13) The Belgian House of Representatives: From Revolution to Federalism, by Derek Blyth, Alistair MacLean, and Rory Watson

This was a freebie from a conference I spoke at in April in the Belgian Parliament (I had been there once or twice before). The book was produced as part of the 175th anniversary celebrations of the Belgian Parliament (or something), and I get the impression that it has been very heavily rewritten by three British journalists (on commission from the parliament itself) from a much more academic tome produced in 2003. I have to say it is far more digestible than the only other history of Belgium I have attempted, The Political History of Belgium by Els Witte, Jan Craeybeckx, and Alain Meynen (though I’ve read one other political commentary). As with any institutional history, of course it tries to put the Belgiam Parliament (and especially the House of Representatives) at the centre of the narrative, but often if you are describing the political life of a country that is not completely inaccurate. I certainly came out of it feeling that I understood more about why Belgium is the way it is.

Partly because of what is between the lines. The establishment of parliamentary democracy in the 1830s is described in terms which make it sound a uniquely Belgian achievement, when in fact most of Belgium’s neighbours were doing much the same, a point reinforced by a) the number of other countries said to have copied large chunks of Belgium’s constitution into their own, and b) the other previous constitutions which the authors admit were ripped off by the Belgians. On the other hand, the awful record, for which both the executive and legislative branches must bear responsibility, of keeping the public finances honest (in the years between 1832 and 1989, the budget was adopted on time precisely once, in 1839) is trreated as an administrative question with nobody much to blame. While the authors bemoan the loss of power to the executive from the legislature, they report without much comment the shift to wide consultation on draft laws with a) the social partners and b) the other five legislatures in Belgium, which basically means that although you have got a wide consensus among the social partners, it is through a very closed and opaque process.

There are a few things I would have liked more on. Why have a Senate as well as a House of Representatives – OK, it makes slightly more sense now that the state is formally a federal one, but what about the period before 1993? Why has compulsory voting lasted so long here? What about all these periods when Wilfried Martens felt he had to rule by extraordinary power? What about (to choose a local issue that became national) the Leuven University question? How and precisely why did the three main parties split into Fracophone and Flemish branches? Still, I feel I have better grounds for asking the questions now that I’ve read the book – which is beautifully presented and illustrated (apart from the incorrect reference to Northern Ireland on page 50). Nice work, though probably not available in the shops (no ISBN number visible anywhere, which is not a good sign).

12) Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Prodded by Anne I read this, rather quickly, last night and today. I thought it was rather good. Of course, due to the massive amounts of discussion of the book, I thought I had been spoiled for the main plot point, that it centres around a group of children who are being bred as cloned organ donors, and was expecting a treatment like that of Lois McMaster Bujold in Mirror Dance where the practice is generally seen as unacceptable, and our heroes try to wipe it out. But in fact the shock comes at the end, when we discover that the cloned organ-ripping is in fact completely sanctioned by wider society (which appears in other respects to be identical to present-day England), and the situation is much closer to that of Barry Norman’s End Product (where Africans are routinely lobotomised at birth and farmed for food by Europeans) and that the guardians of the children whose stories are told in the novel are somewhat heroic in their own way. It’s done very well.

There is of course more here, in the exploration of friendship, growing up, death, wondering what life is like for people whose lives are very different from ours, and so on, but it is crazy to suggest (as Dave Langford ruthlessly records Ishiguro and his mainstream reviewers as doing) that this is not a work of science fiction. Definitely worth reading.

This was the last of the First Doctor stories that I felt I must Get Hold Of. I think you have to allow for the fact that it is mid-1960s drama to take into account the rather slow pacing. I liked it all the same; a real attempt to get into the spirit of the historical period, with some difficult dilemmas for the time-travellers – Barbara determined to abolish human sacrifice, but ultimately fails; and the Doctor has someone fall in love with him for the first time (but not, of course the last) in his on-screen adventures. Cameca’s helping them to escape in the end, even though she knows she will never see them again, was as touching as Barbara’s acceptance of her inability to change history. A minor gem, I would say.

Right, now to order up some Second Doctor series.

1) If you are using the LJ Navigation strip, and like it (as I do), nevertheless please go to the Viewing Options page and uncheck the box for “Always show the navigation strip to anyone who views your journal or community”. This allows you to use the strip without imposing it upon anyone else.

2) I’ve taken up the new LiveJournal jabber service, where (obviously) I am nhw@livejournal.com – and also seems like I can use jabber for gmail chats. See you there! (My other online ID’s are all listed on my lj info page.)

