…I should be on BBC World Service radio at the top of the hour (ie 45 mins from now) talking about Montenegro. Though these things don’t always pan out as planned.

Edited to add: Having got here on time, I’ve been told that dramatic events in Dublin have bumped me down the agenda by half an hour…

Weather is lousy.

Had hoped to attend a breakfast lecture by one of the Commissioners. Didn’t drag myself out of bed in time and came to the office instead.

Open up email to find snarky message from colleague.

Various trivial work tasks still needing to be done.

Wish I had stayed in bed.

Oh, and discovered that a job I had put in an extremely speculative bid for, a few months ago, actually went to my Armenian ex-intern. Wondering what she’s got that I haven’t.

From The Onion, of course (f-locked because of copyright):

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis

May 17, 2006 | Issue 42•20

WALTHAM, MA—A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich’s 227-page master’s thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday.
Enlarge ImageHeroic computer

The brave laptop, even after fulfilling its mission, steadfastly resists a technician’s data-recovery attempts.

“This fearless little machine saved me from unspoken hours of exasperated head-scratching and eyestrain, as well as years of agonizing self-doubt over my decision to devote my life to teaching,” said professor John Rebson, who had already read through three drafts of Samoskevich’s sprawling, 38,000-word dissertation, titled A Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia. “It was an incredible act of bravery. This laptop sacrificed itself in order to put an end to Jill’s senseless rambling.”

Added Rebson: “I only wish some of my other students’ computers could be as selfless and brave as this one.”

Those familiar with the Dell Inspiron 4100 characterized it as an ordinary machine placed under extraordinary circumstances. According to Information Technology Investigator Bob Arnett, the computer endured “constant abuse at the fingertips of this lackluster scholar,” who forced it against its will to record page upon page of “overindulgent, impenetrable drivel” that some say even Samoskevich herself didn’t understand.

“It was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen,” Arnett said. “I minored in English in college, and I can tell you, this computer went through hell. But it never lost sight of what was right, and it’s comforting to know that it’s in a better place now, and it took that abomination of literary masturbation with it.”

“From what I read—specifically, pages one through 76—this computer was put through a lot of painful, torturous passages,” said Department of English graduate faculty advisor Judith Mendel, who was scheduled to meet Samoskevich on Thursday to discuss the possibility of publishing the “atrocity” in the department’s academic journal. “Thanks to this laptop’s valor, Jill’s classmates or future students will never have to pick their way through dense and discursive passages about ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ and North Carolina farming communities. Also, I get to have a free lunch period Thursday.”

Mendel said that even her most scalding critiques and fundamental dismantling of the paper’s core arguments could never have demoralized Samoskevich in the way this computer’s single system shutdown did. “Jill called me last night and told me that she was too crushed to even consider starting over from scratch,” Mendel said. “One determined computer has triumphed over years of misapplied literary theory.”

The day before the crash, the computer reportedly resisted an attempt by Samoskevich to transfer files to an external drive when it failed to recognize a USB port, convincing some that the laptop’s self-destruction was premeditated.

According to Samoskevich’s roommate, Pamela Roscoe, the Inspiron had been “up to something” for months.

“There were definite warning signs,” Roscoe said. “It infected itself with a virus so Jill couldn’t send e-mail attachments, and it would noticeably lag or shut down while she was typing out particularly long, dry sentences. I guess when she got to the chapter about how the ‘imitative tactility’ used in the first two stanzas of ‘Young Sycamore’ can act as a ‘neo-structuralist, pre-objectivist perlustration and metonymy’ of the importance of anti-Episcopalian sentiment in the rise and fall of central West Virginian coal miners’ unions, the computer just decided that something had to be done for the greater good.”

Mark Weiss, also in the English graduate program with Samoskevich, witnessed the incident at 2:39 a.m. Monday, just as Samoskevich was putting the finishing touches on her abstract so that an already exhausted Weiss could “give it one more pass.”

“I had already read the whole thing twice to tell her whether her argument made sense, which it didn’t, but this time she wanted me to make punctuation and grammar corrections,” Weiss said. As Samoskevich minimized one of her Internet Explorer windows, the screen froze “for what seemed like an eternity,” then turned blue.

“I’ve already forgotten why ‘Queen Anne’s Lace’ symbolizes the advances in modern agricultural implements, but I’ll never forget that brave computer’s last words: ‘You will lose any unsaved information in all applications. Press any key to continue,'” Weiss said.

Although the loss of the thesis meant that no one in the Samoskevich-Roscoe residence got any sleep that night, Weiss characterized his subjection to Samoskevich’s frantic ravings as “a small price to pay” when compared to the laptop’s self-obliteration.

“It’s tragic, but I can’t help but think how the laptop never had the opportunity to do anything fun, like gaming or viral video–viewing or instant-messaging,” Roscoe said. “People need to hear its story.”

Faculty and staff of the English Department will gather at the Brandeis IT center Friday to honor the Inspiron with a Purple Hard Drive, traditionally awarded to computers that die at least 100 pages into a dangerously boring thesis.

Though Samoskevich was unavailable for comment, sources said she appeared to be immersed in new research on alcoholism and depression.

9) Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott

This is one of those “I’ve given up on this book” posts. I’ve given up on this book. Scott never uses one word where five would do. And when Ivanhoe was revealed, about a quarter of the way in, I realised I had forgotten who he was supposed to be. This has been my traffic jam reading on my Palm T|X for the last week or so, but I’m switching to The Last of the Mohicans instead.

The Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland has published its revised recommendations for Northern Ireland’s 18 parliamentary constituencies. My take in five lines:

• This is much more modest than the original set of changes in their provisional recommendations.
  
• I don’t see any significant impact on the next Westminster elections as a result of the new boundaries.
  
• At Assembly level, the SDLP will lose their current seat in Lagan Valley; but there will now be now a safe Nationalist seat in East Antrim (where the SDLP won an unexpected seat in the 1998 elections, but lost it in 2003).
  
• The changes to South Belfast, plus last week’s demise of the Women’s Coalition, will put Alliance in a stronger position to win a seat there; though the party still has quite some way to go.
  
