Cirrus@Austlit

'The lives of three strangers intersect to bring hope to a beleaguered near-future Britain lurching towards authoritarianism.

'Libby Seymour is a Civil Servant, military intelligence analyst, Union activist, believer in the equality of justice, and member of the MayGE Committee campaigning for a long-overdue General Election. A colleague tells her the police want a word about something she didn't do… and she goes on the run with the help of her occasional lover, ex-army doctor, now trauma therapist, Susan Church.

'Derek Hallett is a British Army officer with an impressive record in special operations. Newly promoted to Major General, he is stunned to be assigned to a secretive job in England. For commercial reasons, Jackson-Burgess (UK) Ltd steps back from administering four work camps designed to reduce poverty in Britain. He swore to the Crown to uphold the rule of law.

'Kayla Nettleton has two lives. Online, she's a veteran Cultural Warrior and defender of social justice through hacking. In real life, she's trapped with her family in a sink estate, and is swept up into the poverty eradication programme run by Jackson-Burgess.

'Together, the three unlikely allies spearhead a small resistance group to fight back in the Disinformation War.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'‘Let me be brave. Let me be brave …’

'In a series where violent death is prevalent but the regular characters generally immune, Face the Raven (2015) is a rarity in featuring the demise of the 12th Doctor’s longstanding companion Clara Oswald. While Doctor Who’s basis as a time-travel series means that the audience will see Clara again, everything after her death here is borrowed time.

'The figures reintroduced by Face the Raven all play unexpected parts: Ashildr, a Viking woman made immortal by the Doctor, is a mayor; Rigsy, a graffiti artist befriended by Clara, is a murder suspect; and numerous monsters from the series’ past have become refugees. Scripted by Sarah Dollard, an Australian living in the UK, the story uses the tropes and imagery of Doctor Who to comment on real-world issues of immigration, asylum and the penal system, its narrative leading directly to the Doctor’s own incarceration in the following episode.

'This Black Archive draws on the history of London and its presentation in fantasy, on queer and feminist theory and on the mythic and folkloric symbolism of ravens to examine this haunting story. It is the first of three books dealing with the final episodes of the 2015 season of Doctor Who.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'To celebrate Lethbridge-Stewart's birthday, a romantic weekend is planned for him and Sally in a remote cottage in the Scottish Highlands. Unfortunately for Sally, freak weather causes her to crash her car.

'Lethbridge-Stewart, meanwhile, is in Cairngorm investigating UFO sightings. Elsewhere, the Daughters of Earth, a women-only peace movement, are making waves in the political world, but just who is their enigmatic leader? And what links the Daughters with the events of Cairngom and Sally's accident?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The year is 1876. An Australian bushranger named Lillian Robinson is hiding her loot from a stagecoach robbery when the TARDIS materialises before her, spooking her horse, Ben. The Doctor emerges with Leela, and while chatting with the bewildered Lillian, learns that a pack of wolves have been spotted in a nearby valley. Curious, the Doctor investigates and meets a pack of Wolf People, an ancient race of humans with a mystical connection to their wolven companions; this pack was brought over from the old country for the amusement of rich Irish families, but escaped and settled in the wilderness. Lillian, startled by a wolf's sudden approach, tries to shoot it but injures herself when the gun explodes in her hand. The Doctor gives her a special kind of medicine, and the Wolf People agree to let her stay with them until she is ready to return to her own people; however, she doesn't have anything special to return to, and by the time she heals, her horse has wandered off, leaving her stranded. Lillian spends decades with the Wolf People as their community slowly dies out, and when one of the women gives birth, Lillian gives the Doctor's special medicine to the newborn girl, whom she christens Erin. Eventually, they are the last of the community, and as Erin and her wolf go walkabout into the desert, Lillian walks in the opposite direction -- and encounters a strange black highway along which motorised vehicles are moving at incredible speeds. On the verge of the highway, Lillian finds an abandoned newspaper claiming that other mythical creatures have been spotted across the world, but after all she's seen, she finds this easy to believe...'

[The Doctor is the Fourth Doctor.]

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip11.htm).

Sighted: 2/6/11

'31 May, 1942: The Doctor and Ace arrive in Sydney just as a fierce battle breaks out in the harbour between Japanese subs and American warships. The Doctor visits a young fortune teller named Li Chen Mei, who gives him an empty jade box which the Doctor passes on to Ace for safekeeping. The Doctor then takes Ace to a boarding house run by Mrs Kitty Harris, and leaves her there while he visits the cliffs called the Gap. Ace sees Mrs Harris sacrifice a chicken for use in a magic ritual of some kind, and heads for the Gap, drawn by the humming of the empty jade box. There, she sees Mrs Harris' other billet, the American Corporal Jed Allum, attack a young Aborigine woman, apparently under the impression that she is one of the enemy. She intervenes, at first knocking Corporal Allum unconscious, but then, like Allum, becoming swept up by a compulsion to kill the enemy; fortunately, the Doctor arrives in time to stop her from killing Allum. He then takes her back to the boarding house, but she begins to see him as the enemy and tries to kill him with nitro-nine. Mei arrives just in time to knock Ace out, and she and the Doctor explain to Mrs Harris that her rituals are not having the effect she intended. Mei and the Aboriginal girl are guardians of the hymnal skein, a power which underlies all existence; Mrs Harris could sense the skein, and was foolishly attempting to manipulate it in order to keep her city safe from attack. The Doctor manages to convince her that she does not have the skill to do so, and she agrees to stop.'

[The Doctor is the Seventh Doctor.]

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip7.htm).

Sighted: 2/6/11

'The Doctor takes Ace and Benny to an old colonial mansion in Sydney, Australia to visit a woman named LaMort. Ace is hoping for a confrontation; a gunman recently ran amok in Port Arthur, the second such massacre in a month's time, and Ace wants to believe that an alien monster is responsible. Ace waits and then follows the Doctor in through the front door, while Benny sneaks into the house around the back -- and while Ace sees herself in an opulent house full of party guests, Benny has fought her way through an overgrown backyard jungle into an abandoned, decaying ruin. Upstairs, the Doctor is talking to a woman whom only he and Ace can see, but whom Benny can hear. Her face looks like skin stretched over a skull and her voice sounds like decay; she is LaMort, Death, and she's weary of her role, having seen everything on Earth there is to see. The Doctor knows that death still has a vital part to play, and has Benny tell LaMort about her life. Death realises that the human race is bound to leave Earth and expand out into the cosmos, taking her influence to new worlds previously untouched; there will always be more for her to see. Ace can't accept the finality of death, but accepts that the human race is responsible for its own crimes.'

(The Doctor is the Seventh Doctor.)

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip4.htm).

Sighted 2/6/11

Doctor Who fan fiction.

A short piece imagining an encounter between the Doctor (an unspecified regeneration), Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas in Paris in 1938. The story's prose style mimics that of Stein.