BSFA Award longlist

My book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television is one of 24 titles longlisted for best non-fiction (long) in this year's British Science Fiction Association's awards. It's a thrill to be noticed, and to be included in such auspicious company - including several mates.

Voting is open to members of the BSFA, who can select up to four works per category. There will then be a shortlist, and winners announced at the Levitation Eastercon event over the weekend of 29 March - 1 April. Details and voting form at the BSFA site.

What with life and lockdown, I've been a bit out of the loop with all things BSFA, though I used to regularly review books for its magazine Vector and attend its events in London. In September 2015, I was the subject of one of those events, interviewed by Professor Edward James, who'd overseen the Masters degree in science-fiction I did 1997-98. 

Here's an on-its-side recording, from that ancient bygone age.

Love and Let Die, by John Higgs

I really enjoyed this wide-ranging ramble through Bond, the Beatles and the British psyche. It charts the interweaving histories of the Fabs and 007, not just in their 1960s heydays but up to the present and beyond, exploring disparities and connections, and how our interpretations have changed. In detailing shifts in what Bond and the Beatles mean, it's a history of our changing mores and anxieties. It's a fun and provactive read - a book about connections that really connects.

"That's as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs," quips Sean Connery's Bond in Goldfinger (1964), a moment before someone hits him. Yet less than a decade later, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and ex-Beatles producer George Martin provided the soundtrack for Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973). I've long thought this was evidence of seismic shifts in contemporary culture over a very brief period, but not got much further that that. This is the territory Higgs dives into in his book, with lots of fresh insight and stuff I didn't know, for all that the subjects are so familiar.

How strange to realise that I've been part of these historical changes. I was at university in the mid-1990s when the Beatles enjoyed a resurgence in things like the Anthology TV series, and well remember debates had then about who was best: the Beatles or the Stones. How disquieting to realise, as Higgs says, that we don't make that comparison any more, without ever being aware of a moment when things changed.

Higgs is also of his (and our) time in rejecting ideas that I can remember used to hold considerable sway, such as that John Lennon was the 'best' Beatle, or the band's driving creative force. As the book says, there's growing recognition of what the four Beatles accomplished together rather than as competing individuals. There's something of this, too, in the way Higgs positions Bond to the Beatles. Initially, they're binary opposites, Bond an establishment figure Higgs equates with death, the Beatles working-class rebels all about life and love. By the end, it's as if they synchronise.

This might all sound a bit highfalutin but the insights here are smart and funny. As just one example, here's what Bond's favourite drink reveals about who he is.

"Bond's belief that he knows exactly what the best is appears early in the first novel Casino Royale, when he goes to the bar and orders a dry martini in a deep champagne goblet. Not trusting the barman to know how to make a martini, he gives him specific instructions. 'Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel.' When the drink arrives, he tells that barman that is is 'Excellent,' then adds, 'But if you can get a vodka made with grain instead of potatoes, you will find it still better.' Most people who have worked in the service industries will recognise a customer like this." (pp. 242-3)

Amazing - Bond as an umarell! 

I especially like how free-wheeling and broad this all is. There's stuff on shamanic ceremonies from the ancient past, stuff on Freud and the fine art world and Putin. At one point, Higgs talks about the damaging effects of fame in disconnecting a rock star (or anyone else famous) from everyone else.

"Drugs and alcohol appear to mask this disconnect, but in reality, they exaggerate it - cocaine in particular acts as fascism in powdered form. It erodes empathy and keeps the focus on the ever-hardening ego." (p. 294)

It probes the less palatable bits of popular history, grappling head on the complexities of our heroes' objectionable behaviour and views. Our heroes are not always good people, yet by framing this all as a study of how attitudes and culture have shifted, the book avoids making them all villains. 

I nodded along to lots of perceptive stuff, like the thoughts on why Spectre (2016) didn't work precisely because it used screenwriting structures that usually do well in other movies. But I'm not sure Higgs is always right. He argues that a derisive response to a particular CGI sequence in Die Another Day (2002) led to a serious rethink by the Bond producers, which included sacking Pierce Brosnan. I suspect a more pertinent reason was that - as I understand it - Brosnan injured his knee while filming the hovercraft chase and first unit production had to be postponed while he underwent surgery. That would have been expensive and an ongoing risk for an ongoing series of action movies. The fantasy of a Bond who is, over 60 years of movies, always in his prime, must square up against the practicalities of ageing. And that's in line with what Higgs argues elsewhere.

But I don't make this point to criticise. It's more that I found myself responding to the book as if it were a conversation, inviting the reader to engage - and argue. Most potent of all is the final chapter. Having delved so deeply into the past, the author maps out how Bond should develop from here. Yes, absolutely, a younger, millennial Bond who'll appeal to a new generation, and one big on fun and consent, and whose partners don't all die. But also -

[Thankfully, Simon is dragged off-stage.]

The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien

Atomic Theory is at work in a rural parish of Ireland. This, says Sergeant Pluck of the local police station, explains a spate of missing bicycles - and why one particular bicycle is locked up in a cell. The sergeant spells it out for us thus:

"Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?" (p. 86)

Since the narrator of The Third Policeman follows this, the sergeant proceeds with devastating logic:

"'Consecutively and consequentially, ' he continued, 'you can safely infer that you are made of atoms yourself and so is your fob pocket and the tail of your shirt and the instrument you use for taking the leavings out of the crook of your hollow tooth. Do you happen to know what takes place when you strike a bar of iron with a good coal hammer or with a blunt instrument?'"

The answer, he says, is that,

"When the wallop falls, the atoms are bashed away down to the bottom of the bar and compressed and crowded there like eggs under a good clucker. After a while in the course of time they swim around and get back at last to where they were. But if you keep hitting the bar long enough and hard enough they do not get a chance to do this and what happens then?" (p. 87)

Pluck explains that atoms from the iron bar duly end up in the hammer, while atoms from the hammer end up in the iron bar. What's more, the same applies in the matter of bicycles.

