Interesting debate on Open Democracy about war last month (first piece here, response here and original author ripostes here). The author of the second piece comprehensively misses the point that the author of the first and third pieces is trying to make, an illustration of how difficult it is to have a sensible discussion of this topic.

The SFBC’s list of significant sf and fantasy of the 1953-2003 period, first seen by me chez here, here and here but now all over my friends list. As usaul, bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin *
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury *
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. *
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett *
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (TV) *
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin *
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny *
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke *
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson *
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I am ashamed of not having read Little, BigChildren of the Atom.

Come the weekend I shall do some number-crunching of other people’s responses to this…

From The eXile: LiveJournal’s effect on Russian politics

Via : Reading the Buffy title sequences

4) The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper

Before I get onto the actual review, a bit of throat-clearing. This book was lent to me by my good friend NP, last time I was in his native country. He phoned me up on Monday to ask, in the politest possible way, if I had finished yet? I confessed I hadn’t actually started reading it. (I have to confess I have in fact read several other books since the last one I blogged, but that was for a Speshul Prodjekt which will be revealed in due time.)

Thus prodded, I started on Monday evening and finished this morning. I know the author, of course; he is notable partly for cycling round Brussels wearing remarkable ties, but mainly for having been successively the senior foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and Javier Solana. At meetings he speaks quietly, indeed hesitantly, but with great authority, and with an air of abstraction that makes me uncertain if he would know who I am, though we have often been in the same room, and even exchanged generally cordial remarks.

Final bit of throat-clearing: I have often complained that my problem with academic analyses of international politics is that they are often so desperately far from the reality that they purport to describe. I’m not the first member of my family to whinge about this (see Maurice Hayes’ report of my father’s views). Cooper agrees – he states at one point that “diplomatic history seems to be written by scholars for scholars”. The problem with academic analysts is that they are not practitioners; and the problem with practitioners is that they are too busy practising to write it down. Cooper is in the rare position of being a practitioner who has taken the time to write it all down, and tell us what he is doing; and it makes sense to me in a way that the likes of Fukuyama and Chomsky simply don’t.

His is the sort of writing that helps me understand a) what is going on in the world politically and also b) what I can to to try and change things. Cooper divides the world into three categories: pre-modern, where chaos reigns; modern, where the ideals of the Treaty of Westphalia stil operate; and post-modern, as typified by the European Union and Japan, where interdependence has replaced the desire for independence. The USA, of course, is in a peculiar place, as a state which is the most powerful in the world and yet stuck between modern and post-modern paradigms. It’s a flexible typology.

How can the diplomat from country X seek to influence the behaviour of country Y? Cooper is blunt:

…states have at their disposal three main instruments of influence: words, money and force. They can persuade, they can bribe or they can coerce.

…followed by several impressive pages on the pros and cons of economic sanctions and military action, leading to the conclusion that unless you can change the mind-set of the people you want to influence, deploying cash and weapons to reinforce your case is probably a waste of time.

There’s lots of good stuff here, about power, domestic imperative, economic motives, and the clash of civiliastions (in more or less that order of priorities). All stuff that I felt I knew, but needed to have someone set down in written form. One particular point that leapt off the page at me: his observations on international protectorates, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, which depend on international cooperation and the voluntary acquiescence of the locals in question: “…not as efficient as traditional imperialism… Nevertheless, in a postmodern era… nothing else will work.”

The only slightly less-than-excellent part of the book is the twenty-page coda on the virtues of a Europe-wide armaments policy. In a work which is otherwise devoted to grand strategy it seemed odd to have so much prominence given to a single point. Admittedly, it is an important point, and I have myself witnessed Cooper convincing a senior politician of the rightness of his views on this one. Indeed, if one considers the book as a collection of three different essays, it probably works OK; it’s just that the first 150 pages work so well as an organic whole that the last 20 stand out rather.

In conclusion – very strongly recommended, if you want to find out what is really going on in the world rather than take refuge in the romantic fantasies either of the Left or the Right.

Karen McCullagh at Manchester University is conducting an online survey to explore the privacy attitudes and expectations of bloggers as part of her PhD research. She summarises the goals of her research thus:

Bloggers[‘] privacy expectations and attitudes

The number of blog writers and readers has grown enormously in the last few years. Moreover, blogs are permeating most niches of social life, addressing a range of topics from scholarly and political issues to family and children’s daily lives. By their very nature, blogs raise a number of privacy issues. On the one hand, they are easy to produce and disseminate. At the same time, they are persistent and cumulative, resulting in large amounts of sometimes personal information being broadcast across the Internet

Blogging has the power to affect not only the lives of bloggers themselves but also of the people, companies, and products that are “blogged.” For example, accounts of bloggers hurting friends’ feelings or losing their jobs because of materials published on their sites are becoming more frequent. Therefore, it is important to understand how accountability and privacy expectations function in this emergent media.

