Novellas (5/5)
Cowdrey, Albert: The Tribes of Bela (F&SF, Aug04)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/ac01.htm
* http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=36011&id=8474 (free)
Link, Kelly: Magic for Beginners (Magic for Beginners, Small Beer Press, Jul05)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/kl01.htm
Sawyer, Robert J.: Identity Theft (Down These Dark Spaceways, Mike Resnick, Ed., Science Fiction Book Club, May05)
* http://sfwriter.com/2006/01/for-your-hugo-consideration-identity.html
Sparhawk, Bud: Clay’s Pride (Analog, Aug04 (In July/August issue))
* http://www.analogsf.com/0602/Clay.shtml
* http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=32047&id=8474 ($2.25)
Witcover, Paul: Left of the Dial (SCI FICTION, Sep04)
* http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/witcover/

Novelettes (9/10)
Abraham, Daniel: Flat Diane (F&SF, Nov04 (Oct/Nov 2004 issue))
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/da01.htm
Bacigalupi, Paolo: The People of Sand and Slag (F&SF, Feb04)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/pb01.htm
Barton, William: Harvest Moon (Asimov’s, Sep05)
* http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0602/harvest.shtml
Cambias, James L.: The Ocean of the Blind (F&SF, Apr04)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/jc01.htm
Doctorow, Cory: Anda’s Game (Salon.com, Nov04 (Online 15 Nov 04))
* http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/15/andas_game/index_np.html
Gunn, Eileen and What, Leslie: Nirvana High (Stable Strategies and Others, Tachyon Press, Sep04)
* http://www.eileengunn.com/StableStrategies/nirvana_high.html
Kelly, Jim: Men are Trouble (Asimov’s, Jun04)
* http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0602/menaretrouble.shtml
McDaid, John G.: Keyboard Practice Consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with Two Manuals (F&SF, Jan05)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/jm01.htm
Melko, Paul: Strength Alone (Asimov’s, Dec04)
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0602/strength.shtml
Shope, Beth: Dragon’s Eye (Lords of Swords, Daniel E. Blackston, Ed., Pitch-Black Books, Dec04)

Short Stories (14/16)
Anderson, Kevin J. and Moesta, Rebecca: Rough Draft (Analog, Feb05 (Jan/Feb 2005 issue.))
* http://www.analogsf.com/0602/Roughdraft.shtml
Bailey, Dale: The End of the World as We Know It (F&SF, Nov04 (Oct/Nov 2004 issue))
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/db01.htm
* http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=36012&id=8474 (free)
Bowes, Richard: There’s a Hole in the City (SCI FICTION, Jun05)
* http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/bowes5/index.html
Emshwiller, Carol: I Live With You (F&SF, Mar05)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/ce01.htm
Harris, Anne: Still Life With Boobs (Talebones, Aug05 (In Summer 2005 issue))
* http://annesible.livejournal.com/1864.html
Hemry, John G.: Small Moments in Time (Analog, Dec04)
* http://www.analogsf.com/0602/smallmoments.shtml
Kress, Nancy: My Mother, Dancing (Asimov’s, Jun04)
* http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0602/mymother.shtml
Lethem, Jonathan: Super Goat Man (New Yorker, Apr04 (Appeared 5 Apr 2004))
* http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/?040405fi_fiction
Link, Kelly: The Faery Handbag (The Faery Reel: Tales From the Twilight Realm, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Ed., Viking Press, Aug04)
* http://www.lcrw.net/fictionplus/link-handbag.htm
Resnick, Mike: A Princess of Earth (Asimov’s, Dec04)
* http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0602/Aprincess.shtml
* http://www.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book.htm&bookid=31106&id=8474 ($0.65)
Rickert, M.: Cold Fires (F&SF, Nov04 (Oct/Nov 2004 issue))
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/mr01.htm
Rosenbaum, Benjamin: Start the Clock (F&SF, Aug04)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/br01.htm
Schoen, Lawrence M.: The Sky’s the Limit (All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, David Moles and Jay Lake, Ed., Wheatland Press, Nov04)
Vukcevich, Ray: Glinky (F&SF, Jun04)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/rv01.htm
Webster, Bud: Christus Destitutus (Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan, Ed., Tor, Aug04)
Wentworth, K.D.: Born-Again (F&SF, May05)
* http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/kw01.htm

I’ll edit this entry if any of the remaining three is put on-line (or turns out to already be available).

A rather grand job is being advertised in NATO. I emailed my senior contact there (who indeed previously did that job) and said that it looked awfully interesting, but I wan’t sure I had enough experience. He replied,

Simply put, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The position has been readvertised because Sec Gen is seeking a range of new candidates and so the field is wide open. So give it a try.

So I think I will.

1) rates of inter-country migration

The results of my poll on this are really rather startling. 87 of you answered all three questions. You report that of your 174 parents, 24 (14%) were born in different countries to you; and of your 348 grandparents, 73 (21%) were born in different countries to you. (So you guys are more likely to have been born in a different country to your parents than they are to have been born in a different country to theirs.)

But even making allowances for that, the rate of inter-country migration used by Rohde in his paper – 0.1%, one in a thousand – seems far too low. One in seven of your parents was born in a different country to you. One in twelve of your grandparents was born in a different country to their child who became your parent. The “true rate” migration worldwide today may well be much higher than I had realised.

