Doctor Who Speculation on the 13th Doctor and Beyond

First off if you haven't watched the 50th anniversary special that aired this past Saturday don't read this post as it will spoil major plot points.

Alright, if you are still reading then you must want to hear this. An established part of Dr Who cannon is that Gallifreyan's can regenerate their bodies 12 times which effectively gives them 13 bodies in total. A fact which has been confirmed by Steven Moffat. This was a plot device originally dreamed up in 60's in order to allow the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, to replace the first played by William Hartnell.

Looking back the following actors have played the Doctor:

1. William Hartnell
2. Patrick Troughton
3. Jon Pertwee
4. Tom Baker
5. Peter Davison
6. Colin Baker
7. Sylvester McCoy
8. Paul McGann
9. Christopher Eccleston
10. David Tennant
11. Matt Smith

But as we now know there was a Doctor between McGann and Eccleston, the War Doctor played by John Hurt. Plus it has already been announced that Matt Smith is leaving the show and Peter Capaldi will be taking over. So the list actually looks like:

1. William Hartnell
2. Patrick Troughton
3. Jon Pertwee
4. Tom Baker
5. Peter Davison
6. Colin Baker
7. Sylvester McCoy
8. Paul McGann
9. John Hurt
10. Christopher Eccleston
11. David Tennant
12. Matt Smith
13. Peter Capaldi

Oh no, we're at 13 Doctor's now. That must mean that Peter Capaldi will be the last actor to ever play the Doctor. Well of course not, they are going to keep making this show until it stops being profitable. During the 50th anniversary show we see John Hurt's Doctor beginning his regeneration but we never see him fully transforming into Christopher Eccleston. Perhaps this is because Christopher Eccleston was unable or unwilling to participate in the special or maybe it's something a little more timey wimey.

Since we had three Doctor's in the same time and space and they were actively messing around with their own timeline (yes, I know they hand wavey explained this away) I'm surmising that an alternative timeline has been created. Now when Doctor number 9 regenerates he doesn't become Christopher Eccleston but instead Peter Capaldi. This means that Capaldi could be Doctor number 10 and they've been able to stave off the question of a 13th Doctor for at least 3 more actors. 

8) Paul McGann
9) John Hurt
10) Peter Capaldi

11) ?

12) ??

13) ???

But wait, what about Matt Smith's Doctor what happens to him? Well, I believe that he is the 13th Doctor. You see David Tennant actually regenerated twice. Once in Journey's End and then again in his last show The End of Time. So that would make his list:

8) Paul McGann
9) John Hurt
10) Christopher Eccleston

11) David Tennant

12) David Tennant

13) Matt Smith

So in closing you probably had to be a real Whovian in order to read this post to the end but I believe we'll see a reboot of the Doctor Who franchise with Peter Capaldi stepping in as the new 10th Doctor and Eccleston, Tennant and Smith's Doctors being relegated to an alternative time line.

Books I'm Looking Forward to this Year

io9 pulled together an fantastic list of all the new hotness in science fiction and fantasy that will be release in 2013. Here are the books I'm most interested in reading.

• The Gun Machine by Warren Ellis
• A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
• Homeland by Cory Doctorow
• The Demonologist: A Novel by Andrew Pyper
• Red Planet Blues by Robert J. Sawyer
• London Falling by Paul Cornell
• NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
• The Human Division by John Scalzi
• The Shambling Guide to NYC by Mur Lafferty
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Long War by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
• Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross
• Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
• The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Abominable by Dan Simmons
• Who Wacked Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf

What ones are you most looking forward to reading?

Books I've Read this Week

Okay, it's been a long time since I've done one of these. You take a couple of week break while on vacation and then the next thing you it is 2 months later.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a rocking good story which conjures up remembrances of Ray Bradbury stories I'd previously read. The novel centres around a contest between two young magicians named Celia and Marco. It is a very imaginative little romp as the two magicians compete against each other while falling in love.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness was not what I was looking for after reading The Night Circus. It is another supernatural love story but it is not handled as deftly as The Night Circus and reading the two books back to back definitely cast A Discovery of Witches in a poor light. Seriously though, what do women see in vampires? When did they start becoming boyfriend/husband material? They are the undead people!