"The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles." (p. 88)

He proceeds to supply percentages for various named individuals. 

This is one, compelling example of the daftness contained in The Third Policeman, a novel written in 1940 but not published until 1967. I've had this recommended by various people over the years but have only just got to it. The plot, as such, is straightforward. Our narrator tells us in the opening sentence that he was embroiled with someone else in committing a murder; he then recounts what happened but much of the book concerns the rambling, surreal and often quite confused adventures that follow this wicked deed.

Things get very surreal. At one point, the narrator descends to an underground chamber where his every want can be produced from a machine - but not taken out of the chamber. He is sentenced to death by hanging but rescued by a union of one-legged men (more or less). In a sequence that calls back to Pluck's elucidation on Atomic Theory, the narrator develops some kind of relationship with a female bicycle. In all, it's generally funny-peculiar but peppered with funny-ha-ha, and I can see why some readers might find it insufferable. What saves it is that through these comic, quixotic adventures, the reader is haunted by a sense of something more sinister being involved.

Concise but illuminating notes at the end of this edition cite the influence on O'Brien of A Rebours (1884), the French decadent novel that also inspired Oscar Wilde and is seen in the closing moments of Withnail and I - a film with similar rambling, daft adventures in the countryside with something sad and bitter underneath. The notes also say that "de Selby", a philosopher whose daft theories are expounded here, largely in footnotes, returns in person in O'Brien's later novel The Dalkey Archive (1964), and also in work by Robert Anton Wilson (co-author of The Illuminatus Trilogy). The sequence on pp. 103-105 where the narrator is invited to guess the name of man he doesn't know, and we get a long list of odd monickers interspersed with "No", surely influenced the same gag in the Christmas episode of Father Ted. The notes provide evidence of the novel's influence on the TV series Lost. There's even a "De Selby" referenced in an audio play I produced nearly two decades ago, too. Reading this novel has been akin to when my children see the film or TV episode that inspires a well-known meme.

But The Third Policeman - and its final revelations - more than anything reminded me of stuff that can't have influenced it, or been influenced by it in turn. It's difficult to mention these without a risk of spoiling the novel for those who haven't read it, so I'll leave some line breaks.

Yes, I'll leave some line breaks.

Like this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

In particular, I thought of the horror film Dead of Night (1945), the defining structure of which came about by accident during the edit, and also William Golding's novel Pincher Martin (1956) and the brilliant, unsettling short story 'I Used to Live Here Once' by Jean Rhys (also used as the title of her biography). The odd thought is that all these works and their authors (including O'Brien and The Third Policemen) somehow trod the same surreal, sinister paths independently. That implies that this unsettling space is in actual fact common ground.

The Man Who Didn't Fly, by Margot Bennett

This is a beguiling mystery by Margot Bennett, first published in 1955 and recently republished in a nice new edition by the British Library, along with several other examples of Bennett's crime fiction. I listened to the audio version read by Seán Barrett and think it might have helped to have had the paperback to hand so I could flip easily back to clues and insight. I think I followed it to the end - but can see why other online reviewers found it a bit perplexing.

Several commentators fix on what they see as a fundamental weakness but which I rather enjoyed - this isn't set up as a murder mystery. Instead, it begins with the loss at sea of a charter plane on its way to Ireland. Records show that a pilot and three passengers were aboard, but four men are known to have tickets. So who exactly is the man who didn't fly and why has he also disappeared?

That wheeze puts this novel in the same bracket as other mystery stories I've loved, such as The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (1948), or quite a few adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in not being a murder mystery. I can understand why some readers might find it a bit lightweight, insignificant. It's less Cluedo as Guess Who?

The police ask questions of people who encountered these various men in the days leading up to the fateful flight. That then leads to the bulk of the novel: an extended flashback over several days, all set in a wealthy family home. Two of the men seem romantically entangled with daughters of the house. At least one of the men is embroiled in something dodgy involved investments. None of it really seems to help us as readers play along in solving the puzzle.

But I found a lot of this stuff quite fun. It has the feel of a stage play, characters coming and going in the same drawing room, with conflicts and revelations coming thick and fast. Then two outsiders enter proceedings - a young burglar and an older man from Australia with a grudge. It began to look as if the three passengers on the plane might be drawn from a larger pool than the original four suspects.

(I also began to wonder if the continued reference to "the man" who didn't fly was setting up a twist where the missing person would turn out to be a woman who has switched places with one of the four.)

At last we return to the present to sift through everything we've had presented. The police methodically, logically, work through the evidence and - taking everything they've been told at face value - establish the identify of the fourth man. Then comes the brilliant twist that this does involve a murder mystery, the killing one aspect of wider criminal activity that there have been clues to all along.

But it's odd that this whole thing hinges on tragic chance - the plane crash being a random accident is another thing some readers criticise. The mild-mannered inquiry into who was involved has less dramatic urgency than a regular murder mystery. I liked it because it was something a bit different from the norm but can see why it would disappoint if you have a firmer sense of what mystery novels should be.

I've some more work by Bennett to get through, engaged in my own mild-mannered inquiry into what exactly she might have pitched in 1964 to Doctor Who. Martin Edwards' introduction to this novel has been helpful there - and his mention of Margot Bennett in Life of Crime sparked this thought in the first place. I've the first inklings of an idea about what she and story editor David Whitaker might have discussed but, like the dour police inspector in this novel, will hold off until I've gathered all the evidence.

Doctor Who Magazine #599

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out today, with a deep dive by Benjamin Cook into the shooting of the regenerations sequence seen in The Giggle last year, and a new comic strip in which the TARDIS arrives in space Manchester. There's an interview with Millie Gibson who plays new companion Ruby Sunday, and chats with the teams behind the new TARDIS and sonic screwdriver.