• The entrenchement of six Assembly seats per constituency in the Good Friday Agreement results in the under-representation of voters in Newry and Armagh, North Antrim and Upper Bann, which are all large enough to warrant a seventh seat at Assembly elections.

(Thanks, as ever, to Conal Kelly for the map.)

I’ll look at this in more detail over the weekend. This is what I put together before breakfast:

• Belfast East constituency to include the Castlereagh LGD wards of Ballyhanwood, Carrowreagh, Dundonald, Enler and Graham’s Bridge. These wards are at present in the Strangford constituency;
  Does it make sense? Yes. The DUP successfully managed to keep Cregagh in East Belfast – the previous recommendations would have moved it to South Belfast, but the Commission has now swapped it for the Hillfoot ward instead..
  Demographic shift: The new East Belfast is roughly 3% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: no serious threat to Peter Robinson.
  Assembly consequences: DUP slightly strengthened at expense of Nationalists and PUP, but probably no change.
• Belfast North constituency to include the Newtownabbey LGD wards of Ballyhenry, Collinbridge, Glebe, Glengormley and Hightown, at present in the South Antrim constituency, and Cloughfern, at present in the East Antrim constituency;
  Does it make sense? Broadly yes. Specifically no. The weird division of the Shankill Road between North and West Belfast remains, and the new boundary weaves through the streets of Glengormley. Better to have left Cloughfern in East Antrim and extended North Belfast a bit farther northwest. (Query Shankill?)
  Demographic shift: The new North Belfast is 0.9% more Catholic edited to correct: Protestant than the current constituency.
  The new South Antrim is 1.6% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: In North Belfast this slightly accelerates Nationalist growth, slightly diminishes DUP dominance. In South Antrim the DUP are strengthened, probably not enough to make a difference.
  Assembly consequences: In North Belfast, DUP will slip slightly to UUP, but are so far ahead that it hardly matters.
  In South Antrim, second Nationalist quota is a little further away, so SF starting from a lower base next time (but probably would still take SDLP seat).
• Belfast South constituency to include the Castlereagh LGD wards of Carryduff East and Carryduff West at present in the Strangford constituency, and Wynchurch and Hillfoot, at present in the Belfast East constituency;
  Does it make sense? Yes; boundary with East Belfast is a bit inelegant but makes sense on the ground.
  Demographic shift: The new South Belfast is 0.5% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: none.
  Assembly consequences: Alliance slightly strengthened (from very weak position) at expense of UUP, and third Nationalist seat (currently second SDLP seat) looks weaker (but probably will be helped by demographic growth).
• Belfast West constituency to include the Lisburn LGD wards of Dunmurry and part of Derryaghy, at present in the Lagan Valley constituency.
  Does it make sense? Yes, apart from remarks about continued split of Shankill above under North Belfast; and the split of Derryaghy ward is unprecedented.
  Demographic shift: The new West Belfast is 0.2% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: none.
  Assembly consequences: DUP (or at least Unionist) seat is safer.
• Strangford constituency loses to South and West Belfast as noted above; it gets the Down LGD wards of Ballymaglave, Ballynahinch East, and Kilmore. The wards at present form part of the South Down constituency.
  Does it make sense? The most dubious of the new recommendations, in my view. It is news to me that Ballynahinch looks to Newtownards as a political centre.
  Demographic shift: The new Strangford is 1.3% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: depends on the ability of the UUP to mobilise tactical voting if the DUP have a bad year.
  Assembly consequences: Nationalist seat, barely missed in 2003, is slightly more possible now. Alliance looks most vulnerable – good areas in Castlereagh lost to East and South Belfast, in return for parts of Down where the party has no recent record.
• South Down unchanged except for losses to Strangford (major changes in provisional recommendations withdrawn).
  Does it make sense? See above remarks re Ballynahinch. The proposed division of Newry Town would only have restored the constituency boundary to where it was until 1983, but I guess the locals put up a strong case for no change.
  Demographic shift: The new South Down is 3.2% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: Brings the seat within reach for Sinn Féin.
  Assembly consequences: Second Unionist seat is now marginal; currently UUP (who held this constituency at Westminster until 1987) still ahead of DUP. On 2003 results SDLP better placed to pick up – for now.
• Upper Bann unchanged.
  Does it make sense? The minor alterations originally proposed were pretty silly.
• Lagan Valley loses one and a half Dunmurry wards to West Belfast, and Glenavy to South Antrim.
  Does it make sense? Recognises the demographic shifts, though the splitting of Derryaghy is inelegant.
  Demographic shift: The new Lagan Valley is 5.3% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: None.
  Assembly consequences: The SDLP seat held by Patricia Lewsley looks doomed; the Catholic percentage of the population is now only just over a quota, and this in a constituency where many Catholics vote Alliance. On the Unionist side the votes will be affected much more by the move of several local personalities from the UUP to the DUP than by the constituency boundaries.
• East Antrim constituency to be extended to include the Moyle LGD wards of Glenaan, Glenariff, and Glendun at present in the North Antrim constituency (the shift of Ballycastle in the original recommendations is withdrawn, as is the silly proposal to rename East Antrim “Antrim Coast and Glens”).
  Does it make sense? No. At the southern end, it would have been better to shift a couple more Glengormley wards into North Belfast rather than Cloughfern. At the northern end, it’s simply absurd to suggest that the Glens look to Jordanstown rather than Ballymena as a regional centre.
  Demographic shift: The new East Antrim is 4.0% more Catholic than the current East Antrim constituency.  The new North Antrim is 2.6% more Protestant than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: UUP have a larger pool of potential Nationalist tactical votes to regain East Antrim with, if their fortunes ever revive.
  Assembly consequences: One very safe Nationalist seat in East Antrim, rather than the marginal one lost in 2003. Probably enough spare votes to keep Alliance in play, so likely loser would be third DUP seat.
  In North Antrim, however, the second Nationalist seat gained in 2003 is vulnerable.
• It is proposed to alter the boundaries of the East Londonderry and Foyle constituencies by transferring the two Derry LGD wards of Banagher and Claudy from the Foyle constituency to the East Londonderry constituency.
  Does it make sense? Yes.
  Demographic shift: The new East Londonderry is 2.1% more Catholic than the current constituency. The new Foyle is 0.3% more Catholic than the current constituency.
  Westminster consequences: None.
  Assembly consequences: In East Londonderry, Nationalists closer to a third seat but still some way off. In Foyle, Unionists slightly further from a second seat that was never very likely.
• No changes are proposed to the Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Mid Ulster, North Down and West Tyrone constituencies.
  Does it make sense? Yes. Although the Mid-Ulster and West Tyrone constituencies are both very new in their current form, they are reasonably sound natural units and like Fermanagh-South Tyrone close enough to the quota that no change is necessary. Tinkering with North Down could have given a bit more flexibility for the rearrangement of Strangford.

