Second paragraph of third story (“Half a Grapefruit”):

There were four large clean windows along the wall. There were new fluorescent lights. The class was Health and Guidance, a new idea. Boys and girls mixed until after Christmas, when they got on to Family Life. The teacher was young and optimistic. She wore a dashing red suit that flared out over the hips. She went up and down, up and down the rows, making everybody say what they had for breakfast, to see if they were keeping Canada’s Food Rules.

I’ve been raving here about the short fiction of Canada’s Nobel laureate, mostly set in small town Ontario, usually in collections without a linking theme. But this book (originally published in Canada as Who Do You Think You Are?) is a little different – a sequence of stories about stepmother and stepdaughter Flo and Rose (more Rose than Flo), a couple of which ended up in the Collected Stories volume that I read earlier this year. It won the Governor-General’s Award in Canada and is the only short story collection ever to have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (in 1980; William Golding’s Rites of Passage won). The pace is slow and considered – on the whole these are accounts not of specific incidents but of life choices and changes. Flo never leaves the village where they come from; Rose goes to university, gets married, divorced, becomes mildly famous, has various relationships and eventually returns. For me the two standout stories were “Mischief” and “Simon’s Luck”, as Rose becomes herself again after the end of her marriage, but I see other reviewers preferring the beginning and end of the book. Anyway, once again tremendously engaging, absorbing and convincing.

This was both the top unread book by a woman and the top unread non-genre fiction book on my shelves, as measured by LibraryThing ownership. Next in the former category is Brother and Sister, by Joanna Trollope; next in the latter is The Dinner, by Hermann Koch.

King John was not a good man —
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air —
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

We are Europeans. Brexit will make us face up to it.

“For many Tory Brexit campaigners, the ideological impetus was never isolationist or chauvinist. The theory was that Britain should become a hub of global trade, woven seamlessly into Europe’s single market while unbound by its meddlesome regulations. But that was a fantasy, unavailable in reality and hard to pitch to a mass audience. So to secure the result they wanted, Conservative Brexiteers made a Faustian pact with anti-immigrant populism. They mostly deny it, of course, because it was shameful.”
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The Recipe for Creative Genius

Some life-hacks from Courtney.
(tags: lifehacking )

Daithí McKay suspended from SF, resigns as MLA

Extraordinary. Historic scoop by Irish News.
(tags: northernireland )

MidAmeriCon II, this year’s WorldCon now in full swing in Kansas City, has published a retrospective count of the Hugo nominations of the last two years as they would have been if the proposed new EPH system had been implemented. This is to an extent a counterfactual exercise – particularly for last year, when a number of finalists withdrew precisely because of the success of the slates. But no such comparison can ever be perfect. The reported effect of EPH on the final ballot (I’m not looking at the long-lists here) would have been as follows:

2015 Best Novel: Lock In by John Scalzi would have been on the final ballot instead of The Dark Between The Stars by Kevin Anderson, assuming both finalists who withdrew IRL still withdrew.
2015 Best Novella: Two of the John C. Wright finalists, “The Plural of Helen of Troy” and “Pale Realms of Shade”, would have been replaced by Patrick Rothfuss’ “The Slow Regard of Silent Things” and Ken Liu’s “The Regular”. This was a category where No Award won IRL.
2015 Best Novelette: No change to the final ballot, because John C. Wright’s story which was disqualified IRL would not have qualified under EPH.
2015 Best Short Story: assuming the same withdrawals, John C. Wright’s “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” and Steve Diamond’s “A Single Samurai” would have been replaced by Ursula Vernon’s [Nebula-winning] “Jackalope Wives” and Aliette de Bodard’s “The Breath of War”. This was a category where No Award won IRL.
2015 Best Related Work: Wisdom From My Internet by Michael Z. Williamson and Letters to Gardner by Lou Antonelli would have been replaced by Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great and the Mad Norwegian compilation Chicks Dig Gaming. This was a category where No Award won IRL.
2015 Best Graphic Story: Sex Criminals volume 1 would have been replaced by Schlock Mercenary: Broken Wind. 
2015 Best Editor, Short Form: Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Vox Day would have been replaced by John Joseph Adams and Neil Clarke. This was a category where No Award won IRL.
2015 Best Editor, Long Form: Vox Day would have been replaced by Liz Gorinsky. This was a category where No Award won IRL.
2015 Best Professional Artist: Kirk DouPonce would have been replaced by John Picacio.
2015 Best Semiprozine: Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine would have been replaced by The Book Smugglers.
2015 Best Fanzine: No change.
2015 Best Fancast: No change.
2015 Best Fan Writer: Matthew David Surridge, who withdrew IRL, and also Dave Freer would not have qualified; they would have been replaced by Abigail Nussbaum.
2015 Best Fan Artist: No change
2015 Campbell Award: No change.

