Time and Space

A couple of very good books read recently.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North is near-on impossible to put down. It's about a bloke called Harry August who, when he dies, lives his life over again - but remembering everything that happened before. He can change small things - such as going into different professions or marrying different people - but the big stuff like the Second World War or his mum dying young from cancer is rather set in stone. And Harry's not alone, either - there's a whole network or "oroborans", looking out for each other and passing messages to one another forward and backward in time. Including a message from the future that the end is coming, and increasingly quickly...

It's one of those books that starts with a brilliant, ridiculous idea and plays it out perfectly logically, but then adds ever more thrilling developments. To say more would only spoil it, but gosh it is good.

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield is packed full of fascinating detail about the counter-intuitive nature of working in Earth orbit. For example, there's this moment in November 1995, when Hadfield was on a space shuttle that docked with the Russian Mir space station. It was an extremely complicated bit of orbital mechanics, but they docked successfully - and three seconds early.

"Only we couldn't get the hatch open. On the other side, they were kicking it with all their might. But the Russian engineers had taped, strapped and sealed our docking module's hatch just a little too enthusiastically, with multiple layers. So we did the true space-age thing: we broke into Mir using a Swiss Army knife. Never leave the planet without one."

Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth (2015 [2013]), p. 191.

But the book aims to find life lessons from Hadfield's experience that we can all benefit from, so there's lots of home-spun advice about why it's good to sweat the small stuff and to be prepared. An example is Hadfield learning "Rocket Man" on the guitar on the off-chance that he met Elton John (which he did) and was invited to play something with him (which he wasn't).

I found Hadfield's drive and goal-orientation a bit wearying, but he's an extremely amiable, likable guy - and quick to recount his own failures and mistakes, such as that time one of his colleagues got a face-full of his nail clippings. He's also got a very accessible style, coolly acknowledging the weirdness and danger and randomness of his day job. And it's hard to not like the guy responsible for the first ever music video recorded in space.

Marek says "no"

Here's Dr Marek Kukula - my co-author on The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who - on Doctor Who: The Fan Show answering questions about science, and saying no to Steven Moffat.

The smell of the Daleks

M'colleague Dr Marek Kukula and I have written a couple of blog posts to spread the word about The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who. Here's two of them:

• "What do Daleks smell like?" for Sci-fi Now Magazine
• "Where is planet Vulcan?" for the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog

Remember, there are a bunch of events next week to launch the book, and here's me talking to the Starburst Bookworm podcast (series 3, episode 19 if you are catching up from the future) and to Croydon Radio.

ETA here's another blog post:

• "The science of crashed spaceships" for the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog

Doctor Who and the Black Hole

Ben, Polly, Jamie and the Doctor

Big Finish have announced a series of four "early adventures" for the Second Doctor - two of 'em scribbled by me...

"The series opens in September with The Yes Men by Simon Guerrier, in which the Doctor, Jamie, Polly and Ben arrive on New Houston, an Earth colony in the Fourth Sector, which the Doctor previously saved from an alien invasion. He wishes to pay his respects to his late friend Meg Carvossa, but something is not quite right with New Houston’s subservient robots...

'Everyone loved Simon’s script,' says producer David Richardson. 'It’s a clever, dark thriller in the style of The Enemy of the World that really plays to the strengths of all the regular characters. And we had all of the characters there - not only Frazer as the Doctor and Ben, but also Anneke Wills reprising the role of Polly, and Elliot Chapman making his debut as Ben Jackson. Elliot has big shoes to fill, but he does a smashing job - these three actors really do sound exactly like that early TARDIS team.'

...

November’s release is The Black Hole by Simon Guerrier, and the line-up shifts to the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria (Deborah Watling). On a research station near a black hole, time keeps standing still. Investigating the phenomenon, the Doctor discovers a power far greater than any of the monsters that challenge him on his travels... Guest stars for this story are David Warner, who serves as narrator, Rufus Hound and Janet Dibley."

The other stories in the series are The Forsaken by Justin Richards (October) and The Isos Network by Nicholas Briggs (December).

There will be a Graceless IV

Gosh. Those fine fellows at Big Finish want me to write more of my science-fiction series Graceless, so I am busy scribbling.

As the announcement says:

"Ciara Janson and Laura Doddington are heading back into studio later this year, following the greenlighting of Graceless - Series 4 for a 2016 release. We spoke to series creator and writer Simon as he begins to work on this new set:

"Ha ha! I am thrilled to get to write more adventures for Abby and Zara (though when we last heard from from them they weren't called that any more). But how to bring them back from that rather definitive ending? Well, the answer we've come up with makes me giddy with delight... I can't wait! Get on with writing it, me."

