Monthly Archives: May 2018

May Books

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Non-fiction: 8 (YTD 25)
Luminescent Threads, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal
The Road to Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead
Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate, by Zoe Quinn
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Liz Bourke
The Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook, European Edition, by Harrison Monsky and the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
The Case for a New WEU: European Defence After Brexit, by Charles Tannock MEP
A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, by Nat Segaloff (extract)

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Fiction (non-sf): 1 (YTD 14)
Looking For JJ, by Anne Cassidy

sf (non-Who): 14 (YTD 49)
River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey
Darkness and the Light, by Olaf Stapledon
Donovan's Brain, by Curt Siodmak
Akata Warrior, by Nnedi Okorafor
Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire
Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith
The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin
The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang
Summer in Orcus, by T. Kingfisher
A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge
Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein
Mind Over Ship, by David Marusek
In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Second-Stage Lensmen, by E. E. “Doc” Smith (did not finish)

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 17)
The Day of the Doctor, by Steven Moffat
Twice Upon a Time, by Paul Cornell
Collected Works, ed. Nick Wallace

Comics: 1 (YTD 15)

P.I.G.S., by Cecilia Valagussa

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~7,100 pages (YTD ~33,000)
16/27 (YTD 53/121) by non-male writers (Pierce/Mondal, Mead, Quinn, Le Guin, Bourke, Cassidy, Gailey, Okorafor, McGuire, Griffith, Jemisin, Yang, "Kingfisher", Hardinge, Brennan, Valagussa)
4/27 (YTD 15/121) by PoC (Mondal, Okorafor, Jemisin, Yang)
0/27 (YTD 6/121) reread

Reading now
Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi
Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee

Coming soon (perhaps):
Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, by James Finn Garner
Moominvalley in November, by Tove Jansson
Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasi
Virgins, Weeders and Queens, by Twigs Way
Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov
Le Mariage de Figaro, by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
Your Code Name is Jonah, by Edward Packard
Anno Mortis, by Rebecca Levene
“Slow Sculpture”, by Theodore Sturgeon
The Aeneid, by Virgil
Rose de Paris, by Gilles Schlesser
The Flood, by Scott Gray and Gareth Roberts
Weapons of Mass Diplomacy, by Abel Lanzac
Maigret Loses His Temper, by Georges Simenon
Up Jim River, by Michael Flynn
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England, by Ian Mortimer
Aztec Century, by Christopher Evans
The Supernatural Enhancements, by Edgar Cantero
The Martian Inca, by Ian Watson
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters
Old Friends, by Jonathan Clements, Marc Platt and Pete Kempshall

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No Time to Spare, by Ursula Le Guin; and Sleeping with Monsters, by Liz Bourke (2018 Hugo finalists)

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Two more Hugo finalists for Best Related Work – both of them books of essays and blog posts, originally published online.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Second paragraph of third chapter:

One of the things people often find when they get there [old age] is that younger people don’t want to hear about it. So honest conversation concerning geezerhood takes place mostly among geezers.

I was delighted last year when Ursula Le Guin won the Hugo for Best Related Work on my watch, and sent a lovely acceptance speech. I hadn’t anticipated that she would be up for it again this year; I was, of course, aware that her time might be running short, as alas it proved to be. These pieces are not as deep as those in Words Are My Matter, but they are just as wise; much less about literature than about age, experience, politics, and some lovely short pieces about her cat. There is a particularly good piece about anger. It’s a short book, but it will linger with me for a long time. You can get it here.

Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Liz Bourke

Second paragraph of third chapter:

So, Angel of Destruction. Together with The Devil and Deep Space (2002), the next novel in the Jurisdiction sequence, it marks a significant change within Matthews’ Jurisdiction universe. Previously, we’ve seen our protagonist, Andrej Koscuisko, act against the Bench only in —relatively —small ways, and only when in emotional extremis. Angel of Destruction and The Devil and Deep Space show characters acting against their unforgiving government in ways that are far more broadly subversive —and which have everything to do with prioritizing humaneness and justice over the rigid, inflexible, and inhumane rule of law and its application.
(Adapted from here.)

