Doctor Who books (fiction, nonfiction, nonfact)

[publiusr]

A nice find

The Dalek World 1965 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Dalek World 1965Dalek Annual for 1965, published in Hardback by Souvenir Press Ltd in association with Panther Books Ltd. Written by David Whittaker (the...

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[Turtletrekker]

Just Sarah: More Than Fifty Years of a Doctor Who Companion

Candy Jar Books is pleased to announce Just Sarah: More Than Fifty Years of a Doctor Who Companion, a celebration of the much-loved character played by Elisabeth Sladen…

merchandise.thedoctorwhosite.co.uk

 

[Allyn Gibson]

It looks like the Puffin Classics range, which mixed Doctor Who with literary classics, is coming to an end with Dracula.

That's unfortunate. I was working on a spec proposal for War and Peace and Time, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was going to be four novelettes, each with a different Doctor, set at different points in Tolstoy's novel (1805 with Six, 1807 with Eleven, 1812 with War, and 1814 with Fourteen). Oh, well.

 

[jaime]

It looks like the Puffin Classics range, which mixed Doctor Who with literary classics, is coming to an end with Dracula.

That's unfortunate. I was working on a spec proposal for War and Peace and Time, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was going to be four novelettes, each with a different Doctor, set at different points in Tolstoy's novel (1805 with Six, 1807 with Eleven, 1812 with War, and 1814 with Fourteen). Oh, well.

Didn’t even know they existed til now. They… don’t look like the Doctors I would pick for those novels. It’s a bit of an out there idea tbh, that would have done better back in the ‘and zombies’ craze. In fact, some of those are things it’s sort of not worth doing, since the Hinchcliffe era exists, and they’ve been riffed on in Who before.
I can see why it didn’t go well.

 

[Steve Roby]

That's unfortunate. I was working on a spec proposal for War and Peace and Time, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was going to be four novelettes, each with a different Doctor, set at different points in Tolstoy's novel (1805 with Six, 1807 with Eleven, 1812 with War, and 1814 with Fourteen). Oh, well.

Ooh, I'd've read that. I just watched one of the BBC War and Peace miniseries a week or two ago.

Didn’t even know they existed til now.

I can see why it didn’t go well.

Can you?

 

[jaime]

Ooh, I'd've read that. I just watched one of the BBC War and Peace miniseries a week or two ago.





Can you?

Yeah. At no point had I even heard of them, despite wandering Who shaped corners of the web and book shaped corners. Not even an invasive recommendation on my kindle.
I’m their target audience in some ways, and yet they missed me, in this advert saturated era.

The covers themselves are not very good.

Are they aimed at Who fans or a way to bring in people from the sort-of-booming books-in-general fandom that now exists?

The titles chosen are, as I said, ones already essentially explored in Who to a certain extent, but are also too diverse in some ways. (For a start, there’s not really a definable ‘Robin Hood’ book.) In that regard, they would be better off as straight forward Who books rather than being remix/mash-up books. They don’t look like a clever idea, so much as neither fish nor fowl.



Also as I said, it’s essentially jumping on the ‘And Zombies’ trend about a decade after that was happening. (And of course, Android Karenina)
They also come along at a time where AI stuff is poisoning the well, and these look more like *that* than anything else.

A combination of these (and sundry) things, and I would be very very surprised if they did well. Which is probably why the first time I am hearing of them is here, and they are cancelled.

Whether they are a good idea in the first place?
That’s a different question, and I could go one way or the other on that.

 

[Steve Roby]

I haven't read any of them yet, though I've been buying them, because as someone who reads Doctor Who books I also read Doctor Who Magazine and follow the books forum on Gallifrey Base so I don't miss books like these or the Cushingverse novels or whatever. When I have read some of them, I'll have an informed opinion.

 

[jaime]

I haven't read any of them yet, though I've been buying them, because as someone who reads Doctor Who books I also read Doctor Who Magazine and follow the books forum on Gallifrey Base so I don't miss books like these or the Cushingverse novels or whatever. When I have read some of them, I'll have an informed opinion.

I only read DWM now and then these days, as part of my Apple News sub. It ceased being a thing for me years ago alas.
I forgot I even had a Gallifrey Base account for *years* too.

I find it curious that it was the Children’s Books bit of Aunties Stationery that put them out, especially given the titles/themes picked.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Are they aimed at Who fans or a way to bring in people from the sort-of-booming books-in-general fandom that now exists?

The Puffin Classics books are/were aimed at the same audience that would read the Target novelizations, anyone from 7 to 70.