Graceless - Series 4 is available for pre-order ahead of its release in September 2016 at a discounted price on both CD and Download. All three previous Graceless releases are still available, as are the three Doctor Who stories which saw the origins of the series: Doctor Who - The Judgement of Isskar, Doctor Who - The Destroyer of Delights, and Doctor Who - The Chaos Pool."

Events for The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

I'll be at some events to publicise my new book, The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who.

• 4 June, 6 pm
  I'll be signing the book at Forbidden Planet in London, alongside by co-author Marek Kukula and short story writers Jenny Colgan, Jonathan Morris and Andrew Smith.
• 5 June, 7 pm
  Marek and I will be giving a talk at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, accompanied by a Dalek.
• 6 June, 7.30 pm
  I and the Dr will speak at the Northwich Lit Fest on "Doctor Who and the Egyptians".

There'll be more events to come, which I'll post here as they're confirmed. And I've done some interviewed too. I was a guest on the Handsome Timmy D Express last week. 

V for Vengeance

A few hundred yards from where I live, in a gap between the terraced houses there's a children's playground. It's a regular haunt of the Lord of Chaos, and I'd vaguely wondered if the gap between the houses might have been the result of a bomb in the Second World War.

Recently, the Dr's researches on something else meant she stumbled on the fact that yes, that gap was the result of a V-2 rocket. In fact, our part of South London was especially badly hit by the Nazi vengeance weapons, the direct result of British Intelligence sacrificing my neighbourhood to save central London. They did this by convincing the Nazis that their bombs fell far north of the capital so the aim needed correcting.

I think of the people who lived in the streets around me now, and those who lived in the house where I'm typing this, in a room with a view of a garden that still contains a brick shelter. 70 years ago on VE Day, on the street where my son's playground now is, they hanged an effigy of Hitler. I can't blame them.

Of course, the V-2 later took people to the Moon - as I was surprised to find NASA discussing quite openly when I visited Cape Canaveral in 2009.

"Our guide was nicely open about the origins of American rocketry, showing us a rare example of a V2 engine while explaining what rockets like that had done to south London. He himself raised the dubious morality in pardoning the former Nazi Werhner von Braun; again, this wasn’t the kind of corporate history I’d quite expected. NASA seemed keen to challenge their own history, to ask the difficult questions."

Me, "Geek Heaven", 10 November 2009.

Today, the Dr took the Lord of Chaos to the RAF Museum at Colindale, and thought to snap me these pictures.

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

My new book will be out on 4 June, and this 'ere is the press release:

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who
By Simon Guerrier and Dr Marek Kukula
4 June 2015

Doctor Who stories are many things: thrilling adventures, historical dramas, and science fiction tales. But how much of the science is real? And how much is fiction?

Weaving together authoratitive scientific discussion with a series of new adventures by acclaimed Doctor Who writers including Jenny T Colgan, George Mann and Jacqueline Rayner, Simon Guerrier and Dr Marek Kukula explore the possibilities of time travel, life on other planets, artificial intelligence, parallel universes and more. From the dawn of astronomy and the discovery of gravity to the moon landings and string theory, the authors show how science has inspired Doctor Who, and how, on occasion, life has mirrored art, such as the 1989 discovery of 'ice-canoes' on Triton which were featured in the 1973 episode The Planet of the Daleks.

For example, did you know...

• The creation of the Cybermen in The Tenth Planet in 1966 was prompted by two American neuroscientists who argued that astronauts' bodies should be adapted to suit the conditions of space.
• The failure of Beagle 2 to land on Mars on Christmas Day 2003 influenced the loss of Guinevere One at the start of The Christmas Invasion.
• The many parallel universes that feature in Doctor Who, from Inferno to Rise of the Cybermen, are inspired by a reaction to the Schrodinger's Cat theory: that a new universe is created for each different outcome.
• The startling resemblance between Amelia Pond and the Twelfth Doctor and two characters from The Fires of Pompeii isn't simply due to the actors returning to the series: it might be grounded in science as well.
• Time Lords aren't the only beings able to regenerate - when the turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish gets ill, old, or faces danger, it can return to its childhood state as a polyp.

Full blurb and details at the Ebury website. Oh, and here's the back cover with a nice quote from Leela.