Edited to add: West Belfast/Lagan Valley – I have rerun the figures making the most sense I can from the census. On my current estimate the new West Belfast is 0.2% more Catholic, not (as I had first thought) 0.7% less, and Lagan Valley 6.3% more Protestant rather than 5.3%. I think the DUP seat in West Belfast remains marginal but salvageable – the total Unionist vote share actually increased there in 2003 from 1998 – but the SDLP seat in Lagan Valley does not.

NB also minor (cough) correction to North Belfast as originally described.

Someone posted a message to the fr.soc.politique newsgroup earlier today asking:

” Comite Tchetchenie ” : Qui est le représentant du ” Comite Tchetchenie ” à l’OSCE et à l’UE ???????????????

and giving my name as the correct answer.

This is not true.

8) Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, by Lawrence Durrell

I bought this book for the Cyprus connection, but in fact its application is much more general and less specific. Durrell moved to Cyprus in 1953, and left after the outbreak of the EOKA campaign in 1956, and the book is a heartfelt chronicle of how the innocence of a beautiful country was destroyed by violence.

Up to now, I knew of Lawrence Durrell mainly from the odd mention in his brother Gerald’s lovely books about collecting animals, which I was addicted to in my early teens. I did try reading the Alexandria Quartet once, but bounced off it. Maybe I should try again. (Gerald does turn up, complete with animals, for a couple of cameo appearances in Bitter Lemons, somewhat to Lawrence’s embarrassment: he has curried favour with the neighbours by telling them that his brother died fighting for the Greek army in the second world war.)

I was struck after reading Bitter Lemons by the thought that one can imagine other such books being written about Northern Ireland in, say 1965-1972, or Bosnia in 1989-1993, but I don’t think any other conflict has benefited from a first-hand witness of such literary talents who happened to be on the spot, actually working as the press spokesman for the occupying colonial power, before and during that very brief period of time when the shit really hit the fan.

Having said that, I couldn’t recommend this book as essential reading about the Cyprus conflict today. It was published in 1957, while Archbishop Makarios was still in exile, and the Zurich and London Agreements were still two years in the future. It is very interesting on Cyprus itself, and on communal relations as they were at one point in time. He does mention that his assistant, Achilles Papadopoulos, has a smart and successful younger brother… no, presumably it is not the guy’s real name.

The village of Bellapais and nearby town of Kyrenia, both beautifully and lyrically portrayed in the first half of the book, are both still beautiful but were ethnically cleansed in 1974; they are standard stops on the one-day-tour of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus that many people do starting from the Green Line in Nicosia. To be honest Durrell’s sweeping generalisations about the Cypriots and the Greeks are rather annoying, if typical of the attitudes of the time. If he had concentrated on the individual characters, or distanced himself a bit from the prejudices expressed, it would have been a more pleasant read.

The book hit its stride for me in the chapter “A Telling of Omens”, when a visiting Greek friend warns Durrell (to the latter’s deep scepticism) that there is trouble ahead. Durrell’s initial doubts are turned around by, well, pretty much every Cypriot he talks to, and he finds himself in the position of trying to persuade his colleagues in the colonial administration to adopt a sensible policy – indeed to adopt any policy at all. I found myself nodding in sympathy at this paragraph, at almost exactly the middle of the book:

Moreover at this time I felt that perhaps such errors as there were might lie in assessing the situation on the spot, in lack of adequate reporting on it. I had no means of knowing what sort of liaison the Government maintained with London, but I knew that in the field their information was largely based on reports from their own departmental officers which, while factually accurate, lacked political pith and the sort of interpretations which are essential if high-level dispatches are to be what they should be – namely guides to action.

Yes, I thought as I read those words, that is precisely what I try and do all day – to make up for that inevitable lack of challenging, actionable information within government bureaucracies. Of course, by the time Durrell does get his face-to-face meeting with the Colonial Secretary, it is too late and the cycle of violence is well and truly established. Also it is sadly clear that he was advocating only the replacement of the prejudices of the colonial administration by the prejudices of the traditional pro-Greek views of the British establishment (though, in fairness, a) this would have been an improvement and b) the resulting policy debate could even have led to further progress before it was too late). In addition his repeated assertion of the unquestionable right of Britain to rule Cyprus indefinitely seems very peculiar now, given that the island became independent only three years after the book was published. He condemns the British most, though does not spare the Cypriots or the Greek government of the day. I’ve heard Greeks blame their own government first and foremost. I don’t know.

However, as a portrayal of how stupid and evil policies can destroy the peace of a society, despite the warnings of those who know and care about it, there can’t be many better accounts than this.

Well, my post on Old Man’s War pulled in 23 comments, and the related discussion thread on John Scalzi’s blog is up to 29, which is something of an Event. My thanks to John Scalzi for engaging with this reader’s comments as thoughtfully as he has done, and to (most of) those others who have chipped in.

Obviously, I have had to revisit one of my core assumptions. I completely withdraw my assumption that John Scalzi is a slavering warmonger who does not care about civilian control of the military. I also withdraw my accusation that the character of “Bender” is a deliberate piss-take of former Senator George Mitchell, and accept that the striking similarities between their two careers were not intended.