Book Review Catch Up: Mission of Honor

Initially I was very excited to get the latest Honor Harrington novel, Mission Of Honor, in my hands. It had been 5 years since the last book.  After reading it I can't even properly express how disappointed I was in the story.  To me it just seems like a bridge novel between the previous 11 books which dealt with Manticore's war with the Haven and the upcoming war with the Solarian League.

It's just a lot of shuffling of deck chairs where the villains, Haven, are shuffled out and replaced with the Solarians as well Honor is given a personal reason to hate the Solarians.  It just seems like the whole series has hit a point where it needed to be rebooted and can start fresh.

I'm rating this book a pants.  Skip it and look forward to the upcoming A Rising Thunder which is due in 2012.

Book Review Catch Up: Pluto

If you were ever a fan of Astro Boy you will love Pluto. The 8 volume Pluto series is based off of an Astro Boy story The Greatest Robot on Earth by manga god Osamu Tezuka.

Pluto really is a love letter to Tezuka by one of the most popular and prominant manga artists of our time Naoki Urasawa.  The art in all of the volumes is absolutely gorgeous while the story has been updated with a more adult bent.  We follow Gesicht (see picture left) in his attempts to solve the case of a string of robot and human deaths.

I loved the entire series but not because I was an Astro Boy fan but because it was such a great story with art to complement it. I'm rating this series a buy.

Book Review Catch Up: The Lost Fleet Series

The Lost Fleet is a six book series of military sci-fi written by Jack Campbell. In the first book of the series Dauntless we are introduced to Captain Black Jack Geary who has just been thawed out of suspended animation after 100 years.  Captain Geary has been elevated to near mythical levels by the Alliance as he used his command to fight a delaying action at the beginning of the war over 100 years ago. The Alliance forces find Geary on the way to attack the Syndicate home system in a bid to end the war. They see the resurrection of Geary as a good omen. However, they are about to fall in a Syndicate trap. One that only Geary can save them from.

I really liked this series a lot, reading all the books in a 3 week period.  The writer has a military background and he writes the naval battles very well using some realistic physics.  The books are not all space battles though and they offer some good characterization, albeit over a small number of main characters.

It was also very interesting to me to see the parallels between Captain Geary and King Arthur.  Arthur is supposed to return to Britain to save them in their time of greatest need and that's exactly what Geary is doing here for the Alliance.

I recommend all the books in this series as a buy.

PSA: Talking to Your Kids....About Star Wars

Don't let your kids find out about Star Wars on their own. Have the talk for both your sake's.

The Vorkosigan Series as Free eBooks

Amazing science fiction book publisher Baen has released almost all of the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold as free eBooks.  I've read all of the Vorkosigan series up until the latest novel Cryoburn and throughly enjoyed all of them.

The series follows Miles Vorkosigan on a series of adventures.  What makes things interesting with the series is that the books were not written in chronological order.  This may sound a bit confusing but it is very easy to pick up any book in the series and get a solid read without having to know anything about the other books.

I'd rate all of these books a buy if there weren't already free!

The Most Awesome Thing Ever! Part 2

Oh thank you Foolish Gadgets for letting me know that these Star Wars Sandwitch Cutters even exist.  Honey, we heading down to Syracuse so I can go to Williams-Sonoma.  I'm willing to bet she never thought she'd hear those words but I need my peanut butter Millennium Falcon to be chased by a ham and cheese Tie Fighter.

Web Comics Wednesday: Cleopatra in Spaaace!

Wow, Cleopatra in Spaaace! is one of my new favourite web comics which came to my attention courtesy of my buddy Ryan and the talented artist Katie Cook who posted a pin up of Cleopatra on her blog recently.

