The Also People

Doctor Who book
The Also People
Series	Virgin New Adventures
Release number	44
Featuring	Seventh Doctor Bernice, Chris, Roz, Kadiatu
Writer	Ben Aaronovitch
Publisher	Virgin Books
ISBN	ISBN 0-426-20456-5
Release date	November 1995
Preceded by	Head Games
Followed by	Shakedown

The Also People is an original novel written by Ben Aaronovitch and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Seventh Doctor, Bernice, Chris, Roz and Kadiatu.

Continuity

Like all Doctor Who spin-off media, its relationship to the ongoing story of the television series is open to interpretation. It does feature cameos (in a dream sequence) by a Dalek, a Cyberman and a Sontaran. (beginning of chapter 10)

The novel features Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart and continues her story from Aaronovitch's earlier novel Transit and Set Piece by Kate Orman.

Each chapter begins with a quote from a fictional song, many of which tie into Doctor Who history, for instance two are from an LP by Johnny Chess, a 1980s pop star established in earlier books as the son of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, and another is a protest song from a 25th century "HvLP" titled All The Way From Heaven by Comes The Trickster, a reference to the setting of Love and War.

The People

The Also People introduce a race of beings known only as "The People", and later used in the Bernice Summerfield Virgin New Adventures. The People are a highly advanced society (for example, they live inside a Dyson Sphere), with abilities rivalling those of the Time Lords; as such, they have been kept in check by the Time Lords to prevent them from learning the nature of time travel. This had led to tense relations between the Time Lords and The People. The People appear to be a combination of biological and artificial beings; they can switch their forms or their minds at will or even as punishment, one day a humanoid person, the next day the intelligence of a spaceship.

Influences

The society of the People has a very close resemblance to the Culture of Iain M. Banks: the "everything is free" moneyless utopia, the built-in ability of the humanoid citizens to change sex and control their reproduction, the origin of the humanoids as a genofixed merger of several humanoid alien species, the floating intelligent machines known as drones, the intelligent ships and their classisifications, the coordination (arguably, quiet rule) of the structure by a single superintelligent computer. The influence has been openly acknowledged by Aaronovitch on the Usenet group rec.arts.sf.written [1]; the book itself contains in the Acknowledgements the line "I'd like to remind everyone that while talent borrows and genius steals, New Adventure writers get it off the back of a lorry, no questions asked."

External links

• The Also People at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Cloister Library - The Also People
• The Also People at The TARDIS Library

Reviews

• The Also People reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The Also People reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• The Whoniverse's review on The Also People

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