Find and Replace

Katy Manning is brilliant. Really, that should be a required t-shirt slogan for every single Doctor Who fan. Not content with playing that emblem of early seventies Britain, Jo Grant, she also had a pivotal role in creating the audio version of the wonderful Iris Wildthyme.

As she says in the short interview which follows on from the action in Paul Magrs' fantastic new Companion Chronicle, Find and Replace, when first playing Iris Peter Davison, playing the Doctor, asked in horror of her accent 'Are you really intending to play it like that?' and thank God she said yes, or we'd have missed out on so much. Without that broad Mancunian accent perhaps the character would have remained trapped in prose but with it she flew until that voice is now the one that I hear when reading Iris' adventures, a the defining characteristic of Miss Wildthyme.

Which means that the combination of Katy playing Iris, Jo and the Third Doctor in Find and Replace is a dream come true for someone like me who adores all three and views the seventies as the high-spot of British television. Throw in the best writer of modern Doctor Who penning the script and, frankly, I'm in genre heaven.

Make no doubt about it, Find and Replace is the best single Big Finish release bar none since Magrs' earlier Ringpullworld and demonstrates that, when the company uses the very best talent available, it's capable of creating stories on a par with any genre work in any medium anywhere.

The acting is, of course, superb. Katy is astonishing, at times switching smoothly from Jo's winsome little girl voice, to Iris' barking Lancashire to Pertwee's patrician tones in the space of a few seconds. That Alex Lowe as the novelisor Huxley is in no way embarrassed by such a tour de force performance is indicative of his quality too, but both actors are helped immeasurably by the quality of Magrs' script, which flows and eddies as smoothly as a pint of Guinness, sliding from nostalgic reverie as Jo imagines the Doctor moving about in his lab directly above her, to unexpected confrontation as...well, you better listen to it yourself really :)

There's a very genuine sense of sheer pleasure in every aspect of Find and Replace, a very real feeling that everyone involved is having a whale of a time, best summed up by the triumphant whoop of 'Let's go back to the Seventies!' which ends part one. Credit for some of this must presumably go to director Lisa Bowerman, who contrives to keep everything moving along and to avoid the temptation to clutter the sound-scape with intrusive background bells and whistles (unlike some of the other BF directors).

Hugely recommended.

Obverse Books News

With apologies to my many, many readers who may already have seen this on various Dr Who fora and elsewhere, here's an update on Obverse's plans for 2010...

First off, the next book in the Iris series is to be called Ms Wildthyme and Friends Investigate, which Cody Schell described as "a quartet of loosely connected mystery-infused stories with danger and intrigue from the more obscure corners of the Obverse-iverse" - and that's as good a description as any.

Essentially it's four overlapping novellas which taken together make a single complete mystery novel.

Iris and Panda are in each story, but are only the primary stars of the final one. The other stories concern, respectively, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger; the Manleigh Halt Irregulars (as first seen in Paul's Panda Book of Horror tale, 'The Delightful Bag') and Senor 105, the Mexican masked wrestler created by Cody for his Celestial Omnibus story.

The authors for this book - Jim Smith, Nick Wallace, Cody Schell and myself - are already hard at work, since we're looking to publish the book in May 2010.

Secondly, the fourth book in the Iris series - and the second and final book for 2010 - is to be called Iris: Abroad (like the pun?), and will be a new short story collection edited by Paul and I along the lines of the two books already out. The only theme is that the stories can't be primarily set on the British mainland and must feature Iris and Panda as seen in the Panda Book/Celestial Omnibus. Anyone interested in pitching a story (as previously at leats one slot in the book will be reserved for a cold pitch via email or the website) should have their synopsis to us by the end of February 2010...

The publication date for this one will be November 2010 (publishing on 12 December turned out in retrospect to be a bit of a mistake, with the Christmas post slowing everything down).

Eh, and I think that's it.

Win a copy of The Panda Book of Horror

We (Obverse Books) are running a small competition in conjunction with Outpost Skaro!

To win a copy of the Panda Book of Horror, just create an image or animation promoting the book (you can use the image to the left if you want) - go to

http://tinyurl.com/ycl7q5s

and have a bash! (you need to join the forum to do so but it's a decent sort of place, promise).

Panda Book of Horror Now Available

Ding Ding! All aboard! Room for a little 'un at the back!

Iris, Panda and their transtemporal double decker Routemaster bus are just about ready to leave the terminus and set out on their most terrifying adventures yet!

Yes, The Panda Book of Horror will soon be on its way to the printers, with a publication date in November 2009!

Along for the ride this time are...

