FANTOM PUBLISHING HAS released an abridged audiobook version of Alwyn W Turner's well-regarded study of the career of Survivors creator Terry Nation.

The audio version is narrated by David Troughton, who appeared in the second series Survivors episode Lights of London I as the clueless farm resident Stan, who fails to comprehend the realities of the deception and abduction that Amul and Penny carry out with his assistance, and that of "the lads" he shares the farm with.

Troughton's dulcet tones are well suited to the delivery Turner's lively and persuasive prose. While this is a heavily edited rendition of the original full print text, it makes for an engrossing listen nonetheless.

As it covers the entire of Nation's career, the section of the book covering Survivors has to be relatively short, but it provides an entertaining account of his approach to and his work on the series.

First released shortly after the print book was published, the audio version of Terry Nation: The Man Who Invented the Daleks is still available to buy, in both CD and digital download formats from the Fantom site.

In February 2021, the remaining copies of the audiobook were being offered for sale at a heavily discounted price - and it's likely that this pressing will sell out and may not be re-issued.

Listen to a sample from the opening section of the audiobook:

Terry Nation: The Man Who Invented the Daleks

The Daleks are one of the most iconic and fearsome creations in television history. Since their first appearance in 1963, they have simultaneously fascinated and terrified generations of children, their instant success ensuring, and sometimes eclipsing, that of Doctor Who.

They sprang from the imagination of Terry Nation, a failed stand-up comic who became one of the most prolific writers for television that Britain has ever produced. Survivors, his vision of a post-apocalyptic England, so haunted audiences in the Seventies that the BBC revived it over thirty years on, and Blake’s 7, constantly rumoured for return, endures as a cult sci-fi classic. But it is for his genocidal pepperpots that Nation is most often remembered, and on the 50th anniversary of their creation they continue to top the Saturday-night ratings.

Yet while the Daleks brought him notoriety and riches, Nation played a much wider role in British broadcasting’s golden age. He wrote for Spike Milligan, Frankie Howerd and an increasingly troubled Tony Hancock, and as one of the key figures behind the adventure series of the Sixties – including The Avengers, The Saint and The Persuaders! – he turned the pulp classics of his boyhood into a major British export.

In The Man Who Invented the Daleks, acclaimed cultural historian Alwyn W. Turner, explores the curious and contested origins of Doctor Who‘s greatest villains, and sheds light on a strange world of ambitious young writers, producers and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

-- Fantom Publishing

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