Attack of the Spoilers

By Caleb | July 16, 2007

I hear rumours that the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has leaked onto the Internet and that spoilsports are going around the place saying what happens at the end. Now, having sometimes discovered rather more than I’d have liked to have known in advance about some Doctor Who episodes from internet discussions, I’m wondering about stopping visiting any forums where someone might give the game away altogether until Saturday.

The phenomenon of “spoilers” is an interesting and varied one. The fun side is discovering scraps that whet the appetite beforehand. This is particularly appealing when all the details are kept so closely guarded, as with the last Harry Potter book. For example, on one forum someone revealed the title of chapter 7 of the last Harry Potter book, which didn’t give anything much away, but only enough to get the imagination going with new possibilities. That’s the kind of information I don’t mind, even enjoy, discovering. These aren’t so much spoilers in the genuine sense so much as teasers.

Similarly, with my occasional watching of Doctor Who being filmed, it’s fun to get a hint and a flavour of what’s to come, such as seeing gas-mask zombies shuffling through the smoke on Barry Island. There’s also the feeling of achievement of investigating something, especially if you’re the one to unearth some previously unknown titbit.

But by contrast, there are some spoilers that really do spoil. Someone overheard the Doctor’s line “Just this once, everybody lives!” during the filming of that episode, which I got to hear about, which spoiled some of the tension of the episode for me. That’s just too much information. After I’d been to the Doctor Who series 2 press launch, I had some rather odd requests by email asking me to spill the beans and tell all about the episode I’d seen. Needless to say, I didn’t do so, and I really don’t understand the mentality of someone who wants the whole game given away on the Internet rather than enjoying the story as intended.

So why do people leak information that spoils stories? In fan circles, there’s an added dimension of the power and status conferred on the bearer of spoilers. The one with the most encyclopaedic knowledge is the Truest Fan, and the one who can reveal spoilers about the future is elevated to the status of prophet and priest. Having been to that press launch, I know the temptation of teasing fans online, but dropping cryptic hints is a somewhat sordid and trivial pleasure.

Others try and spoil for money, such as this guy trying to flog a Doctor Who script. I can understand the fannish thrill of uncovering secrets, something that comes out of a love for a book or television series. But to manipulate other people’s enthusiasm for your own greed is just reprehensible. Similarly annoying are those who think it funny to tell people information they dn’t want to know, the type who created “Dumbledore is Dead” t-shirts shortly after book 6 was published.

So spoilers are a very mixed bag, on the one hand harmless teasers, and at the other extreme, the information age’s equivalent of crack cocaine. Remember kids, just say NO! (And remind me to do the same!)

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Does the welfare state destroy the family?

By Caleb | July 16, 2007

My good friend and Cardiff University’s friendly neighbourhood demagogue Swithun has started a blog, The Eclectic Rambler. He can be a bit wordy, but I’m sure it will prove to be interesting because Swithun both has real conviction about what he believes, and opinions on just about everything. While I often disagree with him, it’s always entertaining to discuss with him.

One of Swithun’s recent offerings was about the Tories’ plans to give financial incentives to married couples as part of a package of efforts to rebuild society. I think the Conservatives have identified a real problem. For all our prosperity and affluence, in terms of happiness and social well-being, our country is very lacking. It’s hard to bemoan the state of society today without sounding like an old fart, but from our target-obsessed education system to stable nuclear families seeming like an anachronistic oddity to the ubiquity of materialistic consumerism, there seems to be a genuine malaise afflicting Western culture today.

So what exactly is the root of the problem? According to Swithun, “The destruction of marriage, the family and society can almost solely be blamed on the state: in particular the welfare state”. Elaborating on his theory, he claims “Where the state does more, the Church and family (nuclear and extended) do less.” You can read his full argument here.

My first question would be, were the Church and family looking after everyone properly before the Big Bad State came along and spoiled everything? Well, a quick look at history would show you that the poor were not being provided for as they should be, at least if you regard a reasonable minimum of care to be somewhere above sending people to the dreaded Poor House. Yes, Church and family should help care for those in need, but there also needs to be a safety net for when they can’t or don’t. What’s more, unless there’s a massive revival in religious participation, then the Church is in no place to shoulder that responsibility, and I can’t see society organising itself to look after all those in need spontaneously.

