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5381738 | /m/0djb71 | Peveril of the Peak | Walter Scott | 1823-01-07 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Sir Geoffrey Peveril and Major Bridgenorth had been boys together; and although they adopted different views in religion and politics, the major's influence had saved the Royalist's life after the battle of Bolton-le-Moor, and Lady Peveril had brought up his motherless girl, Alice, with her own son. After the Restoration, the Countess of Derby, who, through treachery, had suffered a long imprisonment by the Roundheads, sought protection at Martindale Castle, where Bridgenorth would have arrested her for having caused his brother-in-law, William Christian, to be shot as a traitor, had not the knight interfered by tearing up the warrant, and escorting her through Cheshire on her return to the Isle of Man. Alice was of course withdrawn from his wife's care, and it was supposed the major had emigrated to New England. Several years afterwards Sir Geoffrey's son Julian became the companion of the young earl, and, with the nurse Deborah's connivance, renewed his intimacy with his foster sister, who was under the care of her widowed aunt, Dame Christian. At one of the secret interviews between them, they were surprised by the entrance of her father, who related some of his religious experiences, and vaguely hinted that his consent to their marriage was not impossible. The next night, having undertaken to proceed to London, to clear the countess and her son from the suspicion of being concerned in Titus Oates's pretended Popish plot, Julian was conducted to a sloop by Fenella, his patron's deaf and dumb dwarf, and, as she was being taken ashore against her will while he was asleep, he dreamt that he heard Alice's voice calling for his help. At Liverpool he met Topham with a warrant against Sir Geoffrey, and on his way to the Peak to warn him, he travelled with Edward Christian, passing as Ganlesse, a priest, who led him to an inn, where they supped with Chiffinch, a servant of Charles II. On reaching Martindale Castle, he found his father and mother in the custody of Roundheads, and he was taken by Bridgenorth as a prisoner to Moultrassie Hall, where Alice received them, and he recognised Ganlesse among a number of Puritan visitors. During the night the Hall was attacked by the dependents and miners of the Peveril estate, and, having regained his liberty, Julian started, with Lance as his servant, in search of his parents, who he ascertained were on their way to London in charge of Topham. At an inn where they halted, Julian overheard Chiffinch revealing to a courtier a plot against Alice, and that he had been robbed of the papers entrusted to him by the countess, which, however, he managed to recover the next morning. Meanwhile, Christian, under whose care Bridgenorth had placed his daughter, communicated to the Duke of Buckingham a design he had formed of introducing her to Charles II, and, at an interview with her father, endeavoured to persuade him to abandon the idea of marrying her to young Peveril. Having reached London, Julian met Fenella, who led him into St. James's Park, where she attracted the notice of the king by dancing, and he sent them both to await his return at Chiffinch's apartments. Alice was already under the care of Mistress Chiffinch, and escaped from an interview with the duke to find herself in the presence of Charles and her lover, with whom, after he had placed the countess's papers in the king's hands, she was allowed to depart. Julian, however, lost her in a street fray, and having been committed to Newgate for wounding his assailant, he was placed in the same cell with the queen's dwarf, and conversed with an invisible speaker. After startling Christian with the news that his niece had disappeared, the duke bribed Colonel Blood to intercept his movements, so that he might not discover where she was, and was then himself astonished at finding Fenella instead of Alice, who had been captured by his servants in his house, and at her equally unexpected defiance of and escape from him. A few days afterwards, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, his son and the dwarf were tried for aiding and abetting Oates's Plot, and were all acquitted. In order, however, to avoid the mob, they took refuge in a room, where they encountered Bridgenorth, who convinced Julian that they were in his power, and allowed Christian to propose to the Duke of Buckingham that several hundred Fifth-Monarchy men, led by Colonel Blood, should seize the king, and proclaim his Grace Lord-Lieutenant of the kingdom. The same afternoon Charles had just granted an audience to the Countess of Derby, when the dwarf emerged from a violoncello case and revealed the conspiracy which Fenella had enabled him to overhear. It then transpired that Bridgenorth had released the Peverils, and that Christian had trained his daughter Fenella, whose real name was Zarah, to feign being deaf and dumb, in order that she might act as his spy; but that her secret love for Julian had frustrated the execution of his vengeance against the countess. He was allowed to leave the country, and the major, who. on recovering Alice by Fenella's aid, had placed her under Lady Peveril's care, having offered to restore some of Sir Geoffrey's domains which had passed into his hands as her dowry, the king's recommendation secured the old knight's consent to the marriage which within a few weeks united the Martindale-Moultrassie families and estates. |
5381757 | /m/0djb7r | The Fair Maid of Perth | Walter Scott | 1828 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The armourer, Henry Gow, had excited the jealousy of the apprentice Conachar by spending the evening with the glover and his daughter and was returning to their house at dawn, that he might be the first person she saw on St Valentine's morning, when he encountered a party of courtiers in the act of placing a ladder against her window. Having cut off the hand of one, and seized another, who, however, managed to escape, he left the neighbours to pursue the rest, and was saluted by Catharine as her lover. The citizens waited on the provost, who, having heard their grievance, issued a challenge of defiance to the offenders. Meanwhile the King, who occupied apartments in the convent, having confessed to the prior, was consulting with his brother, when the Earl of March arrived to intimate his withdrawal to the English Border, followed into the courtyard by Louise, and afterwards by the Duke of Rothsay, whose dalliance with the maiden was interrupted by the Earl of Douglas ordering his followers to seize and scourge her. Henry Gow, however, was at hand, and the prince, having committed her to his protection, attended his father's council, at which it was determined that the hostile Clans Chattan and Quhele ("Kay") should be invited to settle their feud by a combat between an equal number of their bravest men in the royal presence, and a commission was issued for the suppression of heresy. The old monarch, having learnt that his son was one of those who had attempted to force their way into the glover's house, insisted that he should dismiss his Master of the Horse, who encouraged all his follies; and while Catharine, who had listened to the Lollard teaching of Father Clement, was being urged by him to favour the secret suit of the Prince, her other lover, Conachar, who had rejoined his clan, appeared to carry off her councillor from arrest as an apostate reformer. The armourer had maimed the Prince's Master of the Horse, Sir John Ramorny, whose desire for revenge was encouraged by the apothecary, Dwining. An assassin named Bonthron undertook to waylay and murder Henry Gow. On Shrovetide evening old Simon was visited by a party of morrice-dancers, headed by Proudfute, who lingered behind to confirm a rumour that Henry Gow had been seen escorting a merry maiden to his house, and then proceeded thither to apologise for having divulged the secret. On his way home in the armourer's coat and cap, as a protection against other revellers, he received a blow from behind and fell dead on the spot. About the same time Sir John was roused from the effects of a narcotic by the arrival of the Prince, who made light of his sufferings, and whom he horrified by suggesting that he should cause the death of his uncle, and seize his father's throne. The fate of Proudfute, whose body was at first mistaken for that of the armourer, excited general commotion in the city; while Catharine, on hearing the news, rushed to her lover's house and was folded in his arms. Her father then accompanied him to the town council, where he was chosen as the widow's champion, and the Provost repaired to the King's presence to demand a full inquiry. At a council held the following day, trial by ordeal of bier-right, or by combat, was ordered; and suspicion having fallen on Ramorny's household, each of his servants was required to pass before the corpse, in the belief that the wounds would bleed afresh as the culprit approached. Bonthron, however, chose the alternative of combat, and, having been struck down by Gow, was led away to be hanged. But Dwining had arranged that he should merely be suspended so that he could breathe and during the night he and Sir John's page Eviot cut him down and carried him off. Catharine had learnt that she and her father were both suspected by the commission; and the Provost having offered to place her under the care of The Douglas's daughter, the deserted wife of the Prince, the old glover sought the protection of his former apprentice, who was now the chieftain of his clan. Having returned from his father's funeral, Conachar pleaded for the hand of Catharine, without which he felt he should disgrace himself in the approaching combat with the Clan Chattan. Simon, however, reminded him that she was betrothed to the armourer, and his foster father promised to screen him in the conflict. At the instigation of his uncle, the Prince had been committed to the custody of the Earl of Errol; but, with the Duke's connivance, he was enticed by Ramorny and the apothecary to escape to the castle of Falkland, and, with the help of Bonthron, was starved to death there. Catharine and Louise, however, discovered his fate, and communicated with The Douglas, who overpowered the garrison, and hanged the murderers. The meeting of the hostile champions had been arranged with great pomp, and Henry Gow, having consented to supply Eachin (Conachar) with a suit of armour, volunteered to take the place of one of the Clan Chattan who failed to appear, A terrible conflict ensued, during which Torquil and his eight sons all fell defending their chief, who at last fled from the battle-ground unwounded and dishonoured. On hearing of Rothsay's death, Robert III resigned his sceptre to his wily and ambitious brother, and later died broken-hearted when his younger son James was captured by the English king. Albany transferred the regency to his son; but, nineteen years afterwards, the rightful heir returned, and the usurper expiated his own and his father's guilt on the scaffold. The warrants against Simon and his daughter, and Father Clement, were cancelled by the intervention of the Earl of Douglas, and the Church was conciliated with Dwining's ill-gotten wealth. Conachar either became a hermit, or, legend has it, was spirited away by the fairies. Scotland boasts of many distinguished descendants from Henry Gow and his spouse the Fair Maid of Perth. |
5381761 | /m/0djb8h | Anne of Geierstein | Walter Scott | 1829 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | As the merchant John Philipson and his son Arthur were travelling towards Basel they were overtaken by a storm, and found themselves at the edge of a precipice caused by a recent earthquake. Arthur was making his way towards a tower indicated by their guide Antonio, when he was rescued from imminent danger by Anne, who conducted him to her uncle Bierderman's mountain home. His father had already been brought there to safety by Biederman and his sons. During their evening games Rudolph, who had joined in them, became jealous of the young Englishman's skill with the bow, and challenged him; but they were overheard by Anne, and the duel was interrupted. The travellers were invited to continue their journey in company with a deputation of Switzers, commissioned to remonstrate with Charles the Bold respecting the exactions of Hagenbach; and the magistrates of Basel having declined to let them enter the city, they took shelter in the ruins of a castle. During his share in the night watches, Arthur fancied that he saw an apparition of Anne, and was encouraged in his belief by Rudolph, who narrated her family history, which implied that her ancestors had dealings with supernatural beings. Hoping to prevent a conflict on his account between the Swiss and the duke's steward, the merchant arranged that he and his son should precede them; but on reaching the Burgundian citadel they were imprisoned by the governor in separate dungeons. Arthur, however, was released by Anne with the assistance of a priest, and his father by Biederman, a body of Swiss youths having entered the town and incited the citizens to execute Hagenbach, just as he was intending to slaughter the deputation, whom he had treacherously admitted. A valuable necklace which had been taken from the merchant was restored to him by Sigismund, and the deputies having decided to persist in seeking an interview with the duke, the Englishman undertook to represent their cause favourably to him. On their way to Charles's headquarters father and son were overtaken by Anne disguised as a lady of rank, and, acting on her whispered advice to Arthur, they continued their journey by different roads. The elder fell in with a mysterious priest who provided him with a guide to the "Golden Fleece," where he was lowered from his bedroom to appear before a meeting of the Vehmic court or holy tribunal, and warned against speaking of their secret powers. The younger was met and conducted by Annette to a castle, where he spent the evening with his lady-love, and travelled with her the next day to rejoin his father at Strassburg. In the cathedral there they met Margaret of Anjou, who recognised Philipson as John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, a faithful adherent of the house of Lancaster, and planned with him an appeal to the duke for aid against the Yorkists. On reaching Charles's camp the earl was welcomed as an old companion in arms, and obtained a promise of the help he sought, on condition that Provence was ceded to Burgundy. Arthur was despatched to Aix-en-Provence to urge Margaret to persuade her father accordingly, while the earl accompanied his host to an interview with his burghers and the Swiss deputies. King René of Anjou's preference for the society of troubadours and frivolous amusements had driven his daughter to take refuge in a convent. On hearing from Arthur, however, the result of the earl's mission to the duke, she returned to the palace, and had induced her father to sign away his kingdom, when his grandson Ferrand arrived with the news of the rout of the Burgundian army at Neuchâtel, and Arthur learned from his squire, Sigismund, that he had not seen Anne's spectre but herself during his night-watch, and that the priest he had met more than once was her father, the Count Albert of Geierstein. The same evening Queen Margaret died in her chair of state; and all the earl's prospects for England being thwarted, he occupied himself in arranging a treaty between her father and the King of France. He was still in Provence when he was summoned to rouse the duke from a fit of melancholy, caused by the Switzers having again defeated him. After raising fresh troops, Charles decided to wrest Nancy from the young Duke of Lorraine, and during the siege Arthur received another challenge from Rudolph. The rivals met, and, having killed the Bernese, the young Englishman obtained Count Albert's consent to his marriage with Anne, with strict injunctions to warn the duke that the Secret Tribunal had decreed his death. By the treachery of the Italians the Swiss were enabled the same night to gain another victory, Charles was slain, and their independence was established. Being still an exile, the earl accepted the patriot Biederman's invitation to reside with his countess at Geierstein, until the battle of Bosworth placed Henry VII on the throne, when Arthur and his wife attracted as much admiration at the English Court as they had gained among their Swiss neighbours. |
5381773 | /m/0djb9k | Weir of Hermiston | Robert Louis Stevenson | 1896 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel tells the story of Archie Weir, a youth born into an upper-class Edinburgh family. Because of his Romantic sensibilities and sensitivity, Archie is estranged from his father, who is depicted as the coarse and cruel judge of a criminal court. By mutual consent, Archie is banished from his family of origin and sent to live as the local laird on a family property in the vicinity of Hermiston (now on Edinburgh's outskirts, and occupied by Heriot-Watt University, but then out in the countryside). While serving as the laird, Archie meets and falls in love with Kirstie (Christina). As the two are deepening their relationship, the book breaks off. Confusingly, there are two characters in the novel called Christina. |
5384313 | /m/0djfsj | Witch Hunt | Wendy Corsi Staub | 1993 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A fishing boat sinks in the English Channel in the middle of the night, and the evidence points to murder. Ex-Special Branch agent Dominic Elder comes out of retirement to help investigate the explosion of the boat, as it appears that his long-time obsession, a female assassin known as Witch, may be responsible. Using the boat to get to England from France, Witch left a subtle trail of clues to announce her arrival and to warn off Elder. But that is the least of Special Branch's worries, if Elder's well-honed intuition is correct. He has seen her work before and knows her to be a resourceful enemy, who always seems a step ahead of the authorities. With an imminent summit of world leaders to be held in London, Witch's target seems obvious. Young Michael Barclay's thoroughness leads him onto Witch's trail, with the help of his liaison in the French police, Dominique. Apart from her language help and guidance around Paris, Michael is sexually attracted to her. The team of detectives and MI5 agents, and the terrorist, play cat-and-mouse with each other in Scotland, England, France, and even briefly visit a former associate of Witch in prison in Germany. |
5384472 | /m/0djfzw | Bleeding Hearts | Ian Rankin | 1994 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Michael Weston is a professional assassin, but he also suffers from haemophilia. The wealthy father of a girl he killed by mistake years ago has sworn vengeance on the killer, hiring a private detective (Hoffer) to track him down. Rankin has said that he wrote this book under the influence of Martin Amis' novel Money and that Weston was influenced by that novel's protagonist John Self. |
5384586 | /m/0djg4h | Blood Hunt | Ian Rankin | 9/14/1995 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Gordon Reeve, a former SAS soldier, receives a phone call in his home in Scotland, informing him that his brother Jim has been found dead in a car in San Diego - the car being locked from the inside, and the gun still in Jim's hand. While in the USA to identify the body, Gordon realises that his brother was murdered, and that the police is more than reluctant to follow any lead. Retracing Jim's final hours, he connects Jim's death with his work as a journalist, investigating a multinational chemical corporation. Soon, Gordon finds himself under surveillance, and decides to find out more among Jim's acquaintances back in Europe. In London, he finds more hints, but no evidence for his brother's sources. After returning to his wife and son, he finds that his home has been bugged by professionals. Sending his wife and son to a relative, he determines to take on his enemy on his own. Interestingly, there are two parties after him: The multinational corporation, represented by "Jay", a renegade SAS member, and an international investigation corporation, somehow connected with the case. Traveling to France, in order to find out more from a journalist colleague of Jim's, they are attacked by a group of professional killers under orders from Jay, resulting in multiple deaths, and leading to Gordon becoming a police target. Gordon decides to return to the USA, where he infiltrates the investigation corporation, and learns more about the history of the case. Then he travels to San Diego, to collect more evidence, and eventually returns to England, deliberately leaving a trail for Jay. Their long enmity leads Jay to follow Gordon to Scotland, where Gordon kills him and his team in a final showdown. Gordon manages to locate Jim's hidden journalistic material, hopefully clearing Jim's and his own name. |
5385291 | /m/0djg_n | Before the Fact | Anthony Berkeley Cox | null | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | Before the Fact is the story of Lina, a "born victim". She is raised in the country in the early decades of the 20th century and, at 28, she is still a virgin and in danger of becoming an old spinster. She finds country life with her parents rather boring, and only lives for strangers who might be passing through or who have been invited by someone living in or near their village. When the novel opens, such a stranger has just arrived: 27 year-old Johnnie Aysgarth, from an impoverished family who are, as she is told, "of rotten stock". General McLaidlaw, Lina's father, is opposed to the marriage, and everyone seems to know that all that Johnnie is after is Lina's money. Lina herself has been told from an early age that Joyce, her younger sister, got the looks and she (Lina) got the brains. In spite of these difficulties, Lina and Johnnie get married after only a short engagement. They go to Paris on their honeymoon, where they stay at the best hotels and dine at the best restaurants, and, on their return, move into an eight-bedroom house in London. Only six weeks later, Johnnie, who is jobless, admits to his wife that they have been living on borrowed money and that it has run out. Gradually, unwillingly, Lina takes charge of the couple's finances and suggests that Johnnie get a regular job. They leave the expensive house and move to the country; they settle down in a part of Dorset where they know no one and start living in a more modest house. For the time being, they rely entirely on Lina's allowance. Reluctantly, Johnnie takes a job as the steward of a large estate of a Captain Melbeck. Lina always wanted to have children, but, as it turns out, she never gets pregnant. As time goes by, Lina gradually learns that Johnnie is a crook. Apart from being a compulsive liar, he turns out to be * a thief: During a tennis party, he steals an expensive diamond belonging to one of the guests and, soon afterwards, a piece of Lina's own jewelry. Also, he sells Lina's four Hepplewhite chairs to an antique shop in Bournemouth. * a forger: He forges Lina's signature and cashes one of her cheques. * an embezzler: He embezzles Captain Melbeck's money to pay his gambling debts. Luckily, Melbeck doesn't prosecute. * an adulterer: During their marriage, he has affairs with many women and village girls, including Lina's best friend, Janet Caldwell - he has a flat in Bournemouth especially for that purpose - and Ella, their parlour maid, by whom he has a son. * eventually, a murderer: He incites General McLaidlaw to do a trick involving chairs while he and Lina are staying with the General for Christmas. This is too much physical exercise for the General, and he dies suddenly. Some years later, Johnnie cheats a rich school friend of his, Beaky Thwaite, out of his money by traveling incognito to Paris with him, going to a brothel and having him drink a whole beaker of brandy in one gulp so that he drops dead. However, Lina's own death will be Johnnie's first "real" murder. He goes to great lengths to conceive an undetectable murder. When Isobel Sedbusk, the author of detective stories, happens to spend the summer in their village, he associates with her and, on the pretext of discussing material for her new book, elicits a new method of murder from her: swallowing an alkali commonly used, but never suspected of being poisonous, and which leaves no trace in the human body for a post-mortem to find. At the very end of the novel, Lina, who really seems to have gone mad, catches the flu. She has been waiting for her husband to try to murder her for months now. When he brings her a drink, she swallows it deliberately, knowing that it is a poisonous cocktail. Johnny is going to get away with it ("People did die of influenza."), which is what Lina, so much in love with her husband, hopes will happen. The novel covers a period of approximately ten years: Johnnie Aysgarth's courtship of, and marriage to, Lina McLaidlaw, the disintegration of their marriage and her imminent death — although it is uncertain that she is really going to die. The whole story is told from Lina Aysgarth's point of view. We know everything she does and everything she thinks. On the other hand, we know practically nothing about the villain except for what Lina sees and gathers, creating more suspense. |
5385342 | /m/0djh1c | The Talented Mr. Ripley | Patricia Highsmith | 1955 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Tom Ripley is a young man struggling to make a living in New York City by whatever means necessary, including a series of small-time confidence scams. One day, he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf to travel to Mongibello, Italy, to persuade Greenleaf's errant son, Dickie, to return to the United States and join the family business. Ripley agrees, exaggerating his friendship with Dickie, a half-remembered acquaintance, in order to gain the elder Greenleaf's trust. Shortly after his arrival in Italy, Ripley meets Dickie and his friend Marge Sherwood; although Ripley ingratiates himself with Dickie, Marge does not seem to like him very much. As Ripley and Dickie spend more time together, Marge feels left out and begins insinuating to Dickie that Ripley is gay. Dickie then surprises Ripley in Dickie's bedroom dressed up in Dickie's clothes and imitating his mannerisms. Dickie is upset, and from this moment on Ripley senses that his wealthy friend has begun to tire of him, resenting his constant presence and growing personal dependence. Ripley has indeed become obsessed with Dickie, which is further reinforced by his desire to imitate and maintain the wealthy lifestyle Dickie has afforded him. As a gesture to Ripley, Dickie agrees to travel with him on a short holiday to Sanremo. Sensing that Dickie is about to cut him loose, Ripley finally decides to murder him and assume his identity. When the two set sail in a small rented boat, Ripley beats him to death with an oar, dumps his anchor-weighted body into the water and scuttles the boat. Ripley assumes Dickie's identity, living off the latter's trust fund and carefully providing communications to Marge to assure her that Dickie has dumped her. Freddie Miles, an old friend of Dickie's from the same social set, encounters Ripley at what he supposes to be Dickie's apartment in Rome. He soon suspects something is wrong. When Miles finally confronts him, Ripley kills him with an ashtray. He later disposes of the body on the outskirts of Rome, attempting to make police believe that Miles has been murdered by robbers. Ripley enters a cat-and-mouse game with the Italian police, but manages to keep himself safe by restoring his own identity and moving to Venice. In succession Marge, Dickie's father, and an American private detective confront Ripley, who suggests to them that Dickie was depressed and may have committed suicide. Marge stays for a while at Ripley's rented house in Venice. When she discovers Dickie's rings in Ripley's possession, she seems to be on the verge of realising the truth. Panicked, Ripley contemplates murdering Marge, but she is saved when she says that if Dickie gave his rings to Ripley, then he probably meant to kill himself. The story concludes with Ripley's traveling to Greece and resigning himself to eventually getting caught. On arrival in Greece, however, he discovers that the Greenleaf family has accepted that Dickie is dead and that Ripley shall inherit his fortune according to a will forged by Ripley on Dickie's Hermes typewriter. While the book ends with Ripley happily rich, it also suggests that he may forever be dogged by paranoia. In one of the final paragraphs, he nervously envisions a group of police officers waiting to arrest him, and Highsmith leaves her protagonist wondering, ".....was he going to see policemen waiting for him on every pier that he ever approached?" |
5386942 | /m/0djjp_ | Timewyrm: Exodus | Terrance Dicks | null | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Ace arrive in London 1951, but discover that somehow the Nazis have won the war. They must travel back into the history of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party to ensure that history is restored to its proper course. |
5386979 | /m/0djjr0 | Timewyrm: Apocalypse | Nigel Robinson | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Ace follow the Timewyrm to the planet Kirith in the far, far future. There they find a peaceful, happy society that hides a dark secret. |
5387022 | /m/0djjs1 | Timewyrm: Revelation | Paul Cornell | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The battle to defeat the Timewyrm having taken the Seventh Doctor and Ace to Ancient Mesopotamia, 1950s Britain and the edge of the universe at the end of time finally ends within the Doctor's own mind with only his past incarnations to help him after Ace is killed by a playground bully... |
5390022 | /m/0djnpz | Obernewtyn | Isobelle Carmody | 1988-05 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Elspeth learns from her premonitions, and her cat Maruman's prophecies, that a keeper from Obernewtyn, a feared institution where Misfits are sent to work, will come to take her there. Soon, when delivering tea to visiting Head Keeper of Obernewtyn, Madam Vega, Elspeth accidentally reveals she is a Misfit, though not to what extent, and is soon despatched to Obernewtyn. Her first few weeks at Obernewtyn are spent in the kitchen, with the cook’s daughter, the favoured Misfit, Ariel, and farm overseer, Rushton, taking an immediate hatred of her. Later reassigned to the farm, an encounter with Matthew and Dameon reveals she is not alone in her particular abilities. Elspeth, plagued by nightmares, begins to feel there is a dark secret underneath their everyday tasks. While working, Elspeth decides to test the range of her telepathic ability, "farseeking", but beyond the boundaries of Obernewtyn, a strange machine, the Zebrakhen, traps her mind. She is only freed by combining her mental strength with another anonymous mind who offers assistance. Asked by Vega to look out for "special" Misfits, her interview reveals the Doctor is a defective simpleton; his "assistant", Alexi, has no interest in Elspeth in his quest to find the "right one". Elspeth and Matthew later deduce that tortuous experiments on their kind are occurring, and they decide to escape. That night, Elspeth sneaks into the Doctor’s office to retrieve a map and compass, but on finding forbidden books and maps from before the Great White, the "Beforetime", she realises they must be searching for something from long ago. She leaves empty-handed. Rosamunde, a friend from Kindraide, arrives at Obernewtyn and coldly informs Elspeth that her brother Jes had discovered he also had mental abilities, but was killed by guards in an escape attempt. Rushton comforts the distraught Elspeth, and asks her why she plagues him. Fearful that someone will soon be after her as well, her group’s escape plans begin in earnest. Elspeth returns a second time to the Doctor’s office, but when Vega, Alexi and Ariel enter, she learns Ariel is part of the Obernewtyn family, and that they are searching for a Misfit to help them find the location of Beforetime weapons. Pre-warned that two councilmen are coming to fetch her for questioning by the Herders, at nightfall she makes to escape but Rushton stops her. He reveals a secret network of drains which gets her safely to the farms. Yet, once there she is lost in a blizzard, until Dominick finds her and locks her in the farmhouse to return later to Obernewtyn. Overhearing a conversation between her captors, she discovers they were to secretly meet with the rebel group, but Rushton has gone missing. Convincing them that her powers can help find him, she makes her way on foot through the blizzard to the far mountains, with Maruman as her guide. Inside the cave network she finds a dying Cameo, who tells her the Beforetime weapons Alexi and Vega are searching for caused the Great White, but they do not know this. She also reveals it is Elspeth’s destiny, as the Seeker, to destroy them. After mourning her death, Elspeth overhears that Rushton, imprisoned in the next cavern, is the true heir of Obernewtyn. Suddenly, she is captured by Ariel, who ties her to a table next to the Zebrakhen machine. Elspeth is forced to hold the diaries of Marissa, the wife of the founder of Obernewtyn, and use her abilities to discover what Marissa was thinking when she wrote them to determine the weapons’ location. Still withstanding the torture, Elspeth mentally enters Rushton’s mind and recognises the voice of her earlier rescuer from the Zebrakhen. Rushton gives his mental strength to her to endure it, but in her despair at their threats to kill him, her resistance breaks and Marissa’s thoughts reveal the map to be carved into the front doors of Obernewtyn. At this point, the Zebrakhan overheats and bursts into flames. Something in Elspeth’s mind cracks and she uses this new power to kill Vega. She falls unconscious as Rushton’s rebel friends rush in. Alexi is killed, but Ariel flees into the night and is believed to have died in the blizzard. Now known to be the legal master of Obernewtyn, Rushton plans to build it into a secret refuge for Misfits. |
