An Interview with Una McCormack: Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Fan Fiction
In this exciting episode, we sit down with the renowned sci-fi author Una McCormack. She is best known for her intricate storytelling and work within the fandom, especially with Star Trek and Doctor Who novels. The combination of Una McCormack Star Trek Doctor Who has produced some of the most compelling narratives in sci-fi. Here, she shares her journey as a writer. First, she talks about her early inspirations and how they shaped her career. Then, she dives into her latest projects, offering a rare glimpse into her creative mind.
Crafting Compelling Sci-Fi Narratives
Listeners will be captivated by Una McCormack’s insights into crafting compelling narratives. She explains the art of world-building and how it transports readers to otherworldly realms. Moreover, she discusses the challenges and rewards of writing in the sci-fi genre. Aspiring writers will find her advice invaluable.
The Creative Process of Una McCormack Star Trek Doctor Who
Throughout the interview, Una McCormack reflects on her experiences with iconic franchises like Star Trek and Doctor Who. She shares anecdotes from her collaborations, highlighting the community spirit in sci-fi. She understands the power of the fandom, which is fueled by everything from conventions to the excitement of live Doctor Who Improv. Additionally, she delves into recurring themes in her work, providing a deeper understanding of her creative process. For more analysis of the franchise, listen to our full discussion on themes of feminism and fandom in Star Trek.
Insights for Aspiring Sci-Fi Writers
This episode is a must-listen for fans of Una McCormack and sci-fi enthusiasts alike. Whether you’re familiar with her work or new to her stories, you’ll gain a fresh appreciation for her narratives. Her ability to weave intricate plots and develop rich characters is truly remarkable. As the conversation unfolds, Una McCormack teases her upcoming projects. Her enthusiasm for the genre is infectious, inspiring listeners to explore the limitless possibilities of sci-fi. Tune in to discover the secrets behind Una McCormack’s success as a writer for Star Trek and Doctor Who. Learn how she continues to push storytelling boundaries. This episode is not just an interview; it’s an invitation to journey through the imaginative worlds of one of sci-fi’s most talented authors. Don’t miss this chance to hear from Una McCormack herself and gain valuable insights into the art of sci-fi writing.
Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)
00:00 Introduction to OCAST and Guests
02:57 Una McCormack’s Journey into Science Fiction
05:44 From Fan Fiction to Published Author
08:44 Writing for Star Trek and Doctor Who
12:02 The Impact of Canon and Storylines
14:48 Exploring the World of Firefly
17:59 The Challenges of Writing for Established Franchises
20:53 The Role of Feminism in Science Fiction
23:48 The Evolution of Fan Fiction and Its Influence
26:46 Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy
29:46 The Future of Science Fiction and New Voices
32:28 The Importance of Female Representation in Media
35:27 Una’s Work with Big Finish Audio
38:33 Current Trends in Science Fiction Literature
41:24 Final Thoughts and Future Aspirations
Full Transcript
Cal (00:00.974)
And it should start recording any second. I’m looking, it is recording. I’m just going to assume it’s recording right now. The other soft. All right, cool. Okay. So welcome everyone to OCAST, your island gateway to all things geek. We are the official podcast of Ocon, the Comic Con of the Outer Hebrides.
Yeah.
holding.
Cal (00:29.484)
I’m your host, Khalil MacDonald. And quick go around my two lovely hosts tonight, returning again, Kathleen, your second time. How are you feeling? How are you Hello.
I’m very pleased to be back, thank you. Very excited for this evening’s guest.
All right, and for our first time on OKAST, Mads, how are you doing?
Thank you for the invite.
All right, no problem. So joining us tonight, very special guest who’s got her foot in many of her favorite geeky doors. She’s New York Times bestselling author, written novels for probably a few of the biggest sci-fi, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and even Firefly. And beyond that, writer for big finish audio dramas. And on top of that, a PhD with a focus on feminist science fiction. So let’s give a big welcome to Una McCormack. Welcome to the show.
Una (01:21.09)
Hello, thank you for having me. Thanks very much. Good to be here.
All right, just to get started, we usually always start with the beginning. So you’ve written for all these franchises. Where did you get the bug for science fiction? Was it a single show in particular or can you recall when you got that one for it?
Absolutely, I can date this moment almost precisely. In fact, if I’d known this question was coming, I would have dated it and timed it for you precisely. Because it’s a specific episode of the BBC science fiction series, Blake 7. And it was a repeat of the first season of, first episode of the third season, Aftermath. And it’s a little moment where the character of Avon, played by the very handsome
Paul Darrow faints in a life capsule. And I think I thought that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. as those of you who grew up in this deck of the woods in the 70s, there wasn’t much on television at the time. So no, it was Blake 7, which in fact I was watching from quite a young age and I was playing playground games with my mate Jan. used to pretend we were the crew of the Liberator.
And Jan had been given a science fiction style toy gun for Christmas that made noises. that brought us up more or less the production values of what was on screen. So it was Blake 7 very, very much. I was a Blake 7 fan before I was a Doctor Who fan, I would say.
Kathleen/Mads (03:01.684)
I love that idea. So was it that spark that made you want to write your own stories?
It’s Blake 7. Blake 7 was what I wanted to do because I won’t do any spoilers. If you’ve lasted this long without being spoiled for Blake 7, I think it’s quite important not to be spoiled for Blake 7. But Blake 7 has a particularly dramatic ending. I think that’s it. can say that. And then after that, I just I wanted to write more stories. And I started doing stickman cartoons. I can picture these little notebooks, the tiny little notebooks that I would grid up the page.
I do these stickman cartoons. And then from there, I had an older sibling who’s about 10 years older than me, who got into fandom when they were about 18 and went to conventions and things. I started bringing back fanzines, Blake’s have fanzines. So from when I was quite young, were kind of Blake’s have fanzines around the house. So I read a lot of fanfiction before I was a teenager, yeah.
And that’s so I mean, this was just a thing that happened. So I was writing fan fiction very early on. And then in the usual way, kind of discovered fandom and the place of there was a very active local group in the Northwest where I was growing up. I was growing up in St. Helens. So there were people in like Liverpool and Southport and all around. And I got involved with them. And then and then the incident happened kind of a bit later than that.
So yeah, a fan scene to the fan fiction from very early on.
Kathleen/Mads (04:42.966)
I think that’s amazing because you know, you’ve gone from fan, mean, fan fiction gave you your kind of entrance into publishing, didn’t it?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because after that, I started watching Deep Space Nine. And there’s a little story behind that. I don’t know if you can tell that. But again, that’s a show with quite a dramatic ending, particularly if you’re interested, like I am in Cardassia. And again, I had to cope with the trauma of that by writing reams and reams of fiction. Oh, I’ve been hoping this dreadful thing that I’ve just watched on screen.
But by then, of course, the internet was up and running. So I posted all this stuff online under my own name, which most people didn’t do, but I was very naive. And well, I’ve written it. I quite like it. I’ll just put my whole name, not even like, you know, just my first name or something, which meant that the guy was at Pocket Books, the editor at the time, Marco Palmieri, found it very easy to track me down.
And he invited me to pitch. They were doing a 10th anniversary, think, Deep Space Nine anthology. So he invited me to pitch. And then from that, he liked the short story I did and asked me to pitch a couple of novel ideas. And yeah, they became my first books. It was all by accident. Wow.
