Seven films watched on two planes

Bladerunner 2049
This is not a film designed to be watched on a small, square screen on a plane, the naked bits pixellated and the swearing dubbed. But it still looks amazing, a credible, bleak future of light and texture and history. There's considerable effort to continue on from the original film without matching it slavishly, but sadly this new instalment lacks the quirky humour.

It's treatment of women is also a problem. True, the "pleasure model" Replicants in the first film were all women, and I think this one's trying to make a point about the way women are packaged and sold - while also showing us lots of bare boobs (if I read my pixellated screen right). Given we know that Ryan Reynolds' K is a Replicant, perhaps it would have worked better for him, in his darkest hour, to see a sexy advert not for a Replicant that reminds him of someone else, but for one that looks just like him.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
This film about rape and murder and suicide and domestic violence and racism and torture was, helpfully, edited for content, so what seems to have been an almost constant barrage of swearing was dubbed out. For the first ten minutes or so, I thought I was going to have to turn the thing off it was so ridiculous, and then it became hypnotic.

It's a gripping film, that starts with a really tough premise and then keeps coming at you from left field. Part of the thrill of it is in having two lead characters who seem completely unchained, liable to do just about anything.

A final scene seems a bit tacked on - we watch a car drive away past the titular billboards and the film could have ended there, but we then cut to the interior of the car for some last exposition. I'm also really uncomfortable about the sort-of redemption of the racist cop who admits to having tortured a black suspect - an act that is almost a joke among the white people of the community. Yes, he suffers in the course of events, and endeavours to be a better cop, but there's no sense that either he or the community really face up to what he's done.

Baby Driver
This typically stylish caper from Edgar Wright is great fun, though obviously overshadowed by Kevin Spacey's later fall from grace. I really liked the final sequence where Baby must face the consequences of his actions, but also felt love interest Debora was too accepting of all he had done. Grosse Point Blank had Debbie recoil in horror from her prospective boyfriend's criminal life. Not enough of a price is paid here, I thought.

Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Guy Ritchie's daft take on the Arthurian legend has baby Arthur brought up in a brothel in London, where he grows into a right geezer with a common touch before learning he's the king. The title would be more accurately Arthur: Ledge. The film's one redeeming feature is that the London shown is clearly the one built and then abandoned by the Romans, the cheeky cockneys having taken charge of the former temples and circus. Just that panning shot made it worth it.

Goodbye, Christopher Robin
Since I'd read Christoper Robin's own memoir, The Enchanted Place, I knew that the opening premise of this film wasn't right - the boy who played with Winnie the Pooh didn't grow up to die in the Second World War. Yes, the film reveals later on that he survived, but that opening meant I watched this wondering what else had been moulded for dramatic effect. Would Olive, the nanny, really have spoken her mind to the boy's parents? Have the writers been fair to Daphne, the boy's mum?

Even so, that didn't distract too much from the moving story, of a shell-shocked AA Milne and EH Shephard struggling to return to their light-comic lives from before the war. A son and a move to the country both fail to quiet Milne's demons, at least at first. Then a bond builds between father and son that Milne works into his Winnie the Pooh stories - which were hugely successful by any measure, except the one that really mattered. Christopher Robin's enchanted childhood became a nightmare adolescence.

It's a compelling, horrifying story, that the books we so adored caused such misery for the boy in them. I find myself reviewing how much I put my own children in the limelight, on social media or in anything related to my work.

The Dark Tower
This is a humourless action movie about a troubled teenager who is really the special psychic who can either save or destroy the whole universe. The gunslinger he teams up with is played by Idris Elba, who adds a touch of class and is the best thing about the film - but it's a shame he couldn't be smarter or funnier. As the two journey through different realms together, they fight various bad guys and monsters, while the main villain does horrible things to anyone close to them. It's downright nasty: the bad guy killing the boy's mum is oddly unaffecting beyond the immediate shock. I kept hoping it would do something more interesting.

Spider-Man: Homecoming
I'd seen this fun adventure before, and again was struck by its wit, its heart, the villain we can totally sympathise with and the brilliant moment where Spider-Man inadvertently turns up at his front door. A lot of superhero films are about exceedingly strong and well-equipped people beating up villains who often seem less well-off in powers and technology. This new version of Spider-Man works precisely because he's a little guy - young and green and apparently out on his own. 

Artemis, by Andy Weir

I really enjoyed this rollicking thriller by the author of The Martian. Like that, it's full of practical problem-solving in space, this time on the lunar colony Artemis sometime after the year 2072 (ie more than a hundred years after the last Apollo landing).

It takes 10 pages before we learn that our gutsy narrator is female. Jasmine "Jazz" Bashira is a porter (ie courier) with a line in illegal smuggling, to the despair of her respectable father - a welder and practising Muslim. She's lived on the Moon since she was six, and since her teens lived a rough existence just about surviving on her own wits. She's canny, adept, brave and wise-cracking, and an engaging character.

Other characters are also well drawn, and towards the end Jazz has to get a bunch of them to work together who we know are going to clash. That works really well. I also liked the minor character inspired by the real-life gruff Londoner who played the first Doctor Who:

"That evening, I hit my favorite watering hole: Hartnell's Pub [...] I loved the place. Partically because Billy was a pleasant bartender, but mainly because it was the closest bar to my coffin."
Andy Weir, Artmeis, p. 32. 

The proof copy I read says film rights to Artmeis have been sold to 20th Century Fox, so I wonder who will play Billy - perhaps he might be CGI.

Initially it looks like the book will involve a simple heist, but things soon become much more complex - and that lets us explore the lunar colony from inside and out, examining the infrastructure and politics and various power blocs involved. Just as in The Martian, existing in space is fraught with difficulty and danger. But whereas that was effectively Robinson Crusoe on Mars, with one smart astronaut battling the elements - and odds - to stay alive, this is a busier story with villains up to no good.

