• reading_gibbon: Chapter XV: Early Christianity
  The growth of Christianity "was most effectually favoured and assisted by the five following causes: I. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth. III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire."
  (tags: gibbon)

Someone recently posted an enquiry about British women sf novelists from before 1970, and I responded rather unhelpfully that Sylvia Anderson probably deserved more writing credits for Thunderbirds than she actually got (ie, co-author of the first episode, “Trapped in the Sky”). A very little more research (in particular, reading Nick Cooper and Keith Topping, and then scraping IMDB) allows me to add the following names to the list of female writers for British televised sf before 1970:

Hazel Adair, who along with Peter Ling created the soap operas Compact and Crossroads, but also earlier in her career co-wrote (with Ronald Marriott) a childrens’ sf series, Stranger from Space, the adventures of a Martian boy who has crashed on Earth and is befriended by a human boy, which had two series in 1951-2 and 1952-3 (shown as an insert into the magazine programme Whirligig).

Sheilah Ward, who was married to Peter Ling (himself the author of a Troughton-era Doctor Who story), wrote a 1958 children’s sf series for ITV, Time Is The Enemy (as well as a couple of episodes of The Avengers).

Evelyn Frazer, who wrote an sfnal play, “The Critical Point”, broadcast in 1957 and again in 1960, mixing cryogenics with police procedure. She also wrote Virus X, a 1962 play featuring a supervirus, and later in 1962 wrote a four-part series called The Monsters with Vincent Tilsley.

Marielaine Double has precisely one IMDB credit, as co-author of the 1965 Wednesday play Campaign for One, a “psychological space drama” according to Keith Topping.

Marghanita Laski, better known as a journalist and non-genre writer, but also author of a post-apocalypse play, The Offshore Island, which was broadcast in 1959.

Elaine Morgan, now better known for her advocacy of the aquatic ape hypothesis, wrote (among many other TV credits) Thunderbolt, an episode of R3, a drama series set in a secret British government research unit – the Bugs or Torchwood of its day.

Kate Wilhelm is not British, but her short story Andover and the Android was adapted by Bruce Stewart as a 1965 episode of Out of the Unknown. (The story was published in 1963 in a collection called The Mile-Long SpaceshipAndover and the Android, presumably to make the most of the TV tie-in.)

In 1966, the Doctor Who time slot was filled over the summer by an sf children’s detective series called Quick, Before They Catch Us, whose fourth and final story, “The Tungsten Ring”, was written by Margot Bennett and directed by Paddy Russell. Bennett is much better known as a crime writer, though one of her other books has the intriguing title of The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation.

Finally, Keith Topping lists a couple more female writers of sfnal TV plays in the Thirty Minute Theatre strand: Dawn Pavitt, who co-wrote “The Isle is Full of Noises” with Terry Wale in 1965, and Charlotte Plimmer, who co-wrote “Standing by for Santa Claus” with Denis Plimmer in 1968. Both of them have a few other IMDB credits which may or may not be sfnal.

I am sure there are more. Hazel Adair in particular looks like she merits some further research.

Well, I think the best that can be said for the Big Finish audio of Mission to Magnus is that it makes me look forward to hearing all the rest of the BF audio plays I shall listen to this year, because they will be better. I commented a few months back that the novelisation of the unbroadcast story felt a bit padded; Philip Martin has stripped out the padding and got down to the bare essentials, and unfortunately the story still is not a very good one.

This is almost entirely the fault of the script. The introduction of yet another Time Lord with a strange past relationship to the Doctor was a repeated mistake of Sixth Doctor stories (from start to finish – Azrael, the Second Doctor, the Trial scenes) and it is not done any better here than in any of the other cases. The Ice Warriors’ plan is a silly one, astrophysically, and the Doctor appears to deal with it by essentially snapping his fingers. And the women-only planet, which is merely dull in the book version, is actually rather offensive here. (Not quite as bad as The Two Ronnies, but this is not saying much.)

Most of the cast give this rubbish their best efforts – the regulars, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant; returning guest star Nadil Shaban as Sil; also I thought Susan Franklyn among the supporting cast was rather good (and Maggie Steed at least adequate). But Big Finish took the courageous step of getting child actors to play the child characters, and with the best will in the world, this experiment cannot be described as a roaring success. It is a real shame that Wally K. Daly could not be persuaded to liberate his script for The Ultimate Evil, as I think it would have lifted the quality of the Lost Stories season rather considerably.