Thanks.
Kathleen/Mads (06:15.648)
Are there any accidents?
Well, a lucky sort of, what’s the word I’m looking for, a lucky sort of, all things happening all at once, all came together at once, because he was commissioning. I’d been writing for a while, so I was, I wasn’t rubbish anymore. I was kind of editable and he was sort of happy to take me on. But yeah, everything came together.
All right. And like, so was that first book, was that Enigma Tales by any chance?
No, that’s quite… No, no, the first book was… So I did a little short story called Face Value, which was in that anthology, Prophecy and Change. And then I did a novella called… Hang on a minute. It’s called The Lotus Flower. And that’s in… They were doing a lovely series of books which are called Worlds of DS and I. They were like those… You know those old fashioned books like Dore used to do where you would have two novellas in one book? They did three of those, yeah. And I did the Cardassia one.
called Lotus Flower. And then on the back of those, did a novel called, a Deep Space Nine novel called Hollow Men, which is a follow-up to my favorite episode of Star Trek, which is of course the one where Garrick corrupts Cisco in the public. So I did a sort of follow-up to that one. That was my first full-length book. Although I had written a full-length fan fiction about Faramir and Eowyn from Lord of the Rings, so I’d already written a novel.
Cal (07:35.618)
Thank
Una (07:49.132)
Yeah, but but but not one the Tolkien estate would let me make money from sadly. It’s online, still online, my fan fiction pen name is Altariel, which aficionados will know is Galadriel’s quenya name.
I’d be very interested in reading that.
Una (08:13.58)
Very good. And it’s all on AO3. I’ve got an absolute ton of Lord of the Rings, Faramir and Eowyn related. Just help yourself. It’s called A Game of Chess. It’s 70,000 words long. yeah, I love me Tolkien fan fiction.
my, I know what I’m doing tonight.
Cal (08:37.548)
So, see when you’re writing for these franchises, do you get to pick where you go or do the states come along and say, we want you to make a book about this for us? But how much freedom do you actually get with it?
So often there’s a steer or often, so with the Star Trek books, think for a long while, until the shows came back quite recently, the novels had turned into this massive kind of, it’s known as beta canon. You’ve got about 20 years worth of books from, I don’t know, enterprise ending to discovery coming back. And this massive sort of convoluted,
storyline had emerged. So to some extent you were kind of finding gaps in that and I found a massive gap which I kind of I got my little flag and planted it in and I’m mostly kind of here I am doing Cardassia right. You come near here you’re talking to me and my friend Gareth so we all had our own sort of places that we kind of played and I really sort of part my territory there, made my territory there.
So, and because it was, because the shows were off air, we’ve really got to do anything we wanted. It was like when Doctor Who went off air back in the eighties, there was a series of books called The New Adventures. Because nobody was making the show, you know, it’s, get really experimental, they, you know, they get a bit darker, get a bit more adult, the smalls.
sex and drugs and rock and roll and all these kinds of things. Loads of people get their sort of novel start. People like Paul Cornell writes The New Adventures, Beda Rojovich, think Russell T. Davis does one. So I stupidly did not pitch one at the time, imagine that timeline. Brilliant writers like Kate Orman, people like that. So they’re a lot more experimental and exactly the same happens with Star Trek. The studio isn’t really
Una (10:45.4)
looking at it and we just kind of were, well, this is great. Let’s do what we like. So huge storylines and, you know, big backstories and everything. And then they brought the show back. We had to just finish it all up.
Did you feel that what you were doing was not considered canon? when the show came back on air, you were like, damn, we went too far. Now we have to bring it back.
It was really sort of, well, you know, kind of, you pay your money, you take your chances. We’d had an absolute field day. So because it had gone on so long, what happened with Star Wars, for example, is they just shut it down. Yeah, they just, that’s it. No more. These storylines all ended partway through. But what they were able to do with the Star Trek books is three of the writers who’d been writing for ages longer than I had.
they kind of said, let’s do a trilogy to kind of wrap up all the storylines. it did get wrapped up. I didn’t get to wrap up my Cardassia story, sadly. I wrapped up some of them in a book that was actually a Star Trek Picard book called Second Self. I wrapped up some of the stories there. Not quite, because it’s very different. But at least something got wrapped up. Because they really had built it. It was a small, but it was a dedicated readership.
And I think that people had had that experience of the Star Wars books just ending. So there was some kind of sense of, you know, this this finishing off, which was great. think everyone they are a good example of kind of where these books were. You’ve got all that you’ve got the publishing house, it licensed them who are gallery books in this case. And then the studio who are who doing all the kind of obviously are doing all the script writing for the TV series.
Una (12:39.468)
So we did get to finish them off. And the Voyager series finished as well. Kirsten Byer, who now writes for the show, writes for Strange New Worlds, and was a co-creator on Picard. She had been doing this series of books based on Voyager and was able to wrap them up. So the series managed to finish in some ways, but I didn’t get to quite do everything.
I should have, we all just thought, you know, we’ve been doing this for 20 years, it’s going to go on forever, but a franchise always has life in it.
I was going to ask, you you mentioned that, you know, your other writer that now works, writes for Strange New Worlds. Has any TV series been inspired by one of the stories you’ve written or?
No, I’ve seen tiny little things pop up. there’s little bits of, there was a little throwaway line. It’s really tiny, really throwaway line in an episode of Picard about some trees on Cardassia, the Ithian trees. I thought, hang on a minute. I recognize that. And then you go, now, was it me or was it Andy Robinson or was it in the show? No, that one was me.
But then the big thing for me that came out of the books was the name that they gave to number one. So in the books she’s named Una and that gets into the show. She was named Una after me. there you go. Every time Anson Mount says my name I go, thank you Anson, that’s me.
Kathleen/Mads (14:22.828)
That’s your legacy.
is.
There’s much worse people you could have seen your name than Anson Mount.
Exactly that. I’ll cope with that.
I’ve just got to ask, sorry, this is going to be very specific to Deep Space Nine. Which came first? Was it Enigma Tales or was it Andy Robinson’s A Stitch in Time?
Una (14:48.832)
a stitch in time, absolutely. That’s the kind of granddaddy. Yeah.
Okay, so you based a lot of your garrick stuff off what he wrote there. Yeah, because that was
Absolutely. So he sort of does this map of the capital city and I kind of expand on that and you know, but kind of world built within that. So yeah, Stitching Time was sort of a, yeah, that came out not long after, well, it was probably about two, I can’t remember now, about 2002 or something like that. So then I think, yeah, my books aren’t until about 2005. So that space is, there’s the map in that of
the capital and I kind of set a loss of it in that.
Mads can bring you back in. Sorry I interrupted you.
Kathleen/Mads (15:33.774)
No, no, sorry. I was curious about your experience on Doctor Who because it’s like all those new iterations of the Doctor and stuff. How did you get involved in that?
So the show had come back and I’d done some Star Trek books. I’d done quite a few Star Trek books by then. because, like I said, Star Trek wasn’t on air, I thought, can’t go on forever. So I’m feeling more confident now. I knew that the Doctor was just about to be recast. David Tennant was sort of coming to the end of his, what do we call it, tenure, reign. Something like that. Yeah, I’m not quite sure what it is.
