So Vile A Sin

Virgin Publishing Decalog 4: Re: Generations A Collection of Short Stories

Editors	Andy Lane and Justin Richards
ISBN	0 426 20505 7
Published	1997

Synopsis:Ten stories - a thousand years - one family. For the first time, we see the complete future history of the Forrester family, chronicling their inexorable rise through the galaxy-spanning Earth's empire.

• Standalone success by Robert Smith?
• A Review by Finn Clark
• The Darkest Dark End of a Dark Line (Darkly) by Graham Pilato

Standalone success by Robert Smith? 20/7/00

This isn't a bad idea for a post DW licence book by Virgin. The Decalogs were always higher sellers than the individual books, with short stories being favoured by casual readers over the more daunting prospect of often heavily-linked novels, which often came with the sort of prerequisite readings that made them more like university courses than light reading.

With Bernice (and Chris and Jason and Braxiatel) being suitably covered in the Benny NAs, that left one major NA companion who was left out (Oblivion aside). The Forrester family had been hinted at on a number of occasions in the NAs, with their proud genetic heritage and a history of investigators that we get here. The various Forresters sometimes bear a resemblance to Roz, sometimes not, but of course that doesn't matter at all. We get to see the family, yes, but we also get a showcase of galactic affairs developing and growing over a millennium and the book succeeds admirably in showing us this aspect.

The NAs had been quite good at filling in the future history for the period covered here. There was a Star Trekkian like consistency to the universe that may have taken away a little from the wonder of the random DW universe, but which provided a solid backdrop to many adventures by a variety of authors.

So, going in, Decalog 4 looks like it should be able to build on the success of the NAs. And it does, for the most part. It gets a little dry and dusty with a lack of familiar characters, up until the end (yes, the Alpha Centaurans are mentioned once, to good effect, but we could have seen a couple of NA-only supporting characters pop up, surely?). Furthermore, the authors seem to have taken the idea that since these are stories featuring non-regular characters, they can actually kill them off in their stories. Amusingly, almost every author seems to have relished this idea, so much so that one wonders how the Forrester family managed to survive their millennium at all.

All the stories contained within are enjoyable, except Ben Jeapes' Heritage (but that's par for the course for a Ben Jeapes story. I keep mixing him up with the guy who wrote the worst of the worst Blake's Seven episodes and that's not just because their names are slightly similar). Kate Orman's story seems rather underdone for an Orman tale, although still enjoyable. Peter Anghelides provides a story that's acceptable enough, yet humourless in the extreme, which is a shame given his online reputation.

Standout stories are those from Richard Salter (I really, really liked the twist in this one), Lance Parkin, Paul Leonard (who manages to restrain himself to a reasonably short story, albeit with the chapters that would later plague him in the BBC anthology monstrosities) and especially the final story from Andy Lane and Justin Richards, an extraordinarily creepy tale, dealing nicely with the fallout from So Vile A Sin.

There's a nice thread of the chronicling of the Forrester clan by Tranlis DiFarallio, which comes together surprisingly well at the end. There's also some nice interplay between stories, with a subplot about whether the Forrester family is descended from Nelson Mandela or not playing subtly in the background. The last story also features some familiar characters, including a very welcome appearance by Roz (sort of) that plays very nicely into the very end of So Vile.

Indeed, the links contained here are superior, I think, to the artificial attempts at linking the stories together in Decalog 3, which was explicitly about the continuity of stories (and ended up being so contrived as to be nonsensical, in most cases).

Decalog 4 is easily the best of the five Decalogs. I realise that doesn't say too much, but it's quite enjoyable in its own right and an interesting collection from Virgin. I have no idea about sales, but they managed to publish one more after this (unfortunately for the sixteen people who bought it), so it must have done all right. It's a bit too standalone in places and occasionally a bit dry, but as Doctor Who-related anthologies go, it's a success.

A Review by Finn Clark 21/1/03

It's a shame it's only a Decalog. (And not just any old Decalog, but "Decalog 4"!) Virgin's short story collections always sold well, except for the fifth, but no one talks about them these days. The world of Doctor Who anthologies is bigger these days, with the various Short Trips collections, Cornell-edited Benny tomes, DWM's Yearbooks, charity fanthologies and more. Of all of the above, the fanthologies probably have the edge, if only because there you can find the work of Charles Daniels. We have more Whoish short stories than we can count, most of 'em okay, some of 'em appalling and a precious outstanding few that deserve to be cherished and passed down through the fannish generations. (Perhaps in twenty years, someone might publish a "Best Stories From Sixty Years" collection? That could be worth reading.)

