Monthly Archives: December 2020

June 2009 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started last year, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

In June 2009, the German TV channel ZDF did a brief spot about my work at the start of the month:

The big news story was the European Parliament elections, which saw the continuing erosion of the larger parties to the benefit of the fringes, most notably in the UK where UKIP came second and the ruling Labour party came third. For me it was most memorable because I wrecked my back driving home from the results party, and had to stay in bed for a week – one of the worst bouts of ill health I have had in my life. I did manage a field trip to (North) Macedonia and Montenegro later in the month.

And I read 34 books.

Non-fiction: 9 (YTD 45)
McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime, by Misha Glenny
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, by Paul Kincaid
The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance
The Devil's Highway, by Luís Alberto Urrea
How To Make Good Decisions And Be Right All The Time, by Iain King
Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1970-1974, 2nd edition, by Tat Wood
The Vorkosigan Companion, edited by Lilian Stewart Carl and John Helfers

Fiction (non-sf): 6 (YTD 27)
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
Cities of Salt, by Abdelrahman Munif
Sunset at Blandings, by P.G. Wodehouse
The Inner Shrine [by Basil King]
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood

Scripts: 1 (YTD 20)
Edward III, possibly by William Shakespeare and others

SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 43)
METAtropolis, by Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi and Karl Schroeder
This Immortal, by Roger Zelazny
Gods of Ireland vol II: The Enchanted Isles, by Casey Flynn
The Summer Tree, by Guy Gavriel Kay
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
Hiding under the Light, by Ruth Coleman (MS)
The Restoration Game, by Ken MacLeod (MS)

Who 2: (YTD 16)
The Last Dodo, by Jacqueline Rayner
Byzantium! by Keith Topping

Comics: 10 (YTD 16)
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic, by Howard Tayler
Loven-Boven: Geschiedenis der stad Leuven, by François Stas
Fables vol 11: War and Pieces, by Bill Willingham
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, by Guy Delisle
Serenity: Better Days, by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews
Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine
Fables vol 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers, by Bill Willingham
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle, by Jim Butcher
Y: The Last Man: Whys and Wherefores, by Brian K. Vaughan
Girl Genius 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones, by Phil and Kaja Foglio

Total page count 9,400 (YTD 48,100)
6 (YTD 34/165) by women (Woolf, Atwood, Rayner, Foglio, Carl, Rowling)
3 (YTD 10 / 165) by PoC (Tomine, Munif, and Urrea)

As my regular reader knows, I usually list two good books and one bad for each month, but it's the season of goodwill so I will skip over the ones I didn't like and recommend four that I did. Ken MacLeod was good enough to let me read his draft of The Restoration Game, and I made a few minor suggestions, about half of which are in the final text (the longest of them is the roll call of school children on the bus). It was published a year later and you can get it here. Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings is a particularly good graphic novel; you can get it here. Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz aka If This is a Man is just essential reading; you can get it here. And the second edition of the third volume of About Time is full of fantastic stuff about the Third Doctor; you can get it here.

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Whoniversaries 23 December: Enemy of the World #1, Power of Kroll #1

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i) broadcast anniversaries

23 December 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Enemy of the World. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land on a near-future Australian beach, are attacked by gunmen, rescued by Astrid in her helicopter, and discover that the sinister Salamander is the Doctor's double.

23 December 1978: broadcast of first episode of The Power of Kroll. In search of the fifth segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana land on the third moon of Delta Minor, where Romana is captured by the native Swampies and the Doctor by the protein miners.

ii) date specified in-universe

23 December 1892: The Eleventh Doctor meets Victorian barmaid Clara Oswald in London, as seen in The Snowmen (2012).

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2010, film and book

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2010: The Year We Make Contact won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1985

The other finalists were, in order of finishing, Ghostbusters, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the David Lynch Dune and The Last Starfighter. All were cinematic productions. I have seen all but the last of these. In general they are a rather uninspiring bunch, TBH, and I think I'd have voted for Ghostbusters. The really important question is, why on earth did The Terminator not get on the final ballot? It's top of one of the IMDB rankings for the year (admittedly beaten by Dune and Ghostbusters on the other), and surely the most memorable SF film of 1984.