Secondly, just off the top of my head, I can think of several other likely causes for the destruction of traditional social structures, such as:
1) The Industrial Revolution
2) The Sexual Revolution, particularly the invention of contraceptives
3) Secularisation, both in its Modernist and Postmodernist forms

The technological advances of 1) and 2) are not in themselves bad, and carry with them the potential for a great deal of good. However, we’ve rushed to embrace these new developments without stopping to catch our breath and deal with the social consequences that they have. Although I think Marxism is dramatically mistaken on many counts, I admire it as an attempt to understand and respond to the upheaval that industrialisation brought. It gives a wrong answer, but at least it’s asking the right questions, which is more than the Church has done in general. We’re still reeling from those changes, and are rushing headlong into the Information Revolution, again without stopping to try and plan how we’ll manage the changes that will bring.

I think that Swithun has some good points about how certain forms of welfare can encourage irresponsibility. But I don’t agree with him that “Only the entire abolition of the welfare state will solve this and many other problems; as long as it exists these problems will be perpetuated”. Welfare is not inherently unfair or inherently socially destructive. It all depends on whether it’s being given fairly to those who genuinely need it. It’s a tool for social engineering, and whether or not that’s a good or a bad thing depends entirely on what kind of society you are trying to engineer. Let’s hope our politicians can find a way of turn it to helping create a soulful society that encourages community and family life, that gives people a sense of responsibility, rather than our soulless society of consumerism, individualism and triviality.

But the change that’s needed is more than just economic: it’s cultural, tied up with what people think and believe. Any attempt to solve the problem purely by economic means will fail. People need to really believe that they have a responsibility to one another, that they need to invest time in relationships, and not just in the bottom line when it comes to educational or financial targets. Unless people’s souls are changed, then no amount of economic fiddling – either modifying the welfare state or abolishing it altogether – will create genuine change.

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Doctor Who: Series 3 in Review

By Caleb | July 11, 2007

Doctor Who has come a long way since it first returned to our screens in 2005. From risky reinvention to mainstream hit, the big question at the beginning of series 3 was “will they be able to keep up the quality and keep it fresh?”

If anyone doubted the answer to that question was “yes”, then the opening story Smith and Jones swiftly laid those doubts to rest, with an assured and action-packed tale that introduced Martha Jones to the Doctor when the hospital she was working in was transported to the moon by a platoon of Judoon. New girl Martha proved to be a warm and likeable character, different from Rose but still very much in the 21st century girl explorer mould. We also got a couple of mentions of some guy called “Mr Saxon”…

This was swiftly followed by The Shakespeare Code, a witty script teaming up the Doctor and Shakespeare against the witch-like Carrionites, who use the power of words for their nefarious ends. The alien invasion by having a small group of villains open up a portal for their army is rather unoriginal even by Doctor Who’s promiscuous standards, with stories such as The Unquiet Dead and series 2 finale Army of Ghosts having recently covered similar ground. But it’s good to see an historical setting so spectacularly realised, and the whole yarn is told with such style and gusto that it’s still massively entertaining despite these elements of unoriginality.

Off to the year 5 billion next for a return visit to New New York, for one of the oddest and most charming Doctor Who stories yet attempted. What other show could have a 20 year long traffic jam, a giant head in a jar, cat nuns, Macra and hymns, and tell a good story with it all? While Russell T Davies freely acknowledges sources like Mega City One from Judge Dread, here it’s all remixed into an original and touching meditation on faith and hope. With giant crabs.

Off then back to old New York in the Doctor’s latest encounter with the Daleks. Daleks in Manhatten may not have been to everyone’s taste story-wise, but few can deny that it looked amazing, with a small amount of filming in New York helping to create spectacular shots of the city in the 1930s. Personally, I loved this two-parter. It was great to see the Daleks scheming and plotting away rather than just blasting in as an army, and I loved the dissent among the Cult of Skaro, with their independent thought and personalities. Yes, some of the science was a bit dodgy, but for a show based around a time-travelling police box, I can suspend my disbelief.

