It’s International Jazz Day today, and though I don’t think of myself as a jazz fan, there’s something incredibly exhilarating and actually revolutionary about the best of it. I remember committing grievous harm against “Take the A Train” in the school band thirty years ago; the song is much stronger than our puny efforts to defeat it, though, and will live on when we are all dust. Here’s the classic film version from 1943, with vocals by Bettie Roché (who, naturally, did not get screen credit). Just give yourself three minutes to listen to it.

• A brief list of misused terms in EU publciations
  
  Updated September 2013.
  (tags: eu english )

• Why a Labour deal might be a better bet for the DUP after the election
  
  I think they’ll go with the winners.
  (tags: ukpolitics northernireland )
• Banned from Tristan da Cunha
  
  A confession.
  (tags: writing )

• Anger Translator Luther at the White House Correspondents Dinner
  
  This is funny.
  (tags: uspolitics funny )
• What Central Europe Really Thinks About Russia
  
  Ivan Krastev writes.
  (tags: bulgaria poland russia eu )
• In Which Edmund Schubert Withdraws From the Hugos
  
  Respect.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )

• Choosing “Sides”
  
  Jim Hines critiques the rhetoric.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• An American Dad Takes Belgian Citizenship So His Expat Son Can Play High-Level Golf
  
  I know the dad.
  (tags: eu usa belgium sport )
• Mustafa Akinci wins northern Cyprus presidential election
  
  Interesting times!!!
  (tags: cyprus )

Thanks to the BBC making all back issues of the Radio Times available online, you can now see what the Beeb put on air on any day since Edwin H. Lemare and Harry Goss-Custard played the organ at Steinway Hall on 30 September 1923. I am looking here at what was broadcast on a particular Wednesday 48 years ago.

On 26 April 1967, BBC One started broadcasting at the curiously precise time of 0938, with the world premiere of a musical piece called The Turtle Drum – words by Ian Serraillier, best known for his 1956 novel The Silver Sword aka Escape from Warsaw about the adventures of four children in Poland immediately after the second world war; music by the future Sir Malcolm Arnold, then best known for his film music including the score for Bridge on the River Kwai, now better remembered for his orchestral works. It’s a pretty high-powered creative team for a piece performed by eleven-year-olds at a school in Thornton Heath. Incidentally both Serraillier and Arnold were pacifists. The Turtle Drum was broadcast in eight parts during the summer term of 1967, and this was the first.

Other things that caught my eye later on BBC One:

An educational programme with the title Power for 1980 – Coal. When 1980 came round in real life, of course, coal was heading for oblivion.

Jackanory with Marian Diamond reading part 3 of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. She lated voicer Galadriel in the BBC Radio Lord of the Rings. This page has pictures of her making phone calls in 1960 and 1974.

This episode (Space Monkey) of Top Cat. (There was also a Magic Roundabout episode, but the Radio Times does not record which one.)

At 6.17 pm (another curiously specific timeslot) we got highlights from that year’s Wembley concert organised by the Stars Oganisation for Spastics (now the Stars Foundation for Cerebral Palsy), featuring Paul Jones, the Kinks and Lulu.

Tomorrow’s World previewed Expo 67 in Montreal, which was then about to open. I remember wandering through its decaying plastic exhibit space five years later.

Then police drama Softly, Softly, starring Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor, reached the 26th episode of its second series.

The Wednesday Play was another repeat, first shown in 1966: The Executioner by Robert Muller, directed by Michael Hayes (who also directed three Doctor Who stories including City of Death), with the cast including a couple of actors (David Garfield, Eileen Way) who also appeared in Doctor Who. It is about the assassination of Trotsky.

BBC One ended its day with a reflection on the life of the Quaker pioneer George Fox, featuring John Abineri (another multiple Who actor) following his path through England with readings by Paul Eddington (who was himself a committed Quaker).

All the presenters of all the current affairs programmes appear to have been men.

As for the relatively new BBC Two, it started with Play School at 1100. One of the presenters was Ann Morrish who was apparently a girlfriend of the then Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton. The other was Gordon Rollings, who had co-presented the very first edition of Play School, the first programme ever shown on BBC Two in 1964.

