Monthly Archives: October 2017

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1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Zhu Di and his father, Hong Wu, had encouraged the development of every aspect of navigation. A handbook titled Notebook on Sea Bottom Currents, found in Quanzhou, states that, after announcing the ascension of the Yongle emperor (Zhu Di) to the throne, Zheng He and his admirals were instructed to search for navigation charts, collecting all the information about currents, islands, mountains, straits, and the positions of stars. They used this data to revise their navigation charts, including compass points and the cross-references of stars.

I was warnedThe Story of English in 100 Words, by David Crystal.

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An Assessment of the Economic Impact of Brexit on the EU 27

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Second section of third chapter (actually section 3.1, on the European Economic Area):

In economic terms this would be close, but not identical, to the status quo for a full member state that is not a eurozone member, with full inclusion in the single market for all four freedoms, and compliance with all ‘EEA-relevant’ regulatory legislation by the EU. But it excludes membership of the EU’s custom union, as well as agricultural and fisheries policies.

In the EEA all new or amended EU legislation has automatically to be taken on board by the non-EU EEA states.

Dispute settlement is by a special EFTA Court, which however cannot deviate from the rulings of the European Court of Justice.

Budget contributions are made, which are substantial, but significantly less than for EU member states (see section 1.5 above).

On the free movement of persons it may be noted that Liechtenstein was allowed to retain a quota regime for immigrants including from the EU, but this is unlikely to be considered a relevant precedent for the UK.

There is the theoretical option to add a scenario in which the EEA would be combined with membership of the EU’s customs union (1.1 EEA + customs Union). In economic terms this would be a model very close to the status quo. The present EEA non-EU member states do not want this, because they value their freedom to make their own trade deals with the rest of the world. The UK clearly excludes this scenario, so it is not further pursued here.

This is a report from March this year (little has changed in the six months since), pulling together the economic stats for the EU and the UK, and looking at the existing forecasts for the impact of Brexit on their respective GDPs. The authors do not try their own forecasting, but do discuss the gaps in existing forecasts. The whole thing is 60 pages, only 30 of which are the actual report (the rest is cover matter and annexes) so relatively easy to digest. It was prepared by my former colleageus at CEPS for the European Parliament, and can be downloaded for free here.

I’m familiar with the basics of the situation as most sane people accept it. To summarise the summary of the summary, “All available studies concur that a significant disruption of trade links will impose economic costs on both sides. However, the EU27 would bear only a disproportionally [sic] small share of the total cost.” To dig a bit more into the detail,

The trade in both goods and services between the UK and EU27 is very substantial: €306 billion of exports of goods by the EU27 to the UK, versus €184 billion of imports, and thus a large surplus of account of goods alone (all data here and below for 2015). In terms of % shares of GDP, the EU27’s exports to the UK amount to 2.5% of GDP, whereas the UK’s exports to the EU27 amount to 7.5% of its GDP… For services the amounts are also large: €94 billion of exports by the EU27 to the UK, versus €122 billion of imports, and thus a surplus in this case for the UK (although here the statistics are not so reliable, with big differences seen in the ‘mirror data’ for the same items collected by the EU27, which would cancel the UK’s surplus).

There were some surprises for me in the detail. The biggest exporter of goods to the UK among the EU27, as measured by %GDP, is not Ireland but Belgium, with the Netherlands in a close third place. Of course this may be due to the importance of Antwerp and Zeebrugge (and Rotterdam for the Netherlands) as a port from which goods are shipped to or from other EU27 destinations. My comment: it’s interesting and instructive that we have seen absolutely no discussion in the Belgian press (let alone in the British press) of the possibility of Belgium pushing for a softer line on Brexit out of selfish economic interest.

Sectorally, machinery and transport equipment is the biggest, accounting for 34% of UK->EU27 trade and 41% of EU27->UK trade, with road vehicles alone respectively 10% and 19% – my comment: the importance of the UK to the German car market is not a myth, which is why the German car industry’s failure to rally round the Union Jack should be taken very seriously by observers. The second biggest sector is chemicals, at 18% of UK->EU27 trade and 17% of EU27->UK trade.

