We heard all about you, the old man said, the stuff you can do. Is it true?
I picked this up as a recommendation from one of the lists of novellas that should have been on the 2015 Hugo ballot, though in fact this didn't make the top 15. I don't think I was aware at the time that K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for Tom Holt, best known for his comic fantasy. This is not comic at all. It's a grimly convincing story of a man who is able to extract and delete specific memories from other people, but with the consequence that he himself retains those memories; and he never forgets. He's not a pleasant character, but it's a very well-drawn story, and would probably have got a vote from me if it had been on any list I could have voted for. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2015. Next on that list is A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff, by Neil Gaiman.
His voice was like bubbles rising in a swamp. “Kicktoad no more, Little Tommy! I am called Bufotenine the Great now, yes I am. Apprentice no more, but Master! Yes!”
This ended up on my unread list as part of the 2015 Hugo packet. It was a story that was slated onto the Best Novella ballot, which I refrained from reading at the time, as I was always going to vote No Award in a category where all five finalists had been put there through an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim was to destroy the Hugos. However, I decided that I'd work round to it eventually in good faith; and here we are.
It's not very good. It's a story about four people who as children had a very Narnia-like adventure and are now dragged as adults into a new encounter with the other world by Tibalt the talking cat, who is killed and resurrected towards the end, in case you hadn't got the point. As my regular reader knows, I am not a huge fan of the comic series DIE, by Kieron Gillen and others, but it takes a similar idea and does it much better.
The dialogue of One Bright Star to Guide Them is florid. Many important points of the action happen off stage. (Our protagonist is a captive at the end of one chapter, and free at the start of the next, a transition that is never explained.) All of England is next door to all the rest of England. Wright had his moments earlier in his career; this is not one of them. His behaviour around the Puppies in 2015-16 would anyway have disinclined me to vote for him (yeah, I know, artist from the art, but the Hugos are community awards and choices have consequences). But this story is in no way Hugo worthy.
You can read it for free online here if you want to cross-check my take. I am sorry to report that I cannot now find the rest of the 2015 Hugo packet in my archives, so unfortunately I have had to remove Big Boys Don't Cry, by Tom Kratman, and Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth, a collection of essays by John C. Wright, from my unread list. If you happen to have kept your own copies of those from the 2015 packet, please don't feel under any obligation to send them to me. Doing so would be a violation of the honour code on which the Hugo packet is made available.
This was the shortest unread book that I had acquired in 2015. Next on that list is Seven Deadly Sins, by Neil Gaiman.
Wed, 12:56: Blood donation – Service du Sang – Belgian Red Cross https://t.co/4opYmkohQF Unfortunately I can’t give blood in most European countries because my blood is too British. But if you can, you should think about it.
Wed, 19:01: RT @AyoCaesar: Nowhere in this article does it mention that Allegra Stratton’s husband, James Forsyth, is the political editor of The Spect…
Wed, 19:12: Not Before Sundown, Sinisalo; Camouflage, Haldeman; River of Gods, McDonald; Iron Council, Mi�ville https://t.co/Uu6pSsXrlC
These are the four books that won the Tiptree, BSFA and Clarke Awards in 2004. (The Tiptree Award was shared.) I had already read three of them, and I found I didn’t really want to reread one of those three. Which one? Well, you’ll find out…
The one I had not read was one of the two Tiptree winners, Not Before Sundown, aka Troll, a Love Story, by Johanna Sinisalo. I met the author in Helsinki in 2017, when we got her to read the final ballot for Best Novel in that year’s Hugo Awards as part of the superb announcement video (now vanished, alas); we filmed in the mini-shopping mall at Eteläesplanadi 22, Johanna standing beside the mermaid statue by Tove Jansson’s father for which Tove herself modelled, me holding an umbrella just out of camera shot because it was pouring with rain.
Thanks to the wonderful Sanna and Jukka, working in parallel, I managed to track down the Finnish original of the second paragraph of Part 3:
Se ei tunnu sairaalta, ei ollenkaan, vaikka sen turkki pölisee jatkuvasti synkeänä pilvenä Electroluxin letkussa.
He doesn’t seem ill at all, though the shreds of his coat are a dismal sight in the Electrolux [vacuum cleaner].
This is a really intense and complex (and short) novel, which it would be slightly unfair to call urban fantasy even though it’s about a troll taking up residence in a contemporary Helsinki apartment block. Mikael, who finds and cares for the troll, is a gay photographer who lives upstairs from a Filipina mail-order bride. The troll’s pheromones cause massive sexual confusion for everyone, sparsely recounted in that very Finnish way. The narrative is bolstered by a history of humanity’s coexistence with trolls over the centuries and millennia. Helsinki is a sober nineteenth century city which has undergone some occasionally brutal twentieth century development; but it’s not difficult to feel older forces tugging at you when you are there, and Johanna Sinisalo has captured that, as well as exploring some important human issues.
I had previously read the other Tiptree winner, Camouflage by Joe Haldeman, because it also won the Nebula the following year. The second sentence of the third chapter is:
Of course Jack Halliburton knew that the sub had ruptured and that there was no chance of survivors. But it made it possible for Russell Stearns to ply down the length of the Tonga and Kermadec trenches. He made routine soundings as he went, and discovered a mysterious wreck not far from the sub.
Well, its high points are less high but its low points not as low as the three other books on the Nebula shortlist which I had read (Air, Going Postal and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell). It bears a very strong resemblance to Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, with the story being the interweaving of two threads about immortals (in this case, probably alien) living in our world, who are drawn together by an alien artifact discovered in the Pacific Ocean in 2019. Indeed, perhaps the award of the Nebula was partly a tribute to Butler’s novel. Haldeman, of course, puts his own riffs on it – basically, he brings in much more science, and much more of the military, and makes it into a love story as well. All adds up to a very enjoyable book, which I would certainly have overlooked if it had not won the award.
