Monthly Archives: August 2018

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Walls in Belfast

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We went to the Ulster Museum yesterday, where there is a very good and full exhibition about the Troubles. One of the exhibits is a map from the Roads Service from 1979 showing exactly which bits of Belfast were closed off for security reasons.

In the yellow zone, no unattended vehicles were allowed from 8 am to 6 pm Monday to Saturday; in the red zone, no unattended vehicles were allowed at any time; and within the barriers, on the cross-hatched streets, only “delivery vehicles etc” were allowed. There were only seven points where vehicles could enter the city centre, of the twenty-odd possibilities; the others were simply blocked off.

What I found interesting is the similarity with the wall built around Belfast in the 1640s, as mapped by Gillespie and Royle.

The gates marked on Castle Street and North Street are in exactly the same place as two of the security barriers of 330 years later. It would have been perfect if they actually coincided with vehicle access points, but they don’t quite – the North Street gate is next to (but on on) the site of the later access point at the northern end of Royal Avenue, and to reach Castle Street in the 1970s you would need to go in at the southern end of Queen Street. There was another gate in the 1640s on what was Corporation Street in the 1970s but is now the Dunbar Link.

I tried drawing the two on one map, but the 1970s security zone looked a little too phallic.

It is interesting that the commercial centre of Belfast had shifted so little in a third of a millennium. The core areas of economic activity in, say, London and Dublin would have moved a lot between the 1640s and 1970s. But I guess that is less true of some other cities I know well, like Brussels or Leuven. (Or Oxford or Cambridge, for that matter.)

There is no trace above ground now of the 1640s fortifications, and little enough from the 1970s. Long may it remain so.

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Doctor Who Files: 7) The Daleks, 8) The Cybermen, 12) The TARDIS, all by Justin Richards

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I read four of the books in this series soon after they first came out, and have been hanging onto these three for some time. They are cheerful pieces. Each consists of about two thirds recounting TV Who lore about the subject of the book, and then a relevant short story. Justin Richards (who, as I repeatedly point out, is the most prolific author of New Who) is on form here, delivering a Dalek Empire-style tale, a contemporary kids-deal-with-Cybermen vignette, and the story of how the Doctor and Martha influenced the construction of Stonehenge. If you spot these, they are worth picking up, here, here and here.

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Monday reading

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Current
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
Anno Dracula – Dracula Cha Cha Cha, by Kim Newman

Last books finished
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, by Marcel Proust
The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
Doctor Who Files 7: The Daleks, by Justin Richards
Doctor Who Files 8: The Cybermen, by Justin Richards
Doctor Who Files 12: The TARDIS, by Justin Richards
Huawei Stories: Pioneers, ed. Tian Tao and Yin Zhifeng
Time Lord, by Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans

Next books
Fair Trade, by Laura T. Reynolds, Douglas Murray and John Wilkinson
Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink
Nobody’s Children, by Kate Orman, Jonathan Blum and Philip Purser-Hallard

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The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

I’d begun to like the Ayreses for their own sake, too. It was Caroline I saw most. I discovered that she walked in the park almost daily, so I’d often catch sight of her unmistakable long-legged, broad-hipped figure, with Gyp cutting a way through the long grass at her side. If she was close enough I would stop the car and wind down my window, and we’d chat, as we had that time in the lane. She seemed to be always in the middle of some chore, always had a bag or a basket with her, filled with fruit, or mushrooms, or sticks for kindling. She might as well, I thought, have been a farmer’s daughter; the more I saw of things at Hundreds, the sorrier I was that her life, like that of her brother, had so much work in it and so few pleasures. One day a neighbour of mine presented me with a couple of jars of honey from his hives, for having seen his son safely through a bad dose of whooping cough. I remembered Caroline’s having longed for honey on my very first visit to the house, so I gave one of the jars to her. I did it casually, but she seemed amazed and delighted by the gift, holding up the jar to catch the sunlight, showing her mother.

