I’ve always thought of Ellis as a cultural magpie – content to strip popular culture of its goodies for his own ends but paying little back. Witness the insultingly tossed-off spin-offs from his Planetary series, the wildly hyped yet ultimately pretty-but-empty Ministry of Space, and his willfully adolescent and gratuitous Giger-eque Strange Kisses – he must have laughed himself sick the day the royalty cheques for those turkeys came in.

And yet. Global Frequency and Planetary are emotionally engaging, intelligent and literate stories. GF is high concept and probably lends itself to translation on TV more than Planetary but the latter, I hope, will be remembered as the crown on Ellis’ somewhat patchy career. It’s his Catch-22.