In case you didn't know, 2010 is the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, seventeen years on. Apart from Douglas Rain as the Voice of HAL, there is just one visible returnee from the first film – Keir Dullea as transmogrified astronaut Dave Bowman.


There are a surprising number of returnees from previous Oscar winners. We have seen all three American astronauts before. Roy Scheider, Heywood Floyd here, was Russo in The French Connection fourteen years ago.


Bob Balaban and John Lithgow, here Dr Chandra and Dr Curnow, were respectively the student who gets a blowjob from Robert Redford in Midnight Cowboy, sixteen years ago, and Debra Winger's bank manager lover in Terms of Endearment last year.



And Dana Elcar, here Russian space expert Dimitri Moisewitch, was FBI agent Polk in The Sting twelve years ago (like Bob Balaban, appearing with Robert Redford).


Peter Hyams is no Stanley Kubrick, and although this is a gorgeous film to look at, and it got five Oscar nominations in the technical categories, there's a bit of a missing heart. We are shown the set-up with Floyd's wife and son, but no real closure; there's an intense emotional moment when a cute Russian cosmonaut finds comfort in Floyd's arms, but then they barely speak to each other again. Helen Mirren is great but underused as the Russian spaceship captain.


Because it's not so very clear what the film is about in human terms, the Cold War subplot becomes more dominant than was perhaps intended (certainly more so than in the novel); and that's also a barrier to today's viewer. In 1984 there seemed no reason to doubt that the Soviet Union would still be there in 2010, but in fact it lasted only another six years. The importance of the theme is reinforced by a mocked-up Time magazine cover with Clarke as the US president and Kubrick as the Soviet leader.

The effects are still gorgeous, as I said.

Basically it's a film that goes through the numbers of adapting Clarke's sequel novel to the screen, leaving out some of the good bits for lack of money and time.

As for the novel, the second paragraph of the third chapter is:

Even after all these years, and his endless reviews of the data radioed back from Discovery, he was not sure what had gone wrong. He could only formulate theories; the facts he needed were frozen in Hal's circuits, out there between Jupiter and Io.

There's nothing terribly wrong with the novel, but nothing terribly right about it either. Having spent the 1970s working on the three books from what was then the biggest book deal in science fiction history, Clarke came back to 2001 partly because he was interested to follow the story, but also I'm sure partly because he realised he could make a lot of money from it. There are some good bits that are not in the film – the relationships between the astronauts, and Floyd's marriage, are all given a lot more detail, the tragic story of the Chinese expedition is a well-judged interlude, and we actually get to see the alien life of the Jupiter system. But it's also clearly written not to end the story but to continue it. I rushed out and bought this when it came out, but did not do the same for the later books in the series, and I don't think I was alone in reacting that way. I love almost all of Clarke's work, partly for teenage nostalgia and partly for genuine sensawunda, but this is not at the top of my list. You can get it here.

The next Hugo winner is Back to the Future, but I have leapt ahead and will do a later winner first.

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280 days of plague: transgressing a boundary (or not)

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Grim, grim news from the UK as the inevitable happened and Boris Johnson was forced to revoke the silly promises he had made about Christmas. Jack Blanchard has catalogued his mis-steps well:

Meanwhile here, where our prime minister warned us over a month ago that there would be very few Christmas parties, the recent mini-surge does seem to be stabilising, thank heavens, with the reported rate of infections showing signs of a small decrease. I had expected more stringent measures to be announced last week, but in fact we got only minor tweaks, with a strong warning to implement the current regulations more thoroughly. And vaccinations will start next week, though I am not expecting our family to be anywhere near the front of the queue.

