August 2024 Books

Non-fiction 14 (YTD 55)
Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Leeson
The Sky at Night Book of the Moon, by Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, by Julie Peakman (did not finish)
Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski
Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait
The Edge of Destruction, by Simon Guerrier
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis
Imagining Ireland’s Independence, by Jason K. Knick
Comparing Electoral Systems, by David M. Farrell
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato
Preventable, by Devi Sridhar
Persians, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (did not finish)
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett

Non-genre 5 (YTD 23)
Companion Piece, by Ali Smith
The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Lydia, by Paula Goode (did not finish)
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
All Change, by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Poetry 1 (YTD 4)
Where the Sidewalk Ends
, by Shel Silverstein

SF 7 (YTD 61)
Darkening Skies, by Juliet E. McKenna
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
The Wonderful Visit, by H. G. Wells
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless (did not finish)
Carrie, by Stephen King
Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy
334, by Thomas M. Disch

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 23)
Warmonger, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who: Kerblam!, by Pete McTighe
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson

Comics 1 (YTD 21)
The Sapling: Growth, by Rob Williams et al

7,400 pages (YTD 45,500)
16/31 (YTD 87/188) by non-male writers (Leeson/Plunkett, Aderin-Pocock, Peakman, Tait, Ellis, Mazzucato, Sridhar, Harris, Blackett, Smith, Chandler Warner, Goode, Howard, McKenna, Enriquez, Murphy)
3/31 (YTD 26/188) by a non-white writer (Aderin-Pocock, Sridhar, Harris)
3/31 rereads (334, Warmonger, Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction)
300 books currently tagged unread, up only 1 from last month despite Worldcon, down 59 from August 2023.

Reading now
Titan, by John Varley
South: The Illustrated Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917, by Ernest Shackleton
A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long

Coming soon (perhaps)
The Sapling: Roots, by George Mann et al
Grave Matter, by Justin Richards
Doctor Who: Space Babies, by Alison Rumfitt
Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol, by Graeme Curry
The Happiness Patrol, by Mike Stack
Political, Electoral and Spatial Systems, by R. J. Johnston
Church and State in Tudor Ireland: A History of Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics, 1543-1603, by Robert Dudley Edwards
Helen Waddell Reassessed: New Readings, ed. Jennifer FitzGerald
Yes Taoiseach: Irish Politics From Behind Closed Doors, by Frank Dunlop
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
The Spellcoats, by Diana Wynne Jones
Glory, by NoViolet Bulawayo
Hard to Be a God, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Desdemona and the Deep, by C. S. E. Cooney
“They Will Dream in the Garden” by Gabriela Damián Miravete
The Hanging Tree, by Ben Aaronovitch
Monica, by Daniel Clowes
Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett
The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
Bellatrix, Tome 1, by Leo
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy
Marriage, by H.G. Wells
How I Learned to Understand the World, by Hans Rosling
What Might Have Been, by Ernest Bramah
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently, by Steve Silberman

Top Books of 1924: The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner; and A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster

This may seem like an odd pairing of books, and in fact I have to admit that it is an odd pairing of books. But these are the top books of 1924 among Goodreads and LibraryThing users respectively. (Third is We, by Evgeny Zamyatin.)

The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Boxcar Children is:

“What shall we do? Where shall we go?” thought Jessie.

I had never heard of this book before starting this exercise. It is a short children’s novel about four siblings (and their dog) whose parents have died and who take up residence in an abandoned railway boxcar. The local doctor takes an interest in them and there is a happy ending. A bit improbable – surely even in 1924 there were government authorities looking out for orphaned children – but very wholesome.

It is the first in a series of, wait for it, over 160 novels, still being published, where the children mostly solve mysteries during the school holidays, which are hugely popular across the pond. I understand that the children have not aged much since 1924. I found it a naïve and hopeful tale. A novel written today about four homeless siblings would be a lot grittier, even if aimed at the same 7-10 age range. You can get it here.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of A Passage to India is:

“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”

I remember seeing the 1984 film starring Judy Davis and Peggy Ashcroft, possibly in the course of a week I spent at the English public school Downside. To be honest the only bit of it that I remember is the climax of the trial scene, when Judy Davis’s character recants her testimony. I also remember how strange it was to watch such an imperial film in such an imperial setting. Downside itself seemed spiritually rather unhealthy – this was of course decades before the sexual abuse scandals emerged.

I started off rather liking the book, which clearly critiques the British presence in India and sees its imminent end, twenty-five years before it actually happened. The portrayal of the snobbish and racist Anglo-Indian community is clearly based on close observation. But the more he got into writing about Indians, the more the book slipped into Orientalism, and the final section, set around a festival in an Indian-ruled state, seemed to me much less humane than the earlier part of the book. Also, of course, I am spoiled by decades of reading Indian (and Pakistani and Bangladeshi) writers about India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh), rather than white people’s commentary.

This also poisons the portrayal of the relationship between the English and Indian male protagonists, which again is based on Forster’s personal experience, of deep friendship with Syed Ross Masood, but ends up not very satisfactory to either the fictional characters or the reader.

Anyway, you can get it here.

I was surprised to discover that the title of the book is taken from a Walt Whitman poem, “Passage to India”, which is actually not about India at all but compares the opening of the Suez Canal with the manly expansion of American power across the continent. I thought it was the usual doggerel from Whitman – “The gigantic dredging machines” “Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God” “Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?” – but when I said so on social media it turned out that he still has his fans. Judge for yourself.

The three top books of 1924 – The Boxcar Children, A Passage to India and We – could not be much more different from each other; a happy kids’ book, a grumpy reportage on colonialism, and a dystopian vision of the future. (Compare 1923 when I had two murder mysteries and mystic poetry.)

The Wonderful Visit, by H.G. Wells

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Now, the Vicar of Siddermorton had two rivals in his scientific pursuits; Gully of Sidderton, who had actually seen the glare, and who it was sent the drawing to Nature, and Borland the natural history dealer, who kept the marine laboratory at Portburdock. Borland, the Vicar thought, should have stuck to his copepods, but instead he kept a taxidermist, and took advantage of his littoral position to pick up rare sea birds. It was evident to anyone who knew anything of collecting that both these men would be scouring the country after the strange visitant, before twenty-four hours were out.

Wells’ second novel, published just after The Time Machine and just before The Island of Dr Moreau, but much less well known. The Reverend Hilyer, vicar of Siddermorton, shoots what he thinks is a strange bird, but it turns out to be an angel fallen to Earth, whose wing has been badly damaged by the clergyman. Lots of fish-out-of-water humour as the angel attempts to get to grips with Victorian society, and of course society reckons it is too good for the stranger; the local landowner accuses the angel (with reason) of being a socialist, and disaster ensues, with the vicar’s comely maidservant turning out to be the only one worthy of redemption. It’s a short book, and the satire is a bit obvious in places and rather dated as well. You can get it here.

You can also get, via the Internet Archive, a 2008 BBC radio dramatisation of the novel, script by Stephen Gallagher (of Doctor Who and other fame) and with the vicar played by Bernard Cribbins. At least for now, that’s available with a bunch of other Wells dramatisations here.

Next up on my Wells pile: Marriage.

Imagining Ireland’s Independence: The Debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, by Jason K. Knirck

Second paragraph of third chapter:

There were a number of factors leading each side to consider a truce in the summer of 1921. For the British, the behavior of the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans was generating substantial negative publicity, made worse by the government’s apparent sanction of such actions by the end of 1920. In addition, the British had been unwilling to unleash a full-scale war in Ireland and were leery of doing so without exploring alternative solutions. The British had been fighting the Anglo-Irish “war” with police and local security forces rather than with full-strength divisions of the British Army. With difficulties in Egypt and India, among other places, Britain could not afford to station too many regular troops in Ireland. Given that Britain was deeply in debt from the Great War, and Lloyd George’s coalition government was already having difficulty redeeming its promise to build “homes fit for heroes” after the war, Britain also did not have the financial wherewithal to launch a full military campaign in Ireland. The political will was lacking, too. Despite the presence of Tories in the cabinet – Lloyd George was the Liberal prime minister of a largely Tory cabinet, a holdover from the wartime coalition – there was a sense that the British public, as well as the Liberal and Labour parties, would not keep quiet about a full military campaign in Ireland, given that the relatively small-scale hostilities undertaken by the security forces were already causing unease.² In addition, Lloyd George correctly surmised that a settlement could be reached that was closer in practical terms to the offer of Home Rule already on the table than it was to the self-proclaimed Irish Republic.
² Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919-21 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1993), 225.

This is a short and detailed book about the debates in Dáil Eireann in December 1921 and January 1922 about the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and about the political situation which led to it. Having fairly recently read Charles Townshend’s The Republic, which covers much of the same ground, I felt that Knirck’s general political account of the events of the War of Independence, which forms the first third or so of the book, isn’t as good as Townshend’s; but when he gets into the detail, first of the Treaty negotiations and then of the Dáil debates, he is much more solid (Townshend is running out of steam at that point).

On the Treaty, Knirck devotes considerable space to trying to work out what de Valera was actually up to, and comes to the conclusion that he wanted the negotiations in London to fail so that he could leap in with an improved proposal and save the day. Given the relative inexperience and weaker position of the Irish delegation, this would have been such a bold assumption by de Valera that I found it difficult to believe, but Knick marshals his evidence convincingly.

On the Dáil debates, the heart of the book, Knirck goes through the whole thing in fascinated detail, looking at the backgrounds of the members of the Second Dáil (who were all elected unopposed in May 1920), tracking those who moved from hard-liner to pro-Treaty and from dove to anti-Treaty, and tracing the procedural issues and the rhetorical style of the debates, which did become personalised at several points. I found this a much more attractive way of approaching the concept of the Republic than Townshend’s ideological analysis; looking at what people actually did and said is, after all, a fundamentally sound approach.

One important point that he makes is that both wings of the Sinn Fein leadership, and indeed the rank and file, were desperate to maintain a united movement until well past the moment when this was no longer feasible (which was probably when the plenipotentiaries signed in London). This led both sides into tactical and strategic mistakes. For us, looking back on over a century of division along lines established by the Treaty, it can be difficult to appreciate that serious leaders thought they could still avoid it as late as early January 1922. Hindsight gives you 20/20 vision.

