Got away, thanks to mother-in-law’s baby-sitting, for 23 hours with my wife to Maastricht, chosen pretty much at random from nearby cities we haven’t really been to.

Verdict: Don’t go on a Monday, when all the famous museums are closed; don’t go while it’s still snowing. Apart from that, it was fine.

Particularly intrigued by the exhibition in the treasury of the church of St Servatius. One fascinating exhibit was a small ivory chest, with a combination lock, made in Sicily (they said) in the twelfth century. The combination for the lock was set on four dials with Arabic letters. Of course at the time the Norman kingdom of Sicily was pretty much at the cutting edge of scientific research in the world (except perhaps China).

While I’ve been away, has been playing the Napoleonic scenario of Civ III and has been dealing with plumbers and fixing radiators, “without even spraining an ovary”.

Almost two months ago,  came up with a meme – to list all the novels which have won the Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, Tiptree, Dick, Stoker and  World Fantasy Awards and, as so often, bold the ones you have read. It was a pretty short-lived meme; in the next couple of days 34 people did it (all but one on livejournal) and then it died a death as these things do.

I thought it would be intertesting (well, interesting for me, anyway) to crunch through the numbers and see how many people of this self-selected group have actually read each of the award-winners. Excluding the Stoker winners, which seemed to have far less take-up, and the Sidewise Awards, which only one person listed, the results for the other 169 books are as follows (top twenty-ish above the cut tag, and the three which nobody had read below it):

32 (1st): Frank Herbert, Dune

29 (2nd): Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

28 (joint 3rd): Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

27 (5th): J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

26 (joint 6th): Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
William Gibson, Neuromancer

25 (joint 8th): Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
Larry Niven, Ringworld
Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

24 (joint 12th): Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

23 (joint 14th): David Brin, Startide Rising
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

22 (joint 16th): David Brin, The Uplift War
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

21 (19th): Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

20 (joint 20th): Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep

19 (joint 23rd): Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
Dan Simmons, Hyperion
Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer
Isaac Asimov, Foundation’s Edge
Neil Stephenson, The Diamond Age
Philip José Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

18 (joint 31st): Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars
Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

17 (joint 36th): China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates
Ursula Le Guin, Tehanu

16 (joint 41st): Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds
Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen
Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game
Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

15 (joint 48th): Frederik Pohl, Gateway
Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance
Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

14 (joint 54th): Gregory Benford, Timescape
John Crowley, Little, Big
Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood

13 (joint 57th): C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station
Clifford Simak, Way Station
James Blish, A Case of Conscience
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky

12 (62nd): M. John Harrison, Light

11 (joint 63rd): C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen
Ellen Kushner, Thomas the Rhymer
Greg Bear, Moving Mars
Patricia McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Ursula Le Guin, The Other Wind

10 (joint 68th): Colin Greenland, Take Back Plenty
Elizabeth Moon, Speed of Dark
Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness
Fritz Leiber, The Big Time
Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer
Gwyneth Jones, The White Queen
Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
Tim Powers, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace

9 (joint 76th): Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
China Miéville, Iron Council
Frederik Pohl, Man Plus
Gwyneth Jones, Bold as Love
Ian McDonald, King of Morning, Queen of Day
James Morrow, Towing Jehovah
Jeff Noon, Vurt
Joe Haldeman, Forever Peace
John M. Ford, The Dragon Waiting
Nicola Griffith, Slow River
Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes
Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships

8 (joint 88th): Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio
John M. Ford, Growing Up Weightless
Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon
Tim Powers, Last Call
Vonda N. Mcintyre, The Moon and the Sun

7 (joint 94th): James Morrow, Only Begotten Daughter
Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw
Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time
Michael Moorcock, Gloriana
Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
Pat Cadigan, Fools
Pat Murphy, The Falling Woman
Paul McAuley, Fairyland
Roger Zelazny, …And Call Me Conrad
Tim Powers, Declare