I have two criticisms. First, although Jazz is an engaging lead, she's also a very blokey one. This is a male-dominated environment and her life is defined by men: the dad she's estranged from; the rich guy she works for; the sort-of cop trying to deport her; the bloke on Earth she gets to send contraband; the various men she has or might have sex with. There are only a small number of women characters - the woman in charge of Artemis, the teenage daughter of her employer, and a scientist working for the bad guys - and it's a shame Jazz doesn't have any female friends of her own age.

I can see that isolates her, makes her situation harder. But it doesn't help that at one point she disguises herself as a prostitute, or that a supposedly symapthetic male character keeps referring to Jazz's breasts. That cuts against what's otherwise a compelling female lead, in a book that deals in issues other writers might have ignored, such as the practicalities of religion or disability while living on the Moon.

I also thought the ending was a bit easy - especially when so much of the book is about things being more tricky than they first appear, and simple jobs having unexpected and dire consequences. Given the scale of the crisis, affecting the whole of the colony, it seems a little unlikely that no one is killed or permanently injured. That comes down to some extraordinary luck on Jazz's part, and perhaps the ending might have been stronger if the cost of saving the colony and ensuring its future was that - as frequently threatened - she got sent back to Earth.

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

I'm afraid that this odd but acclaimed novel about a grieving father (namely, Abraham Lincoln) left me a bit cold.

All sorts of things appealed: the lively cast of miscreant ghosts; the mixing up of different historical sources to convey particular moments, the contradictions of the witnesses included; the general weird and morbid tone.

The ghosts are great fun, from all classes and backgrounds, each with their own story to tell (which is what sustains them, and keeps them from moving on). They're a lively dead, and it's a pleasure to be in their company - but is that enough?

Cynically, I can see why this won awards, such as the covetted Man Booker. It's made up of snippets from different sources - apparently real first-hand sources describing Lincoln and fictional ghosts who meet his son (the first-hand sources now long dead, so also ghosts). Often, the snippets are no more than a sentence, so there are few words to a page. The effect is that one races through the book. Imagine the delight of the burdened judge of an award, faced with mountains of volumes to get through! That, and the strange conceit of Lincoln's dead son being in a throng of strange ghosts, and the insights afforded into Lincoln himself, and other novels would seem hard work and boring.

Even more cynically, this might be a novel to appeal to people who don't really like reading novels. Clever, strange, apparently about something important - and quick to get through. It doesn't leave us with torturous questions to mull over long after, as other serious and acclaimed books often do.

For all I raced through it, I didn't think the plot sustained 341 pages and 108 chapters. It's a novella, really - perhaps even a short story. What actually happens? Well, spoilers, but...

The boy dies; Lincoln grieves and goes at night to the cemetery to look upon the body; he lingers and then leaves, determined to fight on in the Civil War. Meanwhile, the cemetery's ghosts, in trying to aid the boy, come to their own kinds of peace. But as you read it, there's a lot of, "Lincoln entered the tomb... The ghosts tell amusing, rude anecdotes about their lives... Lincoln had just entered the tomb..." Get on with it, I thought.

I think my disappointment might stem from having just read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, set in roughly the same period and roughly the same geographical area. That rattles along at speed, with something profound to say about America and history, and without saying it directly. Instead, this is too much of what Patricia Highsmith referred to, in Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, as a gimmick novel.

There's also my own status as a grieving father, which I'm sure shadows my response. But this novel takes us to Lincoln at a key moment in his life: the awful death of his favourite son, and the publication of the casuality lists showing the brutal cost of the Civil War. The fundamental problem is that to make the encounter with the ghosts shape or influence what Lincoln then does next would be utterly crass, but not to do so makes the whole thing a bit pointless.

I liked the idea, I liked the characters in it, but couldn't shake a sense of disappointment.

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

I’ve had this extraordinary book on the stack of books by my bed for a while. It won the Clarke Award last year, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. The cover tells us that Barack Obama thought it “terrific.”

It’s the tale of a slave girl, Cora, who runs away from an abysmally brutal life on a plantation, despite the threat of even more brutal reprisals should she be caught. Cora soon meets up with the “underground railroad” that helps get escaped slaves to the freedom of the north, but the conceit here is that the railroad is not just the name of a loose organisation of helpers. There really are trains, riding tracks hidden deep into American soil.

The judges of the Clarke Award seem to have considered this enough to make the book count as science-fiction, or at least an alternative history that could still be included in its remit. I’m grateful for that because that award first brought the book to my attention. But having read it, I’m not so sure. Whatever the case, it is a brilliant book, one that will linger long in my thoughts.

One particularly impressive achievement is the sheer number of characters, many of them met only fleetingly, who are nevertheless vivid and alive. Characters are often introduced with a telling insight, such as the vicious Ridgeway, the man employed to hunt Cora and the other escapees, whose whole worldview is conveyed in his judgment on other professions.

“If you weren’t a little dirty at the end of the day, you weren’t much of a man.”
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, p. 88.

Between the main sections of the book detailing Cora’s adventures, some supporting characters also have their lives and outlooks explored in single chapters – in some cases after we already know the terrible ways they met their deaths.

It’s established early that anyone can be suddenly beaten or killed, but often Cora must move on without knowing the fate of those close to her. Then, towards the end, we hear what befell some of those she had to abandon. We’ve covered so much ground and met so many other people yet this news hits us hard because the characters are so well drawn.

The scale and horror of the oppression, delivered in different forms in different states, is appalling. When she first escapes, the railroad gets Cora to South Carolina, which seems heavenly compared to all she’s known before. She considers settling there. But if she hasn’t noticed disquieting aspects, we have. There’s the strict segregation. There’s the icky nature of the job she’s required to do, as part of a living display in a museum. There’s the visit to the doctor, softly smiling as he mentions a method of permanent birth control.