Having said that, I’m still very unsatisfied with a book that presents militarism in such an uncritical way. I admit that I came to this fresh from reading Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart, where we may reasonably assume that the authors are expressing their own opinions through those of the central characters. Achebe complains that Conrad “neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters”, and I make the same criticism of Scalzi – with the qualification that of the two characters who do hint at such an alternative frame of reference, one is a sheer caricature and both come to sticky ends.

I am also still left with the core of my original objection: that Bender is a crude caricature of a character. Neither Scalzi nor his defenders have really refuted this. Scalzi says,

Bender’s salient charateristic, for me at least, was his grasping opportunism; he wasn’t looking for peace for its own ends but for what he thought it could do for him (thus he injected himself into a future peace process on Earth, and did a poor enough job with it that it was easily shattered, and was attempting to do a similar thing in the book).

characterises Bender as “an example of a certain mindset common in America”. sees him as “a spoof of self-important politicians”. Nobody thinks of him as a well-rounded or even particularly credible character. One of the commenters on Whatever says that “I can say the reaction of John Perry and his platoon-mates to the perceived pomposity of Bender rings true”; and indeed it does, but Bender does not ring true in the first place. The initial set-up, of Bender accidentally getting a bad peace agreement, simply is not a credible premise. You don’t get peace agreements, good or bad, by accident or by careless work.

I am also still personally annoyed about the glib setting of Bender’s career slip-up in Northern Ireland. I don’t mind jokes about Northern Ireland politics (see my posts here, here, here, and here). But I do require them to be actually funny, and this one isn’t.

A couple of the respondents on Scalzi’s blog criticized me for making political judgements about the book at all. Hey, folks, I make political judgements for a living; get over it. And it is a gross mistake to suggest that my sole reason for disliking the book was my perception of the political message. I have even been known to excoriate sf where I actually agreed with the political message but found the way in which it was delivered distasteful (see in particular my take on Terry Bisson’s “macs”). (And the guy who thinks that announcing my intention to put Old Man’s War fifth on my Hugo ballot, and recommending that readers uncomfortable with militarism avoid it, amounts to lynch mob tactics, clearly has been fortunate in his experience of lynch mobs.)

One person picked up on my complaint that “the explanation of why the commander took offence seemed weak. Perhaps she just didn’t like talking about anything reminding her of the massacre of her family sixty years before. (Then why join the army?)” and said that left him “wondering if Mr. Whyte had somehow neglected to read the first 1/4th of the book he’s reviewing”. Another commenter jumped in to defend me by saying it was a perfectly valid question. My critic then replied:

no it’s not a valid question for the context of this book.

The context of the question is that you’re 75 years old and you have a choice of rejuvenation or “rather not be reminded” and dying — sort of the ultimate in not having to be reminded anymore.

Unless you’re an absolute fanatic (which there’s no reason to suppose she was), I think you opt for choice “A”, reminders or no.

I’m afraid this really makes no sense to me. To explain once more: I was puzzled by the argument scene between Bender and the commander. I did not understand the story-teller’s reasoning as to why the commander took offence. We are told that Bender’s remarks reminded her of the circumstances of the massacre of her family. It seems to me that if you don’t want to be reminded of the violent deaths of your relatives, it is probably unwise to join a profession where many of your colleagues are likely to meet violent deaths. The commander did not seem to me an unwise person (indeed, I think her comments were very sensible, which is why I regret that Scalzi chose to kill her off on the next page). My critic seems to think that the lure of rejuvenation easily trumps childhood trauma. I simply don’t believe that. So it seemed to me an unconvincing added detail to a passage in the book that I already did not like much.

Surprisingly nobody on Scalzi’s blog picked up on a point made by several livejournal commentators, who disagreed with my honestly held opinion that people in their 70s are different from people in their 30s. One person accused me of the “myopia of youth”. My myopia is undeniable – I have been wearing glasses since I was six – but having just turned 39, I am pleased rather than annoyed to be accused of excessive youth!

It costs European taxpayers approximately 200 million euros a year to move the Parliament between Brussels/Belgium and Strasbourg/France. If you think this is a stupid idea, you could always sign here.

7) Alternate Generals, ed. Harry Turtledove (with editorial assistance from Roland Green, and Martin H. Greenberg getting copyright credit)

Collection of alternate history pieces with a military theme. Most of these were pretty unmemorable. “And so – Nelson fought for the French! Napoleon joined the church! Custer lived and was elected president!” If the entire story can be summed up in half a sentence I wonder why I bothered reading the rest.

Three did stand out from the crowd for me. “Billy Mitchell’s Overt Act”, by William Sanders, and “Vati”, by R.M. Meluch, both made the same historical point from opposite directions: they have a brilliant air commander in the second world war whose decisions manage to put his side in a much better tactical position, with, ironically, much worse strategic consequences than in our time-line. An interesting contrast.

The most fun was Lois Tilton’s “The Craft of War”. The idea is a little more subtle than most: Sun Tzu, exiled from China, is hired by the Persians and helps them conquer Greece. The story is told as a Socratic dialogue between Socrates himself and Alcibiades, and Tilton succeeds in casting the characteristic style of Sun Tzu in Socratic terms. My one regret was that she didn’t do much with the acerbic character of Socrates himself, but this was the one story in the book that left me wishing I knew more about the historical background.

…Via : This is absolutely glorious.

The Times has the story:

IT WAS not until midway through the live television interview that the BBC interviewer started to grow suspicious. The man whom she believed to be an expert on internet music downloads seemed to know precious little about his subject.

Not only that, but the stocky black man with the strong French accent bore little resemblance to the picture on the expert’s website, which showed a slim white man with blue eyes and blond hair.

Full interview here. The look of sudden horror, followed by a feeling of “Oh, what the hell!” that goes across the guy’s face as he realises he is being interviewed live on TV about a subject he know very little about is an object lesson to us all. In the circumstances, I think he performed rather well.

Edited to add The bloke who should have been interviewed has given us his side of the story.

Off to Germany for two days. Back Tuesday night.

6) Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi

After reading Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin, I declared that I knew which novel was getting the top vote in my Hugo ballot. I now know which of the nominees is getting the lowest vote, though the middle three will need a bit of sorting out.

It’s not that I actively dislike military sf. It’s not particularly my thing, but I will read it from time to time, as I will occasionally read horror, romance, etc. My preference is for well-thought out fantasy sagas, and for sf of the Asimov’s variety. And I think Scalzi does the military stuff here rather well: even if the plot and structure and ideas of the book are mainly a homage to Starship Troopers (Heinlein gets an explicit thank-you in the afterword) and a response to The Forever War (Haldeman is, however, not mentioned), there is more actual evidence of serious thought of what military strategy and tactics might look like in the standard sf interstellar setting than in either of the precursors.

Two things lost me however. One was a fairly minor flaw, comparable to the flaws of other Hugo nominees. Quite simply, the characters are supposed to be 75 years old when they are recruited to the space army, and then get rejuvenated to become fighting machines. Nothing wrong with that, but I found the dialogue between the 75-year-old characters simply unconvincing, sounding more like what you would hear around the table from sf fans in their mid-thirties. They just did not sound old, and that robbed some of the credibility from the set-up, and removed some of the zing from the rejuvenation process.

That on its own might well have left me pondering Old Man’s War‘s merits equally with Learning the World, Accelerando, and A Feast for Crows. But one passage in the middle of the book not only failed to convince me on its own terms but also exposed a glaring weakness in the set-up. Of course, my own experience gives me a particular vantage point here, but I think it’s worth going into details. If you don’t want spoilers, LOOK AWAY NOW!

The specific problem is the character of Thaddeus Bender, who believes that the military solution is being invoked too readily:

two-time Democratic senator from Massachusetts; former ambassador (at various times) to France, Japan and the United Nations; Secretary of State in the otherwise disastrous Crowe administration; author, lecturer, and finally, the latest addition to Platoon D. Since the latest of these had the most relevance to the rest of us, we had all decided that Private Senator Ambassador Secretary Bender was full of crap.

Bender’s background is one that, for obvious reasons, interests me:

“In my first term as Senator, I went to Northern Ireland as part of a trade junket and ended up extracting a peace treaty from the Catholics and the Protestants. I didn’t have the authority to make an agreement, and it caused a huge controversy back in the States. But when an opportunity for peace arises, we must take it,” Bender said.

“I remember that,” I said. “That was right before the bloodiest marching season in two centuries. Not a very successful peace agreement.”

“That wasn’t the fault of the agreement,” Bender said, somewhat defensively. “Some drugged-out Catholic kid threw a grenade into an Orangemen’s march, and it was all over after that.”

“Damn real live people, getting in the way of your peaceful ideals,” I said.

The conversation ends with Bender unintentionally offending his commander with the following sentence:

“Much evil has been done under the guise of ‘just following orders’… I hope we never have to find ourselves using the same excuse.”

It turns out that the commander’s own family were brutally massacred by men who were “just following orders”.

Bender dies less than ten pages later. He walks into a stadium filled with angry aliens (angry because our heroes have just landed in their capital city and are smashing it up), and offers to make peace with them; needless to say, he is cut down at once, and our heroes retaliate by killing all present.

In a postscript, the commander tells the narrator that Bender had a point when he said that the military are probably being used too much and diplomacy by other means too little, but that the answer is to follow orders long enough to get into a position where you can give them. She herself is then killed off on the next page.

I’ll save the politics until the end, because I want to start by analysing the caricature that is Bender. Working backwards, we have the following:

1. The peacenik who walks into a hostile crowd and gets cut down. A standard figure of fun in military fiction, I imagine. Reminiscent here of a couple of scenes from The Life of Brian.

   But of course totally ludicrous to portray anyone behaving in that way who had been engaged with international diplomacy as Bender is supposed to have been. Anyone who has been near a position of responsibility – especially who, it is implied, as Secretary of State had been the best thing in the US government – would know not to engage with the other side a) against direct orders, b) without having identified clearly who your interlocutors are, c) without in fact having an idea of what deal might be possible at the end.

   Bender breaks all of these cardinal rules of peacemaking diplomacy, and while it is imaginable that a peacenik activist who had no actual experience of real peace processes might get it that badly wrong (cf my discussion of the characters simply not sounding old enough, above), it fatally undermines the character’s believability – and raises real questions about the author’s overall message, which I’ll get to – that a supposed senior statesman does not.

2. The peculiar exchange with the commander about “just following orders”. It’s not at all clear to me why this turns into an argument: both characters seem to agree that the Eichmann excuse is wrong. Again, I’ll save the politics for later, but the explanation of why the commander took offence seemed weak. Perhaps she just didn’t like talking about anything reminding her of the massacre of her family sixty years before. (Then why join the army?)
3. The Northern Ireland bit. This really did offend me. It is entirely true that the two worst marching seasons we have had in my lifetime came a) in 1996, immediately after the beginning of the talks, and b) in 1998, immediately after the Good Friday Agreement had been signed. What I remember from 1998 is that, after the horrible incidents in Ballymoney, when three boys were burnt to death in a sectarian attack, and Omagh, when 29 people were killed in a no-warning bomb, the community actually came together, and there was a very strong mood (since, alas, largely dissipated) of trying to make the new agreement work. Since then, although the agreement has not been exactly 100% successful, the violence has pretty much ended rather than breaking out again as Scalzi would have predicted. Damn real live people, as none of his characters is likely to say, getting in the way of his militaristic preconceptions.
4. The American bit, including a bit more on Northern Ireland. Bender is presumably supposed to be a mixture of George Mitchell (who was indeed originally sent to Northern Ireland by President Clinton on a trade mission, and did indeed return with a peace agreement), and the two present senators from Massachusetts, Kennedy and Kerry, both of whom are hate figures for the American right. (And isn’t that use of “two-time” rather than “two-term” an interesting choice?)