So, as I said, it's a shame this is only a Decalog. Because Decalog 4 - Re:Generations is a fabulous read that might have been acclaimed as one of the gems of Who-related fiction had it borne just one author's name instead of eleven.

The stories are all good, but that's only the half of it. (The only one I had trouble getting into was Peter Anghelides's piece - too much like hard work - but I could tell that there was interesting stuff there to be mined if you had the patience.) As the tagline says, this is "ten stories, a thousand years and one family". This, as far as I know, is the Who world's first and only (to date) multi-generational saga. Such things tend to be enormous novels constructed like anthologies, with overlapping short stories or novellas combined into a single narrative as our attention goes from each generation to the next.

Decalog 4 gives us the Forresters. The stories are sufficiently inter-linked for you to feel you're really following that family's fortunes, which is damned impressive since nearly a millennium gets covered in only ten stories. Each Forrester tends to be not the son but the great-grandson of the last one's cousin, with a nice touch being the sleeper colony ship whose passengers are thawed out 300 years after setting off. This allowed a meeting of different generations and helped a lot with those little connections.

Unsurprisingly, the collection covers a lot of history. However its relationship with the mainstream Whoniverse is edgy, as shouldn't be surprising with post-licence Virgin. The only recognisable name from the TV series is a brief mention of Alpha Centauri, but even Virgin's own characters like Kadiatu don't get namechecked. This bothered me not at all. Everything's still there and part of the grand tapestry, even if the Dalek invasion of 2157 never gets named as such. We see the corporations rise and fall, then too the Earth Empire. There's even a history book ("The Gutter to the Stars: A History of the Forrester Family" by Tranlis Difarallio) which helpfully fills in the details between each story. (Its author turns up at the end and provides a final twist that felt a bit too weird for me, though what follows on from it brings the collection to its perfect conclusion.)

Another thing I liked is the fact that by the nature of the Forrester family, this is a series of stories all with black protagonists. The text never makes a big deal out of this, but I think in the largely whitebread world of Who-related fiction that's a valuable thing.

Andy Lane gets to wrap up the 30th-century Earth he created in Original Sin, which Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman brought back for So Vile A Sin. If anyone's doing a big reread of those books, I'd say Decalog 4 is required reading. Not just the best of the Decalogs, but one of the best books published by Virgin post-licence. I can't believe I was scouring bookshops for the likes of Tempest and Deadfall while ignoring this. If you don't already own a copy and see one for sale, grab it.

The Darkest Dark End of a Dark Line (Darkly) by Graham Pilato 12/4/05

Towards the end Dependence Day, the doom-y, dusty last of the tales in this fourth Decalog, you get the creeping sense that every opinion you've had about the book, as you've read along, from beginning to end (a good idea in a lot of anthologies, actually, despite what you may think about the individuality of single stories -- editors put them in this order for a reason, you know...), might just have been premature. The book was already all tied together in terms of a plot arc and a set line of Forrester characters, but the editors allowed themselves their final word, and boy do they make it a powerful one. The book functions like an appendix to the finale epic of the NAs, So Vile a Sin, by Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman, and it might as well have been another novel itself. I finished the book in the early afternoon, feeling all ho-hum beforehand, and spent the whole evening distracted and lost in thoughts of vast things.

'T'was a minor epic. A deep, dark, and fading one...

And this is not the first time I have read a book of short stories and thought of it as I might a novel. Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles come to mind. But it's certainly the first time I can think of this happening in Doctor Who.

As Bradbury is one of the great masters of science fiction and many of his short story collections are, no doubt, essential and popular reading to any sci-fi fan, I suppose I'm not alone in thinking that using a linked set of disparate stories to tell a whole, perhaps more impressive one, is an altogether good idea and well worth pursuing for the sake of making an enjoyable short story collection. Gotta love The Martian Chronicles. It's the concise poetry of lovely little short stories telling the grand novel-like epic of the human settlement of Mars. Best Book Ever.

And this, actually, was always the idea with the Decalog series. Ten very different Who-y stories, about one thing. The first Decalog, sometimes known, but really only by those nerdishly (like me) desperate to name things more specifically than simply as numbers (well, you couldn't call it One all the time and feel good about yourself, now could you?), as Decalog Playback (as that was the title of the uniting story of the collection), was very nearly a "novel" compilation itself, telling one story composed of many small ones. Playback, however, was more a loose set of very different stories that were merely tied to one framing story, itself there to have a fun way to present a lot of specifically varied Doctor Who stories. Not a novel-alike, nor quite an epic, but it was a good thing.

