I haven’t read a lot of Vance’s work – just The Dying Earth and The Last Castle – but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read, and considering the fascinating material that 90-year-old Frederik Pohl is putting on his blog these days, I was rather looking forward to reading this volume of reminiscences by Vance, who is a couple of years older.

Unfortunately it’s just not a very interesting book. The best bit is the early material about growing up during the Depression (Vance was born in 1916), but apart from that it’s a sequence of dinners, holidays, parties, jazz concerts, enumerated in detail without much reflection. To give one example, I have seen the story of the Jack Vance / Frank Herbert / Poul Anderson houseboat told in several other places, and told better. To give another, Vance has been blind for the last twenty years (including when writing all his later books starting with Lyonesse), and while I shall bear in mind his extensive listing of mystery genre wriiters whose whork he enjoys listening to on audio, it would have been interesting to read something more profound about the effect of the loss of one of the five senses on the writer. A line about the distinctive smell of Irish peat is used twice. We really don’t learn much about Vance the man, and even less about Vance the writer; and those like me who really only know him through his writing won’t feel any the wiser after reading this.

I usually like biography/autobiography as a genre, but between this and St Thérèse I have not been lucky this week!

1) the ‘a’ is very short and low, heading towards a short ‘o’ in English.
2) both the ‘g’ and the ‘gh’ are pronounced as a softer version of ‘ch’ in Scottish ‘loch’.
3) ‘Vahn Goff’ is completely and utterly wrong. (And if you thought it was ‘Van Go’, I don’t ever want to talk to you again.)

Getting myself in the mood for last weekend’s Doctor Who, I am revisiting its writer’s first great hit:

I really didn’t know much about St Thérèse of Lisieux, other than that her relics have been the centre of much religious enthusiasm in the various countries to which they have been brought. After reading this book, I don’t feel that I know much more than I did. She was one of eight children, the youngest of four surviving sisters, who all became nuns in the same convent (Thérèse having personally petitioned the Pope to be allowed to join at the age of fifteen); she basically dedicated herself to a consuming, borderline erotic vision of union with Christ, and expired of tuberculosis at the age of 24 in 1897. Despite having grown up in the Irish Catholic tradition myself, I found a lot of the story pretty repellent, and if I’d been Thérèse’s spiritual director I fear I would have instructed her rather firmly to get a grip. Having said that, I think her intense devotion to her personal conception of Christ is an extrapolation of the extreme loyalties I sometimes see expressed in media fandom communities. Perhaps I should get hold of her Story of a Soul but I am not really inclined to after reading this.

A very neatly put together novel of the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara, set between Planet of Giants and The Dalek Invasion of Earth in a dystopian and devastated London of an alternative 2006, facing invasion from a South African army and disintegration as a result of the local boffins’ time experiments; the last quarter of the book takes us back to 1972 (but a 1972 where WOTAN won, though only briefly) to try and put things right. Apart from the grimness of his militarised and failing future society, Guerrier has a lovely take on the Ian / Barbara relationship, and while his First Doctor isn’t quite as consistent he still fills out some of the gaps in the character rather well (less so poor Susan, whose main characteristics are her skills in time-keeping and cooking). The time-paradox plot is not resolved with mathematical rigour, but is satisfying all the same. Good stuff.

This is the ninth volume in the Foglios’ Girl Genius saga, originally published online, but now available as part of the Hugo Voters’ Packet; it’s not a series I know other than having read Volume Eight last year when it too was up for the Hugos. I liked this one more; perhaps it is that I am now even a little more familiar with the characters, but also the storylines seemed a little less opaque, with the intelligent castle particularly memorable as playing its own game with Agatha, its ostensible owner (at one point it muses that it would quite like to be reconstructed as a yurt, so that it could go and visit exotic places). As ever, the Foglios’ artwork is gorgeous and distinctive. I don’t think they will score a second successive Hugo – Neil Gaiman is sure to win for Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? – but I will rank this volume higher than I did last year’s.

What number is next in this series?