The Lazarus Experiment and 42 took two sci-fi tropes, the mad scientist, and an alien nasty loose on a spaceship, and did them fairly well, too, but coming back to back couldn’t escape the feeling of being somewhat generic runarounds. They were lifted by some effective moments, such as the showdown with Professor Lazarus in the cathedral, and the Doctor’s fear at being possessed by the alien sun, but up to this point, series 3 was “only” consistently very good, rather than reaching the dizzy heights of excellence achieved by, say, The Girl in the Fireplace. But that was all to change with Human Nature and Blink.

I picked up a copy of the novel Human Nature at Hay-on-Wye a few years ago, and it deservedly has a reputation as one of the best of the original Doctor Who novels published while the show was off the air. It’s a simple idea: the Doctor become human. It’s the story of the incarnation, or Superman II. From the classy period setting to the delightfully malevolent Family of Blood and their scarecrow servants, it’s a great story, and gives the Doctor a very human love story as he falls in love with Joan. The contrast between the humanity of John Smith and the Time Lord nature of the Doctor is fascinating, and the story also examines questions of war and how to respond to evil. The way the Doctor deals with the Family of Blood in the end is brimming with righteous rage and Old Testament fury, both very scary and very cool. The Doctor is good, but don’t ever mistake that for nice.

The next episode also didn’t have much of the actual Doctor in it, for different reasons. Since Doctor Who started having Christmas specials, there hasn’t been enough time in filming for the Doctor and his companion to film 14 episodes-worth of material, and so there’s one episode a year in which they only appear briefly on-screen. Last year’s “Doctor-lite” episode, Love & Monsters, is the Marmite of Doctor Who stories, with many either loving it or hating it. Personally, I really enjoyed L&M, but Steven Moffat’s Blink made a virtue of a smaller budget and a largely absent David Tennant to deliver a brilliantly creepy tale of weeping angels that was on another level entirely. It managed the impressive feat of not seeming disappointing after Paul Cornell’s superlative two-parter. Carey Mulligan carried the episode well as Sally Sparrow (and was very cute), putting her at the top of many fans’ wish-list for new companions.

Series 3 managed to better disguise its penny-pinching towards the end of the series than series 2, where we ended up with two cheap contemporary Earth stories back-to-back before the Cybermen vs Dalek epic finale. Utopia takes us to an alien planet at the end of the universe, distracting us from the cheap, old-school filming in a quarry by making it a pivotal “event” episode and giving us some cracking performances from regulars and the supporting cast. The first big hook was the return of Captain Jack, but he wasn’t the only time-traveller from the Doctor’s past making a reappearance. Although the episode probably didn’t make enough of its end of the universe setting, it crackled into life in the final quarter of an hour with the return of the Master. Derek Jacobi masterfully manages the transition from kindly human Professor Yana to evil Time Lord, and John Simm is just electric as the regenerated Master in the final scenes.

The series finale goes bigger than ever before, with the Master actually succeeding in outsmarting the Doctor and taking over the world, and ready to start his takeover of the rest of the universe. Some fans seem to want a serious Master more like Jacobi, or Roger Delgado who first played the role, but I love John Simm’s manic mirror-image of the Doctor, casually taking over the country and murdering the cabinet, stealing many of the best lines from the Doctor. It’s a pity that after starting by defying supervillain convention by refusing to tell the Doctor all his plans so the Doctor can work out how to defeat him, the Master then falls into the trap of keeping all his opponents alive so that he can gloat. It’s just a pity that the production team didn’t stick to their guns and kill him off without the Flash Gordon-style “The End… or is it?!?” scene of someone (Lucy Saxon?) picking up his ring from the funeral pyre.

The “one year later” conceit allows for a refreshingly different post-apocalyptic setting for the final episode, though it makes it rather inevitable that Russell was going to hit the reset button by the end of the story. But he actually makes it work: the Paradox Device is set up in advance, and the characters have to struggle through a year of hell to put things back to normal. This is no easy victory.