Most of the pieces collected here are book reviews, previously posted on Strange Horizons, Tor.com, etc; and all of the books reviewed are by women, which makes an important point but unfortunately means we miss this piece. This is all good material and certainly points me to a few authors who I should try out once I have escaped from the slopes of Mount Hugo. You can get it here.

That just leaves the Harlan Ellison book to go; I’ll publish my rankings in this category when I have read it.

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Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The wind had died to a whisper and the night was quiet and inky soft. Dry ting grass scratched against the spun fibers of Marghe’s nightbag as she wriggled onto her back. The cloud cover was thin and veil-like, allowing tantalizing glimpses of the moons and what might be stars, or satellites.

Back to my read-through of past award-winners, Ammonite won the Tiptree in 1994, and was also on the shortlist for both the BSFA and Clarke awards (as was Snow Crash), beaten by Aztec Century and Vurt respectively. The only other book I have read by this author is the Nebula-winning Slow River, though it sounds like I would enjoy her Hild as well.

The story is of an anthropologist who is exploring a planet on which only women live; a local virus is fatal to men, and the women have developed parthenogenesis. At the same time, the protagonist’s bosses on the orbiting spaceship are looking for ways to exploit the planet. It’s very far from being a lesbian feminist paradise; this is a world where women compete for scarce resources and territory, and resist change, though these issues are resolved with less testosterone than in most stories. The core of the story is the protagonist’s physical and cultural journey between her own Earth background and the new world that she has a chance to become part of. The differences of culture are well done; not totally convinced by some of the choices made, but of course one writes great stories about unlikely events. You can get it here.

Next on this list, Aztec Century and then Vurt.

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Monday reading

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Current
Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi
Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee

Last books finished
Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein
Collected Works, ed. Nick Wallace
Mind Over Ship, by David Marusek
In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Second Stage Lensmen, by E. E. “Doc” Smith (did not finish)
The Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook, European Edition, by Harrison Monsky and the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
P.I.G.S., by Cecilia Valagussa
The Case for a New WEU: European Defence After Brexit, by Charles Tannock MEP

Next books
Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasie

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The Repeal of the Eighth

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Well done, everyone. Here is the map with the final official results. (This map and the map below are from Jason Kelleher at Irish Political Maps, on Twitter as @IrishPolMaps.)

Although there was a narrow majority against the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in the Donegal constituency, the more liberal votes in the southern tip of the county, which is electorally attached to Sligo and Leitrim, are sufficient for us to state that every one of the classic Twenty-Six Counties voted in favour of repeal.

It's interesting to contrast with the vote in favour of the Eighth Amendment back in 1983 (on somewhat different electoral boundaries). It's perhaps worth noting that the spread of results was greater in 1983 – almost 42% separated Mayo East and Roscommon, on the one side, from Dun Laoghaire on the other; this year the spread was just over 30% between Donegal and Dublin Bay South. It was a divisive campaign, but the settled will of the people is now clear.

I'm not going to write about the substance because I've already done that, and the debate is over for now. (Though Northern Ireland still remains to be addressed.) A few notes however.

Some foolish commentators have been suggesting that liberals only like referenda when they give the right result. Well, I have to say that it sits very uncomfortably with me that anyone votes to decide on whether or not their fellow-citizens get to enjoy what should be inalienable rights. But we live in an imperfect world, and the Irish Constitution is what it is, and I'll take my moments of joy where I can find them.

I would also say that as referendum processes go, this was prepared very well – it can't be emphasised enough that the Citizen's Assembly played a crucial role in getting political leaders to the place where they could push for the referendum and (in most cases) endorse it. This sort of consultation is now being advocated more widely by among other President Macron of France. (Some of us got there a lot earlier.)

At the same time this couldn't have happened without hard work from many people over many years. I particularly salute Aileen O'Carroll, who successfully chipped away my certainty in my own long-ago pro-life days, and who has been campaigning to repeal the Eighth Amendment since at least 1988. There are many others like her; but I have known her for the longest.

I also salute those who shared their own stories during the campaign. That, I think, was crucial in swaying many voters who may have thought that this was a theoretical and even theological issue with which they had no direct personal connection; and then discovered that they were wrong.

Of course, the work of ensuring that the needed and promised legislation now gets passed must continue. But for once, the hard work doesn't start here; it has been done by the 1,429,981 people who voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment on Friday.

Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” One again she has been proved right.

