I received the book Planet Narnia for my birthday in November. It’s a fascinating and compelling look at the seven classical planets in C S Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and does a great job of making its bold claim that the seven planets are the hidden key to the books seem plausible. Even if you […]
The latest Doctor Who Magazine has a review of Short Trips: How the Doctor Changed my Life, which is very exciting, especially since reviewer Matt Michael speaks very highly of it! Here are a few quotes: Big Finish’s new collection of short stories is a departure from previous releases in that it’s entirely written by […]
Heroes season 3 has really been all over the place. It got off to a good start, covering more ground in a couple of episodes than you’d sometimes get in half a season. But although they quickened the pace, this just meant it got sillier quicker, getting bogged down in formulas and double-crosses and undeveloped […]
The latest edition of A Podcast of Impossible Things is a Big Finish special, looking in particular at Short Trips: How the Doctor Changed my Life. It includes interviews with some of the writers, including the overall winner Michael Coen, and me, of course, plus interviews with Simon Guerrier, editor of the collection and fan […]
Over the many years of Doctor Who, the Doctor has become more and more of a superhero. The First Doctor started off as an old man, a crochety explorer, who got dragged into events and was more likely to be trying to get back to the TARDIS than to save the day. He could be […]
Short Trips: How the Doctor Changed My Life, a collection of brand new Doctor Who short stories published by Big Finish is now available, and it includes The Shopping Trolleys of Doom – my very first piece of professionally published fiction! The theme of the collection is people’s lives who have been changed by the […]
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved? There […]
When someone accused J R R Tolkien of writing escapism, Tolkien apparently replied: “Maybe, but it’s not the escape of a deserter from the front lines, but of a prisoner from a cage.” These two types of escapism are a good description of the two ways that stories can function. Borrowing from Andrew Fellows from […]
That was the question posed in the Books section of Outpost Gallifrey recently. You might not be surprised to read that my short answer is “No”, but hopefully my further observations might be of some interest… First of all, I really enjoy all three writers and their books. Secondly, in the interests of full disclosure, […]
I went to see The Golden Compass on Wednesday, despite having been invited by a Christian friend to join a Facebook group inviting people to boycott the film, warning that it “promotes atheism”. It’s based on Northern Lights, first in the His Dark Materials trilogy written by Philip Pullman , which is certainly very critical […]