The strip quite literally follows the adventures of a teen-aged Cleopatra from 52 BC transported through space in time to the future.  The comic is like a 1950's pulpy sci-fi adventure mixed with Egyptian myths.

I'm really digging what writer/artist Mike Maihack is offering here.  The first 28 page chapter has just recently completed and now chapter two is kicking off.  It is a great time to jump on this strip as there is not too many pages to read in the archive before you've gotten caught up.

Friday Book Review: Julian Comstock

Wow, I mean wow.  The Hugo nomination for Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson is well deserved.  This is one of the best examples  of the unreliable narrator that I've ever had the pleasure of reading and I did really enjoy this book.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The narrator in the book is Adam Hazard who is writing a biography of his good friend and former president of America, Julian Comstock.  I say he is an unreliable narrator due to his naiveté about certain facts of life, his love of certain characters keeps him from speaking ill of them and the fact that as he states later in the book some things were changed for dramatic effect.

The book follows Adam and Julian from their early days in a wilderness town to the war against the Dutch and finally to the presidential palace in New York City.  You've probably noticed some inconsistencies in that last sentence a the world that Adam inhabits is some 200 years in our future.

In this future the world has run out of oil without a valid alternative energy source.  Society has degraded quite severely and we are back into a feudal system complete with serfs which is actually more like slavery.  Without ruining anything about the book the potential future that Wilson paints is very plausible given the current state of affairs in the world.

As you can probably tell I'm rating this book a buy.  My next sci-fi book will be another Hugo nominee The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.  That will round out my reviews of this years nominees where others include:

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
The City and the City by China Miéville
Wake by Robert J Sawyer

Anathem on Sale for $5

The hard cover version of Neal Stephenson's amazing novel Anathem is currently on sale at Chapters for $5. This is an incredible deal, about 85% off the regular price, of an amazing book. At 937 pages you are paying about half a cent per page. This book, as well as all of Stephenson's books get a must buy rating from me.

Friday Book Review: Leviathan

Okay, I'm just going to say it. Leviathan is all sorts of awesomeness! The book takes place in an alternate reality at the beginning of World War I, which made me really glad I recenetly finished reading Paris 1919.

The two main characters represent each of the warring factions:

A 15 year old girl named Deryn Sharp dresses up as a boy to join the British Air Service. The Allied Powers in this universe are nicknamed the "Darwinist" after Charles Darwin who pefected a genetic splicing technique which allows the Allies to create their own new species. One of which is the Leviathan class air ship that Deryn is serving on.

The other is a young man Aleksandar Ferdinand who is the son of Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand who's assissination starts what becomes World War I. The Central Powers are nick named the "Clankers" as they eschew the godless genetic experiment of the Allies and instead focus on steam powered machines. However, the Clankers are still influenced by the Darwinists as their machines tend to be modeled after animals. Such as the 8 legged walking dreadnaught which replaces the tanks we know of.

The universe that author Scott Westerfeld describes is fully developed and his characters act in believable ways. That is, not always in their best interest as they are kids after all.

In case you haven't guessed I give this book my must buy recommendation. Please check out the book's web site as well as it adds a number of extras as well.

Friday Book Review: Wireless

While I'm not usually a huge fan of short story collections I couldn't pass up Wireless by Charles Stross. He's been one of my favourite sci-fi authors since I read his post-singularity novel, Singularity Sky.

In this collection we get to see Stross take on a number of different genres like the cold war era Missile Gap, the mind bending time travel Palimpsests, his net neutrality collaboration with Cory Doctorow called Unwirer and my personal favourite Down on the Farm. In Down on the Farm we get another mission from Bob Howard of The Laundry. The Laundry is a secret British organization that is a cross between MI-6/computer hackers/warlocks.

All of the stories in this book are quite enjoyable and I recommend this book as a buy to all sci-fi lovers.

