9) The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson

A short review for a very long book (whose very size evoked consternation from my colleagues in the South Caucasus). If you liked Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver, and I did, you’ll like this as well. Qualifies as sf only on the Damon Knight principle. Set in Europe between 1689 and 1704 with most of it concentrated towards the first three years of that period. I thought actually better than Quicksilver, with more imaginative use of settings including Mediterranean, India, and Spanish America. Good stuff.

8) Irresistible Forces, edited by Catherine Asaro

I bought this because it contains the latest installment of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, the short story “Winterfair Gifts”, about Miles Vorkosigan’s wedding, so set a few months before the most recent novel of the series, Diplomatic Immunity. The book is worth it for this story alone; I’ve seen several reviews along the lines of “I haven’t read anything else by Bujold but this was very good”. Even if you have read everything else by Bujold, as I have, the story is very good.

It’s just as well, because most of the other stories are crap. This is an attempt at a cross-genre anthology linking sf and romance, and I think I’ll stay off the romance for now. “Skin Deep”, by Deb Stover, was so dire, and the plot resolution signalled so very very far in advance, that I couldn’t finish it. The only other one I felt was worthwhile was “The Trouble with Heroes” by Jo Beverly; perhaps not coincidentally, the story with the least “romance” in it. I’ll look out for Beverly’s work in future.

7) Light, by M John Harrison

I bought this some time back because it was very well reviewed by a number of people whose opinions I respect; it was on the shortlist for last year's BSFA and Clarke awards, which to me is usually a good sign, and won the James Tiptree Jr award for "gender-bending" science fiction. I didn't like it. I thought the sex was sordid, the characters unpleasant, and the plot barely comprehensible. Maybe I was just too tired from my travels, but if this is Harrison's best work I don't think I need to try again.

6) Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson

I managed to finish three books on my recent trip and will probably finish a fourth on the last of my six flights at lunchtime today, so will be posting a few more book updates over the weekend. Blind Lake is the penultimate of the Hugo nominees that I have read – and that now includes all the short fiction, which I managed to print out and take with me. I’ll do a page for my website with reviews of them all once I can bring myself to finish Humans.

I liked almost all of Blind Lake. It’s about a community of research scientists in the very near future who have been able (for reasons they don’t fully understand) to observe remotely a community of aliens on a planet far far away. Their research facility is suddenly isolated from the outside world, with no communication possible, and the human relationships between the researchers churn out of control. I thought it was much more successful in this regard than Chronoliths, by the same author, nominated last year. However, as with Chronoliths, I felt the ending was a bit weak and left too little explained. Kubrick barely gets away with it in 2001: A Space Odyssey and I’ve never read a book that managed the trick of leaving you with the sensawunda without explaining What Was really Going On.

I got up at 0530, and it’s now 1000; but of course it’s 1000 in Prague, and 1300 in Tbilisi where I actually spent last night, so I’ve been awake for hours (though managed to nod off a bit on the first plane).

Well, the trip seems to have been a success; I will have to buy myself another copy of Ali and Nino since I gave the one I had to my boss. I may write up more details on what we were actually doing other than sightseeing, but it will be in a locked post if I ever get around to it; suffice to say that we met all three presidents, all three foreign ministers, two out of three prime ministers, and numerous other officials, activists, and diplomats, and came away understanding a lot more than I had before. Also I am now the owner of a fine carpet from the village of Shahnazarli, some Caspian Sea caviar, and a bottle of Georgian red wine and another of the lethal chacha. And, all being well, I’ll be home in four hours.

And my next planned trip, to the Balkans, has been postponed from mid-June to early July, which is a relief.

Welcome to lj, !

This livejournal is one year old this week. It’s rather grown on me, especially once I decided to keep it also as a booklog back in November. So far the only person I’ve met from reading their livejournal is , though of course I bumped into a few of you at the first meetup in Dublin and added you since. Anyway, to all of you, it’s been fun reading your journals and doing the lj thing.

Right, must go for Azeri meetings now.

The Stalin birthplace museum is recommended by many including Young Fogey. We didn’t quite manage that, as it’s a two-hour drive from Tbilisi, but we did manage the old capital of Georgia at Mtskheta.

Last night we were all tired, so much so that one of my colleagues visibly fell asleep over dinner. On top of that we all had to get up at 0500 to catch the 0730 flight from Tbilisi to Baku, so even worse today.