It could be argued that moving from country to country has become easier and more common in the last few decades, and the fact that one in seven of your parents, but only one in twelve of their parents, was born in a different country to their child might be an indicator of this. Myself I’m more inclined to put this down to the selection effect that those people who respond to polls in my livejournal are probably more likely to have an interest in travel, as I do, and to have had parents who, like mine, were also interested in travel.

It’s only impressionistic, but it seems to me that migration from country to country has been pretty frequent for a very long time. As I look at my history shelf, the nearest book is F.E. Peters’ study of Jerusalem, which chronicles the waves of settlement over that city in the last 3000 years starting when David conquered it from the Jebusites. Next along is my abridged versioon of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. On the same sheld I have Peter Balakian’s account of the Armenian genocide and diaspora, Keay’s History of India and a collection of essays on the life of the much-travelled twelfth-century queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (whose son Richard I, if you remember, was married to a Spanish princess shortly after conquering Cyprus). Probably it’s even easier now than it was, and probably more people can travel now than did a hundred years ago; but I reckon most of us in, as Nick Barnes put it, the area north of the equator and west of the Gobi (and going west right the way round to California) have common ancestors in the last 800 years.

2) I wortoe before that [Rohde’s] model assumes that women have an equal probability of bearing children every year between the ages of 16 and 40, thus giving an average age difference between mothers and their children of 28. I reckon this flattens out the natural bump (!) at the lower end of that age range, and my suspicion (without any proof) for most of human history is that most children were born to women aged between 14 and 30. That too will decrease the time to our most recent common ancestor, as the time between generations will be shorter.

speculated that Most children may have been born to women between 14 and 30 but the ones born to older mothers may be more likely to have survived (and their mothers to have died as a result or shortly after). A large number of children born to younger mothers succumbed to poor infant care (nursemaids dropping babies off battlements, bizarre infant-rearing theories not contradicted by inexperienced parents, malnutrition etc)..

Interesting point. It’s not a scientific sample, but the easiest data to get for, say 1250 AD, are the statistics for reigning monarchs and their queens of the day.

Queen of England: Eleanor of Provence (married to Henry III). She was born in 1223, married in 1236. Her children who survived to adulthood were:
Edward I ‘Longshanks’, King of England b. 17 Jun 1239 (mother 16)
Margaret of England b. 29 Sep 1240 (mother 17)
Beatrice of England b. 25 Jun 1242 (mother 19)
Edmund ‘Crouchback’ Plantagenet, Earl of Leicester+ b. 16 Jan 1245 (mother 22)

Queen of France: Eleanor’s elder sister Marguerite (married to St Louis IX), born around 1221, and married in 1234. Her children who survived to adulthood were:
Isabelle (March 2, 1241–January 28, 1271) (mother 20)
Philippe III (May 1, 1245–October 5, 1285) (mother 24)
Jean Tristan (1250–August 3, 1270) (mother 29)
Pierre (1251–1284) (mother 30)
Blanche (1253–1323) (mother 32)
Marguerite (1254–1271) (mother 33)
Robert, Count of Clermont (1256–February 7, 1317) (mother 35)
Agnes of France (c. 1260–December 19, 1327) (mother about 39)

Queen of Norway: Margret, married to Haakon IV in 1225; I don’t have a date of birth for her, but her father was born only in 1189 so if he was 36 when she was married she must have been born between 1205 and 1210. Their children who survived to adulthood were born in 1232, 1234 and 1238 (another born in 1226 died in infancy).

Margaret, Countess in her own right of Flanders and Hainault, had had children when she was 16, 19 and 24.

This is the explanation of my earlier cryptic unlocked post about not putting non-Western characters in your signature file.

As some of you will know, I’ve had the following signature to emails from my gmail account for most of the last twelve months:

Nicholas Whyte
Europe Program Director, ICG
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Governance, QUB
http://explorers.whyte.com
http://nhw.livejournal.com
“мислењето на др. Вајт се смета за божја вистина, а моќниците низ целиот свет, кога ќе го слушнат, климаат со главите во молчалива согласност.” – Jason Miko, 1 Feb 2005

The line at the bottom means “Dr. Whyte’s opinion is considered as God’s truth, and throughout the whole world, whoever hears him nods silently in agreement.” It was a quote from a Macedonian commentator who was pissed off with me after my commentary on the outcome of the November 2004 referendum, and my taking it out of context was a rather childish, obscure and self-indulgent way of getting my revenge for his article (which really got under my skin at the time).

Well, a couple of people had emailed me to let me know that my messages to them were being bounced back specifically because of the Cyrillic characters, so I made a mental note to delete the relevant lines whenever contacting them; it did not occur to me that some email systems might just delete the entire message.

Then over the last few days I tried a couple of times to send messages to , and she reported that they were coming to her completely blank. This evening, driving my mother to the airport, I suddenly thought, “Aha! I bet it is the Cyrillic that ‘s email system objects to.”

And then a very cold sensation ran down my spine, and I thought, “I wonder if that explains why I never got a reply to the long and heartfelt job application letter I sent that lobbying firm back on December 14th???”