11) The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

To be honest, not wildly impressed by this story of the boy who goes to find his Personal Legend in the desert. I think I might have found it deep and meaningful when I was 14. But the images seemed pretty heavy-handed to me now. If I want to read spiritual literature I’ll go straight to the real thing.

10) Eleven on Top, by Janet Evanovich

Checking back I see I have missed the tenth in this series about Stephanie Plum, New Jersey bounty hunter. Not as bad as To The Nines, but again, it’s difficult to make a story about a serial killer funny. Having said which, she comes close to succeeding.

9) Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, by M.J. Simpson

This is really an exploration of Adams in his own words and in the words of people around him, including attempts to get at the truth or otherwise of various anecdotes told by or about him during his life. Simpson conveys well both Adams’ charm and the way in which he infuriated friends and colleagues. He is probably fair to put some of the blame of Adams’ failure to produce on his editors. Apart from that, it’s a bit unsatisfying; as John Lloyd hints in the introduction, Adams’ family life, particularly his relationship with his father, remains pretty much unexplored. Also I would like someone to look at Adams’ work in perhaps a more literary way, with more reflections on the social context of his writing and how he did (or didn’t) link into the issues of the day.

Since it’s a book of details, there are several that particularly appealed to me. Long ago as I was in the throes of deciding to abandon my academic career, one of the rare external shoves in that direction came from the editor of an academic journal to whom I had submitted an article, giving his reasons for rejecting it. I was stunned to discover that the editor in question had been Douglas Adams’ room-mate and first writing partner.

I was completely convinced about the origins of Arthur Dent; also (though Simpson doesn’t mention it directly) about the influence of The Dalek Master Plan on Life, the Universe and Everything.

Apparently, while 42 is the funniest two-digit number, 359 is the funniest three-digit number. +359 is the international dialling code for Bulgaria, while +42 used to be Czechoslovakia (now +420 for the Czechs and +421 for the Slovaks). Draw your own conclusions.

Strange Horizons published my review of Impossible Stories by Zoran Živković on Tuesday.

Anne asks where my review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is. I haven’t yet read the book, so haven’t written a review yet – though I did get it for Christmas and have firmly resolved to try and read it this year!

8) Café Europa: Life after Communism, by Slavenka Drakulić

Collection of short pieces (presumably newspaper columns) by this Croatian writer, who I have not previously read. To be honest, after the first third of it, I was ready to put the book down: too much whining about the state of the world, very much reminding me of why I didn’t much like living in Zagreb in 1998: Croatia then seemed both smug and fragile, a curious combination. (Edited to clarify: There was too much whining about the way the rest of the world was treating Croats (who, unlike most of the rest of the former Yugoslavs, actually were never required to get visas, and enjoyed better access to the EU than Romanians and Bulgarians until surprisingly recently); too much slagging off of the peasantry and bemoaning the fact that they had gained power at the expense of the sophisticated urban elite to which she belongs.)

Things have improved, however, and every time I return to the country now I find myself liking it more and more as normality takes deeper root. The same was true of Drakulić’s book: there were two really good pieces about Croatia’s failure to deal with its fascist historical legacy, and about the psychology of Arkan’s uniform, and after that it somehow all seemed to make more sense and become more readable. So, worth persevering with, though perhaps the editors should have chopped a bit more of the early stuff.

Cybermen sing “Knight of the Round Table”

Doctor and Rose to “Moonlight Shadow”, mainly drawn from the end of the most recent episode. This vid has the considerable merit of making a lot more sense than the original video for “Moonlight Shadow”.

Both by and posted to .

…to Gerald Ford, who is 93 today.

Misread my ticket and turned up at airport 45 minutes early. Still, better than 45 minutes late…

I’m working away on the terrace of the Hotel Crna Gora. It’s their Independence Day so am surrounded by hum of conversation. Very nice.

7) The Compleat Enchanter – The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea, by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Reading “The Compleat Enchanter”,
when I came to the fourth section,
(set in Finland’s Kalevala)
somehow I began to wonder:
Can one write LiveJournal entries
in iambic tetrameter?
(Yes, I know that last word’s bogus
and perhaps that gives the answer.)

This, a five-book compilation
of the works of Pratt and de Camp,
brings together the adventures
of a man called Harold Shea from
Ohio, mid-20th century,
who is, with his friends and lover,
thrust in various fant’sy poems,
first Norse legends, second Spenser,
third Orlando Furioso
(also Kubla Khan here featured),
fourth (as mentioned) Kalevala
ending in Cuchulain’s Ireland.

Though Mark Twain perhaps began it
writing of King Arthur’s Yankee
(don’t think I can really mention
which state that wayfarer came from
as it has two unstressed vowels
in succession, so won’t scan here)
this ambitious and effective
merging of mundane and mythic
surely was an inspiration
for much else in the same genre.

