First and most crucially, I got my second vaccination last Friday, and am therefore clear to travel in the EU from Friday week.
Many people had warned me that the second Pfizer dose can really knock you out the second day after you have had it. I am glad to say that I did not notice anything. I had a big work task over the weekend and was able to complete it comfortably by Sunday afternoon.
I note that in my previous post in this series I referred to “Worldcon hassles”. As those who care about these things will already be aware, the entire 2021 Hugo Awards team, including me, resigned on Tuesday 22nd, rapidly followed by the resignation of the 2021 Worldcon Chair on Friday 25th. I’m not going to say much more about it here, except that I very much appreciated a message from one of the Vice-Presidents of BWAWA, the organisation that “owns” this year’s Worldcon, apologizing for the stress that we had experienced. That does make a difference.
But the big news is that the office is now open all week, and I will be in Brussels on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the time being. Two days ago was the first day of the new regime, and I bought a celebratory Vietnamese lunch for the half dozen colleagues who had showed up.
The Belgian numbers keep going in the right direction. I think that in the next week we will have a day with no recorded COVID deaths, for the first time since September. For other countries – notably the UK – it’s not quite as good, and for parts of the developing world it is disastrous. I’ll cling to what I have.
I am pondering how long I’ll keep up these posts. Last year my benchmark was that the numbers should be below those of 15 March 2020, when there were 266 COVID cases in hospital, of which 54 in intensive care, and 6 deaths. The fatality rate is comfortably below 6 per day at the moment, and the hospital numbers, currently 329, should be below 266 by this time next week. The number in ICU is comparatively much higher – 147 – but also falling rapidly. So I reckon I’ll be doing a 480 days of plague entry, but maybe not 490.
Tue, 17:17: RT @StevePeers: Full text of yesterday’s judgment giving permission to proceed to the judicial review of the domestic law application of th…
Wed, 10:45: RT @billbirtles: Worth spending a minute to watch the video of this extravaganza in Beijing’s Olympic stadium … just to get an idea of how…
30 June 1978: death of David Ellis, who co-wrote The Faceless Ones (1967)
30 June 2015: death of Edward Burnham, who played Professor Watkins in The Invasion (1968) and Professor Kettlewell in Robot (1974-75)
30 June 2019: death of Glyn Houston, who played Professor Watson in The Hand of Fear (Fourth Doctor, 1976) and Colonel Ben Wolsey in The Awakening (Fifth Doctor, 1984).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
30 June 2007: broadcast of Last of the Time Lords, the 200th story and 750th episode (depending how you count) of Doctor Who.
And so I reach the end of this project, again. I am glad that I did it. It was an interesting challenge to hunt down photographs to illustrate each day, particularly when it came to lost episodes.
And as ever, we've lost some people who were involved with Doctor Who during the year. Those who qualified for inclusion here were:
John Rolfe (died 12 August 2020), who played the Captain in The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966), Sam Becket in The Moonbase (Second Doctor, 1967) and Ralph Fell in The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1973).
Frank Windsor (died 30 September 2020), who played Ranulf Fitzwilliam in The King's Demons (Fifth Doctor, 1983) and Inspector Mackenzie, who ends up in the soup in Ghost Light (Seventh Doctor, 1989).
Geoffrey Palmer (died 5 November 2020), who played Masters in Doctor Who and the Silurians (Third Doctor, 1970), the Administrator in The Mutants (Third Doctor, 1972), and Hardaker in Voyage of the Damned (Tenth Doctor, 2007). His son Charles Palmer directed four episodes of Doctor Who in 2007.
Philip Martin (died 13 December 2020), who wrote Vengeance on Varos (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Mindwarp (Sixth Doctor, 1986).
Jeremy Bulloch (died 17 December 2020), who played Tor in The Space Museum (1965), Hal in The Time Warrior (1973-74), and is best known as Boba Fett in the first two Star Wars films.
Peter Craze (died 30 December 2020), brother of Michael 'Ben Jackson' Craze, who played Dako in The Space Museum (First Doctor, 1965), Du Pont in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), and Costa in Nightmare of Eden (Fourth Doctor, 1979).
Mark Eden (died 1 January 2021), who played Marco Polo in the story we now call Marco Polo (First Doctor, 1974) and half a century later played BBC One Controller Donald Baverstock in An Adventure in Space and Time.
