Stewart Bevan.

just heard the actor Stewart Bevan has passed away. Doctor Who fans will remember him from a classic tale near the closing era of the Pertwee age; The Green Death. A well ritten story that deeply traumatised fans of The Doctor and Jo Grant team as this was the story they parted ways. Jo went off with the brilliant young Dr Jones, traveling up the Amazon, trying to avert ecological disaster ( Who says Doctor Who was'nt averse to getting political at times? although I believe the enviroment transcends politics.)and reproducing young Joneses at an impressive rate. As a boy I remember telling my ma how much I loved Jo Grant and how she should have married me. With that certainty only nine year olds have. Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan had a lot of on screen chemistry which apparently spilled over into real life. it was a treat and a life afirming joy to see the pair teamed up for newly recorded minisodes for the release of the Pertwee bluray seasons. They had chemistry then and they have it now, for all to see. Love and best wishes to those who were lucky enough to know him. Heres to The Green Life.

Entropy Tango.

Found myself running, or rather limping, behind this one. There is some very serious world building going on here, an epic canvas that shows a possible history of the twentieth century, in a way that feels so authentic I personally figure it difficult to distnguish from actual world history. As far as I am concerned this all probably happened. So to speak. Lots of familiar names and faces in not so familiar circumstances. Some bitter sweet maybes for characters whose lives went down a very different rabbit hole in that, or those, other probable timelines. And I say bittersweet as viloence follows in these characters wakes whatever timeline or place they live through. The shared curse of Jerry Corneilius, his friends, foes, family and progeny is that they are cursed to live through interesting times, mostly as they tend to shape the times they live through as opposed to being shaped by them. I did smile to see that old Warhorse major Nye surrender to the rustic charms of allotment life though Jerry's ma is much of a muchness as always. The debate on nature versus nurture goes out the window as she seems immune to universeality. Less of a force of nature and more of a force on nature. Does it count as an epic if its a tale told in short historical vignettes mirrored by song lyrics? Not poetry as such as these words are intended to be belted out loud. There are camoes aplenty, Michael Moorcock puts in one as do Lemmy of Motorhead. "Course he does" I heard myself think, or maybe it was just the wind blowing through my letter box... That is not a weird euphemism by the way.

The Adventures Of Una Persson And Catherine Corneilius

Oh Boink! Found this one a bit of a head melter ( Phew, imagine saying that about a Michael Moorcock book.Strewth!)Una Persson and Catherine Corneilius begin this book living together in a peaceful idyll of their own making but being the kind of people they are they do grow bored with this. So out they go, striking for new times and places. Their choices and how they choose to live causes their relationship to flip over into a very different state of play. The course of these changes was gradual andnot understandable, for me. The trelationship between the two undergoes something of a role reversal, mirroring the times they are living through. A bit like reallife I suppose, or at least as real as the lives of two time traveling women can get. Time traveling is not all jolly hockey sticks after all. It takes more than a change of clothes and era appropriate small change to time travel properly. Time pays no attention to changing scenes, time is not aware it passes, like gravity time as a concept is complex. Slipping backwards or forwards in time is like a writwatch bobbing about in uncharted seas. At least as it rests on the bottom it will tell the correct time twice a day. What I am trying to find the words to describe is the notion that a time traveler might well get some details correct but in a larger sense they will only marginally be able to see the bigger picture. Catherine and Una's attempts to love others other than each other often end in violence and calamity, as they seem perpetually drawn to historical and political intrigue. I think this is largely down to the fact they happen to history as opposed to history happening to them. Catherine Corneilius in particular trips down a twisted path of love and abuse, especially the ones she walks down with her brother Jerry as it tips over into sado-masochism. I do not believe I have ever read a book in which the love between a brother and a sister is explored in such painful detail. Certainly not one where themes such as fteishism and pain become a component in that love. What could ever be a safeword in such a scenario?reading this book must have been something of an eye popping experience back when it was first published although I doubt the shared cultural zeitgeist of modernity is any better equipped to deal with such mature themes. Whatever that means... Yet it remains an important component of the vast tapestry Michael Moorcock has woven over the years. One that is neither good nor bad, healthy or ill. It just is...

Lords of Time And Space.

