June Books

Non-fiction 6 (YTD 28)
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
Jar Jar Binks Must Die, by Dan Kimmel
The Flowering of New England 1815-1865, by Van Wyck Brooks
The Steampunk Bible, by Jeff VanderMeer with S.J. Chambers et al.
The Young Elizabeth, by Alison Plowden
Danger to Elizabeth, by Alison Plowden

Fiction (non-sf) 3 (YTD 14)
Hard Times, by Charles Dickens
A Good Hanging and Other Stories, by Ian Rankin
Lust, Caution and Other Stories, by Eileen Chang

sf (non-Who) 7 (YTD 39)
Redemption in Indigo, by Karen Lord
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, by Selma Lagerlöf
The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4, edited by Terry Carr
Sphere, by Michael Crichton
Waking the Moon, by Elizabeth Hand
Sauron Defeated, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Parable of the Talents, by Octavia E. Butler

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 37)
Autonomy, by Daniel Blythe
The House That Jack Built, by Guy Adams
Dying in the Sun, by Jon de Burgh Miller
Falls The Shadow, by Daniel O’Mahony

Comics 9 (YTD 12)
Habibi, by Craig Thompson
The Unwritten, vols 3-4, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross
Digger vols 1-6, by Ursula Vernon

Running totals:
~8,000 pages (YTD 38,800)
14/29 (YTD 39/130) by women (Chambers, Plowden x2, Chang, Lord, Lagerlöf, Hand, Butler, Vernon x6)
3/29 (YTD 5/130) by PoC (Chang, Lord, Butler) – an improvement in my diversity quotients which have been rather low of late.
Owned for more than a year: 9 (Parable of the Talents [reread], Best SF of the Year #4 [reread], The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, The Flowering of New England, Falls the Shadow, Waking the Moon, A Good Hanging, Dying in the Sun, Hard Times)
Other rereads: 0 for a total of 2 (YTD 9/130)

Big 2012 reading projects:
June 30 takes me to Book IX, Chapter XIV of War and Peace, and the end of the Book of Proverbs in the Bible.

Also started:
The Fall of Yquatine, by Nick Walters
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
Marriage with My Kingdom, by Alison Plowden

Coming next, perhaps:
Elizabeth Regina by Alison Plowden
The Bible: The Biography by Karen Armstrong
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself by Harriet Ann Jacobs
The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey
Russian Phoenix: The Story of Russian Christians, 988-1988 by Francis House
Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus The Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
Postscripts (Special BSFA members Sampler Edition) edited by Peter Crowther
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Stories of Colonel Twit, “As They Really Happened” by Will Powell
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
The Spring of the Ram by Dorothy Dunnett
Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
Code of the Krillitanes by Justin Richards
Spectrum: A Science Fiction Anthology: No. 4 edited by Kingsley Amis
The Portable Greek Historians: The Essence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius edited by M. I. Finley
Watchman by Ian Rankin
Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn
Wonderland by Mark Chadbourn
Morgoth’s Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Parasite by Jim Mortimore
Coldheart by Trevor Baxendale
The Public Prosecutor by Jef Geeraerts
The Reign of Elizabeth 1556-1603 by J. B. Black

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2012 Hugos: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

It took me a while (and several long journeys) but eventually I managed to watch all four of the nominated films in this category, having seen the first series of Game of Thrones when it was broadcast last year. My votes are as follows:

No vote: Hugo. Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely loved this film, the story, the cinematography, the performances of the stars both young and older (Sacha Baron Cohen in not completely annoying shock! Not to mention Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lee, etc), the beautiful detail. But it is not really sf. It is about the earliest sf cinema, about technology, about art, (and about love) but the fantasy sequences are clearly delineated as dreams, and the machinery, though verging on steampunk, just about realistic for the era. I’m really glad that Hugo was nominated – I enjoyed it more than any of the other films discussed below – but I can’t vote for it.

5) Captain America: The First Avenger. A rather average action romp, lifted by Hugo Weaving as Nazi scientist who decides to become a supervillain. New Doctor Who companion Jenna-Louise Coleman makes an appearance as Second Girlfriend in an early scene.

4) No Award. As usual I have agonised a bit about this ranking, and might go up or down a notch depending on my mood.