Friday Book Review: Zoe's Tale

Let me just say that I love John Scalzi's writing. I've been a big fan of his since he released Old Man's War and I've continued to following along with The Ghost Brigades
and The Last Colony. That's why I picked up Zoe's Tale as this book takes place in the same universe and during the same time frame as The Last Colony. Except it is told from Zoe's point of view. To me the shared timeline is the books biggest fault. For those of us who've already read The Last Colony there is no sense of tension as we are already aware of the outcome of the conflicts within the book. This is the same problem I had with Ender's Shadow the companion novel to Ender's Game.

That is not to say that it isn't excellently written because it is. Scalzi does and great job of writing this young adult novel and he gives the teenager, Zoe, a believable voice. You'd almost think he has a teen or pre-teen stalking around his house ;)

I recommend this book to people who want to get into Scalzi's writing of the Old Mans War universe without having to invest in three books worth of material.

Friday Book Review: Sun of Suns

I started listening to Sun Of Suns as it was a free audio book download from Audible. Without it being promoted by Audible, I probably never would have experienced this book and that would have been a shame.

This book owes a lot to Iain M Banks Culture novels as it is a posthuman space opera as Banks is credited in creating the genre. Even more so it reminds me of his latest novel, Matter, as an outsider comes into a relatively back water planet and upsets the balance of power. Comparing the author of Sun of Suns, Karl Schroeder, to Iain M Banks is a complement.

The events of Sun of Suns take place on a world called Virga. Virga is basically a Dyson's sphere orbiting its main sun Candesce. There is very little land and water. Giant cities generate their own gravity by using centrifugal force. Political power is gained by controlling any number of the smaller suns inside Virga.

We begin the story with a prologue where the people of Aerie are building their own sun to break free of the influence of Slipstream only to be brutally shut down by an attack from the Slipstream navy. We then skip forward a number of years where we focus on Hayden Griffin a survivor of the attack on Aerie where he has insinuated himself into the household of Venera Fanning the wife of Admiral Chaison Fanning. The man Hayden blames for the attack on Aerie.

All three of the main characters are interesting and well developed. You wonder whether Haydon can get past his need for revenge and move on with his life, Venera is certainly more than a trophy wife and she keeps some pretty important secrets from her husband but most interesting is the juxtaposition of Haydon's personal evaluation of Admiral Griffin compared to what he has always been told about the Butcher of Aerie.

The book is an engaging nautical adventure set in a posthuman society. It is expertly narrated by Joyce Irvine. I really enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to reading the Queen of Candesce: Book Two of Virga. However, you don't need to read the next book as the plot threads started are resolved in the first book.

Friday Book Review: Wake

I'm a huge fan of Canadian novelist Robert J Sawyer. I was very excited when I had a chance to meet him at a book signing in Ottawa for his latest novel, Wake.

Wake's protagonist, Caitlin Decter, is a blind 15 year old girl living in Canada. She is about to undergo a new experimental procedure that may cure her blindness. The surgery puts an implant in her eye which will fix the signals going to her primary visual cortex. The catch is the implant must communicate with an off board device for signal processing which the dub the eyePod.

An unexpected side benefit of the the implant is that it allows her to visualize the world wide web. This allows Caitlin to detect an emerging intelligence on the web. Could this been the singularity that features so heavily in books by Vinge and Stross?

There are two side plots going on. One is the outbreak of an advanced strain of the bird flu in China and the other is the emergence of a Chimpanzee who can communicate in sign language.

Along with the main story Sawyer draws parallels to the life of Helen Keller. Keller was blind and deaf from an early age up until she was 7 when a governess learned how to communicate with her. When you read the book you can see how it relates to Cailin, the singularity and the chimp.

Sadly, the only negative point is that this is the first part of a trilogy so while you get a satisfying read you don't get the complete story. Mind you don't let that discourage you from picking up another great book from one of Canada's finest.