Published in 1945, this was apparently a huge classic in the middle of last century, described as the best known book written in Finnish (Tove Jansson wrote in Swedish), the only Finnish book ever adapted to become a Hollywood movie, and the best-selling translated novel in America until The Name of the Rose.

It's about an ancient Egyptian doctor, Sinuhe, who spends most of the first half of the story travelling through Egypt's neighbours, as far as Crete, Smyrna and Babylon, and then in the second half returns home to participate in the intrigues at the courts of Akhenaton and his successors Tutankhamun and Horemheb (an old friend of the narrator). It was hailed for its "realistic" portrayal of ancient life, which to me tends to signal that it buttressed existing popular conceptions; I definitely felt that the scenes of ideologically driven internal conflict and brutal military suppression of popular uprisings might be drawn from more local experience of mid-century Europe than from any study of ancient Egypt.

It is a solid book of its kind, which would have appealed to the prejudices of mid-century readers while at the same time making them think that the author was informing and enlightening them. Of course, it has a comic slave character, almost all the women are seductresses, and none of the many "Negroes" are named. But there is a decent sense of scale in both space and time, and the reflections of the politics of the day are sufficiently oblique to remain interesting.

It is interesting that the story of Akhenaton became such a popular topic for literature. Agatha Christie wrote a play about him in 1937, and he's also the Pharaoh of Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers which was published in 1943. Of course, his close family connection with Tutankhamun added an extra element of interest. But I wonder how many other ancient rulers had more or less well-documented heretical religious ideas, and have been completely forgotten? I reckon Akhenaton easily beats Julian the Apostate, who is the only other one I can think of. (Unless you count those who won, like Constantine and Henry VIII.)

• Labour moves to support Tories’ lower benefit cap despite ‘children on breadline’ warnings
  
  The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• Is the world more dangerous for kids than it was 30 years ago?
  
  Not in America. (Same elsewhere?)
  (tags: history family )
• What Russian students learn about Russia’s enemies
  
  Conspiracy theories as doctrine.
  (tags: russia )

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal

Last books finished
Amoras v2: Jerusalem, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Marc Legendre]
The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari
City of Death, by Douglas Adams and James Goss
The Painted Man/The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett
Sharpe's Waterloo, by Bernard Cornwell
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Next books
The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999, by Misha Glenny
Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture: Military Men in England and Ireland, 1558-1594, by Rory Rapple
Palace of the Red Sun, by Christopher Bulis

Books acquired in last week
City of Death, by Douglas Adams and James Goss

• The Telescope that Disproved Liberalism, Part II
  
  True story.
  (tags: ireland historyofscience )
• A New ‘Wrinkle in Time’
  
  Cut passage more nuanced in critiquing Communism and U.S. Security.
  (tags: sf )
• FIFA officials arrested on US corruption charges
  
  Dramatic!
  (tags: football )
• Tumblr blog shames those who arrange ‘manels’
  
  Plenty of choice…
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )

We’ve waited a long time for this!

Back in the days before video recorders, let alone DVDs, Doctor Who stories lived on after first broadcast only in the novelisations published by Target Books (and later by Virgin). In the fullness of time, almost every story ever shown appeared in print – many of them in novelisations by the indefatigable Terrance Dicks, whose lucid if workmanlike style informed the tastes of a generation of fans.

One of the few stories not to get that treatment was the 1979 Fourth Doctor story City of Death, which has a strong claim to being one of the best Who stories ever, written over a wet weekend by the then script editor Douglas Adams, certainly the most prominent SF writer to have held that position, from a story concept by David Fisher, one of the best Who writers of the late 1970s. It is now brought to the page by James Goss, who I personally rate as the best writer of Who prose and audios active at present. (He has, alas, no screenplay experience, so I don’t expect him to be writing any TV episodes soon.)

Goss is not the first Who writer to try and channel Douglas Adams (unsuccessful: Eric SawardGareth Roberts). But he takes it in a new direction, starting off by lulling the reader into a false sense of security with an Adams-esque first chapter, and then settling into adapting from both the script and the final broadcast version for the printed page. As he explains in an afterword, he picks and chooses between the alternatives. Shakespeare here sprained his hand playing croquet (Adams) rather than writing sonnets (Tom Baker’s improvisation). The John Cleese and Eleanor Bron characters have been pursuing a desultory love affair around Paris for days. Most importantly, the Count doesn’t actually realise his own identity until the end of the first episode, and this actually makes a lot of sense. (But he keeps the broadcast version of the story’s funniest line, while explaining how it originated from the script.)