Coming back to it after fifteen years, I had forgotten almost everything about it but enjoyed it all the more for that, though I have little to add to the above. Haldeman is not what you would think of as a typical potential Tiptree/Otherwise Award winner, yet he has always had an inclination to explore sexuality, which doesn’t always take him down the right track; but this time it did. You can get Camouflage here.
The Tiptree Award showed an interesting balance of old and new, fantasy and science fiction, in its choice of winner that year. It also had two special mentions of non-fiction books; a short list of two novels, two collections and two short stories, none of which I recall reading; and a long list on nine novels and five shorter pieces, which included Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, on which more in a moment, and Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment.
The BSFA Award went to River of Gods, by Ian McDonald. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
With a manifest of Bengali politicians and their diplomatic guests from neighbour and erstwhile rival Bharat, the States of Bengal tilt-jet lurches in the chill microclimate spiralling up from the ice floe. Shaheen Badoor Khan notices that the surface is grooved and furrowed with crevasses and ravines. Torrent water glitters; ice-melt has gouged sheer canyons in the ice walls, spectacular waterfalls arc from the berg’s cliff edges.
I gave River of Gods my first preference for the Hugos, and would certainly have voted for it in the BSFA Awards if I had had a vote. (My first Eastercon was still seven years away.) In my 2005 Hugo round-up, I wrote:
I realise I’m partly cheering for my home team here. I believe the last Hugo winner from Northern Ireland was Bob Shaw, who was voted Best Fan Writer in 1979 and 1980 (and I think Walt Willis’ “Outstanding Actifan” Hugo in 1958 may complete the list not just of Ulster winners but of Irish winners in toto). However I’d like to think my opinion of this book would be just as high if it had been written by a Californian, or indeed an Indian since that’s where it’s set. In 2047, a hundred years after independence, the sub-continent is embedded in ecological troubles and accelerated technology. The cast of characters includes a comedian who inherits a business empire, a journalist, a policeman hunting rogue AI’s, an American scientist, a politician, a neuter, a small-time crook, a Big Dumb Object, and India itself. McDonald keeps all these balls hurtling through the air, to dazzling effect. A great book in a good year.
I slightly sighed when I considered the 477 pages of the novel, but in fact rereading was a joy, with the complex, vivid society of India in the near future, confronted with internal tensions and, as with Camouflage, an alien intrusion. The one point I picked up on this time around is that I think McDonald’s future India has Bangladesh (re)united with West Bengal, which seems improbable from here. Otherwise I stand by what I said sixteen years ago. You can get it here.
(Particularly thinking of Ian right now; he suffered a bereavement last month.)
The Arthur C. Clarke Award went to Iron Council, by my fellow Clare College alumnus China Miéville. (We have never met.) The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
‘We’re taking a diversion,’ Cutter said. ‘It’s going to take you a few extra days to get to Shankell. We’re going southwest first. Along the coast. Up the Dradscale Rover. You’ll make Shankell a few days late, is all. And minus a bit of stock.’
Again in my 2005 Hugo round-up, I wrote:
Back to the fantasy city of New Crobuzon, setting of Mieville’s two earlier books, but this time with revolution, and the legacy of a socialist train from years ago in time bringing the ideology back home, combined with the variegated humans and near-humans and the distorted landscapes of Mieville’s created world. Lots of fascinating stuff here, including desperate if unusual love affairs, extraordinary landscapes, and nods to many historical revolutionary movements (New Crobuzon for once more reminiscent of Paris than of London in places). But I felt it went on a bit too long, and the language, while lyrical and wonderful in many places, was verbose in others, and that the ending didn’t really reward the effort I’d had to put in; actually my least favourite of the three New Crobuzon books. Also the fact that Mieville’s politics are well to the left of the average Hugo voter’s will probably put him out of contention. (Of course, that is less true this year than most years.)
If you’ve been counting, you’ll have worked out that this is the one I couldn’t finish when I tried re-reading it. Seventy pages in, with my brain fogged by COVID, it all seemed like a bit too much effort and I turned to other, less profound reading. Be that as it may, you can get it here.
The Clarke shortlist also included River of Gods, along with three other books that I have read – Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell; The Syſtem of the World, by Neal Stephenson; and The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger – and one that I haven’t – Market Forces, by Richard Morgan. To be honest I think I would rate all of the ones I have read ahead of Iron Council, but that’s the breaks. I’d have found it tough to choose between Mitchell and Niffenegger; while I love The Syſtem of the World I wouldn’t put it top of that list.
Interesting to note that three of the four above are about non-human intrusions into our world – extraterrestrial intrusions in Camouflage and River of Gods, an ancient entity in Not Before Sundown – even though two of those three aren’t quite our world – River of Gods is set in 2047, and in Not Before Sundown, humans and trolls have a long history of uneasy coexistence.
For completeness, River of Gods and Iron Council were also losers on the Hugo ballot, along with The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. This was the year of the most recent Glasgow Worldcon, and I diligently read everything and voted for River of Gods, but it lost fairly narrowly to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The rather crazy Nebula system of the time means that you have to compare with two different years, in one of which Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of Souls beat Cloud Atlas, and in the other, as noted above, Haldeman’s Camouflage repeated its Tiptree success, ahead of Air, by Geoff Ryman; Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett (who had declined a Hugo nomination for it); Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell yet again; Orphans of Chaos, by John C. Wright; and Polaris, by Jack McDevitt.
This has been a long entry for the three awards that I am following in this series of posts. The next will be shorter, as all three were won the following year by Geoff Ryman’s Air, a feat otherwise only achieved by Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow.
Tue, 16:05: If Rod Liddle has the right to lecture Durham students about sex work, where’s my invitation to talk about cats? https://t.co/kJlkzBGA79 Another manufactured anti-woke controversy. (I promise not to write too often about the awful Liddle.)
