Blood Heat Second Iteration (novel)

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Blood Heat Second Iteration, often called Blood Heat: Director's Cut and alternately subtitled Blood Heat: An Adventure in Time and Space, was Jim Mortimore's 2015 "Director's Cut" adaptation of his 1993 Virgin New Adventures novel Blood Heat. While the names of non-original characters were changed from the first edition for story and copyright reasons, many of Mortimore's original characters, including the humans Alan Tomson and Frank Hobson and the reptiles Imorkal and Chtaachtl, retained their identities.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

Back cover[[edit] | [edit source]]

"You want to see your child? I want to see you beg. Get down on your knees, you damn animal."

EARTH: 1993
A world undergoing quantum collapse, overrun by predators, torn apart by rage.

EARTH: 1993
A world where identity can shift as often as a butterfly flaps its wings. A world where two warring species are toppling violently over the brink of extinction.

EARTH: 1993
The last world left in the multiverse. A world facing destruction only one person can stop.

But that person died. Two hundred million years ago…

Inside flap[[edit] | [edit source]]

Life came to Earth from space on a seed of interstellar flotsam weighing no more than a family cat. From that moment the planet waged a war with itself which would outlast even the death of its star. Early combatants in this war fought mindlessly and without tools. But nothing drives innovation, biological or technological, like conflict. Later fighters in this war used their most potent weapon to name it: evolution, which only the fittest could ever survive. But in the haste to annihilation the truth, as sometimes happens, was lost. Mammal. Reptile. Fish. Bird. Insect. Plant. Fungi. Virus. We are all alien. If this island Earth was ever our home it is only because we have occupied it with nothing short of ceaseless violence. Darwin was right. There is no god. Only a never-ending war from which the only rest there can ever be…

… is extinction.

Chapter titles[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Reflection Data
  • Involution – First Iteration
  • Rage I
  • Rage II
  • "Sunborn & Dragonbane"
  1. Future Past
    1. Instinct (World's End)
    2. Involution – Second Iteration
    3. Reason (Strangers)
  2. World of No Tomorrows
    1. Instinct (The New World)
    2. Involution – Third Iteration
    3. Reason (Bonehenge)
  3. Call to Colours
    1. Instinct (Random Walk)
    2. Involution – Fourth Iteration
    3. Reason (The Ceremony of Innocence)
  4. Isomorphic
    1. Instinct (The Invisible Rainbow)
    2. Involution – Fifth Iteration
    3. Reason (The Blood Dimmed Tide)
  5. Ground Zero
    1. Involution – Sixth Iteration
  • Extinction
    • Involution – Final Iteration
  • Reflection Data Analysis

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

to be added

Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • After the release of Blood Heat Second Iteration, Jim Mortimore collaborated with Niki Haringsma to make the comic To Be Born, which presented an alternative take on a scene from the Director's Cut and was published in the 2019 charity anthology Unbound: Adventures in Time and Space.[1]
  • Mortimore's cover for Blood Heat Second Iteration gave it the subtitle "An Adventure in Time and Space", which was previously used for the cover of Campaign.
  • This novel was written by Mortimore at the same time as his work for Erimem, explaining the approved usage of concepts from Iain McLaughlin, including a reference to Erimem.

Deviations from the original story[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • The non-original characters were renamed to avoid copyright violation, and their backstories were also reinvented to better connect with the book's themes.[2] The Seventh Doctor and the TARDIS were replaced by Dr. Jon St. Myth and his Trisected Abutment Reality Disconnect.
  • Nearly every scene was expanded, including new additional action sequences.
  • Mortimore reinvented Siluria'ans as a psychic "cloud network" species and elaborated on their reimagined their culture, history, and biology. This includes an explanation of the Martians and Draconians as descendants of Siluria'an space-farers, an idea which Mortimore credits to Iain McLaughlin in his Author's Note.
  • The alternate universe arc was replaced by a plotline about the universe undergoing a quantum collapse, which leads to new or expanded scenes slowly revealing that parts of Earth's history have always been different even before the divergence, or deliberately conflicting memories and backstories. (At one point, Joanne remembers several conflicting memories which have actually happened in the past of other characters.)
  • The original novel's beginning was moved to near the end, starting the story in media res.
  • Minor original characters from the original novel were given fuller characterisations.
  • The roles of Berenice and Joanne were significantly expanded, with the former joining a Siluria'an Caravan and the latter featuring in multiple flashback scenes.
  • "Doctor Padrone" appears in Jo's flashbacks as a prominent figure in a survivor's community. ("Padrone" means "Master" in Italian.
  • The book has a radically different ending, a cliffhanger to be continued in Mortimore's further Collapsing Universe Cycle novels.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

Illustrations[[edit] | [edit source]]

to be added

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  1. ↑ To Be Born: An Adventure in Sequential Mindfuckery
  2. ↑ Josh Wilson's BHDC Q&A
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