First round – 30 days
First Doctor – William Hartnell
Season One – 1963-64
1/ An Unearthly Child (4)
2/ The Daleks (7)
3/ The Edge of Destruction (2)
4/ Marco Polo (7)
5/ The Keys of Marinus (6)
6/ The Aztecs (4)

Second round – 27 days
1/ The Sensorites (6)
2/ The Reign of Terror (6)
Season Two – 1964-65
3/ Planet of Giants (3)
4/ The Dalek Invasion of Earth (6)
5/ The Rescue (2)
6/ The Romans (4)

Third round – 28 days
1/ The Web Planet (6)
2/ The Crusade (4)
3/ The Space Museum (4)
4/ The Chase (6)
5/ The Time Meddler (4)
Season Three – 1965-66
6/ Galaxy 4 (4)

Fourth round – 33 days
0/ Mission to the Unknown (1)
1/ The Myth Makers (4)
2/ The Daleks’ Master Plan (12)
3/ The Massacre (4)
4/ The Ark (4)
5/ The Celestial Toymaker (4)
6/ The Gunfighters (4)

Fifth round – 26 days
1/ The Savages (4)
2/ The War Machines (4)
Season 4: 1966-67
3/ The Smugglers (4)
4/ The Tenth Planet (4)
Patrick Troughton
5/ The Power of the Daleks (6)
6/ The Highlanders (4)

Sixth Round – 29 days
1/ The Underwater Menace (4)
2/ The Moonbase (4)
3/ The Macra Terror (4)
4/ The Faceless Ones (6)
5/ The Evil of the Daleks (7)
Season 5: 1967-68
6/ The Tomb of the Cybermen (4)

Seventh round – 36 days
1/ The Abominable Snowmen (6)
2/ The Ice Warriors (6)
3/ The Enemy of the World (6)
4/ The Web of Fear (6)
5/ Fury from the Deep (6)
6/ The Wheel in Space (6)

Eighth round – 34 days
Season 6: 1968-69
1/ The Dominators (5)
2/ The Mind Robber (5)
3/ The Invasion (8)
4/ The Krotons (4)
5/ The Seeds of Death (6)
6/ The Space Pirates (6)

Ninth round – 39 days
1/ The War Games (10)
Jon Pertwee
Season 7: 1970
2/ Spearhead from Space (4)
3/ The Silurians (7)
4/ The Ambassadors of Death (7)
5/ Inferno (7)
Season 8: 1971
6/ Terror of the Autons (4)

Tenth round – 29 days
1/ The Mind of Evil (6)
2/ The Claws of Axos (4)
3/ Colony in Space (6)
4/ The Daemons (5)
Season 9: 1972
5/ Day of the Daleks (4)
6/ The Curse of Peladon (4)

Eleventh round – 32 days
1/ The Sea Devils (6)
2/ The Mutants (6)
3/ The Time Monster (6)
Season 10: 1972-73
4/ The Three Doctors (4)
5/ Carnival of Monsters (4)
6/ Frontier in Space (6)

Twelfth round – 32 days
1/ Planet of the Daleks (6)
2/ The Green Death (6)
Season 11: 1973-74
3/ The Time Warrior (4)
4/ Invasion of the Dinosaurs (6)
5/ Death to the Daleks (4)
6/ The Monster of Peladon (6)

Thirteenth round – 26 days
1/ Planet of the Spiders (6)
Tom Baker
Season 12: 1974-75
2/ Robot (4)
3/ The Ark in Space (4)
4/ The Sontaran Experiment (2)
5/ Genesis of the Daleks (6)
6/ Revenge of the Cybermen (4)

Fourteenth round – 26 days
Season 13: 1975-76
1/ Terror of the Zygons (4)
2/ Planet of Evil (4)
3/ Pyramids of Mars (4)
4/ The Android Invasion (4)
5/ The Brain of Morbius (4)
6/ The Seeds of Doom (6)

