A Universe Of Terrors - Mauritz – With these stories, I always tried to make them proper adventures, with beginnings, middles and ends. There have been plenty of excellent short stories written about small boys getting caught up in Doctor Who adventures, or character vignettes, but... but that’s a pretty good reason for not writing any more.
Mauritz was a horror story, but one rooted in the ‘Maths’ feel of the stories script edited by Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, Warrior’s Gate, Logopolis, Castrovalva. It’s a Gormenghasty tale, set in a sort of Maurits Escher castle – hence the title. It was written from the point of view of Adric – what was I thinking? – but I think it worked out pretty well, it seemed to capture the era and people said very kind things. I have a sneaking feeling though I may have accidentally stolen the entire plot from an idea for a story that Robert Shearman once told me.
Life Science - Lant Land – For some reason, probably my fault, this was written in approximately the same amount of time it takes to read it, at the last minute, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what the story would be before I wrote it. Hence the resulting pointless, flailing-about-randomly mess. Shame, really, as it involves one of my favourite Doctor Who teams, the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, and lovingly details their mannerisms. But I’m sorry for anyone who bought this collection expecting another Jonathan Morris masterpiece because they would’ve been very disappointed. Still, the rest of it was good.