And while the world is saved, there are consequences for all the characters: the death of the Master, the Doctor’s loss both of his old enemy and Martha Jones as she leaves him, Martha taking charge of her life and giving up on her unrequited love for the Doctor, and her family needing to face up to what they’ve all been through. While it doesn’t quite manage to pack the same punch as the Ninth Doctor’s regeneration or Rose’s departure, it finishes off the series in fine style.

Now that’s my episode-by-episode analysis, but what of the themes of the series? One of the big themes of the revived Doctor Who is the question of “what does it mean to be human?”, which was explored more in this series than ever before. It crops us for the first time in Smith and Jones with the Judoon cataloguing people as human or not human. The Doctor describes Shakespeare as “the most human human who ever lived”, while Professor Lazarus set out to “change what it means to be human” with disastrous consequences.

Daleks in Manhatten has Dalek Sec attempting to create Dalek/human hybrids, leading to a discussion of what defines humanity – is it our compassion, creativity and the like, or our aggression, our propensity for self-destruction and war? Human Nature faces the Doctor with the choice – the life of a Time Lord, a wandering lonely god, or the life of a human, to have a wife and family, and to grow old and die. This is one of the things the show does best – by showing us all these monsters and aliens, casting a fresh light on our own nature as humans.

This series also saw the development of the Doctor as a messiah-figure. From the Doctor’s own incarnation as a human being and his heart-wrenching choice to end his life as a human to save the world in Human Nature, to Martha walking the world spreading the Gospel of the Doctor in Last of the Time Lords, the Christ-like parallels have rarely been more blatantly drawn. Is this just to give a bit of extra mythic zing to the show, or is something more going on?

Russell T Davies seems to be deliberately giving Christian imagery a humanist spin. The whole world saying “Doctor” in the finale was very prayer-like, but it inverted the Christian idea of prayer, where power comes from the one being prayed to, God. Here, power came from those “praying”, from humanity’s combined psychic power, which the Doctor attunes himself to using the Master’s telepathic field. It’s a homage to the power and potential of humanity, to hope as a source of strength in itself.

Arguably, however, the show gives a lopsided view of humanity, showing its potential for great good, which is undoubtedly true and one of the real strength of the show, but without dealing honestly with our corresponding capacity for great evil. Although the show’s monsters are often warnings of what humanity could become, it would be interesting to see the show pick up on the idea in The Christmas Invasion where the Doctor says he ought to have warned the Sycorax to “Run and hide because the monsters are coming: the human race.” But overall, Doctor Who’s broad humanism is one of the great things about it, and Russell T Davies resists the temptation to make it an explicitly and exclusively secular humanism.

To return to the original question, they didn’t just keep up the quality of Doctor Who in series 3, but surpassed it. There’s some concern over the casting of Catherine Tate as the new companion, but from only really seeing her in the Christmas special, I’m inclined to think it could be a lot of fun, as long as Donna is developed as a character. She seems unlikely to fall in love with the Doctor, which would get a bit repetitive a third time around. But if the last three series are anything to go by, series 4 of Doctor Who will continue to surprise and delight.

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On the job trail

By Caleb | July 11, 2007

I had my first interview on Monday and just heard back that I didn’t get the job. One of the points of feedback they gave me was that my interview technique could be improved. I realised at the time I was nervous and didn’t make as much eye contact as I should have, and they gave a couple of other points for improvement.

So I’m disappointed about that – I’d have been very happy with that job. But all is not lost! Since that interview, another company I’ve applied to contacted me to say they want to interview me for a job I’ve applied for with them. Unlike the first job, it’s in the media which is where I’d really like to be working, and it looks really interesting and I’d really, really love to get it. So hopefully I’ll be able to learn from my first attempt and go in and dazzle the panel on the second.

Here’s some of the advice I was given:

  • Make eye contact – fairly obvious basic of communication, really
  • Be concise – a bit tricky to judge how long an answer is expected. I didn’t think I was being too waffly most of the time, but I’ll try and keep it snappy.
  • Be focused on the job in hand – or, don’t mention that you’re applying for other stuff.

This last one was because I’d said in response to the question “Would you take the job if offered?” something like “Yes, almost definitely, unless perhaps something else surprisingly came up suddenly. I wouldn’t not take it out of the hope that something better might come along later”. So perhaps a bit waffly, but I was trying to be as positive as I could be, but also be honest. Well, live and learn, and with the next job, I can honestly say I definitely wouldn’t hesitate a moment before accepting.

