The Ancestor Cell |
Top Ten! In SFX magazine readers’ poll category “Best SF/Fantasy novelisation or
TV tie-in novel 2000”
Bestseller! Featured in the Top 20 sales ranking on amazon.co.uk, and to date is my
biggest-selling novel.
First
published by BBC Worldwide in July 2000 (delayed until April 2001 in US), ISBN:
0-563-53809-0
When
BBC Books editor Steve Cole left BBC Worldwide, he had felt that there were a
variety of “loose ends” in the continuing Eighth Doctor stories that could be
tied up. Steve and I had both written novels as part of the recent story arc
featuring Compassion (I wrote Frontier Worlds
and Steve wrote Parallel 59 with Natalie Dallaire—and I did the
structural edit on Steve’s novel).
We
had both just started new full-time day jobs, and Steve was writing several Doctor
Who audio stories for Big Finish Productions, so we agreed to work on a
book proposal together - almost entirely by e-mail! New BBC Books range
consultant Justin Richards also had clear ideas about how he wanted the series
to develop in the second half of 2000, and briefed us on some things he wanted
resolved in the book. We pitched our revised proposal to Justin and BBC
Worldwide’s Ben Dunn, and it was accepted.
The
book was published in July 2000 in the
You
can read an article from the BBC’s Monthly Telepress. That newsletter also published “tasters” in the
form of Chapter 1
and Chapter 2.
When the book was published, reviews ranged from wild enthusiasm to total outrage.
Steve
Cole and I took part in a unique Q&A about The Ancestor Cell at the
GallifreyOne convention in Los Angeles, February 2001. (More details on the GallifreyOne
web site and mailing list.) If you couldn’t attend that, you can instead read
the Top Ten questions
that people ask me via e-mail, and a short interview I did with Doctor Who
Magazine.
Last revised: 12 December 2003