Paul Magrs
Mark Clapham
Mark Michalowski
Simon Guerrier
Ian Potter
Paul Dale Smith
Phil Craggs
Eddie Robson
Nicholas Nada
Blair Bidmead
Matt Kimpton
Mark Morris
Jac Rayner & Orna Petit

Many of these names will be known to Who book fans from the Virgin, BBC, Telos and Big Finish ranges, but new to Who-related fiction are Nix Nada and Blair Bidmead, both of whom submitted stories via the Obverse website, and Phil Craggs, editor of blankpages magazine. As for Orna Petit, who can say? All we know is Jac insisted and who are we to argue...

With cover art by Paul Magrs and a pretty damn nifty pastiche of the original Pan Books of Horror design by Cody Schell, we think you'll enjoy The Panda Book of Horror...though perhaps enjoy is the wrong word...

Available for pre-order from Obverse Books now! Publication date: Late November 2009

And don't forget - the Celestial Omnibus is still available!

Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus now in Stock!

What is there left to say about Iris Wildthyme – transtemporal adventuress extraordinaire, metafictional explorer of texts and subtexts, double-decker-dwelling interstellar bag-lady, amnesia-prone political and sexual revolutionary, writer of wrongs, wronger of rights (especially copyrights), all-round champion of freedom, occasional nightclub singer and frequent barroom floozy?

Well, there’s always something...

Obverse Books are proud to announce the release of their first short story collection, 'Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus', edited by Paul Magrs and Stuart Douglas.

Continuing the adventures of time traveller extraordinaire Ms Iris Wildthyme, 'The Celestial Omnibus' contains stories by such Who luminaries as former BBC Books editor Steve Cole; Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, producers of the Iris audios for Big Finish; and Iris creator Paul Magrs himself. With an introduction from Katy Manning, the Omnibus travels from 1950s England to the last sun at the end of the Universe, encountering the crew of the Battleship Anathema, Marlene Dietrich and Panda's mysterious former lover, Gemma, on the way.

Available in hardback, with an exclusive cover painting by legendary BBC costume designer June Hudson, 'The Celestial Omnibus' costs £10.99 plus postage from www.obversebooks.co.uk while stocks last!

Shaun Lyon - on 'being a twat'

So (this might be a long email so settle down with a cuppa and a biscuit)...

Those of you who frequent the Doctor Who Forum might have noticed this morning that all mention of Obverse Books and the Iris book have been banned by Shaun Lyon. As he says,

"Please be advised that discussion, direct or indirect, of Obverse Books and/or its Iris Wildthyme material is no longer permitted in this forum under any circumstances.

Anyone who does so will have their membership revoked.

Sorry, but I won't be answering inquiries about this. Suffice to say that if you'd like any explanation, you are welcome to take it up with them."

Given that the fault for all this for once has little to do with me and everything to do with certain other people telling lies it seemed worth going public with this, and at least providing some entertainment for the faithful readers of this blog and, hopefully, the Iris book.

I promise not to editorialise or make my usual snarky comments, but essentially a poster on the Doctor Who Forum, one Magister, doesn't like me because I once or twice pointed out the idiocy of his canon argument in a thread on that forum (yes, I know, canon debates - I should know better).

He's obviously a bit mental, hence his suggestion here that a load of PE teachers should come round and give me a kicking :)

http://www.doctorwhoforum.com/showpost.php?p=7796195&postcount=412

Which is fine, really - lots of people over the years have been less than fond of me and I can no doubt be a pain in the arse at times.

However Magister then took advantage of the fact I was banned from (Steven Hill, Chief Admin of DWF, banned me rather hilariously for saying in jest that my pal Jonn was an absolute arse. In spite of Jonn immediately posting pointing out that he started it and we were pals and it was just a joke. Ho hum.)

Eh, where was I? Oh yes - Magister took advantage of my two week ban to post various things which suggested that I had used his order details improperly to find out private details about him. Starting on the 4th of May with this narky but relatively benign post where he first asked from nowhere 'How secure is the ordering system?" and then when Phil Purser-Hallard pointed out that it was 100% safe, followed up with

"I was more posting about how secure the information is within "Obverse Books", and how personal details are used by Stuart."

http://doctorwhoforum.com/showpost. php?p=8211966&postcount=172
(though its been taken down as of yesterday I think)

Bit annoying and enough to piss me off a bit, but that was all.

I did think I better say something rather than leave that hanging, so I sent a humorous (I thought) post from a new account, called 'Madge', featuring an avatar of Madge from Neighbours and styling myself 'The Representative of Obverse Industries' (any of you Jandek fans? :) as
follows:

"[QUOTE=Magister;8211966]

Thanks for the reply. I was more posting about how secure the information is within "Obverse Books", and how personal details are used by Stuart.[/QUOTE]

As Obverse Books' legal representative on doctorwhoforum.com I can assure all interested parties that Obverse Books uses only "Paypal" for its "payment" system, as this is by far the most secure such "system" around, on the grounds that Paypal only sends the customer
"address" to the vendor. No credit card details or other financial information is in any way available "to" Obverse Books.

