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Book Club - by Luke

Book Club - December 2006

Further Doctor Who books

December 31st 2006 05:27
Yesterday I talked about the various ranges of Doctor Who novels. Anyway, here are some oddities that I missed or glanced over...



Target spinoffs
Perhaps realising that they would eventually run out of novelisations to publish, or maybe just feeling creative, Target commissioned the odd non-televised Doctor Who novel. The first of these was the novelisation of 'K9 and Company' - the pilot episode for a failed 80s spinoff series that would've featured K9 and Sarah-Jane Smith (funnily enough, with the current revival of Doctor Who on television at the moment, both of these characters are soon to have brand new spinoff series of their own). Following on from this, it was decided to publish two further original spinoff novels detailing what happened to the Doctor's companions after they left him. Whether this series was originally planned to feature more entries or not, I don't know. These two novels were 'Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma' and 'Harry Sullivan's Private War'. The second of these was a spy-thriller written by the actor who originally portrayed the character on the show.


Target also published novelisations of three un-made television scripts, calling these the 'Missing Episodes'. These were stories that would've been produced in 1986 had the show not gone on hiatus for 18 months. Target also published two novelisations of Doctor Who audio plays - 'Slipback' and 'The Pescatons'.




Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who!
The 80s were a time of many crazes. Amongst these crazes was the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books craze - Choose Your Own Adventure blog. The 'Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who' series was, amazingly enough, a Doctor Who-based version of this. Six of these were made, they all featured the 6th Doctor and they were...

'Search for the Doctor' - featuring K9, Drax and Omega.
'Crisis in Space' - featuring Peri and Turlough.
'The Garden of Evil'
'Mission to Venus' - featuring Peri.
'Invasion of the Ormazoids'
'Race Against Time' - featuring Peri.

Two other interactive books were also published by FASA in the 80s, these were 'The Vortex Crystal' (featuring the 4th Doctor, Sarah-Jane and Harry Sullivan) and 'The Rebel's Gamble' (featuring the 6th Doctor, Peri and Harry Sullivan). These were considerably more in-depth than the 'Make Your Own Adventure' series.

Who Killed Kennedy
Virgin books published this strange one-off novel. Whilst it didn't feature the Doctor directly, it did feature many characters from the 3rd Doctor's era, referencing a lot of his televised adventures and linking him to a conspiracy revolving around the assassination of JFK, amongst other things. I haven't read it.



Faction Paradox
Mad Norweigian press are a cult/TV tie-in based independent publisher who have published various unofficial guides to Doctor Who. Their six-book line of 'Faction Paradox' novels link in with a similar line of original audio plays they also produced. Faction Paradox are a group of villains that were featured in the BBC 8th Doctor range of books, created by writer Lawrence Miles. They were strikingly original and a popular foil for the 8th Doctor, and these books continue to explore their place in the Doctor Who universe - though, for copyright reasons, all references to Doctor Who in these books are disguised with different names.

Big Finish Books
Big Finish are a group who produce original Doctor Who audio-plays featuring the actors who portrayed the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Doctors, as well as various supporting characters and alien races from the television show. In recent years they have also started publishing the occasional book... so far they have published three spin-off novels based on original characters created for their range of Doctor Who audio-plays, this line is called 'New Worlds'. They also published a great number of Doctor Who short story anthologies called 'Short Trips'.



I Am a Dalek
As part of the recent initiative to encourage reading (both Britain and Australia currently have this, I'm not sure about America), BBC books released this special one-off novella featuring the 10th Doctor. It's fairly brief and written in a manner that allows people of all ages and all reading levels to be able to enjoy it.
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Doctor Who novels

December 30th 2006 04:32


The first book I ever read and liked was a Doctor Who book. It was called 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' and I borrowed it from my local library when I was 8. From here on in I would read virtually nothing voluntarily but Doctor Who, up until the age of around 19. There are a lot of Doctor Who books, and I have read nowhere near them all.

For those of you not in the know (I pity thee!), Doctor Who is a British science-fiction/adventure television show. It's the greatest thing ever put on TV, ever. It even beats most movies. It's the longest running science-fiction show of all time, it ran uninterrupted from 1963 to 1989, and was recently revived (with much success) in 2005. To put it shortly, it rules. It's about a mysterious alien called The Doctor, who travels through time and space in a wonderful and quaint travelling machine called the TARDIS. He often travels with human companions, and they get into adventures throughout all of time and space. Lots of cool stuff happens and they meet historical figures, nasty aliens and robots, and all sorts of cool stuff. Did I mention cool stuff?