5390085 | /m/0djnrp | The Farseekers | Isobelle Carmody | 1994-05 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Rushton returns from a journey around the highlands and immediately calls a meeting of all the leaders of the guilds (guildmerge). At the meeting, Elspeth and Pavo propose a joint expedition of their guilds to the West Coast, in order to recover an untouched Beforetime (time before Great White) book cache, as well as rescue a person with very strong mental abilities. Rushton proposes a safe house be set up in the capital, Sutrium, so they can be informed of the Council’s movements, with that person joining their expedition. This expedition is unanimously approved. Suddenly her cat Maruman falls into a fitful coma and Elspeth enters his mind to help bring him to. Inside his mind, a voice of an Agyllian reminds Elspeth of her promise to destroy the weaponmachines, a journey she must make alone. Later, Zarak bumps into an unknown Misfit mind while farseeking, who is a novice Herder in Darthnor cloister. Elspeth contacts the novice, named Jik, who initially believes she is a demon sent to test his faith. After subsequent conversations, she reveals she too is a Misfit and offers him a home at Obernewtyn. A small group of Farseekers rescue him, making it looked as he had drowned. Meanwhile, Elspeth, in response to the horses’ refusal to be ridden, strikes a bargain with their leader, Gahltha, that the upcoming expedition be treated as a test as to whether they can work as equals. He agrees but only if Elspeth rides him, as both parties should risk leaders. Just before the expedition sets off, a prophecy reveals Jik must join them and they must be back before the pass closes in winter, or Obernewtyn will fall. Disguised as a gypsy troop, they attempt to find a secret pass through the lower mountains, but are taken captive by armsmen of Henry Druid (infamous rebel leader). Inside the well-established camp, their mental abilities are suddenly constrained and the group are separated. After being questioned by Druid about Obernewtyn, Kella and Elspeth are invited to dinner with the men in order to arrange bonding (marriage) of them to some armsmen. The head armsmen, Gilbert, takes a liking to her and speaks at length of his life and the camp. Later, Elspeth finds a secret group of Misfits led by Druid’s secret deaf daughter and learns the block on the abilities is caused by a Misfit baby. Elspeth and Kella intended to be bonded to someone that night but instead the group escape during a large storm. Dominic, who had eluded capture, had built large rafts at Elspeth’s earlier request, on which the group escaped their pursuers into the mountain rapids. Halfway down, they came across a ruined Beforetime city in a large cavern. Suddenly exiting the mountain via a large waterfall, they are nursed back to health by a rebel couple. In return, the group agree to go to Aborium to see if their son, Brydda, is fine. Domick leaves them to travel to Sutrium to set up the safe house. In Aborium, Elspeth asks for him at the specified inn but is taken prisoner instead. Rescued by one of Brydda’s friends, she is taken to see him. Meanwhile Kella, Jik and Pavo are taken captive by the Herders and are being held in the local cloister. Realising Jik is an escaped novice, they intend to send him to Herder Isle (island containing core of order) that night for interrogation. Though she breaks in and frees the other two, she is too late to free Jik. However, with Brydda’s help, they are able to cause enough commotion on the wharf to rescue him. Outside the city, they, with Brydda, travel north to their destination, the ruins containing the library. Deserted as believed haunted, the group eventually realise a wild girl is causing the horrific visions with her mind, and is the Misfit they seek. By coaxing with food, the girl, dubbed ‘Dragon’, eventually follows them back and joins their group. They also take back many books from the Beforetime library. After returning to Brydda’s parents house, Domick rushes in to warn them of the approaching soliderguards, and that Ariel is alive. Fleeing, Brydda reveals the secret pass through the mountains, which the group safely get through only through Jik’s dog’s directions. However on emerging from the other side, a firestorm bears down on them. Though Elspeth is dragged to safety by Daffyd, someone she met many years earlier, Jik perishes in the flames. Elspeth convinces Daffyd to take the others back to Obernewtyn before the pass closes, as the mental barrier blocking the pain in her badly injured feet caused by the Zebrakhen had collapsed. Alone and dying, Elspeth is taken by Guannette birds (Agyllians) to the highest mountain where they teach her body to heal itself. The leader, Atthis, who spoke to her earlier in Maruman’s mind, reminds her of her quest, and the existence of the Destroyer who is destined to try and use the weaponmachines. Haven taken months to heal, Elspeth is return to the wintery highlands where Gahltha awaits her to take her back to Obernewtyn. There Elspeth sees a ruin, destroyed by a firestorm, and a soldierguard camp set up nearby with Rushton and others captive inside. Having presumed her dead, the others are mystified and overjoyed at her arrival, particularly Rushton. They reveal Obernewtyn is fine, and it is just a vision caused by Dragon to fool soldierguards, who eventually flee in fear of catching a deadly disease. |
5390724 | /m/0djq1h | The Keeping Place | Isobelle Carmody | 1998-11 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | After a kidnapping, the Misfit community at Obernewtyn are forced to join the rebellion against the totalitarian Council, using their extraordinary mental abilities. Yet Elspeth must also seek out clues left by a long-dead seer, Kasanda, necessary to her quest to destroy the Beforetime weaponmachines. When one is hidden in the past, Elspeth must travel the Dreamtrails, stalked by a terrifying beast, with Maruman, her cat, as guide and protector. Only now can she learn more of the Beforetime Misfits and their enemy, Govamen, and realise her quest is intimately linked with the Misfit's Obernewtyn - its past and its future. |
5391339 | /m/0djr2l | The Eye | Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov | 1930 | null | The action of the novel largely begins after the attempted (perhaps successful) suicide of the protagonist. After his supposed death, his "eye" observes a group of Russian émigrés as he tries to ascertain their opinions of the character Smurov, around whom much uncertainty and suspicion exists. |
5392055 | /m/0djs90 | Darkfall | Isobelle Carmody | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | After Glynn is transported to the world of Keltor, she is rescued by an Acanthan Windwalker named Solen, who despite his apparent indifference, is heavily involved in the complex politics of Keltor. Glynn pretends amnesia and slowly learns that the independent Isle of Darkfall and its sisterhood of soulweavers are falling out of favour with rulers in Keltor. Unfortunately, her athletic build, sense of honour and independence make her resemble the Myrmidons, amazon like women who are the sworn protectors of the soulweavers, who are also out of favour. Unbeknownst to Glynn, her twin sister Ember, in trying to save her from drowning was also transported into Keltor. She is rescued by the Soulweaver Alene and her Myrmidon protectors Feyt and Tareed, who harbours a nagging suspicions as to whether Ember is the "Unraveller" as predicted by Lanalor, the very first Holder(King) and the only male soulweaver. Ember is dying from a large tumour in the frontal lobe of her brain. She is half blind and does not have long to live. The entire plot is a result of Lanalor's trickery in which the Unykorn/Firstmade was captured by the Chaos spirit so that Lanalor could be with his love, Shenavyre, who incidentally committed suicide when the Firstmade was imprisoned. Lanalor prophesized an Unraveller would come to rescue the Unykorn and free Keltor, although most Keltorians have lost faith in this prophecy. The arrival of strangers (People from Earth), Lanalor promised, would be a sign that the Unraveller would come one day. He gave the description by which the Unraveller would be identified: half blind yet seeing all (half blind), mark by visioning though without the Darkfall mark, lives yet sings the deathsong (dying), born yet not of the Song of Making (not from Keltor), gifted from the great water (from the portal in the water, thus washed up to shore) and crowned in bright flames (many take this as red hair) In an attempt to get currency to pay for a ship fare, Glynn is captured by members of the Draaka cult, who drug and enslave her. The Draaka cult preaches to the Chaos spirit though this is not known to all of Keltor. The Draaka seek to ultimately rule the world in Chaos. Glynn is saved from being a drugged drone by Bayard, a loyal Draaka follower who does not agree with the drug taking that the rest of the cult does, when her pet, the fienna, gets attached to Glynn. Bayard wanted Glynn as her servant instead of a drone as she believed that Glynn could help the fienna give birth to its final offspring (Glynn portrays herself as a Fomikan who came from an aspi breeder's farm whose parents are disappointed with her, in order to survive). Through a vision, Ember saves the Holder's life from an assassination attempt by Coralyn, who wants to put her other son Kalide on the throne. Her friend Bleyd is framed and tortured and a daring rescue attempt brings Ember face to face with the paradoxical manbeast Ronaall who predicts Ember's death if she does not leave the Isle of Ramidan within the night with Bleyd. Ember's tale ends with her smuggled on a ship heading to Darkfall so she can seek answers and healing for her ever-worsening brain tumour. Alene gives her own a'luwtha as a gift, the playing of the music to unlock her memory. Bayard falls overboard and drowns on the way to Ramidan and Glynn helps the fienna give birth, assisted by Solen, who she reunites with on a ship after his faked death. The mother fienna enhances Glynn's latent abilities so that she can save the last offspring (the mother and 2 of 3 offspring die), and in doing so, helps fill the grey void in Glynn. She is now connected to the he-fienna. In the morning, as Glynn's ship pulls into the harbour of Ramidan; unknowingly she watches Ember's ship departing. The novel also interconnects characters on Earth to those in Keltor in "Segue" sections. These characters include Faye and Tabby (Implied mirrors of Feyt and Tareed), a mysterious comatose manbeast by the name of Ronaall, the male nurse who cares for the comatose man who also cared for Ember, a clarinet player and his comatose mother, a security guard, a policeman named Johnny, the blonde jogger who finds Wind's suicide note and various others. |
5395471 | /m/0djxtf | Drift House: The First Voyage | Dale Peck | 2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | After the 9/11 attack on New York City, the three Oakenfeld children, Susan, Charles, and Murray, are sent to live with their Uncle Farley in Canada. Farley has recently bought a strange ship-like home named Drift House on The Bay of Eternity. The home resembles a bizarre old-time ship, washed ashore. The children immediately find the home very odd. When they question their uncle about the strange house, he becomes nervous and distracted. The children later explore the house, where they meet a talkative parrot named President Wilson. One morning, they wake to discover the house has been raised up by a flood, carried out of the bay, and has drifted into the Sea of Time – a place where past, present, and future converge. Susan, Charles and Murray, along with Uncle Farley and President Wilson embark on an adventure where they discover evil mermaids, comical pirates, a wise whale, predictions of things to come, and a secret plot that could stop time itself. |
5395968 | /m/0djyc4 | The Professor of Desire | Philip Roth | 1977 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | David is emotionally insecure. He grows up in the hotel his parents manage, where he is influenced by artist Herbie Bratasky, who, thanks to his ingenuity in imitating sounds of farts, defecation and toilet flushing, is credited with "mastering the whole Wagner scale of fecal Storm and Stress". When he attends a college, he rooms with a lazy, often-masturbating, homosexual, draft-dodging, fellow student, who inadvertently adds to Kepesh's insecurity. At first, he seems to accept the odd facts about his colleague, but then he's shocked when he's told by others that he deviated from so many social norms. David, often lusting after female co-students, never has a successful date. He often annoys girls by telling them they have gorgeous bodily features. Kepesh, with a Fulbright grant in his pocket, goes to London, where he meets two sexually interested Swedish girls, Birgitta and Elisabeth. Back in America, he moves to California, where he gets acquainted with Helen, a woman dreaming of opening a store. Helen has a history of promiscuity dating back to her early twenties, when she lived in Hong Kong and other places in Asia. Helen does not feel loved by Kepesh. She refuses to do household duties because Kepesh gives her only sexual attention; unable to speak of his emotions, Kepesh submits to that "fact" and ends up doing all the housework as well as teaching literature classes and writing papers on Anton Chekhov. Kepesh separates from Helen and goes to New York to give lectures in literature, but his emotional side not yet formed or refined, he has endless sessions with a psychoanalyst and even uses his literature class (which he later calls "Desire 341" after the course number) to contrast his own desires and experiences with those portrayed in works like Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. He even persuades the students to hear about and discuss his own love life. On a visit to Prague, birthplace of the equally sexually inexperienced Franz Kafka, he dreams of visiting the still-living prostitute of Kafka who invites him to look at her crotch; presuming he wants to see why it held Kafka's interest for so long. it:Il professore di desiderio |
5397043 | /m/0dj_60 | The Last Hero | Leslie Charteris | 1930 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Unlike previous Saint stories, which were straightforward realistic crime dramas, The Last Hero saw Simon Templar entering the realm of both science fiction and spy fiction. The novel starts an unspecified length of time after the events of Enter the Saint with an account of Simon Templar, The Saint, foiling an assassination attempt on a visiting prince by tricking the would-be assassin into blowing himself up. This leads to The Saint becoming a cause célèbre among the British people, to the point where the government offers him not only a full pardon for past crimes, but also a job as a sanctioned crime-buster. Templar politely refuses, saying he prefers to remain underground, his identity a secret to all but a select few. (He would revisit this decision, however, in the later story "The Impossible Crime" (featured in the collection Alias the Saint) and again in the novel, She Was a Lady.) Over the next three months, the Saint proceeds to operate so far in the shadows that the general public thinks he has retired or disappeared. During this time, Templar hears from a reporter friend about troubling indications that conditions for a new war in Europe might be brewing (Templar insists that after the events of the First World War there wouldn't be another such war "for hundreds of years"). Later, during an outing in the countryside with fellow adventurer and girlfriend Patricia Holm, Templar stumbles upon a secret British government installation where he and Holm witness the testing of a deadly and mysterious weapon—the electroncloud machine, which creates a vapor capable of turning anything (and anyone) it touches into ash. Templar and Holm are about to leave when they encounter a giant of a man named Rayt Marius, an evil tycoon who wants the weapon for his own purposes. After escaping to safety, Templar determines that he and his team must steal or destroy the weapon before their government—or any other—can use it against people. Not only that, but the weapon must not be allowed to fall into Marius' hands. And in order that such a weapon never be re-created, Templar also plans to kidnap the device's inventor and, if necessary, kill the scientist. Things become complicated when Marius kidnaps Patricia Holm, setting Templar off into an uncharacteristically murderous rage. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard Inspector Claud Eustace Teal also finds himself getting involved, even though the identity of The Saint remains a mystery to him. After rescuing Patricia from the clutches of Marius, Templar realizes that his quest for anonymity is at an end (with both Marius and Teal now aware of who he really is) and begins to make plans to leave the country (along with his compatriots if they so choose). But first he must try to convince the inventor of the electroncloud to abandon the weapon; when the scientist indicates that he not only refuses to give up his work, but might also be mad, Templar reluctantly decides the man must die in order to potentially save the lives of millions. Before he can execute the scientist, Templar's base is attacked by Marius, who is revealed to be working for the same prince Templar earlier saved. During the melee, one of Templar's men, Norman Kent, completes the Saint's orders and kills the scientist; he does so after determining that whoever killed the scientist would be likely to hang for murder if caught, and out of loyalty to Templar chose to take the chance himself. It is also revealed that Kent, who had only been mentioned briefly in previous Saint adventures, harbored an unrequited love for Patricia Holm, possibly originating from a Mediterranean cruise on which Templar had assigned Kent to take Holm in order to keep her out of trouble (as indicated in Enter the Saint). Later, while being held at gunpoint by Marius and the prince, Kent reveals that he killed the scientist, but not before being given the man's final notes on the electroncloud. In exchange for Marius and the Prince allowing the Saint and his friends Patricia and Roger Conway to go free, Kent agrees to hand over the documents. After Templar and his group (save Kent) depart, Kent reveals that he has played a trick on Marius and had secretly passed the notes off to Simon before his departure. As the book ends, Marius shoots Norman Kent dead as he stands in front of a window to stop Marius shooting through it. The Last Hero was published 15 years before the advent of nuclear weapons, and nine years before the outbreak of the Second World War, yet contains statements that could be seen as predicting these two milestones. Perhaps coincidentally, the name Albert Einstein is mentioned in passing. The electroncloud device is only shown in action once and, while the inventor of the device is killed, and Marius states to Templar that the machine Templar and Holm witnessed in action was destroyed by his men, it is never revealed what, if anything, Templar did with the scientist's notes. The Last Hero was the first of a trilogy of novels. The events of this novel (in particular the fate of Norman Kent) led to an immediate sequel, Knight Templar (a.k.a. The Avenging Saint), which was published later in 1930 and which takes place three months after the conclusion of Last Hero. In 1932, after an interval of a number of unrelated novellas and a full-length novel, the trilogy concluded with Getaway. After this book, the character of Holm fades somewhat into the background for a time, although she would return to the forefront in the novella collection The Holy Terror. The tone of the book is far more romantic and tragic than the average Simon Templar books. In most books of the series, the reader can know in advance that no matter what terrible threats and perils Templar would face, he would survive them all and live to have new adventures in the next book and the next. Conversely, in the present book Charteris drops many hints that Norman Kent is in effect "fey", meaning doomed to die - for example, his hopeless but gallant love for Patricia Holm. Norman Kent, rather than Templar, is the true protagonist - certainly in the book's later parts - and he is manifestly "The Last Hero" of the title. With reference to this book, Caroline Whitehead and George McLeod wrote: (...) Norman Kent is an archetypal knight-errant. Though formally a man of 20th Century England, he lives (and dies) by the Code of Chivalry. He loves totally his Lady, Patricia Holm - who, like Don Quixote's Dulcinea, is not aware of that love. He is totally loyal to his Liege Lord, Simon Templar. Like Sir Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", Norman Kent takes on the threats to his Lord. Not only physicial threats to life and limb, but also the sometimes inavoidable need to take dishourable acts which would have reflected badly on the reputation of King Arthur/Simon Templar is taken on, wholly and without reservation, by Sir Gawain/Norman Kent.. |
5397088 | /m/0dj_8g | Winner Takes All | Jacqueline Rayner | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The time travellers return to present-day Earth and become intrigued by the latest craze, the video game Death to Mantodeans. Is the game as harmless as it seems and even if it is, why are so many people going on holiday and not coming back? The Doctor and Rose need Mickey Smith's help as Earth is threatened once more by aliens known as the Quevvils. |
5398595 | /m/0dk1nl | That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French | Stephen King | null | null | As the story progresses, she begins to remember skeletons from the closet, starting as financially strapped newlyweds who went onto greater things with her husband's eventual success in the computer industry. It is implied, though never explicitly revealed, that the man and woman have been killed in a mid-air plane collision, and are suffering eternal torment. |
5399696 | /m/0dk3dr | Cold Fusion | Lance Parkin | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa arrive on an unnamed ice planet (which goes unnamed throughout the novel), which has settlements at the equator and not anywhere else. The planet is run by the Scientifica, a technocratic society allied with the Earth Empire, but there is a more than usual presence of Adjudicators on the planet. Tegan and Nyssa get a hotel room where they run into a man who claims to be "Bruce Jovanka" with a bad Australian accent, while the Doctor and Adric enter the Scientifica's complex and encounter three very diverse characters: Whitfield, the woman who runs the Scientifica; Tertullian Medford, the primary Adjudicator on the planet; and a badly decaying woman who the Doctor subsequently learns is Gallifreyan when she regenerates and nicknames "Patience" (she was previously known as only the Patient). While things turn sticky for the Doctor and Adric (they're ambushed by a beautiful black woman on the skitrain tracks, then arrested for being alien spies), Tegan and Nyssa run into their own troubles with the husky blond "Bruce". And all the meanwhile, a little man is elsewhere on the planet, investigating a strange machine found buried in the subterranean soil... |
5400608 | /m/0dk4y2 | System Shock | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | It is 1998 and the information age is just about to take off. However, mysterious events are plaguing London. A prominent spy is killed. A hostage situation bizarrely resolved. The Doctor receives a computer disc from a man who is supposed to be dead. It seems that an alien race is planning a takeover using Earth's ever expanding computer technology. |
5400938 | /m/0dk5fn | The Eye of the Giant | Christopher Bulis | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The year is 1934. According to legend, the Polynesian island of Salutua disappeared after a fire god rose up from the volcano and drove away the natives. However, the eccentric Professor Sternberg believes that he’s located the legendary island, after tending to a man found floating in the Pacific Ocean with giant animal bites on his body. An American millionaire, film producer Marshal Grover, funds an expedition to Salutua based on Sternberg’s findings, apparently intending to use the island as a backdrop for a realistic monster movie. The expedition’s ship, the Constitution, passes through what appears to be a freak atmospheric distortion which shrouds Salutua from the outside world, but is disabled by an underwater explosion as it enters the lagoon. The crew successfully beach the ship, and as they begin to conduct repairs, Grover’s team sets off to explore the jungle. The flora and fauna on the island prove to be impossibly gigantic, but Grover’s spoiled second wife, former starlet Nancy Norton, is terrified by the unnatural growth, and when she’s attacked by a giant snake she flatly refuses to film anything on the island. Grover, however, refuses to take her away just yet. He has another reason for coming to Salutua -- a motive connected to his beloved daughter Amelia, who lost an arm in the car crash which killed Grover’s first wife. In present-day London, the Doctor and Liz are working on the TARDIS console when Sergeant Mike Yates arrives in the laboratowy with a package from UNIT’s Australian bureau, a fragment of an alien spaceship found in the belly of a shark. The Doctor tunes the TARDIS’ Space-Time Visualiser to the frequency of the omicron radiation trace on the fragment, and creates what appears to be a holographic image of the fragment’s path through history, terminating at the moment of its creation. As Yates leaves to report to the Brigadier, however, Liz realises that the “image” is in fact a time bridge, through which solid material can pass; the Doctor is in fact making another attempt to escape from his exile. The Doctor passes through the bridge to explore the island on the other side, but the Visualiser’s power accumulators begin to overload. While trying to warn him, Liz accidentally falls through the time bridge and is stranded on the other side with him when the accumulators short out. Grover’s cameraman de Veer, trying to get one up on the selfish Nancy, suggests using Amelia as a stand-in for long-shot location footage. Nancy, who fought her way to stardom from the slums, has become paranoid about any perceived threat to her livelihood, and that night she confronts Amelia privately on the ship’s deck, convinced that Amelia is trying to steal the picture from her. As Amelia tries to explain that this is not the case, the ship is attacked by giant crabs, and when Nancy tries to escape she accidentally knocks Amelia overboard. Surrounded by the crabs, Amelia is forced to retreat into the woods, and Grover and a team of sailors set off to rescue her, while Nancy remains on the boat, paralysed by guilt and self-reproach. In the forest, Amelia manages to escape from the pursuing crabs, but then falls into a giant pit masked by vegetation, and is unable to climb out. The Doctor and Liz explore their surroundings, and discover that they’re in the caldera of a dormant volcano. An alien spaceship is embedded in the ground, and a device powered by geothermal energy from the volcano is generating a force field that renders the island invisible to the outside world. The Doctor theorises that the device has caused the volcano to cool down and lapse into dormancy, which means that the ship must have been here for quite some time. He and Liz then hear gunfire and screaming from the jungle, and investigate to find that the rescue team from the Constitution has been caught in the middle of a battle between giant crabs and giant bats. The crewmen are being slaughtered until the Doctor arrives with his sonic screwdriver, which drives off both the bats and the crabs. The Doctor claims to be from a British expedition, and although wary of rivals, Grover is grateful for the Doctor’s help. It is now obvious that the search for Amelia will have to wait until morning, and the Doctor and Liz accompany the team back to the Constitution. On the way back, they spot strange marks in the jungle earth, which appear to be the tracks of a miniature tank. Back at UNIT HQ, Sergeant Osgood manages to repair the time bridge, although it must be run at a reduced rate of power in order to prevent the accumulators from burning out again. Yates volunteers to go through the bridge and search for the Doctor and Liz, and while searching the island, he finds Amelia and rescues her from a giant spider. Since Amelia is unable to climb out of the pit, she and Mike must search for another way out, and while doing so they stumble across a giant statue, presumably the islanders’ deity -- a giant humanoid carved from remarkably pliant stone, with a single ruby-red eye. The pit turns out to be an extinct lava tube, which comes to the surface elsewhere in the jungle. While returning to the Constitution, however, Mike and Amelia are attacked by a miniature tank which has been taking samples of the flora and fauna from the island. Trying to fight it off, Mike accidentally destroys it when his grenade ruptures what proves to be a high-pressure water tank. He and Amelia are then reunited with the expedition members and with the Doctor and Liz, but as they share stories, a shower of paper leaflets floats across the island, having been flung through the time bridge by a desperate Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT’s research team has just learned that Salutua will be completely destroyed by a volcanic eruption this very night. The Doctor is forced to admit the truth, but Grover refuses to abandon his expedition on the word of people who claim to have travelled through Time. In order to prove his story, the Doctor suggests that Mike show Grover the “statue” in the pit, which the Doctor believes is in fact a dead alien in a life support suit. Upon arriving at the pit, the Doctor studies the statue for himself and finds a storage unit containing two Semquess drug vials and one empty space; he concludes that the third vial must have broken open in the past, releasing chemicals which resulted in the gigantism on the island. He intends to dispose of the other two, but before he can do so, Grover has his men hold the Doctor, Liz and Mike at gunpoint and seizes the vials, revealing that he came to the island in the hope that the cause of the unnatural growth could be tamed to grow back Amelia’s missing arm. Nancy, who has been suffering from guilt ever since Amelia fell into the water, realises that this entire expedition was for Amelia’s benefit and not her own, and in a fit of rage she lashes out at Amelia’s self-righteousness -- infuriating Grover and destroying herself in his eyes before she realises what she’s done. The Brigadier finds that he is unable to pilot the time bridge beyond the caldera, since it is tuned into the omicron radiation signature from the spacecraft. Benton thus prepares to lead a team through the bridge to find and rescue the Doctor, Liz and Yates. As the team prepares to set off, reports start to come in from UNIT’s American offices of strange, spectral UFO sightings on the American west coast. Sightings are also reported of ghosts and of spectral buildings which have not existed for years. Soon reports are coming in from all over the American continent, and then from Hong Kong and Japan. As Benton and his team pass through the time bridge, a commercial jet crashes in Munich after the pilot reports that the runway has changed position. Soon the sightings reach England as well; ghostlike squadrons of marching figures, dead people and condemned buildings are spotted. The opposite occurs as well -- people who still exist become harder to perceive... Grover has the Doctor, Liz and Mike locked up on the Constitution, promising to release them before the volcano erupts so they can return to their own time. The Doctor, however, refuses to help Sternberg open the vials, claiming that the human race is not prepared to handle the alien technology within. Amelia, who believes that the loss of her arm is a test from God, accepts the Doctor’s argument and refuses to take any of the drugs even if Sternberg somehow manages to open the vials. Meanwhile, Nancy, knowing that her marriage to Grover is effectively over, seduces crewman David Ferraro and convinces him to steal the giant’s ruby eye from the pit. When he fails to return, she goes looking for him -- to find that he has been hypnotised by the ruby eye and is building a fire in the pit. Before Nancy can respond, the heat restores the giant to life, and it hypnotises her as well. The smoke from the fire attracts the attention of Grover’s men and of Benton’s search party, but when they arrive, the giant, Brokk, holds Nancy hostage and uses her as its telepathic go-between to demand the return of the ampoules. He had stolen the vials from the Semquess, but they shot down his ship and he crashed on this relatively cold planet, losing one of the ampoules in the process. He drove away the natives of the island and installed the force field to prevent the Semquess from finding him while he repaired his ship, but first he went searching for the missing ampoule and fell into this pit, damaging the heat exchanger of his survival suit. He has been trapped, dormant, for fifty years, and in the intervening time the Semquess have tracked him down. The miniature tanks are the Semquess’ life support units, they have been taking samples from the island to determine whether their drugs are responsible for the growth here, and it was presumably a Semquess tank which struck the Constitution in the lagoon, damaging the ship. Realising that the Doctor was right all along, Grover orders the reluctant Sternberg to surrender the vials, but just as they are handed over the Semquess tanks arrive. As Brokk still holds Nancy hostage, the UNIT troops are forced to fight off the Semquess while Brokk escapes, but the Semquess mothership then emerges from the lagoon, and Brokk realises that he will never escape them. Following him at a distance, the others see him place Nancy down and continue on to the ship alone. Realising what is about to happen, the Doctor sends Grover’s group back to their ship and tells the UNIT team to assemble on the beach. Benton has left one man standing by the time bridge, and the Doctor has Yates radio instructions to him to pass on to the Brigadier. Brokk’s ship takes off, but the Semquess shoot it down, and its fragments are scattered across the island -- thus covering the island in omicron radiation and enabling the Brigadier to pilot the time bridge to the beach. As the UNIT team escape and the repaired Constitution heads back out to sea, the nuclear core of Brokk’s ship plunes into the heart of the volcano, triggering an eruption which destroys Salutua and scatters the fragments of Brokk’s ship throughout the surrounding area. One day, one of these fragments will be found and eaten by a shark. Back in present-day England at last, the Doctor begins to power down the time bridge -- but suddenly the power in UNIT HQ goes out, and Yates sees that the lights of London have changed outside the window. Realising what has happened, the Doctor stops before shutting down the time bridge completely. Salutua must have existed on a nexus point in time and space, and by passing through the bridge and interfering in the past the Doctor and his friends have changed history. While the time bridge was operating at full capacity the two timelines co-existed side by side, causing the spectral sightings which began on the opposite side of the world and have slowly been approaching the terminus of the time bridge. Since UNIT HQ’s electrical generators no longer exist, the time bridge only has a limited amount of power, and when that runs out the time bubble preserving this corner of UNIT HQ will be wiped out of existence. The Doctor and his companions must find out how history has changed, return to the Constitution, and fix things before their timeline ceases to be. UNIT HQ is attacked by soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms, who capture Liz and take her through the interface into the other timeline. The Doctor knows that she will only survive for a short time on the other side; she is currently imbued with artron energy due to her trip through the time bridge, but as that decays she will slowly cease to exist. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton set off after her, using the fragment of Brokk’s ship from the time bridge as a portable artron energy reserve. Yates and Osgood remain on guard as the soldiers outside begin to bomb UNIT HQ; their bombs fade away on UNIT’s side of the interface, but are slowly becoming more real -- and more dangerous. Liz is taken through a version of London which resembles the futuristic visions of old silent films. In what used to be St Paul’s Cathedral, she is questioned by nuns dressed in scarlet, who open a satellite to this world’s Goddess -- Nancy Grover. Nancy reveals that Brokk, knowing he could not escape the Semquess, struck a deal with her and gave her the Semquess vials and fragments of his brain-eye. The figure that boarded the ship and took off was just the husk of his body, acting autonomously. Since Nancy was unable to hide the ampoules in her pocketless dress, she had Sternberg smuggle them aboard the ship; unwilling to leave Salutua without some proof of his discoveries, he was happy to do so. Once aboard the ship, however, Nancy murdered him and used the contents of one ampoule to merge herself with a fragment of Brokk’s brain-eye. Using the powers granted to her by the ruby fragment, she took over the minds of her maid Tilly and the disgraced David Ferraro, planted ruby fragments in their foreheads as well, and proceeded from that point; once Grover’s films made her a star, she was able to spread her mesmeric influence over the world and reshape it in her image. Now she is the star she’s always wanted to be, and the Goddess of a world; the people of her Earth have already fought off the Semquess, and soon they will have constructed a new body for Brokk. However, Liz realises that while this world is united rather than divided, it is ruled by fear, and when Nancy loses the powers granted to her by her union with Brokk, her utopia will fall. Infuriated by Liz’s rejection, Nancy attempts to bring her under mental control, but fails when Liz begins to fade from existence. Fortunately, the Doctor arrives just in time, and once back in the time bubble surrounding Bessie, Liz returns to normal. The Doctor drives back to UNIT HQ, and as Nancy’s soldiers redouble their efforts to destroy the time bridge, he leads the Brigadier, Benton and Yates through the time bridge to the Constitution to face Nancy in the past. Nancy and her slaves are in the process of taking over the ship, and when they attempt to kill the intruders, the Doctor -- realising that Nancy is beyond reason -- uses his sonic screwdriver to find the resonance point of the ruby crystals. The crystals shatter, killing Tilly and Ferraro, but as Nancy dies she falls atop the ampoule -- and the contents spill over her body, the remaining ruby fragments, and the structure of the Constitution itself. Back at UNIT HQ, Liz and Osgood find themselves looking out over a devastated wasteland as the Constitution begins to warp into a monstrous living being. The contents of the ampoule have merged Nancy, Brokk’s eye, and the organic components of the ship itself into a voracious living entity, part animal, part vegetable, and part mineral; the transition has driven the new entity insane, and it will consume all life on Earth. The Doctor is unable to fight this new life form, and when Liz and Osgood try to cut it to pieces using the time bridge, the pieces reconstitute on the other side and attack them. They are forced to flee beyond the interface, but begin to fade away once outside the time bubble. As the Constitution prepares to devour its passengers, the Doctor realises that his only remaining weapon is the third ampoule -- the most dangerous and valuable of all, which releases the full potential of any life form which consumes it. He is unwilling to risk the consequences of his drinking it, fearing what he might become -- and before anybody can stop her, Amelia grabs it from him and drinks it herself. The shock of the chemical transformation kills her, but her faith and the powers of the transformation enable her to survive beyond death, turning her into an angelic being with all of the powers that implies. The new Amelia subdues the hybrid life form, and promises to care for it until she can find a way to separate Nancy and Brokk once again. Realising that she no longer belongs on Earth, Nancy bids farewell to her tearful father and sets off to explore the Universe and try to understand her new purpose in it. The Doctor and the UNIT team return to London to find that, apart from a few newspaper headlines regarding the fate of Grover’s expedition, history has returned to normal. |
5401161 | /m/0dk5t4 | The Plotters | Gareth Roberts | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | In London of 1605, the First Doctor becomes embroiled in the Guy Fawkes conspiracy whilst Vicki finds herself dressed as a boy in the Court of King James I. |
5401753 | /m/0dk6kc | Forty Thousand in Gehenna | C. J. Cherryh | 1983-10 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A group of 42,363 Union humans and azi are dispatched to set up a base on a very rare habitable planet named Gehenna II. Unknown to the settlers, their mission is designed to fail; they are deliberately abandoned in order to create long-term problems for the rival Alliance. The native Caliban are first presented as annoying lizard-like creatures. The humans at first attempt to keep them outside a perimeter or to drive them away. In time, larger and larger Caliban are seen, with differences in color, size, and even a social structure (some Caliban are subservient to the larger, different-colored Caliban). It becomes clear that the creatures are capable of communication, at least at the level of symbology, and of developing empathic or possibly telepathic links to humans. Eventually a symbiosis develops, with some of the Caliban pairing off with humans. Over a period of decades and several generations cut off from resupply, the colonists lapse into a primitive lifestyle. By necessity, the azi are allowed to raise families. The non-azi humans are in the minority from the beginning and over time, intermarry with the majority. An Alliance mission first seeks to intervene, then withdraws from direct contact, content to watch as two quasi-feudal, fundamentally opposed societies develop, while a third, smaller group called the "weirds" becomes much more closely associated with the Caliban, living with them rather than the other humans and becoming less comprehensible in the process. The novel follows several generations of descendants of one particular azi, who establish different lines and rise to become the leaders of two rival cultures. Historical moments depict the decline of the colony, the establishment of human/azi-Caliban relations, cultural development, and the planetary environment. Finally, the two cultures, one "masculine"-aggressive, the other more "feminine"-receptive, meet and fight for dominance. A Union delegation arrives at the very end, just in time to be given short shrift by Elai, the girl-ruler who has emerged victorious. |
5401791 | /m/0dk6lr | The Also People | Ben Aaronovitch | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Prologue relates a fable in which a leopard becomes caught in a trap. None of the animals will release the creature because they fear she will eat them, until a woman passes by and makes the leopard promise not to hurt her if she frees her. Out of the trap the leopard goes back on her promise and begins hunting the woman, arguing that her brothers built the trap and that killing is part of her nature. Unable to get help from the other animals, the woman eventually encounters the clever hare Tsuro, who tricks the leopard back into the trap, from where she again begins to shout for help. Tsuro turns to the woman and asks whether or not they should free her. Following events on Detrios, the Doctor has promised to give his companions a holiday and sets the TARDIS for the Worldsphere, a Dyson Sphere that is the home of the massively technologically advanced race called the People. The People are an amalgam of several different races that banded together to build the sphere and have now evolved to an incredibly advanced state where they can change their form and sex at will. The sphere is also home to several different kinds of artificial intelligences; including the governing computer called God (a joke that stuck), spherical drones and various starships that orbit the sphere. Even household objects such as tables and baths have their own personalities. The People are so technologically advanced that they have a non-aggression treaty with the Time Lords (which the Doctor helped negotiate). One of the clauses of this treaty is that the People are not allowed to develop Time Travel technology and the Doctor parks the TARDIS a couple of seconds into the future so as to remove it as a temptation should God become curious. The travellers move into a deserted villa that overlooks the town of iSanti Jeni and wake up the following morning to find their every whim and desire catered to. Exploring this new environment, Benny makes friends with a local baker saRa!qava and Chris begins a romantic relationship with her daughter Dep. However, despite his earlier claims the Doctor has a very serious reason for visiting the Worldsphere; in a nearby wilderness he has hidden Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart under the guard of the drone aM!xitsa. After she disappeared into the Time Vortex the Doctor eventually tracked her down on board a slave ship in the Atlantic, reduced to a feral state where she attacks and kills anyone who approaches her. The Doctor brought her here for safety but fears that she is too dangerous to be kept alive. That night a thunder storm rages across the bay. The following night saRa!qava invites them to a party at the local power facility which has been made to resemble a set of windmills. Whilst the others mingle, Roz is the only one who doesn't feel comfortable in the peace and quiet of her surroundings. This is not helped when she accidentally consumes a mood enhancing drink flashback, that causes her to relive the death her partner Martle. She also unwittingly becomes a cult figure when she throws up over an alien creature that resembles a cockroach, something that the People find fascinating. She bumps into another guest feLixi, who claims to understand her feelings. He is a veteran of the war the People recently fought against an insectoid race and witnessed the death of his lover. Meanwhile, Chris and Dep are too busy playing an electronic game to notice a strange electrical discharge for one of the windmills. The morning after two agents of the ship !C-mel arrive and inform the group that during the thunderstorm a drone called vi!Cari was killed by a lightning strike which somehow penetrated the drone shielding. Itself another war veteran, vi!Cari had withdrawn from society and become increasingly unpopular after the death of its partner. Popular opinion also blames vi!Cari for cause the micro-tsunami that destroyed local artist beRut's mural on iSenti Jeni's harbour wall. God was busy conducting surveillance and cannot explain what the drone was doing out in a storm. Without actually being asked, the Doctor volunteers to investigate the death and discover if vi!Cari was murdered. The Doctor and Chris use a biplane to fly over the crime site and are forced to land on a nearby ocean liner when they run out of fuel. Re-supplied they return to the skies and the Doctor parachutes down to the ground (striking up a conversation with the parachute who is actually sentient and exploring apple trees as a hobby). Meeting up with saRa!qava and Benny, the Doctor outlines his theory that vi!Cari's shields were damaged by specifically designed lightning strikes. Kadiatu experiences a nightmare in which her creators threaten to put her back in her box and takes shelter in the villa. Before aM!xitsa can catch her, Benny recognises her and realises that the Doctor has brought her here despite his claims to the contrary. The Doctor admits that he is unsure what to do with her and is especially worried that various trans-temporal entities might be attracted to her. The only solution maybe to painlessly kill her. Benny refuses to allow this, so the Doctor decides to make it her choice and gives her two days to make up her mind. The Doctor presence disturbs the millions of ships in orbit within the sphere, since they cannot predict his actions. !C-mel nearly convinces the ships to go to war against the Time Lords, however the Doctor (using a sofa inside a gravity bubble) appears and manages to talk the ships down. He leaves Chris and feLixi fishing and to Chris' surprise the fish he catches is intelligent and he throws it back. The returning Doctor is annoyed by this and re-catches the fish to question it. The fish confirms that a depth charge caused the micro-tsunami. The Doctor's theory is that vi!Cari was out in the storm looking for evidence that proved itself innocent of destroying the mural. He dispatches Roz and Chris to interview some of the ships, but Roz loses her patience when the first one, S-Lioness, starts showing off by answering her questions before she asks them. Nevertheless, they still learn that many ships suffered psychological effects from the war; including a ship R-Vene which requested to be dismantled after two of its crew were killed. It was this ship that vi!Cari served on. The Doctor believes that the People would not simply destroy the ship and concludes that the ship was rebuilt and given a new identity to help it recover. Roz shares this information with feLixi, who has begun to write poems for her. He shows her a garden area he has created and Roz finally begins to relax and the two make love. Meanwhile, Benny is finding her decision about Kadiatu harder to make than she thought and she begins to experience bad dreams. saRa!qava takes her on a shopping trip (although Benny finds the idea of shopping without money hard to understand). saRa!qava reveals that she had a reason to kill vi!Cari, since the drone discovered that she had conceived Dep without her partners permission. Such a crime is punishable by social ostracism in the People's culture. She wants to share this information with the Doctor. Unknown to her, Dep is also committing the same crime; the next time she and Chris make love, Dep secretly manipulates her own biology so that conceives a child. When the Doctor and Benny arrive for the meeting with saRa!qava, the pair are attacked by a swarm of microscopic drones that attempt to eat anything in their path. The Doctor and Benny survive long enough for God to intervene and shut the swarm down. Horrified at what has happened, saRa!qava protests that she isn't responsible and the Doctor says that he already knows that. Only a ship could build such a weapon and monitor her calls. Back at the glade where he has hidden Kadiatu, aM!xitsa performs a routine brain scan and is suddenly hit by a virus created from Kadiatu's own brain patterns. By the time he overcomes it, Kadiatu has gone. By the time the TARDIS crew learn of this she has reached the town and is apparently attacking beRut. But in fact, beRut is the one attacking her as she has graffitied his new mural with the phrase "I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE-WHEELING UNICYCLE". Somehow, she has overcome her genetic programming and her response to attack is no longer to kill. Free at last, she begins dancing on the beach with Roz and the others joining in. As the party ends, the Doctor spots the windmills and realises that they could have been the source of the blast, explaining the energy discharge during the earlier party. It occurs to Roz that vi!Cari might have kept a diary to cope with its isolation. She confronts S-Lioness, who confesses that her behaviour during their earlier encounter was to mask that it has vi!Cari's diary. As Roz leaves !C-mel moves in and kidnaps her and holds her hostage along with the rest of the crew. To prevent God attacking it, !C-mel moves inside the Sphere. It admits that it is the re-engineered R-Vene and threatens to use its weapons against the several trillion inhabitants of the sphere unless the Doctor grants it asylum. The Doctor exchanges himself for all the hostages and then suggests that they link telepathically to save time. In doing so !C-mel unwitting downloads the virus Kadiatu attacked aM!xitsa with and begins to break up. Roz makes it to safety, while the Doctor falls out of the ship; only to be caught by the parachute he befriended earlier. Having read the diary, Roz confronts feLixi, who reveals that his lover who died in the war was vi!Cari's partner and he blamed the drone for her death. He convinced !C-mel that vi!Cari had found its secret and manipulated the ship into killing the drone. Roz also accuses him of slipping her the flashback drink at the party and faking affection for her in order to get close to the Doctor. He denies this and says that his feelings are genuine, but Roz simply walks away. He won't be punished for his crimes but from this moment on he will be outcast from society and no-one will speak to him. The Doctor injects Kadiatu with some Time Lord DNA that stabilises her genetic code and allows her to travel freely in time. Benny tells the Doctor about her dreams and outlines a theory of her own that she has developed; since all the Doctor's companions are linked through the TARDIS's telepathic circuits, Benny suspects that her agonising over Kadiatu's fate and eventually decision to let her live filtered through to Kadiatu's mind and helped her overcome her programming. Benny believes this was the Doctor's plan all along, but he says that they just got lucky. The crew remain on the sphere for several more days before leaving in the TARDIS, unaware that Dep is pregnant with Chris's child. Kadiatu leaves for her own travels accompanied by aM!xitsa. The epilogue relates another fable of Tsuro the hare and his ancient enemy the snake, Danhamakatu. Through his cleverness, Tsuro frees the leopard from her influence and in revenge Danhamakatu promises to take the life of one of his friends. Tsuro however, laughs, thinking that he has tricked her again. By the time she strikes he will have been able to think up a plan to save his friend. But the woman is worried; what if he cannot think up a plan this time? |
5403356 | /m/0dk8w_ | Space Station Seventh Grade | Jerry Spinelli | 1982-10 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Seventh-grader Jason Herkimer narrates the events of his year, from school, hair, and pimples, to mothers, little brothers, and a girl. It is a story about being true to yourself and the nostalgic recollection of adolescent years. Jason has a crush on a cheerleader, Debbie. |
5403366 | /m/0dk8yc | The Begum's Millions | Jules Verne | 1879 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"} | Two men receive the news that they are part-inheritors to a vast fortune due to being the last surviving descendants of a French soldier-of-fortune who many years before settled in India and married the immensely rich widow of one of its native princes – the begum of the title. One of the inheritors is a gentle French physician, Dr. Sarrasin, who has long been concerned with the unsanitary conditions of the European cities. He decides to use his share of the inheritance to establish a utopian model city which would be constructed and maintained with public health as the primary concern of its government. The other inheritor is a far from gentle, German scientist Prof. Schultze – very stereotypically presented as an arrogant militarist and racist, who becomes increasingly power-mad in the course of the book. Though having had himself a French grandmother, (otherwise he would not have gotten the inheritance), he is completely convinced of the innate superiority of the "Saxon" (i.e., German) over the "Latin" (primarily, the French) which would lead to the eventual total destruction of the latter by the former. Immediately when first introduced to the reader he is in the process of composing a supposedly scholarly paper entitled "Why do all French people suffer, to one degree or another, from hereditary degeneration?", to be published in the German "Physiological Annals" (though his official academic specialty is Chemistry). Later it is disclosed that Schultze had done considerable "research" and publication conclusively proving the superiority of the German race over the rest of humanity. The Utopian plans of his distant French cousin not only seem to Schultze stupid and meaningless, but are positively wrong for the very fact that they issue from a Frenchman and are designed to block "progress" which decreed that the degenerate French are due to be subdued by the Germans. Schultze proposes to use his half of the inheritance for constructing his own kind of utopia – a city devoted to the production of ever more powerful and destructive weapons – and even before the first stone was laid in either city, vows to destroy Sarrasin's creation. The two (each one separately) quite improbably manage to get the United States to cede its sovereignty over large parts of the Pacific Northwest, so as to enable the creation of two competing city-states, located at southern Oregon at a distance of forty kilometres of each other on either side of the Cascades – a tranquil French city of 100,000 on the western side, and a bustling German city of 50,000 to the east, with its industrial and mining operations extending far eastward, causing extensive pollution and environmental destruction as far as The Red Desert in Wyoming (see http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/programs/reddesert/index.php,http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/news/newsletter/docs/2003c/). Verne gives the precise location of Sarrasin's "Ville-France" (France-Ville or Frankville in English translations) – on the Southern Oregon sea shore, eighty kilometres north of Cape Blanco, at 43°11'3" North, 124°41'17" West. This would place it at the southern end of Coos County, Oregon – a county which already existed at the time, though very thinly populated (and remained so, having 62,779 inhabitants as of 2000). The nearest real-life town seems to be Bandon with a 2,833 population registered in the same 2000 census, located slightly north-east of the site of Ville-France, (see http://www.el.com/to/bandon/), and which was founded by the Irish peer George Bennet in 1873 – one year after Verne's date for the creation of Ville-France. The Coquille River, at whose southern bank Bandon is located, is presumably the unnamed "small river of sweet mountain waters" which Verne describes as providing Ville-France's water. As depicted by Verne, brief negotiations with the Oregon Legislature in December 1871 suffice to secure the grant of a 16 kilometre-wide area extending from the Pacific shore to the peaks of the Cascades, "with a sovereignty similar to that of Monaco" and the stipulation that after an unspecified number of years it would revert to full US sovereignty (Verne does not mention any United States Department of State or Congressional involvement in the deal). Actual construction begins in January 1872, and by April of the same year the first train from New York pulls into the Ville-France Railway Station, a trunk line from Sacramento having been completed. The houses and public facilities of "Ville-France" are constructed by a large number of Chinese migrant workers- who are sent away once the city is complete, with the payment of their salaries specifically dependent on their signing an obligation never to return. Reviewer Paul Kincaid noted that "The Chinese coolies employed to build the French utopia are then hurriedly dispatched back to San Francisco, since they are not fit to reside in this best of all cities" http://www.sfsite.com/03a/bm219.htm. The book justifies the exclusion of the Chinese as being a precaution needed in order to avoid in advance the "difficulties created in other places" by the presence of Chinese communities. This might be an oblique reference to the Chinese Massacre of 1871, when a mob entered Los Angeles' Chinatown, indiscriminately burning Chinese-occupied buildings and killing at least 20 Chinese American residents out of a total of some 200 then living in the city. Most of the action takes place in Schultze's "Steel City" (Stahlstadt) – a vast industrial and mining complex, where ores are taken out of the earth, made into steel and the steel into ever more deadly arms, of which this has become within a few years the world's biggest producer. The now immensely rich Schultze is Steel City's dictator, whose very word is law and who makes all significant decisions personally. There is no mention of Steel City's precise legal status vis-a-vis the Oregon or US Federal authorities, but clearly Schultze behaves as a completely independent head of state (except that he uses Dollars rather than mint his own currency). The strongly fortified city is built in concentric circles, each separated from the next by a high wall, with the mysterious "Tower of the Bull" – Schultze's own abode – at its center. The workers are under a semi-military discipline, with complex metallurgical operations carried out with a Teutonic split-second precision. A worker straying into where and what he is not authorised to see and know is punished with immediate expulsion in the outer sectors and with death in the sensitive inner ones. However, the workers' conditions seem rather decent by Nineteenth Century standards: there are none of the hovels which characterised many working-class districts of the time, and competence is rewarded with rapid promotion by the paternalistic Schultze and his underlings. Dr. Sarrasin, in contrast, is a rather passive figure – a kind of non-hereditary constitutional monarch who, after the original initiative to found Ville-France, does not take any significant decision in the rest of the book. The book's real protagonist, who offers active resistance to Schultze's dark reign and his increasingly satanic designs, is a younger Frenchman – the Alsatian Marcel Bruckmann, native of the part of France forcibly annexed by Germany in the recent war. The dashing Bruckmann – an Alsatian with a German family name and fiercely patriotic French heart – manages to penetrate Steel City. As an Alsatian, he is a fluent speaker of German, an indispensable condition for entering the thoroughly Germanised Steel City, and is able to pass himself off as being Swiss – "Elsässisch", the German dialect spoken in Alsace, being very close to Swiss German. He quickly rises high in its hierarchy, gains Schultze's personal confidence, spies out some of the tyrant's well-kept secrets and brings a warning to his French friends. It turns out that Schultze is not content to produce arms, but fully intends to use them himself – first against the hated Ville-France, as a first step towards his explicit ambition of establishing Germany's worldwide rule.(He casually mentions a plan to seize "some islands off Japan" in order to further the same.) Two fearsome weapons are being made ready – a super-cannon capable of firing massive incendiary charges over a distance of 40 km (just the distance from Steel City to Ville-France), and shells filled with gas. The latter seems to give Verne credit for the very first prediction of chemical warfare, nearly twenty years before H. G. Wells's "black smoke" in The War of the Worlds. Schultze's gas is designed not only to suffocate its victims but at the same time also freeze them. A special projectile is filled with compressed liquid carbon dioxide that, when released, instantly lowers the surrounding temperature to a hundred degrees Celsius below zero, quick-freezing every living thing in the vicinity. Ville-France prepares as well as it can, but there is not very much to do against such weapons. Schultze, however, meets with poetic justice. Firstly, the incendiary charge fired by the super-cannon at Ville-France not only renders the cannon unusable, but also misses its mark. The charge flies harmlessly over the city and into space, apparently owing to Shultze's failure to account for the roundness of the globe when firing a projectile over such distances. Secondly, as Schultze sits in his secret office, preparing for the final assault and writing out the order to his men to bring him the frozen bodies of Sarrasin and Bruckmann to be displayed in public, a gas projectile which he kept in the office accidentally explodes and feeds him his own deadly medicine. The entire edifice of "Steel City" collapses, since Schultze had kept everything in his own hands and never appointed any deputy. It goes bankrupt and becomes a ghost town. Sarrasin and Bruckmann take it over with the only resistance offered being from two rather dimwitted Schultze bodyguards who stayed behind when everybody else left. Schultze would remain forevermore in his self-made tomb, on display as he had planned to do to his foes, while the good Frenchmen take over direction of Steel City in order to let it "serve a good cause from now on." (Arms production would go on, however, so as "to make Ville-France so strong that nobody would dare attack it ever again".) |
5405150 | /m/0dkcfh | The Prophet of Yonwood | Jeanne DuPrau | 5/9/2006 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The story begins with a young girl named Nickie travelling with her Aunt Crystal to an old house in Yonwood, North Carolina. Nickie's great-grandfather has died, and the house where he lived, known as Greenhaven, is inherited by Crystal and Nickie's family, who plan to sell it. Nickie's mom is working in Philadelphia and her father is assigned to a secret government project (The City of Ember) and communicates with Nickie via short postcards. In Yonwood, a local woman named Althea Tower sees a vision of the future with the world in burning flames and smoke, and subsequently spends months in a dream-like semi-conscious state, in which she mutters indistinct phrases and words. Brenda Beeson, a woman in the town, calls them instructions from God and requires townspeople to comply with her interpretation of the words, and insists that the entire city quit their "wrong" ways and start to be good people, so God would be with them. As a prominent community leader she directs the police in the town to enforce the 'war against evil', Althea's ramblings as admonitions from God. Those who fail to follow God's words are fitted with buzzing bracelets and ostracised. Mrs Beeson's interpretations gradually become more and more strict and unreasonable: beginning with 'no sinners' and 'no singing', they progress to 'no lights' and eventually 'no dogs'. During this time, Nickie has discovered a girl and a dog living in the third floor nursery of Greenhaven. When the girl, Amanda, leaves to take care of Althea, Nickie keeps the dog and she falls foul of Mrs Beeson's ban on dogs. A local boy, Grover, whom Nickie has befriended is also a target of the war against evil and the majority of the book deals with Nickie's struggle with her own desires to be 'good' and do what is 'right'. The book features a fierce under-current outlining the verbal conflict between the U.S. and the 'Phalanx Nations'. Fears that the Phalanx Nations are sending terrorists and spies to the U.S. results in the imposition of a deadline for action against the enemy and preparations for the coming crisis (i.e. war). Through Nickie's actions, Althea Tower is brought back to her senses and the actions of Mrs Beeson are overthrown. The story concludes with Nickie returning to her parents who are moving to California to be near her father's work. In the final chapters it is revealed that Nickie's father is one of the builders of Ember and that eventually Nickie, in her sixties, is offered a place as one of the founders of the city. On her way to Ember, Nickie writes a brief journal that she hides behind a rock for someone to read in the future. This is the journal Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow find in The City of Ember. |
