The offices for KPS the name of the organization on the card Tom gave me were on Thirty-seventh, in the same building as the Costa Rican consulate, on the fifth floor. The office apparently shared a waiting room with a small medical practice. I had been in the waiting room for less than a minute when Avella came to get me to take me to her personal office. There was no one else in the KPS office. I guess they, like most everyone else, were working from home.
Very readable and engaging story which I read to the end, a parallel universe with Godzillas; but as usual with Scalzi, all of the characters sound exactly the same (and indeed exactly like Scalzi himself in real life) and the social commentary is paper thin. You can get it here.
Current Tofu Brains: Life on Zeeta 21, by Lars Koch One Bible, Many Voices: Different Approaches to Biblical Studies, by S.E. Gillingham There Will Be War Volume X, ed. Jerry Pournelle Doctor Who – The Awakening, by Eric Pringle
Last books finished Nant Olchfa, by Amy Dillwyn Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, by Terrance Dicks Drawing Boundaries, eds John C. Courtney, Peter MacKinnon and David E. Smith (did not finish) The Drowning Girl, by Caitlin R. Kiernan Partitions irlandaises, by Vincent Baily and Kris Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree The Deadly Assassin, by Andrew Orton Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie Whose Body?, by Dorothy L. Sayers
Next books The Awakening, by David Evans-Powell Representatives of the People?: Parliamentarians and Constituents in Modern Democracies, by Vernon Bogdanor Falling to Earth, by Al Worden
As with yesterday’s post, I’m trying to derive some meaning from the Internet Movie Database’s user ratings of Doctor Who episodes. Here, for your edification and delight, are the top-rated episodes from each of the incarnations of the show. (Based on these statistics.)
The twentieth episode of the Australian K9 spinoff series, 2010’s Taphony and the Time Loop, has a better rating, at 5.7, than any of the other twenty-five K9 episodes, but that is still lower than any episodes of the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors, or of any of the other spinoffs. I agree that it’s probably the best of the undistinguished run of the Aussie show, with an escaped Time Being in the shape of a cute girl (Taphony, played by Maia Mitchell) draining the essence of the regular cute girl character (Jorjie, played by Philippa Coulthard) and K-9 sorting it all out. It’s still not particularly good, though; I rewatched it last week for this post and I think it deserves a little better than 5.7. Maybe 5.8.
The metal mutt takes both of the bottom places in this list, in fact, with A Girl’s Best Friend, the only episode ever made of the unsuccessful 1981 spinoff K-9 and Company, scoring a lowly 6.1 with IMDB users. This brought back both Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and John Leeson as the voice of K9, but had a very silly plot involving pagan cultists in the English countryside – not natural Who territory, and a story that has been told much better before and since by others. Sarah Jane, of course, also went on to have her own much more successful spinoff.
The second and final episode of 1985’s Revelation of the Daleks is the top-rated Sixth Doctor story at 7.7 (and the first episode of the story is in second place at 7.6). I agree that this is the one story where the Six/Peri pairing comes together, partly because they’re not actually in the story all that much. If you can overlook the huge plot flaw of Davros feeding the entire galaxy with the corpses of a few rich people, it’s very well done, with various different factions of characters motivated for different reasons.
Village of the Angels, the fourth of the six-part Flux storyline, is the top-rated Thirteenth Doctor episode. I am among the many who found this series difficult to follow, but this was a good instalment, with many murky and dramatic goings-on in the Village, culminating with the Doctor herself being transformed into a Weeping Angel. IMDB users rate it at 7.8, which again seems a bit mean.
The top-rated episode of short-lived 2016 spinoff Class is its finale, The Lost, ranked at 8.1 and ending with a massive battle between the Coal Hill Academy kids who have been charged with the defence of Planet Earth and the alien Shadowkin. Alliances and friendships are forged and broken and several significant characters are (apparently) killed off. We are left with a massive cliff-hanger regarding the new nature of regular girl April, which presumably would have been resolved had the BBC commissioned a second series. It’s a shame that they didn’t. I couldn’t recommend watching this on its own, but there are only eight episodes altogether, so you might as well watch them all. I was myself rather disappointed by this episode; my own favourite of the eight is the third, Night Visiting.
The top-rated surviving First Doctor episode, broadcast the day after Christmas Day in 1964, saw the first ever departure of one of the regular characters in Flashpoint, rated 8.3 by IMDB users, the last of the six-part story that we now call The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, falls in love with a Scottish resistance fighter against the Daleks who bears an uncanny resemblance to David Tennant (six years before David Tennant was born), and is left behind on Earth to build a new life, Hartnell delivering one of his great set-piece speeches in farewell. Actually my own favourite episode of this story is the third, Day of Reckoning, which features a desperate scramble across a deserted London. But I won’t fight (much) with those who prefer this one.
The top-rated Seventh Doctor episode is the second of the opener to his second season, Remembrance of the Daleks, at 8.5. It took me a while to warm to this story, but I have come around to its good points. I still prefer the middle two stories from the final season of Old Who, Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric, but there are a couple of great set-pieces in this episode, with the Doctor retrieving the Hand of Omega from a London gravesite in 1963, and Ace menaced by Daleks.
The top-rated Third Doctor episode, also at 8.5, is the second last of his 1970 debut season, the sixth of the seven parts of Inferno. The story concerns a dangerous experiment to drill into the Earth’s crust; for several of the episodes, the Doctor is transported to a parallel Earth where his friends are all fascists and the experiment is further advanced. In the sixth episode, despite the Doctor’s efforts, the parallel Earth begins to disintegrate and he escapes back to our timeline. It’s dramatic doomed stuff, and I think I’m with the IMDB voters here.
I’m surprised to see a lost episode outpolling all of the surviving First Doctor episodes, but it’s a good one. My favourite Hartnell story is the thirteen-part epic that we now (mostly) call The Daleks’ Master Plan. Only three episodes survive, and they do not include the finale, Destruction of Time, in which the Doctor activates the Time Destructor in order to defeat the Daleks by aging them into oblivion, but loses his own companion Sarah Kingdom in the process. IMDB voters rank it at 8.5, which I think I can agree with. You’ll appreciate it more after experiencing the previous twelve parts of the story.
I think that the best single story of the Sarah Jane Adventures is Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith? from the 2007 first series, in which she is replaced in her life history by the ambiguous Andrea, played by Jane Asher. IMDB users rate its two episodes third and fourth at 8.6, but rank two other episodes with visiting guest stars from the parent show just a bit higher at 8.7: in second place, the second part of 2010’s Death of the Doctor, with Matt Smith (and Katy Manning), and at the top, the second part of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, for which David Tennant did his last filming in his first run as the show’s regular star in 2009. Sarah has been yanked into a prison dimension through a fake wedding with a rotter played by Nigel Havers and the Doctor turns up to save her with her friends. Great stuff.
There’s a fairly strong fan consensus that the Fifth Doctor’s final story, The Caves of Androzani, is also his best, and IMDB voters also subscribe to that view; its four episodes hold four of the top five Fifth Doctor spots in the system (the other going to the last episode of Earthshock). And the best of the four, according to IMDB where it is rated 8.8, and also frankly in my own opinion, is the last, where desperate people fight over dwindling resources and lives are brutally and dramatically ended, including the Doctor’s own. Poor Peri doesn’t get much to say except at the end, but it’s her second appearance in this list.