2014 Hugos: Most categories would have been unchanged by EPH. The exceptions are:
2014 Best Editor, Short Form: Sheila Williams would have been replaced by Matthew David Surridge
2014 Best Professional Artist: Galen Dara and Fiona Staples (the latter tied for fifth place in nominations IRL) would have been replaced by Joey Hi-Fi.
2014 Best Fancast: the three-way tie at fifth place for nominations IRL would have been resolved in favour of Tea and Jeopardy, with The SF Signal Podcast – which actually won – and The Writer And The Critic losing out.

1939 Retro Hugos: there would have been relatively more changes, due I think to the relatively lower number of nominators.
1939 Best Novella: “A Matter of Form” by H.L. Gold would have been replaced by “Tarzan and the Elephant Men” by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
1939 Best Short Story: “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma” by Ray Bradbury would have been replaced by “An Experiment of the Dead” by Helen Simpson.
1939 Best Fan Writer: Harry Warner Jr would have been replaced by William F. Temple.

There is a lot to think about here. It’s clear that EPH in 2015 would have given a more diverse ballot, and would have provided two non-slate candidates in four of the five categories where voters No Awarded the slates. But applied to a “normal year”, we actually lose a finalist who won; and for the lower-intensity Retro Hugos, the edge effects get a bit unpredictable.

Dave McCarty, Hugo Admnistrator both this year and in 2014, comments in the paper: “The changes to the Ballot and Long list are not easily verified and for people reviewing the detailed results at the end the only way to check that the process is working correctly would require access to secret nomination data and significant time. The difficulty in verification means that to check any result requires time which is NOT available to award administrators when it is time to close the nominating and prepare for the Ballot announcement. These are significant hurdles for a process that is generally designed to be open and democratic.”

I sympathise, and I also have a more basic concern, which is that EPH (which seemed to me like a good idea when it was first proposed) is fundamentally designed to address last year’s problem. On Sunday we will find out what difference it would have made this year. But as Hugo administrator for Worldcon 75, my personal concern is next year, and I guess if I were at the Business Meeting, I would need to be convinced that it is the right answer at this time. Of course, if the Business Meeting does ratify it this weekend, I’ll duly implement it regardless of my own views.

Edited to add: I’ve been reflecting on this a bit more, after being reminded over on File 770 that the only change EPH would have made in 1984 would have been to drop a woman (Sherri S Tepper) from the Campbell ballot.

The changes it would have made in 2014 would have been to drop a woman in favour of a man for Best Editor Short Form, to drop a woman and a man and bring in a different man for Best Professional Artist, and to drop both the actual winner and another podcast run by a woman and a man from Best Fancast.

Admittedly it’s a small sample, but I don’t really like what I am seeing of EPH’s effects on the diversity of the ballot in “normal” years. However I have to concede that it would have replaced that embarrassingly bad Ray Bradbury story with one by Helen Simpson on the Retro Hugo ballot.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Sandor reached and put the interior lights on, and Lucy’s surroundings acquired some cheer and new dimensions. Rightward, the corridor to the cabins glared with what had once been white tiles—bare conduits painted white like the walls; and to the left another corridor horizoned up the curve, lined with cabinets and parts storage. Aft of the bridge and beyond the shallowest of arches, another space showed, reflected in the idle screens of vacant stations, bunks in brown, worn plastic, twelve of them, that could be set manually for the pitch at dock. Their commonroom, that had been. Their indock sleeping area, living quarters, wardroom—whatever the need of the moment. He set Lucy’s autopilot, unbelted and eased himself out of the cushion: that was enough to get himself a stiff fine if station caught him at it, moving through the vicinity of a station with no one at controls.

