Doctor Who: 1999

After episode 696 (Doctor Who): The Curse of Fatal Death
First broadcast: 12 March 1999
<< back to 1998

"How are things?"
Rowan Atkinson meets the Daleks
Dr Who & the Curse of Fatal Death

In June 1999, Doctor Who Magazine #279 spoke to six writers all working in popular telly about how, if asked, they would bring back Doctor Who. It's fascinating to read Gary Gillatt's "We're gonna be bigger than Star Wars" again today. Four of those writers would write for Doctor Who when it returned in 2005 - but not in the way they told DWM.

"'Well, it would have to be made on film,' [Russell T Davies] said, and probably with the Doctor trapped on Earth to save money. 'I don’t think you’d put a 50-minute film series on during Saturday teatime,' he suggested with almost as much prescience as Steve [Moffat]’s 'The core elements are a Police Box, a frock coat and cliffhangers.' On the other hand, who can disagree that 'The key ingredient is death,' and Russell closed with 'God help anyone in charge of bringing it back – what a responsibility!'

Alex Wilcock, "...And It's About Time Team", 27 August 2006.

In fact, they were already working on getting Doctor Who back on TV. Russell's acclaimed eight-part drama Queer as Folk (first broadcast 23 February to 13 April 1999) included a regular character who was a Doctor Who fan, with clips from old episodes, jokes only fans would get and a cameo by the real prop of K-9.

On 12 March, a new Doctor Who adventure, The Curse of Fatal Death, was broadcast as part of Comic Relief on prime-time BBC One. The script was by Steven Moffat.


On 13 November, Mark Gatiss co-wrote and starred in three more comedy sketches about Doctor Who - one with him as the Doctor in a pastiche of the show from the 60s, another exploring how the show was first commissioned (something Mark explores again this week in An Adventure in Space and Time), and one with Peter Davison gamely playing himself.

All these productions - Russell's, Steven's and Mark's - fondly mocked the conventions of the old show show. For all Steven and Mark created new incarnations of the Doctor, their sketches were more about looking backward at what Doctor Who had once been as it was reviving it anew.

Except...

The Curse of Fatal Death is not a template for a new series. It's certainly not a manifesto for the way Steven runs the show now. It's full of things that worked as jokes because they were so unlike Doctor Who as we knew it.

Yet, they're all things that were central when the show returned: fart jokes, jokes about the sonic screwdriver as a phallus, the companion and Doctor explicitly in love, the companion's confused feelings about that after a regeneration, lots of stuff about the Doctor's mythic place in the universe... Most obviously of all, it embraces the daft fun of Doctor Who as a key part of its appeal.

I think there's something else, too. When the Master brings in an army of Daleks, the Doctor greets them with a pithy line: "How are things?"

The joke is that he's so casual, that his words sound so ordinary. It's not the way the Doctor has ever spoken before. But it will be.

Next episode: 2000

(Ian Stuart Burns has also written about that article in DWM.)

Doctor Who: 1995

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Up Above the Gods, published in Doctor Who Magazine #227 (cover dated 5 July 1995)
<< back to 1994

Up Above the Gods
Art by Lee Sullivan
via TARDIS data core

It's just so majestically wrong: Davros, dad of the Daleks, parked inside the TARDIS, having a chat with the Doctor. That mad juxtaposition - things together that shouldn't be - makes for a brilliant hook into the story, but one aimed squarely at fans.

Up Above The Gods is a single-episode, seven-page comic-strip from Doctor Who Magazine. It a smart, sophisticated story, the Doctor and Davros debating ethics and trying to outwit one another. It's written and drawn superbly, but a big part of the appeal is how much more you get from it if you know your Doctor Who.

Davros isn't just in any part of the TARDIS but the ivy-strewn cloister room last seen in the fourth Doctor story Logopolis. But instead of the fourth Doctor here, it's the sixth. If you know the room, and that the wrong Doctor's in it, there's an extra thrill.

The story itself is a follow-up to a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip from two years previously (Emperor of the Daleks). It sets up events in the TV stories Planet of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks, while it would also help to know the events of Revelation of the Daleks and Logopolis. The title is from a discussion between the Doctor and Davros in Genesis of the Daleks. Yes, all in seven pages.

That's not to say it's impenetrable to more casual fans. All those TV stories had been repeated on BBC Two in 1993 except Remembrance (released on VHS in 1993) and Logopolis (on VHS in 1992). But it rather assumes that the magazine's readers are fully engaged in repeats and releases from two years previously: it assumes a dedicated following.

You can see that, too, in the New Adventures books. Human Nature (published May 1995, and later voted the best of the range) is about the Doctor living as an ordinary human. John Smith is still a kind, brave and clever man, but when aliens attack he can't save the day. The emotional impact of the book hinges on our understanding of what the Doctor is and needs to be - again, knowing Doctor Who makes it more effective.

(That's why it could be adapted for the third series of the TV show, but wouldn't have worked so well in the first.)

Now, it might be argued that it made sense for Doctor Who Magazine to produce comic strips directed at the attentive fan. But it's striking, look back, how inaccessible Doctor Who was in 1995 to newcomers - younger ones, especially. The 1996 television movie was in pre-production at this time, cramming a script full of continuity references that would please the fans. In the first scene after the opening titles, it assumes viewers already know that the huge control room manned by Sylvester McCoy is housed inside the small police box. For a pilot for a new series, there's no concession to those not already in on the secret. (It also features the cloister room.)

But, again in 1995, one clever fellow dared ask if children might yet watch Doctor Who. You can read Gary Gillatt's adventure with Class 4G and the Zygons on his website.

"Today, with Doctor Who a TV powerhouse, we hear young voices much more frequently. But I think Class 4G had some profound things to say about what Doctor Who's priorities should be, and those observations are as true today as they ever were..."

Next episode: 1996

Doctor Who: 1991

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Timewyrm: Revelation, first published December 1991
<< back to 1990

Andrew Skilleter's cover art for
Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell

Who was Doctor Who for?

I argued last time that in 1990 Doctor Who had stopped being for children. That fact was self-evident to Peter Darvill-Evans, who in 1991 was editor of the long-running Doctor Who novelisations. I spoke to him in 2006 about it:

‘It was quite obvious,’ says Darvill-Evans, ‘that Doctor Who fans had grown up, particularly as the viewing figures were relatively low towards the end of the 1980s. It meant that the vast influx of Doctor Who fans had been teenagers during the 70s and early 80s, and they were now growing up. It was a bit absurd to be producing children’s books for them.’

John Freeman could also see this on Doctor Who Magazine: ‘Our readership was late teen and getting older by the issue.’

Me, Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story (Big Finish: 2009), p. 10.

Both men tailored their publications to suit this older, more dedicated audience - and that's probably how Doctor Who Magazine and the books survived the long period without Doctor Who on TV. DWM studied and analysed the show in ever greater depth. The New Adventures books featured adult themes - sex and swearing, drugs and psychedelia, and an awful lot of references to then-current indie bands.

At the time, I was just the right age to embrace this more mature Doctor Who (the first of the New Adventures was published just as I turned 15). Now it seems incredible that the range would purposefully exclude child readers. This, though, was very much of the time - I argued before that Doctor Who was just one of a number of well-known heroes being reinvented in a darker, more violent form. (In 1989, I'd been furious that the new James Bond film was a certificate 15 as I wasn't old enough to see it; and I felt terribly grown-up getting into see Batman, the first ever certificate 12.)

But it wasn't the adult tone of the Doctor Who books that especially hooked me so much as the sense of community they engendered. That community was down to two factors that made the New Adventures very different from most other ranges. First, there was something in the contracts that Darvill-Evans drew up for the authors.

"We had to put into our contracts with authors that these characters and the TARDIS and so on were owned by the BBC, therefore they couldn’t use them without our permission. I also put into the author contracts a clause which said that any character that the authors created remained theirs but that they, by signing the contract, granted Virgin Publishing the right to use those characters in other people’s books. It meant that any character or creation, or anything created in a New Adventure, could be used by any other New Adventures author."