Fifteenth round – 26 days
Season 14: 1976-77
1/ The Masque of Mandragora (4)
2/ The Hand of Fear (4)
3/ The Deadly Assassin (4)
4/ The Face of Evil (4)
5/ The Robots of Death (4)
6/ The Talons of Weng-Chiang (6)

Sixteenth round – 26 days
Season 15: 1977-78
1/ Horror of Fang Rock (4)
2/ The Invisible Enemy (4)
3/ Image of the Fendahl (4)
4/ The Sunmakers (4)
5/ Underworld (4)
6/ The Invasion of Time (6)

Seventeenth round – 26 days
Season 16: 1978-79
1/ The Ribos Operation (4)
2/ The Pirate Planet (4)
3/ The Stones of Blood (4)
4/ The Androids of Tara (4)
5/ The Power of Kroll (4)
6/ The Armageddon Factor (6)

Eighteenth round – 26 days
Season 17: 1979-80
1/ Destiny of the Daleks (4)
2/ City of Death (4)
3/ The Creature from the Pit (4)
4/ Nightmare of Eden (4)
5/ The Horns of Nimon (4)
6/ (Shada) (6)

Nineteenth round – 24 days
Season 18: 1980-81
1/ The Leisure Hive (4)
2/ Meglos (4)
3/ Full Circle (4)
4/ State of Decay (4)
5/ Warriors Gate (4)
6/ The Keeper of Traken (4)

Twentieth round – 22 days
1/ Logopolis (4)
2/ K9 and Company (2)
Peter Davison
Season 19: 1982
3/ Castrovalva (4)
4/ Four to Doomsday (4)
5/ Kinda (4)
6/ The Visitation (4)

Twenty-first round – 22 days
1/ Black Orchid (2)
2/ Earthshock (4)
3/ Time-Flight (4)
Season 20: 1983
4/ Arc of Infinity (4)
5/ Snakedance (4)
6/ Mawdryn Undead (4)

Twenty-second round – 20 days
1/ Terminus (4)
2/ Enlightment (4)
3/ The King’s Demons (2)
4/ The Five Doctors (4)
Season 21: 1984
5/ Warriors of the Deep (4)
6/ The Awakening (2)

Twenty-third round – 24 days
1/ Frontios (4)
2/ Resurrection of the Daleks (4)
3/ Planet of Fire (4)
4/ The Caves of Androzani (4)
Colin Baker
5/ The Twin Dilemma (4)
Season 22: 1985
6/ Attack of the Cybermen (4)

Twenty-fourth round – 27 days
1/ Vengeance on Varos (4)
2/ Mark of the Rani (4)
3/ The Two Doctors (6)
3.5/ In a Fix With Sontarans (1)
4/ Timelash (4)
5/ Revelation of the Daleks (4)
Season 23: 1986 (“The Trial of a Time Lord”)
6/ The Mysterious Planet (4)

Twenty-fifth round – 21 days
1/ Mindwarp (4)
2/ Terror of the Vervoids (4)
3/ The Ultimate Foe (2)
Sylvester McCoy
Season 24: 1987
4/ Time and the Rani (4)
5/ Paradise Towers (4)
6/ Delta and the Bannermen (3)

Twenty-sixth round – 21 days
1/ Dragonfire (3)
Season 25: 1988-89
2/ Remembrance of the Daleks (4)
3/ The Happiness Patrol (3)
4/ Silver Nemesis (3)
5/ The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (4)
Season 26: 1989
6/ Battlefield (4)

Twenty-seventh round – 16 days
1/ Ghost Light (3)
2/ The Curse of Fenric (4)
3/ Survival (3)
4/ Dimensions in Time (1)
5/ The TV Movie (4)
6/ The Curse of Fatal Death (1)

Twenty-eighth round
1/ Death Comes to Time (6)
2/ Real Time (3)
3/ Shada (6)
4/ Scream of the Shalka (3)
Christopher Eccleston
Series 1: 2005
5/ Rose
6/ End of the World

1/ The Unquiet Dead
2/ Aliens of London • World War III
3/ Dalek
4/ The Long Game
5/ Father’s Day
6/ The Empty Child • The Doctor Dances

1/ Boom Town
2/ Bad Wolf • The Parting of the Ways
David Tennant
Series 2: 2005-2006
2.5/ Pudsey cutaway
3/ The Christmas Invasion
3.5/ Attack of the Graske
4/ New Earth
5/ Tooth and Claw
6/ School Reunion