I was disappointed by this, frankly. The best part of the book is a sensitive study of a landed gentry family under economic pressure immediately after the Second World War (the Labour Government is blamed by some of the characters, though I think not by the author), as told by the local doctor whose mother had briefly worked at the big house as a servant. Strange occurrences blight the health of the Ayres family and the doctor’s romance with the daughter of the house; and in the end I felt the book unsuccessfully tried to straddle the genres of horror fiction and Aga saga without really subverting either (though I also admit that neither horror nor Aga sagas are really my thing). Great characterisation and descriptions, shame about the fundamentals of the plot. If you like, you can get it here.

I thought that this was my top unread non-sf fiction book, but in fact I’m reclassifying it as sf. It was also my top unread book by a woman, and my top unread book acquired this year. The next book in the first two of those piles is Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively; next in the other pile is Words of Radiance, by Brandon Sanderson.

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In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower, by Marcel Proust

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Only two chapters, both very long. The second paragraph of the second chapter is:

Mais cette souffrance et ce regain d’amour pour Gilberte ne furent pas plus longs que ceux qu’on a en rêve, et cette fois, au contraire, parce qu’à Balbec l’Habitude ancienne n’était plus là pour les faire durer. Et si ces effets de l’Habitude semblent contradictoires, c’est qu’elle obéit à des lois multiples. À Paris j’étais devenu de plus en plus indifférent à Gilberte, grâce à l’Habitude. Le changement d’habitude, c’est-à-dire la cessation momentanée de l’Habitude, paracheva l’œuvre de l’Habitude quand je partis pour Balbec. Elle affaiblit mais stabilise, elle amène la désagrégation mais la fait durer indéfiniment. Chaque jour depuis des années je calquais tant bien que mal mon état d’âme sur celui de la veille. À Balbec un lit nouveau à côté duquel on m’apportait le matin un petit déjeuner différent de celui de Paris ne devait plus soutenir les pensées dont s’était nourri mon amour pour Gilberte : il y a des cas (assez rares il est vrai) où, la sédentarité immobilisant les jours, le meilleur moyen de gagner du temps, c’est de changer de place. Mon voyage à Balbec fut comme la première sortie d’un convalescent qui n’attendait plus qu’elle pour s’apercevoir qu’il est guéri. However, this recurrence of pain and the renewal of my love for Gilberte did not last longer than they would have in a dream of her, for the very reason that my life at Balbec was free of the habits which in usual circumstances would have helped it to prevail. Such effects of Habit may seem contradictory; but the laws which govern it are many and varied. In Paris, it was because of Habit that I had become more and more indifferent to Gilberte. The change in my habits, that is the momentary suspension of Habit, put its finishing touch to that process when I set off for Balbec. Habit may weaken all things, but it also stabilizes them; it brings about a dislocation, but then makes it last indefinitely. For years past, I had been roughly modelling my state of mind each day on my state of mind of the day before. At Balbec, breakfast in bed — a different bed, a different breakfast —was to be incapable of nourishing the ideas on which my love for Gilberte had fed in Paris. There are instances, albeit infrequent, in which, the passing days having been immobilized by a sedentary way of life, the best way to gain time is to change place. My journey to Balbec was like the first outing of a convalescent who has not noticed until that moment that he is completely cured.

I enjoyed this more this time around than last time I read it – I think it helps that I now have a better appreciation of the overall shape of the story across the six volumes, and that I’m just more familiar with the Modernists than I was eleven years ago. I particular, I enjoyed much more the narrator’s interaction with art and artists, both in Paris and at the seaside, and could see both how he became attracted to Gilberte and Albertine and also how he makes mistakes in both relationships. I had forgotten the incident of the sofa and the brothel, and his erotic fumbles with the two girls. Sure, the sentences are very long, but I am finding it all pretty digestible.

I see that some Proust scholars see Albertine as a female version of Proust’s lover Albert Agostinelli. I must say that apart from the name, I’m not convinced so far. Albertine is very feminised; the real Agostinelli looks pretty butch in surviving photos. In any case, most fictional characters are an amalgam of the author’s experiences rather than being a direct fictionalisation. It should also be said that both Albertine and Gilberte are so very much framed by the narrator’s attraction to them that they don’t really come across strongly as characters in their own right.