The channel then took a break, presumably illustrated by a test card (though not the famous girl with the clown, which was first shown only in July 1967) until 7.30 pm, when it returned with a hard-hitting documentary about angling, followed by another about Catholic priests and celibacy. (Actually it’s possible that only one of these was hard-hitting).

It then switched to drama with a thirty-minute theatre piece, Boa Constrictors by William Bast, who is best known now for his early relationship with James Dean and his later show-running of Dynasty spinoff The Colbys. He lived in the UK in the mid-1960s; this play is about a couple attempting to go out for a party while being impeded by their cleaner. (Though the fact that the non-cleaner characters are called Frankie One, Johnny One, Frankie Two, Johnny Two, and Frankie Three and Johnny Three makes it sound interesting, especially as Johnny Two is black and Frankie Three is a man.)

That was followed by the 1943 Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt, and then by the tremendously highbrow experience of Sir Hugh Casson extolling the virtues of St Pancras Station. The evening ended with a report from the Golden Rose festival at Montreux, where The Frost Report won the overall prize.

On radio, the Home Service featured a dramatisation of Robert Louis Stevenson satrring Anthony Jackson, who I remember from later years as Fred Mumford in Rentaghost. The producer’s name was Brian Miller, working from the BBC’s West of England studios; I wonder if this is an early non-acting role for Elisabeth Sladen’s future husband? He would have been 26, which is not impossible for producing a children’s radio series.

The Home Service centred its evening around, believe it or not, the annual dinner of the Royal Academy, at which the guest speaker was the prime minister, Harold Wilson. I note that the president of the RA got his knighthood later that year. The Book at Bedtime was Silas Marner, read by Alec McCowen.

Over on the Light Programme, Woman’s Hour reported from Belgium, Round the Horne repeated the previous Sunday’s episode, The Phantom Of Bogmouth Hip, and featured a new play, Safari to Paris, by Anton Delmar starring Barbara Cavan and Carol Marsh.

I wasn’t paying attention to any of this, because I was born just a few minutes before the world premiere of The Turtle Drum, and I suspect I concentrated on other issues for the rest of the day.

• I am Big Bird
  
  “I’m still playing a 6-year-old, although I’m 81.” Aww!
  (tags: tv )
• Come to the Clarke Award ceremony, and get 20% off the shortlisted books!
  
  On 6 May.
  (tags: sf )
• Britney Spears, Beyonce & Pink – We Will Rock You (Pepsi)
  
  This is one of the best advertisements of all time.
  (tags: music videos )

It’s more than ten years since I read the first Kushiel trilogy, and just over five years since I read the first book of the second trilogy, but I found myself enjoying this just as much, despite the relative lack of kink. Here, Imriel engages in an unwise but passionate love affair in his home city in the shadow France of Carey’s world, before heading off to his arranged marriage in his world’s shadow Britain. It all goes horribly wrong and he must pursue a were-bear across the frozen steppes, dealing also with zealous worshippers of Yeshua setting up a homeland state in the far North. I am guessing that the last book of the trilogy will feature further eastern excursions; I know I’ll get to it a bit sooner than I got to this one.

I have often whined about the quality or suitability of some of the Hugo finalists in previous years. For instance, I considered that two of last year’s short fiction finalists were not very sfnal, and I voted them down accordingly (as did, I note, the voters as a whole – neither won in its category); and the pool of nominators and candidates for all the short fiction categories has sometimes seemed shallow and even dry in places. I don’t think anyone believes that the Hugos infallibly catalogue the best of the genre. 

That of course is a very different position from concluding that the entire nominations process is steered by a secret left-wing conspiracy (it isn’t, and never was), let alone nominating your own choice of bad stories rather than the ones you fear might otherwise make the ballot. Even less is it a justification for attempting to destroy the awards entirely, just because you and your friends never win.

But I’ll admit that I too bear some responsibility. I’m one of those people who in the past has rarely nominated short fiction for the Hugos because I don’t actually read that much of it as it comes out. I have looked to the BSFA shortlist and the Hugos themselves to inform my short fiction reading, and then the anthologies that come out later in the year. My personal reading style is to try and get through the mountains of unread books, mostly novels, on the shelves by my bed. Maybe I need to start seeking out short fiction more proactively.