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  • Sat, 20:48: RT @djmgaffneyw4: As Gréagóir O’Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself living in a country where people say stuff like…
  • Sun, 10:45: Savita Halappanavar’s parents ‘really, really happy’ after abortion vote https://t.co/gzUkxWGZiU

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The 2018 Hugo finalists for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

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It's going to be quite a lot of Hugo posts in the next few days as I clear my backlog of books read but yet unblogged. I must say that this has brought home to me how much the system demands of conscientious voters – now there are 17 Hugo categories, two associated awards (Campbell and YA), 9 Retro Hugo categories this year (and likely at least as many next year), and all of them with six finalists.

Anyway. For once, I managed to watch all of the Long Form finalists for this year. (Their combined length is 13 hours and 34 minutes; I previously watched/listened to all of the then five finalists all the way through in 2009, 2011 and 2012.) I had seen three in the cinema, before nominations even opened, and was able to get the other three onto the iPad and take advantage of some long business trips to get through them. I found it pretty straightforward to rank the six.

7) Thor: Ragnarok

This is the fourth Marvel Universe film I have seen, but only the third in chronological order – the others were the first Iron Man, which didn't impress me much, and nor did Captain America: The First Avenger, which I also ranked below No Award. On the other hand there is also Black Panther, made after Thor: Ragnarok but which I saw earlier this year, and loved. I'm afraid Thor: Ragnarok is back to the usual form for me. Not being terribly invested in the characters of the Marvel Universe, let alone the Thor storyline, I could see that the whole thing was trying to be funny but it wasn’t really my fandom. At least Jeff Goldblum was treating it with the approriate level of seriousness. I am sure it will do better than seventh place in the overall vote.

6) Blade Runner 2049

This was a bit of a disappointment. It went on way too long, it was very dependent on the predecessor of many years ago, some great action scenes and some beautiful cinematography, but took a long time to get to the point as far as it ever did. Also noticeable that the Asian population of Los Angeles seems to have almost completely disappeared. (And we do miss Vangelis' music.)

5) No Award; I can't really be thrilled at either of the above winning.

4) Get Out

Now we reach the stage where it is really painful to have to choose between the remaining films. I thought Get Out was brilliant – taking an old sf trope, injecting it with the dynamic of the current debate about race, and Josh Lyman from The West Wing as a genial but completely mad scientist. Daniel Kaluuya is particularly good as the protagonist. Maybe a bit too close to the horror side of the genre for my personal taste.

3) Star Wars: The Last Jedi

I seem to be using the phrase “not my fandom” far too much these days. Star Wars very much is one of my fandoms, and I loved this a lot – despite the slight hole in the plot of taking a break to go gambling during a space battle (having said that, I thought both settings were gorgeously realised, I just wasn't convinced of how they fit together). But I liked everything else, including the porgs but especially Carrie Fisher's last hurrah, and also Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran.

2) Wonder Woman

I wrote about this when I saw it, and really loved it. Extra points for being partially set in Belgium (see also: Twice Upon a Time).

1) The Shape of Water

The relationship between the Hugos and the Oscars is not at all direct. A quick scan of the nominees and finalists delivers the following data (year of Hugo is given, which is the year after the film was released and also the year after the Oscar year):

Hugo winners which were also Oscar nominees: Other Hugo finalists which were also Oscar nominees
Doctor Strangelove (1965)
A Clockwork Orange (1972)
Star Wars (1978)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004, won 2003 Oscar too)
Inception (2011)
Gravity (2014)
The Martian (2016)
Arrival (2017)		 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1983)
The Right Stuff (1984)
Field of Dreams (1990)
Ghost (1991)
Beauty and the Beast (1992)
Apollo 13 (1996)
The Sixth Sense (2000)
Avatar (2010)
District 9 (2010)
Up (2010)
Toy Story 3 (2011)
Hugo (2012)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2016)
Hidden Figures (2017)

So far precisely one film has won both awards – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. No other Hugo finalist has ever won the Oscar. It's also noticeable that half of the overlap is from this century, with the expanded Oscar ballots of the last ten years clearly helping. Basically this century, genre films have become fully accepted as part of the mainstream.

