The city, and indeed the planet, have a strange history and an oddly mixed economy.
A very solid and enjoyable Bernice Summerfield novel by Terrance Dicks, bringing her and Chris Cwej to a large city called, er, Megacity, where a huge corporate crime scheme called The Project is bubbling under the surface, and parts of the story are told in the first person by an intellectually enhanced Ogron who is a private eye. It’s not trying to be deep, it’s just trying to be fun, and it succeeds. You can get Mean Streets here (at a price).
That takes me to the end of the Bernice Summerfield novels that I read ten years ago and failed to blog at the time. I’ll jump now to the unblogged Eighth Doctor novels, starting with Time Zero by Justin Richards.
Deftly, Mr Misnomer stitched the transparent thread through the innards of the computer. His long surgeon‘s fingers spliced the nanoscopic connections with practised ease. Fizzing and spluttering, the autopilot of the crashed skimmer sprang to life.
Another book that I really didn’t get on with. The plot ostensibly is about Bernice Summerfield investigating a mysterious artefact, the Spire, which is almost three hundred miles high (or almost 482.803 kilometers high, as Philip Jose Farmer would have said). I found the writing very confusing, with too many characters whose means and motivation were not clear to me, and a choppy narrative abruptly switching between points of view. I understood what happened at the end, but not so much of the beginning or middle. You can get Ghost Devices here.
This is the second last of the Bernice Summerfield novels that I read in 2014-15 and did not get around to writing up at the time. The last is Mean Streets, by Terrance Dicks, which promises to be a little different.
The robarman, Charlie X, at the Witch and Whirlwind was keeping them nicely supplied with drink, so who could complain? And – she smiled at this – she had neatly convinced Professor Shingbourne that none of them needed to be in class until one thirty tomorrow afternoon. As her class automatically followed his, she could have a lie in until about three.
A curious Bernice Summerfield novel in that she’s not in it much; the real protagonist is her ex-husband Jason Kane, who gets mixed up in an archaeological dig gone wrong and also discovers the amnesiac Chris Cwej, a companion from the Seventh Doctor New Adventures novels. There’s also a planet which has got out of place, and Benny trying to work out what is happening at long distance (as are we all). Solid stuff; I see some rave reviews and some very negative, but I was simply satisfied. You can get Deadfall here.
‘Ssseize him!’ snarled Dr Harbinger, but the robots had already released the dauntless Binky Sharperton, and were e‘en now closing on Harbinger‘s escaped nemesis. The first of the diabolical automata raised the electrical tendril to which its miniaturized chronon ray was mounted, but even steel was no match for Mr Misnomer‘s legendary right hook. The leather gauntlet pounded the brute machine‘s trisilicate face, and sparks flew from its antennae as it blew a fuse.⁵ ⁵ Passages like this one demonstrate a wilful ignorance of basic cybernetics theory. Oobert Valdeburg (see Bibliography) claims this suggests a dearth of Public Domain robotics data in the 2530s, a theory which is provably untrue. More likely, it indicates a mistrust of technology typical of puritanical ‘back-to-basics’ cultures. Ironic, then, that almost all of Mr Misnomer‘s adventures were written by autolit engines. Note also how electronic menaces such as the Nemesis Doomsday Engine and Dr Harbinger‘s Megalomanopticon are always fitted with built-in self-destruct mechanisms, against all sense and reason.
I thought this was a rather good entry in the Bernice Summerfield spinoff series of books. Benny appears on a hollow world, encumbered with two junior archaeologists, and encounters various archetypes (dinosaurs, cavemen, useless Nazis (the best kind)) and threatening situations. Perhaps a little more going on than I had braincells to process at the time. But it all seemed to make sense. You can get Down here.
Next in this sequence is Deadfall, by Gary Russell.
This arrangement, however, was strictly for the hoi polloi. If one were rich enough, one could use the docking facilities at the hub of the Mons Venturi wheel for private shuttle craft. Benny hauled herself through the airlock of one such of these, reflecting that all of this seemed to be a needlessly expensive method of transferring her back to the point from which she’d started, albeit several thousands of kilometres above it.
Next in the sequence of Bernice Summerfield novels, this was an interesting paired reading with Freya Marske’s A Restless Truth because it’s also an sfnal murder/crime mystery on a ship; a spaceship this time, with Bernice Summerfield pitted against the assembled wiles of the galaxy’s best / worst detectives to try and solve the identity of the mysterious thief known as the Cat’s Paw. (Who was prefigured in the previous three novels, though I didn’t notice.)
It’s generally funny and witty, and a good parody of the mystery genre with also some decent characterisation of Benny. As one reviewer puts it, Stone is “operating in a league entirely his own, even if nobody – himself included, one suspects – is quite certain exactly what sport he’s actually supposed to be playing.” Could have done without the digs at autism though, which really bring the book down a couple of points for me.