“‘The choice is yours, of course,’ the doctor said. ‘As of this week, it is mandatory for some in the state. Coloured women who have already birthed more than two children, in the name of population control. Imbeciles and the otherwise mentally unfit, for obvious reasons. Habitual criminals. But that doesn’t apply to you, Bessie. Those are women who already have enough burdens. This is just a chance for you to take control over your own destiny.”
Ibid, p. 135.

They then ask her, whatever she decides for herself, to explain the process to the less intelligent girls in her dormitory.

That’s another thing the book does very well: exploring how this awful regime is maintained and enforced, the wider systems of oppression as well as individual brutal acts. As it moves from state to state, it becomes a book about America itself, the violence on which it was founded and what might be done.

There’s a debate towards the end among the liberated black people about how to take things further, to end the cycle of horrific abuse when faced with such vested interests. Catching up with the news as I finished the book, I could see a parallel with the recent March for Life against gun violence. And maybe that’s why The Underground Railroad is science-fiction: it’s set in history, but it’s about the future.

Bernice Summerfield - Braxiatel in Love

Later this year there will be a thrilling range of releases to mark two decades of Bernice Summerfield's audio adventures - including something by me. It's a delight to be back.

For those who might not know...

Benny, a passionate, waspish, brilliant space archaeologist, was created by Paul Cornell and made her debut in Doctor Who Magazine in September 1992, in a preview of Paul's original Doctor Who novel Love and War, published the following month. She accompanied the Doctor through most of the New Adventures books, largely overseen by editor Rebecca Levene. In 1997, the publishers' licence for Doctor Who was not renewed but the New Adventures, and Benny, continued without him, starting with Cornell's Oh No It Isn't!

On 25 and 26 June 1998, in the basement of Intergalactic Arts Studios, 31 Morecombe Street SE17, recording took place on an audio adaptation of Oh No It Isn't - not just the first Benny audio play but the first Big Finish production. Adapted by Jacqueline Rayner, directed by Nicholas Briggs and starring Lisa Bowerman as Benny, the cast included Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier from Doctor Who), Jo Castleton and Mark Gatiss.

A second adaptation, Beyond the Sun, was recorded in August - written by Matt Jones from his own novel and directed by Gary Russell, this time at Crosstown Studios in Fulham. Both Benny plays went on sale in September 1998, and more followed. The quality of them convinced the BBC to give Big Finish a licence to produce original Doctor Who plays, which began in 1999.

That same year, the New Adventures range of novels ended, and that might have been the end of Benny. But Big Finish stuck by her, and in 2000 began to produce original Benny plays - not adapations - and also their own range of Benny books.

You can skip the next bit because it's all about me...

I first wrote for Benny in Life During Wartime, a prose anthology edited by Cornell and published in 2003. In 2004, I edited the anthology A Life Worth Living and was commissioned for my first Benny play - The Lost Museum, released in 2005. In October 2005, Gary Russell appointed me script editor on the series, and in the summer of 2006, when he left Big Finish to be a script editor on TV Doctor Who, I became producer of Benny, overseeing the 12 plays and six books released between then and January 2008.

I also wrote Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story - a history of Benny, and of Big Finish and the period that Doctor Who wasn't on TV - published in 2009. I wrote a story for 2010 anthology Present Danger, a single scene for the audio play Many Happy Returns from 2012, and continue to work with Lisa Bowerman regularly when she directs my other work for Big Finish. But it's been more than 10 years since I wrote a Benny play - until now.

Braxiatel in Love is directed by Scott Handcock and released in September as part of Bernice Summerfield: The Story So Far volume 1, alongside a new play about Bernice in her youth by range producer James Goss, and The Grel Invasion of Earth by Jacqueline Rayner. The blurb for my one goes like this:

"Irving Braxiatel likes to collect things, and when he gains a fiancee, Bernice Summerfield can't help but be suspicious. What are her mysterious employer's motives? It can't just be love, can it? Nothing on the Braxiatel Collection is ever that simple. Not even love."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Slayer Stats

My new infographics book, Slayer Stats, marks 21 years of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer with all the graphics-based data a slavering demon can eat.

#BTVS - Slayer Stats

“Hilarious,” says Popsugar’s preview of Slayer Stats, blithely overlooking the many dogged months of diligent, cool-headed research. *wipes glasses on handkerchief*

Slayer Stats preview: Buffy Profile

Slayer Stats preview: The Web

Slayer Stats – The Complete Infographics Guide to All Things Buffy is written by me and Steve O’Brien, illustrated by Ilaria Vescovo and designed by Stuart Smith. It’s published by Insight Editions on 24 April. I’m not saying the fate of the world depends on you buying a copy, but probably best to get one just in case.

Oh, and Steve and I previously wrote the Doctor Who infographics book Whographica.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, by Patricia Highsmith

Last week, I ran a workshop for the Hastings Writers' Group on writing science fiction, my brief that this was a bunch of enthusiastic, hard-working writers - many of them professionally published - who had mostly never dabbled in sf. No pressure.

Seeking inspiration, I nosed through guides to writing in a bookshop and fell upon Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by best-selling author Patricia Highsmith, originally published in 1983. It's a great, breezy, enthusiastic and honest account of her process, from where she gets her ideas to dealing with publishers' notes on the manuscript. She's often specific, giving insights into her most famous novels, so it's a book for fans of thrilling fiction as well as for would-be writers.

Among the gems imparted is to base the events of your story on real "emotional experience", felt or observed first hand. Even small events that affect us should be recorded in notebooks to be exploited later. The reason for this is that suspense stories - and the kind of sci-fi nonsense I write - often involve events far outside the author's direct experience. But emotional responses are transferable. Highsmith's example is some teenagers larking about outside her window who made her feel uncomfortable - a feeling she then applied to more tangible, thrilling events for a novel.

While much of the advice is very useful, it's clear it comes from another age. For one thing, even though the book entirely consists of Highsmith's own perspective, she refers to the author - and reader - in the third person as "he" thoughout. The feeling is that she's a rare exception in an otherwise male domain.