Don’t hate me, but I have often found C.J. Cherryh’s work difficult to engage with. (I have similar problems with John Crowley and M. John Harrison.) I bought this at Eastercon to give her another try, having rather bounced off both Downbelow Station, to which this is a sequel, and Cyteen a few years back. I’m afraid this didn’t work for me either; I appreciate the tightness of the prose, but I lost track of the plot early on and could not work out why I should care much about the characters. Lesson learned, I guess.

This was both my top unread sf book and top unread book by a woman (as measured by LibraryThing popularity). Next on the former list is The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, next on the latter The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro (which was already at the top of the pile).

World’s biggest banks already plotting mass exodus from London after Brexit

Taking back control, eh?
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Brexit trade deals: the gruelling challenge

More “Taking back control”.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Will the UN glass ceiling be shattered this time?

More on the next Secretary-General.
(tags: )

How Big Is A Fart? Somewhere Between A Bottle Of Nail Polish And A Can Of Soda

Because you needed to know.
(tags: biology )

Second paragraph of third story (“Angel”, by ‘Tara Samms’ [Stephen Cole]):

The lights stay on at night, shine in your eyes, you can’t sleep. When you fall to fatigue at last they wake you and feed you pills that snag in the throat.

I wasn’t all that satisfied with the previous anthology in this series, but I felt this was on much firmer ground – one story for each of the first seven Doctors, with linking material featuring the Eighth, and although the stories’ themes are linked, they are also different. The least successful was the first, “The Duke’s Folly” by Gareth Wigmore, which seemed to me to have the First Doctor and companions way out of character. “Angel”, by ‘Tara Samms’ [Stephen Cole], with the Third Doctor and Jo, is gloomy but well-written. “Suitors, Inc.” by Paul Magrs features the Fourth Doctor, the second Romana, Harry and Sarah and gets very silly perhaps at the expense of plot, but it is fun. Also fun but much better controlled is Rebecca Levene’s “Too Rich For My Blood”, in which she demonstrates her knowledge of poker (she was working on a book about it at the time this story was written) and also of the Seventh Doctor, Benny and Chris. So all in all, a decent jumping-in point if you want to sample this series.

Next in this sequence is Short Trips: A Day in the Life, edited by Ian Farrington.

How badly is Jeremy Corbyn doing?

“Labour’s current position is poor, but not exceptionally so.”
(tags: ukpolitics )

How many presidents has America had?

The Cleveland confusion.
(tags: uspolitics history )

The Terrifying JFK Airport Shooting That Wasn’t

Extraordinary.
(tags: waronterror psychology )

Watership Down and the power of not-quite-appropriate children’s books.

Indeed.
(tags: reading books )

Brexit is not going to happen (but it might need a second referendum)

Too optimistic, I fear.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Hitler and the Reinvention of Interpreting

Actually Nuremberg trials more important.
(tags: languages wwii )

I really loved the style adopted by Kyra when making her predictions this time last year. Based on a little more than gut instinct (ie reading every public blog post that I could find by anyone which mentioned the Hugo in the last couple of months), I am copying her example and making my predictions for this year's Hugos, in the order that the results will be declared on Saturday night (early Sunday morning this side of the Atlantic).

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Who I think will win it: Andy Weir, slate's top pick this year but also supported by fans who felt he was deprived by slate last year
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Alyssa Wong, youngest Nebula winner in decades
Who I think will win if if I am very wrong: I do not think that I will be very wrong

Best Fan Artist
Who I think will win it: Steve Stiles, only non-slate nominee, frequently passed over in previous years
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Christian Quinot, slate's top pick
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: No Award

Best Fan Writer
Who I think will win it: Mike Glyer, only non-slate nominee, had a very good year until recent illness
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Jeffro Johnson, slate's top pick
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: No Award

Best Fancast
Who I think will win it: No Award, all others are slate nominees
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Tales to Terrify, the only one with significant non-slate following
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: The Rageaholic, slate's top pick