Azerbaijan is my 41st country in my life (my boss mutters that he is roughly a hundred countries ahead of me; I shall have to scramble to catch up). Baku is very windy. The old city is really rather attractive. We walked around quoting bits of Ali and Nino at each other. I bought a carpet from the Quba region. Getting it home is going to be interesting…

Tomorrow evening fly back to Tbilisi for a night and then home the next morning. The trip is great fun but I can’t wait to be back with wife and children again.

Still in Tbilisi (then flying to Baku first thing tomorrow morning).

I’d hoped that we would be on a helicopter trip up to the border with Chechnya this morning. Unfortunately the weather apparently doesn’t allow (though it’s OK down here). But it turned out that the people who own the helicopter are based in a dacha (summer house in the countryside) that used to belong to Khrushchev when he was leader of the Soviet Union. Ex-President Shevardnadze’s suitably palatial residence is next door. We stood on the balcony, sipping our coffee, speculating about who might have stood there before us, and what decisions they might have made.

Yes, Young Fogey, Yerevan is still very pink. Interesting contrast with Tbilisi; here, the hey-day of civic construction and national culture was obviously over a century ago. Yerevan is full of new money from abroad, and not a lot else. The lack of traffic on the main road to the outside world from Armenia is telling.

Thanks for the restaurant tip, – actually I think I ate there last July. Off to somewhere else (?The Mill?) for dinner now.

Armenia was a blast. And we seemed to make much better time coming back up the road to Georgia last night (and no hassle from traffic police at all). I was just about able to communicate with our Armenian driver – his Russian was bad but mine much much worse. (I need to get some practice with when I get back.)

Tesco apparently were in Prague long before they were in Belfast, the first serious sign of capitalism. Unforunately I left my razor and shaving gel behind in the first night’s hotel in Tbilisi. Fortunately I still had spare blades.

In Tbilisi now. Fun.

So, yesterday morning woke up after an awful night’s sleep. Got on 0900 plane to Tbilisi via Prague, with four hour stopover in Prague.

Good. Enough time to find the Tesco’s in Prague and buy 1) summer coat 2) jeans 3) shaving kit. Return to Prague airport.

Gobsmacked to see that plane to Tbilisi is “cancelled”. It turns out that this is a pessimistic interpretation of events. In fact it is simply redirected; still going to Tbilisi, but via Amsterdam. (From Prague. Yes. Right.)

We land in Amsterdam at 1800. I could have driven to Amsterdam airport in time if I had left home at 1430, seven hours after I went out the door. I would have liked seven more hors with my family, on my wife’s birthday. But there we go.

Finally arrive in Tbilisi at 0200 local time this morning. Zoom to hotel. Bed in time to watch Ukraine triumph in Eurovision song contest. Awaiting early morning start again.

In car by 0730, driving from Georgia to Armenia. Impressive works for Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Stopped twice by Georgian traffic cops asking for bribes. Pay them, continue. Last 20 km of road from Georgia to Armenia (along which 80% of Armenia’s exports go) is in shocking state. No decent surface, livestock wandering freely over it. (Perhaps germane that local population largely Azeri rather than Georgian or Armenian?)

Long stop at border. Impressed by my own Russian when I understand my colleague ask “Там нудо пройти?” [Do we have to go over there?] Еventually released into Armenia, my 40th country. Beuatiful place, reminiscent of Ireland (partly because of the soft rain). Livestock still wandering across road, but road in much better condition than in Georgia.

Finally arrive Yerevan at 1500. Sleep briefly. Meet up with boss and his wife (who is also a fan of superb novel Ali and Nino set in these parts 90 years ago). Out to dinner for fantastic Armenian meal at restaurant with authentic folk dancing. Turns out this is not for our benefit but because most of restaurant booked out by sales taskforce for Armenian brandy, mostly young Russian women with dyed hair. We enjoy watching them dance, and sample product.

Back to hotel. Internet. Now bed.

Right, off I go for a week in the Southern Caucasus. See you when I get back.

Excellent Hugo-nominated story from Shadows over Baker Street, now online on author’s website:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/StudyinEmerald.asp

5) Singularity Sky by

This is the first of this year’s Hugo nominees that I’ve read after the shortlist was announced (I’d already read Ilium and Paladin of Souls). I’ve been somewhat struck by those who have already done roundups of the shortlists tending to make comments along the lines of, well is a great guy but this isn’t a Hugo-quality book. Quite apart from the fact that after last year’s winner, the concept of a “Hugo-quality” book seems not quite as exalted as perhaps we would like, I think it’s really unfair. Let me state then that is a great guy and this is also a very good book.