On a happier note, I’m inclined to feel that the high-profile press coverage of the last three weeks, which has been generally pretty hostile to the slates, will have motivated people who previously passively appreciated the Hugos, but did not feel sufficiently invested in the outcome to take part. Now they do and they will. There will be significantly increased participation in both voting this year and nominating next year. That has to be a good thing in itself, and it’s a good chance to bring genuinely greater diversity to the voter base. The slate architects deserve no credit whatsoever for this, as their intention was to pull a political stunt rather than actually to improve matters.

To the short fiction categories.

Best Short Story

Four of the five finalists in this category are on the ballot because of an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos, rather than because of their ostensible literary merit, and the fifth is there because of an allied campaign whose organisers have made it clear that they have no problem in colluding with the organiser of the more successful campaign which has dominated the nominations this year. Their position on the ballot is illegitimate and they will not get my vote.

I am not interested in the views of those nominated on either the process or more general political issues; it just seems to me pretty clear that if you don’t want a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos to succeed, it’s better not to vote for those candidates that he has pushed onto the ballot. My vote will therefore have a single preference:

1) No Award

Even if I could put aside the circumstances of the nomination process, I would have difficulty in voting for some of the finalists. The behaviour of at least two of the authors would make me hesitate about giving them a chance to strut onto the stage as winners, regardless of the merits of their fiction.

Best Novelette

Four of the finalists in this category are on the ballot because of an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos, rather than because of their ostensible literary merit. Their position on the ballot is illegitimate and they will not get my vote.

It must be admitted that this is one of the more respectable parts of the slate, though also a category where any pretension to “democratic” or “transparent” crowdsourcing was simply abandoned. I’m particularly sorry to lose the chance to vote on Michael F. Flynn’s story. I’ve generally enjoyed his fiction, and often voted for it. But not this year.

My vote will therefore have two preferences:

1) No Award
2) “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt

I’m afraid that once again Olde Heuvelt’s writing has failed to grab me. The story is close in spirit to Ted Chiang and to last year’s winner by John Chu, but I felt it did not have the same finesse of execution. Chance Morrison has given her own typically caustic take on the story; it lost me with gur tbyqsvfu va gur 7 Hc obggyr; fheryl gur pbapragengvba bs pneoba qvbkvqr naq gnegnevp npvq jbhyq xvyy gur cbbe perngher bss?

However, if through some awful chain of circumstances my vote should be decisive in whether the Hugo (or one of the lower places in this category) goes to “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” or to one of the slate nominees, I would prefer that “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” won and the slate nominee lost; I am therefore giving it my second preference.

Best Novella

All five finalists in this category are on the ballot because of an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos, rather than because of their ostensible literary merit. Their position on the ballot is illegitimate and they will not get my vote. My ballot will therefore have a single preference:

1) No Award

Even if I could put aside the circumstances of the nomination process, I would again have difficulty in voting for some of the finalists. Three of the nominated stories are by an author whose online conduct has been so grotesque that I would be disinclined to give him the chance to appear as a winner even if I liked his writing. (I did like some of his early work, but have been less enthusiastic about his more recent output.) One of the other two is by an author who has repeatedly resorted to obscene and vicious abuse of those who disagree with him, and again I don’t particularly want to reward that behaviour. This is not about political views; it is about professionalism.

I have not engaged in systematic research on the behaviour and views of all nominated authors, and I’m not interested in finding out more about any of them at this stage, because as I have said this isn’t going to sway my vote. In any case I am dubious about demanding loyalty oaths – or disloyalty oaths, for that matter – from writers or indeed anyone. I am just recording what I’ve noticed in general reading around this year’s Hugos, and I suspect I am not alone in making some of those judgements.

Sorry to be grim. But we are in grim circumstances.