OK, next comes The Guermantes Way. But not until September. You can get In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower here.

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Ill Met in Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber, and other novellas of 1970

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The version I have of “Ill Met in Lankhmar” has no internal divisions, so the third paragraph is:

The two thieves also had the relief of knowing that, with the satisfaction of a job well done, they were going straight home now, not to a wife, Aarth forbid! – or to parents and children, all gods forfend! but to Thieves’ House, headquarters and barracks of the all-mighty Guild which was father to them both and mother too, though no woman was allowed inside its ever-open portal on Cheap Street.

This won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novella presented in 1971 for work of 1970 (so the 1971 Hugo but the 1970 Nebula). Leiber had been writing both prose and poetry about the heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser since 1939. In 1970 he published two stories set very early in internal chronology: an origin story for Fafhrd, “The Snow Women” (the origin story for the Gray Mouser had appeared in 1962), and this tale of how the two first became a partnership in the city of Lankhmar. In these post-Pratchett days, we can forget that Ankh-Morpork is very firmly built on Lankhmar’s foundations, but it’s pretty easy to see the elements that Discworld drew from Leiber.

Lankhmar is more sexy than Ankh-Morpork, and the story revolves around Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser attempting to impress their girlfriends by taking on the Thieves’ Guild. The Guild, however, has sorcerous support, and in a horrific passage the two women are killed by magic (or “fridged”, as we would say now) and the two heroes destroy the Guild in revenge. In an attempt to move with the times (and against his own past record) Leiber does give the two women a bit of intelligence and character, but it does not do them much good.

However, it’s well-written and entertaining, and fans who had been following the Lankhmar stories will have lapped this up just as Doctor Who fans enjoy Missing Adventures.

The title of course refers both to Oberon’s grumpy greeting to Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2 scene 1, and to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s wartime exploits in Crete. Neither has much bearing on Leiber’s story.

Since I had the time to do it, I read several of the other novellas competing with “Ill Met in Lankhmar” for the Hugo and Nebula that year. Two others were on both shortlists. One was “The Region Between”, by Harlan Ellison, whose third chapter is actually numbered 1¾; its second paragraph is:

And yet alive. More completely alive than he had ever been, than any human being had ever conceived of being. Alive with all of the universe, one with the clamoring stars, brother to the infinite empty spaces, heroic in proportions that even myth could not define.

I found this a fairly indigestible and self-indulgent piece. It is one of five stories by different authors which all started with the main character’s death; we cycle through confusing and disjointed fonts and prose to discover the meaning of God. Not the New Wave at its best.

The other story on both final ballots was “The Thing in the Stone” by Clifford D. Simak, the second paragraph of whose third section is:

At fault, Daniels knew, had been his obsession withthe creature in the stone. The past was nothing—it was the creature in the stone that was important and to tell of it, to explain it and how he knew that it was there, he must tell about his listening to the stars.

I liked this a lot more. It’s a story about an isolated man in rural America who finds himself eerily linked to another world, in this case past geological ages. It is therefore of course a fairly typical Simak story, and maybe doesn’t stand out all that much from the rest of his work, but it ticked a lot of my boxes.

Leiber’s Fafhrd story “The Snow Women” also qualified for the Hugo ballot, but he withdrew it. The other two novellas contending for the Hugo were therefore “Beastchild” by Dean R. Koontz, which I was not able to track down in its originally published form, and “The World Outside” by Robert Silverberg, now available as the sixth chapter of The World Inside, the novel about a future society living in immense tower blocks and reproducing like crazy. More specifically, it is the chapter about the man who decides to leave his home tower block and explore the surrounding countryside. The second paragraph of its third section is:

But in the end he goes without telling anyone.

It’s a rather brutal story – in the world outside the World Inside, people use birth control and women actually have the right to refuse sex, both things which shock the protagonist. On his return home he is immediately executed in case he should spread heretical ideas of how society might be different. I can see why it got onto the ballot, but I can also see why it didn’t win.