Arthur Cox (died 9 April 2021, two days after his 87th birthday), who played Cully in The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968) and Mr Henderson in The Eleventh Hour (Eleventh Doctor, 2010), one of the longest gaps between first and second appearances on the show.
Frank Cox (died 27 April 2021; unrelated to Arthur Cox, as far as I know), who directed part 2 of the story we now call The Edge of Destruction (First Doctor, 1964) and parts 5 and 6 of the story we now call The Sensorites (also First Doctor, 1964).
Christopher Coll (died 29 May 2021), who played lunar technician Phipps in The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969) and the Marshal's aide Stubbs in The Mutants (Third Doctor, 1972).
And last but very definitely not least, Jackie Lane (died 24 June 2021), who played companion Dodo Chaplet in early 1966.
Of all the former companions who lived into this century, Jackie Lane had by far the lowest profile, but here she is in Paris in 2010:
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, 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.
The biggest professional development of the month was that I got entangled with the politics of Georgia (the real one, not the U.S. state of the same name) which took me to Strasbourg on my one trip of the month (just a few weeks after my last time there). I also got involved with a couple of online slapfights, one on Liz Bourke's infamous review, the other on replacing a British MEP who had resigned. The former is still a relevant debate, I think.
We also entertained the deputy foreign minister of Moldova for dinner. But dear god, my camera back then was pretty awful.
~8,500 pages
10/30 by women (Kobzova, Nissen/Seibervik, Roach, Wolf, von Tunzelmann, Brontë, Bujold, Tildesley, Griffith, Jones)
0/30 by PoC (as far as I know)
Some very good books this month. The best, rather to my surprise, was The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë, which I had not read before. You can get it here. Honorable mentions also to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation analysis of the failure of the Sri Lanka peacekeeping mission, which you can get here, and on a different note Andy Lane's great Doctor Who novel All-Consuming Fire, which you can get here. Wooden spoon to The Other City, by Michal Ajvaz, which you can get here.
Mon, 21:49: RT @worldcon2021: We’re happy to announce Linda Deneroff has accepted the WSFS Division Head position. She will be responsible for administ…
29 June 1943: birth of Maureen O'Brien, who played Vicki in 1964-65.
29 June 1980: birth of Katherine Jenkins, who played Abigail Pettigrew in A Christmas Carol (2010).
29 June 1999: death of Declan Mulholland, one of the few Northern Irish actors to appear in Who, as Clark in The Sea Devils (1972) and Till in The Androids of Tara (1978).
29 June 2000: death of John Abineri, who played van Lutyens in Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1967), Carrington in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970), Railton in Death to the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1974) and Ranquin in The Power of Kroll (Fourth Doctor, 1978-79)
Yet even this I found that I failed at; for instead of sparkling aphorisms, fascinating conversation and news of current affairs, all the pages revealed each week was that I saw to the hens twice daily and grudgingly fulfilled my other tasks, was pleased when Mother made jam roly-poly and petulant when it was liver, read greedily, said my prayers dutifully, was chided frequently for mooning about and once a month suffered the Curse.
For some reason I apparently put this on my wishlist, and my kind wife duly got it for my birthday in April. It's a very interesting novel set in the 1930s, in a rural England where there is still a shortage of labour due to the first word war, and 14-year-old Edie is coming to terms with the world outside her farm and her village. Glamorous Constance arrives from London to write sketches of country life; but she brings much more dangerous ideas with her as well, and Edie's life ends up completely disrupted (it's made clear at the start of the first chapter that there has been a major disruption, and we spend the rest of the book finding out what happened). I thought this was a great book, if not necessarily a cheerful one, and I will look out for more by this writer. It won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2019. You can get it here.
Sun, 21:45: RT @AlexTaylorNews: Break : exit polls for 2nd final round of French regional elections just out Far right doesn’t manage to win a single…
Sun, 21:58: RT @guygavrielkay: I’ve said, several teams I like this year. Belgium’s ageing Old Guard and France, both, and even sad England, alone and…
28 June 1951: birth of Sarah Ward, better known as Lalla Ward, who played Princess Astra in The Armageddon Factor (1979) and then the second Romana from 1979 to 1981. Happy 70th birthday!
28 June 2020: death of Louis Mahoney who played a newscaster in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1973), Ponti in Planet of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1975), and the older Billy Shipton in Blink (Ninth Doctor, 2007).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
28 June 2008: broadcast of The Stolen Earth, featuring the Tenth Doctor, Martha, Donna, Jack, Ianto and Gwen from Torchwood and Sarah Jane and her adopted son Luke from the SJA. The Earth is moved to the Medusa Cascade by the Daleks and Davros; the Doctor is caught by a Dalek extermination beam.
