Star Lord, by Donald G. Phillips, was the 29th BT novel released, in February 1996. In it, a descendant of Stefan Amaris tries to re-establish the Rim Worlds Republic. Posing as the Knights of the Inner Sphere, his forces launch terror attacks to sow chaos. An irregular unit including elements of the real Knights is tasked with identifying, infiltrating, and eliminating this unknown enemy.
Star Lord has traditionally never topped anyone's list of favourite BT novels. The most common critique is that it essentially reads like someone's RPG campaign put to print (though I've also seen people praise it for that reason). Apparently the book had a troubled genesis, with Blaine Pardoe mentioning on his blog that he needed to do a rewrite on it (he's credited inside it as having provided "additional writing").
This was the author's first and last BT novel. I used to think it was because he was a young kid who wrote an iffy novel and the line editor didn't feel he warranted another shot. Some years ago I saw a mention on these forums that he had actually died. However, I didn't get the chance to learn anything more until about six months ago. At that point a fellow posted on Facebook that, as someone who went to every estate sale advertised as having games, he recently hit one that had some rather interesting pieces.
Donald Phillips was married, and his wife held onto most of his items until she died this summer. I was surprised to hear this (because again, I assumed he was young), but it turns out that, while he did die relatively young, he was still a lot older than I thought:
He was a Vietnam War vet--and a chaplain, of all things--who was also a big SF geek (apparently his estate had piles of Star Wars, Star Trek, and B5 stuff as well).
The buyer decided to turn the Battletech items around fairly quickly, and I managed to nab the larger display pictured above (I did not get the smaller framed Star Lord cover). This was a framed collection of a copy of the novel, the sell sheet for his book, the Roc catalogue containing the listing for his book, and his editor's business card. It arrived yesterday, so here's some shots:
Too bad that "full-length animated film" never materialized.
Contact details on the last one redacted. They're almost certainly hopelessly out of date, but might as well be sure.
Also included were a few random sheets from Phillips' BT files. The family held onto any original full manuscripts, apparently.
For the last one, he apparently typed that out on his own Steiner stationery that he whipped up, a few samples of which I now have:
I'm not a collector by nature, but I am a historian, and that for me always overlaps with any other hobby I pick up. Anything that grabs my interest I also want to know the history of as much as possible, whether that's music or pulps and paperbacks or--in this case--BT. I couldn't pass up the chance to get a hold of such a one of a kind piece of history of the franchise, so full of neat info. I wish I could have met Mr. Phillips.
