No Future

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I actually got the chance to tell Paul Cornell about this blog in person. He was here for CONvergence, an annual Twin Cities con that Paul himself has described as "the best in the world". He was very enthused to hear about a blog devoted to the books, as he clearly remembers the era fondly...but when I mentioned that we were almost up to 'No Future', he grimaced. "I'm sorry," he said, in that terribly polite way that he has. "I always hated that one."

This is not the first time I'd heard that. In fact, he said the same thing to me when I got the book signed at his first CONvergence appearance, a few years back. But even though I admire Paul tremendously, in this he is dead wrong. And I will now explain why 'No Future' is a wonderful book.

1) It is clever. One of Paul's biggest complaints about the book is that it ends with a big sequence of everyone sitting around a table while the Doctor explains the plot to them. But here's the thing: That's exactly what's needed at this stage of the novel, because Cornell has just rung in no less than a half-dozen extremely clever plot twists over the course of the novel's climax, and while some of them do get explained as they go on (Pike as a secret Vardan, Ace as a triple agent, the fake dagger, the misfiring gun) there are still plenty that deserve a spot for us to just revel in the sheer brilliance of the explanation. I do not care that there's a whocking great chunk of exposition at the end, not when it comes after a scene where the Doctor is stabbed in the chest, locked in a coffin, and left on an ice planet to die...and proceeds to rescue Bernice a bit later. The book is plotted too finely for me to care that the magician needed a whole chapter to explain how the trick was done.

2) It is witty. One of the complaints I heard from reviewers is that the book was too arch. Here I can at least acknowledge understanding what they're talking about; there are a few bits, such as the videotape of the alternate universe where the Doctor left himself clues, that come off as a titch too self-consciously wry and self-referential to work. But for every one like that, there are ten great lines like, "I demonstrated him in front of the whole cabinet on a flock of sheep." "But they're simple, wooly-minded creatures with no will of their own!" "True, but I think they were impressed with what he did to the sheep." This book has some great, laugh-out-loud dialogue, and I feel that it perfectly captures the joy that should be present in Cornell's "summer" novel.

3) It is deeper than it looks. For a novel that's about an alliance of the Vardans and the Meddling Monk (and does great things with both, by the way--this is very much a redemptive reading of these concepts) this is a book with a lot of thematic depth. The whole subtext is about everyone taking on the Doctor's role of master manipulator and deceiver, and the ways that doing so changes their perspective on the Doctor's actions. Ace finds herself switching roles with the Doctor, manipulating him and pretending to betray him for a greater good, and finds that it's not something that gives her a sense of power as much as it does intense guilt. The Doctor winds up in Ace's shoes, and gets a taste of what it's like to be the puppet on the strings. But it goes even deeper than that. With the exception of Benny, who's pretty much Cornell's Greek chorus, virtually everybody is more than they appear to be. Sergeant Benton is ostensibly loyal to UNIT, but secretly aids the Doctor. The Brigadier is pretending that the Doctor is an alien saboteur because he doesn't know who to trust. Mike Yates and Broadsword are pretending to be Black Star agents. Pike is a secret Vardan traitor who's actually a secret traitor to the Vardans. And of course the entire invasion plan is built on a massive deception. That's a subtext so rich you could grow crops in it, that is.

4) It is well-characterized. Another complaint I've heard about the book is that the Brigadier "doesn't act right". Oh noes! The Brigadier experienced personal growth as a result of being around the Doctor, and has become significantly more awesome as a result! CORNELL YOU FIEND! In all seriousness, there's a lot of great characterization here. Benny is excellent, Ace is wonderfully conflicted, the Doctor is in over his head and hating it, and oh by the way this is the first time I've read this book since actually sitting down to watch 'The Time Meddler' and Cornell nails Peter Butterworth. Absolutely nails the portrayal spot on.

5) It is cathartic. I think this is what always makes me stand up and cheerlead for this book, even over the objections of the author. At this point, the range needed a novel like this, one that ended the outward spiral of the characters away from being sympathetic and likable and turned them back along a path towards being a family. Ace needed to remember why she cared about the Doctor. The Doctor needed to remember that he was more than just a monster who fought monsters. Benny needed...Benny needed to get out from under the cauldron of seething angst and be allowed to grow as a person, is what she needed. I ached for this novel after four books of everyone in the TARDIS hating each other, and I loved it when I got it. Still do. That's why, despite the fact that even its author won't defend it, I will.