1/ The Girl in the Fireplace
2/ Rise of the Cybermen • The Age of Steel
3/ The Idiot’s Lantern
4/ The Impossible Planet • The Satan Pit
5/ Love & Monsters
6/ Fear Her

1/ Army of Ghosts • Doomsday
Torchwood Season 1
2/ Everything Changes
3/ Day One
4/ Ghost Machine
5/ Cyberwoman
6/ Small Worlds

1/ Countrycide
2/ Greeks Bearing Gifts
3/ They Keep Killing Suzie
4/ Random Shoes
5/ Out of Time
6/ Combat

1/ Captain Jack Harkness
2/ End of Days
Series 3: 2006-2007
3/ The Runaway Bride
Sarah Jane Adventures pilot
4/ Invasion of the Bane
Series 3
5/ Smith and Jones
6/ The Shakespeare Code

1/ Gridlock
2/ Daleks in Manhatten • Evolution of the Daleks
3/ The Lazarus Experiment
4/ 42
5/ Human Nature • The Family of Blood
6/ Blink

1/ Utopia • The Sound of Drums • Last of the Time Lords
2/ The Infinite Quest
Sarah Jane series 1
3/ Revenge of the Slitheen
4/ Eye of the Gorgon
5/ Warriors of Kudlak
6/ Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

1/ The Lost Boy
1.5/ Time Crash
Series 4: 2007-2008
2/ Voyage of the Damned
Torchwood Series 2
3/ Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
4/ Sleeper
5/ To the Last Man
6/ Meat

1/ Adam
2/ Reset
3/ Dead Man Walking
4/ A Day in the Death
5/ Something Borrowed
6/ From Out of the Rain

1/ Adrift
2/ Fragments
3/ Exit Wounds
Series 4: 2007-2008
4/ Partners in Crime
5/ Fires of Pompeii
6/ Planet of The Ood

1/ The Sontaran Strategem • The Poison Sky
2/ The Doctor’s Daughter
3/ The Unicorn and the Wasp
4/ Silence in the Library • Forest of the Dead
5/ Midnight
6/ Turn Left

1/ The Stolen Earth • Journey’s End
Sarah Jane season Two
2/ The Last Sontaran
3/ The Day of the Clown
4/ Secrets of the Stars
5/ The Mark of the Berserker
6/ The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith

1/ Enemy of the Bane
Specials: 2008-2010
2/ The Next Doctor
2.5/ Sarah Jane: From Raxacoricofallapretorius with love
3/ Planet of the Dead
4/ Torchwood: Children of Earth
Sarah Jane Series 3
5/ Prisoner of the Judoon
6/ The Mad Woman in the Attic

1/ The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith
2/ The Eternity Trap
3/ Mona Lisa’s Revenge
4/ Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars
5/ Sarah Jane: The Gift
6/ Dreamland

1/ The End of Time (2)

a) unread sf, in order of entry to LibraryThing:

1. Irish tales of terror, ed by Jim McGarry
2. Forbidden Acts, ed by Nancy A. Collins
3. Seasons of Plenty by Colin Greenland
4. Mother of Plenty by Colin Greenland
5. The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe

b) unread sf in order of LibraryThing popularity:

1. The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
2. The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay
3. The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay
4. Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey
5. Heart of the Sea by Nora Roberts

c) unread sf in order of popularity here (obviously will rejig this ordering to take account of series order):

1. The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
2. The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay
3. The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay
4. Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones
5. The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones

d) unread non-sf fiction, in order of entry to LibraryThing:

1. Thirteen Steps Down by Ruth Rendell
2. Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin
3. Wandering Star by J.M.G. Le Clezio
4. The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
5. Njal’s Saga

e) unread non-sf fiction, in order of LibraryThing popularity:

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
3. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

f) unread non-sf fiction, in order of popularity here:

1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
2. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
3. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
4. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
5. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

g) unread non-fiction, in order of entry to LibraryThing:

1. The Two Faces of Islam by Stephen Schwartz
2. Radical Islams Rules edited by Paul Marshall
3. Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
4. Half-life of a Zealot by Swanee Hunt
5. The provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian by Theodor Mommsen

h) unread non-fiction, in order of LibraryThing popularity:

1. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
2. Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
3. The Koran
4. On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius
5. The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker

i) unread non-fiction, in order of popularity here:

1. The Panda’s Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould
2. The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Profiles of the future by Arthur C. Clarke
4. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
5. The Koran

j) books already read, in order of LibraryThing popularity

1. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

k) Hugo-winning novels that I haven’t previously reviewed on-line:

1. The Uplift War by David Brin
2. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
3. The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
4. Cordelia’s Honor (for Barrayar) by Lois McMaster Bujold
5. A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

l) unread New Adventures of Doctor Who (new list)

0. Timewyrm: Genesys
   Timewyrm: Exodus
   Timewyrm: Apocalypse
   Timewyrm: Revelation
1. Cat’s Cradle: Times Crucible by Marc Platt
2. Cat’s Cradle: Warhead by Andrew Cartmel
3. Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt
4. Nightshade by Mark Gatiss
   Love and War
5. Transit by Ben Aaronovitch

m) unread Eighth Doctor Adventures (new list)

0. The Eight Doctors
1. Vampire Science by Kate Orman
2. The Bodysnatchers by Mark Morris
   Genocide
3. War of the Daleks by John Peel
   Alien Bodies
4. Kursaal by Peter Anghelides
5. Option Lock by Justin Richards

n) other unread Doctor Who books, in order of LibraryThing popularity

1. Wooden Heart by Martin Day
2. The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier
3. Forever Autumn by Mark Morris
4. Sick Building by Paul Magrs
5. Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale

o) Ian Rankin books, starting with the Rebus novels, in series order:

1. Mortal Causes
2. Let It Bleed
3. Black and Blue
4. The Hanging Garden
5. Dead Souls

p) books by writers of colour, in order of entry into LibraryThing:

1. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
2. Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran
3. The Emperor’s Babe by Bernardine Evaristo
4. Out by Natsuo Kirino
5. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

q) books on the shelves at end 2005, otherwise not accounted for, going backwards in LT entry order:

1. Wheel Of Engaged Buddhism by Kenneth Kraft
2. Ta Hsueh and Chung Yung
3. Mr. Bloomfield’s Orchard by Nicholas P. Money
4. The Twilight of Atheism by Alister McGrath
5. Saint Therese of Lisieux by Kathryn Harrison

r) books acquired since end 2005, otherwise not accounted for, in LT entry order:

0. Year’s Best SF 8, edited by David G. Hartwell
1. Who Saved Bosnia by Vitomir Miles Raguz
2. The Portadown News by Newton Emerson
3. The Cyprus question and the EU by Andreas Theophanous
4. Peacebuilding and Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ten Years after Dayton
5. A Different Kingdom by Paul Kearney

Plus whatever else should take my fancy.

As it happens, this morning I was re-watching the first episode of The Gunfighters, a generally forgotten 1966 story where the Tardis lands in Tombstone, Arizona, specifically at the OK Corral, and William Hartnell’s Doctor is offered a gun for self-defence by the local dentist, Doc Holliday. As with Tennant’s Doctor this evening, he refuses to take it at first, but (in rather more comic than dramatic terms) does so in the end. I don’t know if it was a deliberate reference, but pleasing all the same.

…that was better than I had feared. RTD has managed to write a decent finale.

Once we had disposed of the actual plot, about 40 minutes in, it was a rather affecting farewell to the Tennant era. I did find something in my eye when it turned out that Jessica Hynes’ character was called Verity Newman. And again when the New Year encounter turned out to be at the start of that momentous year, 2005.

Broadening out a bit, I think it was entirely reasonable to give Ten a chance to say goodbye to his peeps. This happened in virtual reality for Four and Five as well, but it is much more satisfactory to have the next step in the companions’ lives (as happened for Two, just before the Time Lords killed him).

It was also rather beautiful to have the deliberate echoing of Five’s dying spaceship landing (and perhaps we will watch Caves of Androzani again in tribute over the weekend). Tennant was certainly copying Davison’s grimace. Of course, absorbing radiation was the killing factor for Three and Nine as well.

Anyway, plenty of loose ends left. Who was the mysterious female Time Lord? Susan? Romana? Iris Wildthyme? River Song? Are the Time Lords (who are, as I thought, now Evil) dead forever? And the Master?

