Author Craig Hinton Dies

Doctor Who author Craig Hinton, a longtime contributor to the Virgin and BBC Books novel lines and Big Finish's audio ranges, has died. He was 42.

Hinton first became known for his articles about various sci-fi television programmes, including Doctor Who and Star Trek. He was also for a time editor of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society's journal Celestial Toyroom. This work brought him to the attention of the editor of Doctor Who Magazine, who offered him the role of reviewing merchandise for the magazine's Shelf Life section. It was whilst writing for the magazine that Hinton had his first novel, The Crystal Bucephalus, published as part of Virgin Publishing's Missing Adventures range. The book - which Hinton often referred to as "The Crystal Bucket" - was originally submitted for Virgin's New Adventures, and 50,000 words of this version were written before the change was made.

This novel was followed by a further Missing Adventure, Millennial Rites in 1995, and then by Hinton's only New Adventure in 1996, GodEngine, which featured the Ice Warriors as well as oblique appearances by the Daleks.

Following Virgin's loss of their licence to produce Doctor Who novels, Hinton began submitting proposals to BBC Booksand in 2001 they published his novel The Quantum Archangel as part of their Past Doctor Adventures range. This was followed in 2004 by the novel Synthespians, which again had started life as a proposal for the current incumbent Doctor before being altered to feature a previous Doctor. Synthespians also came into difficulties when an image of the television show Dynasty was used on the cover: the cover's creators had arranged for permission to use the copyrighted image, but had neglected to arrange permission to alter it, and so at the last minute a replacement cover had to be produced. It is this that appeared on the cover of the novel.

Hinton also wrote for Big Finish, with the Doctor Who audio play Excelis Decays being produced in 2002 and theTomorrow People play The Lords of Forever in 2005. He also contributed short stories to a variety of Big Finish's short fiction collections.

Hinton spoke often of having coined the term "fanwank" in some of his past reviews to refer to novels or stories that relied heavily on past continuity. Ironically, the term would often be applied to Hinton's own work, which frequently incorporated a great deal of Doctor Who history; Hinton himself embraced the label.

His most recent published work consisted of reviews of the 2006 Doctor Who episodes, published in Second Flight: Back to the Vortex II by Outpost Gallifrey's editor Shaun Lyon. Hinton formed part of the international panel of reviewers giving their thoughts on each episode for the book, which was released less than a fortnight before his death. At the time of his death, Hinton was working with co-writer Chris McKeon on a project called Time's Champion, a novel based on a former BBC Books submission of his which would have explained the circumstances surrounding the Sixth Doctor's regeneration. Hinton intended to publish the completed project online, and McKeon intends to complete the work in memory of Hinton and make it available to fans.

Hinton, an active and popular member of the Doctor Who fan community since the 1980s, was a regular poster on the Outpost Gallifrey forum since its inception in 2001. A memorial thread has been opened on the forum to leave tributes and share memories.

Outpost Gallifrey would like to offer its sincere condolences to all of Hinton's family and friends.

(Some details sourced from Wikipedia; additional reporting by Paul Hayes & Arnold T. Blumberg. Photograph is of Craig from the Gallifrey 2005 convention.)