No Future

Paul Cornell once again does wonderful things in this novel. I've never seen the episode with the baddie in it, so I'm perhaps under-educated on some of the background story. That said, I had a blast reading it.

The Doctor's treatment of Ace and their mutual mistrust has come to a head. Her neutrality toward Bennie has slid toward dislike. In addition to all that, Ace has started having visions of a red-clad woman. Meanwhile, they're back in the 1970s and finding out that something or someone has been interfering. The solution? Save the world with rock 'n roll!

OK, fine, punk. Regardless, this is a great setup for a novel. And Cornell's usual deft touch with character is back. He's shameless about invoking elements of Love and War, of course, because he understands the unwritten parts of that story. I enjoyed this book a lot more than Love and War, though, for multiple reasons.

First, that aforementioned deft touch with characters. I liked the punk band, especially Danny. The UNIT subplot is ingenious and works only because Cornell makes you believe these characters would behave in just the way they do, especially the beloved Brigadier. What do you mean, you don't recognize the Doctor and Ace? And yet Benton recognizes the Doctor, as does Yates? This plot, by the way, had me almost biting my nails... and I've been working very hard to quit! So well done, and so much fun. Bravo. And while I have no idea, as previously stated, if Mortimus is true to the series, he is internally consistent through the whole novel. His mannerisms are distinctive but not overplayed and he comes across as a very real villain, in part because of his capriciousness.

Second, the usual Cornell tight plotting. He knows where he is taking the book, and so events unspool cleanly and with a sense of inevitability. This can be hard to take, like when Ace is so very clearly being manipulated by Mortimus. As she follows him into his TARDIS, as he apparently mind-controls her, it made me want to reach through the pages and shake her. A feeling of real danger to main characters is hard to come by, even in the NAs so far, but Cornell can bring it off.

Third, because despite all this it has a wonderfully light touch. Even when I was trying not to bite my nails, Benny could make me laugh. Even when I was seriously worried for Ace, Danny's nerves about sex kept things from getting too thick. No, this isn't a romp. It's clear that for at least some characters, things are not going to end well. The ability to soft-pedal that, though, is magnificent. And the Doctor's brilliant escape at a pivotal moment is both jaw-dropping (yes, even though of course he's going to escape) and funny. I mean, really... origami?

It's really almost too bad that you have to go through Blood Heat and The Dimension Riders to get to this point. The other three books in the arc - Left-Handed Hummingbird, Conundrum, and No Future - stand as shining examples of what Doctor Who can be when it's freed of budget considerations and has excellent writers to take it that next step farther. I'll read the latter three again for fun, where I won't read the former two. And I feel bad for Gareth Roberts, because he had to follow this one... and I just don't know how anyone could pull that off.

Chat: Conundrum

John: And the hits just keep on coming, don’t they? This is part of a stretch of books I absolutely love...which is funny, because I kind of hated them the first time I read them. I read the series out of order up through...oh, I think it was ‘Head Games’...and so I really didn’t understand at the time that this was a story arc that was deliberately ramping up the tension between Ace and the Doctor so that it could release it cathartically. I thought Ace was just being kind of a jerk. Mind you, she still kind of is, but so is Benny. The regulars don’t cover themselves with glory in this one, do they?

Dee: No, they really don’t. I love the book, but at this point I’d love to give Ace a swift kick in the tail. Except, of course, I’d get flechetted. Benny, I can understand behaving as she is to an extent. It must be decidedly uncomfortable on the TARDIS at this point, and who can blame her for wanting to leave?

And yet, holy cow, I love this story. The characters are so improbable, and they don’t realize it... and I never saw the original Land of Fiction story in its entirety, so I didn’t pick up on what was going on until the robots appeared. Once they did, though, I did remember what I’d seen: the distinctive noise kept going in my head. Then everything makes sense, but it’s not like the original Land of Fiction, so how are they going to get out of it? Especially with the tension and the team not working together, unlike the original trip to the Land.