You’re a tenant. That cool. Quite pleased with that. Yeah, so I thought, OK, they’re probably going to be doing some new books because they always turn them in. They will hopefully be looking for new authors or be interested. So let’s, and I very rarely do this. I’m hopeless at going out there and pitching and pushing myself forward. But I thought, I’ve got a tax bill or something, know.
get some work in. had a job at the time, I was doing loads of other stuff, was kind of teaching other stuff at the time then. So I I would like some rising wood, I’d really like to do some Doctor Who. So I knew that the books were being sort of commissioned and edited at the time, was a guy called Justin Richards, who I sort of, he was like a friend of a friend, because it’s a small world these things, think, if you’ve done a little bit of work here, and I’d written a bit for DWM. But I didn’t know how to get in touch with him, so I pretty much
wrote a letter, wrote a letter saying, my name’s Ina Makoma, this is my publishing history, here’s my kind of Doctor Who chops and experience. And then I didn’t really know where to send it. So I pretty much wrote Justin Richards Care of the BBC or something like that. So put a stamp on it. And long story short, he’d heard of me. And more importantly, the guy who was kind of at BBC Wales at Bad Wolf at the time.
Una (17:43.054)
who was in charge of kind of commissioning authors was a guy called Gary Russell. And Gary and I went back years. He’d been editor at DWM and I’ve been a little bit involved with sort of Doctor Who circles round about then. So we had met and he recognized my name and I think had seen some of my Star Trek stuff. So again, it was just a case of everything coming together at the right time. It was a move to a new doctor.
I think they were looking for new voices. I’d done some TV time works. The big stuff for TV time work is that your deadlines are insane and they need to know you can deliver. And then the people that my letter arrived at, I was kind of a known quantity to them. So again, lots of luck and a little bit of prior experience and all these things. And that was my route in. Gary got me my first big finish commission as well, which was on.
Gallifrey as I recall. So sometimes it’s just the right people at the right moments or you being at the right stage and that was my in at Topsohoo and that was a Matt Smith book. What was it called? It’s called the, what was it? It’s called The King’s Dragon, that’s it. Go on, say forget my, well what have I written?
So were you as familiar with Doctor Who and the genre as you were with Star Trek or?
yeah absolutely yeah completely yeah yeah yeah I mean we have a full-size Dalek in this house so that’s the yeah.
Kathleen/Mads (19:23.36)
Houses have Daleks, I hear.
Yeah, exactly. Many of them, there’s quite a lot of Doctor Who stuff around here. So I would say Doctor Who was more what my other half was interested in. He’s not very interested in Star Trek, poor man. He’s sat through an awful lot of it. And he’s more the Doctor Who fan, I would say. Not massive. I mean, apart from the full-size Dalek, we’re not huge collectors of Doctor Who stuff.
But so, you everyone’s got one weakness. But I know, I knew Doctor Who extremely well. I’ve been watching it since I was, well, it was the first thing I remember, Planet of Spiders. So I vaguely remember kind of John Pertwee. I was a little bit young for the rest of it. yeah, so, you know, I’d watched it like any kid in the 70s and 80s, I’d watched it. I’d sat in the library and read a shelf of Terence Dick’s novels, all of that. So it’s as much my kind of milieu.
But I would, I’m not as, I was a bit embarrassed when I do Doctor Who stuff, because, you know, everybody else, they’re just, they can like name all the heart, the left, so titles, that kind of thing. I couldn’t do, do Blake seven, but Doctor Who, not so much. But I would say I have, if you stop the average person in the street, I would say I would have a kind of top one percentile. Doctor Who knowledge. If you did that at Doctor Who convention, I might be a little bit lower down, but yeah.
So Doctor Who I knew as well. In fact, I’ve probably seen more Doctor Who. It’s only recently that I’ve kind of chased up watching things like Enterprise sort of to the end. but I think on balance, there’s probably a lot more Star Trek, isn’t there? I don’t know, actually. feels like there’s
Cal (21:06.19)
Yeah, there is. One thing is the other franchise you’ve always been attached to is Firefly. that’s different because that is so limited compared to the other two main ones. So did that present a different challenge when you’ve only got 12 episodes if I’m remembering right, of Firefly?
12 or 13, yeah, one film. There’s quite a few sort of comic books as well that do some of the stuff that I think would have been, because it was meant to run to five seasons, wasn’t it? a quite decent lengthwise. Don’t remind us! I know, sorry!
I can see the pain is still real, isn’t it?
But in many ways, I sort of feel like we it’s perfect in our minds, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s only ever all that brilliant stuff. So it’s how I kind of console myself. So some of the of the comic books, I think, go into some of the stories that would have would have got told. They kind of tell on from.
Yeah, it didn’t have to go bad, I agree.
Speaker 4 (21:57.965)
Now!
Una (22:16.418)
from the end of Serenity, actually. And then you get back story of characters like, look. So I kind of, I can’t remember now why I did this, whether it was specific to the brief. But I limited my books to things that could have happened in the run of the show. So I put them there, partly because I thought, I think there’s just, so my favorite character is Simon Tam. And I just think there’s a lot of,
There’s a lot of joy out of Simon Tam having a really rubbish time. You know, Simon just being absolutely hopeless, being a pirate when he’s like this hot shot doctor, he’s just rubbish at the world that he’s found, River is better at the world that they’re living in now.
And I get a lot of fun out of writing that. A lot of sympathy for him as well, poor guy, because he’s literally turned his life over for River. So I think both of my books, I think, are pretty sure are set during the run of the show. So that really was the only constraint. I can’t remember now whether that was published or directed. I suspect it might have been. But I can’t quite remember now. And then I think the only really tricky thing with Firefly.
The really tricky thing with Firefly, this is easier if you’re doing a novel actually, is there are heck of a lot of characters. Yeah. That main cast is huge. There’s thousands of them. you’re kind of, what can I do? So I think novels work with that. Because what you have to do in Doctor Who is literally the first thing you do is separate the Doctor and the companion. Yeah. That’s fine. Yeah. Because then you’ve got the Doctor with a new companion.
and you’ve got the companion exploring the setting of the world that you’re in. But if you write a Firefly book, you’re kind of going, right, I’ve got, there must be about nine, I reckon. So you’re immediately going, all right, I’m into at least three separate plot strands here. And which is fine, because if you’ve got a novel of about 90,000 words, how they did that on screen.
Una (24:27.406)
I don’t know. And I think there are episodes where they go, Inara has gone off for the day, you know. It’s like knocking Nyssa on the head at the start, where they’ve got all those people in the TARDIS during the Davison era. Quick, we’ve got a, I don’t know, drug Nyssa or Teagan’s having a sleep or something. Go see her uncle, yeah.
It’s always a challenge with a choral book or film. It’s like how do you make them progress more or less all at the same time? So none of them feel completely left out like, this guy is still the same in episode nine as he was in episode one, whereas the other ones have gone so far.
on a journey or whatever. Yes. And when you’re doing these books in the run of the show, I’ve literally got to put them back. So if it’s something between, I don’t know, heart of gold and objects in space or whatever, they’ve got to they’ve got to slot back in. Yeah. So, so I think the, and then the other thing, and because there’s, this is quite fun about it, because there’s so few episodes, you go, well, actually, that nine people gives you a lot of combinations. Yeah. A lot, a lot of which we didn’t get to go see on screen.
