Did anyone else pick up on the similarities between the settings of The Doctor’s Daughter and The Ark? When they reached the spaceship at the end, I was really hoping for an explicit line about “the Steel Sky”, or perhaps an elephant in the undergrowth. As it was, it looked very similar to the jungle where the Doctor, Steven and Dodo met the Monoids all those years ago. So perhaps there was a general policy of sending out mixed crews of humans and humanoids; in one case, the humanoids might be half man, half fish; in another, they might be half human, a quarter Beatle, and a quarter ping-pong ball.

2) Template, by Matt Hughes

I actually read this book a week ago in Burgundy, but am following up on ‘s suggestion that we all blog about it today – Hughes has kindly been distributing it electronically to anyone who promises to review it on-line.

In style, it is a conscious homage to Jack Vance, whose Tales of the Dying Earth I enjoyed a couple of years ago. There are three notable differences. First, Hughes’ hero, Conn Labro, is a naïf rather than a man of smug sophistication like Cugel: he comes from a planet where all transactions are based on economics, so that (as another character describes him) he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The novel therefore becomes a quest on several levels as he explores the universe, discovers the truth about his origins and gets the girl and his inheritance. Second (though this may just me my lack of appreciation), it is much less funny. The worlds and cultures that Conn Labro encounters on his journey to enlightenment tend to be monolithically organised around a single principle, but the effect (for me anyway) was sinister rather than humorous, and presumably intended to be so.

Those two differences with Vance are matters of authorial choice, and I think Hughes deliberately takes his story in a direction Vance didn’t go, and on the whole navigates well. The third difference I noted, unfortunately, is not to Hughes’ credit. The women of Hughes’ universe are much less visible than the men: there is the central character’s love interest, a slightly comical police detective, and another character who stands and watches her brother gambling (why does she not gamble herself?) and is then horribly murdered. Vance’s women are much more interesting, and on occasion get the better of his hero. If Hughes’ hero doesn’t always win the argument, he makes up for it by saving his lover’s life.

One other small point I regretted in Hughes book – a road not taken, perhaps – is that there is a hint in an early chapter that the somewhat two-dimensional cultures described are each intended to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This is a neat idea, and would have brought an interesting extra set of structures to mesh with what is a fairly standard hero’s quest narrative; but Hughes doesn’t quite do it. Still, I enjoyed the grand narrative sweep and general sensawunda. Good fun.

15) Kosova Express: A Journey in Wartime, by James Pettifer

I’ve met James Pettifer half a dozen times on the Balkans conference circuit, and corresponded with him occasionally; he was kind enough to send me a copy of this book shortly after its publication in 2005, since when it has sat accusingly on my bookshelves. But I was planning to go to Kosovo next week (in the event, my plans have changed and I will go only to Montenegro and Albania) and so picked it up a few days ago.

It is an autobiographical account of what it is like to be a reporter of conflict; the physical difficulties of transport and communication in the field, the problems of getting copy into the paper, convincing sceptical editors, and overcoming opposition and interference from the British foreign policy apparatus. It is also the political story of the movement of Kosovo from miserable subjection to the verge of independence, and I don’t think I have read a better account of the 1991-99 period; I really regretted that apart from a couple of vignettes from 2001, he does not take the story further.

Pettifer is a romantic. His story is full of geography, both human and physical; his Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia are steeped in history. This is both good and bad. I found myself in roughly equal measure deeply impressed by his insights into the interconnections between key figures and events across the region, and frustrated by his paranoia about continental western Europe (the “Euroids”) and the British intelligence services (though if even a quarter of what he alleges is true, there are some very serious questions to answer, for instance about the Macedonian arms plot of 1993). His sympathies, like Rebecca West’s, are absolutely clear, but that certainly does not make this a bad book. (I do wish someone had proof-read the Slavic names for him, though.)

Pettifer can be a difficult personality. I have seen him walk out of a conference before it began in protest at the presence of another participant. One wonders to what extent his difficulties with his various editors in London and elsewhere were personality clashes as much as professional issues. Having said that, I am impressed by the nice things he says about many people who I also count as friends, both in the region and among the foreign correspondents.

