Terry Nation

"This is the first academic study of the science fiction television devised and written by Terry Nation, who wrote Dalek stories and other serials for Doctor Who, and created the BBC's 1970s post-apocalyptic space adventure series Blake's 7".--Back cover.

Widely thought of as the best book Terry Pratchett ever wrote, this is a story of a Nation, a story of a friendship, a story of growing up and the truths we must learn. It is epic in every sense . . . Prepare for the world to be turned upside down . . . For Mau, halfway between boy and man, it happens when a great wave destroys his entire village. For Daphne, it’s when the same wave crashes her ship into the island that was once Mau’s home. Everything they once had is now so far away, lost to distance and time. But when Daphne stops trying to shoot Mau (she did apologise for it), and instead uses a salvaged invitation card to invite him to tea, they discover a new home can be theirs. And then people start arriving on the island – some very good, some very bad. And it’s soon clear that Daphne and Mau must fight for their Nation. Then a discovery is made that will change the entire world forever . . .

A “splendidly entertaining” biography of the British tv writer acclaimed for his invention of a fictional alien race for Doctor Who (Dominic Sandrook, author of State of Emergency—The Way We Were: Britain 1970–1974). The Daleks are one of the most iconic and fearsome creations in television history. Since their first appearance in 1963, they have simultaneously fascinated and terrified generations of children, their instant success ensuring, and sometimes eclipsing, that of Doctor Who. They sprang from the imagination of Terry Nation, a failed stand-up comic who became one of the most prolific writers for television that Britain ever produced. Survivors, his vision of a post-apocalyptic England, so haunted audiences in the Seventies that the BBC revived it over thirty years on, and Blake’s 7, constantly rumored for return, endures as a cult sci-fi classic. But it is for his genocidal pepperpots that Nation is most often remembered, and now, more than 50 years after their creation they continue to top the Saturday-night ratings. Yet while the Daleks brought him notoriety and riches, Nation played a much wider role in British broadcasting’s golden age. He wrote for Spike Milligan, Frankie Howerd and an increasingly troubled Tony Hancock, and as one of the key figures behind the adventure series of the Sixties—including The Avengers, The Saint and The Persuaders!—he turned the pulp classics of his boyhood into a major British export. In The Man Who Invented the Daleks, acclaimed cultural historian Alwyn W. Turner, explores the curious and contested origins of Doctor Who’s greatest villains, and sheds light on a strange world of ambitious young writers, producers and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

Terry Nation was one of the most successful, prolific, and celebrated writers for popular television that Britain ever produced. His late 1970s science fiction seriesSurvivorsandBlake's 7have been durable, cult and critical hits, both being remade 30 years later. His most famous creations, theDaleks, ensured, and at times eclipsed, the success ofDoctor Who. Indeed, almost half a century after their first appearance in 1963, new additions toDalekmythology continue to be made, while the word itself has entered the Oxford English Dictionary, passing into the language as the name of the most famous race of aliens in fiction. While his science fiction work remains at the core of his appeal, Nation also had a role to play in the early days of radio and television comedy—as part of the legendary Associated London Scripts, he wrote for Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, and Frankie Howerd—and in the internationally successful adventure series of the 1960s:The Avengers,The Saint,The Persuaders!, and others. This account of his life and contributions will shed light on a fascinating melting pot of ambitious young writers, producers, and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

This book may well be the most unusual document to come out of the Viet Nam war. It is the moving story of nine American soldiers and pilots who were captured and held prisoner for five years. It could only be told in their own words; and so the author interviewed each of the nine men, and edited and wove their accounts together to form a single, compelling narrative of war and survival. For three years these Americans were held in a Viet Cong jungle prison, where they struggled against starvation- and themselves. They describe the details of their daily existence as the war ebbed and flowed around them: the rats, the terror of American bombing raids, the sickness. Through juxtaposition of their individual stories we see the subtle, destructive tensions that operate on a group of men in such desperate circumstances. Then they marched up the Ho Chi Minh trail to Hanoi, where their physical ordeal gave way to an agonizing moral dilemma. Should they join the "Peace Committee", a group of POW's protesting the war? Or should they resist their captors by all possible means as ordered by the secret American commander of the Hanoi prison? After three years in the jungle on the edge of survival, each man had to answer the questions: Who am I? What do I believe? These nine men form a cross section of the army we sent to Viet Nam. Their words illuminate not only their individual background and experience, but also the meaning of the war for us all.

Survivors of a global plague battle for life on an empty planet. A gripping vision of a post-apocalyptic world... 'A fine piece of British post-apocalyptic fiction' 'Nation's novel is based on his original cult series...and is all the better for it, being far, far more gritty and realistic' SUNDAY SUN A virus has wiped out 95 per cent of the world's population in just a few weeks, leaving the remaining 5 per cent to stay alive in a world devoid of the most basic amenities - electricity, transport and medicine. The few survivors of the human race are forced to fall back on the most primitive skills in order to live and re-establish some semblance of law and order. Abby Grant, widowed by the plague, moves through this new dark age with determination, sustained by hope that her son, who fled his boarding school at the onset, has survived. She knows she must relearn the skills on which civilisation was built. With others, she founds a commune and the group return to the soil. But marauding bands threaten their existence. For Abby, there's a chance for a new life and love when she encounters James Garland, the fourteenth Earl of Woodhouse, who is engaged in a desperate fight to save his ancestral home. But more important, she must find her son.

Following the National Theatre's success with plays based on novels by well-loved children's writers like Philip Pulman (His Dark Materials), Jamila Gavin (Coram Boy) and Michael Morpurgo (War Horse), the National now stages Mark Ravenhill's exhilarating adaptation of Terry Pratchett's witty and challenging adventure story in a major Christmas production for 2009. A parallel world, 1860. Two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other's language; somehow they must learn to survive. As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer. Mau fights cannibal Raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe's fiercely patriarchal gods. Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as they discard old doctrine to forge a new Nation.

The end of the world may be upon us, but it certainly is taking its sweet time playing out. The walkers on The Walking Dead have been "walking" for nearly a decade. There are now dozens of apocalyptic television shows and we use the "end times" to describe everything from domestic politics and international conflict, to the weather and our views of the future. This collection of new essays asks what it means to live in a world inundated with representations of the apocalypse. Focusing on such series as The Walking Dead, The Strain, Battlestar Galactica, Doomsday Preppers, Westworld, The Handmaid's Tale, they explore how the serialization of the end of the world allows for a closer examination of the disintegration of humanity--while it happens. Do these shows prepare us for what is to come? Do they spur us to action? Might they even be causing the apocalypse?