John: Actually, I thought that Benny was worse than Ace in this one. “I’ve finally got Ace to confide in me! I’m going to go blab it to the Doctor now!” ICK. But yes, the main thing here is just how wonderfully deadpan Steve Lyons is. It’s this beautiful double layer of irony involved--on the one hand, he’s taking all these old shop-worn tropes and lame ideas from ancient adventure fiction, like the Famous Five and the Phantom Stranger, and putting them in modern, grim and gritty stories to show how utterly unrealistic and ludicrous they are...and then, he reveals that this approach is taken by a whiny, overgrown adolescent who’s run out of good ideas and is pissing in the sandbox because he can’t think of anything good to do with the toys anymore. That is absolutely beautiful to me.

Dee: That’s the only way this can work, and (at least for me) work it does. I love how the relationships in the Land weave together, as well. This character married to that character, a group of kids traveling to the beach when their parents seem to have been in the village without leaving for decades... priceless. Superhero meeting spy novel meeting thriller meeting Lifetime drama about abuse. It’s great. And at first the TARDIS crew grates in that somehow-harmonious milieu, and it’s only later that it becomes clear that the grating is all that’s saving them. He does great work here.

John: And he plays it all so straight. I think that’s why Phil thought that it was a serious book that was wrecking his favorite story, because Lyons never breaks character. He’s writing from the point of view of the Master of the Land, and he never deviates from that perspective even when it’s obvious that there’s a huge disconnect between what the narrative is saying and what the author thinks. It’s like watching Stephen Colbert work in some ways. The whole thing with the Famous Five’s dog going rabid and having to be put down is simultaneously funny and mean-spirited, but you’re meant to see both ends. That’s the book in a nutshell, I think.

Dee: Very much so. And, of course, your beloved Scrabble game moment. It’s beautiful and hair-raising at once. And at the end, when they confront the Master of the Land, you do feel sorry for him. How can you not? He’s a victim. You wish that the Doctor could rescue him as well. I think it was never quite explained why not, but I understand why: he’s too much a character himself.

John: Well, they’ll get into that a lot in Lyons’ next NA, ‘Head Games’ (um, not to spoil or anything...) But I think it’s more a case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma than any kind of physical barrier. The MoL is, to his mind, playing the odds...yes, the Doctor could theoretically get both of them out, and yes, he could even more theoretically defeat the villain behind all this who seems to have unlimited power and a long memory for grudges. But if the MoL allies himself with the Doctor and the Doctor loses, then he’s bound to be punished for picking the losing side. Better to try to the last to defeat the Doctor and hope for either a win or a merciful ally in defeat. At least, that’s the impression I got.

Dee: It’s a great ending. Reading it as an arc book, I can see why so many threads are left unresolved. I can imagine the frustration of fans at the time, though... Ace’s last action, again, makes me want to put her in time out. And Benny discovering the place wasn’t what she hoped is sad. None of this makes the book less to me. It did make me nervous about how they were going to wrap all this up.

John: I’m actually pretty sure I read the wrap-up first, so I already knew that it was heading for a great ending. Which is our next book! ‘No Future’, by the always excellent Paul Cornell. We saw him last weekend, and he visibly winced when we mentioned we were reading it. Let’s see if we can’t show him how wrong he is about it, shall we?

Conundrum

So right, 'Conundrum', really freaking awesome and brilliant and good and stuff. Now on to the important part--violently disagreeing with Phil Sandifer!

Phil (I am on a first-name basis with him, and almost certainly will be even after this, because he's always up for a good argument) wrote a piece on 'Conundrum' for his blog, the TARDIS Eruditorum, in which he basically argued that the entire brilliance of the concept, the novel, and the storytelling is utterly invalidated because the Doctor at one point says that the Land of Fiction was created by the Gods of Ragnarok. Which is pretty impressive on the face of it, especially when he argues that the problem is that it caters to pedantic people who focus on insignificant details instead of appreciating the magnificent whole, but it's even more impressive when you remember that this occurs towards the end of a book in which the Doctor blatantly lies about every damn thing that's happening the entire book long.

The fact is, Phil's reading of 'Conundrum' only works if you approach it with the prima facie assumption that the book is utterly lacking in irony on any possible level, which is sad because it ignores the fact that the book couldn't be dripping with irony more if it was a special irony sponge, dipped deep into the broth of irony until it was saturated with irony down to the last tiny ironic pore. Even the irony itself is steeped in irony in this book. The whole story is exactly what it doesn't mean. Reading this and deciding to take only the parts that piss you off as intended seriously is like choosing to believe that Kubrick made 'The Shining' just to tell you that he really did fake the moon landings but you'll never catch him hahahahahaha!!!!

