Britain flirts with economic insanity

I wish the Washington Post would say what they really think!
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The Rock of remain: why Gibraltar is rejecting Brexit

Funny how those who bang on about sovereignty ignore the views of those most affected!
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The Guardian view on Jo Cox: an attack on humanity, idealism and democracy | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian

Amen.
(tags: ukpolitics death )

The unspeakable truth – Charlie’s Diary

“I’ve been saying a while that when fascism comes to Britain it will be wearing a tweed jacket and a cheeky grin, holding a pint of beer in one hand and a noose in the other.

“I wasn’t expecting to be proven right so soon.”
(tags: ukpolitics )

A Day of Infamy

Alex Massie nails it in the Spectator.
(tags: ukpolitics death )

All LinkedIn with Nowhere to Go

A hilarious (if lengthy) takedown of LinkedIn.
(tags: linkedin )

Donald Trump: ‘Belgium is a beautiful city’

Previously he called it a “hellhole”. #fb
(tags: Belgium uspolitics )

Second frames of the third pages of part I and part II:

(First frame: Sofie’s mother says, “AHA! Madam is home!”)

I’m always on the lookout for good Flemish graphic novels, given that Belgium’s tradition is generally strong and not entirely Francophone, and I think this counts as a decent find. De maagd en de neger comes in two parts, the first telling the story from the point of view of the father of Flemish student Sofie of his unhappy accommodation to her relationship with Togolese refugee Abou, and the second with Sofie, years later, telling her side of the same story to Leentje, her daughter by a later relationship. Of course, it’s a white-people-talking-about-black-people story, but it’s tenderly observed for all that. Sofie’s father’s personal journey is particularly affecting, and I always like stories where the same events are viewed from two different perspectives, getting two very different answers.

This came to the top of my list of unread graphic novels in a language other than English. Next on that list is De Mexicaan met twee hoofden, by Joann Sfarr, which I should really have got in the original French.

Secrets And Lies Behind The Other Big Election That Will Shape The World

Behind the scenes of the UNSG race!
(tags: un )

Open Letter to Mr Farage from a small business owner

Samantha writes.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Vajt: Brisel svoje pozicije nije promenio

Expert commentary on EU-Serbia relations (by me, in Serbian)
(tags: eu serbia )

Brexit polling: Leave is gaining ground. But do not rule out Remain just yet

The @Economist puts on a brave face.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Norwegian PM’s message to Britain

Don’t leave, you’ll hate it.
(tags: norway ukpolitics eu )

I want my country back! Personal thoughts on the EU Referendum

Dr Burnley reflects.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Brussels is in Brexit denial

Tim tries to explain Britain to the bubble.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

We can already see a post-Brexit economy emerging. It’s grim.

Gerry is scared.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

My nominations for Best Novelette for the 1941 Retro Hugos were:

“It!”, by Theodore Sturgeon (finalist)
“Farewell to the Master”, by Harry Bates (finalist)
“New York Fights the Termanites”, by Bertrand L. Shurtleff
“Into the Darkness”, by Ross Rocklynne
“The Sea Thing”, by A.E. van Vogt

I admit that I deliberately avoided Heinlein in my pre-nomination reading; I knew he would need little help from me, and indeed he got two stories on the final ballot in this category as well as three in Best Novella.

My own vote is as follows:

6) “Blowups Happen” by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph:

The man addressed turned slowly around and faced the speaker. His expression was hidden by a grotesque helmet, part of a heavy, leaden armor which shielded his entire body, but the tone of voice in which he answered showed nervous exasperation.

One of those Heinlein stories that you think you know and then discover has a lot more in it than you remembered. Too much so, in fact: psychologists controlling nuclear reactors, the craters on the Moon caused by the death of a lost civilisation. The story gets significant good marks for foreseeing how nuclear power could work in practice, but unfortunately the version in The Past Through Tomorrow has clearly been revised to catch up with reality mid-1940s, so it’s difficult to form a clear judgement of the 1940 version (which is ostensibly the version on the ballot).

5) “Darker Than You Think” by Jack Williamson

Second paragraph:

She had a million dollars’ worth of flame-red hair. White, soft, sweetly serious, her face confirmed Barbee’s first dazzled impression. Her rather large mouth appeared humorous and quickly expressive. Barber looked twice into her alert, grave eyes and decided that they were distinctly greenish.

I am frankly a bit surprised about this nomination. I know of a couple of people who nominated it but did so in the novella category, and my impression is that its’s well over the 17,500 limit for novelettes; a File 770 contributor think’s it’s 38,000, which is almost novel length. The 1940 version has been reprinted only twice, in two collections published by Haffner Press in 2008, neither available electronically and with paper copies going for rather heavy prices; but you can read the original here. To add further confusion, it is the 1948 novel-length expansion, not the original 1940 short version, that has been included in the Hugo packet. I do wonder whether those who nominated it were thinking of the 1948 rather than 1940 version.

Anyway, it’s a story of shape-shifting magic and the ancient revenge of the Black Messiah, which turns out not to be quite as awful as it sounds (though still pretty bad); the female characters are either evil or passive; there are some good descriptive moments, but I’m marking it down because of my suspicions about the categorisation.

4) No award

3) “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph:

The speaker stood still on the rostrum and waited for his audience to answer him. The reply came in scattered shouts that cut through the ominous, discontented murmur of the crowd.

This on the other hand is a very political story about how a new transport technology will be managed; one may not like the angle Heinlein chooses to take, but it’s undeniable that he goes beyond the “Isn’t it cool!” description of how the roads work and into the human dimension. The inclusion of a government minister from Australia is a rare acknowledgement in sf of this era that the world outside the USA exists as well.

2) “It!” by Theodore Sturgeon

Second paragraph:

It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and in darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living.

Great creepy story of possession and body-horror.

1) “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates

Second paragraph:

He himself had come to feel an almost proprietary interest in the exhibit, and with some reason. He had been the only freelance picture reporter on the Capitol grounds when the visitors from the Unknown had arrived, and had obtained the first professional shots of the ship. He had witnessed at close hand every event of the next mad few days. He had thereafter photographed many times the eight-foot robot, the ship, and the beautiful slain ambassador, Klaatu, and his imposing tomb out in the center of the Tidal Basin, and, such was the continuing news value of the event to the billions of persons throughout habitable space, he was there now once more to get still other shots and, if possible, a new “angle.”

This will get a lot of votes because it is the basis for the great sf film The Day The Earth Stood Still, but I think it’s a good piece of work in its own right, meditating on how humanity is capable of screwing up relations with the Other and also of missing the point. The twist at the end did not make it into the film, so will take readers by (mild) surprise.

My nominations for Best Novelette for the 2016 Hugos were:

“Red Legacy”, by Eneasz Brodski
“Utrechtenaar”, by Paul Evanby
“So Much Cooking”, by Naomi Kritzer
“Our Lady of the Open Road”, by Sarah Pinsker
“English Wildlife”, by Alan Smale

None of these were finalists.

Two of the finalists – “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead”, by Brooke Bolander, and “Folding Beijing”, by Hao Jingfang – did moderately well in the File 770 straw poll, whose top nominated stories were:

“So Much Cooking”, by Naomi Kritzer (18)
“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan”, by Ian McDonald (14)
“Another Word for World”, by Ann Leckie (13)
“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead”, by Brooke Bolander (11)
“Entanglements”, by David Gerrold (8)
“Our Lady of the Open Road”, by Sarah Pinsker (8)
“Folding Beijing”, by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (7)
“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild”, by Catherynne M. Valente (7)

Two other finalists, “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke and “Obits” by Stephen King, were each nominated by one of File 770’s respondents; “Flashpoint: Titan” by Cheah Kai Wai was nominated by nonoe of them. It is reasonable to suppose that these three owe their position on the final ballot entirely to the slate – despite King’s prominence as a writer, the nominated story is horror rather than sf or fantasy,. (NB that the one non-Rabid Puppy nominee on the ballot was supported by the Sad Puppies.)