5405446 | /m/0dkcxt | Old Man's War | John Scalzi | 2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel tells the story of John Perry, a 75-year old retired advertisement writer, who joins the Colonial Defense Forces who protect human interplanetary colonists. Applicants are required to sign a letter of intent when they are 65—which John and his now deceased wife Kathy had signed 10 years prior to the beginning of the story. After visiting his wife's grave to say good bye (as volunteers can never return to Earth) Perry takes a space elevator to the CDF's Henry Hudson, where he meets a group of fellow retiree volunteers who dub themselves the 'Old Farts'. Following a series of bizzare psychological tests, Perry's mind is ultimately transferred to a new body with enhanced musculature, green skin, and yellow (almost cat-like) eyes. This new body, based on his original DNA, has been modified for enormous strength and dexterity, and supplemented with several proprietary products including artificial blood, enhanced eyesight and other senses and most critically, a BrainPal—a neural interface that allows Perry to communicate with other members of the CDF through thought. After a week of frivolity and orgies, Perry lands on Beta Pyxis III for basic training, during which the CDF's heritage in the United States armed forces is made clear when the recruits are taught the Rifleman's Creed. After Perry learns that his Master Sergeant adopted one his advertisements from Earth as a mantra, Perry is given the dubious job of platoon leader during the weeks of training before he is shipped out to the CDF's Modesto. His first engagement is with the Consu, a fierce and incredibly intelligent, though religiously zealous, alien species. Perry improvises a tactic which enables the CDF to win this first battle quickly. This is soon followed by a number of battles with, among others, the Whaidians and the tiny Covandu. By the end of this last engagement Perry begins to suffer psychological distress over killing the Liliputian Covandu and accepts that he has transformed both physically and mentally. Now a war-seasoned veteran, Perry then participates in the Battle for Coral. The CDF plans to rapidly transport in a small number of vessels to Coral, which was assaulted and conquered by the predatory Rraey. Somehow, the Rraey are able to predict the trajectory of the vessel's skip drives (a feat that should not be possible) and use this knowledge to destroy the fleet. Perry's quick thinking allows him and a small number of others to escape in a shuttle craft and make for the planet's surface, where they are shot down and crash violently. Perry is left for dead, only to be rescued by the mysterious "Ghost Brigades", the Special Forces units of the CDF. Perry is struck by the sight of the leader of the Ghost Brigades rescue team, Jane Sagan, an apparent clone of his dead wife Kathy. After being repaired, Perry tracks down Jane Sagan, who turns out to have been grown using Kathy Perry's DNA, as legally allowed by her letter of intent to join the CDF. Unlike John, Jane has no memories of her previous life, but upon learning of Kathy, Jane seeks to learn more from John about being a regular born ('realborn') person and what kind of life one can have outside the CDF. Jane manipulates her chain of command to promote John to an advisory role (as a full lieutenant) to gather information from the Consu during a ritualistic meeting to share information. Perry discovers that the Rraey have received tachyon technology from the Consu, allowing them to predict the location of their ships. Perry also manipulates command to get the last two of his friends from the 'Old Farts' transferred to Military Research. Jane and John then participate in a Special Forces operation in an attempt to capture or destroy the borrowed Consu technology in advance of a major invasion on Coral. While John is instrumental in the successful outcome of the battle, in particular, saving the data relating to the machines, which are destroyed, he loses track of Jane as she returns to the insular Ghost Brigades. At the conclusion of the book, Perry has been promoted to captain following his deeds at Coral and despite the separation, holds hope of reuniting with Jane when their terms of service conclude. |
5405547 | /m/0dkd0z | Snobs | Julian Fellowes | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Edith Lavery is an upper middle class single woman who feels she has reached a time in her life when the only chance of riches, fame and success is to marry a rich man. Her parents, especially her mother, have spent most of Edith's life trying to make her respectable to the upper classes and are both extremely glad when she announces her courtship and engagement to bumbling but kind-hearted, Charles Broughton, the son of the Marquess of Uckfield. The engagement is not looked upon favourably by Charles' mother, the Marchioness of Uckfield ('Googie' to her friends) or by many in Charles' 'set'. His friends and relatives frequently mock Edith and attempt to 'catch her out' as an alien to the aristocracy. Her greatest enemy of all, ironically, is Eric Chase, husband of Lady Caroline Chase (Charles' sister) who comes from a similar background to Edith herself. After the couple marry they honeymoon in Majorca, Spain and cracks already begin to form in the marriage. Charles bores Edith and Edith puzzles Charles. Back at the family seat of Broughton Hall, Edith is tempted by Simon Russell, an actor who is filming scenes for a period drama at Broughton with the story's narrator. She embarks on an affair with Russell which leads her to eventually very nearly divorce Charles. She returns to the Broughton fold upon news of her being pregnant. She accepts Charles for who he is and they live 'happily enough'. |
5405937 | /m/0dkdk_ | Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible | Marc Platt | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | On Gallifrey, civilization is reaching a crossroads. The venerable Pythia, ruler of Gallifrey, is coming to the end of her reign without a successor. Meanwhile, Rassilon and his Cult of Reason are gaining political influence, as early time travel experiments begin to bear fruit. But during the latest such experiment, the Time Scaphe collides with a strange blue box hurtling through space-time. Both craft are destroyed, leaving the crew of Chronauts stranded on a gray alien world. Elsewhere (specifically Ealing Broadway in the early 1990s), the Doctor and Ace are enjoying a quiet lunch in a café when the whole of reality suddenly breaks down. They manage to get into the TARDIS, though it now lacks even a door. Convinced there is an intruder, the Doctor leaves Ace in the console room while he goes to look. The console releases a parchment to Ace, then the TARDIS collides with a primitive time ship and is destroyed. Ace finds herself alone in a barren, grey landscape. Ace sees a far larger version of the creature that infiltrated the TARDIS, and begins to work out what happened. She encounters a young man named Shonnzi who seems to know her and the Doctor already. Shonnzi takes her to meet the Phazels, the former crew of the Gallifreyan Time Scaphe, who were stranded on this world, betrayed by their former comrade Vael, and enslaved by the Process. Now, they work to find the future, which was stolen by the Doctor at the beginning of the World. Right before the Doctor died. Ace, by interacting with the Phazels, begins to cause changes to the established pattern of time in the World City, a disruption which is detected by the Process in its Watch Tower. The Process sends Vael to investigate. When Vael and the Process’s insect-like guards arrive, the Phazels help Ace to escape. She and Shonnzi get away and discover a ghost-like image of the Doctor. Believing him to be dead, Ace begins to grieve. But Shonnzi tells her that he has been given many of the Doctor’s memories. Ace and Shonnzi are forced to split up as they are discovered by the guards. Vael manages to capture Shonnzi and take him back to the Process, but Ace escapes across a mercury river. Across the river, Ace realizes that she is in the same place she was before, but at an earlier time. She witnesses the arrival of the Chronauts and the death of the Doctor at the hands of the Process. Believing that she and the Doctor are to blame for their predicament, the Chronauts turn on Ace and hand her over to the Process. Vael betrays his fellow Chronauts, who are enslaved by the Process and sent to search for the Future stolen by the Doctor. Vael drags Ace back to the Watch Tower, where the Younger Process prepares to eliminate her. But it is interrupted by the arrival of the Older Process, who has come to discover why the past is no longer as it remembers. The Doctor’s ghost appears, which allows Ace to escape. She comes across a silver cat that leads her to the top of the Watch Tower. There, Ace discovers that the World exists on the inner surface of a hollow sphere, and there are three different Cities existing at three discrete moments in time stretching out from the Watch Tower. She also finds Shonnzi imprisoned in a cocoon and releases him. As Vael chases them, the cat trips Ace, causing her to fall from the top of the Watch Tower. She is caught by some sort of force field and begins to slowly descend toward the ground. Shonnzi jumps after her and is also protected. Ace concludes that the TARDIS must still exist, somewhere, and must be protecting them. Back on Gallifrey, the Pythia's prophetic powers suddenly desert her, and she becomes fanatically obsessed with locating her male successor, who she believes to be Vael. In reality, her promised successor his Rassilon. The TARDIS key glows in Ace’s hand and leads her to an old attic that she recognizes from the TARDIS. Inside the attic is the Doctor, but he has no memories. Ace and Shonnzi bring him back to the Phazels so that he can help them fight the Process, but he’s not much good in his present condition. When Vael and the guards arrive, one of the Phazels, Reogus, recklessly challenges them. Reogus is killed and one of the guards spontaneously vanishes. The Phazels are all highly disturbed by this. The Doctor issues a challenge to the Process, but privately admits to Ace that there is little he can do. The cat returns, transforms into the Doctor’s ghost, and restores the Doctor’s memories. The Doctor realizes that the cat was a manifestation of the TARDIS’s Banshee Circuits, a fail-safe measure designed to avert the ultimate destruction of the ship. The TARDIS had used Shonnzi’s mind as a kind of back-up data storage and dumped the Doctor’s memories there. Now that the Doctor is restored, Ace gives him the parchment she had obtained from the TARDIS. It is the TARDIS greyprints, which the Doctor can use to access the ship’s systems through the Banshee Circuits. The Doctor realizes that the entire World City was his TARDIS, invaded, occupied, and distorted by the Process. The Doctor uses the TARDIS’s architectural configuration systems to trap the Older Process, which is trying to restart the World it remembered from its youth. While the Doctor interrogates the monster, the Phazels receive the psychic summoning they knew was coming, and walk back toward the Watch Tower to become the Process’s insect-like guards. The Older Process tells the Doctor that the Young Process intends to start a new Now, turning the old Phazels into guards, and using them to enslave the young Phazels and immediately turn them into guards as well. The world begins to collapse as a massive moon-like object approaches from the “sky”. The younger Shonnzi, who remembers things that adults forget, recognizes it as an egg. Vael uses his pyrokinetic powers to destroy the egg before the Process can be born, which in turn destroys the older Processes. Then Vael turns his power against his own mind, where the last Pythia of Ancient Gallifrey is lurking, trying to safeguard the future of her world. Vael is killed as he burns out his own mind in opposition to the Pythia’s domination. The Phazels, now Chronauts once again, return to Gallifrey where Rassilon’s revolution has been successful. But with her dying breath, the Pythia curses the world of Gallifrey so that no children will ever be born there again. Rassilon suspends the time experiments until he can come up with a way of artificially extending the Gallifreyan lifespan. But Pekkary, Captain of the Chronauts, tells Rassilon about the TARDIS, a time ship bigger on the inside than outside, and the future of Gallifrey is clear. Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor becomes obsessed with the ancient history of his world, but the data banks contain no information other than vague legends. But the TARDIS has been seriously damaged by the ordeal, and the silver cat remains. |
5406078 | /m/0dkdr7 | Cat's Cradle: Warhead | Andrew Cartmel | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In the near future, the Earth is on the point of environmental collapse, and pollution poisons the atmosphere. The point of no return is rapidly approaching, but the Butler Institute has an ingenious solution. Rather than work to restore the environment, the Butler Institute plans to transfer the minds of the super-rich into computers, thus eliminating the need for breathable air and drinkable water. Many years after he met her on the planet of the Cheetah People (as seen in the televised episode Survival), the Doctor visits Shreela as she's dying in hospital. Shreela, now a science writer, agrees to publish as her own an article the Doctor wrote linking telekinesis to certain blood proteins. Later, the article is seen by Matthew O'Hara, CEO of a massive corporation called the Butler Institute. O'Hara instructs his Biostock Acquisitions division to forward any individuals exhibiting the relevant blood proteins directly to his research facility in upstate New York. In New York City, a police officer named McIlveen is assassinated by a Butler Institute employee, in front of his partner Mancuso. The Doctor then visits the King Building in New York City, corporate headquarters of the Butler Institute. and gains access to restricted computer files. Next, the Doctor hires a youth gang to track down Bobby Prescott, an insane murderer who preys on video gamers. Prescott tells the Doctor about a dangerous secret being hidden in a nondescript metal drum in Turkey. The Doctor sends Ace to Turkey to retrieve the item. In Turkey, Ace hires a band of Kurdish mercenaries to assist her. The drum is being held on an island by a handful of well-armed but inexperienced kids. Ace manages to neutralize the kids without anyone getting hurt, secures the drum, and makes arrangements to return with it to the Doctor in England. The Doctor takes Ace to his house in Kent, where he explains that the drum contains a young man by the name of Vincent Wheaton. Vincent's life-functions were totally suspended by a chemical gel inside the drum. Vincent has the power to mentally amplify the emotions of others and release the mental energy through telekinesis. The Doctor plans to use Vincent, along with a specially selected emotional trigger, to work as a two-component telekinetic bomb to destroy the Butler Institute research facility. The trigger is Justine, an emotionally unstable environmental activist, lured to Kent by rumors of a supernatural gateway located within it. After Ace gets Vincent out of the drum and brings him back to consciousness, Justine finds him, touches him, and sets off a powerful psychic explosion. Relocating everyone to New York City, the Doctor's plan is set into motion. Justine drugs Vincent in Central Park, ensuring that he'll be picked up by the Butler Institute's Biostock Acquisitions division, where his unusual blood proteins will be detected. Justine meets Ace and the Doctor at a drug store which is about to be robbed. Eager to be reunited with Vincent (with whom she is now in love) Justine takes a suicide pill and collapses before the enraged Doctor. Meanwhile, Mancuso arrives in response to the robbery and arrests the Doctor before he can tell her about her unusual new gun. Ace is arrested by Mancuso's new partner Breen. During a shoot out with the gang robbing the drug store, Mancuso's gun swivels on a hidden joint and fires of its own accord, saving Mancuso's life. Ace is taken into custody by Mancuso's new partner Breen, but the Doctor gets away. Ace's good health is immediately detected by the Butler Institute, who want to farm her organs for the benefit of the rich. Breen intervenes on Ace's behalf and takes her to Mancuso. The Doctor appears and explains to Mancuso that the mind of her old partner, McIlveen, was downloaded into her new gun. This was a test run for the scheme the Butler Institute will use to immunize the very rich against the further degradation of the planet. The Doctor reveals that the pill Justine took did not kill her, but merely simulated death, and that she'll soon wake up in the Biostock Acquisitions division of the Butler Institute. Mancuso, Breen, and McIlveen help the Doctor and Ace to rescue Justine from the King Building. They all travel to the project site, where Justine and Vincent are reunited. However, the Doctor's weapon fails. Her blossoming relationship with Vincent has quieted the emotional storm raging within Justine, and she is no longer capable of fueling his telekinetic power. O'Hara, gloating over the failure of the Doctor's plan, grabs Vincent angrily by the arm. The emotional coldness within O'Hara is amplified by Vincent's power, and a terrible blast of cold destroys both O'Hara and the project site. The Doctor informs O'Hara's corporate partners that the project has failed, and they agree to redirect their efforts toward reversing the environmental damage done to the planet. |
5406102 | /m/0dkds_ | Cat's Cradle: Witchmark | null | null | null | Strange things are happening in the Welsh village of Llanfer Ceirog. The police are investigating a coach crash which killed the driver and all passengers. Only the driver could be identified: Selwyn Hughes, brother of the coach's owner, Emrys Hughes, and resident of Llanfer Ceirog. Stuart Taylor, a veterinarian, tends to a horse with a strange wound in the middle of its forehead, and discovers a tapered horn nearby. When the Doctor and Ace arrive, they are greeted warmly until Ace is shot at by Emrys Hughes. The Doctor is intrigued to hear a legend of a village called Dinorben that vanished hundreds of years ago. Everything seems to be centered around the mysterious stone circle located on Emrys's land. The Doctor and Ace investigate the circle, only to find themselves transported to another world. The city of Dinorben has become a desperate refuge of humanity. The head of the ruling council, Dryfid, explains that the sun mysteriously disappeared some time ago, and that they are beset by demons. The other people of the world, including unicorns, centaurs, trolls, and short, furry-footed creatures called the Sidhe, have become hostile after learning that the humans have a means of escaping their doomed world: the stone circle gateway to Earth. The Doctor and Ace are sent on a quest to find the living god Goibhnie and persuade him to restore his favor. Back in Wales, two American hitchhikers stumble upon an injured centaur. Unable to believe what they've found, they seek help from the authorities. Unfortunately, they find the local Constable Hughes, who douses the centaur in gasoline and incinerates the corpse. The hitchhikers, Jack and David, manage to contact Inspector Stevens of Scotland Yard's Paranormal Investigations Division. Stevens is in the area investigating the mysterious coach, and trying to find the missing veterinarian who contacted him about the unicorn. Meanwhile, two figures resembling the Doctor and Ace return to Llanfer Ceirog, but they are really shape-shifting demons who kill and take the forms of two local residents. The Doctor and Ace set off on their quest. They meet Bathsheba, a young girl with a withered arm, who tells them that her family was killed by demons while she was collecting firewood. They agree to take her with them, and she hopes that the god Goibhnie will see fit to restore her arm. After meeting Herne, a strange creature who apologizes to the Doctor for something that hasn't happened yet, they are captured by the Sidhe, evading execution when the Sidhe are attacked by an unseen force, allowing them to escape. They are next attacked by a demon, but rescued by Chulainn, a human returning to Dinorben for evacuation. Fearing for the safety of his companions, the Doctor asks Chulainn to take Ace and Bathsheba back to Dinorben with him. Bathsheba catches the Doctor trying to leave quietly, and insists on going with him. Ace reluctantly agrees to return to Dinorben with Chulainn. She is contacted by Bat, a unicorn who can communicate with her telepathically. Chulainn is distrustful of all non-human creatures, so Ace abandons him and his party. She decides to return to Dinorben with Bat and the other unicorns, intending to force their way through the gateway and make themselves known to the Earth authorities, so that the other peoples of the dying world might also be saved. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Bat encounter a group of Firbolg (centaurs) along with veterinarian Stuart Taylor, who was sent on the same quest to reach Goibhnie. The Firbolg take them to Goihbnie's island, but they don't know how to contact the god. When the Firbolg slay a dragon, the Doctor discovers that it is in fact a bio-mechanical creature, technological rather than fantastical in origin. Ace's assault on Dinorben is successful, and passing through the gateway, she finds the hitchhikers David and Jack along with Inspector Stevens, who were investigating Emrys Hughes's role in everything. When the soldiers of Dinorben overcome the shock of Ace's sudden attack, they regroup and follow her through the gateway, arrest Ace, David, Jack, and Stevens, and bring them all back to Dinorben. The soldiers have overcome the unicorns and forcefully removed their horns, destroying their psychic abilities. The Doctor gets an audience with Goibhnie, who turns out to be an alien scientist whose experiment has been completed. The Doctor appeals to Goibhnie's scientific curiosity to extend the experiment. Goibhnie restores the sun, and agrees to help collect the demons, which are discarded products of his experiments. Ace discovers that General Nuada, the head of Dinorben's military, is in fact a shape-shifting demon. Nuada summons all of the demons for a final assault on Dinorben. David finds himself summoned by Nuada, since he was attacked by a demon when he came to Llanfer Ceirog as a child. Goibhnie returns to Dinorben, but is mortally wounded in the battle against the demons. David manages to hold onto his self-control and kills Nuada, and eventually with the Doctor's assistance, is restored to human form. Goibhnie gives the Doctor his power source, which the Doctor uses to reprogram the gateway. All of the demons are funneled into the stone circle, and transmatted to tne now rejuvenated sun. The Doctor, Ace, Jack, David, Stevens, and Taylor return to Earth, and the stone circle is destroyed. The unicorns, now trapped on Earth, are beginning to recover. The Doctor promises Ace that UNIT will look after them. The Doctor uses Goibhnie's experimental material to repair his ailing TARDIS, unaware that a fleck of demonic material had contaminated the supply. |
5406151 | /m/0dkdx5 | Nightshade | Mark Gatiss | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The year is 1968, and as the BBC rebroadcasts episodes of the classic SF serial “Nightshade”, the townsfolk of Crook Marsham prepare for a lonely Christmas. At the local retirement home, actor Edmund Trevithick learns that a reporter is coming to interview him about his role as Professor Nightshade, and goes to sleep dreaming of past successes. But later that night, the scientists at the local radiotelescope are baffled by a sudden energy surge from an unknown source, which floods their instruments and blots out the signals they were monitoring from a nova in the vicinity of Bellatrix. Trevithick wakes to find that his window has been smashed open, and he faints when an evil voice in the darkness hisses the name of Professor Nightshade. Meanwhile, Jack Prudhoe is drowning his sorrows at Lawrence Yeadon’s pub, thinking back on the failure he’s made of his life, when his wife Win runs by the window -- young again, and as full of life as she was before the death of their young son crushed her spirit. Almost delirious with joy, Jack follows her out of the village to the moor… where something horrible happens. The TARDIS materialises in Crook Marsham as dawn breaks. The Doctor is in a pensive mood, and he shouts angrily at Ace when she finds his grand-daughter Susan’s clothing and dresses in it as a joke. Telling Ace that he needs to think about things for a while, he sends her off to explore the town while he visits the local monastery to reconsider his self-appointed role as guardian of the cosmos. Ace meets Robin Yeadon, the pub owner’s teenage son, and becomes curious when Vijay Degun, a technician from the radiotelescope, comes in search of a working telephone only to find that the entire town’s phone system is down. Seeking excitement, Ace hides in the back seat of Vijay’s car and is taken to the radiotelescope, and while exploring she finds a guard’s rapidly decomposing body near a hole in the fence. She enters the building to tell the others, but nobody believes her claim; particularly not the head of research, the racist Professor Hawthorne. Lawrence Yeadon’s wife Betty goes into hysterics while preparing for a bath, claiming to have seen her dead brother Alf climbing out of the water. She has always blamed herself for his death during the war, since she feels she shamed him into enlisting. Lawrence sends Robin to fetch Doctor Shearsmith, but Robin finds Shearsmith’s offices empty and instead goes to the old folks’ home to ask Jill Mason for help. Jill is seeing off her charges as they leave town to visit their families, and Constable Lowcock is questioning Trevithick about the previous night’s incident. He and Trevithick accompany Robin back to the pub, where Lawrence tells Robin to take care of Betty while he and Lowcock fetch help from the next village over. The Doctor spends some time with Abbot Winstanley, and reads up on the history of the village. During the Civil War, Marsham Castle was completely destroyed as if by heavenly fire, on the very ground on which the radiotelescope was later built. Not terribly concerned, the Doctor returns to the pub to fetch Ace, only to find the village in a turmoil as more villagers are found to have vanished during the night. Trevithick tries to interest the Doctor in his story, but the Doctor doesn’t want to get involved and decides to look for Ace at the radiotelescope. Robin overhears him and decides to accompany him, since Betty seems to be sleeping normally now and Robin wants to see more of Ace. However, soon after they leave, there is another surge of energy at the radiotelescope -- and Betty awakens to find her dead brother standing outside her door. Trevithick, on his way back to the retirement home, is attacked by one of the insectoid aliens from the first “Nightshade” serial, but it vanishes into thin air when Lowcock and Yeadon return -- retching and fainting, and claiming that they were unable to leave the village. When Vijay goes to fetch his lover Holly to help analyse the readings from the array, he finds the ghost of James, her dead lover, sitting at the edge of her bed. James’ image dissolves into a fountain of light which nearly consumes Holly before Vijay manages to snap her fully awake. Meanwhile, the old folks’ bus crashes on its way out of town when the driver falls victim to the same force that prevented Lowcock and Yeadon from leaving. Tim Medway, the BBC reporter coming to interview Trevithick, feels no such influence when he enters the town, and when he comes across the accident he helps Jill to evacuate the stunned old folk to the monastery. Medway stops at the police station to report the accident, only to find them fully occupied by the disappearance of so many townspeople. He continues on to the pub, where Trevithick fills him in on the unbelievable events and decides to alert the Doctor, who seemed to believe his story. Medway, unable to accept what he’s stumbled into, nevertheless agrees to drive Trevithick to the radiotelescope to look for the Doctor. The Doctor and Robin find Jack Prudhoe’s decomposing body on the moors, and continue on to the radiotelescope with some urgency. Once he’s sure Ace is safe, the Doctor studies the readings the scientists have been taking, but can make no sense of them. He and Ace decide to redirect their investigation towards the history of the town, and go to the monastery while Robin returns home. There, he finds that Betty is dead, her body decomposing like the others they have found. When his furious father accuses Robin of abandoning her, Robin bolts from the pub to join Ace back at the monastery. There, the Doctor and Ace find that not only was the radiotelescope built on the grounds of Marsham Castle, but an archaeological dig in the same area was abandoned at the turn of the century for unknown reasons. The Doctor returns to the radiotelescope, leaving Ace at the monastery, but Hawthorne scoffs at the Doctor’s claims, accuses Holly and Vijay of taking psychedelic drugs, and storms off to his room -- where he is attacked and consumed by a Tar Baby, the embodiment of his childhood fears. The old folk at the monastery try to raise their spirits with a singalong, but raise entirely the wrong spirits; the songs remind them of lost friends and family, which come to life around them. The ghosts transform into blazing fountains of light which consume the terrified seniors and monks, including Winstanley. Jill flees in terror, while Robin and Ace, cut off from the exit, have no choice but to climb the stairs and try to hide in the attic. There, they are trapped by Billy Coote, a homeless old man who sleeps here on cold nights -- and who has been possessed by the Sentience which is eating the villagers’ lives. The Doctor sees the blazing light from the monastery and rushes off to rescue Ace. He runs into Jill on the way, and orders her to gather the surviving villagers together in the church. Medway and Trevithick arrive at the radiotelescope soon after, but Medway panics and flees upon finding Hawthorne’s decomposing body. When he tries to drive out of town, however, he too falls victim to the fear barrier, which let him in but will not let him out. When he tries to push through regardless, he nearly runs over the fleeing Jill Mason, and is killed when he swerves off the road to avoid her. Back at the radiotelescope, Holly, Vijay, Trevithick and Dr Cooper are attacked by the insect monsters from “Nightshade”, and are forced to split up. The monsters pursue Trevithick into the depths of the complex, where he manages to destroy one in a lift shaft, using his old service revolver to blow up a fire extinguisher. He then sees a fierce, glowing light creeping up the lift shaft towards him, but manages to get out of the shaft and escape before it consumes him. The Doctor finds the monastery littered with decomposing bodies -- and then his grand-daughter Susan steps out of the shadows towards him. He flees from her to the attic, where he finds Ace and Robin trapped with Billy Coote. The Sentience which possesses him is barely sentient at all, and knows only an all-encompassing hunger. Billy’s body breaks into shafts of light which attempt to consume the Doctor, Ace and Robin, but Ace distracts it using her nitro-9a capsules. The Doctor, Ace and Robin flee as the attic explodes, but the Sentience feeds upon the energy released by the explosion and grows stronger yet. Meanwhile, Jill and Lowcock get the survivors to the church, although Lawrence Yeadon and Win Prudhoe have both fallen victim to the Sentience in the form of their dead spouses. As the frightened villagers gather in the church, the strengthened Sentience rushes over the moor to the village -- and an old veteran studying the war memorial on the church wall inadvertently provides it with another form. The villagers find their church under siege by dead soldiers, who begin to batter through the doors and windows to get at them. The Doctor, Robin and Ace return to the radiotelescope, where they find that subsidence near the breach in the fence has exposed the old Paleolithic quarry and archaeological site. The Doctor finally realises that the energy surges which have been flooding the instruments are not from space at all, but from beneath the ground. He takes Holly, Vijay and Trevithick to confront the Sentience on its own turf, but it has grown too strong for them, and consumes both Holly and Trevithick, forcing the Doctor and Vijay to retreat. The Doctor seems powerless to defeat it, but Ace realises that the Sentience has been taking forms from its victims’ memories because it requires them to submit before it can consume them. She proves her theory by summoning the Sentience to her with her own memories of her mother, and then banishing it by refusing to concede to her mother’s hold over her emotions. The Doctor leaps into action and has Cooper realign the radiotelescope until it is once again picking up the nova in Bellatrix which the scientists were originally studying. He then summons the Sentience in the form of Susan, and shows it the nova -- a source of more energy than it could ever have imagined. The Sentience tears itself free of the earth, leaving Crook Marsham at last. As the Doctor prepares to follow, Ace asks his permission to stay behind with Robin, but the Doctor asks her to take one more trip with him first. They follow the Sentience as it travels back in Time, in order to reach the star before it goes nova, and watch as its departure from Earth tears apart Marsham Castle, to the horror of the watching Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Sentience reaches the star in Bellatrix just as it goes nova, and gorges itself on the release of energy. Still not sated, it locates another supernova in a distant galaxy, travels there and settles down to feed… and the Doctor and Ace watch with satisfaction as the star collapses into a black hole, trapping the Sentience forever. Ace now expects to be taken back to Crook Marsham, but the Doctor has another agenda for her, and instead he vanishes into the TARDIS corridors, refusing to acknowledge her pleas to be taken back. |
