Duncan Lunan almost wrote for Doctor Who...

[Winterwind]

I know some of you are familiar with Duncan Lunan. We just did an interview with him that went up yesterday and one of the things he mentions is how he came close to writing for DW during the Pertwee era.

http://www.winterwind-productions.com/issue17/cover.htm

Mods, hope you'll forgive my posting this here. Due to Duncan Lunan's background, it could have gone in the science forum but since there is the DW connection and since a few of the forum members here actually contributed questions to the interview I thought it'd be fine posting in the DW forum.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

That's very cool. I've only read one book of Lunan's -- The Mysterious Signals from Outer Space -- during a period when I was reading a lot of Ancient Astronaut books, and I really liked it. (What can I say? I was twelve.) The interesting thing about that book was that the first half of the book had more to do with interstellar colonization and alien first contact protocols than it did with whether or not aliens from Izar have a space probe at one of the Lagrange points.

I'll check it out!

 

[Winterwind]

Thanks. I hope you enjoy the interview.

When we got the interview back, I was quite surprised by the length and depth of his answers. As such, we broke it into two parts and printed an abridged version in the ezine with the unabridged version on the main site. So there's plenty to read. The story of how he almost wrote for DW is actually quite interesting. Of course so too is the entire interview.

The first part deals with his writing. The second part, not yet published, deals with his involvement in astronomy and folk music. He mentions Graham Hancock in a couple of answers in part two, touching on extra-terrestrials vs ancient civilisations. And he goes into detail about Epsilon Bootes. So there's more to come.

 

[Rarewolf]

If he still had his notes Big Finish might be interested in adapting them, there aren't any Pertwee lost stories, since they used most of what was written for TV at the time. Or so they say...

 

[Psion]

I'm very much looking forward to Part II ... the stuff surrounding his ideas concerning Epsilon Boötis is what brought him to my attention back in the seventies -- a time when I was heavily interested in not only SF, but flying saucers, the Bermuda Triangle, and shaggy bipeds living in the wood. I wonder what impact his association with such "fringe ideas" has had on his career, and I'm curious about why he abandoned his ideas and then revisited them years later.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Duncan Lunan has been considered pretty much a fruit loop in scientific circles since the 70's. A university course that I attended on the philosophy of science devoted nearly a whole lecture critiquing Lunan's unorthodox approach to scientific methodology. The guy certainly does seem to have a very fertile imagination, but I have no idea of whether he has any talent for writing fiction.

 

[Winterwind]

I'm very much looking forward to Part II ... the stuff surrounding his ideas concerning Epsilon Boötis is what brought him to my attention back in the seventies -- a time when I was heavily interested in not only SF, but flying saucers, the Bermuda Triangle, and shaggy bipeds living in the wood. I wonder what impact his association with such "fringe ideas" has had on his career, and I'm curious about why he abandoned his ideas and then revisited them years later.

I think you're going to like Part Two for certain then. And his answer to the Epsilon Bootes question is very in depth. In fact I'm not even sure how to edit it down for the ezine version. Of course the unabridged will be on the main site but if we published that in the ezine, the answer to one question would be longer than most interviews in their entirety!

I must say I'm somewhat surprised no-one's commented on his Jon Pertwee story yet... mind you, that's in the unabridged version of the interview so... *shrugs*