28 June 2010: broadcast of Hound of the Korven, twenty-fifth and secon-last of the episodes of the Austarlian K9 series. Thorne entices K9 to hand over his regeneration unit in exchange for his missing memory chip. It is a double cross. The fake chip contains a code turning K9 into a bomb. Starkey is taken by an old enemy who has a few surprises for K9 and his friends too.
As often happens when you work on these things, a niggle of doubt continued in my mind about the baby’s paternity. The mother’s identity was clear enough; but I worried that my candidate for the father, who I referred to as “Bill” in my previous post, was really too distantly related me to be a plausible candidate for grandfather to “Patricia”, “Derek” and “Bella”. Their DNA links to me were of the order of third cousins; if Bill was their grandfather, they would be my fifth cousins, and one would expect the DNA connections to be much more diluted than they are.
I worried away at this, and went back to look at the list of my grandmother’s first cousins, rather than anyone more distant; all descended from a couple who I will call Bill and Sally, born 1810s, who lived all of their lives near Boston. (A different Bill to the previous one.) I realised that I had missed one interesting candidate, who I will call “Edward”, son of Bill and Sally’s older daughter. Edward’s older brother “Chris” had moved to California in 1909, so I had ruled him out, but I had somehow failed to notice that Edward and the middle brother “David” had stayed in the East. David spent most of his life in his home town in Massachusetts, but Edward had moved around a fair bit. He actually died in Philadelphia during the second world war; and, digging a bit further into the records, I discovered that he had also spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania from 1907 to 1917, including, crucially, that he lived in Philadelphia in 1916, exactly when the baby in the park was conceived.
To say that I was excited was an understatement. I realised also that although Edward was not himself known to have had other children, I had identified two of Chris’s great-grandchildren, Edward’s great-great-nephews, on another genetics site, myheritage.com – identified as “Henry” and “Ian” on this diagram.
Patricia needed little persuading to let me upload her DNA sample to myheritage.com. If I was right about Edward being her grandfather, then the link between her and Edward’s great-great-nephews should be twice as strong as the link between her and me; second cousins once removed, as opposed to third cousins.
On a Saturday morning, my email pinged with a message from myheritage.com. I clicked excitedly to their site to see the analysis. Would it prove my theory that Edward was the father of the baby in the park?
Er, no. Patricia’s link with Henry was actually weaker than her link with me. And her link with Ian was so weak that it was off the scale of measurability. My Edward theory looked to have been completely blown out of the water.
I went back to the drawing board. Specifically, I went back to 23andMe, the website where I had first signed up for this kind of thing. After a bit more digging around, I realised that no less than three other known descendants of Bill and Sally, my great-great-grandparents, were on the site. And we knew that the father of the baby in the park must have been a mature man in 1916. If he was also a descendant of Bill and Sally, there were only seven possibilities:
Bill and Sally’s sons, Albert and Brian;
Bill and Sally’s daughter’s sons, Chris, David and Edward
Albert’s son Frank
Brian’s son George.
Luckily four of these had descendants on 23andMe. Chris’s great-great-granddaughter by his eldest daughter, who I’ll call Jo; Frank’s great-granddaughter Kate, also Albert’s great-great-granddaughter; a great-grandson of Albert by his second marriage, who I’ll call Lenny; and me, great-grandson of Brian and great-nephew of George.
There is no need to go into complexity here. It’s pretty simple.
If Chris, David or Edward was the grandfather of Patricia, Bella and Derek, then their DNA should be closer to Jo’s than to Kate’s, Lenny’s or mine. (Already pretty much excluded as a possibility, by the myheritage.com results.)
If Frank was the grandfather of Patricia, Bella and Derek, then their DNA should be closer to Kate’s than to Jo’s, Lenny’s or mine.
If Albert was the grandfather of Patricia, Bella and Derek, then their DNA should be closer to Lenny’s than to Jo’s, Kate’s or mine.
If Brian or George was the grandfather of Patricia, Bella and Derek, then their DNA should be closer to mine than to Jo’s Kate’s or Lenny’s. (Already pretty much excluded, because their links to me should be a lot closer than they are, if this was the case.)
