Barry Letts’ last novel, published in 2005 just after New Who began, but taking the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier to investigate a strange cult based around a mind-altering drug and rescuing Sarah’s gormless assistant Jeremy (from The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space). It’s not great, to be honest; the story rambles and characters make rather arbitrarily stupid decisions in order to prolong the plot. But we should take it as what it is, a farewell note to the series from one of its veteran producers.
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Links I found interesting for 19-05-2014
- The 2014 Election Is the Least Important in Years
Sometimes it’s good for us commentators to admit that it doesn’t matter much!
May Books 2) 10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights, by Ryu Mitsuse
A relative got this for me, having spotted that it was being described as a great Japanese sf novel – in fact, it was ranked in a 2006 poll of Japanese readers as the greatest Japanese sf novel of all time. I was a little baffled at first, as we moved from Plato to Buddha to Jesus as incarnations of non-human entities; was this a Shaggy God story? Though I'll admit that it was very interesting to see a non-Christian writer's take on the New Testament, and in the end the Buddha and sf do seem to find a harmonious coexistence after exciting and occasionally confusing conflicts. I finished it rather puzzled; the book seemed to owe a lot to Childhood's End, and a little to the New Wave, but not much to more recent genre developments.
The mystery was resolved when I realised that 百億の昼と千億の夜 was published in 1967, so it's not very surprising that it reflects the concerns of that decade. It is the only one of Mitsuse's 20-odd novels to have been published in English; while the Japanese graphic story-telling tradition has a huge English-language following, this seems to be less true of unillustrated prose. While I regret not having better access to this particular tradition, I do hope that it's moved on a bit from 1967.
Moonflesh, by Mark Morris
Oh dear. There are some nice ideas in this Fifth Doctor / Nyssa audio; a country-house story in the same style as Black Orchid and The Unicorn and the Wasp, an alien which turns out to be a bit different from what we might have expected. But the guest characters are total cliches, including in particular Silver Crow, a mystical Native American played by a white English actor – that’s the worst, though the doomed lesbian is pretty facepalming as well. The cast give it their best, but this should have been looked at more carefully before it was made.
Links I found interesting for 18-05-2014
- Iain Duncan Smith used false statistics to justify disability benefit cuts
British govt’s war on the disabled, justified by lies.
- Don’t Diss Cheap Smartphones. They’re About to Change Everything
The next stage of the revolution.
May Books 1) Neptune’s Brood, by Charles Stross
The first of this year’s Hugo nominees which I got after nominations had been announced. It’s set in the same universe as Saturn’s Children but that really doesn’t matter, as it’s a very different book – unusually for SF (though much less unusually for Stross) one of the central themes is future economics, specifically the issue of currency and cash flow between worlds which are separated by light years and where information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light. On top of a decent plot, there is an excellent underwater city, priests, pirates (who may or may not be insurers), and reflections on the complex family dynamics of bespoke clone sisters. I will still rank Ancillary Justice higher, but this gets a good Hugo vote from me.
More Blake’s 7 audios
The Magnificent Four, by Simon Guerrier
False Positive, by Eddie Robson
Wolf, by Nigel Fairs
The second season of Blake’s 7 audios, again similar in format to the earlier Companion Chronicles, with one or two actors from the original series with maybe a guest performer telling a story as it happened to them. Released in 2012.
The Magnificent Four has a brilliant concept: Avon and Cally, played as ever by Paul Darrow and Jan Chappell, find themselves on a ship very like the Liberator with a crew that is a weird echo of their own. It’s a very interesting exploration of how the set-up for the show might look from a different angle, decently executed.
I was a bit less sure about False Positive, by Eddie Robson, which relies on Gareth Thomas and a dubious doctor played by Beth Chalmers, and a plot line where reality may or may not be being bent; is Blake on drugs? Or just pretending? Or really Blake at all? The resolution was satisfactory but not so sure about the journey.
Finally, Wolf, by Nigel Fairs, brings Jacqueline Pearce back as Servalan, along witgh Jan Chappell as Cally and Anthony Howell’s Auron scientist Gustav Nyrron, in a story of loyalty and treachery, which lost a little from not having a bigger cast. But Jan Chappell has really found her pace with Cally, perhaps a little more so than she ever did on TV.
Links I found interesting for 17-05-2014
- What do Europeans call a platypus?
Because you really needed to know.
- The London Evolution Animation
The Streets of London (historical) – let me show you something!
- The Google, the Bad and the Ugly
I need to make a point of watching @brusselsgeek on Fridays.