The Founding Fathers and The Locked Room

Those luminous persons at Big Finish have announced the contents of The First Doctor box-set out in June, what has some scribbling by me:

"Big Finish are delighted to name the four new stories being released in June in the Doctor Who - The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Box Set:

The Sleeping Blood by Martin Day

When the Doctor falls ill, Susan is forced to leave the safety of the TARDIS behind. Exploring a disused research centre in search of medical supplies, she becomes embroiled in the deadly plans of a terrorist holding an entire world to ransom – and the soldier sent to stop him.

The Unwinding World by Ian Potter

Office life is tough, the commute is a grind, nothing works quite as well as you’d like. Vicki seems to remember things being better once, before the little flat. It’s time she put some excitement back in her life. It’s just a shame the Doctor can’t help.

The Founding Fathers by Simon Guerrier

The TARDIS lands in Leicester Square in the summer of 1762. When the Doctor, Steven and Vicki find themselves locked out of the TARDIS, only one man can possibly help them. But the American, Benjamin Franklin, has problems of his own…

The Locked Room by Simon Guerrier

Steven Taylor left the Doctor and the TARDIS to become king of an alien world. But it’s now many years since he gave up the throne and went to live in a cell in the mountains, out of sight of his people. He’s not escaping his past – quite the opposite, in fact. As his granddaughter, Sida, is about to discover…

Doctor Who - The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Box Set is released in June on CD and Download, and until July 1st is at a pre-order price of £20 on CD and £15 on Download. It’s part of the epic and much-loved Doctor Who - The Companion Chronicles range from Big Finish, which can be Subscribed to for savings across buying the titles separately.

Bar the first four stories, all the Companion Chronicles are available on both CD and Download, and exclusive to the Big Finish site, a CD purchase will provide access to a Download in your account too!"

The Art of Doctor Who

Out this week in shops is the The Art of Doctor Who - the latest sumptuous special edition from Doctor Who Magazine, "celebrating six decades of design and illustration inspired by the series."

It's a beautiful, comprehensive thing, and I'm thrilled to have a couple of pieces in it.

For a short feature on Doctor Who animation, I got to speak to Steve Maher, who was responsible for the look of The Scream of the Shalka and The Infinite Quest, and the two animated episodes of The Invasion.

For a longer (but it could easily have been book length!) feature on Doctor Who comics since 2000, I got to speak to Lee Sullivan, Mike Collins, John Ross, Nick Roche, Pia Guerra, Adrian Salmon, Elena Casagrande and Alice X Zhang, as well as former DWM editor Clayton Hickman and current Titan Comics editor Andrew James. (There's also sage wisdom from Martin Geraghty, but he spoke to my comrades, not me.)

But I think my favourite bit is, without me asking, an episode of AAAGH! making it into the mag, with what I think might be Nervil and Mrs Tinkle's first appearance in DWM. 

Doctor Who and the very Hungry Snake

Out in shops today is Doctor Who Adventures #363, which features another daft comic strip by me - "The Very Hungry Snake".

"The Very Hungry Snake" - Doctor Who Adventures #363
Written by Simon Guerrier, art by John Ross,
colour by Alan Craddock

As ever, I'm delighted by the magnificent artwork by the magnificent John Ross - notching up his 1612th consecutive page of artwork for the comic strip since DWA began in April 2006. What an extraordinary achievement.

"That's a typical piece of fan nonsense..."

In shops now - The Essential Doctor Who: Master. Includes my interviews with Terrance Dicks, Richard Franklin and Katy Manning. I asked Terrance and Katy, on the basis of Missy, if the Master has always fancied the Doctor…

Full details at the official Doctor Who Magazine website.

Irregularity signing, Forbidden Planet this Saturday

JOIN JURASSIC LONDON AT FORBIDDEN PLANET FOR THE BEST IN CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY – taking place the London Megastore on Saturday 7th March from 1- 2pm!

During the Age of Reason, the world’s greatest minds named, measured and catalogued the world around them.

They brought order and discipline to the universe. Except where they didn’t. Irregularity collects fourteen original stories from extraordinary literary voices, each featuring someone — or something — that refused to obey the dictates of reason: Darwin’s other voyage, the secret names of spiders, the assassination of Isaac Newton and an utterly impossible book.

• Tiffani Angus • Rose Biggin • Richard Dunn • Simon Guerrier • Nick Harkaway • Roger Luckhurst • Adam Roberts • Claire North • Gary Northfield • Henrietta Rose-Innes • James Smythe • M. Suddain • E.J. Swift • Sophie Waring

Come and meet the authors of this marvellous collection, have a chat, grab yourself a signed and enjoy the company – this won’t be formal event, just a chance to find some fabulous fiction!

