This interview with Lawrence Miles was conducted in late
1998 by Kevin Patrick Mahoney. Reviews of his novels follow.
KM: I first came across your work when I read 'Alien
Bodies'. This struck me as being particularly brilliant, and this judgement was
shared with everyone who read the book. Except one bloke who thought it was the
worst in the series of BBC books (he liked 'The
Eight Doctors'). How did you react to this almost universal praise? How did
it make you feel?
LAWRENCE MILES: "Almost" is a very big word.
Every now and then, someone says something good about 'Alien Bodies', and it's
always a bit surprising, because nobody made much of a fuss when it came out.
The DWM review preferred 'The
Roundheads' that month, and TV Zone gave it the same mark out of ten as 'The
Bodysnatchers', so it wasn't like I felt I'd really achieved anything.
I think when I started writing for Doctor Who I wanted to push things a bit, to
see how far I could stretch the mythology. But I'd say I've learned my lesson
now. The fact is, I'm one person writing for a series that puts out twenty two
books a year, so however well or badly I do my job I don't think I'm going to
make much of a difference. That's one of the reasons why I'm not doing any more
after August, because I don't want to go pushing the series in funny directions
if no one wants to go there. I know how expendable I am, basically.
But I'm glad the man who liked 'The Eight Doctors' hated 'Alien Bodies'. These
people deserve no pity.
KM: Um, you have quit a distinctive style, haven't you?
How would you describe the way you write?
LAWRENCE MILES: "Careful", I'd say. The quality
of the writing's more important to me than anything else, and I think that's
probably quite unusual. Most Doctor Who stories tend to concentrate on the plot
and forget about style completely, which is fine if you're writing an adventure
story for TV, but the rules are different for novels. Theoretically, anyway.
The truth is that most books - and I don't mean Doctor Who books here, I'm
talking about books in general - are incredibly badly-written. I've spent whole
hours working on individual paragraphs, so it always gets on my nerves when
people don't give a toss about that sort of thing. When they say nice things
about a book just because of the set pieces in it, even if the sentences are
rubbish and the writing's full of clichés.
It really irritates me when books are put together out of stock phrases, as
well. You get these crap sentences like "the torchlight cut through the
darkness like a knife through butter", and you think... hang on, does this
come from personal experience or what? Has this person actually thought about
the astonishing cutting power of knives in relation to dairy fats, or have they
just seen the sentence written down somewhere else and copied it word-for-word?
So, if there's anything different about the way I write, that's probably the
reason. I've got a thing about coming up with my own sentences. Or am I just
being too obsessive?
KM: What was it that led to you writing for the good
Doctor?
LAWRENCE MILES: Doctor Who's my native mythology, that's
all. If you read, say, the work of Salman Rushdie... forget about the blasphemy
for a moment, it's not important right now... there's a lot of material in
there that comes from traditional Indian culture, there are lots of links to
Indian mythology. Which doesn't mean he has to believe in gods with the heads
of elephants, obviously. It's just part of his background, those are the
symbols he grew up with. That's more or less the way I feel about Doctor Who. I've
got a pretty low opinion of a lot of the original episodes, but it's still my
home territory.
Doctor Who always went for action over style, and that's one of the things I
like least about it. Plenty of interesting things happen, but there's not of
artistry there. Which is probably why 'Logopolis' is my favourite story,
because it's supposed to be the Fourth Doctor's funeral, and it feels like a
funeral. You could probably squeeze the whole plot into an episode and a half,
but you'd lose everything that makes it work. It still surprises me that people
can't see what a great piece of television a story like 'Revelation of the
Daleks' is, just because it isn't a great piece of Doctor Who. On the other
hand, the Deadly Assassin's almost unwatchable if you're a non-fan. It's so
badly made, it's funny. I think what I'm saying is that the fanbase has got
different set of criteria about what makes good and bad fiction, and my
opinions are probably closer to a "normal" person's than to an
average fanboy's. Which is another good reason for retiring from Doctor Who
duty, I'd say.
By the way, am I the only person who's noticed that the TV movie was
brilliantly directed? Or doesn't anybody else care about little things like
that?