2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award

• The 900 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean were killed by British government policy
  
  Kudos to @telegraph for getting it right.
  (tags: ukpolitics eu migration )
• How To Win An Election In The Roman Republic
  
  Bribe the voters!
  (tags: elections history )
• Sasquan Membership Numbers Keep Rocketing Upward
  
  Most supporting members ever!
  (tags: sf )
• Light Pollution Atlas 2006
  
  Flanders is pretty bad.
  (tags: maps astronomy )

Before I go into this year’s choices, I want to observe that the Best Graphic Story category has really improved. I was dismayed by the dominance of one particular series which won the first three awards made in this category, and which I never really liked; and I was also concerned that this category’s finalists in general in general didn’t seem closely related to the comics that I read and like.

But I didn’t feel this gave me a mandate to try and nuke the awards; instead I just voted for stuff I liked, while whining online about the stuff I didn’t like, and eventually the situation changed. The superb Digger and the first volume of Saga won, and although I didn’t have the patience for last year’s winner, I like the writer’s other work, and can accept that this too was a rewarding experience for those prepared to watch it properly.

I found this year’s finalists pretty easy to rank, as follows (with links to my reviews, none of which are long):

1) Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal, written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt

I was really charmed by this.

2) Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick, written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky

As I wrote earlier, this is different and imaginative.

3) Saga Volume 3, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples

I nominated this, and I still like it very much, but it’s not quite as mind-blowingly good as the first in the series.

4) Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery, written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch

Funny and a little subversive, but once you’ve grasped the premise a bit predictable.

5) No Award.

There is another finalist, but it is only there because a racist misogynist instrumentalised it as part of his plan to destroy the Hugos. So I am therefore not ranking it at all. I suspect that if I was ranking on literary merit, I probably wouldn’t give it an awfully high vote, not being a huge fan of zombie fiction or of this particular style of webcomic (it is similar to Schlock Mercenary, which a lot of people loved but I didn’t); but I’m not, so the question doesn’t arise.

A couple of people who nominated this and other slate works have already had the honesty to admit that they just nominated what they were told to, without having read any of it. I note that not a single person has reviewed this particular work on Amazon or registered their ownership of it on Goodreads or LibraryThing, although between 60 and 201 people nominated it. I find that conclusive evidence, if any more were needed, that its presence on the ballot is the result of a political stunt rather than any genuine literary consideration, and I am treating it accordingly.

No blame, of course, attaches to the writer/artist, whose own views on this sorry situation are not known to me and would make no difference to my vote if I did know them.

2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award

The last of the Hugo nominees for Best Graphic Story, this is a rather cool account of Suzie and John, who have discovered separately that time freezes around each of them whenever they have an orgasm, and together realise that they can rob banks (only for the best of causes of course) while the rest of the world is still. The story is told from Suzie’s point of view, in flashback and breaching the fourth wall, with humour rather than coarseness. It turns out that even frozen time has its guardians, and we end on a bit of a cliff-hanger for the next volume; great fun though.

• Puppygate Winners and Losers
  
  Cheryl’s thoughts.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• How election maps reveal the politics of geography
  
  Also that 18 seats are missing in most cases!
  (tags: ukpolitics maps )
• Hugos and Class
  
  Scalzi again.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• An SNP takeover? Whatever happened to democracy?
  
  Applying common sense (and satire).
  (tags: ukpolitics scotland )
• Doctor Who and race
  
  A review.
  (tags: doctorwho race )

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett

Last books finished
ζ5 – 50 pages
η5 – 50 pages
θ5 – 50 pages
ι5 – 50 pages
Ms Marvel vol 1: No Normal, by G.Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
κ5 – 50 pages
Here's One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves
λ5 – 50 pages
μ5 – 50 pages
ν5 – 50 pages
υ5 – 50 pages
φ5 – 50 pages
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch
Sex Criminals, vol 1: One Weird Trick, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

Last week's audios
Welcome to Night Vale, eps 64-66
Death Match, by John Dorney

Next books
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones

Books acquired in last week
Sex Criminals, vol 1: One Weird Trick, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

• Should Western Leaders Attend Moscow’s WWII Parade?
  
