NOTES ON NOBODY’S CHILDREN
WARNING: This page contains substantial SPOILERS for Nobody’s Children.
NOTES ON THE MIM
The Mim were – or, to be scrupulously accurate, one Mim was – originally created by Simon Guerrier, in his short story ‘Incongruous Details’ for Big Finish Productions’ Doctor Who anthology Short Trips: The Centenarian. In 2006 and 2007 they, and in particular their conflict with the Draconians, became a significant plot element in the Bernice Summerfield book and audio ranges.
While Simon did some imaginative groundwork in envisaging them as shapeshifting sponges mostly composed of nervous tissue, the Mim as they appear in ‘Nursery Politics’ are largely based on the background Kate gives them in ‘All Mimsy Were the Borogoves’. This includes the idea that they deliberately give themselves names which sound silly and therefore non-threatening when dealing with humans... hence Mwshi, Phwmi and the like.
There are (and honestly – I wasn’t joking when I said that there were spoilers here) two Mim characters in the novella, Dr Mwshi and Victoria. I had a lot of fun with each of their voices.
Although he’s spend a great deal of his life with aliens – including humans – Mwshi still thinks like a Mim. He exists in three dimensions, amid shifting currents, drifting from one shape to another, and I try to suggest that in the words he chooses. His thoughts appear sequentially rather than hierarchically, his sentences rarely including subclauses. His metaphors refer to scents and currents. He uses similar-looking words in apposition to one another: ‘its vortices and vertices’, ‘our explorers exploiters’ – in an attempt (on my part, obviously) to echo his shapeshifting in his thoughts.
Victoria is even more unusual, in that she doesn’t have a personality as such. It’s been stolen from her by the Institute, replaced with off-the-peg fragments of personas, which she can combine to create her infiltrating identities. Her thought and speech patterns range chaotically and randomly through diverse linguistic spaces, veering across styles, registers and regions during the course of a sentence. It’s only when she takes on someone else’s persona – Ms Haddad’s, Benny’s, Pashar’s – that she speaks at all coherently, and then it’s with a borrowed voice.
- Notes on Nobody’s Children.
- Back to Notes on the Quire.
- Forward to Notes on the Draconians.
- Buy Nobody’s Children at Peculiar Tomes.
- Buy Nobody’s Children from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Big Finish Productions.
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Nobody’s Children cover © Lee Sullivan 2007.
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