This year, for only the second time in the history of both awards, the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture is also up for the Hugo. I must say I thought it was brilliant. I really liked the detailed paranoid portrayal of the world of 1962, the navigation of race, gender and disability, and the core question of what makes us human at the end of the day. It looks and sounds fantastic. It gets my firm first preference and I think it must have a good chance of winning the award.

2018 Hugos: Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Related Work | Graphic Story | Dramatic Long | Dramatic Short | Professional Artist & Fan Artist | Series | Young Adult | Campbell Award
1943 Retro Hugos: Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Dramatic Short | Fan Artist

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Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time, by Paul Cornell

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was a decision that meant that he no longer had to bear the burden of hope.

So, we come to the latest novelisation of the latest Doctor Who episode. (For the record, the shortest ever interval between the broadcast of a new episode and the novelisation being published was The Five Doctors, where Terrance Dicks’ book was available in the shops the day before the story was broadcast.)

Paul Cornell has the longest record of writing Doctor Who among the four authors of the new novelisations, having started with the third of the New Adventures, Timewyrm: Revelation, back in 1991, soon after the end of Old Who; of course, he wrote the Ninth Doctor story Father’s Day and the Tenth Doctor story Human Nature/The Family of Blood (adapted from a Seventh Doctor novel of the same nameglorious 50th anniversary tribute The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who and the more recent and great fun The Four Doctors.

Here he has done a lovely job of taking the Terrance Dicks style at his best (he’s always been clear in his admiration) and applying the method to a 21st century script. He softens some of the edges of the First Doctor’s characterisation which I found problematic on screen, adds quite a lot to the Bill back-story which means that it all makes sense, and embeds the whole story in mythos in a way that works much better on the page. Also the Twelfth Doctor’s final monologue is much more clearly a memo to his future self.

And I have to admit that I had not twigged that the First World War parts of the story are actually set in Belgium. Admittedly it’s not Belgium at its prettiest, but the screen caption (had I paid attention) said it was Ypres 1914, and in the novelisation it’s explicitly near Saint-Yvon (where the best-known account of the Christmas Truce was recorded). This is the second TV episode which is partly set in Belgium (the first being a blink-and-you-miss-it moment from The Unicorn and the Wasp). That’s two more than have been set in Ireland…

Anyway, it’s a true and worthy homage to the show and to the Terrance Dicks style, bringing in its own new elements. You can get it here.

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Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, by Steven Moffat

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Second paragraph of third chapter (numbered Chapter 1):

‘He’s here,’ I said, keeping tight rein on the panic levels in my voice. ‘I can hear him, moving about. He’s in Time Vault Zero. The Doctor is in Time Vault Zero.’

Second paragraph of seventh chapter (numbered Chapter 3):

I am writing this account so that perhaps, finally, I can leave it behind.

Steven Moffat is, oddly enough, the one writer of the four new novelisations who had not previously written a Doctor Who novel. Yep, his previous written Who prose, despite his being the show-runner for the whole of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor eras, and having generated screenplay for more Doctors than any other writer (even if you don't count the extra five in The Curse of Fatal Death), amounts to only a few short stories, starting with "Continuity Errors" in the 1996 collection Decalog 3: Consequences, and going on to "What I Did In My Christmas Holidays – By Sally Sparrow", the short story from the 2006 Annual that became the TV episode Blink.

Of course, I really enjoyed the 2013 50th anniversary special, which in retrospect we now see as a last salute to the Tennant era from almost the end of the Smith era. And I am glad to report that this is by far the best of the four new Doctor Who novels published last month. Moffat has veered further from the script than any of the other writers; the chapters are told by alternating narrators, in non-sequential numbers, interspersed with reports from other characters (Chapter Nine, significantly, is missing); the basics of the storyline (starting with the Eighth Doctor's regeneration, and ending with the Curator) remain the same, but the transmission to the printed page has been done in a very different way. And there are some lovely shout-outs to odd bits of continuity – Peter Cushing's Doctor is canonicalised; there is a desperate attempt to explain the black and white era. In general, it's just good fun, and it feels like the process of writing the book was much more enjoyable for the author than was notoriously the case with the ofiginal script. If you are a Who fan, you should get it here.

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Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion, by Jenny T. Colgan

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

She [Jackie Tyler] told herself that a lot, these days.

