The Coming of the Terraphiles

Michael Moorcock

2010

This was a bit of a shock; yes it's that Michael Moorcock, hero of the anti-establishment New Wave of Science Fiction from the sixties and seventies. Although Moorcock has been rather quiet in the past few years, this book shows that he has lost little of his touch.

The Doctor and Amy are sent an emergency distress call that was badly, almost deliberately, mangled but with enough detail to tell them that there was something up in the galaxy of the 50,000s and that an old adversary of the Doctor was somehow involved and it's here that the main influence of Moorcock makes itself felt as we learn the name of this desparate fellow, none other than the dread pirate Captain Cornelius, but apart from this, the main Moorcockian features are the way that he uses the notions of Law and Chaos as direct guiding forces, though it was interesting to see the Doctor being put on the side of Chaos (not entitrely uniquely; there's the TV story 'The Happiness Patrol' but fairly unusual).

The story sees the Doctor, Amy and their colleagues on the Gentlemen's team of the Terraphiles - a group dedicated to recreating all forms of Earth sports up to the 21st century, with some, er, very interesting thoughts on these sports. But behind these relatively benign activities lies a dark secret that could lead to the merging of multiple dimensions that wouldn't leave much behind...

Of course, the success of any book depends on how well the author can capture the feel of the Doctor and his companions and in this case, Moorcock actually manages to capture the frenetic pace of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy perhaps better than most of the 'traditional' writers.

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