5406188 | /m/0dkdy6 | Love and War | Paul Cornell | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Ace returns to Perivale to attend the funeral of her childhood friend Julian. At the funeral she remembers how she and Julian once drove his car into the country along a road that leads to nowhere on the map, as owls flew overhead. Despite the atmosphere of the funeral, she takes comfort that she still has the Doctor and returns to the TARDIS. In the 26th century, the planet Heaven, has been designated as a cemetery for the dead of various races, of which there are many at the moment, as Earth and Draconia are in the middle of a war with the Daleks. In addition to the military presence and various civilian settlements on the planet, there is also a community of Travelers and a group of archeologists, led by Prof. Bernice Summerfield. Bernice (Benny to her friends), is looking for clues to the function a mysterious arch-shaped monument, left by Heaven's long extinct original inhabitants about whom nothing is known. In the main settlement of Joycetown, there is also a religious sect called the Church of the Vacuum, led by brother Phaedrus, who preach that the universe is without meaning and that people should give themselves over to the vacuum of space. In the middle of one of their rituals where a member of the group is being sacrificed the victim is taken over by an alien presence, that announces it is coming to Heaven and the Church must do its bidding. The Doctor and Ace arrive on the planet looking for a book the Doctor wants called the 'Papers of Felsecar', which he believes he can find in a library of forbidden texts the Earth authorities have stored on Heaven. However, the librarian claims he hasn't seen the book. Outside Ace bumps into one of the travelers called Jan, whom the Doctor promptly saves from the attentions of Kale, one of the soldiers station on Heaven. Ace goes with Jan back to the camp and meets his friends, including Roisa, Jan's on again off again lover, Maire (a Dalek killer who wears one of their guns as a trophy) and Benny. Walking back she tells Benny about the TARDIS and her own background. As one of Benny's specialist subjects is 20th-century history, she knows that no matter how strange her story, Ace is telling the truth. Also at the camp is Christopher, the traveler's sexless high priest, who is beginning to sense evil approaching. The Doctor visits Miller, the man in charge of the IMC military force on Heaven. Miller knows about the Doctor through legends that describe him as the "Oncoming Storm" and tells him that his instruments keep picking up a vast sphere in orbit, but the sphere keeps vanishing before they can identify it. Worried about what this means the Doctor meets Benny at her dig site and helps her access a hidden chamber beneath the arch, where they find the body of one of the long vanished Heavanites and a message written on the walls. Outside a sniper tries to shoot them, but Benny wounds the attacker in the arm and they flee. At the traveler's camp, Ace joins Jan and the others in the virtual reality realm, known as Puterspace, where the travelers have constructed their own area called the Great Wheel. Jan is greeted by the archetypical god of universal jokes, The Trickster, who torments Jan with a goblet. Jan tells Ace that he once stole such a goblet from the Church of the Vacuum. Jan doesn't agree with their concepts of sacrifice, because long ago when he and Christopher were drafted, they volunteered for experimental drug trials, but Jan lost his nerve at the last moment and Christopher took his for him, with the result that he gained psychic abilities and lost his gender. As the travelers gather at the Wheel, Roisa tells them all that she plans to leave the group, but before she can explain a creature breaks into the Wheel. Christopher holds it off while the others escape, but his body is killed in the process. The Travelers hold a funeral for Christopher’s body and Ace spends the night with the grieving Jan. That night, Ace experiences a strange dream in which the Doctor meets Death and offers himself as a sacrifice to her instead of Ace. Death reminds the Doctor that he sacrificed his sixth body to become "Time's Champion" and says that instead of Ace, she will taken another life. The following morning the Doctor is unsettled to learn Ace has slept with Jan and changes the subject to the book he's looking for. Ace goes to the library and realises that the librarian is being watched, but still manages to locate the book. Miller sends Kale to man an orbiting space station in case of attack. The Doctor meets Jan and realises that he is really in love with Ace. Seemingly making his mind up about something, the Doctor enters Puterspace, only to be attacked by Phaedrus and members of the Church of the Vacuum and trapped in a recreation of his third regeneration, where he was dying of radiation poisoning, alone in the TARDIS. Ace breaks in to rescue him and the scene shifts to a recreation of Ace's home and one of her arguments with her mother. Suddenly, Julian appears and Ace realises that he has been absorbed intyo the alien's group consciousness. With the help of Christopher, whose mind still lives on inside Puterspace despite the death of his body, Julian regains enough of his individuality to help Ace and the Doctor escape. In the confusion, Phaedrus is trapped in his own worst memory, of the time when he performed the mercy killing of his dying mother. That night the Doctor leads the travelers as they break into the library, but the librarian turns before their eyes into a fungus-like creature. The Doctor kills the creature by setting it on fire and retrieves the book. The Doctor tells Miller that Kale has also been infected by the creatures and it was him who shot at the Doctor and Benny. He has similarly infected everyone on the space station via fungal spores and the planet is now defenseless and they cannot call for help. The Doctor tells Ace to end her relationship with Jan, but she thinks he is simply jealous and doesn't want her to abandon him. The 'Papers of Felsecar' contains a message from a future Doctor, who has left behind the cypher to translate the Heavenite message. Ace spends the night with Jan who reveals that his secret name is Aradath, which means 'big fire', in relation to the prokinetic abilities he gained from the military drugs. Suddenly, a cloud of fungal spores drifts into the camp, but in the confusion it is impossible to tell who was infected. Christopher appears before Ace, in a reanimated corpse. He warns her that if she stays with Jan she will be forced to make a sacrifice. The message on the wall is warning that confirms the Doctor's worst fears. Everyone of the billions of dead bodies on Heaven has been infected by the fungus. In orbit Kale tries to crash the station and destroy the dig site. The Doctor and his friends break into the church (where he and Benny disrupt the Churches mantras by singing Try a Little Tenderness) and demands to speak to their masters. Ace, fearing that she will lose Jan, threatens to kill Phaedrus unless his masters call off the attack. Kale promptly self-destructs the platform. The Doctor explains that the fungus is an alien life form, known as the Hoothi. The Hoothi feed on death and decay, and travel in giant organic spheres filled with toxic gases that are invisible to tracking systems. They are master planners, laying traps for their enemies across time; everyone infected by the spores is now linked to the Hoothi group mind, and they can use them to gather intelligence or do their bidding, before eventually transforming them into fungus creatures. The Heavanites were a race that the Hoothi regularly harvested and used brainwashing to convince that they were gods. The body at the dig is of a woman who rebelled against them and the archway is a telescope she built to spot the approaching spheres. With no way of getting help the Doctor seemingly gives up hope of beating them. Roisa, realising that she is infected, straps explosives to her body and goes to destroy the Church, but she is unable to pull the trigger and Phaedrus leads her to the crypt to meet her new masters. Jan, furious with the Doctor for doing nothing, decides to take action himself. He thinks that, with the help of the telescope, they might be able to attack the sphere in a shuttle with explosives. Although he tries to leave Ace behind, she comes along anyway. Ace, though, leaves a note for the Doctor suggesting that, if she doesn't make it back, he should take Benny as his new companion. Approaching the sphere she asks Jan to marry her and he accepts, but at the last moment everyone except Ace explodes into the fungus — including Jan. In the confusion, Ace falls into an escape pod and falls back to the surface. Realising Ace has gone on the attack, something he expected Jan to stop her from, the Doctor leaps into action. He and Benny go in the TARDIS to the sphere, where the Doctor offers the fungi one last chance to surrender, which the giant fungus refuses to do. They have already used Roisa to infect the Doctor and threaten to convert him unless he does what they want. As they leave, Benny sees her traveler friends, including Jan, now no-more than walking corpses. All across Heaven the bodies of the dead rise out of the ground and attack the military bases and towns. Benny finds Ace in the forest, looking for revenge. Christopher appears, and assures Ace that Jan was not manipulated into his death but went of his own free will; however, Benny is an expert at reading body language, and knows that he is lying. Phaedrus enters Puterspace in a last attempt to make peace with his dead mother, but Ace follows hims and attacks him. Confident of victory the Hoothi sphere lands to pick up the dead and the infected. The Doctor goes to the Church and jacks into Puterspace, ostensibly to pull Ace out so they can escape. But as Ace watches in horror, the Doctor and Christopher use Phaedrus’s link to the Hoothi, their own links to Puterspace, and Christopher’s old friendship, to contact Jan’s remains through the neural link still embedded in his fungus-ridden body. There is still a bit of Jan left in the Hoothi group mind, and the Doctor reminds him of his secret name. Jan uses his pryokinisis to burn the Hoothi sphere, igniting the gas in the sphere and destroying them. Jan realises that the Doctor had always planned to send Jan to his death and did it despite knowing Ace's feelings for him. In shock, Ace wanders into the basement of the church, only to find Phaedrus and Roisa and a single surviving Hoothi, left behind as a back-up. At the last moment, Maire the only other surviving traveler, emerges carrying a Dalek gun and kills Roisa. Ace calls out to Julian inside the Hoothi mind and the creature explodes. Returning for Ace, the Doctor is confronted by Christopher, who dies in his arms to remind him of what he has done. The Doctor tries to apologise to Ace, but she angrily walks out of the TARDIS resolving to travel with Maire. Although she is also displeased with him, Bernice agrees to travel with the Doctor as she thinks he needs someone to remind him who he is and why he fights evil. Their first journey is back to Earth to release some of the owls, that can no longer survive in Heaven's ecosystem. In the distance Ace and Julian are driving towards the beach. |
5406230 | /m/0dkd_8 | Transit | Ben Aaronovitch | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Human engineers are preparing to open a new section of the Sol Transit System (STS), a mass transit system that uses transmat technology to send trains instantly between planets, from the solar system to Arcturus. The system begins to experience power drains, which the technicians, known as "Floozies", cannot determine the cause. At Lunarversity on the moon, Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart is experiencing financial difficulty and agrees to deliver a batch of drugs to Old Sam, one of the Floozies, for a local dealer. Old Sam is a veteran of the Ten-thousand Day War against the Martians and now cannot survive without combat drugs given to him by the army. Having made the drop off and collected a moneypin in payment, Kadiatu joins the Floozies for a wild night out across the Solar System and sleeps with one named Blondie. The following morning, she wakes up in Beijing, without the moneypin she needs to get home and pay her debts. During the opening ceremony of the Arcturus extension, an unknown force blasts through the tunnel, killing everything in its path. Dodging a ticket inspector, Kadiatu makes her way to King's Cross Station as the TARDIS materialises. As the Doctor and Bernice exit the TARDIS, the blast wave hits the station—Bernice and the TARDIS are caught in the blast and disappear, but the Doctor pulls Kadiatu to safety. With the main line shut down till the damage can be repaired, the Doctor cannot retrieve the TARDIS or Benny, and remains with Kadiatu. The pair visit Kadiatu's elderly family friend and blind war veteran, Francine, at her bar on Mars. She agrees to use her underworld contacts to find Blondie (who Kadiatu assumes stole the moneypin while they were making love), and tells Kadiatu that her new friend has two hearts, confirming her suspicions. Long ago, her father told her stories about his grandfather and the mysterious time traveller known as the Doctor. The two go to a cafe in Paris, where the Doctor gets drunk and passes out celebrating the universe's 13500020012th birthday. Benny arrives at Lowell depot a rundown slum on Pluto and meets two prostitutes, Zamina and Roberta. Unknown to Benny, Roberta is a childhood lover of Blondie who resents him for escaping the slum. Roberta has Kadiatu's moneypin, which she took after having seen her and Blondie making love. Behiaving strangely, Benny demands to be taken to a local gang leader, whom she then encourages to take over the slum. Violence spreads across the slum, killing many including Roberta and eventually leading to military intervention and evacuation of the survivors. The Doctor awakens in Kadiatu's room at the Lunarversity and, looking through her belongings, realises she has been researching his visits to Earth and that she was genetically engineered. He also discovers that she is close to developing a time machine. Unsure how to act, the Doctor first solves Kadiatu's problem with the drug dealers and then searches for Benny, stowing away on a maintenance train heading to the relief zone on Pluto. A mysterious train-shaped object begins moving through the tunnels, swallowing passengers and pirate free-surfers (who use special boards to traverse the tunnels illegally). Its victims are re-engineered into mutant soldiers to serve the intelligence that has invaded the tunnels. Francine contacts Old Sam about Blondie, but he convinces them that he knows nothing about the moneypin. Using the tunnel surveillance system, they locate Kadiatu and the Doctor heading for Pluto. Old Sam and Blondie set off to investigate, intending to rescue Kadiatu. The Doctor finds the TARDIS embedded in a concrete wall at the end of the line. While the Doctor tries to work out a way to free it, the pair are attacked by Benny. The intelligence has possessed her, but it does not recognise the Doctor as a threat. Kadiatu realises that her instinctive response to danger is to kill, and that her punches are capable of causing fatal injuries. Old Sam and Blondie arrive and Benny escapes, joining Zamina on a refugee train heading for Mars. Zamina realises that Benny caused the riots for just this purpose. Flashbacks reveal that Kadiatu's father, Yembe, is a descendant of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and an African woman with whom he had a brief relationship during his service in Africa. Years later Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart had been a soldier in the war against the Martians, where he met Francine. After the war, Francine learnt from a mysterious hacker that a facility outside Leipzig was being used to genetically engineer super-soldiers. Yembe burnt the facility to the ground, but spared a single baby whom he and Francine adopted. The Doctor, Kadiatu and Blondie return the Doctor's house on Allen Road in Kent. While Kadiatu and Blondie make love, the Doctor constructs a device for hacking into the tunnel network. The Doctor deduces that the intelligence invading the tunnels is from another dimension and operates similarly to a computer virus using a neural computer system. He also learns that the STS system has become self-aware, and communicates with it via a hologram of television anchorman, Yak Harris. The hologram confirms the Doctor's theory, which they then report to the STS executives in London. At the same time, the Floozies identify an energy build up, indicating that the hole between dimensions is about to open again. On Mars, Benny has gained access to the STS system, but the controlling influence weakens as she gets further from the tunnels. She recovers enough to send Zamina to the Doctor for help. The Doctor and Kadiatu arrive on Mars, in time to see Benny fleeing from the human colony, killing anyone in her way. They follow, and corner her in an Ice Warrior nest. Benny reveals a gun and Kadiatu shoots her. As the sleeping warriors begin to revive, the Doctor realises that this "Benny" is a duplicate created to distract him. Kadiatu summons Francine to fly them back to the settlement. En route, the craft accidentally activates a missile defence system, but Francine's manages to land the craft. Another duplicate of Benny enters a STS reactor and overloads the power, creating enough energy to open the breach. The Doctor sends the Floozies to the end of the line to build a machine to his specifications and connected to the TARDIS. The group—including Benny, who is disguised as one of the station's staff—come under attack by the mutant creatures, and Blondie is among the fatalities. The Doctor commandeers a freesurf board and heads through the tunnels to the station, picking up a piece of software hitch-hiking in the system along the way. Barely surviving the landing, the Doctor sees the breach open. The virus was an agent laying the groundwork for the real invader to emerge—it is nameless, but the Doctor calls it Fred. The Doctor uses the machine to fire a burst of artron energy from the TARDIS. Fred retreats through the breach, taking Benny with it and the Doctor follows. In the other dimension, the Doctor appears before its world's ruler to ask for Benny's return. Unlike Fred, the ruler realises how dangerous the Doctor is, and attempts to destroy him. At that moment, Kadiatu appears, distracting Fred long enough for the Doctor to push the hitch-hiker into Benny's mind, forcing Fred out. The Yak Harris software remains in the alternative dimension achieve its full potential, and the Doctor, Benny and Kadiatu return to their reality moments before the gateway collapses. The Doctor visits the Stone Mountain computer archive and erases evidence of his existence, then sends Old Sam to the Ice Warrior nest, suggesting he offer the reviving warriors a gesture of peace. The surviving Floozies cut the TARDIS from the wall and the Doctor and Benny depart. Some months latter, Kadiatu has a job at STS, gaining access to the resources she needs to build her time machine. Her work complete, she destroys her research and sets off through the time vortex to catch up with the Doctor. |
5406999 | /m/0dkg6t | The Pit | null | null | null | In an attempt to lighten the Doctor's mood, his companion Bernice suggests an investigation of a planetary system of seven planets that had seemingly vanished. The TARDIS materializes on the worst of the seven and the two are assailed by multiple types of threats. The Doctor is thrown into another universe entirely. Bernice soon realizes the source of the dangers come from the Doctor's own past. |
5407100 | /m/0dkgh1 | White Darkness | David A. McIntee | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor’s last three visits to the scattered human colonies of the third millennium have not been entirely successful. And now that Ace has rejoined him and Bernice, life on board the TARDIS is getting pretty stressful. The Doctor yearns for a simpler time and place: Earth, the tropics, the early twentieth century. The TARDIS lands in Haiti in the early years of the First World War. And the Doctor, Bernice and Ace land in a murderous plot involving voodoo, violent death, Zombies and German spies. And perhaps something else -- something far, far worse. |
5407173 | /m/0dkgr2 | Blood Heat | Jim Mortimore | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | A mysterious force breaks through the TARDIS exterior, throwing Bernice into the Vortex and forcing the Doctor to make an emergency landing. At first thinking they've landed in prehistoric times (after a dinosaur knocks the TARDIS into a tar pit), the Doctor soon learns that they have landed on a parallel Earth. On this Earth, the Silurians killed the Doctor in his third incarnation twenty years ago, then went on to kill most of humanity with a plague, and return Earth to its prehistoric state. An embittered alternate version of the Brigadier, along with Liz Shaw and the remnants of UNIT, attempts to destroy the Silurians with nuclear missiles. Ace manages to reactivate the Third Doctor's TARDIS (which had gone into hibernation after his death), which the Doctor then materializes around the entire Earth. He then uses the Architectural Configuration controls to delete the inbound missiles and prevents the massacre of the Silurians. The Doctor then manages to convince the Brigadier and the Silurian leader that the two races can and must live in peace. The happy ending is ruined for Ace and Bernice, however, when the Doctor reveals that this alternate universe cannot survive without destroying the real Universe. In order to save their Universe, the Doctor time rams his old TARDIS in order to start a chain reaction that will destroy the parallel universe after the current inhabitants have lived out the rest of their lives, vowing simultaneously to find whoever created this timeline and bring them to justice. |
5407302 | /m/0dkh16 | Conundrum | Steve Lyons | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | What seems to be a simple murder investigation in a quiet English village becomes something far more deadly for the Seventh Doctor and his companions when the inhabitants begin to exhibit superhero abilities... |
5407317 | /m/0dkh1x | No Future | Paul Cornell | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | London, 1976, while Bernice becomes lead singer in a punk band, the Doctor must face more than one old enemy... |
5407353 | /m/0dkh3_ | Tragedy Day | Gareth Roberts | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Empire City on the planet Olleril is experiencing 'Tragedy Day', where the well-off give charitably to the poor. However, this specific day has much more to offer, with murders, weaponry and plots that could destroy everything. The trio, naturally, all want to leave but had been captured by various factions within minutes of arrival. |
5407368 | /m/0dkh5q | Legacy | Gary Russell | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor is in pursuit of a galactic criminal and the the trail leads to Peladon: a desolate world once home to a barbaric, feudal society. Now the Galactic Federation is attempting to bring prosperity and civilisation to the planet. But not all Peladonians support the changes, and when ancient relics are stolen from their Citadel, the representatives of the Federation are blamed. The Doctor suspects the Ice Warrior delegation, but before long the Time Lord himself is arrested for the crime -- and sentenced to death. Elsewhere, interplanetary mercenaries are bringing one of the galaxy's most evil artefacts to Peladon, apparently on the Doctor's instruction. Ace is pursuing a dangerous mission on another world and Bernice is getting friendly -- perhaps too friendly -- with the Ice Warriors she has studied for so long. The players are making the final moves in a devious and lethal plan - but for once it isn't the Doctor's... |
5407407 | /m/0dkh7h | Theatre of War | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | An archeological expedition to the planet Mexaus ends in tragedy; all but one of the visitors die and lethal radiation contaminates the surface. Now the survivor is leading a new trip, with Professor Bernice Summerfield. Murders start again. Bernice summons her friends, the Doctor and Ace. They are sucked into a dangerously real re-creation of Shakespeare's greatest tragic play, Hamlet, which is paralleled by "The Good Soldiers," the (fictitious) purportedly lost play of the future playwright Stanoff Osterling. |
5407607 | /m/0dkhjj | To Reign in Hell | Steven Brust | 1984-05 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story begins by detailing the creation story of Heaven. There is a substance of raw chaos: cacoastrum; and stuff of order: illiaster. From the illiaster came consciousness that resulted in the firstborn angels: Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial. The firstborn create Heaven in order to protect themselves from the cacoastrum, which threatens to destroy them. This event is later referred to as the 'First Wave.' The walls of heaven have collapsed two times since then, resulting in the Second and Third Waves, creating, respectively, the archangels and angels. After the third wave Heaven has been divided into four regencies named for the cardinal points of the compass. Belial, half-mad and trapped in the form of a dragon, rules the Northern Regency. Leviathan, a kindly woman in the shape of a sea serpent, oversees the Western Regency. Satan rules the South with his loyal servant Beelzebub, trapped in the body of a golden retriever. Lucifer rules the East, with his consort Lilith, who had previously been briefly involved with Satan. Yaweh oversees all of Heaven from the center, aided by his healer Raphael and warrior Michael. Other important angels include the blind musician Harut, the poetry-quoting Ariel, the craftsman Asmodai, the smirking Mephistopheles, the dour Uriel, the sneering Abdiel, the somewhat naive Gabriel and the coolly competent Zaphkiel. A mostly independent subplot involving two angels named Kyriel and Sith gives the viewpoints of two low-level angels who get swept up in the story's events. Trouble arises when Yaweh, worried about the imminent Fourth Wave, devises The Plan: the blueprint for a new, larger Heaven (Earth), with walls that the cacoastrum cannot destroy. Unfortunately, at least a thousand angels will die during the construction of his new Paradise. Yaweh charges Satan with securing the cooperation of every angel in Heaven, and Satan finds himself wondering if they have the ethical right to coerce anyone into participating. Exacerbating matters is Abdiel, who craves Satan's rank. Abdiel begins playing Satan against Yaweh, telling each of them that the other will no longer discuss matters. Step by step, the factions escalate. Abdiel attempts to wound Beelzebub and accidentally kills the innocent Ariel. When Satan and Beelzebub attempt to avenge this, Raphael and Michael misinterpret this as proof their opponents have abandoned all decency. Yaweh, attempting to rally his side, convinces his supporters that he is not only the eldest of the Firstborn, he is God. This announcement stuns not only his opponents, but even Michael, his closest supporter. Using the energy of his newfound worshipers, he creates a new angel, Yeshuah, who he proclaims his son and heir. As the war continues, Zaphkiel intercepts Satan and brings him directly to Yaweh, where the two discover that Abdiel has played them both for fools. However, Satan will not acknowledge Yaweh's dishonest claim to Godhood, and neither will Yaweh abandon it, so the conflict continues. Abdiel, now on the run from both sides, begins digging a hole in the wall of Heaven, but Mephistopheles finds and strangles him before he can finish the work. Satan's hosts gain the ascendency in the battle. Seeing that defeat is inevitable, Yaweh decides to destroy Heaven by expanding the hole that Abdiel had been deepening. Yet when the wall of Heaven is breached, flooding Heaven with cacoastrum, Yaweh finds that he cannot allow himself to be destroyed by the cacoastrum; it is not in his nature. Yeshuah, seeing an opportunity to triumph over Satan's forces, sacrifices his life by leaping into the breach and directing the rupture towards the hosts of Satan, devastating them. Meanwhile, as the rebels fight for Heaven, Satan is captured but with the help of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles leaves Heaven; his followers join him in the abyss and create a third stronghold: Hell. |
5408368 | /m/0dkjbv | Warlock | Andrew Cartmel | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | A new drug called "Warlock" is tearing apart society. Benny is involved with a law enforcement effort to bring it down while Ace is in trouble in a horrific animal laboratory. Only The Doctor is left to discover the truth behind the new drug. |
5408388 | /m/0dkjd7 | Set Piece | Kate Orman | null | null | Ms Cohen is travelling on a starliner, when the ship falls through a time rift and is boarded by giant mechanical ants. She wakes up on board a vessel known as The Ship, where the ants and human prisoners they use as slaves are slowly processing the captured humans and storing their minds inside Ship's systems. The human guards, however, have a problem. One prisoner, whom they have christened the "Gingerbread Man", keeps escaping from cold storage and despite their best efforts they are unable to prevent him escaping again. Ms Cohen witnesses several of these escapes and watches the guards brutally beat him to the point where he seems to be suffering a heart attack. As Ms. Cohen tries to start him breathing again, she realises he has two hearts. Eventually she realises that the "Gingerbread Man's" escapes always go to a different part of Ship, therefore he is looking for someone. In his next escape, he reaches the freezers, where Ace is trapped. Having finally found her, he is able to summon Bernice to rescue them. But the attempt fails and the Doctor, Ace and Bernice are thrown out into the rift. Ms Cohen is trapped on Ship and eventually processed like the others. Some months earlier, the Doctor shows Bernice and Ace a mysterious cafe that keeps manifesting itself at different locations in time and space ranging from Glebe, New South Wales to Argolis. The Doctor says this as a result of a Time Rift, which has been punched through the fabric of reality. Now an unknown force is using the rift to snare passenger ships. The Doctor and Ace plan to get captured and learn what is happening and then Bernice can rescue them but now the plan has gone wrong and the three travellers are separated. Ace falls out of the rift in the ancient Egyptian desert during the Akhenaten period, where she is eventually found by nobleman Sedjet and becomes part of his household body guard. Because she is a woman, she has to constantly prove herself. The only person who seems to accept her is the priest, Sesehaten. Although she can still hear Egyptian as English, she eventually accepts that the Doctor isn't coming to rescue her. When Sedjet tries to take her on as his mistress, Ace refuses and realises that Sedjet will only ever see her as a curiosity. She leaves his house, abandoning the force field generator she used to travel through the rift. However, she can't find work as a soldier and is reduced to working as a waitress. She eventually bumps into Sesehaten again, who tells her that odd lights have been seen in the sky. Ace realises that the rift may be opening and rushes back to Sedjet's house. The building is empty and the ants are there looking for the force field generator. Sesehaten reveals that he is part of the cult of Set, also known as Sutekh, which has been outlawed since Pharaoh forced Egypt to accept a single religion and one god Aten. Sesehaten's cult will help Ace leave through the rift, if she helps them kidnap the Pharaoh, which Ace agrees to as she sees Akhenaten as another in the long line of fascists she's fought. Ace breaks into Akhenaten's palace and takes him hostage, but the Pharaoh finds the whole thing very amusing and Ace realises through talking to him that he is no better or worse than any other ruler would be and just wants to be remembered. In the courtyard he reveals the TARDIS, which his army recovered when it fell from the sky, explaining how Ace could understand Egyptian. Using the instruments, Ace discovers that Sesehaten is not human, but a machine built by Ship to control the rift. Bernice lands in France in 1798 and makes friends with Vivant Dominique Denon, the father of modern Egyptology and one of her heroes. Together they travel to Egypt with Napoleon's army and Bernice attempts to find the Amarna Graffito, a mysterious phrase written on a tomb wall in modern English, which she has a strange feeling can help her find the TARDIS. Searching inside a tomb, she is trapped by survivors of Set's cult, who steal her diary thinking it and the message are key to releasing their god from his prison. Denon rescues her and together they lead French troops to the Cultists camp, where Benny recovers her diary and finds the location of the graffiti. The Doctor, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, appears out of the rift in Paris, 1871, as the events of the Paris Commune unfold. He finds himself in the care of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, whose time travel experiments have created the rift in the first place and now they are both trapped in Paris. The ants, however, have followed them and Kadiatu takes the Doctor to M. Thierry's house for shelter. Despite his confused state of mind, the Doctor still realises that Thierry's young son is not all he seems and suspects Thierry is really in league with the ants. Thierry and Kadiatu have been helping the Doctor recover, playing for time and hoping that he will reveal to them the information that Ship couldn't take from his mind. Ace has the TARDIS buried in the monument at Amarna and writes a message on the wall, so the Doctor or Bernice will eventually find it. She then uses Sesehaten to open the rift and with the help of the force shield, escapes through it. In 1798, Bernice does indeed find the TARDIS and after saying goodbye to Denon, she too leaves for the Doctor's location. In Paris, Thierry uses the ant's technology to try to use Kadiatu's time machine to stabilise the rift, but unfortunately the Doctor has filled it with explosives, hoping the ants would take it back to Ship. The only thing they can do now is duck. The resulting explosion kills Thierry, and tears the rift completely open. The little boy appears and attempts to stabilise the rift as first Ace, then the TARDIS come through. He is a machine built to stabilise the rift like Sesehaten. As the rift widens, Ace shoots the boy, sealing the rift in the process. The Doctor, his mind recovering, explains to Ace and Benny that Ship is an organic computer, built by a human colony to store their minds in a gestalt entity, but having fallen through Kadiatu's rifts, it is now trying to store all organic matter in the universe and has built the ship and the ants to fulfil its purpose. The travellers return to Paris and Ace watches the chaos around her. Knowing that the Commune will fail and thousands will be killed, she tries to persuade the woman fighters that their attack are pointless, just as Akhenaten's religious reforms were ultimately undone and forgotten. But the fighters believe that fighting for their beliefs is more important than winning. Bernice finds Kadiatu is giving Ship dead bodies killed in the Commune to process into organic machinery for time travel. Ship has also infected Kadiatu with an organic virus that is slowly taking her over. She has been playing for time hoping to come up with a virus to kill Ship, but now it’s too late. Ship overcomes her virus and she becomes apart of Ship and goes back for the Doctor, whom his companions now realise has also been infected, which will allow Ship to read his mind and use the knowledge to open more rifts and process more minds. Refusing to let the Doctor be sacrificed Ace uses one of Kadiatu’s organic time hoppers to follow them to Ship, where she tries to track down the Doctor. All the prisoners and the human guards have been processed and the three people are the only ones aboard. Kadiatu shoots her, but as she is still trying to resist Ship’s influence Ace is only badly wounded. Ace is too late to help the Doctor, who is already being connected to the fabric of Ship—but the moment he accesses Ship’s central nervous system, he is able to shut it down directly. As Ship dies, Kadiatu leaps into the rift and disappears. Ace gets the Doctor back to Paris, where he allows himself to die temporarily, thus killing the organic material which Ship had implanted in him. As the TARDIS is about to leave Ace chooses to stay. She knows she can't change history, but actions maybe able to save some lives. She also plans to use the surviving technology to monitor the rifts and protect Earth from any other threats like Ship. The Doctor reveals that he's known where she would end up since soon after he met her. The Epilogue shows Ace, now using the name Dorothee McShane, meeting Denon and telling him that Bernice is safe. She again meets the Doctor in Sydney, 1993 and helps him fight an alien invasion. In the present of 1871, Ace helps defend a barricade until the last moment, then puts down her gun and disappears into history. |