Every country has its own rules, and there has been some debate about whether or not hairdressers should be able to continue to work. Many people have longer hair than I do and it suits them fine. But it was becoming the thing that was really getting on top of me, to coin a phrase. A friend had gone to Maastricht for a haircut a couple of weekends ago, and I did some research and confirmed that this is not in fact a breach of Belgian rules, though obviously they don’t want everyone doing it and it is “discouraged”. So I was all set to plan a quick visit to Hulst, the nearest town across the Dutch border; and then last week the Netherlands announced a further lockdown, with all hairdressers closed. Likewise Germany. So that left France.

I checked also with French regulations, and there is nothing forbidding a brief visit across a land border. In most countries the quarantine requirement kicks in only if you are staying more than a day or two; that actually seems weird to me, as if the virus will wait 24 or 48 hours to infect people, but there you go. So I booked an appointment with the Salon Vincent in Quarouble and set off, 80 minutes drive there and the same back. Needless to say I did not get out of the car during either leg of the journey. I was in France for less than an hour all told. (The time stamps on my before-and-after photos are exactly 30 minutes apart.)

Back in 1954, Quarouble (population 3,000 and falling) was the location of one of France’s best documented UFO encounters (which of course is not saying much). I saw no aliens, and I encountered only the hairdresser; we both wore masks throughout and sanitised thoroughly. To my surprise, she said that she had not had much custom from Belgium, but was very busy anyway with French regulars. She also firmly corrected me when I said “nonante” instead of “quatre-vingts-dix” – and this only 4km from the border!

A couple of people were upset when I posted about this in a locked entry on Facebook, and I get that – these are stressful times, and many are in a less fortunate situation than I am. So I’m sorry that they were upset, and they are totally entitled to their judgement; but I don’t believe that I (or the hairdresser) put anyone at risk, including each other, and as far as I know I stuck to the rules.

On a much less controversial note, today is little U's 18th birthday, and she had cake and birthday presents of jigsaws and Balamory DVDs. She knows perfectly well what is going on. We can have her at home for four days at a time currently; she's been with us since Saturday, and will go back to the residential centre today, coming back home again for Christmas itself.


Weather has been cloudy for the last few evenings, but my cousin who is an actual astronomer and lives in California has been getting some great pictures of the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction:

The #Jupiturn great conjunction 2020 (public post)

Posted by Robert Minchin on Monday, 21 December 2020

After a frenzy last week, work has slowed down for the last few days before the holiday, and I’m looking forward to a complete break from Thursday. Hope you all get a restful few days as well.

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My tweets

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  • Tue, 10:45: Irish unity: going nowhere fast https://t.co/OFJNR7hA0h Well put, by @bjhbfs. I’d go further; Nationalists not only are not engaging Unionists, they are not even engaging the middle ground whose votes are crucial.

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My media 2020

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My biggest media hit of the year was a quick soundbite the morning after the US election, given to Bloomberg in Brussels, who explained that all of their US-based experts were still in bed. (As I probably should have been too.) It came out just in time for the Asian evening news cycle, so I found my name popping up in mentions in Chinese (both Hong Kong and Taiwan, and presumably the mainland as well), Indonesian and Vietnamese as well as the less unusual Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Greek.

My other big hit was an October interview on the future of Kosovo/Serbia relations, which I did in English but is only available in Albanian and Serbian. (Google Translate is your friend.)

Apart from that, I did an interview on Brexit for Bulgarian TV, and for a Flemish journalism student, and a piece for Montenegro television on the pandemic (back in the days before Montenegro had been seriously hit by it). Here's the last of those – voiceover in the local language, but you can hear me in the background.

Also in media news, I secured a positive ruling from the Spanish media ethics commission in June over false statements published about me in 2018 and 2019 by a Spanish news website, finding in my favour on all counts. I was told earlier this month that the commission is restarting the process to give the news website a chance to reply (a bit mysterious as to why the commission failed to reach them in the first place) but I'm still right and they're still wrong, so I'm confident in getting the same result. Will update here as and when.