While I’m not surprised that the Eighth Doctor’s unexpected 2013 return in Night of the Doctor rates higher then The Movie, I am surprised that it rates as high as 9.0 on IMDB. It’s less than seven minutes long, and I feel that fannish enthusiasm at the time of the fiftieth anniversary has not yet been tempered by sober reflection.
In general I’ve been concentrating on the top-rated single episodes for each case, but for the Ninth Doctor’s 2005 series, the top two episodes, rated 9.0, are a two-part story, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, which also incidentally won the Hugo Award that year. This is the one introducing Captain Jack Harkness, set in WW2 London, famously featuring the gasmask zombie child asking “Are you my mummy?” My own favourite Ninth Doctor story is Dalek, but I’m clearly not with the majority. The second part, The Doctor Dances, is a hair above the first part on IMDB.
My own favourite Second Doctor episode is the completely bonkers opening to The Mind Robber, but IMDB voters disagree. Their top-ranked episode of the black-and-white era is also the very last: the tenth episode of epic 1969 story The War Games, rated 9.1. Having invoked his own people, the Time Lords, to defeat an alien mastermind’s evil plans, the Doctor himself is put on trial for interference in cosmic affairs, and sentenced to exile on Earth, his companions sent home with their memories wiped. The final shots, as he howls in protest at the Time Lords changing his face, are among the bleakest of the whole of Doctor Who (cf above mentions of The Daleks’ Master Plan and Earthshock).
My favourite story of Old Who is the Fourth Doctor’s The Deadly Assassin, from 1976. But I find it difficult to argue with the verdict of IMDB users that the best single episode of Old Who, rated 9.1, is the sixth and final part of 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks, in which their crazed creator Davros loses control of the malevolent pepperpots. (It’s their fifth appearance on this list.) There are many beautiful moments here, including Davros’s large button marked “TOTAL DESTRUCT” which lurks like Chekhov’s gun.
The spinoff shows have had a mixed success rate here, but Children of Earth, the third series of Torchwood (co-starring Peter Capaldi as a harassed senior British government official), is in a league of its own, its five episodes ranked between 8.7 and 9.2, all of them higher than any First, Third, Sixth, Seventh or Thirteenth Doctor stories. The top-ranked episode is the fourth, which features the growing evidence of Jack’s involvement with the alien threat to the world’s children, and famously ends with the demise of the much-loved Ianto, and I think I’d support that choice, though maybe not put it as high as 9.2.
We’re getting near the end here. I totally agree with the final three verdicts by IMDB voters. Their top-ranked Eleventh Doctor story, at 9.3, is Vincent and the Doctor, with its intense portrayal of artistic genius and mental illness, leavened by an alien incursion. I was surprised that the 2010 season closer, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, won the Hugo that year; the verdict of history, I think, is with Vincent.
The top-rated Thirteenth Doctor episode, 2015’s Heaven Sent at 9.6, is again my favourite from the era, with the Doctor, newly bereaved of Clara, trapped in a mysterious castle where he must recapitulate a cycle of death and renewal, over and over. I think it’s tremendous, though very different from the norm.
And finally, my favourite Doctor Who episode of all time, and also well clear at the top of IMDB’s rankings, is the Hugo-winning 2007 Tenth Doctor story Blink, which introduced the Weeping Angels and communicated much of its plot through DVD Easter eggs. I loved it on first broadcast and I still love it now. IMDB voters give it a massive 9.8 out of 10. It also won the Hugo Award. Although it barely has the Doctor and Martha in it, I think you could safely show it to someone who had never seen Doctor Who before, and who wondered if they would like the show; it would be a valid litmus test.
Steven Moffat wrote four of the above (Night of the Doctor, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Heaven Sent and Blink) and Terry Nation is credited with two (Genesis of the Daleks and Flashpoint, though there are varying reports of the real extent of his input). Graeme Harper, David Moloney and Douglas Camfield are each credited with directing two of them (Harper: Revelation of the Daleks and The Caves of Androzani; Moloney: The War Games and Genesis of the Daleks; Camfield: Destruction of Time and Inferno, though in fact he was too ill to direct episode 6 of the latter).
I am a little surprised that the greatest Old Who writer Robert Holmes appears in both the “best” and “worst” lists, for The Caves of Androzani and The Space Pirates respectively. As previously noted, I think The Space Pirates is underrated. Director Andrew Morgan did only two Doctor Who stories, but one of them is on each list, Remembrance of the Daleks here and Time and the Rani yesterday.
To round off the post, the average ratings for each Doctor and spinoff show:
10th Doctor: 8.04 (highest 9.8, lowest 5.9) 9th Doctor 7.93 (highest 9.0, lowest 6.9) 11th Doctor: 7.81 (highest 9.3, lowest 6.7) 12th Doctor: 7.80 (highest 9.6, lowest 5.8) Torchwood 7.72 (highest 9.2, lowest 6.2) 8th Doctor 7.65 (higher 9.0, lower 6.3) Sarah Jane Adventures7.56 (highest 8.7, lowest 6.7) 4th Doctor 7.55 (highest 9.1, lowest 5.8) 3rd Doctor 7.47 (highest 8.5, lowest 6.4) Class 7.46 (highest 8.1, lowest 6.9) 2nd Doctor 7.36 (highest 9.1, lowest 4.9) 5th Doctor 7.12 (highest 8.8, lowest 5.9) 1st Doctor 7.05 (highest 8.5, lowest 5.6) 7th Doctor 6.94 (highest 8.5, lowest 5.3) 6th Doctor 6.72 (highest 7.7, lowest 5.3) 13th Doctor 6.25 (highest 7.8, lowest 4.2) K9 and Company 6.1 [Australian] K9 4.87 (highest 5.7, lowest 4.1)
I’m perhaps a little more obsessed than I should be with extracting meaning from the Internet Movie Database. Thinking about the question of what to show (and what not to show) a friend who doesn’t know much about Doctor Who, I wondered if the user rankings for individual episodes might shed any light? Well, maybe they do and maybe they don’t.
This is in no way meant to be competition for the ruthless ongoing vote run by @Heraldofcreatio on Twitter, in which The People vote on paired Doctor Who stories to decide which is better and which worse. But I encourage those of you on Twitter to participate.
So, which are the worst-rated episodes for each Doctor and Whoniverse spinoff series, as voted by IMDB users? I have compiled the numbers.
The Doctor with the highest rated worst episode, if you see what I mean, is Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor, who graced our screens in 2005. Aliens of London, the one with the spaceship crashing into Big Ben and farting monsters, scores 6.9 from IMDB users. It actually includes the first scene ever filmed for New Who, where Eccleston’s Doctor, and Naoko Mori as Dr Sato (later to return in Torchwood), inspect the alien pig.
You may have missed Class, the 2016 spinoff about some kids at Coal Hill School who are charged by the Doctor with defending the Earth. (One of the kids is in fact an alien prince, and one of the teachers is his secret and reluctant bodyguard.) The worst-ranked episode, Brave-ish Heart, also at 6.9, is the second of a two-part story which sees two of the kids sucked into another dimension while the others fight off an invasion of carnivorous petals and an alien who has taken over the school’s board of governors. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it, but the unearthly dimension is a bit naff.