Anyway, what really turned me into such a rabid fan of Doctor Who was the novels. The show is great, don't get me wrong, but the books opened up a whole other world for me. At first, there were just novelisations of the television episodes, but when Doctor Who got cancelled in 1989 - well, the floodgates opened. Stacks of amazing and original full-length novels were written. I've built up quite a collection, nearly 300 (by no means all of them), and it fills up an entire bookcase.

Yes. I am a massive nerd!

Here are some of the different ranges of novels...



The Target Novelisations
These are thin 100 page books written for a family audience. They're mostly book versions of the televised stories (with one or two exceptions). Every televised Doctor Who story from between 1963 and 1989 has been released in book form, with about four exceptions (for copyright reasons). You can find a lot of these books for about a dollar each in second hand stores. Some editions and releases are quite rare. There are only seven of these that I don't have.

The New Adventures
A couple of years after Doctor Who was cancelled, a licence was granted to Virgin books to publish a range of original Doctor Who books. Recognising that Doctor Who fans were mostly no longer children, it was decided to run with the format and go deeper and more broadly with the stories. There were very few taboos as far as these books were concerned. Swearing, sex, gratuitous violence - nothing was off limits. Fans were polarised by the books... some were put off by the more adult nature, or felt that the books didn't really capture the feel of the show. Some - like me - absolutely adored them. The New Adventures opened up the Doctor Who universe in ways that very few science-fiction franchises have managed. Unlike, say, Star Trek novels, these books were given almost free range with what they could do with their characters. As there was no on-air counterpart to the novels, the degree of freedom given to the writers was quite large. Major characters from the show were killed off... new versions of villains and aliens appeared. All sorts of COOL STUFF happened.



The Missing Adventures
With the success of the New Adventures, Virgin decided to launch a second line of novels. Whereas the New Adventures continued the adventures of the last and most current Doctor (the 7th Doctor), these novels would bring us new stories featuring the past incarnations of the Doctor. Originally aimed to be more traditional than their New Adventure counterparts, the Missing Adventures ended up being just as daring in some aspects - at one or two points even directly contradicting the televised series!

The BBC Avdentures
After five or eight years or so (I can't remember), Virgin's licence ran out and the BBC (who owned the original rights) decided they would publish their own line of novels rather than renew Virgin's contract. The subsequent novels were published in two lines... one featuring past Doctors (now including the 7th), and one concentrating on the further adventures of the 8th Doctor (from the failed American telemovie pilot for a new series of Doctor Who). The BBC were a lot more conservative with their treatment of the franchise, the past Doctors line was a lot more traditional in scope and the 8th Doctor line - while sometimes incredibly daring in the ways it broke with the show's established mythology - remained altogether less adult in what it was willing to allow on the written page.

Virgin Books
But the New Adventures weren't going without a fight! Although their licence had been revoked, and the last few Doctor Who novels they published had to be pulped in large numbers to avoid copyright issues (and now fetch up to 150 pounds each on eBay in some cases), Virgin decided to keep on keeping on. Utilising a popular companion character they had created for the New Adventures range (25th century crusading archeologist and party girl, Bernice 'Benny' Summerfield), they continued to publish Doctor-less science-fiction adventures set in the Doctor Who universe. They weren't allowed to mention anything Doctor Who related by name, but if you know Doctor Who and read these books it's pretty obvious which characters and alien races they refer to and feature sometimes. This line was doomed to fail though, it's audience appeal was minimal, and it petered out a year or two after it started.

Telos Novellas
A short-lived range of Doctor Who novellas was commissioned by the BBC as well, granting a short licence to an independent publisher. These books explored the show in a variety of new and interesting ways, and brought some new writing talent in, and were very much of the 'collectors item' variety - featuring detailed frontspieces and hard covers. A few spinoff non-Doctor novellas have been published in this range since their licence for Doctor Who ran out.



BBC Books 2005
With the new televised 2005 series of Doctor Who, the BBC called their line of original Doctor Who books to a halt. The 8th Doctor stories were tailed off with an epic called 'The Gallifrey Chronicles', and it's unknown if the past Doctor adventures will be revived any time in the near future. Instead we now have new novels featuring the current televised Doctors. 2005-2006 saw the release of 6 books featuring the 9th Doctor, and 2006 onwards has seen the publication of three 10th Doctor novels and another four on the horizon. These novels aren't as long as previous original novels, and - in keeping with the on-air show - are more mainstream and family orientated. I'm yet to read any of these.

And that's about it! I'm sure I'll talk more about my adventures with Doctor Who in the future (apologies to anyone who isn't interested, hahaha).
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The Orange Prize for Fiction

December 29th 2006 04:54
The Orange Prize is a new (well, new as far as literary awards go) prize for fiction that has been running for 10 years now. It is awarded to women of any nationality, though the prize rules stipulate that the book in question must be newly published in the UK and written in English.