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Our War: Ireland and the Great War, ed. John Horne

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Second paragraph of third chapter ("200,000 volunteer soldiers", by Philip Orr):

At the beginning of the twentieth century the British Army no longer held the huge proportion of Irishmen that it did in the 1830s when 40% of its men were from this island. However, close to 30,000 Irishmen were in the regular forces by 1914 and another 30,000 were reservists. Irish soldiers were stationed in locations across the empire, in units known as battalions, approximately 1,000 strong. Each battalion belonged to one of the historic regiments that recruited in Ireland, usually on a regional basis. Every regiment had its store of military traditions, going back in some cases to the seventeenth century and including participation in famous battles such as Waterloo. As well as the long history of Irish foot-soldiers, there was an officer tradition among Anglo—Irish gentry with twelve of the generals in the British Army being Irish in 1914, including Henry Wilson, from Ballinalee, Co. Longford, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1922.

A lovely book of essays on various aspects of Ireland's engagement with the first world war; I'm familiar enough with the subject from my own work (my PhD thesis was on Irish science from 1890-1930 and the effects of the war were pretty significant), but even so I learned a few things, including the fact that the British government made it illegal to buy a drink for someone else in pubs. Topics address include specifics on the roles of women and of the labour movement, and on the wider societal impact of a war whose legacy in Ireland was distinctly ambiguous. The presentation is scholarly but light enough for the general but interested reader, and it is lavishly illustrated with colour copies of documents from the time, in particular the originals of soldiers' letters home, which makes it all pretty immediate. The original cover price of £15.95 must have been way below cost for RTÉ and the RIA. I hope it was offset by a government grant; money well spent if so. You can get it here.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves (since I could not find the guide to megalithic Northern Ireland). Next on that list is Anne Chambers' biography of T.K. Whitaker.

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Whoniversaries 21 December

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i) births and deaths

21 December 1915: birth of James Cairncross, who played Lemaitre/Stirling in The Reign of Terror (First Doctor, 1964) and Beta in The Krotons (Second Doctor, 1968-69). (he's also the parson in Tom Jones.)

21 December 1937: birth of Sheila Reid, who played Etta in Vengeance on Varos (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Clara's grandmother in The Time of the Doctor (Eleventh Doctor, 2013) and Dark Water (Twelfth Doctor, 2014).

21 December 1991: death of Colin Douglas, who played security chief Donald Bruce in The Enemy of the World (Second Doctor, 1967) and lighthouse keeper Reuben in Horror of Fang Rock (Fourth Doctor, 1977).

21 December 1998: death of Roger Avon, who played Saphadin in The Crusade (First Doctor, 1965), Daxtar in The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965) and Wells in Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (Cushing movie, 1966)

ii) broadcast and stage anniversaries

21 December 1963: broadcast of "The Dead Planet", first episode of the story we now call The Daleks. The Doctor, Ian, Susan and Barbara land on a strange world with a petrified forest and an abandoned city. But what is it that terrifies Barbara at the end?????

21 December 1965: first performance of the stage play Curse of the Daleks, by David Whitaker and Terry Nation.

21 December 1968: broadcast of eighth episode of The Invasion. Tobias Vaughn changes sides and helps defeat the Cybermen, though he too is killed.

21 December 1988: broadcast of second episode of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Ace is captured by the clowns; the Doctor is forced to perform for the circus.

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Top LJ posts of 2020

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As Livejournal continues its sad decline, it becomes paradoxically a bit easier to pick out the posts that got the most engagement over the year.

The biggest by far was my Brexit post on 31 January, which I had been brewing for three and a half years.

The second biggest was my full Hugo details post, which I was able to get done a bit more promptly thanks to being a deputy administrator this year.

Only two posts got more than five comments, my review of Titus Groan with eight:

and my review of a fascinating paper on Tolkien (which has been withdrawn from publication, unfortunately):

Some day in 2021 I will have to put in place an alternative blogging platform.