6) “Flashpoint: Titan” by Cheah Kai Wai

Second paragraph:

The console displayed the data as a three-dimensional hologram. In the center of the display, Takao was a blue triangle pointing towards a bright yellow mass. That was Titan, the largest moon in the Saturnian system, ten thousand kilometers away. Other yellow dots indicated satellites, orbital structures and shuttles with Titanian registration. White tracks indicated civilian space traffic. A number of small green dots orbited Titan, each representing American orbital patrol ships. Each contact carried a unique tag, displaying vector, velocity, name and other critical information.

Future space combat which I found pretty dull and gave up on half way through. Would not have been on the ballot without slate support.

5) “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke

Second paragraph:

While gathering strength, they raid, attacking our outposts and asteroid acquisition operations, our transiting cargo ships and task forces, looking for easy victories, forcing us to expend more resources than they. In accordance with their conservative –the misinformed might say cowardly –nature, they hit and run, always with the aim of preserving themselves while damaging us.

The scenario of human weapons becomes obvious to the reader in the first few pages, and then doesn’t really go anywhere. Would not have been on the ballot without slate support.

4) “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander

Second paragraph:

Rhye has her guns drawn before the other Ganymede fuckers can twitch, but it’s way too late — the damage is done and smeared across the walls and floor and ceiling. Synthetic blood and bone look exactly the same as the real deal. She puts three shots into the flesh slab that did it (he’s dead he’s dead gods fuck it no nononono) and then the rest of his pals are on her like the three-times-fucked human jackals they are, pulling her down. The room stinks of blood and gunsmoke and fear-sweat. For the first time in her life, those smells make Rhye want to gag. Her ears are ringing — whether from the gunshots or god knows what else — and it feels like the floor is falling away beneath her motorcycle boots.

I found this pretty violent and at the same time I wasn’t sure what it was about. It’s the only non-Rabid Puppy finalist and so quite likely to win, but I won’t vote for it.

3) “Obits” by Stephen King

Second paragraph:

That was the gospel according to Vern Higgins, who headed up the journalism department at the University of Rhode Island, where I got my degree. A lot of what I heard at school went in one ear and out the other, but not that, because Professor Higgins hammered on it. He said that people need clarity and concision in order to start the process of understanding.

Good creepy story, though with only a few tech changes it could have been written a hundred years ago. But it’s a horror story rather than sf or fantasy, and should not be a Hugo finalist. Would not have been on the ballot without slate support.

2) No Award

1) “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu

Second paragraph:

After the end of his shift at the waste processing station, Lao Dao had gone home, first to shower and then to change. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown pants—the only decent clothes he owned. The shirt’s cuffs were frayed, so he rolled them up to his elbows. Lao Dao was forty–eight, single, and long past the age when he still took care of his appearance. As he had no one to pester him about the domestic details, he had simply kept this outfit for years. Every time he wore it, he’d come home afterward, take off the shirt and pants, and fold them up neatly to put away. Working at the waste processing station meant there were few occasions that called for the outfit, save a wedding now and then for a friend’s son or daughter.

Given that two or three of the finalists would quite possibly have made the final ballot without slating, I feel that the Foster principle is weaker here; and I really liked this story (as I liked the same author’s “Summer at Grandma’s House” which I nominated for Best Short Story), an evocative look at a future densely populated and rigidly stratified society. I hope voters will overlook the slate support for it (as I’m sure they will for strong candidates in a couple of other categories) and recognise it.

One of the categories where even a relatively weak 1941 ballot is markedly better than the 2016 one.

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

Leuven most innovative university in Europe

Hooray!
(tags: )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

From the window of his study he had a panoramic view of the city’s various districts – residential, commercial, industrial, administrative – as they sifted down to the Borann river and on the far bank gave way to the parklands surrounding the five palaces. The families headed by the Lord Philosopher had been granted a cluster of dwellings and other buildings on this choice site many centuries earlier, during the reign of Bytran IV, when their work was held in much higher regard.

This is one of Shaw’s best known books, second in LibraryThing and Goodreads ownership only to Orbitsville. I don’t think it has aged particularly well. Shaw’s protagonist, Toller Maraquine, is chief engineer of a culture under pressure from its human(ish) neighbours on the planet of Land and also facing extinction at the hands of the non-human Ptertha. Toller’s rulers therefore order a mass emigration through space to the neighbouring twin planet of Overland, conveniently linked with Land by a common atmosphere. I thought that the book’s attitude to women (never a strong point of Shaw’s) was pretty appalling. The female characters are either invisible or two-dimensional, and there is some nasty sexual violence as a defining moment for the most important woman character. It doesn’t even do a terribly good job as engineering fiction; because the Land/Overland universe is very different from ours (we learn at one stage that π=3 exactly) we can’t really thrill to the solution of engineering problems which are designed to pad out the thin plot. That leaves us with Toller Maraquine’s inner journey, and he’s just not a very interesting chap. I must say I’m fully on board with Robin McKinley’s devastating contemporary review in the L.A. Times. Where I love Shaw’s work, it’s when he takes people in a contemporary or near-contemporary setting to somewhere unexpected – A Wreath of Stars, Other Days, Other Eyes. His more space-y books haven’t usually worked for me.

The Ragged Astronauts came to the top of my reading list as the winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel of 1986. The other shortlisted works were Blood Music, by Greg Bear; Count Zero, by William Gibson; Queen of the States, by Josephine Saxton; and Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling. I’ve read the first two of these, and to be honest The Ragged Astronauts looks like a pretty undaring choice – perhaps the ecological crisis message seemed more exciting then than now, and the misogyny was less of an issue among voters? It was also runner-up for the first Arthur C. Clarke Award (which went to The Handmaid’s Tale) and was shortlisted for the Hugo (but not the Nebula), both of which went to Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

Next on this particular list is the 1987 BSFA winner, Gráinne, by Keith Roberts. (In principle I’m alternating BSFA winners with Clarke and Tiptree winners, but I wrote up The Handmaid’s Tale not all that long ago and the Tiptree hadn’t got going yet in 1987.)

Why I am not signing written declarations

Kaja Kallas has had enough.
(tags: eu )

Middle England’s immigration referendum

Ben Judah reports.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

My nominations for Best Novel for the 1941 Retro Hugos were:

Kallocain, Karin Boye (finalist)
The Ill-Made Knight, T.H. White (finalist)
Twice in Time, Manly Wade Wellman
The Last Man, aka No Other Man, Alfred Noyes
Captain Future and the Space Emperor, Edmond Hamilton

I was under no illusions that two slots at least would go to novels I didn’t care for, Slan and Gray Lensman, but hoped that I would at least boost the signal for T.H. White and for at least one of the other four. I’m glad that Kallocain was the one that made the cut, though I do not expect it to win. My votes will be:

No vote: Gray Lensman by E.E. “Doc” Smith (Astounding Science‐Fiction, Jan 1940)

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Here’s to love!” Haynes gave the toast.

I confess that I didn’t actually read this one; I bounced so firmly off Triplanetary, Galactic Patrol and First Lensman that I did not think there was much point in trying the fourth of the series.

5) No Award

4) Slan by A.E. van Vogt

Second paragraph of third chapter:

But there was so much at stake, she dared not miss a single thought or picture. Her eyes and mind jerked open, and there it was again— the room, the men, the whole menacing situation.

I didn’t really warm to this. But it’s a classic story which informed a lot that came later.

3) The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson (Unknown, Mar 1940)

Second paragraph of third chapter :

Theseus pushed through the ring. He found Cyron standing angrily over a small yellow-brown man, who was bound to the mast. The prisoner was squealing in terror, trying to writhe away from another red-hot lance that the enraged pirate was flourishing in front of him.