There were three other stories on the Nebula ballot. I did not bother tracking down “The Fatal Fulfillment” by Poul Anderson (one of the same set of stories as “The Region Between”) or “A Style in Treason” by James Blish. “April Fools Day Forever”, by Kate Wilhelm, was the only novella by a woman on either final ballot. (There were no works by women at all on the Hugo ballot for the written fiction categories; the Nebulas had one story by a woman in each category, two by Kate Wilhelm and two by Joanna Russ.) The third paragraph of “April Fools Day Forever” is:

What she wanted to do was call Martie, but she didn’t. His boss didn’t approve of personal phone calls during the working day. She breathed a curse at Hilary Boyle, and waited for Martie to call her. He would, as soon as he had a chance. When she was certain that there was nothing else she should do, she sat down in the living room, where one log was burning softly. There was no light on in the room and the storm had darkened the sky. The small fire glowed pleasingly in the enormous fireplace, and the radiance was picked up by pottery and brass mugs on a low table before the fireplace. The room was a long rectangle, wholly out of proportion, much too long for the width, and with an uncommonly high ceiling. Paneling the end walls had helped, as had making a separate room within the larger one, with its focal point the fireplace. A pair of chairs and a two-seater couch made a cozy grouping. The colors were autumn forest colors, brilliant and subdued at the same time: oranges and scarlets in the striped covering of the couch, picked up again by pillows; rust browns in the chairs; forest-green rug. The room would never make House Beautiful, Julia had thought when she brought in the last piece of brass for the table and surveyed the effect, but she loved it, and Martie loved it. And she’d seen people relax in that small room within a room who hadn’t been able to relax for a long time. She heard it then.

It’s a tremendously creepy novella, set in a 1970 society where the death rate has suddenly accelerated and the birth rate drastically decreased. The heroine and her husband, struggling with their own efforts to start a family, find themselves embroiled in a sinister conspiracy which seems to be linked to the bizarre demographic changes. Unfortunately I felt that the ending was a cop-out that undermined the internal logic of the rest of the story, but up until the last couple of pages I really enjoyed it.

So, did the voters of 1970 get it right? I’d have found it a tough call between Leiber, Simak and (for the Nebula) Wilhelm myself; but in the end I think I too would have voted for Leiber.

Next comes Ringworld.


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The mystery of the shy thinktank

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POLITICO alerted me earlier in the week to the existence of a Brussels thinktank called EU Policies, of which I had not previously heard. POLITICO complained, reasonably enough, that one of the stories on the EU Policies site had been copied from them wholesale and without attribution.

The mission statement of EU Policies declares, “EU Policies is a european [sic] Think-tank. / Our focus is to promote successful policies, at a european [sic] level, always putting subsidiarity ahead.” The postal address given is a co-working space on the far side of Brussels from the EU quarter, which also offers a virtual office among its services. The thinktank has a Twitter account dating from last October, but no Facebook presence that I could detect.

Oddly enough, not a single one of the named editorial staff appears to have their own social media presence, whether on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Googling their names individually, combined with the word “Brussels”, produces no results apart from the EU Policies website itself, and a gig date for a musician (an American drummer) with the same name as the Executive Editor. (At least one of the other names looks like it has been misspelled, but trying some of the obvious variations produced no better results.)

The site features banner ads for Euractiv’s daily news roundup, but I think it is very unlikely that there is any real connection there.

It is surprising that such an industrious team has so little visibility outside their own website. All very mysterious.

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The Life of Our Lord, by Charles Dickens

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The names of the Twelve apostles were, Simon Peter, Andrew, James the son of Zebedee, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Labbaeus, Simon, and Judas Iscariot. This man afterwards betrayed Jesus Christ, as you will hear bye and bye.

A not terribly remarkable re-telling of the Gospels for children, mainly interesting because, in line with the author’s wishes, it was not published until after the last of his children had died, 64 years after Dickens’ death and almost 90 years after it was first written. Readers will be interested to learn that Sunday was the Jewish sabbath, along with other helpful observations. You can get it for free in various places, including here.

