The Turing Test

Paul Leonard

for the defence: Venusian Lullaby (MA), Dancing the Code (MA)

for the prosecution: Evolution (EDA), Dreamstone Moon (EDA), Revolution Man (EDA)

A race of aliens can travel by transmitting themselves as code. They get stuck on Earth due to being jammed, and a rather slim plot involving Alan Turing, Graham Greene and Joseph Heller (and a mysterious stranger known as the Doctor of course) ends with the four men stuck in Dresden while trying to help them.

I so want to like this book more than I do and I feel oddly guilty criticising it, since it is clearly such a labour of love. Alan Turing's opening section is the best of the book's three parts, but since he doesn't pick up the narration later it feels curtailed and unresolved. Graham Greene's section is fine I suppose but doesn't honestly add much to the story at hand. And Joseph Heller's conclusion seems both superfluous and disconnected. It's not a bad book it just concentrates on the 'voices' of its narrators to the detriment of telling the story.

Not a great deal, unless I've missed it. (That was short & sweet wasn't it!)

With the book all presented as first-person narratives we only ever get to see the Doctor from other people's points of view, sometimes less than flatteringly, with few insights into the 'real' person. The Graham Greene section doesn't tell us very much, and the disappointing Joseph Heller section gives the impression of the forward-planning seventh Doctor, rather than the permanently-forgetful eighth. Only the Alan Turing opening part really gives us a sense of the power of the Doctor's personality, with Turing just so totally falling for him. Again an unrequited love, and again the Doctor is totally unaware of his effect on the poor man.

There are a couple of standout moments for our brave, asexual Timelord - he opens the door to his blue box, somehow expecting it to be more than a box inside (although he doesn't quite know why he thinks that). When it turns out to still be a cupboard inside he goes into an absolute rage, collapsing into a gibbering wreck. The contrast with the almost angelic love-interest figure presented in the book up to that point is very powerful. Then near the end the Doctor is left behind by the aliens, and seems shell-shocked at the injustice. Interestingly this last scene seems to suggest that, far from the laudable aim of helping the aliens gain their freedom, the Doctor's motive is in fact simply to obtain his own release, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. Naughty, naughty!

We also learn, in passing, that the Doctor tried to join the RAF in 1940 (ie, the Battle of Britain) but was refused due to not having any proof of nationality!

This Book: I picked up a mint edition from eBay at £2.50, but with p&p of £1.80. £1.69 saved against RRP.

Running Score: £11.67 saved against RRP