The statistics on trade in services are not completely reliable: “the Belgian services deficit with the UK is recorded to be €1.8 billion according to UK data, whereas the Belgian data suggest the deficit to be only €0.1 billion. The biggest divergence is in the case of Ireland, where according to UK data the UK has a large surplus of €6.1 billion, whereas according to Irish data it is Ireland that enjoys an even bigger surplus of €11.5 billion.” However it’s fairly clear that the UK has a trade surplus on financial services of ~€20 billion, a deficit in tourism and travel of ~€10 billion, and everything else more or less balances. For FDI the figures are even more murky, distorted particuarly by special purpose entities in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

There is a good analysis of the different relationships that third countries have with the EU. The authors come down where the consensus currently is in Brussels (and, I hope, in London): that a “successful” outcome to the Brexit negotiations will be a strategic partnership (as the EU has with major geopolitical powers) and a comprehensive free trade agreement (as the EU has with applicant and aspirant countries, though starting from the other end as it were). They note that the four freedoms are not in fact indivisible when applied to Eastern countries, who do not benefit from freedom of movement (and the Liechtenstein point was also made earlier). My comment: since the UK still doesn’t seem to know what it wants in terms of freedom of movement, this hardly matters.

On the impact of Brexit, the findings are very clear.

There has been a considerable amount of quantitative modelling work done on various Brexit scenarios by both official institutions (UK Treasury, OECD) and independent economists. These all cover ranges of scenarios in the optimistic-pessimistic spectrum, including the spread between the EEA and WTO scenarios highlighted above… Nonetheless the modelling work has produced a cluster of relatively consistent results. The main story is one of economic losses by both parties, but disproportionately between them in money amounts in a ratio of around 1 to 2 or 3 for the UK and the EU27 respectively. In terms of percentages of GDP the losses for the EU27 would be about 10 to 15 times lower given the 1:5 ratio in the GDP of the UK relative that of the EU-27.

  • For the EU 27 the losses are virtually insignificant, averaging between 0.11% and 0.52% of GDP for the optimistic versus pessimistic scenarios respectively. These amounts are modelled as the totals cumulating up to 2030, so the annual average losses would be of the order of 0.011% to 0.052 % of GDP.
  • For the UK the losses average between 1.31% and 4.21 % of GDP for the optimistic and pessimistic scenarios respectively, or 0.13% to 0.41% of GDP annually. Among the different models it is also notable that the losses for the UK are higher than average in the case of two models (OECD and UK Treasury) that capture negative impacts on foreign direct investment (FDI), which is redirected in some degree away from the UK into the EU 27. In their pessimistic scenarios the losses cumulate to about 7.5% of GDP, or 0.75% annually, which are highly significant amounts macroeconomically. This FDI effect is not however reflected in models estimated for the EU27, and so implies that there might need to be some adjustment to the results reported above for the EU27.

Ireland of course is hit particularly hard, since its economic relations to the UK are almost a miniature version of those of the UK to the rest of Europe; Malta and Cyprus are also hit disproportionately (as is Belgium, noted above). My comment: smart UK diplomacy would have spotted this and tried to get Ireland (and the islands) on side with the British policy from the beginning. However, it’s much easier in the short term to alternate between ignoring them and patronising them.

The Open Europe analysis of the impact of the UK unilaterally dropping all trade barriers post-Brexit is also considered, to be dismissed.

The world has seen three such cases: Singapore, Hong Kong and Georgia. But these are all small countries, with very high concentrations in Singapore and Hong Kong of financial and other services, somewhat similar actually to the place of London as regional and global service centres. However in the British case, beyond the 10 million people in cosmopolitan London, there are another 50 million people with different interests. This is a clue why the scenario does not attract political support in the UK, even if the simulation postulates that it would be beneficial.

Basically this is a good, clear-eyed summary of the state of economic forecasting, which is honest about the deficiencies of knowledge and data. Well worth a read, as a base point from which to judge the veracity of newspaper headlines and Brexiteer wishful thinking.