- Trouble in Western Sahara
Some excellent mythbusting.
April Books 20) Other People’s Countries: A Journey into Memory, by Patrick McGuinness
I don’t know how I heard of this – possibly through a Facebook recommendation, since I can’t find it in emails – but it was a good recommendation. McGuinness’s mother comes from Bouillon in southern Belgium, and it is basically his second home despite his British upbringng (Irish grandparents, diplomat father from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Welsh-speaking children). It’s a lovely exploration of the historic town and its people, and the author’s own background, through very short snippets of narrative, occasional poetry, and the auithor’s own photographs. you don’t have to be Belgian or even like Belgium much to appreciate it (though it will make more sense if you have enough French to understand why it’s funny that Kevin Keegan should be known to locals as Kevin Qui Gagne). A lovely book.
April Books 19) Need for Certainty, by Robert Towler
So, apparently lots of people wrote letters to John A.T. Robinson about their understanding of faith; and years later this sociologist read through them all to see if he could find any common threads. The answers were actually quite interesting – he finds basically five strands of belief among the correspondents, who presumably would all have positioned themselves within or close to 1970s British Anglicanism. Some (“exemplarism”) want to follow Jesus Christ as a model for humanity on an emotional level; some (“conversionism”) are deeply invested in the experience of being born again and how to share that with others; some (“theism” are interested more intellectually ni the nature of God; some (“Gnosticism”) are much more into a spiritual connection with the unknowable, whatever it is; and some (“traditionalism”) like the Church because it’s there. Obviously there would be overlaps between these in the experience of any particular person.
I have always found it striking that the Church of England was able to embrace such diversity of doctrine and approach. But I did find slightly frustrating this (admittedly very short) study’s omission to enquire as to whether these five strands (or their equivalents) could be found within other religious traditions, both Christian and non-Christian, or indeed within other non-religious belief systems. I wouldn’t be vastly surprised to find that they are replicated, in different stengths, in any majority religious tradition in a given country. (I would expect minorities to have a more homogenous approach; but it would be interesting to test that too.)
Links I found interesting for 16-05-2014
- EU secret revealed: Rome Treaty was signed on blank sheet
Hidden history!
- UK support for staying in the EU at its highest level since before the 1992 ERM crisis
Interesting!
- A Forgotten Front Line
Hundreds killed during the 20-year”ceasefire”.
- Belgium Gets Hacked… Again
So that’s why they aren’t answering my emails!!
- My one conversation with Jean-Luc Dehaene, who has died aged 73
“The big mistake was when federal elections got out of step with regional votes.”
- Northern Ireland Elections site
Now updated with info about local and European elections next week.
April Books 18) Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell
I’m not sure that I’d read any of Orwell’s non-fiction of any length before. It is a great personal account of taking up arms in an idealistic struggle, and finding that the grim realities are not especially glamorous, and that indeed the political leadership is more concerned with internal manœuvring for power on their own side than with actually, y’know, winning the war against Franco. Orwell is particularly bitter against the Communists, who were by his account instructed by Moscow to sell out genuine revolutionaries in order to safeguard the USSR’s wider geopolitical position, and it’s an important and vehement reminder that most of the Western Left, back in the day, were very hostile to the Soviets. His descriptions of the reality of fighting are vivid as well, both inching ground off the Franco forces in the mountains, and the internal fighting up and down the Ramblas (or more accurately between hotels and the Barcelona telephone exchange) when the other shoe finally dropped. It reminded me of accounts I have picked up from more recent conflicts in the Balkans and Cyprus – not from the peacekeepers but from primary combatants. There’s a fascinating sub-plot about the use and abuse of information to shape the received narrative of what is going on during wartime, but that’s not the primary focus here; Orwell addressed it pretty well in both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. A great and short book, which everyone should read.
Top unread non-fiction:
Peleponnesian War | Innocents Abroad | Terre des Hommes | The Hero with a Thousand Faces | Race of a Lifetime / Game Change | Proust and the Squid | The Tipping Point | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Elementary Forms of Religious Life | Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | History of Christianity | History of the World in 100 Objects | A Room of One’s Own | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | The Last Mughal | Reading the Oxford English Dictionary | Jane Austen | Homage to Catalonia | The Road to Middle Earth | Essence of Christianity | The Strangest Man
April Books 17) Assassin’s Quest, by Robin Hobb
Last volume of the huge epic Farsser Trilogy (at 848 pages it’s the longest book I’ve read so far this year, more than 100 pages longer than either Buddenbrooks or Dominion which are both in the low 700s, and so is Het Verdriet van België which I’ve just started). It is pretty much a satisfactory conclusion to the epic, though we do seem to take a long time getting to the retrieval of the lost king and climax of the story, and then the ending felt, well, not rushed, but at a pace I could have coped with the rest of the book being written at. It’s been interesting to read these more or less at the same time as Patrick Rothfuss, who takes quite a similar situation, a slightly less attractive central character, but does perhaps more interesting things with it.