This almost made my own nominations list, replaced by the Alfred Noyes novel at the last moment. It’s a decent retelling of Greek legend.

2) Kallocain by Karin Boye

Second paragraph of third chapter :

“Soon everyone will know what State-threatening speeches I’m making,” I complained bitterly. “Go ahead and ask for a divorce, please do, even though the children are so small. It’s better for them to be fatherless than to live with an individual dangerous to the State.”

I’m pleased but also rather surprised that this made the shortlist; it’s a dystopia in the Brave New World / Nineteen Eighty-Four mould, but with some interesting wrinkles of its own.

1) The Ill‐Made Knight by T.H. White

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Uncle Dap was the only one in the family who took Lancelot seriously, and Lancelot was the one who was serious about Uncle Dap. It was easy not to be serious about the old fellow, for he was that peculiar creation which ignorant people laugh at—a genuine maestro. His branch of learning was chivalry. There was not a piece of armour proofed in Europe but what Uncle Dap had a theory about it. He was furious with the new Gothic style, with its ridges and scallop-patterns and fluting. He considered it ridiculous to wear armour like the ropework on a Nelson sideboard, for it was obvious that every groove would be liable to hold a point. The whole object of good armour, he said, was to throw the point off—and, when he thought of the people in Germany making their horrible furrows, he nearly went frantic. There was nothing in Heraldry which he did not know. If anybody committed any of the grosser errors—such as putting metal on metal or colour on colour—he became electrified with passion. His long white moustaches quivered at their tips like antennae, the ends of his fingers came together in gestures of the wildest passion, and he waved his arms and jumped up and down and wagged his eyebrows and almost fizzed. Nobody can be a maestro without being subject to these excitements, so Lancelot seldom minded when he got his face slapped in a mêlée about shields cut à bouche or about whether it was a good idea to have a guige on your shield or not. Sometimes Uncle Dap was tantalized into beating him, but he bore that also. In those days they did.

I reread this with some trepidation, possibly decades since I last read it, but I love it stillThe Once and Future King is way ahead of the other finalists on both LibraryThing and Goodreads, and I hope this translates into votes.

For the 2016 Hugos, I turn again to the File 770 straw poll in order to make an educated guess at the effect of the slate on the final ballot. The novels reportedly nominated by the most contributors to that thread were:

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie (33)
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik (20)
The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin (18)
Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente (9)
Bryony and Roses, by T. Kingfisher [Ursula Vernon] (8)
Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear (8)
The Just City, by Jo Walton (7)
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson (7)

The top three of these are finalists, and Seveneves was probably in the zone as well even without slate intervention. The Aeronaut’s Windlass, however, was nominated by only one person on the File 770 thread.

My own nominations were:

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie (finalist)
Europe at Midnight, by Dave Hutchinson
Mother of Eden, by Chris Beckett
Touch, by Claire North
The Just City, by Jo Walton

So I got one out of five here, which is around my average.

My votes are:

6) The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass, by Jim Butcher

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Bridget?” called her father’s deep voice from the entrance of the chamber. “Bridget, are you back here? It’s time.”

Military fic isn’t usually my thing; steampunk isn’t usually my thing; the first 116 pages, supplied with the Hugo packet, didn’t change my mind; and the fact that it was almost certainly slated onto the final ballot pushes it below No Award for me.

5) No Award

4) Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Down in the pantry, using a long-handled pot for a lever, I pried up the great iron cap that covered the refuse-pit and looked down. Deep below a fire gleamed; there was no escape there for me. I pushed the iron lid back into place with an effort, and then I searched all along the walls with both my palms, into every dark corner, looking for some opening, some entry. But if there was one, I didn’t find it; and then morning was spilling down the stairs behind me, an unwelcome golden light. I had to make the breakfast and carry the tray up to my doom.

This has already won the Nebula, so the fact that I wasn’t wild about it won’t do it much harm.

3) The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin

Second paragraph of third chapter:

But you still don’t know where Nassun is buried, if Jija bothered to bury her. Until you’ve said farewell to your daughter, you have to remain the mother that she loved.

Again, I think this just didn’t click with me as it obviously has for a lot of people.

2) Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson

Second paragraph of third chapter:

He could see that the president didn’t like that. Julia Bliss Flaherty, currently nearing the end of her first year on that job.

This, on the other hand, confounded my expectations; I had read a lot of very disappointed commentary, and was prepared for masses of dry infodump, but in fact I thought it was quite a good, if old-fashioned, example of the “My God! What if…” aspirations of sf. Despite the almost 900-page length I kept turning the pages. There are some serious problems: the reason why the Moon explodes at the start of the book is never explained, the celebrity cameos are just a bit annoying, the Evil Woman President is much more annoying than that, and the last section of the book, which is set literally 5000 years after the rest, should really have been a separate novel and could actually have been expanded a bit more. Nevertheless, I warmed to it enough to give it my second preference.

1) Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie

Second paragraph of third chapter:

If you grew up in such a household, or took an assignment associated with one, you didn’t need to request housing from Station Administration. Your housing assignment had been made long before you were born, long before the aptitudes sent you to your post. It helped, of course, to belong to a family that had been present when a station was first built, or annexed. Or to be related to one somehow. When I had been a ship, every one of my officers who had lived on stations had belonged to such households.

I find it difficult to articulate why I like these books so much, but I do.

The 1941 ballot has three acknowledged classics of sf and fantasy, and a great work of Swedish literature. I wonder what the critics of 2091 will make of the 2016 ballot? I certainly won’t be around to ask them.

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

Nailing the lie about unelected Brussels bureaucrats

Robin Lustig’s lucid analysis #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Frank Bruni on Orlando

An attack “on freedom itself”.
(tags: guns uspolitics sexandgenderandsexuality )

10 steps to Brexit

What could go wrong between now and next week…
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

1.5 million registered to vote last week

Will it help?
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

WikiLeaks to publish more Hillary Clinton emails – Julian Assange

Assange helping Trump.
(tags: wikileaks uspolitics )

GOP blocked bill to stop terrorists buying guns

A year ago.
(tags: uspolitics guns )

Second frame of chapter three:

At the not terribly impressive Brussels Comic Con, I thought I might try classic manga again, having bounced off the first volume of Tezuka’s Buddha when I tried it ten years ago. Mistakenly, I thought that this was the first of Tezuka’s Adolf series; in fact it’s the second, which may explain why the plot goes around in circles without really getting anywhere. At the beginning of the book, the central character, journalist Sohei Toge has returned from the 1936 Olympics with evidence that Adolf Hitler is in fact of Jewish descent. On this not terribly substantial and somewhat offensive idea is hung a run-around plot of getting beaten up and escaping certain death while attempting to retain the precious documents. I’m not sufficiently attracted to want to get any more in the series, or indeed, anything else by Tezuka.

The format of the book has been flipped left-to-right rather than the original Japanese right-to-left, and I wondered if that might apply to the pictures as well. But in fact the sign in the frame excerpted above is pretty clearly an unreversed 協合通信社, the last three characters meaning “News Agency” and the first two could be pronounced Kyogo, though I see the more usual pronunication fo the second character is “Ai” (as in “Aikido”, 合気道).

This came to the top of my list as the most popular book (on LibraryThing) by a non-white author. Next on that list is Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, which I think I will enjoy more.

Episode 16: Up To Scratch
First shown: 19 December 1970 (US), 30 April 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writer: Glyn Jones
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Timothy Bateson as Mr. Furber
Ann Lancaster as the Landlady

Plot

Billie is looking after a dog called Scratch. Brains is trying to communicate with Mars. Mr Furber arrives with his flea circus, and the gang manage to reinstate him into his previous lodgings after finding his landlady’s dog..