Even the stock story setting –
visitors arrive from elsewhere,
get entwined in local issues,
solve the problem (sometimes fail to)
disappear to next adventure
using magic means of travel
sounds a bit like Doctor Who, ne?

Also, use of spell components
such as “verbal” and “somatic”
was employed by Gary Gygax
in so far as I remember
from my teenage D&D days.

Anyway, this book is harmless.
Irish bit is, sadly, least good –
use of silly plot devices
to prevent our heroes making
any diff’rence to the story.
But the rest is entertaining.
And I think I’d recommend it.
Four stars in my on-line cat’logue.

6) [Doctor Who] Timewyrm: Exodus, by Terrance Dicks

Gosh, Terrance Dicks can actually come close to writing tolerably well. Here we have the Seventh Doctor and Ace pursuing the Timewyrm (last seen in ancient Babylon) to Nazi Germany – or rather, first to a 1951 Festival of Britain celebrated after a German victory; then following Adolf Hitler from the Munich putsch to 1940. It would be easy to do this very crassly, but Dicks manages to stay (for my money) the right side of the line. Still a slight feeling that he wished he was writing a TV series rather than a novel, but satisfying enough. Also brought back a villain from one of the series I have not yet seen…

5) Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Having read Asimov a few days back, I thought I would continue picking through the chronology of Hugo winners that a) I haven’t yet written about on-line and b) are on my shelves. It is therefore entirely by coincidence that I read this just after George Soros’ book, which has extraordinary resonances with Bradbury’s chilling vision of a future America addicted to interactive yet completely brainless television shows, fighting pointless yet very violent and highy visible wars, and rejecting intellectualism as a crime against the state; where firemen are the burners of books, not the savers of lives.

“Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?”
“No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it.”
“Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.”

Bradbury’s brilliance is that once you swallow the (rather huge) premise, the plot works very well as a thriller. Montag is the classical sfnal hero rebelling against all he has been taught (and what a great role model – to rebel in favour of reading great literature!), and at every turn the bad guys, his own former comrades, seem about to catch up with him. The character of Clarisse, at the very beginning, is interesting too – partly that it is rather neat to put a teenage girl as the person who opens the central character’s eyes, partly also because her ambigous demise sets the tone for much of what is to follow. (I take it that we are meant to understand that her uncle is the protagonist of Bradbury’s short story, “The Pedestrian”.) But Beatty, the fire captain, is also a more interesting character than I had remembered as well – Montag’s flash of revelation (after murdering him of course) is that his boss “actually wanted to die“, that his own belief in the burning of books was in the end not strong enough to sustain him.

Anyway, a great book, well worth the re-read.

4) The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, by George Soros

Kindly sent me by the author, who of course I know through work anyway. To get a quick summary of his views, you could start with his New York Times interview here or his videoblog interview here. In effect, he is attempting to provide the American liberal tradition with a stronger intellectual base. He is disarmingly frank about why he does it:

To sum it up, I believe I combine three qualifications. First, I have developed a conceptual framework that has given me a certain understanding of history, and, in particular, what I call far-from-equilibrium situations; second, I have a set of firm ethical and political beliefs; and third, I have made a lot of money.

When you’re in that position, you can write whatever you like, and it is therefore with some bemusement that the casual reader expecting a book on contemporary US politics will find that the first seventy pages actually address the nature of reality and its relationship to human thought, in order to better contextualise Soros’ ideal of an open society. I’m not especially well placed to rate this in terms of academic content of originality; I never studied philosophy or politics, though I have been a practitioner of the latter, and I did scrape a little below the surface of the philosophy of science back in my historian days. However it seems sound enough, particularly his linkage with and development of the notions of Karl Popper. It is certainly an awful lot more convincing, as an analysis of human history, than Hari Seldon.

In the introduction he gleefully quotes Branko Crvenkovski as describing him as a “stateless statesman”, but in fact he reveals a very strong sense of U.S. citizenship and even patriotism. His exploration of the question of “What’s Wrong with America?” is that of a grieving insider. He worries that America is so busy trying to feel good that it has lost any thirst for knowing the truth. He thinks that America has difficulties dealing with death (and his own shorter time horizon, since he is now seventy-five, is a recurrent theme in the book). He is appalled at the way America’s reputation in the world, and its ability to persuade others to its cause, have been destroyed by its own policy on the “war on terror” (a concept which he dissects forensically).

There is a confusion in President Bush’s mind about what democracy means. When he says that democracy will prevail, he really means that America will prevail. But a democratic government needs to gain the backing of the electorate and that is not necessarily the same as the backing of the United States. The contradiction became evident in the recent elections in Egypt, and even more in Palestine.