The target audience for this book will be people who already know the story, and I think that they will be satisfied. It’s a different situation from Shada, the unfinished 1980 story by Adams whose novelisation by Gareth Roberts was published in 2012, in that there’s no what-might-have-been mystery about City of Death – we’ve seen it and we know what happens. Goss preserves the spirit of Adams’ script, and probably does a better job of putting it on the page than Adams would have done (he had a habit of revising his own past work without necessarily improving it).

Anyway, for those of us who treasure memories of a former monk from Liverpool courting an Ulster aristocrat by the Seine, this is simply indispensable. And for those who are fans of Douglas Adams, this is, in a way, his last book, reflecting back to the height of his powers. I won’t claim that it’s great literature; but I loved it.

• Shetland and Orkney and Alistair Carmichael
  
  I agree with Jane.
  (tags: ukpolitics libdems )

This is one of the small subgenre of Irish Home Rule future histories published towards the end of the 19th century, most of which forecast disaster for both Britain and Ireland as a Consequnce of Irish self-government; There are a couple of exceptions, including John Francis Maguire's The Next Generation and, as you may have deduced from the title, this anonymous 74-page pamphlet, published in Boston in 1883, thought that Irish independence, never mind Home Rule, would be a Good Thing. You can get it for free here.

It's an interesting scenario, especially for a story written before Parnell's electoral triumph of 1885. The context for the story is one of general European disintegration, as indeed was the case when push eventually did come to shove forty years after writing and thirty years after the story is set:

The year 1892 opened upon a gloomy prospect,—a period of impending strife and conflict in Europe. Eveiy-where discontent was manifest, and people grew more and more restless under the government of kings and princes. Nihilism, Socialism, and Democracy honeycombed and permeated every civilized community. The Russian government, as a last resort to escape destruction, had granted autonomy to long-suffering Poland ; the Turks had retired to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, whence they came ; and the Greeks, whose territory was now expanded to its ancient domain, occupied Constantinople as their original capital, Byzantium. Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Albania had been consolidated with Dalmatia as a Christian republic, called the Dalmatian League. Norway, separated from Sweden, had become a republic. The people of British North America had asked and had received autonomy, and were now the Republic of Canada. India, taking fire from the example of Christian lands, became restive, and consequently England had sent large bodies of troops thither ; but Ireland still occupied her old position, not as, according to the Act of Union, a component, sovereign part of the Empire, but as a vassal dependency.

The outbreak of a European conflict – Germany, allied with Austria, invades the Netherlands and Belgium – creates Ireland's opportunity; the Irish army, trained in America and with German support, lands near Ballina and fights a decisive battle with the British at the Moy River (I had slightly hoped that the title might refer to Moy in County Tyrone, but it was not to be). There is another battle at Grangegorman in Dublin, in which the Irish/German army unleashes the awesome destructive power of a super bomb, causing the surrender of the remnants of the British garrison, after which the victorious Irish army is welcomed with public celebration into every major city, including Belfast. King Edward's government must therefore sue for peace, and the newly independent Irish state becomes an earthly paradise.

I found it very interesting that the dispositions of the various Irish/German and British troops are given in considerable detail – it's as if the writer had been working out the scenarios with tabletop miniatures on maps of the territory, and I must say that in places it descends into a game report. What the writer misses, of course, is that when the war for Irish independence actually came it was irregular forces on both sides that shaped the outcome, including the police and auxiliary police. If you're writing in 1882 and reading about the Franco-Prussian War and the American Civil War, it's an understandable mistake to make – though the Balkan wars of 1877-79 clearly weren't scrutinised very closely except as news items (as is apparent from the opening paragraph above). One of Shaw's targets in Arms and the Man, written only a few years later and set in 1885, is the armchair war enthusiast who thinks it's all about glorious cavalry charges.