Ibid., p.9.

As a result, authors developed characters and settings from previous books, creating a vividly detailed history of the future, full of recognisable friends and enemies. The more you, as a reader, kept up with the series, the more rewarding this development would be.

But there was something else profoundly important. Darvill-Evans had spotted what he called,

"a huge untapped and rather frustrated pool of talent amongst Doctor Who fandom".

Ibid., p. 11.

The press release announcing the New Adventures, dated 27 June 1990, said the range was open to submissions from previously unpublished authors. This was an unprecedented step: reading the 'slush pile' of unsolicited manuscripts can be arduous work. Yet the Doctor Who books quickly struck gold.

Paul Cornell was the first to be accepted. His first novel, Timewyrm: Revelation, was the fourth New Adventure, published in December 1991. It was an extraordinary, strange and rich debut - I received it as a Christmas present and read it from cover to cover that very afternoon.

Paul was followed by more first-time authors, among them Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts (who, like Paul, would write for the TV series when it returned); Justin Richards (now in charge of the Doctor Who books); and Andy Lane (now the bestselling author of the Young Sherlock Holmes books). That was just in the first couple of years: Doctor Who books continued to offer opportunties to first-time authors.

Not only were the books developing a shared universe but anyone could be part of it. I sent my first submission in to the editors in 1994. You can read it here (it's not very good) and see the response I got from editorial assistant Andy Bodle (which was amazing). Even though I was rejected, the kind response and the invitation to try again kept me avidly reading the series, and it kept me writing.

(I was finally commissioned to write a Doctor Who novel in 2004 - 10 years after my first attempt. I owe my career as an author to that initial, kind rejection.)

So, as I said at the start, who was Doctor Who for?

Watching telly is a largely passive experience. It might make us laugh or cry, we might shout at the screen, but (unlike theatre, for example) our responses don't shape or affect those telling the story. Our role is simply to watch. There are shows that want us to write letters or ring in, or - these days - Tweet along. But, especially with drama, the audience mostly takes what it's given.

Fandom - any kind of fandom - is about being involved. Dressing up, writing our own stories, discussing the production of the show in depth - all fan activity - is about taking an active part. It's sometimes said as a criticism that fans have a sense of entitlement, but that's exactly what being a fan is (though that doesn't excuse bad behaviour).

For a brief and thrilling time when Doctor Who wasn't on TV, fans could participate in the creation of new Doctor Who. Not on TV and not for children, but a Doctor Who of the fans by the fans for the fans.

But how did it look to anyone else?

Next episode: 1992

My first ever rejection letter

Excitement! I have found my first ever rejection letter, received in April 1992 from Gary Russell, then editor of Doctor Who Magazine. I was 15 at the time, and it was just a few months since Gary's interview with novelist Paul Cornell (in issue #181, December 1991) had made me realise that being a writer was something I might actually do, not merely something to dream of like being an astronaut or pop star.

I sent Gary a terrible short story in which the Fourth Doctor and Romana land somewhere and, er, that's it, and surprisingly the response was a form letter:

I've had a lot of form letters since. They're the usual response to unsolicited on spec submissions. It took me a long time to realise that collecting rejection letters - forms ones, then form ones with notes on your submission, then ones with notes on your submission that invite you to try again - is a big part of being a writer.

I mustn't have been too disappointed by this first response as I sent Gary more stories. You can see how much better they were by the response I got six months later:

At the same time I also sent a script for a Judge Dredd story to 2000AD, and the form rejection letter I got back wasn't even signed (though someone had asterisked the paragraphs I should pay attention to).

Over the next few years, I continued to send things to Doctor Who Magazine and 2000AD, and also sent in proposals anywhere else I could think of. My first rejection letter from the publisher of Doctor Who books in 1994 was so detailed, generous and encouraging that I probably owe my career to it.

I finally got commissioned by Doctor Who Magazine at the end of 2001, with a two-part feature published in early 2002. Later that year, I also got commissioned to write a Doctor Who short story, in Big Finish's Short Trips: Zodiac. That was edited by Jacqueline Rayner, overseen by Gary Russell. That led to me writing lots for Big Finish, and a couple of years later I helped Gary write form letters in response to submissions.

2000AD turned me down, again, with a form letter just last year.

(Thanks to Gary for permission to post these.)

Official "expert"

Digital Spy have posted the first video counting down David Tennant's Top 10 moments as Doctor Who, as voted for by readers.

Among the august and handsome luminaries speaking wisdom is, er, me. I note that none of the other young scamps thought to wear a suit. What has broadcasting come to?

The remaining nine top moments will follow in the next few days.

ETA: nine; eight; seven; six; five; four; three; two; one.

All clear?

To the National Theatre last night with N. for a “An Evening with Private Eye”, at which Ian Hislop, Harry Enfield, John Sessions, Lewis Macleod, Katy Brand, Richard Ingrams and Craig Brown performed bits from the magazine. A fun evening, and then afterwards I got plus-oned into N.'s work party and had fine salmon and liver and bacon. Latest and liveliest I've been out in weeks.

Excitingly, the kidney infection seems to be done with – though I've a doctor's appointment this afternoon where I'm hoping to get the all clear. Still battered and tired and stuff, but a whole lot less bleurgh than I was.

Am catching up on things needing to be writ. The Novel now stands at 15,000 words which I'm mostly happy with. Have a script to write by the end of the month, and trying to do bits of the Novel around it. Also got to rewrite some of the Short Film – which includes adding in a whole new character – and perhaps add one last piece of cleverness to a thing we're recording next week. None of which means anything to you, but will be of fascination to me when I look back from the future.

Now some fun free stuff:

The first of Big Finish's festive podcasts includes a competition in which you – yes YOU – might win a copy of the exceedingly fancy Bernice Summerfield – the Inside Story, what I wrote. There are plenty of other things in the competition, too, plus trailers and foolishness from the boys. More podcasts and competitions in the next few days.

(Looking forward to Saturday, too, when the Big Finish luminaries will be at the Corner Store in Covent Garden, flogging copies of Rob Shearman's splendid “Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical” between 12 and 5. Do come along if you can.)

Paul Cornell is also running up to Christmas with festive blogs, and I was enthralled by his new Doctor Who short story, “The Last Doctor”, which is hardcore, old-skool Cornell with its mad sf ideas and woman vicar and beating heart on its sleeve. Sadly, there are no owls.

pp. 50-51

The Inside Story of Benny is beginning to push its way through people's letterboxes - hooray! And the fellows at Kasterborous have an exclusive PDF of pages 50 and 51.

The excerpt covers Human Nature, a 1995 novel by Paul Cornell featuring the seventh Doctor and Benny - adapted into two TV episodes in 2007 featuring the tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.

Grand Tour 2009

Busy, busy, busy. Lots of different bits of work on and about to go on tour…

Tomorrow morning I’m a guest at Faringdon Arts Festival, reading to children at Faringdon Junior School and then trying to answer their questions. Kids tend to ask more challenging, leftfield questions than grown-ups, so I’m more nervous than normal.

My bit is just for the school kids, but on Saturday afternoon proper TV writers of Doctor Who Paul Cornell and Phil Ford will be spilling their secrets to anyone who’ll listen. Miffed I’m going to miss that.

I’ll be at a guest at the Winchester Arts Festival on Saturday, at the library where I used to borrow Doctor Who books. Me, Mark Morris and Nicholas Briggs will be encouraging three sessions of school kids to write their own monstrous stories and explaining what makes a good monster.

At the end of August I’ll be at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich – the centre of time and space itself, and location for Doctor Who and the Dimensions in Time – as part of a weekend of family activities. More details on what that will involve soon.

Over the weekend of 19-20 September, I’ll be at Regenerations in Swansea, flogging copies of the Inside Story. (How splendid that Gary Russell gets top billing above Derek Jacobi and Davros).