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Top Facebook posts of 2020

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Facebook have made it even more difficult than before to track the impact of your posts. Luckily I had already tallied the first half of the year, so it was a bit less tedious to scroll through and tally manually. And unlike Twitter, there are only three things to measure – reactions, comments and shares.

Most comments: a rather toxic debate on 'cancel culture', though I feel I owe it to my trans friends (and indeed my trans enemies) to spell out where I stand. Basically, if you are not prepared to use people's preferred pronouns, I don't really want to be friends with you.

“Cancel culture” is nothing more than the latest repackaging of the argument that the true threat to liberalism resides…

Posted by Nicholas Whyte on Monday, 13 July 2020

Most shares (only counting my own content rather than stuff I've nicked from elsewhere): my valedictory piece for UK membership. Here I clearly spoke for many far beyond my own circle of friends, and again I stand by it.

It is one thousand, three hundred and seventeen days since the Brexit referendum. And I am still angry.

There is no…

Posted by Nicholas Whyte on Friday, 31 January 2020

On a totally positive note, the most reactions to any post was my re-upping my wedding day photo, originally posted in 2017.

27 years on!

Posted by Nicholas Whyte on Friday, 2 October 2020

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Top Instagram posts of 2020

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Only three metrics here: likes for pictures, views of videos and comments on both.

The most comments went to the small montage for F's 21st birthday.

The most likes went to our reunion picture with B, on her birthday, after we had not seen her for three months.

And the most viewed video was of B and her not-very-secret boyfriend earlier this month.

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Top tweets of 2020

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The year isn't over yet, but I am guessing that I may not tweet anything very significant in its remaining eleven days.

Here are my top tweets of 2020 in all the various metrics offered by Twitter, plus where the top tweet(s) didn’t have original content from me I’ve drilled down for the top tweet in that category that does have original content, plus one that isn’t actually top in any one category but has the best aggregate score of them all.

Most permalink clicks (I had completely forgotten even posting this one):

Most hashtag clicks (I rarely use hashtags; I posted this as the second last episode of this year’s Doctor Who was on air, and I guess a lot of people were surfing the conversation):

Second most impressions (not quite sure why this day of all days should get the attention, I have been tweeting the numbers daily since April):

Second highest number of replies (deliberately designed to get lots of replies):

Third highest retweets (highest for original content, and makes an important point about not signal boosting the worst):

Most app opens (a video I did many years ago sadly became relevant):

Highest engagement rate and most URL clicks (surprising, I didn’t think it was that exciting a topic):

Most URL clicks, second highest detail expands (on an issue where I am possibly the most visible commentator out there, this was the biggest news story of the year):

Most replies and user profile clicks (grim stuff as things started to get bad):

Second most engagements, likes, media views and media engagements (played for laughs, though really, sometimes people who spend money promoting their tweets are just throwing it away):

Second highest retweets (also not original content; grim laughs, if any):

Most impressions, most retweets, most likes, most detail expands, most media views, most media engagements (sadly not my original content; more grim laughs, if any).

Top aggregate score across all categories (though not actually top in any of them, entirely thanks to being retweeted by Georgia Tennant, the author’s daughter):

Facebook and others coming soon.

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Whoniversaries 20 December

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i) births and deaths

20 December 1943: birth of Jacqueline Pearce, who played Chessene in The Two Doctors (1985), Prime Miniister Sherilyn Harper in Big Finish audio The Fearmonger (2000), Admiral Mettna in the webcast Death Comes to Time (2001-02) and of course Servalan in Blake's 7.

20 December 1978: birth of Eddie Robson, author of many Big Finish audios and various short stories.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

This is the first day since 28 August (arguably 21 August) with no broadcast anniversaries, and the last such day in the calendar year.

iii) date specified in canon

20 December 1992: St Christopher's Church in Cheldon Bonniface is transported to the Moon, as recounted in Paul Cornell's 1991 novel Timewyrm: Revelation.