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Sunday Reading

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Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein
Plague City, by Jonathan Morris
Grand Hotel, by Vicki Baum

Last books finished
The Big Hunt, by Lance Parkin
Memoir of the Queen of Etruria, Written by Herself / an Authentic Narrative of the Seizure and Removal of Pope Pius VII, with Genuine Memoirs of His Journey Written by One of His Attendants
From Bed to Bed, by Catullus, trans. James Michie
An Assessment of the Economic Impact of Brexit on the EU27, by Michael Emerson, Matthias Busse, Mattia Di Salvo, Daniel Gros, and Jacques Pelkmans

Next books
The Last Castle, by Jack Vance
Thorns, by Robert Silverberg
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge

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All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film and 1928 book)

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This is the first of the Oscar winners for Best Picture (in this case, “Outstanding Production”) that I had actually seen before. It beat four films I have not heard of, The Big House, Disraeli, The Divorcee and The Love Parade in the Academy vote, and also tops the IMDB ratings for the relevant time period. Lewis Milestone also won the Oscar for best Director. It is also interesting (to me anyway) that the top film of 1930 was based on the top book of 1929 as measured by Publisher’s Weekly.

If you don’t know, it’s a film about a young man who signs up for service in the first world war, and discovers that military life is not as glamorous or honourable as he had been led to believe, with his friends gradually becoming casualties until he himself is killed reaching for a butterfly in the last scene. The fact that it’s set in Germany (due to being based on a German book) enables the questions about war and peace to be put to non-German audiences without challenging their own patriotism, other than perhaps raising the uncomfortable question that other people’s patriotism may be just as valuable as your own. The film (and the book) offered nothing but disillusion and defeat from militarism. It’s notable that most of the extras were genuine German army veterans who had emigrated to California after the war.

(The film itself was banned in Germany under Hitler; when it was first shown, the Nazis, still three years from power, disrupted cinema showings.)

Here’s the trailer.

It’s a far, far better film than Wings or Broadway Melody, and I can’t bring myself to treat it in the same way as I did them. (Though even here there is whitewashing – there are black soldiers in the book, colonial troops on the Allied side, omitted from the film.)

The dialogue tips towards the earnest at times as well. But in general it is well done, and some elements have found there way into most war films since. There’s a clear parental relationship to Blackadder Goes Forth, 59 years later and 28 years ago:

Albert Kropp: Ah, the French certainly deserve to be punished for starting this war.
Detering: Everybody says it’s somebody else.
Tjaden: Well. how do they start a war?
Albert Kropp: Well, one country offends another.
Tjaden: How could one country offend another?
Tjaden: You mean there’s a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?
[Everyone laughs]
Albert Kropp: Well, stupid, one people offends another.
Tjaden: Oh, well, if that’s it, I shouldn’t be here at all. I don’t feel offended.
Katczinsky: It don’t apply to tramps like you.
Tjaden: Good. Then I could be goin’ home right away.

It’s sad to note that Lewis Wollheim, who as Katszinsky steals the show from Lew Ayres’ romantic Paul Bäumer, died only a year later in 1931 at the age of 50.

At 133 minutes it’s quite slow going, but the buildup is worth it as the really good scenes come towards the end. First, Paul and two friends manage to buy the affections of three French girls near the battlefield, bartering food for sex. Most of this is told by nudges and hints but it’s all the more effective for that. Then Paul returns home for a confrontation with the teacher whose rhetoric encouraged him to sign up in the first place.

Professor Kantorek: You’ve come at the right moment, Baumer! Just at the right moment!
[to students]
Professor Kantorek: And as if to prove all I have said, here is one of the first to go! A lad who sat before me on these very benches, who gave up all to serve in the first year of the war. One of the iron youth who have made Germany invincible in the field! Look at him. Sturdy and bronze and clear-eyed! The kind of soldier every one of you should envy! Paul, lad, you must speak to them. You must tell them what it means to serve your fatherland.
Paul Bäumer: No no, I can’t tell them anything.
Paul Bäumer: You must, Paul. Just a word. Just tell them how much they’re needed out there. Tell them why you went, and what it meant to you.
Paul Bäumer: I can’t say anything.
Professor Kantorek: If you remember some deed of heroism, some touch of humility, tell about it.
[encouraging murmurs from the students]
Paul Bäumer: I can’t tell you anything you don’t know. We live in the trenches out there, we fight, we try not to be killed; and sometimes we are. That’s all.

And finally he returns to the Front, and to his doom. It’s a gut-wrenching sequence, which stuck in my memory from the first time I saw the film on late night TV as a teenager. Tremendous stuff, and I’m glad to have found an excuse to revisit it.