As well as reflecting and refracting the very different future universes described by his friends Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod, there are all kinds of other influences in there, including slightly subversive genuflections towards both Bujoldian space opera and Boris Pasternak. Apart from its complex literary heritage, there is a core political message about freedom of information defeating repressive political regimes, obviously of relevance in today’s world, and a rather good love story. Recommended.

The livejournal “friends list” is a real misnomer. It’s actually two things: either people whose journals you like reading, or people who you have decided should be allowed access to (some of) your locked posts. Most of you are people who I consider, or would like to consider, as friends.

There are 43 “real” people on my “friends-of” list, ie 43 people who see my postings on their “friends” pages. None of the automated tools for comparing these things seems to be working at the moment but I’ve had a go at cranking through by hand an analysis of which other livejournals are thought to be worth reading by the people who read mine.

The “friends lists” of the 43 people on my “friends-of” list have a total of 1276 entries for 388 other livejournal users (not counting communities or feeds) on them, ie you guys are reading an average of 29.7 other lj users, each of whom is listed by on average 3.3 of you. They are:

43 mentions (not surprisingly)
14 mentions
12 mentions
11 mentions
10 mentions
9 mentions
8 mentions
7 mentions
6 mentions
5 mentions
4 mentions
3 mentions
2 mentions
1 mention for

I dunno what it all means…

Pleasant lunch with an ex-boss, much discussion of the joys of management and the problems of tracking EU policy (financial services legislation in his case).

Not so pleasant to learn that a former colleague, who left the organisation at the same time as I did, committed suicide a few months later. Rest in peace, Feli.

I see Quicksilver won the Arthur C. Clarke award. Of the four I’d read on the shortlist of six, probably my favourite, ahead of Pattern Recognition.

Pollster John Zogby thinks Kerry will win.

I said so in February.

The boss has given the go-ahead for publishing our Azerbaijan report tomorrow!

The Green Party’s candidate in next month’s European election in Northern Ireland has withdrawn after a sporting injury last weekend, and seems likely to be replaced by their co-leader Lindsay Whitcroft. Lindsay and I were both on the Alliance Party ticket in North Belfast in 1996, and her husband Pete and I (and Kathy of Kate and Pansy) were on the same University Challenge team in 1994, so I wish her well. If I had a vote back home I would be backing John Gilliland with my first preference, but would certainly give Lindsay my second.

Broken Engagement – why Iraq is not like the Cold War.

As I expected, all but one of the Hugo nominees in the short fiction categories can now be found on-line, in some cases three times over

Best Novella (five out of five)

* “Empress of Mars” by Kage Baker (Asimov’s, July 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/empressofmars.shtml
http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=18503&id=8474 (for $2.69)

* “The Green Leopard Plague” by Walter Jon Williams (Asimov’s, Oct.-Nov. 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/greenleopards.shtml

* “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s, Dec. 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/liketheonesweusedtono.shtml

* “The Cookie Monster” by Vernor Vinge (Analog, Oct. 2003)
http://www.analogsf.com/0406/cookiemonster.shtml

* “Walk in Silence” by Catherine Asaro (Analog, April 2003)
http://www.analogsf.com/0406/silence.shtml

Best Novelette (six out of six)

* “The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeffrey Ford (Sci Fiction, scifi.com, Feb. 2003)
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/ford4/

* “Bernardo’s House” by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s, June 2003)
http://www.jimkelly.net/pages/bernardo’s_house.htm
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/bernardoshouse.shtml
http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=22109&id=8474

* “Into the Gardens of Sweet Night” by Jay Lake (Writers of the Future XIX, Bridge, 2003)
http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=21594&id=8474

* “Hexagons” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, July 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/hexagons.shtml

* “Nightfall” by Charles Stross (Asimov’s, April 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/nightfall.shtml

* “Legions in Time” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s, April 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/legionsintime.shtml

Best Short Story (four out of five)

* “Paying It Forward” by Michael A. Burstein (Analog, Sept. 2003)
http://www.analogsf.com/0406/payingforward.shtml

* “A Study in Emerald” by Neil Gaiman (Shadows over Baker Street, Del Rey, 2003)
(not yet)

* “Four Short Novels” by Joe Haldeman (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov. 2003)
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/jh01.htm

* “The Tale of the Golden Eagle” by David D. Levine (Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2003); free from FictionWise
http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=21805&id=8474

* “Robots Don’t Cry” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s, July 2003)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/robotsdontcry.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/33zl4 (gives you a text file from Compuserve)

Interview. Fantastic.