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Now We Are Six Hundred, by James Goss, illustrated by Russell T. Davies

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Third poem, in full, with illustrations:

DALEK
(after ‘Furry Bear’)

If I were a Dalek
And a big Dalek too
I shouldn’t much care
If it froze or snew.

I shouldn’t much mind
If it rained acid
I’d be all lead-lined
With a coat like his.


For I’d have no eyes just a stalk to see
And I’d have no legs but I’d glide nicely
There’d be no arms but my big gun would kill
And there’d be a sucker which would, um, still—
I would have no heart and I’d have no soul
Which would help when being lonely takes its toll.

If I were a Dalek
And a big Dalek too
I shouldn’t much care
What happened to you.

You could run away
You could say goodbye
And I’d be all lead-lined
With a coat like his.

A short collection of poems by James Goss, with illustrations by former show-runner Russell T. Davis, all more or less based on similar poems by A.A. Milne. The concept is very cute, and I like that fact that the subject matter of the poems bridges both Old Who and New Who. James Goss is one of my favourite Who writers. However, it didn’t entirely work for me – perhaps it is too long since I last read Now We Are Six. You can get it here.

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High-Rise, by J. G. Ballard

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Far below him, the cars in the front ranks of the parking-lot were spattered with broken eggs, wine and melted ice-cream. A dozen windscreens had been knocked out by falling bottles. Even at this early hour, at least twenty of Laing’s fellow residents were standing on their balconies, gazing down at the debris gathering at the cliff-foot.

I bought this, appropriately enough, at the Barbican exhibition last year. It’s a dystopian story of middle-class life in a tower block degenerating into a primitive society ruled by violence and caste division, with a small contribution from the media – or rather from the journalist who is one of the residents who shares the social degeneration. It is a bit Lord of the Flies for grownups – but at the same time, it is vivid and frightening; a direct riposte perhaps to the cosy catastrophes of John Wyndham, and surely inspiration for Judge Dredd who came shortly afterwards. Of course, this is partly a reimagining of Ballard’s experiences in WW2 prison camps, but it’s also interesting how much the building itself is a character in the book. I see that the film was mostly shot in good old Bangor, Co Down; I must give it a try. You can get the book here.

This was my top unread book acquired last year. Next on that list is Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson (which of course I have read, but long ago).

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The Politics of Climate Change, by Anthony Giddens

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

However, others are pressing their claims. Environmental economists dismiss most green thinking as so much mumbo jumbo. For them, a proper approach must be hard-edged and phrased in terms of the costs and benefits of different strategies, with markets having the upper hand. They also tend to look towards carbon markets as likely to contribute most to enabling us to cope with global warming.

This book was published in 2009 and is already very dated. Climate change is a topic that I orbit around a bit at work (more so in my last job) and it’s striking to realise just how much the debate has moved on in the last nine or ten years. Most obviously, carbon markets fell way out of fashion with the 2008 crash, and the big focus now is on renewables (Giddens just missed the German Energiewende). But also the Paris climate accord looks even more remarkable from the 2009 perspective than from the 2018 perspective; the points of reference of the global debate have completely changed. Another crucial development, which Giddens barely hoped for but is now a fundamental part of the dynamic, is the shift of Chinese policy in favour of environmental issues. This is enough to make the US federal government much less relevant, thought perhaps not much less dangerous (Gidddens spends some time agonising about Bush and post-Bush policies; we did not know we had it so good).

There are good questions to be asked about whether vaguely democratic and vaguely capitalist systems will find the necessary impetus to implement the massive changes that are needed. The scale of the problem is even starker now than it was a decade ago. James Murray published a must-read piece about the scale of the problem just this week. But I was cheered by reading this book and realising that the debate does move on. I hope it will move fast enough. You can see for yourself if you like.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that list is Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability and Survival, by Daniel Jaffee.