I was sufficiently interested by the film to track down the book by Erich Maria Remarque (an interesting character whose lovers included Marlene Dietrich and who ended up married to Paulette Goddard; meanwhile his sister, who had stayed in Germany, was executed by the Nazis basically for being his sister). He wrote a number of other books, including a sequel to All Quiet…, but it’s on this that his reputation rests, quite rightly. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Ich nicke. Wir werfen uns in die Brust, lassen uns auf dem Hof rasieren, stecken die Hände in die Hosentaschen, sehen uns die Rekruten an und fühlen uns als steinaltes Militär.I nod. We strut about, get ourselves shaved on the parade-ground, put our hands in our pockets, look at the new recruits and feel as if we have been in the army for a thousand years.

It’s a tightly constructed first-person account of the awfulness of the war, apart (necessarily) from the final paragraphs. The film adds and takes away. Most notably, it has a clear narrative from start to finish, whereas the book starts in medias res with the story about the soldiers demanding double rations because only 80 of the 150 men have come back from the latest action and there is therefore some over-catering.

The book dispenses with scene-setting – Professor Kantorek’s recruitment of the eager students is disposed of in a flashback paragraph, and his later fate is to be humiliated as a member of the Home Guard; Bäumer has no disillusioned return to the schoolroom. On the other hand, the book includes much more graphic details than could be filmed – the death of horses; the latrines; the blood of the battlefield (in the film nobody seems to bleed much when they are shot).

The passage with the three French girls is played completely differently in the book and the film. In the film, Paul is an innocent grabbing a first and last moment of sexual comfort near the battlefield. In the book, it’s clear that he, like all his fellow soldiers, has been a regular client of military brothels, and the encounter with the French girls is wordless and desperate, and not really sweet.

I was pleased though that the dialogue I quoted above from the film is rooted strongly in a similar passage from the book:

Tjaden erscheint wieder. Er ist noch immer angeregt und greift sofort wieder in das Gespräch ein, indem er sich erkundigt, wie eigentlich ein Krieg entstehe.Tjaden comes back. He is still worked up and joins in the debate again straight away by asking how a war starts in the first place.

 »Meistens so, daß ein Land ein anderes schwer beleidigt«, gibt Albert mit einer gewissen Überlegenheit zur Antwort.

‘Usually when one country insults another one badly,’ answers Kropp, a little patronizingly. But Tjaden isn’t going to be put off.
Doch Tjaden stellt sich dickfellig. »Ein Land? Das verstehe ich nicht. Ein Berg in Deutschland kann doch einen Berg in Frankreich nicht beleidigen. Oder ein Fluß oder ein Wald oder ein Weizenfeld.«‘A country? I don’t get it. A German mountain can’t insult a French mountain, or a river, or a forest, or a cornfield.’
»Bist du so dämlich oder tust du nur so?« knurrt Kropp.‘Are you really that daft or are you just pretending?’ grumbles Kropp. ‘That isn’t what I mean. One nation insults another…’
»So meine ich das doch nicht. Ein Volk beleidigt das andere -«

»Dann habe ich hier nichts zu suchen«, erwidert Tjaden,»ich fühle mich nicht beleidigt.«

‘Then I shouldn’t be here at all,’ answers Tjaden, ‘because I don’t feel insulted.’
»Dir soll man nun was erklären«, sagt Albert ärgerlich,»auf dich Dorfdeubel kommt es doch dabei nicht an.«‘It’s hopeless trying to explain anything to you,’ says Kropp with some irritation, ‘it’s got nothing to do with a yokel like you.’
»Dann kann ich ja erst recht nach Hause gehen«, beharrt Tjaden, und alles lacht.‘In that case I can certainly go home, then,’ insists Tjaden, and everybody laughs.

Anyway, reading that has been an unexpected bonus for this project.

Next up in the Oscar films list is Cimarron, of which almost the only thing I know is that it’s a Western and was like All Quiet on the Western Front based on a best-selling novel.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

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The Famished Road, by Ben Okri

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was only when they stopped at a crossroad and placed shining white eggs on the ground, that I noticed they all wore white smocks. Their faces were veiled. The veils had holes through which I could barely see their eyes. After they had made their offering at the crossroad they bounded on through the streets, past scenes of rioting, and into the forest. They ran through pitch darkness, through silence and mists, and into another reality in which the gigantic Masquerade was riding a white horse. The horse had jagged teeth and its eyes were diamond bright. There was a piercing cry in the air. When the Masquerade and the white horse vanished, I noticed that the forest swarmed with unearthly beings. It was like an overcrowded marketplace. Many of them had red lights in their eyes, wisps of saffron smoke came out of their ears, and gentle green fires burned on their heads. Some were tall, others were short; some were wide, others were thin. They moved slowly. They were so numerous that they interpenetrated one another. The women ran through these beings without any fear.