6 (joint 105th): Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage
Bruce Sterling, Distraction
Christopher Priest, The Prestige
Christopher Priest, The Separation
Elizabeth Hand, Waking the Moon
Geoff Ryman, 253: the Print Remix
Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
Marge Piercy, Body of Glass
Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward
Michael Swanwick, Stations of the Tide
Pat Cadigan, Synners
Richard Paul Russo, Ship of Fools

5 (joint 117th): Dan Simmons, Song of Kali
Ken Grimwood, Replay
Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order
Patricia McKillip, Ombria in Shadow
Robert J. Sawyer, Hominids
Rudy Rucker, Software
Stephen Baxter, Vacuum Diagrams

4 (joint 124th): Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine
Catherine Asaro, The Quantum Rose
Elizabeth A. Lynn, Watchtower
Elizabeth Anne Scarborough, The Healer’s War
Jack Womack, Elvissey
Nancy Springer, Larque on the Wing
Pat Murphy, Points of Departure
Patrick Suskind, Perfume
Rachel Pollack, Godmother Night
Robert J. Sawyer, The Terminal Experiment
Sean Stewart, Galveston

3 (joint 135th): Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Bruce Bethke, Headcrash
Eleanor Arnason, A Woman of the Iron People
George Turner, The Sea and Summer
Gwyneth Jones, Life
Jeffrey Ford, The Physiognomy
Martin Scott, Thraxas
Michael Shea, Nifft the Lean
Peter Straub, Koko
Robert Charles Wilson, Mysterium
Rudy Rucker, Wetware
Tricia Sullivan, Dreaming In Smoke

2 (joint 147th): James Blaylock, Homunculus
Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child
Graham Joyce, The Facts of Life
Jack Vance, Madouc
Johanna Sinisalo, Not Before Sundown/Troll: A Love Story
Lewis Shiner, Glimpses
Mark Clifton & Frank Riley, They’d Rather be Right
Patricia Geary, Strange Toys
Rachel Pollack, Unquenchable Fire
Richard Paul Russo, Subterranean Gallery
Theodore Roszak, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein

1 (joint 158th): Joe Haldeman, Camouflage
Molly Gloss, Wild Life
Richard Grant, Through the Heart
Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return
Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life
Suzy McKee Charnas, The Conqueror’s Child
William Kotzwinkle, Doctor Rat

0 (joint 166th): Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife
Stepan Chapman, The Troika

I confess that I have never heard of either Louise Erdrich or Stepan Chapman, let alone their respective award-winning novels. Howver, I have read the top forty or so. The first I haven’t yet read is China Mountain Zhang, followed by Little, Big and Mythago Wood, and then Thomas the Rhymer and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.

That Dune came out on top overall is not so very surprising. I’m pleased by Le Guin’s performance. Slightly surprised that Flowers for Algernon did not do even better – I thought it was a standard high-school assignment (certainly the most-visited page of my own website) but perhaps if you strictly count the novel rather than the original short story the count goes down. Other interesting data there as well, but I have been working on this for long enough.

(Thanks very much to agrumer, apotropaism, badgerbag, blue_condition, http://browriter.blogspot.com, burger_eater, communicator, ellen_fremedon, feyandstrange, firecat, gummitch, hollowpoint, jodawi, jry, kangeiko, katlinel, kerravonsen, ladyoflight2004, lenora_rose, linda_joyce, marykaykare, nhw, nickeyb, pariyal, peake, pigeonhed, sbisson, shsilver, sooguy, spacedoutlooney, tensegrity, tinaconnolly, vierran45 and especially truepenny for putting it into its standard form – user names link to the relevant entry in each case.)

2) Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod

I don’t plan to get into a habit of meta-reviewing, but I have read and here, and here, also ‘s observations, and ‘s praise. I am much more towards the and end of the spectrum. I really liked it. I thought that it does indeed add something new to the old sf theme of first contact between humans and aliens. It takes the premise of Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky, a book I really didn’t like at all, and does it a whole lot better – basically, the aliens on their planet have a society which feels much more like ours than do the humans in the approaching spaceship. I thought the various cultures and subcultures, both human and alien, were convincingly fleshed out. (Planets in sf novels are too often portrayed as having just one culture and one language – in extreme cases, appearing to possess a single time zone.) MacLeod is on top form in both depth and humour in his portrayal of the intellectual shock of the encounter for both humans and aliens.