This is the second of the four recently published Doctor Who novelisations, reviving the Target series; by the great chick-lit writer Jenny Colgan, it puts the Tenth Doctor’s first TV appearance into book form. This is far from Colgan’s first encounter with Who; she wrote an Eleventh Doctor novel, Dark Horizonsan Eleven/Clara ebook, Into the Nowherea Ten/Donna novel, In the BloodTen/Donna Big Finish audio, Time Reaver, and several other bits and bobs (collected together in a volume to be published soon).

As with Russell T. Davies’ novelisation of Rose, Rose Tyler is the central character here – partly because, as you may remember, the new Tenth Doctor spends about half of the story asleep in post-regenerative repose. We long-term fans can get rather blasé about regeneration, but Colgan really brings us inside the head of Rose who has just seen her best friend’s body explode and burn, to be replaced by a total stranger who knows far too much about her – and of course Rose here stands for every fan whose first Doctor gets replaced by another; I have myself finally forgiven Peter Davison for not being Tom Baker, but it took me a long time, and the show has sometimes taken fan acceptance of the new lead too lightly (I’m looking at you, The Twin Dilemma) – though admittedly it has got it right more often than not.

Apart from that, the Sycorax are even nastier in Colgan’s book, there is a lovely doomed romance between Dr Llewellyn and Sally Jacobs, and the depiction of an accidentally elevated British Prime Minister somewhat out of her depth when faced with the biggest political crisis in living memory seems more prescient than satirical from the viewpoint of today. (“In a particularly 2017 move, by the way,” Colgan says in the afterword, “my Harriet also has a cough.”) All rather glorious.

Anyway, the book does full honour to the Target tradition, and you can get it here.

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Doctor Who: Rose, by Russell T. Davis

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

A hug, of course, whoomph! Her mum grabbed hold of her and squeezed her tight. Jackie Tyler, five foot nothing, age not relevant, karaoke champion of the Spinning Wheel, life and soul of the party but a monumental lightning storm when angry, now sobbing and laughing and then, somehow, finding a reason to give Rose a punch on the arm.

I'm doing another themed week of reviews here, and this time it is going to be the four new Doctor Who novelisations published last month. This started with some disappointment for me – I shifted things around so that I could go to the 13 April signing by the authors of all four books at Forbidden Planet in London, but when I reached the queue at 5.40 (for a 6pm start) it was already over 400 metres long and stretched from the back entrance on New Compton St around the corners of St Giles' Passsage and some way back up Shaftesbury Avenue. By 7.45, I was still over 100 people from the front and my dinner companion was waiting hungrily in a nearby restaurant, so I gave up and went back the next morning to get unautographed copies. I should not have allowed my work colleagues to tempt me for a quick Friday pint at 5pm. I did at least say Hi to Paul Cornell in the shop while I was looking for the queue.

Anyway, here we are, the first Target novelisation of a New Who story, written by its author, the man who brought Doctor Who back. But I'm going to pause for a little more throat-clearing – these are not the first New Who novelisations. Pearson Educational published book versions of four Eleventh Doctor stories for early readers back in 2011 – The Eleventh Hour, Victory of the Daleks, The Time of Angels (including Flesh and Stone), and The Lodger. They are out of print now, but no less than six Twelfth Doctor stories are coming from the same source this year – The [sic] Robot of Sherwood, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline, The Girl Who Died, The Woman Who Lived, and Face the Raven. I haven't yet read any of the Pearson versions; they are what they are.

Back to Rose. Back in the bad old days of 1996, Russell T. Davies wrote a Seventh Doctor book called Damaged Goods (more recently adapted for audio by Jonathan Morris for Big Finish). It included the following interesting points:

  • The first character we encounter in the story is the daughter of Mrs Tyler, who is a single mother
  • She says to the Doctor at one point, "You think you're so funny", a line almost echoed by Rose Tyler a decade later
  • The Tylers live on a council estate where strange things are happening
  • The strange things include (but are not restricted to) a doppelganger of a black neighbour created by an evil alien intelligence
  • The Doctor's female companion is Roz
  • At the very end the Doctor goes back in time to meet the young Tyler girl before the adventure started in her time line
  • As the alien invasion fully manifests lots of people die horribly and swiftly

So this novelisation is actually the third time, not the second, that Davies has visited some of these themes.