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The Martian Inca, by Ian Watson

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The bundle of parachute silk appropriated by Baltasar Quispe and found beneath the potatoes was loaded on the truck sealed up in plastic. As for the smaller wad of silk entrusted to the Sonco household, the president of Apusquiy town council, now embroiled in a bitter dispute over jurisdiction with the canton head from Santa Rosa, merely asked Martin Checa, being Angelina Sonco’s common law husband and a resident in the Sonco house, to confirm that there was none still there, and then swore that all silk had been surrendered. That missing man Julio Capac had suggested bringing all the parachute material here to stop it from blowing away, the council president affirmed; for he had no intention of talking about informal distribution of what was now State property.

One of Ian Watson’s early books, with parallel narratives in which a virus in Martian soil causes spiritual transformation both among the inhabitants of the Bolivian village where a Soviet sample return mission crash lands, and among the crew of an American space mission to the planet. I felt that the message was rather heavily laid on; two decades later, KSR did a much better job of Mars as agent of spiritual transformation. I didn’t dislike it as much as Stanisław Lem, who wrote:

It is a pity that even highly talented, well-read, and intelligent writers of the younger generation, such as Ian Watson, fail to recognize the difference between the delusion of mysticism and what is really the case. He has erroneously yoked his considerable erudition to the wrong purpose of passing off a shallow fairy-tale for the lost redemption of our civilization. His novel tells much more about the confusion that currently holds captive even the brightest young people than about the real state of things on Earth and in the heavens, from which Mars shines down upon us as a challenge. About the genuine mysteries of the universe that we have yet to solve in the years to come, Watson’s novel tells us nothing.

If you want to see what the fuss was about, you can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2010. Next on that pile is Putting Up Roots, by Charles Sheffield.

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The Supernatural Enhancements, by Edgar Cantero

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Second paragraph of third day’s entry:

And the worst thing that can happen is that they ask you permission to take a picture.

This was one of the submissions for the Clarke Award which was not really suitable for consideration but which was interesting enough for me to come back to. It’s a haunted house story, the house being in Virginia, the story being of the young new English heir to the property and his mute Irish girlfriend, uncovering a mystery of codes and performative mystery-solving, with a global and weird aspect to it. It is intriguingly put together in documentary style, diary entries, transcripts from CCTV films, notes written by the mute Niamh, giving the sense of a puzzle whose pieces are being fitted together by protagonists and readers alike. There is then a massive twist at the end which slightly undermined a lot of the preceding narrative for me, but still I rather enjoyed it. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2015. Next on that pile is Pete Townsend’s autobiography, Who I Am.

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Hugo Awards 2018: How (Some More) Bloggers Are Voting

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As vaguely promised, an update to my previous post on bloggers' votes for the four traditional Hugo written fiction categories (see also 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2011). Usual health warnings apply.

I'm sorry if I omitted your blog post. I did my best to be comprehensive using Google and DuckDuckGo, but they doesn't get everywhere and they will miss things. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your preferences, or more importantly if I used the wrong handle for you. Please let me know and I will correct it.

Thanks to JJ for alerting me to some of the additional entries.

Short Stories

Fifteen more bloggers here, for a total of 37, with three now running very close together just behind the leader. Going from bottom to top:

1 1 vote for “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand,” by Fran Wilde
Embrodski

1.83 4.33 votes for “Carnival Nine,” by Caroline M. Yoachim
⅓ Andrea Elisabeth Kovarschik
½ Camestros Felapton
Trish Matson
Alexander Pyles
David Steffen
½ Lise Andreasen

2 7 votes for Nebula-winning “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse
Psocoptera
Travis
Doctor Science
Ethan Mills
Garik
S.R. Algernon
Steve Mollmann

6.33 7.33 votes for Locus-winning “The Martian Obelisk,” by Linda Nagata
Andrea Blythe
⅓ Andrea Elisabeth Kovarschik
Bonnie McDaniel
Doris V. Sutherland
Joe Sherry
Peter J. Enyeart
Rich Horton
Chris Gerrib

3.5 7.5 votes for “Sun, Moon, Dust” by Ursula Vernon
Bruncvik
½ Camestros Felapton
Charon Dunn
Nicholas Whyte
Cambridge Geek
Rachel Coleman
Timo Pietilä
Vanessa Ricci-Thode

8.33 10.83 votes for “Fandom for Robots,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Adrienne Joy
⅓ Andrea Elisabeth Kovarschik
Andrew Leon Hudson
Crankybookwyrm
Grimlock
James Reid
Mark Ciocco
Sue Burke
Tsana Dolichva
Andrew Hickey
Chris Battey
½ Lise Andreasen

Novelettes

Fourteen more here, for a new total of 31. Front runner much further ahead now.