Soundtrack

While setting up their pet sanctuary, the gang (except Brains) sing “Old MacDonald Had A Farm”:

Glorious Moments

This is quite a charming episode, with the pets and the flea circus. As often with Glyn Jones, he took a single idea, which had already been done twice (in Episode 7: The Pop Singer and Episode 13: Barney) – the kids take mercy on a passing performer – and did something rather good with it.

There is a very cute sequence at the end where Tiger takes some performing dogs through their paces.

Less glorious moments

Transatlantic interpretation: Sticks excitedly cries, on being informed that Billie is getting two pounds a week for dog-sitting, “Why, that’s over five dollars!”

What's all this then?

The flea circus with non-existent fleas has been around for a while, but was popularised on British TV by former Goon Michael Bentine, best remembered by my generation for Michael Bentine’s Potty Time (1973-74), though the flea circus apparently was first shown on It’s A Square World (1960-64). I have a dim memory of seeing huim demonstrate it to Michael Aspel on Crackerjack! in the very early 1970s. I can’t find any clips of it online, unfortunately.

This is the fourth (and last) of the 17 episodes whose plot revolves around a dog. (The others were Episode 3: Starstruck, Episode 11: A Helping Hound, and Episode 14: Man’s Best Friend – the latter admittedly a bit of a stretch in that the dog is a hypothetical dog until the very last scene.)

Who's That?

Timothy Bateson (Mr Furber) was born in 1926, and had many supporting roles on film and TV without ever quite hitting the big time (he had the lead role in a sitcom about lighthousemen in 1970). I did not recognise him at all, but he played Binro the Heretic in the 1978 Doctor Who story The Ribos Operation, and was also the voice of Kreacher in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), his last role before his death in 2009.

Ann Lancaster (the Landlady) was born in 1920. She too played a lot of supporting roles, mostly in comedy, ending with Ruth the parlourmaid in the classic 1970 film of The Railway Children and with this episode, both of which were shown only after her death in 1970.

J.C. Penney, born in 1975 so aged 95 when the show was made, owned the stores that provided the wardrobe for the kids in the show. Several of the actors have reminisced in interviews about how much better dressed they felt they were for the show than English children were in real life at that stage. Obviously for J.C. Penney, the advertising potential was pretty important – and entirely US-based; there were no Penney’s shops this side of the Atlantic. (The Irish chain originally called Penneys, now Primark, was only in Dublin in 1970 and anyway is a completely different company.)

Where's that?

Mr Furber is kicked out of, and later restored to, 16 Essex Road in Borehamwood, which is still there though the bow windows have been renovated.

See you next week…

…for A Hit for a Miss.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Class, we are very lucky today,’ began Mr Watts. ‘Mrs Kabui has agreed to share with us the remarkable life and times of the heart seed.’

A short but very powerful book, about the power of literature to transcend the horrors of humanity. Mr Watts brings education to a remote part of Bougainville in the middle of the war there (probably the most horrible conflict in the Pacific since WW2, with 15-20,000 killed of a population of less than a quarter million). Pip from Great Expectations becomes a focal cultural reference point for Matilda and her neighbours, before war comes and destroys their world. After the dust has settled, Matilda finds out where Mr Watts actually came from; and her memories of him are not tarnished but enhanced as a result. It’s a grim read in places, but ultimately encouraging.

This came to the top of my list as the most popular of my unread non-sf/fantasy books on LibraryThing. Next on that list is Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns

Last books finished
Space Raptor Butt Invasion, by Chuck Tingle
The Builders, by Daniel Polanski
Perfect State, by Brandon Sanderson
Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds
Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986, by Marc Aramini (not finished)
SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, by Vox Day (not finished)
Selected Stories, by Alice Munro
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson
The Aeronaut’s Windlass, by Jim Butcher (did not finish)

Next books
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry

Books acquired in last week
Time Lord, by Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Ebans

What Will Happen To EU Digital VAT If We Leave The EU? 10 Popular Myths Debunked

(tags: ukpolitics eu )

My nominations for Best Related Work this year were:

Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien, eds. Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan
Letters to Tiptree, eds Alissa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce
Companion Piece: Women Celebrate the Humans, Aliens and Tin Dogs of Doctor Who, eds. L.M. Myles and Liz Barr
TARDIS Eruditorum, by Philip Sandifer – the entire blog, which finished in February 2015
A Detailed Explanation, by Matthew David Surridge

None of these made the final ballot, which was completely determined by the slate. I don’t regard any of the finalists as having legitimately earned their places, so I am voting No Award in this category; it does not in any way reflect the state of commentary on the genre in the last year.

Edited to add: The state of the genre last year is possibly better illustrated by the most popular Related Works among respondents to the File 770 straw poll. These were:

Letters to Tiptree, eds. Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein (24)
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir, by Felicia Day (12)
John Scalzi Is Not a Very Popular Author and I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels, by “Theophilus Pratt” [Alexandra Erin] (10)
Invisible 2: Personal Essays on Representation in SF/F, ed. Jim C. Hines (5)
The Wheel of Time Companion, by Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons (5)
“A Detailed Explanation”, by Matthew David Surridge (4)
A History of Epic Fantasy, by Adam Whitehead (4)
Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Lois McMaster Bujold, by Edward James (4)
Women of Wonder: Celebrating Women Creators of Fantastic Art, by Cathy Fenner, intr. Lauren Panepinto (4)

(end of edit.)

Unlike last year, though, I’m going to give a couple of transfers to maximise the chances of the worst of them being beaten by the less awful. It’s subjective, of course, but my ranking is as follows:

1) No Award

2) Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini

Second paragraph of third chapter:

At the culmination of the first book, Severian presents his philosophy of composition in the chapter titled “Five Legs”, comparing the writing of his manuscript to an actual execution, in which the competent headsman can position people who “want different things in such a way that he pleases everyone (save perhaps his victim, of course). Severian also states:

The authorities for whom the carnifex acts, the chiliarchs or archons … will have little complaint if the condemned is prevented from escaping, or much inflaming the mob; and if he is undeniably dead at the conclusion of the proceedings. That authority, as it seems to me, in my writing is the impulse that drives me to my task. Its requirements are that the subject of this work must remain central to it—not escaping into prefaces or indexes or into another work entirely; that the rhetoric not be permitted to overwhelm it; and that it be carried to a satisfactory conclusion. (Shadow, XXXIII 226)

Apart from The Book of the New Sun, I’ve read only a couple of other Wolfe books; a lot of people really like him, but he doesn’t do much for me to be honest. However, this seems a harmless enough exploration of his writing that just happens to have been published by the chief slater.

3) The First Draft of My Appendix N Book by Jeffro Johnson

Second paragraph of third chapter (which is on The High Crusade by Poul Anderson):

Now… the thief class takes a lot of flak in spite of the enduring appeal of characters like Robin Hood and Bilbo Baggins. Yet not only was it a latecomer that wasn’t even in the original three “little brown books” that made up the original “White Box”rule set, but its system of skills and abilities was seen as taking away from actions that everyone tended try during the earliest game sessions.² For instance, fighting men might take a stab at being stealthy by removing their armor and then scouting ahead for the party. When the thief class came along with an explicit chance to “move silently”, a lot of people leaped to the conclusion the other classes couldn’t attempt such a thing anymore. This made for some hard feelings, and fixing the design issues implied by this class’s existence is such a hassle that maybe it’s best to just drop it altogether!
² See “The Trouble with Thieves” by James Maliszewski in Knockspell #2 for a good run down on the arguments surrounding the introduction of the thief class.

A fairly harmless look at the books listed in Appendix N of the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, from the very narrow perspective of what each book contributed to Dungeons and Dragons. (The paragraph excerpted is actually a side remark in an article mainly about clerics.) The book is not actually finished; it’s a collection of blog posts, a poorly formatted table of contents being included in the Hugo packet. In a normal year would lose marks from me for messiness.

