• Disability benefit assessments ‘unfair’, says ex-worker
  
  An Atos whistleblower’s tale of the war on the disabled.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• World’s fish have been moving to cooler waters for decades, study finds – Washington Post
  
  (tags: )
• The Cabinet of tomorrow?
  
  Predictions from 1997; no Cameron, Miliband or Clegg!
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• 3-D Scans Reveal Caterpillars Turning Into Butterflies
  
  Wow.
  (tags: )
• A vote for Europe
  
  Pär Stenbäck rejects despair.
  (tags: eu )

He was wearing a white T-shirt with the slogan My companion went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

I thought I had read all of the Amy and Rory books, before the first Clara ones come out, but realised I had missed a couple. This is from the Quick Reads series, and it’s a typically competent story from Rayner (who is one of the most prolific authors of written Who these days); take the basic concept of Blink, add a dodgy stage magician (reminiscent of Priest’s Prestige?) and the X-Factor, and a twist in the tale involving a beloved small dog, and then update it for a new Tardis crew. Short but very sweet.

Chronicler dipped his pen and Kvothe looked down at his folded hands for as long as it takes to draw three deep breaths.
Then he began to speak.

After a run of epic fantasy novels that didn’t really impress me, I picked this up, the last of my Christmas presents, noted with dismay that the last page was numbered 662, sighed and started reading.

But in fact I really really enjoyed it. For once, the world-building and languages worked for me; the coming-of-age story of the disguised magician hero had some new wrinkles; the university setting of much of the book has of course echoes of other fantasy educational establishments, but remains very much its own; and basically, Kvothe as a character engaged my interest and I needed to find out what happened next. And having reached page 662, I still want to know what happens next, and will get more books in the series in order to find out.

• Hamlet Mash Up (2013)
  
  198 Hamlets in 15 minutes!
  (tags: shakespeare )
• How Bernard Cornwell became a writer
  
  It’s all because of BBC Northern Ireland.
  (tags: northernireland )
• Pregnancy and consent
  
  "Yes is meaningless if there is no way to say No."
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Who should not be making the abortion law?
  
  "The Irish government is finally getting round to drafting a new law on abortion. The law will only cover cases where the mother’s life is in danger without an abortion. Even so, the Catholic Church in Ireland is opposing the legislation. How fixated do you have to be to oppose an abortion where the mother (and of course, the baby), will die without one?"
  (tags: Ireland sexandgenderandsexuality )
• The case for Britain in Europe
  
  by one M. Thatcher.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )

Current:
The Peoples of Middle Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (just started)
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (halfway through)

Last books finished
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake
The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash
Doors Open by Ian Rankin
Toy Soldiers by Paul Leonard

Next books
The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness
Final Sacrifice, by Tony Lee (10th Doctor comic)
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash

Books acquired in last week:
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: an Autobiography, by J.G. Ballard

LT Unread books tally: 446

• Dull Flag and Tongue of Gangsta
  
  The Place-names of Shetland and Orkney
  (tags: scotland maps )
• Foreign policy could change Europe beyond recognition
  
  …if given a chance, says @Jan_Techau.
  (tags: eu )
• Space is now a reality TV show
  
  @cmdr_hadfield ‘s success.
  (tags: space )
• One cent, two cents, nonsense
  
  The small change costs more than it is worth! (Thanks @quarsan)
  (tags: eu )

• So Long, Commander Hadfield
  
  Hadfield’s greatest moments of the last five months.
  (tags: space )
• From Winterfell to King’s Landing
  
  Strange Maps looks at Westeros.
  (tags: maps sf )
• The Down Survey of Ireland
  
  A fantastic archive – Ireland in the wake of Cromwell.
  (tags: maps Ireland )
• European Commission not seeking to restrict seeds
  
  Another Euromyth busted.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Indian historical linguistics: Setting the record straight
  
  The Economist on Sanskrit.
  (tags: linguistics )