Survey is at http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/privacysurvey/

BTW for those of you who did the last one of these, the resultant thesis can be found at http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cameron/phd-thesis.pdf (158 pages!).

…look, I have only ever claimed to have opinions; I never claimed to have taste!!!

I’ve been slow at blogging the more recent episodes, so here’s my chance to catch up. Verdict: generally positive – last week’s episode excellent, this week’s not so sure.

Ghost Machine

I had no idea that Splott was a real place. Apart from that vital piece of educational knowledge, I liked this a lot – alien technology and time slips meeting gritty social reality (or at least the BBC Wales version thereof).

Cyberwoman

Thought this was simply superb. The struggle between Lisa’s old personality and the dominant cyber-personality went in parallel with Ianto’s struggle to come to terms with the reality that he had lost his girlfriend for ever. I guess that as the series goes on, Owen and Toshiko will get their “own” episodes as well. This came pretty close to a classic Doctor Who base-under-siege story, and all the better for it.

Small Worlds

Looked great, I’ll give it that, and great music. But apart from the little girl’s slightly wobbly acting, I did wonder why the fairies would attack Estelle, and trash Gwen’s flat without in fact attacking her? However, interesting back-story for Jack; I thought this was an interesting rounding out of his character (though will be interested to discover how this gets fitted into continuity).

Anyway, we’ll keep watching.

Here’s another reason. Despite the sentiments expressed at 4m 08s.

(Hat–tips to and .)

Managed to get the office for my new job fixed up today – 39 Rue Montoyer, sharing the building with such luminaries of the Brussels scene as EuroISPA, Political Intelligence, Euronet Consulting, Autism Europe, Save the Children, and the Austrian region of Burgenland. And many more.

Now I just have to hire an intern to help me furnish it come 2 January…

For :
UnSuggestions for Urban shaman by C.E. Murphy:
1. Breakfast of champions; or, Goodbye blue Monday! by Kurt Vonnegut (expected 19.9, found 0)
UnSuggestions for Thunderbird Falls by C.E. Murphy:
1. The old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway (expected 16.4, found 0)

For :
UnSuggestions for Singularity sky by Charles Stross:
1. The perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (expected 29.4, found 0)
UnSuggestions for Accelerando by Charles Stross:
1. My sister’s keeper : a novel by Jodi Picoult (expected 26.1, found 0)

For :
UnSuggestions for River of gods by Ian McDonald:
1. White Oleander by Janet Fitch (expected 18.7, found 0)
UnSuggestions for Desolation Road by Ian McDonald
1. My sister’s keeper : a novel by Jodi Picoult (expected 15, found 0) – again!

For :
UnSuggestions for The Thief’s Gamble (Tale of Einarinn) by Juliet E. McKenna:
1. Everything is illuminated : a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer (expected 24.4, found 0)
UnSuggestions for The Swordsman’s Oath : The Second Tale of Einarinn (Tale of Einarinn) by Juliet E. McKenna:
1. A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole (expected 18.6, found 0)

I dunno about you, but I was startled by some of those.

Also The Ultimate Hitch-Hiker’s Guide seems to come up a lot. I guess because “real” fans have each book separately, whereas those who buy the whole package are probably not genre readers?

Further investigations reveal:

If you own A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, you are unlikely to own Socks Two from Vogue‘s Knitting on the Go series.

If you own Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny, you are unlikely to own Desiring God: meditations of a Christian hedonist by John Piper.

If you own One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, you are unlikely to own Definitely Dead, the sixth in Charlaine Harris’ series of Southern Vampire novels.

If you own The Color Purple by Alice Walker, you are unlikely to own F.A. Hayek’s classic economic treatise, The Road to Serfdom. Which is ironic, in a way.

If you own the Confessions of St Augustine, you are unlikely to own Sherilynn Kenyon’s vampire romance, Night Pleasures.

If you own The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, you are unlikely to own D.A. Carson’s highly regarded textbook warning against Exegetical Fallacies.

I could go on all day. It is interesting that theology texts, and paranormal romance, seem to be somewhat isolated bodies of literature.

A History of Doctor Who in Fanvids. (Hat-tip .) Haven’t watched them all yet but enjoyed the Troughton and Tennant ones.

Latest from LibraryThing: The UnSuggester, finding out which books are unlikely to be owned by the same people. Am both amused and slightly saddened to see that those who own Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy are unlikely to own that other great work of political analysis, Terry Pratchett’s Thud!.

And the Washington Post on breasts. (Hat-tip .)

