We went to the nearby town of Sint-Truiden today, it being a public holiday and the place looking at least vaguely interesting. It is blessed with decently preserved architecture, witness here the town hall and church in the main square:

and here a sculpture dedicated to the area’s main agricultural produce, yer basic fruits:

(You will note Mrs making a rare appearance.)

Some interesting art also in the main square:

Rather gloriously, the tourist agency has put together a Quest for younger visitors, consisting of nine little locked boxes at several of the monuments. You are given a key, and some mildly cryptic clues, and you follow the map and take a puzzle piece out of each box:

You may find yourself distracted en route by unexpected medieval frescos…

…the elaborate astronomical clock of Camille Festraets, including wondrous animated figures which emerge and perform on the hour…

…or even cute baby goats…

…but eventually you will assemble the pieces to form a picture which says, can you see a gate like this?

If you can see such a gate, go through it…

…and you will find the treasure chest in an alcove…

..full of souvenir medals of St Trudo, the patron saint of Sint-Truiden.

Quite a long walk in the end, but a good time was had by all.

Making a start on the nominated works in this year’s Best Graphic Story category of the Hugo Awards. As before, I think there is a valid question of eligibility given that the actual “Witches” storyline is bookended by two other stories between the same covers, and that it’s not really completely resolved; but I think this is a case where the Hugo rules don’t completely match the reality of how graphic stories are published or read.

The central story of Witches has the rise of Baba Yaga as an enemy of the Fables, courageously opposed by the winged monkey Bufkin and his allies; and also a parallel story line of shifts of power among the Fables who are now at their farm, exiled from New York. The former worked better for me, the latter still needing resolution in a future volume.

The first pages of the book, however, are a rather effective vignette of a group we have not encountered before called the Boxers – a fighting order who trap their enemies in large magical boxes; it’s Willingham’s riff on any number of young warrior stories, but done rather well. And the last pages take us back to the former Frog Prince’s new kingdom of Haven, with a parable about peacebuilding in a post-conflict society; I’m sufficiently familiar with these issues from my work that I found it a little didactic, but perhaps that won’t be the general reaction, and some of the character moments were rather memorable.

i) births and deaths

2 June 1922: birth of Carmen Silvera, who played several parts in The Celestial Toymaker (1966) and also Ruth in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), better known in later years as René Artois’s long-suffering wife Edith in ‘Allo! ‘Allo!.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 June 1973: broadcast of third episode of The Green Death. The Doctor and Jo escape from the mine, but the egg they bring back hatches and a maggot threatens Jo.

2 June 1997: publication of The Eight Doctors, by Terrance Dicks, and The Devil Goblins from Neptune, by Martin Day and Keith Topping, launching the Eighth Doctor and Past Doctor adventures respectively.

2 June 2007: broadcast of The Family of Blood. The Doctor sheds his human self and tricks the Family into submission.

iii) date specified in canon

2 June 1866: setting of the Victorian parts of Evil of the Daleks (1967).

2 June 1953: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, as seen in The Idiot’s Lantern (2006).

Fewer than usual this month due to illness, watching Hugo-nominated films, watching longer-than-usual episodes of Old Who and reading Hugo-nominated short fiction.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 27)
The Alexiad, by Anna Comnena
Age of Atrocity, edited by David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait
The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
Who On Earth Is Tom Baker? An Autobiography

Fiction (non-SF) 2 (YTD 21)
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder

SF (non-Who) 4 (YTD 29)
Speaking in Tongues, by Ian McDonald
The Shaping of Middle-Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang
Feed, by Mira Grant

Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane, K9 2 (YTD 33)
The Dimension Riders, by Daniel Blythe
Doctor Who Annual 1984

Comics 2 (YTD 8)
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers vol. 4, by Fumi Yoshinaga
Fables vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover, by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges

~4,500 pages (YTD ~33,300)
5/14 (YTD 19/118) by women (Comnena, Tait, Lahiri, Grant, Yoshinaga)
3/14 (YTD 9/118) by PoC (Lahiri, Chiang, Yoshinaga)
Owned for more than a year: 4 (The Alexiad [reread], Speaking in Tongues [reread], Dimension Riders, Sophie's World)
Also reread: None (YTD 18/118)

Programmed reads: 9 from 10 lists
b) The Innocents Abroad (non-fiction by popularity on LT)
e) and f) Sophie's World (non-genre fiction by popularity on LT and on LJ poll)
g) Speaking in Tongues (sf anthologies in order of entry)
l) Dimension Riders (New Adventures in sequence)
o) Who On Earth Is Tom Baker? (other Old Who by popularity)
p) The Shaping of Middle-Earth (History of Middle Earth in sequence)
r) Age of Atrocity (Tudors and Ireland)
s) The Namesake (books by PoC in order of entry)
t) The Alexiad (books on the shelves at end 2005, otherwise not accounted for, going backwards in LT entry order)

Coming next, possibly:
The Taint by Michael Collier (started)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (started)
Fables vol. 14: Witches by Bill Willingham (started)
Blackout by Connie Willis (started)
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Complete Book of "Thunderbirds" by Chris Bentley
Questioning the Millennium by Stephen Jay Gould
History of the Spanish Inquisition by Joseph Perez
When Santa Fell to Earth by Cornelia Funke
Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin
Eerste Keer by Sibylline
Something In The Water by Trevor Baxendale
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
Irish Magic II edited by Morgan Llywelyn
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish by Neil Gaiman
Spenser's The Faerie Queen – A Selection of Critical Essays edited by Peter C. Bayley
The Lost Road and Other Writings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Left-handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman
Terre Des Hommes by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
State of Change by Christopher Bulis

i) births and deaths

1 June 1947: birth of Jonathan Pryce, who played the Master in The Curse of Fatal Death (1999).

1 June 1991: death of Milton Subotsky, who produced and wrote Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), the two cinema films starring Peter Cushing as Doctor Who.

1 June 2005: death of Geoffey Toone, who played Temmosus in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Hepesh in The Curse of Peladon (1972).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

1 June 1968: broadcast of sixth episode of The Wheel In Space, ending Season 4 of Old Who. The Doctor manages to destroy the Cybermen with the X-ray laser; and Zoe stows away on the Tardis.

1 June 1974: broadcast of fifth part of Planet of the Spiders. The Doctor confronts the Great One, and escapes to Earth with Sarah; but she is under the spiders’ control.

iii) date specified in canon

1 June 1977: Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, as celebrated in Mawdryn Undead (1983).