The worst-ranked episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures, at 6.7, is the second of the sadly truncated 2011 final season, the closing half of a two-parter named Sky, after the new regular character who it introduces. Sinead Michael, playing the new girl, was only twelve years old when the episode was filmed, making her the youngest actor ever to play a regular character in the Whoniverse. The story sees her transformed from a living planet-busting bomb to a human girl, and Sarah adopts her at the end. Again, nothing terribly wrong with it, but a slightly awkward introduction of a new character. (I should note also that I’m not counting the 2009 Comic Relief Special with Ronnie Corbett and more fart jokes, which scores only 6.1.)
I remember watching the worst-rated Eleventh Doctor story, The Curse of the Black Spot, after a full day at the BBC studios in Belfast where I had been covering the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election. IMDB users give it a rating of 6.7, but I rather enjoyed it, a tale of swashbuckling nonsense aboard a pirate ship that isn’t what it seems. I may have been tired and my critical faculties dulled. But I think there were a couple of worse Eleventh Doctor episodes. (IMDB also rates a factual minisode about the making of a different Eleventh Doctor story a hair below The Curse of the Black Spot, but I’m not including it here.)
On the other hand, I think that IMDB voters have it about right in their disdain for the third episode of the 1972 Third Doctor story, The Time Monster, rated at an average of 6.4. The story in general is a pretty silly tale of the Master attempting to Conquer The World by linking up with the mystic powers of ancient Atlantis, and this is the silliest episode of the six, culminating in Pertwee’s Doctor constructing an anti-timewarping device from a corkscrew, while he and the rest of the cast struggle to keep their faces straight.
There are only two televised Eighth Doctor stories, made 17 years apart, and they are very different kettles of fish. The lower-rated of the two, at 6.3, is The (1996) Movie, which saw Sylvester McCoy regenerate into Paul McGann and get involved with a plot to thwart another attempt by the Master to Conquer The World and incidentally steal the Doctor’s remaining lives and the TARDIS. I think it is enjoying a bit of a renaissance among fannish opinion at the moment, but its overall rating remains perhaps unfairly low.
The worst-rated episode of Torchwood is Cyberwoman, from the 2006 first series, at 6.2, in which it turns out that Torchwood crew member Ianto has been keeping his semi-cyberised girlfriend in the cellar without anyone noticing. She wakes up and goes on the rampage, and comes to a nasty end, clearing the way for Ianto’s subsequent romance with Jack. The episode is mainly memorable for Caroline Chikezie’s costume as the Cyberwoman. I must say that I personally enjoyed it, but many others didn’t.
(K-9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend, fits here at 6.1, but I’ll cover it tomorrow.)
The Tenth Doctor may be the favourite of the masses, but that doesn’t go for all of his stories. Fear Her is set around the opening of the 2012 Olympics, six years in the future when the story was shown in 2006, and rates 5.9 on IMDB; it features the Doctor being transformed into a child’s squiggly drawing, and just generally looks a bit low budget. However I feel it’s underrated here, and Nina Sosanya is especially good as the kid’s mother.
However, the worst-rated Fifth Doctor episode is one that I remember watching with crashing disappointment when it was first broadcast in 1982. Season 19 of Old Who, Peter Davison’s first, ended with a story called Time-Flight in which the Doctor’s old adversary, the Master, attempts to entrap him with a time-travelling Concorde aircraft. The plot made little sense and the director made little effort. At the end of the story, loyal and long-suffering companion Tegan is casually left behind (though retrieved in the first story of the next season). The fourth and final episode is rated 5.9.
For my money the worst Twelfth Doctor story is the ridiculous Kill the Moon in which it turns out that the large ball of rock orbiting the Earth is actually an alien dragon’s egg. IMDB users disagree. The worst rated Twelfth Doctor episode, at 5.8, is the 2015 story Sleep No More, which I couldn’t remember much about and rewatched for this post. The Doctor and Clara get involved with investigating the apparently abandoned Le Verrier space station; the story is told in documentary form, narrated by the guy who set the station up. It’s a different format but I found it effective enough, not especially memorable but not awful either.
The worst-rated Fourth Doctor episode is another that I watched on first broadcast with feelings of disappointment and almost of betrayal. After the glory years of Robert Holmes as script editor, the arrival of his successor coincided with a funding crunch, and the 1978 story Underworld, though ambitiously riffing off both Greek mythology and Time Lord lore, ends up being remarkable for its cheap-looking special effects, and I agree with IMDB voters that the third episode, also rated 5.8, is probably the least impressive of an unimpressive quartet.
The worst rated surviving episode from the Second Doctor era, at 5.7, is rated ahead of several lost episodes from the black and white era, but I am listing it anyway. It’s from 1969, the second episode of The Space Pirates, an ambitious attempt at space opera written by Robert Holmes, the greatest of Old Who script writers. I tend to think that this (and the whole story) would be in better regard if more of it had survived, though I’ll admit that it probably didn’t quite hit the mark even in 1969. Again there’s a notable female costume, this time Lisa Daniely’s hairdo as mining magnate Madeleine.
The lowest-rated surviving episode of the black-and-white era is from 1964, when individual stories did not have specific names, but each episode had its own individual title; it’s The Centre, the sixth and final part of the First Doctor story that we now call The Web Planet. As with The Space Pirates, it’s an ambitious story which doesn’t quite meet the mark of today’s production values, this time with insectoid alien races and a disembodied intelligence duelling for control of the planet Vortis. I don’t think it is so very terrible myself, and would give it more than 5.6.
The lowest-rated Sixth Doctor episode will come as little surprise. Colin Baker’s 1984 debut story, The Twin Dilemma, features bizarre characterisation for the show’s central character, very poor acting from a couple of the guest performers, and unambitious (to put it politely) direction. A friend of mine who lives in Spain told me that her new English neighbour proudly informed her that his dad had written the worst Doctor Who story ever; it was this one. Fans can debate which of the four episodes is worst; myself I’d have said the first, but IMDB users say the last, with a rating of 5.3.
To my surprise, that’s not the lowest-rated surviving episode of Old Who; it is pipped by another closing episode from a debuting Doctor’s first story, the fourth episode of Time and the Rani starting Sylvester McCoy in 1987. This story was adapted by authors Pip and Jane Baker from a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and involves a crazy conspiracy by rebel Time Lord the Rani to harvest the brains of geniuses from Earth’s history. After some initial confusion the actor and Ace defeat her and herd the curiously docile geniuses into the TARDIS to go home.
The lowest-rated episode of Old Who is a lost episode, the sixth and final instalment of 1969’s The Space Pirates, as referred to above. I think this must reflect general lack of knowledge of the story more than anything. There is quite a good reconstruction available on Dailymotion, and it seems to me that The Dominators, from earlier in that season, is a far weaker story in every regard. (And The Twin Dilemma is weaker still.)
The worst-rated episode of Doctor Who proper is the 2020 Thirteenth Doctor story Orphan 55, at a dismal 4.2. I confess that as with Sleep No More, although I watched it on first broadcast, I had completely forgotten what it was about and rewatched it for this post. The Doctor and fam end up at a resort which turns out to be constructed on the ruins of Earth and also under alien attack. There are a couple of doomed romances and lots of bangs. Whitaker, as always, does her best to inject energy into it; the Doctor preaches a sermon about climate change at the end. It does a lot of the things that other episodes do, but doesn’t do them any better than any of the others. I agree that it’s not all that good, but myself I’d still rank it above The Twin Dilemma, and indeed Kill the Moon.