Of course he needs to use the script of the 2005 story as his basis, and also has to make it accessible for the younger audience whose aunts and uncles may have bought this, but he adds a lot more material here, starting with a great pen-portrait of the office caretaker, Bernie Wilson, who is the first of many characters to die horribly in New Who. Most notably, Mickey gets considerably more depth and characterisation than he was ever granted on screen, and it turns out that he is in a band including a trans woman and two young men who are just on the cusp of realising their true feelings for each other. The treatment of Jackie on the page seems much more sympathetic than she got on the screen, and poor Clive gets an expansion to his background as well:

And now, in sudden coordination, every dummy in every window lifted its arm and swung down. Row upon row of glass shattered, bright chips cascading to the floor. All along the street, people screamed, yelled, some still laughing. Caroline said, `Well that’s not very funny,’ and she grabbed hold of the boys to pull them back.
But Clive was staring. With horror. And yet, with delight.
Because he remembered.
In his files. In those mad old stories of monsters from Loch Ness, and wizards in Cornwall, and robots at the North Pole, there had been tales, from long ago, fables about shop-window dummies coming to life and attacking people, a slaughter, so the secret files said, a massacre on the streets of England, hushed up ever since by the Powers That Be, the population doped and duped into forgetting. And Clive, even Clive, had read those stories and thought, How can that possibly be true?
But here it is, he thought. It’s happening again.
Which meant the Doctor was true. Every word of him and her and them. All Clive’s fantasies were now becoming facts, right before his eyes. But if the glories were true then so were the terrors. And Clive felt a chill in his heart as he watched the plastic army step down into the street.
He turned to his wife and children.
He said, ‘Run.’
Caroline stared at him, more scared by the look in his eyes than by the dummies. He said quietly, ‘I’ll try to stop them. Now for the love of God, run.’
And Caroline, at last, believed. She looked at her husband for one last time and said, ‘I love you.’ Then she took hold of the boys’ hands, and ran.

The one character we don’t learn so much more about is the Doctor himself. We get a bit more circumstantial detail about the Time War, but Davies put more than that in the 2006 Annual. Of course, this is sensible enough; the book is told from Rose’s point of view, and for her the Doctor is a mysterious stranger who disrupts her ordinary life; the cosmic adventures are yet to come. But having seen how some of the other characters are enhanced by Davies from the printed page, the enigma of the show’s central personality is even more palpable than it was on the screen.

Still, this is a worthy start to what we must hope is a revival of the old tradition. You can get it here.

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Monday reading

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Current
Collected Works, ed. Nick Wallace
Mind Over Ship, by David Marusek
Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein
In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan

Last books finished
Summer in Orcus, by T. Kingfisher
A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge
Looking For JJ, by Anne Cassidy

Next books
Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett

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The 2018 Hugo finalists for Best Novella

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I found it pretty easy to rank these this year, though I am also very well aware that my tastes are very different from those of voters (and indeed nominators). One point before I start: it's of course very gratifying for Tor.com to have got five of the six available slots, but is it such a good thing that one publisher has cornered the market in this category? (There was a time, of course, when Asimov's had this dominance too, getting five out of five slots for Best Novella in 1991 and 1996, and four out of five in 1987, 1988, 1990, 1992, and 2000; and likewise all but one slot for Best Novelette in 1988 and 1994, and all but one slot in Best Short Story in 1993 and 1995. We all survived.)

Anyway, my ranking, introduced in each case by the second paragraph of the third chapter, is:

6) All Systems Red, by Martha Wells

It wasn't until I was helping to carry equipment to the little hopper that I realized they were going to make me ride in the crew cabin.

I hate stories about anthroporphic robots coming to terms with their non-humanity, and I'm afraid this was another one of them.

5) Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor

When I finally stopped coughing and my eyes focused on the docked ships, my heart began to beat like a talking drum played by the strongest drummer. I rubbed some otjize with my index finger from my cheek and brought it to my nose and inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled its sweet aroma. My heart continued its hard beat, but at least it slowed some. Okwu was already at check-in and I quickly got behind him.

Unlike most people, I bounced firmly off the first of the Binti novellas, and the same happened here; I found the plot disjointed and the prose in places surprisingly clunky.