So, to repeat: Do NOT put non-Latin characters into your signature file. Full internationalisation has not yet hit email as widely as I would have wished.

A survey about mobility.

(Feel free to interpret both “same country” and “parents/grandparents” as widely as necessary.)

Do NOT put non-Latin characters into your signature file.

I was having a row with a NATO official who felt unhappy about certain aspects of our Macedonia report. He was telling me that this would all make Lord Robertson very unhappy, given that he had been secretary-general at the time and that our report made reference to things he had done. I then read the NATO official this email:

Dear Nicholas,

Many thanks for sight of the Macedonia paper. I read it with great interest not least because of my own intimate involvement in the area and it would seem my lasting legacy of confusion over the amnesty. Remembering as I do the fraught circumstances of getting an amnesty and in doing so saving the peace process I’m not sure I want reminding.

I do not suggest any amendment – not least because I might make matters even more complex than they are. Any comment from me in the text would be blown out of proportion. I do however believe it right to get ICTY to hold their decisions, but also that local politicians to be restrained in commenting on the cases lest they paint themselves into very awkward corners.

Yours aye,

George Robertson

Tee hee.

Been meaning to write this up for some time, and I think for the moment as a blog entry rather than a web page.

Doug Rohde’s paper on the most recent common ancestor of all humanity is the most interesting of the numerous pieces of research cited by Mark Humphrys on this topic. Rohde set up a computer simulation of global population dynamics from 20,000 BC to the present day, including a fairly small allowance for migration rates between continents.

He found that his computer simulations gave results of between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago for the lifetime of the most recent common ancestor of all humanity. Reading through his paper, it seems clear to me that his conclusions are too modest; that in fact it is entirely likely that the most recent ancestor of all humanity lived around 2,000 years ago. I have several reasons for thinking this:

1) Rohde admits that he is using unrealistically low rates of inter-country migration, simply so as not to get results that are too startling. If the real rate of migration between countries and continents is higher than the one he used, the time to the most recent common ancestor decreases.

2) His models assumes that women have an equal probability of bearing children every year between the ages of 16 and 40, thus giving an average age difference between mothers and their children of 28. I reckon this flattens out the natural bump (!) at the lower end of that age range, and my suspicion (without any proof) for most of human history is that most children were born to women aged between 14 and 30. That too will decrease the time to our most recent common ancestor, as the time between generations will be shorter.

(A digression: female-female lines are much harder to trace, which is odd given that there is never any doubt about who a child’s mother is. For instance, little is known of Mary Garritt, the wife of Thomas Webb, a surveyor in Stow-on-the-Wold in the mid-18th century. Her daughter Frances (1775-1862) married Thomas Salisbury, landlord of Marshfield House in Yorkshire. Their daughter Anne (1806-1881) married another gentry type, Edwyn Burnaby of Baggrave Hall in Leicestershire. Their daughter Caroline (1832-1918) married a widowed clergyman who was the grandson of a duke. Their daughter Nina (1862-1938) managed to bag an earl as her husband. Her daughter Elizabeth (1900-2002) did rather better than a mere earl. Her daughter, another Elizabeth, was born in 1926 and is still alive; those of you in the UK and Canada will find her depicted on certain useful everyday objects, ie money. But her direct female line ancestry can be traced back only six generations before it is lost in the Gloucestershire middle classes.)

3) Rohde leaves out the effect of occasional exceptional individuals (what in homage to Asimov we might call the “Mule effect”), in this case those with vast numbers of children all of whom produce descendants, such as Genghis Khan. The paper I link to there shows that Genghis Khan’s Y-chromosomes are present in large proportions of the male population of his former empire.

That of course only measures the direct male-line descent of the individuals concerned. It must be pretty certain that if you take all lineages into account, Genghis Khan is an ancestor, quite likely the most recent common ancestor himself, of everyone between the Aral Sea and the Pacific north of the old boundary line. If he had not fathered the immense number of children he appears to have done, that would surely have added another couple of centuries to the time since the most recent common ancestor of the people of the region.

I’ve argued elsewhere that most of us are descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Someone living in the first few centuries AD, probably in East Asia, probably a man with children by several different women (quite possibly in different places), is the most recent person who is the ancestor of us all.

Of course, while this is a nice concept, it’s not quite as strong as it seems. Rohde points out one reason for this, which is that at the distance of 50 generations the likelihood that we have inherited any genetic material at all from this one particular ancestor is pretty minimal unless you happen to be fairly close in geographical proximity to them.

There is another reason as well, which is that family ties are not just about genetics but are also about how you feel. By emphasising the arrival of children in a family as the product of procreation between married couples of opposite sexes, the Most Recent Common Ancestry model leaves out all the messiness of real life – adoptions, most obviously, but various other possibilities are all around us. It’s an attractive mathematical concept, but we have to bear in mind that it isn’t the whole story.

Most of you who care will have seen most of these already; just for my own record-keeping:

The gender dynamics in cross-class relationships in Firefly. Great quote at the end, though irrelevant to the basic argument:

What I adore about Kaylee, as a character, is that she completely ignores any sort of gender stereotypes, she’s a mechanic, she’s girly, she really into sex, she’s innocent, and when she wants a pretty dress it is quite possibly the ugliest pretty dress you’ve ever seen – but you love her for it.