Anyway, if you want an insight into Kosovo that gives a very different perspective than the usual diplomatic histories, you could do a lot worse than start here.

Two nice extracts from Doctor Who and the Dæmons, for all you Doctor/Master shippers out there (the viewpoint character is the Master in both cases):

…in a moment, he would be witness to the fulfilment of one of his lesser ambitions—the death of his old enemy, the Doctor.

Funnily enough, he was experiencing a twinge of regret. They had not always been enemies. In the early days at school they had been playmates. Even later, though their paths diverged, a friendly rivalry had been as far apart as they would allow themselves to go. If only the Doctor weren’t so abominably good! All this claptrap about morality, integrity, compassion and the rest! If only he had seen sense, together they could have ruled the Universe… But there it was. The Doctor had chosen. It was his own fault that he had to be killed.

and

…his mind was full of memories of his sometime friend. The time they played truant together, ‘borrowed’ the Senior Tutor’s skimmer and went on an unauthorised visit to the Paradise Islands; the time he fooled the High Council of the Time Lords into thinking it was the Doctor who had put glue on the President’s perigosto stick; the time the Doctor saved his life by… He shook his head fiercely. This was no time for weakness.

Five more Who books, of which three are decidedly skippable and two rather good.

10) Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, by Terrance Dicks

This is one of Dicks’ better efforts – introducing three new regular characters (Jo Grant and the Master both get good introductions here, Mike Yates rather less so) and bringing back the Autons. The Doctor is an inveterate name-dropper, and basically more fun than the character as actually played by Pertwee. It is a very rare case of Dicks actually improving on a Robert Holmes script – certainly when I eventually saw the original TV version I was disappointed that the ‘orrible squamous Nestene Consciousness does not actually materialise in sight of the viewer. And it is a taproot text for much else in the later Doctor/Master stories – the radio telescope in Logopolis, the phone call in Last of the Time Lords. A good one.

ObNI: McDermott, who is the only identifiably Northern Irish character I know of in Doctor Who, here becomes a “Northcountry man”.

11) Doctor Who – the Mind of Evil, by Terrance Dicks

As often happens with stories from this period, we lose the action sequences which made the original story watchable and the confusion of the plot is therefore mercilessly exposed to the reader. Three different strands of action (Master/Keller machine; nerve gas nuclear missile; peace conference) all combine here rather confusingly.

12) Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos, by Terrance Dicks

As often happens with stories from this period, the printed page is able to compensate for the ropy special effects and less convincing performances of the original. The story is still pretty silly though.

13) Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, by Malcolm Hulke

This was one of those books which, on rereading, failed to live up to my fond childhood memories. Hulke irritatingly switches between writing down for a younger audience and meandering into heavy-handed political parable. For whatever reason, it is written as if it were Jo Grant’s first story; and the introduction is much more clumsily handled than in Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons. The back-story of the human colonists is ripped off unimaginatively from dozens of better sf books about future dystopias. And the whole plot basically makes no sense. The least good of the Hulke books so far.

14) Doctor Who and the Dæmons, by Barry Letts

This was one of those books which, on rereading, very much lived up to my fond childhood memories. It is funny, witty, adds bags of backstory to both minor and major characters (the account of the Doctor and the Master growing up together on Gallifrey ought to be canon for all interested fanfic writers), substitutes far better special effects on the page for the end-of-budget ones we got on-screen, and is generally a good read. My favourite Third Doctor book so far.

Yes, a lot of you got it: the seven women in my previous question are all presidents of their countries – respectively, as said, of Liberia, Ireland, Finland, Philippines, Chile, Argentina and India. has a point in that not all have executive powers – though the majority of them (Liberia, Philippines, Chile, Argentina and to a certain extent Finland) do.

Female heads of state is too broad an answer – that would leave out the Queens of the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands, and arguably the Governors-General of Canada, Antigua and Barbados Barbuda, and St Lucia.

Even democratically elected female heads of state/ female heads of state in republics is too broad an answer – that description would also have to include this lady, currently in her second term and looking a bit uncomfortable in her ceremonial uniform:

So, who is she???

Edited to add: – See comments for the answer – got the country, and named her correctly.