Wed, 11:18: RT @BCommNI: There’s just one week left to give us your views on our Initial Proposals for Parliamentary constituency boundaries in Norther…
Well, I’m basically better. I woke up on Saturday feeling a lot more like myself, had a normal weekend (writiing blog posts, cooking the family dinner twice) and worked the whole day yesterday and today, mainly catching up on a thousand emails but with a fair number of meetings too. Still working from home, and not being very adventurous as yet. On Thursday I will go and work in the office in Brussels, and we have our work Christmas dinner downtown in the evening. Everyone will be tested before dinner; my system must be swarming with antibodies right now, so I am not apprehensive.
Thanks to everyone who commented for their sympathy and support. It does help one’s morale.
B is fine, and had a much milder case. We finally got U tested and she turned out negative (she may well have had it asymptomatically at the same time as me and Anne, and recovered), and she will go back to school and then to the care home in Tienen tomorrow. A bit farther afield, my friend R in Antwerp got out of intensive care and is convalescing at home. More widely, the Belgian numbers are finally turning around – the weekly average rate of infection registered a decrease this morning for the first time since 9 October. Then it was 1898; now it’s 17146, almost exactly nine times higher.
I had a nasty dose of the bug, basically lasting fifteen and a half days from midday Thursday 18th, when I realised I could no longer ignore the symptoms that I’d had since the previous day and went to bed for two weeks, until waking up feeling better on Saturday 3rd. But it could have been a lot worse, and likely would have been a lot worse if I had not been doubly vaccinated. More importantly, perhaps, because I was vaccinated I was much less infectious, and despite close contact with a number of colleagues on the 15th and 16th in London, I don’t appear to have passed it on to anyone apart from Anne. (So our household R number is 0.5, 0.3 if you count F having had it in October without anyone else catching it from him.)
I will continue to be careful – I know enough people who have had COVID twice to make me very cautious, and my blood oxidation level remains lower than I’d like it to be. (Having said which, I wasn’t measuring it before I got COVID, so possibly I’m normally a bit onn the low side.) We only get booster shots here six months after our original second shot, which for me would be Christmas Day; but I’ll be in the queue as soon as it’s available.
It’s weird to look at the subject line of this post – 630 days, 90 weeks. Certainly when I first started this sequence of ten-day posts in March 2020, it seemed unlikely that I’d still be writiing them in the summer (and indeed there was a gap of a couple of months during that first deceptive lull). I dare not predict now when I’ll feel that I can stop updating, except that it certainly won’t be before next year.
See you soon. Get vaccinated, if you haven’t been; get boosted as soon as you can; and try not to get the damn bug.
Second paragraph of third chapter in original (NB that in the English translation by Ken Liu, this passage is about a quarter of the way into the third chapter, rather than near the beginning):
She [Mi Mi, the protagonist] didn't know how long she had been running, nor where she was. A sense of urgency tugged at her nerves, making it impossible for her to give up the desire to run, but there was no one after her. There was no concrete threat, only a formless, unnamed foreboding that swept over the sea at her from the distant horizon. Out of the corners of her eyes, she seemed to glimpse some indescribable glow, a complex iridescence found in the sheen of metal coating or the luster of crystals, fluctuating in the manner of waves or racing clouds, devouring the dim, black-and-white space behind her.
Another of the Chinese contemporary SF works that is being widely recommended – I picked this one up from Vector in the spring. It's a grim contemporary tale of pollution off the Chinese coast, in a community that has grown up from migrant workers who have come to process waste, and something non-human that has also emerged in the meantime. The metaphor of monsters living in the rubbish dump goes at least as far back as ancient human societies, but I felt this pulled that old story together with the contemporary structural problems of China, both managing its own growing and demanding society and dealing with America. Ken Liu's translation has its quirks – I don't really need to know about the precise tonal pronunciation of words that are used only a couple of times – but it's fluent and seems to catch a time and place, fictional but closely related to today's China. Recommended. You can get it here.
This was the top unread book by a writer of colour on my pile. Next is the other Chinese sf novel recommended by Vector, An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King.
The fragment has no title, though it obviously presages Tolkien's much longer and more elaborate tratments of both the fair-copy manuscript and the typrescript of ‘Aotrou and Itroun’, as well as the final version published in The Welsh Review. The verse is alliterative and unrhymed, though the line is metrical, in iambic tetrameter. The story breaks off at the moment of the lord’s approach ‘with lagging feet’ to the cave of the fay.
This is minor Tolkieniana, to be honest. It's a poem published in 1930 about a Breton lord who buys a magic potion for his wife; and it all goes horribly wrong. Verlyn Flieger, who is one of the most prolific and interesting Tolkien scholars out there, has done a great job of presenting the poem itself and three earlier goes (a draft and two other poems on closely related themes). But even the completist can rest easy without this on their shelves. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2017. Next on that pile is Tower [of London], by Nigel Jones.
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.
I started the month at a Worldcon planning meeting in London, dealing with the fallout of the Jonathan Ross affair. That was my only trip away that month; work continued to be grim, but I established initial contact with my current employers about coming to work for them instead.
Here's B with an emu.
I read 27 books that month. Crucially, this was also the month that, inspired by H, I started to try and include the second paragraph of the third chapter of every book I read in my write-ups here. I've found that a useful addition to my routine; a sort of intake of breath and nod to the original text before saying whatever I have to say about it. I dropped it at the end of March 2014, but soon picked it up again.
~7,200 pages (YTD ~20,000)
6/25 (YTD 19/65) by women (Ali, Leckie, Allan, Rand, Canavan, J Baker)
1/25 (YTD 2/656) by PoC (Ali)
I hugely enjoyed returning to Animal Farm, which you can get here, and reading for the first time Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, which you can get here, and Nina Allan's Spin, which you can get here. On the other hand the 1986 Doctor Who Make-Your-Own-Adventure books were generally pretty awful, with the worst being William Emms' Mission to Venusyou can get it here.