Obverse Books has not as yet had any "order" from a Mr "Magister" but looks forward to receiving such in the "future".

Mr Douglas would also like to apologise to Mr Jonn Elledge for calling him an absolute arse and a total tit. This is patently not the case and having taken objective steps to re-appraise his position non-subjectively, Mr Douglas now finds it hard to credit he was ever so vile.

Further he would like to agree with Mr Elledge's mum that Mr Elledge is in point of fact "a very nice boy with a lovely smile" and with Mr Elledge's granny that "the other boys are just jealous of his good looks and will be his friend once they realise that that haircut works
just as well on a boy as on a girl".

Best wishes

The Representative of Obverse Industries."

http://www.doctorwhoforum.com/showpost.php?p=8220642&postcount=179

All obviously tongue in cheek and in no way intended to subvert any rules on OG but in any case I got banned for life from DWF by Steven Hill for that.

Again, not the end of the world even though it meant I would need to get Paul Magrs or CodySchell or someone to make update posts to DWF. I did send Steven Hill an email apologising for creating duplicate accounts, but also pointing out that I had made no attempt to hide that it was me and was obviously joking but that if he felt an apology was called for then I certainly apologised.

In fact, here's the full text of my email to Hill from 6 May, the day after I was banned:

Dear Steven

Apologies for the duplicate account. I was not aware that there was any stricture in place to prevent me from creating a temporary new user for a specific and, I thought, important, reason, but now that I have been made aware of that fact, I naturally understand that this
breaches the rules.

In my defence, however, I should point out that there was no attempt to create a genuine sock puppet, not did I make any attempt to hide the fact that it was me posting. It's just that I - and several other people who PM'ed and emailed me - felt my integrity was definitely
being called into question and, given the recent concerns raised by the Forbidden Planet fraud, I felt - and still feel - an immediate response was required.

I have in the past run several highly successful and profitable businesses and while Obverse Books is more by way of being a sideline, did not succeed with these companies in the past by ignoring a statement which, with the greatest respect to your post to OG, is malicious, potentially libellous, almost certainly damaging to my business and which I did consider discussing with my solicitor.

In any case I had thought that the obviously humorous and exaggerated manner in which I both answered Magister's question and apologised to Jonn for an offence which he didn't take, made it clear that I had no intention of deceiving anyone as to the identity of the poster and had expected that to be taken into account.

That said, if you feel an apology is required then please do accept my genuine apologies.

I did consider mailing you to ask if you had any objection to my setting up an Obverse Books account solely to post news about the books, but that seems largely pointless when I already have an existing account. Should my account be restored, I have decided not to post to the forum in future except where it impacts upon my book which, though a shame, is probably for the best all things considered.

I look forward to your thoughts in this matter.

Regards

Stuart Douglas

to which Hill actually replied on the 7th May (the sole reply before Shaun's final, banning obverse email) as follows:

Stuart,
Before I can respond to this myself, I need to have Shaun take a look at it. Any time anyone mentions legal complications, it becomes Shaun's business.
-Steve

Sadly neither Shaun nor Steven Hill bothered to get back to me after that (and Lyon presumably now claims that Hill was lying and never sent the email on at all, if his initial claim to have known nothing about the matter is accepted at face value).

Magister however continued to post. On the 8th of May he said

"I'm going to try for a final post on the subject. I'm going to Pm a copy to Steve. I'm sorry Steve if this post isn't allowed. If you have to delete it please could you also delete the referenced post by Stuart on the other thread. If this post gets deleted I wont post on this subject again.

I've gone out of my way not to be defamatory, but to make as open comments as I can so that Stuart can reply.

The start of this, which I hoped to avoid posting for Stuart's sake, was that within days of me ordering, stuart posted on the books not canon thread the following:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart Douglas View Post
You know, I am so glad that I've now been told who you are in real life [ - I'd hate to think you'd one day be teaching my kids]


It was that post that led me to try, without breaking forum rules, to find out from stuart how he had used my order to find out who I am in real life.

I was hoping that Stuart would reply without me having to go into details."

Now he knew I was banned and all he had to do was ask me how I knew who he was (a fact I'd mentioned in passing jokey reference) - and I would have told him the truth, that a couple of people had told me it by email. Leaving aside the fact that I had no idea he'd ordered a
book, there's no way you can do anything with a Paypal email other than read it! But rather than email me via OG or the Obverse site, he took advantage of the fact I couldn't reply to suggest pretty plainly that I was up to no good.

