Cirrus@Austlit

'In the newly-formed penal colony of Sydney, plague and starvation are a constant threat. But this time isolation has a more sinister edge. In 1919, a reclusive Sydney doctor with a dark history and a fear of treating patients is drawn into a situation beyond even his control. Beneath the bustling noise of present-day Sydney, Jacqueline's accidental discovery while on an archeological dig unearths more than just a rotting corpse.'

Source: Back cover.

Tabula Rasa began in 1994 as a magazine devoted to both the history of horror and its present developments. Due to financial and time restraints, only seven issues were ever published in hardcopy format. In 2001, Carroll and Ward established Tabula Rasa as a website, expanding its focus to include Australian comics, Australian horror, role playing, Doctor Who, and Stephen King. The site also includes numerous interviews with speculative-fiction writers. Additional features include uploaded copies of David Carroll's fanzine Burnt Toast and his 'unpublished' Doctor Who novel Imperfect Copy.

Contributors to the website include Leigh Blackmore, Robert Hood, Kate Orman, Rod Williams, Rick Kennett, Ben Peek, and illustrator Jason Towers.

Tabula Rasa began in 1994 as a magazine devoted to both the history of horror and its present developments. Editors David Carroll and Lyla Ward conceived the magazine as a 15-issue publication that would begin with a horror timeline. The subsequent issues would then examine the key publications and authors in depth, with the history culminating with H. P. Lovecraft. Due to financial and time restraints, only seven issues were ever published in hardcopy format.

Carroll and Ward established Tabula Rasa as a website in 2001.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

Ace, former companion to the Seventh Doctor but currently a mercenary for hire, finds herself trapped on a squalid colony planet, waiting four days for her ship to depart. Bored, she heads out into the streets to incite a mugging, hoping for a brief adrenalin rush. When she accidentally cripples her attacker, she steals his ID card. Out of curiosity, she visits his family, posing as a hiker. During the one night she spends with them, she confronts them with some unpleasant truths about their family life, but doesn't reveal that the son of whom they are so proud is a homeless drug addict and not, as they believe, a successful naval recruit. Then she returns to her period of waiting, but this time with only two days before the ship's departure.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

A human soldier experiences a brief but terrifying war against the Sontarans, the race of warrior clones from the Doctor Who television series. Though the soldier never actually sees the Doctor himself, the latter's role in the ultimate destruction of the Sontaran vessel can be deduced from the shell-shocked speech of one of the victims of the attack: '"There was this man..." it said, trailing off as if there wasn't anything else to say.'

Doctor Who fan fiction.

Two interlaced stories. In the first, the Doctor (either the Fifth or the Sixth Doctor) and his companion Peri find a dying man on a snowbound world, only to realise that the situation is a trap constructed by the Doctor's enemy, the Master. Interspersed with this story are scenes from the Master's manipulation and torture of inhabitants of an unspecified world, whom he keeps in thrall as servants.

The Master's behaviour in this story is sadistic even by his standards, including, at one point, hypnotising a man into cooking and serving his own child as a meal for the Master and his guests.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive on a world in the throes of revolution. As the Doctor slips away to see what's happening, Ace nurses a young boy through the pains of severe withdrawal, a process that reminds her of the drug-related death of one of her friends from Perivale, just before she left Earth.

Intended as one of the intermissions in Carroll's ultimately unpublished New Adventure novel Imperfect Copy, the story ends abruptly and is more stream of consciousness than a discrete narrative.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

Set in the world of Paradise Towers, the decaying twenty-second century apartment building that formed the setting for the 1987 Doctor Who serial 'Paradise Towers.' In the original serial, almost the entire able-bodied male population of the Towers left to fight a war, leaving only the Kangs (colour-coded gangs of young girls), the Rezzies (residents of the Towers), and the Caretakers (Judge Dredd-style policemen).

This story is set after the Doctor has left Paradise Towers, apparently leaving the Kangs, Caretakers, and Rezzies to build a more harmonious society. Instead, a parasitic lifeform is moving gluttonously through the inhabitants of the Towers, destroying its hosts faster than necessary in its own greed at the abundance of food. Finally, the lifeform is trapped in the body of the final remaining Kang, who knows that her own death will also kill the creature. But even as she's dying, an emissary from the missing soldiers returns to announce that they have won the war and are returning to the Towers, guaranteeing the creature a new supply of food.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

A story that combines the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace with the DC Comics villain (and nemesis to DC hero Batman), the Joker.

Deciding to fly in a commerical airline rather than travel in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ace find the place hijacked by the homicidally insane Joker, who begins killing passengers, beginning (apparently) with the Doctor.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

'Changeling' blends together the events of the first Doctor Who serial, 1963's 'An Unearthly Child', and 1988's 'Remembrance of the Daleks', which reprised some of the events and settings of the 1963 setting (namely, Coal Hill School and the Totter's Lane junkyard).

'Changeling' combines two of the Doctor's companions, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton (now married, with a young daughter) from the 1963 serial, and the unnamed girl who was the focus for Dalek power in the 1988 serial, bringing them into direct conflict, as some of the few people on Earth who know of the Doctor and have been changed (or damaged) by his passing.

Doctor Who fan fiction.

'Memories' covers the later life of Perpugilliam 'Peri' Brown, companion of the Fifth and Sixth Doctors. The story begins some twenty years after Peri departed the series with her apparent death in the 1986 story 'Mindwarp', and shows her as the wife (and, subsequently, widow) of barbarian warlord King Yrcanos of Thoros Alpha.

'Burnt Toast was a fanzine edited by David Carroll, devoted to a strange mixture of Doctor Who and the horror genre. It took its cue from work such as Kate Orman's The Question Mark and a number of similar publications, produced by an active and articulate fan base in the late '80s and early '90s. The 'zine seemed to find a style reasonably quickly, though I think it only really hit its stride with Issue 6, when the strongly themed issues started.

There were a large number of contributors to BT, but in particular Jonathan Barons is to be acknowledged as the Burnt Toast artist, providing a strong sense of visual continuity and many excellent covers and interiors. Unfortunately, in this archive's current spartan existence, much of that art is not present here. Not all the articles and stories are currently up, either, though that should be remedied as I get in touch with people to secure their permission (my own non-fan stories are not included for other reasons).'

Source: Burnt Toast home page. Sighted: 18/8/2011

In addition to publishing Carroll's own Doctor Who fan fiction, Burnt Toast also published a number of short pieces by Kate Orman, who later became the first woman and the first Australian to publish a Doctor Who New Adventures novel.

Burnt Toast also contains fan fiction related to shows other than Doctor Who, including a long piece by David Carroll based on the American television series Bewitched. Issues also contain reviews of relevant publications or television shows, as well as non-fiction pieces on various topics.