My rating of this book is both subjective and specific, but I think it's a magical and vital piece of Doctor Who history. This is a miscellany of items from fanzines, mostly from the '80s and '90s with occasional nods to the '70s. Although it is described as being edited by Paul Cornell, in fact he provides substantial introductions and guidance throughout.

When this book was first published in 1997, it seems there were negative reviews from some quarters. These were put down to Cornell's allegedly preferential treatment of whom he included, of presenting certain views of fandom, and just a general feeling that a book like this didn't present fans at their most erudite or intellectual. The thing is, twenty-five years later, this is exactly what I'm looking for. There are a few other books where writers have taken their own fanzine pieces and republished them with the aim of self-glorification. There are a couple of collections of fanzine writings that seek to present exactly that intellectual edge. (To be clear, most of these zines are long dead and punishingly unavailable online.) But Cornell was providing a snapshot of a key moment in the program's history, and it's as if he could imagine me in 2022 lapping this up.

The show's "wilderness years" (1990 - 2004) are exactly the period of my interest, a time after the already publicly-dismissed program was cancelled (well, "rested") and before it returned to mainstream attention. Fans committed themselves, in those heady days when the internet was a novel way of communicating and shoddy copies of old episodes on VHS were the most effective ways of watching past media, to preserving, protecting, revising, challenging, sharing, debating, dismantling, recreating, and extolling the twenty-six seasons of this program. Not only was this a major factor in why the series ultimately returned, and to such popular acclaim, but it directly influenced the careers of dozens of these fans who went on to work as professional writers, actors, directors, producers, creatives, talent agents, and so on - many of them using those talents directly on Doctor Who. For someone of my generation seeking to better understand how these years unfolded, Cornell's book fits snugly around my desires.

Some of it is silly now, and some of it only makes sense if you have a synoptic understanding of those twenty-six years. But if so, this is the historical document for you. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/913276.html

Published ten years ago, this is a compilation of the author's choice of interesting or remarkable writing from Doctor Who fanzines, mostly from the period between the show's cancellation in 1989 and the TV movie in 1996, with a few bits from before and after - most notably the infamous panning of The Deadly Assassin by the then president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society from 1976. There is a certain amount of linking narrative from Paul himself - and having spent much of this weekend talking to him it's impossible not to hear his voice in my head as I read the words (even if it's ten years since he wrote them) - expressing his love for the programme and for fanzines as a genre. There are some lovely pieces - a great Tom Baker interview, a meditation on the place of tea and other hot beverages in the Whoniverse, some of the early analysis by Tat Wood that has culminated in the About Time books. There are some other bit I could happily leave, but that is fanzine writing for you.

I was a bit surprised that there was no discussion at all of fan fiction, which even in my limited teenage excursions into Doctor Who fanzines was clearly a large part of the subculture, and almost no mention of the internet - Kate Orman, daringly, gives a web address. Fandom was very definitely on-line by this date - indeed, it didn't take much googling to find a usenet discussion of a review of this very book - and while I appreciate that the best bits of the written record were certainly still in hard copy fanzine, it's odd to find the internet so absent from the discussion.

Anyway, it's a book of its time, and will be of interest to people concerned with the changing (and unchanging) nature of fandom. ( )