While going through the lengthy but not awfully engaging task of putting redirects from the old website to the new yesterday I watched this 1966 Doctor Who story in the background (multitasking as ever). Fan lore generally is pretty negative about this story; perhaps this shows that I wasn’t concentrating sufficiently, but I really rather enjoyed it.

In particular, I very much enjoyed the one thing that those who dislike this story universally single out for criticism, Jackie Lane’s acting as the newly arrived companion Dodo Chaplet (who walked into the TARDIS at the end of the previous story). I thought it was great to have an assertive young companion – the first really since Barbara’s departure (apart from the brief appearance of Sara Kingdom) – and for my money she rose to the challenge. Hartnell is on top form, and even his fluffs seem much more in character with the Doctor than with the actor. Peter Purves as Stephen has some great lines and even a mild love interest.

The other feature of this story universally mocked by the critics, the Monoids, actually seemed not too bad to me, for 1966 anyway. Certainly far far better than the forest creatures at the end of The Chase. They reminded me a bit of the Ood from The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. Their transformation from silent servitors to sinister overlords is creepy but compelling. And they supply the great punchline to episode two, when the TARDIS crew discover that the statue the Ark’s human crews were building has been complete, but with a Monoid head.

I even liked the look of it. The gradual revelation that the forest has (as we are warned in the title of the first episode) a steel sky is well done. The Roman-style costumes of the human Guardians deliberately make us think of the Monoids as slaves. The surface of the planet Refusis, and its invisble inhabitants, are well done. The scenes of planets and suns in space are, at least, not too embarrassing.

This is from an era of Doctor Who (Season Three) that has had a bad press, but I’ve found myself very much enjoying three of the other nine stories (Mission to the Unknown, The Dalek Master Plan, and The Savages) and would probably have enjoyed The Massacre more in a different format. I also saw the last (and only surviving) episode of the following story, The Celestial Toymaker, on the Lost In Time DVD set, and thought it was great. So I shall look out for Galaxy 4, The Myth Makers, the rest of The Celestial Toymaker and especially The Gunfighters and The War Machines both of which apparently survive in full.

I am stunned by the attention being paid to the new opinion poll which shows Sinn Fein’s support down by 4% to 20% (as El Blogador would have it, echoed by Slugger O’Toole.

I may not agree with them on much else, but the Sinn Fein supporters in the comments threads to both posts have it right; SF tend to be very much underestimated in their support in polls, not (as Blogador seems to believe) because people magically change their minds in the run-up to polling day, but because their supporters or likely supporters are shy about revealing their view to nice men or women with clipboards. I don’t have any moral problem with this, actually; your views are between you and the ballot box, and pollsters have no automatic right to truthful answers.

El Blogador does raise the prospect of SF becoming so “respectable” that this effect will disappear. We’ve seen the process in reverse in recent years – it used to be that the Alliance Party’s rating in polls was twice its election results, but now people who want to sound more moderate than they really are choose different lies to tell the pollsters. Some day SF suporters will feel thaty can be honest with the pollsters, but the fact is that their party’s current poll rating is consistent with previous poll ratings for the party, and should be compared with those poll ratings rather than the last election results.

The commenters in the Slugger post make much of the 2.6% support for Republican Sinn Fein as evidence that Gerry Adams has been damaged by the St Andrew’s Agreement. I doubt it; I don’t think Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s lot have a visible public profile, and I would bet that at least half of the people who chose RSF in the BBC’s poll thought they were indicating support for Adams as against the Stickies, rather than for Ó Brádaigh against Adams.

In summary: “Opinion poll shows SF support down 4% from last election” is simply not a news story worth reporting.

Today is 121 days after Gerald Ford’s 93rd birthday. He has therefore outlived Ronald Reagan, who died on 5 June 2004 at the age of 93 years and 120 days. To pre-empt press coverage he issued this (largely unreported) press statement on Friday:

“The length of one’s days matters less than the love of one’s family and friends. I thank God for the gift of every sunrise and, even more, for all the years He has blessed me with Betty and the children, with our extended family and the friends of a lifetime. That includes countless Americans who, in recent months, have remembered me in their prayers. Your kindness touches me deeply. May God bless you all and may God bless America.”

If he can make it to 9 November next year, he will beat the record of 33 years 118 days set by his old boss, Richard Nixon, as ex-Vice-President to live longest after the end of his term.

But meantime, congratulations, Jerry!

My personal website (thanks, Damien and Terry!) has now moved to http://www.nicholaswhyte.info – the old explorers.whyte.com site, and the old explorers@whyte.com email address (which currently forwards to my gmail account) will be closed down next year.