Sun, 12:56: RT @BakerLuke: A sharp column, and perhaps one that could only be written by someone ending their assignment . A cracking job well done @d…
Mon, 10:06: RT @Si_Hart: Maybe it’s a symptom of my mental state right now but I actually don’t care what anyone else thought about Doctor Who. All tha…
This is actually a lot less exciting than it sounds, a brisk history of white people's sexuality (a follow-up volume looks at Asia and Africa) looking also at historical understandings of marriage and other sexual arrangements. Philippe Brenot is a veteran French sexologist who has written two dozen other books on the subject, and artist Laetitia Coryn is a well-known bandes dessinées writer who is also an actor and voiceover artist. It's not especially erotic, though it's certainly descriptive. In general the points landed fairly and not too didactically; but the scope is not particularly broad. Here's one nice frame about religion, sex and St Paul:
Sat, 12:56: EM [Entitled Mother] ends my engagement and gets me banned from a steak house all in one night https://t.co/oJzZM9VIhm A classic from the bowels of Reddit.
Sat, 16:05: RT @Glasgowin2024: Our first reveal for some fabulous supporter goodies is this fun colouring page of our winter logo by our very own @sill…
Sat, 19:33: Feeling a lot better this evening to the point of cooking the family dinner. This also means reviving the tradition where U watches me cook while bopping to 80s classics on the iPad – here, the Pet Shop Boys’ Go West! https://t.co/k3mJdtFFkj
Sat, 20:48: RT @seanwhelanRTE: A great long read for this weekend on the Anglo-Irish treaty debates 100 years ago. Deep background for Article 16 #Brex…
Sun, 10:45: Jodie Whittaker on saying goodbye to Doctor Who: ‘I thought, what if I’ve ruined this for actresses?’ https://t.co/ssxSeLYXh9 She sounds lovely.
Glancing over the scavengers’ heads, Tom glimpsed a dark silhouette against the distant glare of furnaces. The girl was at the far end of the catwalk, climbing nimbly up a ladder to a higher level. He ran after her and snatched at her ankle as she reached the top. He missed by a few inches, and at the same moment a dart hissed past him, striking sparks from the rungs. He looked back. Two more policemen were thrusting through the crowd with cross-bows raised. Beyond them he could see Katherine and her father watching him. “Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I can catch her!”
Philip Reeve and I are both going to be Guests of Honour at next year's Eastercon, but I confess that I had not read any of his books. Mortal Engines was a huge hit when it first came out, and has been (unsuccessfully) filmed. The plot is fairly standard YA (girl meets boy, they are separated, struggle and are eventually reunited) but what really makes it is the setting: a post-apocalyptic steampunk Eurasia where cities have become mobile and eat other cities in a struggle for survival, "municipal Darwinism". It does take quite a special talent to invent a grotesque, fantastic world and also get us to sympathise with the characters who gradually learn just how awful their world really is. He also gives his heroine a particularly memorable back-story to uncover. Recommended. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired this year, and also my top unread sf book. Next on those piles are Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, and Staring at the Sun, by Julian Barnes.
Ghost Light is an entirely different matter [from Battlefield]. I approached it with some suspicion, in that I had found several of Marc Platt’s other offerings (Downtime, Auld Mortality, Lungbarrow) tough going. And indeed, Ghost Light is tough going too, but I very much felt it was worth the effort: intricately constructed, well acted, beautifully shot; certainly the best story I’ve seen that was broadcast between Caves of Androzani and Rose.
One of my big complaints of Who of this era is that so little effort seems to have been put into getting the settings right: Ghost Light does not suffer from this problem – from the beginning, and indeed all the way through, you feel convinced that this is a Victorian mansion, even when it turns out that the butler is a living Neanderthal and there is a spaceship in the basement.
Also the Doctor’s bringing Ace back to the scene of her childhood crimes is, if I’m not mistaken, practically the first attempt ever to link a companion to his or her back story.
It is, however, a story very far removed from the normal territory of Doctor Who – surrealist play meets Agatha Christie, perhaps – and despite the quality of the drama it must have further created doubt about what Doctor Who was actually for. Still, apparently this was the last story of the old series actually filmed (although the third last to be broadcast) and it’s nice to feel that that the cast and team must have felt they were going out on a high.
Returning to it in 2011, on the last leg of my Great Old Who Rewatch, I wrote:
I was amazed, rewatching Ghost Light, by just how good it is. Densely packed with literary and cultural and scientific references, transformations, and bizarre imagery, it is a real feast for the viewer. Even if I am still not totally certain I know what it was all about, I find it utterly fascinating; the cast seem to be reasonably surefooted in the peculiarity of what is going on, and the music and sets all add up as well. Having had my view of the worst Seventh Doctor story confounded on this rewatch, I felt confirmed in my view that Ghost Light is the best; and as it was the last story actually filmed, we can say that Old Who ended on a real high.
In the years since I wrote that, Marc Platt has continued writing Who scripts – I think that of the Old Who writers he is actually the only one still really active (Rona Munro has done one TV episode, but that’s it). You cannot accuse him of not keeping the faith. I recently much enjoyed his Fourth Doctor two-parter, The Skin of the Sleek / The Thief Who Stole Time, though I don’t know if I will ever get around to writing it up.
However, on the third time of viewing, but the first time watching it out of context with the rest of the final season of Old Who, I have to say that Ghost Light did not work for me as well as before. There are massive holes in the plot, which are only just covered by the energy and bombast of the leads, especially McCoy. If you are in the mood, you don’t worry about it not really making sense; this time round, I just wasn’t in the mood.
And there are a couple of scenes where actors are standing around with their hands by their sides, waiting for their next line, which is never a good sign.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Marc Platt’s novelisation is:
The ponderous clock reached its third stroke. In the darkened study, white gloved hands touched the shoulder of a girl who sat motionless, staring into the fire.