Follow-up note on Serenity and US politics.

Followed by on the Guild and the Bene Gesserit“Well, Maybe You Can Take That Part Of The Sky”, by Abigail Nussbaum on sin and society;

and on gender and class again especially Inara, which leads to a surprising discussion of Star Trek, especially “The Cage”.

Happy Birthday to and !
(And and yesterday.)

(Slightly surprised that none of you seems to know each other.)

4) The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

I have been reading this on my Palm T|X after downloading more or less at random from Project Gutenberg. The last of the four collections of Doyle's stories about the great detective, published in 1927, but mostly set in 1900-1902, "around the time of the Boer War". It's an odd selection, not the best of the Holmes stories; there are several tales turning on freaks of nature (monkey gland injections, a disease almost like leprosy and a killer jellyfish) and several where Holmes doesn't actually solve anything but is more a kind of deliverer of absolution. I was also intrigued by the presence in different stories of no less than three Latin American ladies of fiery temperament. Did Doyle have a particular experience from his own past in mind?

The other thing that struck me was the universal use of the telegram as a method of communication. We've forgotten all about this now, but it combined elements of the fax, the SMS and the email. I wonder if anyone can date precisely when the telegram went out of use?

List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2005. Mark with a star if you had multiple non-consecutive stays.

Rome
Ljubljana*
London*
Thessaloniki
Belgrade
Geneva
Washington DC*
New York*
Tirana
Cambridge (Mass)
Paris
Belfast
Tbilisi
Rogate, W Sussex
Loughbrickland, Co. Down
Glasgow
Ohrid
Skopje*
Pristina
Prcanj, Montenegro
Kiev

Not as many as I thought, in fact.

Half a dozen new comment notifications to this post revealed to me that Neil Gaiman had come across my review of his latest book, as a result of browsing himself on Library Thing. It’s a small internet. (My very first post on this livejournal was about meeting him at an autograph session in Brussels.)

3) Steppe, by Piers Anthony

This arose out of a conversation with a colleague who remembered having read it years ago. He described the plot to me, I posted his query here (and also on rasfw) and it was swiftly identified by as this book. I told my colleague, he bought it off Amazon, read it over the weekend and passed it on to me.

Our hero, a ninth-century Uighur, is yanked far into the future by players of a massive interactive game called Steppe, in which the history of Central Asia is simulated between the years 841 and 1227 at a rate of a game year for every real day that passes. The author takes the opportunity to regale us with much history transcribed painstakingly from Rene Grousset’s Empire of the Steppes (thanks to Mike Schilling for that tip-off).

Well, one has to be honest and admit that neither the plot, nor the setting, nor indeed the characterisation are quite as well-rounded as the couple depicted by Boris Vallejo on the cover, whose relevance is as minimal as their clothing. (Note how the gentleman holds his long upright pointy thing in one hand, and clutches another weapon at groin level with the other.)

For some reason, rather than have the whole game of Steppe a computer-generated environment, Anthony chooses to try and rewrite the Central Asian landscape into a space opera setting, so that the horses are spaceships, rough terrain equates to nebulas, camps are actually on planets. It’s not as well done as he managed in the five-volume Bio of a Space Tyrant series (and that set rather a low bar to exceed, featuring as it did the bizarre decision of Turks and Greeks to settle on the same asteroid when they had the whole solar system to choose from, purely so that they could reproduce the Cyprus situation in space).

It’s never clear whether the characters are supposed to get marks for recreating the historical record or deviating from it, and this is where Anthony really does run into difficulty with writing a decent story; he cannot choose between history lesson and plot. (A cantankerous afterword complains about his treatment by his publishers.) The women of the future are apparently “unversed in the refinements of pleasure” (this phrase is actually used), but fortunately our time-travelling hero is around to put them right by doing it the old-fashioned Turkic way.

Perhaps not the best book I’ve read all year, but I did at least find it much easier going than Dhalgren.

Of course, I’ve been tracking the Hugos and Nebulas separately; but this was interesting. (Usual – bold if you’ve read.)

Thanks to  here,  here,  here,  here,  here and  here.

1953 HUGO: Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

1955 HUGO: Mark Clifton & Frank Riley, They’d Rather Be Right

1956 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, Double Star

1958 HUGO: Fritz Leiber, The Big Time

1959 HUGO: James Blish, A Case of Conscience

1960 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

1961 HUGO: Walter Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

1962 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

1963 HUGO: Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

1964 HUGO: Clifford Simak, Way Station

1965 HUGO: Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer
NEBULA: Frank Herbert, Dune

1966 HUGO: Roger Zelazny, …And Call Me Conrad
HUGO: Frank Herbert, Dune
NEBULA: Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
NEBULA: Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

1967 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
NEBULA: Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection

1968 HUGO: Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
NEBULA: Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage

1969 HUGO: John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
NEBULA: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

1970 HUGO: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
NEBULA: Larry Niven, Ringworld

1971 HUGO: Larry Niven, Ringworld
NEBULA: Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes

1972 HUGO: Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
NEBULA: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves

1973 HUGO: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
NEBULA: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama

1974 HUGO: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
NEBULA: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

1975 HUGO: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
NEBULA: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
WFA: Patricia McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

1976 HUGO: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
NEBULA: Frederik Pohl, Man Plus
WFA: Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return

1977 HUGO: Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
NEBULA: Frederik Pohl, Gateway
WFA: William Kotzwinkle, Doctor Rat

1978 HUGO: Frederik Pohl, Gateway
NEBULA: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
WFA: Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness

1979 HUGO: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
NEBULA: Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
WFA: Michael Moorcock, Gloriana

1980 HUGO: Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
NEBULA: Gregory Benford, Timescape
WFA: Elizabeth A. Lynn, Watchtower

1981 HUGO: Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen
NEBULA: Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
WFA: Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

1982 DICK: Rudy Rucker, Software
HUGO: C. J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station
NEBULA: Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time
WFA: John Crowley, Little Big

1983 DICK: Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates
HUGO: Isaac Asimov, Foundation’s Edge
NEBULA: David Brin, Startide Rising
WFA: Michael Shea, Nifft the Lean

1984 DICK: William Gibson, Neuromancer
HUGO: David Brin, Startide Rising
NEBULA: William Gibson, Neuromancer
WFA: John M. Ford, The Dragon Waiting

1985 DICK: Tim Powers, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace
HUGO: William Gibson, Neuromancer
NEBULA: Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
WFA: Barry Hughart, The Bridge of Birds
WFA: Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood

1986 DICK: James P. Blaylock, Homunculus
HUGO: Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
NEBULA: Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
WFA: Dan Simmons, Song of Kali

1987 CLARKE: Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
DICK: Patricia Geary, Strange Toys
HUGO: Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
NEBULA: Pat Murphy, The Falling Woman
STOKER: Stephen King, Misery
STOKER: Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song
WFA: Patrick Suskind, Perfume

1988 CLARKE: George Turner, The Sea and Summer
DICK: Rudy Rucker, Wetware
HUGO: David Brin, The Uplift War
NEBULA: Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free
STOKER: Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
WFA: Ken Grimwood, Replay

1989 CLARKE: Rachel Pollack, Unquenchable Fire
DICK: Richard Paul Russo, Subterranean Gallery
HUGO: C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen
NEBULA: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Healer’s War
STOKER: Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort
WFA: Peter Straub, Koko

1990 CLARKE: Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
DICK: Pat Murphy, Points of Departure
HUGO: Dan Simmons, Hyperion
NEBULA: Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu
STOKER: Robert R. McCammon, Mine
WFA: Jack Vance, Madouc

1991 CLARKE: Colin Greenland, Take Back Plenty
DICK: Ian McDonald, King of Morning, Queen of Day
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game
NEBULA: Michael Swanwick, Stations of the Tide
STOKER: Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life
TIPTREE: Eleanor Arnason, A Woman of the Iron People
TIPTREE: Gwyneth Jones, The White Queen
WFA: James Morrow, Only Begotten Daughter
WFA: Ellen Kushner, Thomas the Rhymer

1992 CLARKE: Pat Cadigan, Synners
DICK: Richard Grant, Through the Heart
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
NEBULA: Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
STOKER: Thomas F. Monteleone, Blood of the Lamb
TIPTREE: Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
WFA: Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life

1993 CLARKE: Marge Piercy, Body of Glass
DICK: Jack Womack, Elvissey
DICK: John M. Ford, Growing Up Weightless
HUGO: Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
HUGO: Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
NEBULA: Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
STOKER: Peter Straub, The Throat
TIPTREE: Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
WFA: Tim Powers, Last Call

1994 CLARKE: Jeff Noon, Vurt
DICK: Robert Charles Wilson, Mysterium
HUGO: Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars
NEBULA: Greg Bear, Moving Mars
STOKER: Nancy Holder, Dead in the Water
TIPTREE: Nancy Springer, Larque on the Wing
WFA: Lewis Shiner, Glimpses

1995 CLARKE: Pat Cadigan, Fools
DICK: Bruce Bethke, Headcrash
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance
NEBULA: Robert J. Sawyer, The Terminal Experiment
STOKER: Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
TIPTREE: Elizabeth Hand, Waking the Moon
TIPTREE: Theodore Roszak, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein
WFA: James Morrow, Towing Jehovah

1996 CLARKE: Paul J. McAuley, Fairyland
DICK: Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships
HUGO: Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
NEBULA: Nicola Griffith, Slow River
STOKER: Stephen King, The Green Mile
TIPTREE: Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
WFA: Christopher Priest, The Prestige

1997 CLARKE: Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
DICK: Stepan Chapman, The Troika
HUGO: Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars
NEBULA: Vonda N. McIntyre, The Moon and the Sun
STOKER: Janet Berliner and George Guthridge, Children of the Dusk
TIPTREE: Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine
WFA: Rachel Pollack, Godmother Night

1998 CLARKE: Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
DICK: Geoff Ryman, 253: The Print Remix
HUGO: Joe Haldeman, Forever Peace
NEBULA: Joe Haldeman, Forever Peace
STOKER: Stephen King, Bag of Bones
TIPTREE: [a short story by Raphael Carter]
WFA: Jeffrey Ford, The Physiognomy