Another point that struck me was the political geography of Dublin, particularly as it relates to the 1916 Rising. Both military plans, from this book and real life, were fairly crazy. The Battle of the Moy has a victorious insurgent army coming in from the northwest and overwhelming the Brits after the Grangegorman kerfuffle. Pearse and Connolly seized the General Post Office, but failed to assert control of either Dublin Castle or indeed the actual phone exchange. But the wider point is that while we now think of the government quarter of Dublin as being in the block centred on Leinster House, in both 1882 and 1916 it was really Dublin Castle with an extension down to the Four Courts. I don't think there were any government buildings on Merrion Square until the Department of Agriculture arrived there in 1899. (The Battle of Moy is inconsistent as to whether the Irish Parliament returns to College Green before or after independence.)

Anyway, a short future history book of the past, well worth looking at if you are familiar with Irish geography and history, probably not otherwise. I wonder who wrote it?

• If Michael Gove listens to Daniel Hannan’s honeyed polemic on Human Rights he really will get into a muddle
  
  An excellent fisking!
  (tags: eu ukpolitics humanrights )
• So you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European…
  
  Good summary.
  (tags: genealogy )
• #hometovote Edinburgh to Dublin
  
  Great story!
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality ireland )
• Caitlin Green: The medieval ‘New England’: a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast
  
  Extraordinary!
  (tags: history )

Best Fan Artist is the only category which was left un-piddled on by the slatemongers. As usual, it's a mixture of familiar names and new; also as usual, I find the new ones more interesting. And they managed to get on the ballot with no need for an organised campaign…

My ranking:

	5) Steve Stiles
	4) Brad Foster
	3) Niini Aalto
	2) Spring Schoenhuth
	1) Elizabeth Leggett

My ranking is very similar to that of Joe Sherry. He is rather mercilessly wielding “No Award” after his top two. Certainly I too am being more merciless than usual in voting “No Award” this year, and not only on the slate candidates; I may also put it third, but I will also rank those finalists that I put below “No Award” in this category.

For Best Professional Artist, there is only one non-slate finalist, Julie Dillon. I'll be honest; I prefer at least one of the other artists to her, but I am voting for “No Award” against any finalist whose place on the ballot has been secured as part of a political campaign by a racist misogynist. This does not reflect on the artists themselves, whose interests and motives do not concern me here. But I'm taking the reflections of Matt Foster very seriously, and I think I will simply vote 1) No Award, 2) Julie Dillon this year. We have been denied a proper vote in this category, as in so many others.

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

I have on the shelf another of Lewis’s novels, The Extraordinary Reign of King Ludd, set in an alternate history where the 1848 revolutions succeeded and the crowns of the British and Mughal Empires were united in marriage. Eighty years on, King-Emperor George Akbar I is struggling with technology; I don’t remember a lot else except that I think there was another revolution at the end.

I got hold of The Evolution Man (aka What We Did to Father aka How I Ate My Father aka Once upon an Ice Age) after reading Terry Pratchett’s repeated recommendations in A Slip of the Keyboard. It really is hilarious, a novel of cavemen who talk to each other in mid-twentieth century schoolboy prose, with names like Oswald, Ernest and Wilbur – clearly aimed in part at William Golding’s The Inheritors, and perhaps also at any number of caveman films. Their father worries about which end of the Pleistocene era they are living at, but invents fire, thus causing a technological revolution. I’m sure that the young Douglas Adams must have read it too; there are strong echoes of the humour of Hitch-hiker here, if anything more so than of Pratchett (though there are shades of Lewis’s the treatment of technology in the early Rincewind/Twoflower relationship). It’s a very short book at 120 pages, and there really is only one joke, but it’s worked through in several different variations to a satisfactory and tasty conclusion.

A style guide for American writers in 1909, some of which must have seemed absurdly pedantic at the time and much of which seems obsolete now (though in a few cases I can regret that the battle has been lost). Here are a few examples of usages to which Bierce objected:

Casualties for Losses in Battle. The essence of casualty is accident, absence of design. Death and wounds in battle are produced otherwise, are expectable and expected, and, by the enemy, intentional.

Conservative for Moderate. “A conservative estimate”; “a conservative forecast”; “a conservative statement,” and so on. These and many other abuses of the word are of recent growth in the newspapers and “halls of legislation.” Having been found to have several meanings, conservative seems to be thought to mean everything.

Demean for Debase or Degrade. “He demeaned himself by accepting charity.” The word relates, not to meanness, but to demeanor, conduct, behavior. One may demean oneself with dignity and credit.

