BBC Books has released details of the forthcoming adventure Harvest of Time featuring the Third Doctor and the Master as well as UNIT.

Announced in July 2011, it has been written by Alastair Reynolds, who won a British Science Fiction Association award in 2001 for his novel Chasm City.


The 386-page book, which has an RRP of £16.99, will be published on Thursday 6th June and is available to pre-order.

Reynolds gained a PhD in astronomy and worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency before becoming a full-time writer. His book Revelation Space was short-listed for both the Arthur C Clarke and BSFA Awards, while House of Suns was short-listed for the Arthur C Clarke Award.

BBC Books is to bring out a fact-filled Doctor Who publication next month. Entitled Who-ology: Doctor Who - The Official Miscellany, the 384-page hardcover book, compiled by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, will be available from Thursday 2nd May.

Scott has written books, audio dramas, and comics strips based on series including Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Skylanders, and Judge Dredd. He has also written about the Doctor's adventures in Doctor Who Magazine and SFX.

Journalist and author Wright, who is also a regular contributor to DWM, has written audios, short stories, and comic strips featuring new adventures for the Doctor, along with tie-ins to other series such as The Sarah Jane Adventures and The Power Rangers.

Who-ology is available to pre-order.

The writer of the fourth in the Puffin Books series of e-books has been revealed to be Philip Reeve, the award-winning author of Mortal Engines, Here Lies Arthur, and GOBLINS.


Philip Reeve was born in Brighton and worked in a book shop for many years before becoming a full-time illustrator and then turning to writing. His first novel, Mortal Engines, won the Nestlé Smarties Gold Award (2002), the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for both the Branford Boase Award and the Whitbread Children's Book Award. He has since won many more awards and accolades for his works including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 2006 and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for A Darkling Plain and the 2008 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Here Lies Arthur. His most recent titles are GOBLINS (2012) which was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and its sequel GOBLINS VS DWARVES (2013). He lives in Dartmoor, England with his wife and son, Sam. For further information and to explore the author’s own curious world visit his website.

Reeve commented:

A video of the author will be released on YouTube by BBC Worldwide later in the month, with the book itself coming out on the 23rd April. An extract from the book can be read via the Guardian.

As previously reported, Splendid Chaps is a year-long performance/podcast project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who hosted by comedian Ben McKenzie (Dungeon Crawl, Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour) and writer John Richards (ABC1 sitcom Outland, Boxcutters podcast).

Described by its creators as part intellectual panel discussion, part nerdy Tonight Show, Splendid Chaps is a combination of analysis, enthusiasm and irreverence. The first episode went to number 1 on the iTunes TV & Film Podcast chart in Australia, and to number 4 in the UK.  The podcasts to the first few episodes are now available at www.splendidchaps.com or at  iTunes.

Tickets are now on sale for a special bonus show all about Doctor Who books!

Books have always been an important part of Doctor Who, from the Target novelisations of the pre-video recorder age to the New Adventures and Eighth Doctor novels that continued the story after the original series went off air. Ben, John and Petra will be joined by editor and JOY 94.9 host Katie Purvis, and filmmaker, writer and podcaster Dave Hoskin for a discussion and reading of some of these works, plus a look at the stranger end of the publishing spectrum (the Doctor Who Cookbook, anyone?). And there’ll be a special reading from comedian Lawrence Leung!

Splendid Chaps: A Year Of Doctor Who: "Who and Books"

Space: Northcote Library, 32-38 Separation Street, Northcote, Melbourne
Time: Saturday May 4 2013, 4:30 PM
Accessibility: This venue is wheelchair accessible.
Tickets: All tickets $10 (plus booking fee where applicable)
Bookings: via trybooking.com, or buy tickets at the door (subject to availability)
Podcast: TBA.

This month sees the publication of Nemesis of the Daleks, the fifteenth volume in the ongoing series of Doctor Who Graphic Novels, published by Panini Books. The Graphic Novels are collections of comic strips that originally appeared in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine and other related titles.

Nemesis of the Daleks, named after the book’s opening strip, is the second volume of Seventh Doctor comic strips (picking up where A Cold Day in Hell!, published in 2009, left off). The stories in this collection originally appeared in 1989 and 1990. At that time the strips not only ran in Doctor Who Magazine but also in a second Marvel Comics UK title, The Incredible Hulk Presents. Comic strips from both titles are included in this book, with a number of stories reproduced for the first time since their original publication.

The book includes the popular ‘back up’ strips featuring Abslom Daak from 1980 issues of Doctor Who Weekly and Doctor Who Monthly, to tie-in with the character’s appearance in the Nemesis of the Daleks story. There is also a detailed commentary by former Doctor Who Magazine editor John Freeman, featuring input from the writers, artists and editors who worked on these strips, with reproduced script pages and rough pencil drawings.