3465
4095
4725
5355
5775
5985
6435

It’s a while since I’ve done this – and apologies to anyone who has either asked questions or requested questions in the past; I have lost track of any obligations I had, so do prod me if you think I owe you. Thanks to the three ladies mentioned below for livening up a rather tedious train journey as I worke through their queries.

From :

1. What is the role of faith in your life?

   I’m not a fervent pray-er; I go for months without attending church. When I describe myself as a believer, it’s more a statement of an intellectual position than a description of an emotional relationship. But from time to time I do simply enjoy opening myself up to a sense of the presence of the numinous, and I think pretty much all religious activity is based on this fairly common human experience.
   

2. Has your work in Africa changed your perspective in any way? (And do you have any future plans to come to Juba?)

   Two for the price of one, eh? My work in Africa amounts to three visits to Juba since last November, and I do not anticipate that I will be called on to return soon, for reasons of recent internal reorganisation. I found it pretty gruelling, for reasons with which you will be very familiar, though of course rewarding as well, because one is very conscious of one’s work at making a difference.

   I had always wanted to do some work on Africa, because of all parts of the world it is the most neglected, and apart from Southern Sudan my current job has also brought me into contact with the Polisario Front and Somaliland. Actually being on the ground does bring home to you the enormity of the demands being made by the outside world on Africa and Africans; but I like to think that I was already prepared for that by my pre-trip research!
   

3. Where do you see yourself in ten years?

   Still in Belgium, anyway; still in international politics, one way or the other. I hope (and expect) that my current job will keep me going for a while yet.
   

4. Seriously: what’s so great about Doctor Who? I just don’t get it.

   I am not one of the fans who could ever seriously argue that Doctor Who is so great. For me, it has the attraction of a connection between the present day and my later childhood, a common point of interest with my ten-year-old son, and a huge and detailed expanding mythos which I can continually explore (at present, apart from the current Eleventh Doctor stories on TV, I’ve just started reading a First Doctor book, just finished watching a Third Doctor TV story, and just finished a run of Sixth Doctor audio plays; and when I get home I’ll hoke out the 1970 Doctor Who annual from the DVD it’s stacked with). It works for me; I don’t demand that it should work for everyone.

   Also I believe that one of the guest actors in a Sixth Doctor story has a daughter who lives in Sudan and writes novels.
   

5. What would your Desert Island Discs be?

   You were fortunate to ask this question before , who also thought of it but I made her try again.

   I have not been listening to a lot of music in the last ten years or so. It was a much bigger thing for me in my twenties than in my thirties or forties. Having said which, if I am stuck on the island, I believe the rules allow me not just a single LP per entry but a collection of recordings marketed together for each entry. So:

   1. Sibelius complete orchestral works – or if you press me, the Second Symphony and the Kullervo symphony; I just love the barren landscapes of his music.
   2. Beethoven: complete symphonies if I am allowed, otherwise I’ll settle for the Seventh. (A minority choice; I suspect that the Ninth, Fifth and Sixth are more popular, but I’ll stand by it.)
   3. Dire Straits: if I can’t have the complete collection, I’ll take Alchemy which I used to listen to on long car journeys across Bosnia.
   4. Les Miserables: as long as there is an English-language version without the insufferable Michael Ball.
   5. Carmina Burana – tacky but fun.
   6. the original audio Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (both series if I am allowed).
   7. The Daleks’ Master Plan with narration by Peter Purves.
   8. if I can count the complete Sibelius as one entry, then I’ll have the Bruch violin concerto to round it off.

   
   

6. How on earth do you find the time to read as much as you do?

   Really, , the rules say five questions not six – or seven! But I read fast; I have a long commute; I read more if I am travelling or am ill; and anyway I’ve been cutting down lately!

From :

1. Is there a food you can’t stand that most other people love?

   I’m really not a fan of Marmite, under any circumstances; of tunkey, under most circumstances; or of spinach, unless it is cooked in such a way as to disguise its taste! Apart from that I will try most things.
   

2. You read a lot! Have you ever thrown a book across the room or come close?

   I do note a few books that I cannot finish each year.
   