With no reply from Messrs Hill and Lyon thus far and Magister getting more outrageous - and as the date of publication got nearer - Paul Magrs emailed Steven Hill directly via the OG address, as follows:

Hi-

I'm a bit annoyed about this Magister bloke. It seems that he and Stuart Douglas have had a long-running debate about canonicity and other fun things. However, now it seems this Magister person has started to impugn Stuart's integrity and reliability, very publicly on the forum. To me it looks like it could have a very adverse effect on sales of the Iris Wildthyme anthology Stuart is publishing this month.

I'm not very happy about that. That book is something we've both put a lot of effort into. It's not right if a spat about something silly like continuity can end up with someone deliberately casting
aspersions on somebody's trustworthiness. That's what Magister's messages look like to me. In these straitened times it's hard to launch a new small press. It's really unhelpful to have someone
behaving as Magister seems to be doing. It looks like silliness and spite, but can have an effect on floating customers.

Stuart's been banned from OG, I believe. So he can't come back on these debates. His being banned is beside the point in all this. I don't have time to keep looking at these discussion pages, but I don't want people bad-mouthing Stuart's or Obverse Books' integrity. Will you, as a moderator, put a stop to this snideness, please?

i'll look forward to hearing from you,

paul m

Again, Paul got no reply.

I mail Hill again asking if Shaun Lyon had had a chance to look at my email yet and again get no reply. So I asked Jon Dennis, as a friend of Shaun Lyon's, to email him on my behalf, simply asking him to get in touch, as follows:.

"Shaun,

My apologies if you are no longer running the Forum, but as far as I know, you are. I'm normally loath to ask a favor like this, but Stuart Douglas' company has been subjected to some defamatory posts by some guy calling himself Magister and Steve Hill appears more interested in staying on Magister's good side. I'll admit it's partially self-interest, I have a story in the book in question and Magister seems intent on costing it some sales. At least one of these posts could be considered libellous, so I think it might be a good idea if you contact Stuart at sa douglas at gmail.com."

Shaun never got in touch at all - and presumably claims not to have received this email either.

A week or so passed with no replies from any of the emails to Shaun or Steven Hill from me, Paul or Jon, and then on the 22nd May Magister popped up again and, after a few daft snidey comments about me, posted this:

"There's a lot more I could say about one poster which I'm not allowed to by forum rules which I respect, but I do have information I ought to find a way to become more generally available. So I do bite my tongue here a lot, as I'm sure others do to and if unguarded comments are leaking out I apologise...It is my responsiblity to find a way away from OG to share the inappropriate actions of a particular poster, and I should not have referred to him here in that way. I will redouble my efforts not to do that again."

in response to a post which mentioned Phil PH and I. I was banned but Phil took reasonable umbrage and pointed out that the statement was potentially libellous and would he care to elaborate. He sent Phil a PM apologising to him and confirming that his quarrel was with me.
He's of the opinion that I'd "used" the personal details he submitted with his order for the Iris book, which is demonstrably neither possible nor the case, as he'd been told on OG when he first brought the matter up.

That last post was the straw that broke the camel's back for me as was a follow up post where he 'apologised' for the allegation while simply repeating it.

With the book coming out in a week and these posts presumably putting some level of doubt in the minds of the potential readership (already spooked by the FP International issues just previously), I spoke to a mate who's a lawyer in the States and showed him the same email
chain I've added above. He said that the final post in particular was "defamatory" and "likely to do material damage to [my] business" and definitely actionable. I told him that I didn't want to do that - apart from anything else it's expensive, I could conceivably lose and - most importantly - it would be overkill. He suggested I therefore send an email to Shaun Lyon via as secure a method as possible, laying out the problem in a calm manner, as one professional adult to
another, and pointing out that as owner of the forum, Shaun Lyon was legally liable for the content contained on it, especially if it has been previously brought to his attention.

I asked round, got two different email addresses for Shaun from mutual friends, plus got Jon Dennis to send the email via Facebook mail so that he couldn't pretend not to have received it, although I suspected that the suggestion of legal consequences should at least guarantee a
reply.

What I sent was:

Dear Shaun

I am extremely sorry to have to bother you but as Steven Hill has chosen to ignore emails from myself and Paul Magrs and continues to allow one poster, Magister, to make posts on OG which increasingly look likely to force me to instigate formal legal proceedings against
you, it seems best to at least attempt to go over his head before I have to spend further money on lawyers.

I have no idea if you know what has been going on over on the DWF but as you are the owner of that site you are unfortunately legally liable for the content posted on it, particularly if that content has been reported for potentially illegal activity and nothing has been done by the people you appoint to run the boards.