The worst rated episode from the televised Whoniverse is one you have probably forgotten even if you ever saw it. Mind Snap, the twenty-second episode of the twenty-six in the Australian spinoff series about the Doctor’s robot dog, K9, is a cheap and lazy filler 2010 episode in which K9 loses his memory and needs to be reminded of his true self by re-experiencing clips from the previous twenty-one episodes. The IMDB rating of 4.1 is harsh, but I agree with the voters’ verdict in giving this one the wooden spoon. Bob Baker, who co-authored both this and Underworld, is the only writer with two different stories on this list. (Robert Holmes has two episodes from the same story, so it doesn’t really count.)
More cheerfully, I’ll be celebrating the best-rated episodes of each Doctor and spinoff show tomorrow. (Including K9 and Company, in case you were wondering.)
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging at the end of October 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
I started the month with a couple of days of enforced silence after my throat oepration, but have made a full recovery. (Well, almost – I don’t think I’ll ever hit the high notes again.) I had three work trips, one to Berlin, where I visited the site of Rosa Luxemburg’s murder:
and London where I relived one of my favourite urban walks, from Tottenham Court Road to Westminster.
I ended the month in Sofia where I met (among others) Finnish politician Astrid Thors.
And I discovered that my great-great-grandmother’s biological father was not her mother’s husband, but a distant cousin of President Grover Cleveland (also of Shirley Temple and Fritz Leiber).
I read 28 books that month.
Non-fiction 9 (YTD 54) Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, eds. Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, by Amia Srinivasan True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman Directed by Douglas Camfield, by Michael Seely Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, by Elsa Sjunneson The Eleventh Hour, by Jon Arnold Face the Raven, by Sarah Groenewegen No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media, by Peter Steven The King of Almayne: a 13th century Englishman in Europe, by T.W.E. Roche
Non-genre 2 (YTD 11) Intimacy, by Jean Paul Sartre Q&A, by Vikas Swarup
SF 7 (YTD 50) Half Life, by Shelley Jackson The Happier Dead, by Ivo Stourton Queen of the States, by Josephine Saxton End of the World Blues, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood The Monk, by Matthew Lewis Nova Swing, by M. John Harrison Killdozer!, by Theodore Sturgeon
Doctor Who 1 (YTD 16) The HAVOC Files, Volume 4, ed. Shaun Russell
Comics 9 (YTD 12) Monstress, Volume 6: The Vow, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda Far Sector, by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell Lore Olympus, by Rachael Smythe Die, vol.3: The Great Game, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles Die, vol 4: Bleed, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles Once & Future, vol. 3: The Parliament of Magpies, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain Once & Future, vol. 4: Monarchies in the UK, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bon-villain Junker: een Pruisische blues, by Simon Spruyt Strange Adventures, by Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Evan “Doc” Shane
Half Life, by Shelley Jackson – I can’t believe that nobody recommended this to me before; you can get it here.
The King of Almayne: a 13th century Englishman in Europe, by T.W.E. Roche – ho many of you knew about the thirteenth-century English prince who captured Jerusalem and got elected Holy Roman Emperor? You can get it here.
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, by Amia Srinivasan – difficult but important reading; you can get it here.
On the other hand, as usual for this author, I bounced off Nova Swing by M. John Harrison. You can get it here.
The forest’s red floor was spongy from the long fall of pine needles, a slow accumulation through the years, but it was the steady soft pounding of Frank’s feet that the floor now supported. The tips of sunken stones and the ridges of slow-searching tree roots disrupted the clean line of the path, but Frank’s running shoes trod firmly upon them, finding their angles, their roughnesses, a momentary grip and release as he pushed on up the slope.
Glorious set of stories about the revolution in society caused by the invention of a teleporter. Strong thumbs up. Recommended. You can get it here.
Second paragraph of third chapter (“Fallacy 3: ‘Ukraine should adopt neutrality'”, by Orysia Lutsevich):
Imposed neutrality would leave Ukraine exposed to a continued existential threat. It would invite more aggression from Russia and is contrary to a fundamental principle of international law – the sovereign right to choose international alliances. Russia itself formally recognized this principle as a co-signatory of the Istanbul Declaration of 1999.
In line with my commitment to blogging more about my work-related reading, this is a report from Chatham House which came out last month, in which ten authors look at some of the underlying principles of the current conflict – the title is slightly misleading, in that it doesn’t mean “By adopting these recommendations, the war can be brought to an end”, it’s more “This is the intellectual framing in which the end of the war should be imagined”.
There are nine chapters, each by a different writer, book-ended by pieces from James Nixey, who has ceded to Tim Ash the distinction of being first-named contributor, I guess on alphabetical grounds. Each chapter tackles a particular fallacy – and these are not straw men, these are arguments I have actually seen and heard people make, including some who surprised me. In general I agree with the writers of the report, and disagree with the following propositions:
‘Settle now: all wars end at the negotiating table’
‘Ukraine should concede territory in exchange for peace’
‘Ukraine should adopt neutrality’
‘Russian security concerns must be respected’
‘Russian defeat is more dangerous than Russian victory’
‘Russia’s defeat in Ukraine will lead to greater instability in Russia’
‘This is costing too much, and the West needs to restore economic ties with Russia’
‘Ukraine’s pursuit of justice hinders peace’
‘This war is not our fight, and there are more important global problems’
Several of the authors presented it last week at a thinktank in Brussels, and I was really rather shocked that a couple of audience participants made the argument that we have to find a way to let the Russians off gently. Fundamentally, it’s important to help Ukraine to win, and not to impose external limits on what that victory is going to look like. What the Russians do is their responsibility. They chose this war, completely without provocation, and they can sort themselves out afterwards.
They accessed the original police interview with the suspension scientist, Rima Cagnac, conducted by two Genovese Homicide inspectors a day after her husband’s murder and just five days before she was due to leave Earth. Apparently still in a state of shock, Cagnac answered all the questions factually, stating that she’d been in a meeting with Captain Xavier Fernandez at the time of the killing. The interview was in French, auto-translated for Kemp’s benefit, although he knew Danni understood the original. When asked about the state of her relationship with her late husband, Kemp noticed that Cagnac blinked and hesitated fractionally before replying, ambiguously, that after five years of marriage they remained good friends.
I don’t know about you, but I’m always annoyed by police detectives in SF novels who don’t behave at all like police detectives in real life. Anyway. Twin narratives of detective solving decades-old future crime and alien contact from Earth’s first colony ship, plus corruption and murder in high places. Kept me reading to the end, but it’s not very subtle. And did I mention that I found the police bit unrealistic?
Though I am vey sorry that we have lost Eric Brown since I read it.