If Re: Generations wanted to be like Ray's The Martian Chronicles, then Playback wanted to be like his The Illustrated Man -- there was this guy, see, with vivid moving tattoos on his body that told short stories -- good, huh? A set of mostly quite enjoyable and yet very, very different tales, with practically every difference in tone, mood, style, and Who era. This was specifically the point: that the Doctor, the one guy who was in every story in the bunch, had in fact been so different over such a long life. The framing story even hinged on this notion. He was too many people to be believed. That was the Big Awesome for us, to gather outside of the main narrative, back then, to witness that our hero was legion and now he was represented, even, by us nutty fan legions. Yea! Hurrah! Quite Seriously, Yea.

It was the first time we got official Doctor Who fiction from previous Doctors' eras. And maybe, just maybe, it also gave us Jim Mortimore's sketch for Campaign, his later verboten masterpiece. And so what if it wasn't the Best Book Ever, it was a marvelous moment. It may even have been among the most important in Doctor Who's history, actually...

The Decalog series then served, also, as any multi-authored short works anthology must, to be a convenient collection of the world of like-minded talents usually unseen in one place so quick and easily read... and coveted (they were very pretty books, I thought). They were several perspectives we can't always have in one novel, together. Theoretically, then, many minds may, together, make for an easier greater whole than a sum of parts. Think Skagra's ball. No, don't... Anyway... Try to think of a good themed literature class in school. Or even the whole of the collected official fiction of Doctor Who, in all its many forms, even though that's several editors' doing. This possibility then, this theory, might have made one really curious about that book of ten (greater than one) edited by a central Mastermind, hahahaha. Sorry.

Really, nevermind Skagra.

And nevermind me, I'm a twittery fan finally appealing to people that for once might know what lurks in my silly... haahhh... Anyway, it's clear why this format may appeal to a Doctor Who fan who reads books the way this Decalog book-ish thing connects short stories. It's a pattern, you know. We get addicted.

Ahem.

So, the questions of the knowing reviewer of Decalog 4/Re: Generations follow.

Did everyone's different view of the Forrester family line make for a greater epic? Did Justin and Andy make the world a typically cool full (Andy Lane-ly) and twisty (Justin Richards-exactly) one, just as they might and should? Did the Virgin New Adventures really just go out with a bang and really actually intentionally give us a full blown finale epic (So Vile a Sin) and another Doctorless epic right behind (this book right here)? Just what kind of people were the Forresters, anyway?

As Roz Forrester finally lost herself to history.

Good old So Vile a Sin. The Earth Empire goes to civil war while the psychic conspiracies of millennia finale play out. A rehash of the Transit setting-hopping format that really does bring about the sense of the whole galaxy and all the very small places being within this novel's reach. Basically a series, a 300-page series of tight little moments, sketches for the would've-been monument, every little scene a hint at more. Plotwise, if not everywise, the height of the dramatic height of the continuous story of the NAs. So huge. Should even have been so, sooo much bigger... maybe.

As it was, it was big enough to put a more epic spin on the NA continuity of "Future History" than anything in the continuous Doctor Who universe ever before. Not much not written by Lawrence Miles has surpassed it since. The Psi-Powers arc (which was another very loose arc, though full of impressively written books), the entirety of Roz's and Chris' journeys since Original Sin, and all the dramatic Time's Champion 7th-Doctor's-responsible for life, light, and Time stuff came together here. It didn't misstep and do a sort of hurried non-event big finale like in Ancestor Cell, 3 years later. This was climactically vast character, world, and prose. And it really should have gone 400 pages at least, purely for the sake of the sweep of the thing. But then, there was this Decalog coming very soon after. Interesting times, were the early-to-middle months of 1997.

Ideally, it might have been a coda and a collective tip of the hat to the great established continuity of Virgin's millennium of future history and its legacy. But the multi-authored anthology is still a difficult beast to tame. It turned out to be something rather different, naturally.

Second Chances by Alex Stewart. Where were the first chances? Why begin so deep into space, so deep into the future? The most satisfying thing about this story is its murdered man self-investigation premise, and that is carried out very much as a detached ghost in the machine perspective might allow... We get only the briefest hint of what was at stake for this Forrester though. And it was strange to have another dead Forrester so soon after Roz. Strange because one of the first things that happens is this guy's death. Dark, this. And off he goes to explore the galaxy as a drone... cool.

