Celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the ‘Doctor Who’ series are underway and this month the BBC is kicking it off with a press announcement that they will be publishing a series of 11 original ‘Doctor Who’ stories written by “well-known children’s authors” beginning this month.
The stories, which are being called e-shorts, will appear online each month and will feature each regeneration of the Doctor beginning with the First Doctor played by William Hartnell.
Publisher Juliet Matthews said: “We are delighted to have 11 sensational children’s authors involved in the series, all bringing an individual style, imagination and interpretation to their e-short tribute to The Doctor. This is a who’s who of children’s fiction coming together to celebrate the much-loved Doctor Who.”
While the list of authors is being kept under wraps, fans will know who will be writing the first e-short on Monday, January 7, as the BBC will reveal the name on their ‘Doctor Who’ Facebook page. A promotional video featuring the author will be released on the BBC Worldwide YouTube channel on January 11th with the first story available on January 23rd.
Each month a new author will be revealed in the same manner prior to their story being published. In November, all 11 short stories will then be available for purchase in an anthology paperback book.
Even though the BBC has not given a hint on who is on that list of authors, the folks at Hypable have suggested British authors Michelle Paver, Susan Price, Kate Thompson, Anthony Horowitz, Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Pullman, Alan Garner and even J.K. Rowling.
Rowling would be a very good educated guess as being on that list as she is one of the most high profile children’s book authors since creating Harry Potter. In fact, back in 2005 when Russell. T. Davis was the showrunner of the series, Rowlings was asked to write an episode of ‘Doctor Who’ but had to decline as she was in the midst of writing her ‘Harry Potter’ books.
Surprisingly Neil Gaiman was not listed but it seems he may (and I stress may) be involved with the project. On January 4th he tweeted:
So that confirms Gaiman is doing something and it’s not connected to his penultimate episode in this season’s series as that episode has already wrapped filming. He did say that he was asked to pick out some favorite video clips when asked outright about writing an e-short:
But we all know the BBC is quite adamant with NDA when it comes to ‘Doctor Who’ news so whether it is to write a short story (which, may I add would be epic if it was!) or to pick out clips we won’t know, but Gaiman has said that he has an affinity for the Second Doctor, so if he were approached to write a story and was given his choice to pick, we may see his name revealed in February. We can only hope.
So who do you think is on this list of writers? We’ll soon know tomorrow when the first of 11 authors will be revealed! Come back here on ScienceFiction.com to find out who that person is!