Ben Aaronovitch | |
---|---|
Born | Ben Dylan Aaronovitch 22 February 1964 Camden, London, England |
Occupation | Author, screenwriter |
Notable works | Rivers of London Remembrance of the Daleks |
Spouse | Marie Fofana (m. 1992) |
Relatives | Sam Aaronovitch (father) Owen Aaronovitch (brother) David Aaronovitch (brother) |
Ben Dylan Aaronovitch (born 22 February 1964) [2] is an English author and screenwriter. He is the author of the series of novels Rivers of London . He also wrote two Doctor Who serials in the late 1980s and spin-off novels from Doctor Who and Blake's 7 .
Born in Camden, [3] Aaronovitch is the son of the economist Sam Aaronovitch who was a senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, [4] and the younger brother of actor Owen Aaronovitch and journalist David Aaronovitch. [5] He attended Holloway School. [6]
Aaronovitch left school with no particular plan. “Instead of going to university I basically faffed about. I had a series of terrible jobs, the kind you get when you have no qualifications.” These included working as a security guard for Securitas, which he says taught him “to understand shoplifting a lot better... So it did come in quite handy later, for work”. [7] During one of the short-term jobs he submitted some scripts to the BBC, which led to him writing Doctor Who stories, and finally, while working at Waterstones, Aaronovitch published his first Rivers of London novel, which rapidly became a word-of-mouth success, enabling him to write full-time. He is passionate about diversity in literature, [8] and in 2020 he founded the Future Worlds Prize, then known as the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award, aimed at opening up science fiction and fantasy publishing to more diverse writers. [9] [10]
In 2023 it was announced that Rivers of London would be adapted for TV as a co-production between Pure Fiction Television, See-Saw Films and Aaronovitch’s own production company, Unnecessary Logo. [11]
Aaronovitch lives in Wimbledon, London. [12]
Aaronovitch wrote two Doctor Who serials, Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) and Battlefield (1989), for BBC television, and also the novelization of the former. [13]
He wrote one episode for Casualty (1990) and was then a regular writer on the science fiction series Jupiter Moon . [14]
He subsequently wrote or co-wrote three Doctor Who spin-off novels in the Virgin Publishing New Adventures range; he created the character Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart who became a semi-regular in the New Adventures. He has also written a novel and several short stories published by Big Finish Productions featuring the character of Bernice Summerfield, who was originally developed in the New Adventures. He also co-wrote a Doctor Who audio drama for Big Finish, and has written a number of Blake's 7 spin-off audio dramas.
In May 1987, Aaronovitch submitted Knight Fall to the Doctor Who production office for Season 25. The story concerned privatization. [15] Script editor Andrew Cartmel liked the story ideas, but felt that the script was inappropriate for the series and had too many supporting characters. [15]
After failing to feature Aaronovitch's Knight Fall storyline to production, Aaronovitch submitted a story in June 1987, entitled Transit . The story would see the Doctor and Ace in the future, land in a metro station, and discover transportation portals that could lead any body throughout the Solar System, but one of the portals leads a gate way to hell. [15] Even though Aaronovitch's scripts of Transit never came to fruition, he would adapt the story as a book for Virgin New Adventures series in December 1992. [15]
During Summer of 1988, Aaronovitch submitted a three-part adventure story for Doctor Who’s 27th Season (which never came to fruition), and was called Bad Destination. The story would feature The Doctor seeing Ace as a captain of a hospital spaceship which is being under attack by the Metatraxi. [16] The story, however, was abandoned when, in September 1989, the BBC cancelled Doctor Who after its 26 Season, due to declining audiences. [15] [16] In July 2011, Big Finish Productions released the story as Earth Aid, by Aaronovitch and Cartmel. [15]
Novelizations:
The short stories below are published in Tales from the Folly:
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of extremely xenophobic mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. They were conceived by writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in casings designed by Raymond Cusick.
Skaro is a fictional planet in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was created by the writer Terry Nation as the home planet of the Daleks.