He swipes also at globalisation and fundamentalist belief in the free market, and devotes a brief but intensely argued section to the question of energy and preventing global warming (a cause to which he says he was converted by Al Gore), but criticises the anti-globalisation Left’s attacks on the WTO and various summits on the grounds that these are the wrong target: “The international institutions largely reflect the policies of the member states; it is the member states that have to be held responsible.”

So, rather a thought-provoking little book; much less shrill, much more reflective, more prescriptive, and in many ways much sadder than what I’ve read of, say, Noam Chomsky. I think anyone who is seriously interested in fixing what’s wrong with the US should try and get hold of it.

To Heverlee War Cemetery, which I referred to also here

Roses between the gravestones:

King George VI’s cousin:

Well, we now know the answer to the question people have been asking for forty years: in a battle between the Daleks and the Cybermen, who would win? The interaction between the two sets of baddies was great.

Anne in the car on the way home (we were watching at a friend’s) spotted certain similiarites with the Philip Pullman trilogy. These are explored further by here and in comments to here.

Having just listened to (and watched where possible) the Dalek Master Plan, I really did think that Rose was going to go out into the void, like Katarina. Though I was happy enough with her being saved by Pete ex machina.

One of the kids watching with us muttered at 37 past the hour in that we had eight minutes left, and the plot seemed to be over. He actually stuck it out to the end but his two elder brothers fled as soon as (as put it) Rose’s make-up started melting.

Yeah, the very end went on a wee bit – but it’s not the worst padding we’ve seen from Russell T Davies in his own episodes. The only bit that was really silly was cyber-Yvonne weeping (?oil?).

Edited to add: Anne asks, what about the Cybermen who were Cyber-ised on our Earth – surely they were unaffected by passage through the Void, and therefore shouldn’t have been sucked in? But maybe the materials for Cyber-ising them were brought across?

In summary: Very good stuff, and very nearly great.

Yes, it’s come to Belgium! (A million thanks to who spotted it.) So we zoomed up to Antwerp this morning and it was just fantastic.

and numerous videos.

John Quiggin on the novels

John DeNardo on all the short fiction nominees

Anne K.G. Murphy/ on the novelettes and short stories.

and on the short stories, here and here respectively.

Have added notes of all these, and of the Locus and Sturgeon awards, to the web page.

3) The Economist Style Guide

Mandatory reading for those of us doing editing for a living, of course. Full of useful snippets and helpful hints, though I dare to disagree on a few points:

Dominicans Take care. Do they come from Dominica? Or the Dominican Republic? Or are they friars?

*Snerk!*

federalist in Britain, someone who believes in centralising the powers of associated states; in the United States and Europe, someone who believes in decentralising them.

Perhaps that one was a bit more tongue-in-cheek.

Abbreviations that can be pronounced and are composed of bits of words rather than just initials should be spelt out in upper and lower case

Agreed, but their examples include “Kfor” and “Sfor” which I would always spell KFOR and SFOR, since that is and was the capitalisation preferred by the peacekeepers themselves.

Put the accents and cedillas on French names and words, umlauts on German ones, accents and tildes on Spanish ones, and accents, cedillas and tildes on Portuguese ones: Françoise de Panafieu, Wolfgang Schäuble, Federico Peña. Leave the accents off other foreign names.

C’mon, in this day and age I think we should be able to go a long way in spelling names correctly even if the version of the Latin alphabet used in unfamiliar. Though I accept that Đà Nẵng, for instance, has an English spelling of Da Nang.

Capitalisation rules – much tougher than I would be inclined to be, with odd lapses from that toughness – why, for instance, “the queen” but “the Queen’s Speech”?

community is a useful word in the context of religious or ethnic groups. But in many other others [sic] it jars. Not only is it often unnecessary, it also purports to convey a sense of togetherness that may not exist.
The intelligence community means spies.
The online community means geeks and nerds.

*Hmph!*

It is sometimes useful to talk of human-rights abuses but often the sentence can be rephrased more pithily and accurately. The army is accused of committing numerous human-rights abuses probably means The army is accused of torture and murder.

Fair point. Though Anne wonders if the latter phrase is not in fact more precise, while being equally accurate.

haver means to talk nonsense, not dither, swither or waver.

Really?