It’s the place everyone’s talking about.

Dear ,

I was very regreted to hear that news about your colleague, who I really respect and we become friends while he was viziting Borduria. What happened really touched not only your organisation but me personally as well, because I may suppose that he also was asked questions about my personality and so.

Unfgortunately I was not in Borduria that days and I told your colleague about long time ago, I am in Western Europe now.

As soon as I arrive I am going to take an adequate measures and have very seriouse discussions on this matter with my authorities, especially with Security Service. Please accept my apologisez. I really hope that this outreageous fact would not complicate our very good realtions. With best regards…

So that’s a relief.

[edited to add:] Obviously a) he is all right b) he is aware of the political stakes in Borduria and c) he was clever enough to read my “message of protest” for what I really meant to say in it.

4) Shadows over Baker Street, edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan

This is the first of the Hugo nominees package I gave myself for my birthday; Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald” has been nominated for Best Short Story and is the lead item in this anthology of authors attempting to meld the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft.

I’ve always had a liking for Holmes pastiches, and vividly remember as a teenager devouring John Dickson Carr’s The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, based around adventures mentioned but not fully recounted in the canonical stories, and Robert Lee Hall’s Exit Sherlock Holmes in which both Holmes and Moriarty turn out to be time-travelling clones from the 24th century, but it’s very well done as far as I remember. Also of course there’s the early long-unpublished Bujold story, “The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment”.

And as for H.P. Lovecraft – indeed, some (all?) of the original stories are pastiche, most overtly the one where his friend and fellow author Clark Ashton Smith turns out to be the Whisperer in Darkness, Klarkash-Ton. And the tradition of Cthulhu pastiche has been alive and well for decades; an earlier Holmes/Elder Gods crossover which I much enjoyed was Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October.

I’m sorry therefore to report that this is a pretty poor showing. Over and over the same themes get rewarmed – unspeakable entities in or from Afghanistan; the truth behind Colonel Moran and/or Irene Adler and/or (once or twice) Moriarty; dark hints, never fully explained, about bees. The editors have done a poor job with details of the setting – Guildford in Surrey has a “d”, folks; Fylingdales in Yorkshire has no “r”; “Inswich” is a poor attempt to combine Innsmouth and Dunwich from Lovecraft with Bram Stoker’s Whitby; the less said about the attempts at Welsh and Dutch the better (though I was amused to read the tale involving the young Princess Wilhelmina at Noordeinde Palace just two weeks after I helped celebrate her great-grandson’s wedding there).

The jewel (the emerald?) of the collection is certainly the Gaiman story, which turns everything on its head to combine irony with horror. Three others, by Steve Perry, co-editor Michael Reaves and F. Gwynplaine McIntyre, deserve honorable mentions. But it would be better to leave the rest sleeping in R’lyeh with the Great Old One himself.

On my own site:
Georgia On My Mind, by Charles Sheffield

On Infinity Plus:
Floater by Lucius Shepard
Carolan’s Concerto, by Caiseal Mór

I'm feeling much more chirpy now. I was very hungry and grouchy earlier in the evening and got out of it by cooking – steak and rice and chicons and peas and spinach for this evening, and marinading a big chunk of turkey for lunch tomorrow.

And we just watched an entire video together for the first time since U arrived sixteen months ago.

And it was a fantastic one as well – Chocolat, starring the ever wondrous Juliette Binoche. Brilliant bits include the north wind, the statue, the priest singing Elvis, the scene where Vianne and Anouk come downstairs and find the party being prepared (and the Count's awakening – in more ways than one – shortly after) and lots more.

And I see checking IMDB that Lena Olin was also in The Unbearable Lightness of Being along with JB. And Leslie Caron and JB were both also in Damage.

And every paragraph in this entry after the first starts with "and". Time for bed.

Living with Caucasians.

Incidentally, this time next week I shall be in Georgia.
15 May: fly Brussels-Tbilisi via Prague
16 May: drive Tbilisi-Yerevan in afternoon
17 May: drive back in evening
20 May (first thing): fly Tbilisi-Baku
21 May (late): return Baku-Tbilisi
22 May: fly home, Tbilisi-Brussels via Prague

I’m looking forward to the 23rd…