      A short Metro ride from the centre of the city brought him to a station called Schuman, from which Fitz emerged eating a chocolate-coated waffle, to find himself at a roundabout. Apparently roundabouts were quite rare in Belgium and from what Fitz had seen of the local driving habits he could see why – the average Belgian apparently happier to drive in a straight line, no matter who or what might be in their way, rather than have the inconvenience of having to steer in a circle. Consulting the curious local version of an A-to-Z – a thick handbook whose map pages were so small that you had hardly begun to walk before you needed to turn the page – Fitz took a side street away from the EC offices, past a clutch of Indian restaurants (must be here for the Brits, he thought as he passed) and behind the giant and futuristic Berlaymont building.
      According to his guide book the Berlaymont building had been constructed in the 1970s to house the European Commission but in the 1990s it had been found to be full of dangerous asbestos and had been evacuated. Since then it had been wrapped in plastic, waiting for the asbestos to be safely removed. So far it had been closed for getting on for ten years and most people at the Commission considered it a long-running joke that it would be reopening ‘soon’.
      Fitz almost missed the street he was looking for. The street sign was in Flemish – Stevinstraat – and he had to look twice to see the French translation, Rue Stevin.

I quite liked this Eighth Doctor novel when I first read it in late 2008, and I liked it more this time round. In particular, Fitz’s return after a five-book gap is very welcome, making the reader (or at least this reader) feel that we are getting back to a format we recognise; and new companion Anji has a far better start than the unfortunate Sam or the incomprehensible Compassion. I also appreciated the amnesiac Doctor’s vague memories of his previous life – I find the Eighth Doctor’s repeated vulnerability to amnesia a bit tedious, but this is now the sixth successive amnesiac!Doctor novel so the irritation is wearing off. The notion of orbital launching sites either on the Belgian coast or in Southern England, with or without alien technology, is a bit fanciful but I’ll forgive it. A novel that makes a lot more sense as part of the sequence but is probably decent enough on its own.

I haven’t given up on my New Who rewatch – on the contrary, I’m about to get to The Last Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith – but I am way behind on writing it up; three entries, to be precise, this one and the two I had planned for Season 3 of Doctor Who. Anyway, better late than never. These entries will be brief, with one exception for the story I really hated.

Reset begins with bringing back Martha Jones, which of course is a winner by any standards, and ends by killing Owen, a bold stroke – especially since he is killed by Mr Robinson from Neighbours (I never trusted that man). Martha going undercover was very reminiscent of Harry Sullivan in Robot. The Singularity Scalpel is pretty scary, especially when it’s being used to save Martha from a gruesome fate.

Dead Man Walking is a bit weaker. Jack just happening to find the right weird little girl who knew where the spare Resurrection gauntlet was, hmmm. The giant reset button at the end to restore Martha back to health, hmmm. The bits in between were better; Owen adapting to his new existence, and the horror in the hospital, both well enough done.

But we are back on form with A Day In The Death, tremendously lifted by both Burn Gorman doing both comedy and pathos as dead Owen, and Richard Briers even though all he does is lie there dying. The biggest downside is Torchwood’s peculiar approach to human resources issues, which hasn’t improved since the end of the previous season. (I confess that I missed the references to Thomas Covenant, and will watch for them if I give this episode another go.)

And Something Borrowed shows Torchwood doing comedy and largely succeeding at it. I don’t insist that Who and its spinoffs be serious all the time, but I do prefer it not to be half-hearted, and this episode compares rather favourably with the equivalent Buffy (Hell’s Bells). Nerys Hughes is fantastic, especially as the shape-changing monster, and the Rhys/Gwen/Jack tension is done rather better than usual. Eve Myles gets a chance to really shine here.

I didn’t much like From Out Of The Rain when I first saw it, but I think I must just have been in a bad mood. Like the other P.J. Hammond episode (Small Worlds) it’s a bit of a step aside from the usual run, reaching back into a black-and-white past; but since Torchwood is supposed to be a decades-old organisation, and Jack a centuries-old time-travelling immortal, that’s appropriate enough. Not trying to hard, yet succeeding. (the Ghostmaker turns up shortly in Who as Davros.)

Chris Chibnall is often the target of fan hostility, but Adrift is one of his better episodes. It’s a bit surprising that a show set in the liminal surroundings of Cardiff Bay did not make much of the sea as a place of horror (some of the books, notably Another Life and Something in the Water, do use it). The idea of the island of secrets, itself one of Jack’s many secrets, and the human consequences of its existence, is all basically sound and executed well.