There is an insanely complex set of rules for the correct spelling in English of Russian names, almost all of which I agree with, apart from the idea that you should always transliterate “дж” as “j”; giving as an example Stalin’s real surname, Jugashvili. I would always write Dzhugashvili. (Though of course in his native Georgian it was ჯუღაშვილი which I would transliterate as Jugashvili, as “ჯ” is normally transcribed “j”; but we know him through translation from the Russian.) They then go on to add, absurdly, that his first name should be spelt “Josef” not “Iosif”. I would have said that the man know to us as “Joseph Stalin” was born “Iosif Dzhugashvili”. (Accepting Иосиф Джугашвили ratehr than იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი as the more official version of his original name.)

Placenames: I’m glad that they are with me on Transdniestria, rather than “Transnistria” which is gaining ground. But there’s no way I’m using “Leghorn” for Livorno.

More places: The list of administrative divisions of Belgium, bafflingly, lists only nine provinces, omitting Brussels (and Flanders and Wallonia), though there is a hint that Brabant can be Flemish or Walloon. And the list of Swiss cantons, while including without explanation the splits of Appenzell and Unterwalden, does not mention that Basel is similarly split.

Will keep it by my desk though.

Was at a Finnish embassy reception this evening, in view of their EU presidency, and they had four singers performing beautifully melodious songs. Finnish is one of the most pleasant languages to listen to – I guess euphonic is the right adjective – that I come into contact with. Can’t understand a word, of course, but I love hearing it.

And earlier in the day, a combination of a Moldova meeting and reminded me of this. Vrei să pleci dar nu mă, nu mă iei, Nu mă, nu mă iei, nu mă, nu mă, nu mă iei! Chipul tău şi dragostea din tei, Mi-amintesc de ochii tăi iei!

And finally, points us to this wonderful resource of Persian music.

US Armed Forces Journal publishes article recommending redrawing borders of every country between Greece, India and Egypt.

Carl Bildt thinks this is insanely stupid and dangerous.

From , here

John Scalzi puts me 35th out of the top 51 blogs on science fiction and fantasy. That’s very nice of him, considering the things I said about his book! Of course, you don’t have to believe him; you just have to believe in the power of Technorati.

2) The Prisoner, by Thomas M. Disch

Picked this up off the family shelves when in Ireland a couple of years ago; prodded into reading it now by ‘s livejournal, which is, entertainingly, written in very much the same style, 37 years later.

I understand that hardcore Prisoner fans do not regard this novel as canonical, but I think it’s pretty true to the spirit of the TV series, and most plot discrepancies can be explained as artifically induced hallucinations. My favourite moment is when Number 6 is about to escape in a hastily constructed metal cage (to protect him from the attentions of Rover and his cousins) but is frustrated by landscape at a crucial juncture.

Must go and buy the DVDs now.

He has been named the 2006 Dick Enberg Award winner by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), an award given annually to a person whose actions and commitment have furthered the meaning and reach of the Academic All-America Teams Program and/or the student-athlete while promoting the values of education and academics.

I haven’t a clue what any of that means, but it’s worthy of celebration anyway.

The two Georgian recipes I did the other night (from the Darra Goldstein book, us, uk):

NB – quantities are given in American, so I had to estimate. But Georgian recipes are more a matter of adherence to the spirit than the letter of what is intended, so you just go with what seems right.

Salmon Buglama (ie stew)

¾ cup oil
2 pounds (ie 900g) salmon, cut into 1 ½ inch (4 cm) pieces
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 cup chopped cilantro (ie coriander)
2 medium onions, peeled, sliced and separated into rings
2 small lemons, sliced
4 bay leaves
1 ½ lb sliced tomatoes (or 700g tinned)
garlic to taste

Use a deep saucepan and stack up the stew in the following order: ¼ cup oil; salmon; salt and pepper; cilantro/coriander; onions; lemons; bayleaves; another ¼ cup oil; tomatoes; the final ¼ cup oil; more salt and pepper, and garlic if you like. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes, eat it up. Dead easy.

Soko Arazhanit (mushrooms in cream)

1 tablespoon butter
1 pound (500g) mushrooms, thickly sliced
salt
freshly ground pepper
1 ½ cups (I reckon about 200g) heavy cream

4 handfuls of fresh parsley
4 handfuls of fresh dill
5 whole black peppercorns
2 inches (5 cm) of cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
3 cloves

Melt the butter. Toss the mushrooms in the butter. Add salt and pepper. Heat the cream to boiling and pour over the mushrooms.

Now for the tricky bit. Tie the remaining ingredients into a “cheesecloth bag” (as previously noted, I disassembled some teabags and used them instead) and add to the mushrooms.

Cover and simmer for 45-50 minutes. Remove the cheesecloth bag (or in my case the teabags) and serve.

There are several of you on my f-list who are professional editors. Are there any textbooks on editing you would recommend, or even training courses this side of the Atlantic?