Links I found interesting for 15-05-2014
- Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable, Posing Long-Term Risks from Rising Seas to Millions
Live near the coast? Move!
- Language map: What’s the most popular language in your state?
Other than English. (Or Spanish.)
- Autism’s early child
Half a century on. (Piece from 2011)
- No, Sanctions Didn’t Force Iran to Make a Deal
Busting the myth.
- Game of Thrones hides secret Monty Python reference in new episode
Now, *that* shows commitment!
April Books 16) Cheese, by Willem Elsschot
One of the Great Belgian Novels which you may not have heard of, it’s a fairly short parable about a middle-class senior clerk in Antwerp who gets ideas above his station and takes an assignment as representative for Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg of a major Dutch cheese company. He hopes to show his neighbours and rivals that he is made of sterner stuff than they imagined, which I guess sums up Belgian national aspirations of the 1930s (and perhaps not only then). Of course it all goes wrong, and he has to return to his previous job, pretending that none of this ever happened. I bought and read it in English, but the Dutch original is here (warning: annoying pop-up asking you to participate in a survey).
Wednesday reading
Current
Cyberabad Days, by Ian McDonald
Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood
Last books finished
Warbound, by Larry Correia
The Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker
The Rise and Fall of Languages, by R.M.W. Dixon
Mr Norris Changes Trains, by Christopher Isherwood
[Doctor Who] The Death of Art by Simon Bucher-Jones
Parasite, by Mira Grant
Last week’s audios
[Doctor Who] Dark Eyes, by Nicholas Briggs
[Charlotte Pollard] The Lamentation Cipher, by Jonathan Morris
Next books
Het Verdriet van België, by Hugo Claus
The Road To Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, by Mary and Bryan Talbot
[Doctor Who] Anachrophobia by Jonathan Morris
Books acquired in last week
The Blazing World, by Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle
Betelgeuse #1: La planète, by Leo
Links I found interesting for 14-05-2014
- Welcome to Planet Voronoi
Redrawing the world’s boundaries by location of capitals.
- The EP Ignobel Prize: poll of the oddest behaviour of MEPs 2009-2014
Some corkers here.
- Scottish independence
@amendlocke (Ken MacLeod) explains why he is against.
April Books 15) The Ocean At The End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
One of Gaiman’s excellent shorter pieces, with a boy who doesn’t quite understand what’s going on in the world around him, partly because it’s incomprehensible adult stuff and partly because it’s scary monsters from another dimension threatening to destroy the world. I felt he was drawing from a deeper well here than in, say, Coraline or The Graveyard Book, and it was more successful as a result. I find Gaiman more interesting when he dares to try something a little newer.
April Books 14) Understanding the Lord of the Rings, eds Rose Zimbardo & Neil Isaacs
A very interesting collection of essays about Tolkien, of which the two standout pieces are “Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship” by Marion Zimmer Bradley, about love and heroism and how they apply to LotR, and “The Road Back to Middle-earth” by Tom Shippey, unlike the others specially commissioned for this volume, describing in detail the differences between the three Peter Jackson films and the books, and analysing why those choices were made. The pieces by C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden, and Patrick Grant’s reflection on Tolkien and Jung, are pretty good too. Some of the others have been slightly overtaken by events, specifically by the publication of The Silmarillion and the History of Middle Earth series. But it’s well worth getting hold of for Bradley, Shippey, Lewis, Auden and Grant.
April Books 13) The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith
Well, you know, nothing much ever actually happens in these books. Our heroine is called in to solve some mysterious deaths; but the answer is obvious, and anyway the culprit is not brought to justice. Another character resigns from her job; and then changes her mind. Yet another character gets a new car; but it crashes and is wrecked, though he is uninjured. Those who like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing that they like.
Links I found interesting for 12-05-2014
- What Not To Say to a Parent of an Autistic Child
Yep, had all of these.
- Voters can’t name their MEPs as poll highlights disengagement with EU
Must try harder.
- Still Paying For The Civil War
The 84-year-old whose father just missed Gettysburg.
- Eurovision: A continent divided in its sexual attitudes?
Less than you might have thought, apparently.