• Irregularity signing - event details on Facebook
• Irregularity signing - event details on Forbidden Planet's website

Bananas

The new issue of Doctor Who Adventures features a four-page comic strip written by me. In "Five A Day", the 12th Doctor and Clara battle giant bananas on the alien world Luna Schlosser*. Even by my usual standards, it is silly.

As ever, the art is by John Ross with colour by Alan Craddock, and the editor was Moray Laing. Issue #362 of DWA is in shops now.

* Luna Schlosser is, of course, also the name of Diane Keaton's character in the magnificent Sleeper (1973). It's just possible I was, ahem, inspired by one particular scene.

Four non-fiction books

"The people interested in the history of comic books are not the same as the people interested in the history of the polygraph. (And very few people in either group are also interested in the history of feminism.)"

Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), pp. 295-6.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is extraordinary: a compelling, strange secret history of alternative sexuality and modern times. William Moulton Marston - under the pseudonym Charles Moulton - based the superhero he created on his wife and their girlfriend - the latter the niece of Margaret Sanger, the campaigner who popularised the term "birth control". There are reasons why Wonder Woman proclaims "Suffering Sapho!" and that she's so often tied up in chains...

Marston, who invented a "lie detector" based on a test of systolic blood pressure, which later led to the polygraph, was shrouded in falsehoods - about his private life, about who in his household wrote what, about his qualifications as a psychologist. There's lots on how his threesome contrived to build a myth around him, and how for all he extolled the versions of men submitting to dominant women, he rather had it the other way round.

The epilogue is especially interesting, placing the feminist reclamation of Wonder Woman in the early 1970s amid what else what happening in the feminist movement at the time. The examples Lepore cites of "trashing" seem like a modern phenomena.

I also remain haunted weeks after finishing Do No Harm, a memoir by brain surgeon Henry Marsh. Marsh recounts a number of different cases where he has got it right or wrong - the latter always with horrific consequences. Really this is a catalogue of the terrible awfulness that life brings to us, and of human efforts to get through it. Marsh is painfully honest about his own fears and weakness, but what haunts me are his perfect turns of phrase: that all surgeons are carry with them cemeteries of the patients they have wronged; that, when facing the angry parents of a young patient, love is selfish; that doctors forget patients and patients forget doctors if everything goes well, and it's only the tragedies that linger...

Marsh's anger at the management and cut-backs, and the effect he can see them having on people's lives, echoed Nick Davies' Hack Attack, his account of the hacking scandal that he originally broke in the Guardian. At the end, he rants against a system that has removed accountability from our political systems, where even the most terrible personal tragedy has become a commodity. Like Marsh, Davies is forthcoming about his own failings - how he missed connections or said the wrong things or jeopardised his whole case. He's also good in making his account of Leveson so much about human character.

And now I am 35 pages into H is for Hawk, which is currently collecting literary prizes all over town. It turns out to echo much of these other books - how we handle tragedy and injustice and anger, how we're losing the old world in exchange for something as yet unknown. I'm not quite sure what it's about yet - so far a memoir of loss, some personal history and falconry, and the works of TH White (I am also rereading The Once and Future King) - but there's this striking moment on the process of grief, gleaned from too many books.

"I read that after denial comes grief. Or anger. Or guilt. I remember worrying about which stage I was at. I wanted to taxonomise the process, order it, make it sensible. But there was no sense, and I didn't recognise any of these emotions at all."

Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk (2014), p. 17.

Modern Man at the BFI

Modern Man, the short film I wrote, will play at the BFI on 21 February as part of the 8th BFI Future Film Festival. It's included in the short fiction selection in NFT1 at 1 pm.

The Future Film Festival promises to "provide opportunities to connect with the film industry, kick-start your career and develop new and existing skills with inspirational screenings, masterclasses, Q&As and workshops." So it's a bit gutting that I can't go due to other commitments. Bah.

Modern Man is the third film I've written to get screened at the BFI: Wizard played as part of the LOCO London Comedy Film Festival last year, and The Plotters was shortlisted for the Virgin Media Shorts Award 2012.

Sherlock Holmes and immortality

You can read my piece for the Lancet Psychiatry on the Museum of London's Sherlock Holmes exhibition (running until 12 April), which really explores the nature of Holmes fandom more generally.