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What I want to do when I grow up

By Caleb | July 5, 2007

Being a student has been a somewhat strange time of transition into adulthood. Just as leaving home for university was both an exciting and scary prospect, now leaving university for work is just as exciting and scary.

Probably the biggest challenge facing me now as a graduand (funny word that) is the search for a job. No more living at home off my parents’ income, no more student loan to pay the rent and bills – from here on in, I need to start making my own living. That’s somewhat daunting, but there’s something satisfying about becoming financially independent, taking responsibility for myself in that way.

It raises the whole big question of “what do you want to do with your life?” As a Christian, I believe that my first priority is to honour, glorify and delight in God. Since he made humanity in his image, to be truly human is to be a symbol and pointer to the goodness, beauty and truth of the creator. Living life is a performance, a work of art. There are a billion and one ways of riffing on the theme of the image of God, countless styles and performances that can be made on that theme.

So to get down to what form my specific performance on the stage of life should take, I need to discern the calling that God has for me, something that arises out of the interplay of, firstly, the gifts and abilities God has given me, secondly, the needs and opportunities in the world around me, and thirdly, my freedom to make choices that express my love for and delight in God.

I believe that God has gifted me with a certain gift for words, for using language, and that I’m someone more inclined to thought and a more intellectual approach to things. At the moment, I’d say that my understanding of my vocation is something like “to engage critically and creatively with the culture around me”.

In particular, I love to write, and I want to tell stories. So one of my big ambitions is to be a successful published author. While I probably won’t match the mega-success of J K Rowling or Dan Brown, I hope that I’ll one day be able to make a living out of what I write. And not just prose – I’d also love to write for television and radio. Maybe theatre too, come to that, but I’ve not really thought about it. And not just fiction – I’ve really loved being involved with the student media, and if I could get into journalism then that’d be amazing, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that without further training, which is expensive, but if I can find a way of getting my foot on the ladder… Anyway, words and stories form a big part of what I want to do with my life.

More generally, I want to engage critically with our culture. I believe that the Christian message is good news of hope that our society and culture, indeed the whole world, desperately needs to hear. I want to engage both individuals and my culture generally in a conversation where I bring it into dialogue with the revolutionary, life-changing, all-encompassing message of Jesus. This means listening carefully to what people are saying, to the ideas being put forward in books and songs and films, as well as thinkers and the man on the street, and trying to discuss it seriously and thoughtfully. I also want to help other Christians live out their faith in the wholeness of life, and contribute to the life of the Church, particularly in my local community of believers.

My third great hope and ambition, arguably the most important, is to have a family, to be a loving husband and father. At the moment there’s a rather important missing ingredient in that plan, but I trust that God will help me find a woman to love and cherish if that’s what he wants for me!

So what do I plan to do? I’m currently looking for work. If it can be in some way connected to what I want to be doing, so much the better, but realistically I may need to take something that’s only indirectly related at best to support myself as I get some experience and try and get on with writing my novel and other projects in my spare time. I plan on staying in Cardiff for at least the next academic year, but beyond that, God only knows. I’d like to visit China again, and I hope that vast country can be reached more and more with the Gospel, but my inclination is that my “mission field” is here at home in the UK. I’ve got my first job interview next week, a job I’d be pleased to get, but God knows what the future holds – quite literally, I’m glad to say (though Swithun might disagree!). Anyway, I look forward to my new adventures as I leave university!

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2:1

By Caleb | June 27, 2007

I got my degree classification today – 2:1, which I’m very happy with. Not quite as happy as I would be if I’d got a 1st, naturally enough, but it’s what I expected and I’d rather have all the extra-curricular experiences I’ve had as a student and a lower mark than have had a better mark and no life beyond my studies.

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Life after university

By Caleb | June 27, 2007

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks now since I finished university. I’ve been to Oxford to visit a friend, been to Birmingham for the Contagious training day, watched series 2 of Battlestar Galactica, applied for some jobs and continued work on my novel.