From here on we're into the stuff I liked. Sadly, we still have to rank them.

4) Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire

Age seven was first grade, where Jillian learned that she had cooties and smelled and no one wanted to play with her anyway, and Jacqueline learned that if she wanted people to like her, all she had to do was smile at them and say she liked their shoes.

To my immense surprise, since I've generally not found McGuire's writing to my taste, I hugely loved Every Heart a Doorway, last year's winner in this category. This year we have the back-story of two of the characters from Every Heart a Doorway, twin sisters Jack and Jill, and their adventure with a vampire in a hidden land. The characterisation of the sisters and their family was very convincing. But there were a number of gaps in the world-building that nagged me – not least that the sisters' home in our world wasn't quite right for either England or America.

3) River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey

They didn't read the second letter either.

I love this bonkers concept of an alternate steampunkish history where in the 1850s, hippopotami were introduced into the lower Mississippi, and immediately problems arise due to their tendency to take over the ecosystem. Our gender-diverse protagonists are sent on a mission to deal with the problem, and must deal with personal vendettas, betrayal and death. The hippos of this universe appear to be carnivorous, which suggests that evolution took a very strange turn at some point.

2) The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang

Winter had silenced the frogs that sang outside the windows on warmer days. In that quiet, Akeha cautiously cleared their mindeye and tapped into the Slack. The world of arch-energies lay calm around the sleeping bundle of their twin. Mokoya had nightmares sometimes, and on those nights the Slack seethed around them like a wild river. But not tonight. In Akeha’s mindeye, the Slack enfolded their twin like a gentle blanket, shimmering in the colors of the five natures.

I knew JY Yang back in Livejournal days in 2004, and indeed they made my Moldova userpic for me; I'm really glad to see their writing career flourishing now. I also really liked The Black Tides of Heaven, a story of high-born and magically gifted twins in an Asian-influenced fantasy world (which is however much more fluid in its acceptance of sexual diversity), dealing with the technology of mass destruction as well as their own relationship with each other and their lovers. Clear and direct, where a lot of stories like this disappear into their own jargon. Great stuff.

1) "And Then There Were (N-One)", by Sarah Pinsker

The hotel employee knelt by the Sarah to my left, who had my haircut and who was wearing the same T-shirt as me, only with a long sleeved shirt underneath it. She was the only one I’d seen with a prosthetic hand. It was a good prosthetic; I wouldn’t have noticed it if we hadn’t stood at a washroom sink next to each other before the meal. Other than the hand, she’d looked more like me than most; I desperately wanted to figure out where we’d diverged, but hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her yet.

This was the first finalist that I read, and it was a good start. I may hate anthropomorphic robot stories, but I love doppelganger stories, and I have a residual affection for murder mysteries, and this scratches both of the latter two itches, with Pinsker called in to investigate her own murder at a convention attended exclusively by alternate timeline versions of herself. A briliant concept, carried off with just the right amount of humour and minimal solipsism. Gets my top vote.

Edited to add: Once again my tastes are out of whack with the trend, as All Systems Red won the Nebula!

2018 Hugos: Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Related Work | Graphic Story | Dramatic Long | Dramatic Short | Professional Artist & Fan Artist | Series | Young Adult | Campbell Award
1943 Retro Hugos: Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Dramatic Short | Fan Artist


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The God Instinct, by Jesse Bering

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Third paragraph of fourth chapter:

Of course, Nagin was only reinventing the well-treaded fire-and-brimstone wheel in suggesting that our God is a testy and vengeful one. Just a year before he made his political gaffe, other reflective people from all corners of the globe borrowed from the same barrel of explanation and offered commentary on the “real” reason for the Indonesian tsunami that killed nearly a quarter of a million people in Southeast Asia in 2004. (Never mind the sudden shifting of tectonic plates on the Indian Ocean floor.) All similarly saw that catastrophe, too, as a sort of enormous, Vegas-style, blinking marquee meant to convey an unambiguous message to us superficial, fallen, and famously flawed human beings. Here are a few anonymous samples from some online discussion forums just a few days after the tsunami disaster:

As God says, I send things down on you as a warning so that you may ponder and change your ways.

A lot of times, God allows things like this to happen to bring people to their knees before God. It takes something of this magnitude to help them understand there is something bigger that controls this world than themselves.