1999 CLARKE: Tricia Sullivan, Dreaming in Smoke
DICK: Stephen Baxter, Vacuum Diagrams: Stories of the Xeelee Sequence
HUGO: Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
NEBULA: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
STOKER: Peter Straub, Mr. X
TIPTREE: Suzy McKee Charnas, The Conqueror’s Child
WFA: Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife

2000 CLARKE: Bruce Sterling, Distraction
DICK: Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward
HUGO: Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky
NEBULA: Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio
STOKER: Richard Laymon, The Traveling Vampire Show
TIPTREE: Molly Gloss, Wild Life
WFA: Martin Scott, Thraxas

2001 CLARKE: China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
DICK: Richard Paul Russo, Ship of Fools
HUGO: J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
NEBULA: Catherine Asaro, The Quantum Rose
STOKER: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
TIPTREE: Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child
WFA: Tim Powers, Declare
WFA: Sean Stewart, Galveston

2002 CLARKE: Gwyneth Jones, Bold as Love
DICK: Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
HUGO: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
NEBULA: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
STOKER: Thomas Piccirilli, The Night Class
TIPTREE: M. John Harrison, Light
WFA: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind

2003 CLARKE: Christopher Priest, The Separation
DICK: Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon
HUGO: Robert J. Sawyer, Hominids
NEBULA: Elizabeth Moon, Speed of Dark
STOKER: Peter Straub, lost boy lost girl
TIPTREE: Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order
WFA: Graham Joyce, The Facts of Life
WFA: Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow

2004 CLARKE: Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
DICK: Gwyneth Jones, Life
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
NEBULA: Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
STOKER: Peter Straub, In the Night Room
TIPTREE: Joe Haldeman, Camouflage
TIPTREE: Johanna Sinisalo, Not Before Sundown (US title, Troll: A Love Story)
WFA: Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw

2005 CLARKE: China Miéville, Iron Council
HUGO: Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
WFA: Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Bah, just realised that I’ve been reading Dhalgren for the last few days in the mistaken belief that it was also a Nebula winner. Oh well.

Apparently my website is the 60th most popular Belgian weblog. If you believe these figures. Which I don’t. (Many of the sites listed, including mine, are not weblogs at all; I don’t really understand the criteria for listing them.)

shame, by Pam Noles

I’ve never told my parents that, in a way, they ruined these books and movies for me. Nor did I ever tell them that gradually, during near-weekly pilgrimages to the neighborhood branch library, I’d started asking the librarian if she had books with magic and spaceships and dragons and stuff in them, but with some black people, too. Black would be the first choice, but anybody kind of brown would do. It seemed the answer, for my age group anyway, was no. When I got older, there would be a few.
…
Later that summer, during the weekly hajj to the library, the librarian gave me a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea. She told me it had just come in, that she held it special for me, and that she knew I would like it a lot.

I know I didn’t start reading it that day. But I was deep into it before the week was out. And because Le Guin snuck up on it, let us thrill with Sparrowhawk as he made his way, the Revelation came as a shock. I do remember bursting out into tears on the living room couch when I understood what was going on. And the tears flowed again when Mom came home from work and I showed her the book while trying to explain. Sparrowhawk is brown. I think he’s like an Indian from India. And Vetch is black like from Africa. There’s a bunch more and they have real power. Not the girls, though. But still they are also the good guys. It’s the white people who are evil. And Sparrowhawk is also Ged, and he’s going to be the most powerful one of them all, ever.
…
Le Guin’s racial choices in “A Wizard of Earthsea” mattered because her decision said to the wide white world: You Are Not The Whole Of The Universe. For many fans of genre, no matter where they fell on the spectrum of pale, this was the first time such a truth was made alive for them within the pages of the magical worlds they loved.

And

As We Mean To Go On, by Kelley Eskridge & Nicola Griffith

The first time I saw her, in the hallway of the unairconditioned dorm, close and hot as a greenhouse, I opened my mouth to say How was your trip? as if we were already each other’s friend, lover, partner, joint explorer. I knew in our first three sentences that she would be the best writer there; that I would help her be better; that all my assumptions about how my life would unfurl were wrong; and that I would someday be the writer I yearned to be, because she wouldn’t have it any other way.
…
By the time we met, we had both read the quintessentially English C.S. Lewis, and the resolutely American Jack London. We had both read Lord of the Rings and internalised it to such an extent that even from that first day we could quote it wryly (“It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!”) and understand a variety of meanings, heartfelt and ironic, wistful and smug, depending on context. We were connected by story; we came together in that space where character and plot illuminate and influence each other, much as Kelley and I do.

The first on sf and race; the second on being two writers in a relationship. Both excellent and thought-provoking reading.

draws my attention to this sales catalogue:

As a result of the new structure of Belgian Defence, a part of the major military equipment has become redundant and is therefore offered for sale.

1 x 560-tonne minehunter, with 20mm gun, crew of 49 not included;
1 x hovercraft “used during artillery exercises along the sea-side, to recover the targets and to keep the fire-area clear of ships (yachts & fishing boats)”
5 x Britten Norman BN 2A aircraft, plus spare parts
25 x Alouette 2 Astazou helicopters
14 x Lockheed Martin F16 combat planes (12 x single seat, 2x double seat)
9 x A109BA military helicopters, may need some servicing
various Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicles
325 x M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers
53 x Leopard 1 A5 battle tanks
5 x bridges, suitable for crossing rivers or other obstacles (NB best used if mounted on a Leopard 1 A5 battle tank)
219 x CVR-T light-weight armoured vehicles
8 x MOR 120 MM RT mortars, no spare parts or ammunition supplied
etc

Just what you want to give that special someone in your life.

