Success, bbc, i heard them declare it as a success, the mod did i hearthat . They have absolute confidence in the system. As far as everyone voted to buy new and more expensive ones which probably will not go astray. Probably why they are £40 billion. Time and we do these tests every three orfour mag time and we do these tests every three or four mag years, so we have not done another one since. Three or four mag years, so we have not done another one since. And we do these tests. An extraordinary situation. I do not know how many people watched that this morning but andrew marr, he had her squirming, theresa may. Her refusal to answer the question came back to bite her and she looked very shifty. Four or five times she refused to say whether she knew this Trident Launch had misfired. Doing what we all have to do, keep asking the question if you want to stay healthy, dont brown to coast, although the Daily Telegraph says it is a row over brown toast and crispy roast potato cancer. What is the problem . What are we not meant to do now . We are meant to have lovely golden toast and not crispy brown toast and lovely golden potatoes rather than brown and crunchy ones because of carcinogens when everything is crunchy. Do feel free to note the times headline does not say what you should have is non brown toast, which more of us know by its more ordinary name, bread. And your potatoes cannot be too fluffy because it creates more of a surface area . And no crisps either. Oh, dear. I had a crispy Roast Potatoes i have ever had and they were also the nicest so i do not think that will change. I think we all treat these Cancer Stories with a pinch of salt. A pinch of salt if that is not too unhealthy. Oh, dear, lets have a bag of crisps. Thats it for the papers tonight. Before you go, these front pages have come dont forget, all the front pages are online on the bbc news website where you can read a detailed review of the papers. Its all there for you, seven days a week, at bbc. Co. Uk papers, and you can see us there too, with each nights edition of the papers been posted on the page shortly after weve finished. Now its time for meet the author, and jim naughtie talks to Stephen Baxter whos taken on the huge task of writing a sequel to h. G. Wells classic Science Fiction, story, the war of the worlds. You have to be brave to write a sequel to a novel by hg wells, the father of Science Fiction. But Stephen Baxter has done it for the second time. Having taken on the story of The Time Machine more than 20 years ago, he has now written the massacre of mankind, which is the story of the return of the martians after their defeat in wellss classic story the war of the worlds. Stephen baxter, Maths And Physics Teacher turned author, is one of our best known Science Fiction authors, with more than 40 books to his name and he has also collaborated with Arthur C Clarke, no less, and terry pratchett. Now he takes on one of his biggest challenges. Welcome. So the martians are back. Why . Well, they always intended to, i think. The First Expedition, as we know, failed. There is so much they didnt anticipate the bacteria on the earth particularly. They didnt anticipate resistance, i dont believe. They did manage to down a few Artillery Shells and so forth. Didnt really expect the conditions of the earth. Wells says they were baffled by seeing ships in the sea no deep oceans on mars. I think the First Expedition was like columbus. He gets over the atlantic and has no idea where he is or what hes dealing with. What followed that is the conquistadors more purposeful and they know what they want and how to get it as well. So its a story not just of fear on earth, the sense of impending doom, its the story of mutual incomprehension. Yes, i think so. Rather like the story of the americas, i guess. But the martians are on a kind of different moral level, in a sense. And wells emphasised this. They are loyal to each other. They treat us as livestock, basically. Awkward livestock that is liable to attack you if youre not careful, but livestock. As with animals, they are loyal to each other, they come back to each other and save each other when they are wounded and so forth, and what theyre trying to do is save the race from a catastrophe back on mars. You talk in terms of wells in terms of enormous respect, obviously, but a kind of affection for his vision. What does he mean to you . Well, he was the father of Science Fiction, i think its fair to say that. If he had done nothing else, that would have been massively important for me. But he did all sorts of other things. He did. He was a big figure in the world and i think after his death weve rather forgotten that. He was a Massive Public figure all the way through to the second world war. Very popular in the first world war, accounts of the true condition of life in the trenches and so on. And i think his lifes work in a way was crystallised by his work on the declaration of the rights of man, his work on that influenced what came after. He was a famous idealist but in his great Science Fiction books, The Time Machine, war of the worlds, which was published just before the turn of the century in the 1890s, he was doing something that really hadnt been done before. Trying to imagine the world in a way nobody had ever seen or read before. No, thats true. There had been visions ofjourneys to other planets but nothing as rigorous and scientifically thought out as wells. His vision of mars in particular. He used the logic of the time, which was the sun was cooling down and the further from the sun a planet was, the older it was. So mars is old and cooling. It is locked in an ice age and the martians have had to reduce themselves to a kind of minimal, bunker like existence to cling on, and now they have got to that. Thats one of the fascinating things that emerges in your own story the massacre of mankind the sympathy for, as it were, the enemy, the other side. I think we, the readers, who arent under the feet of the martians, can see glimmers of sympathy for them. As i say, they are loyal to each other. The way you talk about the story and the martians is interesting because youve written dozens of Science Fiction stories of your own but its almost as if youre coming back to the motherload of Science Fiction with this story. The fascination that we have with mars is the archetypal fascination with the other. Yes, mars was always. In the telescopic age, mars was the only world whose surface you can see apart from the moon, which was obviously dead, so you could project your fantasies on it. Which we did. All the way through to the 1960s, actually, when the first space probes went past and it was much more like the moon, as it turns out. Now