3) Source Code. An intricate story of a special ops guy who has to relive the last minutes of someone else’s life over and over again until he is able to prevent a terrorist attack, though he himself is already doomed. I liked the basic plot but didn’t care for the political framing (life as a computer game…) and was not wholly convinced by the resolution.

2) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. I enjoyed this much more than I had expected to. While Part 1 was basically about wandering around waiting for the plot to start happening, Part 2 gets you right into the final conflict, with everyone giving it their all, and a very pleasing closure to this incarnation of Rowling’s epic cycle. Radcliffe and Watson have particularly come on over the years; the special effects are great as well.

1) Game of Thrones, Series 1. I was an early advocate of nominating the series as a whole, and I remain an unabashed fanboy. This will be remembered when Captain America has been long forgotten. (Actually, hasn’t that happened already?)

See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Related Work | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist | Best Fan Writer | Best Fan Artist | Best Fancast | The John W. Campbell Award (Not A Hugo)

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June Books 22-27) Digger vols 1-6, by Ursula Vernon

As I worked through my Hugo Voter Packet, I eventually reached the file labelled “Digger_Optimized.pdf” and opened it. My heart sank as I realised that it is 830 pages in length – I think only A Dance With Dragons is longer, of this year’s book nominees – and then my eyebrows rose as I realised that the first edition of the first volume was published as long ago as 2005.

But I needn’t have worried. The sixth and final volume of Digger was published last year, making the whole thing eligible for this year’s Hugos, and it turns out to be a cracking good read: the tale of a witty wombat who finds herself emerging from the floor of a temple far from home and becoming embroiled in the local struggles of veiled warriors, hyena-people, a shrew pretending to be a troll, an oracular slug, a talking statue of an elephant god, and much else. It is brilliant, with humour, drama, pathos, and well-drawn characters in every sense. Tthose of you who haven’t dug that far into your Chicon downloads are strongly recommended to go look for it. (I might add that the combined cost of the six volumes is more than twice the price of a Chicon supporting membership which would get you the whole set of nominees.)

I have been a bit uncomfortable with the way the Hugo Awards’ inevitable focus on annual output doesn’t really fit the creative pace of comics writers, but the problem seems solved here. I think my first preference vote is decided.

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June Books 21) Parable of the Talents, by Octavia E. Butler

I had been looking forward to rereading this. When I first read it, shortly after publication, the dystopian setting of a near-future USA torn apart by social conflict and religious extremism seemed a bit far-fetched; in these days of the Tea Party, Rick Santorum, the Citizen’s United ruling and today’s anticipated judgement on healthcare, it doesn’t seem so unrealistic after all. I must say that the detail of the philosophical ideas of Lauren Olamina, the central character, rather sail past me – it’s a compassionate, pro-technology belief system, which I think is all you need to know. But basically this is a story of a community carefully built and brutally destroyed, of bigotry and violence eventually overcome at huge personal costs. The humanity of the tale and the vivid detail of the setting are the ingredients which make it remarkable.

Parable of the Talents won the 2000 Nebula for Best Novel. The other nominees which I have read are Ken MacLeod’s The Cassini Division, George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings, and Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky (which won that year’s Hugo). The other two, which I haven’t read, were Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh and Mockingbird by Sean Stewart. I reckon this is one of those years when the Nebulas recognised a novel that thoroughly deserved it.

Three Companion Chronicles

The Revenants, by Ian Potter, was a free download for DWM subscribers a month or so ago. William Russell returns as Ian Chesterton, telling the story of how he and Barbara were apparently abandoned by the First Doctor in Orkney in 1956, just after Susan’s departure in Tardis time. The plot is fairly standard (creatures in the bog which may or may not be a Threat To Us All) but there are some lovely character moments for all three of the Tardis crew, and Sharon Small puts in an appearance as several different local Orcadian women.

I find Eddie Robson’s writing a bit variable, but The Jigsaw War is definitely hit rather than miss. Fraser Hines as Jamie, occasionally channelling the Second Doctor, is joined by Dominic Mafham as his interrogator / captor / fellow prisoner, and must assemble the different elements of a disjointed timeline in order to resolve the plot. It’s a straight two-hander, all dialogue and no narration, an original idea implemented well, and requiring only minimal knowledge of Who to appreciate.