The other three nominations are sheer malice. Two are straightforward propaganda; the third combines a harrowing account of personal trauma with an attack on all homosexuals and on same-sex marriage. I’m not going to rank them on my ballot at all. The excerpts will give a sufficient sense of the content, I hope.

“Safe Space as Rape Room” by Daniel Eness

Second paragraph of third entry:

The answer is simple: vandalism and destruction is not the unintended consequence of the protesters, nor is the inactivity of the majority a sign of helplessness. It is not the vocal few who have torn down Lovecraft’s statue, but the seemingly passive majority within World Fantasy’s body who, through unvoiced cheers, have blessed the desecration.

Actually one of the less inflammatory passages.

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

Second paragraph of third chapter:

From the famous and accomplished to the insignificant and the ordinary, absolutely no one is safe. Consider a few of the following examples:

• Dr. James Watson, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of DNA, awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, forced to resign as chancellor and board member of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after 43 years due to comments he made concerning human biodiversity. The president of the Federation of American Scientists said, “He has failed us in the worst possible way. It is a sad and revolting way to end a remarkable career”.
• Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla, forced to resign due to a single $1,000 political donation made five years prior.
• Sir Tim Hunt, Nobel Laureate, awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, forced to resign from the University College London and fired by the European Research Council’s science committee due to a comment about women crying in the laboratory.
• Pax Dickenson, Chief Technology Officer of Business Insider, forced to resign due to tweeting several politically incorrect comments.
• Curt Schilling, former Major League Baseball pitcher, baseball analyst, and expert ASL player was suspended by ESPN and removed “from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration” for a single tweet comparing the estimated percentage of Muslims who are extremists to the historical percentage of Germans who were National Socialists.
• North Charleston Police Sgt. Shannon Dildine, fired for wearing Confederate flag boxers.
• Florida high school principal Alberto Iber, fired for defending a Texas police officer accused of racism.
• Greg Elliott, Canadian graphic artist, fired and charged with criminally harassing two female political activists for refusing to endorse their plan to “sic the Internet” on a young man in Northern Ontario who developed a video game of which they disapproved.

To be clear, Watson was forced to resign from Cold Spring not for comments about human biodiversity but because he said black people were stupid. Shannon Dildine was not fired for “wearing Confederate flag boxers”; he was fired for posting a picture of himself wearing nothing but Confederate flag boxers on Facebook, the week that nine black churchgoers were murdered in his community and as calls mounted for the flag to be taken down from state property – you get the joke? And it goes on, but I think the point is clear.

“The Story of Moira Greyland” by Moira Greyland

Second last para:

But that is not going to slow me down one bit. I am going to keep right on speaking out. I have been silent for entirely too long. Gay “marriage” is nothing but a way to make children over in the image of their “parents” and in ten to thirty years, the survivors will speak out.

Greyland’s trauma is entirely real, and what happened to her is deplorable, but there’s no way that I’m endorsing her political conclusions, even indirectly, with a preference vote. In a week when the Stanford rape victim’s testimony has seared across the airwaves, the slate’s exploitation of Greyland’s trauma to try and score points in a game that nobody else wants to play seems particularly disgusting.

Well, that was depressing. Let’s hope for better next year (though I will have to refrain from commentary).

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

MP switches from Leave to Remain

Because the numbers were made up.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Do you want to ruin this picture? Vote Leave.

Irish consequences.
(tags: eu northernireland ukpolitics ireland )

So democratic: Why I love the EU

Francis puts a strong case.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

WTFUK

Another horrible account of an honest traveller being abused and deported by the UK.
(tags: migration ukpolitics )

The black hole within Donald Trump

“A man tragically enslaved to his own neediness.”
(tags: uspolitics )

Second frame of third page:

Kim: That little creature! Let’s follow it! It will lead us there.

I was a bit dissatisfied with the previous couple of volumes in this series, which seemed to me to have a real middle-book syndrome feeling about them, but here we are moving satisfactorily towards a conclusion as Kim and fellow explorers, separated in their exploration of the lush planetary surface of Bételgeuse, endure deadly danger to eventually be led by the indigenous iums and the mysterious young human girl Mai Lin to the place where the secret of the planet can be found. At least, I hope so; I’ve bought the next book already and will report back.

EU immigration has no negative impact on British wages, jobs or public services, research finds | Home News | News | The Independent

As we thought.
(tags: eu migration ukpolitics )

Reading the runes

Pete on the polls
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

How ‘Economists for Brexit’ manage to defy the laws of gravity

“Minford admits his model predicts that the policy would cause the ‘elimination’ of UK manufacturing and a large increase in wage inequality. But although he is relaxed about these outcomes, we suspect that voters in Port Talbot and elsewhere in Britain wouldn’t be so impressed.”
(tags: ukpolitics eu economics )

New Brunswick’s new Celtic affairs cabinet post blasted as ‘bizarre’

Fair comment. #fb
(tags: canada )

I did some due diligence and research while nominating for these categories, and it was all for nothing as far as the 2016 Hugos went, because the slate swept nine places out of ten.

For Best Professional Artist for 2016, I nominated the following:

Anne Sudworth
Fangorn
Julie Dillon
David Hardy
Fiona Staples

None of these made the final ballot; all five of those who did were supported by the slate. I’m therefore voting No Award in this category and leaving it at that.

For Best Fan Artist for 2016, I nominated the following:

Andy Bigwood
Chris Moore
Jane Stewart
Margaret Walty
Keith Scaife

I did not expect any of them to make it to the ballot, to be honest. But the fact is that four of the five artists who did end up as finalists were supported by the slate. Applying the Matt Foster principle, that if we have only one non-slate finalist in a category we are still allowing it to be decided by the slate, I’m therefore voting:

1) No Award
2) Steve Stiles (whose art has never much appealed to me anyway, to be honest)

And that’s it.

For Best Professional Artist for 1941, I nominated the following:

Virgil Finlay
Margaret Brundage
Hubert Rogers

All three of them made the final ballot, along with:

Hannes Bok
Edd Cartier
Frank R. Paul

These are all worthy finalists. My votes are as follows, with representative art:

1) Margaret Brundage

2) Edd Cartier

3) Hubert Rogers

4) Frank R. Paul

5) Hannes Bok

6) Vergil Finlay

7) No Award

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

“Remain” is still ahead. Probably.

Peter Kellner casts a cold eye.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

‘Doesn’t Mary have a lovely bottom?’ – Catholicism, sex and girls in Father Ted

An excellent analysis!
(tags: tv ireland church fatherted )

Vote Leave quietly delete its fake ‘register to vote’ page after being exposed

Liars and cheats.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

In or Out? My journey to a decision on the EU Referendum

Long but comprehensive.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

As noted previously, it is more difficult this year than last year to assess the impact that slate voting had on the final ballot for the Hugos. For some guidance on that question, once again I'm looking at the File 770 straw poll, where the top novellas that readers reported nominating were:

Penric’s Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold (25)
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor (16)
Witches of Lychford, by Paul Cornell (13)
“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn”, by Usman T. Malik (12)
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, by Kai Ashante Wilson (12)
“The New Mother”, by Eugene Fischer (11)

In fact the first two of these did make it to the final ballot, Binti without slate support and Penric’s Demon with support both from the Rabid Puppies and from me; if the File 770 readership is representative of the broader non-Puppy Hugo electorate (which of course it may not be), “Slow Bullets”, by Alastair Reynolds (7), would not have been far off either, whereas “The Builders”, by Daniel Polansky (3) was probably further, and “Perfect State” by Brandon Sanderson (0) further still.

It's probably also worth noting that all four of the slated finalists have distanced themselves from the slate in pretty clear terms. (Okorafor's views are also pretty clear.)

