Firefly

Serenity Blueprints Reference Pack

It’s a mark of maturity to be able to admit when you’ve made a mistake. At least, that’s what our mothers always told us. So, it is with bowed head and humble heart that we admit we goofed when we made just 750 sets of the limited-edition Serenity Blueprints. Based on all the e-mails asking that we reissue the now sold-out blueprints, we can tell you agree wholeheartedly.

Luckily, this is one of those mistakes than can be easily addressed, and we’re going to do just that. Not by reissuing the poster-sized, signed, limited-edition 10-sheet set. Once we set a limit of a particular product, we will never reissue that product. You can bank on that.

Instead, we will take the content from the limited-edition blueprints, namely the plans and schematics for Serenity, and put them in a new handy reference-size, spiral-bound pack. A number of you (actually, a large number of you) told us you loved our blueprints, but were afraid to touch them lest the oil from your fingers in any way blemishes your pristine set. And you requested (okay, in some cases, demanded), we reissue the blueprints in a smaller, less-expensive format, so you could keep them handy and pore over them at your convenience. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Of course, being big old Browncoats ourselves, we felt it wasn’t enough just to shrink the blueprints and call it day. No, there’s a lot of stuff we wanted to see in our Serenity blueprints that we just couldn’t fit into a large-format set of museum-quality art prints. But a smaller format will allow us to add some extras: more than 20 additional pages of content.

Yep, that’s right. In addition to the original 10 sheets documenting Serenity’s design, deck plans and systems, we’re adding pages with all her builder plaques, door designs (yes, the colors and shapes signify more than just Mal’s taste in decor), insignias, warning labels, closeups of the shuttle and flying mule, all display screens from the bridge including key system interfaces, such as the proximity scan, planetary scan and systems status – all created by Geoffrey Mandel, Serenity graphics designer and co-creator of the blueprints.

Whew! We’re out of breath! But we’re not done. Because we also commissioned Tim Earls, set designer for Serenity and one of the folks who helped create Serenity’s original design for the TV show, to create the designs of the rest of the Firefly series. That’s right! Mr. Earls, who was the other half of the blueprints team, has turned his considerable talents and knowledge of the Firefly to create illustrations of the Series 1, Series 2 and Series 4 Fireflies (for those not in the know, Serenity is a Series 3 Firefly). And, as an added bonus, Mr. Earl’s has also created the Independent Military’s Series 3 Gunboat variant used extensively in the Unification War.

And to top it off? A forward written by Orson Scott Card (yes, that Orson Scott Card), in character, as it were.