Please note that this is not a plea to be reinstated on the forum, from which I am currently banned by Mr Hill. Mr Hill is in my opinion clearly partial, but membership of a public forum is equally clearly in the purview of the owner and his representatives and if you feel that DWF is better served without my presence then that is your decision.

However, this Magister has some vendetta against me quite out of proportion to the fact that I have on several occasions pointed out - I admit possibly less than politely - the foolishness of both his arguments and of his ability to use English correctly.

So out of proportion have they become in fact that one of his latest posts (number 792 in the Canon thread in the Books section) is most definitely libellous and aimed at me. The libel is self-evident - in reply to a post from BryanB in which Bryan pointed out that Magister's
previous post was both defamatory towards Phil Purser-Hallard and I - Magister said, in part,

"There's a lot more I could say about one poster which I'm not allowed to by forum rules which I respect, but I do have information I ought to find a way to become more generally available...It is my responsibility to find a way away from OG to share the inappropriate
actions of a particular poster, and I should not have referred to him here in that way. I will redouble my efforts not to do that again."

and then confirmed to Phil by PM, when he quite rightly replied to highlight the libel contained therein, that he was talking about me.

His problem is that he in some way believes that I have misused a Paypal email from him to identify who he is, when this is in fact utterly impossible (as he has been told) - while obviously anyone who buys a product online needs to put his name and address down, there is
no magister@ email in the orders thus far and so no way in which I could identify him from that.

In fact, I had no idea he had ordered a book and was actually sent the same name for Magister by three separate people within a couple of days of one another advising that should I ever need to legal action against him for the more inappropriate things he had said about me
that his name would be helpful. Had Magister emailed me directly I would have told him this, but instead he has chosen to continue to post false claims about me, with the collusion of Mr Hill and, therefore, the approval of yourself.

I have spoken to a lawyer who specialises in US law and he tells me that this statement, when combined with confirmation of its target, is certainly libellous and likely to cause material harm to my business (in this instance, Obverse Books), especially given that any suspicion
- or hint of mistrust - about my handling of credit card details could be particularly damaging in light of the recent card fraud from Forbidden Planet International sales.

I am informed that all of this, combined with DWF's failure to take appropriate action in the face of multiple and repeated complaints about Magister, is a solid basis for a civil action.

As examples of these multiple complaints, Paul Magrs wrote directly to Mr Hill via the DWF email address but received no reply as did I; several people have reported Magister's posts multiple times using the DWF Report function; and others have posted directly in the thread
itself highlighting various inappropriate and potentially legally damaging posts by Magister - only to be effectively told to shut up by Mr Hill. All of these people are happy to confirm their actions.

As I say I am not attempting to be reinstated to the forum, but for all that Obverse is not my primary business it is a business nonetheless, and I thus have no choice but to take some action to ensure that Magister is no longer allowed to post libellously about me on a public forum and to obtain an apology and public retraction from Magister for the libels he has posted thus far.

I would be grateful if you could both reply to confirm receipt of this email and give some thought to its contents. I should stress that I am more than willing to take foral legal action in this matter if need be but would obviously prefer to avoid such unpleasantness over a problem which can be easily solved from your side.

I look forward to hearing from you but if I have had no reply with in one week of today then I will assume you are unwilling to take any action and are giving formal as opposed to merely tacit approval to Magister's activities on your forum, and will act accordingly to protect my personal and professional reputation.

Regards

Stuart Douglas

For once, Shaun Lyon replied quite quickly - the following morning the email below was in my Inbox (and in Paul's too incidentally).

"Stuart,

I think you have a lot of nerve, opening a dialogue with a person you've never met -- and who had no idea about ANY of this -- by taking a warning shot. Not a friendly "by the way". Not a "can you please help?" None of that. Just a reprehensible "Shaun, I have a problem, and if you don't solve it, I'm going to try to fuck you over." I am absolutely *disgusted* that you would choose this tack with me, considering that so many of your contributors are people I know personally... Mark Wright, Jonathan Dennis, Steve Cole, Steve Lyons, Steve Wickham, and especially Katy Manning. If it was your intention of being a twat, you've been a great success at it.

I read Magister's post in question, and frankly, if I wasn't one of the twelve or so people who might actually know what he's on about, I would have completely bypassed it. Whatever. I've taken Magister's post, and a reply to it, and removed it. I'm going to warn him not to
make any statements against you in future. I've put my staff on alert that he is not allowed to make any further comment about this, and should he, he will be removed from the forum.

Meanwhile, I am hereby letting you know that the discussion of your book and/or Obverse Books is hereby a topic non grata in my discussion forum. Period. I don't want anyone mentioning it, nobody discussing it, nobody putting links to it in their signature files, etc. As it
is *my* Forum, I don't want one single byte of my bandwith used for the promotion of your material. If you'd like to share that fact with your contributors, be my guest... be sure you make note of the fact that you threatened to sue straight off the bat.