The titles chosen are, as I said, ones already essentially explored in Who to a certain extent, but are also too diverse in some ways. (For a start, there’s not really a definable ‘Robin Hood’ book.) In that regard, they would be better off as straight forward Who books rather than being remix/mash-up books. They don’t look like a clever idea, so much as neither fish nor fowl.

Also as I said, it’s essentially jumping on the ‘And Zombies’ trend about a decade after that was happening. (And of course, Android Karenina)

I don't know that the Quirk Books comparison is really valid. For one thing, those books retained some (much?) of the original text and warped it to incorporate something from outside the original narrative. The Puffin Classics don't do that. They're original novels in which the Doctors' story intersects with a tale from classic literature.

If I had the opportunity to write War and Peace and Time or The Doctor of Zenda (working title, this was the other Puffin Classics idea I was toying with), I wouldn't have been lifting large sections of Leo Tolstoy or Anthony Hope's text. I'd take the settings and the characters, then do something original with it that respected, and maybe added to, the original. (Zenda would have had timey-wimey shit going on, and that's clearly not in Hope's original. )

Ooh, I'd've read that. I just watched one of the BBC War and Peace miniseries a week or two ago.

There's a lot one can do with War and Peace. There are these huge gaps, characters disappear for hundreds of pages, and major historical events get obliquely referenced if at all. And it's a book I have argued with, because it goes places I don't agree with, and it doesn't show the things I want to see. I wanted to play around in those gaps, like 1814, which Tolstoy sums up in like two lines in the First Epilogue but there's big stuff there -- the fall of Paris! -- I want to read about.

One problem I ran into -- and I'm not sure if I needed to solve it -- was that I had absolutely nothing for Natasha to do. She would get mentioned, but I don't believe she would have ever appeared on page. Other Rostovs would have -- 1814 would largely be from Nikolai's perspective -- but Natasha is such a sheltered character that she doesn't have the space for her story to intersect the Doctor's. Plus, I generally detest Natasha as a character; the adaptations generally tone her down, but she's a lot on the page.

 

[Christopher]

The Puffin Classics don't do that. They're original novels in which the Doctors' story intersects with a tale from classic literature.

That's kind of like how I think of "The Crusade" -- it feels as if the TARDIS landed in the middle of a lost Shakespeare play, King Richard I.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

That's a really good way to describe "The Crusade."

 

[jaime]

The Puffin Classics books are/were aimed at the same audience that would read the Target novelizations, anyone from 7 to 70.


I don't know that the Quirk Books comparison is really valid. For one thing, those books retained some (much?) of the original text and warped it to incorporate something from outside the original narrative. The Puffin Classics don't do that. They're original novels in which the Doctors' story intersects with a tale from classic literature.

If I had the opportunity to write War and Peace and Time or The Doctor of Zenda (working title, this was the other Puffin Classics idea I was toying with), I wouldn't have been lifting large sections of Leo Tolstoy or Anthony Hope's text. I'd take the settings and the characters, then do something original with it that respected, and maybe added to, the original. (Zenda would have had timey-wimey shit going on, and that's clearly not in Hope's original. )


There's a lot one can do with War and Peace. There are these huge gaps, characters disappear for hundreds of pages, and major historical events get obliquely referenced if at all. And it's a book I have argued with, because it goes places I don't agree with, and it doesn't show the things I want to see. I wanted to play around in those gaps, like 1814, which Tolstoy sums up in like two lines in the First Epilogue but there's big stuff there -- the fall of Paris! -- I want to read about.

One problem I ran into -- and I'm not sure if I needed to solve it -- was that I had absolutely nothing for Natasha to do. She would get mentioned, but I don't believe she would have ever appeared on page. Other Rostovs would have -- 1814 would largely be from Nikolai's perspective -- but Natasha is such a sheltered character that she doesn't have the space for her story to intersect the Doctor's. Plus, I generally detest Natasha as a character; the adaptations generally tone her down, but she's a lot on the page.

Maybe they would have been better off moving the covers away from a slightly wonky classics style, and embracing something closer to ladybird books.
I certainly think the cover art lands it in fish nor fowl territory as a result.
Especially when you compare it to the success of the Mr.Men style ones a few years back.

They seem very mixed in what they’re telling me they are about from the covers — and as to aiming at children, that’s awkward with any classic books, but particularly when we’re talking Dracula and Frankenstein, and then putting that in the same range as Oz. (Which looks wise and concept wise seems one of the better choices)

Same with your Tolstoy — that’s something for the grups for sure.

Though it’s also now making me wonder if someone should have done Kafkas Metamorphosis, guest starring… six, most likely. (I also wonder about some of the Doctor choices, but hey ho. This range looks even more into the fanfic stages of Who book that one might usually consider… and I’m one of the people who thinks DW may have found the best place to be when it was written word in the first Wilderness Years, so am very in the corner of Who books. Saying that, I barely touch the NSAs because they never landed for me, or maybe the modern Doctors just never fit those worlds as well for me.)