I ran a finger down the side of his face and he shuddered and wrinkled his nose as if trying to discourage an insect. And then he turned on to his back and began to snore loudly.
When I first read this in 2009, I wrote:
I only realised after reading this that I had already heard the excellent audio adaptation which includes Sophie Aldred and Anneke Wills. The original book is very good too, and I think would be reasonably penetrable for someone who hadn’t previously followed the Bernice Summerfield stories. Nicely observed emotional politics between and among Benny and her students, and the various aliens with whom Benny’s ex gets them involved. To a certain extent I felt it was the story that Colony In Space should have been. A good one (only the second Benny novel I have read, the first being the equally enjoyable Walking to Babylon).
I reread it in 2015, but in the midst of Clarke and other obligations didn’t write it up that time. My original plan was only to revisit the Bernice Summerfield novels that I have never written up at all, but then I thought, I actually enjoyed this and I wonder if a return visit will work? And it did; as well as the nicely judged emotional and physical perils of Benny and her students, there’s a particularly wacky alien reproduction process which often results in hot-looking humanoids, and a deceptive Ancient Weapon. One of the good ones. You can (probably) get it here.
I had written of the audio in 2007:
Beyond the Sun is another archaeological dig-goes-wrong story but introduces the character of Jason, Benny’s ex-husband, and lots of emotional angst as well as the actual plot. I was completely absorbed in it, and yet failed to spot the voices of Sophie Aldred and Anneke Wills until I read the sleeve notes afterwards.
I spotted Anneke Wills this time, but failed to spot Sophie Aldred, who is actually a very versatile actor. But the star is Lisa Bowerman, really getting into her stride here as Bernice, with sarcasm and emotion, helping us through what’s actually a rather convoluted plot. The only one of the first season audios not adapted by Jac Rayner but by Matt Jones, the original author. You can get it here.
‘So, what do you think?’ Benny asked for about the fifth time in as many minutes.
Justin Richards is the most prolific of living Doctor Who authors – I am not completely sure if he has overtaken Terrance Dicks by now, but if not, I am sure that he will. Usually his writing is accessible and enjoyable, so I’m sorry to report that I somewhat bounced off this, the second of the independent Bernice Summerfield novels. It’s a story about a historical artefact which appears to exist in several duplicate forms, but the format kept shifting from strange dig to heist to detective novel to courtroom drama, and I felt too much was being put in without enough explanation of what was going on. A rare miss for me, for both author and series. You can get it here, at a price.
When I listened to the audio version first time round, in 2007, I wrote:
Dragon’s Wrath, like Oh, No It Isn’t!, is detached from the narrative of the other four stories. It is, frankly, not as good; plot too obvious, guest star (Richard Franklin) not sufficiently engaged, sound recording rather poor in places, basically rather skippable.
Re-listening confirmed my impressions from the first time around, and I will add that the end is very rushed. It’s interesting the Big Finish slipped it in at the end of their first Bernice Summerfield season, getting the other (and in my view better) stories out the door first. You can get it here.
Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield woke up, stretched, and sang a single pure note. The stretch had brought on the singing. It was all because of the look of the day. Sunlight was dappling through leaves above her. Birds were cheeping. The air smelt of a summer morning.
The first of the Bernice Summerfield spinoff novels, adapted to become the first Big Finish audio. Bernice, settling into her new job as a professor of archæology, finds herself sucked into a world where she and her colleagues are transformed into pantomime characters, and facing down the alien Grel. (Facts! Good facts!) It’s actually rather well done – the concept risks being either too twee or too clever for its own good, but Paul Cornell bends the rules of narrative here just enough to get away with it. You can get it here.
The audio adaptation – from 27 years ago, good heavens! – is particularly memorable for Nicholas Courtney’s performance as Wolsey, Bernice’s cat, though everyone is good including Alastair Lock as the Grel. I listened to it just after re-reading the book, so can’t really tell how well it stands on its own. You can still get it here.
On my first encounter with the Grel of the Whoniverse (which was actually in the Sixth Doctor audio The Doomwood Conspiracy), I confusedly assumed that they were the same as the Grell, a D&D creature that I remember from White Dwarf #27 back in 1981 (actually invented by Ian Livingstone in WD #12, two years earlier). But the D&D Grell, with two ‘l’s, are disembodied hovering brains with a beak and barbed tentacles, while the DW Grel, with one ‘l’, are humanoids with squid-like faces. You’re welcome.
Next in sequence of the Virgin Bernice Summerfield novels, this time featuring a voyage by sea with an alien species whose life cycle and religious beliefs are worked out in interesting detail, of course largely driving the plot. I thought this was an above average book in this series, with convincing characters among both the humans and non-humans and a compassionate take on the conflict between them.
I am struck, though, that the standard mode of a Bernice Sumemrfield novel seems to involve her being sent on mission rather than staying at home. My memory of the audios is that a lot more of them have her dealing with problems at home base. (Though of course she has been on mission for the last few of those as well.)