Does that work for you, or is there anything else you'd like to take umbrage with?

Shaun Lyon

I said wouldn't editorialise so I won't mention Lyon's aggressive attitude or even the swearing, but one thing he seems to think is that in some way I would have issues in telling anyone what had happened. Which is why I copied this mesage to every one of the book contributors, the contributors Lyon seems to believe I would be avoiding for some reason - every message, post and mail of which can be confirmed as the truth by a variety of other people involved. I also copied Shaun Lyon in on it - I've no idea why he thinks I would have a problem explaining why he's banned the Iris book from his forum given that I'm certainly not the one who ends up looking a 'twat'...

And remember kids - www.obversebooks.co.uk to buy a copy of Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus!

Out now!

Oh, and some relevant blog posts...

Philip Purser-Hallard's blog

Simon Bucher-Jones' blog

Jon Dennis' LJ

Louise Dennis' LJ

Alex's Blog

[NB I got an email today saying that it was a breach of netiquette to put private emails online. Fair point, but in my defence I should point out that the main reason I put this online as opposed to my original email to the book contributors is that Lyon emailed one of the writers and told him to ignore anything I said because I was a liar. And I mailed all the contributors with the exact post I made below, missing nothing out but adding nothing in, several of them advised similar contact and suggested I put it all on my blog. As the posts below demonstrate, I have nothing to hide. Meanwhile Lyon is defriending anyone on Facebook who so much as mentions Obverse Books.]

Why is a pre-order not just an order?

Well we've finally just about got there! Some nine months or so after Paul and I first discussed doing a new Iris Wildthyme short story collection, I spoke to the printer this afternoon and sent our lovingly created print ready pdf and Mark Michalowski's brilliant setting of June Hudson's fabulous cover art into their capable hands. All things being well, I should have the finished book in my hands, ready to post out at some point during May!

Which is where you all come in!

If no-one buys the book, this will all have been a bit of a waste of time, so please do nip along to www.obversebooks.co.uk and pre-order a copy for the bargain price of £10.99 plus postage for 234 fantastic, fun-filled pages!

Just click on the Panda to order...he says he doesn't mind, he likes to do his bit!

Boarding the Bus!

And travelling on the Bus this time round are...

[BIG DRUMROLL]

Introduction - Katy Manning
A Gamble with Wildthyme - Steve Lyons
Sovereign - Mags L Halliday
The Unhappy Medium - Mark Wright and Cavan Scott
Living Legend - Stuart Douglas
Battleship Anathema - Phil Purser-Hallard
The Dreadful Flap - Paul Magrs
Not A Drop - Steven Wickham
Iris Wildthyme y Señor Cientocinco contra Los Monstruos del Fiesta - Cody Schell
Why, Because We Like You - Jonathan Dennis
The Scarlet Shadow - Stewart Sheargold
Only Living Girls - Steve Cole

Messrs Lyons, Magrs and Cole and the delightful Ms Mags Halliday will be well known to Doctor Who book readers, while Mark Wright and Cav Scott are in charge of the Big Finish Iris range. They and Stewart Sheargold have written extensively for the Big Finish ranges.

Jonathan Dennis and Phil Purser-Hallard have both written Faction Paradox fiction, with Phil also writing for novellas for Telos and Big Finish.

Finally, introducing Cody Schell and Steven Wickham with their first published pieces of Who related fiction, though Steven has appeared as an actor in over a dozen Big Finish audios.

Oh, and me - but that's sheer nepotism so probably best glossed over quickly...

With specially commissioned cover art by June Hudson, legendary Doctor Who costume designer, and logo courtesy of the lovely Anthony Dry, we're aiming for a publication date in early April.

Here's a sneak preview of June's brilliant cover art:


http://www.obversebooks.co.uk for further details (as soon as I put them up, later today) and expressions of childlike glee from Paul and I...

Did I mention the introduction by Iris herself, Katy Manning?

Cheers

Stuart

Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus - Update

Nearly there now! Just waiting for one author to finish up and then we can see how it all fits together.

Further announcements on obversebooks.co.uk soon...

(hmm, does that sound too much like one of those spam comments which litter blogger?)

Iris Season 2 Box Set

The quickest of plugs for something very dear to my heart: Big Finish have now released the artwork for the utterly fabulous looking and sounding Iris Wildthyme season 2 box set.

Consisting of all four of the new season stories, and with each disc also coming with Anthony Dry's Official Best Ever Artwork, the box set is available for pre-order from Big Finish now at a fairly sizeable discount compared to buying them individually!