KM: What is it that you set out to do when writing? Who
do you see reading your books? Are they, in the Graham Greene sense, just
'entertainments', or is there a serious rationale behind your works?
LAWRENCE MILES: I haven't had much luck with serious rationales.
Whenever I try to say something meaningful, nobody understands a word of it.
The point of 'Christmas on a Rational Planet' was to do a book that was about
history, rather than just using history as a backdrop the way most Doctor Who
stories do. But hardly anybody got the point, and I think people generally just
took it to be a Doctor-saves-the-universe-from-an-ancient-supernatural-force
kind of story. Which it is technically, but that wasn't really the point.
'Down' had the same problem. It's meant to be a story about people, about the
way people reinvent themselves to suit the environments about them, and all the
'At the Earth's Core' stuff is just window dressing. At the start of the book
you're supposed to think it's a fluffy adventure story, but you get deeper and
deeper into things as you go on, until by the end of the story you're being
dragged through screaming bloody hell with the characters. There's a huge
difference between the styles of the first and last chapters, if you try
comparing them. That's why the book's called 'Down', because the whole thing's
supposed to be one long psychological descent. But again, people really didn't
get it. There was one magazine review where the writer basically said it was a
lightweight action story, and that he couldn't understand why there were
serious bits mixed in with the funny bits. Which kind of says it all. On the
other hand, 'Alien Bodies' was just a big noisy SF epic, and it's had a better
reaction than anything else I've ever written. So maybe I'm better off writing
stuff that's completely mindless.
Actually... to be honest, these days I really regret writing 'Christmas on a
Rational Planet' and 'Down'. There's too much information in the world anyway,
so there's no point writing something unless it's got the chance of being the
best in its field. Otherwise, why bother? Why fill up the culture with
second-rate data? I think both of those books are okay, but let's be honest,
neither of them come close to qualifying as the best New Adventure. So I'm not
really sure why I wrote them. Because I could, I suppose, and that's not really
a good enough reason.
When I started writing 'Interference' for the BBC... that's the one that comes
out in August... I deliberately set out to write the best Doctor Who story ever
told. I mean, I failed, but even in failing, I think I've ended up with
something that I can be happy with. I'd say that's the most important thing
I've learned from writing Doctor Who, that there's no point aiming for okay.
KM: What most frustrates me about the New Adventures is
the tendency of writers to create glorious new characters in fabulous new
worlds, and then set about killing them off like so many red shirted security
men. But you don't like to kill you characters off so much, do you? Do your
characters have lives of their own?
LAWRENCE MILES: You're the first person who's noticed
that. You're right, people tend to end up with less scar tissue in my books.
There's two reasons for that, really. There's an artistic one and there's a personal
one. The artistic reason is that killing people off is usually a very easy and
very lazy way of dealing with loose ends. You know what happens at the end of
'Evil of the Daleks'? All the Daleks kill each other off, but the TARDIS crew
end up getting stuck on Skaro with a Turkish wrestler. Now, the Doctor can't
steer the TARDIS well enough to take the Turkish wrestler home, and the man
obviously wouldn't make a good companion, so what happens? The Turk heroically
sacrifices himself to help the crew get back to the ship. Conveniently. I mean,
what's the point in coming up with a new character if you're just going to do
something that pointless? Also, there are a lot of writers... again,. I'm not
just talking about Doctor Who here... who seem to think that the best way to
give characters depth and feeling is by torturing them half to death, just so
they've got something to agonise about. And it doesn't work. It never works.
It's embarrassing.
The personal reason for keeping characters alive is probably a bit worrying,
but it's this: I don't think I draw very solid lines between real life and
fiction, so I've got this terrible superstitious fear that there's no actual
difference between characters and people. I try not to kill characters off in a
hurry, because I don't want it to happen to me. I don't want to die because
some writer wants to make some point about dramatic irony.
Come to think of it, 'Christmas on a Rational Planet' might well be the only
New Adventures with a bodycount of zero. Plenty of people get serious head
injuries, and there's quite a lot of blood on the streets by the end, but the
only person who actually dies get put back together by the epilogue. So that's
all right.
KM: I read and loved 'Down', but also found it totally
confusing. What is the best way to read this book? Down in one or one sip at a
time?
