 From season one, Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova is seen reading  Harlan Ellison (qv)s book "Working Without a Net." Harlan Ellison  is credited as the conceptual consultant for Babylon 5. "Working  Without a Net" is the title of Ellisons planned autobiography, but  does not exist as of today (2004). According to  J. Michael Straczynski (qv), Ellison borrowed the prop and carried  it around for a short while to make people think they had missed it  when it came out.