At this point I needed to persuade Patricia, Bella and Derek to all submit samples to 23andMe. Again, they needed little persuading. It took a while to get everything organised, but the results came back in the end, and for all three of them, the link with Kate was much closer than their links with Jo, Lenny or me. It looked very much like Frank must be their grandfather.
Another factor elevates this from probability to certainty. As I have noted before, 23andMe allows you to do chromosome-by-chromosome comparison. Very interestingly, Kate shares X chromosome DNA with all three of Patricia, Bella and Derek. We people, generally AMAB, who have Y chromosomes can only inherit X chromosome DNA from our mothers and not our fathers. (You folks with two X chromosomes, generally AFAB, have inherited that DNA from both of your parents.) That means that if you share X chromosome DNA with anyone, there cannot be a father-son link in your genealogical connection, because sons inherit X chromosome DNA only from their mothers.
But Kate’s link with six of the seven potential fathers of the baby in the park does include a father-son connection. Five of them are related to her through the father-son link between Albert and Frank, and the sixth is Albert himself. The only one of the seven with whom Kate could share X chromosome DNA is her own great-grandfather, Frank. (I myself do not share X-chromosome DNA with any of the other people in the chart, because my link to them all is through my father.)
So, I think I have solved a 104-year-old mystery. We still don’t know how Frank and Peggy got together, to set in motion the course of events that resulted in the birth of the baby abandoned in the park in Philadelphia. Frank was working in Buffalo that year, and also had to visit Washington DC now and then for business; we also know that his cousin Edward was living in Philadelphia. Perhaps Frank stopped off in Philly to visit Edward, and met with Peggy then? Then again, she was a musician; perhaps she was performing in DC or in Buffalo, and met Frank there? I doubt that we will ever find out.
But we do know for sure who the biological parents of the baby in the park were.
This sort of research is really difficult and not cheap. We needed Patricia, Bella and Derek to supply DNA samples to two different testing sites, and I think if I were not related to them myself, it would have taken a lot longer to get to the bottom of the mystery. It also frankly took a couple of nights of insomnia to clear my own concentration to the right point.
But I would love to do more of this. It’s immensely gratifying. I’ve already been asked to help out with one of the Philippines cases mentioned here. In the end, everyone has a right to know where they come from. I have a real job, so I doubt that I will ever make a living out of this kind of work, but it would be really interesting to do it again.
Sat, 19:35: RT @NaomiOhReally: Northern Ireland’s @naomi_long busts a few myths about the Protocol in two minutes that are as clear as Evian water http…
27 June 1991: death of Milton Subotsky, who produced and wrote Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), the two cinema films starring Peter Cushing as Doctor Who.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
27 June 1964: broadcast of "The Unwilling Warriors", second episode of the story we now call The Sensorites. The Sensorites threaten to take Susan to their own planet as a hostage.
A couple of people have asked me if I will return to the staff of DisCon III now that the Chair has resigned. Whoever the new Chair is, I will decline any such invitation. My former position as WSFS Division Head was filled within twenty-four hours of my own resignation, by someone who (unlike me) has actually done that job before, and who does not need me looking over their shoulder. I have no information about the rest of the vacancies, and frankly it’s none of my business whether others of the former team decide to return if invited to do so. Whoever does pick up the reins, I wish them well; I think that we left the Hugo Administration side of things in pretty good shape, and there is of course continuity in Site Selection and the Business Meeting. (One of my few regrets about the way things ended is that we had not yet set up systematic monitoring of the votes coming in, so I have absolutely no idea who is winning.)
Having been liberated earlier than I expected from my responsibilities for this year’s Hugos, I can start blogging my views on the finalists for those who are interested. I think the Best Graphic Story or Comic category has really improved over the years that it has been run; as my regular reader knows, I am worried about category inflation for the Hugos, but this one certainly brings more than it takes.
6) Invisible Kingdom, vol 2: Edge of Everything, by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward
Second frame of Part 03:
One of the problems of this Hugo category is that when later volumes in a series are nominated by people who have grown to love the series as a whole, those of us who have not read the preceding volumes are rather at a loss to understand what is going on. This is gorgeously drawn, intense space opera, but I have not read the first volume so was missing the background, and on top of that not much seemed to actually happen despite a lot of running about. You can get it here.
5) DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles
Second frame of Part 8:
And here’s another second volume on the final ballot, with the important difference that the first volume was on last year’s ballot, so I had at least read it. It’s about a group of role-playing friends who are swept into a fantasy world and must try and reunite to get back. Again, quite a lot of middle-book running around, and I do not really care for any of the characters. You can get it here.