On pages 42 and 43, there's my interview with post-production producer Ceres Doyle (who has worked on Doctor Who since 2004) and post-production supervisor Liv Duffin, who I spoke to in October.

There's also a nice review by Jamie Lenman of Whotopia, the book I worked on with Jonathan Morris and Una McCormack.

Adventures Across Space and Time - A Doctor Who Reader

I've just received a copy of this collection of essays and insights on the cultural history and impact of Doctor Who, edited by Paul Booth, Matt Hills, Joy Piedmont and Tansy Rayner Roberts.

I read a proof version in May and was asked if I'd provide an endorsement. My response then is now partially quoted on the back cover:

"A brilliant compendium of the brilliance of Doctor Who fandom. Intelligent, insightful and incredibly wide-ranging, this is a really engaging collection. I love the mix of new analysis and older pieces to give a comprehensive overview. A perfect introduction for those new to Doctor Who scholarship, and packed with interest for more established scholars. There's so much here I'd never even thought of. I finished it then immediately wanted to start reading again."

The book republishes some classic takes, with excerpts from The Making of Doctor Who (1972) by the series' then script editor Terrance Dicks and regular writer Malcolm Hulke, a 1973 letter to Radio Times by a teenage Peter Capaldi (later the Twelfth Doctor), and a 1995 post to rec.arts.doctor.who by Steven Moffat who was later executive producer of the series. There's a piece on 'canonicity' by my friend Paul Cornell, addressing his TV adaptation of Human Nature for the Tenth Doctor on TV when it was originally a novel featuring the Seventh Doctor. 

There are excepts from cultural historians John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins, whose work I read closely while at university half a lifetime ago. This sits alongside an except from Pier Britton's authoritative book Design for Doctor Who, and a piece by Mary Robinette Kowal detailing the Doctor Who references hidden in her historical fantasy novels.

But what really thrilled me is the new essays original to this collection that cover an enormous range of ground. As I said in my endorsement, there's loads here that was new to this long-in-the-tooth hardcore fan. That was especially true of Magdalena Stonawska's piece on fandom in Poland, Eloy Vieira and Lilian FranÇa on fandom in Brazil and Ting Guo on fandom in China. There's stuff on fanzines and figurines and the financial cost (more than £300!) of following multimedia adventure Time Lord Victorious (of which I wrote one instalment). There's loads here to illuminate, inspire and challenge - and to argue with. What a delight.

(One slightly odd thing: I'm described on the back cover as "producer and author of How The Doctor Changed My Life (2008)", but I edited rather than authored that book, and it was quite a long time ago. I've done one or two other related things since.)

Garry Halliday and the Disappearing Diamonds, by Justin Blake

This is a concise, 125-page novelisation of the first Garry Halliday serial. The children's TV series about the adventures of an airline pilot ran for a total of 50 half-hour episodes, broadcast on Saturday evenings between 28 February 1959 and 29 September 1962; 11 episodes were then repeated between 5 November 1962 and 27 July 1963. For more than three years, Garry Halliday was a fixture in the schedule but it was then largely eclipsed by the series of serials that replaced it in the same Saturday teatime slot: Doctor Who.

While I was researching the life of David Whitaker - who worked on two Garry Halliday serials before becoming first story editor of Doctor Who - I read some contradictory stuff about the earlier series. Despite what you may read elsewhere, it was not adapted from books by Justin Blake; instead, the five books published 1960-65 were novelisations of broadcast TV serials. Nor did the TV series comprise a single 'trailer' episode and then two serials of 16 and 33 episodes respectively; there were seven serials of either six or seven episodes, and then an eighth series of six one-off episodes.

Such misconceptions are common when discussing old TV that no longer exists (only one episode of Garry Halliday survives in the archive), based on decades-old memories. The novelisation is a record of what has been lost, its six chapters providing a useful precis of the six broadcast episodes, with details of plot, pace and tone, and even descriptions of some of the sets. It can also help correct other misconceptions.

For example, the villain of the series is known as The Voice because even his own hench-people never see him in person. Some sources say that in the first serial The Voice disguised himself by shining a powerful light in the faces of those who report to him. The novelisation makes clear he works from an office with a two-way mirror and his minions are only admitted to the so-called Mirror Room. It may be that the light shone in people's faces is from a later serial, or it may be that what a viewer remembers is the way the Mirror Room scenes were shot, with close-ups of anxious hench-people.

What's more, Halliday is here a pilot for the British Overseas Airways - surely a little too close to the real-life British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-74). It's only after this first adventure that he sets up his own airline, Halliday Charter Company.

So, the plot. On several flights back from Amsterdam, keen-eyed Halliday (Terence Longdon) spots an unexpected sight: what look like weather balloons but smaller. Halliday's co-pilot Bill Dodds (Terence Alexander, later Charlie Hungerford in Bergerac) - who narrates the novelisation - and stewardess Jean Wills (credited in Radio Times as Ann Gudrun, but better known as Gudrun Ure aka Supergran) fail to spot the balloons, and the authorities don't believe him either.

When Dodds tells a friend in the pub about this, they are overheard by a trainee steward called George Bassett (Geoffrey Hibbert), who then reports this conversation to The Voice. It turns out that Halliday has stumbled on to a diamond-smuggling operation. On his next flight, Halliday diverts course so that Dodds and Wills finally see a balloon but Bassett convinces them not to report this without better evidence; they agree to bring a cine camera with them on their next flight.

But as that flight takes off, Bassett has planted a bomb among the luggage...

In the second episode / chapter, Halliday learns of the bomb and disposes of it in the nick of time. In Amsterdam, he and his friends then investigate where the balloons have been launched from. They deduce it must be somewhere near the coast and drive around asking local people what they might have seen. This leads them to a windmill, where they are apprehended by two gunmen...