My own nominations were:

1941
"The Mound", by H.P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop
"If This Goes On—", by Robert A. Heinlein (finalist)
Fattypuffs and Thinifers, by Andre Maurois
The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
"But Without Horns", by Norvell Page

2016
"Citadel of Weeping Pearls", by Aliette de Bodard
Penric's Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold (finalist)
Witches of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
"The New Mother", by Eugene Fischer
A Day In Deep Freeze, by Lisa Shapter

So one of my five choices made the final ballot for both 1941 and 2016, and in both cases, having read the other four possibilities, my surviving nominee will remain my top preference.

1941 Retro Hugos

It’s a real shame that only Heinlein and de Camp/Pratt are represented on the final ballot. The best writing of 1940 went a lot broader than that, and frankly I’m applying No Award rather brutally at the point where I feel the quality is less than the weakest of the stories I nominated ("The Mound").

6) “Coventry”, by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph:

‘Very well-the jury has determined that you have violated a basic custom agreed to under the Covenant, and that through this act did damage another free citizen. It is the opinion of the jury and of the court that you did so knowingly, and aware of the probability of damage to a free citizen. Therefore, you are sentenced to choose between the Two Alternatives.’

A political parable which didn’t really have a lot of point as far as I could see. Unlike the other three finalists, I read it during the nomination phase but quickly rejected it.

5) “The Roaring Trumpet”, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The explorer of universes ducked under the skins and into a long hall panelled in dark wood. At one end a fire blazed, apparently in the centre of the floor, though bricked round to knee height. Around it were a number of benches and tables. Shea caught a glimpse of walls hung with weapons – a huge sword, nearly as tall as he was, half a dozen small spears or javelins, their delicate steel points catching ruddy highlights from the torches in brackets, a kite shaped shield with metal overlay in an intricate pattern—

The first of the Compleat Enchanter stories which I read in 2006 and have reread now, in which a modern scientist visits the world of the Norse gods. It’s rather uneven, obviously a taproot text for much that came after, but really not well executed, memorable only for the phrase “Yngvi is a louse!”

4) No Award

3) “Magic, Inc.”, by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph of third section:

“Are you an expert in magic, Mr. Wiggin?” he asked.

Tim Powers argues in the afterword to the Baen edition (only $8.99, recommended) that this should be seen as an early example of urban fantasy and actually I think he’s right; we have a situation of intrusive magic, intervening in the normal business and political life of a small US state. It feels a bit didactic to me, and is of course pretty sexist, but it lurches above No Award as a good case of “What If?” for me.

2) “The Mathematics of Magic”, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Shea was taken in tow by a pair of youths who gazed at him admiringly. Each wore medieval hose, with one leg red and the other white. As he mounted a winding stair under their guidance, one of them piped, 'Are you only a squire, sir?'

Having been a bit disappointed with “The Roaring Trumpet”, I was relieved to enjoy the second instalment of the series much more; here our hero and his colleague visit the world of Edmund Spenser, with much scope for confusion about the code of chivalry. It is very funny in places, particularly the recitation of “Eskimo Nell”. So I’m giving it my second preference.

1) “If This Goes On—”, by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph of Chapter 3:

Zeb turned to her. ‘I don’t believe so.’ She stared at him. ‘Are you a Cabalist?’

I think this is far and away the best contender in this category. As I have said before, Heinlein’s portrayal of a theocratic dictatorship ruling a dystopian future America seems very close to the bone in 2016, and his thoughts about political messaging are pretty up to date as well, though of course the techniques turn out to be different. This is a worthy winner.

The quality gap between the 1941 and 2016 lists is rather less here than for other categories (mainly because the 1941 list has a couple of weak finalists). My votes for 2016 are as follows:

2016 Hugos

6) The Builders, by Daniel Polansky

Second paragraph of third section:

He nodded brusquely to Reconquista and slipped his way to the back, stopping in front of the main table. “Where is everyone?”

I may be being a bit harsh, but I couldn't really see the point of heavily armed talking small furry creatures. Maybe it ties into something I am not aware of.

5) Perfect State, by Brandon Sanderson

Second paragraph of third section:

It felt so odd to have nobody trailing me. No servants, no soldiers. At the front doors, a man guarding the entrance bowed, then waved me past. I caught a glimpse of a clipboard with a page full of faces on it, mine included. Several of the people from the gunfight earlier were also pictured, and I guessed this was a sheet telling him all the Liveborn visiting the city, so he’d know who to obey. Only a few of those here in the city would be Liveborn—maybe a hundred or so out of millions. Just like in other States, the rest would be Machineborn. Simulated Entities who had been born within the State, and would live their entire lives here.

This was quite a neat concept, but I guessed what was going on not very far into the story and felt that it then went on a bit too long.

4) No Award – in a normal year I might be more generous to trailing stories, but my view is that the Polansky and Sanderson probably owe their spots on the ballot to slating, and the other three probably don't.

3) Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor

Second paragraph of third section:

When the officer handed me my astrolabe, I resisted the urge to snatch it back. He was an old Khoush man, so old that he was privileged to wear the blackest turban and face veil. His shaky hands were so gnarled and arthritic that he nearly dropped my astrolabe. He was bent like a dying palm tree and when he’d said, “You have never traveled; I must do a full scan. Remain where you are,” his voice was drier than the red desert outside my city. But he read my astrolabe as fast as my father, which both impressed and scared me. He’d coaxed it open by whispering a few choice equations and his suddenly steady hands worked the dials as if they were his own.

I expect that this will win, and indeed it has already won the Nebula. As I said when I read it for the BSFA vote, the plot (plucky kid survives alien attack, makes peace between aliens and humans) is hardly original, and the fact that the protagonist's tribal adornments uniquely give her protection against the aliens is pretty cliched. But obviously it appealed to a lot of readers.

2) Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds

Second paragraph of third section:

But once I was able to assess my condition I realised that there was no longer any pain anywhere in my leg. I felt neither the bullet nor my wound.

I wasn't quite sure about this in places, but Reynolds conveys bleak unforgiving vastness of space and time very well, and managed to find redemption for both protagonist and antagonist at the end. So I have swallowed my uncertainty and put it second.

1) Penric’s Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Second paragraph of third section:

“Where did the fellow go who came with . . .” Pen wasn’t sure what to call her, dead sorceress seeming disrespectful though definitive. “With the late Learned Ruchia?”

I’m a total Bujold fanboy and knew I’d be voting for this as soon as I read it.

I’m hoping that the one 1940 novelette that I haven’t otherwise found will show up in the Retro Hugo packet from MidAmeriCon 2 – I’ve read all the others, including the 2015 finalists.

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

Episode 15: United We Stand
First shown: 19 December 1970 (US), 30 April 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writers: John Tully and Glyn Jones
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Pat Coombs as Miss Fisher
Derek Royle as Mr. Beaumont
Jack Haig as the Short Workman
Bob Todd as the Big Workman
Lauri Lupino Lane as the Mayor
John Barrard as the Short Councillor
Reg Peters as the Tall Councillor

Note: I was on the road every weekend in May except the last, which I spent catching up with other things. Only two more episodes after this one, alas.

Plot

Local businessman Mr Beaumont wants to raze the Double Deckers' den and turn it into a car park. Two workmen are sent to clear it are frightened into retreat by the gang, who then sabotage Mr Beaumont's site visit with the Mayor and two councillors.

Glorious Moments

This episode is almost entirely slapstick, at the expense of Mr Beaumont…

…and also of the two workmen who are a delightful direct homage to Laurel and Hardy (their theme tune is referenced in the incidental music at one point).

Less glorious moments

There's not much here apart from the slapstick, and the kids don't actually get as much to do as the adult actors.

What's all this then?

The basic plot of the evil capitalist plan to destroy the place where the kids are having fun is most famously developed in Cliff Richard's The Young Ones (1961), also shot at Elstree. Melvyn Hayes, who appears in most Double Deckers episodes (but not this one) was of course in the next Cliff Richard film, Summer Holiday (1963).