Finally, after eight months, I have done the next in my series of reviews of those works of written sf which have won both Hugo and Nebula.

Clifford D. Simak’s “Grotto of the Dancing Deer”.

Surprisingly little to be written about it, in the end, probably partly why it took me so long. Right, now about those other reviews I owe Keith Brooke…

Ian has found hidden meaning in Prince Caspian:

Oddly, it seems to be an allegorical commentary on the Palestinian situation. Narnia is under occupation, and its indigenous folk have been pushed to the margins by the settlers. That Lewis sees the liberation of Narnia coming from a scion of their oppressors’ royal family is interesting. Maybe the time will yet come when Omri Sharon leads Palestine to freedom.

You do have to wonder about Narnia. For a magical place, it seems to be a bit lacking in solid governmental institutions. In both of Lewis’ first two books, the country’s government has been overthrown by invaders. I wonder is Lewis’ message that the Narnians would have been better off spending less time partying in the woods and more organizing a well-trained militia equipped with the latest weaponry?

Much has been said about the way Lewis works his religious propaganda into the Narnia books. This one is no exception. Not merely does a pagan river god show up, but well-known Graeco-Roman deity Bacchus makes an appearance, together with his retinue of Maenads and some old geezer on a donkey. At one point they show up in a convent school, chase away the nuns, and then one of the schoolgirls is helped out of her overwear so that she can join the wild girls who follow Bacchus. This marks out C.S. Lewis as the originator of the video for ‘Prime Mover’ by Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction.

See for more.

Charles Kennedy has indeed resigned. Poor guy. A week ago this seemed quite improbable.

And I see that the Menzies Campbell bandwagon is starting to roll. Nothing is inevitable in politics, but he certainly wouldn’t be a bad choice, a safe pair of hands for the next few years until some of the newer MPs are sufficiently well known to be electable.

Went to Paris yesterday for a series of work meetings. Very cold out, but beautiful. Had time for a very quick browse in Shakespeare and Company as well; beautiful setting across the river from Notre Dame.

But there appears to be no internet cafe anywhere in Paris, and I couldn’t get the WiFi in my Palm T|X to work for me. A bit frustrating.

Obliquely on Charles Kennedy: I was once involved with a political party which at one point had a leader who was generally regarded as an awfully nice guy but simply not a leader. At one point his friends called a “vote of confidence” in his leadership at the party’s quarterly Council meeting. He won by a large margin, but with a dozen votes against and four abstentions, mostly from other party officers and staff; and his leadership limped on painfully for another couple of years, until there was another mini-crisis, he narrowly won a vote of confidence at the party executive, but decided it wasn’t enough and fell on his sword.

Failure of leadership tends to be much more visible to those at the top of the party than the average member. Party headquarters inevitably spends a lot of time building a public image of the party leader as a person of stature, and the average member has a strong motive to believe this. On the other hand, those who are working with the leader every day will tend to have reliable perceptions, but operationalising these is difficult, and the specific issue that sparks a crisis may be completely unexpected and largely unrelated to the wider problem, which is one of style rather than substance. (In the case I mentioned above, the final straw was the botched appointment of a new deputy leader.)

Part of the problem is with the shift from leaders being elected by the MPs to election by a wider group within the party, which in general is a good and desirable thing, but which does almost inevitably have this awkward consequence. If your leader is elected by the membership as a whole, how can they be made properly accountable?

As regards Kennedy in particular, I voted for him, rather to my own surprise, back in 1999, largely because his named supporters included three senior party activists who I perceived as a) having good judgement generally and b) coming from three very different strands within the party. I don’t regard Simon Hughes as reliable, and none of the other three candidates at the time seemed to me to have the necessary spark.

But like many activists I too was disappointed by last year’s election campaign, a general feeling that we didn’t make the inroads against the Conservatives that should have been possible with their fourth crap leader in a row and their disgraceful pandering to the right. A Lib Dem friend of mine in Brussels went to help with one of the “decapitation” campaigns, against a senior Conservative, and reported a sad lack of vigour, or even strategic thinking, in that particular constituency. Another friend was actually working in Cowley Street (party headquarters), and painted me a picture of a campaign whose leader was largely absent, rumoured to be drinking heavily, and with a lack of direction starting from the top.

All election results depend to a certain extent on luck; but the harder you work, the luckier you get, and especially in the British system, where there are few professional party workers and most activists are unpaid volunteers, the malaise which is a consequence of the leader not pulling his weight can spread awfully fast without anyone really quite knowing why.

(And, folks, let’s drop the line about it-was-OK-for Churchill-to-be-drunk. Two very big differences. First off, the job of being a politician was very different fifty or sixty years ago than it is now. Second, Churchill at least appears to have been doing a full day’s work; Kennedy has not even been able to give that appearance.)