For another, there's a lot on the mechanics of writing in the age before word processing computers. She counsels us not to make carbon copies when typing up our first and second drafts, and advises us to retype whole pages or sections only if the earlier draft is too covered in notes. Even though she says she reworks and revises as she retypes her work, the sense is that - because of the technology involved - there were many fewer revisions made in the old days. That's not to say it was better then, or now; just notably different.

Given the slow plod of manually typing a new draft, I found it particularly bruising when Highsmith talks about her novel, The Two Faces of January, being turned down by the publisher Harper & Row, with whom she'd enjoyed years of success. They were not turning down a first draft, but the revised second or third version - a proper, professional submission. Ouch. So how did Highsmith respond?

"I let time go by and wrote another book, which was accepted, and then returned to January and rewrote it, but without referring to the first manuscript, because I completely changed the plot, the age and character of the wife and the character of the young hero - everything except the layout of the Palace of Knossos; three-quarters of a page was all I used of the first manuscript. The charm of that musty old hotel in Athens [her real experience] and the fascination of the young man on meeting a stranger who resembled his father (and a stranger who was a crook) [her seed idea the novel had grown from], these still held me fascinated, and inspired me to write another two hundred and fifty or three hundred pages in order to use these characters. The second and present version of The Two Faces of January was also rejected out of hand by Harper & Row, and this time I thought they were wrong, though I shelved the book, mentally at least, and did not know what to do except write another book. These little setbacks, amounting sometimes to thousands of dollars' worth of time wasted, writers must learn to take like Spartans. A brief curse, perhaps, then tighten the belt a notch and on to something new - of course with enthusiasm, courage and optimism, because without these three elements, you cannot produce anything good."
Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, p. 113.

The cost of it, in time and money, is something that resonates all too strongly. By coincidence, last week a spec novel I've written was turned down by yet another publisher, but with notes that have helped me clarify my own thoughts about how it should be reworked - drastically, from the ground up, but retaining the basic plot and the seed ideas that first excited me when I thought of them. It's a gruelling prospect to have to start again, and I'd already decided to write something else first. Highsmith has quite inspired me to push on.

(It's some solace that Highsmith tells us The Two Faces of January was taken up by another publisher, Heinemann, and went on to win a prestigious award from the Crime Writers Association.)

In her final pages, Highsmith makes some general comments - on her discomfort with genre labels, on raising the quality of novels, on her works being adapted as films. But a few grumbles aside, she concludes with some words on the joy, and freedom, of being a writer. It's a book full of practical tips, but Highsmith's most important lesson is her attitude. 

Bath, Bristol, York

It's British Science Week and tomorrow I'll be talking at the Bath Taps into Science festival on the scientific secrets of Doctor Who - and it's free to come along. I'm on at 2 pm at The Edge, University of Bath.

On Wednesday 14 March, Dr Marek Kukula and I will be speaking at the Basingstoke Discovery Centre, again on the science of Doctor Who. The event starts at 7.30 pm and tickets are £5.

We're also due to speak at the York Festival of Ideas in June - more details of which nearer the time.

Dusty Answer, by Rosamond Lehmann

This is a novel of yearning. Judith Earle is an only child, a teenager living a lonely life in a nice house in the Thames Valley. She recalls with a thrill the times in her childhood when the next-door house was home to five cousins, who would sometimes involve her in their games. Looking back to those days with a pang, she longs for them to have noticed her, to have thought well of her, to come back to her again.

Then there is news: cousins Charlie and Mariella have married, young, and Charlie has gone off to the trenches. There, that beautiful boy is killed, leaving his young wife with a baby she can't quite deal with. The cousins return to the next-door house, and Judith still yearns for their attention. But they're older, sadder, broken - and beset by thoughts of sex. They speak of mistresses rathet than wives. Judith is observed swimming naked in the river, and each of the cousins seems to fall for her in turn over the next few years.

Judith has strong feelings, and is quick to fantasise events to come - at the mention of a cousin's name, she will be consumed by thoughts of how she'll teach or nurse or marry them. There's a sense this longing comes from being so lonely at home - her parents spend most of the book abroad. But there's also a great well of emotion inside her that yearns to be fully expressed.

Then Judith starts at Cambridge, and immediately falls for a fellow student, Jennifer. Their relationship is passionate and loving, and scandalised readers when the book was first published in 1927. But it's surprising, now, how little this three-year affair actually involves. Later, when Judith is carried away by one of the (male) cousins to a secluded spot on an island, we're left with little doubt as to the physical act that occurs - without it ever being spelled out. But between Jennifer and Judith, there's lots of mutual admiration, entertaining friends and gettiing a little tipsy... And that's all. Their kisses might be the kisses of affectionate, platonic friends.

Judith also makes time for a strange, sad girl called Mabel, who everyone else is rude about. On her first day at college, Judith worries that by just making polite conversation with Mabel, the girl will be a burden to her ever after. And though there's an element that Judith is too embarrassed, too cowardly, to break off from Mabel entirely, we also see her kindness and care when Mabel gets into a fix over her exams. Seeing Judith's kindness and compassion make it all the more galling when others are cruel or uncaring to her.

In the last year at university, Jennifer abruptly dumps Judith for another woman, and Lehmann keenly makes us feel the loss. Judith's beloved (if absent) father also dies, and Judith is left in fug of confused, desperate emotions. It's here she encounters the cousins again, swimming naked with Mariella and facing advances of different kinds from the men. One of the cousins treats her particularly badly - using her, then casting her off. We keenly feel the affect this has on Judith, and the risk to her reputation and future should her actions ever be spoken of. And yet she can't stop yearning for those people who have treated her so badly.

For all her misery, Judith is a smart and witty young woman, an accomplished ice-skater, swimmer and student. It is fun to be in her company. But there's a constant feeling, whatever her best efforts, that she's trapped by her class and gender and time. Required to join her widowed mother in Paris after completing her studies, it seems Judith's academic accompishments can only be a hindrance.