Not long to wait, anyway. Good to see Matt Smith get a decent lead-in as well.

(hat-tip to the lovely Alex.)

My 2009 reading ended on a high note, with Edward Gibbon’s short and entertaining autobiography, telling the story of his life and of how he wrote the Decline and Fall.

(Incidentally I shall be writing up the most controversial chapters, XV and XVI, on early Christianity on tomorrow and next week. You can sample them here and here – they feature some of his most savage and memorable sarcasm.)

The two chapters in which Gibbon describes the completion, publication and reception of the Decline and Fall ought to be essential reading for anyone planning a writing career. In particular, his reflections on completing the twenty-year project are poignant:

It was on the night of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias . I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

There is lots more here as well: his political career (which was entirely the result of Gibbon’s recepit of patronage – two different seats in parliament for pocket boroughs, and a junior government position which appears to have involved no actual duties in return for a large salary), his experience of Oxford (and some of his trenchant criticisms of the Oxbridge system remain valid), his reflections on living in Lausanne rather than London, his experience as an officer in the militia. Gibbon comes across as, of course, tremendously intelligent, but also rather modest with it: he is conscious of some of the flaws of Decline and Fall, but claims that his own satisfaction at a job well done is more important than public praise or condemnation, though at the same time praise is always welcome. He expresses the vague hope, in 1791, that people will still read his work in a hundred years’ time. I was reading this aloud to Anne as she drove us home from England yesterday, and I found I had got something in my eye, also affecting my throat, as I got to the end:

The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may possibly be my last: but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years…. The warm desires, the long expectations of youth, are founded on the ignorance of themselves and of the world: they are gradually damped by time and experience, by disappointment and possession; and after the middle season the crowd must be content to remain at the foot of the mountain; while the few who have climbed the summit aspire to descend or expect to fall. In old age, the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children; the faith of enthusiasts, who sing Hallelujahs above the clouds; and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writing.

The Penguin edition is not the text made famous by Gibbon’s friend Lord Sheffield, but a new (well, 1983) treatment of the manuscripts by Penguin’s editor Betty Radice, who steps from behind the curtain and explains her methodology in an interesting introduction. Well worth getting.

I read slightly fewer books last year than in 2008, 342 rather than 374. This was partly due to reading fewer Doctor Who novelisations (having read almost all of them last year) and also due to a deliberate choice of reading more classics of non-sf literature. For most of the year I was still reading books at an almost neurotic rate; I have slowed down since September, partly because I rejigged my reading lists to take it more slowly, and partly because I started a couple of other projects (watching Doctor Who from the beginning, weekly chapter of Gibbon) which ate into reading time.

Scores on the doors:
Total pages read 100,000 (to nearest 1,000), which is roughly 270 a day. My commute is often an hour and a half each way, and I am a fast reader
68 (20%) by women (ie female author or editor credited on front cover; does not include female pseudonym of male author), up from 2008’s 46 (12%)
16 (5%) by writers of colour (not terribly impressive but double my previous rate and three times 2008’s 1.6%)
36 (11%) rereads (italicised below)
48 added to LT catalogue in 2005; 6 in 2006, 3 in 2007, 79 in 2008. 65 had been on the slelves for more than a year before I read them.

Non-fiction

Total 88 (26%) in 2009, up slightly from 72 (19%) in 2008.

Best in category: Survival In Auschwitz, by Primo Levi – a searing account of an incredible situation.

Also excellent: Gibbon’s Memoirs, The Road from Coorain, Emma’s War: Love, Betrayal and Death in the Sudan, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Collapse, EU Accession Dynamics And Conflict Resolution: Catalysing Peace Or Consolidating Partition In Cyprus?, About Time 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who (Seasons 7 to 11), 2nd edition, Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale, Target: A History of the Target Doctor Who Books

Very very good: Rocks of Ages, Shakespeare’s Wife, Galileo’s Daughter, The Lyncher in Me, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII, Early Belfast,  Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus, Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know, Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to The Prisoner, From Genocide to Continental War: The Congolese Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa

Worst in category: Blue Like Jazz, an uninspiring articulation of liberal Christianity

Fiction (other than sf and comics)

Total 57 (18%) in 2009, substantially up from 25 (7%) in 2008 due to deliberate policy of reading more classics.