Second paragraph of third papal document (Paul VI’s Apostolic letter Pacis Nuntius of 1964, proclaiming St Benedict as the Principal Patron of Europe):
Sic igitur spiritualem illam unitatem Europae coagmentavit, qua quidem nationes, sermone, genere, ingenio diversae, unum populum Dei se esse sentiebant. Quae unitas, fideliter annitentibus monachis, disciplinae tanti parentis alumnis, peculiaris nota facta est mediae, quam vocant, aetatis. Illam, quae, ut ait Sanctus Augustinus, «ommis pulchritudinis forma» est, lugenda rerum vicissitudine discissam, quotquot sunt bona praediti voluntate, restituere temporibus nostris conantur. Libro, seu ingenii cultu, idem venerabilis patriarcha, a quo tot monasteria nomen vigoremque traxerunt, vetera litterarum monumenta, cum liberales disciplinae artesque obruebantur caligine, diligenti cura servavit et ad posteros transmisit, atque doctrinas studiose excoluit. Aratro demum, seu re rustica, aliisque subsidiis loca vasta et horrida in agros frugum feraces et hortos amemos mutavit; et precationibus fabrilia iungens, secundum verba illa «ora et labora», humano operi excellentiam addidit. Haud immerito ergo Pius PP. XII Sanctum Benedictum «Europae patrem» appellavit, cuius quidem terme continentis populis ille amorem et studium recti ordinis inspiravit, in quo socialis vita eorum inniteretur.
It was in this way that he cemented that spiritual unity in Europe, whereby peoples divided on the level of language, ethnicity and culture, perceived that they constituted the one People of God – a unity that, thanks to the constant efforts of those monks who followed so illustrious a teacher, became the distinctive hallmark of the Middle Ages. It is this unity, which St. Augustine calls the “exemplar and model of absolute beauty”, but which regrettably has been fragmented through a maze of historical events, that all men of good will even in our own day seek to rebuild. With the book, then, i.e. with culture, the same St Benedict, – from whom so many monasteries derive their name and vigour – with provident concern, saved the classical tradition of the ancients at a time when the humanistic patrimony was being lost, by transmitting it intact to posterity, and by restoring the cult of knowledge. Lastly, it was with the plough, i.e. with the cultivation of the fields and with other similar initiatives, that he succeeded in transforming abandoned and overgrown lands into fertile fields and greaceful gardens; and by uniting prayer with manual labour, according to his famous motto “ora et labora,” he ennobled and elevated human work. Rightly, therefore, Pius XII hailed Saint Benedict XII as “the father of Europe”; for he inspired the peoples of this Continent that loving care of order and justice that forms the foundation of true society.
This is an old-fashioned little publication (108 pages), lent to me by a colleague, pulling together fifteen major statements by the popes on European integration from 1957 to 2017. It is nicely illustrated, the photograph of the EU leaders meeting the current Pope in the Sistine chapel is particularly striking.
There’s nothing very surprising here for anyone familiar with the EU and the Vatican. Successive popes have been opposed to war and to Communism, and the EU was constructed as a bulwark against both. More recent themes include an emphasis on social justice and on environmental protection, with the Church’s own particular wrinkles on those themes. There’s not much here that anyone could object to, frankly.
There was a time when the relationship looked closer. Of the six founding mamebr states of the EU, four are largely Catholic by religious tradition and the other two (the Natherlands and West Germany, as it then was) were balanced between Catholicism and Protestantism. Now things are vey different; of the 27 current member states, you’d have to put at least four in the Orthodox column, three in the firmly Protestant tradition, and anyway most of them are part of the rising tide of secularism. The European People’s Party, Europe’s largest political grouping, came from the post-war Christian Democrat tradition, but has moved firmly away from anything too church-oriented (though often gets tempted by anti-wokeness, which is not quite the same thing).
I do remember attending a conference for Northern Ireland party activists in the early 1990s, at which a Unionist participant informed us that Pope John XXIII had endorsed European integration in order to ensure Catholic domination in Europe. One of the others present snorted that not many of John XXIII’s plans for the church had worked out in the end. The EU’s two openly gay prime ministers are both from traditionally Catholic countries. Pius XII would not have approved.
Anyway, this is co-published by the EU External Action Service and L’Osservatore Romano, and you can get it from their websites, here and here.
“Hi,” I said, while they took me up in the mysterious freight elevator to another cloak-and-dagger meeting with that asshole Quint. “Long time no see.” I repeated myself in a couple new languages and dialects when they didn’t answer, just in case it really was all a matter of misunderstanding.
I thought this very good. Race against time with unlikely allies in an abandoned space structure inhabited by horrible creatures. I didn’t think it put a foot wrong. You can get it here.
Her father, the old count, had always had protégés—young priests, mostly, some of whom became bishops or advisers to Count Pesavolta. It had never occurred to Marga that she might have a protégé of her own, or that she’d want one. But looking at Tess—curious and eager, smart enough to have taught herself Quootla, resourceful enough to have found the Continental Serpent on her own—was like looking at herself at that age. There were things Marga needed to tell that young self.
Putting my money where my mouth is, I bought and read this, the book on the Hugo ballot with the best page-to-dollar ratio. I was glad to see it because I hugely enjoyed the previous book in the series, Tess of the Road, but did not write it up in 2020 because I was on the Hugos that year too. In the Serpent’s Wake takes Tess on a polar expedition led by a hilariously unperceptive aristocratic lady, where they tour also colonialism and rape culture. It didn’t move me quite as much as the previous book – seemed to be a lot of circumpolar circling – but I still enjoyed it a lot. Hartman’s imagined world is richly drawn and internally consistent. Worth getting all four books in the series for the YA reader in your life. You can get this one here.
The pounding jimmied his eyes open, and the light leaking around the window shade was a spear through the head. There was a voice behind the din. He recognized it.
Alternate-history space programme, hero joins it to expiate his crimes, failed to grab me. You can get it here.
…please bear in mind that it is a privilege, not a right.
There is nothing about the Hugo voter package in the WSFS constitution. It depends entirely on the goodwill of creators to produce the works, and also the goodwill of volunteers to assemble it. It’s probably the most laborious of any of the tasks involved with Hugo administration, and definitely one of the most thankless. (I hope that I have thanked those who have done it for me.)
I’ve had my share of Hugo-related tensions over the years, but among the most annoying are the entitled complaints of people who expect the Hugo voter packet to be designed for them and their specifications. To be very clear, I’m not talking about accessibility here – people with visual difficulties deserve consideration from publishers and Hugo administrators alike – but about those who demand the free reading material but then can’t be bothered to install the free software. (And then there are those who “forget” to download it in time and still want to get hold of it after the deadline has passed, and get all miffed when we have the audacity to honour the terms of our agreement with publishers, and say no.)
Inevitably some creators will provide their material poorly formatted, or in a form that some people don’t like, and readers will blame Worldcon for it. Inevitably the packet will be released later than had been hoped, because nobody in their right mind does the packet more than once, and it always takes longer than first expected. Inevitably other things go wrong. (My top complaint about creators – those who expect us to download sample copies of their work from NetGalley. Hardly anyone will bother to try, and those few who do try usually find that it doesn’t work.) The fact it that we are lucky to get the Hugo packet at all, and it frustrates me when I see commentary that doesn’t take that into account. My best wishes to those dealing with this year’s challenges.
While we are waiting for this year’s packet, I urge you to start buying (or borrowing) Hugo finalist books, rather than wait until you can get them for free. Creators deserve your money. One possible approach, if you want to be efficient about this, is to work through them from cheapest to most expensive. If you want to be super efficient, you could work through them in order of value measured by the number of pages per dollar, pound or euro. How to calculate that, you ask? Well, as it happens I’ve crunched those numbers for Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Graphic Story, Best Related Work (for four of the six finalists, the other two being an online essay and a Chinese website) and the Lodestar Award, and I can share it with you here. (Prices are from Amazon.com on Kindle, but links go to Amazon.co.uk hard copy, for Reasons.)
