Book comments - Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles, Michael Moorcock
If you've ever read Neil Gaiman's short story "One Life Furnished in Early Moorcock", know that the protagonist, minus some of the most specifically male experiences, is basically me. Michael Moorcock and Doctor Who defined British SF&F for me from when I was about 12, and the epic crossover that is The Coming of the Terraphiles is a dream come true.
It's more helpful and accurate to think of this as a Michael Moorcock book with the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond in it, rather than as a Doctor Who novel. And if you only know Moorcock through the Elric saga, you may have to reset your expectations. The 510th-century Terraphiles-a social group of re-enactors and gamesmen and -women devoted to the culture of Old Old Earth, c. 1500-1920-are echoes of the denizens of the End of Time; the explorers of the Second Aether and their colour-fuelled ships play a key part in the plot; and there is also a mysterious Captain Cornelius, a charming and glamourous space-pirate who wears a Pierrot mask. And the story itself revolves around a classically Moorcock plot in which the Cosmic Balance must be restored before the Multiverse spins apart in a whirl of matter-antimatter storms. Add to this a fond Wodehouse pastiche (including a formidable grande dame, a hat theft, and a feckless young fellow named Bingo), and the result is a strange and weirdly delightful star-spanning caper.
Admittedly, the comic brio of the first act dissipates somewhat in the second, and the third feels slightly rushed. But the world of Doctor Who and the Multiverse intersect quite neatly, and it's fun for a longtime Moorcock fan to see the Doctor going on about the Cosmic Balance and the order of Law and Chaos. The Eleventh Doctor is very well-realised here, as is Amy, whose perspective on some of the weirder aspects of space-time travel constitutes some of the book's most memorable passages.
I haven't got the perspective to really say how well this will play to the Who fan unfamiliar with Moorcock's work. It could go very well ... or it may feel like some other universe pasted on to the Whoniverse and thus confusing as hell. I really couldn't say, having been steeped in both for so very long. And from that perspective, I enjoyed it tremendously. I'd have liked to have seen more of Captain Cornelius, but who knows-maybe another time.
[ Originally posted at Dreamwidth | Post a comment | Leave a comment ]
It's more helpful and accurate to think of this as a Michael Moorcock book with the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond in it, rather than as a Doctor Who novel. And if you only know Moorcock through the Elric saga, you may have to reset your expectations. The 510th-century Terraphiles-a social group of re-enactors and gamesmen and -women devoted to the culture of Old Old Earth, c. 1500-1920-are echoes of the denizens of the End of Time; the explorers of the Second Aether and their colour-fuelled ships play a key part in the plot; and there is also a mysterious Captain Cornelius, a charming and glamourous space-pirate who wears a Pierrot mask. And the story itself revolves around a classically Moorcock plot in which the Cosmic Balance must be restored before the Multiverse spins apart in a whirl of matter-antimatter storms. Add to this a fond Wodehouse pastiche (including a formidable grande dame, a hat theft, and a feckless young fellow named Bingo), and the result is a strange and weirdly delightful star-spanning caper.
Admittedly, the comic brio of the first act dissipates somewhat in the second, and the third feels slightly rushed. But the world of Doctor Who and the Multiverse intersect quite neatly, and it's fun for a longtime Moorcock fan to see the Doctor going on about the Cosmic Balance and the order of Law and Chaos. The Eleventh Doctor is very well-realised here, as is Amy, whose perspective on some of the weirder aspects of space-time travel constitutes some of the book's most memorable passages.
I haven't got the perspective to really say how well this will play to the Who fan unfamiliar with Moorcock's work. It could go very well ... or it may feel like some other universe pasted on to the Whoniverse and thus confusing as hell. I really couldn't say, having been steeped in both for so very long. And from that perspective, I enjoyed it tremendously. I'd have liked to have seen more of Captain Cornelius, but who knows-maybe another time.
[ Originally posted at Dreamwidth | Post a comment | Leave a comment ]