Best in Category: Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck.

Also excellent: To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita, Catch 22, Nature Girl, Oedipus Rex

Very very good: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, The Go-Between, To the Lighthouse, As I Lay Dying, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Middlesex, Song of Solomon, The Angel Makers, Mr Singh Has Disappeared, The Secret Garden, The Story of Tracy Beaker, The New Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction

Worst book I read all year: Angels and Demons, the book which made Dan Brown’s name. It is slightly better written than The Da Vinci Code, but this really isn’t saying much.

SF (other than Who and comics, but including some ancient literature)

Total 78 (23%) in 2009, up slightly from 71 (19%) in 2008.

Best in category: Very difficult to choose between On the Beach, Threshold (vol 1 of the collected Zelazny), The Night Sessions and another Ken MacLeod novel, The Restoration Game, as yet unpublished . Probably in the end I would go for On The Beach.

Also excellent: The Hobbit, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Lord of Light, The War of the Worlds, Divine Comedy

Very very good: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, This Immortal, The Man in the High Castle, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Big Time,  A Million Open Doors, Kindred, Wizard of Oz, The Blind Assassin, The Graveyard Book, Anathem, Black Juice, The Iliad, The Golden Ass

Worst in category: Bard IV: Ravens Gathering, by Keith Taylor. Admittedly I only managed the  first 20 pages so it may have improved.

Comics

Total 28 (8%) in 2009, substantially up from last year’s 7 (2%) because of reading complete Fables and also the Hugo nominees.

Best in category: Persepolis 2 and Shortcomings

Very very good: With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child v. 1

Worst in category: Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic – I know it has fans, but simply did not strike me as very impressive.

Shakespeare Plays (in most cases rating refers to both text and Arkangel performance)

Total 19 (6%) in 2009 compared to 20 (also 5%) in 2008; this is one category that will not appear in 2010’s list!

Best in category: Has to be Hamlet!

Also excellent: Twelfth Night, Macbeth

Very very good: Othello, King Lear

Worst in category: The Two Noble Kinsmen

Doctor Who Spinoff Fiction (other than comics and audio plays)

Total 70 (19%, substantially down from last year when I read most of the novelisations). The Doctor, or spinoff series, is given in brackets.

Best in category: Gary Russell’s Beautiful Chaos, which has the Tenth Doctor, Wilf and Donna teaming up against the return of a classic-era enemy.

Very good: Farewell Great Macedon (1), Doctor Who – Ghosts of N-Space (3), Romance of Crime (4), Sands of Time (5), Zeta Major (5), Millennial Rites (6), Only Human (9), The Eyeless (10), Snowglobe 7 (10), The Day of the Troll (10), Decalog [first volume], Downtime, Border Princes (Torchwood), Slow Decay (Torchwood), The Sin Eaters (Torchwood), Beyond the Sun (Bernice Summerfield)

Worst in category: Byzantium! (1)

To round the year off, notes on audio plays and films.

Audio plays (including Doctor Who)

Best in category: The Lord of the Rings, the definitive BBC version.

Also excellent: The Mahogany Murderers (a Doctor Who spinoff with Jago and Litefoot from The Talons of Weng-Chiang), Moths Ate My “Doctor Who” Scarf (a confessional autobiography, adapted from the stage show), Kaldor City: The Prisoner (a brilliant two-hander between Paul Darrow and Peter Miles)

Very very good: The War of the Worlds (Original 1938 Radio Adaptaion), Sympathy for the Devil (alternate Doctor Who story), The Doomwood Curse (6th Doctor and Charlie), The Bride of Peladon (5th Doctor, Peri and Erimem), Death in Blackpool (8th Doctor and Lucie)

Worst in Category: The Poison Seas, a Bernice Summerfield story that was probably OK but marred by poor production.

Films:

One of my 2010 resolutions is to watch more films and to track them better!

Wii Fit Plus tells me that my BMI is in the ideal range, and that I have the body of a 28-year-old.

(It did not say which 28-year-old.)

(You can guess which New Year’s resolution I have been implementing.)

Happy new year everyone!

I’m still working up my review post of 2009’s books, but here is the full list in poll form. Which have you read?