0.33 0.33 votes for “Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard
⅓ Bruncvik

2.75 2.75 votes for “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara
Doris Sutherland
½ Embrodski
Psocoptera
¼ Tsana Dolichva

1.25 3.25 votes for “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee
Rich Horton
¼ Tsana Dolichva
Chris Battey
Steve Mollmann

3.58 5.58 votes for “A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
⅓ Andrea Elisabeth Kovarschik
Charon Dunn
Peter J. Enyeart
Sue Burke
¼ Tsana Dolichva
Doctor Science
Rachel Coleman

2.42 6.92 votes for “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer
⅓ Andrea Elisabeth Kovarschik
Bonnie McDaniel
⅓ Bruncvik
½ Embrodski
¼ Tsana Dolichva
½ Alexander Pyles
Cambridge Geek
Chris Gerrib
Timo Pietilä
Vanessa Ricci-Thode

6.67 12.17 votes for “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker
Adrienne Joy
Andrea Blythe
⅓ Andrea Elisabeth Kovarschik
⅓ Bruncvik
Crankybookwyrm
Joe Sherry
James Reid
Nicholas Whyte
½ Alexander Pyles
Andrew Hickey
David Steffen
Ethan Mills
Garik
Kat Jones

Novellas

Twelve more, for a total of 27, and the two leaders still far in front, though swapping places.

0 0 votes for Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire
0 0 votes for River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey

1 2 votes for The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang
Joe Sherry
Doctor Science

0 3 votes for Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor
Alexander Pyles
Andrea Blythe
Ethan Mills

7.5 9.5 votes for "And Then There Were (N-One)", by Sarah Pinsker
½ Adrienne Joy
Charon Dunn
David Steffen
James Reid
Peter J. Enyeart
Rich Horton
Nicholas Whyte
Psocoptera
Steve Mollmann
Timo Pietilä

6.5 12.5 votes for Locus- and Nebula-winning All Systems Red, by Martha Wells
½ Adrienne Joy
Bonnie McDaniel
Camestros Felapton
Chris Battey
Crankybookwyrm
Trish Matson
Tsana Dolichva
Cambridge Geek
Chris Gerrib
Garik
Rachel Coleman
Sue Burke
Vanessa Ricci-Thode

Novels

Nine more votes to report, and one change of mind, but the front-runner remains very far ahead.

1 1 vote for Locus-winning The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi
Charon Dunn

1 1 vote for Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty
Chris Battey
Chris Gerrib

1 2.5 votes for New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Rich Horton
½ Hugo Book Club
Timo Pietilä

1 3 votes for Provenance, by Ann Leckie
Nicholas Whyte
Crankybookwyrm
Doctor Science

1 3 votes for Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee
Alex Marianyi
Chris Battey
Reader of Else

6 9.5 votes for Locus- and Nebula-winning The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin
Adrienne Joy
Bonnie McDaniel
The Incomparable podcast
Joe Sherry
Peter J. Enyeart
Psocoptera
Ethan Mills
Garik
½ Hugo Book Club
Vanessa Ricci-Thode

This methodology has had decidedly mixed results in previous years. But I think it’s looking good for The Stone Sky and “Wind Will Rove” in particular.