Best Fanzine
Who I think will win it: File 770, supported by slate and non-slate fans alike
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: I do not think I will be wrong
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: I do not think I will be very wrong

Best Semiprozine
Who I think will win it: Uncanny Magazine
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Strange Horizons
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Beneath Ceaseless Skies
[slate's top pick in this category is No Award]

Best Professional Artist
Who I think will win it: No Award, all finalists are slate candidates
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Larry Elmore, slate's top pick
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: I do not think I will be very wrong

Best Editor, Long Form
Who I think will win it: Sheila Gilbert
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Toni Weisskopf
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Vox Day, slate's top pick

Best Editor, Short Form
Who I think will win it: Sheila Williams
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Ellen Datlow
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Jerry Pournelle, slate's top pick

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Who I think will win it: Doctor Who, “Heaven Sent”
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Jessica Jones, “AKA Smile”
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: “The Cutie Map” Parts 1 and 2, the slate's top pick

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Who I think will win it: The Martian, slate's top pick but with much wider support
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Graphic Story
Who I think will win it: The Sandman: Overture, slate's top pick but also the only good nominee
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: I do not think I will be wrong
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: No Award

Best Related Work
Who I think will win it: No Award
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: I do not think I will be wrong
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Between Light and Shadow by Marc Aramini, slate's top pick

Best Short Story
Who I think will win it: “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: I do not think I will be wrong
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle, slate's top pick

Best Novelette
Who I think will win it: “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: “Obits” by Stephen King, slate's top pick but with wider support
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander, only non-slate finalist

Best Novella
Who I think will win it: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold, slate's top pick but with wider support
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: I do not think I will be very wrong

Best Novel
Who I think will win it: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Who I think will win it if I am wrong: Uprooted by Naomi Novik, slate's top pick but with wider support
Who I think will win it if I am very wrong: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

Let’s see what happens…

Second extract in third chapter:

‘I’ll introduce myself. Name’s Lt John MacGregor, as a matter of fact, in the I.P.F.’
‘Interplanetary Force,’ goggled Fred.
‘Precisely,’ said MacGregor with an exaggerated bow.
‘My man, you are now in the presence of the John MacGregor who has shot down seventeen of the Martian invasion fleet.’
LIONEL FANTHORPE, Flame Mass

This is a point-and-laugh collection of extracts from sf books and films which are grotesquely over-written or badly written, and does pretty much what it says on the tin. Some of the extracts are pretty glorious but I’m afraid most just made me wince. I found the first half, which concentrates on books, much more interesting than the second half, which concentrates on films. Part of the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle that I got last year.

This reached the top of my list of unread sf recommended by you guys at the end of last year. However, I think I’m going to count it as non-fiction instead, as the interpretative framing is the core of the book. Next on that list anyway is Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge.

Liam Fox tried to wrest control of Foreign Office duties from Boris Johnson

Move along, nothing to see here.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Donald Trump’s Tongue

Going horribly wrong!
(tags: uspolitics )

How I led a country out of the EU

My old friend Uffe reminisces.
(tags: greenland eu denmark )

Brexit: Enough David Brent, this is serious!

Another lucid explanation.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

“My girlfriend elaborately made me homeless.”

For once, do read the comments.
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality law )

NASA: Last month was Earth’s hottest in recorded history

Again.
(tags: climatechange )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Oh, good, Watly. Oh, good. Perfect timing. Just perfect. Couldn’t’ve asked for better. Things’ll be ready in just – almost perfect timing, Watly. A few more minutes and we’ll sit down to a – be ready in a few minutes, Watly. You have a seat and put your feet up.”

This 1991 novel may have been partly inspired by Frederik Pohl’s memorable 1974 story “We Purchased People”, with which it shares the concept of human bodies being rented out for use by other intelligences, the original owner helplessly aware as murder is committed by their hands. However it’s not quite in the same league – where Pohl’s protagonist is repulsive and has done dreadful things with the result that he is punished by being rented out to aliens, Emshwiler’s Watly is participating in the free market and renting himself to rich humans, in a near-future surveillance society which is sexually liberated in many ways except that it remains deeply homophobic. The impact is very different – Pohl gets us to sympathise with an awful man to whom awful things happen, Emshwiler switches from the implications of the hosting technology to standard techno-thriller mode once we’ve had the original setup, allowing him to explore his future city at exciting pace, before the inevitable twist leads to a predictable conclusion.

