The Turing Test

"Turing Test" needs to go up there with "Interference" as "Doctor Who" books that break the mold and then stamp up and down on the pieces. Narrated, in turn, by fictionalized versions of Alan Turing, Graham Greene and Joseph Heller, this is an outside-looking-in "Who" book that's much more about character than outwitting the latest generic alien threat. Don't expect to be given all the puzzle pieces as to What's Going On, because that's not the point.The tone shifts wonderfully throughout the book to reflect the styles of the narrators in question - the Heller section in particular brings back "Catch-22" vividly. The Doctor is terribly interesting, here, with his motivation stripped down to very human essentials. This book has probably made the best use of its setting of any of the books about the eighth Doctor exiled on Earth.Buy it. Read it. Thank yourself later.

Whenever I open a Paul Leonard "Doctor Who" novel of late, I feel dread in the pit of my stomach. I've come to expect short books with 200 pages of terrific writing, and 40 pages of a haphazard sloppy conclusion which has the feel of something written on a newspaper in an airport barber shop."The Turing Test" also comes at a critical time -- it's the third book of the Caught-On-Earth arc. Our Doctor, memory gone, friends gone, TARDIS inoperable, has been stranded for 45 years, and is only just beginning to piece together that he's not human. It's Leonard's task to portray the Doctor's first escape attempt -- and also the first appearance of bona-fide outer space aliens since this arc began. Oh, and it's World War II.On the face of it, then, this is a book that needs heavy Doctor involvement -- it's the first serious wrinkle to the character of this tabula rasa Doctor we've had over the past few books. But Leonard chooses to tell the story from the point of three real-life narrators -- Alan Turing, Graham Greene, and Joseph Heller -- each of whom tell a bit and piece of the story before dying, and then pass the tale to the next author.This is classic Paul Leonard on two grounds -- he gets to kill characters off, *and* he gets to leave a story unfinished not just once, but two times over in the same book! I was dreading the final Joseph Heller segment, but to my surprise and delight, this is the best of all, the most manic writing and (arguably) the most sensible standpoint of the three narrators. This portion I finished in one night. The Graham Greene section felt like a slight letdown -- the narrative POV didn't seem as careful (or intentionally careless) as the Heller or Turing bits. I'm also leery of reading the memoir of someone who's about to take his own life -- the Turing chapters are seemingly dictated in his final hours, and the endless self-deprecation seems intrusive -- but on the whole these chapters are a good way to begin the tale.The Doctor's final revelation -- that, like Li Hsen Chang, and so many other stooges and collaborators we saw in TV "Doctor Who", he's been duped and left behind, and that he now must become less selfish -- is really quick and glossed over. Fortunately, this "off-screen" realization is in keeping with the rest of the book, so it's a forgivable sin.Some of the endless recitations on religion and morality and, even worse, science, are rubbish. So is the final segment, with our heroes playing out a silly fantasy as Dresden burns. But it's well-written, fast-moving rubbish. Maybe I won't dread the final chapters of Paul Leonard's next book.

This was a daring approach that could have fallen flat on its face. However, the author pulls off the task of writing from three peoples perspectives well, especially considereing that two of those people are widely read authors themselves. The pain and frustration inherent in the Doctor at the end are palpable and really topped off a very good book.

When I was a youngster the Doctor Who novelisations produced by Target sparked my interest in reading. The likes of Terrance Dicks, Gerry Davis, Ian Marter, and Malcolm Hulke provided me with much pleasure and led me to explore more of the local library before I ventured into "more serious" fiction. Those early novels were formulaic and this is wittily shown in an essay by Paul Magrs, a wonderful British novelist whose work seems to draw on magical realism from Gabriel Marquez and Terrance Dicks, where he explains how these early Target books influenced his writing. In those early Target books certain nouns always had the same qualifying adjectives. Pockets were capacious. Hair was "a mass of curls" or "an unruly mop". It had been some years since I read a Doctor Who novel, and it was Paul Magrs move into the stable of BBC writers that led me to read one or two of the recent novels. The books today are very different to the fiction of fifteen or more years ago. They are well written adult science fiction. Things do not always work out for the best. Life is not simple. Characters are no longer brief descriptions recalling much enjoyed television stories but are fleshed out, alive.The Turing Test is a fine example of the modern Doctor WHo novel, and indeed may be a level or two above the norm. Set in the Second World War and featuring as central characters Alan Turing, codebreaker, Graham Greene, spy and occasional novelist, and Joseph Heller, pilot and future novelist; the story features the eighth incarnation of the Doctor. Stranded on earth he has lost his memory, and is wandering waiting for a meeting in St Louis in 2001. It features codes, and aliens; but also meditations on sex and sexuality, the value of humanity, and the nature of fighting.The novel is divided into three sections. One written from the perspective of Turing, one Greene, one Heller. Each is in the first person. The conceit in lesser hands would have failed but Paul Leonard mimics the styles of the latter two well, and provides a distinctive voice to the lonely Turing. As someone that has read a lot of Greene lately I feel that Leonard's writing evoked something of Greeneland.The particular value of Leonard's style and structure is that in giving each character an opportunity to speak their character can be revealed in a manner that does not require revelation upon revelation. Further, each character's perspective being very different - from Turing's naivety, through Greene's bitter cynicism, to Heller's battling pacifism - we are shown different facets of the Doctor, the central character. For a character with a huge past (to his fanbase) placed in a story arc based on a breakdown and terrible amnesia, this novel succeeds in casting new light on him.It is an impressive adult sci-fi novel. Mr Leonard is to be congratulated.Readers are referred to the first novel in the arc, The Burning by Justin Richards, and Paul Magrs The Scarlet Empress, for other very

I have had some difficulty with the new Doctor Who story arc. Neither 'The Burning' nor 'Casualties of War' have particularly satisfied me as they haven't convinced me that anything has changed. The Doctor has lost his memory, but apart from a few references to this it appears to have had no impact on the story. I was therefore delighted when finally I got the impression that something was very different in 'The Turing Test'.Paul Leonard writes this story from three perspectives, those of real people alive at the time and still well known today: mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing, and novelists Graham Greene and Joseph Heller.The Doctor is alive and well on Earth, and is trying to work out exactly who he is. In this quest, he encounters the three "authors" of the story who assist him, in one way or another and with different degrees of willingness, to track down some people who are also very different from other people.The story is entertaining on a variety of levels. It is a fairly straightforward adventure story (although the backtracking inherent in the changing of "authors" might frustrate some). It is also a different Doctor, one who is operating with a very personal agenda which is at odds with his normal methods. It is also about what makes people "human" (in a very broad sense), and we are given a variety of examples both within the human cast and also with those who are not truly human.I hope that the rest of the story arc is up to the standard this novel has set.