Blood Heat Second Iteration (novel)

Blood Heat (Second Iteration), often informally called Blood Heat: Director's Cut, was Jim Mortimore's "Director's Cut" adaptation of his Virgin New Adventures novel Blood Heat. While the names of many characters were changed from the first edition for story and copyright reasons, all of Mortimore's original characters, including the humans Alan Tomson and Frank Hobson and the reptiles Imorkal and Chtaachtl, retained their identities.

Back cover
"You want to see your child? I want to see you beg. Get down on your knees, you damn animal."

EARTH: 1993 A world undergoing quantum collapse, overrun by predators, torn apart by rage.

EARTH: 1993 A world where identity can shift as often as a butterfly flaps its wings. A world where two warring species are toppling violently over the brink of extinction.

EARTH: 1993 The last world left in the multiverse. A world facing destruction only one person can stop.

But that person died. Two hundred million years ago…

Inside flap
Life came to Earth from space on a seed of interstellar flotsam weighing no more than a family cat. From that moment the planet waged a war with itself which would outlast even the death of its star. Early combatants in this war fought mindlessly and without tools. But nothing drives innovation, biological or technological, like conflict. Later fighters in this war used their most potent weapon to name it: evolution, which only the fittest could ever survive. But in the haste to annihilation the truth, as sometimes happens, was lost. Mammal. Reptile. Fish. Bird. Insect. Plant. Fungi. Virus. We are all alien. If this island Earth was ever our home it is only because we have occupied it with nothing short of ceaseless violence. Darwin was right. There is no god. Only a never-ending war from which the only rest there can ever be…

… is extinction.

Chapter titles

 * Reflection Data
 * Involution – First Iteration
 * Rage I
 * Rage II
 * "Sunborn & Dragonbane"
 * 1) Future Past
 * 2) Instinct (World's End)
 * 3) Involution – Second Iteration
 * 4) Reason (Strangers)
 * 5) World of No Tomorrows
 * 6) Instinct (The New World)
 * 7) Involution – Third Iteration
 * 8) Reason (Bonehenge)
 * 9) Call to Colours
 * 10) Instinct (Random Walk)
 * 11) Involution – Fourth Iteration
 * 12) Reason (The Ceremony of Innocence)
 * 13) Isomorphic
 * 14) Instinct (The Invisible Rainbow)
 * 15) Involution – Fifth Iteration
 * 16) Reason (The Blood Dimmed Tide)
 * 17) Ground Zero
 * 18) Involution – Sixth Iteration
 * Extinction
 * Involution – Final Iteration
 * Reflection Data Analysis

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Dr. Jon St. Myth
 * Dorothea Gale
 * Berenice
 * Joanne
 * Captain Yeats
 * Sergeant Benson
 * The Old Man (Blood Heat Second Iteration
 * Alan Tomson
 * Julia Adams
 * Jan Martin
 * Frank Hobson
 * Imorkal
 * Chtaachtl
 * Chtorba
 * Doctor Padrone
 * Cliff and Nan

Deviations from the original story

 * The non-original characters were renamed to avoid copyright violation, and their backstories were also reinvented to better connect with the book's themes. The Seventh Doctor and the TARDIS were replaced by Dr. Jon St. Myth and his Trisected Abutment Reality Disconnect.
 * Nearly every scene was expanded, including new added action sequences.
 * Mortimore reinvented Siluri'ians as a psychic "cloud network" species and elaborated on their reimagined their culture, history, and biology. This includes an explanation of the Martians and Draconians as descendants of Siluri'ian space-farers, an idea which he credits to Iain McLaughlin in his Author's Note.
 * The alternate universe arc was replaced by a plotline about the universe undergoing a quantum collapse, which leads to new or expanded scenes slowly revealing that parts of Earth's history have always been different even pre-Silurian, or deliberately conflicting memories and backstories. (At one point, "Joanne" remembers several conflicting memories which have actually happened in the past of other characters.)
 * The original novel's beginning was moved to near the end, starting the story in media res.
 * Minor original characters from the original novel were given fuller characterisations.
 * The roles of Berenice and Joanne were significantly expanded, with the former joining a "Siluria'an" Caravan and raising Morka, and the latter featuring in multiple flashback scenes.
 * "Doctor Padrone" appears in Jo's flashbacks as a prominent figure in a survivor's community. ("Padrone" means "Master" in Italian.
 * The book has a radically different ending, a cliffhanger to be continued in Mortimore's further Collapsing Universe Cycle novels.

Continuity
to be added

Illustrations
to be added