Ben Aaronovitch Explained

Ben Aaronovitch
Birth Name:Ben Dylan Aaronovitch
Birth Date:22 February 1964
Birth Place:Camden, London, England
Occupation:Author, screenwriter
Spouse:[1]
Notableworks:Rivers of London
Remembrance of the Daleks
Relatives:Sam Aaronovitch (father)
Owen Aaronovitch (brother)
David Aaronovitch (brother)

Ben Dylan Aaronovitch (born 22 February 1964)[2] is an English author and screenwriter. He is the author of the series of novels Rivers of London. He also wrote two Doctor Who serials in the late 1980s and spin-off novels from Doctor Who and Blake's 7.

Biography

Born in Camden,[3] Aaronovitch is the son of the economist Sam Aaronovitch who was a senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain,[4] and the younger brother of actor Owen Aaronovitch and journalist David Aaronovitch.[5] He attended Holloway School.[6]

Aaronovitch left school with no particular plan. “Instead of going to university I basically faffed about. I had a series of terrible jobs, the kind you get when you have no qualifications.” These included working as a security guard for Securitas, which he says taught him “to understand shoplifting a lot better... So it did come in quite handy later, for work”.[7] During one of the short-term jobs he submitted some scripts to the BBC, which led to him writing Doctor Who stories, and finally, while working at Waterstones, Aaronovitch published his first Rivers of London novel, which rapidly became a word-of-mouth success, enabling him to write full-time. He is passionate about diversity in literature,[8] and in 2020 he founded the Future Worlds Prize, then known as the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award, aimed at opening up science fiction and fantasy publishing to more diverse writers.[9] [10]

In 2023 it was announced that Rivers of London would be adapted for TV as a co-production between Pure Fiction Television, See-Saw Films and Aaronovitch’s own production company, Unnecessary Logo.[11]

Aaronovitch lives in Wimbledon.[12]

Doctor Who and television work

Aaronovitch wrote two Doctor Who serials, Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) and Battlefield (1989), for BBC television, and also the novelization of the former.[13]

He wrote one episode for Casualty (1990) and was then a regular writer on the science fiction series Jupiter Moon.[14]

He subsequently wrote or co-wrote three Doctor Who spin-off novels in the Virgin Publishing New Adventures range; he created the character Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart who became a semi-regular in the New Adventures. He has also written a novel and several short stories published by Big Finish Productions featuring the character of Bernice Summerfield, who was originally developed in the New Adventures. He also co-wrote a Doctor Who audio drama for Big Finish, and has written a number of Blake's 7 spin-off audio dramas.

Proposed serials of “Doctor Who”

Knight Fall

In May 1987, Aaronovitch submitted Knight Fall to the Doctor Who production office for Season 25. The story concerned privatization.[15] Script editor Andrew Cartmel liked the story ideas, but felt that the script was inappropriate for the series and had too many supporting characters.

Transit

After failing to feature Aaronovitch's Knight Fall storyline to production, Aaronovitch submitted a story in June 1987, entitled Transit. The story would see the Doctor and Ace in the future, land in a metro station, and discover transportation portals that could lead any body throughout the Solar System, but one of the portals leads a gate way to hell. Even though Aaronovitch's scripts of Transit never came to fruition, he would adapt the story as a book for Virgin New Adventures series in December 1992.

Bad Destination

During Summer of 1988, Aaronovitch submitted a three-part adventure story for Doctor Who’s 27th Season (which never came to fruition), and was called Bad Destination. The story would feature The Doctor seeing Ace as a captain of a hospital spaceship which is being under attack by the Metatraxi.[16] The story, however, was abandoned when, in September 1989, the BBC cancelled Doctor Who after its 26 Season, due to declining audiences. In July 2011, Big Finish Productions released the story as Earth Aid, by Aaronovitch and Cartmel.

Television

Doctor Who

Casualty

Jupiter Moon

Dark Knight

Audio dramas

Blake's 7

Doctor Who

Novels

Doctor Who

Novelisations

Virgin New Adventures

Rivers of London

See also: Peter Grant (book series).

Others

Comics

Rivers of London – Body Work

Rivers of London – Night Witch

Rivers of London – Black Mould

Rivers of London – Detective Stories

Rivers of London – Cry Fox

Rivers of London – Water Weed

Rivers of London – Action at a Distance

Rivers of London – The Fey & The Furious

Rivers of London – Monday, Monday

Rivers of London – Deadly Ever After

Rivers of London – Here Be Dragons

Short stories

Rivers of London series

The short stories below are published in 'Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection'.

External links

Notes and References

  1. England and Wales, Marriage Registration Index, 1837–2005
  2. Web site: Ben Dylan AARONOVITCH – Personal Appointments (free information from Companies House). beta.companieshouse.gov.uk.
  3. Web site: Index entry. 5 January 2018. FreeBMD. ONS.
  4. Book: Barker, Martin. A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign. 25 July 2014. 1992. Univ. Press of Mississippi. 978-1-61703-747-4. 20.
  5. News: Obituary: Sam Aaronovitch. https://web.archive.org/web/20100901091045/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-sam-aaronovitch-1163687.html. 1 September 2010 . The Independent. John Grahl . dead . 8 June 1998.
  6. http://www.oldcamdenians.info/school The Old Camdenians Club
  7. Web site: Frazer . Jenni . Ben Aaronovitch: the best-selling writer who made the Met police magical . 2024-05-09 . www.thejc.com . en.
  8. Web site: 2020-11-01 . Man Of London, Creator Of Worlds – Pen To Print . 2024-05-09 . en-GB.
  9. Web site: Aaronovitch expands SFF prize for writers of colour . 2024-05-08 . The Bookseller . En.
  10. Web site: Future Worlds Prize increases prize pot . 2024-05-30 . The Bookseller . En.
  11. Web site: Ben Aaronovitch’s ‘Rivers of London’ Set For Adaptation By See-Saw, Pure Fiction Television . 2024-05-30 . IMDb . en-US.
  12. Web site: Best-selling Wimbledon author makes a splash in capital's libraries for Cityread 2015 | SWLondoner . 7 April 2015 .
  13. Web site: Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Novels #7 - Remembrance of the Daleks . 4 September 2013 .
  14. Web site: Ben Aaronovitch . 16 January 2010 . Zeno Agency . 28 February 2015.
  15. A brief history of “Doctor Who” stories-The Lost Stories-Patrick Sullivan, Shannon
  16. “Doctor Who: Endgame”- DVD documentary of “Doctor Who: Survival”- retrieved August 2007
  17. Web site: Del Rey Buys Ben Aaronovitch's RIVERS OF LONDON Series... . Zeno Literary Agency . 1 March 2010 . 8 September 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100914013133/http://zenoagency.com/news/del-rey-buys-ben-aaronovitchs-rivers-of-london/. 14 September 2010 . live.
  18. Web site: The Hanging Tree Announcement. 16 September 2016. 11 December 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181214114353/https://www.gollancz.co.uk/2016/09/16/the-hanging-tree-announcement/. 14 December 2018. dead.
  19. Web site: Book and Comic Chronology. Temporarily Significant. 2020-08-18.
  20. Web site: Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7). www.goodreads.com. 24 March 2018.
  21. Book: The October Man. 9 January 2019. 9781473224339. Aaronovitch. Ben.

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