The whole idea of the novel, like the idea of the original 'Mind Robber' before it, is that the Master of the Land of Fiction is trying to trap the Doctor within the context of our understanding. He's trying to reduce him to nothing more than a fictional character, something that we can switch off and ignore when the screen goes dead. But the Doctor is more than that, and always has been. You can't get rid of the Doctor by switching him off--he's not defined by the fictions around him, he defines them. He warps genre, he infects tropes, he subverts cliches and traipses gaily from one metafictional universe to another. He is bigger than fiction.

But in the original 'Mind Robber', this was expressed by having the Doctor rewire a computer and blow it up, because it's hard to express this concept in a way that also makes for satisfying drama. How do you have the Doctor win by subverting a trope, or defining a narrative? How do you beat a bad guy by outwriting him?

Oh wait.

Because that's exactly what the Doctor does to beat the Master of the Land of Fiction in the end. It's not that he tricks the Master into creating a big bunch of technobabble radiation that disperses the Land, it's that he subverts the narrative by suggesting that technobabble radiation should disperse it in the first place. The Land of Fiction is part of his universe, not the other way around. The Doctor narrates the Land of Fiction into defeat by crafting a conceptual framework for it that gives him narrative primacy. He's not a character in someone else's story. Everyone else is a character in his.

In that regard, it wouldn't work if the Doctor took the Land on its own terms. It wouldn't make any sense if he accepted its reality and nonetheless escaped it, because the whole mechanism of its defeat is that he defines it as a part of his world. That doesn't mean it actually is--the entire book is quite literally a duel between two unreliable narrators, and there's nothing in the entire story that can be trusted as "fact"--but to express that, to suggest that the Doctor is lying to us...no, not lying, telling a story--HIS story...would be to break character. And Lyons is too damn good a writer to break character just to explain the story to people who wouldn't get it anyway.

So if there are a group of fans who decide to accept the Doctor's narrative of the Land of Fiction, who feel that it tucks the Land neatly away into the structure of the Whoniverse and makes it all Make Perfect Sense, well...let 'em. But to suggest that it was written for that purpose, and to hate it for that reason, does nothing but reduce your own enjoyment of a perfectly awesome book.

Oh, and the Scrabble scene is freaking metal.

Conundrum

Back after successful surgery, healing beautifully, off pain meds, and still with a warm glow regarding this book. It's another highly readable, fun piece. 

I think the word that first comes to mind is "irreverent." The characters are delightfully goofy (except when  they're not), and the breaking of the fourth wall early on and repeatedly seems to indicate this will be a rule-breaking book. In fact, it's only as things go on that it becomes very clear that, in fact, it's a highly rule-obeying book. It's just that those rules are a bit different. 

I loved this book and got into it like a well-broken-in pair of jeans. In total fairness, I can see the stereotypical characters getting on the nerves of a different kind of reader. I can imagine someone becoming annoyed with the predictability of the action unspooling. Just as there have been books in this range where I was not the target audience, those would not be the target for this book. This time, I feel like I am.

I also enjoyed this much more than the Second Doctor adventure on which the concept was based, although I think that's largely down to the TV limited budget factor. Here we have a Land of Fiction that literally is only bounded by what its Master can be arsed to delineate. The revelation of who that Master is makes perfect sense, and it fits perfectly with the previous events in the book.

It wouldn't be one of my reviews without me talking about Ace, of course. Benny shines here, and it's one of the first times I really love her and can see her meriting the adulation. Here, though, the Doctor nearly reaps the whirlwind with Ace. He's lied straight out and by omission so many times that he nearly loses Ace's willingness to even work with him at all... And this time it's not his fault, but he has to deal with it anyway. It really makes me wonder where they can go from here.

I highly recommend this one, and if you're not the target audience, just remember: it's only a story...

Blog note!

I am going to be having surgery on 3-JUN. (No worries: it's fairly major but everything is expected to be just fine.) Because of this, we're going to try to get through Conundrum and then there may be a delay before the next entry. Alternatively, I might feel like blogging on pain meds, which should be amusing!

We're having way too much fun with this blog to stop doing it, and we are both deeply grateful to the regular readers for your support!