If Adrift is one of Chibnall’s better episodes, Fragments is definitely one of his worst. I sat through it basically scoring to see if it is as bad as End of Days. My verdict: not quite, but nearly. The idea of an entire bombed building collapsing on our team but in such a way that they are all able to walk away afterwards is offensively ludicrous.The origin stories for Owen, Toshiko and especially Jack are just offensive. The bit with Ianto and the pterodactyl is the only thing that lifts this dismal piece of work above End of Days, and not very far at that.

Finally, Exit Wounds is not brilliant but not awful either. The biggest problem is that Lachlan Niebohr as Jack’s brother Gray appears to be asleep while acting, which is challenging if you are playing the mega-villain. The other big problem is that too much is packed in and we barely adjust to Spike Captain John Hart being the psychopath before we discover that it’s actually Gray who is the psychopath. (So why did Spike Captain John Hart blow up the building last week then?) But one can forgive it a lot for the bold step of killing off Owen (again) and Toshiko. And the notion of Jack being frozen since Roman times is also rather good, so good that Moffat uses it for Who a few years later.

Apart from the abysmal Fragments, and with some reservations for Dead Man Walking and Exit Wounds, this run is of much more consistently decent quality than the equivalent run from the first season.

Edited to add: I forgot to do obituaries for Owen and Tosh, the first two regular characters in the Whoniverse to be killed off simultaneously (although for the second time in Owen’s case).

Owen is certainly the more interesting character, converted from total slimeball for most of the first series, to heroic sidekick who sometimes dares to think for himself, to heroic corpse. I never quite liked him but I did become interested in watching him. Burn Gorman of course goes on to greater stuff.

Tosh, on the other hand, gets pencilled in as the geek with occasional disruptive bursts of sexuality rather early in the series, and stays there. What’s noticeable is that she gets three romantic episodes to Owen’s one (Greeks Bearing Gifts, Sleeper and Adam) but she effectively gets a character reset at the end of each, whereas Owen’s romance in Out Of Time is transformative for him. It’s not as important a character in the minds of the writers, and it shows; a Jenna effect, perhaps?

Coming next: Donna Noble!

< The Curse of Fatal Death | The Webcasts | Rose – Dalek | The Long Game – The Parting of the Ways | Comic Relief 2006 – The Girl in the Fireplace | Rise of the Cybermen – Doomsday | Everything Changes – They Keep Killing Suzie | Random Shoes – End of Days | Smith and Jones – 42 | Human Nature / The Family of Blood – Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords & The Infinite Quest | Revenge of the Slitheen – The Lost Boy & Time Crash | Voyage of the Damned – Adam | Reset – Exit Wounds

Just when I was in paradise the phone rang.

This is the very first Lovejoy novel, published in 1977 and adapted for TV as part of the first season in 1986. It is interesting coming to it after having read more than half of the rest of the series. Very few of the other books are really recognisable as murder mysteries; they tend to spiral off into grand conspiracies involving antiques and treachery, ending without much resolution. But here there is an actual suspicious death involving obscure antiques (the eponymous pair of duelling pistols) and when Lovejoy is called upon to locate the pistols he inevitably investigates the murder as well, and what’s more solves it. It is also noticeable that Lovejoy’s supernatural ability to detect antiques is a bit less well developed here than in some later books, and that Tinker Dill (played so lovably by Dudley Sutton on TV) is not the repellent character he becomes later in the sequence.

One very negative point: Lovejoy hits his girlfriend in the first chapter. I am surprised that this was acceptable in 1977 and I would like to think that it would not be acceptable now. I suspect that this (and much else) was omitted from the TV adaptation.

‘I spent a lot of time in the library.’
‘Might explain why I don’t remember you – I only went there the one time, took out The Godfather.’
‘Was that for recreational purposes or for training?’

An excellent story of a raid on the National Gallery of Scotland, mostly from the point of view of the upper-middle class robbers who hire an underworld boss as an accomplice, and also that of the detective investigating them. I expected the tension to be about whether or not they would be caught – and knowing Rankin, either is possible – but in fact there was an excellent twist at the end when the real story is revealed.

I see there’s a new Rebus novel out, coming in paperback next month. One for the list.

Thanks to both Cory Doctorow and Bruce Sterling for linking to this "brief list of misused English terminology in EU publications", one of a staggering number of guidelines for translators in and for the EU institutions.