4) Monstress, vol. 5: Warchild, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Second frame of Chapter 27:
Not a second volume, but a fifth, where all four previous volumes were Hugo finalists and indeed three of them won, two of them in years when I was the Hugo Administrator. The art is gorgeous and the world-building fascinating; however I have slightly lost track of the plot and, as with previous volumes, the violence is a bit too squicky for my taste.
Though there was one moment that gave me a big laugh.
3) Ghost-Spider vol. 1: Dog Days Are Over, by Seanan McGuire, Takeshi Miyazawa and Rosie Kämpe
Second frame of third part:
I have not always got on with McGuire’s work before, but I did enjoy this, a Buffy-esque story of teen superhero Spider-Gwen trying to keep a handle on both her crime-fighting life and her college education – in a parallel Earth, of course – which being hunted by a Baddie. Laugh-out-loud funny in places. You can get it here.
2) Once & Future vol. 1: The King Is Undead, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora, Tamra Bonvillain, and Ed Dukeshire
Second frame of Chapter 3:
Another one that I really liked – an audacious reinvention of the Matter of Britain, where King Arthur returns as an undead horror in league with present-day fascists, and our hero, together with his tough-as-nails granny, must thwart them. Moves at a cracking pace with some good set-pieces in south-west England. You can get it here.
1) Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
Second frame of 2026 section:
I was sure I had read the original version of Parable of the Sower, but I can’t actually find a record anywhere of having done so, and don’t seem to have it on my shelves. So I was coming to the story as a whole fresh, a grim tale of a young woman’s experience of the catastrophic breakdown of society in near-future California (much nearer now than it was when the book first came out) and her building for a better world. I think Duffy and Jennings have done a tremendous job of bringing Butler’s prose respectfully to graphic life, not going overboard on the horror but not underselling it either, and making each character distinct on the page. So it gets my top vote this year. You can get it here.
Fri, 12:07: RT @TSEofPB: Is anyone else worried that if Boris Johnson sacks Matt Hancock for having an affair that the irony will be so great that it w…
Fri, 12:56: RT @jeffercakes88: It has blown my mind this evening to see how many tributes have come pouring in for my Great Aunt after this news broke…
Fri, 16:05: RT @NothingLane: In memory of Jackie Lane. Here’s the letter that Innes Lloyd sent to Jackie to thank her for her work and the reply she se…
Sat, 10:45: RT @matthew_petti: The president of El Salvador (Nayib Bukele) is Palestinian, the Chilean front-runner (Daniel Jadue) is Palestinian, and…
26 June 1914: birth of John Bailey, who played the Commander in The Sensorites (First Doctor, 1964), Edward Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks (Second Doctor, 1967) and Sezom in The Horns of Nimon (Fourth Doctor, 1980).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
26 June 1965: broadcast of "The Planet of Decision", sixth episode of the story we now call The Chase
26 June 2010: broadcast of The Big Bang, ending Season Five of New Who. How to summarise it? Multiple time lines, the Tardis explodes ending the Universe, and Amy and Rory leave their wedding reception too travel with the Doctor.
iii) dates specified in canon
26 June 1284: an alien energy entity posing as the Pied Piper kidnaps 130 children from Hamelin in Germany, as mentioned in the 2009 SJA story, The Day of the Clown.
26 June 2010: Rory Williams starts to travel with the Doctor and Amy, returning to Earth for their wedding, despite the end of the universe; after which they start to travel again.
Current The Monster's Wife, by Kate Horsley Middlemarch, by George Eliot Light, by M. John Harrison Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas
Last books finished
"Stories For Men", by John Kessel The Johnstown Flood, by David McCullagh Come Tumbling Down, by Seanan McGuire Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
Next books Riding the Unicorn, by Paul Kearney Empire Games, by Charles Stross
Fri, 10:45: RT @AlexKOliver: “It is hard to overstate this achievement by the Australian negotiating team.” Punchy review of the new Aus-UK FTA by @Dmi…
Fri, 11:16: RT @purves_peter: it was a shock to receive a note from Dexter O’Neil to tell me the news that Jackie Lane had died. We worked well togethe…
25 June 1937: birth of Audrey Arlington, who played the Abbess in Eye of the Gorgon (SJA, 2007), and Mrs Poggit in Amy's Choice (Eleventh Doctor, 2010)
25 June 1981: birth of Sheridan Smith, who played Lucie Miller in the Big Finish Eighth Doctor audios, 2007-10.
ii) broadcast and cinematic anniversaries
25 June 1965: cinema release of Dr. Who and the Daleks, starring Peter Cushing as eccentric scientist Dr. Who.
25 June 1966: broadcast of first episode of The War Machines
iii) dates specified in canon
25 June 1906, 25 June 2006: birth and death of Edward Grainger (in the 2006 anthology, Short Trips: The Centenarian, edited by Ian Farrington).