What makes these seven women unique in the world today?

shares my insane fascination and writes about it at length here. There’s not a lot of us about who appreciate her.

So, on to the Third Doctor books, starting with three Dicks efforts of varying quality, and a good one by Malcolm Hulke; all covering stories first broadcast in 1970.

6) Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks

This was the first original Target novelisation (published after the three 1960s First Doctor novels had been reissued) and the first of over sixty novelisations by Dicks (plus a dozen spinoffs). It’s not actually one of his better ones (and it’s interesting that I often find myself writing that about Dicks’ novelisations of Robert Holmes’ stories). In particular, the joke of Sam Seeley being a funny little man from the country grates even worse on the printed page than it did on screen, and there is not enough clarity about who the viewpoint character is meant to be. I had fond memories of this from when I first read it as a child, but it didn’t really live up to them.

7) Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke

This was the second original novel in Target’s series of novelisations after Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, the first of Hulke’s six books for the range. It is a good one; Hulke tells the story in part from the point of view of the eponymous cave monsters (the word “Silurian” is not used here), showing us humans as alien vermin. He also makes the story a more overt parable about authority and power, and adds little bits of character especially for the Brigadier and Liz. (And see note below on a minor character.) I suspect this will be near the top of my list of Third Doctor novels.

8) Doctor Who – the Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks

This is not particularly good. We lose out on the action scenes which were one of the original story’s strong points (along with generally good direction), and Dicks adds little new to the plot (having said which, see below for a point on a minor character) which basically exposes its weaknesses rather more mercilessly to the reader. Published in 1987, this was the last of the televised Third Doctor stories to reach print (wording chosen carefully to allow for Barry Letts’ novels based on his two audio dramas).

9) Doctor Who – Inferno, by Terrance Dicks

I’m glad to say that Doctor Who – Inferno, published in 1984, is one of Dicks’ better novelisations. He has judiciously trimmed Don Houghton’s original seven episodes (deleting its least attractive aspect, the sexist banter between Greg Sutton and Petra Williams) to make a good TV story an exciting book. The twist of the parallel world plotline makes the Third Doctor himself the viewpoint character for a substantial chunk, and this always brings out Dicks at his best.

Two of these books contain explicit references to Northern Ireland, which are otherwise very rare in the Doctor Who mythos (though see also Daragh Carville’s play, Regenerations). In Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, we get the following back story for Major Barker (renamed from Baker in the TV story, where he was played by Norman Jones without a beard):

…he saw himself one rainy day in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, leading a group of soldiers who were trying to pin down an IRA sniper. The sniper had already shot two of his men dead, and wounded a third. The Major carefully worked his men into a position so that the sniper was completely surrounded. Then he called upon the sniper to surrender. A rifle was thrown down from a window, and a man appeared with his arms raised. As Major Barker called on his men to break cover and arrest the sniper, shots rang out from a sniper in another building, instantly killing the young soldier next to Major Barker. Without a second’s thought, Barker aimed his revolver at the sniper standing with his hands up in surrender, and shot him dead. For that moment of anger, Major Barker had been asked to resign from the British Army and to find another job.

Things had changed rather drastically in Northern Ireland between the time of broadcast of this story (January-March 1970) and Hulke’s novelisation, published four years later. According to the grim and masterly Sutton index, before the summer of 1970 the only people killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland were two Protestants shot during riots on the Shankill Road. IRA sniper attacks on the army began only in February 1971. (I don’t know if this is at all helpful for the UNIT dating controversy.) The idea that Barker would have been removed from the army in the circumstances described is rather grimly laughable; even the odious Lee Clegg was eventually allowed to walk free and return to the ranks.

The second (and briefer) such reference is in Doctor Who – the Ambassadors of Death, where we are told that Reegan (as played by William Dysart)

had been born in Ireland, though he had spent much of his life in America and other parts of the world, frequently on the run from the law. He had begun his criminal career robbing banks for the IRA, and had left Ireland in danger of his life when it had been discovered that he was keeping more of the proceeds for himself than he was donating to the Cause.

