Ever since the new series launched, news about the books have been… well, kind of dull. The New Series Adventures are good, solid young adult novels. There’s been some great ones (Only Human, The Pirate Loop, The Eyeless), some good ones and mostly a stream of steady, competent ones. Which I’ve always thought was a missed opportunity—the 1990s proved that the Doctor Who novel was capable of doing so much more than just being mere tie-in material and could be fantastic extrapolations of the Doctor Who concept using prose. (Thus far, most adventureous, boundary-pushing, prose adventure related to Doctor Who has been James Goss’ Torchwood novel Almost Perfect which may be the best Doctor Who-related book of the decade. Let me put it this way—the last Doctor Who related book that had me this excited about the writing was Damaged Goods)

More than that, with the popularity of the new series, surely we could do better than have the same usual suspects who have written steady, solid, unadventurous Who fiction for the past 10 years? Couldn’t we have some novels by the best authors writing today (even the best young adult authors) instead of more of the same from the people who have brought us more of the same since 1998?

Well…all this has changed. Science fiction and fantasy legend Michael Moorcock has announced he is writing a Doctor Who novel.

Looks like not only has the game of writing the TV series been raised under the new proprietors, the game of writing the novels has been raised too.