In October I’m hoping to do a thing in Manchester and possibly also in Leeds, of which more details soon. And then, at the end of October I’m at HurricaneWho in Orlando.

If you're able to make any or all of these, do come say hello.

Long playing

So. Turned 33 on Wednesday: the same age as Jesus when the Romans killed him, and (if my sums are right) the age of David Tennant when he was cast as Doctor Who.

(Of no interest to anyone, but Peter Davison became a former Doctor Who a month before turning 33. So I'm now older than two Doctors, as old as one, with another eight still to catch up.)

Derren Brown's Enigma show was superb. I have some theories about how some of his tricks might have worked, and also about the imagery and associations he uses. But I'll hold off until I've read his Tricks of the Mind, which a kind person got me for my birthday.

Did splendidly well for loot, too: all of The Wire, The Deadly Assassin (I concede all Mr Gillatt says in his recent DWM review, and yet I still love this story), Party Animals, Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country, a duvet, some pants, a long-sleeved tee-shirt, various London bus maps from different years in the last century and a cheesecake.

But mostly I have been working on things as-yet unannounced. One thing Paul Cornell speaks of should get an official announcement next week, and I've pretty much finished my bits of it. Then there's rewrites today, and a script to be written for the CBBC competition which closes on Wednesday. And rewrites on another spec script, thanks to the kind diligence of L. And I'm awaiting notes on something else. And a “go” on a couple of other big things, too...

In the meantime, Danny Stack has set up an official site and trailer for Origin, the short film he wrote and directed on which I was a runner and associate producer. It stars Lee Ross (Kenny in Press Gang) and Katy Carmichael (Twist in Spaced) – both of whom I served murky tea.

Oh, and my Primeval novel has also just had a glowing 9 out of 10 review:

“Author Simon Guerrier manages to stuff 231 pages with way more action, adventure and twists than I thought possible ... He writes short, punchy chapters which flip between the characters so quickly - with an endless supply of cliff-hangers - that you are constantly on the edge of your seat as the twists and turns are thrown at you ... This could be the most enjoyable book you purchase this year.”

Nick Smithson, Book Review – Primeval: Fire and Water, Sci-fi-Online.

(I seem to have lost a point for using the new team at the ARC.)

Standing in the Herald

A feature in today's Herald on writing Doctor Who includes wisdom from Paul Cornell, Terrance Dicks, Stephen Greenhorn and Big Finish competition winner Michael Coen - plus some wittering from me.

Class act

Spent the weekend with some chums, and drank and laughed a great deal. Paul Cornell, Nimbos and I also performed the following hilarity at a party on Saturday night, based of course of the Frost Report's class sketch.

Telly:
I look down on him (Indicates Merchandise) because I write for the new series and get top-billing at conventions.

Merchandise:
I look up to him (Telly) because he writes for the new series; but I look down on him (Punter) because he is just a punter. I write books and get middle billing at conventions.

Punter:
I know my place. I look up to them both. But I don't look up to him (Merchandise) as much as I look up to him (Telly), because he has got innate canonical status.

Telly:
I have got innate canonical status, but I have not got any money. So sometimes I look up (bends knees, does so) to him (Merchandise).

Merchandise:
I still look up to him (Telly) because although I have money, I am vulgar and commercial. But I am not as vulgar as his (Punter) posts to the internet so I still look down on him (Punter).

Punter:
I know my place. I look up to them both; but while I am no one, I am honest in my opinions and passionate about the show. I fund everything they do. Had I the inclination, I could look down on them. But I don't.

Merchandise:
We all know our place, but what do we get out of it?

Telly:
I get my name on the telly and a feeling of superiority over them. I get quite angry when they don’t accord me the appropriate respect.

Merchandise:
I get my name on a lot of knock-off tat. I get a feeling of inferiority from him, (Telly), but a feeling of superiority over him (Punter). I get quite angry when they don’t accord me the appropriate respect.

Punter:
I get quite angry.

Back to the grindstone today, and the first trip to the gym in 10 days. It hurt. But plenty of exciting emails to work through, and there'll be all kinds of thrilling announcements in the next few days.

Oh, and the Dr recommends something she's been working on: a BBC archive collection of Francis Bacon clips and stuff.

Indistinguishable from magic

To the Clarke Awards last night in London’s glamorous West End; shoehorned into the underground bar in the Apollo cinema on Lower Regent Street.

(Lisa Tuttle explained to the Times last week about the award, its controversies and this year’s nominees.)

Arrived soaked by rain and weirded out by all the folk in really very impressive Star Wars costumes. Was it all in aid of added showbiz gloss, or a ruse to get some interest from the media? The Clarke Awards, after all, only celebrate unsexy stuff like books. Or was this instead some kind of ill-thought-through tribute? The first awards since the death of Sir Arthur, and I wondered what he’d think.

Nope, turns out they’re all there for a film, being shown after the book stuff. But I did have the splendid joy of Darth Vader trying to squeeze past me and J., perhaps trying to reach the free beer. And in a very unSith-like manner, asking politely, “Excuse me.”

Didn’t trip over on the way into the ceremony this time, and sat and ate ice cream and gossiped until they made the announcement. Hooray for Richard Morgan who seemed endearingly amazed. And hooray for more beer and gossip afterwards.

There was my boss Andrew Sewell basking in Blake’s 7 telly. There was Paul Cornell, who – what with the Stormtroopers jostling around us – I described as my own Master Yoda. And then decided he was more my Emperor Palpatine and I was his Darth Maul. By the time I was suggesting that I’d have to throw him off a balcony into the heating system of the Death Star, and that he’d explode for no very good reason and so restore balance and stuff to the Force… Well, he deftly, fearfully walked away.

There was also the SFX gang and the Pan Macmillan gang and Anthony Brown on behalf of all things Visimag. And I realised only after he must have left that one familiar seeming bloke used to be one of my tutors, who I’d not seen since I graduated almost a decade ago. Gah. Patrick Parrinder inspired my paper on Iain Banks and utopia, and marvellously pointed out that, from evidence in the text, the Martians launched their war of the worlds out of what seems to be a giant space cannon.

Excitingly, I did get to say hello to Ken MacLeod. Was, I asked, Trotskyite science-fiction just him spotting a niche? And he started to say no and we almost got talking. Then some bloke came over to say Ken had should have won, and Ken began to explain he was very happy with it being Richard Morgan, and someone needed to get past to reach the free beer and then I was out of his orbit…

And ended up in a silly discussion about how one might improve the Clarke’s? What about additional, less distinguished awards for sci-fi films and telly? Or, because no else does this, adverts thieving sci-fi stuff? That dancing transforming Corsa, for example. (It might not actually be a Corsa ad, but that’s what we geeks called it.) And what happens to the driver when his car morphs into a robot? Is he splattered all over the dashboard?

You see; thinking through the consequences of new technology. One day I’ll be on the Clarke shortlist.

My mates’ scribbling #1

A sizeable chunk of the stalagmite of wanna-read books are those by my colleagues and playmates. The loyal and supportive thing is to buy the things (even more so, in the case of School's Out, after a freebie copy had been swallowed up by the post). But actually, you know, reading them has been on hiatus.

(One chum was telling me just a while ago that he’s given up any pretence of keeping up with his mates’ stuff. It is easier and cheaper and probably less cruel than to keep on saying, “But I mean to.”)

But my current employment means a couple of hours commuting, which means I’m fast catching up. I’ve also just had this two-week stint extended to 21 December, so I’m afraid there’s going to be quite a lot more book posts to come. Sorry.

Robert Shearman’s Tiny Deaths is a collection of 14 short stories all on the subject of death. The final story, “Somewhere in a small room a little boy sat waiting”, is the only one I’d read before, when it appeared in the Benny anthology Life During Wartime, edited by Paul Cornell. (Alongside TWO stories of mine, because clearly I am best.)

In the context of Tiny Deaths, it’s a very different story. No longer is it implicit that the small boy in question is the half-doggy son of a space archaeologist, hidden away while the museum-on-a-planetoid that’s his home is invaded by space-Nazis. Instead, we only get things as he understands them, so there are hints of something happening that means he must be hidden, and that Mummy is somehow involved.