Endorse for Approve. To endorse is to write upon the back of, or to sign the promissory note of another. It is a commercial word, having insufficient dignity for literary use. You may endorse a check, but you approve a policy, or statement.

Expectorate for Spit. The former word is frequently used, even in laws and ordinances, as a euphemism for the latter. It not only means something entirely different, but to one with a Latin ear is far more offensive.

Forebears for Ancestors. The word is sometimes spelled forbears, a worse spelling than the other, but not much. If used at all it should be spelled forebeers, for it means those who have been before. A forebe-er is one who fore-was. Considered in any way, it is a senseless word.

Gubernatorial. Eschew it; it is not English, is needless and bombastic. Leave it to those who call a political office a “chair.” “Gubernatorial chair” is good enough for them. So is hanging.

Imaginary Line. The adjective is needless. Geometrically, every line is imaginary; its graphic representation is a mark. True the text-books say, draw a line, but in a mathematical sense the line already exists; the drawing only makes its course visible.

Insignificant for Trivial, or Small. Insignificant means not signifying anything, and should be used only in contrast, expressed or implied, with something that is important for what it implies. The bear’s tail may be insignificant to a naturalist tracing the animal’s descent from an earlier species, but to the rest of us, not concerned with the matter, it is merely small.

Last and Past. “Last week.” “The past week.” Neither is accurate: a week cannot be the last if another is already begun; and all weeks except this one are past. Here two wrongs seem to make a right: we can say the week last past. But will we? I trow not.

Literally for Figuratively. “The stream was literally alive with fish.” “His eloquence literally swept the audience from its feet.” It is bad enough to exaggerate, but to affirm the truth of the exaggeration is intolerable.

Moneyed for Wealthy. “The moneyed men of New York.” One might as sensibly say, “The cattled men of Texas,” or, “The lobstered men of the fish market.”

Novel for Romance. In a novel there is at least an apparent attention to considerations of probability; it is a narrative of what might occur. Romance flies with a free wing and owns no allegiance to likelihood. Both are fiction, both works of imagination, but should not be confounded. They are as distinct as beast and bird.

Pants for Trousers. Abbreviated from pantaloons, which are no longer worn. Vulgar exceedingly.

Practically for Virtually. This error is very common. “It is practically conceded.” “The decision was practically unanimous.” “The panther and the cougar are practically the same animal.” These and similar misapplications of the word are virtually without excuse.

Proven for Proved. Good Scotch, but bad English.

Responsible. “The bad weather is responsible for much sickness.” “His intemperance was responsible for his crime.” Responsibility is not an attribute of anything but human beings, and few of these can respond, in damages or otherwise. Responsible is nearly synonymous with accountable and answerable, which, also, are frequently misused.

Spend for Pass. “We shall spend the summer in Europe.” Spend denotes a voluntary relinquishment, but time goes from us against our will.

To. As part of an infinitive it should not be separated from the other part by an adverb, as, “to hastily think,” for hastily to think, or, to think hastily. Condemnation of the split infinitive is now pretty general, but it is only recently that any one seems to have thought of it. Our forefathers and we elder writers of this generation used it freely and without shame—perhaps because it had not a name, and our crime could not be pointed out without too much explanation.

United States as a Singular Noun. “The United States is for peace.” The fact that we are in some ways one nation has nothing to do with it; it is enough to know that the word States is plural—if not, what is State? It would be pretty hard on a foreigner skilled in the English tongue if he could not venture to use our national name without having made a study of the history of our Constitution and political institutions. Grammar has not a speaking acquaintance with politics, and patriotic pride is not schoolmaster to syntax.

Entertaining even where one doesn’t agree with him.

This is the last of seven books by Greeley set in and around Irish Chicago in the late twentieth century; the only other one I had read was the first in the series, Virgin and Martyr, which I thoroughly enjoyed many years ago. This was also thoroughly enjoyable, the story of Lorcan Flynn, a mostly respectable businessman who becomes motivated to dig into mysterious events of his youth – how he lost his first love, and the death of her relatives in an unsolved explosion thirty-five years earlier -and starts to uncover answers that are difficult to live with. As was usually the case with Greeley, his protagonists are flawed but have their own kind of integrity (apart from a couple of cartoony villains), and underpinning a lot of is lies an optimistic view of an imperfect church. Not deep literature but a fun read.