This has been partly motivated by a generous offer to host it from an old friend; also by the fact that NetIdentity, who have owned the whyte.com domain for several years now, were never awfully good at customer service and have got even worse since they were bought by Tucows a few months ago. Since I was migrating off their service anyway it hasn’t affected me much, but a dissatisfied customer has been blogging about it here, and one of Tucows’ people has been desperately attempting to put a brave face on it here (though to be honest it is an even more damning read than the first one). So I feel like I am well out of it.

Any suggestions for an easy way of emailing everyone who has linked to explorers.whyte.com? Thought not…

3) A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

I don’t often re-read books, especially very long ones, especially the first in a series of very long books. But I know that sooner or later, the next book in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is going to come out, and I was concerned when I read the most recent one that I had forgotten who some of the characters were; and anyway I enjoyed the book so much on first reading, which must be over five years ago now, that I wanted to see if it stood the test of time.

And it does. Part of the charm is the rapidly shifting perspective, with each chapter of a few pages detailing events from the viewpoint of Eddard Stark, aide to King Robert, or one of Eddard’s six children, or the dwarf nobleman Tyrion Lannister, or Daenerys Targaryen, heiress to King Robert’s deposed predecessor. Part of it also is that within that volatile framework, the story in this volume is basically a contrast of the disintegration of Eddard Stark’s career, family and life with the upward trend of Daenerys’ fortunes – though the latter undergo a twist at the end of the book.

The other tension that runs through the book – a theme which as far as I remember re-emerges only in the most recent volume to the same extent – is the tension between the ideals of honour and chivalry held by Eddard and by his daughter Sansa, and the Realpolitik of the dynastic struggle into which they are plunged, the game of thrones that gives the book its title, with perhaps only Tyrion Lannister being the direct viewpoint character for the more cynical approach, though of course it comes up in almost every conversation.

And despite the book’s strong fantasy credentials, in fact the the tools used in the game of thrones are steel and poison, largely. In Westeros, the setting of the story for most of our characters, I think the only obvious intrusion of magic is Jon Stark’s encounter with zombies from the frozen North. Daenerys, on another continent, encounters more magic and supernatural events than the other characters combined, including in the book’s stunning denouement.

The background is especially well realised. Martin has successfully combined the standard knights-in-armour setting with a sense of cultural distance, by the cheap but effective trick of slightly altering spellings – so we have “Eddard” rather than “Edward”, “Catelyn” rather than “Catherine”, and, most effectively, knights are dubbed “Ser” rather than “Sir”. Daenerys, in exile across the water, encounters a bewildering variety of other cultures, and will go on to encounter more in future books. There are hints of the religious diversity which becomes a major theme of later volumes. And against all this human geography, climate change is on its way; as Eddard Stark’s family motto would have it, “Winter Is Coming”.

Another advantage of re-reading is that I know what is going to happen. First time round I think I read the books so fast, wanting to know who was going to be killed next, that I missed details that turned out to be important, like why exactly Jonah Mormont was exiled, and who Samwell Tarly was. I’m also now more than ever certain that Jon Snow is really not Eddard’s son but his nephew, from the vague hints we are given. And the shallowness of Eddard’s enemies comes across even more clearly – they are motivated only by the desire for power, and not with any sense of what they want to do with it, which is why despite their apparent victory in the game of thrones in this volume, we have the sense that they are riding for a fall later in the series.

Anyway, I won’t rush to reread volume two, but I won’t put it off too long either.

I got back from my work trip to find the new DVD of The Invasion waiting for me. Episode 1 is one of those for which the original video footage has been lost, and only the soundtrack survives. The DVD, however, includes an animation of the style used by the BBC for the Scream of the Shalka and Shada for it, and while it is not a patch on watching real actors deliver their lines, it is much more satisfactory than either soundtrack alone, or the animations generated by fans, or following along the BBC photonovels while trying to listen to the words. Well done to the animators; will report back on the full thing once I have finished watching (but two episodes this evening were enough for me).

Got an email from an international official based in Belgrade about the report we published yesterday:

This is an astonishgly bad report. Apart from being the only organisation to accuse the government of’stuffing the ballot boxes” ICG is foregoing its last shred of independent credibility. There are legitimate reasons to criticize the constitution, none of which is addressed by ICG — instead, you try (without any basis of argumentation) to portray the constitution as an obstruction to Kosovo independence. What on eareth persuaded you to dilute ICG’s credibility further by circulating this ver poor report.

(All typos as originally received.)

So I replied,

Dear Mr X,

Thank you for your comments.

In my view, and that of my colleagues, it is those international officials who refused to publicly acknowledge what the dogs in the street are saying about the conduct of the Serbian referendum who need to worry about their independent credibility.