Reading it in this new context, I realised the story had no especially science-fiction elements to it. The events could almost be happening anywhere, any when – and it’s that universality that makes it so affecting. (Interestingly, to me anyway, Cornell gave me notes once that Benny stories should always be noticeably sci-fi.)

It’s tricky to discuss the rest of Tiny Deaths without spoiling it’s many wondrous surprises. Like a lot of Rob’s plays on stage and on Radio 4, there’s a prevailing bitter-sweetness to the stories, with wry comic detail punctuating the sense of loss. On the back cover, Martin Jarvis compares him to Douglas Adams, Alexei Sayle and Philip K Dick. I also thought of Alan Bennett.

The cover – a lovely thing of a Goth girl blowing bubbles that are also holes – is a great summing up of this light-touch melancholia. It occurs to me as I write this that she only needs an ankh and she could be Neil Gaiman’s fun, lively Death.

Often Rob’s characters are rather numb to the things happening to them – people who aren’t in love or aren’t grieving, or don’t quite understand all the fuss. This leads them to attempt to explain themselves, which is a good device for creating a skewed perspective. It also means that many of the stories have a dream-like quality.

Another thing that makes them dream-like is the strict adherence to the rules of fantasy. Like his celebrated Doctor Who work, Rob will start a story from some mad idea – everyone suddenly all being told how and when they’re going to die, or that Hell does not discriminate between its human souls and those of other animals. And having established this “novum” (which is what the clever academic Darko Suvin calls the weirdshit that’s crucial to sci-fi), he then explores its consequences on ordinary people.

As Douglas Adams famously said, the effect of following this weirdshit through is that an idea that’s initially silly and funny becomes something affecting, and moving, and scary. Stranger still, the mad ideas become somehow plausible, even convincing. By changing the rules of sacred stuff we yet take so for granted – how we die, how we grieve, how we are thought of afterward – Rob undermines our sureties. As a result, it’s an unsettling sequence, at once playful and profound.

Again, it’s difficult to describe this without giving anything away, and the stories are full of quite brilliant veerings off. But the titular story is a particular gem. It begins with a description of Jesus not as an ordinary person as such, but at least as one we feel we might almost have known. He’s good on scripture, the story explains, but not brilliant on practicalities.

“As his parents had said, somewhat ruefully, there was a lad who knew the value of everything and the cost of nothing […] He’d listen patiently as his disciples at the Last Supper tried to tot up the bill and work out how much everyone should put in – they should just split it thirteen ways Andrew had suggested, but Simon Peter pointed out that was all very well but he hadn’t had a starter, and Thomas went on to say that he had had a starter but it had only been olives, that was the cheapest thing on the menu, that hardly counted, in some restaurants they’d be thrown in gratis, it was hardly his fault this one didn’t. And Jesus would say nothing, just watch them indulgently, would wait until he was told what his contribution should be, and put in without further comment.”

Robert Shearman, “Tiny Deaths”, in, er, Tiny Deaths, pp. 175-6.

It’s a story that’s at once deliciously blasphemous and yet at the same time dares to give insight on what Jesus’ death means. There’s both something of The Last Temptation about it, yet also of Life of Brian.

And in struggling to explain what the book’s like, I realise I’m just listing other things I’ve loved. Which is about as a good a recommendation as you’re going to get.

Egypt in a hedge

On Saturday, I went to see Paul Cornell in Faringdon, about 17 miles out of Oxford. There was quite a lot of lager and a furious game of Spoof (where you have to guess the totals of everyone's 0-3). And the next morning, after a late but hearty breakfast and the minute's silence, I was taken for a quick gander round the local highlights.

We admired the spindly folly, which only got planning permission on the proviso that it also had a wood planted so people wouldn't actually see it. I took a picture of the statue called Egypt apparently "rescued" from the Crystal Palace.

Since I'm usually rubbish at taking photos, I'm really rather pleased with how this one came out. Especially since it was taken on my Sony Ericsson flip-phone. (I have looked to see what make it is, but it doesn't seem to say. "M2" seems to be the type of the battery. But is a black phone, with large friendly keys.)

My host then took me into the churchyard to see a cannonball lodged in the side of the wall. Gobber Cromwell apparently had a battery of guns placed where the folly now stands. Only the cannonball is not the relic of the civil wars - it was put there by some eminent Victorians to make the church more exciting.

"It's all Cornell's fault"

The new Doctor Who site Tardis Travels has posted up an interview with me. Leslie McMurtry grills me about the Doctor Who short story competition (from back when I was sifting through the entries) and about writing in general.

Ga-ga

Alex Fitch's Benny show has been aired, and is now available to download. Odd listening to the rambling, nasal, awkward bloke that is, er, me. And it would help if I had thought to explain each of the people, stories and things that I'm on about. Assume too much you already know...

But still, it's free and it's comprehensive and I'm jolly pleased. And I think the bosses will be pleased that we got our message across:

• Benny's next adventure: a short snipper from the forthcoming "The Wake", including the dramatisation of some of Justin Richards's novel "Theatre of War" (pp. 32-34).
• Utterly all over the place as I answer Alex's questions at the recording of "The End of the World", 6 May 2007. (Yes, that's the recording you can hear in the background.)
  
• Yesterday, Alex interviewing Lisa Bowerman.
• Paul Cornell (and, er, me) interviewed by Graham Sleight on 24 January, at one of those BSFA things.
• Regarding Jason Kane: Alex interviewing Stephen Fewell yesterday.
• Over the phone, me interviewing Sophie Aldred for the Inside Story of Benny, 31 May 2007.
• Did this one mano-a-mano - a snippet of me interviewing Gareth Roberts for the same book, 7 June 2007.
• Upcoming Benny anthology "Missing Adventures" is being given away free (listen to the show for details how to enter).
• Can't resist a mystery... Benny takes a job on the Braxiatel Collection in another short excerpt from "The Wake", this time dramatising some of Justin's "Tears of the Oracle" (pp. 276-7).
• The end
  

Can you hear me pumping on your stereo?

I make my radio debut next week.

Tuesday 23 October, 8 pm
Resonance FM 104.4 FM (in London), or www.resonancefm.com on the Internet.

In an hour-long programme, Alex Fitch interviews me about Bernice Summerfield, who this month turned 15 years-old. I then interview Sophie Aldred and Gareth Roberts about things Benny, Graham Sleight talks to Benny's creator Paul Cornell, and there'll other fab stuff, some giveaways and exclusive snippets of things to come.

After broadcast, the show will be available to download from www.readyformycloseup.blogspot.com.

"Make her posh"

Nimbos had us round for bacon sarnies and beer last night, so we got to see The Family of Blood.

Cor. Just cor. One of us wept, one of us gaped in uncharacteristic silence and one of us texted Paul. Yet the rotter didn't smuggle in a reference to Bernice (the nice lady in the original book version which he created and who I'm now in charge of), or even of Wolsey (the cat Joan bequeathed her, and who I killed last year).

Anyway. After last week's interview with Paul Cornell from the archive, here's us again on 20 December 2005, for my article about companions for Doctor Who's Magazine:

ME: So, what can you tell us about Circular Time?

CORNELL: It's four short stories featuring the fifth Doctor and Nyssa, largely. But they scatter across the different kinds of story that Dr Who does. There's a historical, there's a weird one, there's a far future one and there's a kind of pastoral one. They're each set in a different season as is my want and they're sort of me having fun going back to my earliest days of fan fiction, sort of doing the kinds of stories I did back then. It's also because I so wanted to work with Peter Davision before I stopped doing this kind of stuff. It's just me playing around with stuff I haven't gone near since Goth Opera really.

ME: One of the things that's very telling about your work generally is that it's very character-based. We know that one of the things Russell said when he commissioned you for Father's Day was that he wanted the character depth that you put into your books. So are you similarly exploring somes sides of the characters we haven't seen before?

