Dublin on Monday: Met officials, did a presentation with my colleague at DCU. (‘s grandfather among those present.)

Tuesday: travel to Cyprus all day – as previously noted, the sky was pretty clear over Belgium, but Cyprus was damp. Had enough time to walk around Nicosia in the evening and get a renewed sense of it. I’d been to Cyprus twice before – in 1993 for our honeymoon and again in 2001 – but both times concentrating on the coast with only day trips to Nicosia. Of course this visit was also essentially a day-trip to Nicosia, but without the pleasant hanging out at the beach for a few days on either side.

I was struck, as ever, by the economic dynamism of the south – becoming more and more like the rest of Europe. But I was also struck for the first time by how ex-British it feels too. Last time I was there, in 2001, I had never been to Greece; since March 2002 I’ve been to several conferences in Athens and Thessalonika, and in comparison Cyprus is simply much closer to what I grew up with. (The fact that I had just come from another formerly British-ruled island which also has its northern part still occupied by the larger neighbour perhaps also increased my sense of familiarity.) In particular, southern Nicosia seems to have a lot of Asian immigrants – both from the sub-continent and also from more eastern parts. I can see how its small very open economy would be a natural point of attraction for other countries which are surfing the waves of globalisation successfully.

On Wednesday we had the formal launch of our Cyprus report at the Ledra Palace Hotel in the middle of the Green Line, the UN-patrolled buffer zone which has separated the two sides since 1974 (1963 in some places). There was a panel of four respondents, two from each side including former members of their negotiating teams, with some robust debate.

The most striking thing here was that the Green Line has now been opened, and people were calmly and freely walking between the two halves of the city, past the Ledra Palace Hotel, with only the most perfunctory of formalities on the northern side (and none at all on the southern side). Yet it did not feel like the sort of liberation that I know I felt when I went to Berlin in 1992, having previously visited in 1986. By 1992 the Wall was completely gone, and the Brandenburg Gate freely approachable from the West; I found myself choking with tears as I walked up to it. But in Nicosia the Green Line is still there. It has been a divided city for 43 years, compared to Berlin’s 27. I did not come away with any confidence that it will be reunited very soon.

We had several more meetings, but got into the north for an hour or so’s sight-seeing. I had visited briefly in 2001, and while Turkish-controlled Nicosia still struck me as quaint, reminiscent of how I thought Sarajevo must have once been, and much quieter than the southern part of the city, there seemed to be a new (if still quiet) buzz about the place. An indication of this was – again – the visible presence of immigrants, African rather than Asian this time (mainly from the Mediterranean coastal countries, of course, but a fair few from further south). One of our interlocutors told us that there had been a lot of investment in the North because of the prospects of a settlement.

It is peculiar to find a Gothic cathedral in the Eastern Mediterranean, though less so if you remember the enduring legacy of the Crusaders (long before the British took over in 1878, Richard the Lion-Heart conquered Cyprus in 1191 as part of the Third Crusade, and promptly floged it to the Templars who sold it on to Guy de Lusignan, the ex-King of Jerusalem). It’s pretty bizarre anywhere to see a Gothic cathedral with added minarets. Inside, the whole place has been reoriented to face Mecca rather than Jerusalem, giving a peculiarly skewed feel. The local clergy approached us and tried to engage our interest in the teachings of Beiüzzaman Said Nursi, whose mystical writings would probably make a lot more sense to me if I knew more about the Quran, though they seem in general pleasant enough.

Of course, I might as well have taken my time, because my flight to Athens had been cancelled and I had several hours’ wait for the next one in Larnaca irport, attempting to use the variously inadequate internet facilities to catch up with work. Finally got into Athens after midnight; Thursday was a beautiful day, but I was too busy to take any photographs unfortunately, and flew straight on to Istanbul in the early evening.