This was a Booker Prize winning novel that somehow ended up on our shelves. I was surprised to find that it’s actually a magical realist novel, based very firmly in Nigerian tradition, looking at village life in a developing country from the point of view of a supernatural child, in tune with the disruptions caused both by humans and non-human forces. There’s not actually a lot of plot but the writing is very immediate and immersive, and having had no expectations one way or the other, I really enjoyed it.

I’ve argued before that we all need to be paying more attention to Nigeria. Nnedi Okorafor is doing well these days too. And I’m really glad to see that Tochi Onyebuchi, who I got to know through Livejournal a decade ago, is now a rising star.

This was both my top unread book by a non-white writer and my top unread book acquired this year. Next in those lisst respectively are Everfair, by Nisi Shawl, and It Can’t happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis.

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  • Fri, 10:45: Whitehall hiring policy ‘could be undermining UK trade talks’ https://t.co/Acp0kT3j0k Well, that may be *one* factor…
  • Fri, 11:47: RT @SimonTilford: Just quickly checked websites of most of EU’s leading Continental newspapers & #Brexit impasse barely noted. Britain is a…
  • Fri, 11:50: RT @CharlesTannock: I remember being told a year ago by senior source EU27 unity would melt away as they need UK more than we need them. No…

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New Europe, by Michael Palin

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Second paragraph of third chapter [visiting Medjugorje]:

Such has been the impact on the local economy that a cynic might think there’s a conspiracy to keep a good story going, and when we’re suddenly told that one of the original visionaries is happy to meet and talk I wonder if we’re using them or they’re using us.

This is a book-of-a-TV-programme, made in 2006/7 by Palin as one of his travelogue series, taking in all the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe, plus Turkey, minus most of Russia (represented briefly by Kaliningrad). An average of 14 pages per country doesn’t get you very much insight, especially since in several cases he has to divert to do something touristy that will look good on the small screen (leeches in Estonia, for instance) rather than actually exploring what is going on in a particular society. I guess this is inevitable for the kind of book it must be, but it’s not Patrick Leigh Fermor. I might have enjoyed it more if I’d known less about the countries in question.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2013; next in that list is A Man of Parts, by David Lodge.

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The Red Leaguers, by Shan F. Bullock

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Another book that I picked up from the Interwebs thanks to Jack Fennell’s Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction. His summary of it there is a bit misleading; he wrote it up in much more accurate detail in his longer monograph on Irish SF. It’s a pretty awful book. James “Red” Shaw, a middle-class Protestant veteran of the Boer War, returns to Fermanagh around 1904 (when the book was published), and is co-opted as commander of the local Nationalist militia, changing sides partly because the Protestant girl he loves is in love with another man. The national uprising is successful and a revolutionary Republican government takes power in Dublin and across most of the island; but Ulster descends into sectarian violence, with Shaw and his Red Leaguers taking it out on his own co-religionists locally. A lot of this was eerily reminiscent of more recent times in the Balkans. The narrator gets to Dublin with the girl (who remains unimpressed and terrified) but sees social cohesion disintegrating under a lazy and corrupt administration. As the Great Powers (Britain, Germany and the USA) prepare to invade Ireland to restore order, he makes his escape to France.

The protagonist is such an unpleasant character – presiding over ethnic cleansing and monstrously intimidating the unfortunate Leah – that it’s difficult to engage with the book. It’s a little redeemed by considering the wider picture: the author was based in London, and wrote a number of novels with the same Fermanagh setting as The Red Leaguers (but without the revolution timeline) in which the protagonist, clearly based on himself, is the chap who Leah is really in love with. So perhaps Shaw is the romantic but wrong side of his personality, seduced by revolutionary ideals. It’s still not a great vindication.

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Press Cuttings, by George Bernard Shaw

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I would normally give the second paragraph of the third scene, but the entire play has just one extended scene, so here is the opening section:

The forenoon of the first of April, 1911.

General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the hearthrug than to the desk. There is a chair at each end of it for persons having business with the general. There is a telephone on the table. Long silence.

A VOICE OUTSIDE. Votes for Women!