After enjoying most of Marc Platt’s other work, including his novelisation of Battlefield, I was looking forward to reading this. I’m afraid I was disappointed. Once again, I realise just how vital the direction and acting of the TV version can be; and the intensely visual and subtle original just loses most of its vitality and mystery on the printed page. In particular, we lose the striking visual appearance of Nimrod the Neanderthal and of Light himself, who comes across as just some random and rather dull megalomaniac with super powers.
Scrapes through the Bechdel test: in most of the Ace/Gwendolen scenes they are talking about Josias and/or the Doctor, and the one exception is when they fight, and are then interrupted by Control. A fight is barely a conversation, but I suppose it will have to do. (Mrs/Lady Pritchard appears to communicate with the maidservants by telepathy.)
I have been very inconsistent in my application of the Bechdel test; maybe I’ll start being systematic in 2022. Anyway, It was originally intended for films, not books. Apart from that, nothing to add to my previous assessment. You can get the book here.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Jonathan Dennis’ Black Archive monograph on Ghost Light is:
[Referring to the ghost story] It’s a popular story genre of course. Myths and stories of haunted places date back to tribal times; there’s a haunted house story in the 1,001 Nights53. As I mentioned before, one of the characters in Ghost Light, Mrs Grose, is taken directly from one of the most popular haunted house stories in literature, The Turn of the Screw (1898). Scarcely a year goes by that there isn’t a movie released about a haunted house, usually more than one. Last year (2015) has seen a remake of Poltergeist (1982), and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, which isn’t just a haunted house story, it’s a Gothic haunted house story in the same vein as those Ghost Light was pastiching. 53 ‘Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad’.
As with my rewatch of the story, unfortunately I didn’t get much out of this. It’s a bit of a grab-bag of source material and script analysis, without looking at the actual staging of the TV story as much as the others have done, or indeed at its reception and subsequent reputation. So it’s the first miss of the first six Black Archives for me; which after all is not such a bad strike rate.
arguing (unconvincingly) that it uses other literary and film sources more than other stories (though with an amusing coda on similarities with The Rocky Horror Picture Showpointing out that it is a haunted house story, and the Steven Moffat likes these too;
a cursory look at hypnosis and mind control;
even shorter on “Java” as a euphemism; and
a long and confused chapter on evolution and class.
The completist will want this, but I think there’s more interesting commentary to be found elsewhere. Anyway, you can get it here.
Sat, 10:45: Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It) https://t.co/vUarYRDxed Very interesting piece, though the ads on the @slashfilm site are really annoying.
Current The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien Lying Under the Apple Tree, by Alice Munro This Town Will Never Let Us Go, by Lawrence Miles The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend
Last books finished The Last Defender of Camelot, by Roger Zelazny (2002) – did not finish Shanghai Sparrow, by Gaie Sebold Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney Le dernier Atlas, Tome 3, by Fabien Vehlmann A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine Staring At The Sun, by Julian Barnes Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells The Secret, by Eva Hoffman
Next books
"Blood Music", by Greg Bear An Introduction to the Gospel of John, by Raymond E. Brown
Another mindless new experience was the school assembly, which was held every morning in the main hall that passed also as a gymnasium. Mr Hall would address the pupils and then the music teacher, Mrs Hicks, would play some classical music on some beat-up old mono record player. I became very familiar with Ravel’s Bolero and Greig’s Peir Guint suite [sic] as a result. The most painful part of assembly though was the singing of hymns. We had all just been issued with new, plastic-covered hymn books, very tasty to nibble on, and it was from these that I’d learn the Christian hits of the day, such as ‘Morning Has Broken’ and ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. It was all pretty painful stuff, not least because, before and after the hymns, we had to sit on the floor, crammed in like sardines. I would always suffer from pins and needles sat on that floor. Needless to say, it was actually a relief to stand up and complete the morning assembly by mumbling the Lord’s Prayer. Now that was a thing. The only part that ever made any sense to me was the bit about giving me my daily bread. Other than that I was lost. The bit about forgiving us our trespasses had me really confused — I had trespassed on other people’s property before, but I had never thought to ask for the Lord’s forgiveness. Was that what it meant?
I made the mistake of getting this in the middle of my Double Deckers fixation a few years back, because Google indicated that it does have a couple of references to the show, and I thought it might be some kind of academic analysis of the pop culture of the day. No such luck; it’s the autobiography of a not very interesting chap, who has not done even the most basic research on the things he is writing about (“ Greig’s Peir Guint ” !!!!) and really would not even be much use as a primary source for what is anyway a well-researched and well-archived period. I read the first couple of chapters and gave up. You can get it here.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my (virtual) shelf. Next on that list is The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend.
Thu, 12:56: RT @FinancialTimes: Opinion: Boris Johnson’s character and his government, with its taste for brinkmanship, mistrust of diplomats and campa…
Thu, 17:19: This is the only place where I have seen the raw numbers. Barnier lost out by 1209 votes. (He turns 71 next month.) https://t.co/nhGr0uskZP
Fri, 10:44: RT @KatyJayne101: If anyone needs cheering up today Nigel Farage’s anti-cancel culture conference has been cancelled.
Fri, 11:07: Merkel’s punk pick for leaving ceremony raises eyebrows https://t.co/CttebxrzsF For her farewell to German politics, Angela Merkel chose a 1970s Nina Hagen song about a girl who is upset that her boyfriend failed to take colour photos of her at the nudist beach (and elsewhere).
I stopped my daily updates at the weekend, but no harm in a five-day check-in. I’m still not completely well; I am less dependent on paracetamol and my hot water bottle that I was last week, and in general I’m up almost as much as I am in bed, but I’m really not back to full fitness as yet. I had hoped to do a biggish work meeting this afternoon, but realised when I woke up this morning that I simply was not up to it, and pulled out apologetically.
Despite my very imperfect state of health, now that it’s more than 10 days after my positive diagnosis, the Belgian health authority has issued me with a Certificate of Recovery which I can brandish at anybody who asks. (Nobody will. The double vaccination certificate has more weight.)