This was my first visit to Turkey, and I will have to go again. I had only about five waking hours there on Friday, four of which were spent talking to people and the fifth in the taxi on the way to the airport. There was a decent view from the hotel and I managed to snap the Hagia Sophia from the taxi, but it’s not really satisfactory. Also the weather (unlike in Athens) was pretty dull.

And so home again. At last.

Almost a week ago now, but I just wanted to note a) the blogging panel, which was fun and rambled all round the place; b) the Flann O’Brien panel, which I felt a little embarrassed about as we descended into me and Pádraig evangelising on behalf of the author, at one point doing a dialogue from the “Catechism of Cliché” series; c) Susanna being interviewed as Guest of Honour by Juliet McKenna (actually on reflection this was on Saturday not Sunday); d) me moderating quite an interesting panel on awards and award-winners with Colin Greenland, Charlie Stross, and Julian West (a late but welcome addition); e) the raffle, which saw numerous authors investing heavily in raffle tickets – see my gallery – and the closing ceremony, at which handed over to Frank Darcy for future P-Cons. A whole bunch of us went for dinner, along with a colleague of mine who had just arrived from the Balkans.

should feel very pleased with himself for having run a damn fine convention on literary sf. Apart from those mentioned above or in the photographs, I very much enjoyed meeting and talking to Colin Smythe, , , , , , , David Stewart, Cate Murphy, Dave Lally, and Paul Kearney. And anyone else who remembers talking to me.

Just to help , using the awesome powers of IceRocket I can provide the following comprehensive list of P-Con blog entries: mine himself, here, here, here, and hereLeah and John, briefly, here, here and here here here here here here here hereCate Murphy here. See also pictures by here and by here and here. (And mine.)

Am preparing a longish post, or posts, about last week’s travels, which will firmly avoid the politics. At times there was robust debate. I am pleased with this interview, which included my exchange with the interviewer:

– Η αξιοπιστία της οργάνωσης αμφισβητήθηκε από την Κυβέρνηση;
[Was the reliability of your organisation disputed by the government?]

– Ναι. γνωρίζω και τη δήλωση του κ. Παπαδόπουλου ότι δεν γνωρίζει την οργάνωση. Καταλαβαίνω ότι οι άνθρωποι που δεν γνωρίζουν για εξωτερική πολιτική, δεν γνωρίζουν και την οργάνωση.
[Yes. I also know of President Papadopoulos’ statement that he does not know our organisation. I understand that people who don’t know much about foreign affairs might not have heard of it.]

Back home, and counting the cost of my visit to P-Con and then to Hodges Figgis and Waterstone’s on Dawson Street the next day:

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges
Forbidden Acts ed. Nancy A. Collins
The DisContinuity Guide: The Unofficial Doctor Who Companion by Paul Cornell et al
The Portadown News by Newton Emerson
Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland
Seasons of Plenty by Colin Greenland
Mother of Plenty by Colin Greenland
5th Interzone Anthology
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
Irish Tales of Terror ed. Jim McGarry
Lost Lives by David McKittrick et al
George and Sam by Charlotte Moore
Expiration Date by Tim Powers
Sourcery by Terry Pratchett
The Hidden Family by Charles Stross
Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend
The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe
The Seeds of Time by John Wyndham

OK, I’m giving up books for Lent. Or something.

9) Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea

I haven’t finished this. I never will. It is too heart-rending. It lists 3697 victims of the Troubles, including not only those who died as a direct result of violent acts, but also others whose deaths, ostensibly due to natural causes, was obviously related to the violence.

The gut-wrenching thing is the sheer pointlessness of it all. The bloke who worked for the Queen as a royal coachman, out bird-watching one day, killed by the British army in crossfire in a battle with the IRA. The Unionist councillor, blown up in his car, on his way out of a meeting where he had asked fellow councillors to show a mark of respect to a Catholic victim of Loyalists a few days before.

I found I had forgotten so much of this. I had certainly forgotten, if I had ever known, that a 61-year-old bank manager and his 19-year-old daughter were shot around the corner from our house in September 1976. She died on the spot; he lingered for five weeks. The perpetrators are believed to have got the impression that the father’s recent promotion to “Chief Inspector” meant that he was a senior policeman.