I do look forward to your office publishing its analysis of the legitimate reasons to criticise the Serbian constitution; I will be glad to make a point-by-point comparison with our analysis, which as far as I know is the only one out there in English.

Our head of office in Belgrade is with me in Brussels at the moment, but I am sure he will be glad to engage your office in dialogue on these and other issues on his return.

Sincerely,

It was the kind of afternoon when I was writing messages like that!

The SFBC’s list of significant sf and fantasy of the 1953-2003 period, previously blogged by here, here and here:

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Of course!

The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Fair enough.

Dune, Frank Herbert
Also fair enough.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
Influential, yet strangely crap.

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Superb.

Neuromancer, William Gibson
Unmemorable.

Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
I did like this, though my favourite Clarke novel is, unfashionably, Imperial Earth. However it is probably fair to characterise this as the most influential “future of mankind” novel of its day.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
I was one of those who saw Blade Runner before I read the book and so was unprepared for how much more content the book has. I also read the unmemorable sequel by K.W. Jeter.

The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Must surely be one of the biggest factors behind the recent revival in paganism, and also clearly influential in the fantasy genre.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Yes.

The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
Enjoyed it but didn’t quite see what the fuss was about.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Yes, a truly great book.

The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
As with most Asimov, I am not overwhelmed.

Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of either the book or the author.

Cities in Flight, James Blish
Enjoyed it.

The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
A hilarious beginning to a classic series, though my favourite is still Small Gods and perhaps also Thud!

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Great collection.

Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
Haven’t read it.

The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Won the first ever Hugo award in 1953. Excellent stuff.

Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Started it earlier this year; got stuck halfway through.

Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Hmm. Enjoyed it a lot when I was very young. Not sure if it would stand the test of time, and I found the later books formulaic.

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Good stuff, though Card seems to be trying to rewrite it with his later novels.

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
Ah, yes. The basis of the famous practice 

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Certainly influential as a military sf novel. I have my doubts about the ending.

Gateway, Frederik Pohl

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Never heard of the book, and I don’t think I’ve heard of the author either.

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
Have no intention of reading it. Persuade me otherwise, if you like.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

Little, Big, John Crowley
This is the only one on the list I haven’t read which I feel somewhat ashamed about.

Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick

Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement

More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon

The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
Haven’t read much Smith, and certainly haven’t read this.

On the Beach, Nevil Shute

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys

The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein

Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock

The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks

Timescape, Gregory Benford

To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Am off to the Ardennes for a staff meeting for the next few days, so those of you who have requested interview questions may have to wait.

Yes, everyone, livejournal is back!!!!

And so I have three sets of interview questions, which I will answer as follows:

From

1. Your LJ is always very interesting to read and you exhibit an eclectic range of interests. What has led you to have such a diverse range of interests; and do you feel that this range of interests led you to seek out your work, or your work led you to broaden your interests?

   On the first point, well, that’s very nice of you to say so. As to the rest, I’ve definitely always been of an eclectic turn of mind. My work has never been more than one part of what I do and who I am, and I’ve tended to only seek work in areas in which I am already at least a little bit interested. But I’m not sure I would go as far as to say that it is my range of interests that leads me to seek out particular lines of work. My range of interests certainly drives my livejournal posts, however!
   

2. Some years ago Updike wrote a novel entitled “Memories of the Ford Administration”. What are yours?

   I was seven when Ford became president, and nine when his term ended, so I don’t remember a lot! Having said that, I do remember the two assassination attempts in September 1975. In October 1975 I really started reading the news, with the long dying of General Franco in Spain and the IRA siege in Monasterevin being the stories I would follow in the Irish Times each morning.

   In retrospect, Ford’s big contribution to history was the Helsinki Accords, which I am convinced played a far greater role in the eventual fall of Communism and liberation of eastern Europe than any of Reagan’s later policies.
   

3. Given your analyses of SF book award winners do you think book awards reward the best novels, or are other factors at play?

   Part of the reason I am so fascinated by the process of award-making is that it is so clearly a political process, and therefore can be subjected to the same sort of analysis as any other voting process that produces winners and losers. Some people get upset when I say this, or when I follow through by pointing out, say, that the Hugo Awards are much more likely to go to men, and slightly less likely to go to left-wing books, than the Nebulas; or that authors born in a particular time period have won more awards. But I don’t think anything is lost by querying the process.

   Obviously the quality of the book is going to be one factor, indeed, one hopes, an important one; but the voters in the Hugos and Nebulas (and I concentrate on them because they give me so many data points) are clearly influenced by other factors; local heroes from the place the WorldCon is being held, for instance, or a much-loved author producing his or her first work in years and being rewarded as much for past performance as for the quality of that particular nomination. See answer to a later question for the worst recent example.
   