Knirck’s most fundamental point is that most of the Irish political leadership in 1921 were politically inexperienced, and the debates reveal a new style of politics coming into being, but not quite there yet. They got outplayed by Lloyd George in London, and then by themselves in Dublin. Having seen other revolutionary situations elsewhere, I must say that it rings true. Whether or not you agree, his analysis of the primary sources – the Treaty debates themselves – is compelling. You can get it here.

Tuesday reading

Current
All Change, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett
Titan, by John Varley

Last books finished
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless (did not finish)
Carrie, by Stephen King
Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy
Preventable, by Devi Sridhar
334, by Thomas M. Disch
Persians, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (did not finish)

Next books
The Sapling: Roots, by I.N.J. Culbard et al
A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse

Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis

Second paragraph of third chapter:

There’s so little definite information about Tabby [Tabitha Ackroyd, the Brontës’ housekeeper] that in At Home With the Brontës, Ann Dinsdale wrote, ‘it’s almost as if her life didn’t begin until she walked through the door of Haworth Parsonage’. She was almost certainly born in Haworth, and brought up there, and was in her fifties when she came to work for the Brontës. At least one brother (a woolcomber like their father) and a sister, Susannah, still lived in the village. [Ellen] Nussey said she was ‘faithful’, ‘trustworthy’, ‘very quaint in appearance’ and (ironically, given how much Nussey liked to bang on about the Brontës) discreet. When questioned about the family she worked for, Tabby was ‘invincible and impenetrable’. And when asked, in the village, if the children ‘were not fearfully larn’d’, she left in a huff but told Anne and her siblings, because she knew it would make them laugh.

I came late to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but it is absolutely my favourite book by any of the Brontë sisters (my top book of the year for 2012), and picked this up in hope of understanding more. (And then didn’t read it for six years.)

It’s difficult to write a biography of someone who is known as the most obscure of a group of three, most of whose papers and letters were destroyed; and yet we do have a lot to go on, from the remaining records of her life and most of all from her novels. (A taxi driver admits sheepishly to Ellis during her research that he could not name three novels by Anne Brontë. She reassures him that Anne only wrote two.)

The book makes a strong case (which I already agreed with anyway) that Anne was the best and greatest of the sisters. Charlotte and Emily’s heroines are unhealthily fascinated by broody and frankly abusive men. Helen, the eponymous tenant of Wildfell Hall, suffers in a bad marriage, gets out and moves on. I have not read Agnes Grey but clearly I need to correct that omission.

Ellis takes the approach of looking at individuals who were close to Anne Brontë and devoting a chapter to each. She is not a fan of Charlotte, but as a loyal Loughbricklander I was very glad to read a clean bill of health for the sisters’ father Patrick. (I should that Claire Harman, reviewing the book in the Guardian, found it unbalanced especially with regard to Charlotte and also skipping over Anne’s religious faith.)

It’s a book not only about Anne Brontë’s life, but about the process of researching that life; and about Ellis’s own progression from proud singleton at the beginning to entranced lover at the end. Sometimes when researchers put themselves into the story it becomes very intrusive and distracting; here Ellis uses her own emotional experiences to illuminate the themes of Anne Brontë’s writing, and it works.

She also put me onto an Eleventh Doctor comic where the sisters (or at least their avatars) make an appearance. I shall report back on that one in due course.

Despite Claire Harman’s caveats, I enjoyed it a lot and you can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long.

Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Intento salir en silencio para no despertar a su padre, pero se sorprendio cuando lo encontro despierto, serio pero tranquilo, saliendo de la cocina con una taza de to en la mano. La casa, como siempre, no estaba iluminada por luz electrica: solamente el televisor encendido en el living, vacio salvo por el sillon de pana, amarillo, muy grande, casi una cama. Cuando Juan vio a Gaspar se le acerco y encendio un pequefio velador que estaba sobre el piso. Tenia un cigarrillo en la otra mano.He tried to leave the house quietly so he wouldn’t wake his father, but was surprised to see him already awake, serious but serene, coming from the kitchen with a cup of tea. As always, there were no electric lights on in the house, only the TV in the living room, which was unfurnished but for the yellow corduroy sofa that was so big it was practically a bed. When Juan saw Gaspar, he went over to him and switched on a small lamp on the floor. His other hand held a cigarette.
translation by Megan MacDowell

This was the longest of the books submitted for last year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award, and also one of the easiest to rule out; it is a fantasy novel with no trace of science fiction in it. I put it aside, knowing that I would come back to it at some point; but in the meantime I saw a lot of very negative reviews online, and suspected that I might not last 100 pages into the 725 of the English translation.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The book is about a boy whose relatives are involved with a black magic cult operating between Argentina and Europe, set during the alternation between military dictatorship and democracy; there are of course dark and intricate family relationships, murky happenings and a cute but doomed dog. It does go on rather a long time, but I found it engaging and page-turning. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2022. Next on that pile is The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy.

The best known books set in each country: Germany

See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in the territory of today’s Federal Republic of Germany.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
The Book ThiefMarkus Zusak 2,627,76445,832
The ReaderBernhard Schlink215,03913,555
SteppenwolfHermann Hesse190,85013,764
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s BerlinErik Larson 205,3017,847
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi GermanyWilliam L. Shirer136,3948,045
Stones from the River Ursula Hegi95,7884,705
Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family Thomas Mann31,2395,775
Every Man Dies AloneHans Fallada33,1743,664

When I did this exercise in 2015, the result was the same, with The Book Thief top and The Reader second. The only other one of the top eight that I have read is Buddenbrooks.

I had to disqualify a lot of books here because less than half, sometimes none of the book at all, is set in the right country, even though LibraryThing and Goodreads users tagged them with the tag “Germany”. From the top, the disqualified were Slaughterhouse-Five (also set in Belgium, Luxembourg, the USA and the planet Tralfamadore); The Diary of Anne Frank (entirely set in the Netherlands); Night, by Elie Wiesel (mainly set in today’s Poland, also in today’s Romania); All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (more than half set in France); Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse (set in a fictional India and Nepal); The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka (entirely set in Czechia); The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (entirely set in today’s Poland); All Quiet on the Western Front (mostly set in France); Perfume, by Patrick Süskind (entirely set in France); The Magic Mountain (set in Switzerland); and The Tin Drum (mostly set in today’s Poland again).

Next up: France, but I will skip next weekend so it will be on 8 September.

India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan

Lydia, by Paula Gooder

Second paragraph of Chapter 3:

‘Tertius!’ She had intended a whisper but it came out as a hiss.

Second paragraph of the notes to Chapter 3:

A ROMAN ATRIUM
During the Roman Empire, and in the houses of the wealthy, the atrium was the reception room of the house. They were light, airy spaces, lit by the compluvium: a hole in the roof that was designed to let rainwater into the impluvium, a marble lined pool below. The householder would often sit on the opposite side of the impluvium, facing the vestibule or hallway, and hence the guests who entered the house. Although in the period of the Roman republic the atrium was often a family room, by the time of the empire it was a much more formal reception area, with family rooms located towards the back of the house. Even non-citizens like Lydia would have been accustomed to treating the space in this way.

This is basically New Testament fan-fiction, linking a woman mentioned in Acts with a passage from Philippians and telling a story about St Paul. There are 212 pages of plot and 106 pages of notes, which gives you an idea of the writer’s priorities and how seriously she has taken it. I lasted until the first miracle and then couldn’t manage any more. You can get it here.

The Administrator’s Tale, third time around: part two

(continued from here)

And so, I went to Worldcon in Glasgow. I read with envy of people who were able to attend lots of panels, go to signings and spend long hours hanging out with their mates; because I was doing two jobs in Glasgow, I had even less time than usual. (Also, I forgot to fill out the programme participation form, which is probably just as well.) Lots of good friends were there who I barely said hello to, or simply did not see at all. I think next time I may just announce that there will be a specific evening and a specific bar where I hang out. I did this on the Thursday night for the WSFS team, though not all were able to attend, and by the end a few extras had joined.

WSFS meetup photo from Arthur Liu (who is sitting beside me). The Site Selection team, Thomas and Naveed, are behind me; left is my deputy, Kathryn Duval, and at the far right Business Meeting deputy presiding officer Warren Buff. This was late in the evening and a number of the team had already peeled off.

As will be visible from the above, I injected a bit of light relief, at least for me, for much of the convention by donning a pair of elf ears which I had bought at Eastercon. This made me feel generally happy. When people asked why I was wearing them, I replied that I was cosplaying the Hugo Administrator. (One of the people I said this to turned out to be Suzan Palumbo, the administrator of the Ignyte Awards.)

I was not the only person to have the idea.

It was also very nice to catch up again with Yan Ru, who I had met in Chengdu. I got a badge made for her.

I did manage to attend a couple of panels, one on the likely winners of the Best Novel, Best Series and Best Graphic Story categories (which of course I already knew), and also I was pleased to top and tail Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer’s Guest of Honour presentation. Best of all, I got to the two main musical events, a pre-convention organ recital at the Kelvingrove and the orchestral concert on the Friday night.

Before I get to the Hugos, I must say something about the Business Meeting. First off, the work load on the top table (and to a much lesser extent those of us supporting them) was extreme. This was the longest agenda, and the longest Business Meeting, on record, thanks not only to the reckoning from Chengdu, but also a bunch of other items that some people felt compelled to add to the agenda. I am amazed that Jesi Lipp got us through it, and even finished slightly ahead of time. But it meant that the meeting lasted from 10 to 3 every day, rather than the usual 10 to 1.

The Business Meeting team; photo by Olav Rokne.

I was content with most of the decisions made at the meeting. Good things: an apology to those disqualified without justification by Chengdu was approved; the ban on virtual participation which was sneaked through last year was reversed; the proposal to restrict Site Selection voting rights to People Like Us was rejected; so was the Best Independent Film proposal (more on that when I write about the consultative vote which we trialled before the convention).

Less good: although the amendment clarifying the definition of Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist is largely my own wording, I am concerned that many fan artists are unhappy with it. I hope that it can be improved between now and Seattle. The one winner this year that particularly attracted sniping was Best Fan Artist, which indicates that the status quo still needs improvement.

A lot of the really serious stuff was kicked to various committees which will report next year. I got voted onto the committee which will investigate what actually happened at Chengdu. I was also appointed to another committee which will look at the administration of the Hugos more broadly, including the possibility of external audit. Other committees will consider the Business Meeting itself, and Hugo software.