3. What would be your desert island discs? You travel a lot, so what’s the one thing you always pack?

   Trusty Gillette Mach 3 razor with spare blades. One can usually find toothbrush, toothpaste and soap on the road, but decent razors are much more difficult sometimes.
   

4. If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?

   I’ve just had a fairly unpleasant journey to Alsace in the northern European summer heat, and would much rather be tucked up in my own bed next to my nice warm wife.
   

5. Of the many places you travel to, is there one that you’d prefer to never return to?

   I guess the most unpleasant place I’ve been was Bratunac, north of Srebrenica, in 1997 just two years after the massacre, where many of the killings took place and where the population seemed to display a horrified awareness of what had been done combined with utter unwillingness to talk to outsiders. Even there, I think morbid curiosity would bring me back again.

   I didn’t have much fun on my one and only visit to Madrid, but that wouldn’t stop me going back; my first trip to Tirana was pretty disastrous from the point of view of getting good food, but it turns out from later on-the-ground research that I was just unlucky. There was a time in my life when I was going to Kosovo more often than I liked, but my trip there next month will be my first in two and a half years.
   

From

1. What made you pick Clare College?

   A combination of factors – I was charmed by the architecture; I liked its apparent commitment to both science and music (and to a certain extent religion), which were big things for me when I was 17; and I was told that it had good links with Northern Ireland (though of course these turned out to be more personal as manifested primarily in Lord Ashby rather than institutional). I certainly don’t regret it, though quite probably I would have been equally well served by any college less posh than Magdalene or Peterhouse.
   

2. What’s your opinion on the MMR / autism scare?

   Almost unprintable. Wakefield’s research was faked, has caused children to die due to lack of immunisation, and shamelessly exploited on the guilt feelings of parents dealing with an awful discovery about their children and trying to rationalise it by blaming something, even (perhaps especially) if that something is their own actions. Wakefield shouldn’t just be struck off; he should be in jail.
   

3. How did you meet your wife (I never tire of hearing these sorts of stories!)

   That story has been , I suspect sharing some architectural similarities to your own experience!
   

4. Fizzy drinks or fruit juice?

   Fizzy water, but if it’s sweet I prefer it flat. Apart from iced tea, but that’s made from leaves not fruit.
   

5. Tell us about an occasion when you could see what needed to be done but were powerless to do it.

   Jeepers, there are too many of those, and I suppose that’s what motivates my political activities. The one most on my mind this week has been the Gaza blockade, a policy which seems certain to achieve the opposite of its ostensible aims. My former employers at ICG have been rightly vocal about this. Other such international politics issues are the supine acceptance of Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara and theft of resources; the failure of the rest of the world to try to persuade Serbia that it has lost Kosovo, the hugely irrational and destructive attitude of Greece on the Macedonian name issue; and the groupthink policy of supporting a “government” in Somalia which barely controls its own presidential palace while ignoring those who actually run substanial chunks of the former country’s territory and do so reasonably well. There are others but those are the ones I am most familiar with.

   On a more personal and professional level, now that I am effectively a consultant, I give people advice all the time, and have to live with the ego shock when they don’t take it. I think my advice is worth quite a lot, so I am usually more alarmed on their behalf than on my own, but there is a bit of both in there.
   

I had been meaning to read this for ages, and then got myself talked into doing a paper on its subject at a conference tomorrow, which provided a fairly massive incentive to buckle down to it. I was wrong to dawdle; Wars, Guns and Votes is a lucidly written analysis of the effects and causes of democracy and good governance in the poorest countries of the world, whose inhabitants Collier describes in a previous book as “the bottom billion”. Collier’s findings are disturbing and provocative, but based on good hard research. He states that:

