Charlie Jane Anders’ new novel Victories Greater Than Death is now out from Titan Books and in this short piece, Anders talks about the power of imagination for a child…

 

I was obsessed with Doctor Who as a kid – well, okay, I’m still obsessed with Doctor Who, let’s be real – and I pored over all the Target novelizations, episode guides, and issues of Doctor Who Monthly. And when my family finally got a VCR, we basically only used it to amass a towering pile of Who episodes on tape. The greatest moment of my young life, therefore, was when I was living in the UK and my parents took me on a road trip to Longleat, a country estate somewhere in Wiltshire that was populated by monkeys, lions… and a working TARDIS.

For a long time, there were two Doctor Who exhibitions in the UK, featuring props and sets from the TV show: one at Longleat and the other at Blackpool. We eventually visited both, but my visit to the Longleat one happened first and is seared into my brain. Monkeys tried to dismantle the windshield wipers on our rental car, and a lion peed all over the roof. And then we arrived at the actual exhibition, and there was that familiar police box, with a hallway leading inside the TARDIS console room. K-9 greeted us, and a Dalek warned that smokers would be exterminated. The central column of the hexagonal console rose and fell, as if we were about to vanish into thin air with what Terrance Dicks always described as a wheezing, groaning sound.

Somehow I ended up taking shelter underneath a midsize family sedan in the car park.

At this point, I’m no longer sure what scared me so much – the presence of an actual Dalek, yelling and ranting in that classic Dalek-y manner, or the notion that the TARDIS was about to dematerialize and I would be whisked away to a gravel pit somewhere and attacked by men wearing latex prosthetics. Either way, in that moment, it all felt real to me. I was absolutely convinced that I was entering this thrilling, colorful, dangerous world of monsters and strange new worlds. And in the moment, I freaked out.

When I think back on that moment now, I’m only slightly annoyed at my child self for missing out on the rest of the Who exhibition and instead staring at the underside of a car. (Also, do not hide under cars! You could get badly hurt!) I mostly feel like this is a testament to how much Doctor Who captured my imagination and made me believe in its dreamscapes, dodgy special effects and all.

Even though my physical body ran away from the TARDIS and the “no smoking” Dalek and everything, my mind stayed, and it’s never really left. And as scary as it might have been in the moment, this experience also cemented in my mind how much I love escaping into a world of heroes and monsters – where the danger is only equaled by the companionship and the beauty of discovery.

When I set out to write Victories Greater Than Death, my young-adult space opera novel full of starships and villains and monsters and best friends saving each other, I was writing for my child self who got so swept up in imaginary worlds that she ran out to the parking lot. Because that escapism saved my life and got me through a lot of scary stuff in the real world – and I still love to believe in the power of adventure, even now.

Victories Greater Than Death is out now from Titan Books; click here to order from Amazon.co.uk