"'If you were a little more stupid,' said Mamma, 'you might make a success of a London season even at this late date. You've got the looks. You are stupid - stupid enough, I should think, to ruin all your own chances - but you're not stupid all through. You're like your father: he was a brilliant imbecile. I never intended to put you into the marriage-market - but I'll do so if you like. If you haven't decided to marry one of those young Fyfes... They're quite a good family, I suppose.'"
Rosamond Lehmann, Dusty Answer (1927), p. 259.

There is more loss to come, and the novel ends with Judith never more alone, and unsure of her future - but also at some kind of epiphany about these people who have so consumed her thoughts and desires for so long. She is still yearning, but not for them. There's just a chance she is free. 

The Court Jester

Out now, The Court Jester is the latest volume of The Wife in Space series by Neil & Sue Perryman, in which they watch all of Doctor Who. This one covers the adventures of the Sixth Doctor (1984-1986).

I've written the foreword for this volume, which has given me a chance to revisit what it was like to watch these episodes first go out, and to confess my love for Timelash.

• Buy The Court Jester (Kindle edition)
• Adventures with the Wife in Space
• Me on being terrified of Doctor Who in 1985

A Legacy of Spies, by John le Carre

"I, who was taught from the cradle to deny, deny and deny again - taught by the very Service that is seeking to drag a confession out me?"
John le Carre, A Legacy of Spies (2017), p. 161.

This is an extraordinary lap of honour, almost a pastiche of le Carre by le Carre himself, the sort of thing in anyone else's hands we would call fan fiction.

It returns us to the world of the Circus and George Smiley, not seen since The Secret Pilgrim (1990), but it's really revisiting the events that led to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) - le Carre's third novel, and the one that made his name. Along the way, we catch up with characters and events from his two other most successful Circus novels - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) and Smiley's People (1979). In fact, since this new book is recounted by Smiley's loyal underling, Peter Guillam, I had Michael Jayston's voice in my head (he played Guillam in the BBC adaptations of those latter two novels; Benedict Cumberbatch played Guillam in the more recent Tinker Tailor film.)

A friend had read and enjoyed this new book without knowing any of this history. I'm now eager to reread those other books to see how well it all fits together. It feels seamless, the only glaring thing being Smiley himself - recruited as a spy to the Circus in 1928 or 1937, depending which book you refer to, but still alive and in good health whenever this new, modern-feeling book is set. It is very contemporary, and though the word "Brexit" isn't used, George tells us he is and always was a European, and is horrified by the idea of England on its own as a "citizen of nowhere".

Yet given the age Smiley must surely be, the only concession to the passing of time is that he no longer wears a suit. The one character to have died since we last visited this world is Smiley's nemesis Karla. Jim Prideaux is still working at the same school as he was in Tinker Tailor, more than 40 years ago.

The story sees Guillam called back to London because there's likely to be a parliamentary inquiry into the events of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. He is reticent, but slowly we unpick what happened - a little ahead of the investigators he is speaking to. There's a real sense of menace in the jovial lawyers who seem ready to hang Guillam out to dry, and in the character of Christoph - a man out of revenge. It's an absorbing read, full of well drawn characters and telling detail. Indulgent, but perfectly done.

Women & Power - A Manifesto, by Mary Beard

This is a timely publication of two lectures by Mary Beard, one on "The Public Voice of Women" and the efforts to silence them, and the other on "Women in Power." I've long been impressed by the eminent professor's extraordinary patience in dealing with online abuse, from the obscene to the vexatious. Here, she's characteristically considered and considerate in laying out her case that,

"When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice."
Mary Beard, Women and Power - A Manifesto (2017), p. xi.

Concisely and engagingly, she covers a lot of ground, with references from Penelope in The Odyssey to Professor Holly in Pokemon Farm. Images inform the text, in part because these were originally delivered as lectures but also because Beard has always used non-textual sources to add depth and detail to her examination of history.

Some of her more academic books I've found hard to keep up with, but this book is very accessible. That's not to say it's all put very simply - she embraces the complexities and nuances involved. Elizabeth I's speech at Tilbury and Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" would both advance her case, but Beard doubts either woman really spoke the words attributed. She won't take the easy path.

There's much to mull over, whether in relation to politics and public discourse, or applied to my own attitudes and behaviour. Following this example, being more considered and considerate, is not a bad place to start.

But if this is a manifesto, what is the call to action? In her second lecture, she identifies the problem as one of elites holding power over the powerless. Now, various people in the news have been calling out elites for some time, but the danger - especially when wealthy, well-connected politicians claim to be anti-elitist - is that it's about replacing one group in power with another. The system isn't changed and the inequities continue.

Beard concludes her second lecture with the wish to rethink power not as a possession to be fought over, but as a verb, "to power".

"What I have in mind is the ability to be effective, to make a difference in the world, and the right to be taken seriously, together as much as individually. It is power in that sense that many women feel they don't have - and that they want. Why the popular resonance of 'mansplaining' (despite the intense dislike of the term felt by many men?) It hits home for us because it points straight to what it feels like not to be taken seriously: a bit like when I get lectured on Roman history on Twitter."
Ibid., p. 87.

Ad Astra: An Illustrated Guide to Leaving the Planet, by Dallas Campbell

This book is a delight, a breezy yet wide-ranging history of humanity's efforts to leave Earth, plus what the near future might hold.

I've read a lot about the exploration of space, and watched a lot of documentaries, too (and written about them here, you poor souls), so am amazed by how much of this book came as new. For one thing, it's so wide-ranging, exploring things like who made the flags put up on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, and how they were constructed given the various physical limitations of the lunar surface and the astronauts' spacesuits.

But there's also plenty where well-documented, well-known material is cast in a new light. For example, the book details the various non-human animals that have been sent into space (a subject I looked into for Horrible Histories Magazine a few years ago). This section concludes with the Russian Zond 5 mission of September 1968, where a probe got to within 1950 km of the Moon before returning to Earth. This wasn't new to me, but then the book contrasts the pair of tortoises on board (alongside other creatures) to the "nimble hare" of the human-crewed Apollo 8, launched two months later.