On one level, it's a fair cop. I have certainly encountered every single usage listed by the writer of the document (attributed to one Jeremy Gardner) during my 14 years in Brussels, particularly in the last six years when my office has been in the heart of the EU quarter. (The document omits "cocktail", which in Brussels means a reception where wine and snacks are served, but never actual cocktails.)

But on the other hand, I find myself dissatisfied with some of the analysis. One or two of the listed usages are clearly wrong – for instance, I'll agree that "punctually" or "opportunity" should never be used as illustrated. However, what is the problem with using "badge" to mean a security pass, even if it is not stuck or sewn onto your clothing? And "comitology" and "cabinet" are certainly terms of art which are taught to every student of EU structures and actually have Wikipedia articles (linked); they may not be in the OED but they clearly have legitimacy through widespread use. This is not just the way the EU crowd write, it is the way they talk, and on one level this looks like an attempt to constrain the natural development of linguistic communication to arbitrary rules set by people who are not in the conversation.

In fairness, this document was intended for a fairly small audience – those translators who are drafting material for readers outside the Eurobubble. Considered as a guide to making EU documents comprehensible to native speakers of English (and those who use it professionally as a second language outside the EU context) it is probably a very useful piece of work. But my anarchist soul wishes it had been presented as a dictionary of the Brussels dialect of English, rather than a finger-wagging set of admonitions about right and wrong usage.

• The last three months on Foursquare
  
  Last 500 mn checkins. Interesting variations – Flanders v Wallonia, north v south Cyprus; Syria a complete blank.
  (tags: maps internet )

Apropos of nothing in particular, in “August” from vol 6 of Sandman, the disguised emperor tells his story to a dwarf.

There was a long silence. Finally the Recruiter said, ‘YOU’RE CORRECT. I’VE MADE A MISTAKE. THE WAR WILL NOW STOP.’

Yet another whiney review from me I’m afraid (I’ll just say that I am really enjoying the books I am reading at present, so things will lighten up when I finish them). Leonard has the Seventh Doctor, Benny, Chris and Roz encountering an alien computer which is kidnapping children in 1919 to turn them into perfect soldiers. Even in 1995, when this was published, this must have seemed a desperate attempt to rewrite The War GamesWarriors of Kudlak takes the same rather improbable wrinkle of using children but does it far far better. The premise is weak, the violence is nasty and gratuitous, and the evil computer is persuaded to see the error of its ways after hearing three sentences from the Doctor. As I read through the New Adventures and the Eighth Doctor Adventures in parallel, the newer strand has generally felt weaker, but that’s not the case this month.

Isidore takes a deep breath. ‘An interplanetary thief is building a picotech machine out of the city itself while the cryptarchs take over people’s minds to try to destroy the zoku colony in order to stop the tzaddikim from breaking their power,’ he says. ‘I want to stop them both.’ He pauses. ‘Also, I think the thief is my real father.’

I had fairly high expectations for this after a run of recent sf books which didn’t really excite me. Unfortunately I didn’t like it quite as much as I had hoped; I thought there was basically some neat ideas and world-building in there, but actually I think Charlie Stross does this sort of thing rather better. Too many made-up words, and present tense throughout didn’t really focus my attention. Maybe I was just in a bad mood.

• Think Again: European Decline
  
  @markhleonard and @hanskundnani tackle seven myths, more or less convincingly.
  (tags: eu )
• Intellectual Biography and Niall Ferguson
  
  Drezner on form.
  (tags: bloggers )
• Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown
  
  "The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology."
  (tags: funny )
• Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t
  
  Broken down by age and sex.
  (tags: genderandsexandsexuality films )
• Ultraconserved words? Really??
  
  Too good to be true.
  (tags: linguistics )
• Vintage Dutch safety posters
  
  Wow.
  (tags: art dutch horribleworkplaceaccidents )
• Michael Gove and ‘correct grammar’: let me explain this slowly
  
  "there is one certain way to make life harder for children to acquire Standard English: creating tests that fail them."
  (tags: ukpolitics education )
• Where on the Blue Marble
  
  Space game!
  (tags: maps space )

I had the flu jab last October, and since then I haven’t needed a day off work for anything more serious than jet-lag.

I cannot remember that ever happening (or, rather failing to happen) before. This last winter was the healthiest of my life that I can recall.