One of my favourite Tardis pairings. Two smart, funny and incredibly well dressed friends traveling through space and time together. With their dog! Whats not to like. And its not just because I am thoroughly enjoying watching them in their travels from Skaro to Shada in the most recent bluray box set. Well, okay, yes it is but there is so much to enjoy in this hugely varied season, no wonder the next one would have such an air of melancholia. Ah, the new melancholia. Its become such an everyday thing. Where is a type forty when you need one?

The Alchemical Question.

Its Jerry Corneilius, friends, lovers and frenemies in the decade we called the eighties, in Thatcher's Britain. And if you had to try living through that era it felt like Thatcher's World. Which off course it was not. Not even close. "I'm in danger of turning into a second rate Doctor Who," Jerry says at one point. A second rate 5th, 6th or 7th Doctor? You might well have asked yourself at slice of self perception that damns all round with faint praise. Actually, you might well have asked yourself no such thing. It nagged at me, though. Tap dancing around the periphery of my imagination. You should bleedin' coco, Jerry. well, not so much my imagination as the disorderly filing cabinet where I store my pop cultural references. Not to get too snooty about it but whoever has the most wins. As you might surmise from his comment, his self observation, Jerry Corneilius is getting older but not much wiser. With Ms Brunner morphing into an uber-Thatcher to a bone crushing matriarchy that is ,in its own way, as tedious as any given patriarchy.There is no place for a court clown in such a society, as the life of a rake is just not fit for purpose in such a serious world. All the women Jerry has polluted over the years with his many, and formerly endearing, needs come into their own with Earth altering effect. Jerry is not the man he was, he finds himself tied to the railway track of something that distantly resembles a plotwith Catherine and Unarealy the only two to release him from the crushing onslaught of multiversal destiny. Having outgrown the age, devolution is his only refuge , with the bracing need for a ressurection of the Final Programme the only possible road to anywhere else. Complex and bewildering at times The Alchemist Question really has no answer and boy, is'nt life just like that. Perhaps not like mine, perhaps not like yours, but possibly like ours.

A Blue Dander Round The Black Island.

(From my Sketch Book) During the second look down i wore a groove in the path around The Black Island walking it with Fluke the Dog. Forests are so very different depending the time of day or night you walk about them. i find them utterly fascinating and can lost in them for hours on end, as does Fluke.

Sherlock Holmes Art In The Blood.

It was Conan Doyle who coined the phrase, about art in the blood and the curious forms it can take. It was inevitable then that someone would sieze the opportunity to weave something altogether more substantial from the remark. And weave away the author certainly does, spinning a spider web of mystery and intrigue, lifting it from mere pastiche to a wholly enjoyable in its own right. "Sherlock Holmes is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation." The author had me at the very mention of Holmes off course but to play a mental game of "Did he really have a go at the Ripper mystery?" was just the blood red icing on the cake.Some one had donated it to the Oxfam book store and I thank them. "..disatrous Ripper investigation.." oh be still my beating and throbbing imagination.It is not that long since I read Sherlock Holmes And The Breath Of God so my mind has not strayed that far from Baker Street, although this feels an altogether swarthier tale than that one. That one felt like a League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen spin off but this feels more Doyle like, despite its use of the real and the imagined. In that first book our heroes met a right rum bunch of old coves, satanists, ghost hunters, ghost breakers and charlatans which all goes quite a bit Grand Guignol by the end of the affair. This one feels a bit more grounded in a post Victorianna sort of way.Although the presence throughout of the morally ambigous French detective Vidocq lends the affair a certain Gaellic frisson. Make off that what you will, Vidocq certainly does. In his eyes, to do what thou wilt remains the whole of the law. So to speak, ahem...

As far as sherlockian ( Er, Holmesian?) pastiches go this is easily one of the best i have read in some time. Quite good enough to stand as an original text without the bookend of it being another found lost manuscript by Mr Doyle. It flowed really easily, nary a moment of it feeling it had no place in the canon, despite the appearence of some equally fictional detective figures and real history beings. Axtually that canon has been fored so many times it is difficult at times to recognise the ammunition of prose bnecessary to feel part of the history of Holmes. Like Doctor Who the character has had so many lives and staggers under the weight of over a century of continued story telling.