The Orange Prize was created to address the statistical lack of literary awards given to female writers. It is also judged exlusively by women, to celebrate female critical analysis.

Here are the past winners...

'A Spell of Winter' - Helen Dunmore (1996)
'Fugitive Pieces' - Anne Michaels (1997)
'Larry's Party' - Carol Shields (1998)
'A Crime in the Neighbourhood' - Suzanne Berne (1999)
'When I Lived in Modern Times' - Linda Grant (2000)
'The Idea of Perfection' - Kate Grenville (2001)
'Bel Canto' - Anne Patchett (2002)
'Property' - Valeria Martin (2003)
'Small Island' - Andrea Levy (2004)
'We Need to Talk About Kevin' - Lionel Shriver (2005)
'On Beauty' - Zadie Smith (2006)

Some people have a problem with the prize because it's exclusively for women. I don't particularly mind either way, I see it as the 'Best Actress Oscar' as opposed to the 'Best Actor Oscar'. There's nothing wrong with it, it's celebrating the absolute best that female writers have to offer. People should focus on what it is rather than what it isn't. If you're looking for a unisex literary prize there are plenty of them to choose from. I don't think anyone could really argue that these books are without merit, these are all well-renowned and talented writers who deserve the praise they're given.

Power to the people.
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A further selection of reviews.

December 28th 2006 01:47
Bit busy at the moment, what with Christmas and being a retail-slave and all that... anyway here's some older reviews and articles you might like to check out if you haven't read them before...

Dead Famous - Ben Elton's clever and hilarious Big Brother-inspired novel.
Bent Books - a review of an awesome second-hand bookstore in Brisbane.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - an instant classic of revolutionary Chinese literature and adventure.
American Gods - Neil Gaiman's overrated novel of Americana and mythology.
Mortal Engines - one of the best books I read last year. A wonderful work of swashbuckling and fantastica.
1984 - the George Orwell classic.
McQueen - the most recent (and possibly definitive) in-depth biography of Steve McQueen.
DisneyWar - a fascinating insight into the rise and fall of the Disney corporation in the 80s, 90s and 00s.
Conspiracy Files - a bit of fun for conspiracy nuts everywhere. This blog features a comment left by the actual author of the book being reviewed!
Shardik - Richard Adams' magnificent and moving epic of religion and slavery.
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzegerald's classic novel of 20th century debauchery.
The Gormenghast trilogy - one of the greatest works of fantasy and gothic fiction ever written.
Lullaby - a novel of witchcraft, trauma and the homogenisation of culture from the author of 'Fight Club'.
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote's magnun opus.


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Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

December 26th 2006 23:23


'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha' is the fourth novel by Roddy Doyle, published in the early 90s, and one of his few stand-alone novels. It also won the Man Booker prize - a rather controversial win too, a lot of snobbish types were offended that such a popularist work won the award over more traditionally heavy-going literature-type books. It also happens to be a rather short novel, I knocked it over during a slow day at work


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New Releases - Late 2006

December 23rd 2006 08:39
Another day, another round of new releases. I've collected together some of the big name releases that have just come out, one or two of them might be yet to hit Australian shores...


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The Chain of Charms

December 22nd 2006 10:54


'The Chain of Charms' is a new children's adventure series written by rising Australin fantasy author Kate Forsyth. They're fairly brief novels but the good news is that if you get into them you won't have to wait long for the next installment... all six books are being published in the space of a year


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The Spook's Curse

December 21st 2006 10:54


'The Spook's Curse' is the second book in the Wardstone Chronicles series by Joseph Delaney, a series that is slowly gaining popularity via word-of-mouth and has recently been connected to film rumours. The first book, 'The Spook's Apprentice' (click for review), was a creepy and more than slightly disturbing 'childrens' book that made imaginative and extensive use of English folklore. 'The Spook's Curse' continues to bring the chills and spills, building substantially on Delaney's portrayal of a 18-19th century English countryside landscape at the mercy of ancient dark powers


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Bryce Courtenay

December 19th 2006 06:41


I'm currently reading 'The Power of One' and so far it's going alright (expect a review in the near-ish future). Anyway I thought I'd just slap up a bibliography of Bryce Courtenay


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Eragon the movie

December 18th 2006 00:08
The cover of the new edition of the book.