Remembrance of the Daleks is the first serial of the 25th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The serial was first broadcast in four weekly episodes from 5 to 26 October 1988. It was written by Ben Aaronovitch and directed by Andrew Morgan.
Doctor Who spin-offs refers to material created outside of, but related to, the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
Andrew J. Cartmel is a British script editor, author and journalist. He was the script editor of Doctor Who during the Sylvester McCoy era of the show between 1987 and 1989. He has also worked as a script editor on other television series, as a magazine editor, as a comics writer, as a film studies lecturer, and as a novelist.
Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield, or simply Benny, is a fictional character created by author Paul Cornell as a new companion of the Seventh Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures. The New Adventures were authorised novels carrying on from where the Doctor Who television series had left off, and Summerfield was introduced in Cornell's novel Love and War in 1992.
Susan Foreman is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The granddaughter of the Doctor and original companion of their first incarnation, she was played by actress Carole Ann Ford from 1963 to 1964, in the show's first season and the first two stories of the second season. Ford reprised the role for the feature-length 20th anniversary episode "The Five Doctors" (1983) and the 30th anniversary charity special Dimensions in Time (1993).
The Dalek Invasion of Earth is the second serial of the second season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Terry Nation and directed by Richard Martin, the serial was broadcast on BBC1 in six weekly parts from 21 November to 26 December 1964. In the serial, the First Doctor, his granddaughter Susan Foreman, and teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright discover that the Earth in the 22nd century has been occupied by Daleks. They work with a human resistance group to stop the Daleks from mining out the Earth's core as part of their plan to pilot the planet through space.
BBC Books is an imprint majority-owned and managed by Penguin Random House through its Ebury Publishing division. The minority shareholder is BBC Studios, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The imprint has been active since the 1980s.
Since their first appearance in 1963 there have been a number of variant models of the Daleks, a fictional alien race in the BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who.
Ace is a fictional character played by Sophie Aldred in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A 20th-century Earth teenager from the London suburb of Perivale, she is a companion of the Seventh Doctor and was a regular in the series from 1987 to 1989 and returned in 2022. She is considered one of the Doctor's most popular companions.
Justin Richards is a British writer. He has written science fiction and fantasy novels, including series set in Victorian or early-20th-century London, and also adventure stories set in the present day. He has written many spin-off novels, reference books and audio plays based on the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, and he is Creative Consultant for the BBC Books range of Doctor Who novels.
The New Series Adventures are a series of novels relating to the long-running BBC science fiction television series, Doctor Who. The 'NSAs', as they are often referred to, are published by BBC Books, and are regularly published twice a year. Beginning with the Tenth Doctor, a series of 'Quick Reads' have also been available, published once a year. With exception to the Quick Reads, all of the NSAs have been published in hardcover to begin with, and have been reprinted in paperback for boxed collections that are exclusive to The Book People and Tesco. Some of the reprints amend pictures of the companion of the novel from the cover. Some of the hardback editions have also been reprinted to amend pictures of Rose.
Lungbarrow is an original novel written by Marc Platt and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Published in Virgin Books' New Adventures range, it was the last of that range to feature the Seventh Doctor.
Lee Sullivan is a comic artist who lives and works in the UK.
The twenty-fifth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 5 October 1988. It comprised four separate serials, beginning with Remembrance of the Daleks and ending with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. To mark the 25th anniversary season, producer John Nathan-Turner brought back the Daleks and the Cybermen. The American New Jersey Network also made a special behind-the-scenes documentary called The Making of Doctor Who, which followed the production of the 25th anniversary story Silver Nemesis. Andrew Cartmel script edited the series.
Rivers of London is the first novel in the Rivers of London series by English author Ben Aaronovitch. The novel was released on 10 January 2011 through Gollancz and was well received by critics, earning a Galaxy National Book Awards nomination for Aaronovitch in the New Writer of the Year award. The author Ben Aaronovitch has subsequently written nine books in the Peter Grant Series, plus accompanying novellas, short stories, comics and graphic novels.
The Rivers of London series is a series of urban fantasy novels by English author Ben Aaronovitch, and comics/graphic novels by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, illustrated by Lee Sullivan.