4. Which Wodehouse books would you recommend to someone new to his work?

   That one is difficult. Though all the many Wodehouse books are pretty similar, I think I would recommend starting with the sequence of four Blandings Castle novels, Summer Lightning (1929), Heavy Weather (1933), Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), and Full Moon (1947). They are all pretty short, and if they don’t grab you, probably Wodehouse is not for you.
   

5. If you had the power to erase one film, one book, and one TV show from history with the consequence that no-one was aware they had ever existed what would you choose and why?

   I wouldn’t. Freedom of speech includes freedom to write total crap (and then my freedom to mock it afterwards).
   

From  :

1. What’s the best thing about being a father?

   Crumbs, a very difficult question. Being a parent reorients your entire state of mind; the total priority in your life is assuring the well-being of the small creatures who depend on you. The best individual moments are when you do something that they like, and they appreciate it, whether that is tickling their toes, cooking them a meal, or taking them up the Eiffel Tower. But parenthood is such an all-consuming condition that I think it’s impossible to pick out any one thing that is good (or even bad) about it.
   

2. I get the impression you have friends dotted all over Europe. Is this the case? How do you go about maintaining long distance friendships with people in other countries?

   Working as I do in international politics, in an environment which includes a great deal of enforced socialising (international conferences, diplomatic receptions, etc), I make a lot of international friendships just by doing my job; and that of course means correspondence and stayng in touch on work-related issues – and these relationships have more of the quality of friendships because I am on the labour-of-love end of the spectrum rather than the its-a-job-innit end.

   But I also an instinctive and compulsive networker – a year ago I read the self-help book Never Eat Alone and was struck (indeed slightly appalled) by how well it described my own behaviour. So that’s another part of the answer, and I carry the networking behaviour through to my fannish and on-line activities.
   

3. Why do you book blog? What do you get out of it?

   At first it was out of a feeling that since I read so many books so quickly, this would be a way of capturing the content in some slightly more permanent form; and also that if I read a book knowing in advance that I was going to write it up, I would find myself reading more deeply and getting more from the reading experience.

   Now I do it at least as much to entertain, primarily to entertain myself, though I have to admit that the feedback I get from people who like reading my bookblog entries is (usually) very gratifying.
   

4. How do you feel about the way geek and sf communities sometimes characterise themselves as being full of people with autistic-spectrum-type tendencies? Do you think it raises genuine awareness of autistic spectrum disorders, or does it only create misunderstandings?

   In a lot of cases outside fandom (and I go into this in more depth below) when people make remarks like “X behaves autistically” they are just being rude. But the key difference in what you are talking about is that the group, or members of it, characterise themselves in this way. I think it probably is objectively true that the geek and sf communities, especially on-line, are especially attractive to people with autistic spectrum disorders. However, I don’t think it really does much to raise awareness, especially if it is just used as an excuse for bad behaviour.
   

5. How important is your career to you? If it all fell to pieces tomorrow how would you feel and what would you do?

   See above re parenting, for the overall importance. I think anyone who works in politics (at least, anyone sane who works in politics) has to be aware that they could be out of a job tomorrow if the wind were to change. I don’t let it worry me too much; politics was my hobby before it became my career, and I imagine I could work my way into administration or technical writing if I had to start from scratch. (Indeed, here in Belgium I think there is a vast untapped market for editing people’s written English to make it sound more like a native speaker’s.)

From  :

1. How on Earth do you find the time to read so many books?

   I read very fast; and over the last few months I have also been deliberately reading shorter books!

   Speed-reading is one of the single most useful skills you can acquire, along with touch-typing (which I can’t do).
   

2. You got very angry about George Osbourne’s off the cuff remarks about autism early in the year. What is the balance to be struck between holding people accountable for their remarks and avoiding public figures sticking entirely to vetted talking points?

   To take the Osborne point first: disability isn’t funny.   made this point, slightly differently, re Jack Straw. It isn’t funny to have only one leg, it isn’t funny to be blind, it isn’t funny to be deaf, it isn’t funny to have a mental illness, it isn’t funny to have an autistic spectrum disorder.

   You ask a very good question about holding people accountable for their remarks vs eliminating spontaneity. I have run across this one is a slightly different context recently as well, on a mailing list where I got into yet another Chomsky debate, with his supporters arguing that remarks attributed to the great man in newspaper articles (even ones which he wrote himself) should not be held to the same standards of truth and accuracy as his more scholarly work.

   I say, bollocks. I don’t see any reason why people, whether Noam Chomsky, George Osborne or me, should not be held accountable for remarks they make in their public capacity, whether scripted or not. Sometimes they will slip – I know I do; I once told a joke at a conference which offended someone in the audience (she came and told me so afterwards), and in that case all you can do is apologise (as Osborne failed to do), and resolve to be more careful with knowing your listeners’ sensibilities in future.