1. democratic poor countries are more at risk of violence than non-democratic poor countries (for rich countries, the opposite is the case)
2. This is because holding elections in poor and repressive states does nothing to improve the chances of good governance and incentivises violent behaviour from both government and opposition (and reinforces habits of bad governance, whoever wins)
3. Ethnically diverse poor countries are more at risk of violence – though the key finding here is that ethnic diversity makes it more difficult to run a state but usually helps the private sector to develop more rapidly
4. Post-conflict settlements are more durable in repressive states than democratic ones (Angola vs Sri Lanka)
5. UN peacekeeping, or any international security guarantee of intervention against potential spoilers, is by far the most cost-effective short-term means of preserving peace agreements
6. Though in the long term, economic development is the only real guarantee of peace
7. Post-conflict aid also helps to restore financial and human capital, though perhaps 11% (a surprisingly precise figure) gets diverted to military expenditure
8. Guns in Africa are very cheap, and international arms embargoes ignored by non-OECD countries
9. Civil wars are more likely in countries which
   1. have low per capita income
   2. have a low or negative rate of economic growth
   3. are dependent on exporting natural resources
   4. have more ethnic and religious diversity
   5. have more young men aged between 15 and 29
   6. are smaller
   7. have mountains
   8. are poor and democratic, or rich and repressive
   9. have already had a civil war
10. A very few coups are good, but all civil wars are bad; and there is no way to tell if a particular coup will be good or bad.
11. coups are
    1. no less likely in democracies than in repressive states, unless the state is very efficient in its repression
    2. likely to lead to further coups
    3. more likely in poor states and states with low or negative economic growth
    4. less common than they used to be
    5. less likely if the president adopts a term limit for himself, especially if he then sticks to it
    6. not especially affected in likelihood by the level of military spending
12. Small states, especially poor small states, will find it particularly difficult to provide adequate internal security (here he sneers at several small states which I know)

I must say that I am not happy with his findings that small states and diverse states are less secure. It seems to me a bit contradictory anyway; a Serbia trying to hand onto Kosovo, or a Sudan trying to hang onto its southern parts, doesn’t look all that viable to me. On the other hand, one obvious solution that leaps to mind for me which Collier doesn’t mention is that African countries should start negotiating regional security guarantees à la OSCE, in order to drive down military spending and boost disarmament.

Collier does have four provocative policy prescriptions, all of which should be seen in the context of his finding that democracies are fragile in poor countries, so the answer is to stabilise them until they are economically stable (at per capita income of $2700, which again seems remarkably precise):

1. The international community should offer a military guarantee against internal civil rebellion to governments which are prepared to hold elections that meet international standards and stick by the result. If the government rigs the elections, the guarantee is withdrawn, and potential coup leaders will take note.
2. A slightly incomprehensible proposal which seems to amount to more anti-corruption consultants and international aid funding non-state-run schools and hospitals
3. Aid should be negatively correlated with military expenditure
4. Post-conflict states should be prepared to share sovereignty with the international community in appropriate ad-hoc arrangements.

Apart from the second proposal, which I didn’t understand, the rest all seems sensible to me; there is more to be said on post-conflict protectorates, of which Bosnia, which I know best, developed in its own very peculiar way and is now finding it difficult to wind down, but has at least played an important role in preventing a further outbreak of war.

Anyway, a fascinating and thought-provoking book; now I just have to add some of my own ideas to it before tomorrow morning. These may include thoughts on both justice and gender, since he says noting at all about either of those rather important topics.

It seems like it was only a few days ago that I was reading a new Doctor Who novel by Justin Richards. Oh yeah, that’s because it was only a few days ago. And having finished Option Lock yesterday morning, I put the new Jago and Litefoot plays on to listen to on the way home at the end of the day; and who do you thinlk wrote the first of them?

Anyway, Option Lock takes us to the present day, where the inheritor of an ancient alien conspiracy happens to be playing a key role in international politics. Once you accept the rather implausible premise that the bad guy allows the Doctor and Sam to cultivate his acquaintance and enjoy his hospitality in the first place, the plot careers along at a great pace, with twists and reveals which were just the right side of keeping me wondering what Richards would think of next rather than being irritated with him for jerking the story around on a whim. The biggest problem with the EDAs so far for me is the inconsistent characterisation of Sam; it would be nice if this developed into a protrayal of a young woman’s personal growth, but I am not holding my breath.

asks, following Martin Wisse: Which of the 117 authors listed on Sandra McDonald’s periodic table of women in science fiction have you read? Following the rules, I’ve bolded the ones I own (or have owned) books by, italicised the women I’ve read something of (short stories count), and starred those I have never heard of. James points out also that there are a number of people on this list whose work he is familiar with who don’t fit the stated criteria well. People who fall into that category get underlined. I’d like to add a <flash> also for those I have actually met, but that would be too much like bragging.