A good idea, this, and a plot that better things could have been done with. I wish mainly that our hero could have been at least more established, more memorialized and discussed. I think this was a story that needed more time, basically. Make it tragic, not so flat, simply because he's dead doesn't mean his readers need to feel that way too.

Mostly, though, this is a very strange way to start anything novel-like. Not, clearly, that the editors meant to begin with that sense. In fact, the one-off-ness of most of these stories is a definitely good thing for the sake of their variety. Speaking of which...

Kate Orman's No One Goes to Halfway There. A cheeky bit of inconsequential dark matter. We get twisty, stylish fun of another Transit and So Vile a Sin-like structure, following two lonely souls as they meet up with and do battle of sorts with a destructive incomprehensible entity, also a la Transit. By the end, with only the beast a bit wrapped up, one really gets the sense that someone goofed and put the bleakest stories all in the front. I hated this.

Shopping for Eternity by Gus Smith. My favorite individual story of the collection. A Candide with a Forrester and no great optimism. The title is a bit confusing, sounding like something that might be more appropriate with Benny in it. At such great variance from the first two stories, I was even pleased to see another Forrester die. Not that I wanted it, but he had it coming. I found this adventure very amusing, and rather moving, despite its slummy tone.

This Decalog becomes one great existentialist list, huh?

A pattern of apparent death and transformation is going on here. Yeah, not redemption nearly so much as transformation. These characters are lost and purely victims of their age. However, despite the running descriptions of the passing ages by Tranlis DiFaralio, Forrester historian, the times don't necessarily change all that much. I maintain most strongly that we'd have had a better collection here if the first story was set some time and place more identifiable as present-like. And where the hell did the name Forrester ever come from for a family of Xhosa people? Or is that supposed to be a mystery that is best not being solved? Perhaps. But at least considered would have been nice.

Ben Jeapes' Heritage. This almost gets a Neil Penswick award for good ideas with poor execution. Like the first story, I loved the premise. Once that was over, I was impressed with the plot of it and the characters' differences. Having an earlier era Roz-like Forrester and a later era, corrupt one made for a very nice dynamic. Everything about this story satisfies in terms of plot, really. But it's only about three pages worth of describing, while the story was 20-some pages of awkward, shallow dialogue and oversimplified characterization for the two main characters -- one being too obviously bad and the other too obviously good.

Vitally reassuring, though, was the presence of a connection to the Second Chances Forrester. As the differences in years between these characters are multi-generational and cross vast stretches of space from one to the next, it's cool. The chain continues. One gets it by now that all of these stories will feature the death of another Forrester. Merciless time. It makes some of these characters into heroes, though, simply by nature of their deaths. And the female ones tend to be more heroic too...

Liz Holliday's proto Adjudicator tale Burning Bright, the only real bomb of this collection. All the dialogue between our heroes is cheesy and not fun for it. I liked the developing story and its images. The mad weather satellite was a fun villain to arrive at. But the potential love story here couldn't have been more unmotivated or uninteresting. Notice that it was the thirteenth god and the seventh in conflict here? Are these Doctor incarnations being referenced too? Is it worth wondering? I was almost bemused by that one, part of the way through, when it occurred to me that this story couldn't possibly have anything to do with that, legally or hintingly, it's just too much of a mess.

But a romantic mess doesn't come that often in a Decalog, and even the possibility that a Forrester could be having a good time in one of these stories did get my hopes up. And she saves the planet, too.

Adrenalin [its chemical formula actually] by Peter Anghelides. Clever. Once again, a dreary world for the people connected to the Forresters -- another less than heroic male Forrester. This story takes faith on the part of the reader that there may be hope for its hero, up against the oppressors as he is. And that it's told in second person is terribly dooming all along. Nowhere is this a terribly zinging, grabya type piece, but it does work to bring you in if you let it. It's a bit of a collapsing floor narration though. You never really know what's going on until it's over... and then you kind of wonder what made you trust that one...

And unlike other Decalogs, one notices that no story here is very long. Only Burning Bright tended to overwhelm its format with incidents. It's a bunch of hurriedly written fiction, I gather. How many of these stories could even have been planned to originally be about Forresters? They feel far more oriented around their own internal needs to all add up quite the way one may want for a history...