It might just be God’s way to remind us that He is in charge, that He is God and we need to repent.

The calamity—so distressing for those individually involved—was for humanity as a whole a profoundly moral occurrence, an act of God performed for our benefit.

I somehow came across Jesse Bering through our mutual connection with the Queen's University of Belfast – he was a lecturer there at the time that I was a visiting research fellow (not that I visited very often) – so when the buzz around this book started I acquired it, but then didn’t get around to reading it until now. It’s a short and breezy exploration of the psychology of belief – not as wearyingly hostile as Richard Dawkins, but equally taking it for granted that there is no “there” there. I was particularly drawn into the first few chapters’ exploration of theory of mind – our ability to attribute mental states to others and to adapt our behaviour to take others’ mental states into account. This is one of the things that makes us human – not just that we have a greater cognitive ability than other animals, but that we treat each other as fellow individuals. Bering makes a strong argument that belief in God, or in the supernatural, is a natural development from the fact that we have theory of mind, and therefore is to an extent an evolutionary adaptation to cope with our intelligence and social natures. He then ranges around the areas of philosophy, psychology and organised religion with a bit less impact, but he has set up the argument well enough (and the book is short enough) that I enjoyed following it though to the end. I must read more of his books, which include Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? and Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. Docking points, though, for concealing interesting information in the endnotes – why do publishers still do this, when there is perfectly decent technology for footnotes? You can get it here.

This was the top unread book I acquired in 2011. Next on that list is Up Jim River, by Michael F. Flynn.

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The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Tonkee and Hoa lag behind with you. It’s almost like the old days, except that now Hoa appears as you walk, gets left behind as you keep walking, then appears again somewhere ahead of you. Most times he adopts a neutral posture, but occasionally he’s doing something ridiculous, like the time you find him in a running pose. Apparently stone eaters get bored, too. Hjarka stays with Tonkee, so that’s four of you. Well, five: Lerna lingers to walk with you, too, angry at what he perceives as the mistreatment of one of his patients. He didn’t think a recently comatose woman should be made to walk at all, let alone left to fall behind. You try to tell him not to stick with you, not to draw Castrima’s wrath upon himself, but he snorts and says that if Castrima really wants to antagonize the only person in the comm who’s formally trained to do surgery, they don’t deserve to keep him. Which is… well, it’s a very good point. You shut up.

Third of a trilogy whose first two volumes both won the Hugo, and on this year’s final ballot. I was among the very few who was not particularly grabbed by the previous two, and I’m afraid this one equally failed to grab me. I liked the mother-and-daughter theme, but I remain confused by the world-building and unengaged by the characters and indeed by the plot. Others will like it more than me, and they can get it here.

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Genius Loci, by Ben Aaronovitch

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The Professor’s database had a lot of material from the twentieth century. She called it the last Romantic age when the Earth was still diverse and exciting. She said it was a simpler age when the moral choices were clear. ‘When we met our first aliens,’ said the Professor, ‘we had to accept the reality of moral relativism. A Martian is biologically hardwired differently from a human, who is hardwired differently from a Draconian. You can’t find a basic moral common ground – only a constantly flexing point of equilibrium.’

Well, this was unexpected. I’ve been reading the Bernice Summerfield books in publication order, which generally means in order of internal chronology; but Genius Loci is an exception. It’s a novel about the early career of the first archaeologist companion, on her first offworld dig, and I can think of only two other novels in which a future companion appears before they meet the Doctor (Harry Sullivan in The Face of the Enemy and Erimem, like Benny a non-TV companion, in The Coming of the Queen).

And this is rather good. I’ve had my problems with some of Aaronovitch’s other work (though he certainly seems to have found his stride with Rivers of London, a finalist for last year’s Best Series Hugo); here a lot of things come together, a well-rounded main character, lots of detail of non-human cultures, lots of reflection on human politics, and plenty of humour and throwaway lines about 21st century culture. It’s one of the very few Bernice Sumemrfield books that you could try a non-Whovian fan on and have reasonable hope that they would appreciate it; the references to canon are light but tempting.

Sadly of course it is way out of print, and you can get it here at huge cost.

Next up: Collected Works, ed. Nick Wallace.

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