LAWRENCE MILES: I recommend sitting in a hot bath and
soaking it all up through osmosis. Works for me.
KM: Perhaps the main reason why I found 'Down' so
confusing was because bits were missing. Do you find the limits set by editors
to be too restraining? Have you ever written a novel which hasn't been chopped
about? Did 'Mr. Misnomer' really exist?
LAWRENCE MILES: A lot of people told me that the end of
'Down' was confusing. Most of them ask me if it's something to do with the
cuts, as well. But it isn't. The last couple of chapters weren't really trimmed
at all, although a page or two did drop off the end of the epilogue. If
anybody's having trouble following it, then... well, that must be my fault.
'Down' is the only book I've written that had serious cutting done to it,
although 'Christmas on a Rational Planet' had one line removed for reasons of
blasphemy, and 'Interference' has had a few lines sliced out by the
Corporation's lawyers. Some of the material was actionable, apparently. Am I
the only Doctor Who writer who's been edited for blasphemy and libel, or what?
No, Mr Misnomer didn't exist. Apart from the prologue, the epilogue, and the
bits that are headed "reality", everything in 'Down' is Bernice's
story, and therefore edited by her as she sees fit. I thought it was quite
straightforward myself, although that could just be me blurring the line
between real life and fiction again. Ho hum.
KM: It's not often that once I've read a novel, I want to
read it again immediately, as I felt with 'Down'. What much loved novel would
you re-read? Which writers inspired you to write?
LAWRENCE MILES: I don't really like books much. I think
they're a bit backward, to be honest. I'd say our culture's moving faster than
literature seems able to keep up with. What I mean is that these days, with
people being able to process information so quickly and the population getting
signals from so many different mass-media systems, I think books could be a lot
more complex than they actually are. If you look at the big SF authors today...
like Stephen Baxter, or Kim Stanley Robinson, or whoever... their stuff isn't
bad, but I can't help feeling that we're supposed to be past that stage by now.
We're not living in the 1970s any more, it doesn't take a 600-page novel to
explore one idea. Personally, my head moves a lot faster than that. It wouldn't
be so bad if the surplus material was there for atmosphere, but it's not, it's
just padding.
That's another thing I've been trying to do in my books. Make things move
faster. 'Down' was a very cut-and-paste kind of story, there are whole passages
that aren't connected with the plot and that go off at tangents. And 'Alien
Bodies' is quite non-linear, with all those character interludes. The idea was
to set up a whole universe inside the book, a whole environment for the
characters. It's not meant to be just beginning-middle-end.
So that's my answer. I don't read books much, because I don't think they're
everything they're cracked up to be. I've re-read a few of the New Adventures,
though, and I must have gone through 'Transit' about four times now. It's a
great book for people with fast processing speeds. Never a dull moment. But
everyone else seems to hate it, so again, that shows you how out of synch with
the fanbase I am.
KM: So, what's happening on the writing front? It's been
over a year, and still no successor to 'Alien Bodies'. What's going on?
LAWRENCE MILES: I've got three books out in 1999. There's
a New Adventure in April, and there's the BBC novel in August, which makes a
total of three. You'll see. There are a lot of other things I want to work on
after that, although I've no idea whether anybody's going to pay me to write
them.
Incidentally, I should say now that the New Adventure's going to be completely
horrible, and I'm hoping that it'll be the most hated book since ... well,
since 'Transit', I hope. With 'Alien Bodies', I wanted to write something that
everyone was going to like - except for people who go for 'The Eight Doctors',
natch - but when I started to do work on the New Adventure it was pretty
obvious to me that there was no point in trying to do anything popular. I've
got no interest in writing stuff like 'Walking
to Babylon', basically. So I decided to stop pretending, and tell the truth
for once. To do the kind of book I wanted to do. No messing about.
It's going to be ripped apart by the fan press. Probably my best book, though.
KM: Imagine it's Saturday, and you're on the last page of
the Daily Telegraph/Times/Sun/Mirror magazine. What is a day in the life of
Lawrence Miles like?