Applying for jobs is a somewhat tedious process, filling out application forms and trying to fine-tune my CV to each job that I apply for. I’ve applied for stuff at Care for the Family, BBC Wales and Confused.com, as well as for various bits of summer work – I’ll be doing a couple of days next week through the University Jobshop, which is just as well since my funds are depleting rapidly!

I’m aiming for 1,000 words a day on my novel now, and I passed 15,000 on Monday, which is probably around two-thirds of the way through the first act of the story. Russell T Davies used a couple of ideas in Saturday’s Doctor Who episode, the exciting Sound of Drums, but hopefully nobody will notice by the time anyone reads my story and when I’ve used them in a bit of a different context. Sometimes I suspect that Russell has a secret device to scan the minds of Cardiff’s inhabitants for good story ideas, hence the emotion patches in Gridlock being rather like my Emotion Emporium story. Or it could just be that great minds think alike, of course!

Later today I’ll be getting my degree classification. I’m guessing it’ll probably be a 2:1, which I’d be very happy with. I’ve perhaps got a chance of a First, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up so I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I manage it. I’ll post an update tonight or tomorrow morning.

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A Christian view of literature – part one

By Caleb | June 20, 2007

Part one in a series on a Christian view of literature, based on my undergraduate dissertation on that subject.

Why do we need a Christian view of literature?

Over forty years ago, literary critic Harry Blamires lamented in his book The Christian Mind,“There is no longer a Christian mind”. By this, he did not mean that there were no longer any Christian thinkers or academics, but that there is not a Christian mind in the sense of “a collectively accepted set of notions or attitudes”. Rather, “as a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularisation”. The situation has arguably not changed much by today. But what does it mean to have a Christian mind? Is there any need for a distinctively Christian perspective on literature?

In this post, I’ll answer the question with a Christian audience in mind, assuming an audience that agrees with the basic tenets of Christianity. Why bother with studying when you can get on with evangelism, for example? Why get bogged down in academic questions when there are souls to save?

The need to communicate the Gospel message to people is an urgent one, but we are called not just to redeem souls, but all creation. God’s purpose is to “reconcile to himself all things, whether things in heaven or things on Earth, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20). The nature of Christian commitment is not one of merely private belief or morality, but of living out “the Lordship of Christ in the wholeness of life”, to borrow a phrase from Francis Schaeffer.

As a result of being personally reconciled to God, we should seek to work out that reconciliation practically in our world, in every sphere of life, bringing healing and extending the influence of the Kingdom of God. Hence a Christian literary criticism is needed for Christians to have intellectual and personal integrity between their faith and studies, and to be faithful to the claims of Jesus Christ on the totality of life and existence.

But what does this mean in practice? Is it just having a Christian work ethic, studying hard and doing our best at it? That’s certainly necessary, but is there more to it than that? If everything is under the Lordship of Christ, then does that mean we need a Christian cookery as well, or a Christian perspective on road-sweeping?

Some activities are comparatively neutral in their content. There isn’t really a specifically Christian method of roadsweeping – you don’t need to sweep cross-shaped patterns in the dust, for example. But living for Jesus may have implications for even apparently mundane activities. When it comes to cooking, a Christian has particular reason to be concerned that the ingredients that they use are from sources where the workers are treated fairly, for example, and to make sure that they look after their body because it is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

What’s more, in any activity involving assumptions about the nature of the world and humanity, and so on, the Christian has a responsibility to make sure that they are working from a worldview faithful to what is revealed in Scripture. There aren’t usually any deep-rooted philosophical assumptions about the meaning of life involved in sweeping the road, but there probably will be at some stage in any serious academic study. Christians are called to serve God with all their minds, and so need to think consistently with Christianity as well as act with a Christian ethic.

It also isn’t possible to separate intellectual content from practical ethic. You can think in a way that is proud or humble, for example, and that will change the answers you come up with. Seeking truth involves a moral obligation as well as an intellectual one. Thinking Christianly is a matter of intellectual virtue.

All this means that faithfulness to God in one’s studies means not only acting Christianly in one’s personal behaviour, such as being honest and conscientious, but also being faithful in the life of the mind and in one’s professional activity, in a way that is consistent with a Christian understanding of the world and patterns of thought.