Well, Eragon-the-movie has been released in America and is sure to hit our shores soon enough for the school holiday season. The book has also been re-issued with a new movie tie-in cover to help synergise market forces or whatever. So how's it faring up in America with the critics


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Steve Irwin and the Money-Machine

December 16th 2006 00:57
An older Steve Irwin book, rushed back out onto shelves within days of his death


There are now no less than three seperate newly released books about Steve Irwin. Sure enough, when the market calls for something it is delivered. Call me cynical, but is it really necessary? Obviously it is, as they're selling like crazy... but let's pretend, just for a moment, that the market was susceptible to things like good taste, ethics and morals


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Lolly Scramble

December 15th 2006 03:41


A friend of mine leant this one to me earlier this week, and I gotta say - wow. I really tore through this one, read it in a day. It was that good. I mean, I've always been a fan of The Late Show and Tony Martin, so I knew I'd like it - I just wasn't prepared for how well-written this was or what sort of book it would be


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Alistair Reynolds booksigning

December 14th 2006 12:00


Gaslight Books are an independent book store operating out of the Fyshwick in the A.C.T. (near Canberra). They specialise in crime and detective fiction, as well as science-fiction, fantasy and horror. Pretty much all the good stuff. They sell both new and secondhand books and the sound like a great place to check out if you're ever in the area or after some specialist titles in those genres. They have been open since 1989, and they release two monthly newsletters, Sleuth and Other Worlds
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Across the Dark Metropolis

December 13th 2006 04:54


'Across the Dark Metropolis' is the third and final book in the Borribles trilogy by Michael de Larrabeiti. If you've been following this blog at all, you might be familiar with my less than stellar reaction to this series. The first book was fairly clumsy and it's 'cult' status seemed fairly unwarranted. The second book picked up the game a bit and seemed to display a wiser sense of plot construction and grasp of language. So what's the verdict after reading the third book? It was - as they say - pretty 'how's it going', IE. Supremely average


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All-Out Waugh

December 12th 2006 04:34
Seperated at birth?


Not less than an hour ago I was walking home from the train station in Penrith via the Westfields Shopping Centre. I happened to walk past the Dymocks there, and there was a great big long queue of (mostly) middle-aged women trailing down out of it's doorway. Upon passing the shop I noticed that cricketing superstar Steve Waugh was soon due for an appearance to coincide with the promotion of his autobiography 'Out of My Comfort Zone'. Security guards stood nearby, to ensure said-queue didn't break out into some kind of oestrogen-based cricket-enflamed frenzy. It was an impressive sight. The crowd looked quite excited. In the pants


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A Selection of reviews and stuff

December 9th 2006 23:27
Well, it's strange to think that I've been doing this blog for the best part of nine months now. I swear it only felt like six months! Where did those other three months go? Anyway, thought I'd keep the pot boiling by posting up some direct links to older reviews and stuff, cause I know they can tend to get away from the reader, buried deep deep down in the archives and all that. It also lets me off from writing something today. Ha!

The Gun Seller - Hugh Laurie's first book


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The Hawk and the Dove

December 8th 2006 07:03


I swear I didn't make this up... the following is from the back of this boddice-ripping romance novel


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Lord of Misrule

December 7th 2006 11:16


'Lord of Misrule' is a revised and expanded new edition of Christopher Lee's prevous autobiography, 'Tall, Dark and Gruesome'. The first autobiography was written in the late 70s when Lee was almost into his 60s. Man, the guy is now about 85... I guess he never expected to have achieved so much in the autumn years of his life. He doesn't seem to be letting up either, in the last five years he has become more famous than ever (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), reaping the rewards of a long and celebrated career in horror and cult films with several big name directors honouring his achievements by enlisting his talents for a whole new generation to enjoy


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John Le Carre

December 6th 2006 12:49


John Le Carre - real name David John Moore Cornwell - is probably best known for his influential and groundbreaking spy novels of the 60s. In recent years he has expanded his stories beyond the normal constraints of the genre, and has moved more into 'political thriller' territory at times. He's about 75 now, but he's still keeping it real in a very big way (witness one of his more recent novels, the critically acclaimed 'Constant Gardner


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Looking for Mr. Right

December 6th 2006 06:35


I read this book today. It cheered me up some. Normally I hate these kind of gifty books, usually because they're full of new-agey, pseudo-philisophical crap that makes my brain leak out of my ears in frustration. Thankfully, this book wasn't one of those


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Recent scores!

December 5th 2006 06:17
Well, on the weekend just gone I travelled up to Brisbane. The weather was gold and a good time was had by all. High on my list of priorities upon arriving in Brisbane was to visit this 2nd hand bookstore in the West End...


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Top 5 Books

December 1st 2006 09:59


I'm going away for a few days so I thought I'd just do a short entry on each of my blogs today


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