I’m afraid I was not as impressed by Ken Bentley’s The Rings of Ikiria, with Richard Franklin reprising Mike Yates and Felicity Duncan as several female characters. The plot is basically a rip-off of Claws of Axos

In summary: The Jigsaw War is an excellent concept done well, The Revenants will please Ian and Barbara fans, and The Rings of Ikiria wasn’t all that special.

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June Books 20) Falls The Shadow, by Daniel O’Mahony

There is a format that works much more often than not for Doctor Who: take an isolated building, and develop beyond the usual base-under-siege story by making the inhabitants a collection of strange indiviuals each with their own hidden motivations. Ghost Light on TV, The Chimes of Midnight on audio, last year’s New Who book Dead of Winter are all good examples; so is Falls The Shadow, a Seventh Doctor story in the New Adventures range featuring Ace and Bernice Summerfield, which runs through changing topography, off-stage sex, weird androids, temporary deaths, and mysterious travellers in a satisfying and well-written text. Seemed a bit longer than most in this series, but maybe that was just my frame of mind.

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Bernice Summerfield: Road Trip

I am months behind on writing up my recent Big Finish listening, but one has to start somewhere. The three Road Trip audios take Bernice Summerfield, played as ever by Lisa Bowerman, to the edge of the universe in a quest for her son; they are fairly separate narratives (indeed, one mild frustration is that plot threads between the three are not really connected at all) which are reasonably penetrable even for listeners who have not previously encountered Benny, though the end of the third and final play is pretty heavy on continuity. All also feature actors who have appeared in televised Who or its spinoffs, notably Ayesha Antoine (who was Dee Dee in Midnight) as Benny’s friend and travelling companion Ruth.

Brand Management by Christopher Cooper was my favourite of the three, with Benny landing on the world of Lyndyaz and encountering a culture where she is worshipped as a goddess. Anjli Mohindra, who played Rani on the Sarah Jane Adventures, turns up as one of a pair of evil siblings who are running the place, and there are lots of larks involving archaeology and explosions.

Bad Habits, by Paul Morris and Simon Barnard, continues the religious theme with Benny and Ruth going undercover as nuns in an order run by Jacqueline King (who played Donna’s mother on TV Who) in order to get close to a vital relic. I went to a convent school so have heard all the nun jokes before, and several plot elements are wildly implausible even by the standards of Doctor Who spinoff stories, but at least everyone seems to be having fun.

Despite its title, Paradise Frost has no religious content, but instead features Benny, Ruth and their obnoxious pilot trying to solve the mystery of a frozen former resort with only three vaguely human inhabitants, of whom the most mysterious is played by Arthur Darville (Rory on TV Who) and the most evil by the ever-luscious tones of India Fisher (former audio companion Charley Pollard). There are also loads of sandroaches. I can’t remember another audio with both Bowerman and Fisher, and they spark off each other beautifully, but I felt the means and motivation of Fisher’s character didn’t quite hold together. And then the last scene, where the main story is over and Benny reaches her destination, is basically an extended trailer for the next series. Which I look forward to.

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Glorious exchange

This is a beautiful video of a politician having a bad hair day, and indeed a bad tongue day.

It helps my enjoyment immensely to recollect the individual concerned as a young Tory activist in my Cambridge student days. But I think it is pretty impressive even without that background information.

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June Books 18-19) The Unwritten, vols 4-5, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

June Books 18) The Unwritten: Leviathan, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

This is the second of this year’s Hugo nominees for graphic novel which I have read – a pleasing narrative of young Tommy Taylor, who gets separately from his girlfriend and his vampire side-kick to get sucked into crewing the Pequod and ending up in a confined space with Pinocchio and Gepetto, the Prophet Jonah, Sinbad the Sailor and Baron Munchausen (and a random Celt). The literary allusions are dense, the artwork generally good and the narrative coherent, though perhaps a little less adventurous than I had hoped for from previous volumes. The volume ends with a standalone story about a group of small scared animals attempting to escape up an apparently endless staircase, whose links with the main narrative aren’t clear. I don’t think I could recommend it to readers who haven’t already tried the first two volumens.

