A (Not So) Brief Foreword
Where to start? Well, the Animorphs series was among among the first set of books I read. I was eight years old, and beginning to move into the great sea of fiction, and Animorphs was that first real step, borrowed from my local library. They only had a seven of them, and I certainly didn't read them in chronological order, but I still became addicted, and over the course of the next few years managed to read all but a few titles. However, this was all a while back now. I'd forgotten all about them to be honest, having moved on to various other things (I'm rather a large Terry Pratchett fan now, and I also love Philip Reeve's Moving Cities Quartet). But, a few weeks back, whilst browsing at the library of the new town I now live in (I'm Australian by birth, but because of my father's job I've been all over the place. I first read the books in New Zealand, but I moved to Britain recently, and checked out the local library for the first time a few weeks back), I found the books, and began to read them once more.
Eventually, I managed to hunt down #54, one of the few I hadn't read. You're probably thinking right now "ah, so he didn't like the ending and is now going to write a fan fiction alternate ending and then follow from that". Well, you'd be wrong. =P In fact, I loved the ending. My problem was, overall, I think I'd moved on too much. The literary quality of the books wasn't bad, it was still as good as it ever, but I was certainly no longer the intended target audience. Jake started when the war when he was 13, and it was finished by the time he was 16. This made good reading for an eight year old, but I'm 16 myself now, and many of the older books no longer seem to have the same strength as they did, I find it more difficult to relate to the characters. So, I decided I'd write some fan fiction for the older readers like myself. However, this had another problem. If I wasn't going to write about the younger characters, then the only real option I had left was a prequel to #1 or a sequel to number #54.
The trouble was, neither of those options felt right. Setting the books after #54 meant that the Animorphs would now be adults, more or less. This put me off for two reasons. The first is that as I have yet to achieve adulthood myself, it would be difficult for me to realistically write from that view point. The second is that I believe the fact the Animorphs are children is quite important. The books are in a way coming of age stories, and I didn't really want to touch that. While I was looking at the 15 to 18 range in terms of age, that's still young enough for someone not to really have settled within themselves. So, that left a prequel to #1, but I dismissed this out of hand, considering the events which set up the series have been very clearly explained, and there's no real need to do anything.
This left me with a conundrum – how could I write a fan fiction if there was no room for it within the existing continuity? Which was how I came up with my idea – an Animorphs Redux. Instead of writing from within the existing continuity, I'd abandon it, and start anew, a whole new canon. I'd use key themes from the previous series, such as the Yeerks, the Ellimist, the Andalites, but use new characters, new stories, new backgrounds, and so on. It'd give me the freedom to write what I want to write, while still keeping the Animorphs spirit (or at least, I hope it does. =P ) So, without further ado, here goes the first part of Animorphs Book 1: The End.