25-27 June 1993: some of the events of the 1994 novel No Future by Paul Cornell.
25 June 2007: Donna makes a fatal decision in Turn Left.
25 June 2010: Amy Pond starts her travels with the Doctor.
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, 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.
December 2011 was the month that I had my single biggest lobbying success in my time in Brussels – there have been a couple of others almost as good, but this was special. By a margin of 30 votes, we got the European Parliament to reject a planned fisheries deal with Morocco, which would have allowed exploitation of the rich fisheries of the Western Sahara, which is not Moroccan territory, without any benefit to the Saharawi people. I had honestly expected to lose, and found myself crying with relief for the next hour or so. I have a very bad photograph of the two crucial MEPs and a fellow Belgian activist clutching glasses of champagne after the result came through.
Each of the people in this picture had interesting futures ahead of them.
On the left, Isabella Lövin went back to Sweden where she was Minister for International Development Cooperation from 2014 to 2019, Minister for the Environment from 2019 to 2021 Deputy Prime Minister from 2016 to 2021, as well as being co-leader of the Green Party from 2016 to 2021. She retired from politics earlier this year.
In the middle, Raül Romeva is due to be released from prison this week, and may be a free man by the time you read this. He went back to Catalonia in 2014, where he was elected to the Catalan parliament in 2015 and served as Minister for External and Institutional Relations and Transparency in the Catalan government from 2016 until it was suspended in 2017. In 2019 he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for sedition and misuse of public funds, a blatantly political prosecution. Now that he is out again, perhaps a new era can be envisaged.
And on the right, my Belgian fellow-activist S came back with me on the same train to Brussels. Nine months later to the day, she gave birth to a baby girl. Her other half must have been very glad to see her that evening.
Strasbourg was my only trip that month. H came and spent Christmas with us, taking this rather nice picture of all five of us on Christmas Day itself.
~8,000 pages (total for year ~88,200)
7/25 by women (Sladen, Caspersen, 5x Le Guin); total for year 65/302
2/25 by PoC (2x Saʿdī); total for year 15/302
This was the month that I finished Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, more than two years after starting it. It was the best book of the month and the year. You can get it here. The other new read that I particularly enjoyed was the third Stieg Larsson book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. You can get it here. Worst of the month was the appalling Tintin in Africayou can get it in English here, if you really want.
2011 books roundup
Reformatting my previous tally to my current system. 301 books for the year is the third highest of my annual tallies. 88,200 pages is my fifth highest. 22% by women was lower than any subsequent year. 5% by PoC is low.
1) Doctor Who
Novels, collections of shorter fiction, etc excluding comics
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
18
32
32
51
39
43
59
72
75
80
71
71
179
27
28
5
1
7%
14%
12%
21%
18%
15%
20%
30%
29%
27%
26%
21%
48%
11%
14%
3%
1%
All Who books including comics and non-fiction
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
25
43
42
55
42
54
68
81
75
87
79
81
180
49
32
5
1
9%
18%
16%
23%
20%
19%
23%
34%
29%
29%
28%
23%
49%
21%
15%
3%
1%
One of the stronger years.
Top Doctor Who fiction of the year: (Torchwood) First Born, by James Goss. My reviewget it here.
Top Doctor Who non-fiction of the year:
tie between The Unsilent Library, eds Simon Bradshaw, Tony Keen and Graham Sleight. My reviewget it here if you are lucky.. Ahistory by Lance Parkin. My reviewget it here
The one you haven't heard of: The Wonderful Book of Doctor Who 1965, by Paul Smith. My reviewget it here.
The one you haven't heard of: A Reader's Companion to A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold. My reviewget it here.
The one to avoid:
The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland. My reviewget it here.
4) Non-genre fiction
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
40
45
36
26
28
42
41
44
48
48
50
59
24
33
35
9
19
15%
19%
14%
11%
13%
14%
14%
19%
19%
16%
18%
17%
6%
14%
17%
6%
13%
Top non-genre book of the year:
Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. My reviews here, here and herehere, here and here.