Mr Beaumont, the evil authority figure, may have been intended to be a return appearance of Graham Stark's very similar character Mr Brimble from Episode 11, A Helping Hound – when he first appears, Billie says, "It's Mr Beaumont – he's come back!" although he has not previously appeared in the show.

Who's That?

John Tully, who gets part credit for the script, wrote three of the best-loved BBC TV adaptations of children's books in the 1970s – Tom's Midnight Garden (1974), Kizzy (1976) and The Phoenix and the Carpet (1976-77) – the last of these starred a young Gary Russell, who has gone on to other things. It's his only Double Deckers script, but given his track record I can't imagine that he was the writer of whom Glyn Jones complained that he had to rewrite the entire thing.

We have already seen Pat Coombs (Miss Fisher), who plays Doris in Episode 5, Happy Haunting, Jack Haig (the Short Workman), who plays Harvey the Toy Shop Assistant in Episode 2, The Case of the Missing Doughnut, and John Barrard (the Short Councillor) who plays the King of Diamonds in Episode 8, Scooper Strikes Out.

Derek Royle (Mr Beaumont), born in 1928, had a bit part in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour (1968), and ended his career in 'Allo 'Allo as Roger LeClerc (whose brother Ernest LeClerc was played by Jack Haig); the part was recast after his death in 1990. In the mid-1970s he and Pat Coombs appeared in a children's sit-com about a medical practice called Hogg's Back, in which he played the title character. He memorably also played Mr Leeman, the eponymous corpse in the classic Fawlty Towers episode The Kipper and the Corpse.

Bob Todd (the Tall Workman), born in 1921, had a long career as straight man to the likes of Benny Hill, Spike Milligan and Marty Feldman. He died in 1992.

Lauri Lupino Lane (the Mayor), also born in 1921, was the son of Lupino Lane, an Edwardian child actor who grew up to make the Lambeth Walk famous as the star of Me and My Girl (stage 1937, film 1939). Lauri has only ten credits on IMDB, the first being an appearance in his father's 1939 film and the last being another Mayor in Confessions of a Summer Camp Councillor (1977). He died in 1986. NB that IMDB incorrectly credits him as one of the councillors.

Reg Peters (the taller councillor) has nine minor IMDB credits between 1968 and 1971 followed by one in 1985, and that's it.

Where's that?

Entirely filmed in studio.

See you next week…

…for Up to Scratch.

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
Selected Stories, by Alice Munro

Last books finished
Space Raptor Butt Invasion, by Chuck Tingle
The Builders, by Daniel Polanski
Perfect State, by Brandon Sanderson
Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds

Next books
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns

Books acquired in last week
Who Moved My Blackberry? by Martin Lukes with Lucy Kellaway
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel
Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot
The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot
Waldo and Magic, Inc., by Robert A. Heinlein

The Hugos this year present some difficulty for the voter who objects to the slating tactics of the self-styled Rabid Puppies. They cunningly nominated some items that were not absolutely unworthy of the ballot. Indeed, in one or two cases I myself nominated finalists that were also on the Rabid Puppy slate.

The Short Story category isn’t one of those difficult cases. It’s my personal judgement that four of the five finalists had little support outside the slate, and owe their places on the ballot entirely to that sponsorship. File 770 held a survey of its own readers to ask who they had nominated, and the top listed short stories were:

“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (21)
“Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon (18)
“Damage” by David D. Levine (13)
“Wooden Feathers” by Ursula Vernon (13)
“Hello, Hello” by Seanan McGuire (7)
“Monkey King, Faerie Queen” by Zen Cho (7)
“Today I Am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker (7)

Apart from “Cat Pictures Please”, the only one of the actual finalists mentioned on File 770 was “Asymmetrical Warfare” which one person reported having nominated. File 770 doesn’t represent the whole of fandom, of course, but it is none the less a fairly broad spectrum.

My own nominations were:

1941 Retro Hugos:
“John Duffy's Brother”, by Flann O'Brien
“The Stellar Legion”, by Leigh Brackett (Finalist)
“The Piper”, by Ray Bradbury (as Ron Reynolds)
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, by Jorge Luís Borges (Finalist)
“Quietus”, by Ross Rocklynne

2016 Hugos:
"Caisson", by Karl Bunker
"The Shape of My Name", by Nino Cipri
"Madeleine", by Amal El-Mohtar
"Summer at Grandma's House", by Hao Jingfang, tr Carmen Yiling Yan
"The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill", by Kelly Robson

I was pretty much out of sync both with the combined wisdom of File 770 readers and with the actual ballot.

For these write-ups in general, I've excerpted the second paragraph of each story which in most cases is a fairly good insight into the style of the whole (with the exception of Chuck Tingle's story, which swerves into porn two thirds of the way through). Here are my votes:

6) “Robbie” by Isaac Asimov

Second paragraph:

She craned her neck to investigate the possibilities of a clump of bushes to the right and then withdrew farther to obtain a better angle for viewing its dark recesses. The quiet was profound except for the incessant buzzing of insects and the occasional chirrup of some hardy bird, braving the midday sun.

I'm sorry, but I just hate cute robots, and this is the archetypal cute robot story.

5) No Award

I can live with any of the others winning.

4) “Martian Quest” by Leigh Brackett

Second paragraph:

Rikatva and Tchava, the Martian Reclaimed Areas. The Tri-Council—great minds of three worlds—had poured money into them in an effort to give the unwanted overflow of a crowded civilization a chance to get off the public charity rolls. Water, brought in tanker ships from wetter worlds; Venusian humus, acid phosphate, nitrate nitrogen, to make the alkaline desert fruitful; after that, crude shacks and cruder implements, scrimped together with what was left from the funds wrung so hardly from resentful taxpayers.

It's basically a Western on Mars, but it's passionately done.

3) “The Stellar Legion” by Leigh Brackett

Second paragraph:

The metal door clanged open to admit Lehn, the young Venusian Commandant, and every man jerked tautly to his feet. Ian MacIan, the white-haired, space-burned Earthman, alone and hungrily poised for action; Thekla, the swart Martian low-canaler, grinning like a weasel beside Bhak, the hulking strangler from Titan. Every quick nervous glance was riveted on Lehn.

This actually got one of my nomination votes, and I can't quite remember why; I think it's better than the other Brackett story on the ballot, but not that much better.

2) “Requiem” by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph (counting Robert Louis Stevenson's epitaph as part of the first paragraph):

These lines appear another place — scrawled on a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container, and pinned to the ground with a knife.

I wavered on this one a bit; but in the end, the story of someone achieving their lifetime's desire in their dying moments is a rather moving story, even if the protagonist is an old rich white man (as I too hope to be some day).

1) “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges

Second paragraph:

The following day, Bioy called me from Buenos Aires. He told me he had before him the article on Uqbar, in volume XLVI of the encyclopedia. The heresiarch's name was not forthcoming, but there was a note on his doctrine, formulated in words almost identical to those he had repeated, though perhaps literally inferior. He had recalled: Copulation and mirrors are abominable. The text of the encyclopedia said: For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or (more precisely) a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe. I told him, in all truthfulness, that I should like to see that article. A few days later he brought it. This surprised me, since the scrupulous cartographical indices of Ritter's Erdkunde were plentifully ignorant of the name Uqbar.

It's rare that Hugo voters have a chance to honour one of the great works of world literature, and I hope they will take that chance this year.

There's a bit of a quality contrast, to put it mildly, between the 1941 Retro Hugos and this year's Hugo nominations. My votes for the latter are as follows:

6) “If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris

Second paragraph:

If you were a Hugo®, then I would become Taller, Stronger John Scalzi so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats, if you were into that kind of thing. I’d make my bed right under the trophy case, in the basement where my wife lets me sleep. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.