And so it goes on, Halliday surviving a series of scrapes. The obvious comparison is to the adventures of Biggles, though it reminded me a lot of John Buchan's Hannay stories. The diamond-smuggling plot may owe something to James Bond - the first Bond film wasn't out until 1962, but the novel Diamonds are Forever was published in 1956 and Ian Fleming's non-fiction book The Diamond Smugglers the following year. To expose the villains, Bond pretends to be a diamond-smuggler called Peter Franks; Halliday also pretends to be a diamond smuggler, but is really working on behalf of police inspector Franks. (The film version of Diamonds are Forever (1971) features stuff set in Amsterdam but the original novel does not.)

Just as with the adventures of Bond and Hannay, some elements mentioned in passing are a shock to the modern reader. The most glaring example is the racist joke when Dodds and his friends are in the cockpit scanning the air for balloons,

"and looking like a lot of daft coons watching a whole in the road or something" (pp. 20-21)

This comes from Dodds, who is a otherwise presented as a well-meaning bungler - we're told on the first page that his nickname is "Hopeless". He's largely there for comic relief; there's a fun sequence when he tries to pretend that the fugitive Halliday is not hiding in his house, and a more suspenseful bit towards the end of the story when, not privy to what's really going on and only trying to help, he leads the police to the wrong house, leaving Halliday in a fix with the enemy. In fact, there are some very effective moments of suspense and some genuine threat, such as the prospect of a whole plane-load of innocent people being murdered just to cover The Voice's tracks. I can see why the series hooked viewers.

The cover of the book may also tell us something about the popular appeal of the series. The artwork is by Lee Kenyon, based - we're told in the inside flap - on photographs supplied by the BBC. The top half of the cover is dominated by a close-up portrait of Elwyn Brook-Jones as The Voice, moodily lit and photo-realistic. Beneath him, in medium shot, is a more comic-strip portrayal of Halliday and Dodds in the cockpit, neither a particularly good likeness of the actors and Dodds looking off to one side at two balloons in the sky. The emphasis is surely on the villain, suggesting that he was the chief appeal.

I'm also struck by how little Jean Wills has to do, for all she insists on not being left out of things. She may have had more dialogue in the TV version but says very little in the book, and the only other female character is the unseen airport announcer. We can compare that to the first year of Doctor Who where Susan Foreman and Barbara Wright have so much to say and do, alongside a number of notable female guest characters.

It's also odd to read a story made for children that includes a visit to the pub and people smoking, or that includes the discomforts of a strip search. Oddest of all given that this is narrated by a co-pilot is the lack of any details about flying a plane, what's involved in navigation or changing course, or even the protocols of communication with the ground. The nearest we get is on page 68 when Halliday spells his name out in a joke-version of the NATO phonetic alphabet.

"Garry said: 'H for Holland. A for Amsterdam. L for Latitude. Another L for Longitude. I for Interesting. D for Diamonds. A for Altitude. Y for Yours Truly.'"

But while Dodds tells us a little about his own past - service in the RAF, where he was teased for being "Hopeless" - we get very little sense of Garry Halliday as a person, beyond his dogged determination and usefulness in a fight. Perhaps most revealing is when Dodds lists the contents of Halliday's overnight bag: 

"Pyjamas, a couple of handkerchiefs, spare socks, a tie, slippers, a flashy silk dressing-gown one of his girls gave him for Christmas, a Penguin book by Raymond Chandler and another by Jane Austen, sponge-bag with toothpaste, toothbrush, razor and shaving soap." (p. 90)

This determined adventure hero reads Austen but doesn't pack a change of underpants. And does "one of his girls" mean he's a womaniser or a dad? We're not told - because the series entitled Garry Halliday isn't really about him.

• Me on the next book in the series, Garry Halliday and the Ray of Death.

Titanium Noir, by Nick Harkaway

The idea of mashing up detective fiction and sci-fi isn't new. Isaac Asimov did it in The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun in the 1950s (the latter of which I reread last month). As a kid, I was a big fan of Robo-Hunter in 2000AD, in which hero Sam Slade is a space-travelling version of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.

As I've argued before, I think science-fiction and the detective story share a lot in common anyway, not least in the way we read them. We follow a plot but we're also looking for clues - in the detective story to work out whodunnit, in sci-fi to understand how this world operates differently from our own. We also read (and write) such stories with a knowledge of what's gone before in the genre, so judge each new work on its ability to follow conventions while both avoiding cliche and adding something new.

Titanium Noir is much closer to a Dashiell Hammett style thriller, with narrator Cal Sounder a world weary, wise-cracking gumshoe acting as a buffer between the police and super-rich elite called "Titans" in a gritty near-future. When one of the Titans is found dead, apparently having shot himself, Cal can look into things on a softer, less formal basis than the police, but also without the protection that goes with carrying a badge.

What makes this world different from our own is that the super-rich can afford injections of Titanium 7. As we're told early on,

"It's a rejuvenation treatment given by infusion. It turns the body's clack back to pre-puberty, then runs you through it at speed. It's also used to stimulate regeneration of severely damaged organs and limbs. It really does make you young again, but since it starts with an adult body, it also makes you bigger, hence the name [Titans]. Oh, and it's so expensive almost no one has it. Strictly for the speciation rich." (pp. 10-11)

There's obviously something in this akin to IVF which also jump-starts the body like putting it through puberty again. As with IVF, the result is painful and takes months to recover from. But Titans then live extremely long lives.

There's a stark division between the Titans who've received T7 and the mass of ordinary, little people who haven't. We see the impact of this on one particular relationship where one party is a Titan. But there's more nuance here than a simple divide between haves and have-nots. Over decades, some Titans have had more than one infusion - each one making them bigger, stranger, something else. There are gradations of Titan, separate from one another, and also families and attachments and conflicts between different groups.