• Eurobubble – Conference, Part 1
  
  First of three 5 minute shorts about Brussels conferences
  (tags: eu )
• Eurobubble – Conference, Part 2
  
  (tags: eu )
• Eurobubble – Conference, Part 3
  
  (tags: eu )
• Google / Landsat, 1984-2011
  
  A terrifying look at how we are changing the world.
  (tags: maps climatechange )
• Colour film of London in 1927
  
  Amazing!
  (tags: film london )

I found out a few weeks ago, greatly to my delight, that the woods near our house are basically full of Bronze Age and Gallo-Roman tumuli. Today being a bank holiday and a fine day, we went out in search of the two nearest (numbered 2 and 3 on the linked map), and found them fairly easily.

Tumuli in a forest don’t photograph well. You need to be on the ground to appreciate why the sudden swell of the land looks obviously and convincingly like a human addition to the land’s natural contours. Presumably this mound, rising barely a metre over the surrounding soil, would have been much more impressive when originally constructed.

And here, the pattern of sunshine and leaves (living and dead) is what catches the eye (quite apart from the lovely human being in the foreground), This one actually had traces of a ditch surrounding it, but I really couldn’t see a way of photographing it.

We walk over our ancestors; these mounds are remnants from the Bronze Age, maybe five thousand years ago. They are a message from two hundred generations before our time: look, we were here too, and some part of us remains.

I've been following the debate on reform of the Seanad (the Irish Senate) with great interest; see here, here, here, here and here. Up to now, my position has been very much in favour of abolition. There is only one other small state in the EU with an upper house (Slovenia); the other ten smaller than Austria (which is federal, and has twice Ireland’s population) get by with one, as do Sweden, Hungary, Portugal and Greece. I therefore welcomed Enda Kenny’s promise, while in opposition, to abolish the Seanad, and actually found Labour even more compelling in the arguments they made in their manifesto (which, quelle surprise, turn out not to actually be binding on their elected representatives).

However. I am reasonably impressed by a 30-page paper with the title “Radical Seanad Reform through Legislative Change”, co-authored by Feargal Quinn, Michael McDowell, Joe O’Toole, Noel Whelan and Katherine Zappone, and published here, here and here. While two of them are serving senators, two of the other three have retired from politics, and Whelan and I wrote a book together exactly ten years ago this spring. Not all details in the paper are correct – Croatia, for instance, went unicameral in 2001 (cf §4.3 on page 18), and not all of them are convincing. But the main argument – that the electoral base for the Seanad is fixed by legislation, not the constitution, and that it could and should be broadened out to include the entire electorate even without a referendum – is thought-provoking.

I found even more interesting the argument for the Seanad’s actual contribution to the legislative process. My own criterion for a useful revising chamber in an otherwise unitary state is that it actually revises, and the evidence here, though skimpy, is fairly compelling (note also this comment on one of my previous posts). I now feel that although my gut sympathy remains with the abolitionists, any referendum proposal to abolish the Seanad will need to demonstrate not only that it makes appropriate adjustments to the various other state structures which would need to be altered because they depend on the existence of the Seanad or its Cathaoirleach, but also that it brings in equivalent or better safeguards against hasty legislation by a unicameral Dáil. These needn’t be constitutional amendments or even legislation – changes to the Dáil’s Standing Orders would probably cut it – but they must be there.

Worth a look if you are interested in upper chambers in general as well.

L’Europe ne se fera pas d’un coup, ni dans une construction d’ensemble : elle se fera par des réalisations concrètes créant d’abord une solidarité de fait. – Robert Schuman

καὶ ταῦτα εἰπὼν βλεπόντων αὐτῶν ἐπήρθη, καὶ νεφέλη ὑπέλαβεν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν. – St Luke

• Ten Things Romans Used for Toilet Paper
  
  Now you know.
  (tags: history )
• 14 May screening of “No Fire Zone” in the European Parliament.
  
  I’ll be there; hope you will too.
  (tags: srilanka )
• @stealthmunchkin’s latest email to the CEO of @btcares
  
  It’s not the despair; it’s the hope.
  (tags: phone )
• Who wants to live forever?
  