  Experts think not.
  (tags: russia politics )
• Another Greek tragedy in four short acts
  
  How Syriza screwed up.
  (tags: greece eu )
• Suddenly, there’s hope for Cyprus
  
  Interesting election this weekend!
  (tags: cyprus )

Growing up, I knew Peter Purves as one of the presenters of Blue Peter two afternoons a week. It wasn't until after he had left, I think, that I became aware before I was born he had been a regular on Doctor Who, as Steven Taylor, one of the companions to the First Doctor. I was delighted when he was practically the first person I met at Gallifrey One in 2013. I think he's also the earliest of the regular actors on Who to have written an autobiography. (The only other Hartnell-era personality to have done that is Anneke Wills.)

It's a good read. 30 pages of 250 are devoted to his one year on Doctor WhoBlue Peter. That's still less than half of the book, and he makes a good set of anecdotes out of the indignities of the life of an actor, and his subsequent shift to directing (I wished he'd said a bit more about that) and presenting various TV programmes about subjects such as dogs and darts. He also seems to have settled down into a long-lasting second marriage. (Not mentioned in the book, but his Gilly Fraser, his first wife, also appeared in Doctor Who as Ann Davidson, the possessed air stewardess in The Faceless Ones.) The most moving section is where he writes about Petra, the Blue Peter dog who he looked after for much of her long life; she was a rather difficult dog, but she taught him a lot.

The book also provided me with a moment of unexpected enlightenment about Dire Straits. I'm sure many of you are familiar with their song Tunnel of Love. I had personally always been mystified by the lines "Girl it looks so pretty to me / Like it always did / Like the Spanish City to me / When we were kids." It turns out (and here those of you familiar with northeast England will be giving me serious side-eye) that the Spanish City was a famous funfair, close to the railway stations of Cullercoats and Whitley Bay, just north of the mouth of the River Tyne, where the young Peter Purves was taken by his grandparents while visiting from Blackpool, and where the young Mark Knopfler acquired a taste for rock and roll a decade or so later.

One shouldn't expect a lot from celebrity memoirs, but this one is reasonably shot through with humanity and a certain degree of humility. Acting is a fragile career, and Doctor Who and Blue Peter, Purves' high points, both came pretty early. He's had a lot of time to reflect, sometimes through force of circumstances, and this book that doesn't promise much does deliver a bit more.

Another one of the Hugo finalists for Best Graphic Story, this time about a gang of four warriors, women of assorted races, in a High Fantasy environment. They go on a quest, they uncover a plot, they kick ass and perpetrate mayhem on their foes. It’s great fun, but not hugely ambitious; I’ve read two better finalists in this category so far.

• Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters
  
  Brilliant. (Though long.)
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• A Digital Model of Asteroid Vesta
  
  Beautiful.
  (tags: astronomy asteroids )

• Father Ted’s legacy, 20 years on: up with this sort of thing
  
  That would be an ecumenical matter!
  (tags: ireland tv funny )
• Keeping Up With the Hugos
  
  Scalzi returns to the fray.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )

• Remembering Roger Zelazny (by George .R. Martin)
  
  I wish I was nearer Santa Fe!
  (tags: sf zelazny )
• The Man Who Made Obama Viral
  
  Presidential social media strategy.
  (tags: uspolitics internet )
• Black Gate Withdraws From Hugo Consideration
  
  Another withdrawal, endorsing No Award ahead of any slate nominee.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• Azerbaijan: Release Activists, Journalists Behind Bars
  
  Act before European Games.
  (tags: azerbaijan )

I bought this as a result of attending a presentation by the author in Brussels in January (you’ll hear me contributing to the discussion from about 58:48 onwards). It’s lucid, enjoyable and moving – an account purely of one action on the battlefield that day, the ultimately unsuccessful defence of La Haye Sainte by the King’s German Legion, a force of expat soldiers, originally exiles from Hanover, who held their position throughout the course of the day, absorbing massive amounts of fire from the French. Simms draws some wider lessons about European defence cooperation from the episode which I don’t think are really valid, but the rest of it is an entertaining and enlightening description of a small but crucial episode.