Andre Norton
C. L. Moore
Evangeline Walton
Leigh Brackett
Judith Merril
Joanna Russ
Margaret St. Clair
Katherine MacLean
Carol Emshwiller
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zenna Henderson
Madeline L’Engle
Angela Carter
Ursula LeGuin
Anne McCaffrey
Diana Wynne Jones
Kit Reed
James Tiptree, Jr.
Rachel Pollack
Jane Yolen
*Marta Randall
Eleanor Arnason
Ellen Asher
Patricia A. McKillip
Suzy McKee Charnas
Lisa Tuttle
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Tanith Lee
Pamela Sargeant
Jayge Carr
Vonda McIntyre
Octavia E. Butler
Kate Wilhelm
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Sheila Finch
Mary Gentle
*Jessia Amanda Salmonson
C. J. Cherryh
Joan D. Vinge
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Datlow
Nancy Kress
Pat Murphy
Lisa Goldstein
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Mary Turzillo
Connie Willis
*Barbara Hambly
*Nancy Holder
Sheri S. Tepper
Melissa Scott
Margaret Atwood
Lois McMaster Bujold
*Jeanne Cavelos
Karen Joy Fowler
Leigh Kennedy
*Judith Moffett
Rebecca Ore
Emma Bull
Pat Cadigan
Kathyrn Cramer
*Laura Mixon
Eileen Gunn
Elizabeth Hand
Kij Johnson
Delia Sherman
Elizabeth Moon
*Michaela Roessner
Terri Windling
*Sharon Lee
Sherwood Smith
Katherine Kurtz
Margo Lanagan
Laura Resnick
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Sheila Williams
Farah Mendlesohn
Gwyneth Jones
*Ardath Mayhar
Esther Friesner
Debra Doyle
Nicola Griffith
Amy Thomson
Martha Wells
Catherine Asaro
Kate Elliott
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Shawna McCarthy
Caitlin Kiernan
Maureen McHugh
Cheryl Morgan
Nisi Shawl
Mary Doria Russell
Kage Baker
Kelly Link
*Nancy Springer
J. K. Rowling
Nalo Hopkinson
Ellen Klages
Tananarive Due
M. Rickert
Theodora Goss
Mary Anne Mohanraj
*S. L. Viehl
Jo Walton
*Kristine Smith
*Deborah Layne
Cherie Priest
Wen Spencer
K. J. Bishop
Catherynne M. Valente
Elizabeth Bear
*Ekaterina Sedia
Naomi Novik
Mary Robinette Kowal
Ann VanderMeer

(hoping that I haven’t somehow bolded any who haven’t actually published any books that I could own…)

Palimpsest probably gets my vote for the Hugo this year. Like The City & The City, its central device is a parallel place visible just out of the corner of one’s eye; but where Miéville takes this concept as background, hangs a murder mystery over it, and then disappoints with the big reveal at the end, in Valente’s book the parallel city practically is the narrative, as her four protagonists work their way towards it and to the eventual climax.

I cannot remember a recent Hugo nominee as erotic as Palimpsest, which has already won the Lambda Award for best LGBT sf novel of the year. The prose is generally rich and luscious. I was completely seduced!

Here.

Non-Fiction 4 (YTD 26)
   

Fiction (non-sf) 3 (YTD 26)
   

SF (non-Who) 8, counting Cordelia’s Honor as two (YTD 40)
      

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 28)
   

Comics 3 (YTD 5)
  

7/22 (YTD 29/125) by women (Hunt, Kirino, Baker, Rowling, Priest, 2xBujold)
2/22 (YTD 11/125) by PoC (Kirino, Hosseini)
4/22 owned for more than a year (Cordelia’s Honor [2xreread], Half-Life of a Zealot, Transit)
1 other reread (Lord of the Flies), total YTD rereads 11/125
Page count ~5,800 (YTD ~37,100)