So let’s put Jane, Wash and River together, because that’s not really a kind of, yeah. Exactly that. And then I’m getting old now, so I’m absolutely banking on her name. Mal’s, Zoe, Zoe and Book I put together as kind of pairing. And I think particularly where it’s where it’s at the stage in Book’s life where he’s kind of going, well, you
Unusual slap-up party.
Una (26:06.774)
I was basically an operative, but I’d rather you didn’t know that. And Zoe’s going, I could tell someone who can handle a gun. Yeah, so that’s the kind of dynamic you have with those. So I think a lot of what you’re doing is, and then obviously, because you’re telling a story, you’ve got to pair at least one of them with an original character from the setting that you’re in. So you’ve got to accommodate that. But as long as you’re doing that, think I send Jane, Wash and River go off and they go to a casino.
and break the bank there. you’ve, and James got this really good tuxedo that he actually, it’s kind of vintage, but he looks really good in it, you know, because he would scrub up quite well. So, so you can get lots of fun, think. And nine characters is quite a lot that if you think of like rolling the dice and going, you know, like a one-armed bandit, right, who’s going to come up as this kind of guy?
There’s quite a lot of communism, get a lot of fun of it, and lot of Firefly, you get lot of words on the page just from those people wisecracking at each other. And that’s a real pleasure of it. So I had a bit of a ball with those, I have to say. They were just fun to do. Yeah. It’s a great show, isn’t it? yeah.
Benter in space. It’s basically like that.
sadly no yeah it’s quips in space yeah
Kathleen/Mads (27:29.282)
Exactly. I think I need to watch the entire series again. And then read your box.
Oh bless you. Well I hope they sound like them. my 11 year old is not quite old enough for it but we’ll get this in because some of it’s quite violent, things like war stories but we have just got through the hold of Babylon 5. They are addicted. This is their first major fandom actually. The writing fan fiction.
It’s more.
Una (28:03.438)
And I feel a bit bad because of course not only are none of their friends remote, never even heard of this show, but their parents are too young as well so like, saddled them with this 90s fandom which they’re a bit bitter about. So I’m gonna have to write some stories for them I think.
It’s just so interesting because writing those kind of fan fiction, if that’s inspired them to write, isn’t that really and stupidly, I’ve never thought of it before, how to encourage young people to write around the stuff they love.
What you love and what matters to you, what you want more of and if it’s their favourite TV show, then go for it. If it’s their favourite K-pop band, just go for it. Put some stories, yeah. Post online responsibly and not under the age of 30. That’s a separate story, but just right. If it’s Blake’s and Stickman cartoons, it’s still, yeah, it’s telling a story and writing about…
characters that you care about. very much.
There are so many bridges right now, feel, between publishing fan fiction and being published in the official publishing world. mean, we’ve seen it time and again, people just getting their clothes on characters that already exist, and they get noticed, and they get published, and they actually get to invent a whole world of their own. But they have gotten that because they pretty much went to, I don’t know,
Kathleen/Mads (29:43.968)
unofficial writing school on AO3 and feedback and feedback and feedback because like things can be very raw and like unedited on AO3 and things are just like amazingly chiseled and like you really have like a range of talents there.
Get it,
Una (30:03.022)
Absolutely. I’m reading it. I don’t read as much as I used to just because of time in the day more than anything else. But a friend of mine, I follow some friends who still writing, sort of talking stuff. And one of them is doing an amazing story at the moment, is because the way the wonderful way that fan fiction works, we take the characters from Lord of the Rings and they’re now at the Northern College of Music circa 1990 or something.
Or you’re doing an alternate universe.
Yeah, kind of alternate universe. And not only are the characters great, you’re kind of enjoying the retelling of the story this setting. It is some of the best writing about music and performance that I’ve seen. She’s a great performer, a great musician herself. They’re in an orchestra and they’re rehearsing and it’s the experience of playing the instrument and practicing it and struggling and it’s lovely stuff. And she’s posting her favourite sort of…
performances, each one is kind of themed around a piece she loves. And I can’t think of anything that I would read like that anywhere else. I could go and read a great piece of music journalism, yeah, or I could go back and read Lord of the Rings, but to get that kind of double hit. It’s absolutely unique and she’s great writer as well. But I want to write this story, so that’s what AO3 is for. I love it.
I actually love that AO3 was created by, like co-created by one mass, like big, big name in not fan fiction, in fantasy, not really sci-fi, Naomi Novik, the author of the Temera series. And now she’s doing the Skull of Months series, is amazing. And I love that she got published and it’s all official and respectable, but she’s still got like a foot in the fan fiction world.
Una (31:57.798)
And it was lovely to watch, because when I was sort of in the 80s and into the 90s, it was all pseudonyms and you would never kind of, I I didn’t, I was naive. People didn’t let those two sides of their life kind of, they’re professional, particularly if they were professional women, they didn’t let those two sides of their life mix. And now it’s really, to the extent that did Chloe Zhao, who directed The Eternals, didn’t she pretty much say in an interview,
Oh, yeah, I have like a secret account where I read a load of Eternals fanfiction. Just checking in with the fandom, know, great.
Was there, I mean it’s less now, but was there a snobbery that it just wasn’t like proper writing?
I think there was snobbery, I think very much as well for some writers, if they were writing slash fiction, they didn’t want or if they were writing erotica in any way, there was just no way that you could kind of, have that. If you’re like a lawyer at some, you know, something, you just wouldn’t have those two identities match. I suspect that would probably still be the case now just for writing erotica.
Yeah, but but often I think I’m not sure. At least one of the people involved in AO3, I think she was like a professor of film studies and and in that case, almost being a slash writer is like a pro to your career. It’s like your performance art or something. I think it’s and then you discover that people like Joanna Ross, well, from very
Una (33:47.214)
know we’ve got essays by Joanna Ross very early on about reading Kirk and Spock slash fiction so she wrote and theorized about that very early on but I think for some people it was a kind of clash of professional identities that just wasn’t going to work with the kind of fit that they were writing yeah it’s really interesting but now people are just sort of you know we we all just are much more open about it I think yeah.
think it’s probably on par with, especially with erotica, because a lot of that fiction is exploring the different relationships that didn’t happen or couldn’t happen or didn’t happen enough. In the canon, I feel like, because right now romance and romantasy is definitely on the rise in publishing world. I feel like there is less snobbery towards it. There’s always going to be snobbery from, I don’t know, maybe the book-a-price kind of people.
Yeah.
Kathleen/Mads (34:40.813)
But it actually sells, so I don’t know. I would be very interested to see like maybe 10 or 15 years down the road what we are keeping from that moment right now.
And I think it’s all of these things are broken down just in my lifetime. So just that barrier between literary fiction and science fiction, for example, I don’t think we would be surprised now to see something with a book like Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which is what must be 15, 20 years old now. That was a really big breakthrough book, I think, that it kind of went, look, something can have science fiction elements and be a literary novel. Ishiguro, I think, is obviously really important here.
in mainstream. don’t like his books very much, it gives a kind of literary credibility to it. He’s not the first science fiction writer to win the Nobel. That’s Doris Lessing, of course. But somebody like Urshila Gwyn, I think nobody would say anything about her quality. But then I think within fandoms as well, or within science fiction communities, those hierarchies of, you know, we’ve got the literary science fiction writers.