¹ As checked recently on Amazon.com for the Kindle version, which is generally what I read. Other regions and formats will likely be broadly similar. ² Buffalito World Outreach Project consists of thirty translations of a single story. Taking that into account, the number of pages of original content per dollar would put it at the other end of this table.
NB that the above list totals 7,500 pages, not counting the Buffalito World Outreach Project, nor the other two Best Related Work finalists, nor anything from the other categories. That’s why I am getting reading now…
I felt it was a bit too derivative of Hunger Games and Earthsearch (for those with longer memories), and the powers of the AI (and indeed the human kids) are just sufficient for the plot to proceed as the writer wants. You can get it here.
Last books finished In the Serpent’s Wake, by Rachel Hartman Ancient, Ancient, by Kiini Ibura Salaam Jill, by Amy Dillwyn The Popes and Sixty Years of European Integration How to End Russia’s War on Ukraine, by Timothy Ash et al Jill and Jack, by Amy Dillwyn Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, ed. Paula Guran Blackpool Remembered, by John Collier Saga, Vol. 10, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Next books Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, by Terrance Dicks Drawing Boundaries: Legislature, Court and Electoral Values, eds. John C. Courtney, Peter MacKinnon, David E. Smith Partitions irlandaises, by Vincent Baily and Kris
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging at the end of October 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
As the pandemic finally receded, I had two very interesting trips in May 2022: at the beginning of the month, to Northern Ireland for the coverage of the election to the Northern Ireland Assembly (which at time of writing has yet to resume sitting):
And a couple of weeks later to Geneva, Switzerland and Podgorica, Montenegro for work. The end of the month had me under the surgeon’s knife for a (benign) lump in my larynx.
With all the travel, I managed to read 35 books that month.
Non-fiction 16 (YTD 45) Carnival of Monsters, by Ian Potter Thursday’s Child, by Maralyn Rittenour Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, by Mark Blake Queens of the Crusades, by Alison Weir A Norman Legacy, by Sally Harpur O’Dowd Tower, by Nigel Jones The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitania to the Holy Places (circa 385 A.D.), trans. John H. Bernard, with an appendix by Sir Charles William Wilson. The Pilgrimage of Etheria, trans. M. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe Signs and Symbols Around the World, by Elizabeth S. Helfman The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, by Simon Bucher-Jones The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation, by Anne McGowan and Paul F. Bradshaw Terrorism In Asymmetric Conflict: Ideological and Structural Aspects, by Ekaterina A. Stepanova Marco Polo, by Dene October The Halls of Narrow Water, by Bill Hall Never Say You Can’t Survive, by Charlie Jane Anders CBT Workbook, by Stephanie Fitzgerald
Non-genre 1 (YTD 9) The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak
SF 11 (YTD 43) The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki A Master of Djinn, by P. Djélì Clark Flicker, by Theodore Roszak Stardust, by Neil Gaiman Demons and Dreams: Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror v. 1, eds. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling She Who Became the Sun, by Shelly Parker-Chan Mort, by Terry Pratchett Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells Mythos, by Stephen Fry
Second frame of third story (“The Infinite Corridor”):
Continuing the adventures of the Tenth Doctor and New Yorker Gabby Gonzalez. The first of these, the title story, has a rather cliched arena situation crossed with a much better than usual take on the characters losing and recovering their memories. Gabby’s friend Cindy joins the TARDIS at the end of the story, though to be honest I have difficulty distinguishing between their characters. The second story, “The Wishing Well Witch”, is a pleasing little vignette set in an English village that is not quite Stockbridge. The third story sets us up for the next volume with the Osirians returning to the fore. You can get it here.
Next in this sequence: Sins of the Father, by a similar team.
My sister cried. My sister rarely cried; I was the one who sat and screamed over every scraped knee and torn skirt, the one who our father fluttered to and swept up in his arms and kissed on the head and called mia Gracino and mia trezoro and mia karulino in the Malisintian tongue of our ancestor, taking little notice of the fact that despite all my howling, my eyes were always dry. But on the day we left for Ceiao my sister had wept at the runway in the harbor as the ship heat curled up around our feet, face red and silent, her mouth a fiat line and her eyes so hot on me that I was afraid my hair would burn.
Yet another space operatic tale of dynastic politics witha same-sex romance twist. Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I stopped after a hundred pages with the feeling that nothing new was going to happen. You can get it here.
In the boys’ division, this sentiment informed his nightly blessing – his benediction, shouted over the beds standing in rows in the darkness. Dr Larch’s blessing followed the bed-time reading, which – after the unfortunate accident to the Winkles – became the responsibility of Homer Wells. Dr Larch wanted to give Homer more confidence. When Homer told Dr Larch how he had loved reading to the Winkles in their safari tent – and how he thought he had done it well, except that the Winkles had fallen asleep – the doctor decided that the boy’s talent should be encouraged.
A long but tremendous book, set mainly in an orphanage in Maine before, during and after the second world war. Dr Larch, the head of the orphanage, is also an abortionist and helps women from all over the community to end unwanted pregnancies. His protégé, Homer Wells, makes friends with coastal orchard kids Wally and Cindy and leaves the orphanage. We know that he will come back in the end but the journey is beautifully told and heart-breaking.
The Cider House Rules was published in 1985, twelve years after Roe v Wade, when it seemed improbable that abortion rights would be rolled back. Now of course we are seeing precisely that, as the U.S. Right attempts to run away from the devastation it has wrought on the country by picking culture war fights with the poor and oppressed. One hopes that the current situation is a nasty temporary blip, but I recommend this book educationally as a reminder of why abortion rights were and are needed. You can get it here.
This was the top book by LibraryThing populatiry on my shelves that I had not yet blogged here. Next is “The Metamorphosis”, by Franz Kafka.
I had been walking, as was my habit, without purpose along the Portway. In a melancholic state, vision turned inwards, I felt as if I drifted in this manner most mornings. Looking for what, I could not recall. I wandered alone, my hands firmly plunged into my pockets, my fingers twitching rhythmically in forgotten arrangements, remembering the ghostly movements of some old functionality long since dissolved. What was it I had used to do, before I had begun to walk here every day? What had I used my hands for? (Mummy, can you pick me up? I can’t see!). I could never remember. My shoulders hunched against the chill. Every now and then, I managed to drag my eyes away from the beautiful bridge that hung above me, a bridge I stared at without really seeing, trying and failing to block out its insistent, persuasive calls. I would look away, struggling to reconnect my feet and my body to the ground beneath me, but my gaze always drifted back. The bridge was magnetic.
Protagonist is being treated for profound psychiatric problems by dodgy contemporary British academics with an agenda and a dream machine. It all goes horribly wrong. Author makes it clear from the foreword that it’s partly based on personal experience of psychiatric treatment. It comes from the heart, but I’m afraid I found the writing very clunky, especially at the start; it improved a bit as it went on. You can get it here.
At junctures the quakes seemed to come often, sending the water quivering over her skin again and again in reverberating series. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, the concussions jarring through her bones and sending chills through her teeth. Goosebumps lifted on her skin, so rare an occasion she felts at them in wondering confusion. Any texture at all came as a fascinating alleviation to the endless litany of despair that was her only company.