I think that those who love the Business Meeting need to realise that less is more; that making it a smaller burden and less of a time sink for Worldcon members will improve its popularity. The fact that we successfully got through all of the business in 20 hours should be set against the fact that there was far too much business in the first place. This won’t be changed by passing new rules; a cultural shift is needed.

Unfortunately a number of people caught COVID at the convention. I did not, and the two people I spent most time with who did catch it had been wearing masks most of the time (at the Business Meeting). Masks, of course, are better at protecting other people from you than vice versa. I saw somewhere that the rate of infection at Glasgow was not very different to that at the 2021 Worldcon in DC, which had a much more vigorous masking policy. There are no easy answers.

Back to the Hugos. Much of one’s time as Administrator (and team) is spent getting material objects to the right place at the right time. We were fortunate in that the lair where we assembled the Hugos was just backstage of the Armadillo, but we had to assemble rocket, base and plaque and also do the other bits, like pins and certificates. The ceremony and receptions were handled (and handled well) by the Events division rather than by us.

The Hugo wrangling team, Laura, Kathryn, Scott, me and Bridget; photo by Olav Rokne

During the rehearsal, Vince Doherty had the excellent idea that I could bring the first Hugo ever awarded, by Isaac Asimov to Forrest J. Ackerman as #1 Fan Personality in 1953, onto the stage as part of my speech, and I must admit that for me that was the high point of the convention – feeling a direct connection with the previous 70 Hugo ceremonies.

Not sure who took this one, but obviously it wasn’t me. Probably Olav again.

That Hugo trophy, voted in good faith by the Worldcon voters of 1953, started a democratic process of appreciation of fan and professional activity that continues to this day. Controversy was there from the beginning – Ackerman rejected his Hugo and wanted it instead to go to British fan Ken Slater, who kept it for decades and eventually passed it back to Ackerman. John Scalzi summarized it in a witty introduction to the ceremony.

Forrest J. Ackerman rejecting the first ever Hugo, presented by Isaac Asimov, lurking behind him. Ackerman was a creep, who rejected the award on the evening but later repossessed it, and Asimov was worse. Not sure who took the photo.

At the end of the evening, putting Emily Tesh’s award for Best Novel away, I realised that I could get a nice shot of the oldest and most recent Hugo trophies beside each other on the shelf.

The latest Hugo on the left, the earliest on the right. You can see that the latter has acquired a large quasi-cubical wooden base since 1953. It has also lost a fin.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The ceremony had its regrettable glitches, notably when a pre-recorded video failed to play, and when it turned out that the Chinese titles and names in the slides had somehow been mangled beyond recognition. It also turned out that one set of plaques had three errors, including misspelling the word “Worldcon”. Despite those problems, the atmosphere in the room was hugely positive, almost redemptive. There’s a lovely piece about it here. I seem to have voted for only two of the winners myself, but that is par for the course, and I certainly don’t begrudge the other 18 their awards.

Hugo trophies waiting to be awarded. Photo by Laura Martins

The Hugo team, in the wings of the stage, were uniquely poorly placed to hear the speeches made by the winners. It was not until much later that I caught up with Emily Tesh’s well-chosen final words:

I wrote Some Desperate Glory imagining, if you like, a “bad end.” […] I love a bad end. I imagined the worst possible outcome of what humanity could become, some of the worst of our species: cruelty, brutality, hatred of outsiders and love of power. Tonight, I’d like you all to join me in imagining instead the best, which is something science fiction can do and has always done. And through and because of that power of imagination, I ask you to act in whatever way you can and whatever way is right for you to support the victims of violence and warfare around the world, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan and in many other places. To support the victims of cruelty and intolerance close to home, including here in the islands where that solidarity is dearly needed right now, especially for the victims of the recent racist riots, and for those targeted by the transphobia of some parts of the UK media. I wrote humanity’s bad end, and I call upon you all, with perfect faith, to prove me wrong.

And that brought us to the after-party, which I must say I enjoyed a lot – indeed the pre and post Hugo receptions seemed to me to work better, as a combination, than at any other Worldcon I have been to (the 2017 and 2023 after-parties were awesome, but the pre-ceremony receptions not as good as Glasgow).

Hugo wrangling team rejoices. Photo by Paul Weimer.

We of the Hugo wrangling team spent Monday packing Hugo trophies ready for shipping, and more than a week later we are still gathering addresses for the finalist pins and certificates, and arranging for extra trophies for those who have requested them. But I enjoyed it all immensely, and the person to thank most for that is Esther MacCallum-Stewart, the Chair.

I took an extra day in Glasgow to unwind and to attend the committee farewell dinner, which I had never managed to do before at a Worldcon. I used my extra day profitably, visiting the Kelvingrove in the morning for a proper look around – my word, there is so much there:

And in the afternoon I went to see the Govan Stones, relics of the religious centre of the ancient realm of Strathclyde; a couple of the Glaswegians who I spoke to at dinner had never heard of these amazing 9th to 11th century monuments, a stone’s throw from the Armadillo (if you throw the stone across the river very vigorously).

The Sarcophagus of St Constantine
The hogback grave stones
The Jordanhill Cross (a stump) and the Sun Stane

Next year, unusually, the Hugo team will be much the same as this year. I will be the Hugo administrator again; Cassidy, who was deputy Hugo administrator this year, will be WSFS Division Head; Kathryn Duval will repeat her role as Deputy Division Head; and my deputy as Hugo administrator will be Esther MacCallum-Stewart. Hopefully we will avoid the pitfalls of 2024, and make different mistakes instead.

See you in Seattle, perhaps?

The Edge of Destruction, by Simon Guerrier (and David Whitaker, and Nigel Robinson)

When I first watched this story in 2006, I wrote:

This must be one of the few pre-Davison stories that I had neither seen on TV nor read in novelisation form. It’s a two-parter, from immediately after the first Dalek story, featuring only the four members of the Tardis crew – the first Doctor, his grand-daughter Susan, and the teachers Ian and Barbara. There is a fifth character, not played by an actor, but I’ll get to that.

This was very very brave. The production team had run out of money, and had to do an entire story with no guest actors and no sets beyond what had already been made. The two episodes had two different directors, one of whom had never directed a television drama before. It could have been a disaster.

In fact it is very good. I would even have said excellent, were it not for the bathos of the minor technical problem with the Tardis which turns out to be at the core of the plot. But apart from that – and one or two minor slips from Hartnell, though he keeps it together for the big set-piece speeches – I was surprised by just how good it is.

I also watched the DVD documentary, which is entertaining and enlightening, and also actually slightly longer than either of the episodes. Meta-text, isn’t that the concept I’m looking for?

When I rewatched it in 2009, I wrote rather more briefly:

The Edge of Destruction is a two-episode filler with a great beginning and middle but a less good resolution. The weirdness on the Tardis screen, the clock faces and the odd behaviour of the crew are all nicely done, but the broken spring is rather banal and unmagical. However, what really makes the story memorable is the humanising of the Doctor and the repairing of his relationship with Barbara.

Rewatching it now, it seems rather staged, but staged rather well. These are four believable characters in an unbelievable situation, and the story efficiently works it through to the end.

I also read the novelisation back in 2008, and wrote then:

Robinson has taken a two-episode story and padded it out with some interesting new material of Ian and Barbara exploring the depths of the Tardis. Unfortunately, Robinson’s own prose style is thunderously bad in places. For completists only.

The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

In the darkness, the rhythmic in-out in-out breathing of the life support system seemed even more eerily alive. Ian shuddered, but resisted the urge to share his fears with the Doctor who would only delight in ridiculing his irrational notions.

I think I was a little unfair in my first reading. Robinson is not a fluid writer, but I’ve certainly read much worse, including much worse Doctor Who books. You cn get it here (for a price).

Simon Guerrier’s Black Archive on The Edge of Destruction is one of the shortest in the series, clocking in at a mere 108 pages. The story is a short one, but James Cooray Smith got 73 pages out of the 6 minutes of Night of the Doctor, and at that rate this volume would have been about the length of The Lord of the Rings.

It starts with an introduction, which makes a bold assertion:

I’ve a theory about you, the reader of this book. I think you:

  • Have seen the 2013 drama An Adventure in Space and Time.
  • Can identify moments in it that aren’t quite what happened.
  • Understand why such dramatic licence was necessary.

I feel seen. It is as if I had had dinner with the author at Gallifrey One this year. Oh, wait…

The introduction further looks at the paucity of archive sources on the story, and makes the important point that he will refer to it in the book as “Series C” to distinguish between it and the first episode, whose title is “The Edge of Destruction”.

The first chapter, “Part One – On the Edge” looks in detail at what we know about the commissioning, writing and recording of the story, deflating a couple of the myths that have circulated about it in fannish circles.

The second chapter, “Part Two – Beyond the Brink” proposes Guerrier’s first five theories about the story: 1) that it is weird by design of the cast and producers, 2) that the show-runners had decided already to make it a show about alien beings; 3) that the TARDIS manipulating the minds of the crew is a metaphor for TV affecting its audience; 4) that the scientific basis of the story is relatively sound; and 5) that the story was written with a view to reinforcing the continuation of Doctor Who as a show.

The third chapter’s title is “Part Three – Inside the Spaceship”. Its second paragraph is:

The camera script for ‘The Edge of Destruction’ suggests that David Whitaker intended to exploit and adapt this existing space, but not to add an extra room to the TARDIS. Although Scene 2 is headed ‘Int. The Girls’ Bedroom’, stage directions immediately after this say, ‘Susan now has a medical box open on the table in the living quarters’, so the bedroom was intended to be part of that pre-existing space. Stage directions continue that, ‘If possible one of the circular wall pieces should be open as if it is a cupboard.’ Then, in Scene 6, Ian also ‘goes to one of the walls. He presses a switch and three of the circular wall pieces descend and a wall bed is revealed.’ The implication is that Whitaker envisaged the living quarters – even the whole TARDIS control room – as a kind of bedsit: a single space with multiple functions. (He had form in this; on 30 September 1963 he agreed to rework the scripts of The Daleks to combine sets wherever practical to reduce their overall number1.)
1 Christopher Barry, ‘Special effects in connexion with Dr Who 2nd story’, 30 September 1963, WAC T5/648/1 General B.