5408447 | /m/0dkjgp | Sanctuary | David A. McIntee | null | null | As the Albigensian crusade draws to its bloody conclusion, men inflict savage brutalities on each other in the name of religion. Forced to temporarily abandon ship, the TARDIS crew find their lives intertwined with warring Templars, crusaders and heretics. While the Doctor begins a murder investigation in a besieged fortress, Bernice finds herself drawn to an embittered mercenary who has made the heretics’ fight his own. And both time travellers realize that to leave history unchanged they may have to sacrifice far more than their lives. |
5408799 | /m/0dkjzc | Sky Pirates! | Dave Stone | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Benny travel on the ship Schirron Dream. They confront various hostile climates, bizarre crew members and an alien race threatening the entirety of the local star system. |
5408961 | /m/0dkk4_ | Zamper | Gareth Roberts | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and his companions, separated from the TARDIS, investigate Zamper. It is an organization dedicated to building gigantic warships. A separate race has arrived in order to commission craft; also industrial accidents are plaguing the workers. |
5408969 | /m/0dkk5p | Toy Soldiers | Paul Leonard | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Benny are in Europe in the aftermath of World War 1. Children are going missing and it is tied to an alien world that has been going through its own war. |
5409030 | /m/0dkk93 | Head Games | Steve Lyons | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | A flaw in the structure of the Universe is allowing energy from the Land of Fiction to seep through. The Doctor and his companions must close the gap to save the Universe, but the TARDIS is unable to navigate the crystallised cloud of fictional energy around the gap. The Doctor lands on the crystal’s surface, and he, Benny and Chris pass through the crystal, navigating through their individual dreams as the fictional energy gives them form. Once they reach the crystal’s interior they must put force-field generators in place around the gap, and Roz, who is waiting by the controls in the TARDIS, will then be able to squeeze the gap shut. But the Doctor has withheld one fact from his companions for fear of alienating them. The gap has opened above the dying planet Detrios, and its inhabitants have unwittingly reshaped the fictional energy into the crystal Miracle which is providing light and power to their world. When the Doctor closes the gap, the Miracle will vanish, and Detrios really will be doomed. Things get even more complicated when the fictional energy finds a focus in Jason, the young Writer who was returned to Earth by the Time Lords after the Doctor’s last encounter with the Land of Fiction. As the fictional energy floods into this Universe, Jason finds that his wishes and dreams are coming true. A fictional double of the Doctor, Dr. Who, appears in the TARDIS, knocks out the real Doctor before he can enter the crystal, and sends him to the fictional Galactic Prison for the crime of trying to wipe out the Detrians. Dr Who then picks up Jason, his new companion, and they set off to have neat adventures, beat up green monsters, and arrest the evil Doctor’s accomplices. Roz, uncertain of the extent of the newcomers’ powers, hides in the TARDIS corridors and waits for an opportunity to make her move. Jason and Dr Who try to remove Benny and Chris from the Miracle, but as the TARDIS is unable to materialise within, it is diverted to Detrios. There, Jason agrees to help the hapless Politik Darnak to defeat the green lizard monsters which are about to attack his Citadel. In fact Darnak is just a low-grade civil servant who sees promotion prospects in these helpful aliens, and the lizard people have a rich culture of their own which has suffered under the oppressive rule of the human upper classes. Oblivious to the wider issues, Dr Who whips up an ACME Lizard Monster Eradicator from spare parts and instantly exterminates ninety percent of the planet’s lizard population. Darnak can’t believe that the problem has been solved so easily, but his denial irritates Jason, and moments later the Citadel is attacked by a giant dinosaur. Jason discovers its one weak point and defeats it through a combination of observation, clever thinking and bravery—except of course that he’d created the dinosaur and thus its weakness as well, and in the process of defeating it, a dozen guards have been horribly killed and the Citadel has been destroyed. Jason and Dr Who depart, leaving Darnak with the unenviable task of explaining the fiasco to the Detrian Superior. The Detrians detect intruders on the Miracle and transmat Chris to their planet for interrogation, where he’s horrified to learn that the Doctor nearly tricked him into committing genocide. He is imprisoned with a young rebel, Kat’lanna, who was arrested after the extermination of the lizard people and has given up her hope for a new world order; talking with Chris, however, restores her hope that things can get better, even when he admits that he and his friends were trying to destroy the Miracle. Kat tricks their guard, steals his keys and helps her fellow prisoners to escape, but back at the rebel stronghold they are betrayed and captured by followers of Enros, the Undying One. Enros believes that he created the Miracle and that his death will mean its destruction; he also believes that one day aliens will descend and worship him. When Chris refuses to do so, Kat is taken to be executed while Enros prepares to sacrifice Chris in public before his followers. Dr Who and Jason travel to the decrepit leisure world Avalone, where the Doctor’s former companion Mel has been stranded alone for months. At first, she’s delighted to see the TARDIS, but then Dr Who and Jason imprison her in Galactic Prison along with the Doctor. Dr Who and Jason then land on the Miracle, venture inside and kidnap Benny, but while they’re busy Jason’s attention wanders and the fictional Galactic Prison vanishes—leaving Mel and the Doctor at the mercy of the fictional dinosaurs which Jason left to guard the grounds. He eventually forgets about the dinosaurs as well, but by that time many of the planet’s primitive natives have been slaughtered. The angry primitives blame the Doctor and Mel and prepare to burn them at the stake, but they are saved at the last moment when Dr Who and Jason return with Benny, causing the Prison and the dinosaurs to return. The Doctor and Mel are no longer within the confines of the prison, and thus escape as the dinosaurs tear into the fleeing tribesmen. Mel, however, has begun to worry about the Doctor’s newly secretive nature and is puzzled by Dr Who’s claim that the Doctor is responsible for the destruction of the Althosian system and the Silurian Earth. Roz emerges from hiding to rescue Benny from Dr Who and Jason, but when they are reunited with the Doctor, Mel is appalled by his new gun-toting, casually violent companions. Together, they steal a cartoon spaceship from the Prison and attempt to return to the Miracle, but Jason and Dr Who pursue them in the TARDIS. Jason decides that the TARDIS has weapons, and it therefore does—and Dr Who shoots down the escaping prisoners’ ship, blowing it up in the vacuum of space... Dr Who and Jason then return to Detrios to arrest Chris, and the materialisation of the TARDIS distracts Enros’ followers just as Chris is about to be sacrificed. Still disoriented and confused from the drugs which the cultists gave him, Chris accuses Dr Who of trying to commit genocide, and Jason and Dr Who realise that he was unaware of the Doctor’s evil plans and welcome him aboard as part of the team. As Chris recovers in the TARDIS, Jason and Dr Who travel to a cafe in Glebe to try to arrest Ace, but she realises that Dr Who isn’t the real Doctor and fights back. Unable to defeat her, Jason panics and flees, deciding to forget that she ever existed—and as Ace has no way of finding them by herself, she uses her time-hopper to travel to 2002, in order to conduct research on historical anomalies in the hope of tracking them down. Jason and Dr Who then take the puzzled Chris to Earth to right wrongs and topple evil dictatorships, and decide to start in England. Dr Who gets himself arrested in order to contact rebel elements in prison, but only succeeds in freeing several dangerous criminals who instantly flee into the streets rather than join his rebel army. Jason also tries to contact the “resistance”, but only finds student protestors who think he’s out of his mind. He eventually storms Buckingham Palace with a fictional battletank, only to find that the Queen has gone to Sheffield to dedicate a new sports centre. Jason and Dr Who set off to assassinate her, concluding that since she’s the head of the oppressive English dictatorship, then getting rid of her will usher in a new era of peace. The Doctor, Benny, Roz and Mel find themselves on Earth; in Jason’s world, the arch-villains are always inexplicably resurrected for the sequel. The Doctor leaves Benny and Roz to watch over Buckingham Palace in case Jason returns, while he sets off for Sheffield with the increasingly hostile Mel. But the Doctor’s frustration boils over when their train is delayed by the vagaries of British Rail. The voice of his sixth incarnation shouts at him in his mind, accusing him of horrific crimes, and his guilt forces him to admit to Mel that he deliberately influenced her to leave him so he could go about his mission as Time’s Champion without her simplistic morality interfering. She is horrified by this revelation, and realises that he truly is no longer the Doctor she knew. The Doctor and Mel reach Sheffield moments too late, and Dr Who guns down the Queen with smart bullets which evade innocent bystanders and smash into the Queen’s chest. And yet the Queen survives without a scratch, proof that Jason knows deep down that what he’s doing is wrong. Ace has found this odd incident in newspaper reports—and was told of its significance by a future Doctor—but Dr Who and Jason get away from her again. She is, however, reunited with the Doctor and Mel, who is horrified to see that Ace has become a callous soldier. Jason and Dr Who, apparently believing that they’ve assassinated the ruler of Britain, return to Buckingham Palace, drive out the staff and set up a force field to keep them out; however, Benny and Roz join forces with UNIT under Brigadier Winifred Bambera and use Roz’s force rifle to bleed energy into the force field until it overloads. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds his TARDIS in Sheffield and travels to the Palace to confront Jason; however, Dr Who and Chris both confront the Doctor over his past crimes. The Doctor claims that the Detrians’ grim position is their own fault, as the upper classes had plenty of warning that their sun was dying but wasted time in internecine squabbling rather than searching for ways to save their world. The Miracle is a stopgap solution only, and will destroy the Universe as a side effect. And Jason is just as guilty of genocide as is the Doctor; he’s already wiped out the lizards of Detrios just because they looked like green monsters, and has decimated the tribal population where he thoughtlessly set down his “Galactic Prison” and guard dinosaurs. At this point, UNIT forces storm the palace, and Jason panics and releases a fireball which kills everyone; fortunately, the Doctor uses the fictional energy surrounding Jason to survive, and convinces him to use his powers to resurrect everyone. Jason finally acknowledges the need to grow up, and Dr Who vanishes, his work done. The Doctor takes Jason and his former and current companions back to the Miracle to finish his work, but Mel refuses to help him destroy a world, and Chris insists upon returning to Detrios to rescue Kat’lanna. Roz insists upon helping him, and the Doctor has no choice but to let them go their own way. Jason agrees to help the Doctor, and he, Ace and the Doctor thus venture out onto the Miracle. The Detrians have posted guards to stop them from destroying the Miracle, but Benny emerges from the TARDIS at the last moment to help fight them off; sadly, Mel doesn’t. The Doctor, Ace and Jason then travel through the Miracle, but as the Doctor travels through his own dreams he’s confronted by his guilt made manifest in the form of his sixth incarnation. The Sixth Doctor accuses the Seventh of cutting his incarnation short in order to become Time’s Champion, of genocide, and of the manipulation and betrayal of his companions. The Seventh Doctor is forced to fight his way past the raving Sixth, and sees him transforming into the Valeyard as they do battle. Kat’lanna’s fellow rebels rescue her from Enros’ followers; meanwhile, Enros decides to legitimise his claim to be Detrios’ true ruler, and sends his followers into the Citadel to assassinate the Superior and seize control of the planet. As this leaves Enros himself relatively unguarded, the remaining rebels decide to take the opportunity to assassinate him, but Kat recalls Chris’ claim that the Miracle was created by the beliefs of the Detrians—which means that if enough people believe the Miracle will vanish when Enros dies, then it will. If this happens, Detrios will never shake off his warped religion. Kat thus tries to stop her fellow rebels, and the delay gives the Doctor, Ace and Jason enough time they need to finish their work. As the Miracle fades away, Enros’ hold over his followers is broken, and thus nobody notices when he is killed. Meanwhile, Chris and Roz are unable to locate Kat’lanna, and when Chris sees the terrible poverty and deprivation in which the ordinary Detrians live he gives in to despair, concluding that it was foolish and pointless to try rescuing just one person. He and Roz return to the TARDIS, unaware that Kat’lanna and her fellow rebels have used the death of the Miracle as a foundation for a new order; now that it’s gone the Detrians have no choice but to abandon their illusory hopes, and start looking for real, constructive ways of restoring power to their world. For the first time there is real hope for the future. But Kat’lanna never understands why Chris didn’t try to come back for her as he’d promised. The Doctor returns Jason, Ace and Mel to their proper times, but he and Mel part on bitter terms. Ace promises to try to talk some sense into Mel—and quietly passes on a message for the Doctor from his future incarnation. As Roz tries to help Chris come to terms with his perceived failure, the Doctor seals off the memory of the Sixth Doctor in his mind, knowing that he must continue to resist the temptation to regenerate into his eighth incarnation; that moment of weakness could give the Valeyard the chance he needs to break free. He then promises Benny that he’ll set the co-ordinates at random so they can have a simple adventure like the ones they used to have, but again, he’s lying. According to Ace, the gap which they’ve just closed was scraped into the Universe by Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart’s time machine, and the Doctor must deal with her for good before she does any more damage. Once again his duty to the bigger picture must take precedence over the wishes of his companions. |
5409077 | /m/0dkkb4 | Warchild | Andrew Cartmel | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The culmination of the previous two novels brings powerful forces ready to do battle all over the globe. Sucked into this is every-man Creed, whose normal life is disrupted by the super-powers his two sons seem to have. |
5409295 | /m/0dkklh | SLEEPY | Kate Orman | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The earth colony Yemaya 4 is struck by a plague that causes the colonists to manifest psychic powers. The Doctor and his companions become heavily involved. Some of the group contract the plague, while others travel back in time to try to find out how it started. Meanwhile, murderous agents threaten to simply kill every innocent person involved. |
5409661 | /m/0dkl2f | GodEngine | Craig Hinton | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Stranded on Mars, the Doctor and Roz team up with a group of colonists on a journey to find much-needed supplies at the North Pole. But when their expedition is joined by a party of Ice Warrior pilgrims, tensions are stretched to breaking point. Elsewhere, Chris finds himself on Pluto's moon, trapped with a group of desperate scientists in a deadly race against time. The year is 2157: the Earth has been invaded, and forces are at work on Mars to ensure that the mysterious invaders are successful. Unless the Doctor can solve the riddle of the GodEngine, the entire course of human history will be changed... |
5409885 | /m/0dklkt | So Vile a Sin | Kate Orman | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor returns to the thirtieth century; he fears an ancient secret from his own past will harm time and space. The Human empire that rules the solar system is crumbling under power disputes. |
5410725 | /m/0dkmyj | Twilight of the Gods | Mark Clapham | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | God-like beings have shattered the peace of Dellah, and threaten to spread chaos across the galaxy. Benny and Jason Kane return to the planet in a desperate last attempt to stop them, before the planet is destroyed forever. |
5411302 | /m/0dknx5 | Artemis Fowl: The Seventh Dwarf | Eoin Colfer | 3/4/2004 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Artemis Fowl lures the dwarf, Mulch Diggums, to New York City and then brings him back to Ireland to steal the priceless Fei Fei tiara which contains a one-of-a-kind blue diamond. Artemis claims that he intends to use it for a laser. However, a gang of six dwarves led by Sergei the Significant have already stolen the tiara and plan to sell it at a circus to several European jewellery fences. As the dwarfs perform in the circus, Mulch sneaks in underground and takes the tiara, also knocking out their leader, Sergei. Captain Holly Short has been relaxing in a luxury resort belonging to the People while waiting for the Council to clear her name after the incident at Fowl Manor. However, Foaly calls her saying that she must track Artemis's plane; the LEP have been alerted by Mulch's stolen LEP helmet. Holly Short catches Artemis with the tiara, but not before he manages to swap the priceless blue diamond for a fake. Ultimately, it is discovered that Artemis stole the diamond as the colour reminded him of his father's eyes. He gives the diamond to his mother as a gift and promises her that he will find his father. nl:Artemis Fowl: De zevende dwerg |
5412678 | /m/0dkq_9 | The Lost Weekend | Charles R. Jackson | 1944 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Set in a rundown neighborhood of Manhattan in 1936, the novel explores a five-day alcoholic binge. Don Birnam, a binge drinker mostly of rye, fancies himself a would-be writer. He lapses into foreign phrases and quotes Shakespeare even while attempting to steal a woman's purse, trying to pawn a typewriter for drinking money, and smashing his face on a banister. That accident gets him checked into an "alcoholic ward." There, a counselor advises Birnam on the nature of alcoholism: There isn't any cure, besides just stopping. And how many of them can do that? They don't want to, you see. When they feel bad like this fellow here, they think they want to stop, but they don't, really. They can't bring themselves to admit they're alcoholics, or that liquor's got them licked. They believe they can take it or leave it alone — so they take it. If they do stop, out of fear or whatever, they go at once into such a state of euphoria and well-being that they become over-confident. They're rid of drink, and feel sure enough of themselves to be able to start again, promising they'll take one, or at the most two, and — well, then it becomes the same old story over again. Perhaps the only thing keeping Birnam from drinking himself to death is his girlfriend Helen, a selfless and incorruptible woman who tolerates his behavior out of love. Helen does, however, upbraid him with the words: "I haven't got time to be neurotic." No sooner has he begun to recover from his "Lost Weekend" than he contemplates killing Helen's maid to get the key to the liquor cabinet. He has a few drinks and crawls into bed wondering, "Why did they make such a fuss?" |
5413317 | /m/0dkrvd | The Bodysnatchers | Mark Morris | null | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The Doctor, Sam and an allied professor work together to stop alien bodysnatchers, grave-robbers and much worse plaguing London. |
5413393 | /m/0dkryy | Genocide | Paul Leonard | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Jo Grant, a UNIT veteran, receives a call for help from an old colleague. A scientific unit is being threatened by a UNIT force led by a secretive Captain. Jo Grant ends up sucked out of time and space. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Sam go to 2109 and find an alien race where the humans should be. To make it worse, the aliens claim to have been there for thousands of years...and something is wrong with Sam's mind. |
5413403 | /m/0dkrzm | War of the Daleks | John Peel | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The story opens up with the Doctor and Sam in the TARDIS doing some maintenance when they are collected by a ship which holds an escape pod containing Davros. A group of Thals arrive; they want Davros to alter their species so they will be better able to fight the Daleks. A force of Daleks then arrive and take the Doctor and Davros, along with other characters, to Skaro. Before landing on Skaro, the Doctor discovers that the coordinates he believed were Skaro's were actually those of the planet Antalin. Since Davros's return the Dalek Prime has met considerable resistance with a number of Davros loyalists forming. Initiating a final civil war on Skaro, the Dalek Prime has all the Davros loyalists revealed and exterminated. In the mean time he releases the Doctor to leave Skaro. The Doctor discovers a planted device on board the TARDIS which would allow the Daleks to survive in case the Dalek Prime failed. He jettisons it into the vortex. With his faction defeated, Davros is sentenced to death by matter dispersal. Prior to his downfall he had implanted a Spider Dalek as a spy amongst the Dalek Prime's forces. Davros is placed in a disintegration chamber and his atoms dispersed. His fate is left open when his data is either erased from the disintegrator or transmatted across space to a safe location. |
5413561 | /m/0dks6x | The Year of Intelligent Tigers | Kate Orman | null | null | The alien world of Hitchemus is known for its animal sanctuaries and the musical talents of the citizens. Now the animals have escaped, a hurricane is threatening everyone and the humans do not want the Doctor's assistance. His companions are left to deal with the situation when the Doctor vanishes into the wild. |
5413611 | /m/0dks99 | Alien Bodies | Lawrence Miles | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith use the TARDIS to find Sputnik 2, and retrieve the body of Laika, which the Doctor then buries on the planet Quiescia. Years later, the Doctor (now in his eighth incarnation) is playing a game of chess with General Tschike of UNISYC, when suddenly the general pulls a gun on him. Tschike tells the Doctor that the only reason the various Earth governments he has encountered down the years have never done this before is because they never really believed that the Doctor could be actually killed. Now they have received information from a source in what was once Borneo that suggests differently. Before Tschike can shoot however, the Doctor dives out a nearby window. Tschike knows he won't hit the ground; after all, he's the Doctor. In fact the TARDIS has been hovering outside and reunited with Sam the Doctor heads to Borneo to investigate. In Borneo (now referred to as East Indies Revit zone) two other UNISYC soldiers, Colonel Kortez and Lieutenant Bregman arrive at what appears to be the ruins of an ancient city, but it is really a block-transfer computational structure known as the Unthinkable City. The City is a venue for the auction for an artifact, known as the Relic. In addition to the two UNISYC soldiers, other bidders include a dead man named Trask, a conceptual entity referred to as The Shift, a Time Lord called Homunculette and two representatives from Faction Paradox, Cousin Justine and Brother Manjuele. The auction is being organised by Mr. Qixotl, who is awaiting the arrival of one more party before the bidding can begin. When the TARDIS materialises at the City, the Doctor and Sam are attacked by leopards that are programmed to attack anyone whose biodata they do not recognise. However, the Doctor locates one of their control pads and adds his own and Sam's biodata to the guest list. Qixotl, horrified, recognises the Doctor and tries to hide his identity from the other quests. Homunculette is a Time Lord from sometime in the Doctor's future where the Time Lords are entangled in a war with a mysterious "Enemy". The Time Lords want to possess the Relic because they think it will give them an advantage in the war and Homunculette has been pursuing it across history. At some point it fell into the hands of Earth governments and Homunculette attempted to retrieve it after the Dalek invasion, but Qixotl had already claimed it. His companion Marie is actually his TARDIS, disguised as a woman. In the City, Marie's weapons systems are suddenly turned against her and she explodes. While the Doctor is amazed by the future evolution of TARDISes, Homunculette assumes that Faction Paradox are responsible, since they are natural enemies of Time Lords. Faction Paradox also once possessed the Relic, which they unearthed from the ruins on Dronid, where the first battle between the Time Lords and the Enemy was fought. However, its discoverers didn't realise its significance and fired it off into the vortex as part of a ritual (where it eventually came to Earth). Sam finds Bregman has gone into culture shock at the presence of so many alien beings and wonders why she has never felt such feelings. The pair is drawn into the Faction Paradox shrine, which resembles a TARDIS crossed with a voodoo shrine, where Brother Manjuele attacks them and takes a biodata sample from Bregman. Both Bregman and Sam begin hearing voices in their heads which appear to come from the Relic and follow them into the heart of the City. The Doctor confronts Qixotl and demands to known what the Relic is. Qixotl reveals the truth; the Relic is a coffin containing the Doctor's own future dead body. Flashbacks reveal Qixotl was once on Dronid just prior to the battle. He was stranded there following the collapse of various criminal activities and learnt from local gossip that the Doctor was on his way to Dronid, but no-one is sure whether he has sided with his own people or the enemy. The current Doctor presses Qixotl for more information, but is appalled when he reveals that the Daleks are the last bidder to arrive. Outside a black spaceship descends and Qixotl and the Doctor go to meet it. But instead of the Daleks, a Kroton, called E-Kobalt emerges, having killed the Dalek passengers and taken their ship. The Krotons are also aware of the future war from captured Time Lord prisoners and believe they can use the conflict to further their empire. Sam and Bregman reach the Relic in a vault at the centre of the City, but suddenly the City's internal defenses are activated which use the intruders biodata to create a psychic attack unique to the individual. Bregman is filled with a sense of self loathing and despair and Sam is attacked by giant babies that appear out of the walls, but the only result is to make her confused. Forced to ignore the auction, the Doctor rushes to shut off the system and rescue them. Finding Sam and the dead embryos, he realises that Sam has two sets of biodata; the Sam he knows and another dark-haired version. This confused the security system and it couldn't generate a proper attack. The Doctor concludes that someone has re-written Sam's biodata to make her the perfect travelling companion for him. His conclusion is confirmed by the dead body in the coffin. Despite being dead, a Timelords mind remains active to some degree and the Doctor more so than usual and it has been calling out to Sam, Bergman and the current Doctor. Back in the Faction shrine, Manjuele attempts to take over Bregman's mind while it is in a confused state. But the Doctor realises what is happening and touches the dead mind inside the Relic to give himself enough energy to push Manjuele out. Repelled from Bergman, Manjuele realises the Doctor's identity and bursts into the auction to tell the others. The various groups assume they have been set up and turn on each other. As the Doctor intervenes, he suddenly recognises Qixotl from his past and is consumed with a desire for bloody revenge on the man who tried to profit from his death. As he is about to strangle him, he suddenly realises that they are all being manipulated by The Shift, that has got into all their minds and exploited their various insecurities to set them against each other. The Doctor deliberately falls into a catatonic state, trapping The Shift inside his mind. It reveals that it works for the Enemy. It was originally a Gabrielidean soldier who fought on the side of the Time Lords and encountered a future Doctor, before dying and being turned in a conceptual entity for the Enemy. When the Doctor wakes up, it can no longer influence the bidders, so retreats inside E-Kobalt to await another chance. The chance arrives soon for E-Kobalt has summoned re-enforcements and the Doctor's actions have deactivated the security systems. Abandoning the auction the bidders attempt to flee. In the chaos, Qixotl is mortally wounded, only to be approached by Trask. Trask is an agent of the Celestis, a future version of the Celestial Intervention Agency who have removed themselves from existence and become beings of pure thought who observe the war from outside the universe. They maintain influence through their agents who bear their mark. They brought Trask back from the dead as such an agent and they can save Qixotl in the same way, if he gives them the Relic. The Doctor uses a piece of crystal discharged by the Krotons weaponry as a biodata sample, which he uses to activate the Faction shrine so the bidders can escape. Meanwhile, Marie has been slowly repairing herself and makes contact with the Doctor. He materialises the Shrine around the attacking Krotons, who accidentally destroy themselves attempting to blast their way out of the Shrine. The Doctor seizes the moment and traps The Shift in a mental prison inside his mind. Stepping out to reclaim his own body, he finds Qixotl has surrendered it to the Celestis, who have taken it to their extra-dimensional home, Mictlan. The Doctor follows Trask and arrives in the castle at the centre of Mictlan where the Celestis watch the universe through a portal in the floor. In addition to the Celestis the world is also populated by their servants, who made deals with them across history and now live a terrible existence as slaves. Just before the battle on Dronid, a future (and possibly the final) Doctor made his own deal with the Celestis to stop them interfering on Dronid. Now they are going to take his body in payment of this debt. The current Doctor makes a counter offer; they can mark his current body and he will be their agent in return for releasing the Relic to him. They agree and place a mark on his hand; but in fact the Doctor has tricked them and they have actually marked The Shift inside his mind. Returning to the real world the bidders go their separate ways; Qixotl dismantles the City (glad the Doctor never learnt the truth about how he got his hands on the Relic), Marie and Homunculette return to the war, The Shift is downloaded into the TARDIS memory. Bregman returns to UNISYC, taking comfort from the fact that although humanity is such as small part of the universe, the higher powers still need human beings to define their existence. The Doctor chooses not to tell Sam about the Relic or what he's learnt about her biodata. He takes the Relic to Quiescia and buries it next to the grave his third self dug. He then uses a bomb to destroy his own body forever. |
