Book Of The Month: Alien Bodies

Despite my love of all things science-fiction, I've actually read very few what I would call "hard science-fiction" - a Ben Bova, some Arthur C Clarke and that's about it. Most of my literary exposure to the genre has been space opera and pulp fiction.

So, Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies certainly felt like jumping in at the deep end. I already knew, from his Faction Paradox audio plays and comics, that Miles likes to play with big ideas, which was a large part of the appeal going into this title (I also knew it was the first appearance of the Faction in a Doctor Who novel).

The Eighth Doctor and his young companion, Sam, arrive in the East Indies, at a "city that shouldn't exist", and gatecrash an auction for a strange, priceless item known simply as The Relic.

The other bidders are an incredible range of people (including two representatives from Faction Paradox, a Time Lord from the future, a zombie, a thought creature, an insane human Colonel and others), all representing different interests and having their own reasons for obtaining The Relic.

Among the mind-blowing concepts Miles throws out is a TARDIS that can impersonate a living entity, the brewing war between The Time Lords and their nameless Enemy, buildings constructed out of mathematics... and all this before we even discover what The Relic is.

It's been a while since I've read a book that I've been so eager to return to every evening, and mulled over during the day (between chapters), turning over and over the ideas that the book has conjured up, playing out various possibilities in my mind.

And striding through the middle of all this is the powerful figure of The Eighth Doctor, confident (most of the time), jovial and charismatic. There is no doubt he will ultimately triumph, but even when he does, there is a feeling of great satisfaction that he has "got one over" on forces that are possibly far more powerful than him.

If I had one small niggle with Alien Bodies, and it's probably because I'm reading The Eighth Doctor stories in a rather random order, I still can't quite get a handle on Sam as a companion. Although I learned more about her in this book, I suppose because I haven't followed her from when she met The Doctor, I find her a difficult companion to relate to.

The book does, however, make an interesting observation about why The Doctor needs a companion and why various 'intergalactic superbeings' need human agents or servants.

Alien Bodies is an incredible, epic science-fiction story, with just the right splashes of humour and horror, dealing with far-out science and exotic violence as well as intimate personal stories (we get flashback back stories for all the main players in the auction, as well as fascinating glimpses in the far future of the Whoniverse that could still hold true, even given, the TV programme's Time War) to create a compelling and unique narrative.