LAWRENCE MILES: Oh dear. A typical day's probably going
to be quite depressing. Saturday's a bit unpredictable, but a normal weekday
goes something like this:
Wake up. Drink tea. Put milk on cereal and leave to soak. Turn on TV, to see
whether any of the early-morning talk shows can beat their previous record by
coming up with a better title for a programme than "I Fancy Fat
Blokes". Then watch 'Teletubbies'. Make note of which Teletubby was last
out of the hole in the opening credits, which Teletubby got to be the TV set,
and which Teletubby went 'boo' from behind the hills at the end. I'm convinced
there are mystical patterns in these details, if only I can decipher them.
Fetch the mail. Get disappointed that nobody's sent me anything interesting,
and keep the junk mail from Goldfish to use as notepaper later on. Clean shiny
white envelopes. Mmmmmm. Eat the soggy cereal, which my lesser mind would have
forgotten about by this point.
Walk the half-mile to the high street, pretending I've got something vital to
do in the library and/or newsagent but actually just doing random exercise
after what Jim Mortimore said about how much weight I've been putting on
recently. Walk home again. Turn on the radio. Turn on the TV, to watch
'Neighbours' with the sound off. Pretend that this is an exercise in
post-modern multi-media sensory immersion, even though my friends know it's
just because I fancy Libby Kennedy. Eat lunch. Turn on the word processor. Do
some writing, pausing every few minutes to agonise about whether I'm using too
many commas. Or whether I'm starting too many sentences with "and".
Finish writing at about six. Think about watching whatever's on BBC2 at six
o'clock that day, then usually decide against it. Eat tea. Not dinner, because
my family comes from the north, where they have tea instead. So there. Nyaah.
Do evening-type things. Maybe watch television, being loudly sarcastic about
the quality of modern programming and trying to ignore the fact that the cat
isn't really interested. Maybe go to the pub, if anyone else is bothering.
Finally go to bed, when it gets so late that I no longer feel guilty about
wasting my life by sleeping too much.
Someone once said that if you're a celebrity writing a "Day in the
Life" feature for one of the magazines, then it's vitally important for
you to end the piece with your own personal catchphrase. Or the sentence you're
most famous for, anyway. So, in conclusion; no, it isn't the bloody People.
REVIEWS
SPOILERS****SPOILERS***SPOILERS****SPOILERS***SPOILERS****SPOILERS****SPOILERS****
Christmas
on a Rational Planet ISBN042620476X
Christmas Eve 1799. The American town of Woodwicke is making preparations for the
festivities. However, some festivities are weirder than others, involving more
than a mere change of centuries... Something's got a grip on Matheson Catcher
and it's not about to let go. Battle is joined between Cacophony and History.
The Doctor, as Time's Champion, has to get involved, especially when the
stranded Roz sets about killing Samuel Lincoln under the misapprehension that
he's the famous President's grandfather.
Roz has been taken to Woodwicke by the Amaranth. Unfortunately, this device has
fallen into the hands of Catcher, whose delusions about the Watchmakers has
been seized upon by the Carnival Queen, an entity created when the Time Lords
decided to rid themselves of all irrationality. The Queen's influence has been
felt throughout time, especially in the history of the Cybermen (with their
myth-like aversion to golden bullets - see p. 250), but only now has she
threatened to break loose. The first evidence of this is the corrupt version of
the TARDIS she creates in Catcher's Cellar. The Doctor's efforts to investigate
are hindered by Catcher's Renewalist Society, who have gone on a witch hunt,
and also by the French agents of the Shadow Directory, a sort of precursor to
UNIT.
Meanwhile, Chris is trapped in the TARDIS with Marielle, a member of the Shadow
Directory who has psychic powers. With the TARDIS disintegrating due to
chanting of the Renewalist Society, Chris is joined in a fight for survival by
the Interface, a device left by Kamelion to communicate with the TARDIS.
Marielle is taken over by the Carnival Queen, and Chris starts creating Gynoids
(by not thinking). Androids are men-like, for men are the architects, the
rational builders. Gynoids represent irrational 'females' who just 'are' in a
world of chaos (the Doctor ponders what Davros did to dispose of the female
Kaleds p.250). So, this is not just a battle between order and chaos, but
between the sexes as well.