Newly created Titans are also strong and horny, so specialist establishments cater for titanic sex, while the media revels in gossip (and recordings of) the ins and outs of who is doing what to who. Many ordinary people are keen to get in on the action, and to modify themselves to look more like Titans while unable to afford T7. From this one medical intervention has developed a whole culture.

This all makes for a richly drawn environment in which the plot neatly twists and turns. The novel rattles along, zigging and zagging with everyone under suspicion - even the narrator, whose loyalties we're not always sure of. The final reveal of the killer hinges on something we've been told early on - a nicely played clue that seems obvious in retrospect but took this reader by surprise. And it's all wrapped up in 236 pages - a quick, exciting and satisfying read.

Dashiell Hammett used Sam Spade in several stories, and also created other heroes who featured in multiple adventures (ie the Continental Op, Nick and Nora Charles and secret agent X-9). It would be fun to see Cal Sounder in further adventures, exploring more of this world - and Sounder's changed position within it given what happens in this book. But that will have to wait, as first Nick Harkaway is writing a George Smiley novel.

See also:

• Me on Silverview by John le Carre (and completed by Nick Harkaway)
• Me on The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Vworp Vworp! #6

The latest issue of ginormous Doctor Who fanzine Vworp Vworp! is now available, with 180 glossy pages devoted to the very first episode, An Unearthly Child, plus a DVD with added wonders.

My piece, "David the Goliath" (pp. 23-25) is on the thesis that without David Whitaker as story editor, Doctor Who would never have survived its first year. I endeavoured to be objective in my biography; here, I was asked to let rip.

The DVD includes an animated version of "A Meeting on the Common", the first chapter of David's 1964 novelisation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, itself adapted from the TV serial that comprises Doctor Who episodes 5-11. The animation, effectively a new opening for all of Doctor Who, is directed and animated by Mel Meanley, adapted by Ian Winterton and stars Stephen Noonan as the Doctor, Adam Grayson as Ian, Helen Stirling-Lane as Barbara and Kerry Ely as Susan. Here's the trailer:

In my book, I discuss why this meeting takes place on Barnes Common and the elements of David Whitaker's real life that fed into it. In fact, the new animation is not the first dramatised version of this material, as I learned from The John Nathan-Turner Production Diary 1979-1990 by Richard Molesworth (Telos, 2022). Richard was then kind enough to let me have sight of the original paperwork.

In the summer of 1981, Philip Lewis - a BBC employee based in Room 4, 16 LS at Broadcasting House in London - wrote to Doctor Who producer John Nathan Turner about a script he (Lewis) had written for 'Episode 1' of Doctor Who and the Daleks, adapting the early chapters of David Whitaker's novelisation as an audio play. Lewis wanted the producer's permission to allow the Studio Amateur Dramatic Group (SADG) of the BBC Club to record this, on the proviso that it would be made by and played for club members only, and was not intended for broadcast. The idea was to use it as an exercise in adapting a novel for radio. Lewis assured the producer that the Daleks didn't feature - i.e. the episode concluded before they made their first appearance.

Replying on 4 June, Nathan Turner agreed in principle that this project could go ahead but wanted to check with Martin Hussey, merchandising assistant at BBC Enterprises, whether the project needed the blessing of Roger Hancock, agent of Dalek creator Terry Nation. The producer forwarded Hussey the script the following day; a copy of his covering memo survives. There's no record of a reply and the script doesn't seem to have been returned, so is not included in the Nathan Turner archive.

Staff at the BBC's Written Archive Centre were unable to locate a copy of the script or any further details about this production. No recording, cast list or other paperwork is known to survive. I've also drawn a blank in trying to trace Philip Lewis; he's surely not the man of the same name who was a long-serving TV producer for BBC Midlands and created Pot Black.

But if SADG recorded a version of the script by Lewis, it may well have been technically accomplished. SADG helped BBC staff learn key skills in production. For example, Bob Wood was a senior clerk working in the current recordings retention unit at Broadcasting House in the 1960s, but joined this (and other) groups:

"At SADG, I learnt to be a radio studio manager and producer, eventually becoming their technical training officer and winning a technical trophy ... In 1970, after successfully completing the POA/SM training course, I left London and moved to Glasgow as a radio studio manager at BBC Scotland." (Bob Wood, "BBC hostels & the summer of love", Prospero issue 6 (December 2018), p. 8.

UPDATE!

I’ve been in touch with Philip Lewis, who now works as a voice artist with credits including a radio announcer on Emmerdale. You can find out more (and employ him!) via his website. 

So, what about his adaptation of Doctor Who and the Daleks?

“As far as I know, it never got recorded,” Philip tells me. “At least not with my involvement. And I don’t have a copy of the script. In the intervening years I’ve moved house a number of times.”

But why adapt this particular Doctor Who novelisation, which was then 17 years-old? “The answer to that lies in the letter I wrote to the then producer – basically it was an exercise in adapting a book for radio. I seem to remember around that time I did several partial adaptations of other books and Doctor Who was just one of them.

“And no, I’m not the Philip Lewis who produced Pot Black, although I did meet him once.”

Thanks to Philip, and also to Richard Bignell.

Connections with James Burke

I've really enjoyed this new six-part series on Curiosity Steam, with my hero James Burke returning to the subject of the unexpected history of change. There are two big differences between this and the 1978 series Connections that Burke made for the BBC, which I blogged about a decade ago. (Since then, it's been released on DVD by Simply Media in 2017 and is, er, currently all on YouTube).