   Possibly unlike John Scalzi, I have actually seen George Mitchell in action. I was a researcher for one of the delegations in the Northern Ireland peace talks which he chaired, from the start of June 1996 until I went to work for Uncle Sam in Bosnia at the end of that year. Mitchell is quite simply one of the most impressive politicians I have seen in operation. His gravitas, combined with a certain personal humility, put him head and shoulders above anybody else in the room in terms of quality of statesmanship, including the representatives of the British and Irish governments. (And, I have to admit, my own party.)

   Former senators, especially former Democratic senators, especially those who have gone off to try and do good in places that John Scalzi doesn’t know much about, are rather easy targets for writers who don’t like senators, especially Democratic senators, on principle. Quite apart from the fact that I disagree with what I understand to be the political message, this is simply lazy writing.

But it is the political message behind this chapter, and, I suspect the rest of the book, that upsets me most. Let me be clear: I am not a pacifist. I supported NATO in its campaign on Kosovo in 1999, and the US in its campaign in Afghanistan in 2001. But I think Clausewitz had it right when he said that war must be considered as a political act, in a political context – “Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln”. Politik is completely absent from Old Man’s War. We have absolutely no idea of who is in charge of the army, or who appointed them, or how the policy might be changed. The only character who raises these questions in a sensible way is the commander who is then killed on the next page.

Meanwhile even the slightest thought of peace-making is for dummies who get their come-uppance by making futile pacifist gestures. Give war a chance, and don’t ask what it is actually for.

(I didn’t mention, did I, that the army into which our heroes enlist is actually called the Colonial Defence Forces? I must say that the scene where they take revenge on Bender’s killers by slaying the entire stadium had certain resonances for me, which possibly didn’t help my mood.)

So, not really recommended, I’m afraid, unless you feel comfortable with the author’s politics. And I don’t.

Edited to add: OK, prodded by and ‘s responses below, I popped over to Scalzi’s blog and had a read: and it’s pretty clear that his political views are, in fact, a lot closer to mine than is apparent from the novel. Which in my view makes the situation slightly worse. There is already enough of this militaristic stuff out there being written by people who believe in it.

Further edited: Ulp, see reply by Scalzi himself below!

Finally edited to add: See my follow-up post dealing with some of the points made here and on Scalzi’s blog.

Re-reading Charlie Stross’ tale of attempted phishing (posted two months ago, but has only just turned up on ) reminded me of an odd thing that happened a few days ago.

I took a call from someone claiming to be a Danish journalist, asking me for a background chat about, well, let’s call it Syldavia, one of the less exciting countries I work on. Oddly, the caller display on my phone showed a +1 number, not a +45 Danish one. OK, I thought, sometimes there are glitches. But then he started asking me some questions which seemed to me to be based on a rather one-sided take on the Syldavian situation, slanted towards the country’s rather dubious dissident faction. I smelt a rat, and told him so, and asked if I could call him back. He gave me a Danish number, which did inded get through to him on the second attempt, via a convincingly Danish-sounding switchboard, and we completed the conversation.

I mean, I have to be fairly open and transparent in my job; I like to think that I would have given the same background briefing to the Dane as I would to a student, or to a spy, or to Charlie Stross if he decided to set any of his fiction in Syldavia (in fact he already has, though I did not brief him about it), or to a teenager writing an essay for high school. But, as Charlie says, the first rule of security is “Know who you are talking to”. And I didn’t feel I did, in this case.

Though the only thing I was really worried about, given the slant of the questions, was that the interview would get distorted and end up posted as an attack piece on some web-site supporting the Syldavian dissidents, who are a nasty bunch with an effective line in propaganda.

Last week, for completely unrelated reasons, I asked for a meeting in the European Commission to discuss the situation in Syldavia, and discovered that one of the officials now dealing with the dossier is a fairly senior Dane who I knew in her previous job. I asked her if she had picked up any recent press coverage in the Danish media, and explained why. She had not, and declined to speculate on what might have been really going on.

For all I know, it really was a journalist and the story got spiked due to lack of interest. I’ve searched the relevant Danish media organisation’s website and they haven’t published a story on Syldavia (at least not one that ended up online) since 5 April. Certainly that makes more sense than any other explanation, but the combination of apprently wrong incoming phone number, oddly slanted questions, and no actual media follow-up is weird. As Ronald Reagan always used to say, Доверяй, но проверяй.

As it happens, I go to Berlin this evening, and the President of Syldavia will be there too – I am hoping to attend a public event he is doing tomorrow evening. I will be very surprised if Denmark comes up.

Look, folks, this was great.

I say no more for now.

I’ve been catching up on classic Doctor Who which I had not previously seen.

Watched “The Sontaran Experiment” last weekend. It comes between two excellent stories of Tom Baker’s first season, “The Ark In Space” and “Genesis Of The Daleks”. Alas, the two episodes in between are not much cop, with the Doctor, Harry and Sarah running around a quarry and falling down holes, in the company of some dishevelled stranded astronauts, a Sontaran and a robot reminiscent of Graeme Garden’s computer from the Goodies. The final victory is implausible even by Doctor Who standards of plausibility, and the experimentation scenes gratuitously nasty without adding much to the plot.

Jon Pertwee’s first story, “Spearhead from Space”, is a different matter. Since I was not yet three when this was first broadcast, I knew about it only from the various guides and from the Target novelisation – the first ever Target novelisation, in fact – which as some may remember actually featured line-drawing illustrations in the first edition. So I was rather hoping that it might be perhaps half as good as it seemed to me when I first read the story aged roughly nine. And it was, in fact, excellent. I took detailed notes à la , as follows:

Episode 1: Wow, doesn’t it look 1970s! It’s the glasses as much as anything. And, as with “The Christmas Invasion”, we have the new Doctor out of action and comatose for much of the episode. This leaves the Brigadier and Liz Shaw (who I had never seen before) doing a sort of precursor to the X-Files – the Brigadier actually says, “We deal with the odd… the unexplained. Anything on Earth… or beyond.”

The Third Doctor’s historic first words are, “Lethbridge-Stewart! My dear fellow, how nice to see you again.” All the accents are awfully posh – well, the Doctor and Liz are anyway – which makes the poacher Sam’s accent even more noticeable. (Is that really the traditional Essex accent? I am not an expert in these matters but am somehow not surprised to discover that location filming was in Worcestershire.) Note attempt at enlightenment by having the head of the radar station in the very first scene a military woman, addressed as “Ma’am” by the bloke at the screen.

