Monthly Archives: March 2010

Doctor Who: The Final Sanction by Steve Lyons British Science Fiction & Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys by Paul Kincaid and Niall Harrison Lays of Beleriand: The History of Middle-Earth 3 by Christopher Tolkien Book of Lost Tales: Pt. 2: … Continue reading →

Non-Fiction 6 (YTD 18) Fiction (non-sf) 6 (YTD 15) SF (non-Who) 5 (YTD 23) Doctor Who etc fiction 8 (YTD 17) 5/25 (YTD 16/73) by women (Jones, Collins, Mehran, Montgomery, Picoult) 2/25 (YTD 7/73) by PoC (Mehran, Obama) 12/25 owned … Continue reading →

I saw a very favourable review of this Tenth Doctor audio book in DWM, but started off feeling a bit disappointed, particularly after my enjoyment of Dead Air

The plot thickens in North Down, where one of the UUP’s two assembly members has resigned in support of Lady Sylvia Hermon, the local MP. The UUP’s strategic linkage with the Conservatives has thus so far seen the nomination in … Continue reading →

I see that Neal Barrett, jr, has just been named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction Writers of America. I don’t believe I have read anything by him. Any recommendations as to where (or if) I should start?

I’ve enjoyed listening to this 1977 sf radio story, in six 25-minute episodes, starring no less than Peter Cushing and Vincent Price (the latter with a mild American accent, but you can be sure it is him) delivering a script … Continue reading →

I’m a fan of Stephen Cole’s more recent books, but this is experimental stuff which shows a talent still coming together. The story brings Ben, Polly and the First Doctor to an asteroid where a bunch of human soldiers are … Continue reading →

Thanks, all for your good wishes re my teeth. I saw the nice stomalogist / maxillary surgeon this afternoon at the curiously named Hôpital Deux Alices in Uccle, and she anaesthetised my jaw thoroughly and whipped out the errant fragments. … Continue reading →

How was your day? Mine started by bursting a front tyre as I grazed the kerb outside F’s school while dropping him off. Not too far to drive to the nearest tyre specialist, but it meant an hour of sitting … Continue reading →

Reading Gibbon’s "Decline and Fall" – Chapter XXI: Heresy and paganism We start briefly with the Donatist schism, which was basically political; and then we have a prolonged and detailed discourse on Platonism and the doctrine of the Trinity, which … Continue reading →

…who wants to come over to our place to watch Doctor Who next Saturday? 

I got this book out of curiosity: LibraryThing listed it as the top UnSuggestion for both Rasselas and The Stainless Steel Rat, so I wanted to test the system. (This was before I had read Blue Like Jazz, which I … Continue reading →

A wholesome tale of an enthusiastic orphan girl accidentally adopted by a brother and sister in rural Prince Edward Island, bringing a mild amount of subversive chaos to their orderly lives and to the life of their small town. It’s … Continue reading →

I took B out for an excursion today; first of all crossing the linguistic frontier to the park at Hélécine, ten minutes’ drive from where she lives, a place she always loves visiting; she enjoyed running giggling across the lawns, … Continue reading →

Gosh, it’s almost five years since I listened to episode 1 of Fury from the Deep, and commented on the accent used by John Abineri playing a Dutch character. I can now bring you the full exchange of what must … Continue reading →

Facebook folks will have the headlines of this already, but in brief the dental merry-go-round has started again. Four weeks ago I went back to my dentist for some final cleaning-up on the upper left molar which had been giving … Continue reading →

This is a fascinating autobiography. The book, first published in 1995, begins with the death of Barack Obama senior, announced down a bad phone line to his son over a decade earlier; and then divides more or less into two … Continue reading →

I wrote a few months back about the possible configurations of the coming election in the Northern Ireland constituency of North Down, which until this week was represented by the only remaining MP from the Ulster Unionist Party, the former … Continue reading →

We had all been invited to a working lunch with the Prime Minister. I was rather pleased with the way the seating worked out: I ended up sitting opposite an American bloke, who was seated between the Prime Minister and … Continue reading →

A good historical and literary survey of whaling: Hoare chases down all sorts of information about whales and their exploitation by humans; I had forgotten just how bad things had got in the 1970s before the whaling ban came into … Continue reading →

This is a brilliant, erotic, somewhat mystical novel, about a teenage boy in County Antrim in the 1950s who finds himself crossing into the Different Kingdom of the title and finding his faerie lover while looking for his lost relative … Continue reading →

I wasn’t expecting these till the end of the month, so was very glad to be able to listen to both The Emperor of Eternity and The Architects of History which on various errands over the weekend.  The Emperor of … Continue reading →

Conservative candidate for the Western Isles wants to develop the harbour in Achmore, which sadly is the only village in the Western Isles which is not located on the coast. (Which certainly makes it an imaginative and forward-looking policy.) Hat-tip … Continue reading →

I reread this for Ian‘s classic book club, so am putting this below the cut in case anyone who will be at Monday’s discussion (I won’t be!) hasn’t finished it yet and is concerned about spoilers. I really love this … Continue reading →

Whose Who? | WalesHome.org Derrick Sherwin reminisces about his time on Doctor Who, handling the Troughton / Pertwee transition (tags: doctorwho)

My colleague Carne Ross is on ABC National’s radio show ‘Future Tense’ this morning (Thursday 18th, by the time you read this) at 0830, repeated Friday 19th at 1230. Details and downloadable extract here. (Also downloadable for non-Australian residents who … Continue reading →

When Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for Literature a couple of years ago, I had never heard of him. This is much his most easily obtainable book, and it was also strongly endorsed by , so I had been … Continue reading →

It being St Patrick’s Day, I am going to post about the city of Tuzla, where I spent my first night in Bosnia back in early 1997. Looking around the office of my newly acquired colleagues, I spotted a map … Continue reading →

"Lost" Shakespeare play published Another one to read… (tags: shakespeare)

Doing these in internal Whovian chronology (in terms of history, since four are set on earth and the fifth in the far future, it would be Freak Show, The Suffering, Klein’s Story, Hollows of Time and then Survival of the … Continue reading →