- Why can’t you remember being a baby? Science explains
The answer lies in neurogenesis. (It says here.)
April Books 12) Deathless, by Catherynne A. Valente
Didn’t quite work for me, I’m afraid. Heartfelt and detailed evocation of Russian legends and how they might have played out for real in the early years of Stalinism, and I picked up amusing references to those excellent books The Twelve Chairs and The Master and Margarita, but I didn’t care about the characters very much. Obviously appeals to a lot of people so I’m in a minority here.
April Books 11) Revelation, by C. J. Sansom
I’m even further behind with bookblogging than I was last time I complained about being far behind with bookblogging, but I will eventually catch up, even if it means only thumbnail write-ups for some books.
This won’t be one of those. By peculiar coincidence I was reading this at the same time as two other books with a Tudor setting, the sternly historical Anglicising the Government of Ireland and the less factually based Doctor Who ebook A Handful of Stardust. Revelation is set a bit earlier, in the last years of the reign of Henry VIII, and involves an established character, lawyer Matthew Shardlake, pursuing a serial killer who is repeating the opening of the seals in the Book of Revelation. I quite enjoyed the mystery and some of the chrome (the henchman’s unhappy marriage, the African doctor) but thought that Sansom laid it on a bit thick in invoking Copernicus and other contemporary thinkers (De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium as a topic of conversation in London in its year of publication? Hardly!) and also overestimates the power of the Tudor police state in successfully covering up gruesome murders, particularly the ones it wasn’t actually responsible for. Hilary Mantel catches the idiom of the period much more convincingly in Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. But it is entertaining enough.
Links I found interesting for 11-05-2014
- Voting advice websites
Asimov saw it coming.
Science fiction and fantasy set in Ireland
Somewhat out of the blue, I’ve had two messages today from people urging me to add particular works to my (very out-of-date) list of science fiction and fantasy set in Ireland. Has there been a link to it somewhere than I don’t know about?
Links I found interesting for 09-05-2014
- JSCEM Recommends Optional Preferential Voting for the Senate
Australian proposal to help bigger political parties beat smaller ones.
- First Job Dictionary
What those ads really mean.
- Apples of Eden: Saving the Wild Ancestor of Modern Apples
Ancient fruit.
Links I found interesting for 08-05-2014
- Independentism and the European Union
Lucid analysis from EU enlargement guru Graham Avery.
- Wikipedia, the Difficulties of Mapping World Religions, and a Most Bizarre Map
Someone is Wrong on the Internet.
- What are the marginal European Parliament seats in the UK?
I have crunched the numbers.
- The Hackers Who Recovered NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos
… at an abandoned McDonald’s.
- Khiva
Peter presses onwards through Central Asian history.
- State Executioners: Untrained, Incompetent, and “Complete Idiots”
Sheer barbarism.
- Nagorny Karabakh: Keys to a Settlement
US co-mediator speaks.
- Rights concerns cast shadow on Azerbaijan’s political rise
@ESI_EU and @giorgi_gogia are quoted.
Wednesday reading
Current
The Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker
Warbound, by Larry Correia
Mr Norris Changes Trains, by Christopher Isherwood
Last books finished
Neptune’s Brood, by Charles Stross
10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights, by Ryu Mitsuse
The Finches of Mars, by Brian Aldiss
[Doctor Who] Island of Death, by Barry Letts
Last week’s audios
[Vienna Salvatore] The Memory Box, by Jonathan Morris
[Blake’s 7]: The Armageddon Storm, by Cavan Scott
Next books
Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood
Cyberabad Days, by Ian McDonald
The Road To Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
[Doctor Who] The Death of Art by Simon Bucher-Jones
Books acquired in last week (actually some from birthday weekend which didn’t get logged then)
The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White
Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
The Prisoner: A Day in the Life, by Hank Stine
Monkey Planet, by Pierre Boulle
Carson of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Saga, Vol. 2, by Brian K Vaughan
Gallimaufry: A Collection of Short Stories, by Colin Baker
Buffy: The Lost Slayer v1: Prophecies, by Christopher Golden
Buffy: The Lost Slayer v2: Dark Times, by Christopher Golden
Buffy: The Lost Slayer v3: King of the Dead, by Christopher Golden
Buffy: The Lost Slayer v4: Original Sins, by Christopher Golden
Links I found interesting for 07-05-2014
- What price for your nation’s soul?
The sale of Blencathra.
- The Arms of Individuals in Same-Sex Marriages
Garter, Clarenceux, and Norroy and Ulster speak.
- Pyramid Energy
Giza v Apollo.