Last week the BBC announced a series of 11 short stories called eshorts to be penned by famous children’s authors to kick off the 50th anniversary celebrations for Doctor Who. Today it announced the first author is Eoin Colfer.
Colfer is the bestselling author of the Artemis Fowl series, as well as novels such as The Wish List and The Supernaturalist. He also penned And Another Thing…., the controversial sixth book in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.
The first of the 11 Doctor Who eshorts is titled “A Big Hand For The Doctor” and will be released on January 23. The story will feature the First Doctor, who was played by William Hartnell between 1963–1966. We can’t wait to see where Colfer will take the character, and we wonder which (if any) of Hartnell’s companions will be directly included in the story.
Synopsis:
London, 1900. The First Doctor is missing both his hand and his granddaughter, Susan. Faced with the search for Susan, a strange beam of soporific light, and a host of marauding Soul Pirates intent on harvesting human limbs, the Doctor is promised a dangerous journey into a land he may never forget…
The eshort will be available for global download. You can pre-order for Kindle now on Amazon, where it is retailing for $2.68 in the United States or £1.99 in the United Kingdom.
In addition, all 11 stories will be published in a printed anthology, which wil be availible from November 23, 2013. A promotional video for Eoin Colfer will be available from Friday, January 11 on the BBC Worldwide YouTube channel.
The big reveal took place on the official Doctor Who Facebook page. As you can see, Colfer wasn’t on our list of predicated authors. We are still waiting to see if J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman or Anthony Horowitz will put pen to paper for one of the remaining ten stories. In case you aren’t familiar with Colfer’s works, you can learn more about him here.