It's packed with detail, a lot of it strange and surprising. As a presenter of science programmes on TV, the author has had direct access to some extraordinary people and places. And the book is all told in short, pithy chunks so what's a complex, technical subject is never too heavy or dry. The text is presented beautifully, too, with lots of well-chosen photographs, documents and curios.

I especially loved how seamlessly the hotch-potch collection is brought together. My favourite, I think, is where we're told that since, obviously, there is no facility to develop camera film in space, in 1964, Robert Leighton's team at JPL conceived and built the first ever digital camera. The cost, given it could take 22 images (of 200 x 200 pixels each), averaged out at $3.8 million per picture.

We then follow this invention being put on Mariner 3 (where something went wrong and the probe was lost to space) and its twin Mariner 4, which launched on 28 November 1964 and reached Mars the following July. Then we get the awful wait for the pictures it took - the first pictures of Mars taken in space - to transmit back to Earth.

Next we're told how Richard Grumm, an engineer, and John Casani, who'd worked on the recording system, got ahead of the process by printing out the raw data from Mariner's camera as it arrived, arranging it in row after row of three-digit numbers, and colouring in these numbers, by hand, with crayons from a local art shop: 050-045 in brown, 045-040 in red, 040-35 in orange, etc.

Accompanying the concise text, there are photographs of the box of crayons, of the chart assigning colours to numbers, of a close-up of the work, and of the actual photograph that was slowly downloaded.

Ad Astra by Dallas Campbell, pp. 206-7.

And then you turn the page and there's a double page spread of the hand-coloured version - a breath-taking juxtaposition in one object, one artwork, of cutting-edge science and childlike simplicity.

Ad Astra by Dallas Campbell, pp. 208-9.

In all, this is a perfectly curated and comprehensive handbook. It inspires awe, and makes clear how very difficult and dangerous it will be to return people to the Moon and then go further - and how close and inevitable it is that we do.

St Mary's, Ickworth - inspiration for the Weeping Angels

Last summer, then big chief of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat, explained to me his inspiration for the most successful of his monsters, the Weeping Angels:

"We were at a hotel in Dorset and there was a graveyard next to the hotel. The church was closed down and the graveyard gates were all chained up with a big sign saying, 'Unsafe structure.' That seemed really frightening. I went over and looked inside, and saw all these leaning gravestones and one lamenting, weeping angel. I thought that was really creepy and strange, and wondered if that was the unsafe structure. So a few years later I wrote it up as [2007 episode] Blink, including the chained-up gate which we had at the very beginning." [From my interview with Steven Moffat] 

In September, Marcus Hearn at Doctor Who Magazine asked me to write something about Blink for a new special issue, The Essential Doctor Who - Time Travel, published in November. I asked Steven to confirm the hotel he'd stayed in all those years ago, so I could track down that church. It turned out not be to be in Dorset after all. He directed me to the Ickworth Hotel in Suffolk, and said the abandoned church was right next to it.

John Porter, director of the Ickworth Church Conservation Trust, invited me to come see for myself. It was a 180-mile round trip, and I chose to visit the same day as a Wood Fair in the surrounding National Trust grounds, which made it a little crowded and busy. But the church was easy to find and John kindly gave me a tour. These are some of the pictures I took:

As I wrote in my piece:

"Sadly, there’s no lamenting angel statue in the churchyard today. Gargoyles stretch out from the top of the church tower, and some of the graves are carved with cherubs – like those seen in Steven’s 2012 episode The Angels Take Manhattan – or skulls. Stacked neatly against one wall, a broken-off stone crucifix and other pieces suggest that some monuments did not survive the period of neglect.
Though John hadn’t heard of there being an angel statue in the churchyard, he admits that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. He shows me the church’s impressive eighteenth-century chancel boards and explains they were saved at the last moment from a skip. “Who knows what was thrown away?” he says. Perhaps the original weeping angel wasn’t thought worthy of salvation."

Steven had also been back to the church since creating the Weeping Angels. As he told me,

"It was gone – oh no! Now, there are two possible explanations. One is that Weeping Angels are real and we're all doomed – unless a moth sees them. Or, I misremembered and in my fake memory created the Weeping Angel in that graveyard."

See also:

• The angels had the phone box (in Kensal Green)
• Me on Blink

Geis - A Game Without Rules by Alexis Deacon

A Game Without Rules (2017) continues the beguiling story begun in Geis - A Matter of Life and Death (2016), the extraordinary, beautiful graphic novel by Alexis Deacon.

When the chief matriarch dies without an heir, a contest is held to find a new ruler for the island state. Fifty contestants - some of them the least likely competitors - then begin some peculiar and deadly games...

Page 81 of Geis - A Game Without Rules
by Alexis Deacon

I've followed Alexis' career for some time as we have a mutual friend (who introduced us, very briefly, late last year because I asked). His books for younger children - Slow Loris, I Am Henry Finch - have been favourites of the Lord of Chaos.

Geis is aimed at older readers and presents an absorbing, rich fantasy world full of strangeness and horror and magic. I meant to post here in praise of the first volume but only got so far as a tweet:

"Geis by Alexis Deacon is great: eerie, epic
fantasy like a fairy tale twisting wrong. Plus
people wear amusingly shaped hats."

The second volume is just as enthralling, full of the same dream-like disquiet and sudden shocking turns - and those excellent hats. The characters from the first book are caught up in games and plots they barely understand, and which not all of them survive. The violence is implied rather than shown, but the beautiful artwork and lightness of touch in the storytelling are underpinned by constant, real threat. A book that compels you to read on.

I eagerly anticipate the third volume, The Will That Shapes The World. You can see more artwork from Geis on Alexis Deacon's website.