I've read two of the stories and they're brilliant (and I can't believe that Messrs Wright and Scott will have allowed either Simon Guerrier or Mark Magrs to turn in anything less good than that).

There's nothing not to like here - go and buy them now, and whet your appetite for the plethora of Iris related...well, stuff due out this year.

Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus

You know how it is. Your favourite book series goes belly up or starts printing books that just aren't as good as they used to be. You're stuck re-reading The Also People and The Blue Angel and - good as those two books are - moaning to people that everything's a bit rubbish now.

So it was that, with the various Who books lines either disappearing or printing books aimed at a younger audience, we - that's Paul Magrs and I - decided that this would be a great time to launch a new more adult oriented Who-related fiction imprint, publishing officially licensed Iris Wildthyme books.

Everything's a little bit hush-hush at the moment, but the first book is going to be a short story collection entitled

'Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus'

and will be published late next Spring. We're keeping authors names under our hats (there will be a story from Paul obviously) but expect lots of Who fiction luminaries to be announced over the coming few weeks

The aim is to use any profit from the short story collection to kick-off a series of twice yearly Iris novellas. The books will only be available in a limited, numbered and autographed run. Don't worry though - they definitely won't be wildly expensive. Books are for reading not hiding in display cabinets.

One thing we can announce is that June Hudson, utterly legendary Who costume designer and the brains behind the famous season 18 costumes amongst many other things, has kindly agreed to do the cover art, about which we're both totally chuffed.

Further information will appear on obversebooks.co.uk, where you can currently sign up for our mailing list and so keep abreast of upcoming news...

The Complete Wildthyme III: "Femme Fatale"

"Femme Fatale" (More Short Trips, BBC Books, 1999)

Ah, this is more like it. This is where it really gets going. To coin a
phrase, there's a riot goin' on in this story.

This is Doctor Who recast as the Avengers, obviously, but it's also Who as
written by Michael Moorcock, with the Doctor, Iris et al filtered through
Paul's take on the 1960's New Wave, with the music of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed
playing in the background.

Equally obviously therefore, it's about as far from trad Who as you can
get - timelines bend round in knots, chunks of text are repeated word for
word a page or two after their original appearance, and it's never entirely
certain just whether everyone is who they seem to be (actually, it's very
clear that often they're not - what isn't always obvious on first reading is
who they *are*).

Themes which pop up in later Iris short stories make their first appearance
here - using clones for sex; literally re-writing one or other version of
history; the problems of maintaining a consistent continuity - but
concentrating on that kind of thing only serves to blind the reader to the
sheer exuberance of the prose. This is genuinely unlike almost anything
seen in Who fiction up until this point (Jim Mortimore's 'Campaign' actually
goes even further, even down to using wacky New Wave typesetting styles, but
that's the only comparable text in Who until John Anderson deliberately - I
assume - utilised a more upbeat version of the same style in DWIN's Myth
Makers collections). This is proper literary fiction, with little or no
concessions made to the fact that Doctor Who is, traditionally, aimed at
'intelligent 14 year olds with glasses'. It's very well-written, requires
some thought from the reader and utterly fails to do anything expected.

That's not to say that "Femme Fatale" is incomprehensibly dense or
deliberately hard to comprehend. Instead it's packed full of great ideas
and good jokes - just off the top of my head, there's Andy Warhol in 1968
wondering if he'd agreed to merchandise the Marilyn Monroe T-Shirt Iris is
wearing and which she'd bought in Camden Market in the 1990s; there's a book
written collaboratively by the Marquis de Sade, Gertrude Stein and Flaubert;
Iris writing a porn version of her travels for the Olympia Press; a clone of
Valerie Solanas; Sam and Iris discussing time travel in the Factory toilets;
the eventual destinaton of the Doctor and Mrs Jones...and so on. Take your
pick of your personal favourite.

There are more cool ideas in this short story than in most novels you'll
read - buy a copy of More Short Trips on ebay for a pound and turn to page
317. You won't be disappointed.

The Complete Wildthyme II: "Old Flames"

"Old Flames" (from the BBC 'Short Trips' collection, 1998)

In terms of Paul's published Doctor Who fiction, "Old Flames" is the cuckoo
in the nest. It's the Iris story which doesn't really play metafictional
games. It's the Iris story with a conventional beginning, middle and end.
It's the Iris story with a straight companion. In short, it's not terribly
Irisy at all.

This feeling of dislocation from the rest of the Complete Wildthyme (or
'The Magrsian Chronicles' as I was briefly tempted to title these reviews,
until I realised that would be *very* crap) is increased by what seems to be
Paul's hesitancy in writing Doctor Who for the first time.

