Arnott, Jake
Entry updated 26 January 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1961- ) UK author and playwright whose first novel was The Long Firm (1999), set in the 1960s UK criminal underworld and adapted in 2004 as an award-winning BBC2 Television series. Of particular sf interest is his sixth novel The House of Rumour (2012), an exploration of cultism, occultism, disinformation and myth-making from World War Two to the end of the twentieth century. One invented character is a budding sf author who in 1940s Los Angeles meets Anthony Boucher (here inspired by a Cuban fan to translate Jorge Luis Borges), Leigh Brackett, Robert A Heinlein, L Ron Hubbard (see Recursive SF) and others, with later reference to Hubbard's Dianetics, Scientology and links with Aleister Crowley and the US rocket engineer and occultist Jack Parsons. Other real-world figures include Ian Fleming, whose war work here involves the fostering of occult beliefs in Nazi Germany and investigation of Katharine Burdekin (also featured) for an apparent Prediction in her Swastika Night (1937) as by Murray Constantine of the abortive UK mission of Rudolf Hess (also featured). Sf film projects include deliberate promotion of the UFO mythology; there is a kind of "origin story" for Alien Greys, and more than one reference to Jonbar Points (with due credit to Brian W Aldiss and SF Horizons). The young sf author of the 1940s has a later career resembling that of Philip K Dick (with whom he talks at the 1964 Worldcon, subsequently joining the New Wave). Further historical events here semi-mythologized include the Apollo 11 mission and, harrowingly, the mass cult Suicide at Jonestown. In a nod to Oulipo, The House of Rumour is divided into sections named and numbered – with some relevance – for the major arcana or great trumps of the Thoth tarot pack, beginning with The Fool. The overall effect is disquieting, elusive, Equipoisal; like all secret histories it conveys that more has been going on than we could know, but rather than stoking routine Paranoia also suggests that much that was hidden (including interludes of desolating Sex) is of little consequence to those not directly affected.
Arnott has also contributed to the Doctor Who universe with the story A Handful of Stardust (2014 ebook), in which the Sixth Doctor meets John Dee in 1572. [DRL]
Jake Arnott
born Buckinghamshire: 11 March 1961
works (highly selected)
- The House of Rumour (London: Hodder and Stoughton/Sceptre, 2012) [hb/photocollage]
collections and stories
- A Handful of Stardust (London: BBC Digital, 2014) [story: ebook: tie to Doctor Who: Doctor Who: na/]
links
previous versions of this entry