   Rhetoric is not taught in schools as a subject, as far as I know; I wish it were, and I wish people were better trained in the art of being spontaneous and intelligent at the same time. Myself, I tend to plan my public presentations fairly rigidly these days, ensuring that there is a joke at the beginning, a joke in the middle, and a joke somewhere near the end, with hopefully some actual content in between. But I also usually do speaking points rather than a full script, so it comes across as more spontaneous than perhaps it actually is. It really isn’t all that difficult to be spontaneous without being offensive, and I wonder what those who argue to the contrary are trying to excuse.

3. What is your favourite language?

   I’m being lazy and cutting and pasting from the last time I answered this question, with added link to the Jubilate chamber choir.

   I just love the sound of both Italian and Finnish. Italian hardly needs explanation. Finnish – well, just listen to some of Koskenniemi’s lyrics to Sibelius’ music (these are the official lyrics for Finlandia):

   Oi Suomi, katso, Sinun päiväs koittaa,
   yön uhka karkoitettu on jo pois,
   ja aamun kiuru kirkkaudessa soittaa
   kuin itse taivahan kansi sois.
   Yön vallat aamun valkeus jo voittaa
   sun päiväs koittaa, oi synnyinmaa.

   Oi nouse, Suomi, nosta korkealle
   pääs seppelöimä suurten muistojen,
   oi nouse, Suomi, näytit maailmalle
   sa että karkoitit orjuuden
   ja ettet taipunut sa sorron alle,
   on aamus alkanut, synnyinmaa.

   I love the look of Georgian, even though I can’t read it:

   დილასა ადრე მოვიდა იგი ნაზარდი სოსანი,
   ძოწეულითა მოსილი, პირად ბროლ-ბადახშოსანი,
   პირ-ოქრო რიდე ეხვია, შვენოდა ქარქაშოსანი,
   მეფესა გასლვად აწვევდა, მოდგა თეთრ-ტაიჭოსანი.

   (Note how the last four syllables of each line rhyme. Obvious now I point it out, isn’t it.)

   I like speaking Dutch. Not something I do very often, but normally rather shocks native speakers – especially here in Flanders, where they assume I must actually be Dutch (ie from the hated North).

4. Can you ever imagine yourself going into politics (ie as an elected representative)?

   Yes. I have in fact stood for election twice, in 1990 and more recently in 1996. On neither occasion did I come very close to winning, and this left me with the strong feeling that next time I stand in an election it will be for real.

   Having said that, my family circumstances would make it pretty irresponsible of me to take on the commitment of running an election campaign at the moment. Also at present, politics is my work rather than my hobby (my hobby being livejournal and fandom) so I’m not looking to ramp up my political engagement in that way.

   But I do like the feel of the European Parliament, and it frustrates me that an institution with so much potential punches so far below its weight in the debate on the EU’s foreign policy capabilities (mainly because the foreign affairs committee has been captured by an unrepresentative clique). If I stood for election it would probably be to try and get one of the British Lib Dem seats there. Not before 2014 at the earliest, though.

5. What is the worst book ever to win a Hugo or Nebula?

   Tricky. My least favourite Nebula winners are The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro, The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer, and Neuromancer by William Gibson. My least favourite Hugo winners are Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh, The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov and They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley.

   Much as I hate The Gods Themselves, I think two much more recent books are so awful that their winning the respective awards is just incomprehensible.

   Well, not totally incomprehensible in one case: Hominids clearly won the Hugo in 2003 because the WorldCon was in Canada that year, and Sawyer is obviously a very popular figure in fandom in that part of the world. But I find it difficult to believe that anyone who voted for Hominids had actually read any of the other nominees.

   Feeble as that excuse is, there can be no similar plea of mitigation for the Nebula voters giving their 2001 award to The Quantum Rose, with its clichéd romantic plot and desperately contrived attempts to draw parallels with quantum physics. (Unless the other books on the shortlist were even worse. But they included A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin, so I think that theory fails too.)

   Apart from that, I suspect Neuromancer may not have been a very worthy winner, but I can’t remember anything about it despite having reread it several times.

As usual, if you would like questions, ask.

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1) Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
2) Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton

Before I start, I was amused by the difference between the cover illustrations of these two books:

One might be forgiven for thinking that whoever chose the pictures believes that fantasy is for girls and science fiction for boys.