we believe life of some kind might be up there. Yes, it is the motherload of dreams. You talk about projecting ourfantasies. Is that really what Science Fiction is about . Well, i think you could say that Science Fiction is about. Its not about the future, or in other words its about the here and now, predicting our concerns, in a way. So with wells and war of the worlds he was reflecting late victorian angst about imperialism and colonialism and the damage it can do to the colonial conscience, for one thing. Now i think we could look at it as a metaphor for climate change. You know, the martians planet has collapsed in a terrible way and migrants, heavily armed migrants, come to the earth. What is it that gives this story such a grip . Is it the sense of impending doom . Is it as simple as that . The fear that lurks inside all of us in some way . I think it works on many levels and as a myth you can take out of it what is relevant to your time. The sense of the universe as evolving around us, not necessarily to our liking, and we have to adapt. In other words, in every age there is some threat that seems impossibly big. And terrific. Yes. As i mentioned earlier, you have collaborated with some extraordinary authors and Arthur C Clarke comes to mind. A name whos known to people who are not necessarily Science Fiction addicts as somebody who could imagine the unimaginable. What was he like when you communicated with him and talked to him late in his life . Yeah, he was in his 80s when i was working. He had lived through so much. Much of what he predicted logically had worked out. A lot of it hadnt. But he was continually interested. Did that bother him . He got it wrong . What i asked him about specifically was about space flight how come we dont have places on mars now, as predicted. He said no, because so much of what has happened was so enriching. The robot probes to jupiter and beyond. He loved all that. He set novels out there late in life. So he never got tired of that curious search for the next thing that was coming round the corner . Exactly, yeah. He was always open to curiosity, to new influences. To new writers. He read the latest sf, like mine, and stayed curious right till the end. Lets go back finally to the martians themselves. When weve finished this book, what do you want us to think about the martians . I think the lesson we have to learn from the martians is what the characters are working for at the end of the book and, indeed, at the end of war of the worlds. In a way, the specific nature of the martians and their actions doesnt matter. It is the way they represent the wider context of our future. You know, our earth isnt infinite. It is one grain of sand in infinity. That is the specific story and you have to take it away. Rather than columbus and what he did, his journey emphasised the globalisation of mankind. So i think its the universalisation of mankind that you need to take away. Would you like to meet a martian . I would probably be running fast the other way i would be fascinated. If i could watch from a height maybe, yes. Watch from a distance. Stephen baxter, thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Its another cold frosty night out there for a good few of us after what has been a sparkling day for many. Scenes like this one in suffolk. But for others it stayed gloomy all day long and, well, we saw some light snow falling out of some of this cloud in wales earlier on today, so quite a mixture, and we will keep the variety going, as we head into the night, where youve got cloud cover actually, that will provide a blanket and will prevent the temperatures from falling too low. Where youve got clear skies, as i say, quite a hard frost. And as weve seen over the last few nights temperatures locally can fall lower than these numbers suggest. The other weather element, and perhaps the most important one, is fog, so im going to take all the rest of the elements off and just concentrate on that fog. Its already there across some southern counties, and it will become more extensive i think later on in the night and by tomorrow morning. It will be quite nasty, freezing fog patches. And again on tuesday, disruption quite possible. Check out your bbc local Radio Station or go online for the latest updates. Some of the major airports could be affected, so do leave a bit of extra time and check with the operators before you set off. Not all of us waking up to fog. I think there will be some brighter skies further west at eight oclock in the morning across parts of South West England and got through wales. Some patches of fog through the midlands, northern england, maybe southern scotland, but not as extensive and plenty of dry and in places bright weather, though it will be chilly and there will be some frost around across these more northern areas. To go through the day, actually for the vast majority it will be a nice day with light winds, some sunshine developing for a good few. Where you start off with fog it could linger and when that does happen it will be particularly chilly, in fact not much above freezing across central and eastern parts of england, where that fog sticks around, but for most of us, yeah, a five, six, possibly 7 degrees, with light winds and wintry sunshine. It should feel quite nice. Then the fog reforms again and by tuesday could be a problem once more, especially across some central and North Eastern parts of england perhaps. Different story across scotland and northern ireland. Some patchy rain pushing in from the west here, crossing the irish sea. Introducing some milder south westerly winds, so relatively mild nine or ten degrees here and in western fringes of england and wales. Further south and east, though, despite some brightness it is going to be chilly. We end the week with the fog clearing as the breeze picks up. It will be a cold wind for a time before it turns milder for all come the weekend. This is bbc news. Im martine croxall. The headlines at 11pm demands for the Prime Minister to make a commons statement tomorrow about problems with a test of the trident missile system, and what she knew when. I have absolute faith in our trident missiles. When i made that speech in the house of commons, what we were talking about was whether or not we should renew our trident. The Prime Minister has confirmed shell talk to donald trump on friday about the importance of nato, when she visits the new president in washington. Choose life, choose facebook and hope that someone somewhere ca res. It helped define the 1990s, now train spotting returns for a new generation. Also, in the next hour, well be taking a look at tomorrows papers, including the financial times, which has more reaction