The General starts convulsively; snatches a revolver from a drawer, and listens in an agony of apprehension. Nothing happens. He puts the revolver back, ashamed; wipes his brow; and resumes his work. He is startled afresh by the entry of an Orderly. This Orderly is an unsoldierly, slovenly, discontented young man.

I picked this up thanks to Jack Fennell’s Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction. It is science fiction only in the sense that it’s set in the near future with an envisioned political change – written in 1908 and set in 1911, in an England where the suffragette movement has become so disruptive that martial law is being implemented in London. It’s not one of the great Shaw plays; the fact that we have moved on so decisively from this particular part of the wider gender and politics debate makes it very difficult to relate to his central characters, the general, the prime minister, and the anti-suffrage ladies who demand audience with them. However his shafts about class, and the dangers of putting the military in charge of a political project, remain well-aimed. And towards the end it gets really funny when the general claims to be fifty-two, only to be confronted with the fact that Who’s Who says he’s sixty-one.

The portrayal of General “Mitchener” and Prime Minister “Balsquith” was felt to be so close to the bone for Generals Milner and Kitchener, and PMs Balfour and Asquith, that the play was actually banned from public performance in England; an act of censorship which is almost incomprehensible to today’s reader.

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A Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction, by Jack Fennell

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Third entry:

Anonymous. The Re-Conquest of Ireland, A.D. 1895.
Dublin: Hodges, Figgis and Co., 1881.

A short future-history pamphlet detailing the disastrous consequences of the 1881 Land Act. The establishment of Land Courts to fix fair rents for impoverished tenants leads to a flood of spurious claims against decent, hardworking landlords, who are beaten or assassinated if they dare to defend their income. The Land League and the Fenians, having learned that the overgenerous British government will acquiesce to Irish demands when threatened with agitation, parliamentary obstruction and agrarian violence, continue to preach revolution and rent defaulting. The situation is made worse by a second famine in the years between 1892 and 1895, and by disturbing international developments. American Fenians finally stage an uprising of ten thousand men on the banks of the Shannon, and only after three days of pitched battle is the rebellion quelled. A couple of recurring late-Imperial obsessions are mentioned in the text: firstly, the oft-cited Boer uprising (though the Battle of Majuba Hill, an occasion almost deified by the Fenians in other rebellion-fantasy novels, is not explicitly mentioned); secondly, the Russian advance into Afghanistan – as in other future-war texts of the time, from this the author extrapolates an attempted Russian conquest of the Indian subcontinent.

Keywords: Future War; Independence; Nationalism; Unionism

A neat compilation of about 100 sf books by Irish authors, prepared as part of the successful campaign for the Dublin 2019 Worldcon. It’s not exhaustive, but it does cover a lot of interesting ground, particularly the Home Rule fantasies of the decades around 1900 which forecast triumph or (more often) disaster following the political victory of Irish Nationalism, and also the Irish language sf of the mid-twentieth century – not just the Captaen Speirling books of Cathal Ó Sándair but various other pieces. He also includes the more sfnal plays of Shaw and Beckett. Only about 5% of the books are by women; perhaps if more fantasy had been included, that balance might have been different?

Anyway, you can download it here.

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Sunday reading

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Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett

Last books finished
The Dancers at the End of Time, by Michael Moorcock (not finished)
Antarès, Épisode 5, by Leo
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
What Made Now In Northern Ireland, ed. Maurna Crozier
1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies (not finished)
Antarès, Épisode 6 , by Leo
Cimarron, by Edna Ferber
Short Trips: Christmas Around the World, by Xanna Eve Chown

Next books
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Last Castle, by Jack Vance
The Big Hunt, by Lance Parkin

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It’s Dark in London, ed. Oscar Zárate

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Second paragraph of third story (“The Known of Kensal Rising” by Josh Appignanesi – one of the prose pieces, most are in comics format):

“It’s all right, Dad,” I said. “You don’t have to take that tone with me. Just… tell me how you are.” We had stopped walking. There was a moment like a short folding in time. From beneath a furrowed brow, without making any sound, he said, “I’m just so fucking lonely.”

A collection of short pieces about London, of which the two standouts are “The Court” by Neil Gaiman and Warren Pleece, and “I Keep Coming Back” by Alan Moore and Oscar Zárate; most of the rest are little more than vignettes and some of them are a bit confused at that. Originally published in 1996, this 2012 edition has more material (though does not indicate what has been added).