First, that original series had - like lots of the BBC's science documentaries then and now - a lot of Burke out in the field, striding through picturesque locations to illustrate his thesis. Here, things are on a smaller, less expensive scale with the older Burke on a virtual set, his arguments illustrated by what looks like stock footage and bits of CGI swirling around him. At some points they use CGI to animate him - he even dances (!) - and there are also some props, such as when he dons the Macktinosh waterproof coat he's telling us about. But the effect of all this is to underline that these are basically lectures. It's all more TED talk than Brian Cox out on a mountain pointing at stars.

Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in Episode 5, where Burke discusses the usefulness of the vacuum flask. He makes his case then turns and points behind him, as in the screenshot above. We get a CGI animation of a rocket blasting off - a fun gag and call-back. In the original, out on location and perfectly timed to the launch of the Titan-Centaur rocket carrying Voyager 2 in space, it creates an iconic bit of TV:

(Burke's old programmes are full of extraordinary, ballsy stuff like this. He explains gravity while sat on a roller-coaster, and hands the Apollo astronauts a plastic bag they all recognise and asks them to explain how this was used as a toilet in space.)

Secondly, each episode in the new Connections begins with a change that hasn't happened yet: a prediction of the near future. The old BBC series used connections to explain how we got to be where we are; this new series is about where we're going.

To give a sense of the format, Episode 1, Seeing the Future, begins with Burke talking about the potential of quantum computing to crunch such vast sets of data that it will be able to predict the future to a high degree of accuracy. We then duck back in time to 1814 and the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's toothpick. Animation in a style slightly reminiscent of Monty Python shows Napoleon escaping from Elba.

An example of the animation from
Connections with James Burke

The fun is in seeing how Burke will get from this toothpick to quantum computing in a series of logical steps. Those steps are often surprising because of unintended consequences of a given change or new invention. Sometimes it's a less direct connection. For example, Napoleon's toothpick was supplied by George Bullock, and Bullock's brother William didn't just ship stuff out from the UK but also brought stuff home, organising exhibitions of exotic stuff in "living museums". To ship such stuff from far-off locales, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward perfected the "Wardian case", which meant plants survived long journeys. That, in turn, meant Robert Fortune could smuggle tea plants out of China and help set-up tea plantations in India, with a profound impact on trade.

We're then on to the ships used to carry these good quickly - the clippers using sail and then the iron ships powered by steam. Then we're onto the same ships carrying palm oil, and it's use in soap, and the way that was packaged and branded... On and on it goes, a hop-scotch through time, with regular recaps of the connections so far.

Episode 2, The End of Scarcity, predicts the universal replicator by following the chain from Louis XIV's wig.

Episode 3, In the Net, predicts humans merging with the internet and Episode 4, None of This is Real, predicts avatars that are indistinguishable from humans, with AI as the gatekeeper to knowledge - the latter reached by following a chain from shipworm.

Episode 5, Designer Genes, gets to the titular editing of who we are from coffee beans in Leipzig, and the final episode, Limitless Energy, predicts energy autonomy based on perovskite solar cells leading to a post-scarcity society with no need for climate change or war - all from the starting point of a potato.

Burke is an engaging and often funny speaker, with just the right tone of irreverence for these leaps of imagination. For example:

"In 1852, one of [William Bird] Herapath's students notices, as you would, that if you add iodine to dog's urine, if the dog has already been fed quinine - okay, okay, but this is what geeks do - then you get needle like crystals." (None of This is Real)

These crystals polarise glass, leading to the invention of both polarised glasses and the polaroid camera.

But there's plenty of serious stuff behind these arguments. A key theme is the way science can open up opportunities and provide benefits for all. In discussing the steps that lead to designer genes, he notes that two brilliant women responsible for key connections along the way, both died while young. Given that the end point is about improving health, he asks what Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin might have gone on to contribute if they'd lived longer.

That, I think, is another key difference from the original series, which I felt assumed a male viewer, Burke speaking to his peers. This is all much more inclusive and I don't think Burke is now talking to his own generation. Instead, he addresses those who will follow, encouraging them to take part in the bright future he sees ahead. That's what really strikes me about this series: it's optimism for where we go next. 

See also:

• Interview with Burke about the new series by Jennifer Ouellette for Art Technica
• Me on The Pinball Effect by James Burke
• Me on Doctor Mirabilis by James Blish (1964), my reading informed by watching Burke's 1985 series, The Day The Universe Changed 

Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

Over a series of long drives and shorter washings-up, I've worked my way through this 35+ hour reading of Our Mutual Friend, the novel by Charles Dickens first published in 1864-65, and the last novel he completed. The audiobook version was brilliantly read by David Troughton.

Lizzie Hexam is scared of the Thames but dutifully joins her father in his boat to scour the water for valuable jetsam. One night her father finds the body of a dead young man, identified as John Harmon. Harmon is the heir to a fortune, conditional on his marrying a Miss Bella Wilfer - who he has never met. With Harmon dead, the fortune passes to an eccentric but kindly couple, the Boffins. And they feel they ought to do something by Miss Wilfer, so take her in as their own. But Bella, the Boffins and lots of people around them are affected by this new-found wealth, and not always for the better. The Boffins have also taken on a secretary, John Rokesmith, who has a mysterious past...

I first read this novel in 1998 having loved the BBC TV adaptation starring Keeley Hawes as Lizzie Hexam and Paul McGann as the aesthete Eugene Wrayburn who falls for her, Anna Friel as Bella Wilfer and Steven Mackintosh as John Rokesmith. The thing that struck me then was the book's attention to water - the river Thames, the locks and canals, the connections afforded by its flow. 

In part, I think that chimed with me because of other depictions of the Thames from the same period - namely by the Impressionists, which I studied at A-level. Here's "The Thames below Westminster" by Claude Monet, painted 1870-71, and now in the collection of the National Gallery. I had this sense of Dickens producing a similarly vivid, dashed-off impression of the river in prose.