CORNELL: To some degree, yes. A lot of it was a desire to get back to the fifth Doctor's speech patterns, which I really adore. And to give Sarah Sutton something to do as Nyssa. That doesn't happen very often. Yes, there's character-based stuff in there. There's a nice little romance for Nyssa. There's some nice stand-up arguing between Davison and Isaac Newton. It's a very character-based set of stories. One of the things I think the new show has taught us all is that you can do a very good, complete Dr Who story in 42 minutes. So these four half-hours are all complete stories which I think certainly run as complete as four-part stories do.

ME: You say with Nyssa that's she's not always been very well served by material –

CORNELL: She doesn't get the service.

ME: Where do you begin with giving her something more?

CORNELL: Giving her humour is I think the starting place. I see no reason why that character shouldn't have a vein of wry humour, and that's a good place to start. Making the relationship between her and the Doctor much more one-to-one so that they have an ongoing relationship you can believe in. And giving them certain points of disagreement, a couple of flashpoints in there. There's a lot of threads that run through all four, and put together all four of them form a greater story again in character or thematic terms.

ME: You said making them believable. Another thing in your writing is that, for example with Bernice, she may be a space archaeologist but she's very real, very believable.

CORNELL: Cool.

ME: Similarly, in the commentary to Father's Day you're asking the actors how they prepare for something so unreal.

CORNELL: It does boggle me because... Sorry, I won't go on about that.

ME: The thing I found really interesting was Billie and Shaun's response, which was that there was something believable about the lines which they were given, even if the situation was very strange. Is that based on observation, or where does that come from?

CORNELL: Well, it's typical me, living with one foot either side of a particular fence. And this covers several different fences in my life. In this particular case it's about one half of me being a hard-core fundamentalist geek who doesn't give a damn really about the mainsteam audience and would like to present the most far-spun fantasy imaginable with very little connection to the real world, and having another half of me that very much wants to tell stories about people who live in the real world. Rather than doing those two things separately I always seem to do things that do them both at once. I think if there's one thing that my stories are about it's the effect on people of quite extreme fantasy circumstances. Certainly way back in the New Adventures, my New Adventures are full of ordinary people encountering very, very weird stuff.

ME: It's about the consequences of the stuff, but also how they're changed by it.

CORNELL: Absolutely. You cannot come back through the door and be the same person. It gives them a different insight into the world they're in.

ME: So is that where you come to with Nyssa: you try and develop her in some way, having something that happens that changes her?

CORNELL: The thing is with Nyssa, she's entirely from the fantasy end of the world. Certainly in the TV series she didn't really get attached into the actual world at all. Almost nothing for an actor to play in that part on TV. There's some nice fairy-princess stuff in Traken, but after that. At least Johnny Byrne gives her some stuff to do in Arc of Infinity, but you don't really learn much about her in doing it. There aren't any shades of grey there. Really this is having her live in a small village while the Dr plays cricket for one summer. The story covers the summer and what happens to her while he's having fun.

ME: On the depth and you don't really learn much about her, one of the things that Big Finish have done which is also in the new series is that companions have a history, and friends and family. In Big Finish we've met sisters and brothers... Pete really grounded Rose into something that was real and believable. How much more difficult is it to manage a story when you've got other character to deal with? Does it give you more perspectives, so it's easier to cut to somebody else, or does it actually make it very cluttered?

CORNELL: Um...

ME: I mean, how comfortable are you working from a shopping list of things that need to go into a story?

CORNELL: Every writer loves a shopping list. There's nothing worse - we're in cliche city here - than a blank sheet of paper. Genocide, misery, bus stations - there are lots of things worse than a blank sheet of paper. You can make a paper airplane out of a blank sheet of paper. But... every writer loves a shopping list, especially when it's a shopping list that somebody else has made out that's got lots of lovely presents for me on it.

ME: So for example when you have little Mickey in Father's Day, was that something which you were asked to do, or something you threw in for a laugh?

CORNELL: I think... I think that was Russell's idea. I find it very difficult to play "whose idea was what" through Father's Day because it's quite a long time ago and it's all so much a team game. He wasn't on the original shopping list, he would have been there once we got into it.

ME: There's a suggestion there that things are prefigured for his relationship with Rose beforehand.

CORNELL: Absolutely. There's the imprinting of the chicken thing.

ME: Another thing you say in the commentary about Pete and I've also heard you say about Benny is that they're based on people that you know.

CORNELL: Oh yeah, hugely.

ME: How much do you cut-and-paste from things you've heard and people you've seen to create a real character, and how much can you create something real by making it up?

CORNELL: I think the really difficult job as a writer is to create people who aren't you, who don't think like you and act like you. Obviously every character you write will have some degree of you in it, but it's where you get the other point of view from. Certainly I tend to cut-and-paste from people I know. Sometimes from people I know quite distantly, but often people I know very well. Writers whose characters are all them, sometimes it can work very well. Aaron Sorkin, all of his West Wing characters are different assets of his personality, but that just feels like a wonderful way in to a wonderful mind every week. In my own case, I don't think I've got that depth of ability and so need to find other voices.

ME: So do you find when you're talking to your mates in the pub or something that you'll think, "I'm having that!", or is it something that occurs to you later, when you're writing it and you think, "I remember that time that so and so..."?

CORNELL: It's very rarely individual lines. It's usually a vague impression of people. Do you think I've stolen some stuff from you, is that where this is going?

ME: No, no.

CORNELL: I'm trying to think of examples from Bernice.

ME: I've noticed from doing the Benny history that early on you say Benny is "you in a frock". Which gets very disturbing when Jason Kane is apparently Dave Stone.

CORNELL: I know, I know. And there's Justin running the Collection... But Benny is very close to my viewpoint character. So much so that I quite like the fact that so many voices have ruffled her up a bit since then.

ME: How much did writing for Benny change, or thinking of her, as a result of Lisa getting cast?

CORNELL: It's very hard to say. Lisa's voice infected me so quickly, I find it very hard to think of any primordial Benny that wasn't her. Certainly the Emma Thompson voice on top of me and my frock would be the primordial Benny but Lisa really nailed it.

ME: You've written for Benny since. Do you know find that you're writing for Lisa?

CORNELL: Very much so. In particular I think you'll find her speech patterns have changed a bit, because in Lisa's performance a lot of what she does is in wonderful hesitation. The points in Benny's sentence construction where she hesitates are very different now, I'm sure.

ME: How have things developed since Big Finish took on Benny? In many way, BF's ongoing work all comes from what they originally did with Benny. How much were you involved in setting up Benny's first stuff?

CORNELL: It's really complicated, and I think very apt for Bernice. I was, as always, very busy. I think it was about the time I first started working on Casualty. They asked em to adapt the books and I put forward Jac [Rayner] instead to do it. I think that changed the whole nature of what the range was going to be from an early point. Especially since Jac's voice really is not mine or Benny's at that point. I mean to say that... I'm trying to say something positive and appreciative which may already have sounded negative.

ME: It took it off in a new way.

CORNELL: Exactly. It added a new viewpoint to it.

ME: When they stopped adapting the books and came up with the Collection, how much were you involved in that? Was it just that they said, "this is what we're doing?"

CORNELL: To some degree. The relationship between me and Gary [Russell - who I've sinced succeeded] about Bernice has always been that if I feel I want to interfere, I can view every script, make suggestions and change things. I could pull the rug out from under them and give the licence to somebody else. But I've never felt the need to threaten that and I like the fact that it's something I can dive into, like doing Life During Wartime, and then dive out of again. I like the fact that it continues on without me.

ME: It has a life of it's own.

CORNELL: Exactly. And a life of it's own is very true to the spirit of the character. The purpose of Benny is one thing: a domestic observer character amongst cosmic vastness. Originally that was the cosmic vastness of a distant and alien Dr and now I would say it's the cosmic vastness of all of science fiction. Her brand of carry-on / absurd/ occasionally tragic life experience plays off always against what's happening in more spacey things currently.