Here Guerrier proposes another five theories: 6) it’s the last time for a while that we see much of the inside of the TARDIS; 7) the roundels are meant to convey the thickness and robustness of the walls and door; 8) the crew were meant to have assigned positions for take-off; 9) the TARDIS is lusting for the heat of the Sun; and 10) if the TARDIS had changed shape, the protruding lock would have been a constant feature.

A brief conclusion argues that the oddness of the story is its virtue.

This is my favourite kind of Black Archive, taking a story which is not one of my all time favourites but finding sufficient points of interest in it to make me think more about the story itself, the art of story-telling on television, and Doctor Who. You can get it here.

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Massacre (2)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31)
5th Doctor: Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)

Archbishop Treanor’s funeral, and Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait

I attended a big Irish funeral earlier this week. Archbishop Noël Treanor, the Vatican’s diplomatic representative to the EU, died suddenly on 11 August and was buried in St Peter’s cathedral in Belfast, where he had previously been the bishop for many years, last Tuesday. I happen to be in Norn Iron at present and attended, sitting between a retired South Belfast community worker, and the mum of two of the choristers.

I knew Noël from his current and previous roles in Brussels, and we’d had a really excellent lunch at his residence on 12 July (an auspicious date!), my last working day in the office until September. We discussed many things, including ironically enough the Pope’s health (“I saw him just a few weeks ago; our appointment was at 8.30 am and it was his fourth meeting that morning; his mobility may not be great but he’s as sharp mentally as ever and he’ll stay around at least until the Synod has concluded in October”) and the church blessing of same-sex relationships (Noël surprised me by saying, without any prodding from me, that he agreed with the Pope’s positive approach). I looked forward to continuing the conversation on my return to work next month, but, alas, it is not to be.

The funeral was a massive affair, with a full cathedral including dozens of bishops and well over a hundred priests. (“I’ve never seen so many priests!” gasped the lady beside me. “I didn’t realise there were that many left!” I replied. Noël, who was 73, would have been roughly in the middle of the age range of the clergy attending, and younger than most of the bishops.) It ended with Noël being laid to rest in the chapel where two of his predecessors already lie (Patrick Walsh, his immediate predecessor, died only last December). The current bishop, Alan McGuckian, led the service, apart from the committal at the very end which was led by Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister. The ceremony stuck closely to the liturgy that I know so well, but with a lot more ecclesiastical chanting than I am used to (and that’s a fine thing). It was a respectfully and carefully designed occasion; I left feeling that my friendship with Noël, which was warm but not deep, had been given decent closure, and I am sure that everyone in the congregation who knew him felt the same.

Funerary rituals have been around since the dawn of humanity, but it is surprisingly difficult to track down the historical details of death as a cultural phenomenon. Clodagh Tait has tackled Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650 in this short monograph. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

The period of time between a person’s physical demise and the disposal of their corpse is worth close examination, for in the glimpses of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people addressing the fact of the corpse in their midst we can also see them dealing with some of those rather more complicated questions raised by that corpse’s presence among them. The rituals and processes involved are difficult to reconstruct. At this stage the corpse usually was in the hands of family and friends, the focus of procedures which, because they were to contemporaries too ordinary to be documented or remarked upon, let alone explained, become all but invisible when the historian attempts to look at them in any depth.

This is a very dense book, looking in depth at what is known about attitudes to death and the dead in Ireland in the early modern period. Tait is frank about the shortcomings of the source material – the surviving written evidence is mainly about the rich rather than the poor, about English speakers rather than Irish speakers, about adults rather than children. But there is enough to pull together a fascinating cultural and ritual landscape, of corpses and graves being relocated for political reasons, of which relatives you are buried with, of how the afterlife is imagined at a time when Protestants and Catholics were being offered very different future fates.

The struggle over the religious jurisdiction of death would in itself have been enough for a whole book, but it would not have been as good; by leading in with the nuts and bolts of the deathbed, the funeral rites and the monuments, Tait establishes a framework of universal human experience, with an Irish historical hue, in which the denominational squabbles then take place. Many of the old cultural practices around death are lost forever, thanks to industrialisation and modernisation, but enough survives to give us a really interesting glimpse of a society both familiar and alien. You can get it here.

This was the shortest unread book that I acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett.

Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski

Second paragraph of third chapter:

This book exists in large part because trade policy, where selling across borders meets government policy, procedure and regulations, is ludicrously vulnerable to rhetorical handwaving. It can feel, intuitively, like something which just should not be that hard. Fill a container, ship it, maybe pay some taxes at the border, and bing bang boom little Tyler has the new Lego pieces your bare feet will be stepping on in the dark for the next decade.

Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade negotiator, gained prominence during the online Brexit wars as one of the few sensible commentators on international trade. He was particularly good at deflating British government and pro-government chest-beating statements about how they were going to biff the European and ensure future prosperity by better trade with the rest of the world. (You may recall a particularly amusing example when Liz Truss, then trade minister, announced to the media that she was going to give her Australian counterpart a severe finger-wagging, and very soon after Boris Johnson, then prime minister, sat down with the Australian and conceded pretty much everything the Aussies were looking for.)

This book is only tangentially about Brexit and more about the general nuts and bolts of trade negotiations, and perhaps more importantly, how trade negotiation is talked about by political leaders. Grozoubinski regretfully makes the case that the complexity of the subject disincentivises clarity, and politicians therefore are incentivised to downplay the details (or, if you like, “lie”) because i) it’s complicated, ii) they need to disguise their own lack of understanding and iii) it is tempting to claim quick and visible wins when you know that disproving such claims will be tedious and detailed (“if you’re explaining, you’re losing”).

It’s not only government politicians who lie about this. I vividly remember the TTIP wars, when imaginary threats to the NHS and other public services in the EU through the proposed dispute settlement mechanism of the draft treaty were used to undermine a treaty which would have ensured shared regulatory standards on both sides of the Atlantic and locked those in for much of the rest of the world. Some of the people making those arguments probably believed them, but some must have known that they were false. Grozoubinski takes us painstakingly through why any big treaty negotiation is going to look much the same. He explains the reasons for the relative opacity of the process (though by the standards of many international discussions, they are crystal clear), while admitting that a bit more transparency might make the process as a whole an easier public sell.

It’s lucid and self-deprecating, and well worth a read. I’m glad to say that I got an autographed copy in Brussels in June directly from the author. You can get it here.

Tuesday reading

A good week.

Current
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato
Carrie, by Stephen King

Last books finished
The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein
Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski 
Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson
The Edge of Destruction, by Simon Guerrier
Lydia, by Paula Goode (did not finish)
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis
Imagining Ireland’s Independence, by Jason K. Knick
The Wonderful Visit, by H. G. Wells
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
Comparing Electoral Systems, by David M. Farrell

Next books
Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse

Doctor Who: Kerblam! by Pete McTighe

I wrote up Kerblam! in detail in April last year, after reading the Black Archive volume about the story, so I don’t feel the need to do so again; to repeat my key point, I did not much like Kerblam!, and thought it one of the weakest stories of Jodie Whittaker’s first season. However, since then, the novelisation of the story by its original writer, Pete McTighe, has been published. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:

This malaise had started some time ago – strange sensations that Max couldn’t quite comprehend but now understood to be ‘confusion’ and ‘pain’. Over time, the feelings had grown in potency, and morphed into something else. A sickness. A deep-set anger, boiling from within. What was the word for it? Yes, that’s right … Hate.

I felt that the novelisation redeemed the story in a way that the Black Archive didn’t. Giving a lot more background detail about the characters and the universe made the narrative much fuller and more credible; the punchline, that the computer itself is sentient and crying for help, is given away much earlier in the book, which gives the story much more time to fill out the details. It still doesn’t give the Doctor and her companions much to do, but it is one of the (surprisingly rare) cases where a flawed TV story has a fair number of those flaws corrected on the page. You can get it here.

Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Leeson / Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, by Julie Peakman

Second paragraph of third chapter of Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Leeson:

For some time after I came to Dublin, my body was weak, my health very precarious, and my spirits heavily oppressed. Pleasures seemed to have lost their exhilarating effect, and I experienced a kind of lethargy of the mind. In short, I fell into a state, the most destructive to virtue that possibly can be. It is when the heart is replete with sorrow and languor, that is most susceptible of love. In the midst of a round of amusements, each equally engaging, and a train of admirers the giddy female gives neither a preference, and has not leisure to attach herself to either. But when softened, and inactive, the tender passions find easy admission, and the comforter, and consoler soon becomes the favoured lover—such was my case.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore:

While Dardis continued to visit Peg when he could, she was lonely and missed her family. She confessed, ‘I was oppressed with anxiety, and could neither look back with remorse, nor forward without apprehension of what might follow.’ Her biggest concern was what her sisters and father might be making of her disappearance. She had fled he sister’s house telling no one where she was going and had left behind all her clothes. Anxious about the distress she was causing her family, she pleaded with Dardis to try and find out what they knew of her situation.

I picked up Julie Peakman’s book about Peg Plunkett, 18th century Dublin courtesan, off a remainder pile a few years ago, and thought I should prepare myself for it by reading the original memoirs, published in 1795-97 and available for free here, among other places.

Peg’s memoir is a tremendously interesting account of what it was like to make your living from sex in the Dublin of 250 years ago. She pulled herself up from a series of failed relationships and set up a brothel on what is now O’Connell Street with her friend Sally Hayes in about 1775; she would have been in her thirties (if we accept the 1742 birthdate proposed by Peakman) and Hayes a bit younger.

She faced a lot of violence from men who felt they should take it into their own hands to punish sex workers just for being sex workers, but interestingly (by her account at least) she managed to get the forces of law and order on her side, and usually won her day in subsequent court cases. She tells these stories with great humour, but it must have been very traumatic.

She does a lot of name-dropping of names that mean nothing to us now, but clearly she was accepted in the highest social circles. She had affairs with at least two of the English governors of Ireland, Charles Manners, the Duke of Rutland, and John Fane, the Earl of Westmorland. She has a hilarious story about being challenged while at the theatre about her affair with the Duke; when hecklers yelled, “Peg, who lay you with last?”,

I with the greatest nonchalance, replied, “MANNERS you black-guards;” this repartee was received with universal plaudits, as the bon mot was astonishingly great, the Duke himself being in the royal box with his divine Duchess, who was observed to laugh immoderately at the whimsical occurrence, for ’tis a known fact, that this most beautiful of woman kind that ever I beheld, never troubled herself about her husband’s intrigues.