Catie’s rate of output is very impressive, and I have long given up trying to keep pace with her books; I enjoyed this tale of an immortal from Atlantis getting involved with an archaeological dig into his own past, and finding that past relationships come back to haunt him. Some online reviewers insist that it’s rather closely linked to the Highlander series, but I don’t know that particular show and to me it seemed pretty fresh and interesting; ancient secrets and relationships coming to the surface. Good fun. You can get it here.
This was the SF book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile (and last of those acquired in 2016) is There Will Be War Vol X, edited by Jerry Pournelle.
“Nobody.” Jes repeats his answer for who knows how many times. He can’t blame the big guy for being cautious. He hadn’t planned on telling them about his ability or the Institute so soon, if at all, but the equipment failure happened, and people were going to get hurt and he had to show them some reason, some value he could add to their operation. Disclosing his ability just opened the door.
Space opera where our protagonist has psychic powers over the forces of gravity. Some nice ideas and good treatment of gender, but not startling. You can get it here.
Russia’s act of aggression against a neighbour jolted the EU into becoming more of a geopolitical actor, forcing it to demonstrate a degree of unity and purpose, which the fractious 27-nation bloc rarely achieves in quieter times. The EU and member states deployed a broad toolbox of measures to support Kyiv, assist Ukrainians, sanction Russia and reduce supply chain dependencies for food, energy, minerals and microchips. They also, for the first time, used collective funds to supply lethal weapons to a partner country under attack.
I’ve decided to be a bit more assiduous about tracking my work-related reading, some of which qualifies as books to blog here. This is a mercifully brief report – 120 pages, available here – which was presented at a conference that I attended last month – I don’t recall actually speaking but I’m visible in the audience at several points.
For those of us inside the policy bubble, there’s nothing very surprising here, but it’s good to get the orthodox view down on paper (or pixels). Taylor reports that both NATO and the defence aspects of the EU have been strengthened, of necessity, after the Russian attack on Ukraine, and that policy-makers are now grappling with the likelihood that we’ll need to be combat-ready for the next decade at least. Lessons have been and are being learned about what armaments are and aren’t necessary. There remains a spectrum of debate but there’s a consensus among defence experts about the big picture.
Necessarily he concentrates on the countries that really drive this – France, Germany, in NATO but outside the EU the UK and USA, and the central and eastern European frontline states. His recommendations are largely things that the main actors are doing or want to do anyway. But it’s a very handy summary of what’s really going on in the policy world, and I hope a helpful counterbalance to the extremists of left and right who prefer to lie about these important issues.
Her experience with taking on passengers is, admittedly, limited. Mostly she only transports refugees, cramming as many people as possible into her ship and running as fast as possible to the nearest safe planet or moon or spacedock. Sometimes there’s a bit of a kerfuffle about food or room, but usually it’s pleasant and she gets to have a wide variety of interesting conversations about planets that she’s never set foot on.
Bluebird is a debut novel, and I felt it showed; quite a complex universe and political set-up which didn’t always hold up to examination, and some odd choices of pacing. A promising start to the author’s career, though. You can get it here.
Second paragraph of third story (“Timebox”, by Janelle Monáe and Eve L. Ewing):
“What are you doing? It’s freezing out.”
Five stories set in the world of Monáe’s Dirty Computer, about women caught up in the near-future totalitarian state of New Dawn, where those who don’t fit in, especially in terms of gender and sexuality, face memory wiping by the powerful state. It’s rooted in her Hugo finalist album and film from a few years back:
All five stories are billed as being co-written by Monáe and a series of other writers. They all take the fictional society in new and slightly different directions; my favourite was the third, “Timebox”, co-written with Chicago activist Eve L. Ewing, in which two women discover a room in their apartment which sits outside time, and react to it very differently. But these are all good and thought-provoking, and recommended. (Eligible surely for the BSFA’s new Best Collection category next year?) You can get it here.
This was top of my pile of unread books by non-white writers. Next is a rather different one: The Return of Eva Perón with the Killings in Trinidad, by V. S. Naipaul.
This is also the first write-up here of a book that I finished this month.
Those godsdamned corsairs had stolen the cruiser’s Eva core.
Ion Curtain is a nicely assembled MilSF story featuring a ruthless intelligence agency and rogue AIs in control of space battleships. But I’m afraid this year in particular, I’m uncomfortable with a book about the glorious Russian space navy. You can get it here.
Current Ancient, Ancient, by Kiini Ibura Salaam In the Serpent’s Wake, by Rachel Hartman Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, ed. Paula Guran Blackpool Remembered, by John Collier
Last books finished Amy Dillwyn, by David Painting The Memory Librarian, ed. Janelle Monáe After the War: How to Keep Europe Safe, by Paul Taylor Atlantis Fallen, by C.E. Murphy The Cider House Rules, by John Irving Arena of Fear, by Nick Abadzis et al A Burglary, or, Unconscious Influence, by Amy Dillwyn
Next books The Shadow Man, by Sharon Bidwell Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, by Bernard Grofman (if I can find it) Partitions irlandaises, by Vincent Baily and Kris
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging at the end of October 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
The highlight of the month for me was Reclamation, the 2022 Eastercon, at which I was one of the Guests of Honour.
We got the Hugo ballot out; I celebrated my 55th birthday in a pub on Place Lux (the same place where I had celebrated my 50th, five years before); and I took little U to the Magritte Museum in Brussels.
Non-fiction read in April 8 (YTD 29) Human Nature / Family of Blood, by Naomi Jacobs and Philip Purser-Hallard Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Colour, by Joy Sanchez-Taylor The Ultimate Foe, by James Cooray Smith Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters Stucwerk, Hechtwerk van het Kasteel te Boxmeer, by W.V.J. Freling The Limbless Landlord, by Brian Igoe Full Circle, by John Toon
Non-genre fiction read in April 1 (YTD 8) No Country for Old Men, by Cormac MacCarthy
SF (non-Who) read in April: 11 (YTD 32) Blackthorn Winter, by Liz Williams Purgatory Mount, by Adam Roberts Air, by Geoff Ryman Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell L’Esprit de L’Escalier, by Catherynne M. Valente Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher Elder Race, by Adian Tchaikovsky Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers The Past is Red, by Cat Valente A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow
Doctor Who books read in April: 4 (YTD 15) Doctor Who: The Ultimate Foe, by Pip and Jane Baker Legends of Camelot, by Jacqueline Rayner The Man from Yesterday, by Nick Walters Doctor Who: Full Circle, by Andrew Smith
First of all, this is the first year since 2018 that I have not been involved with the Hugos, and I’m finding it curiously liberating. Best of luck to Dave and the team; there have clearly been some glitches (as there are every year), but we do it because we love celebrating the best of the genre.
1,847 nominating votes is a good tally – the highest since 2017, which was my first year, and the fifth highest ever, after the 2014-2017 peak. Incidentally, one of the Sad Puppy talking points, back in 2014-15, was that Hugo participation was in potentially terminal decline because people were nominating the Wrong Things. In fact both nominating and final ballot votes had increased steadily year-on-year from 2007 to 2011, and then stabilised before surging again in 2014.The peak in final ballot votes was reached in 2015 and the peak in nominations in 2016, largely in reaction against the Puppies.
Year
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
Noms
1847
1368
1249
1584
1800
1813
2464
4032
2122
1923
Final
?
2235
2362
2221
3097
2828
3319
3130
5950
3587
Year
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
Noms
1343
1101
1006
864
799
482
409
533
546
>462
Final
1848
1922
2100
1094
1074
895
>471
>660
684
1093
I don’t have formal tallies for the final ballot votes in 2006 and 2007, or for nominations in 2004; the number I have given here is the highest count in any single category, which is generally 50%-80% of the full number.