ME: One of the things Big Finish is also very conscious of at the moment is that the guidelines for Dr Who have changed so that we have to be much more careful about suitability of content for a family audience and so on. As a natural progression from that, Benny has become much more adult. She now swears and its ruder. How much do you feel Benny works as a standalone, independent series and how much is it a Dr Who spin off?

CORNELL: It's not been a spin-off for a hell of a long time now. That's what I mean to say when I talk about a point of view as a format. She's got her own point of view which works whatever you play it off of. It certainly doesn't need to play off of Dr Who. In many ways it would be great if she could wander off into the Star Trek universe. Can you imagine?

ME: Actually I can.

CORNELL: It would be worth getting a licence just for a couple of months!

ME: Finally, then, if hypothetically Big Finish ever one day got Eccleston to do a series, we'd more than likely have to come up with a new companion who wasn't Rose. So what would she be like? If you were given that job...

CORNELL: Oh boy. I think I'm companioned out. Make her posh. That would be interesting.

ME: You don't feel that Charley is Rose-but-posh?

CORNELL: But Paul McGann is also. I think Charley would work quite well with Eccleston! Have the regeneration! "Do you want to come with me?" "No actually I don't. Take me home you lout."

Little Englishness

Watched Human Nature at a chum's house last night, and general consensus was hooray! - even from those who've not been wowed by New Show recently.

I've been busy writing about the book version, which features Benny instead of Martha. Going through my old notes, I found this interview with Paul Cornell from 21 June 2001. It was originally for my old website thing, Concrete Elephant, and CONTAINS HUGE SPOILERS for Cornell's book, Something More...

It’s a beautiful Midsummer’s day, and Paul Cornell has spent the afternoon drinking. He politely declines the offer of a pint, and goes for a diet coke instead. We duck downstairs to the Writer’s Bar, to ramble about his new science fiction novel, Something More, about his Doctor Who adventures and about... well, all sorts really. To get him started, Elephant has devised five cunning and incisive warm-up questions...

Me: Brussel sprouts – are they good or bad?

Cornell: Oh they’re horrid! One of the most awful inventions of mankind – you take a cabbage and compress it down to horrible smooth size... and the thing to start with isn’t that good. The only good cabbage is when it’s chopped up into really tiny pieces and served with seaweed in Chinese restaurants. Anything else that’s green and that shape is bad.

Me: Even when they’re cooked with bacon?

Cornell: Even! Even the bacon can’t make up for them.

Me: Okay. Favourite character from the Star Wars universe?

Cornell: Oh.... When I was a kid I was always a big... this is the progression from when I was a boy. Han Solo when I was a kid, Luke Skywalker now I’ve grown up.

Me: Do you dunk biscuits in tea?

Cornell: Yes.

Me: How old were you when you first fell in love?

Cornell: Sixteen.

Me: And what’s the best word in the English language?

Cornell: [Long pause]. That’s a bastard question. [More silence, and then, to the tape recorder...] There’s a long pause. [More silence].

Me: Should we move on and talk about the book?

Cornell: Yes! Please! [He giggles, which sounds a bit like Captain Pugwash]

Me: First thing that struck me about the book is the definite sense of place. Bath, Winchester, Chiswick, Blackheath – in fact, all the places I live, which was a bit spooky. It’s all terribly British. Or rather Home Counties, which puts it beside the traditions of English sci-fi; Wyndham, Wells... And yet it’s not set the-day-after-tomorrow. In fact, the key date is 1998. Were you conscious of creating an alternate history?

Cornell: To be honest, I always thought it was a little awkward having it set ‘next year’. The time presented is the time that I actually wrote it, and I was aware that by the time it came out that would be the past. It seemed odd to be writing a present day scenario that might be different by the time it was out. Y’know? I couldn’t just say it’s the present day, write it as the present day and then be caught up in events. So I decided ‘let’s just root it in history, let’s say this is 1998.’ It wasn’t so much an idea of an ‘alternate’ as just a desire to be honest, to keep the present as the present and to go on from there. Britishness... is very important to the whole thing of it. I’ve always wanted to write science fiction that would seem to be in the same kind of world as Kingsley Amis or Evelyn Waugh.

Me: One of the themes running through the book is history and memory – how people misremember the past, how they remember Britain.

Cornell: It’s about how shit history is basically, and how history is always limited and contained. Well, not always, actually. Since the end of the War, history has limited and contained who the British are. It’s interesting to note that during the Boer War, the stereotype throughout Europe of the English was that we were the passionate people who would laugh or cry at anything. And that’s shifted since then. That’s become, I suppose, the Italians. These supposed traditions of what the British are like, most of them are... like panto. Some of the traditions of pantomime were laid down in the 1970s. We always think things are ancient and they never bloody are. And that’s because we’re tied to the past. That particular war especially has been something that has anchored British history. Only now are we making efforts to let go of that, and Something More is about how terrible it would be if we could never let go of that, if our future was entirely determined by our history, by our past. If we could never get on to the rather wonderful, Dan Dare, one-world superstate that I envisage.

Me: You feel that the Second World War has set in stone the politics of today? An old argument is that with World War One, the reasons people went to war are no longer relevant, but the reasons we went to war in 1939 have become more relevant – race and identity.

Cornell: Yes, yes. But on the otherhand... we now celebrate our sporting victories with the theme tune from The Great Escape. That chant, ‘One world cup and two world wars’... Yeah, two world wars, what, fifty years ago? It’s like we’re stuck in a post-imperial loss. It’s like we’re never going to move away from that, never going to go beyond that, never going to redefine what Britishness is. We’re still waiting for a truly inclusive sense of what Britishness is. There’s been gestures towards it, but even this week, this month [with the race riots in Oldham] there’s still signs that we’re not actually getting it. We’re still lost in history.

Me: So is Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), the architect leader of the heroes, the rag-tag rebels in the book, is he your envisioning of what Britishness should be?

Cornell: Yes. He seems to me to be historically one of those odd Englishmen that pop up from time to time who have just got the whole universe at their command. Englishness does occasionally produce these extraordinarily liberal thinkers who seem to be able to break from the confining code that created them. If I wanted a beneficent deity to be looking over me, I’d want it to be Lutyens, especially since he dealt to admirably in his own life with a wife who was lost in a fog of spirituality which never connected to the real world. And here he was, building buildings in the real world, really good buildings, and expressing himself in a very solid, very concrete way. I think he had a kind of spirituality of his own which is attractive and very interesting. He’s my perfect dad.

Me: So there’s the real history of his opposition to spirituality, and then in your book, Lutyens is fighting a war against a resurrected, alien Jesus Christ from Outer Space.

Cornell: Oh, now you’re giving away the ending.

Me: Jesus is the villain of the piece.

Cornell: One of the things I really like is people who read this before they read the book will wonder ‘How the hell did they get there from the first few chapters?'. I don’t think Lutyens was opposed to spirituality, he was always very supportive of his wife.

Me: There’s a genuine struggle in the book between the means and ends approaches of the great war. The Grey Namer, Jesus, is very much looking towards the ends, drastic solutions whatever the cost. He’s going to destroy the planet Earth – or at least kill everyone on it.

Cornell: But for the best of reasons.

Me: Yes, for the best of reasons. Whereas Lutyens is opposed to that because his idea is that you look to the details. He looks at the pennies and lets the pounds look after themselves. His idea of what a spiritual life involves is having a nice house, with a garden, and going boating with his wife. As opposed to the grand designs. Is that something that you believe yourself?

Cornell: Again it’s that ancient... well it’s not ancient Britishness, it’s a conception of Britishness founded fifty years ago, that the little things are important and big ideologies are rather scary. I quite like that, but I think we’ve carried it just a bit too far. I think Lutyens would say moderation in all things as well, but what does that remind you of? That scones are more important than fascism? I think that this is my Doctor Who heritage showing through.