We’ve got the fan fiction writers. When I was first in front of this something, there was a little graphic called the geek hierarchy. Yeah. And you could kind of, you know, you kind of go down here right down at the bottom with the furries who write erotica about. Whereas we all know that clearly these are the coolest, most sordid people in.
many multiverses, that was the hierarchy. And I had weird reactions when I first started going to the science fiction conventions. People kind of go, when they heard I was a TV tie novelist. I mean, that’s about 15 years ago. And that wouldn’t happen now. That just wouldn’t happen at all. Well, I’d like to think it wouldn’t. So I think those are all broken down, which is all to the good, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a…
Una (36:40.658)
And I think it’s more truthful. think we’re all admitting that we’ve all read a little bit of this. And we’ve tried a little bit of it. even Tolkien writes, it’s all Beowulf fan fiction, isn’t it? And I always found a lot of people say, I don’t read fantasy. I don’t read science fiction. They don’t even know what it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. a kind of very maybe stereotypical.
example, but they didn’t really understand how long it’s going, as you say, bear with, know, folklore, folktales, fairy tales, all that. Exactly that. I don’t, they probably mean I don’t mean a specific kind of thing that I’ve imagined in my mind that science fiction or fantasy is. And you go, well, I don’t read that because either it’s not very good or it doesn’t really exist. Yeah. And then it turns out you do read all this stuff.
and you go well actually have you thought that that might be science fiction or something but yes that was the thing that there’s a book out at the moment called Ministry of Time which I absolutely haven’t seen yet but I’ve got it
So we put it forward because last year’s Ocon was about solo punk and obviously this was falling within the genre of solo.
Yes, and it’s a phenomenal book by Colleen Bradley. And I think she more or less says at the back, you know, I was in lockdown and I was watching a TV show called The Terror. And I started writing some stories on that, you know, and then this is what this book turned into. So I think that that whole barrier of where we get our inspirations from, people are kind of, yeah, you know, I was watching the show, I was inspired by that. And I think it’s just more honest, isn’t it?
Una (38:28.822)
It’s the things we love and want more of. And it’s great. It’s a great book. It’s really good book. Yeah. And at the start of it’s really fan fiction. There’s this whole bits of sort of two people in a room going around a kitchen. It’s like, I’ve read this. I read this on A.O. 3. I love this kind of thing. Let’s have them choosing curtains next, you know. Brilliant. It’s great book.
I like to imagine that it’s going to be like when you read, I don’t know, you go back into Jane Austen and like people who read novels, like just novels are being criticized because it’s like they’re just picturing like gothic novels like with extravagant aero is locked up in towers and they’re like, this is ridiculous. This is not serious literature. And novels is what everybody reads now.
Kathleen/Mads (39:25.898)
The definition of literature just evolves constantly. It’s so interesting to think that right now it’s much more almost crowdsourced with fan fiction because so many more people don’t think themselves as writers are still putting their stories out there on the internet and actually getting good reactions from them. So it must be like a very different time.
Yeah, and I think you read for different reasons at different times. So I might go, you know, if I’m feeling a bit fed up, I’ll go on to AO3 and I’ll go, just give me a really nice story about Faramir and Eowyn making each other feel happy. Just cheering each other up. And it doesn’t have to be terribly well written. You know, it can be very first draft. It’s just got to be emotionally true and felt.
And I don’t mind if it’s like a first draft. It’s just, you you read it and you go, oh, I just feel 1 % better now. I feel better. Yeah. Let me read another and then I shall feel 2 % better. If I keep going, I’ll kind of, it’s like, I don’t know if you love, I’m reading through a series called Murderbot, which I absolutely love. Oh, yes, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. By Martha Wells and the,
Una (40:43.638)
the security unit cyborg in that. All he wants to do is to be, I say he, it’s not specified, but it’s a he on screen. He wants to be left alone to watch his favorite TV shows. So I didn’t say that. Bit of killing, bit of science fiction. That’s kind of what the book is about. They’re wonderful. If you haven’t read them, they’re fabulous. It’s a great show. It’s on Apple TV right now.
Yeah, I started and I can still finish, but I thought, no, I actually want to read the books before I finish the TV. I would actually, yeah, kind of get through the books. aren’t that many, there’s sort of handful of novellas and I think a novel, so you get through them quite quickly. They’re very readable. And then the show is, it’s as close to perfect an adaptation of something as you can believe it. It gives you exactly the right feels, yeah.
Cal (41:37.467)
So I was going to say with your academic work, the feminist science fiction, how does that inform your writing? Because with some of it, you’re working with pre-existing characters. So does it help you maybe explore other ideas? Or maybe perhaps with some of them, you could do a little bit of course correction on some problematic stuff that was presented originally.
So I’ve always tried to do that. when I was starting out, particularly with the Star Trek stuff, it was often as simple as going, do you know what? I think it’d be really nice to have at least one point of view non-male character here. That’s how far back I was starting. And Star Trek books have been better about this. In the past, it’s not true now, actually. That’s pretty much only me at the moment.
How far you were starting?
Una (42:27.138)
But in the past, it was a majority of women writers, people like Diane Dwayne and lots and lots of people. There were a lot of women writers writing Star Trek books. So that’s always been there. And actually, if you go to season three of the original series, incredible number of women writers on that season do really interesting. So I know it’s got this reputation for being not the best season, but you kind of go, actually, I think it’s doing different things.
So Star Trek historically was a lot better, when I came in, because they were commissioning a lot at the time, there quite a lot of women being commissioned, and that dropped off. I was sort of part of that wave of people that was going, well, let’s focus on non-male characters. Let’s tell stories that aren’t just about blowing stuff up, but have a more…
internalized or emotional focus. It’s not just zap zap boom and space. I know this, you know, we all love Star Trek for different reasons. People love the space battles or the hardware and all these kinds of things. It’s not quite my kind of thing. I just don’t do it very well. I’m still not sure what a nacelle is. But I was interested in the emotional intensity and the politics and that side of it. I think that tends to be
associated more with soft science fiction and that tends to be associated more with women or non-binary or queer characters, writers. That tends to be more what’s happening there, that it’s not about imagining a glitzy future, it’s imagining a kind of transformation of society and relationships because they’re so tightly intertwined and that was the kind of thing that I found myself writing.
Most three through Garrick, oddly enough. But I remember there was one book where I kind of went, you know what? sort of iteratively, was going, I’ll have one woman lead. I’ve usually got four point of view credits. Do know what? I’ll have two. Do know what? I’m just going to make everyone in this book female. And maybe Picard will have a walk on. But he’s had a lot of screen time.
Una (44:49.166)
And then, yeah, I think I ended up, I think my happiest moment where I was writing Crusher and Pulaski, having a really good heart to hearts, bitching about Picard, I think. Let’s have them bonding in that way. yeah, yeah, a minimum you want a kind of Bechdel passing, Bechdel test passing thing, but you want the more you start re-centering your stories on different types of character.