I guess it’s about execution, and timing… we’re in an era where the books are sadly going to be as niche as BBV productions once were at this point. Which is awkward, because if we are hitting a new Wilderness, then we’re going to need a true successor to the NA’s and EDA’s. God knows whose face will be on the cover though.

 

[Steve Roby]

Seems to me there's a saying about judging books by their covers.

 

[jaime]

Seems to me there's a saying about judging books by their covers.

Yes. But isn’t that the whole point in aping the classics style and going puffin in the first place this time?

 

[JD]

Anybody here read The Whoniverse: The Untold History of Space and Time? They have it on Hoopla, and it looks interesting, I'm curious how they put the random bits and pieces of, sometimes contradictory, galactic history that we got over the decades into a cohesive whole.
They also have Dalek: The Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe, A Brief History of Time Lords, The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who, and Doctor Who: A History.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Maybe they would have been better off moving the covers away from a slightly wonky classics style, and embracing something closer to ladybird books.
I certainly think the cover art lands it in fish nor fowl territory as a result.

Honestly, I like the Penguin Classics cover style the books used.

Same with your Tolstoy — that’s something for the grups for sure.

I don't think it would have been. I was reading Star Trek books at 9 and 10. Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 came out when I was 8, and I read it on release. There's no material in the outline as it stands that someone in the 8-10 range couldn't handle.

In the Happy New Year, Charlie Brown and The Peanuts Movie, they make a joke about Charlie Brown, aged 8-10, reading War and Peace. (Hell, in The Peanuts Movie, Linus, who is younger than Charlie Brown, reads Charlie Brown's book report and finds it insightful, which strongly suggests that Linus has also read it because he knows enough about the book to know why the book report is insightful.) The thing about the joke... War and Peace is not a particularly difficult book. A long one, yes. But a readable one, especially the Maude translation. Charlie Brown would absolutely be capable of reading it and understanding it at his age.

So, no, I don't think War and Peace and Time would have been only "for the grups." I would have written it in a way that someone who had never read War and Peace could understand it and appreciate it, and that includes the Charlie Browns of the world.

 

[Christopher]

In the Happy New Year, Charlie Brown and The Peanuts Movie, they make a joke about Charlie Brown, aged 8-10, reading War and Peace. (Hell, in The Peanuts Movie, Linus, who is younger than Charlie Brown, reads Charlie Brown's book report and finds it insightful, which strongly suggests that Linus has also read it because he knows enough about the book to know why the book report is insightful.) The thing about the joke... War and Peace is not a particularly difficult book. A long one, yes. But a readable one, especially the Maude translation. Charlie Brown would absolutely be capable of reading it and understanding it at his age.

Well, Linus was always meant to be precocious. Remember, he started out as a baby, years younger than Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the rest, but he ended up outpacing them all intellectually, becoming a philosopher and a Biblical scholar by age 4 or 5. Schulz seemed to like the joke of toddler prodigies, since Schroeder also started out as a baby who could somehow produce concert-worthy classical music from a tin toy piano.

I've become convinced that Schroeder was autistic, given his savant-like musical ability, his intense focus on his passion, and his irritation at people trying to draw him away from it into neurotypical socialization and other activities. Linus was most likely on the spectrum too, given his intelligence, his need for rituals like waiting up for the Great Pumpkin, his thumb-sucking (probably a form of stimming), and his anxiety attacks when his security blanket was taken away.

 

[jaime]

The child readers of today are different to ‘wot we were. Especially when it comes to physical books.

I to prefer the idea of the ‘Classics’ covers and approach, but from the style would assume (as I said) something more akin to Pride & Prejudice and Zombies et al. But whilst two or three of the books are direct ties to specific books, some of them aren’t. And if they are aiming at the lower ages, as well as old geeks like us, then Ladybird sounds more like what they are aiming at. (Except of course the books are too long and ‘proper’ for ladybird.) Or frankly, putting them in line with something like the ‘Companions’ line from Target in the eighties, themselves a sort of forerunner to the NA range.

But then, purely from a marketing perspective, those covers don’t actually look enough like the Classics line either. (There was a trend just a couple of years ago among indie writers for using an app to make pretend classics covers for your book and showing those on Social Media.)

It all looks like quite a good idea, that didn’t catch on.
And from my perspective, just finding out about them, and not having seen them in the places I would expect to see them, and them not all quite being what their covers sort-of-ish suggest, it seems the execution didn’t really land.