Me: There are a number of links through to your Doctor Who books. First of all, the emotional backdrop, the incredible sense of mourning, of the First World War is similar to parts of Human Nature. There’s the fact that Mary Poppins, a pop culture figure, comes forward as the Virgin Mary – a far more transcendental cultural icon – in the same way that Vic Reeves cameos in Love and War as the Trickster.

Cornell: Vic Reeves of course, is the Trickster. It’s Mary Poppins because I wanted people to get her straight away. Mary Poppins – that’s a scary movie. She’s all powerful. She’s an omnipotent deity who’s acting as a household familiar. It’s a very odd movie. And deeply English – that sense of the transcendant, coming down into your house and fitting in to the social mores of the time. Fluttering them about a bit, but it’s that wonderful English link between manners and the infinite.

Me: Cultural references play a funny role in the book. In the future, Empire of the Sun is the greatest film ever made.

Cornell: I’m glad you spotted that. Because it’s shifted. It’s Citizen Kane right now. And we kind of think that it must have always been Citizen Kane – but of course it wasn’t. It’s like it’s something that’s only happened to us in the last ten years.

Me: And the people of the future can quote Beatles songs and make reference to Winnie the Pooh, but Booth makes a comment about The Rocky Horror Show and nobody has any idea what he’s talking about. And, most importantly of all, nobody makes any reference to a man who travels round in a police box and saves people from monsters...

Cornell: Absolutely. Because what’s Paul Cornell going to do when he writes a mainstream novel? He’s going to put some kind of stupid Doctor Who reference in there. And I really didn’t want to do that. I don’t think that there’s a single in-joke. Is there?

Me: The only thing I could think of was that you have stately house that’s somewhere near Bath, with wild animals and a maze – and I immediately thought, ‘is that Longleat?’

Cornell: I think that kind of goes beyond an in-joke. I was thinking of a house called Castle Drago, which is a Lutyens house, was the map I used. It’s kind of Castle Drago in Longleat’s grounds. I’ve got really a strong mental imagery of those grounds, and I’ve always wanted to write something set in that area. What it is about Longleat to me is that when I was very little, you would walk through this incredibly well-kept-up stately home, past all these incredible angles. What I remember at Longleat as a kid is really solid angles of stone against a clear blue, empty sky. And you turn a corner, and there’s the TARDIS. As a kid, that’s magic here in the middle of this English manor. And there’s Lord Bath’s private maze which is only open every now and then, with his erotic murals inside. I never went to see those. I still never have. That was forbidden stuff in the maze. It’s not really, then, an in-joke as much as a deliberate setting.

“We have friends in the Universe. Their ambassador’s an Englishman. Everybody’s going to be filled with hope again. What a great Christmas present.”

Tony, the Prime Minister, p. 216.

Me: I was reading the book as the General Election was taking place, and here’s a book set in 1998 and the Prime Minister’s name is Tony. He’s never sign-posted as Tony Blair, MA Oxon, Leader of the Labour Party...

Cornell: I don’t think I name him –

Me: He is actually referred to as Tony.

Cornell: Oh right. Well it’s meant to be him obviously. I think I’m the only New Labour zealot I know. I just think that if people actually do appreciate something, when things fall right, then they should stand up and declare it. And the British are very bad at that. So this a New Labour science fiction novel, and the Prime Minister presented therein is by no means heroic, or saintly, but is nevertheless decent.

Me: He’s the first person to talk to Booth after he’s changed, rather than at him. He addresses him as a human being and asks his opinion -

Cornell: Because I actually think he would.

Me: - and Booth walks into a committee of experts, and gets the feeling that they’ve been carefully selected to be racially representative. Which obviously contrasts with the future where even people from different families are suspect, homosexuality is a capital offence... it’s a tremendous contrast where the world has fallen apart.

Cornell: Absolutely. It’s the two approaches isn’t it? Humans can continue down this road of Horlicks and inclusivity, which I think, thank God, we’re finally shifting to, with this second election victory in a row.

Me: A damning indictment by the British people of the Conservative Party’s efforts over the last five years.

Cornell: Oh yes. The average age – the average – of Tory Party members is 68. The average, for God’s sake. I wanted to say that what people call political correctness now is actually just the first step towards a real, different society, a different Britain. A Britain of the future, the kingdom. What the book is about, the future it presents, is a world where that doesn’t happen. Where we stand-off from Europe, and declare ourselves alone and live for an Empire that no longer exists, and thus keep on degenerating and degenerating into a bunch of warring tribes. I really wanted to portray in a country-British disaster way, Britain like Mozambique or one of those terrible places in Africa where there is no law, through purely economic struggle, through wars that never end. It’s a bit of an overreaction perhaps.

Me: In the book, the history of the families and the nation are addressed by a house with it’s own history. And the house’s haunted past is a moment when Booth turns his back on the backward-looking people and their confused ideas about Britishness.

“We are never going to get back to the Union Jack, to Britain, to one government over this island […]. We can’t start anything new, because we keep trying to build new things in the image of the old. We can’t get out of that mind-set. We are still too British, when there is not Britain to be British about.”

Booth Hawtrey, pp. 329-330.

That’s the starting point, and the resolution is to turn your back on history. The pivotal human action that causes everyone to forget their past, comes from Jane, who’s been this violent priest. It’s astonishing the barbarity her faith takes her to, but it’s actually her faith that takes them where no one else has succeeded. She’s able to turn back time.

Cornell: Paul nods enthusiastically. Yes.

Me: All of the way through the book, faith is problematic. Having made Jesus the villain –

Cornell: He’s the hero in my next one. No he is. I think if you look what happens in the whole span of the book, he is the villain certainly, but it’s like grace does win through. His actions turn out to be exactly right for the greater good, that the actions of the book create. It’s almost like the Trinity warring against itself, like his dad is up to something that he hasn’t quite got yet. It’s interesting comparing the two books – British Summertime [due 2002]. When I finished it, I became suddenly aware that a lot of the same things happen in British Summertime as do in Something More. We have hangings, a touch of paedophilia, a huge presence of Christ at the centre of the narrative, except that things are reversed. It’s like a mirror image of the first one, and none of this was conscious. It’s just that my brain seems to want to sort through these things again. And it’s another version of history going in a particular way. In the second case it’s an ecological disaster, and how the future might work out that way. The way to tie it back up in a knot, to bring it back to where it’s supposed to be, a sensation of grace working through history. I think it’s also a question of where I was at the time. Something More is a violent battle with faith – it’s me really kicking hard. And British Summertime’s a very faith-full book. Something More is, in the end, a Christian novel but you’d be hard-pressed to see it, and British Summertime is much more of a CS Lewis-on-acid thing. I’m told it might actually be blasphemous, but I’m not sure. Being married to a vicar is going to be interesting, if some of her congregation actually read Something More. Hopefully British Summertime will be around by that point to reassure them. It’s strange because both books I think are equally... British Summertime is nastier if anything, it pushes the characters further. It’s nice that from a kind of fanboy point of view... that they couldn’t possibly exist in the same world, in that the central character i.e. Jesus is a villain in one and a hero in the other [laughs].

Me: Maybe he was just having an off day.

Cornell: Maybe he was. An off life.

Me: You’ve now been a novelist, a paid novelist, for ten years. Early on you carved a niche of what your themes are, what the things you’re interested in are. Women priests –

Cornell: It’s odd isn’t it! When you say ‘carved’, it’s more like ‘randomly had’. I take a couple of steps back and see that there are things there that were never meant to be. I had no idea that these things would keep on recurring.

Me: As well as the novels, though, you’ve done a lot of television work. There was your own series, Wavelength, and two years ago your episode of Love in the Twentieth Century - an insight into masturbation. And now you’re writing what seems to be half of the next season of Casualty...

Cornell: [Laughing] I’m writing three out of forty. Nearly a tenth.

Me: Yes, well, my maths is a bit ropey. When you’re writing a Casualty episode, do you find yourself pitching, ‘Well, there’s this woman priest, and she’s having problems with Jesus. And there’s an alien...’