June Books 19) The Unwritten: On To Genesis, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I actually found this fourth volume a bit more satisfying – reunited with his colleagues, Tommy finds himself investigating and becoming entwined with the Tinker, a 1930s superhero who may or may not be his half-brother in either a literal or a literary sense. The two time lines are intertwined in ambiguous but fascinating detail, with some lovely homages to the 1930s art style. Will get my nomination for the Hugo next year.

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What will happen in 2012?

Since we are now past the Solstice, I thought it might be intertesting to see what sf stories have been set in 2012 (and were written some time before 2012). This is not an exhauistive listing, just the things that caught my eye.

Probably bad film: 2012 (2009), starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet and others, directed by Roland Emmerich, in which the world is devastaed by natural disaster. To be honest, the name of the director alon is enough to deter me from wanting to see this.

Possibly better film: Time of Roses (1969), original title Ruusujen Aika. Summary from here: “Taking place in the year 2012, the film is a fantasy of a “utopian” time when all class conflicts have been erased, at least superficially. A history researcher Raimo Lappalainen becomes obsessed by the life of nude model Saara Turunen, a woman who died in 1976, and tries to reconstruct it for TV, with help from an actress. At the same time a strike in a nuclear plant will lead to a violent upsurge, which media only manages to keep secret from public with a clever cover-up.” See New York Times review, and some pictures.

Comics: Bloody Mary (1996-7) by Garth Ennis. Concerns Corporal “Bloody Mary” Malone, an American commando, who in one story must raid a fascist-ruled Europe and in another must assassinate a religious tyrant ruling New York.

Radio: Deep Trouble (2005, 2007), a BBC sitcom set on a nuclear submarine. This one does look like it might be worth tracking down.

Robert Silverberg novels: Silverberg has written so many novels that it’s hardly surprising that more then one of them is set in 2012. I had heard of the first but not the second. Descriptions of plot from SF Encyclopedia.
Shadrach in the Furnace (1976) – “concerns the predicament of the personal physician of a future dictator who finds his identity in jeopardy.” Nominated for Hugo and Nebula.
The Second Trip (1971/72) – “an intense psychological novel describing the predicaments of a telepathic girl and a man whose Identity has been newly created in the body of an ‘erased’ criminal.”

Television: The mainstream school of thought on Joe 90 is that it is set in 2012-13, though apparently there is a minority faction who support 1998.

Doctor Who TV episodes:
Dalek (2005, Ninth Doctor) – set in an underground base in Utah, before this year’s presidential election
Fear Her (2006, Tenth Doctor)- set during the Olympic opening ceremony in July.

Other Doctor Who stories set in 2012:
Frozen Time (2007 audio, Seventh Doctor) – frozen in the Antarctic ice, both a mysterious blue box and also other things you often find frozen in ice.
Christmas on a Rational Planet (1996, New Adventures novel by Lawrence Miles) – parts of it sert in Arizona in 2012, though the main dated chunks of narrative are in 1799.
Relative Dementias (2002, Past Doctor Adventure with Seventh Doctor) – first chapter set in London in August 2012, rest of story in 1982.
The Shadows of Avalon (2000, Eigth Doctor Adventure by Paul Cornell) – the Brigadier becomes embroiled in conflict over a dimensional gate to the parallel world of Avalon.

NB that the Seventh Doctor appears to have visited this year at least three times, his successors once each (excepting the Eleventh Doctor for whom this year is contemporary) and his predecessors not at all.

Recommendations and additions to the list very welcome.

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June Books 17) Sauron Defeated, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The end of the story of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, including Tolkien's attempts to plot out the very end of the story – Gollum always had a role in the destruction of the Ring, but exactly what that was took some time to work out; but Saruman only gradually emerged as the villain in The Scouring of the Shire, and a postscript of Sam and Rose and their children twenty years on was dropped on the advice of Tolkien's beta readers (I wonder if whether J.K. Rowling was given the same advice about the end of the Harry Potter series; if so, she ignored it).