5413634 | /m/0dkscc | The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town | John Grisham | 10/10/2006 | {"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | Ron Williamson has returned to his hometown of Ada, Oklahoma after multiple failed attempts to play for various minor league baseball teams, including the Fort Lauderdale Yankees and two farm teams owned by the Oakland A's. An elbow injury inhibited his chances to progress. His big dreams were not enough to overcome the odds (less than 10 percent) of making it to a big league game. His failures lead to, or aggravate, his depression and problem drinking. Early in the morning of December 8, 1982, the body of Debra Sue Carter, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress, was found in the bedroom of her garage apartment in Ada. She had been beaten, raped and suffocated. After five years of false starts and shoddy police work by the Ada police department, Williamson—along with his "drinking buddy", Dennis Fritz--were charged, tried and convicted of the rape and murder charges in 1988. Williamson was sentenced to death. Fritz was given a life sentence. Fritz's wife had been murdered seven years earlier and he was raising their only daughter when he was arrested. Grisham's book describes the aggressive and misguided mission of the Ada police department and Pontotoc County District Attorney Bill Peterson to solve the mystery of Carter's murder. The police and prosecutor used forced "dream" confessions, unreliable witnesses, and flimsy evidence to convict Williamson and Fritz. Since a death penalty conviction automatically sets in motion a series of appeals, the Innocence Project aided Williamson's attorney, Mark Barrett, in exposing several glaring holes in the prosecution's case and the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. Frank H. Seay, a U.S. District Court judge, ordered a retrial. After suffering through a conviction and eleven years on death row, Williamson and Fritz were exonerated by DNA evidence and released on April 15, 1999. Williamson was the 78th inmate released from death row since 1973. Williamson suffered deep and irreversible psychological damage during his incarceration and eventual stay on death row. For example, on September 22, 1994, he was five days away from being executed when his sentence was stayed by the court, following the filing of a habeas corpus petition. He was intermittently treated for manic depression, personality disorders, alcoholism and mild schizophrenia. It was later proven that he was indeed mentally ill and therefore was unfit to have been tried or sentenced to death in the first place. The State of Oklahoma, the city of Ada, and Pontotoc County officials never admitted any errors and threatened to re-arrest him. Another criminal from Ada, Glen Gore, was eventually convicted of the original crime on June 24, 2003. He was sentenced to death He was convicted at a second trial on June 21, 2006 and sentenced by Judge Landrith to life in prison without parole. This was required by law due to a jury deadlock on sentencing. Williamson and Fritz sued and won a settlement for wrongful conviction of $500,000 in 2003 from the City of Ada, and an out-of-court settlement with the State of Oklahoma for an undisclosed amount. By 2004, Williamson was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and died on December 4, 2004 in a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, nursing home. Fritz returned to Kansas City, where he lives with his daughter, Elizabeth . In 2006, Fritz published his own account of being wrongly convicted in his book titled Journey toward Justice. The book includes accounts (as subplots) of the false conviction, trial and sentencing of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot in the abduction, rape, and purported murder of Denice Haraway, as well as the false conviction of Greg Wilhoit in the rape and murder of his estranged wife, Kathy. At one time, all the men were incarcerated in the same death row. About two decades before Grisham's book, Ward and Fontenot's wrongful convictions were detailed in a book published in 1987 called The Dreams of Ada by Robert Mayer. |
5413890 | /m/0dksqv | The God Delusion | Richard Dawkins | 2006 | {"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | Dawkins dedicates the book to Douglas Adams and quotes the novelist: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" The book contains ten chapters. The first few chapters make a case that there is almost certainly no God, while the rest discuss religion and morality. Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four "consciousness-raising" messages: # Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. # Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis"—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos. # Children should not be labelled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people cringe. # Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. Since there are a number of different theistic ideas relating to the nature of God(s), Dawkins defines the concept of God that he wishes to address early in the book. Dawkins distinguishes between an abstract, impersonal god (such as found in pantheism, or as promoted by Spinoza or Einstein) from a personal God who is the creator of the universe, who is interested in human affairs, and who should be worshipped. This latter type of God, the existence of which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book. He maintains that the existence of such a God would have effects in the physical universe and – like any other hypothesis – can be tested and falsified. Dawkins surveys briefly the main philosophical arguments in favour of God's existence. Of the various philosophical proofs that he discusses, he singles out the Argument from design for longer consideration. Dawkins concludes that evolution by natural selection can explain apparent design in nature. He writes that one of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain "how the complex, improbable design in the universe arises", and suggests that there are two competing explanations: # A hypothesis involving a designer, that is, a complex being to account for the complexity that we see. # A hypothesis, with supporting theories, that explains how, from simple origins and principles, something more complex can emerge. This is the basic set-up of his argument against the existence of God, the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, where he argues that the first attempt is self-refuting, and the second approach is the way forward. At the end of chapter 4, Why there almost certainly is no God, Dawkins sums up his argument and states, "The temptation [to attribute the appearance of a design to actual design itself] is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable". In addition, chapter 4 asserts that the alternative to the designer hypothesis is not chance, but natural selection. Dawkins does not claim to disprove God with absolute certainty. Instead, he suggests as a general principle that simpler explanations are preferable (see Occam's razor), and that an omniscient and omnipotent God must be extremely complex. As such he argues that the theory of a universe without a God is preferable to the theory of a universe with a God. The second half of the book begins by exploring the roots of religion and seeking an explanation for its ubiquity across human cultures. Dawkins advocates the "theory of religion as an accidental by-product – a misfiring of something useful" as for example the mind's employment of intentional stance. Dawkins suggests that the theory of memes, and human susceptibility to religious memes in particular, can explain how religions might spread like "mind viruses" across societies. He then turns to the subject of morality, maintaining that we do not need religion to be good. Instead, our morality has a Darwinian explanation: altruistic genes, selected through the process of evolution, give people natural empathy. He asks, "would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed?" He argues that very few people would answer "yes", undermining the claim that religion is needed to make us behave morally. In support of this view, he surveys the history of morality, arguing that there is a moral Zeitgeist that continually evolves in society, generally progressing toward liberalism. As it progresses, this moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings. Thus, Dawkins states, morality does not originate from the Bible, rather our moral progress informs what part of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss. The God Delusion is not just a defence of atheism, but also goes on the offensive against religion. Dawkins sees religion as subverting science, fostering fanaticism, encouraging bigotry against homosexuals, and influencing society in other negative ways. He is most outraged about the teaching of religion in schools, which he considers to be an indoctrination process. He equates the religious teaching of children by parents and teachers in faith schools to a form of mental abuse. Dawkins considers the labels "Muslim child" or a "Catholic child" equally misapplied as the descriptions "Marxist child" or a "Tory child", as he wonders how a young child can be considered developed enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it. The book concludes with the question whether religion, despite its alleged problems, fills a "much needed gap", giving consolation and inspiration to people who need it. According to Dawkins, these needs are much better filled by non-religious means such as philosophy and science. He suggests that an atheistic worldview is life-affirming in a way that religion, with its unsatisfying "answers" to life's mysteries, could never be. An appendix gives addresses for those "needing support in escaping religion". |
5414246 | /m/0dkt7h | Escape Velocity | Colin Brake | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In 2001, there is a new space race, between Pierre Yves-Dudoin and Arthur Tyler III, both competing to be the first privately funded man in space. Eventually Pierre announces that he has succeeded, and will be in space in a week. However, Pierre has been helped by a scout of the Kulan race, who are poised to invade Earth. In Brussels a man is shot in front of stockbroker Anji Kapoor and her boyfriend Dave. When Dave attempts first aid, he realises the man is not human. The man then slips a package into Dave's pocket and injects a substance into his wrist. Meanwhile, in London, Fitz is dropped off by Compassion two days before he is to meet the Doctor. When he sees Dave in a news report claiming the dead man had two hearts, he fears the worst and travels to Brussels. After speaking to Dave in Brussels, Fitz discovers that the man wasn't the Doctor, but stays to help investigate. Dave finds the package in his pocket and calls a number written on it, and finds himself speaking to Arthur Tyler III. After meeting Tyler's bodyguard, they bring him back to Dave and Anji's hotel room only to find the killers outside. As the killers drive away, one of them drops his gun which is of alien origin. When Dave leaves the room to contact the police, the dead man's killers kidnap him. Anji then decides to go with Fitz to meet the Doctor. On the 8th of February, Anji and Fitz arrive at St. Louis' pub to meet the Doctor. The Doctor reveals that he created the pub to lure Fitz to him. When the Doctor sees Fitz, he still cannot remember any of his past, and his TARDIS is still smaller on the inside than the outside. Despite this, the Doctor agrees to help and sends Fitz back to Brussels to investigate if Pierre is involved, whilst the Doctor and Anji will stay in London to investigate Tyler. In Brussels Fitz meets a CIA agent called Fisher who is investigating whether Pierre Dudoin's company, ITI, has been in contact with aliens. Together they break into the ITI headquarters and find an alien called Sa'Motta tending to Dave. Sa'Motta explains that he came to Earth in a failed invasion spearhead four years ago and has been stranded which prevents him from stopping their leader, Fray'kon, from reporting that Earth should be invaded by the Kulans. Fray'kon has been helping Dubion's ship near completion in order to rejoin the invasion fleet. The other Kulans in the spearhead just want to return home and have been helping Tyler's ship. However Kulan ships need telepathy to work, so research has been done to produce a hybrid who can work the ship. The dead man had been giving the genes necessary to Tyler, but injected them into Dave to preserve them. However, the genes injected into Dave are slowly killing him. As guards recapture Dave, Fisher's boss orders a squad to capture Fitz and Sa'Motta. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Anji go to Tyler's base and save his life after a Kulan computer virus planted by Dudoin traps Tyler in a room with a fire. The Doctor puts the virus on a DVD for study. The Doctor offers to help stop Dudoin and Fray'kon's plan, but Tyler's ship is destroyed by an after-effect of the virus. Tyler turns to his former friend and Dudoin's ex-wife Christine Holland to help with adapting the Kulan technology for humans, but before he can contact her, Dudoin kidnaps his daughter Pippa to force her to come to Brussels to help Dave. She does so, but Dudoin reveals he plans to launch the rocket without testing it. Christine sees Fray'kon tamper with the controls, but Dudoin refuses to listen. Fitz and Sa'Motta attempt to go to London, but realise they are followed by CIA agents. Fitz is captured and taken to the CIA's agent known as Control, but Sa'Motta escapes, and makes the way to the CIA base where Fitz is being held. Control puts a tracer on Fitz and allows Sa'Motta to rescue him to lead the CIA to the other Kulan. While escaping, Fitz realises that his memories of the destruction of Gallifrey are getting blurred and hazy. In space, the invasion fleet moves into its final formation, ready to invade on Fray'kon's command. Meanwhile, the Doctor rescues Christine's daughter and asks for Tyler's help in stopping Dudoin and Fray'kon getting to space and alerting the invasion fleet, which he agrees to. The Doctor, Tyler, and Anji break into Dudoin's launch pad with ease as Fitz and Sa'Motta are being chased by guards elsewhere in the complex. After rescuing Christine, the Doctor links his mind to Dudoin's ship to shut it down, but he passes out in the process. However, he first raises the oxygen level which causes the Kulan led by Fray'kon to faint, but Fray'kon escapes. Tyler then uses the DVD with the Kulan virus to destroy the systems, and the cabin sets alight, killing the Kulan aboard and Dudoin himself. Returning to Britain, the Doctor helps Tyler complete his rocket so he can return Sa'Motta to the invasion fleet to order the abortion of the invasion. Dave is recovering, but Christine discovers a small amount of Kulan DNA in Dave which was there before his infection, indicating that humans and Kulan may be genetically related, giving solid evidence against the invasion. However Fray'kon enters, having followed them. Control's squad enters, to stop Tyler's ship taking Sa'Motta to the fleet, but Tyler attempts to launch anyway. Fray'kon steals the Doctor's spacesuit and forces Dave to drive to the launch platform, whilst holding Anji hostage. After reaching the rocket, he murders Dave and boards the rocket. The CIA withdraw from the complex, but the Doctor can't warn Tyler about Fray'kon being on board the rocket. Fray'kon overpowers the crew and drives the rocket towards the fleet, where he informs the fleet commander that the humans are savages, and should be killed. The Doctor and Anji go back to St Louis' pub, where the TARDIS has finally regenerated itself. The Doctor pilots the TARDIS onto the Kulan command ship. The Doctor tells Anji to stay in the TARDIS, but she follows him and watches him be captured and put in a holding cell. The Kulan destroy Tyler's ship and put him on trial in front of their war council. Anji releases Fitz and they go to the weapons room. Trying to scare the Kulan by firing an energy beam, she instead fires a barrage of missiles which destroy half the fleet, who turn on each other. The Doctor and Tyler fight Fray'kon, but when Fray'kon gets stunned, Tyler offers to stay and hold off Fray'kon whilst the others escape. Tyler tricks Fray'kon into falling to an airlock and Tyler ejects himself and Fray'kon into space. As the remainder of the fleet blows up as the TARDIS dematerialises. The Doctor, who still cannot remember anything, offers to take Anji home, but the TARDIS materialises onto a prehistoric landscape instead. |
5414598 | /m/0dktw3 | The Burning | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In the late 19th century, the village of Middleton is on the verge of bankrupty due to the tin mine running out, when a huge fissure opens in the moorlands. After a visitor called Roger Nepath offers to buy the mine and visits the fissure with the lord of the manor, Lord Urton's personality changes, and allows Nepath to move into his manor house with his sister Patience. The amnesiac Doctor arrives at the village and befriends Professor Dobbs from The Society of Psychical Research during his research into the fissure. Dobbs's assistant Gaddis claims to have empathic powers, which lead him to point along the fissure, where he is chased off by Urton. The Doctor notices that the water in a dam near the fissure has become warm and acidic, suggesting that it has been heated. Returning to the Fissure they find Gaddis's corpse horribly burnt, which fascinates the Doctor. Nepath later holds an auction to fund his purchase, and demonstration a metal that returns to its original shape when destroyed, which Nepath gives the Doctor a sample of. The army gives Nepath a large amount of money for him to create self repairing guns for the army, which Nepath uses to buy more mining equipment. Later, the metal turns into molten lava, which causes the remains of TARDIS to grow to normal size, although it is still a featureless blue box. Dobbs and the Doctor break into the manor and discover that Nepath had been making many copies of his artifacts out of the metal, then selling them, as well as a young woman's body in a box, before narrowly escaping the Urtons. Going into the mines, the Doctor finds that the tremors that caused the fissure opened up a new mine shaft, which is full of pools of molten lava, which is the source of the metal. The lava suddenly forms into creatures which burn Dobbs to death whilst the Doctor escapes. The Doctor explains to Reverend Stobbold that Nepath is helping living magma, with the power to reform itself, which has already replaced the Urtons and mine workers. After an explosion, the Doctor relises that Middleton is located in an ancient volcanic caldera - with a new eruption about to start. The Doctor meets the army on the way to pick up their new guns, where they are attacked by magma creatures and the new guns explode when fired, killing most of the soldiers. At the manor Nepath explains that the creature has run out of resources in the mine, and he intends to release it into new areas, then take advantage of the resulting chaos. He reveals that the body in the case is his sister Patience's, who died as the result of a building collapsing after a fire, and Nepath believes that the creature can bring her back to life. Escaping the manor, the Doctor pushes Lord Urton into a river, where the cold water cools him into a statue, which crumbles apart. The Doctor returns to the manor and tells him that the woman is not really Patience. When Nepath questions her, she embraces him as the magma leaves her body, leaving him trapped in a statue's arms. The army place explosives near the dam, which the magma accidentally explodes, releasing water that turns the magma into stone. Nepath is freed from the statue, but the Doctor pushes him into the water, causing him to drown. The flood unearths new seams of tin ore, saving the town's economy. The Doctor leaves with the TARDIS's remains to wait for his meeting with Fitz in 2001. |
5416143 | /m/0dkwvn | The Doll | Bolesław Prus | null | null | Wokulski begins his career as a waiter at Hopfer's, a Warsaw restaurant. The scion of an impoverished Polish noble family dreams of a life in science. After taking part in the failed 1863 Uprising against Tsarist Russia, he is sentenced to exile in Siberia. On eventual return to Warsaw, he becomes a salesman at Mincel's haberdashery. Marrying the late owner's widow (who eventually dies), he comes into money and uses it to set up a partnership with a Russian merchant he had met while in exile. The two merchants go to Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, and Wokulski makes a fortune supplying the Russian Army. The enterprising Wokulski now proves a romantic at heart, falling in love with Izabela, daughter of the vacuous, bankrupt aristocrat, Tomasz Łęcki. The manager of Wokulski's Warsaw store, Ignacy Rzecki, is a man of an earlier generation, a modest bachelor who lives on memories of his youth, which was a heroic chapter in his own life and that of Europe. Through his diary the reader learns about some of Wokulski's adventures, seen through the eyes of an admirer. Rzecki and his friend Katz had gone to Hungary in 1848 to enlist in the revolutionary army. For Rzecki, the cause of freedom in Europe is connected with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Hungarian revolution had sparked new hopes of abolishing the reactionary system that had triumphed at Napoleon's fall. Later he had reposed his hopes in Napoleon III. Now, as he writes, he places them in Bonaparte's scion, Napoleon III's son, Prince Loulou. At novel's end, when Rzecki hears that Loulou has perished in Africa, fighting in British ranks against rebel tribesmen, he will be overcome by the despondence of old age. For now, Rzecki lives in constant excitement, preoccupied by politics, which he refers to in his diary by the code-letter "P." Everywhere in the press he finds indications that a long-awaited "it" is beginning. In addition to the two generations represented by Rzecki and Wokulski, the novel provides glimpses of a third, younger one, exemplified in the scientist Julian Ochocki (modeled on Prus' friend, Julian Ochorowicz), some students, and young salesmen at Wokulski's store. The half-starving students inhabit the garret of an apartment house and are in constant conflict with the landlord over their arrears of rent; they are rebels, are inclined to macabre pranks, and are probably socialists. Also of socialist persuasion is a young salesman, whereas some of the latter's colleagues believe first and last in personal gain. The Dolls plot focuses on Wokulski's infatuation with the superficial Izabela, who sees him only as a plebeian intruder into her rarefied world, a brute with huge red hands; for her, persons below the social standing of aristocrats are hardly human. Wokulski, in his quest to win Izabela, begins frequenting theaters and aristocratic salons; and, to help her financially distressed father, founds a company and sets the aristocrats up as shareholders in the business. Wokulski's eventual downfall highlights The Dolls overarching theme: the inertia of Polish society. |
5416976 | /m/0dkxy3 | The Outpost | Bolesław Prus | null | null | The Outpost is a study of rural Poland. Its principal character, a peasant surnamed Ślimak ("Snail"), typifies his village's inhabitants, nearly all illiterate; there is no school. Religion is naively superficial: when a villager happens to buy a painting of Leda and the Swan, the community pray before it as they do before two ancient portraits of noblemen who had been benefactors of the local church. Changes are, however, coming to the area. A railway is being built nearby. The owners of a local manor sell their estate to German settlers financed by Bismarck's German government. Polish landowners, who speak more French than Polish, are happy to take the money and move to a city or abroad, away from the boring countryside. Ślimak's farm becomes an isolated Polish outpost in an increasingly German-settled neighborhood. Ślimak suffers a series of adversities as he refuses to sell his plot of land to German setters (who are described not unsympathetically). The stubborn, conservative peasant is not acting from self-interest, since the money he would have gotten could have bought a better farm elsewhere; he is, rather, acting from inertia and from a principle inculcated in him by his father and grandfather: that when a peasant loses his hereditary plot, he faces the greatest of misfortunes — becoming a mere wage-earner. Still, Ślimak lacks his wife's strength of will; he hesitates. But on her deathbed she makes him swear that he will never sell their land. The book's somber picture is relieved by the author's humor and warmth. The local Catholic priest, habitué of dinners and hunting parties at local manors, is not entirely devoid of Christian virtues. Two of the village's humbler denizens turn out to be exemplars of selflessness. Ślimak's half-wit farm hand, on finding an abandoned baby, takes it home to care for it. After Mrs. Ślimak dies and the widower's farm burns down, he is befriended by a poor, empathetic Jewish peddler who comes to his aid and, in the manner of a deus ex machina, saves the day and the farm. |
5419651 | /m/0dl11h | Legacy of the Daleks | John Peel | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Great Britain in the late 22nd century is slowly recovering from the devastation that followed the Daleks' invasion. The Doctor's very first travelling companion -- his granddaughter, Susan -- is where he left her, helping to rebuild Earth for the survivors. But danger still remains all around... While searching for his lost companion, Sam, the Doctor finds himself in Domain London. But it seems that Susan is now missing too, and his efforts to find her lead to confrontation with the ambitious Lord Haldoran, who is poised to take control of southern Britain through all-out war. With the help of a sinister advisor, Haldoran's plans are already well advanced. Power cables have been fed down a mineshaft, reactivating a mysterious old device of hideous power. But has the Dalek presence on Earth really been wiped out? Or are there still traps set for the unwary? The Doctor learns to his cost once again that when dealing with the evil of the Daleks, nothing can be taken at face value... |
5419833 | /m/0dl1ck | Placebo Effect | Gary Russell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Doctor takes Sam to Micawber’s World, an artificial planet owned by the Carrington Corporation, to attend the wedding of his friends Stacy Townsend and the Ice Warrior Ssard. Sam is slightly peeved to learn that they travelled with him during the three-year period in which he’d left her at a one-hour Greenpeace rally, but she eventually forgives him. The wedding ceremony is disrupted by followers of the Church of the Way Forward, who believe that interspecies marriage dilutes racial purity and is thus forbidden by their Goddess. Chase Carrington himself apologises for the disruption and pays for the wedding guests’ expenses out of his own pocket. Later, however, he is murdered by Foamasi assassins working for the Dark Peaks Lodge, and an impersonator in a body-suit disguise takes his place... Micawber’s World is hosting the 3999 Olympics, and Ms Sox, the head of security for Carrington Corp, has called in extra Space Security troops for the occasion. A patrol vanishes while lighting the tunnels beneath the surface of the planet, but rather than court-martial Sergeant Dallion for losing her men without an explanation, Commander Ritchie gives her and the remaining members of her squad leeway to investigate. In fact, Ritchie’s wife and son have been kidnapped by the Dark Peaks Lodge, who intend to discover what’s going on in the tunnels and then kill Dallion. Rivalry between Dark Peaks and the Twin Suns Lodge leads to the murder of a Foamasi, and when the Doctor notices the body being taken to the Space Security building for an autopsy, he involves himself in the investigation out of curiosity. Ritchie decides that the Doctor might prove to be a useful loose cannon and directs him to the Foamasi ambassador, Green Fingers. The Doctor also speaks with Ms Sox and with Sergeant Dallion, and eventually they all put together their stories and determine that the Dark Peaks Lodge is attempting to infiltrate Carrington Corp through blackmail, murder and impersonation. Sam investigates the Church of the Way Forward but determines that they’re not connected to the mystery; the telepathic Reverend Lukas simply wants to spread the word of his Goddess throughout the galaxy. His young follower Kyle Dale, who has come to compete in the Olympics, becomes intrigued by Sam’s intelligent and passionate defense of her own beliefs. After leaving the Church followers, Sam happens across the entourage of the visiting Duchess of Auckland, just as the sycophantic journalist Talon Chalfont learns that he’s been snubbed from the Duchess’ itinerary. Chalfont hacks into the Federation computers to search for a better story, learns of the missing troopers and sets off to investigate. Sam follows him, and Kyle, who happens to be passing by, follows them both. Ms Sox informs the Doctor that her security team has been investigating SSS xenobiologist Miles Mason, who was seen consorting with an unknown alien shortly before arriving on Micawber’s World. Ms Sox believes that Mason is involved with drug smugglers who have set up camp in the tunnels; it would seem that the Dark Peaks Lodge learned of her investigation while infiltrating Carrington Corp, and are attempting to find out what’s going on so they can get in on the action. But Dark Peaks agents learn of the investigation and send word to Events Co-ordinator Sumner that Ritchie and his associates are conspiring to assassinate the Duchess of Auckland. What nobody yet realizes is that the creatures in the tunnels are Wirrrn. Dr Mason has been absorbed into the Wirrrn hive mind, and has been using the facilities of the SSS labs to manufacture a mutagenic drug which will transform anyone who takes it into a Wirrrn. He intends to trick the Foamasi into distributing the drugs to the athletes under the impression that they are performance-enhancing; in fact most of them are placebos with the mutagenic tags attached. Some of the drugs contain a time-release formula, so those who take them will not fully transform into a Wirrrn for months, thus spreading the taint throughout the galaxy... The missing patrol members have been transformed into Wirrrn larvae, and the Queen sends them to the surface to await the start of the games. She sends a telepathic message to Mason, ordering him to arrange a distraction that will provide the larvae with cover for their attack. The signal is also picked up by the Doctor, who faints dead away just as Sumner arrives to arrest the “conspirators” -- and by Reverend Lukas, who believes it to be the call of his Goddess, and who leads his followers into the tunnels where most are absorbed by the Wirrrn. Chalfont is also transformed into a Wirrrn, but Sam and Kyle manage to escape. Sumner realizes he’s been deceived, and the recovering Doctor realizes that there’s more going on in the tunnels than he’d previously believed. Green Fingers informs the other Lodges about Dark Peaks’ activities and executes the Dark Peaks Patriarch; the remaining Dark Peaks Foamasi are targeted and killed by assassins from the other Lodges, and eventually Ritchie’s wife and son are found and rescued. In the process, it becomes clear that many Dark Peaks agents have themselves become infected by the Wirrrn in the course of their criminal activities. The Doctor and Ms Sox obtain a sample of the drugs, analyse them and learn the truth just as Sam and Kyle arrive with their story. Mason plants a bomb beneath the Duchess of Auckland’s podium, and she is killed instantly in the explosion. In the ensuing confusion the Wirrrn larvae emerge and attack, and some of the Olympic athletes spontaneously transform into Wirrrn, spreading confusion and terror. But thanks to their advance warning of the danger, SSS troops are able to contain the attack and drive off the larvae. The Doctor enters the tunnels and confronts the Wirrrn Queen, who has made her nest around the planet’s artificial power source; he is able to rewire it and electrocute her, but some of the Wirrrn larvae survive. Acting on instinct, they steal a shuttle and set off back “home”, to the Andromeda Galaxy. The Doctor synthesizes an antidote to the mutagenic drug, saving the athletes who took them from becoming Wirrrn—although they will never fully recover. Kyle decides to remain on Micawber’s World and carry on the good work of the Church despite Lukas’ betrayal of his ideals. Lukas himself has escaped with the body of the Wirrrn Queen and with two of his followers—who are slowly transforming into Wirrrn themselves, ready to spread the word of their Goddess throughout the galaxy... |