Except that's not what he did at all, as I learned in 2015 from "Charles Dickens and Science", a talk given at Gresham College by Lord Hunt of Chesterton, for which the video and full transcript are still available. It turns out that engineer John Scott Russell, who identified in his designs for ships that waves have an associated force, worked for Dickens as the railways editor at the Daily News and provided the technical detail in Our Mutual Friend, where the behaviour of the water of the Thames articulates the science of fluid dynamics decades ahead of its time. 

Rereading the novel now, what struck me most was the number of subterfuges involved. Rokesmith and the Boffins deceive Miss Wilfer. Though they claim this is for her best interests, and things all work out in the end, I can't imagine anyone would really accept such deception so readily. Yet Miss Wilfer is also involved in deception: she gets married without telling her busy-body mother and sister, while her father has to pretend he wasn't at the ceremony. 

These are all good people lying for good reasons but there are deceptive villains, too. The Lammies marry thinking that one another is rich;  when they realise they have no money between them, they must continue to hide the truth from everyone else. Roger Riderhood and Bradley Headstone both attempt to leave false trails to incriminate others. Then there are characters who deceive themselves: Headstone over Lizzie's affections, Silas Webb over his rights to the Boffins' fortune.

At the heart of all this is the difference between the 'mask' we present to other people and society as a whole, and the importance of being true to ourselves and our loved ones. And yet that truth is not the same thing as honesty. A lie is okay, even virtuous, when it is meant to aid someone else. The morality here isn't simple black and white, one thing or the other. The dynamics are more fluid.

See also: 

• My review of Dickens by Claire Tomalin
• My talk for the National Portrait Gallery - Doctor Who: Portraits in Time and Space (including Charles Dickens)
• Me on Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four, including stuff on the Thames
• My review for the Lancet Psychiatry of the Dickens Museum's temporary exhibition, Charles Dickens: Man of Science.

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles

On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is called before the Emergency Committee of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs in Moscow. He's identified as the author of Where Is It Now?, a poem published in 1913 and considered by some to be a call to action after the failed revolt of 1905. But despite these credentials, the count is also an aristocrat, was out of the country during the revolutions of 1917 and is deemed to have "succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class" (p. 5). He is placed under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol and remains there for years...

But he does more than just survive; he flourishes.

This is an extraordinary, bewitching novel - a man out of his time in a fast-changing new order, his old-world values at odds with the officiousness of modernity. Rostov is a charming, suave protagonist, able to assist and advise a broad range of those he encounters in the hotel, building up friendships and even a family. It's a story of one man against the odds like so much thrilling spy fiction - and there's a feeling of le Carre throughout, which I mean as high compliment. (Rostov likens himself more to Sam Spade in the film version of The Maltese Falcon). 

Yet what really makes this work is that it's often so playful and fun. The reader is just another in the line to fall for Rostov's charm. And then, in the last section, there's a direct threat to Rostov and someone he holds very dear, and it all gets much more suspenseful, to the very last page.

A Gentleman in Moscow was the last novel my late father finished reading - while in hospital for almost the last time - and the last book he recommended to me. Reading it has been a little like a conversation with him, not least because I can see why he'd have liked it so much. There's something of my dad in Rostov, and his wit and worldview. For all this novel enthralled me, it's taken a while to finish, in part because I've been busy on other things. But now, on completing it, I realise I lingered - a book, and connection, I didn't want to put down.

Happy Times and Places - An Unearthly Child

To mark 60 years of Doctor Who, Toby Hadoke has devoted a special five-part instalment of his Happy Times and Places podcast to the very first episode, An Unearthly Child. I'm in part four.

Toby asked a bunch of us to watch the episode then nominate our five favourite things about it, which he then responds to. I won't spoil who else is involved but there are some brilliant insights, underlining my point that there's always being something new to be discovered.

Also by me on this blog:

• An Unearthly Child takes place on a Tuesday
• What the first Doctor Who serial owes to The Inheritors by William Golding
• Doctor Who: 1963

The Power of 3 podcast #172

I chatted to Kenny Smith for the latest episode of the Power of 3 podcast. As well as asking me about my new book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, Kenny and his co-hosts Dave, John and Steevie discuss their favourite Doctor Who stories written by David.

• Power of 3 podcast #172: David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television

The Sky at Night: The Art of Stargazing by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock

I've just received my copies of The Sky at Night: The Art of Stargazing, a new guide by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock to the 88 constellations of stars. It's a lovely book, each constellation illustrated by Tom Matuszewski and with diagrams by Greg Stevenson. What a fun and informative thing to work on.

Blurb as follows:

"What is the story behind the stars? Many of us gaze up into space and marvel at the Milky Way, but do you know what you're really looking at?

The Art of Stargazing is the ultimate insider's guide to the night sky in which award-winning space scientist and The Sky at Night presenter Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock shares her expertise and unique insights into the marvellous world of stars. Take a tour of the 88 constellations and explore the science, history, culture and romanticism behind these celestial bodies.

In this must-have handbook for budding stargazers - and anyone looking for a little more wonder in their lives - Maggie will help you to identify stars and teach you the basics of naked-eye observation, offering fascinating facts plus advice on kit, 'dark sky' locations and much more. Also included are beautiful illustrations to accompany each constellation and an easy-to-read sky map. With Maggie by your side, the night sky will truly come alive."

My credit in the indicia

It's the fifth book published in the past few months that I've written or worked on - the last year or so has been extremely busy, jumping from project to project. Bit knackered now.

The Daleks in Colour and Kennedy's "Survivors"

Watching the glorious The Daleks in Colour last night, I was especially struck by the bleakness of the story and world, a tale of nuclear holocaust made in an age when that was a stark possibility. As my chum Toby Hadoke pointed out to me a while ago, the second episode of the original serial, “The Survivors” (in which we first see the Daleks), was recorded on the evening of 22 November 1963, just hours after the cast and crew learned of the assassination of President John F Kennedy and the whole world seemed poised on a knife-edge.