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The world in 2021, according to science fiction

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I’ve spent several weekends working on a presentation of twentieth-century science fiction set in the year 2021, and here is the fruit of my labours, a 21-minute video.

The works I found are:

Introduction
TV: Super Force (Hank’s Back), 1991
TV: The Voices, 1955

Hi-tech future
Comics: Superman 2020 (Deadly New Year 2021), 1982
Comics: Superman 2021 (Kidnappers in the Sky), 1982
Film: Johnny Mnemonic, 1995
Game: D/Generation, 1991
Manga: A.I. Revolution, 1994
Novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 1968

On other worlds
TV: The Twilight Zone (On Thursday We Leave for Home), 1963
TV: The Outer Limits (The Invisible Enemy), 1964
Film: Moon Zero Two, 1969

Dystopias
Film: The Sisterhood, 1988
Game: Scorcher, 1996
Comics: Oz, 1992
Novel: The Children of Men, 1992

The End
Novel: Macrolife, 1979

This was the first time I’ve made anything this long by myself, and I must say it has drastically increased my respect for those who do this regularly, either as a hobby or for a living. If I decide to make a habit of it, I’ll invest in better software and hardware. But I’m happy enough with this for now.

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Whoniversaries 19 December

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i) births and deaths

19 December 1915: birth of Simon Lack, who played Kettering in The Mind of Evil (1971) and Zadek in The Androids of Tara (1978)

19 December 1942: birth of Ian Talbot, who played Travis in Doctor Who and the Silurians (Third Doctor, 1970) and Klout in The Leisure Hive (Fourth Doctor, 1980).

19 December 1961: birth of Matthew Waterhouse, who played the Fourth and Fifth Doctor companion Adric from 1980 to 1982.

15 November 1933: birth of Donald Pickering, who played prosecutor Eyesen in the story we now call The Keys of Marinus (First Doctor, 1964), Blade and his alien double in The Faceless Ones (Second Doctor, 1967), and Lakertyan leader Beyus in Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).

19 December 2018: death of Bill Sellars, who directed the story we now call The Celestial Toymaker (First Doctor, 1966).

ii) broadcast anniversary

19 December 1964: broadcast of "The Waking Ally", fifth episode of the story we now call The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Jenny and Barbara are betrayed by the women in the woods and captured by the Daleks; Ian manages to break into the mine but hides in the missile which is headed for the earth's core; Susan and David kiss.

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Time Lord Victorious: DALEKS! by James Goss, The Enemy of My Enemy, by Tracy Ann Baines

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Another update on the Time Lord Victorious stories that I've been working through, all recently released in an order that will surely build to some kind of climax.

First off, a webcast series called DALEKS! starring Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Daleks, with Anjli Mohindra and Ayesha Antoine as the Mechanoids. (Anjli Mohindra needs no introduction; Ayesha Antoine played the professor's assistant Dee Dee in that great Who story Midnight, and has also been Bernice Summerfield's companion Ruth on Big Finish.) Since they are webcasts, you can watch the five episodes starting here:

The series is by James Goss (also the mastermind behind the wider Time Lord Victorious cycle, who as my regular reader knows I rate as one of the best Who writers who has never written for TV). I must say it’s pretty impressive. Both the Daleks and the Mechanoids are bad guys, but the story gives both sets of metal monsters agency and motivation, which means that they actually become interesting. Facing the Daleks with a dangerous cosmic mystery means that we are brought into te exploration of the problem with them. The character of the Dalek Strategist, already introduced in Defender of the Daleks, becomes an intriguing plot vector. Animation means that there is no need to worry about the special effects budget, and the Mechanoids can look impressive rather than just a little cheap as they did in 1965. And the five individual episodes (1 as above, 2, 3, 4, 5) are only 15 minutes long, so you don’t get bored. I was certainly converted enough by the end to be eagerly anticipating the release of the last couple on Thursday nights.