Also excellent in category:
Three of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels, Fleshmarket Close, The Naming Of The Dead and Exit Music. My reviews here, here and herehere, here and here.
The one you haven't heard of: Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales by Bessie Head. My reviewget it here.
Worst: The Onion's Our Dumb World: 73rd Edition: Atlas of the Planet Earth. My reviewget it here.
5) Comics
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
45
31
28
29
27
18
19
30
21
27
18
28
6
20
6
8
8
17%
13%
11%
12%
13%
6%
7%
13%
8%
9%
6%
8%
2%
8%
3%
6%
5%
A bit above average,
Top comic / graphic novel of the year
The first two volumes of Mike Carey's The Unwritten, Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity and Inside Man. My reviews here and herehere and here.
Runner up: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, the sixth of the six Scott Pilgrim volumes. My reviewget it here.
The one to avoid:
As mentioned above, Tintin in the Congo. My reviewget it here.
Most read author of the year: Arthur Conan Doyle, with all 9 Sherlock Holmes books. Also-rans: James Goss (7), Hergé (6), Ursula Le Guin (6), J.R.R. Tolkien (6), Justin Richards (4), Ian Rankin (4), David Martin (4).
There is nothing quite like Gibbon's Decline and Fall fo the Roman Empire. It took me over two years to read, at the rate of a chapter most weekends, and the leisurely pace I took helped me to digest it. You can get it here.
Wed, 12:31: It is one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six days since the Brexit referendum – exactly five years today – and I am still angry. https://t.co/Ssmiz5I2bY
Wed, 13:30: RT @BohemianCoast: @nwbrux All the comments about ‘proper music’ are very hilarious if you know the staggering production levels Oldfield b…
Wed, 17:36: RT @cmioffice: Nobel Peace Laureate Martti Ahtisaari turns 84 years today. Even if he is not on social media, we still want to congratulate…
Wed, 18:34: RT @MargueriteS_IE: @Ellethevillain I volunteered at my first Worldcon to give back to this event where I was having a great time. I joined…
Wed, 19:50: RT @Dodo1963toNow: I regret to announce that Jackie Lane has sadly passed away. I’m sending all my love and thoughts to friends of Jackie…
Wed, 19:51: RT @fantomfilms: It is with deep regret that we announce that actress and friend Jackie Lane has sadly passed away. We pass on our sympathi…
24 June 1985: death of Valentine Dyall, who played the Black Guardian in The Armageddon Factor (Fourth Doctor, 1979), Mawdryn Undead, Terminus, and Enlightenment (all Fifth Doctor, 1982). And Slarn in Slipback (Sixth Doctor audio, 1985).
24 June 1991: birth of Yasmin Paige, who played Maria Jackson in the first series of the Sarah Jane Adventures (2007) and a couple of stories in the second series (2008).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
24 June 1967: broadcast of sixth episode of The Evil of the Daleks. Everyone is brought to Skaro, where the Emperor Dalek instructs the Doctor to transform humanity into Daleks.
24 June 1972: broadcast of sixth episode of The Time Monster, ending Season 9 of Old Who. The Doctor defeats the Master, but persuades Kronos to spare his life; Atlantis is destroyed.
24 June 2006: broadcast of Fear Her. The Doctor finds the alien Isolus in a child's drawings, and he and Rose deal with it using the 2012 Olympic flame.
24 June 2017: broadcast of World Enough and Time. The Doctor decides to test how good Missy has become by sending her on a trial run with Bill and Nardole. However, when things go wrong, the Doctor takes over. With Bill trapped in a different time zone, can the Doctor make it to her before it is too late, and who are all those people getting cured?
Brexiteers, you won. You have made your country a smaller-minded and less important place. For the sake of your mythical sovereignty, you have managed to re-create the old border in Ireland and also produce a new border between Northern Ireland and Britain. You have sniggered at the problems of EU citizens, resident in the UK for years, who struggle to retain the rights that you promised would be untouched by your project. I will be polite and professional with you; I hope to work positively on projects of common interest in the future. But I do not forgive you.
23 June 1925: birth of Mary Ridge, who directed Terminus (1983).
23 June 2021: death of Jackie Lane, who played the First Doctor’s companion Dodo in 1966.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
23 June 1973: broadcast of sixth episode of The Green Death, ending Season 10 of Old Who; last regular appearance of Katy Manning as Jo Grant. The Doctor realises that Cliff’s fungus is fatal to the maggots, and destroys BOSS with the blue crystal; but Jo gets engaged to Cliff.