• The Serbian key
  
  The EU and NATI still have work to do.
  (tags: eu serbia )

I do like to read the odd personal development book sometimes, but in general I like them more than this one, which summarises its approach thus:

How do you survive and thrive in this fiercely competitive economy? You need a whole new entrepreneurial mindset and skill set. Drawing on the best of Silicon Valley, The Start-Up of You helps you accelerate your career and take control of your future–no matter your profession.

The authors mock the What Color Is Your Parachute approach of establishing a clear desired vision, and urge instead an aggressively flexible approach of constantly rethinking your priorities, which to me sounds like an awful lot of work. It seemed to me full of assumptions about personal values and experiences which will apply only to a small subset of people, most of whom are either already very well off or are already well-placed to become so. There is no harm in encouraging people to think creatively, and some of the ideas about networking are actually rather good, but I don’t recommend this particularly strongly.

Something of a middle book in this five-part series: our heroine Kim continues to lead her expedition of a group comprising different human factions deep into the interior of the planetary jungle of Bételgeuse, to try and find the secret of the alien iums. There is a fun swimming scene, and also a vivid sequence of alien creatures wandering through a human settlement causing mayhem. And there is a welcome reappearance at the end. But I’ll hope for a bit more plot in the next volume.

• Thoughts on the Hugo Award Nominees: Fan Artist
  
  Close to my own views.
  (tags: sf )
• The Extraordinary Story Of “The Crystal Maze”
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: tv )
• The Penfield Mood Organ in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
  
  Chris Beckett on a detail of a classic.
  (tags: sf )
• Redrawing the Czech-Polish border
  
  By 2020.
  (tags: maps czechrepublic poland )

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day; getting very near the end now)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari

Last books finished
The Evolution Man, by Roy Lewis
Mating, by Norman Rush
The Battle of the Moy: Or How Ireland Gained Her Independence in 1892-1894, by Anonymous
Wisdom from My Internet, by Michael Z. Williamson (not finished)
The Deaths of Tao, by Wesley Chu (not finished)
The Dark Between the Stars, by Kevin J. Anderson (not finished)

Next books
The Painted Man/The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett
The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov

Books acquired in last week
Amoras v2: Jerusalem, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Marc Legendre]
Apostata Bundel 2 [Argentoratum + Paulus Catena], by Ken Broeders
Suske en Wiske v 150: Het Spaanse spook, by Willy Vandersteen
Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, by David Kynaston
Sally Heathcote: Suffragette, by Mary Talbot, Kate Charlesworth, and Bryan Talbot
The Battle of the Moy: Or How Ireland Gained Her Independence in 1892-1894, by Anonymous
The Dark Between the Stars, by Kevin J. Anderson 
Big Boys Don’t Cry, by Tom Kratman 
One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright
Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth, by John C. Wright
Wisdom from My Internet, by Michael Z. Williamson 
The Deaths of Tao, by Wesley Chu

• Marriage referendum: In the name of equality
  
  Irish Times leading article urges Yes vote.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality ireland )
• The great migration of Brussels lobbyists
  
  I too have migrated!
  (tags: eu lobbying )

I’m sorry to say that I bounced off this 1977 BSFA Award winner pretty thoroughly. The basic scientific hook, imprinting a dead cosmonaut’s mind onto the brain of a child, is interesting enough, but the general setting of decaying contemporary civilisation is depressing without being completely convincing; whereas the characters are convincingly nasty unpleasant people who it is difficult to get interested in. I bounced off The Miracle Visitors too; Adam Roberts took me to task for that, but has since deleted his post. Well, I have two more Watsons on the shelf, so we’ll see if they can pull me round.

A teacher training textbook, which is basically full of sensible advice about managing children of differing levels of ability in the classroom. Useful background information, some of which is directly applicable to other areas of professional life too.

• The Telescope that Disproved Liberalism: Part I
  
  First installment of a three-part essay on the Leviathan of Parsonstown.
  (tags: astronomy ireland historyofscience )
• ‘Gay cake’ row: Judge rules against Ashers bakery
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: northernireland sexandgenderandsexuality )
• If you didn’t see defeat coming, you don’t know how politics works
  
  A UK Labour Party member reflects.
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• Fintan O’Toole: Marriage was nothing to be proud of in 1983
  
  How things have changed.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality ireland )