The crux is that Chris must choose between the new world he now inhabits, and
the rational old world, with all its attendants sufferings (such as the bloody
French revolution, founded on rationalism, which explains the presence of the
French agents, sworn to defend the revolution). Trouble is, though, that Chris
has been having dreams involving a frisbee... It's this dream which leads
ultimately to his choice. But has his choice been influenced by a telepathic
entity, an entity whose existence is most threatened by Chaos, by the absence
of History? An entity close to the Doctor and constructed from pure Math?
To appreciate Miles' novel fully, you do you have a sound basis of knowledge
about Doctor Who's history. There are so many elements: Logopolis, Kamelion.
But Lawrence Miles has also been innovative: the scientific advisor for the
Shadow Directory is Professor Hulot, and the Time Lord game of Eighth Man Bound
sounds intriguing, and even topical. But most interesting of all is Miles' use
of Bakhtin's concept of the Carnivalesque (see more on this in my essay on the
'Talons of Weng-Chiang', posted as soon as I can get around to it).
DOWN
ISBN 042620512X
Bernice finds herself on the world of Tyler's Folly when
one of her students, Lucretia Scannon, has been kidnapped. Along with
Lucretia's friend Ash, Bernice finds that the planet actually contains a Dyson
sphere, which, in many ways, is just like the People's worldsphere... By
coincidence, an expedition from the People has also arrived, led by !X, a
psychotic and one of the Truly Crazed.
Led to Tyler's Folly by Meister Kryptosa's cryptic journal, Bernice finds a
trail of grave robber script. From that point on, everything starts to get a
little dubious. Sucked into the Dyson sphere via a gravity cone, Bernice and
friends find that the interior of Tyler's Folly looks exactly like 'The Land
that Time Forgot', with its own troop of Nazis, only without Anthony Ainley.
There are sabre tooth tigers, woolly mammoth, and the odd Dinosaur, together
with two tribes of ape people, the sophisticated Tribe of Lilith, and the rough
and tumble Tribe of Gug. But why has the fictional character Mr Misnomer
appeared? Is Bernice telling the truth to her captors from the surface of
Tyler's Folly? And what exactly is MEPHISTO?
'Down' can be quite confusing for the casual reader, because it's non-stop.
Like 'Christmas on a Rational Planet', you have to read it all in one go. If
you put these books down for a couple of days, and then return to them, then
you'll be bound to forget important details. Both books have similar themes:
super advanced civilisations rejecting unsavoury elements of themselves, which
are thought to be eradicated, but persist due to their necessity. In 'Down',
MEPHISTO is an unhappy Angel, a machine thrown out of Paradise by the People's
God. It creates a hell, based on an archetype from it's first visitor, Meister
Krytosa (hence all the dinosaurs). But this novel of Paradise Lost operates on
many levels. Like 'The Usual Suspects', and James Hogg's frustrating Gothic
novel 'True Confessions of a Justified Sinner', you do suspect that a lot of
what Bernice says is a fib. She takes advantage of a moment of shared
consciousness to suggest that Mr Misnomer had been there. But what exactly is
she hiding? Who did really save them? And why is Bernice so reluctant to
recognise him?
This is an excellent novel, complete with Lawrence Miles' great wit. The
denouement is certainly the funniest of any of the New Adventures, and works
because the humour is so subtle. We all know what happens to !X... He's been !Xed!
And there's a planet which sounds exactly like one of the New Adventures'
former editors...
There's going to be three more Lawrence Miles novels out soon. I recommend you
buy them all.
ALIEN
BODIES ISBN0563405775
This is one of the most intriguing novels that I have
read in any form. It does help to have more than just a passing interest in
Doctor Who to understand the complex story, but I do believe the plot and prose
will reward even those who have never read a Doctor Who novel before. The story
really is delightful, with one huge central twist which I won't reveal here.
The villain of the piece could hardly be described as melodramatic, or power
hungry, he's just out for a fast buck as he auctions 'The Relic'. With an
absorbing cast of bidders, this book never disappoints. 'Alien Bodies' is
longer than most Doctor Who novels, but I'd be very much surprised if anyone
could find a wasted word.
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