Down (novel)

Down
Main character(s):	Bernice Summerfield
Featuring:	God
Main enemy:	The SSSSSSS, !X
Main setting:	Tyler's Folly, 14 January 2593
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writer:	Lawrence Miles
Cover by:	Mark Salwowski
Release details
Release number:	66
Release date:	2 September 1997
Format:	Paperback Book; 31 Chapters, 311 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20512-X
Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures
← Previous	Ship of Fools
Next →	Deadfall

Down was the sixty-sixth Virgin New Adventures novel. It featured a reappearance of the People, who were introduced in Ben Aaronovitch's The Also People.

Publisher's summary

Mankind expects pain. However it seems to outsiders.

Tyler's Folly: a colony world on the unattractive side of Earthspace, a planet wracked by earthquakes and crawling with off-world bodysnatchers. When the local authorities pull a bedraggled Professor Bernice Summerfield out of the ocean in an off-limits 'quake zone, they naturally want to know what she is doing there... but the professor can only mumble something about woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers.

According to Bernice, the planet is hollow, its interior inhabited by warring tribes of cavemen and strangely unconvincing prehistoric monsters. Some dark and ancient god rules this underground kingdom -- albeit a dark and ancient god with a penchant for thirties pulp adventures and Saturday morning action serials.

Can Bernice's claims be true? Is Tyler's Folly really under threat from an ageless subterranean horror? And why does so much of her story revolve around the utterly amoral alien known as !X...?

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Bernice Summerfield
• !X (aka si!Xist-i!xatl-iVa!qara)
• Kommander Ernst Katastrophen
• Lucretia Caroline Scannon
• Fos!ca
• Ash
• Quinton Pupp
• Frans Nils Kryptosa
• MEPHISTO
• God
• The SSSSSSS

Worldbuilding

Books

• Frans Nils Kryptosa is an explorer and archaeologist who wrote In Search of Ancient Mu and A Short Trip to the Centre of Creation.
• The SSSSSSS use at least 18 official hymns and the handbook Mein Pantz by Bernard Richtmanstances.

Law and order

• As !X is not part of the People's society he is not bound by the Time Lord-People Treaty.

Locations

• !X and Fos!ca are of the People who live in the Worldsphere, both it and Tyler's Folly are examples of Dyson spheres.

Organisations

• SSSSSSS stands for Stella Stora Sigma Schutz-Staffel SturmSoldaten. They are the most ineffective Nazi group since the Outer Hebridean National Party.

Planets

• Kryptosa was born on Ordifica.
• The Worldsphere is 17 galaxies from Dellah.
• The SSSSSSS' power base is a small sausage factory on Smarley's World.

Psychology

• Teleportaphobia also known as "Molecular Vertigo" is described here as the fear of matter transmission.

Species

• Katastrophen is reminded of buffo frogs.

Vehicles

• The SSSSSSS submarine uses warp drive but goes through oceans between planets instead of space.

Notes

• The introduction of Down listed a web address (www.ndirect.co.uk/shebeen) stated to contain background material to the novel. Though the link is no longer active, the novel's glossary, footnotes, and appendices were archived here.
• Down re-introduces the People. This includes Ben Aaronovitch's unique pronunciations for their names; a full explanation can be found in the introduction to The Also People.
• The submarine was originally intended to be black, but after the cover artist rendered it as pink, Miles rewrote its colour.

Continuity

• PROSE: The Also People introduced the People and was the first meeting between Bernice and the People.
• Ordifica is mentioned in PROSE: Ghost Devices and seen in PROSE: Interference - Book One.
• Frans Nils Kryptosa was previously mentioned in PROSE: Beyond the Sun and PROSE: Ship of Fools.
• Students often return from Xan Burrosa with a counterfeit Martian "Spear of Tuburr". (PROSE: Legacy, GodEngine, COMIC: Ascendance)
• A constable remembers watching a vidcast of Summerfield testifying on Stanturus Three. (PROSE: Dragons' Wrath)
• Earth uses mind probes in cases of severe security breaches. (TV: Frontier in Space)
• Fos!ca thinks the Metatraxi are "famous" for eating their own parents. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, AUDIO: Crime of the Century)
• Bernice steals a Selachian palmtop from one of the Nazis. (PROSE: Killing Ground, The Murder Game, et al.)
• Bernice jokes the sequel to Down Among the Dead Men will be called "Fear and Sloathes in Las Vegas". (PROSE: Sky Pirates!)
• Ash recalls the President of Earth who served from 2536 to 2541 was female. (TV: Frontier in Space)
• Believing time travel would undermine the capitalism, the Time-and-Motion Lords prevented its development in human economic space, leading to the creation of the first official time machine being pushed to the 50th century. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
• Katastrophen notes transmat has been used since the 21st century. (TV: The Seeds of Death)
• For In Search of Ancient Mu, Kryptosa investigated Vo'lach Prime (PROSE: Ghost Devices) and Yemaya, (PROSE: SLEEPY) as well as "a dead world at the centre of the galaxy, which legends claim was the birthplace of the very first humanoid civilization". (PROSE: Dead Romance)
• Tyler's Folly and its continued status are later mentioned in PROSE: Alien Bodies, Beige Planet Mars, The Infinity Doctors, and Dead Romance.

External links

• Down at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Down at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Down
• Down The Director's Cut by Lawrence Miles via Internet Archive - The Wayback Machine