Richard Salter's Approximate Time of Death. Far more inviting a read than the last puzzlingly little twister, this story eventually ties a knot right around your mind too. How did this happen, then? Oh, the bugs made them seem fresh... You have to appreciate the Richards-worthy twists of these stories. Good one, Richard. I just wish your characters could have amounted to something rather than simply being there so that the big twist could happen to them. And I do like that it was bugs that mattered.

This story makes it unanimous, these Forrester men were losers. Except that they are moving up in the world. And would it be that that is the only development of these people as characters? It's a fading epic that this story becomes. One vast line, one vast bunch of heroes and villains, and losers. There's little that's worthy being asked of these Forresters. Who might they have been? Would this Decalog have been more fun if these were the Cwejs?

Lance Parkin with Secrets of the Black Planet, as if it were a cavalry to the rescue, this Lance Parkin gem saves the book from tilting over into a world of unaccountably disconnected ideas. Here's the history. So we're only told that the Forresters date back to Mandela until now... and now we find that there are discrepancies in that. Slightly odd that this story came out came out right at the time of Dragons' Wrath, featuring nearly the exact same plot and intellectual payoff, only this one doesn't have an evil warlord as a villain.

Only insufficient in that there's barely a story here, with some lovely ideas and organized vision to account for, this is happiest moment in the book. "Would you like to be President, Mr. Forrester?" the sly corporate princess coos. Steeped in a sense of history and fun attacks on revisionism, the ideas save the lack of plot. This story is the first lynchpin of the collection. The dark years add up and we wonder whether Roslyn Forrester might as well have been a hero in her own "special edition" movie. Does any of it matter? So much death and patheticism. D'oh.

Rescue Mission by Paul Leonard. The story with the grimmest vision of all, this is lovely. A twitch or two or ten too grim, perhaps, at the end, making one wonder what kind of snuff film industry needs its own private island and impossible escapes... But then, all of that is necessary. One is reminded of Edgar Allan Poe here. "Pit and the Pendulum"-y. Although, clearly enough, Abe would never have made it out. The prose is fantastic as per Paul Leonard usual. No Doctor Who writer gets inside their characters' heads like he does. I'll never forget the haunting italicized "honey-honey" passages in Dancing the Code. And the world of Abe and Callie comes across as full and vivid, as clear as can be, pathetic.

This story is so grim it outdoes everything so far and is a pleasantly forgiving thing to be so close to the end of this saga. Another nice twist is how Paul doesn't reveal who's a Forrester until the end... Because we do now know that someone's going to die. And this time there is no real hero or loser, they are just trapped. Terrifying.

Dependence Day by Andy Lane and Justin Richards. And we come to the end. And necessarily look back, all the way. This devastation is unspeakable. Feeling like there could not possibly be a hope in the world left, on this Earth, the ending, goofy as can be for just a flash (who knew historians could be so desperately driven? What's this guy's back-story?), the twist upon a twist ending lands its punch hard. And we have a purpose for or little clone of Roz. Save the world again, why don't you?

This is the dark end of the NAs, no doubt. Full of twists and variation aplenty from story to story, we get an entirety of a piece, complete at the end, loose and confusing at the beginning. As a novel, it's a whole many notches above the sum of its parts in a rating on any scale. The individual stories average out to a comfortable B grade, frustrating and limited. Probably a third or more were adapted to include a dying Forrester from something else far more sketch-based and unconnected before. Now they do connect, and the disparate qualities even improve the sense of lowliness and desperation. The cover image of the book, a cyberpunk star child technochild out amongst the purple-y swirling starlike sparkles, it's creepy. This child must be the species itself, then? Not a Forrester, quite. One gets impressions of the limitedness of everything, including power and life and technology. Every story a united death-tale, told in the passing of an empire.

There goes Roz. This history is fading. It's a really dark book. I couldn't ever be sure if the darkness hadn't also been inspired by the dark skin of these Forresters... As that is never an issue until Secrets of a Black Planet, except in the possible occasional recognition of a Forrester for being dark skinned, one must simply think that this is a story about humanity. Although following on from Roz's example of bad-temperedness and her own racism, you have to wonder if some sense of just desserts might have emerged from these authors... I don't know. Take it as a given that races and names matter and you can never go wrong in discussions of literature. Suffice it to say this piece is raw, thankfully well-edited and well considered, in spite of its shortcomings.

Vast.

Note: Skagra's Ball was in Shada, both of them. But he only ever had one. Although, come to think of it, I think the 70s one's ball was a little smaller.