AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
There are monsters everywhere. Sometimes, they are barbaric creatures -- all fangs and claws and teeth. Sometimes, they are surreptitious, subtle, sneaky. They aim to destroy, to scare, to create havoc, to kill.
Monsters can be found in unusual places -- a museum in turn-of-the-century Rome, a convalescence home deep in the English countryside, media organisations -- and in a variety of forms. They're not all slobbering, rampaging beasts -- most attack their prey with means more cunning than violence.
The Doctor and his companions come up against them constantly: they help the victims and defeat the monsters. Most of the time.
Monsters features eleven stories that look at the concept of 'monster'. In this collection, we meet aliens who take delight in manipulating the populace, a creature who lives for eternity, a monster who lives inside marble and monsters who live inside our heroes...
Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip12.htm). Sighted: 19/5/11
Notes
-
Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
-
Best Seller,
single work
short story
science fiction
'The Doctor and Charley witness a violent riot in a Melbourne bookstore over The Darvius Saga, a sci-fi bestseller published on Biblio-Tablets that lock onto a single purchaser's retinal pattern and cannot be read by anyone else. The publishers are offering a limited quantity of the book, and people have been killed trying to get their hands on a copy. While investigating, Charley makes contact with Professor Bruce Gillespie and his followers in the Movement for Real Literature, who claim that anyone who's tried to transcribe the book has mysteriously disappeared. The author, Nathaniel Clamp, then announces that he's written a prequel that will have an even more limited run, and Gillespie decides that Clamp must die. The Doctor has disappeared while trying to trace the signal that activates the Biblio-Tablets, and Charley, seeing the horrifying violence that has broken out because of the books, agrees to help Gillespie and his team assassinate Clamp. At the last moment, however, she is unable to go through with it, and instead shoots the gun out of Gillespie's hand. Meanwhile, the Doctor has successfully traced the signal to a warehouse, but due to a glitch in the TARDIS he has materialised one week later. After stealing a copy of the prequel and popping into temporal orbit in the TARDIS to read it, he visits the publishers' boardroom and finds that they are in fact monsters from the upper dimensions. The chairman, Mr Tluss, explains that he and his fellow directors are in fact in charge of a broadcast network back home, and that they've been stirring up riots and savage behaviour on Earth for the amusement of the masses in their home dimension. However, the Doctor then reveals that, while in temporal orbit, he arranged for the entire prequel to be posted on the publishers' website; it is thus available for everyone in the world to read, and there will be no further riots caused by its limited availability. Tluss apparently accepts that he's been outflanked, and agrees to leave the Earth in peace -- but in fact, he's realised that the Doctor tends to show up wherever there is trouble. As the Doctor and Charley depart, Tluss and his team prepare to seed listening posts and transmitters throughout this entire dimension in order to monitor the Doctor and broadcast his adventures back home, convinced that they'll make a killing in the ratings.'
[The Doctor is the 8th Doctor.]
Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip12.htm). Sighted 19/5/11