The book also includes drafts of an unpublished novel called The Notion Club Papers, written in the mid-1940s, in which a club of academics – in 1987! – listens to one of their number who has uncovered, through his dreams, another variation on the story of Eärendil and the fall of Númenor which was one of the earliest elements of Tolkien’s mythos and which he never quite got right. What’s interesting about The Notion Club Papers is that it clarifies the reason for part of the failure: the characterisation is all in the framing narrative, and the epic mythos all in the Númenor bits without really much in the way of interesting personal glimpses. What Tolkine managed in The Hobbit and particularly in The Lord of the Rings was to unite the epic and the personal, but it was only after long years of effort and rewriting, and I don’t think either half of The Notion Papers was really salvageable. Still, it’s interesting to map the roads not travelled.

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June Books 16) Dying in the Sun, by Jon de Burgh Miller

Another Second Doctor novel featuring Ben and Polly (no less than five spinoff books are set between The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders, if you count a Telos novella and an annual). Although there is an interesting idea here of alien intelligences infesting the movie industry (done better than in Pratchett's Moving Pictures, though this really isn't saying much), it is let down badly by the writer's failure to get American idiom at all accurately and by some ludicrous plot points – at one point a murder suspect outwits two policemen guarding his home to smuggle a corpse inside, for instance. And poor Polly gets possessed / hypnotised yet again; when I've finished reading her novels I'll do a count of just how often this happens to her.      

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June Books 15) Waking the Moon, by Elizabeth Hand

This is a tremendous novel, ancient pagan mysteries linked with dubious academics and sinister conspiracies, all based around a fictional sinister Catholic university in Washington DC; not so very different from the plot elements of Dan Brown's novels, only much better written and much more interesting. Some brilliant scenes of simmering sexuality and emotional confusion; a satisfactory amount of drawing from genuine mythology, with extra lore invented by the author which plugs in rather neatly. I'm surprised that it is not better known, it feels like a taproot text for much of the recent wave of urban fantasies.

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Links I found interesting for 19-06-2012

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Links I found interesting for 18-06-2012

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Shakespeare’s Restless World

Another excellent series of podcasts from the BBC, exploring Shakespeare’s plays in the wider context of culture, politics and knowledge of the times; twenty 13-minute pieces, all presented by Neil McGregor, the Director of the British Museum, who was such a success with the History of the World in 100 Objects podcast series. The single one which was most useful to me was the one abouit Ireland, making the point that MacMorris is in fact the only Irish speaking character in Shakespeare, though there are plenty of Scots and several Welsh; and many plays have kern or gallowglass hovering round. The second-last episode, on cruelty and torture, is particularly gruesome. But generally an excellent investment of four hours or so of listening.

(And absolutely no mention of the so-called authorship debate!)

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2012 Hugos: Best Related Work

I confess that I haven't completely read two of the five nominees, but I am sufficiently confident in what I have sampled of them to vote as follows:

1) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition. The first two editions were essential enough; the third edition may not yet be Wikipedia but it is already more authoritative and in admirably ambitious. It's not a completed work; voting for it in this state it feels a little like giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize (I hope with a better outcome); but it gets my top vote anyway.

2) The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature. A beautiful book from which I learned more than I had expected.

3) Writing Excuses Season 6. I didn't vote for this last year because I could not bear to download and listen to three hours of advice on writing sf from enthusiastic authors whose works I haven't really warmed to. This year I found the transcripts which made it easier to form a judgement. I've read the first quarter of the season and feel it's a decent effort, but I'm just not in the target audience.

4) Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies by Daniel M. Kimmel. It's decent commentary on sf cinema, which pointed me in some interesting new directions. But a book of essays written at different times over a decade inevitably loses some focus.

5) No Award.

6) Wicked Girls by Seanan McGuire. I'm sorry, I enjoyed this very much but I just don't think it is eligible. The rubric for this category is: "Any work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category." This is an album of songs which all describe more or less fictional situations, of which a bit more than half have more or less clear fantasy elements in the narrative. In so far as the songs themselves relate to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, it is precisely in their fictional content. Agreed, the lead singer / writer is an author and fan who has three other Hugo nominations in different categories this year; but that seems to me far too slender a thread to justify nomination in this category, let alone voting for it. I liked it a lot but it drops off my ballot.