Still, it must have been pretty uncomfortable to have her sex life dissected in public like that, and it is impressive that she turns it into a joke. (The unfortunate duke died of alcoholism while still governing Ireland, aged only 33; his ‘divine duchess’ outlived him by more than forty years.)

I picked up Julie Peakman’s book hoping that it would fill in some of the gaps in Peg’s first person account. To what extent can her stories be independently verified by other records? Who is behind the various pseudonyms, such as “Mr. B——r, of Kilkenny [who] shortly after came to be Lord T——s, by his father’s obtaining a very ancient earldom”? How does her narrative fit into the overall analysis public discussions of sexuality and sex work in the English-speaking world in the 18th century?

I’m afraid that I was disappointed. Peakman’s book does resolve some of the pseudonyms, but otherwise doesn’t do much more than reheat and repeat Peg’s narrative for a modern audience; and frankly, Peg’s style is much more entertaining and engaging. I guess that for readers who don’t have access to the original documents, Peakman will do; but as I have found with that other great self-describer of a century later, Fanny Kemble, the original text is far more interesting than any modern re-hashing.

What I’d like to see is an edition of Peg’s memoirs where the blanks are filled in and where we get a decent best-guess timeline and maps showing the geography of the places where she was active. I think that it would sell rather well. Meanwhile you can get Julie Peakman’s book here.

Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis.

The best known books set in each country: Türkiye

See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in the territory of today’s Türkiye. (And I follow the convention that you call people and countries by the name that they wish to be known by.)

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
The IliadHomer464,04928,539
My Name Is RedOrhan Pamuk57,3757,088
SnowOrhan Pamuk47,0517,086
The Bastard of IstanbulElif Shafak 55,9911,894
The Museum of InnocenceOrhan Pamuk33,5232,269
Istanbul: Memories and the CityOrhan Pamuk20,5443,654
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange WorldElif Shafak 65,748999
Birds Without WingsLouis de Bernières15,2912,672

The Iliad is very firmly set in and around the siege of Troy, today’s Hisarlık on the Ionian Sea coast. So I’m giving it this week’s prize. But it’s very encouraging that six of the other seven are by actual Turkish authors, even if there are only two different writers.

I disqualified the following books because less than half of them (much less, in a couple of cases) is set in Türkiye: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides; The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova; Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr; The Forty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak; The Idiot, by Elif Batuman; and The Island of Missing Trees, again by Elif Shafak. (I’m pretty sure that more than half of The Bastard of Istanbul is set in the city, but not 100%.)

When I did this exercise back in 2015, the same three books came out on top for Turkey (as it was then called).

Next up: Germany.

India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan

The Administrator’s Tale, third time around: part one

So, this year was my third time as Hugo Award Administrator, and my sixth year of being involved with the Hugos in general. And it was by far the weirdest.

I was the Hugo Award Administrator in 2017 and 2019; Deputy Hugo Administrator in 2020 and 2022; and WSFS Division Head for a few months in 2021. This involved Worldcons on three different continents – Helsinki (2017), Dublin (2019), New Zealand (2020, though conducted virtually in the end), Washington DC (2021), Chicago (2022) and Glasgow (2024). Each presented their own problems. I’ve written up the 2017 experience here and here, and 2019 here and here, and more briefly 2022 here; 2020 and 2021 were too painful to write up in full, for somewhat different reasons.

I see from my records that my discussions with Esther MacCallum-Stewart, the Glasgow 2024 Chair, about taking on the role of WSFS Division Head began as early as February 2020, though not confirmed until November 2021. I got my team lined up fairly early – Kat Jones as Hugo Administrator from the beginning, with Cassidy as her deputy and Kathryn Duval as my deputy from October 2022, and Laura Martins joining the team also at an early stage. For the other parts of the WSFS Division, Jesi Lipp came on board as Chair of the Business Meeting in September 2022 and Naveed Khan and Thomas Westerberg for Site Selection in April 2023. Bridget Chee also volunteered to wrangle Hugos on the ground in Glasgow. So far, so good.

But several things went very awry in the process. The first of these was software for administering the Hugo voting and counting. This has been the subject of Monday morning quarter-backing from people who are unaware of the constraints under which a Worldcon operates. The first thing to understand is that for the convention, the registration software is critical to the functioning of the entire organisation. The Hugo and Site Selection stuff is a secondary issue, and no matter how hard you may try and push, the fact is that the convention will be embarrassed if the Hugo stuff doesn’t work properly, but will go bust if the registration stuff doesn’t work properly.

For various very good reasons, which I don’t intend to go into here, the Registration software often tends to get largely or completely rewritten for each convention. WSFS’ aim under my watch has generally been to get the Hugo software talking to the registration system and up and running at an early stage in January for nominations and in April for the final ballot. This does not always work. 2020 was the worst case in point, but it’s a bit of a bare knuckle ride every time.

This year, we had an external service provider who did indeed produce a good registration solution. But their Hugo work fell short of expectations, and we had to resort much more hastily than I would have liked to volunteer efforts – a combination of Kansa, the venerable but creaking back-end for tallying nominations written by Eemeli Aro in 2017 and subsequently updated by David Matthewman, and NomNom, a bespoke solution for the front end of nominations and for both ends of the final ballot written specially this year by Chris Rose. This was precious and valuable volunteer time, and I cannot thank them enough.

Even so, the launch of Hugo nominations voting glitched very badly when it turned out that there was a serious software problem linked to the registration system interface that needed to be resolved, and we had to stop the voting a day after it had started and restart several days later. Henry Balen was also crucial to managing the relationship with the software provider at this point.

In the meantime, we faced much bigger reputational problems affecting the Hugos as a whole. I attended Chengdu Worldcon in 2023 and enjoyed a lot of it. But the data from the final ballot vote, released at the start of December, looked distinctly odd. And when the data from the nominations count was released in January, I was dismayed to see that it was clearly very flawed. The numbers simply did not add up, and were clearly not the output of a genuine ballot count.

The other immediate flaw that caught public attention was the disqualification of several finalists without explanation. It has been generally surmised that this was because of overt or implicit censorship from government authorities. I do not know if this is true, but it seems unlikely to me to be the full story. Babel, by R.F. Kuang, which was disqualified from the ballot, actually won a Chinese-organised prize in Chengdu a few months later. On the other hand, John Chu’s story “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You”, which is about a gay relationship in Taiwan, was allowed to stand as a Hugo finalist.

Personally, I am very disappointed with the behaviour of those who led the Hugo administration in 2023. There is no excuse for the breach of trust with voters and nominees, or for the damage that was done to the Hugos as an institution. The lack of transparency around the decisions is an additional reason for frustration, but the basic point is that the vote very deliberately failed to reflect the wishes of voters.

I have reflected on what I might have done if I were in the position of being instructed that certain Hugo nominees were not allowed on the ballot by local law. (NB that it is still not clear that this was what actually happened in 2023.) The Hugos and Worldcon must of course obey local legislation. But I would have wanted very clear professional advice before taking any such steps, preferably advice that could be published. And if put in an ethically difficult position, I like to think that rather than proceed, I would have resigned – as I did under milder circumstances in 2021.

A silly proposal went to this year’s Business Meeting suggesting that there should be a committee performing broad surveillance of how Worldcons choose WSFS software solutions. This is a bad idea. It adds bureaucracy to a fraught process, blurs lines of responsibility, and ignores the big issue for the convention itself (the registration software). If you think that the biggest problem with the 2023 Hugos was quality control of the software, I have a panda sanctuary that I’d like to sell you. But I will co-operate in good faith with the committee that has been set up to look into these things.

Unfortunately as more details came out about what had happened at Chengdu, it became clear that Kat Jones could not continue as 2024 Hugo Administrator and she resigned. After some reflection, I took on the role of Hugo Administrator myself, doubling up on my existing job as WSFS Division Head. I would not in general recommend this; there are good reasons why these two jobs are generally done by two people.

Translation was a big issue. The many WSFS members of Chengdu were all entitled to vote in 2024 Hugo nominations, and we commissioned Sophia Xue (Xue Yongle) from Shanghai to translate all the relevant materials. I had met her, ironically, because of the 2023 Hugo disqualifications, as a result of which she had qualified for the final ballot, and we had had a long chat at the Hugo ceremony in Chengdu. She caught a number of flaws in the Chinese translation of the WSFS Constitution that had been done the previous year.

With Sophia Xue in Chengdu

I have described the work of the Research Team in the Administrators’ Report and elsewhere. It was essential to the exercise. We had to disqualify three potential finalists, all Chinese (though one also qualified in another category) and another five declined nomination, a couple of them rather late in the process. There were some other tricky calls – Astounding finalists with self-published early work, tallying votes for two of the three volumes of a non-fiction nominee. Northanger Abbey was not a tricky call, but I included it in the final report for amusement.

The Chinese arm of our research team, Regina Kanyu Wang and Arthur Liu

I had had high hopes of producing a video announcing the final ballot with a professional production company and a well-known Scottish actor. The costs, however, were simply unfeasible, so we ended up with a video of self-recorded announcements by various speakers, prefaced with an introduction filmed by my son of me at the Atomium, north of Brussels, which is as science fictional a backdrop as you can get in our part of the world.

I was particularly pleased that we managed to get Geoffrey Gernsback, the oldest great-grandson of Hugo Gernsback, after whom the Hugos are named, as one of the announcers. He supplied us with a photograph of himself as a baby with his great-grandfather. Assembling the whole thing was a mammoth task accomplished without visible seams by Meg McDonald and James Turner.

Looking at the categories, ten out of twenty included Chinese finalists writing in Chinese and ten did not, so we decided to ask Sophia Xue to read the names of the former while I did the latter. (We then used the same audio for the ceremony, which startled me when I heard my own voice booming into the auditorium.)

We also held a town hall meeting for the Hugo finalists a couple of days before the announcement was made, partly for transparency but also to help finalists to make the most of their nomination status in local media.