The next two Big Finish plays in the Time Lord Victorious sequence, together with He Kills Me He Kills Me Not, form a loose trilogy starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor – all written by women, in fact, Carrie Thompson, Tracy Ann Baines and Lizzie Hopley. The new two both involve the Daleks where the first did not.

The Enemy of my Enemy brings the Doctor and the Daleks together to the world of Wrax, which the Doctor thinks should not be there (like the planet of the previous story). The Wrax start off sounding like nice cuddly human-type aliens who you want to be friends with and then turn out to be way more evil and monstrous than you could believe. The Doctor is pushed into alliance with the Daleks. Or is he? It plays out very well, with Nicholas Briggs again being several different Daleks and Rachel Atkins tremendous as the Wrax leader. And McGann, who sometimes is not on form, is very much on form here, playing superbly against Briggs and Atkins.

I have listened to the third of the trilogy, Mutually Assured Destruction, but apparently it's a follow-on to the Una McCormack novel which I have got but not yet read, so I'll write it up when I have done them both. Just to say that it has Daleks too.

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Whoniversaries 18 December: Master Plan #6, Shalka #6, the Sky Gypsy disappears, Sarah meets K9

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i) births and deaths

None that I noted.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

18 December 1965: broadcast of "Coronas of the Sun", sixth episode of the story we now call The Daleks' Master Plan. The Doctor, Steven and Sara give Chen a fake tarranium core; and land somewhere with a really poisonous atmosphere.

18 December 2003: webcast of sixth episode of Scream of the Shalka. The Doctor blows up the Shalka with Alison's help. (And there's a rather peculiar bit with the Master, but watch and judge for yourself.)

iii) date specified in canon

18 December 1953: disappearance of the Sky Gypsy flying from Dublin to Cardiff (see yesterday's Torchwood anniversary).

18 December 1981: Sarah Jane Smith meets Brendan and K9.

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Thursday reading

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Current
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville
Macro Life, by George Zebrowski
Utopia For Realists, by Rutger Bregman

Last books finished
Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer
The Company Articles of Edward Teach, by Thoraiya Dyer/Angælien Apocalypse, by Matthew Chrulew
Our War: Ireland and the Great War, ed. John Horne
2010: Odyssey Two, by Arthur C. Clarke
Above, by Stephanie Campisi/Below, by Ben Peek

Next books
Planetfall, by Emma Newman
The Anything Box, by Zenna Henderson

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My tweets

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  • Thu, 10:45: RT @lukemcgee: Ben Wallace’s “Trump will be missed” comments have reminded me of something I have always found weird. A lot of Brexiteers h…

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Whoniversaries 17 December

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i) births and deaths

17 December 1929: birth of Jacqueline Hill, who played the First Doctor companion Barbara Wright from 1963 to 1965 (she is the first regular cast member to actually appear on screen), and then returned to play Lexa in Meglos (Fourth Doctor, 1980).

17 December 2009: death of James Cairncross, who played Lemaitre/Stirling in The Reign of Terror (First Doctor, 1964) and Beta in The Krotons (Second Doctor, 1968-69). (he's also the parson in Tom Jones.)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

17 December 1966: broadcast of first episode of The Highlanders, introducing Fraser Hines as Jamie. The Doctor, Ben and the McCrimmon menfolk are captured by Redcoats in the aftermath of Culloden; Polly hides out with Kirsty McCrimmon.

17 December 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of The Sun Makers. Leela is rescued, Gatherer Hade thrown off the roof and the Collector disappears down the plug'ole.

17 December 2006: broadcast of Out of Time (Torchwood), the one with the accidentally time-travelling plane passengers from 1953.

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May 2009 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started last year, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

I don't seem to have travelled abroad this month, but we did have a family expedition to the megaliths at Wéris, Belgium's biggest megalithic site.



The daily commute meant that I got through 33 books that month.