See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist | Best Fan Writer | Best Fan Artist | Best Fancast | The John W. Campbell Award (Not A Hugo)

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June Books 14) The Steampunk Bible, by Jeff VanderMeer with S.J. Chambers et al.

This is perhaps the single most beautiful book in the Hugo Voter Packet, with lavish illustrations of the very visual subculture which it describes. I must admit it also turned around my own opinion on steampunk – I had a lot of sympathy with Marigold’s father on Questionable Content, but VanderMeer and his fellow contributors have convinced me that there is an interesting, potentially subversive and liberating aesthetic and literary movement out there, whose roots are broader than I had appreciated and whose aspects extend further than I had realised. I will give it a good place on my Hugo ballot.

Unfortunately the experience of reading the PDF on a computer screen is rather trying. The lovely illustrations break up the text in a way which might be rather pleasant in a dead tree edition but makes the electronic version difficult to follow. To give two examples: a double-page picture spread about balloons on pages 22-23 interrupts – in mid-word – a two-page feature on Edgar Allan Poe on pages 21 and 24, which itself interrupts in mid-sentence the second chapter, the reader being expected to follow the chain of thought directly from page 20 to page 25. Later on, a sentence started on page 134 finishes on page 143, interrupted by five pages of (admittedly gorgeous) photographs and a three-page feature on steampunk fashion. This really isn’t an e-reader friendly text, and I fear that it will not do as well as perhaps it deserves if voters are deterred from ploughing through it.

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The Master’s Timeline

I have just been listening to the new Big Finish Fourth Doctor play, The Trail of the White Worm, which reunites Tom Baker and Geoffrey Beevers as the Doctor and the Master, clearly and explicitly set between The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken. I was then moved by an irrational impulse to try and establish a clear timeline for the Master, as seen from his own point of view. Most of this I think is reasonably well-supported, though some of the Third Doctor short stories and the various Masters who confronted the Eighth Doctor in different media are a bit disputable in terms of canonicty and sequencing. Anyway, here goes – the Master on TV, and in novels, short stories, audios, comics and computer games:

The Delgado Master
Time and Relative
(Telos novella, 1st Doctor – appears obliquely in Susan’s memories)
The Dark Path (MA novel, 2nd Doctor)
“Reconnaisance” (short story in 1994 Doctor Who Yearbook, 3rd Doctor)
Terror of the Autons (TV, 3rd Doctor)
The Mind of Evil (TV, 3rd Doctor)
[in an alternate timeline, the Doctor was not exiled to Earth and the Master, played by Mark Gatiss, brought the secrets of the Mind Parasite to the Chinese; see BF Doctor Who Unbound audio Sympathy for the Devil]
Deadly Reunion (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor
The Claws of Axos (TV, 3rd Doctor)
Colony in Space (TV, 3rd Doctor)
The Dæmons (TV, 3rd Doctor)
“Doctor Who Fights Masterplan Q” (published on the backs of chocolate bar wrappers in 1971, 3rd Doctor)
The Face of the Enemy (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor)
“The Man in the Ion Mask” (comic strip in DWM 1991 winter special, 3rd Doctor)
“The Switching” (short story from Short Trips: Zodiac, 3rd Doctor)
The Sea Devils (TV, 3rd Doctor)
Who Killed Kennedy? (MA Novel, 3rd Doctor, narrative covers all of previous 3rd Doctor stories but denouement is set at this point)
The Time Monster (TV, 3rd Doctor)
“Doorway into Nowhere” (short story in 1973 Doctor Who Annual, 3rd Doctorl)
Verdigris (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor)
Frontier in Space (TV, 3rd Doctor)
“Hidden Talent” (short story in Short Trips: Companions, 3rd Doctor)
“Smash Hit” (short story in 1973 Holiday Special, 3rd Doctor)
“The One Second Hour”, “Fogbound” (stories in TV Comic holiday issue 1973, 3rd Doctor)
Last of the Gadarene (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor)
“The Seismologist’s Story” (short story in Short Trips: Repercussions, 3rd Doctor)
“Listen – The Stars”, “DWAN: Out of the Green Mist” (short stories in 1974 Doctor Who Annual, 3rd Doctor)
“The Glen of Sleeping” (TV Action comic, 3rd Doctor)
“The Duke of Dominoes” (short story in Decalog, 3rd Doctor)
Legacy of the Daleks (EDA novel, 8th Doctor – the Delgado Master degenerates into the Pratt form)

