History Creator / KimNewman

* CharacterOverlap: The AU story "The Man on the Clapham Omnibus" features alternate versions of characters from many of Newman's works. James Lytton (from ''Literature/{{Jago}}''), Richard Jeperson (from ''Literature/DiogenesClub'') and Dr. Shade (from everywhere and nowhere) get featured roles, with cameos from Sally Rhodes (''Literature/TheQuorum'') and Truro Daine (''Literature/TheNightMayor'') and mentions of Pitbull Brittan and Corporal Punishment ("[[{{Literature/Temps}} Pitbull Brittan]]"), Constant Drache (''The Quorum''), Harald Kleindienst (''Beasts in Velvet''), and even Buck Breakfast (from the obscure ''The Gold Diggers of 1981'').

* RaisedAsTheOppositeGender: One of the characters in ''Beasts in Velvet'' -- and there's really not much more can be said about that without massive spoilers.

* BadlyBatteredBabysitter: Played very darkly in the novella "Bloody Students". One subplot involves a woman named Abigail being asked to babysit the protagonist's eight-year-old son, Jason: the kid's a nuisance at the best of times, but he's recently been bitten by a rabbit carrying the mutagenic super-virus of the story, so things start to go downhill when Jason mutates.

** "Coastal City" is built around deconstructing comic book tropes, so pretty much every character is an ersatz, from [[TheCommissionerGordon Police Chief Riordan]] to [[Franchise/SpiderMan the wall-clinging Gecko Man]].
* CaptainPatriotic: The dark side of this is explored in "Ubermensch!" in which a HumanoidAlien, not named but obviously an AU version of Franchise/{{Superman}}, lands on Earth in the early part of the 20th century and grows up to be the patriotic superhero of the nation that raised him during the 1930s -- the catch being that in this story he landed in Germany.

* ShoutOut: The title of Newman's semi-parodic SplatterHorror novel ''Orgy of the Blood Parasites'' (originally published as by Jack Yeovil) was notoriously the working title of Creator/DavidCronenberg's film ''Film/{{Shivers}}''.

* TheNewRockAndRoll: The moral panic around violent horror movies is parodied in the short story "Where The Bodies Are Buried 3". A series of brutal murders is blamed on the titular horror movie, which prompts a tabloid journalist to spearhead a campaign which eventually leads to horror movies getting banned because of their influence. He later comes to realize that there is indeed a dark, demonic presence at work corrupting people into committing these crimes... [[spoiler:but it's got nothing to do with the movie. It's working through the tabloid newspaper and his campaign]].

* AluminiumChristmasTrees: The anti-Semitic content and gleeful violence of Donald Moncrieff's Doctor Shade stories in "The Original Dr. Shade" may seem exaggerated, but it's an accurate reflection of the content of some of the work of "Sapper", and of the even more extremist (and consequently now largely forgotten) Sydney Horler.

* ComicBookTime: Given a great big lampshade hanging in "Coastal City", which is about a TheCommissionerGordon not ''quite'' managing to notice that his backstory keeps changing to account for the passage of time.

* CaptainPatriotic: The dark side of this is explored in "Ubermensch!" in which a HumanoidAlien, not named but obviously an AU version of Franchise/{{Superman}}, lands on Earth in the early part of the 20th century and grows up to be the patriotic superhero of the nation that raised him -- the catch being that in this story he landed in Germany.

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Newman has also written some fiction under the name Jack Yeovil, including tie-in novels and short stories for Games Workshop's ''TabletopGame/DarkFuture'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' settings. The character Genevieve Dieudonne, who appeared in much of his ''Warhammer'' work beginning with the novel ''Literature/{{Drachenfels}}'', went on to also be a part of the ''Literature/AnnoDracula'' and ''Literature/DiogenesClub'' universes. He also wrote the BFI TV Classic book on ''Series/DoctorWho'', and is a regular film reviewer for ''Empire'' magazine, with his own column for DirectToVideo releases (finding some neglected gems, [[SturgeonsLaw but mostly dreck]]).

Newman is a long-time friend of Creator/NeilGaiman; they collaborated on the hilarious and {{troperiffic}} non-fiction book ''Ghastly Beyond Belief'', a collection of science fiction and fantasy quotations with plenty of snarky asides by Newman and Gaiman, back when they were both struggling journalists, and have made cameos in each others' work (Newman appears, in his other job as a film reviewer, in Gaiman's horror story "[[ComicBook/TheSandman Calliope]]").

* BigFirstChoice: An early choice in the adult {{Gamebook}} novel ''Life's Lottery'' is whether your favourite character in ''Series/TheManFromUNCLE'' is Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin. The answer decides whether you end up joining the social in-crowd at your primary school or becoming a misfit, which branches the novel into two entirely separate decision trees.

* {{Gamebooks}}: ''Life's Lottery'' uses the CYOA format to take you through a fairly ordinary life (or extraordinary, it depends on you) from birth in the 1970s till death, and the small choices you make may have great impact on your life -- in the playground, do you like [[Series/TheManFromUNCLE Illya Kuryakin or Napoleon Solo]] better? The first choice you have to make is whether or not to draw breath after being born. If not, "go to 0". It can also be read straight through, to reveal a very different story.

* NarratorAllAlong: The increasingly LemonyNarrator authorial voice in ''Life's Lottery'' is explicitly revealed in a couple of branches to be [[spoiler:Derek Leech]].

* LegacyCharacter: Dr. Shade has two, his son Jamie Shade and his [[AllThereInTheManual thus-far-only-mentioned-in-the-notes]] niece Lady Shade.

* TitledAfterTheSong: "Out of the Night When the Full Moon is Bright", which mixes werewolves into the legend of Franchise/{{Zorro}}, takes its title from the opening theme of the 1950s ''Series/{{Zorro}}'' TV series.

* FanConvention: "Quezalcon" is a short story in the style of the events programme for the eponymous sf convention, organised by Derek Leech, which is strongly implied [[spoiler:to be some kind of ritual in which the guest of honour is sacrificed so another writer can gain his abilities. All we're told is that dinner is "healthy heart", but has no vegetarian option]].

Newman is a long-time friend of Creator/NeilGaiman; they collaborated on the hilarious and {{troperriffic}} non-fiction book ''Ghastly Beyond Belief'', a collection of science fiction and fantasy quotations with plenty of snarky asides by Newman and Gaiman, back when they were both struggling journalists, and have made cameos in each others' work (Newman appears, in his other job as a film reviewer, in Gaiman's horror story "[[ComicBook/TheSandman Calliope]]").

Newman is a long-time friend of Creator/NeilGaiman; they collaborated on the hilarious and troperriffic non-fiction book ''Ghastly Beyond Belief'', a book of science fiction and fantasy quotations with plenty of snarky asides by Newman and Gaiman, back when they were both struggling journalists, and have made cameos in each others' work (Newman appears, in his other job as a film reviewer, in Gaiman's horror story "[[ComicBook/TheSandman Calliope]]").

Another recurring character, introduced in "The Original Dr Shade" but featured most completely in the novel ''Literature/TheQuorum'', is the satanic media magnate Derek Leech; any time a Newman character makes a DealWithTheDevil, it's generally a Deal With Derek. Leech is an unholy NoCelebritiesWereHarmed mashup of Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch who is secretly working toward some kind of consumer-culture-apotheosis apocalypse -- and every single story he appears in, even the ones where he's being actively opposed, ends with him a little bit closer to achieving his goal.