Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles

"Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles" by Micheal Moorcock

A Doctor Who novel written by the great Micheal Moorcock? Sounds good doesn't it? I wanted to like this but it kept annoying me..
I havn't read any Doctor Who fiction since the Target novelisations in the 1980s but I did spend a of chunk of the 90s reading the omnibus editions of some of Moorcock's better  known work, so I had high expectations.
Unfortunately I bounced hard off the first section - its written as a 1920s style, 'jolly hockeysticks' P. G. Wodehouse style farce. The titular Terraphiles are a group of like-minded people from the distant year 50,000 (or something) who share a special interest in old earth customs and sports etc. The 'hilarity' comes from their mangled ideas of the games and language of our time - ie they play a sport which is a weird mix of archery and cricket..and so on. The basic plot is The Doctor (the Matt Smith version) and Amy must join one of the sports teams and win a trophy that will save the universe..and thats about it.
The second section where they travel (sans TARDIS) to the centre of the universe(?) is mildly better but it suffers from Moorcock trying to shoehorn his existing fictional 'multiverse' into the Doctor Who one and ending up just being weird and enigmatic for the hell of it.
We eventually get to the big game but the Doctor doesnt even save the universe personally, instead one of the better minor characters is sacrificed to achieve that goal.
Overall it just dragged, the author got the Doctor about right but everything else probably belonged in another book.

Consider Phlebas

“Consider Phlebas” by Iain M. Banks

It’s to my eternal shame that it took the author’s death to get me to start reading ’ The Culture’ series – I certainly have been aware of them for many years. Since I first started using the internet two decades ago I’d noticed much discussion of these books on newsgroups and forums. Something kept me away from these books, perhaps going by the reputation of Banks’ literary fiction (which he published minus the ‘M’) I was afraid of some oh-so-worthy high concept exercise. But I was wrong; this book is a wide-screen space opera full of action set pieces and an intriguing back story.
The Culture is a utopian civilization of humans and machines living side by side and devoted to bringing enlightenment to the galaxy. In this volume they are at war with the Idirans, a race of giant three-legged religious warriors. During a battle a Culture starship is destroyed but it’s controlling artificial intelligence “Mind” escapes and hides out underground on the forbidden planet Schar’s World. After rescuing him from certain doom the Idirans task shape-changing protagonist Horza with finding and recovering the Mind before the Culture can get to it.
Fully half of the book follows Horza’s misadventures just trying to get to Schar’s World – he encounters and goes into battle with space mercenaries, visits a huge ringworld type “Orbital” and survives being captured by a bizarre tribe of cannibals.
Once we reach the planet the action goes into overdrive with a tense chases and battles in the subterranean tunnels and a suitable climax.
I really enjoyed this book – every time I thought it was going to drift into something clichéd and tedious it would surprise me with imagination and invention. It would make a great Sci-Fi action movie (given enough money was thrown at it).