In the next installment, I’ll ask whether a Christian perspective on literature can be justified as a legitimate activity to non-Christians, to the secular world of academia.

Some futher reading:
– The Christian Mind – Harry Blamires
– Total Truth – Nancy Pearcey

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I’m going to be published!

By Caleb | June 19, 2007

Hooray! The winners of Big Finish’s Doctor Who short story competition have been officially announced, and I was one of the 24 shortlisted. I can now publicly celebrate the fact that I’m going to have my first professionally published short story in an anthology next year – woo!

Michael Coen’s What I Did On My Holidays has won the Big Finish Doctor Who short story competition, launched on our website and aimed at previously unpublished new writers. The story – which features the second Doctor and his friends Jamie and Zoe – will be published in the Defining Patterns anthology, in September of this year. Norman’s homework worries his teacher. Instead of a trip to the beach or the zoo, it’s about meeting a man from the future. Norman of course knows better than to talk to strange men, but this is his own grown-up self. Surely he can’t mean any harm… Can he? “To have actually won the competition is a huge surprise and an absolute delight,” says Michael. “I can’t wait to see my story in print and I’m also looking forward to reading the stories from other entrants, which I’m sure are equally deserving.” The competition aimed to give one new author their ‘first break’. Open to anyone who had never had a work of fiction professional published, the brief was to write a 2,500-word story based on the theme How The Doctor Changed My Life. The response was massive. With more than 1,000 full-length entries, the judges read the equivalent of 50 new series hardback novels before picking Michael’s as their favourite. “It’s a lively, funny and strangely moving story,” enthuses chief-judge Simon Guerrier. “Michael keeps you guessing all the way along. And, very importantly, he’s really brings the second Doctor to life.” “Having now fulfilled one of my life’s ambitions,” says Michael, “I can start to work my down the rest of the list – travelling in space (and time, if possible), finding a cache of missing Doctor Who episodes, meeting [actress] Anneke Wills… And, of course, trying to persuade Big Finish to accept some more submissions from me!” What’s more, though the competition was aimed at finding just one winner, the judges were so impressed with the quality of many entries they’ve decided to extend the prize. “We had an incredibly strong shortlist of the best 25 entries,” explains Guerrier. “Defining Patterns will see Michael’s story published alongside many established and well-known writers. But we felt our shortlist was of such quality that it deserved a whole book of its own.” This special anthology, deftly titled How The Doctor Changed My Life, will be published in late 2008. The 24 runners up are: Violet Addison; Steven Alexander; Mike Amberry; Arnold T Blumberg; Anna Bratton; John Callaghan; Dann Chinn; Stephen Dunn; Richard Goff; Peter Hallbright; Tim Lambert; JR Loflin; Nick May; James C McFetridge; Simon Moore; Michael Montoure; LM Myles; Einar Olgeirsson; Bernard O’Toole; Andrew K Purvis; Michael Rees; Mark Smith; Chris Wing; Caleb Woodbridge

I was informed by email last Thursday, and I’ve been buzzing with the news ever since. As an aspiring writer, it’s a real encouragement for me that I must be doing something right to make the shortlist. Here’s to making it to the top spot in the next competition I enter!

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Glorifying God through studying

By Caleb | June 18, 2007

Dave Bish has written a couple of posts that particularly interested me recently, one on The Heart of Art, asking What does it look like to be a Christian artist – or indeed a Christian in any sphere of life?, and another responding to Christian students who said “I’d rather do evangelism than my course“. Gareth Russell, who’s just finished studying Politics, has written some thoughts on the matter on his blog, highlighting the importance of defending the Christian worldview.

These are great questions to consider, and ones I’ve been keen to try and encourage my fellow students to think about, especially through the CU Christians in Humanities group. I wrote my dissertation on Christian literary criticism, asking what a distinctively Christian perspective on literature should be.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll try and adapt the material into a less academic style to post here on my blog. The first section deals directly with the question of why Christians should try and develop a Christian understanding and approach to their studies, and I hope that the main body of the dissertation will be helpful to any Christians interested in literature in thinking about what their faith means for the subject.

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