So as of now, I think Kennedy should go, and I hope his refusal to resign even when asked to by half the parliamentary party is simply a temporary attempt to emerge with dignity. As of now, if he is a candidate in the forthcoming leadership election, I think I would vote for any other candidate. Even Simon Hughes, or Norman “who?” Baker.

As for Ariel Sharon, since I can’t say anything nice, I’d better not say anything at all.

A: Accent – Rather odd. English people can usually tell I’m Irish, though few manage to identify my Belfast upbringing. On the other hand Denis Donaldson, recently unmasked British agent within Sinn Fein, accused me of having an upper class English accent. (I told him he should get out more. Which was a bit unfair of me, given his bail conditions.)

B: Breakfast – If I make time for it, poached egg on toast. If in New York I always try and make sure I have a decent New York breakfast (since my body clock thinks it’s lunchtime).

C: Chore you hate – All of them. Especially cleaning the toilet.

D: Dad’s name – John.

E: Essential everyday item – Slippers.

F: Flavour ice cream – Mint chocolate chip.

G: Gold or silver – No strong preference. Both please.

H: Hometown – Belfast. More specifically Finaghy. (With a side order of Loughbrickland, Co Down, the ancestral home.)

I: Insomnia – Often generated by children.

J: Job Title – Programme Director for Europe.

K: Kids – Three.

M: Mother’s birthplace – Dublin.

N: Number of Significant Others – One.

O: Overnight hospital stays – None.

P: Phobia – Brain surgery.

Q: Queer – No.

R: Religious affiliation – Catholic.

S: Siblings – One of each.

T: Time you wake up – Aim for 0730.

U: Unnatural hair colours – No. And dwindling hair. (“Lord! I am afflicted by a Bald Patch!”)

V: Vegetable you refuse to eat – Spinach, unless cooked with garlic (or woth cheese).

W: Worst habit – Picking my nose all the time.

X: X-rays – Teeth. And occasional chest.

Y: Yummy – Georgian food.

Z: Zodiac sign – Taurus.

My former assistant has just been hired by a Balkan government – her first duty, to help them react to the recommendations of our report on visa liberalisation – which she helped to write when she was working for me!

http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2006/01/if_youre_going_.html
http://www.article-hangout.com/Article/Linked-In—Basic-Marketing-Blunders/5313
http://blogs.worldwit.org/job-jungle/index.php/dont-be-hatin-or-boilerplatin.html

I posted back in July about an embarrassing moment which was entirely my own fault. I’ve discovered (via a casual google) that the woman to whom I asked my tactless question is about to take maternity leave.

So in fact she probably was pregnant in July. But perhaps didn’t know, or wasn’t sure, or hadn’t told her husband yet, and in any case was too early on for it to really have been showing, and anyway there are perfectly understandable reasons (though it would have been uncharacteristic of her) why she would have enjoyed winding me up.

Oh well. I shall stand by for further news, and not ask any more questions.

Query from a colleague:

Can anyone identify an sf book, published before around 1990, in which the protagonist is put into a simulation game setting where he becomes a medieval character, and ends up conquering most of the known world a la Genghis Khan? (My colleague has a vague memory that Fred Hoyle was the author, but this seems unlikely.)

Thanks in advance.

Doctor Who Mastermind special from last year.

One of the things I’ve done as part of my find-a-new-job plan is to sign up with an on-line social network called LinkedIn, or rather to make full use of the signup I had done some time ago. I think five of you on my f-list are also on my contacts list, so you already know about it. (And I will happily link to anyone else who is interested.) I have managed to ramp up my list of contacts to a pretty good total, largely by running the comparison script with my existing Outlook address book, and also a little by checking to see if old friends were on, and by recruiting former colleagues.

Last week I did a search on LinkedIn for users involved in “Staffing and Recruiting” located in Belgium, three degress of separation or less from me. There are 59 of these. One of them runs a head-hunting firm, and his profile page actually invites people to get in touch directly, “to confidentially discuss your career aspirations”. So I did precisely that, and sent him a CV and covering note to the effect that I am thinking of getting into the private sector. (Which I am, though my preferred option would be to get a job on the inside of NATO or the EU as a political adviser.)

Slightly to my surprise, he phoned this morning. He started by explaining that his usual line of work is to take an order from a company with specifics of the sort of person they want to hire, and then to try and lure the equivalent person who is already doing that job in a rival firm away from their competition. He went on to say that he had almost no experience of getting people out of the “public sector” (which he seemed to feel I’m currently in, though I think “non-profit” is more accurate) into the private sector. I was poised to thank him politely for his advice and end the conversation.

But then he said that his normal line of business was a bit slow at this time of year, so if I had any ideas of large firms who I might consider working for as a EU affairs adviser, then he would happily call their HR managers if he knew them and see what the options were, at no cost to me (though of course charging the company a finder’s fee if they decided to take me), in the vague hope of developing a new line of business for himself. Sounded good to me. So I’ve sent him another email with the information he requires. It’s a long shot, but even if nothing more comes of it, I’ve already learnt more about what head-hunters do, and if nothing comes out of it in the end I’m no worse off.

There’s No Such Thing As Too Many Books

Here’s Your Sign {pictures included}
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