Anyway. I don’t blame Rich Horton for this. I know him on-line as one of the people I most enjoy debating with in my increasingly rare appearances on rec.arts.sf.written, and he has served up two cracking anthologies of stories here – far less overlap with the other “Best of Year” collections than they have with each other, and almost all new to me (apart from two Hugo nominees and one or two that I remembered from Interzone). He has also eschewed the tendency of other editors to introduce each story individually, instead opting for brief word about each of them in an introduction to the whole book, which makes the whole thing feel more unified.

Having said that I liked them all, the SF volume had a slightly wider variation in quality. I loved Joe Haldeman’s very short “Heartwired”, Susan Palwick’s “The Fate of Mice” (a tribute to “Flowers for Algernon”) and Daniel Kaysen’s social networking story “The Jenna Set”. But I am still making up my mind about Alastair Reynolds’ “Understanding Time and Space” – work of genius, or hotch-potch of ingredients from Stapledon, Bradbury and Baxter with the ghost of Elton John as an extra? I guess the fact that I am still thinking about it says something.

In the fantasy volume, I was struck by how few of the stories took the standard sword-and-sorcery milieu as their setting, far more of them belonging to what might be called the urban fantasy sub-genre. In the former category, I thought at first that “Empty Places” by Richard Parks was going to be a run-of-the-mill wizard-hires-thief story, and wondered what it was doing in the collection; but I was converted by the punchline. In the second category, I really liked re-reading Paul Di Filippo’s “The Emperor of Gondwanaland”. The other standout story was Neil Gaiman’s “Sunbird” (though I found myself wishing it was illustrated).

I think I will continue to get all of the “Best of Year” anthologies, because I am such a completist, but if Rich continues with this experiment I shall be particularly looking forward to his volumes in future years.

I’ve slept better here in Cluny than I can remember sleeping for a long time – the weather has changed, and winter is definitely coming on – my brother-in-law assures me that it is below freezing outside.

As previously noted, we went up the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Tuesday; the weather was a bit misty, but the views from the top are good in any weather. It’s quite a phenomenon, I reflected – a structure whose sole purpose was to be the tallest building in the world when it was built, with no pretensions about “really” being an office block or a hotel or a broadcasting mast. And there’s no need to make any propaganda point about it being a French achievement; the building itself does that – it symbolises Paris. (F particularly wanted to do it because of Barnaby Bear.)

Then on Wednesday we dropped in very briefly on Taizé, which is halfway between here and our hosts’ other place in the countryside. I had never been before, though visited when she was a student. Apart from the multinational hordes of clearly very enthusiastic young people, what really struck us was the plainness and functionality of the actual church building – like half a dozen school gym halls bolted together. This is of course in keeping with the spirit of Taizé, but I’m more used to famous places of worship being a bit more spectacular.

And yesterday we did the tour of the remains of the Abbey of Cluny. This made a nice Hegelian synthesis of the two previous days, since it was both the largest building in Christendom (or in some versions “Western Christendom” – what was comparable in size in the East? The Hagia Sophia? The original Church of the Holy Sepulchre?) and the centre of an influential religious movement. All destroyed after the Revolution, with only the southern transept still more or less intact; but they have a fantastic 3D video reconstruction, using polarised light so that it can be in colour (to a certain extent) and you really feel that you are seeing the building as it once was. Yet there’s something a bit stark and inhuman about the computer-generated graphics; would it have killed them to put in a few stick figures wearing medieval garb?

Anyway, well worth seeing, and worth going to see.

Up very early yesterday for a Big Expedition to France. Much travelling and waiting around, but children very patient:

0700 – leave home by car
0810 – train to Paris
0940 – taxi to Gare de Lyon to dump luggage
1030 – set off to Eiffel Tower by RER and Metro
1130 – F and I start queuing for Eiffel Tower, leaving U and to watch the pigeons down below
1230 – get into Eiffel Tower
1250 – reach top of Eiffel Tower: F duly delighted by it, which is just as well considering it was his idea.
1310 – taxi to Gare de Lyon again
1440 – lunch at Gare de Lyon, somewhat enlivened when F’s glass disintegrates as he is in the act of carefully putting it on the table. Waitress assues us that those glasses disintegrate all the time (so why still use them?)
1450 – train for Dijon leaves, 15 mins late; the one train of the day (apart from RER and Metro) which is really full
1540 – successfully change trains in Dijon for Mâcon. Suddenly realise that the car I have rented is at the wrong station in Mâcon.
1800 – arrive Mâcon, take taxi to other station where rental car agent is (thank heavens) still waiting for us.
1830 – set off for Cluny in rental car.
1900 – gets my sister to talk us in on my mobile phone. Conversation appears to consist of sister saying “That’s right, just keep going.” Eventually I see her standing in the middle of the road outside her house. Stop. Park. Eat. Sleep.