The Dead Men Diaries (short story)

The Dead Men Diaries consists of linking material throughout the Bernice Summerfield anthology Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries. It was written by Paul Cornell.

Plot
Benny has put off writing the sequel to her best-selling book, Down Among the Dead Men. Her publisher is fed up enough to send two bounty hunters, Mr Scozz and Mr Plurk, to "encourage" her to finish the book, which will be an autobiography.

Benny, instead of writing about herself, searches the Galaxy Wide Web for stories about herself. She dictates these stories while Mr Scozz and Mr Plurk listen.

For some of the stories, however, Benny waits until the bounty hunters have gone to sleep for the night, feeling that some of the stories are too private for them to hear.

Benny is generally fed up with the bounty hunters, who are running Joseph ragged serving them tea and cakes. She even finds Mr Plurk rummaging in her underwear drawer.

However, by the time she has finished, she has influenced them enough that Mr Plurk wants to develop the academic field of Bounty Hunter Studies.

Benny submits her finished autobiography, which includes all that is left of her manuscript A Brief History of Time, which was mostly lost in a fire.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Mr Plurk
 * Mr Scozz
 * Joseph

Continuity

 * Benny mentions her books Down Among the Dead Men (PROSE: Theatre of War, et al) and Incredibly Bad Jokes of the Twentieth Century. (PROSE: Sky Pirates!)
 * Benny and Gavin have become good chums. (PROSE: The Least Important Man)