People sometimes ask why we do not open voting on the Hugo final ballot as soon as it is announced. The simple fact is that there is not enough time. As noted above, we had a couple of very late withdrawals. Better to do the last coding twiddles when we know that the candidates are settled. We did the announcement at Eastercon on the Friday evening, including also details of those who had declined or were disqualified, and posed with those finalists who were present.

At Eastercon we also unveiled Sara Felix’ tartan rocket:

I should mention also the Hugo Helpdesk team, led by Terry Neill backed up by Rosemary Parks, and the Hugo Packet team consisting of Dave Gallaher, Jed Hartman and Scott Bobo, who ensured important elements of the user experience. The Packet in particular needs perhaps a bit more attention from WSFS as a whole; it is an important element of voter expectations, but is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

I am out of chronological order here, because an early and easy decision in the entire process was to commission Iain Clark to design the trophy base. In general I prefer to go to known creators; running a competition absorbs time both from artists and administrators. Iain’s design is simple and pleasing, and leaves no doubt about the geography of the convention.

Hugo voting ended on 20 July, 55 years to the minute after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stepped on the Moon. I was on a plane from Munich to Brussels at the time: my flight from Los Angeles the previous day had got delayed landing and I had to argue my case for Lufthansa to get me home that night. I landed knowing that we had more issues to deal with.

In about two thirds of the categories, an early lead was established by the eventual winner. We watched the inflow of votes for the rest with interest. In early June we became aware of something unusual – a particular finalist, who we will call Finalist A, was picking up something like ten nominations each day, at a time when most others were picking up just a couple. On closer examination it became clear that almost all of Finalist A’s votes were coming from newly purchased memberships, which were behaving quite unlike memberships controlled by real people. We took no immediate action – as Napoleon said, never interrupt the other side when they are making a mistake – but as history records, we disqualified 377 of those votes, and Finalist A therefore did not win in their category.

My hypothesis, based on the data that I have, is that a well-resourced fan of Finalist A hired a ‘vote farm’ to get a Hugo for their favourite creator. A notice was published in some public or semi-public online or meatspace forum, inviting people to make a quick buck by buying a Glasgow 2024 membership and sending the sponsor proof that they had voted for Finalist A. The sponsor then paid their money back plus a bonus. The greedier ones put in multiple memberships in alphabetical sequence, or in one case giving names which were translations of the numbers from 13 to 17.

For reasons which should be obvious, I am being circumspect about the precise details. I don’t want to make it easier for the next person who decides to do this. I do want to emphasise that the evidence points against Finalist A being involved or knowing about this in any way. I should also add that I have briefed and will brief future Hugo administration teams at greater length.

No other outcome was changed by the disqualification of the 377 votes – actually a couple of close finishes in other categories were widened. We found that disqualifying votes in NomNom is a rather tedious activity, which is just as well – it forces you to be absolutely certain that you are getting it right.

Out of time for today; coming soon, my experience of the convention itself.

Continued here.

Warmonger, by Terrance Dicks

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Hakon shook his head. ‘This is a piece of personal initiative on my part.’ He glared at the guards. ‘Now, shoot them. That’s a direct order.’

This is a really surprising Doctor Who novel from Terrance Dicks, a writer who one doesn’t normally associate with the word “surprising”. It’s a prequel to The Brain of Morbius, but set later in the Doctor’s timeline – Peri is injured one a random planet that they happen to be visiting, so the Fifth Doctor takes her to Mehendri Solon earlier in his career to get fixed up. The two get separated, of course, and the Doctor finds himself the military commander of a grand alliance of improbable partners against Morbius, while Peri leads guerilla resistance planetside. There is a lot about war and military strategy and tactics, and one feels Dicks perhaps working through themes that he was never quite able to explore in his other work – though of course he was the co-author of The War Games. This is a very different Fifth Doctor and Peri to those we are used to, and diehard fans may want to read it as an alternate timeline. But I must say I enjoyed it, and you can get it here (for a price).

I was sufficiently intrigued by all of this to check out Dicks’ own military career. According to his obituaries, he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge and then did two years of National Service with the Royal Fusiliers. He was born in 1935, and National Service was abolished from 1957 to 1960, so he must have been in one of the last cohorts to do it, probably in 1956-58. My own father, born in 1928, told me that he had thought he could have been exempted by being from Northern Ireland, but then discovered that to get a job in England he needed to have done it (indeed he reminisced about how someone told him this at a party, ruining the evening).

Two years in the forces don’t make you an expert on military history, but 1956-58 saw the Suez crisis, the intensification of the EOKA campaign in Cyprus, the climax of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the IRA’s underwhelming border campaign, and the independence of Ghana and Malaysia. From the law of averages, Dicks must have been involved with at least one of these, even if only peripherally, and I guess it gave him some thoughts that he worked out 45 year later in this book.

Next in this series of reading: Grave Matter, by Justin Richards.

Dangerous Waters and Darkening Skies, by Juliet E. McKenna

(By the way, I am completely offline today, which will probably do me good.)

Second paragraph of third chapter of Dangerous Waters:

His casual gesture indicated the smirking man at his side.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Darkening Skies:

Jilseth had always been awe-struck by the Archmage’s talents. A stone mage by birth, hs instinctive affinity was with the soil and rock. Yet he had such effortless control over all the magics of fire, water and even of the air, the element most opposed to his own. There couldn’t be more than a handful of other wizards in this whole city so dedicated to the study and perfecting of magic who could work a scrying spell combined with a clairaudience.

These are the first two of the Hadrumal Crisis series, which I got from the author back in 2018. As usual, intensely detailed secondary world, where a rogue magician troubles the mages and corsairs trouble respectable coastal folks, with it gradually becoming clear how the two plot lines intertwine. Both are very long (well over 500 pages) but I found myself carried along by the narrative. The central characters, Jilseth the young woman mage and battle-hardened warrior Corrain, are especially well drawn. You can get Dangerous Waters here and Darkening Skies here.

These were the sf books that had lingered longest unread on my shelves (sorry Jools). Next on that pile is Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy (sorry Catie).

Companion Piece, by Ali Smith

Second paragraph of third section:

It’s comparatively quite a recent word. But like everything in language it has deep roots.

Another of Smith’s brilliant short novels, set very firmly during the latter days of COVID (it’s funny how few novels there are that use that setting), with a protagonist who finds an acquaintance from student days coming back into her life, along with complex family; and various low-stakes mysteries that need to be solved. I loved it – I think it catches a slice of our lives very well. You can get it here.

Tuesday reading

Well, Worldcon has taken its toll on my reading this week. However, a 24-hour boat journey with no internet looms in my immediate future, so there will be a longer list next week.

Current
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski 
Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait

Last book finished
Doctor Who: Kerblam!, by Pete McTighe

Next books
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato

The Sapling: Growth, by Rob Williams et al

Second frame of third part:

Next in the sequence of Eleventh Doctor comics, this keeps Alice, the Doctor’s librarian companion from the previous two sequences, and introduces the mysterious Sapling, a young sapient tree which is at the centre of a mystery that needs to be solved. Some very good story concepts, the first half involving a weirdly stereotypically British planet and a Silent that even other Silents cannot see, and the second half involving one of Alice’s neighbours who has unaccountably become multiply duplicated. A good start. You can get it here.

The Sky at Night Book of the Moon, by Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Second paragraph of third chapter:

It’s the classic Monty Python question; I mean what has it done for us? We all have a vague notion that it gives us the tides, but how else can a ball of rock in space help us here on Earth?

The astronomer Maggie Aderin-Pocock has been one of the presenters of the BBC astronomy TV programme The Sky at Night for ten years, following in the footsteps of Patrick Moore. I’m afraid it’s generally on too late for me to watch, but I read this book with much interest, having read Patrick Moore’s classic Guide to the Moon forty years ago.

Moving with the times, it’s a very approachable combination of autobiography, science and culture, with the second quarter of the book looking at the history of lunar observation and at literature inspired by the moon. There’s not much about the Apollo landings – you can find plenty of information about them elsewhere – but there’s a lot about the research findings of what is on and inside the Moon.

But the guts of the book are to explore the effect that the moon has on us – both culturally and scientifically. Aderin-Pocock’s approach is that curiosity about the moon is a gateway drug that may lead readers into more research on science. It’s tightly and breezily written, and recommended. You can get it here.

2024 Hugos in a bit more detail

Headlines:

3813 final ballots were received (3808 electronic, 5 paper). As we announced on 23 July 2024, we had to disqualify 377 of these which were not cast by natural persons. We did count the remaining 3436, which is the third highest final ballot vote ever.

1720 nominating ballots were received (1715 electronic, 5 paper), the eighth highest nominations vote ever.

The winner of Best Semiprozine was decided by a margin of 6 votes, and the winners of Best Professional Artis and Best Fancast by margins of 7. These were the closest results among winners.

At lower placings, there were ties for 3rd place in the Astounding Award, and for 5th place in the Best Graphic Story or Comic category, and 4th place in the Best Graphic Story or Comic category was decided by a margin of one vote.

The most decisive contest was for Best Game or Interactive Experience, where the winner got 42.7% of the first preferences and won on the fourth count, with three other finalists still in the race.

In five categories, the finalist with the second highest number of first preferences won after transfers. In two categories, the finalist with the third highest number of first preferences won after transfers.

In ten out of twenty categories, the winner had also topped the poll at nominations stage. In four categories, the winner placed second at the nominations stage; in three the winner had placed third at nominations, in two the winner was fourth and in one case the winner was the second last to qualify.

The last place on the ballot in the following categories was decided by a single vote: Best Related Work, Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, Best Fanzine, Best Fan Artist.

The last place on the ballot in the following categories was decided by a margin of two votes: Best Short Story, Best Professional Artist, Best Semiprozine.

Full details linked from here.

In detail:

Best Novel

  1. Some Desperate Glory by 71 votes ahead of Translation State.
  2. Translation State ahead of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
  3. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi ahead of Witch King
  4. Witch King ahead of The Saint of Bright Doors
  5. The Saint of Bright Doors ahead of Starter Villain
  6. Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK)

Some Desperate Glory also topped nominations by EPH points, though in fact Translation State had the most votes. Martha Wells declined for System Collapse, and its replacement Cosmo Wings was not eligible. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz missed the ballot by only 3 votes.

This category had the most nominating votes, and the joint fewest first preference votes for No Award on the final ballot.

