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Robotech was adapted into novel form by "Jack McKinney", a pseudonym for the team of James Luceno and the late Brian Daley, a pair of writers who had been working with Macek since they had collaborated on the animated series Galaxy Rangers. Using fictitious epigraphs in the style of Dune, McKinney's novels fleshed out the chronology (including adapting the incomplete Sentinels source material) in greater detail. Many Robotech fans consider the McKinney series to be an unofficial canon of its own, despite notable divergences in the writing from Harmony Gold's current official animation-based canon. Despite no longer being considered core continuity by Harmony Gold, the novels have been recently re-issued by Del Rey Books as Omnibus compilations.
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Divergences
The major divergences from the Robotech television series include:
Changing Protoculture from a simple power source (the mecha from the original series were mostly fusion-powered) into a mystical force akin to the Force in Star Wars, that, through its "Shapings," manipulated the destiny of the universe.
Stating that Robotechs mecha are controlled by the pilot's mental imaging via a "thinking cap" (a la Firefox or the later Macross spinoff Macross Plus) rather than the joysticks and pedals seen in the show.
Using a chronology that is contradicted by dialogue from the show.
The divergences can be explained partly by a lack of translated source material from the original shows—meaning that the writers could only go by what was seen on the screen and the scripts they'd been given—and partly by a desire to tie the series together even more completely than the television show, sometimes by including material that never ended up being animated. In particular, the "Shapings of the Protoculture" enabled this unification, serving as the deus ex machina to Robotechs Greek tragedy.
After many discussions of these divergences, and correspondence with James Luceno, a group of fans put together a "McKinney Purist FAQ" to address them. Books 19-21 in the series, written by Luceno alone after Daley's death, dispense with many of the divergences, making use of more show-accurate research material compiled by fans such as the ''Robotech'' Reference Guide.
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Bibliography
The following is the list of novels released by Del Rey in publishing order, Omnibus Editions and a recommended reading order which is roughly chronological, except that the events in books 13-17 (The Sentinels) are actually concurrent with books
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Omnibus Collected Editions |
Chronological Reading Order |
The Devil's Hand (The Sentinels)
Dark Powers (The Sentinels)
Death Dance (The Sentinels)
World Killers (The Sentinels)
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The Macross Saga: Battlecry (
The Macross Saga: Doomsday (
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21. Before the Invid Storm
13. The Devil's Hand (The Sentinels)
14. Dark Powers (The Sentinels)
15. Death Dance (The Sentinels)
16. World Killers (The Sentinels)
17. Rubicon (The Sentinels)
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