You just find yourself telling really different stories because you’ve got to take the reality of people’s lives into account. And then I did a book about Tilly, which was Tilly is a 16 year old at school. that’s like my it awaits my one of my favorites because I thought that it’s just a school story. It’s just a young adult story. There’s no high stakes. She goes on the run. She runs away from school.
And it feels a little bit old fashioned, but it should feel very Starfleet and Star Trek at the same time. And I loved writing that book because I felt that was a kind of story that hadn’t really been told before. It had to be in space. It had to be Star Trek for various reasons, but it felt quite, it felt like a school story as well. I loved telling that story.
And I’m guessing it was easy to write from her point of view because she’s almost like a surrogate for a lot of the fans watching because she is that geeky, awkward person. Thanks. I find it quite easy to write for that reason.
Okay
Una (46:20.274)
I really, yeah, I think we all really identified with Tilly to some degree, don’t we? We’re sort of enthusiastic about things that other people aren’t enthusiastic about. We’ve got very deep knowledge of things that, yeah, we don’t necessarily say the right thing, but we do say the scrupulously accurate thing. And I loved writing her. It’s a great performance. It’s a wonderful performance. It’s a really good character. And I was pleased with the book. I think it came out well. We had a lot of fun.
writing that book and I hope it’s on the page. And just to get insight, a book I would have loved to… if someone had had read that book. yeah, more kind of… There’s not a lot… There’s a lot of young adult fantasy, but I don’t think there’s a lot of young adult science fiction. Just… Every few. It’s It’s still a lot, but it’s still… Yeah, Yeah, just teenagers bucking around on spaceships. Yeah.
You’d have to go back to something like in the sky. Yeah, that’s a good example. But there should be be so much more. Yeah. So much more.
of magic schools, not a lot of flight schools.
Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. And not even flight schools, but, you know, xenolinguistic schools or something. Yes!
Kathleen/Mads (47:41.88)
series is produced by that American Nigerian author, Nnedi Okorafor, blanking on the title. Is it Akata?
there.
I will sublimate.
I think you’re right.
I’m checking it real quick because it is actually a story of a girl that’s been taken to this other planet school where it’s going to be interspecies and everything but it’s fascinating and it’s a very short novel on top of that so she’s going very fast in the story and I remember reading it and being like not used to having such a young character in that setting.
Una (48:16.29)
Yeah.
Una (48:22.822)
Yeah, more of that because there was stuff like that in the 70s. Yes Often the girl characters weren’t fantastic. So you kind of had to you know, pretend you’re one of the boys Because otherwise she was making cups of tea and stuff But yeah, just just that kind of Molly Hunter did a couple, you know, I remember reading a lot of really good science fiction then
There was on-screen notes.
Una (48:49.464)
for girls, yeah, or the girls were in. Yeah, Yeah. So some more of that. That’s what I want. It’s the last. Do you still think it’s important to make space and time to focus on women creators in science fiction and fantasy? So I mean, I’d sort of state it more broadly, I think as diverse as you can make any genre.
is only ever going to be good for the genre. Because it is a genre about opening up your mind and new worlds and new civilizations. if you’re reading science fiction in a kind of closed way, I think you’re kind of missing the point of it. Yeah. We love science fiction. I think it just embraces everything. And sometimes, like I was saying before, you want to read in a closed way because you just want to.
want to relax or you just want to read something that’s consoling you or comforting you or whatever. But if you’re not kind of reading, and it’s true for all sorts of reading, but I think particularly for science fiction, if it’s not going to make you broaden your horizons in some way, it’s sort of missing the point for me. diversity is just, to my mind, is always good. It’s just always good. And that’s how I’d kind of frame it now.
it’s not just about, you know, I’m in my 50s now, I’ve had a very good career, I’ve had a decent career in many ways, I’m much more of an not quite establishment, but I am an established writer. So, but it’s voices younger than me or from different backgrounds or from different life experiences or cultures or whatever. I think those voices should be heard. So reading Deep Wheel Orchadia when it
when it won the book, when it won the Clark. That was phenomenal to read something in in Orcadian. That was just an incredible read. All these things, you never know where it’s going to come from. And it just makes you it stops your own thinking solidifying. And anything that stops the brain solidifying is surely a thing. As a personal project. But I think as much diversity as possible. And that’s got to be followed through. That’s got to be a commitment from commissioners and editors and publishers.
Una (51:15.988)
It’s actually quite hard work, it’s quite easy to default to norms, particularly in big organisations. You’ve got to make an effort. Exactly that, you’ve got to commission and get out there. And also it takes a little bit of… You’ve got to understand that the storytelling as well. Joanna Russ is very good on this, a short… It’s a long essay called How to Suppress Women’s Writing.
And there’s lots of ways that that can happen institutionally, deliberately, all these ways. But one of the most subtle ones is not understanding the mode or the language in which the story is being told. And if you’re bringing a certain mindset about what constitutes good literature, you might be, that’s from within your own worldview. You might be completely missing the cadences or the nuances of something else. Yeah. And that just, you’ve just got to try your best, I think.
That’s my feeling anyway.
Cal (52:17.134)
All right, and just kind of on this topic, so I’m just getting my timeline right. You were writing Doctor Who books before Jodie came along, yeah.
Hmm. Yeah.
You were, as a writer, you probably had in your own head how this first female doctor would be. So how did Jodie compare? I’m just curious to what you probably had in your head.
to write, I came with no preconceptions at all. I think every actor brings something to the doctor and you just don’t know what it’s going to be. I think none of us thought after David Tennant that somebody could be so different and so brilliant and so amazing as Matt Smith. I was just, yeah.
And I think they felt that, he’s just incredible. He’s so good. think he’s one of my very favorites. And think exactly the same with Jodie. She kind of brought this sort of energy and doctorishness. The scripts weren’t always what I could have hoped for. They just weren’t to my taste. didn’t match up. Yeah, there was a mutedness to them and there wasn’t as much rise and fall as I like. And I think having to make some of it during.
Una (53:37.742)
COVID as well must have been phenomenally different. But always, think what she brings on screen is a kind of wonder. There’s an energy, very tender with Yaz and her fam. Bit clueless about what that means, yeah. And not always getting the signals that Yaz is screaming, yeah. But I’m always happy when I see Jodie on screen.
And I just, you know, it just felt lovely seeing a woman in the TARDIS. two of her stories, I think, so the witch finders really take seriously what it would mean for the doctor to be embodied as female. And I think that’s that I thought if they’re going to cast a woman as the doctor, they have to go there. They did. And they did it really well.
And then Demons of the Punch-Arb, I think, starts the work. We kind of get finished off in Dot and Bubble. What does it mean for the Doctor to be in a not-white body? And I think those are, they kind of, because they did those stories, it’s not stunt casting in any way. It’s genuinely thinking through what that would mean. That the Doctor would arrive in certain places and because of the way they look, would have or lose authority in certain ways.
And they genuinely delivered on that with both. think Witch Finders is a phenomenally good and Dot and Bubble, I thought, was knockout. Really good episode. yeah, think they, although it wasn’t always to my taste, I loved that energy that she brought.
Was it in Witch Finders when she said, people always listen to me when I was a man?
Una (55:29.016)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she has no, and she has no power in this situation. She’s only and can only ever be suspect. She can only ever be a witch. Yeah. Whereas any other doctor would have walked into that. It would have been completely different. Different. Yeah.