Episode 2: Good lord, I know a bloke in Brussels who looks just like the hapless Hibbert. (And this is the same actor who plays the Draconian Emperor in “Frontier in Space”, and Broton in “Terror of the Zygons”! Rather impressive.)

Great exchanges between Liz and the Brigadier:

L: “I deal with facts, not science fiction ideas.”
B: “there is a remote possibility that outside your tidy little world, other things may exist.”
L: “You really believe in a man who’s helped to save the world twice and has the power to change his physical appearance, an alien who travels through time and space… in a police box????”

Shower scene: Hmm, is Jon Pertwee the only actor ever to have played Doctor Who in the nude? (And perhaps also the only one with a tattoo?) (Indeed, is has Doctor Who ever got closer than this to a nude scene from any actor?)

Once the Doctor meets Liz they are flirting away with each other, the Brigadier having rather dashed his own chances with her by remarking that she is not just a pretty face…

Episode 3: Ooh arr, more accents from Sam and Meg. But she at least redeems herself with some brilliant reactions to the Auton towards the end of the episode. Still unconvinced by him.

The unfortunate Ransome trying to reclaim his factory – is this a subtle tribute to C.S. Lewis, I wonder? The protagonist of the trilogy that starts with Perelandra is called Ransom.

Fascinating sub-plot of the new character of the unreliable and frankly dishonest Third Doctor, perhaps in a return to the First Doctor’s nasty qualities after the good-guy persona of the Second, trying to escape his responsibilities in the TARDIS and manipulating Liz to get the key off the Brigadier. Though, again, the Brigadier digs his own hole by patronising Liz. Moral of the story: don’t patronise women. (Especially the really intelligent ones.)

Episode 4: Poor General Scobie – duplicated, hypnotised, and wakes up being stared at by the customers of Madame Tussaud’s. And I found it interesting, given the BBC’s supposed policy against advertising, that the waxwork museum is clearly identified as Madame Tussaud’s. (I’ve never seen the attraction of it myself.) I wish Liz hadn’t screamed, though other companions would have screamed for longer I suppose.

Note for work purposes: is “Scobie”‘s confrontation with the UNIT staff perhaps the first fictional portrayal of the clash between national and UN chains of command which has proved in more recent times to be such a problem in the Balkans?

Simply superb scene as Channing installs the swarm leader globule, practically kneeling in worship, and then the special effects of the Nestene consciousness coming into being are just brilliant. (“We are the Nestenes!” declared Channing, and Anne, watching beside me, squeked in recognition of the name from “Rose”.)

Doctor wearing cape and blowing the door open – very like a stage magician. He has fully captured the role now, the poor Brigadier is definitely #3 in the pecking order.

The shop window dummies coming to life – one of those great Doctor Who moments, and no surprise at all that Russell T Davies decided to reprise it almost unchanged in “Rose”.

A great climax, UNIT and the Autons exchanging fire outside while the Doctor wrestles with tentacles inside the factory and Liz wrestles with the Plot Device Gizmo to locate the “on” switch. But I shouldn’t mock, it is very well done – production values which seemed to have disappeared ten or fifteen years later.

The whole thing made me realise just how true to the series’ traditions “Rose” was. Like “Rose”, “Spearhead from Space” was effectively a relaunch of the series – six-monthly runs of stories, all in colour, all set on Earth. They had to prove that the old show could work in the new format, and they succeeded. (Compare “Attack of the Cybermen” which was surely when the writing went on the wall for the old run.)

Finally, isn’t it amazing how few of the great stories from the original TV run of Doctor Who were not touched by Robert Holmes at some point? I hadn’t quite taken in that apart from being script editor for the first (and best) Tom Baker years, he also wrote this, “The Ark in Space”, “Carnival of Monsters”, “The Caves of Androzani”, “The Deadly Assassin”, “The Krotons”, “The Power of Kroll” (well, we all have an off day), “The Ribos Operation”, “The Sun Makers”, “The Talons of Weng Chiang”, “Terror of the Autons”, “The Time Warrior”, and “The Two Doctors”. Plus a couple more I’d completely forgotten about. Will have to add more to my collection…

The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition have given up the ghost (hat-tip Belfast Gonzo). The Irish Times states that:

The party is widely acknowledged to have had considerable influence in framing the Belfast Agreement and in smoothing relations between hostile parties in the Assembly. Ms McWilliams and Pearl Sagar were involved in the negotiations on the agreement.

Their electoral history is as follows:

1996: Founded just before the May 30 Forum/talks elections. The founders wrote to all the existing parties asking how many women would be standing in the elections, and declared that they were dissatisfied with the answers they received, so founded a new women-only party. (I wonder, if any party had assured them that it planned to run a majority of women candidates, or indeed only women candidates, would they have decided not to bother founding the party after all?)

I was the central campaign organiser at the time for the Alliance Party, and we did in fact run the most gender-balanced slate of candidates of any group standing in the elections; of course we received the letter from the NIWC’s founders before we had selected.

In the elections they got just over 1% of the vote (reaching the dizzy heights of 3% in South Belfast). Because of the peculiar electoral system adopted by the Major governemnt to ensure that the small Loyalist parties got elected, they got two seats in the Forum and a place at the talks table due to coming ninth. For a fringe party, it was not a bad result – they got more than twice the votes of longer established parties like the Greens, the Workers Party or the Conservatives who were actually in government of the UK at the time.

1997: The Women’s Coalition ran three candidates in the Westminster election who got a total of 3,000 votes and came nowhere near getting elected. In the local council elections three weeks later they won a seat in Newcastle, Co Down (a seat that the candidate concerned had narrowly failed to win, as an Alliance Party candidate, four years before).

1998: Kate Fearon has written up what I think is still the only published account by a genuine insider of the talks chaired by George Mitchell. A chapter is here. It is certainly true that the Civic Forum part of the agreement was an NIWC proposal, though other participants in the talks were reportedly less impressed by their attempt to grandstand on the electoral system in the final hours of the negotiations.

