Author's introduction by Lance Parkin

The War of the Worlds was obviously a huge influence – how could it fail to be, with Martians invading the Home Counties? Some of the chapter titles are the same, and almost all the original characters were named after places or people in Wells’ book. Both, for example, have an astronomer called Ogilvy.

Note that I do invert a few of the things from The War of the Worlds – germs don’t kill the Martians in this, they’re working for them! I saw Independence Day when I was writing Chapter Seven. As you’ll see for yourselves.

The title took longer than the plot. All we could come up with were joke titles: Licence to Kill, Licence Revoked, The Morte D’Octor. We wanted something ominous, something that reflected the end of the New Adventures in fact as well as fiction. In the end, I decided to watch the Bond film Licence to Kill, partly out of sheer masochism, partly to pick up tips on how to kill a popular franchise. And there the title was, in the theme tune – The Dying Days.

Bex and I had got a story and we had a title. Which was just as well, because the lead time for the book meant I only had five weeks to write it...