This was the SF book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next in that list is This Mortal Mountain, Volume 3 of the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny.

Hugo Award Predictions and Handicapping Sheet

Steve Davidson predicts.
(tags: sf )

The Armagh windmill (PDF)

In case you were wondering.
(tags: Northernireland History )

Brexit ‘could be delayed until late 2019’

This year, next year, sometime, never…
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Why is the Greenwich Prime Meridian 102m west of the GPS zero meridian?

or, what is vertical?
(tags: astronomy )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Other than this official scrutiny, Verity knew that she was likely to be the focus of a different kind of attention in her new role and, as a consequence, she was careful with her image, choosing well-cut expensive clothes to offset her well-cut, expensive hair, discreet jewellery and killer heels. She was adopting her version of what would later be termed ‘power dressing’, acquiring a style to belie her youth and counterpoint her natural authority. She was, she later said, ‘a bit of a freak’ and arrived when both her new bosses, Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson, were on leave so must have felt all the more exposed. But it is not true that she knew no one else at the BBC; Newman had already brought over some of the old crowd from ABC and her friend Irene Shubik would soon follow her.

On the strength of Marson’s biography of John Nathan-Turner, the last producer of Old Who, I bought this, his biography of the show’s first producer. I found it a somewhat frustrating read. As an examination of Verity Lambert’s career in her own terms, it’s compelling and exhaustive – friends, enemies, ex-husband and lovers are all interviewed and provide a three-dimensional perspective of a driven, creative personality. It’s a more cheerful book than the Nathan-Turner biography because Lambert’s career was far more successful; she died in her 70s, a month before she was due to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Women in Film and Television Awards, and the day before the 44th anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who.

(Some of her personal effects were auctioned on eBay after her death, and I ended up with her complimentary copy of the 2003 DVD of The Three Doctors. She had not opened it – she says on one of her last DVD commentaries that she found it difficult to watch the deterioration of William Hartnell’s health even from her own time as producer, so it’s hardly surprising that she gave The Three Doctors a miss.)

I was aware of her early triumph in successfully handling a live broadcast of a play where the actor playing one of the key characters suddenly died in the middle of filming, and of course of her contribution to Doctor WhoAdam Adamant Lives!, Shoulder to Shoulder, Rumpole of the Bailey, Clockwise, A Cry in the Dark, G.B.H., Sleepers and Jonathan Creek.

The big flop was Eldorado, which I actually rather liked in the day; Marson’s analysis of what went wrong is interesting but doesn’t quite land its punches. For me, the two obvious mistakes were the initial casting of so many weak actors (which would appear to have been entirely Julia Smith’s fault rather than Lambert’s) and the over-ambitious timescale which led to early episodes being filmed on a set that was still being built (definitely Lambert’s fault rather than anyone else’s). It would have been interesting to see if a connecting line could be drawn between the Eldorado fiasco and Lambert’s other big professional setbacks – the court case on intellectual property theft for the concept behind Rock Follies, which she lost, and her feuds with Irene Shubik and a few others.

There were three other areas which I wish Marson had stepped back to explore in more depth. The first is the overall cultural role of film and television in itself. We rather get the impression that Lambert’s work was important because she did it, rather than looking at the wider social import. There is loads of research available on this, much of it citing Lambert, and it’s a shame that none of it is used here. The second is feminism – the extract I give above illustrates the difficulties that she faced in her early years because of her gender, but it’s irritating that this pops up over and over as incidental detail rather than as a unifying theme. The third is Jewishness (if that’s the right word). Lambert was strongly identified as a Jew, whether she wanted to be or not, and she varied on that at different times in her career. But it would have been nice to read a bit more background about how Jews fitted into British society in general in Lambert’s lifetime, and into the entertainment industry in particular.

Having said that, it’s still a better book than the John Nathan-Turner biography because it has a more interesting subject, and perhaps has learned a little from the previous one.