The Pratt Master
The Deadly Assassin (TV, 4th Doctor)

The Beevers Master
Trail of the White Worm (BF Fourth Doctor audio – the Master has gained energy from the Eye of Harmony to take on the Beevers form)
The Oseidon Adventure (BF Fourth Doctor audio, out next month)
The Keeper of Traken (TV, 4th Doctor – the Master takes over the body of Tremas of Traken )

The Ainley Master
The Keeper of Traken 
(TV, 4th Doctor)
Logopolis (TV, 4th Doctor)
Castrovalva (TV, 5th Doctor)
Time-Flight (TV, 5th Doctor)
“Night Flight to Nowhere” (short story in 1983 Doctor Who Annual, 5th Doctor)
The King’s Demons (TV, 5th Doctor)
The Five Doctors (TV, 5th Doctor plus 1st, 2nd and 3rd Doctors)
“Birth of a Renegade” (short story in Radio Times 20th anniversary special, 5th Doctor)
“The Creation of Camelot” (short story in 1984 Doctor Who Annual, 5th Doctor)
Planet of Fire (TV, 5th Doctor)
The Mark of the Rani (TV, 6th Doctor)
“The Time Savers” (short story in 1985 Doctor Who Annual, 6th Doctor)
“The Fellowship of Quan”, “The Radio Waves” (short stories in 1986 Doctor Who Annual, 6th Doctor)
The Ultimate Foe (TV, 6th Doctor)
Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror (video game, 6th Doctor)
The Quantum Archangel (PDA novel, 6th Doctor)
Survival (TV, 7th Doctor)
“Stop the Pigeon” (short story in Short Trips, 7th Doctor)
Prime Time (PDA novel, 7th Doctor)
Destiny of the Doctors (video game, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors)

The Master has regenerated:
First Frontier
(NA novel, 7th Doctor)
“Housewarming” (short story in Decalog 2, Lost Properties, set in 3rd Doctor era)
Happy Endings (NA novel, 7th Doctor)

The Master degenerates back into the Beevers form:
Dust Breeding (BF main sequence audio, 7th Doctor)
Master (BF main sequence audio, 7th Doctor)

The Roberts Master:
Doctor Who, the TV Movie
(TV, 8th Doctor – the Master is executed by the Daleks but takes possession of Bruce the driver )

The Master escapes the Eye of Harmony and takes possession of Sir George Steer:
“Forgotten” and “Prologue” (short stories in Short Trips: The Centenarian, 8th Doctor)

The Master is given a new body by Esterath:
“The Fallen”, “The Glorious Dead” (comic strips in DWM, 8th Doctor)

[non-canonical yet somehow true: the Pryce Master who appears with the Atkinson and other Doctors in The Curse of Fatal Death, and ends up in love with the Lumley Doctor]

The Jacobi Master
The Eight Doctors (it is totally speculative as to which of the various Masters is in the main narrative here; of course the Delgado Master also appears in the 3rd Doctor sequence, which is set during The Dæmons)
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (EDA novel, 8th Doctor, the Master is “The Man with the Rosette”)
Brief and contradictory appearances in EDA novels Sometime Never…, The Deadstone Memorial, and The Gallifrey Chronicles, all with the 8th Doctor
[with the Richard E.Grant Ninth Doctor: Scream of the Shalka, “The Feast of the Stone” webcasts – canonical or not, this Master is definitely played by Derek Jacobi]
[during the Time War the Jacobi Master takes on human form as Professor Yana]
Utopia (TV, 10th Doctor)

The Simm Master
Utopia 
(TV, 10th Doctor)
“Speech Day” (short story published in The Doctor Who Stories, 10th Doctor era)
The Sound of Drums (TV, 10th Doctor)
The Story of Martha (NSA story collection, 10th Doctor era, cameo appearance in framing narrative)
Last of the Time Lords (TV, 10th Doctor)
The End of Time (TV, 10th Doctor)

And that’s it so far. Corrections and queries gratefully received.

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Links I found interesting for 16-06-2012

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