A couple of people have asked whether I may have caught the omicron variant. The first case in Belgium was not detected until 26 November, and I was diagnosed on the 17th, so it seems unlikely. Anyway I don’t particularly care; I just happen to been unlucky in how hard I have been hit, and there’s not much point in speculating further.
Other people have been much less lucky. A lot of you knew E in Belfast who died suddenly on Tuesday. She and her husband I had both had COVID last month, which for E came on top of a series of other long-term health problems. Much sympathy to I at this devastating loss; she was only a couple of years older than me.
Stay well, you guys. Get vaccinated, if you haven’t been; get boosted as soon as you can; and try not to get the damn bug.
I have vivid memories of watching Image of the Fendahl when it first came out in 1977 – in retrospect, the last really satisfactory story of Season 15 of Doctor Who, though as a ten-year-old I was generally forgiving. When I rewatched it after thirty years in 2008, I wrote:
I remember being a bit underwhelmed by Image of the Fendahl when it was first broadcast [am no longer sure that is true!], but I really liked it this time round. Having mourned the disruption of the Doctor/Leela partnership by K9’s arrival in my write-up of The Invisible Enemy, actually we’re back to business as before here as the tin dog is out of action for plot purposes. Odd to think that this was the first story with a contemporary setting since The Hand of Fear a year previously (they averaged about one a season in those days). Yet again I find reinforcement for my view that the Leela/Four pairing is the Best Evar, with the contrast between the two quirky regulars sharpened by the crazy Earthlings they are dealing with; Louise Jameson is so expressive even without saying anything. Also my memories of first time round are tempered by the attempt to do much the same thing again a few years later but far less successfully in K9 and Company. Having said that, there are some surprising lapses of direction: the prolonged scenes of the Fendahl manifesting in the cellar lack a certain something, and there is a peculiar shot in episode 3 where we are treated to a prolonged close-up of the Tardis console. But in general it was rather good fun.
Watching it in sequence with the whole of Old Who a couple of years later, I wrote:
This is, so far, a season of re-trying tested formats. After the base-under-siege story and the space opera story, we have a new take on the Hinchcliffe-era horror story in Image of the Fendahl. It mostly works, and if it weren’t for the fact that it comes so soon after the even more successful horror stories done in the Hinchcliffe era this would have a better rep among fans. But I think it does a lot of things better than, say, The Masque of Mandragora or the Pertwee stories which used similar themes, and the Fendahleen themselves are memorably icky. The tension between and among the scientists and the Tyler family keeps us guessing as well.
It’s also yet another brilliant story for Leela, by her creator Chris Boucher, who wrote three of the six stories featuring her and the Doctor without K9. She is great at challenging and teasing the Doctor, efficiently violent but also pragmatic, also just a little vain about her new dress. More on this later, but Jameson’s performance is tremendously enjoyable here as elsewhere.
Rewatching it now, I thoroughly enjoyed it, even with its flaws. For all that the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era of Who is generally described as “Gothic”, this is the one story that really does tick all the Gothic boxes, and Hinchcliffe has already left and it’s Holmes’ last story as script editor. I think also the Doctor and Leela as viewpoint yet alien characters work very well to shed some light on our world as others might see it.
The guest cast are all fully integrated. This was Wanda Ventham’s first acting job after returning to work from the birth of her son Benedict:
And Daphne Heard is just fantastic as Granny Tyler; within a year she would go on to be Peter Bowles’ mother in To The Manor Born.
And the script has some great lines.
DOCTOR: Yes, Fendelman. Tell me about him. MOSS: Well, he’s foreign, isn’t he. Calls hisself a scientist. They do say he’s one of the richest men in the world. You wouldn’t think so to look at him, scruffy devil. They say he made his money out of electronics, but that don’t seem likely ‘cos he ain’t Japanese. DOCTOR: Japanese? MOSS: No. His people dig up bodies. DOCTOR: They do? Splendid. LEELA: Grave robbers. DOCTOR: Or archaeologists.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of the Terrance Dicks novelisation is:
Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl is again a stick-closely-to-the-script effort, which makes the holes in the story a bit less easy to ignore.
I should concede that Dicks does (as he often did) give most of the incidental characters an introductory paragraph explaining their background and motivations, which is in fact a nice set of additions to the narrative. You can get it here.
Anyway, the reason I’m revisiting all of this is that the Black Archive series of Doctor Who monographs chose to ask Simon Bucher-Jones to write up Image of the Fendahl as the series’ fifth volume. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
Image of the Fendahl begins with a blond young man talking to a skull. But this isn’t Hamlet and the Skull isn’t, at least to begin with, a reminder of all humanity’s mortality. Adam Colby jokes about it and calls it ‘Eustace’, and as an archaeologist he doesn’t find it in any way sinister, merely puzzling. Expository dialogue between Colby and his colleague Thea Ransome explains that the skull is anomalously 12 million years old, although still that of ‘modern’ Homo sapiens.
I generally enjoyed this, but I am going to start with a serious imperfection in the .epub version which I bought: endnotes and references to them are wrongly joined up, with individual endnote references sometimes taking you to the start of that chapter’s notes section, rather than to the specific note, and sometimes instead to the start of the bibliography for the book as a whole; meanwhile if you do find your endnote, read it, and then want to return to the main text, clicking on the reference instead brings you to the start of the chapter you were in, rather than to the place where you left off. Other books in the Black Archive series have got this right, as most ebooks do, and you would have thought it a fairly straightforward technical tweak, even with 180 notes to a text with rather fewer pages. This may seem like petty whining, but in a book like this where there is a lot of good stuff in the endnotes, the publisher’s failure to hyperlink them correctly is a real barrier to reading pleasure.
Which is a shame, because otherwise more than any other book in the series so far, this gave new depths to my enjoyment of something I already really liked. As usual, it is neatly divided into thematic chapters, and as usual, I’ll quickly summarise them in order.