Alas, I’ve left it too late to sort out my bicentennial tickets. But where there’s a will, there’s a way…

• America’s lobbying addiction
  
  An appalling vista.
  (tags: lobbying )
• If only the sci-fi writers who hijacked the Hugo awards had the wit to imagine a world beyond the Good Old Days
  
  The Hugo awards hijack is nasty and dishonest – but it just proves progressives right
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• Newsletter quotes my 2010 comments on East Belfast
  
  Very difficult to call!
  (tags: northernireland )
• Puppy psychology
  
  Actually a very interesting read.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )

To a happier part of the 2015 Hugo discussion. I really enjoyed this graphic story about a teenage Pakistani-American girl in New Jersey who acquires super powers. It deftly combined a number of familiar tropes, from Buffy and urban fantasy on the one hand and the increasing literature about being a non-white kid in a new and largely white country on the other, and was also very entertaining. In this category at least, I may have a tough choice.

Someone sensible has looked at how the available data compares with Brad Torgerson's claim to have drawn up his Hugo nominations slate with “the democratic selection system of the Hugo awards… No “quiet” logrolling. Make it transparent.”

It’s clear from the figures that of the five novels recommended by Brad Torgerson, only three were actually recommended by his readers. They were Trial by Fire by Charles E. Gannon (unsuccessful); Skin Game, by Jim Butcher (successful) and Monster Hunter Nemesis, by Larry Correia (declined nomination). The other two on the slate received no mention at all when Torgerson asked for nominations. They were The Dark Between the Stars, by Kevin J. Anderson (successful); and Lines of Departure, by Marko Kloos (withdrawn).

Less easily visible, but equally interesting: four other novels were mentioned by three people each on Torgerson’s discussion, and were unaccountably omitted from his slate when he proposed it. They were A Sword Into Darkness, by Thomas A. Mays; The Martian, by Andy Weir; Judge of Ages, by John C. Wright; and The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast, by Jack Campbell. Another 21 novels received a nomination each, which is one nomination more than Anderson’s or Kloos’s. I have read and enjoyed The Martian, which has far more owners on both LibraryThing and Goodreads than any other sf novel in the awards process so far this year, and it strikes me as exactly the kind of old-fashioned science fiction that some regret is not getting due recognition these days.

For Best Novella, “The Plural of Helen of Troy”, by John C. Wright, got three nominations and was on Torgerson’s slate. But the slate also included “Big Boys Don’t Cry”, by Tom Kratman, which had no nominations in Torgerson’s crowdsourced discussion; and it did not include “Island in a Sea of Stars” by Kevin J. Anderson, which got two nominations, nor “Sixth of the Dusk” by Brandon Sanderson, which got one.

For Best Novelette, four stories were each proposed once in Torgerson’s discussion. Torgerson’s slate, however, comprised four completely different nominees which had not been mentioned in that discussion, and none of those that were.

Similarly, for Best Short Story, two potential nominees got more than one mention in Togerson’s discussion. They were “Domo”, by Joshua M. Young, which got a massive five (more than anything else in any category except Interstellar), and “Queen of the Tyrant Lizards” by John C. Wright, which got two. Neither, however, appeared on Torgerson’s slate. Another 18 stories were each mentioned once in the “crowdsourcing” discussion. Two of those did make it to Torgerson’s slate, as did two stories that had not been mentioned in the discussion.

In other words, of the 16 written fiction nominees on Torgerson’s slate, 11 – more than two-thirds – had not actually been nominated by anyone in the crowd-sourced discussion from which, we are told, the slate emerged.

2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award

Thanks to the brilliant Twitter-sleuthing of Gareth Roberts, we have William Hartnell playing Cliff Richard's father in an episode of a 1969 series called Life With Johnny, so obscure that it is absent from IMDB (which generally seems to include everything down to drama students' five-minute final year projects). There were six episodes in total, each of which had Johnny (as played by Cliff) learning a valuable life lesson the hard way; three of them, including one of the two in which William Hartnell appeared, are lost, and three survive. The show was made by one of the minor ITV franchises, Tyne Tees, and was never picked up by the bigger ITV regions, which is one reason why it has remained quite so obscure. (Maybe not the only reason. The opening song includes the glorious lyrics: "Johnny cares about war! / Johnny cares about cancer! / Johnny wonders if there's any hope / wonders if there is an answer!")

