The Moonbase Alpha Technical Manual
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The Moonbase Alpha Technical Manual was published in October, 1977. It was compiled and written by David Hirsch, with technical drawings by Geoffrey Mandel and David McConnell. The project was semi-official, and was commissioned by Starlog magazine in order to cash in on the perceived dearth of information about the recently-cancelled series Space: 1999, and the unexpected success of The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual.
Somewhat unusually for fictional blueprints, this manual was not published in a normal book binding, but rather came in a red three-ringed binder, with sixty-or-so removable pages. The manual was conceived of as an ongoing project that would be periodically updated and expanded, and the binder format was thought to be an easy way for the manual's owners to insert new pages as they were published. Indeed, the manual even came with a coupon for the purchaser to fill out and mail in, so as to be included on a mailing list informing them of updates as they became available.
Unfortunately, the book was not terribly popular, and did not bring in much money for its publishers. It only went through one printing, and no updates were ever published. It is unknown if any were ever produced.
Keith Young produced several score pages of updates in the format of this manual on his own initiative, and sold these as fanfic. These are extremely high quality and interesting, and extremely hard to come by.