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The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl, by Belle de Jour

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Second paragraph from ‘mars’ [=’March’] chapter, from the ‘A-Z of London sex work’ series of side-bars, discussing oil:

Aside from degrading barrier protection, it’s a rubbish lubricant in general. A man once suggested (whipping out a tub of Vaseline as he did so) attempting to fist me with a petrolatum-based aid. Are you joking? That stuff traps heat and makes it feel like someone’s deep-frying your labia.

This is a really funny and frank look at the high end of the London sex work market, by a scientist and feminist who ended up being played by Billie Piper on TV in her first major role after Doctor Who. I guess some readers will be disappointed to find that the sexual politics in the book is more prominent than the actual descriptions of the act, but if you want a provocative and witty read about sex and society, this is a very good place to start.

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The Angel Maker, by Stefan Brijs

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘You look very much like your father.’

A peculiarly awful book set in Belgium a few years ago, in a town near the Drielandenpunt where a new local doctor moves in with his triplet sons and a sinister unspoken history of discredited scientific experimentation. I thought that the book was trying to navigate the fuzzy boundary between mainstream Belgian literature and horror, and frankly got lost en route, going for shock rather than substance. I got it because I’m always on the lookout for books about Belgium that have made a minor hit in English, but this wasn’t worth it.

This was both the top unread non-genre fiction book on my shelf, and the top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on those lists respectively are Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett, and Corum, by Michael Moorcock.

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1688: A Global History, by John E. Wills

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Sir:
I do not know what sort of people you are. We are Frenchmen. We are among the savages. We would like very much to be among the Christians, such as we are. We know well that you are Spaniards. We do not know if you will attack us. We are very vexed to be among beasts like these who believe neither in God or in anything. Sirs, if you are willing to take to away you have only to send something in writing. Since we have little or nothing to do, as soon as we see the note we will come to you.

Sir, I am your very humble and obedient servant,
Jean l’Archeveque of Bayonne.

This is an interesting concept – looking at a single year and the political events of the entire world that happened in that year, casting the net as widely as possible to capture every continent. Of course in the home archipelago this is the year of the so-called Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic James II of England and VII of Scotland was overthrown by a suspicious Protestant elite; in the eastern Mediterranean, the Venetians and Austrians were fighting the Ottomans; up north near St Petersburg, 1500 Old Believers burned to death rather than submit to Russian rule.

However, I confess I’m writing this up some months after I read it, and I remember very little about it. The best bit is an exploration of Japanese poetry and sexual customs of the period. There are also good bits about Australia, science and the Dutch East India Company. But it doesn’t hang together as one might have wished.

The problem with taking a snapshot like this is that you necessarily get a static rather than dynamic picture. Stories in history depend on capturing long-term trends to illustrate why particular moments are so important. If you have picked your moments for chronology rather than story, you throw away your advantage.

This was the non-fiction book which had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next in that list is Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Whose Cruden’s Concordance Unwrote the Bible, by Julia Keay; but I can’t find it, so I’ll go on to What Made Now in Northern Ireland, a book of essays edited by the late great Maurna Crozier.

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The Dancers At The End Of Time

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Dear friends, you have doubtless already guess that this party has a theme. That theme, needless to say, is “Disaster”.’

This reached the top of my pile of unread sf books as recommended by you, without my realising that I had in fact read it in 2005. My review from then is posted below; nothing in the first 50 pages made me think I would change my mind this time (though there are two nice introductions by John Clute and bythe author himself), so I am moving on to something else. Next in that particular pile is The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein, which was already high up the list.

Originally posted by at May Books 1) The Dancers At The End Of Time

1) The Dancers At The End Of Time, by Michael Moorcock

Edition uniting An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and The End of All Songs. A bit of a one-joke book, this: hero from sexually liberated culture falls in love with woman from a much more repressed culture; this basic plot is the making of many stirring love stories, but here it is played for laughs, the repressed culture being late nineteenth-century London. The anarchic, pansexual, abundant society at the End of Time perhaps inspired Iain M. Banks a little, but Banks carries it off much better. Comic policemen and small furry (but vicious) aliens caper rather pointlessly through the timewarps, as do in-joke characters from Moorcock’s other books and from elsewhere. The end of the universe happens but doesn’t seem to make much difference.

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