Best Novella

  1. Thornhedge by 112 votes ahead of Seeds of Mercury
  2. Mammoths at the Gates by 3 votes ahead of Seeds of Mercury
  3. Seeds of Mercury by 12 votes ahead of The Mimicking of Known Successes
  4. The Mimicking of Known Successes ahead of Rose/House
  5. Rose/House ahead of Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet
  6. Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet

Seeds of Mercury had the most first preferences, but lost on transfers.

The Mimicking of Known Successes was narrowly ahead of Thornhedge for nomination votes. Untethered Sky, by Fonda Lee, missed the ballot by twelve votes.

This category had the most final ballot votes, and the joint fewest first preference votes for No Award on the final ballot.

Best Novelette

  1. The Year Without Sunshine by 312 votes ahead of Ivy, Angelica, Bay
  2. One Man’s Treasure by 2 votes ahead of Ivy, Angelica, Bay
  3. Ivy, Angelica, Bay ahead of On the Fox Roads
  4. On the Fox Roads by Nghi Vo way ahead of the other two
  5. I AM AI by Ai Jiang ahead of Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition
  6. Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition

The Far North was way ahead on nominations, but the author, Hai Ja, declined. The Year Without Sunshine was way ahead of the rest. Science Facts, by Sarah Pinsker, needed 8 more votes, or in excess of 4.00 more points, to get on the ballot.

Best Short Story

  1. Better Living Through Algorithms won on the fifth count, with How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub and The Mausoleum’s Children still in the race
  2. How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub ahead of The Mausoleum’s Children
  3. The Mausoleum’s Children ahead of The Sound of Children Screaming
  4. The Sound of Children Screaming ahead of Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times
  5. Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times ahead of Answerless Journey
  6. Answerless Journey

Answerless Journey, which came sixth on the final ballot, topped the nominations ballot. The winner, Better Living Through Algorithms, came third. Day Ten Thousand, by Isabel J. Kim, needed 2 more votes to get on the ballot.

This category had the most nominees; the lowest percentage of nominating votes for the top qualifying finalist; the joint fewest first preference votes for No Award on the final ballot; and the lowest percentage for No Award in the runoff.

Best Series

  1. Imperial Radch by 516 votes ahead of October Daye
  2. The Final Architecture ahead of October Daye
  3. The Laundry Files ahead of October Daye
  4. October Daye ahead of The Universe of Xuya
  5. The Universe of Xuya ahead of The Last Binding
  6. The Last Binding

Imperial Radch topped nominations as well, just ahead of The Universe of Xuya. The Craft Sequence, by Max Gladstone, needed 18 more votes to get on the ballot.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

  1. Saga, Vol. 11, by 88 votes ahead of The Three Body Problem
  2. Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons ahead of The Three Body Problem
  3. Bea Wolf ahead of The Three Body Problem
  4. The Three Body Problem by 1 vote ahead of Shubeik Lubeik
  5. tie between Shubeik Lubeik and The Witches of World War II

The Three Body Problem had the most first preferences, but lost on transfers.

The Three Body Problem was way in front at the nomination stage, with Saga, Vol. 11 second on EPH points but only fourth in actual votes. Why Don’t You Love Me?, by Paul B. Rainey, needed 9 more votes to get on the ballot.

This category saw the winner with the fewest first preference votes.

Best Related Work

  1. A City on Mars by 39 votes ahead of The Culture: The Drawings
  2. The Culture: The Drawings ahead of A Traveller in Time
  3. A Traveller in Time ahead of Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History v2-3
  4. All These Worlds ahead of the rest
  5. Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History, vols 2 and 3 ahead of Discover X
  6. Discover X

Discover X was far ahead at nominations, with the most votes in any category, and rather unusually got fewer votes in the final ballot. A City on Mars was fifth on nominations, after Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood withdrew. Making It So, by Patrick Stewart, needed 1 more vote to get on the ballot.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

  1. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves by 49 votes ahead of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
  2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ahead of Barbie
  3. Barbie ahead of Nimona
  4. Nimona ahead of Poor Things
  5. Poor Things ahead of The Wandering Earth II
  6. The Wandering Earth II

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the most first preferences, but lost on transfers.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was also well in the lead at nominations stage. Godzilla Minus One needed 1 more vote to qualify for the ballot.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

  1. The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time” by 18 votes ahead of Those Old Scientists
  2. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “Those Old Scientists”, ahead of Glorious Purpose
  3. Loki: “Glorious Purpose”, ahead of Subspace Rhapsody
  4. Doctor Who: “The Giggle”, ahead of Subspace Rhapsody
  5. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “Subspace Rhapsody”, ahead of Wild Blue Yonder
  6. Doctor Who: “Wild Blue Yonder”

Long, Long Time was also far ahead at nominations. Doctor Who: “The Church on Ruby Road” needed 8.8 more points to get on the ballot.

Best Game or Interactive Work

  1. Baldur’s Gate 3, far ahead of the field
  2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ahead of Chants of Sennaar
  3. Chants of Sennaar ahead of DREDGE
  4. DREDGE ahead of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
  5. Alan Wake 2 ahead of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
  6. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Baldur’s Gate 3 was also far ahead of the field at nominations stage. Stray Gods needed 6 more bullet votes to qualify for the ballot. No Award got the highest number of first preference in this category.

Best Editor Short Form

  1. Neil Clarke by 100 votes ahead of Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
  2. Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas ahead of Jonathan Strahan 
  3. Jonathan Strahan ahead of Yang Feng
  4. Scott H. Andrews by 9 votes ahead of Yang Feng
  5. Yang Feng ahead of Liu Weijia
  6. Liu Weijia

Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas had the most first preferences, but lost on transfers.

Yang Feng was way ahead in nominations, and Liu Weijia well ahead of the rest. Nisi Shawl needed 8 more votes worth 3.34 points to get on the ballot.

This was the category in which No Award got the fewest votes in the runoff.

Best Editor Long Form

  1. Ruoxi Chen by 38 votes ahead of Lee Harris
  2. Lee Harris ahead of Yao Haijun
  3. Lindsey Hall ahead of Yao Haijun
  4. Yao Haijun ahead of Kelly Lonesome
  5. Kelly Lonesome by 14 votes ahead of David Thomas Moore
  6. David Thomas Moore

Lee Harris topped nominations, with Ruoxi Chen second. Natasha Bardon declined nomination. Gillian Redfearn needed 5 more votes worth 2.86 points to get on the ballot.

This was the category where No Award got its highest vote share in the runoff.

Best Professional Artist

  1. Rovina Cai by 7 votes ahead of Alyssa Winans
  2. Alyssa Winans ahead of Micaela Alcaino
  3. Galen Dara by 3 votes ahead of Micaela Alcaino
  4. Micaela Alcaino ahead of Dan Dos Santos
  5. Tristan Elwell by 7 votes ahead of Dan Dos Santos
  6. Dan Dos Santos

Alyssa Winans had the most first preferences, but lost on transfers.

Alyssa Winans was far ahead on nominations here, with Rovina Cai third in votes and fourth in EPH points. Feifei Ruan needed 2 more votes worth 1.08 points to get on the ballot.

Best Semiprozine

  1. Strange Horizons by 6 votes ahead of Uncanny Magazine, the closest result of the night.
  2. Uncanny Magazine ahead of FIYAH Literary Magazine
  3. FIYAH Literary Magazine ahead of Escape Pod
  4. Escape Pod ahead of the field
  5. khōréō ahead of GigaNotoSaurus
  6. GigaNotoSaurus

Uncanny Magazine had the most first preferences, but lost on transfers.

Strange Horizons was far ahead at nominations. Interzone needed 2 more votes to qualify for the ballot.

Best Fanzine

  1. Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together by 17 votes ahead of Journey Planet
  2. Black Nerd Problems ahead of Journey Planet
  3. Journey Planet ahead of Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog
  4. Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog ahead of Idea
  5. Idea by 8 votes ahead of The Full Lid
  6. The Full Lid

Black Nerd Problems had the most first preferences here, and Journey Planet the second most, with Nerds of a Feather coming from third place to win.

Nerds of a Feather had the most votes at nominations stage, but Journey Planet had the most EPH points. Zero Gravity News needed 0.5 more points to get on the ballot.

This was the category whose winner had the fewest first preference votes.

Best Fancast

  1. Octothorpe by 7 votes ahead of Worldbuilding for Masochists
  2. Worldbuilding for Masochists by 6 votes ahead of The Coode Street Podcast
  3. The Coode Street Podcast ahead of Publishing Rodeo
  4. Hugos There by 18 votes ahead of Publishing Rodeo
  5. Publishing Rodeo ahead of Science Fiction Fans Buma
  6. Science Fiction Fans Buma

Discover X and Diu Diu Sci Fi Radio both got far more nominating votes than anyone else, but both are professional productions so were not eligible. Octothorpe got far more than any of the rest. Hugo, Girl! needed 8.33 more points to get on the ballot.

This was the category with fewest nominees, and the category where fewest final ballot votes were cast.

Best Fan Writer

  1. Paul Weimer by 114 votes ahead of Jason Sanford
  2. Jason Sanford ahead of Bitter Karella
  3. Bitter Karella ahead of Alasdair Stuart
  4. Alasdair Stuart ahead of James Davis Nicoll
  5. James Davis Nicoll ahead of Örjan Westin
  6. Örjan Westin

Paul Weimer was far ahead at nominations. Camestros Felapton withdrew. Alex Brown needed 3 more votes worth 1.75 points to qualify for the ballot.

This was the category where No Award had its best percentage share of first preference votes.

Best Fan Artist

  1. Laya Rose by 57 votes ahead of Sara Felix
  2. Iain J. Clark ahead of Sara Felix
  3. Sara Felix ahead of Dante Luiz
  4. Dante Luiz ahead of the rest
  5. Alison Scott ahead of España Sheriff
  6. España Sheriff

Iain J. Clarke and Sara Felix led nominations, with Laya Rose third on EPH points and fourth on votes. Yuumei needed 0.8 more points to qualify for the ballot.

This was the category with the fewest nominating votes, and therefore also the category where the top nominee got fewest votes.