The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley

This life of SOE agent "Christine Granville" - born Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek in Poland in 1908 - took a while to get in to, not least because it's so dense with meticulous research. There is lots on the frustrations and false starts of a life running messages under Nazi noses, on the bureaucracy and "office politics" of rival intelligence factions, and on her tangled love life.

Peppered with good moments, it then really picks up once the firm (as SOE was known to its employees) finally gives Christine something to do, dropping her blind (without help) into France. She's brave, resourceful and charismatic, and it's thrilling to be at her side in the thick of the action. The odds against her and her comrades make these chapters utterly compelling - particularly the Nazi attack on Vercors, and Christine's attempts to rescue comrades when they're arrested and sentenced to death. Later, the Warsaw Uprising is just as deftly conveyed - Christine wasn't there, but we're haunted by the dreadful events just as she was.

We feel Christine's righteous anger when artillery is not dropped to the desperate resistance fighters in Vercors and Warsaw, despite repeated and urgent requests. There's also her justifiable fury at being constantly overlooked - a mix of sexism, xenophobia, Antisemitism and office politics. After the war, despite distinguished service and the support of such figures as Lord Selbourne - who appealed directly to the Home Secretary on her behalf - Christine was still denied British citizenship. In fact, says Mulley,

"it now turned out that Christine's service to Britain was irrelevant, because she was not a man. 'A married woman is disbarred, under the present law, from obtaining naturalisation independently from her husband...' a rubber-stamping official explained. Without evidence of [her husband] Jerzy Gizycki's death or a valid dissolution of his and Christine's marriage, the Home Office simply saw 'no point in considering whether she could be regarded as eligible in other respects'. Over six million Poles had died during the war, there were few official records, and Christine was in any case disbarred from returning to Poland because of her service for the Allies, but her marital status was more important than her war record. It was a low moment for Home Office policymakers."
Clare Mulley, The Spy Who Loved (2013), p. 289.

She felt the firm had also let her down, failing to find her suitable work after the war. She's a restless woman of action who doesn't fit easily in peacetime, and SOE was itself closed down at the end of the war. Christine didn't exactly help herself - she was spiky and rude, and refused to take on administrative or secretarial duties - but it's hard not to share her anger.

"'I am rather tired, after six years of more or less active service with the firm,' she wrote bitterly, 'of being treated as a helpless little girl.'
Ibid., p. 294.

We follow her efforts to find a place for herself post-war: a spell farming in Kenya; visiting a friend in Germany but too disquieted about being in enemy territory; working on passenger liners. And then too quickly it's over - shockingly, awfully, in July 1952 Christine was murdered by a jilted admirer.

Mulley is also good at picking through the accounts of Christine's life, weighing up their claims. She spells out the case for Christine having inspired Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale - written a few months before Christine's death. It seems quite convincing an idea until Mulley then unpicks it: there's no strong evidence Christine actually ever met Ian Fleming.

An epilogue detailing how Christine's friends tried to protect her reputation after her death is concise and moving. Mulley then offers a note on how she went about collating this story - from an extraordinary range of sources.

But the book then ends on a sour note, with one appendix speculating on why Christine never had or seemed to want children, and then another other giving more detail about her murderer. They're surely appendices because they don't fit with what's gone before, and there's a feeling of prurience, even disrespect to the difficult, brilliant agent who deserved something more.

See also: Nevil Shute's Requiem for a Wren

Shaggy

This morning, the Dr and I took our poorly, frail cat Shaggy to the vet one last time, where he was quietly put to sleep. It was quick. It has all been horribly, mercifully quick.

For months now, he’s been losing weight and confidence, no longer daring to go outside in the cold and wet, let alone to brave the domains of Other Cats that he once kept in line. Then, in the last few weeks, he’s taken a sudden turn for the worse and been miserable, too. This morning, there was no fight to get him into his carrier, no resistance at all.

Thirteen and a half years ago, Shaggy was my wedding present to the Dr. Growing up, she’d not had any pets but could never pass a cat in the street without stopping to say hello (she still can’t). The day after we got back from honeymoon, on 14 July 2004, we headed to what’s now Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

The Dr was jumpy with excitement, so my role was to be the cool, collected one. I reminded her on our way in that we’d been warned not to expect to take a cat home that first day. No, this was just the start of the process. We were interviewed about our past experience with pets (I grew up with cats, dogs and chickens), about the kind of home we could provide and whether there were dangers such as nearby busy roads. They concluded we needed a nice “entry-level” pet. There was a colour-coded system: we were told to look for green cats.

Then we were led upstairs to where the cats were waiting. They were all in individual hutches, inset into the wall floor to ceiling, each with a card giving details of their temperament and background. Older, crosser cats had red stickers. One particularly furious red beast glared at us from its cell. The yellow cats did a better job of imploring us to love them. The green cats hardly seemed to notice us at all.

As instructed, we looked at the green cats. They were… cats. All very nice but nothing exactly suggestive of how we were meant to choose.

Then they let some green cats out, one at a time, so we could get a better idea. One dark-haired cat with both green and yellow stickers was set down on the floor and wandered nonchalantly off, barely glancing our way. The Dr had his card and asked why he’d been called “Shaggy”. The person showing us round grinned and clapped her hands. It made us jump – and Shaggy, too. His thick, long hair all stood up on end, an endearing scruffy mess.

Sensing our interest in this ridiculous creature, it was suggested we pick him up. The Dr was nervous, so I went first. Shaggy immediately collapsed into my arms, snuggling up like a baby. That did it for my cool composure.

Now it seemed that we might get to take this purring fur-bag home with us that same day. That was, if we could sign all the paperwork and buy up all the equipment we needed before Battersea closed for the evening. There was a bit of a scramble and some crossed wires, but finally we were in our cab home – cradling our new cat.

Back home, we did as instructed and shut ourselves in one room before letting Shaggy out of his carrier. The idea was not to scare him with too much at once: he could get used to one room at a time. (Years later, our surviving cat, Stevens, was so terrified on her first evening with us that she spent the night clinging to the top of a door, and only came down to pee all over the floor.)