It’s all terrible, all difficult to read. The worst of all are the stories of children like the little girl killed in the Omagh bomb at the age of 20 months, as her mother was buying her shoes for her uncle’s wedding where she was to be a flower girl.

The child’s father was left with the task of telling his three other children, aged six, three and two, that their baby sister had died and that at the same time their mother was critically ill. He had gone to the hospital looking for them and was told that his wife was alive but was to be taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast by helicopter. ‘Half an hour later,’ he said, ‘I was told a baby had been found and a priest led me to the ward. When I reached the ward they told me that this baby was dead and asked if I would look to see if it was ours. It was.’

Grim though it is, I am really glad that the authors went to the trouble of compiling all this information. Putting everyone in context, all in one book, sorted only by chronological order, is a reminder that whatever the grand historical rights and wrongs, death is death and all who died left loved ones behind them. I wish this kind of survey could be done for other conflicts.

In the meantime, it’s St Patrick’s Day today, folks; let’s make it a better 21st century if we can.

8) Hidden Camera, by Zoran Živković

I think this may be my favourite Serbian writer’s first attempt at a full novel. Our unnamed narrator, an undertaker, finds himself the victim of a compulsion to follow a trail of surreal summonses to a cinema, a second-hand bookshop, the zoo, a mysterious ecclesiastival building reached only by a sewer and so on. The writing is pretty sparse but lyrical with it. I found myself wondering whether we were being set up for an ending where the narrator turns out to have died at the beginning (a la The Third Policeman) or else where he dies at the end (a la The Trial). But in the end I was pretty satisfied with what we got.

7) The Discontinuity Guide: The Definitive Guide to the Worlds and Times of Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping

Yeah, yeah, I know that almost all of the text is also available on-line. But there’s nothing like dead trees (especially if you are in the middle of a long plane flight). This is a great compilation of odd facts about the series, including most particularly an attempt to introduce consistency to such matters as the Doctor’s age, his academic qualifications, the histories of the Cybermen and of the Daleks, and Mars. Interesting to see the foreshadowing of two of the Ninth Doctor’s more memorable lines – “Hairdryer!” (“The Web Planet”) and “Run!” (Second Doctor, passim). And there’s a certain amount of “Yeah, that was my favourite bit”.

Speaking of favourite bits, I asked my co-panellists at P-Con what their favourite bits of Doctor Who were, both old series and new. Colin Greenland voted for an end-of-episode shot of a Dalek emerging into view (which I reckon was the end of episode 1 of “The Chase”; Juliet McKenna for the Doctor and Jo down the mine in “The Green Death”; and Paul Cornell for the start of life on earth in “City of Death”. From the new series Colin voted for “Are you my mummy?”, surely one of the most impressive Who moments ever, and Juliet confessed to liking the Dalek in chains.

Part of my agenda of course is to improve my knowledge of the best stories, especially those that were first broadcast outside the time period when I was watching most closely (late Third Doctor to early Sixth, then Ninth and Tenth). Apart from Season 7, the other entire season that drew the praise of the Discontinuity Guide‘s authors was the very last of the old run, Season 26 with Sylvester McCoy (“Battlefield”, “Ghost Light”, “The Curse of Fenric” and “Survival”). Other stories to look out for which I hadn’t previously had flagged up to me include particularly the First Doctor’s “The Massacre”, but also a bunch of others from the end of Troughton’s second season.

I’ve made efforts in this direction before, but found this book much more helpful. (I should start reading this blog as well I suspect.)

Just landed in Istanbul. Turkey is the forty-somethingth country I have been to.

[edited to add: Now I have interweb access, it is the 45th.]

6) Different Kinds of Darkness, by David Langford

This is a collection of all Langford’s short fiction not collected elsewhere (and also some that is). About half of it consists of his sf stories, ranging from decent to excellent in quality, including the brilliant "A Game of Consequences". Though I was struck that several of them revolved around a nuclear war and post-Holoocaust Britain; I guess we have different nightmares now.