But it’s true that Doctor Who provides the perfect setting for experimenting with all of those different voices, because it’s a doctor that regenerates into possibly whatever. And yet for 12 or 13 doctors, turned out to be a white man. And it was like, how did nobody like, like clock that in? Somehow they were like on the same lane forever. So they made great episodes. at the same time, was like,
around
Una (56:07.746)
Yeah.
Kathleen/Mads (56:14.402)
How did nobody think that there was like this untapped story reservoir just by making that doctor a woman, a black person, maybe just like a different body shape, anything.
Yeah.
Una (56:29.87)
I think when your diversity is we’ve two guys whose surname is Baker then you kind of need to open this pool up at the moment. It’s in the papers today about Helen Mirren saying that, was it Helen Mirren saying that she doesn’t think that James Bond could be a woman? And I kind of see where she’s getting, there’s so much about Bond is the strutting and the misogyny and the way that Bond
does or doesn’t relate to women. And at the same time, you go, you probably could. It would mean a radical change in a certain aspect of the sex bond. Anything’s possible. But I kind of see where she’s coming from, that that’s such a part of bond. In a way that you wouldn’t think with Sherlock Holmes, you could easily do Sherlock Holmes as a woman. That wouldn’t be a problem. And Victorian as well, I reckon you could get away with it, I think.
Una (57:29.386)
Yeah, sorry, was thinking it could be a female James Bond. just think Michelle Yeoh could do anything. She can do anything. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, she could do it. That’s true. Sorry, Matt.
anything.
Kathleen/Mads (57:46.37)
No, sorry, it’s actually an interesting point about James Bond because you always wonder whether it’s better to leave the existing franchises that will be always male, cis, white characters. Do you leave them alone and do you try to create diversity in a whole new category of stories? Or do you try to diversify the existing ones that you know have sparked interest in a lot of people already?
Obviously, you’re always going to be running the risk of like, and you’re some fandom because you’re touching to the very essence of those characters. is it like, is the best strategy to just like see that different stories to try to impose different stories all together and hope that they work and that they actually find an audience? Or is it to try to diversify existing canons and just like, for the best like they are doing with Doctor Who or James Bond?
thing.
Una (58:45.07)
Yeah, yeah. No, it would be interesting to see what they do. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Yeah. And I guess that’s what contemporary franchises let you do, isn’t it? You can kind of think how big the Marvel universe is now and the kinds of stories that you can tell. Or the Star Wars universe. Actually, I watched the Acolyte recently. And I know it got pasting from certain quarters. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I would have watched several seasons of that.
I’m used to do both.
Una (59:13.964)
And I really like to echo as well. I haven’t I liked much of I mean, yeah. What a what a character. Yeah. Yeah. Act to get to play. it’s all brilliant. And I’m not a big fan of that kind of that kind of cluster of daredevil and Jessica Jones. Yeah, it is. It’s violence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So but we’ve got to like I said before, you’ve got to commit to you’ve got to commit to commissioning.
and casting and writing those stories. And I wonder the extent to which studios are these days. We’ll see. We’ll see. Hope so.
That’s basically what they did with Discovery, also, to try. Because it’s meant to be infinite diversity and it’s always just been predominantly a crew of white people. And in that, a lot of the times you didn’t even notice it, but there wasn’t any straight white men on the deck, on the bridge of that ship at
Yeah, and the opening scene where you’ve got Burnham and Georgiou, it’s like 10 minutes of non-white women. It’s incredible. It’s like, this is new. Yeah, this is completely different. And like you say, you don’t notice. And that’s the point. It’s delivering on that future, I think. Where you stop looking. Yeah. It’s just not something you do cognitively.
notice how it should be. I think DS9 does a pretty good job. of, you know, it centres an African American family and that experience as well. think that’s front and centre and really quite, that’s quite something in the 90s as well. I don’t think you would have seen that in American television very much. So props to DS9 I think for sort of trying well.
Cal (01:01:06.52)
because that famous interview that Nana Visitor did, remember when she originally got the script for Kira and she said, they’ve sent me the wrong script, this character’s too well developed for a woman. Usually, you say, I’m just usually a wife or a lover, but they’ve given me this fully fleshed out character. Because I know Kira’s hailed quite a lot for the depth of that character.
This is it.
Una (01:01:30.796)
Yeah, she’s a wonderful character. I don’t think I’ve appreciated getting to do right here in the books as much as I should have done. I should have done more here, think, but was flipping Garrick. Yeah, distracting me.
Yeah.
Cal (01:01:49.774)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I play the Star Trek role playing game and they’ve asked, can we do Deep Space Nine? I just said no, because everyone’s going to fight over who gets to play Garak.
And you have to leave Garrett just as a random element. Just have that like, I don’t know how you would do that in real thinking, but you just roll dices to kind of get Garrett’s reaction.
Sorry, we’re coming up on time, so just the one thing we haven’t touched on is your work for Big Finish Audio. So, is that completely different writing you have to do there?
Yes, it is. think so. A lot of what I love and have always loved has been writing dialogue. So, you know, my very earliest stories were just just people talking to each other because I loved writing TV. Yeah. Or writing characters from TV. The kind of TV. Yeah. That I watched as a kid is often two people in a room, three people in a room. So to some extent, I love writing dialogue. I love writing people’s voice. I love writing people talk to each other. It leans into that.
But it is different with audio in that you, you it’s hard not to go, look, doctor, a massive mountain. Is that an avalanche? You know, you’ve got to, it’s quite easy to write audio quite badly, I think. And you’ve got to work out the strategies for not doing that. And partially that sound direction.
Cal (01:03:17.014)
Right,
Una (01:03:26.924)
But I think as I’ve got more, as I’ve done it more, I’ve got more confident, more experienced in thinking, well, actually, what can I make this soundscape do? How can that be a part of the texture, not just the texture and the storytelling, but part of the point of it? So I hope I’ve got a little bit more. I still don’t feel I’ve entirely cracked it. I find novel writing much more instinctive, but I with audio.
There are some audio rights out there that think, yeah, you’ve just, completely understand what it is that audio can do. And the first ones I did, I made stupid, technical mistakes. Like I would have five voices and then you get to the studio and there’s only four recording booths. And you go, right. Okay. So can’t have five people recording all at once, you know, or all these kinds of little mistakes that you might make. I think you technically in a novel, really can.
to whoever or whatever you want. It’s just prose. But when you start to do audio, you learn that there are technical constraints to what can be done in a recording studio. And television and film are that like ripped 1,000 times. What can we actually do within budget and on time and all of these? But mostly, I’ve loved audio. Because how else am I going to have had scripts done with lines delivered by David Warner or?
Derek Jacobi for God’s sake. It’s insane, isn’t it? I’m just some mug from Merseyside and Derek Jacobi’s delivering your lines. How did that happen? yeah, Dr Who. That’s how it happened. and Big Finish is always just enormous fun. And to get to go, yeah, Star Cops. I’ve got to do a Star Cops and all these sorts of things. If they just do a Babylon 5 range, we could kind of…
Yes, it can happen. It might happen one day. But yeah, Big Finish is something very special. think we all enjoy doing it. And the best thing I have to say, the best thing is going to the studio and the lunches are always very good. And actually, the nicest thing about Big Finish has been watching
Una (01:05:46.24)
a talent like someone like Scott Hancock, who was when I first met him as a very young script editor and audio producer and went on to a really good career on the radio and in theatre and is now script editor on Doctor Who. And to see people kind of go from that early stage. And it’s really kind of lured, nurtured talent as well, think. So props to them. Yeah.
