[T]he books have been rolling in (don\’t they always – I need a bigger house), from Amazon.co.uk, Ebay.co.uk, and my regular comics and books supplier in the US. So I\’m going to start listing the new stuff that has landed on my doorstep during the months September-December 2014, starting off with the books based on various telefantasy series, in this case, Doctor Who and Star Trek.
- DOCTOR WHO: 50TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION – 11 DOCTORS 11 STORIES (trade paperback, Puffin Books, London, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-141-34894-0)
- THE OFFICIAL QUOTABLE DOCTOR WHO: WISE WORDS FROM ACROSS TIME AND SPACE by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright (hardcover, Harper Design, New York, 2014, ISBN: 978-0-06-233614-9)
- DOCTOR WHO: THE VISUAL DICTIONARY written by Neil Corry, Jacqueline Rayner, Andrew Darling, Kerrie Dougherty, David John and Simon Beecroft (hardcover, Dorling Kindersley DK, London, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-4053-5033-4)
- BEHIND THE SOFA: CELEBRITY MEMORIES OF DOCTOR WHO edited by Steve Berry (hardcover, Matador, UK, 2012, ISBN: 978-1780882-857)
- DOCTOR WHO: THE OFFICIAL ANNUAL 2015 (hardcover, Puffin Books, London, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-405-91756-8)
- STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS – the official novelization of the film by Alan Dean Foster (paperback, Simon & Schuster, London, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-47112-890-5)
- STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION: ON BOARD THE U.S.S. ENTERPRISE by Denise and Michael Okuda (hardcover, SevenOaks, London, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-78177-056-6)
- NEW LIFE AND NEW CIVILIZATIONS: EXPLORING STAR TREK COMICS edited by Joseph F. Berenato (paperback, Sequart Organization, US, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-9405-8905-3)
- STAR TREK: A COMICS HISTORY by Alan J. Porter (paperback, Hermes Press, US, 2009, ISBN: 1-932563-35-0)
That\’s five Doctor Who books and four Star Trek books. So quite a nice haul.
The big DK coffee table book DOCTOR WHO: THE VISUAL DICTIONARY is very nice indeed, lots and lots of gorgeous pictures. The DOCTOR WHO: THE OFFICIAL ANNUAL 2015 isn\’t quite as beefy or interesting as the big DK book, but each year wouldn\’t be the same without the Doctor Who Annual. BEHIND THE SOFA: CELEBRITY MEMORIES OF DOCTOR WHO is an interesting little read, with over a hundred celebrity fans sharing their Doctor Who memories, as is THE OFFICIAL QUOTABLE DOCTOR WHO: WISE WORDS FROM ACROSS TIME AND SPACE, a nice, fat book of Doctor Who quotations, from all eras of the show.
But my favourite Doctor Who book of the bunch is DOCTOR WHO: 50TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION – 11 DOCTORS 11 STORIES, a big, beefy trade paperback of wholesome Doctor Who fiction. Eleven stories celebrating the 50th Anniversary of our favourite Time Lord, one for each incarnation of the Doctor. Eleven stories by eleven different authors, all of which has originally appeared as a series of ebooks earlier in 2013. Most of the names are not authors that I recognize, but I certainly know Neil Gaiman, Eoin Colfer and Alex Scarrow, who are big-name authors (well, Gaiman and Colfer are, but Scarrow has also had a few books published).
The large STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION: ON BOARD THE U.S.S. ENTERPRISE is another coffee table-sized book, although it\’s a lot slimmer than the big DK Doctor Who Visual Dictionary. A nice book, packed with visuals of the Enerprise D, inside and outside, and its crew. The novelization of STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS is one that I picked up in a local bookshop. Ordinarily, I wouldn\’t have bothered, as I\’m not a huge fan of the Star Trek reboot movies, but the author is Alan Dean Foster, who always does a great job on these novelizations. So I took a chance on this one.
But, as far as I\’m concerned, the best of the Star Trek books are the two covering Star Trek comics. These two could\’ve just as easily been covered along with the books on comics, but I\’ve put them in with the telefantasy books, as they\’re about Star Trek. As a fan of both Star Trek and of comics, I find the combination irresistible, and even more so since I\’ve actually read most of these comics over the years, going right back to the Gold Key comics of the late-60\’s.
STAR TREK: A COMICS HISTORY is a nice large-format softcover, full of lots of lovely colour pictures and choc-a-bloc with detailed information. NEW LIFE AND NEW CIVILIZATIONS: EXPLORING STAR TREK COMICS is a smaller format trade paperback, although over a hundred pages longer. Again, loads of great information, although the visuals are a bit disappointing (compared to the copious colour pics in STAR TREK: A COMICS HISTORY) as they are all black and white and there aren\’t as many of them.
That\’s the telefantasy books covered. Next time up, it\’s some of the other stuff.