Cornell: Yes.... There’s a priest fighting with his faith in the first one. The characters I created for Casualty, Comfort, one of the paramedics, is a Catholic, and that's an issue that keeps coming back. I’m having the time of my life on Casualty – they’re giving me incredible freedom, incredible support. The ability to be free to write novels, and also the freedom to express oneself in an ongoing Saturday night primetime BBC1 series – ooh I’m so satisfied. So the same themes do come up albeit using their characters. The BBC has turned down many, many vicar shows from me. I’ve had comedy vicar shows, I’ve had drama vicar shows. I’ve got to the point where when I present my latest batch of wannabe drama proposals, people will say, ‘Now there aren’t any vicars in this, are there?’ And The Godfather, the book I’ve just adapted for a BBC pilot script – I don’t know if it’ll get filmed but I’ve just delivered the script. Today, actually – it’s very much about ‘my’ themes. I really loved it because it’s slap-bang in the middle of my territory. It’s about a horror novelist, a very rich horror novelist, a bestseller, who inherits, through bereavement, these two godchildren and has to take care of them. In a big, sprawling gothic house. He has to deal with grief and... there’s no spirituality. I may introduce a vicar somewhere along the line. But it’s right up my street.

Me: And is television and film somewhere you see your future? Is that the dream?

Cornell: Yes. I want to write a film. I want to write my Battle of Britain film. I’ve got a plan for that, and that may happen. I’ve got a spy novel on the ramp, and a magical fantasy trilogy about magic throughout the last century, the twentieth century. Witches in 1939, and they have a little cosy Great Escape style witches' coven.

Me: And haunt women vicars?

Cornell: Yes, there’ll probably be a vicar in there as well. I’m marrying a woman vicar! How much more into this can I get? It’d be wrong of me to just say that writing pays the bills. It doesn’t. I find real expression there as well, and I’m having the happiest time of my writing life. All of those future projects are of course subject to the whims of the future. In the back of the dust jacket on the hardback [of Something More], it says ‘Paul’s currently developing a series for Channel 4.’ Well I was when that came out. Nothing came of it. I must stop saying that on backflaps. But yeah, it’s a nice place to be at the moment, and [he fingers the dog-eared copy of Something More on the table] I’m desperately proud of it. When I was little, my brother who introduced my to science fiction, would lend me his Analogs. I suppose it’s an association of my brother and a deep Englishness, that I actually lived in a little English village and had all this wonderful stuff in cardboard boxes that he’d show me, his old sf models and things, that got me this big association between spaceyness and little Englishness. I’ve written about my brother already. He’s Peter Hutchings in Timewyrm: Revelation and Happy Endings. He’s an absolute duplicate of my brother, apart from the fact that he’s a mathematician and my brother’s an insurance broker. Anyway, now I’m wittering...

Me: A couple of year’s ago, the Doctor Who New Adventures were reviewed by Foundation – the British academic journal of sf – and you didn’t come across brilliantly. In fact, some kind fellow had to step in to refute the accusation of Doctor Who as ‘sf’s imbecile’.

Cornell: Yes, thank you. I didn’t, did I? Foundation was after science fiction in the New Adventures.

Me: It seemed to be after ‘grit’ – it didn’t like the ‘nice’ stories.

Cornell: There’s nothing worse than grit.

Me: Their favourite story was [Ben Aaronovitch’s] Transit – which shows exactly what their sensibilities were. Not that I’m dissing Transit.

Cornell: Well, I was going to say. They have a point. I think The Also People [Aaronovitch’s subsequent New Adventure] is better than Transit, in that it shows that that author can kick arse without grit. Indeed, without any gestures in the direction of darkness or horror. Just by talking about nice people having a nice time. I think grit is teenage. There’s an awful lot of pain in Something More and British Summertime. People looking for grit will find it, but I think that the important thing about grit is getting past it. It’s what gets in the way, it’s the problem, it’s not what the books are about. It’s what the books are about getting over.

Me: Something More is about people living in an utterly different, difficult, violent world. And some of the violent scenes are particularly nasty.

Cornell: Oh, some particularly horrible things happen to Booth.

Me: And you have Rebecca being buried alive and standing on tip-toe just so that she can breath... all sorts of horrible things. But the whole point is about people overcoming this.

Cornell: And the fact that condition that they’re after is peace and happiness and scones. And a society that can make scones. I think all my books are about pushing that and trying to get back to it. I think there are certain authors who indulge in grit who actually like it. Who want to be there and want their characters to be in it. Which always sits very difficult with Doctor Who... ‘difficult’ isn’t the right word. Can you put in a better word than ‘difficult’?

Me: It’s against the ethics of the series?

Cornell: Yeah, so anyway, that’s true of Who books. But free to write my own stuff, it’s about the victory over grit.

Me: So do you find the violence difficult to write?

Cornell: Horribly, no. I was a little upset by what I did to Rebecca, and I was wondering if this was some kind of sadistic thing. But then I realised I’d done far, far worse things to Booth. Booth being my hero, and being immortal of course, I can do him far more damage. But it’s about him being better at the end, it’s not about the damage.

“Things seemed to be different already. All the new growth. All the new systems. Anything that fell apart just got replaced by something better.”

The happy ending, p. 420.

We mug at each other for a bit. ‘I think that’s it,’ I say. 'Cool!’ enthuses Cornell. ‘Wonderful. Good stuff, nice questions.’ We head back upstairs for more drinks. Later, over pizza, he comes back to that question about the best word in the English language. If he has to choose a word, it’ll be something silly and onomatapaeic... like ‘plop’.

The write stuff

Ten years ago tomorrow I went to the Manopticon 5 convention in Manchester – which is where I first got to meet famous people who are now my pals. I know this ‘cos I found the souvenir brochure the other day, while researching for the Inside Story.

The autographs page shows my priorities even then; I’ve only got scrawl from the writers (Steve Cole, Paul Cornell, Terrance Dicks, Steve Lyons and Gareth Roberts, fact fans). The floppy-haired, wide-eyed, 20-year-old me had only the previous day handed in his undergraduate dissertation – comparing the TV Movie to Star Trek: First Contact – and little dreamt of all the mad shit and scribbling as yet to come…

Signed off on The Two Jasons yesterday and wrote up a quarter of my notes on the first draft of Nobody’s Children. Pretty damn delighted with this year’s Benny – and people are saying nice things about Judas Gift both on Outpost Golliwog and the Down Among the Dead Men mailing list (you’ll need to sign-up to read what’s been said, though).

Also got a lunchtime demonstration from Dr Davy Darlington of how you check a recording studio offers dead space: clap your hands and listen for the lack of any reverb. Look at me with my hang of the lingo.

Then put on a better shirt and jacket and tripped into town to attend my first ever Clarke Award ceremony. I first heard about the Clarkes while doing my MA, when I got to meet some of the judges on the morning after. They’d had no doubt about The Sparrow’s fabulosity, and so I sought it out myself. The Clarkes are generally a great recommendation. It’s like the older kid at school who can recommend the good stuff – there’s only one winner I wasn’t so swayed by.

Was wary about what it would be like, but the place was full of old chums and the beer didn’t need to be paid for. Got to meet Andrew Cartmel – who I’ve employed and am employing, but by proxy – and various other fine folk.

Was so busy nattering that I was one of the last to file into Screen 4 for the ceremony. Managed not to see a prominent step as I looked for spare seats, so went flying in front of everyone. Gah! The free honeycomb ice-cream helped to settle the embarrassment, and I hid at the back with Jim Swallow.

The speeches were all very brief, and having applauded Mike Harrison and the organisers, we beetled back out to the bar. I had fun asking different people if writing knock-off sci-fi tie-ins did you any favours in writing standalone sci-fi (there’s lots of ways you can articulate “No!”), and traded business cards, salacious gossip and hyperbole. Then followed some people to a pub round the corner, and did the same over pints of Green King.

And the only thing I paid for all night was a grubby pasty on the way home. Whee!