Shaggy was never shy. He immediately took charge of the room – our bedroom – and was then scratching at the door. Within an hour or so he’d taken charge of our flat. And that night, we were woken by his happy howls on discovering the mouse problem we’d inherited from our previous tenants. Shaggy, for all he was a beautiful, soft fluffball, was a very practical mouser.

He was always a character. When one friend came round to meet him, Shaggy playfully climbed on to a potted plant in the front room and – brazenly staring all of us out – proceeded to crap in it. He was fascinated by frogs, scooping them up from the old pond at the end of the garden and bringing them into show us them leaping around. When the Dr was bedridden with sickness, he helpfully dropped a frog on her head.

In short, we’d hoped for a good entry-level cat and Shaggy was magnificent. Affectionate, cheeky and rarely ill until these last few weeks, he’s given us a very easy ride. He’s been quick to warm to friends and neighbours (I discovered he’d been getting second breakfasts across the road each morning). More than that, he’s seen us – the Dr especially – through plenty of tough times over the years, always knowing when to pad softly over for a cuddle and that deep bass purr.

He had such a close bond with the Dr that we worried how he might respond to children, and so got a second cat in part to prepare him. But Shaggy was just as affectionate with the interloper cats and then with the children, snuggling up to them and suffering their clumsy but well-meant attention. One friend used to guarantee good behaviour from his daughter with the promise of visiting Shaggy.

For our own Lord of Chaos, Shaggy has always been part of the family, and they had one last cuddle this morning before school. His name is one of Lady Vader’s few but well-practised words. It’s hard to tell how much they take in what’s been happening or how it will affect them. I suspect the main issue they’ll have to deal with is their tender parents.

We knew Shaggy was getting on in years. He was a kittenish 15 months-old when we acquired him so would have been coming up to 15 years now, somewhere between 75 and 90 depending how you calculate cat years. That’s not a bad age, and it’s not been a bad life – doted on by the Dr and spoilt rotten when I wasn’t looking. You could tell when he wasn’t happy, and that’s been mostly rare: when we didn’t share prawns or tuna; when we were ever packing a bag he couldn’t climb into; in his long war of passive aggression against my mother-in-law; in these last few weeks.

This morning the Dr and I went with him to the vet, and soon it was all over. We buried him with his favourite pink mouse toy in the garden, in the corner he’d always made his own because it caught the sun.

Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 2018

The Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 2018 is out in shops now. Among its myriad delights are some things I did the typing on:

WET LOOK
An interview with Stephanie Hyam, who played Heather - the enigmatic student, spooky puddle and love interest of Bill Potts.

NOISES OFF
Sound engineer Cathy Robinson details how the especially unsettling "binaural" sound mix for Knock, Knock was achieved.

THE HERMAPHRODITE CIVIL SERVANT
Ysanne Churchman tells me about returning to Doctor Who after 43 years to reprise the role of Alpha Centauri.

Many of my previous interviews with Doctor Who cast and crew can be read on the Koquillion site.

Syfy Wire

On Christmas Day, I was the guest of Jordan Zakarin and Emily Gaudette on Syfy Wire's podcast The Fandom Files, chatting about my Doctor Who stuff such as The Book of Whoniversal Records and other things I'm writing, including the TV series Flame.

Moonglow by Michael Chabon

I was entranced by Moonglow, the novel by Michael Chabon in which he supposedly recounts his own grandfather's life. It's a gently told, funny, awful tale of love and loss, continually surprising with its wit and heart.

Perhaps it struck a particular chord because earlier this year I helped my parents finish a memoir of family history - how they met, how their parents met, stuff they could remember. There's the same haphazardness and chance encounter, the same brushes with Big Moments in History, and the cold pang for people now gone.

But Chabon's grandfather is also a keen space nerd, and how that weaves through his life and what it means to him is compelling. A running thread is his pursuit of Wernher von Braun during the Second World War, and his horror at then seeing this Nazi officer at the head of the American space programme. What could so easily be preachy is resolved in a nuanced way full of complex emotion, tying in to what we uncover about the wartime experinece of Chabon's grandmother. Then there's a funny bit about a cat.

Footnotes add or correct details from the grandfather's remembrance, and the following one struck me hard. The Saturn V rocket that took people to the Moon, was,

"still, over four decades after flying its last mission, the only vehicle ever built capable of carrying human beings beyond a low earth orbit."
Michael Chabon, Moonglow, p. 249.

See also:

• Me on The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
• Me on Telegraph Avenue

"The Man With Two Brains" in the Lancet Psychiatry

"Me and my brain" is a piece I've written about 1983 comedy The Man with Two Brains, and the history of brain transplants in fiction more generally, for the new issue of the Lancet Psychiatry (vol. 4, no. 12, December 2017). You need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing, but the Lancet website boasts the opening paragraph:

"The Man with Two Brains (1983), the classic comedy starring Steve Martin, is about a love triangle. Beautiful but wicked Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner) is hit by a car driven by neurosurgeon Michael Hfuhruhurr (Martin). He saves her life and falls for her but, once married, Dolores delights in tormenting him. Then Michael meets someone else. He has a lot in common with nice Anne Uumellmahaye (voiced by Sissy Spacek)—not least an unpronounceable surname. The only snag is that she's a brain in a jar."

And the Lancet Psychiatry tweeted the following tantalising excerpt:

"Despite the jokes, fun, and adventure, there's something deeply unsettling about the idea of brain and mind transplants. It plays on anxieties about the distinction between our physical body and our identity, and the linked fear of our bodies failing us through accident, illness, or decrepitude, redefining who we are. It speaks to anxieties about our own uniqueness and autonomy, and the threat of personal annihilation. And then there's the ongoing concern of how scientific and economic change threatens our personal control. It's ripe for further exploration, not just in research but in comedy and horror, because it's a subject best met with nervous laughter."