5419981 | /m/0dl1lt | Someday Angeline | Louis Sachar | 1983 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Angeline is extremely intelligent, because she knew things, especially related to ocean animals and the ocean, "before she was born." Even though she is only eight, she is sent to the sixth grade. She wants to be a garbage collector like her father, although he wants her to become famous and is afraid of her intelligence at times. At school she also faces problems, bullied by the other students and misunderstood by her teacher, Mrs. Hardlick. Her only two friends are a fifth grade teacher, Miss Turbone (also known as Mr. Bone) and Gary Boone (who later gets a book to himself, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes). Mr. Persopolis wants the best for his daughter, and he often pushes her too hard to achieve. When she is elected Secretary of Trash, he becomes angry and orders her to resign. The next day at school, Mrs. Hardlick does not listen to Angeline when she tries to resign, and Angeline is so frustrated that she messes up the classroom, denouncing everything as "Garbage!" Mrs. Hardlick is furious and tells Angeline to not come back without a signed note from her father. For the next week she goes to the aquarium each day, instead of going to school. Her father gets home after she does, so he does not know. When Miss Turbone finds out about this, she arranges to talk with Mr. Persopolis (it is implied that the two fall in love when they meet). They decide Angeline will be transferred to Miss Turbone's fifth grade class, and that she will return to Mrs. Hardlick's class for a day or two while the transfer is arranged. They also plan to go on a date the next evening. However, Mrs. Hardlick succeeds in alienating Angeline one more time, and she once more runs away from school, this time to the beach, where she jumps off the pier (the better to see the fish) and nearly drowns. However, she is saved by a fisherman and later gets completely better. |
5420650 | /m/0dl2hz | The Face-Eater | Simon Messingham | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | On Earth's first space colony, Proxima II, an expedition to a nearby mountain disappears and only one survivor, Jake Leary, returns, apparently turned insane by the experience, he breaks out of hospital and vanishes. Afterwards mutilated bodies begin appearing on the streets, causing the colony's workers to send a distress signal against the wishes of their leader, Helen Percival. The Doctor and Sam arrive in response to the signal, causing Percival to become paranoid that she will be overthrown. despite this, she allows The Doctor to investigate. Sam learns that Percival burned the bodies without an autopsy and breaks into Helen's office to investigate and sets off a bomb planted to stop intruders, and is saved by Police Chief Fuller. Meanwhile, the Doctor speaks to xenozoologist Joan Betts, who is studying the native Proximans, who are dying out suddenly. The Doctor theorises that the Proxians have telepathic powers which are focused on the mountain, trapping something in. When The Doctor attempts to contact their group mind, he learns that they are under threat from an ancient evil. When The Doctor follows Joan into the sewers later that day, something attacks them which kills Joan and knocks him unconscious. Percival begins to oppress the colonists, sparking off riots, whilst Sam and Fuller read Leary's report which explain that the expedition woke an ancient evil which was dormant in the mountains. Later Fuller reveals that he is a shape shifter which has killed the real Fuller. However Sam escapes when a Proximan attacks the creature. The Doctor is brought to the officers, where he explains that an ancient creature called the Face-Eater has being sending out shape shifters to gather life essences for it to eat. Leary enters and explains that this Doctor is a shape shifter - the real one was with him in the mountains, and that is was a shape shifter impersonating him that is responsible for the murders. The Doctor finds the Face-Eater with a Proximan's help and learns that the Proximans built the Face-Eater as a focal point for their group mind in case of attack, but it soon began to eat all life on the planet until it was subdued, but the colonists have woken it again. The Face-Eater then becomes strong enough to move by itself and attacks the settlement. After Percival fails to launch a nuclear strike to wipe out the colony, she is killed by a worker. The Face-Eater attempts to absorb The Doctor, but is confused by his dormant personalities, allowing the Proximans to attack it. Finding the control unit, the Proximans shut down the Face-Eater, which also shuts down their group mind mentally degenerating them into little more than animals. The Doctor and Sam then leave. |
5420907 | /m/0dl2y5 | Revolution Man | Paul Leonard | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor tries to stop a mysterious entity called The Revolution Man from spreading mind altering drugs in the 1960s. |
5421043 | /m/0dl350 | Unnatural History | Kate Orman | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In London, 2002, the dark haired Sam Jones is living a normal life, though struggling with a drug addiction, when the Eighth Doctor arrives in the shop she works in and tells her that she should have blonde hair and be travelling with him. Shocked by this, she runs out onto the street to get away from him and is attacked by a ten year old boy, who claims that she shouldn't exist. When the Doctor rescues her, she agrees to go with him to San Francisco. When they arrive, the Doctor finds Fitz and explains that when the TARDIS destroyed the Earth, but reversed time, a scar in space and time was left behind and strange creatures from other dimensions are being attracted to the city by it. The TARDIS has become trapped inside the scar, and will be crushed by the strain of trying to stabilise the scar in three days unless it is removed. When the Doctor originally arrived, blonde Sam fell in the scar, and dark Sam appeared in London. The Doctor's attempts to contact the Time Lords to obtain new equipment to close the scar fails, and he meets the boy again, who reveals that he is a member of Faction Paradox, but he claims that he isn't here to harm the Doctor, just to observe his actions. Later the Doctor notices a Kraken in the bay, which will destroy the city looking for food if it detects the energy coming from the scar, but the TARDIS is currently blocking it from detecting them. Now under another time limit, the Doctor finds a scientist called Joyce who promises to help repair the equipment needed to close the scar. The Doctor tells Sam that her biodata is vulnerable to change from the pulses coming from the scar. One of Fitz's contacts kidnaps them and delivers them to a man who fits them with tracking devices and releases them. In Golden Gate Park the Doctor discovers lines of his own biodata lying exposed on the ground, and seeing this removes the tracking devices. The Doctor now realizes that the man who kidnapped them was from the higher dimensions, and has been experimenting with the Doctor's biodata. The Doctor learns that the man's name is Griffin and he wants to collect the unnatural creatures in the city. The Doctor traps Griffin who explains that his ambition is to categorize every creature in the universe. Griffin then escapes and the Doctor returns to his hotel. At the hotel Griffin's henchmen kidnap Fitz, but accidentally leave Sam behind. The Doctor goes to check Joyce's progress with his equipment, only to discover that Joyce has also been experimenting with his biodata as well, but refuses to explain why. After learning that Fitz has been kidnapped, the Doctor confronts Griffin, who explains that he wants to see the Kraken destroy the city. Griffin decides to simplify the Doctor's biodata and begins experimenting on it. Sam attempts to rescue him, but Griffin takes a sample of her biodata before they both escape. Joyce finishes repairing the Doctor's equipment. Returning to the scar, the Doctor finds his equipment can't close the scar and will only remove the TARDIS from the scar, which will enable the Kraken to destroy the city, so the Doctor decides to sacrifice the TARDIS to seal the scar. Joyce accidentally tells Griffin that the largest amount of the Doctor's exposed biodata is at the scar. Griffin goes there and tries to edit the Doctor and Sam's biodata, but the Doctor threatens to alter the higher dimensions that Griffin lives in. Griffin releases Fitz, but Fitz then attacks Griffin and traps him in his dimensionally transcendental specimen box. The Doctor pulls the TARDIS out of the scar, causing the Kraken to look for food. The Doctor places a machine to distract the Kraken on the bay, and the boy offers to create a paradox, but the Doctor refuses. Back at the scar, Sam jumps in, turning her into blonde Sam. The Doctor frees Griffin's specimens from the box, who attack Griffin and push him into the scar. Sam throws the specimen box into the scar after him, causing it to close, and which causes dark Sam to cease to exist and the Kraken and the other creatures return to their own dimension. The boy explains that blonde Sam is a paradox, because blonde Sam was created when dark Sam threw herself in amongst the Doctor’s biodata in the scar, but she was only able to do so because the Doctor brought her to the scar he’d created. Now he has no shadow, like the other Faction members, and the boy tells him that he will soon be a Faction member. |
5421216 | /m/0dl3m8 | Autumn Mist | David A. McIntee | null | null | The Doctor investigates an ancient force inferering with The Battle of the Bulge. |
5421868 | /m/0dl4k6 | The Tinder Box | Hans Christian Andersen | 1835-05-08 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The story opens with a poor soldier returning home from war. He meets a witch, who asks him to climb into a hollow tree to retrieve a magic tinderbox. The witch gives the man permission to take anything he finds inside the chambers, but he must return the tinderbox. In the tree, he finds three chambers filled with precious coins guarded by three monstrous dogs, "one with eyes the size of teacups", who guards a vault filled with pennies, one with "eyes the size of supper-plates", who guards a vault filled with silver, and one with eyes "the size of windmills", who guards a vault filled with gold. He fills his pockets with money, finds the tinderbox, and returns to the witch. When she demands the tinderbox without giving a reason, the soldier lops off her head with his sword. In the following scene, the soldier enters a large city and buys himself splendid clothing. He makes many friends, and lives in a magnificent apartment. He learns of a princess kept in a tower after a prophecy foretold her marriage to a common soldier; his interest is piqued and he wants to see her but realizes his whim cannot be satisfied. Eventually, the soldier's money is depleted and he is forced to live in a dark attic. He strikes the tinderbox to light the room, and one of the dogs appears before him. The soldier then discovers he can summon all three dogs and order them to bring him money from their subterranean dwelling. Again, he lives splendidly. One night, he recalls the story of the princess in the locked tower, and desires to see her. He strikes the tinderbox and sends the dog with eyes the size of teacups to bring her to his apartment. The soldier is overwhelmed with her beauty, kisses her and orders the dog to return her to the tower. The following morning, the princess tells her parents she has had a strange dream and relates the night's adventure. The royal couple then watch her closely. When the princess is carried away again, they unsuccessfully use a trail of flour and chalk marks on neighborhood doors to find where she spends her nights. Eventually, her whereabouts are discovered and the soldier is clapped in prison and sentenced to death. On the day of execution, the soldier sends a boy for his tinderbox, and, at the scaffold, asks to have a last smoke. He then strikes the tinderbox and the three monstrous dogs appear. They toss the judge and the councilors, the King and Queen into the air. All are dashed to pieces when they fall to earth. The soldier and the princess are united, and the dogs join the wedding feast. |
5422647 | /m/0dl5zg | A Martian Odyssey | Stanley G. Weinbaum | 1934-07 | null | Early in the 21st century, nearly twenty years after the invention of atomic power and ten years after the first lunar landing, the four-man crew of the Ares has landed on Mars in the Mare Cimmerium. A week after the landing, Dick Jarvis, the ship's American chemist, sets out south in an auxiliary rocket to photograph the landscape. Eight hundred miles out, the engine on Jarvis' rocket gives out, and he crash-lands into one of the Thyle regions. Rather than sit and wait for rescue, Jarvis decides to walk back north to the Ares. Just after crossing into the Mare Chronium, Jarvis comes across a tentacled Martian creature attacking a large birdlike creature. He notices that the birdlike Martian is carrying a bag around its neck, and figuring it for an intelligent being, saves it from the tentacled monstrosity. The rescued creature refers to itself as Tweel. Tweel accompanies Jarvis on his trip back to the Ares, in the course of which it manages to pick up some English, although Jarvis is unable to make any sense of Tweel's language. At first, Tweel travels in tremendous, city-block-long leaps that end with its long beak buried in the ground, but upon seeing Jarvis trudge along, walks beside him. Upon reaching Xanthus Jarvis and Tweel find a line of small pyramids tens of thousands of years old made of silica bricks, each open at the top. As they follow the line, the pyramids slowly become larger and newer. By the time the pyramids are ten feet high, the travelers reach the end of the line and find a pyramid that isn't open at the top. As they watch, a creature with gray scales, one arm, a mouth and a pointed tail pushes its way out of the top of the pyramid, pulls itself several yards along the ground, then plants itself in the ground by the tail. It starts exhaling bricks from its mouth at ten-minute intervals and using them to build another pyramid around itself. Jarvis realizes that the creature is silicon-based rather than carbon-based; neither animal, vegetable nor mineral, but a little of each. The strange combination of a creature produces the solid substance silica and builds himself in with the By-product then sleeps for an unknown length of time. As the two approach a canal cutting across Xanthus, Jarvis is feeling homesick for New York City, thinking about Fancy Long, a woman he knows from the cast of the Yerba Mate Hour television show. When he sees Long standing by the canal, he begins to approach her, but is stopped by Tweel. Tweel takes out a gun that fires poisoned glass needles and shoots Long, who vanishes, replaced by one of the tentacled creatures that Jarvis rescued Tweel from at their first meeting. Jarvis realizes that the tentacled creature, which he names a dream-beast, lures its prey by projecting illusions into their minds. As Jarvis and Tweel approach a city on the canal bank, they are passed by a barrel-like creature with four legs, four arms, and a circle of eyes around its waist. The barrel creature is pushing an empty coppery cart; it pays no attention to Jarvis and Tweel as it goes by them. Another goes by, then a third. Jarvis stands in front of the third, which stops. Jarvis says, "We are friends," and the cart creature repeats the phrase from a diaphragm atop its body, "We are v-r-r-riends," before pushing past him. The next cart creature repeats the phrase as it goes by, and the next. Eventually the cart creatures start returning from the city with their carts full of stones, sand, and chunks of rubbery plants. Jarvis stands in front of one and refuses to move. Eventually the cart creature tweaks his nose hard enough to make him jump aside and yell "Ouch". After that, every cart creature that passes by says "We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!" Jarvis and Tweel follow the cart creatures to their destination, a mound with a tunnel leading down below it. Jarvis soon becomes lost in the network of tunnels, and hours or days pass before he and Tweel find themselves in a domed chamber near the surface. There they find the cart creatures depositing their loads beneath a wheel that grinds the stones and plants into dust. Some of the cart creatures also step under the wheel themselves and are pulverized. Beyond the wheel is a shining crystal on a pedestal. When Jarvis approaches it he feels a tingling in his hands and face, and a wart on his left thumb dries up and falls off. He speculates that the crystal emits some form of radiation that destroys diseased tissue but leaves healthy tissue unharmed. The cart creatures suddenly begin attacking Jarvis and Tweel, who retreat up a corridor which fortunately leads outside. The cart creatures corner them and, rather than save himself, Tweel stays by Jarvis' side facing certain death. The cart creatures are about to finish them off when an auxiliary rocket from the Ares lands destroying the creatures. Jarvis boards the rocket while Tweel bounds away into the martian horizon. The rocket returns with Jarvis to the Ares, and he tells his story to the other three. Jarvis is consumed with recalling the friendship and bond between Tweel and him when Captain Harrison expresses regret that they don't have the healing crystal. Jarvis, mind somewhere else, admits that the cart creatures were attacking him because he took it; he takes it out and shows it to the others. |
5424350 | /m/0dl8j1 | She Was a Lady | Leslie Charteris | 1931 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"} | After years of living on the wrong side of the law, Simon Templar has been pardoned for past (perceived) crimes and is now working as an agent of Scotland Yard. His first mission is to investigate a crime ring called the Angels of Doom, which specializes in (among other things) helping convicted felons escape police dragnets and ambushes. The Angels of Doom is run by Jill Trelawney, a young woman who is willing to condone just about any action -- including the murder of The Saint, if needs be -- in her quest to wreak havoc on Scotland Yard, which she blames for the death of her father. But Templar, in his pursuit of Trelawney, finds within her an unexpected kindred spirit. The book is divided into three parts and could almost be seen as a trilogy of novellas. The first part details Templar investigating Trelawney and discovering the cause of her criminal actions, ultimately resulting in him allowing Trelawney to kill one of the men responsible for framing her father, which has the effect of dissolving the Angels of Doom. Subsequently, in the second part, Templar's status as a police agent apparently comes to an end as he and Trelawney go to Paris in pursuit of a second man believed to be connected to the death of Trelawney's father. As the Paris segment of the novel begins, Templar and Trelawney have become partners to the extent that Simon, when leaving his traditional "calling card" consisting of the drawing of a stick figure with a halo, is now compelled to add a female figure to the image. Meanwhile, Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard continues to pursue both the Saint and Trelawney, especially when he receives reports that the two have allegedly reactivated the Angels of Doom. The third segment of the novel sees Templar and Trelawney pursuing the third and final man responsible for framing her father, but in doing so they must first recruit some unexpected help from within Scotland Yard itself. The book ends with several metafictional references by Templar, who makes references to himself being a storybook character in search of a suitable epilogue for the book. He also makes a direct reference to the title of the American omnibus collection Wanted for Murder which had preceded this novel. She Was a Lady is also notable in that no reference is made to any of the Saint's past colleagues, including his girlfriend, Patricia Holm, making this one of the first books in the series to have such an omission. (This is possibly because, as mentioned above, the novel was not originally conceived as a Saint adventure). |
5424799 | /m/0dl98b | The Bronze God of Rhodes | L. Sprague de Camp | 1960 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The novel is written in first person, purporting to be the memoirs of Chares of Lindos, the sculptor of the Colossus of Rhodes, and concerns his return to Rhodes, his attempts to set up as a sculptor, his struggles with his family's wishes that he enter their bronze foundry, his experience as a catapult artilleryman during the Siege of Rhodes, and his complicated and somewhat hilarious adventures in Ptolemaic Egypt. |
5425263 | /m/0dlb3b | Saving the Queen | William F. Buckley, Jr. | 1976 | null | It reveals Oakes's childhood and educational background, his recruitment into the CIA, and Agency's procedures for "handling" him. His first assignment sends him to Britain, where he must identify (and deal with) a high-level security leak close to the Queen of England. Rufus, the enigmatic genius behind American intelligence operations, is also introduced. |
5425276 | /m/0dlb4c | Stained Glass | William F. Buckley, Jr. | null | null | Oakes's second assignment sends him to West Germany where he is infiltrated into the inner-circle of a charismatic and heroic nobleman, Count Wintergrin, who intends to run for the West German Chancellorship on platform of immediate re-unification with East Germany. Although this is ultimately in the interest of the Western Powers and NATO, the threat of Soviet invasion of West Europe means that Oakes must prevent Wintergrin's election, by whatever means necessary. |
5425286 | /m/0dlb4q | The Black Moth | Georgette Heyer | 1921 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Jack Carstares, oldest son of the Earl Wyncham, disgraced six years earlier, returns home and becomes a highwayman so that he is able to live in the land he loves without detection. One day while out riding he foils an abduction plot mastered by the infamous Duke of Andover. Injured while rescuing the damsel in distress, he is taken home by the thankful Diana Beauleigh and her Aunt Betty, to recover. Mystery and intrigue continue to the melodrama's end. |
5425299 | /m/0dlb5d | To Play the Fool | Laurie R. King | 1995 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A homeless man is murdered and Kate must determine the culprit's identity. Everything seems to point to a man whom the homeless community regards as an important religious figure. |
5425303 | /m/0dlb5r | With Child | Laurie R. King | 3/21/1997 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The stepchild of Kate's coworker Al Hawkin asks Kate to help her find her homeless friend Dio, who has mysteriously vanished. They become friends during the process, although Kate is wounded and decides to take a rest. She invites Jules on a trip to visit her lover Lee. On the way, Jules disappears. Kate realizes that Jules has been kidnapped by her biological father, recently freed from prison. The novel ends with Kate going undercover to the father's house and rescuing her. |
5425315 | /m/0dlb6f | The Art of Detection | Laurie R. King | 5/30/2006 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Philip Gilbert, the head of a group of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, is found dead in a national park's artillery battery. Because the autopsy report is slow-coming, inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner Al Hawkin treat the death as a murder case. She can discover little about the dead man aside from his unrelenting fascination with all things Holmes. One of his dinner group companions, Ian Nicholson, reveals that he had discovered a "lost" Holmes story, possibly by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, about the murder of a gay soldier in 1920s San Francisco. Kate's interest is piqued when Ian mentions that Gilbert's body was discovered under the same circumstance as the soldier's in the story. Eventually, Kate traces Gilbert's ex-wife and learns that it is likely Glibert was gay, given that he had been with an actor several years before. She connects him with Nicholson, who used to be an actor and whose own ex-wife admits he is gay. Kate questions Nicholson, who admits that he hit Gilbert with a heavy bottle of wine after Gilbert announced they would have to break up temporarily following the publishing of the lost manuscript. He did not realize at the time that Gilbert actually died of complications following the attack, thereby downgrading the legal status from homicide to manslaughter. Finding Gilbert dead, Nicholson panics and dumps the body then sets up an elaborate alibi. After confessing his actions to Kate, Nicholson commits suicide by cop. |
5425327 | /m/0dlb73 | A Monstrous Regiment of Women | Laurie R. King | 1995 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Just one more week and Mary will turn 21. She will inherit property and money...but she will also be free of her awful aunt. Going in search of her mentor, Sherlock Holmes, she finds him on top of a hansom cab. Holmes reveals that he knows why Mary has sought him out - to ask him to marry her! - and he mocks her for it. Mary becomes upset and literally runs away. By chance, she meets her old college friend Veronica Beaconsfield. Veronica talks Russell in to visiting The New Temple In God to hear a woman named Margery Child preach. Margery's speeches are all about love and empowerment of women, but Mary discovers that several young ladies have died shortly after making wills in favor of the temple. Mary must try to solve the mystery of Margery Childe while surviving mysterious attacks, newfound wealth, and uncomfortable (or maybe too comfortable?) new feelings for her partner, Holmes. |
5425341 | /m/0dlb7g | A Letter of Mary | Laurie R. King | 1997 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | August 1923. All is quiet in the Holmes household in Sussex as Mary Russell works on academic research while Sherlock Holmes conducts malodorous chemistry experiments. But the peace quickly disappears as out of the past comes Dorothy Ruskin, an amateur archeologist from the Holy Land, who brings the couple a lovely inlaid box with a tattered roll of stained papyrus inside. The evening following their meeting, Miss Ruskin dies in a traffic accident that Holmes and Mary soon prove was murder. But what was the motivation? Was it the little inlaid box holding the manuscript? Or the woman's involvement in the volatile politics of the Holy Land? Or could it have been the scroll itself, a deeply troubling letter that seems to have been written by Mary Magdalene and that contains a biblical bombshell. |
5425488 | /m/0dlbgr | Absolute Zero | Helen Cresswell | 1978 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Uncle Parker has won a trip to the Caribbean in a caption contest. In typical Bagthorpian style, the rest of the family immediately enter similar competitions in an attempt to better his prize but, much of the time, beating the others to an entry form is a victory in itself. With the Parkers on vacation, manic 4-year-old cousin Daisy comes to stay. Uncle Parker claimed her pyromania has passed, but neglected to mention the nature of her current obsession. As Daisy's activities bring the household to its knees using items such as paint, face powder, water and an invisible friend/entity named Arry Awk, Grandma manages to get herself arrested, Mrs Fosdyke is reduced to serving up dishes such as oxtail trifle, and the children are busy wrapping up unwanted prizes to give each other as Christmas presents. When the Bagthorpes eventually win a chance at fame and happiness, the fates deliver a chance for history to not only repeat but excel itself. |
5425800 | /m/0dlbyt | Getaway | Leslie Charteris | 1932 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The novel begins approximately three weeks after the events of the story "The Melancholy Journey of Mr. Teal" in The Holy Terror. Simon Templar, accompanied by his lover/partner Patricia Holm, has departed England on a well-deserved holiday from crime-fighting. While visiting Innsbruck, Austria with their friend, book editor Monty Hayward (making his first appearance in the series), the trio are out for a late-night walk when they see a man being attacked by thugs. They stop the attack, but the victim is particularly ungrateful, forcing Templar to knock him out, too. Intrigued by the man's attitude -- as well as by a steel box attached to his wrist (which later turns out to be a miniature safe filled with recently-stolen diamonds), Templar decides to take the unconscious man back to his hotel room. Before long, however, the man is stabbed to death in Templar's bed and Templar finds himself in yet another encounter with Prince Rudolf -- one of the men responsible for the death of his friend Norman Kent in The Last Hero. Simon and Patricia (with very reluctant adventurer Monty in tow) find themselves on a cross-continent race against Rudolf and his minions (who are pursuing the diamonds) and the police (who want Templar and Monty for the murder of the courier). Along the way, the trio picks up a female crime reporter who takes part in the adventure in her quest for a career-making scoop on The Saint. Whereas the previous book, The Holy Terror, takes place over the course of nearly a year, the events of Getaway take place over little more than 24 hours. The text indicates that this story takes place about two years after the events of The Last Hero. It is the first Saint story to take place completely outside of Great Britain since the novella "The Wonderful War" in Featuring the Saint. Some editions of the novel (such as the Fiction Publishing Co. edition) omit a prologue that recaps the events of "The Melancholy Journey of Mr. Teal". According to this prologue (and later repeated within the main body of the text), the Saint has been "buccaneering" for 10 years by the time of this novel, during which time he had amassed a personal fortune of approximately 100,000 pounds, which was finally topped up by his absconding with a villain's diamonds at the end of "Melancholy Journey". Much of the book is told from Monty Hayward's point of view. According to The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television 1928-1992 by Burl Barer, the character was based upon Charteris' real-life editor, Monty Haydon. |
5426648 | /m/0dld10 | Tempest | Christopher Bulis | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Drell Imnulate is a powerful object lost somewhere on the Polar Express, a powerful train traversing the hostile world of 'Tempest'. Factions on the train want to the Imnulate and are willing to kill innocent people to get to it. It is up to Bernice to save the day. |
5426739 | /m/0dld66 | The Sword of Forever | Jim Mortimore | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Bernice finds her own DNA in the stomach of a mummified dinosaur. Together with Patience, a sentient velociraptor, she travels ever backwards through time. She stumbles upon the 'Sword Of Forever', an object that could easily demolish entire worlds. The story draws on conspiracy theories around the Knights Templar, the Ark of the Covenant and so forth. It also draws on earlier New Adventures' depictions of a future Earth. |
5426763 | /m/0dld6y | Another Girl, Another Planet | Steve Bowkett | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Bernice rushes in to help an archeologist friend who is being stalked by a mysterious figure. |
5426818 | /m/0dld9q | Where Angels Fear | Rebecca Levene | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Bernice's home planet of Dellah, once a place of learning, is being overrun by a new religious movement. Closer investigation reveals the major powers of the universe are literally running in fear from said movement. Levene had been editor of the New Adventures for some years, with Winstone latterly her deputy and then her successor. Where Angels Fear was commissioned as Levene handed over to Winstone and it sets up a story arc that ran through to the final New Adventure, Twilight of the Gods. |
5427081 | /m/0dldqt | Tears of the Oracle | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The shattered world of Dellah, once a thriving place of learning, has only one aspect of the university left. This is under siege by religious fanatics. Bernice Summerfield has to deal with this, a mad collector, her ex husband and an Oracle that could lead to priceless information. |
5428409 | /m/0dlgf_ | Presumed Innocent | Scott Turow | 1987 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel begins with the discovery of Polhemus dead in her apartment, the victim of what appears to be a sexual bondage encounter gone wrong, killed outright by a fatal blow to the skull with an unknown object. Rusty Sabich is a prosecutor and co-worker of Carolyn and is assigned her case by the district attorney. Everything is complicated by the fact that Rusty is an ex-lover of Carolyn's. The novel follows the eventual discovery of their affair and Rusty's trial for her murder. Many of the minor characters in Presumed Innocent also appear in Turow's later novels, which are all set in the fictional, Midwestern Kindle County. A sequel to Presumed Innocent, titled Innocent, was released on May 4, 2010 and continues the relationship between Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto. |
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