Whilst he was by this point a respected non-genre author, with his debut
novel already three years behind him, there is a nervousness and caution in
'Old Flames' which isn't wholly unexpected from the new kid on the block.
Where in the next collection, he lets himself go and recasts his Who leads
as the Avengers' team, then drops them into Andy Warhol's Factory, here we
have an instantly recognisable Fourth Doctor and Sarah-Jane involved in some
fairly low-key shenanigans, as Iris attempts to marry off her latest
companion to the grand-daughter of the rich Lady Huntingdon.

Not that 'low key' and 'instantly recognisable' don't have their benefits.
Sarah-Jane is especially well-done, sounding *exactly* like the TV version,
and the Doctor is enjoyably erratic, moving from down-beat worry to gay
abandon in the turn of a page. Iris, too, is a treat (this Iris reads like
a dry run for the Big Finish audios - you can just hear Katy Manning
speaking the dialogue) and, at this early stage, the Doctor seems far more
genuinely fond of her than normal. Add to the mix the linear narrative and
clear-cut villain, and 'Old Flames' is something that even the most trad of
Who fans should have no problems in following.

Maybe that's why I'm not as fond of it as other Iris stories - if I want
what's generally termed traditional Who I'll go and watch 'Time Warrior' or
'The Invisible Enemy' or whatever. The fact that Paul generally pushes the
boundaries a bit and gives the reader something more than was possible on
the TV screen is a large part of the attraction in reading the Iris books,
and that sense of adventure is missing here. You can see it trying to burst
out now and again, most obviously in the villains who are the last remnant
of a dead race of tiger aliens, but the rest of the story is so
straight-forwardly written that when, for instance, Rector Adams describes
Lady Huntingdon as 'a terrible black spider on a golden throne', it jars
rather then delights and seems oddly out-of-place.

At heart (and imo obviously), 'Old Flames' just tries too hard to be a story
for the Everyman Who reader and although that's perfectly understandable,
being Paul's first Who short story in the BBC's first Who short story
collection, it leaves things a little flat, especially in comparison to
Paul's later Who work (and, in fact, his non-Who work published up to this
point)

The Complete Wildthyme I: "Suitors, Inc"

[With Wildthyme on Top due out (hopefully) very soon, I'm about to re-read all of Paul Magrs' Who fiction, starting with the short stories.

And as I happen to have just posted a review of Paul's latest short story to the Iris/Paul newsgroup, I thought I might as well post it here to get things started. So...]

Suitors, Inc (Seven Deadly Sins, Big Finish, 2005)

Some things are anathema to all right thinking people - the Daily Mail, Ant
and Dec, and the use of short sentences ending in exclamation marks are
surely amongst most people's top three such irritations.

Imagine my surprise therefore when I came to read Paul's latest Iris short
story, 'Suitors, Inc' and found the damn thing was littered with them. Short sentences that is! Ending in exclamation marks! Not Ant and Dec! Or the Daily Mail!

Less surprising though is the fact that this otherwise horrendous practice
works perfectly here. 'Suitors, Inc' - for all its subject matter of
anatomically correct sex robots and shanghaied horny pensioners - is a story
from an alternative universe where Target kept the Who fiction license and
started publishing short story collections for younger readers. And in that
context the plethora of exclamation marks serves to give the dialogue a
certain zip and dash and imbdues Paul's prose with an engagingly dynamic
quality. This is a story which rattles effortlessly along and which
manages - in the space of a dozen pages - to feature four Time Lords, a
couple of assistants, an enemy from another book and what seems to be the
Obverse version of a certain well-known robot dog. The dialogue is as crisp
as you'd expect and catches the tone of the respective TV characters well
(particularly the fourth Doctor), the plot is completely nuts (and the
ending is left unresolved, with absolutely everyone heading off together
into further thrilling adventures) and there's even time for an amusing
metafictional reference or two. If you had to sum 'Suitors, Inc' up in a
word, that word would be 'joyous' because you really do get a feeling of
Paul's joy in writing for this particular era of Who and as a result it's an
absolute joy to read.

Apart from a bizarre typo at the bottom of one page where a meaningless word
has been added to the end of a sentence, this is well nigh perfect and
confirms that Paul is the pre-eminent writer of short Who fiction. Lovely
stuff.

Wildthyme on Top

Excellent news yesterday when both the Iris Wildthyme story collection and Iris audios from Big Finish were officially announced in DWM.

For those who don't know, Iris is a time-travelling character created by Paul Magrs for the BBC Doctor Who book range, who has since branched off into original audio drama starring Katy Manning.

Amongst the authors involved are Lance Parkin, Phil Purser-Hallard, and Craig Hinton, three of my favourite genre authors, and Stew Sheargold, whose short story, It's Raining Again is fantastic in every possible sense.

All in all, something to look forward to...