More recent events notwithstanding, Reegan’s history sounds more like Odd Man Out than anything else; Dicks celebrates his 73rd birthday this coming weekend, so would have been twelve when Odd Man Out was first released. England seems an odd choice of refuge for a former IRA bank robber to flee to.

I’ve headlined this post by referring to Liz Shaw, but in fact she doesn’t come across particularly well on the printed page and, given my childhood memories of the first two of these books, I was surprised by how much I liked Caroline John in the TV role when I watched. I am beginning to spot a pattern where the brainy companions (Zoe and Liz) don’t transfer well to the novelisations, whereas the screamy ones (Victoria, Polly and I expect Jo) actually come over rather better.

5) About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1985-1989

This is the last (so far) of the About Time series of guides to Doctor Who, covering not only all the Seventh Doctor series and all but the first of the Sixth Doctor stories, but also the 1999 TV movie, the misconceived 1993 Dimensions in Time piece, The Curse of Fatal Death and the two Peter Cushing movies. Tat Wood is the main credited author (Lawrence Miles being absent this time, but with “additional material” by Lars Pearson and a defence of The Two Doctors by Robert Shearman).

As in previous volumes, Wood’s sarcastic yet affectionate humour makes it a good read, even though it’s the period of the programme’s history I probably know least well. There are some brilliantly sardonic one-liners which I was regrettably unable to refrain from reading aloud to anyone who would listen. The explanatory essays are as good as ever. Slightly disappointed with the editing – there seem to be a lot more typoes than usual, and some other structural glitches as well. But any serious fan needs to get this.

4) Decalog 2: Lost Property, edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

A collection of ten DW short stories (actually one has no Doctor, but does have Sarah Jane, Mike Yates, K9 and the Master). As usual, of varying but mostly good quality; I hope any of the other contributors who read this will forgive me for favouriting the two Fourth Doctor / Leela stories, one by Tim Robins and set on a commercially exploited Mars, the other by Pam Baddeley and setting settlers against indigenous people on a planet with its own bizarre legal culture. Apart from that, I enjoyed all the rest except the one with Zoe and Jamie and the one with Peri and the peculiar timeshare.

3) Second Part of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Well, I finally managed it: the second half of Don Quixote, having read the first part three years ago. It hangs together rather better than the first part – much less episodic, one senses that unlike his characters the author knew which way things were going. There is some nasty business with a Duke and Duchess who set our heroes up for a series of practical jokes; but Sancho Panza acquits himself very well from it all. In the end, Quixote’s neighbours get him to just give it a rest, and the world is obviously a poorer place as a result. (Also he then dies, to reinforce the point.)

One recurrent theme of Volume II is that Quixote and Panza keep on bumping into people who know them not only from Volume I (published ten years before) but also from the seventeenth-century equivalent of fan fiction; in an early chapter, Panza is prevailed upon to explain a couple of continuity glitches from the previous volume, and there’s a repeated complaint that the fanfic writers have got the leading characters completely wrong. (Tat Wood makes an obvious parallel in About Time Volume 6, which I have also been reading this weekend.)

Anyway, that’s another off my list of classic literature and 2008 reading resolutions. It didn’t blow me away, to be honest, in the same way that Proust has been doing; but it is one of those books everyone should try and get through.

1) The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

I must admit I wouldn’t normally read a book like this; it came free with the Palm T|X back in November 2005, and I had pretty much laid that gadget aside since I got a Blackberry with my new job last year. Oddly enough, it has been the Hugo nominees that pushed me back to the Palm; the best way that I found of reading the nominated short fiction available was to convert via Mobipocket to Palm format. So I came back to this epic novel as well.

Well. It’s a tale of a memorably dysfunctional family – not just the standard horrors of conflicting gender roles and alcoholism, but also dead babies in the freezer and rapists eaten by a convenient tiger. The emotional dynamic between the narrator, his twin sister, his brother and their parents is convincing and compelling, and gripped me through to the end.

Oddly, the least believable element is not so much the grand drama of events in South Carolina but the narrator’s conversations (and eventual fling) with his sister’s psychiatrist in New York. The other slightly peculiar element, as with The Red Badge of Courage (though not as bad), is that the rednecks (including the narrator) seem suspiciously articulate.

Glad I read it. Mostly.