Rather to my surprise the quality of the four pure fantasy stories in the collection is markedly inferior; I found them all somewhat formulaic. Again, rather to my surprise, I enjoyed almost all of the nine horror stories that followed, a genre I don’t normally think of myself as liking much.

But the crowning glory of the collection is the sequence of "BLIT" stories. Langford has taken the idea of the drawings that kill you when you look at them and riffed it four different ways – police procedural ("BLIT"), academic politics ("What Happened at Cambridge IV"), usenet document ("comp.basilisk FAQ") and schoolboy yarn ("Different Kinds of Darkness", which won a Hugo). The third of these actually gives a genealogy of the concept including Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud, J.B. Priestley’s The Shapes of Sleep, Piers Anthony’s Macroscope, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and Monty Python’s sketch about the deadly effects of the World’s Funniest Joke. I would add to these H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Colour Out Of Space" and the experiments of Policeman MacCruiskeen in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. But I have made that point before.

The Discontinuity Guide seems to suggest that Season 7 (Pertwee’s first) was particularly good. Views?

It’s been raining in Cyprus. Reminds me a bit of Ireland. But not very much.

Clear weather, window seat. The Belgian coast was clear – I thought I saw ‘s house, and, a little later, my own.

Someone told me last night that Parker Abrams was originally supposed to have been the Mayor’s son. (“my father died last year… there was, well, a lot of stuff that he didn’t finish. It make me think about, you know, living for now.”) Is this a widely held theory?

What I thought was going to be a pleasant day at P-Con was interrupted just after 12 o’clock when a colleague called me to tell me the news about Milosevic. Stood by for calls from various other interested parties (as has noted) In the middle of my chairing the Doctor Who panel one well-known media organisation called me to ask whether or not they had already interviewed me. (They had.)

Well, there’s not a lot to be said except the obvious, and you’ll find me at the every end of the list of quotes on the BBC site.

Apart from that, P-Con has been good fun. Apart from the Doctor Who panel, which was excellent, I came within a point of winning “Just A Minute” against Paul Cornell and . Also moderated an intense session on the evils of the publishing and bookselling industry. It seems to me from what the panellists were saying that publishing is still coping with the shock of the internet and with the drastic increase in the sheer numbers of different books on the market. Authors who take matters into their own hands, as various people in the room had done in different ways, will do better than authors who don’t.

Also very good to see David Stewart there. Apparently persuaded the hospital to let him out. (Did I hear that right?)

Milosevic dead?

devours my brains.

Am in Dublin, but working all afternoon; will be in the Ashling bar around 7 pm for drink and eventually food. Maybe see you there?

PS: I will be wearing my badge:

4) Does Anything Eat Wasps? And 101 Other Questions edited by Mick O’Hare

A selection of answers to questions asked by the readers of New Scientist. The most memorable ones have to do with gooey substances – honey, earwax and poo. All, however, delivered completely seriously. For example:

The surfaces of the incancescent light bulbs where I work become progressively greyer over time. Why?

This can be explained by the fact that light bulbs work not by emitting light but by sucking dark. ‘Dark sucker’ theory is too complex to be described here in detail, but it proves the existence of dark, that dark is heavier than light, that dark is coloured, and that it travels faster than light.

To answer your question, a bulb becomes darker over time because of all the dark it has sucked in. Similarly, a candle, which is a primitive type of dark sucker, has a white wick when new and this becomes black when used, due to all the dark which has been sucked into it.

[Editor’s note] Readers should be aware that the revolutionary ‘dark sucker’ theory has yet to win widespread support from the scientific community.

Maybe, but I seem to remember something pretty similar in The Third Policeman.

Not looking bad, considering his recent health problems and the fact that he will be 93 in July.