I did feel the novel had one glaring weakness, shared with most of the classics of the hard sf genre to which it clearly belongs. We find out very little about the characters’ inner lives. Much of the human side of the story is conveyed through the blog of a teenage girl, which is frankly much more reminiscent of the author’s own blog than of the real thing at the younger end of livejournal; I guess I must be reading more teenage blogs than Ken does (and I don’t read them much at all). The human characters jump in and out of bed with each other and suffer little emotional embarrassment; as for the aliens, this is the one respect in which we really don’t get inside their heads.

However, it’s going on my Hugo nominations list.

1) Air (or Have not Have), by Geoff Ryman

I mostly agree with Geneva Melzack and Iain Emsley, and where I differ from them I agree with Claude Laumière. This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Sky and Telescope’s almanac page (came to it looking for news about the new comet).

The Calls of Cthulhu.

Here.

Turnout 72%, 52036 votes

First round:
Menȝies Campbell 23264, 44.7%
Chris Huhne 16691, 32.1%
Simon Hughes 12081, 23.2%

Second round:
Menȝies Campbell 29697, 57.9%
Chris Huhne 21628, 42.1%

So pretty decisive for Campbell in the end. Could be worse.

(Hughes’ votes split 53% Campbell, 41% Huhne, 6% neither.)

Edited to add – Lib Dem icon borrowed from , if that’s OK.

Even though it’s over ten years since I submitted my Ph D thesis, deadlines still loom large in my life, and I found much to recognise in this article. If you are procrastinating on a postgraduate project, read it. And also if you are procrastinating on any piece of writing at all.

Well, I’ve made my predictions:

Turnout 63% (lower than might have been expected, due to combination of Kennedy nostalgia and difficulty for many punters of telling the candidates apart)

First round:
Menȝies Campbell 39%
Chris Huhne 36%
Simon Hughes 25%

Second round:
Menȝies Campbell 53%
Chris Huhne 47%

Andy Darley has a brilliant post (also here, minus his last entry) on the winners and losers of the campaign – I’m especially glad to see him list Martin Tod and Alex Wilcock among the winners, though a bit surprised that he doesn’t list Simon Hughes among the losers.

Anyone want a free 7-day guest pass to Stratfor? They have sent me three of them.

Just had a note from a Serious Academic Journal who spotted one of my recent reviews and want to publish a cut-down version of it!

From here

Chaotic Good Half-Orc Fighter

Alignment:
Chaotic Good characters are independent types with a strong belief in the value of goodness. They have little use for governments and other forces of order, and will generally do their own things, without heed to such groups.

Race:
Half-Orcs are often brutish and mean creatures, unaccepted by both thier heritages. They are little better than orcs. But some can be clever and successful in the society of adventurers

Primary Class:
Fighters are the warriors. They use weapons to accomplish their goals. This isn’t to say that they aren’t intelligent, but that they do, in fact, believe that violence is frequently the answer.

Secondary Class:

Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Law and Chaos:
Law —– XXX (3)
Neutral – X (1)
Chaos — XXXXXXX (7)

Good and Evil:
Good —- XXXX (4)
Neutral – X (1)
Evil —- (-4)

Race:
Human —- XXXXXXXX (8)
Half-Elf – XXXXXXXXX (9)
Elf —— XXXXXXXX (8)
Gnome —- XXXXXX (6)
Halfling – XXXXXX (6)
Dwarf —- XXX (3)
Half-Orc – XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)

Class:
Fighter — XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)
Barbarian –XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Ranger — XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Monk —– XXXXXXX (7)
Paladin — XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
Cleric — XXXXXXX (7)
Mage —– (-1)
Druid —- XXXXXXXX (8)
Thief —- (-5)
Bard —– (0)