One of my favorite parts of travelling to Minnesota for sci-fi/fantasy/comic book conventions is a room run by the Minnesota Browncoats, a group of diehard Firefly fans who decorate hotel rooms into spot-on replicas of the Serenity galley. They have a beautiful fiddle player who, dressed as a member of the crew, plays the many songs from the Firefly canon as the rest of the crew hands out leaflets with lyrics and leads the visitors in song. It’s a fantastic experience that captures and illustrates both the magic of Firefly and the love present in its fandom. For them, and those of you now wishing you could experience things like the browncoats’ galley for yourself, there is a new book: Firefly: Still Flying.

Firefly: Still Flying is a collection of essays, production art, biographies, and supplemental bits of fun that manages to perfectly capture the spirit and essence of Firefly. The show, a healthy mix of adventure and comedy, had its own sense of style — and, sadly, had far too short a life on television. Getting new bits, even fragments, of that magic is really something special — which is why I am so fond of this book.

Contained within its 160 pages are scads of cast and production photos, interviews, and tales from the making of the show. Setting this apart from the usual production book, however, is the inclusion of three new pieces of Firefly short fiction, written by series writers Jane Espenson, Brett Matthews, and Jose Molina. Also included are two fall-out-of-your-chair-hilarious pages of a children’s book titled Fun with Dick and Jayne, the jokes of which I will not spoil here. There’s enough production art here to satiate the art fans and enough tidbits to satisfy the trivia hounds.

My favorite part of the book, however, is the six-page story titled The Story of Monkey Shines: the on-set practical joke that has passed into legend. Not just a story with a clever title, it chronicles the strange occurrence of a propmaster’s obnoxious toy that ended up kidnapped and ransomed by a rather impish member of the cast. Loaded with the actual abduction photos, ransom notes, and various bits of tomfoolery, this is exactly the kind of thing you dream of finding in a book like this. It is the crown jewel of a mighty fine book.

Firefly: Still Flying is like spending a few more hours with an old friend you thought you’d never see again. Anyone with the television series box set sitting on their shelf along with Serenity should pick this up at their earliest convenience. The book is available now from Titan Books for $19.95 — a bargain for a book this shiny.

Tags: browncoats, firefly, joss whedon, serenity