Looking at the context framed as “audience expectations”, both from the Hinchcliffe era of Who and from wider concerns about TV horror;
a deep dive into the Gothic, especially the 1965 film The Skull
the origins of humanity and evolution, as depicted in fiction;
H.P. Lovecraft, the missing fifth planet and the devastation of Mars;
ten problems with the script (eg who lets the Doctor out of the cupboard?) and six great things about the story;
an appendix looking at the novelisation, and at other appearances of the Fendahl;
another appendix with a carefully argued continuity theory that the destroyed Fifth Planet is actually Minyos from Underworld, the story after next.
This is meaty stuff, all done in tremendous, affectionate and often convincing detail. Recommended. You can get it here.
A few years ago I read The Taking of Planet Five, co-written by Bucher-Jones, an Eighth Doctor novel which picks up on the Fendahl and a couple of the other things mentioned above, but I did not rate it all that highly. However, I very much enjoyed the Fendahl’s appearance in the Kaldor City audios, set in the same continuity as both Robots of Death and Blake’s 7, and starring, among others, Scott Fredericks in his B7 role as Carnell, though he is also Max Stael in Image of the Fendahl. Kaldor City is also recommended, though more difficult to get these days I think.
Wed, 12:09: This was taped exactly 58 years ago, 1 Dec 1963, & has been giving me joy. The Beatles perform 3 songs and banter with Morecambe and Wise, & then John, Paul, George and Ernie sing “Moonlight Bay” à la Barbershop Quartet. Harmony in difference. https://t.co/ymQqDdp3EC
Wed, 12:56: RT @simongerman600: What an amazing way to visualize early human migration. Lovely map by @HarvardCGA. A great colour scheme and an appropr…
Wed, 15:48: RT @tvukzone: BREAKING: Sony Pictures Television officially announce the acquisition of a majority stake in Bad Wolf. (#DoctorWho#HisDarkM…
Thu, 10:45: RT @alexhallhall: I’ve had many ask why I took the job as Brexit Csllr, if I was as opposed to Brexit as my recent tweets now suggest? Or w…
Thu, 11:00: Old Bexley & Sidcup, and its predecessor seats, have been Tory-held since Ted Heath first won by 133 votes in 1950. His Labour predecessor, Ashley Bramall, went on to lead the Inner London Education Authority 1970-81, & was also a Mastermind contestant. https://t.co/cP88DdhjTh
She’s the filmmaker whose images I described earlier, the image of the men who can’t speak or hear crossing the rubble conversing with each other and the image of the man with the two suitcases at the edge of the high building.
This is the fourth in a quartet of novels by Smith (whose How to be BothI also enjoyed). I haven't read the other three; I don't think it is essential to have done so in order to enjoy Summer, though I am sure it would help. It's a story of a dysfunctional London family in 2020, with pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, comobined with flashbacks to the Second World War and an internment camp on the Isle of Man. It's possibly the first novel set in the pandemic that I have read, and I guess that means quite a lot – a clear reflection of these turbulent times, with also some invocation of the filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti who I should find out more about. In a period where we've perforce had to live very much in the present, I felt the book both supported that feeling and helped give some historical perspective. Recommended. You can get it here.
This was my top book acquired last year, and my top un-read non-genre book. Next on those piles, respectively, are Calvin, by F. Bruce Gordon, and Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney.
Idly filling in spaces in the family tree, which is about all I’ve had energy for of late, I discovered another celebrity relative, pioneering London gynæcologist Gladys Maud Sandes, my fourth cousin. Although she was born seventy years before me, in 1897, we are the same generation; her father John Sandes was born in 1868, sixty years before my father, his third cousin; Gladys’ grandmother, Anna Whyte, was born in 1835, forty-five years before my grandfather, her second cousin; Gladys’ great-grandfather, Charles John Whyte, was born in 1804, twenty-two years before my great-grandfather, his first cousin; and Gladys’ great-great-grandfather, another Charles John Whyte, was born in 1777, seven years before his younger brother, my own great-great-grandfather. She is from the same branch of the family tree as the unfortunate Letitia de la Beche, the Welsh lesbian campaigner and novelist Amy Dillwyn, and my cousins C, F and K.
The BMJ ran a great obituary of Gladys, which makes her sound like a true force of nature:
GLADYS M. SANDES, M.B., B.S., F.R.C.S.
Miss G. M. Sandes, former consultant surgeon to Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, and to the Mothers' Hospital, London, died suddenly on 17 January. She was 70.
Gladys Maud Sandes was born in Dublin on 5 November 1897. She received her early education at Wimbledon High School. When her interest in medicine was aroused as a child she was taken by her headmistress to meet Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, then a very distinguished old lady. This memorable meeting remained a life-long inspiration to her. For her medical training she went to the London School of Medicine for Women (since 1947 the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine), qualifying with the Conjoint diploma in 1922, and graduating MB., B.S. the same year. She look the F.R.C.S. in 1930. Among her appointments was that of first assistant to the urological department at the Royal Free Hospital. She had been a consultant at Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, and at the Mothers' Hospital, London. At the time of her death she was a member of the House Committee at Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End. She was at one time consultant surgeon to the London Lock and Marie Curie Hospitals, appointments which she prized and to which she gave devoted service. Her own interests and those of her husband, Dr. Maxwell Alston, and her capacity for hard work, took her to the wider contexts of medicine in the community. Both were active supporters of the Royal Society of Medicine and of the Faculty of the History of Medicine.
Miss Sandes was chairman of the Marylebone Division of the British Medical Association from 1955 to 1957, and was for many years their representative at the Annual Representative Meetings of the Association. She served on the Women's Advisory Committee of the British Standards Institution, was on the executive of the Fellowship for Freedom in Medicine, and chairman of the editorial committee of Mother and Child. She rendered a great but unobtrusive service in the area of patients with venereal diseases, and in particular to children who were the victims of sexual assaults. She served London University as a member of the Standing Committee of Convocation, and was an ardent supporter and one time chairman of the Old Students' Association of the Royal Free Hospital.