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Monday reading

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Current
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, by Marcel Proust
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

Last books finished
The Martian Inca, by Ian Watson
The Politics of Climate Change, by Anthony Giddens
High-Rise, by J. G. Ballard
Now We Are Six Hundred, by James Goss, illustrated by Russell T. Davies
The Life of Our Lord, by Charles Dickens
“Ill Met in Lankhmar”, by Fritz Leiber
The Region Between, by Harlan Ellison

Next books
Pioneers: Huawei Stories, ed. Tian Tao
Anno Dracula – Dracula Cha Cha Cha, by Kim Newman
Nobody’s Children, by Kate Orman, Jonathan Blum and Philip Purser-Hallard

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The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot

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Third page (Louise Michel’s funeral cortège arrives in Paris):

A biography in graphic form of French revolutionary feminist Louise Michel, who, to my shame, I had not previously heard of. Actually it is more of a portrait than a biography, concentrating on two particular periods of her life – the Paris Commune, and her subsequent exile in New Caledonia where she horrified and disgusted her comrades by taking sides with the indigenous islanders. The argument is interestingly made that her politics links with the Utopian literature of the day – Edward Bellamy in particular, also Charlotte Perkins Gilman appears in the framing narrative, also Victor Hugo and H.G. Wells. (Also, a chap who jumped off the Eiffel Tower which is less of an obvious fit.) Bryan Talbot’s art is subdued but also angry in places. I learned a lot. You can get it here.

This was the top unread comic on my shelves. Next is Dark Satanic Mills, by Marcus Sedgwick.

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Aztec Century, by Christopher Evans

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Good morning,’ I said.

This won the BSFA Award for 1993, beating three books that I have read – Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith; Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson; and Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson – and one that I haven’t, Harm’s Way by Colin Greenland. This is stiff competition – Green Mars is probably the best of the Mars trilogy and won the Hugo and Locus awards, Snow Crash made Stephenson’s reputation and was also on the Clarke shortlist, and Ammonite won the Tiptree award and was on the Clarke shortlist as well. Yet Aztec Century won no other award and did not even get shortlisted for anything else. What were the BSFA voters thinking of?

Actually I can see what they were thinking of. This is a really interesting alternate history where the Aztecs benefited from Spanish technology and cultural inputs to become the major superpower on the planet. The narrator is a princess of the British royal household towards the end of the twentieth century, just after the successful Aztec invasion of England, making her own accommodation with the new order, from a starting point of uncompromising intransigent resistance. A novel like this has to achieve the difficult tasks of intriguing the reader about the different historical track without info-dumping, while also having a decent plot that works on a human level. I think Evans succeeds very well at both – hints are dropped but never fully fleshed out about his world’s history, and the protagonist’s journey of betrayal and unreliable information at her own personal level is a nice reflection of the alternate history genre as a whole. There is a bonus insight into how our own world would look from the Aztec Century starting point. I really enjoyed this and am surprised that it is not better known. You can get it here.

Next on my list of award-winners is Vurt, by Jeff Noon.

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Aliénor, La Légende Noire, vols 5 & 6, by Arnaud Delalande, Simona Mogavino & Carlos Gomez

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Second frame of third page of each volume:

Louis VII: Hahaha, the interest of France! Henry: Isn’t that right, darling?
Eleanor: Don’t you take credit for that too!
Henry: Hahaha! One by one, the last supporters of the House of Blois have surrendered their castles and paid me their tribute…

Conclusion to the six-part graphic novel biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, my favourite medieval character. Volume 5 deals with the first years of Eleanor‘s second marriage to the future King Henry II of England. Volume 6 deals with the last half century of her life, telescoping five decades into 55 pages. The art and characterisation remain gorgeous, but I felt that the writers were a little less in control of their material than in previous volumes. Volume five has a weird subplot between Henry and one of Eleanor’s former lovers, and also gratuitously kills off Eleanor’s sister, when in fact she lived until the 1190s. There is also some nasty ableism around Henry’s younger brother, who is deformed and stutters, and therefore is evil. Volum 6 simply has too much material to cover in too short a space, though I did like the characterisation of Henry and Eleanor’s children, and the structure of telling the story through flashback from Eleanor’s old age in Fontvrault. Overall it’s been a solid series, and I will in particular look out for more work by Simona Mogavino. You can get volume 5 here and volume 6 here.

This was my top unread non-English language comic. At present the only other comics in that pile are the last two parts of Marc Legendre’s Amoras.

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