The 2023 announcement video refers to votes for “25,000 individual works”, but I think this must mean the total sum of the number of nominating votes for each and every individual nominee. I have last year’s figures to hand, and I see that the total number of nominations, counting every single vote separately, was just over 24,000 with 1,386 voters, so that suggests that 2023 voters had an average of 13.5 things on their ballots, while 2022’s voters had an average of 17.5.
One technical point, because it is a category that interests me: the leaked version of the ballot for Best Related Work included The Art of Ghost of Tsushima, but the final ballot includes instead Buffalito World Outreach Project, by Lawrence M. Schoen. The fact is that The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was published in 2020, and therefore is not eligible for the 2023 Hugos. I will add that back in 2021, when the game Ghost of Tsushima seemed likely to make it to the ballot for the Best Video Game special category, we were a little concerned that it does not have much in the way of sfnal elements – despite the title, its setting is firmly historical and rooted in the real world of Japan in the 1270s. I suppose we would have allowed it in the end, on the technicality that you can heal your character by the use of charms.
Buffalito World Outreach Project is a single short story, published in thirty different translations. It very clearly fits the rubric of Best Related Work, which states that to be eligible, a nominee “if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and … is not eligible in any other category.” The story “Buffalo Dogs” itself was first published in 2001, so it is not eligible for the Best Short Story or Best Novelette categories (at 7800 words it’s on the cusp between them). And the whole point of Buffalito World Outreach Project is that it’s noteworthy not for the primary text but because of the translations. We applied exactly the same argument in 2021 when deciding on the eligibility of the eventual winner of the category, Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf.
When I ran the stats on Thursday, Buffalito World Outreach Project unusually had only two owners on Goodreads and none at all on LibraryThing, very very low for a commercially publish Hugo finalist. But it had 56 Kickstarter backers, and I suspect that half of that number nominating it for the Hugo would have been sufficient to get it seventh place on the ballot after The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was disqualified. (Last year, the seventh placed nominee in that category had 23 votes, and the year before, 27.)
The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was among the subjects of two competing conspiracy theories. The 2023 Hugos have been subject to unprecedented and deeply regrettable negative attacks from certain quarters of fandom, determined to discover the traces of undue Chinese Communist Party influence on the process, despite the absence of any evidence whatsoever that the CCP takes the slightest interest in the Hugo Awards.
On the one hand, a commenter on File 770said that:
As described on Wikipedia, the Ghost of Tsushima game is about “a samurai on a quest to protect Tsushima Island during the first Mongol invasion of Japan.” I could see a Chinese censor objecting to that being on the list. Without more to go on, though, it’s just speculation.
To allege that censors are manipulating the Hugo ballot is a really strong accusation, and weasel words about “it’s just speculation” don’t make it any better. It is disgraceful to make such a statement without any proof, especially since the real explanation is pretty straightforward: the book was published in the wrong year.
There has also been a similar suggestion that Babel, by R.F. Kuang, was removed from the list, either by censors or by Kuang declining the nomination. Obviously only Kuang herself can speak to the latter point, and I’m sure she will at a time of her choosing; on the former, it’s worth noting that most critics, including Kuang herself in interviews, see Babel as a critique of British imperialism, and it’s difficult to see why Chinese censors might get upset about that.
Babel has indeed proved very popular, has already won the Nebula and Locus Awards, and is ahead of the actual finalists on Goodreads and LibraryThing (over 110,000 GR ratings, almost 2,500 LT owners, compared with 90,000 and 1,500 for the top Hugo finalist). But Hugo voters have different tastes to Nebula and Locus voters, and it’s not at all unusual that a Nebula winning novel fails to make the Hugo ballot – I count eight precedents so far this century, starting with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents.
Another crucial point is that a number of successful finalists have been pretty critical of the Chinese government. One of them, Chris M. Barkley, comments:
I also think my, and the other nominees from the US and (presumably, other nations) refutes any claims that the Chengdu Worldcon Committee or the Chinese Communist Party have the final say or control over the process.
(Technically of course the Chengdu Worldcon Committee does have control of the process under the WSFS Constitution, but I imagine that they have followed the usual practice of irrevocably delegating all such powers to a special subcommittee.)
On the other hand, a different narrative has the sinister Chinese putting finalists on the ballot rather than taking them off it. One Facebook commenter went full froth on this:
“I sense some state purchased memberships and vote buying”
…by my reckoning 14 of the "recommendations" on that list also made it on the "leak" list. Not all of the "recommendations" were on the "leaked" finalist list, and not all categories had recommendations, but in a few categories, all the recs got through
This was discussed on File 770, a debate that I also contributed to. It’s notable that in several categories there were more recommendations than votes available (there are only six finalists per category and you can only vote for five). It’s also notable that The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was one of the recommendations made by Science Fiction World, even though it was not actually eligible. Given the rather low impact of the recommendation list, I would be surprised if the number of voters who followed it can be demonstrated to be more than a couple of dozen – roughly 1% of the 2,006 voters who supported Chengdu as the 2023 Worldcon site. There are individual authors in the USA who can and do regularly mobilise twice that number to support their own Hugo nominations, without apparently attracting scandalised criticism from wider fandom.
(And I think the conspiracy theorists have to choose – are the Chinese fiendishly adding the Tsushima book to the ballot? Or fiendishly removing it?)
The World Science Fiction Society is not as global as its name would claim. I was very sorry that in my first run as Hugo Administrator, for Worldcon 75 in Helsinki in 2017, saw no Finns on the final ballot (there were Finnish runners-up in Best Graphic Story and Best Semiprozine).
Edited to add: Silly me. There were in fact two Finnish finalists in Best Fan Artist. My apologies to them.
It’s fundamentally a very good thing that the Hugos are a little less dominated by America this year than in previous years, and it’s also not at all surprising that a Worldcon in China gets more Chinese finalists on the Hugo ballot than previously. Those voters will also be eligible to nominate next year, when it will be my turn to be involved again, and I hope we’ll see a diverse Hugo ballot also in 2024.
Second paragraph of third story (“The Mothers, the Mothers, How Eerily It Sounds” by David Skal):
He looked at the stars. More of them, every year more of them, just as the elders had promised. The air had been angered once by the earth man had been the cause of the quarrel, and thus had been denied the light of stars. Digger had heard the tale a hundred times and had no doubt of its truth. The elements must never be angered again, lest man be denied more than starlight.
I had got hold of this 1976 anthology mainly because it is the first publication of the Hugo and Nebula-winning story, “‘Houston! Houston! Do You Read?'”, by James Tiptree Jr. The rubric of the anthology is “Amazing Tales of the Ultimate Sexual Revolution”, the editors sayiong in their preface that they wanted fiction that explored what the world might look like after equality between the sexes had been achieved. They didn’t really get it, but it’s a good anthology anyway.
In fact it incudes two stories by the same author, as the editors were not aware that Tiptree and Racoona Sheldon were the same person. It also includes the first chapter of Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy, and Ursula Le Guin’s non-fiction essay “IS Gender Necessary?” A couple of the others are real duds, but the good pieces are very good, and I think it’s a useful representation of both how far sf had come in 1976 and how much farther there still was to go. You can get it here.