  News from Jay Lake; not unexpected, but awful.
  (tags: death )

Current:
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (half-way through) – last of the Christmas presents
Doors Open by Ian Rankin (just started) – second last of the Rankin books
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (just started) – topped the non-fiction poll
Toy Soldiers by Paul Leonard (nearly finished) – next New Adventure
The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash (halfway through) – insomnia reading

Last books finished
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Redshirts, by John Scalzi
Deadly Reunion, by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts

Next books
Miradal: erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud by Hans Baeté et al (birthday book)
The Peoples of Middle Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake

Books acquired in last week:
Miradal: erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud by Hans Baeté et al
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort by Ivan Petrus Adriaenssens

LT Unread books tally: 448

• Hitting Back
  
  About domestic violence.
  (tags: crime sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Abyei on the edge after killing of top Dinka leader
  
  Appalling – UN offers military protection to local chief, Sudanese militia kill him anyway.
  (tags: southsudan )
• Sylvia Browne: is she for real?
  
  Short answer: no. Longer answer: yeugh, what a revolting and disgusting person.
  (tags: wankers )
• After Belfast, Boston
  
  Lisa reflects.
  (tags: northernireland wanton terror )
• Argonauts of the incredibly specific: anthropological field notes on the Liberal Democrat animal
  
  Brilliant but very long: "Do you know what a Blue Letter is? Do you think Focus is a noun? What does the term Shuttleworth mean to you? Have you met Erlend?" Yes, that last one is the real test!
  (tags: ukpolitics libdems )
• There’s little chance of Britain leaving the EU
  
  Peter Kellner (Mr Ashton): referendum (if it happens) will pass.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• A new “why” for climate action
  
  The view from Costa Rica.
  (tags: climatechange )

• Why are there so many female academics in Turkey?
  
  …and so few in Belgium?
  (tags: belgium sexandgenderandsexuality )
• The weirdest sentence in the U.S. constitution
  
  Are Senators sacrosanct?
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Would You Click the Link in This Email That Apparently Tricked the AP?
  
  Lots of people do.
  (tags: hacking )
• Handless Kazakhstan Man Denied British Visa for Lack of Fingerprints
  
  Taking the British government’s war on the disabled to a new front.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Arctic Ocean ‘acidifying rapidly’
  
  *gulp!*
  (tags: climate change )

• Doctor Who fan buys 14,000 books of the TV show on eBay for schools
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: doctorwho )

This year’s Hugo nominations seem to have produced more than the usual grumbling (I am away from base, so won’t link to any of it, and if you are interested you have probably seen it). I admit that I too found the Best Novel shortlist a bit uninspiring. I don’t want to overstate this; I am used to there being a couple of entries on it that leave me cold, and this year I found points of redemption even in my least favourite nominee. Conversely, however, I do normally find that there is at least one nominee that does catch my enthusiasm and which I can then cheer for. That did not really happen this year. As ever, I found the BSFA list more to my taste, which I guess is not so very surprising, in that I have more in common with more of the selectorate.

Anyway, my ranking in this category is:

5) Redshirts, by John Scalzi – a two-joke book, executed in Scalzi’s usual style, which a lot of people clearly like more than I do.

4) Blackout, by “Mira Grant” – more running around to avoid zombies, with characters unsuccessfully seeking closure.

3) 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson – surprisingly tedious romp round the Solar System, wise people from off-Earth kindly decide to fix the planet.

2) Throne Of The Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed – sword and sorcery in richly imagined Arabian-style culture, not very surprising plot and characters.

1) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold – fun, and nearly as good as some of the stuff she wrote twenty years ago.

See also: Best Novella | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

“…the most rational explanation for what does go on in this ship is that a television show intrudes on our reality and warps it. But that’s not the worst thing about it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Finn said. “If that’s not the worst thing, what is?”
“That as far as I can tell,” Jenkins said, “it’s not actually a very good show.”

This is by some way the most widely owned of this year’s Hugo nominees, and it ticks a lot of fannish boxes so will probably win. I myself will put it last. This is basically a two-joke book, and the punch line to the second joke (above) is delivered less than a third of the way through; all the characters sound the same; and we don’t ever get an Explanation for what is going on. Having said that, the third of the three codas, a time-travel parallel worlds love story, is far superior to the rest and I would have given it a much higher ranking if it were nominated on its own in some other category.