23 June 2007: broadcast of The Sound of Drums. The Master, as Harold Saxon, becomes Prime Minister, kills the cabinet and the American president, ages the Doctor by hundreds of years and unleashes the Toclafane on humanity.
The 2021 Hugo Administration team came on board, at short notice, at the start of this year. We were committed to the words in the 12 January statement by the DisCon III chair, Bill Lawhorn: “The Hugo Awards exist to celebrate and honor all of the creators chosen by the Worldcon membership. We should have considered those creators’ needs and feelings through our policies and the messaging we used.”
It is clear that we have taken the process as far as we can, and that our input is no longer needed by the convention leadership. We are therefore resigning from DisCon III with immediate effect.
Kathy Bond, Hugo Administrator
Kat Jones, Hugo Finalist Liaison
Cassidy Riddlebarger, Hugo Administration team
Marguerite Smith, WSFS Deputy Division Head
Nicholas Whyte, WSFS Division Head
The images were released by lawmakers who then had a chance to question not the CEOs and decision makers who’d signed off on a business model that allowed such propaganda to be monetized, but their lawyers. As per usual, the top brass at the platforms were eager to deflect and deny any wrongdoing. The companies—not just Facebook, but also Twitter and Google—all claimed that they sent their chief counsels rather than the business decision makers because they were best positioned to respond to queries. But as their congressional testimony makes clear, the attorneys were there to make sure that the CEOs didn’t have to take the fall.
A very thought-provoking book by Financial Times / CNN correspondent Foroohar, which unfortunately I can't really write much about for professional reasons. You can get it here.
I had this on my list as my top unread book by a writer of colour; not really certain that Foroohar is in that category, but anyway am glad to have read it. Next on that pile is Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, by Zora Neale Hurston.
Mon, 12:56: The chaotic downfall of the DUP triumvirate https://t.co/7p6MRHVE2T Great stuff from RTE. Includes the bizarre Paisley/Van Morrison chanting.
Mon, 20:48: RT @alanbeattie: Today’s Trade Secrets. The EU is rigid about setting regulations & expecting trade partners to fall into line. Could be mo…
Tue, 10:45: RT @julianpopov: Two teams were told to build the bicycle lane on the right side of the pavement. The diligently followed the instruction.…
22 June 1918: birth of David Ellis (real name David Kerkham), who co-wrote The Faceless Ones (1967) with Malcolm Hulke.
22 June 1953: birth of Ian Levine, among other things continuity consultant to John Nathan Turner.
22 June 2010: death of Pennant Roberts, who directed The Face of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1977), The Sun Makers (Fourth Doctor, 1977), The Pirate Planet (Fourth Doctor, 1978), Shada (Fourth Doctor, unbroadcast but would have been 1980), Warriors of the Deep (Fifth Doctor, 1984) and Timelash (Sixth Doctor, 1985).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
None, the second day of the year for which this is the case.
Second paragraph of third story (“Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” by Vandana Singh):
I was once a man, a poet, a teller of tales, but I am long dead now. I lived in the eleventh century of the Common Era in northern India. Then we could only dream of that fabulous device, the udan-khatola, the ship that flies between worlds. Then, the sky-dwelling Vidyadharas were myth, occupying a reality different from our own. And the only wings I had with which to make my journeys were those of my imagination. . . .
I assume that this was published partly in response to the Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, published in 2009, which contained 21 stories all by white men. This one contains 33 excellent stories by women writers, a couple of which I already knew, some of which were new to me, all reprints and almost all good. A casual reference to a distant relative of mine in Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Science of Herself” prompted me to do some family research; I particularly liked Ekaterina Sedia’s “A Short Encyclopedia of Lunar Seas”; but basically I was kicking myself for having acquired this way back in 2014 and not yet read it. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on that list is Fish Tails by Sherri S. Tepper.
Sun, 23:39: RT @Mij_Europe: Le Pen’s predecessor & father, Jean-Marie, generally outscored opinion polls in elections. Marine Le Pen has now underscore…
Mon, 10:45: ‘I am very shy. It’s amazing I became a movie star’: Leslie Caron at 90 on love, art and addiction https://t.co/XOfPrVq2tT Lovely interview with one of my favourites.