This week, a post by Letters of Note started off a chain of thoughts. Following Kennedy's death, his widow Jacqueline wrote to Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union:

“I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches - 'In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.'”

Khrushchev seems to have been credited for this evocative phrase in the 20 July 1963 issue of Pravda (I've not been able to check this but it says so here). Whatever the case, President Kennedy quickly picked up on the phrase, quoting it on 26 July in his radio and television address to the US people on the nuclear test ban treaty - a transcript and recording can be found on the website of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. 

“A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history. A full-scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes, with the weapons now in existence, could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors, as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, 'the survivors would envy the dead.' For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot even conceive of its horrors.”

These words were very widely reported, such as in the Daily Telegraph the following day (it's a front-page story, but the line about survivors is on p. 16 where the news story continues). That was on Saturday, 27 July 1963 and, despite what Kennedy said, I think people could very well imagine the horrors. Surely it can't be a coincidence that this was probably also the weekend over which Terry Nation wrote his 26-page storyline for a Doctor Who serial at that point entitled "The Survivors".

The storyline does not include a date but we can deduce when Nation wrote it from two surviving documents in the BBC's Written Archives Centre. On 30 July, BBC Head of Serials Donald Wilson produced notes for a preliminary meeting about the promotion of Doctor Who and listed the first three serials then currently planned: the caveman adventure The Tribe of Gum aka An Unearthly Child, the ultimately unmade The Robots and the story that became Marco Polo. 

The following day, story editor David Whitaker produced one-paragraph synopses of these three stories - plus a newly commissioned fourth one: Nation's serial was now under the title “The Mutants.” So: Nation wrote the storyline over the weekend, surely influenced by the leading news story and Kennedy's evocative phrase, then met with Whitaker on the Monday or Tuesday and was commissioned for the story.

One more thing, which I mentioned yesterday in my interview with BBC News (and tweeted back in July). Nation’s thrilling, 26-page storyline, on the basis on which scripts were commissioned, used the words “execution”, “elimination” and “extinction”. Whitaker summarised the plot in one paragraph for his colleagues, and used a word Nation had not: “exterminated”. 

Source: Asa Briggs, Competition, p. 418. My book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television is out now.

Three Counties Radio and Doctor Who @60

The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast 60 years ago today and there's a whole load of stuff on TV, radio and online to mark the occasion.

This morning, I joined Andy Collins on BBC Three Counties radio to talk about David Whitaker, first story editor of Doctor Who, and how his childhood in places such as Knebworth, Cheshunt and Nasty (as well as living in London) fed into those early adventures - and explains why the Daleks invaded Bedford of all places. You can listen here:

• Andy Collins: Doctor Who is 60! (my bit starts at 1.54.00)

ETA: Danny Fullbrook also interviewed me for the BBC News website about David Whitaker's connection to the area - see Doctor Who: Bedford writer's childhood influenced the Daleks.

The second part of my contribution to the Something Who podcast is also now live. Having tackled 1965 story The Rescue (written by David Whitaker) in part one, me, Richard, Giles and Paul get to grips with 2010's The Eleventh Hour.

More of me rabbiting on about Doctor Who here:

• Architects of Doctor Who - David Whitaker by his biographer Simon Guerrier
• Who's Views: Merchandise Paradise - Simon Guerrier
• Corner to Corner: Peter Anghelides and Simon Guerrier

Zero Room Audio - recording of David Whitaker book launch

John Ryan has posted an edited recording of our launch event for David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, hosted at the Portico Library in Manchester earlier this month. I was interviewed by Carol Ann Whitehead - and I think you can hear my jangling nerves.

• Architects of Doctor Who - David Whitaker by his biographer Simon Guerrier

Excitingly, this recording marks the return of 1980s audio fanzine Zero Room. 

Something Who #83: Dido Know, Don't Dido?

I joined Richard, Giles and Paul on the latest episode of the Something Who podcast for a deep-dive look at the 1965 Doctor Who story The Rescue by David Whitaker, and the 2010 episode The Eleventh Hour by Steven Moffat.

It's really interesting to compare what seem to be such disparate, unrelated stories and see the different production teams grappling with what's basically the same problem: how to restart Doctor Who with new regular characters and a tone of engaging, fun adventure.

It was also fun to apply the stuff I've learned researching my newly published biography of David Whitaker, almost like an end-of-term test.

Oh, there is a bit where I had to attempt some acting, a good leap out of my comfort zone. 

The Philip Hinchcliffe Years - The DNA of Doctor Who

A Kickstarter has been launched for the first in a new series new series of large-format books on the creative team behind Doctor Who. This first volume examines the years 1974-77, as overseen by producer Philip Hinchcliffe.

From Morbius to Krynoids, Eldrad to Wirrn, ROUNDEL PUBLISHING takes an in-depth look with unrivalled access to the architect of some of the most revered years of Doctor Who's history! 

Available in softback, hardback or deluxe hardback options including the option to receive signed copies, exclusive art prints and even the chance to get a personal message from Philip himself! 

The book is edited by Gary Russell and designed by Will Brooks, with essays on each one of the Doctor Who stories from the period and insights from Hinchcliffe.

I've written the essay on Planet of Evil (1975) and the way this adventure and the production team at the time more generally borrowed from classics of sci-fi. Other contributors include Louise Jameson, Graeme Burk, Hannah Cooper, Matt Dale, Hayden Gribble, Toby Hadoke, David J Howe, Robin Ince, Alex Kingdom, Emma Ko, Trey Korte, Aaron Lowe, Sophia Morphew, Kim Pfeifer-Adams, Mick Schubert, Kenny Smith, Matthew Sweet, Matthew Toffolo and Ian Winterton. 

The Kickstarter runs until 30 November. See the site for loads more details - and to bung us some cash.