She retained an active and passionate interest in her training school, and countless students, member of staff, and their families were her patients. She was a part-time teacher in the anatomy department for 40 years, having joined the staff in 1927. With Dr. Evelyn Hewer she wrote a book for which many students have been profoundly grateful : An Introduction to the Study of the Nervous System, published in 1929. The first edition was so successful that a second one was called for in 1933. Throughout her association with the anatomy department, and after official retirement, she took endless trouble to enrich the material for teaching and research from her own resources and those of others who responded to her powers of persuasion. She would help struggling juniors with generous invitations to assist at private operations. Postgraduate students from abroad were received in her own home, and correspondence continued long after their return. Her vigour of mind and spirit took many forms and wss matched by an unremitting loyalty and service to people, institutions, and causes. These qualities were manifested in practical kindliness to friends and colleagues, by effective service on many committees, and, most of all, in her holistic view of medical practice. Her patients were not cases, but people seen in the content of their family, home, and work. There are many grateful for her professional care who were amazed to find that, in addition to having arranged for their admission to hospital, everything from preoperative dental appointments and additional help for their families to suitable convalescence had been organised for them by Miss Sandes. All this was accomplished at high speed in a firm and kindly manner that brooked neither delay not denial by her colleagues and assistants. Like many generously built people, she was a quick, a shrewd, and sometimes a devastating critic. Her innate and enormous kindliness did not prevent her from giving short shrift to fools.
She was an enthusiastic traveller in many countries in Europe, and she visited Canada, the United Slates of America, Russia, and South Africa. She was always adding to her well-stored mind, catholicity of interests, and to her circle of friends and acquaintances. The interest and efforts of the latter were often enlisted to help those whom she supported. Her gratitude to Wimbledon High School, where she had been an all-round success, was shown in many ways, including membership of the Committee of Friends of the Girls' Public Day Schools Trust.
Born a Dubliner, she was an active member of the Irish Genealogical Society, With this background, it is not surprising that she was witty, a telling debater, and a very bonny fighter, whether against seemingly over-whelming illnesses or against powers and principalities. Few can have been as indefatigable as Miss Sondes. Despite fatigue she had returned to work after influenza, and she died in harness to the end, as she and all who cared for her would have wished. Her generous, responsive, and energetic presence will be missed in many circles, and the sympathy of her numerous friend. is extended to her husband, and to their daughter, Lilac.—M. F. L. K. and R. E. M. B.
Sir Alexander HADDOW writes: To the above tribute and appreciation may I append a few lines. The name of Gladys Sondes will ever stand in the history and tradition of medical women in this country. Yet her interests ranged immensely deeper. Everything flowed from a personality of unique vigour and power. To her professional work she brought knowledge and decision, to such an extent as (for the unknowing) on occasion obscured far profounder qualities of perception and of compassion. Not only in the medical sphere but in others also she brought succour to countless numbers when succour was most needed, and often did it by stealth.
Her wider sympathies and intermits ranged from Irish genealogy to courageous support—quite outside the line of ordinary duty—of many public and liberal causes in the spheres of social morality and scientific responsibility —causes which seem, and to a large extent still remain, scarcely popular. Above all we shall keep Gladys Sondes in remembrance as the ideal and steadfast friend, ever helpful in her wisdom and ever kind in one's difficulties, although not uncritical. It was the quality of friendship which mattered most—a quality expressed through that unique mien and through those unforgettable eyes. Friendship we assume all too easily in early years and only realize fully as we grow older—at the very time when death removes our friends. This is the nexus of medicine and indeed of all science. As yet we cannot understand it, but must labour so to do. Although the body is gone, in a strange way Gladys Sondes is still present. We loved her dearly and always shall.
N.M. writes: Mrs. Alston, known to all as Miss Sondes, joined the staff of the Mothers' Hospital and was consultant in charge of the V.D. and vaginal discharge clinics. We all at the "Mothers' "—medical staff, nursing staff, and patients—had the highest regard for her. She had great personal charm, a delightful sense of humour, and an amazing capacity for work. She always found time to take a keen interest is the hospital as a whole, and she remained a member of the House Committee after retirement. Her clear thinking, wit, and worldly experience were always such a help, and she will be missed by all of us.
I hope it will be some time before it happens to me, but it would be nice to be the subject of such fulsome tributes from one’s colleagues!
Not mentioned here, but discussed in her Wikipedia article: the London Lock Hospital, to which she devoted her early career, was the first London specialist hospital devoted to sexually transmitted diseases. It was closed as part of the process of introducing the NHS, because it was believed that antibiotics would eradicate all STDs in the short term, so specialist hospital treatment would no longer be needed. Marginalised women, of course, were the big losers of this policy decision.
Gladys and her husband had one child, a daughter born when Gladys was 44. She was a cover girl for Country Life in 1963:
As far as I can tell, she is still alive and has two living children; her husband died exactly a year ago today, after 49 years of marriage. I have no contact with them, but hope this post will comfort and amuse them if they come across it.
Edited to add: Fellow Balkanologists will be interested to know that Gladys was also the fourth cousin of Flora Sandes, the famous Englishwoman who joined the Serbian army in WWI, both 3x great-granddaughters of John Sandes of Kerry (1640-1733) and his wife Mary Blennerhassett. They probably did not know each other well – Flora was more than twenty years older, they were not closely related and they never lived near each other. But given Gladys’ interest in genealogy, she must at least have been well aware of the connection.
Wed, 11:49: RT @johnston_nessa: Back in 1991 I drew a comic strip, sent it into #RTE‘s #TheDen and Zig and Zag acted it out and did the voices and ever…
I’m still not completely well; I am less dependent on paracetamol and my hot water bottle that I was last week, and in general I’m up almost as much as I am in bed, but I’m really not back to full fitness as yet. I had hoped to do a biggish work meeting this afternoon, but realised when I woke up this morning that I simply was not up to it, and pulled out apologetically.