Okay, I think we’ll start to wrap up. So Mads and Kathleen, if you’ve got a final question.
Actually, because these are well-established fandoms and I was curious as to what was exciting to you right now in not necessarily female, but at least feminist or like more contemporary sci-fi. What’s picking your interests these days in what’s being published or made right now?
Oh, wow. That’s one of those questions where people say, and what books have you read? you go, I’ve never read a book. So I think I’ve already said I’m really loving Murderbot. Oh, yeah. I just think they’re absolutely great. I’m a bit late to the party on Murderbot, but I think that would be my. It’s so clever. It’s one of those things where you open it, you go.
Exactly, I don’t know what it is.
Kathleen/Mads (01:07:01.934)
Okay.
Una (01:07:13.324)
This is so simple and so clever and so well done. And you’re just incredibly pleased for the writer who’s been a mainstay of science fiction and fantasy writing for a good few decades. And you go, you’ve got your big hit. You absolutely deserve this. So I’d say Murderbot. And then every year, I always try and read the Clark Shortlist, Clark Award Shortlist.
and there’s always something worth reading on there. I mean they’re always worth reading. So I love this year, I loved Ministry of Time by Colleen Bradley. then, Extremeophile I really liked as well. It’s a little bit, I found it a little bit uneven. There was so much invention going on, but almost on every page there was something that we go, that’s really inventive.
And again, it had this energy that I loved and some really powerful, some of the characters as a genetically engineered character that has a really desperate story, really moving. So every year on the Clarke Award, I would say there’s something that’s worth more than what everything’s always worth reading. it was those are, think, my favorites this year. And then.
And then I can’t remember any other books. Literally got stacks of books. I’m often rereading stuff, maybe essays I’m doing. I’ve just reread Tombs of Atuan by Le Guin. I’ve just done an essay, there’s a book coming out of her maps. Yeah, yeah, very exciting. So reprints of her maps from across her books.
I’ve written an essay on the labyrinth. that’s coming. And then I’m always really excited about what we’re doing at Gold SF. So we’ve got some great stuff there. So everyone should have a look at Gold SF, which is our feminist science fiction imprint. yeah, got some great stuff there.
Cal (01:09:27.854)
Okay, Kathleen, final question.
It’s a speculative fiction question. I was looking on your website and you’ve done talks or podcasts or interviews on Tolkien, I know, but Noel Streatfield, George Heyer as well. So when you’re not reading fantasy and science fiction, do you have any kind of favourite authors? my goodness.
No
Una (01:09:58.284)
Well, those I’ve done. I’ve recently there’s a podcast called backlisted, which has been running for about 10 years now. And I’ve recently taken over co-hosting backlisted. And backlisted is absolutely mad because it’s a new book every two weeks. Yeah. And it’s it’s like being an undergraduate again. It’s like I’ve got to read intensively. Yeah. Just an unbelievable amount of stuff for about a week and a half.
talk knowledgably for an hour, like my tutorials, and they completely forget it. So, the one we’ve got, the one that will be out tomorrow morning is one actually that people who read speculative fiction might enjoy. It’s a novel called The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, who was a surrealist artist. The Hearing Trumpet is a kind of mad, surreal fantasy about a very old lady in her 90s.
whose mum is still alive, hilariously, who gets given this hearing trumpet by her friend. And that’s when she realises her family are planning to pack her off to an old folks home. So she, with hilarious consequences. So it’s an amazing book. Leonora Carradine, I can’t even touch the surface of her. She’s a major surrealist artist. So we’ve just done that one. But then, what other things, some authors I’ve done.
for Batlist did that I love somebody like Anita Bruckner, Georgia Heyer I love, children’s writing I love, Noel Streetfield. I mean, we’ve read William Golding, what have we done in the past few weeks? We’ve done Alan Moore, the ballad of Halo Jones, the Manchester playwright Sheila Delaney from the late 50s, early 60s. Who decides what you read? Because that’s the most
diverse collection. know. Well, so we take the lead. The other host, my friend Andy Miller, who’s been on the podcast since the start, I think he knows what a backlisted book is. And often it’s, who do we think would be a good guest and suit the podcast? And what’s the thing that they would like to do? So a couple of the recent guests were
Una (01:12:25.858)
people who hadn’t been on before and we said, what would you like to do? And they brought Alan Moore and Leonora Carrington. And sometimes we go, here’s a book we really want to do. And there’s someone who’s been on the show before. So we did one on a book called Angel by Elizabeth Taylor. Not that Elizabeth Taylor. That’s very old friend of the show, Andrew Mail.
had wanted to do that book for ages, so we just did that one. I didn’t do stupid amounts of reading for that. I read about five of her books and a biography and possibly some other stuff. So that was quite low-key, that one. But really incredibly eclectic. And I think Andy’s taste in particular will often lead to kind of like 60s and more into music.
So it’s, we just sort of, it’s called, the subtitle is breathing new life into old books. So yeah, a lot of Virago often appears on there and a lot of that kind of stuff. But yeah, it is very eclectic. But I’ll just, I really will read anything. Yeah, more or less anything. I will read it. I’ll read anything once and then I’ll throw your picket on it and I’ll know where to read it again. Yeah. No, no, thank you. I must just say.
before we read up, I must have ordered about five books while I’m sitting here listening. Sorry, I do assign homework. That’s bit notorious for that, I’m afraid. My writers last week at the retreat, they all went away with a list of stuff. It’s very nice. I don’t have to read it.
Thank you so much.
Cal (01:14:21.516)
All right, I suppose my final question is the question asked of all our guests. Would you consider coming up to visit us in Stornoway?
Oh god, absolutely love to. I mean, it really has been a kind of, I’ve longed to go up there and never really, I found the excuse to kind of go up. I would love to, absolutely love to. So yes. No shadow of a doubt. You struggle to get me to leave actually, but I’d love to come up.
There we go, can have all caught every day of the year then.
Thank you.
Even better, from the quiz that happens before Ocon.
Una (01:15:09.966)
I’m terrible at puzzles. I’m terrible at puzzles. I’m good at kind of like house of games, connected stuff. Memory, hopeless, absolutely hopeless. So I’d be a liability, but I enjoy it. I enjoy being bad at them.
Yeah, I’ve got a few.
We all are, we all are.
Cal (01:15:31.554)
Well, and just one, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you after the show, if they want to get in touch?
So find my website which has bits of blog on. I’ve got newsletter, bit intermittent. I’m quite active on Blue Sky, but all of these things are just under my name, is unimacormac.co.uk or else on Blue Sky, very straightforward at Unimacormac. And that’s largely where I am now.
Well, thank you very much for coming along and thanks to my wonderful co-hosts. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, Mads.
It was great to be here. Thank you.
Okay, all right, and we’ll see you all in the next show.
Una (01:16:12.438)
Lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you guys. It’s really good fun. Thank you.
Yes.
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