Chat: The Left-Handed Hummingbird

John: It's been a while since we've had a book this good, hasn't it? I mean, it's been a while since we've had one as bad as 'The Pit', but this one really does make you sit up and take notice.

Dee: Yes, and I have a confession to make about this one...

John: Yes?

Dee: ...I reread this one three times for fun before writing my blog entry. I think that was against the rules or something...

John: I'm spending all my intervening time between blog entries re-reading the Doctor Who books author by author. I'm not sure I can really judge you there.

Dee: Still. It's that good. I wanted more, but she knew when to end it.

John: It really is one of the best debut novels in the whole range. The opening sequence, the murder of John Lennon, is absolutely riveting. It's like a splash of cold water in the face, waking you up and getting you to pay attention. And yet it doesn't feel exploitative in any way. I can see how some people might feel like that, especially since the death of Lennon is within the lifetime of the reading audience, but it's done with such intensity that you feel like Kate feels it as strongly as you do. Like she picked it because it was personal.

Dee: Further confession: it's within my own memory. The colossal outpouring of pure grief was amazing. I remember it keenly and yeah, there was a hell of a lot of emotional energy there. It makes sense within the novel's framework, it makes sense with the characters, and it seems fitting: the reason the Doctor didn't save Lennon is because it's partially his fault, in that universe. It's a real gut-punch.

John: The whole book is a gut-punch. I can't think of another book, certainly not of another author, that does such a good job of creating such an immersive, vivid, emotionally wrenching experience. The Doctor is vulnerable in a way that he's never been before (maybe a few times since, but you never forget your first time) and it absolutely gets at you. Everything feels desperate. The stakes feel so high, because if Huitzilin can do this to the Doctor--and not just any Doctor but the Seventh Doctor, one of the most scary Doctors of all of them--then how is anyone going to get out of this alive?

Dee: Yep...we understand Benny's urge to ditch the whole thing back in the 60s. This one makes you feel the probability of disaster like few others. They're doing their best to pull togeth, but when Benny starts swinging that frying pan and Ace does what she does and the Doctor is dropping acid and shrooms... Wow.

John: Yeah. By the end, you can totally understand why the Doctor decides to stage the final confrontation on the Titanic, just in case. But it's not really just "just in case", is it? This is where you start seeing a recurring theme in Kate's Doctor Who novels, this idea that on some level the Doctor wants to go through these ordeals. He almost seems to welcome the suffering, because deep down he feels like he might deserve it. Let's face it, after some 200 adventures full of death and destruction, the Doctor has to be suffering from some epic survivor guilt.

Dee: Cornell explicitly went there back in T:R, with Five being crucified.

John: Yes, but that was more intended to be the Doctor suppressing his conscience. With Kate, it feels more like the Doctor has a secret death wish.

Dee: Well, he's tired, and he screwed up Ace. I think he has more of a make-it-stop wish, really.

John: I think it goes a bit beyond that. I think he really does feel like he deserves to suffer. You see it a bit more in Kate's next book, perhaps, but even here there are points--like right before jingle-jangle time--where it seems like he wants to find the solution that will cause him the most pain and suffering. Because he's dished out so much of it that he almost feels like it's his turn to hurt.

Dee: No argument except that suffering and death are not the same, and some would argue that death for a Time Lord could be a fate worse than life... Because your next regeneration might care even more.

John: And it's crazy to think that this comes just three books off of 'Iceberg'. It really is Paul Cornell all over again. This is just an author that is operating on a whole different level of talent.

Dee: And it's so unbelievably readable.

John: Oh gods yes. This is one of those books that practically inserts little hooks into your eyeballs and drags you through it. You wince, you whimper, you want to give every single character in it a big hug, but you cannot. Stop. Reading. (Which is another interesting thing--since this happens mid-arc, there's very little catharsis at the end. Some people have accused Kate of writing "hurt/comfort" fiction, but this is very much "hurt/comfort" without the "comfort".)

Dee: Except for Christian and Ben, who make me happy.

John: Yes. This is, in a lot of ways, Cristian's story. And on that level, it's beautiful. He's one of the best-written guest characters I think I've ever read in the series.

And while I think we could both gush even more about this one, we do have to get on to another one I really like, 'Conundrum'! Join us next time for superheroes, deadly board games, and Doctor Who's other grandchildren!