The surviving episode with Hartnell is "Johnny Come Home", based on the parable of the Prodigal Son. Cliff and his band, the Settlers, squeeze six songs into the 21 minutes of the show. It also features Lynda Marchal, better known now as writer Lynda La Plante, as Johnny's girlfriend at home, and Una Stubbs as his girlfriend in London (desperately doing a regional accent, and with Cindy Kent dubbing her songs, but dancing very well). The Hartnell sections are a decent scene starting at 4:25 and a concluding line at 18:57, with no sign of the health difficulties that made it difficult for him to take on substantial roles after Who.

Considering the symbolism of the original parable, we may reflect that Hartnell's last surviving non-Who appearance has him playing God.

The other surviving episodes are "Up the Creek", an update of the Good Samaritan to include racism which also features a rather weird cover of the Beatles' "Help!" at 9:59; and "Johnny Faces Facts", a rather laboured extension of the mote and beam to a full episode which ends with a song and dance routine in front of a backlit cross, just in case you were wondering where all this was leading.

This not high art, but it's interesting to see what you could get away with in the late 1960s. Well done to Gareth Roberts for uncovering a Youtube video which had actually been online since 2011 – clearly there's not a huge overlap between Whovians and fans of Cliff's more obscure backlist.

• Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards
  
  Eric Flint. (& Mercedes Lackey, & George RR Martin)
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• Zebras on the loose in Brussels
  
  Life in the capital of Europe!
  (tags: belgium )
• Improving employee productivity: On your toes
  
  Interesting Economist book reviews.
  (tags: work )
• Once More, Into the Kennels
  
  George R.R. Martin offers redemption.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )

• Eulex report exposes EU failure in Kosovo
  
  But is there a way forward?
  (tags: eu kosovo )
• Why not voting is such a pitifully ineffective form of protest
  
  Because it increases the power of those who *do* vote.
  (tags: politics elections )
• Program Director, Europe and Central Asia – International Crisis Group
  
  My old job (in part) is open for applicants!
  (tags: jobs )
• Initial Thoughts on the Hugo Award Nominations, Rabid and Sad
  
  One fan’s comments.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )
• Puppies Attack: Hugo Awards reflect sci-fi/fantasy divide
  
  @AP covers the story.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )

One thing I’ve been doing this week is polishing off the Clarke Award backlist, reading the first 50 pages of books that I had not got around to earlier in the process. One of them was so enjoyable that I read it to the end, but it was clearly not science fiction. None of the others were shortlist material either. Just a few more to go…

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
Here’s One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves

Last books finished
μ4 – 50 pages 
ν4 – 50 pages 
ξ4 – 50 pages
ο4 – 50 pages
Timeless by Steve Cole
π4 – 50 pages
ρ4 – 50 pages
σ4 – 60 pages
τ4 – enjoyed this so much that I read it to the end
Ship of Fools, by Dave Stone
υ4 – 50 pages
φ4 – 50 pages 
χ4 – 50 pages
Lethbridge-Stewart: Top Secret Files, by Andy Frankham-Allen, Nick Walters, Graeme Harper and David A. McIntee
ψ4 – 50 pages
ω4 – 50 pages
Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey
α5 – 50 pages
β5 – 50 pages
γ5 – 50 pages
δ5 – 50 pages
ε5 – 50 pages

Last week’s audios
The Romance of Crime, by Gareth Roberts, adapted by John Dorney

Next books
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones

Books acquired in last week
Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank
De dagboeken van Anne Frank; wetenschappelijke editie
The Ragged Astronauts, by Bob Shaw
Ms Marvel, vol 1: No Normal, by G. Willow Wilson et al

• The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
  
  How to wreck your society.
  (tags: uspolitics economics )
• Rabid Puppy voter admits he didn’t read the stuff on the slate before nominating it.
  
  Yep.
  (tags: sf sadpuppies )

Marko Kloos withdraws his novel Lines of Departure from the Hugos.
Annie Bellet withdraws her story “Goodnight Stars” from the Hugos.

As I said previously, both authors had my sympathy for being dragged unwittingly into Beale’s campaign to destroy the Hugos. They both now have my deep respect.