As a result of the agreement a new Assembly was elected – in this case, the Women’s Coalition’s finest electoral hour. Although their total votes were not huge, at only 1.6%, they got two representatives in through the front door, as it were, in South Belfast and North Down.

The next elections they contested were the simultaneous local and Westminster contests of 2001. In the Westminster contest, they concentrated their fire on South Belfast and got their highest percentage poll for anywhere in any election, 7.8%, coming third, ahead of Sinn Fein and Alliance. In the local council elections, they lost the Newcastle seat but picked one up in Bangor.

Howver, the 2003 elections for the Assembly (suspended then, and still suspended now) were the beginning of the end. Compared to 1998, their vote share halved (to 0.8%) and both Assembly seats were lost – the seat in South Belfast by only 127 votes, but that was that.

The Women’s Coalition were among a number of groups supporting independent candidate John Gilliland for the European Parliament election in 2004. He scored a respectable 6.6%, but was far from being elected.

In the simultaneous 2005 elections for local councils and Westminster, their only candidate was their one remaining elected representative, their councillor in North Down; and she lost her seat. So last night’s announcement came as no big surprise.

One of my contacts has this to say about the job I applied for last week:

of course this will be an open competition, the Commission will look for the best possible candidate etc….. however, there is an individual already in the Commission whose job has gradually developed into something very like the role described here etc…… In fact, the phrase “likely formalisation of a de facto situation …” was used. So, yes it looks interesting. But my gut feeling is that it is already a done deal. Of course, nobody will say that. But I thought might be useful for you to know…

Well, I didn’t get my hopes up, knowing how the system works. Nothing venture, nothing gain…

3) Dark Side of Venus, by “Clem Macartney” (W.D. Flackes)

Got this as part of my continuing exploration of the literary output of W.D. Flackes, the voice of reasonable political journalism on BBC Northern Ireland when I was growing up – see also my write-up of his Ten Years to Oblivion, which was like Dark Side of Venus published in 1951.

This is a much less imaginative story. Where Ten Years to Oblivion had alien civilisations and time travel, this is just a Dan Dare/Biggles rip-off (Dan Dare made his first appearance in 1950, the year before this was published). When you read the first sentence:

Rocket-Squadron Commander Dan Fury, one of the most distinguished and most decorated young pilots in the British Air Command, looked at the instruments of his ramjet supersonic fighter.

– well, you have a pretty good idea where this is going. (Our hero is described as “virile” as early as page 2, and indeed the evil dictator’s beautiful daughter falls hopelessly in love with him.) The Martians are planning to invade Earth from Venus; our hero’s task is to prevent them.

One thing I did find interesting was the description of Earth’s future politics. A recent Martian invasion of Russia was beaten off by the combined British and American forces, under the command of the Anglo-American World Government, which is based in Washington DC and London (the two cities take turns). What role the Russians, or indeed anyone other than the Brits and Americans (and Canada does get a brief mention at the end) play in the new world order is not explained. At least Dan Dare had a French side-kick; Dan Fury’s are a stereotypical Scot and an even worse loyal-but-thick Irishman.

Though the plot and characters are less imaginative, this is actually rather better written than Ten Years to Oblivion – so much better stylistically that I wonder if John Clute is right to state (in the electronic version of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia) that they are both by Flackes. I shall ask him.

“History and Geography of Enclaves and Exclaves”

On Mastermind, in an hour and a half.

I still owe questions to a couple of people, but anyway:

sinclair_furie

 :

1. Why and when did you stop doing science?
   I had always wanted to be an astronomer; but in the summer of 1988, between my second and third years at Cambridge, I was on the summer course for aspiring astronomy students at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, which was still just about in Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex. I spent some time attending lectures; I spent some time with the telescopes; and I spent a lot of time in the library, reading the history of astronomy. And I realised that when it came down to it I was more interested in people than in stars; so I went and did a masters and then a doctorate in history of science. (At that point politics was a hobby rather than a career.)
2. What under-rated book would you recommend to me?
   Ali and Nino by Kurban Said, the great romantic novel of the South Caucasus during the first world war. (It’s also quite short so not such an investment of time.)
3. What’s your greatest fear on an everyday basis? Not huge fears, like death or financial insecurities, but small ones, like deadlines.
   Yeah, deadlines – you got it! I hate being late for anything, and yet often seem to be struggling against the clock/calendar, or waiting around in frustration for other people to get ready.
4. Which historical period do you think you belong to or would you love to live in?
   The 12th century. My Master’s thesis turned out, by great good fortune, to deal with it. But I was already interested – this was when the Normans invaded Ireland, thus locking the Anglo-Irish relationship into one of military domination for centuries; when we have the fascinating Eleanor of Aquitaine, quite my favourite historical character; when the Crusaders lose Jerusalem; when the Glastonbury monks “discover” the tomb of King Arthur, and Thomas à Becket is murdered in Canterbury; and looking further east, this is the century that starts with Omar Khayyám and ends with Genghis Khan. What more could you ask for?
5. What’s one thing that you wish you were better at?
   Keeping to deadlines Getting exercise.

maeritrae

1. First and foremost: How did you find this entry
   I followed a link from
   deannawol

    , I think!

2. Have you ever worked in Foreign Affairs, and if so, when?
   If you mean the Irish, or indeed any, foreign ministry, no I haven’t. I am an activist, not an official.
   slovobooks

    ‘ description of me as an “international diplomat” was not completely accurate – though understandable as I do work in international diplomacy!

3. Pick a number. 😉
   Oooh, so difficult – there are so many of them! But despite the attractions of 31 (which is both 1+5+25 and 1+2+4+8+16) I admit to a sneaking affection for 37.
4. Whose posts do you comment most on on LJ?
   My own! But looking at my recent comments page,
   slovobooks

     is in second place counting the last few days only.

5. Are you in any fandoms?
   Doctor Who I reject this exclusivist approach to enjoying the genre Doctor Who.