Non-fiction: 10 (YTD 36)
Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life, by Deirdre David
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi
The Prisoner Handbook, by Steven Paul Davies
On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters, by Hilaire Belloc
The Prisoner, by Alain Carrazé and Hélène Oswald
Rhetorics of Fantasy, by Farah Mendlesohn
Fall Out, by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore
EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution, by Nathalie Tocci
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, by John Scalzi
Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller

Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 21)
The Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson
Double Act, by Jacqueline Wilson
Vicky Angel, by Jacqueline Wilson
The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer
Jewel, by Beverly Jenkins

Scripts: 5 (YTD 19)
The Winter's Tale, by William Shakespeare
Οιδίπους Τύραννος / Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles
The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Henry VIII, by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher
The Two Noble Kinsmen, by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher

SF (non-Who, including Apuleius): 9 (YTD 36)
The Patriot Witch, by Charles Coleman Finlay
Zoë's Tale, by John Scalzi
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling
The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire
Bard IV: Ravens' Gathering, by Keith Taylor
The Golden Ass, by Apuleius
Elric, by Michael Moorcock

Who: 2 (YTD 14)
Sands of Time, by Justin Richards
K9 and Company, by Terence Dudley

Comics: 2 (YTD 6)
Fables vol 3: Storybook Love, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha
The Golden Ass, by Milo Manara

Total page count ~8,500 (YTD ~38,700)
11 (YTD 28/132) by women (Nafisi, Tocci, Mendlesohn, David, Oswald, 3x Wilson, Jenkins, Spencer, Rowling)
2 (YTD 7/132) by PoC (Nafisi, Jenkins – not sure if Apuleius counts)

My favourite books this month were Sophocles' ancient play, which you can get here, and Nathalie Tocci's analysis of the EU's failure in Cyprus, which you can get here. Keith Taylor's Celtic misht novel was pretty awful; you can get it here.


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My tweets

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Whoniversaries 16 December

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i) births and deaths

16 December 1929: birth of Nicholas Courtney, who played Bret Vyon in The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965) and Colonel, later Brigadier, Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart from The Web Of Fear (Second Doctor, 1968) to Enemy of the Bane (SJA, 2008), the longest-running character on TV apart from the Doctor himself

16 December 1940: birth of Ronald Allen, who played Rago in The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968) and Ralph Cornish in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970).

16 December 1971: birth of Ashley Way, director of Torchwood episodes Captain Jack Harkness (2007), End of Days (2007), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2008), Reset (2008), Something Borrowed (2008) and Exit Wounds (2008); also of the New Who two-parter The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood (2010) and the Sarah Jane Adventures stories Death of the Doctor (2010) and The Empty Planet (2010).

ii) broadcast and stage anniversaries

16 December 1967: broadcast of sixth episode of The Ice Warriors. The Doctor manages to repair the ioniser and uses it to destroy the Ice Warriors and their ship.

16 December 1974: first night of Doctor Who and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, a stage play starring Trevor Martin as the Doctor and Wendy Padbury as his companion Jenny.

16 December 1978: broadcast of fourth episode of The Androids of Tara. The Doctor defeats Count Grendel in a thrilling sword fight, and he, Romana and K9 depart.

iii) date specified in-universe

16 December 2011: death of General Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart.

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The Children of Men, by P.D. James

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Then Xan said: ‘I’m next door. We have our own bathroom, it’s at the end of the corridor.’

One of three sf novels I have found set in the year 2021. The other two are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, at least later editions, and the first half of Macro Life, by George Zebrowski. (NB that the film Children of Men, based on the book, is set in 2027.)

This was published in 1992; the story is that in 1995, humanity simply stopped reproducing and no new children have been born since then. The narrator is a cousin of and former adviser to Xan Lyppiatt, the dictator of the UK, and is drawn into the resistance to his rule. The graying, disintegrating society is very well depicted, and then all is further disrupted when it turns out that human fertility is not completely finished. Vivid scenes of flight across England to an uncertain destination. You can get it here.

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