the Terran Sphere, an interplanetary federation centred on Earth. Independently wealthy and operating from his personal spaceship, the Mordain, Kennedy is assisted on his missions by engineer Penza Saratov, veteran scientist Professor Jarl Luden, and alien navigator Veem Chemile, a humanoid chameleon who claims to be descended from the Zheltyana, an ancient race which dominated the galaxy in the distant past before vanishing without trace. The discovery of mysterious artifacts left behind by the Zheltyana on different worlds often provided the spring-board for the stories in the series. Lester del Rey found that although the first volume managed to "avoid the primitiveness and the formula" that spoiled many similar series, the virtues of such series were also missing, leaving him unenthusiastic. He later noted improvement in a subsequent installment. Tubb wrote 17 Cap Kennedy novels, all under the pseudonym Gregory Kern. These books were the basis for the Commander Scott series from German publishers Bastei. This series included all of the Cap Kennedy books by Tubb as well as a number of further novels, written under pseudonym by different German authors. Published in the format of romanheft (a digest-sized version of pulp magazines), the series lasted for 42 issues from 1975 to 1976. (See the entry under the German Wikipedia, Commander Scott.) Space: 1999 series Tubb was the author of six novels based on Gerry Anderson's 1975 science fiction television series Space: 1999. Breakaway (1975), Collision Course (1975) and Earthbound (2003) are novelizations of 11 scripts written for the series' first season format (including two that were subsequently filmed as second-season episodes), while Alien Seed (1976), Rogue Planet (1976) and Earthfall (1977, revised 2002) are original novels set within the first season continuity. The latter rejected the format changes of the TV series' second season to provide a satisfactory conclusion to the Space 1999 story. Tubb's short story "Random Sample" from New Writings in SF 29 (1976) was revised to become "Dead End", a short story in the Space: 1999 anthology Shepherd Moon (2010). The original story's Prometheus starship crew are replaced by the Moonbase Alpha characters in the Space: 1999 version. "Random Sample" was itself a revised version of a much earlier Tubb short, "Entrance Exam", originally published in New Worlds magazine (1951). Other science fiction Tubb's best known standalone novel is The Space-Born (1956), which started life as a serial for New Worlds Science Fiction magazine entitled "Star