Simon Guerrier's Blog, page 40

Sherlock Holmes - The Great War

I'm currently in the midst of writing Sherlock Holmes - The Great War, an original novel for Titan Books. More details soon but here's the exciting cover...

Sherlock Holmes -
The Great War

My listing on the Titan Books websiteMe on Conan Doyle and London

Doctor Who Magazine #561

Out today, the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is devoted to the novelisations of TV Doctor Who stories published in the 1970s and 1980s by Target Books. There's a free, exclusive new book included with the issue, plus I've spoken to Robert Shearman, Mark Gatiss and Joy Wilkinson about their new novelisations of their 21st century episodes - Dalek, The Crimson Horror and The Witch Finders.

It's been a thrill to read advance copies of those three books, having grown up on Target. I'm also very much looking forward to next month's release of the 1971 series of Doctor Who on Blu-ray, which includes the documentary by Frank Skinner and my mate Chris Chapman about the great Terrance Dicks - author of more Target books than anyone else. Dicks helped created Doctor Who's best enemy, the Master; I'm increasingly of the opinion that Dicks was the Master all the time.

Scourge of the Cybermen - an original audio novel by me, in a Target styleThe Target Storybook - an anthology, including a story by meEscape to Danger - my pal Jim Sangster works his way through the Target novelisationsBacklisted podcast on the novelisation of The Brain of Morbius, with Drs Una McCormack and Matthew Sweet

Scourge of the Cybermen

Feast your eyeballs on this glorious cover by Claudia Gironi for Doctor Who and the Scourge of the Cybermen , a six-hour original audio novel I've written which will be out in July. Cybermen and sunflowers, what more could you want?

The novel is read by Jon Culshaw, with Cyber voices done by Nick Briggs. The script editor was Roland Moore and the director David Richardson.
I'm delighted that it's Jon Culshaw on this as his perfect reading of Death to The Daleks has been a big influence here - that novelisation (of a 1974 TV story) had always been one of my favourites, and I hope what I've typed has a similar feel.

Masterful and the Switching

Just received my copy of the Masterful box set - a sumptuous collection of eight CDs comprising the epic adventure starring 10 incarnations of Doctor Who's old school pal, the Master. The bonus material includes my short story The Switching read by Duncan Wisby.

"Yesterday there were two Time Lord prisoners on Earth - the Master in his cell, the Doctor in his exile. But today the Doctor's not quite feeling himself. Today he's seeing things from a different perspective. And today the Master's going to escape..."

I'm very fond of The Switching, which was my first professional gig as a writer of fiction, written in August and September 2002 and published in Short Trips - Zodiac at the end of that year. It was also one of the first jobs I picked up after going freelance, and I'm very grateful to editor Jacqueline Rayner for taking a punt on me, and to Jonathan Morris who read my first, clumsy draft and applied a lot of red pen.

The Short Trips stories I wroteLesser Evils - another short story by me featuring the MasterDuncan Wisby in Graceless IV by me

TARDIS 17.2

That splendid lot at the Doctor Who Appreciation Society are unleashing TARDIS magazine vol 17 issue 2, sold in aid of the mental health charity Mind. I'm particularly keen to see what editor Robbie Dunlop has unearthed about 1966 story The Celestial Toymaker...

Among the treats, there's me on the writing of my 2007 Doctor Who novel The Pirate Loop.

TARDIS 17.2 - £7.99 for DWAS membersTARDIS 17.2 - £9.99 for non-membersFull details of TARDIS 17.2

Cinema Limbo: Highlander II

I'm again a guest on the Cinema Limbo podcast, in which Jeremy Phillips looks again at neglected old films. This time, he inflicted on me Highlander II. 

Cinema Limbo: Highlander II

We've previously discussed Ryan's Daughter and the 1976 version of King Kong.

And here's me in more positive form on some of amazing non-Bond films starring Sean Connery.

FREE - Santa Benny at the Bottom of the Sea

That splendid lot at Big Finish have a special Christmas present for you all - a free download of Dame Lisa Bowerman reading my new short story, "Santa Benny at the Bottom of the Sea". Merry Christmas!

Free download of Santa Benny at the Bottom of the Sea

Blurb as follows:

'It will, I admit, be something of a challenge. But you thrive on challenges. And you have experience in communing with psychic populations.'
'So have you, Brax.' 
'A little, yes. Bernice, this is important. And very regrettably, I don't fit the suit.'

Deep under the sea, Nessa, Freng and Strong are trying very hard to be nice. Because if they are naughty, then Santa won’t come and give them presents. And they do want presents very much. But what does Santa really want from them? And what does being nice *really* involve..?

This story comes from Bernice Summerfield: The Christmas Collection, and is offered free for a limited time only, December 2020.

Happy Times and Places

Waaah!I'm Toby Hadoke's guest on the Happy Times and Places podcast this week. At my bidding, Toby watches / listens to the 1967 Doctor Who story The Evil of the Daleks and shares the ideas inside his brain. These include which actors dated who, and how good director Derek Martinus was in his casting. Toby also has to guess my favourite things from each of the seven episodes.

You may like to now that I wrote a book about The Evil of the Daleks, and we recreated the sets of episode 1 for Doctor Who Magazine's recent production design special.

Doctor Who Magazine 559

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is full of festive treats. Rhys Williams, Gavin Rymill and I have attempted to recreate the studio sets of missing 1965 Christmas special The Feast of Steven by exhaustively picking over photographs and production paperwork, and interviewing production assistant Michael E Briant and fans Jeremy Bentham, Ian McLachlan and Marc Platt who watched it go out. Some archive interviews and Ian Levine's diaries also came into play. It has been quite the endeavour...

(Inevitably, the day the issue is released, a new photograph turns up with some additional clues, including traces of fake snow. But anyway...)

There's also the second part of my feature on David Whitaker's contributions to the early history of the Daleks.

World-Building: How Science Sculpts Science Fiction

It me
Last week, I was on an online panel organised by IPAC and and the Keck Institute for Space Studies, discussing the ways that science-fiction writers create fantastical worlds. A little intimidatingly, the other panelists were Becky Chambers, Mary Robinette Kowal and John Scalzi, all under the eye of moderator Phil Plait. Here's the full thing:

The time difference meant that the panel started at 1 am for me - so, rather fittingly, I was calling in from the future.

Thanks to Dr. Jessie Christiansen for inviting me and the expert team who put it all together.