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I, Alastair was the sixth novel in the seventh series of Lethbridge-Stewart, released under the banner of Bloodlines, by Candy Jar Books in 2020.
Publisher's summary
Hail the Leader!
Under the gentle guidance of The Leader, Britain has flourished after the removal of the dead hand of democracy and the old, corrupt aristocracy. Dominant in Europe, a great power around the world, the Republic stands as a beacon to wise, benevolent and firm leadership.
The team led by column leader Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart is the best and brightest of us all, ensuring that attempts to overthrow the natural order will be stamped into submission.
Those who stand with the leader ensure that Britain remains great, a power to be reckoned with, and a dominant force across the globe.
Unity is strength.
Plot
to be added
Characters
References
- The real-life fire at Windscale nuclear facility is much worse in this timeline, killing Seascale village and causing the end of British nuclear industry.
- Excerpts from a suppressed memoir are used to worldbuild and exposit on the Party's ideology, a possible reference to a banned memoir doing the same in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
- Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart refers to Britain killing Charles de Gaulle and ensuring France retained Algeria: in our timeline, from 1960 to 1972 there were attempts at coups and assassinations against De Gaulle by nationalists afraid he'd accept Algerian independence.
- Anne Travers and her father work at The Vault, as Anne would in the Lethbridge-Stewart books - here, they're running it. Rather than being part of the Department of Technology, it's the Department of Energy and is concerned with Britain's power needs.
- As with his counterpart, Lethbridge-Stewart fought in Aden but this version committed massacres of civilians to win. Similarly, he spends this story as Column Leader before his promotion as Alistair spent the early Lethbridge-Stewart books as a colonel.
- A painting of Robert Walpole, the de facto first Prime Minister, hangs in the Cabinet meeting room.
- Robert Dougall hosts Nine O'Clock News as he did in real life (though in real life it started in 1970).
- Lethbridge-Stewart threatens to have someone sent to Cromer, implied to be a labour camp and site of executions - also a reference to the famous line in TV: The Three Doctors.
- The Party and its true believers repeatedly invoke the decadence of the old rulers, while Party officials are shown having a high standard of living while the masses are deprived.
- The Resistance plan is codenamed "the Italian Job", referencing the famous British crime film.
- The Palace of Westminster was burned and replaced by the New People's Parliament. The [[[House of Lords]]' Chamber has survived the fire as a symbolic room. The furniture was removed but as there was no Blitz, the original Pugin stained glass windows were never broken.
Notes
- This is the first appearance of Benton in the Lethbridge-Stewart range, and as such features a creator credit for Derrick Sherwin, who created the character for TV: The Invasion.
- The book comes with a reprint of the short story Ashes of the Inferno.
Continuity
- The Leader is implied at points to be a version of the Doctor, as first established in PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation. (This is not explicitly confirmed for legal reasons) The Leader refers to "hearts", which is taken as a slip due to ill health; there's a rumour from zealots that he could extend his life once but has lost the ability; when Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart starts refering to alien infiltration, the Leader initially seems about to have him dragged away (which Gordon takes as meaning he's not convincing him).
- All non-white Britons were deported and used as slave labour in the Carribean in 1943; the death toll is between sixty to eighty percent. There are also labour camps all over the Home Counties.
- Knight remembers meeting the 'false' Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart nine years ago, as depicted in PROSE: The Schizoid Earth. That puts this story in 1968 - the same year that the first Lethbridge-Stewart books were set.
- The book states the Bolsheviks lost the Russian Civil War and Knight is relieved not to be captured by "Tsarists", while Britain's uneasy American allies are headquartered in Richmond; the White Russians winning the civil war and a Confederate States of America existing was started by The Face of the Enemy.
- Oblique references are made to Alastair having a covered-up past. [PROSE]]: The Schizoid Earth had him come from an alternate timeline.
- The Republic has an RAAF instead of an RAF.
- Alastair's great-uncle was executed at Cromer.
- Knight was killed in The Schiziod Earth, suggesting either he was one of the clones (more of whom Knight encounters in this book), or the Knight in this book is a clone. (His dodgy memory could also be a clue to this.)
- The RSF has rumours of odd things at Loch Ness (TV: Terror of the Zygons), "shaggy ghosts" on the Underground and a strange intelligence (TV: The Web of Fear), and spotted Tibetan Yeti while doing surveillance on China in the 50s.
- Travers had (according to one character) died in Tibet in The Schizoid Earth. However, he is alive here, which suggests the rumour was false.
Errors
- Alastair doesn't believe in the existence of aliens and his father knows about previous incidents as rumours & old reports, even as the book uses worldbuilding elements from The Face of the Enemy where the RSF have fought aliens since 1959.
- Ashes has James Lethbridge-Stewart discover that Alastair had reached Brigade Leader rank while he was away; in this story, James has not left the timeline when Alastair is promoted.