Here is the full list of strips included in the graphic novel. (Titles marked * are reprinted for the first time in this collection.)

• Nemesis of the Daleks (Doctor Who Magazine #152-155)
• Stairway to Heaven (Doctor Who Magazine #156) *
• Once in a Lifetime (The Incredible Hulk Presents #1)
• Hunger from the Ends of Time! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #2-3)
• War World! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #4)
• Technical Hitch (The Incredible Hulk Presents #5)
• A Switch in Time! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #6)
• The Sentinel! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #7) *
• Who’s that Girl! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #8-9) *
• The Enlightenment of Ly-Chee the Wise (The Incredible Hulk Presents #10) *
• Slimmer! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #11) *
• Nineveh! (The Incredible Hulk Presents #12) *
• Train-Flight (Doctor Who Magazine #159-161)
• Doctor Conkerer! (Doctor Who Magazine #162)
• Abslom Daak: Dalek Killer (Doctor Who Weekly #17-20)
• Star Tigers (Doctor Who Weekly #27-30, Doctor Who Monthly #44-46)

Waterstones in Piccadilly, London are to hold a special event in celebration of Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary, featuring several of the authors represented in the recent re-issue of classic novels by BBC Worldwide.

Steve Cole (Ten Little Aliens), Terrance Dicks (Players), Ben Aaronovitch (Remembrance of the Daleks), Justin Richards (Dreams of Empire), Jonathan Morris (Festival of Death) and Gary Russell (Beautiful Chaos) will be in the store on Saturday 6th April from 3:00pm, where they will be discussing their classic Doctor Who novels and the world of the Doctor, plus signing copies of their respective novels.

Entrance to the event is via a ticket, which are redeemable against the price of one of the books on the day. They can be booked in person in Waterstones Piccadilly, via Facebook (subject to booking fee), or by phoning 02078512400. Tickets will also be available on the day, but anyone wishing to attend should arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Candy Jar Books are to release a new book celebrating the many assistants to have accompanied the Doctor over the last fifty years.


The book will be released on 27th June.

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To coincide with the launch of the book the publisher, Candy Jar, is asking fans to vote for their favourite Doctor Who companion. The results will be released when the book is published in June. To vote visit their website.

BBC Books are to release a new ebook to tie in with the new series episode The Bells of Saint John, which premiered this weekend.


The ebook is published on 4th April 2013.

A forthcoming biography of former Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner has been causing a media stir with newspapers focusing on allegations of sexual exploitation.

JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner, written by Richard Marson and to be brought out in May by Miwk Publishing, is based on more than 100 interviews with friends and colleagues as well as inside knowledge by Marson, who has also had access to the entire surviving archive of Nathan-Turner's paperwork and photos.

In its review published on 10th March, SFX predicted a tabloid firestorm thanks to one particular chapter, entitled Hanky Panky, while the current edition of Private Eye, published last week, similarly warned of unfavourable headlines for the BBC, and that's exactly what has happened. A measured book review was published last Friday by The Guardian, but the tabloids have subsequently gone to town on claims that in the 1980s both Nathan-Turner and his partner Gary Downie, a Doctor Who production team member, used their senior roles to prey on male fans - some of whom were under the legal age of consent at the time (Mirror, Mail, and Sun). Marson says himself in the book that he was assaulted by Downie.

Miwk's website includes endorsements for the book from people such as director Fiona Cumming who, with Ian Fraser, says: "Some of the revelations are painful (but) we find this very rounded, well-written and honest." Drama serials manager and later producer Brian Spilsby comments: "I must say you have skewered JN-T precisely. I can vouch for all of the facts and most of the opinions. It's a very accurate - warts-and-all - picture you paint." And David Reid, who was the BBC's head of drama for series and serials from 1981 to 1983, says of the biography: "Quite wonderful on many, many levels. Gripping, fascinating, appalling – and, by the end, truly moving. Immaculate research makes the whole utterly trustworthy. A very good and very well-written book."

Responding to the allegations, the BBC has urged anyone with information to contact the police or the Dame Janet Smith Review, which was set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal to look into the culture and practices of the BBC while Savile worked there.

Nathan-Turner died in 2002 and Downie in 2006.

BBC Worldwide have released their latest in a series of interviews with the writers of the Puffin e-Books to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, with the third instalment The Spear of Destiny, written by Marcus Sedgewick, due to be published on 23rd March. The author chats about his love of the Third Doctor and his fright of the Master, the influence of the Vikings on British culture, what he would do if he could travel in the TARDIS, and why he thinks the Doctor has proved so popular in the last 50 years.



An excerpt from the e-book can be read via The Guardian.