Well, went for an interview with the corporate head-hunters. Very nice and positive, but basically (as I suspected) I am not the right person for this particular job. A useful experience all the same.

Had a slightly sore tooth for the last few days. This is a filling with a long history, repeatedly redone every few years, including once on the sly by a friend of mine in Belfast who was repeating his dentistry exams and sneaked me into the teaching clinic. (He botched it – there was a good reason why he had failed – and I had to get another friend who had passed hers to redo it a few days later.) It was subsequently redone by the excellent Dr Bastasic in Banja Luka many years ago.

Two months ago I realised that it was ages since I’d had a check-up, found a dentist near the office used by a colleague, and went to them. They did it, charged me a huge amount, and then told me to come back in a few days for polishing, which also cost a fortune.

Then the old filling started twinging last weekend. When I decided this morning that I really needed to get it seen to today, before I set off on eight days of travelling, the expensive dentist I’d used in January couldn’t fit me in. Luckily I found another who was prepared to look at me right after lunch. He took one look at the historically problematic filling, shook his head sadly and said, “Il faut sortir tout ça.” Why the hell didn’t the other expensive dentists spot that there was a potential problem back in January?

Anyway, the new dentist was very chatty. Turned out his father had been a Belgian soldier posted to Northern Ireland during World War II, in Portstewart. Much discussion about Bosnia and wars of religion, some of which was a monologue by him as he fiddled around with my mouth. I was pleased with myself at being able to carry on the conversation in French as far as was physically feasible in the circumstances.

Anyway he has warned me that it will hurt like buggery for the next twenty-four hours, so those of you who see me tomorrow may find me less talkative than sometimes. Or seeking anasthesia.

Now that Margo Lanagan’s “Singing My Sister Down” is on-line, I have read it and agree with everyone else that it is a beautifully written, intense, powerful and surprisingly short piece that will probably win any award for which it is nominated.

But is it actually sfnal?

Newly arrived kittens chez .

From :

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible (most of the interesting bits anyway)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

At last!

Friday morning fly to Dublin – work, P-Con, work
Tuesday morning fly to Cyprus
Wednesday launch Cyprus report on the Green Line in Nicosia, fly to Athens
Thursday launch Cyprus report in Athens, fly to Istanbul
Friday launch Cyprus report in Istanbul, fly home.

And not before time.

I seem to be on a number of panels at P-Con this weekend:

Saturday

10:15 Just a Minute Quiz with Paul Cornell, , Leah Moore (moderated by Frank Darcy)
Panellists must speak on a given topic for 60 seconds without hesitation, deviation, or repetition

13:00 Fantastic! The Doctor Who Panel, with Paul Cornell and Colin Greenland, with me moderating (note to self – make sure I have eaten something first).
The enormously successful relaunch of Doctor Who under the microscope, with one of the series’ scriptwriters on hand to give an insight into how it all happened.

17:00 The Sow That Eats Her Own Farrow: How the Book Business is Destroying Itself, with , Ariel, Juliet E McKenna, Bob Neilson, Colin Smythe, and me moderating again.
As bookshops continue to sell more books for less money, and publishers only want guaranteed bestsellers, is the book trade in danger of destroying itself?

Sunday

11:00 Is It About a Bicycle? Flann O’Brien: Ireland’s Master Storyteller, with Leah Moore, Colin Smythe and John W Sexton moderating
Flann O’Brien is Ireland’s most popular writer, according to a recent BBC poll. Now, sales of The Third Policeman have soared after the book appeared in an episode of TV series Lost. Here’s an introduction to his work.

15:00 Awards? We Don’t Need No Steenking Awards!, with Colin Greenland and , and me moderating.
Do awards serve any useful purpose, or are they simply good for the winner’s ego? A few award winners tell it like it is.

I’m glad that and the team have such confidence in my moderating skills! Though I think I will have one or two things to say about the topics in question myself…

See some of you there, perhaps?

gives details of my WorldCon room-mate‘s rise to fame and controversy. Will add other links here as and when I notice them.