Offensive and vacuous, and deliberately so.

5) “Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao

Second paragraph:

The damned hei ren were going to get him replaced, he thought bitterly. If he was fortunate. In the event General Xu decided that the growing gap between the region's quarterly objectives and the actual results achieved was the consequence of excessive greed rather than Zhang‘s inability to make the natives work, his family would be receiving a bill for the price of the bullet used to execute him before long.

Interesting concept, but poorly told and actively racist in the telling.

4) “Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon

Second paragraph:

How I wish I could be in their place right now, to see the cosmic battlefield with young eyes.

I just didn't feel there was any there there.

3) Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle

Second paragraph:

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I tell him with a slight smile.

First part is actually quite fun before it gets gratuitous.

2) “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer

Second paragraph:

I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts—I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes”—one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession. They’re both on the programming team. And of course I know about the hentai. (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct; there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.)

Last year I accepted Matt Foster’s point (in a now-deleted blog post) that if there was only one story in a category that did not owe its place to a slate, it is better to vote No Award than to allow the winner to be, in effect, determined by the slate. I still think there’s merit to that, though this year it will need to be refined a bit. But in any case I was one of the very few who didn’t much like “Cat Pictures Please” in the first place. When I first read this, I thought it was the kind of story that wins a Hugo despite my not really liking it; that's even more likely now, given the circumstance of its being the only non-Puppy nominee on this year's ballot.

1) No Award

The first, but I fear not the last of my No Award votes this year. However, unlike last year, I will vote my preferences allt he way down in most cases.

Let's hope for better times to come.

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

Very sorry to learn of the death of Mohamed Abdelaziz, leader of the Saharawi people of Western Sahara, Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO, and president of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. I met him in December 2008 when he came to my office and I organised media meetings for him. His people have still not had the self-determination to which they are entitled by international law and ICJ opinion. Condolences to his family, friends and people.

I’m going to take a long lunch break tomorrow and visit the Cartoon Museum’s exhibitions on the Great British Graphic Novel and the Doctor Who Target Book Artwork. Anyone else want to come? It’s near the British Museum; opening hours are 1030-1730 – earlier suits me better than later, otherwise flexible.

One extraordinary point about this year's election is that the combined aged of the two front-runners is by some margin the highest ever. Donald Trump turns 70 a few months before the election, and Hillary Clinton a few months after. Their combined age of 139 on Election Day is ten years more than the previous record, Reagan (73) and Mondale (56) in 1984 (total 129). Only twice before have both main candidates been over 60 – the obscure elections of 1848, when Zachary Taylor (63) beat Lewis Cass (64), and 1828 when Andrew Jackson beat John Quincy Adams (both 61). To have both over 69 – both over 70, in the unlikely event that Sanders not Clinton is the Democratic candidate – is really unprecedented.

I found it striking as I crunched the numbers that the average age of candidates now is much older than it used to be. In the list of ages of the leading candidates at each election below, I've put the 16 elections since 1952 (starting with 1956) in red; the 16 elections before 1852 (ending with 1848) in blue; and the 26 elections from 1852 to 1952 inclusive in green. It's clear that the middle period saw younger candidates, with those 26 elections supplying 22 of the bottom half of the table, and 4 of the top half – in fact, none of the middle 26 are in the top 30% of the table, and the high-water mark is the comparatively youthful matchup between Hayes and Tilden in 1876. Meanwhile all four elections since 2000, and all but two of the ten elections starting with 1980 (in darker red), are in the top third of the table. The earlier period was even more elderly, with only two elections (one of which doesn't really count) of the first 16 in the lower half of the table.

2016 ?Clinton? (69) + Trump (70) = 139
1984 Reagan (73) + Mondale (56) = 129
1848 Taylor (63) + Cass (64) = 127
1980 Reagan (69) + Carter (56) = 125
1840 Harrison (67) + Van Buren (57) = 124
1996 Clinton (50) + Dole (73) = 123
1956 Eisenhower (66) + Stevenson (56) = 122
1828 Jackson (61) + Adams (61) = 122
1800 Jefferson (57) + Adams (65) = 122
1832 Jackson (65) + Clay (55) =120
2008 Obama (47) + McCain (72) = 119
1988 Bush (64) + Dukakis (55) = 119
1816 Monroe (58) + King (61) = 119
1808 Madison (57) + Pinckney (62) = 119
1804 Jefferson (61) + Pinckney (58) = 119
2004 Bush (58) + Kerry (60) = 118
1792 Washington (60) + Adams (57) = 117
2012 Obama (51) + Romney (65) = 116
1876 Hayes (54) + Tilden (62) = 116
1844 Polk (49) + Clay (67) = 116
1836 Van Buren (53) + Harrison (63) = 116
1976 Carter (52) + Ford (63) = 115
1820 Monroe (62) + Adams (53) = 115
1992 Clinton (46) + Bush (68) = 114
1952 Eisenhower (62) + Stevenson (52) = 114
1892 Cleveland (55) + Harrison (59) = 114
1824 Adams (57) + Jackson (57) = 114
1796 Adams (61) + Jefferson (53) = 114
1916 Wilson (59) + Hughes (54) = 113
1852 Pierce (47) + Scott (66) = 113
1968 Nixon (55) + Humphrey (57) = 112
1964 Johnson (56) + Goldwater (55) = 111
1872 Grant (50) + Greeley (61) = 111
1948 Truman (64) + Dewey (46) = 110
1972 Nixon (59) + McGovern (50) = 109
1912 Wilson (55) + Roosevelt (54) = 109
1856 Buchanan (65) + Frémont (43) = 109
1788 Washington (56) + Adams (53) = 109
1932 Roosevelt (50) + Hoover (58) = 108
1928 Hoover (54) + Smith (54) = 108
2000 Bush (54) + Gore (52) = 106
1940 Roosevelt (58) + Wilkie (48) = 106
1888 Harrison (55) + Cleveland (51) = 106
1920 Harding (55) + Cox (50) = 105
1884 Cleveland (47) + Blaine (58) = 105
1944 Roosevelt (62) + Dewey (42) = 104
1880 Garfield (48) + Hancock (56) = 104
1868 Grant (46) + Seymour (58) = 104
1812 Madison (61) + Clinton (43) = 104
1936 Roosevelt (54) + Landon (49) = 103
1924 Coolidge (52) + Davis (51) = 103
1908 Taft (51) + Bryan (48) = 99
1904 Roosevelt (46) + Parker (52) = 98
1900 McKinley (57) + Bryan (40) = 97
1864 Lincoln (55) + McClellan (37) = 92
1860 Lincoln (51) + Breckinridge (39) = 90
1960 Kennedy (42) + Nixon (47) = 89
1896 McKinley (53) + Bryan (36) = 89

Note on methodology: I've taken candidates' ages in calendar years on election day. (Which for Warren Harding's was his 55th birthday, for all the good it did him.) In 1800 I count Adams (65) not Burr (44) as runner-up since that's who voters thought they were choosing between in November. For 1872 I've counted Greeley (61) as losing candidate even though he died shortly after the election; most of his electoral votes went to Thomas Hendricks (53) who went on to be Tilden's running mate in 1876 (they lost) and Cleveland's in 1884 (they won, but Hendricks died a few months after taking office). I have not counted third or lower placed candidates at all (thus excluding incumbent President Taft in 1912, when he was 55).

Incidentally the older candidate has won 32 times, and the younger 25 times. But those 32 include three elections which were really acclamations (1788, 1792 and 1820) so the fact that the Adamses were younger than Washington or Monroe doesn't really matter (indeed, there are good grounds for excluding those elections from my list entirely). The most recent period shows a shift of fortune in favour of (relative) youth; of the 16 most recent elections, the younger candidate has won nine and the older seven; of the last six elections, the younger candidate has won five (six out of six, if you want to count Gore as the 2000 winner).