I'm also thrilled to see that the BBC website has a clip from the newly discovered 1916 film of Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette. The clip includes the moment that Holmes meets his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, with them saying "Bonjour" to one another - this version of the film was discovered in France.

Especially thrillingly, while the intertitles narrating the film refer to "Sherlock Holmes" (see, for example, at 01:09 in the clip), Moriarty either speaks with an accent - or a typo:

The Couch on which John Hunter Died

The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London is a fascinating place full of dead things in jars. The surgeon John Hunter (1728-93) collected specimens of lizards and other animals, using them to teach the next generation of doctors.

"While most of his contemporaries taught only human anatomy, Hunter's lectures stressed the relationship between structure and function in all kinds of living creatures. Hunter believed that surgeons should understand how the body adapted to and compensated for damage due to injury, disease or environmental changes. He encouraged students such as Edward Jenner and Astley Cooper to carry out experimental research and to apply the knowledge gained to the treatment of patients."
- Hunterian Museum website

It wasn't just medicine that benefited from Hunter's collection. In 1824, Gideon Mantell tried to match a fossilised fragment of jawbone he'd discovered to a comparable modern-day creature. He visited the Hunterian Museum, where assistant-curator Samuel Stutchbury saw a resemblance - in shape if not size - to a specimen of iguana. The following year, Mantell announced to the Royal Geological Society the discovery of Iguanadon - "iguana-tooth". Along with the fossilised remains of two other creatures, Iguanadon would later be used to define a new kind of animal: the dinosaur.

I visit the Hunterian Museum a fair bit, most recently to look up what it has to say on regeneration - the way some animals are able to regrow lost limbs. (I should also declare an interest: my dad volunteers there and gives a good talk every other Friday on the history of syphilis.)

The collection, though, is not just of animals: there are also plenty of human bodies - whole ones as well as partial bits of interest. If this can leave visitors feeling a bit squeamish, the ethos is very clear: by better understanding the body and how it can go wrong, we can better mend injury and cure disease. That said, deciding what specimens count as "better understanding the body" can be open to debate, such as the museum continuing to display the body of Charles Byrne, the "Irish Giant", against his clearly stated views.

I don't have a problem with Byrne's skeleton being displayed, but I was struck by something else I saw this week. By the reception of the Hunter Wing of St George's Hospital in Tooting there's a display devoted to Hunter. The hospital has just done very well in the results of the Research Excellence Framework for 2014 and links its current research to the precedent set by Hunter - who worked at St George's, but back when it was based at Hyde Park Corner (the hospital moved in stages between 1976 and 1980).

I can see why it might not be appropriate to show medical specimens as people go to their medical appointments in the hospital - it would be too blunt a reminder of our inevitable fate. But is the couch on which Hunter died a more tasteful relic for display? It doesn't seem to do much for the better understanding the body. I find myself more bothered by that the bones of Charles Byrne.

Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 2015

Out now is the Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 2015, a sumptuous celebration of all this year's Doctor Who. It includes some things I done wrote:

An interview with Albert DePetrillo, senior editorial director at BBC Books who oversees the Doctor Who titles.

A feature on fans who have been inspired by Doctor Who to make the most extraordinary things. I spoke to: Billy Hanshaw who posted a video on YouTube earlier this year that led to him designing the show's opening titles; Ailsa Stern who is the brains (and nimble fingers) behind Dr Puppet; Mette Hedin who creates the most amazing monster costumes for wearing to conventions; and Steven Ricks who hand-tailors exquisitely precise recreations of the various Doctors' clothes.

A piece on all the awards Doctor Who has won in 2014.

Doctors Who and all their friends

I am in love with this magnificent effort by the amazing Red Scharlach:

As Red explains:

I set myself a few ground rules: canon Doctors only (so no Shalka Doctor or Peter Cushing, sorry); not all recurring characters are companions (so no Jackie Tyler or Kate Stewart); and companions must have appeared more than once but not necessarily in the same medium (e.g. Sara Kingdom has been in Big Finish and Grace has been in a comic). But then I broke those rules on occasion (e.g. to include Cinder, the War Doctor’s only companion), so the end result is all a bit wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey fuzzy-brainy won’t-fit-in-the-box-neatly. Rather like Doctor Who itself, in fact.
Anyway, the design is now on sale in my Redbubble shop as a poster or art print (i.e. on heavier paper) and there’s still a little bit of time to order one before Christmas…

But look: Oliver, and Amy/Abby and Zara, and even Decky Flamboon...