Lodestar Award for Best YA Book

  1. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by 42 votes ahead of Liberty’s Daughter
  2. Liberty’s Daughter ahead of The Sinister Booksellers of Bath
  3. The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by 11 votes ahead of Abeni’s Song
  4. Unraveller by 3 votes ahead of Abeni’s Song
  5. Abeni’s Song ahead of Promises Stronger than Darkness
  6. Promises Stronger than Darkness

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath and Promises Stronger than Darkness led nominations. Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle, needed 10 more votes worth 6.05 points to qualify for the ballot.

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (sponsored by Dell Magazines)

  1. Xiran Jay Zhao by 159 votes ahead of Moniquill Blackgoose
  2. Moniquill Blackgoose ahead of Ai Jiang
  3. tie between Sunyi Dean and Ai Jiang
  4. Hannah Kaner ahead of Em X. Liu
  5. Em X. Liu

It was very close at the top here in nominations, with Sunyi Dean getting the most votes, just ahead of Moniquill Blackgoose and Ai Jiang, who were just ahead of Xiran Jay Zhao. On EPH points, Blackgoose was top, Jiang second and Dean third, with Zhao fourth again. Bethany Jacobs needed in excess of 3.33 more EPH points, or 12 more votes, to qualify for the ballot.

This was the category where No Award got most votes in the runoff.

And now for next year…

The best known books set in each country: Iran

I’m posting this on Saturday this week because my Hugos post will go up tomorrow (though not until after the official announcements). See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in Iran.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (vol 1 of 2)Marjane Satrapi212,2888,651
Reading Lolita in TehranAzar Nafisi 135,27613,103
The Complete PersepolisMarjane Satrapi186,2466,989
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (vol 2 of 2)Marjane Satrapi75,9914,214
Ruba’iyatOmar Khayyám21,6725,246
Not Without My DaughterBetty Mahmoody35,4191,827
EmbroideriesMarjane Satrapi28,1131,960
Persepolis, Volume 1 (of the original four)Marjane Satrapi90,763554

Well, I’ve had cases where a single author dominates literary perception of a country, but this is the first time that I’ve had four slightly different versions of the same work in the top eight. And I must say I agree; Persepolis is an outstanding artistic achievement, and probably the first half of it is the crown. Also it’s nice that seven out of eight of these books are by actual Iranians.

I disqualified House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III, because it is set in the USA. But I let Persepolis 2 through because just under half of the book (the original part 3) is set in Austria and just over half (the original part 4) back in Iran.

I also allowed the Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam as being mainly set in Iran. Omar Khayyam may not have written all of the poems that are now attributed to him, but he was a very real Persian statesman, scientist and writer, and there are plenty of Iranian cultural references in the poems, which are told from a first-person perspective.

So we end up with five graphic novels (OK, two graphic novels, one of them in four different versions), two first-person factual accounts and one work of poetry. Not bad.

Next up: Türkiye.

India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan

L’Affaire Tournesol / The Calculus Affair, by Hergé

Second frame of third page:

Tintin: We’re home again, and none too soon, either!
Captain Haddock: The telephone, Nestor.
(translation by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner)

This is one of the great Tintin albums: a simple story in which our hero and Captain Haddock go to the rescue of their friend Professor Calculus (Tournesol in the original French) who has been kidnapped by the agents of an Eastern European dictatorship. There’s lots of exciting action through the streets of Geneva and the Swiss and Balkan countrysides, with a climax in the opera house with the great Bianca Castafiore; there’s also comic relief in the form of Thompson and Thomson, the professor’s complete deafness, and the insurance salesman Jolyon Wagg (Séraphin Lampion in French) who invites himself to become Captain Haddock’s friend and house guest while he is away.

Most of the art is close up framing of our heroes, but Hergé throws in a couple of big picture panels. Here is a crown of rubberneckers gathering outside Marlinspike, to Captain Haddock’s annoyance.

Hergé has actually put himself in there at the bottom right, as the man in the crowd with a drawing pad drawing the crowd. He didn’t do that very often.

It was great fun to revisit this, and you can get it here in English and here in French.

This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next up is the first volume of Bellatrix, Leo’s latest series.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, by Dale Smith (and Stephen Wyatt)

I caught the last episode of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy on first broadcast in 1988; when I watched the whole story for the first time in 2008, the last story of Old Who that I watched first time round, I wrote:

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is not a bad end to the season (and indeed to my watching all of Old Who). It looks generally good, and performances are all pretty convincing. I did once again find myself wondering about the means and motivation of the villains, in this case the Gods of Ragnarok; and I was left a bit confused by how the Psychic Circus fitted into the planetary society (and also a bit confused by the ending). But it was all fairly watchable. Now I can go back and do it all again.

When I came back to it for my Great Rewatch in 2011, I wrote:

And finally for this run, once again I enjoyed The Greatest Show In The Galaxy more than I was expecting to. The storyline is awfully simple – the Psychic Circus as a deathtrap set by ancient powerful beings, the Doctor and Ace trying to escape from it and destroy it – and there is therefore an awful lot of circular plotting before the dénouement, but somehow the extra bits tacked on to the plot all add to it. A particular cheer for T.P. McKenna’s fraudulent Captain Cook as a parody of the show’s central character, and the earnest fan played by Adrian Mole Gian Sammarco who finds that the object of his fascination is a fatal obsession; but Jessica Martin and Chris Drury are excellent too, and the whole thing just looks so much better than we were getting two years ago (or even one year ago). Let’s hope they can keep up the standards for a few more years.

What struck me this time round was how symbolic it all is. The story seems somehow not very concerned with creating a convincing secondary world, but instead with managing the characters in a particular plot and emotional space. And yet it gets away with it.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Stephen Wyatt’s novelisation of his own script is:

‘There’s something not quite right about all this,’ the Doctor mused.

When I read it in 2008, I wrote:

Wyatt’s book is not really an improvement on the TV original. Shorn of (for once) decent production values and the compelling performances of the actors, the holes in the plot and clunky scene-setting are more apparent, and Wyatt, having written a TV script, is reduced to reporting what we saw on screen without being able to add much to it. Fails the Bechdel test – each female character is rigidly paired off with a male, and on the rare occasions that they converse it is always about one of the men (usually the Doctor).

Nothing to add too that, sixteen years later. You can get it here.

Dale Smith wrote the punchy Black Archive on The Talons of Weng Chiang which I reviewed a few months ago; he has also written a Tenth Doctor novel that I liked and a Seventh Doctor novel that I didn’t. Here he has done what some of the best Black Archives have done, by taking a story that I had not really thought about very much and making me think about it a lot more, the thoughts going in some unexpected directions. He has also blogged about the process of writing it.

The opening chapter, “What Did You Say Your Name Was?” looks at the over production situation on Doctor who at the time the story was made and draws many parallels about what we see on screen and what was happening behind the cameras.

The second chapter, “Tears of a Clown”, looks at clowns in general and why Ace is right to be scared of them.

The third chapter, “Let There Be Rock”, looks at quarries, and then slides into an argument that the comics artist Alan Moore is a formative and pervasive influence on Andrew Cartmel’s era of Doctor Who. Its second chapter is:

This view of quarries is certainly reflected in Cartmel’s era on the show: outside of season 24 – where one story featured three separate quarries but Cartmel had limited ability to course-correct – only three stories featured quarries, and only two used them as alien planets3. Of those two stories – The Greatest Show and Survival – both used Warmwell Quarry in Dorset. Part of this was the simple reason that only these two stories featured any significant time spent on alien worlds, as Cartmel’s realisation that the BBC could do period drama very well led him to move the show to more Earthly settings. But that shift didn’t result in Doctor Who becoming completely studio-based: the production team settled into alternating between studio-based and location-based stories for the rest of their run, with The Greatest Show being intended to be studio-based until circumstances forced a rethink.

3 Doctor Who Locations Guide, ‘Season Twenty-Four’, ‘Season Twenty-Five’, ‘Season Twenty-Six’. The third was Battlefield (1989), which used the Castle Cement Quarry in Kettleton for pyrotechnics work when Ancelyn crashes into a hill on arrival, presumably on the grounds that quarries are less concerned about things blowing up than Rutland Water.

The fourth chapter, “Fingerprints of the Gods”, looks at the role of magic in Doctor Who, particularly in the Cartmel era.

The fifth chapter, “Forward”, is sheer but entertaining self-indulgence on Smith’s part; it takes the history of Doctor Who, the history of hip-hop, and finds parallels between them despite the rather imperfect rapping delivered by Ross Ricco as the Ringmaster. It is unusual subject matter for a book on Doctor Who, but Smith succeeds in making the case.

A Black Archive that I like more than the story it is about. You can get it here.

Incidentally the Seventh Doctor is the first Doctor to have more than half his stories and episodes covered by Black Archives. (Apart from the special cases of the Eighth Doctor and the Shalka!Doctor.)

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Massacre (2)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31)
5th Doctor: Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)

Who Runs the World?, by Virginia Bergin

Second paragraph of third chapter:

That’s not a word I often hear.

This won the Tiptree Award (now the Otherwise Award) in 2018. It’s a short book about a post-apocalypse future England, in a world where most human men have died of a gender-specific virus and the survivors live in secret reservations, while women get on with running civilisation. Our protagonist is a teenager who has no idea that men are still around; she meets a teenage boy who has fled his reservation, and finds out more about her society than she expected to. I see a lot of very unenthusiastic reviews of this book online, but I rather liked it; I think I can see what the author was trying to do. You can get it here.

The Tiptree Award shortlist included a short story, five novels and one duology. The only one I have read is An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen.

The BSFA Award that year was won by The Rift, by Nina Allan; the Clarke Award was won by Dreams Before the Start of Time, by Anne Charnock, which was also on the BSFA ballot. (I wrote both up here.) The Hugo and Nebula both went to The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin.

The following year the Tiptree Award (as it still was) went to a short story, “They Will Dream in the Garden” by Gabriela Damián Miravete, so that will be next in this sequence.

Tuesday reading

Current
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski
Doctor Who: Kerblam!, by Pete McTighe
Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait

Last books finished
Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Leeson
The Sky at Night Book of the Moon, by Maggie Aderin-Pocock
The Sapling: Growth, by Rob Williams et al
Companion Piece, by Ali Smith
Darkening Skies, by Juliet E. McKenna
Warmonger, by Terrance Dicks
Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, by Julie Peakman (did not finish)

Next books
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato

Since I am spending most of the next week at Worldcon, I doubt that next Tuesday’s list will be as long!