Current Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake Three Daves, by Nicki Elson Chasm City, by Alastair Reynolds
Last books finished A Buzz in the Meadow, by Dave Goulson A.I. Revolution vol 1, by Yuu Asami Bold As Love, by Gwyneth Jones Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers, edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereaka A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher Who Framed Roger Rabbit, by Martin Noble, based on the screenplay by Jeffrey Price & Peter Seaman
Next books Goodbye To All That, by Robert Graves Science Fiction: The Great Years, eds. Carol and Frederik Pohl
Thu, 13:49: RT @CelticAnarchy: “don’t speak ill of the dead” means like don’t stomp around someone’s funeral because they owed you $50, not “don’t ment…
Thu, 14:14: Violating the Gore Vidal principle: Was just invited to an Arabic-language TV show this evening to talk about NATO in Iraq and the EU’s Middle East policy. They even offered a small fee. Tempting, but I declined. I know too many people who know much more about this than I do!
19 February 2020: death of Norman Hartley, who played Ulf in the story we now call The Time Meddler (First Doctor, 1965) and Sergeant Peters in The Invasion (Second Doctor, 1968)
broadcast anniversaries
19 February 1966: broadcast of "Priest of Death", third episode of the story we now call The Massacre. Admiral de Coligny is shot and wounded; the Abbot (or is it the Doctor???) is killed. (No surviving pictures that I could find quickly.)
19 February 1972: broadcast of fourth episode of The Curse of Peladon. The Ice Warriors kill Arcturus who was behind it all; Aggedor kills Hepesh; and all ends happily.
19 February 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of The Robots of Death. The Doctor alters the voice of Dask/Taran Capel with helium, and he is killed by his own robots.
I tried to do the same ranking for the Non-Fiction category, but so few of the short-listed books have been rated by users of either LibraryThing or Goodreads that it does not produce much interesting information, except that Adam Roberts' It's the End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of? is way ahead of the rest.
I did put in nominations from the long-list myself. Three of my nomniees for Best Art made the short-list; two of my nominees for Best Short Fiction; one for Best Novel; and none for Best Non-Fiction.
Thu, 10:00: Mariam Al Mahdi: daughter of Sudan last elected leader is new foreign minister https://t.co/FT7dpC0mco Very interesting. Her father Sadiq al-Mahdi was Sudan’s last democratically elected PM.
Thu, 11:28: RT @Tom_deWaal: New political turbulence in Georgia. Gakharia won praise for handling the first phase of the COVID crisis well and helped G…
18 February 1967: birth of Guy Ferland, director of three of the Torchwood: Miracle Day episodes (2011).
18 February 1993: death of Jacqueline Hill, who played the First Doctor companion Barbara Wright from 1963 to 1965 (she is the first regular cast member to actually appear on screen), and then returned to play Lexa in Meglos (Fourth Doctor, 1980).
18 February 2012: death of Peter Halliday, who played a number of roles in Old Who including Vaughn's security chief Packer in The Invasion (Second Doctor, 1968), Pletrac in Carnival of Monsters (Third Doctor, 1973) and the blind vicar Parkinson in Remembrance of the Daleks (Seventh Doctor, 1988).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
18 February 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Moonbase. The Doctor works out that the Cybermen have been poisoning the sugar.
18 February 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Invasion of Time. The Vardans take over; Leela and Rodan contact the Shobogans; Andred threatens to kill the Doctor.
In the sharp winter's air, their breath steamed behind them. The dinghy went first, followed by Jeff Pitt rowing his little boat, with two sheep in a net lying against his tattered backside. Their progress was slow; Pitt's pride in his rowing was greater than his ability
I am a big fan of the late great Brian Aldiss, and this was the best-known book of his that I had not already read. (If you're interested, LibraryThing and Goodreads agree that the Helliconia trilogy, Hothouse and Non-Stop outrank it.) I wish I'd read it before P.D. James' The Children of Men, which took the same core concept in a slightly different direction. Indeed, The Children of Men has such strong similarities – humanity stopped reproducing 25 years ago, our protagonists undergo a weary odyssey to Oxford – that it's impossible to accept that she hadn't read this first.
It's a quiet, understated, very pessimistic book, written in 1964 when Aldiss was only in his thirties (but had just gone through a divorce and the Cuban Missile Crisis). Stoats are apparently a big problem in the late 2020s. The human race ends with a whimper rather than a bang. There is a lot of Aldissian stuff here, and you certainly couldn't mistake the writing style for anyone else's. But I didn't in the end feel that it was one of his more memorable books; I guess for its time, it caught the Zeitgeist well, but it has now been overtaken by events, and by P.D. James. You can get it here.
This was my top unread sf book, and my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on those piles respectively are The Consuming Fire, by John Scalzi, and City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Wed, 09:03: RT @alexwilcock: OTD 1968: #DoctorWho The Web of Fear 3 Introducing Nicholas Courtney as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart as a suspect… But soon…
Wed, 09:53: A year since the last time I was on an aeroplane, coming back from Gallifrey One in Los Angeles. I really miss travel, and I really miss getting together physically with friends and not-yet-friend who love the same things that I do. See you soon, I hope. https://t.co/NYv0hpwh7Z
Wed, 10:45: RT @SirJJQC: “I have written a very strict letter to the golf club, demanding they change the arrangements I agreed with them when I resign…
17 February 1916: birth of David Blake Kelly, who played the captain of the Mary Celeste in The Chase (First Doctor, 1965) and innkeeper Jacob Kewper in The Smugglers (First Doctor, 1966).
17 February 2013: death of Richard Briers, who played the Chief Caretaker in Paradise Towers (Seventh Doctor, 1988) and Henry Parker in A Day in the Death (Torchwood, 2008).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
17 February 1968: broadcast of third episode of The Web of Fear, introducing Nicholas Courtney as Colonel (later Brigadier) Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. The Doctor reappears with a mysterious colonel; the Yeti attack the base to retrieve the model.
17 February 1973: broadcast of fourth episode of Carnival of Monsters. Kalik and Orum release the Drashigs, but Vorg is able to destroy them, and the Miniscope is deactivated.
17 February 1979: broadcast of fifth episode of The Armageddon Factor. The Doctor meets up with Drax; K9 is evil; Romana and Astra are still captives.
17 February 1996: broadcast of fifth episode of The Ghosts of N-Space on BBC Radio. The Doctor and Sarah return to 1818, where they unsuccessfully try to save Louise and Giuseppe.
For nearly 500 years the postal service was an important part of our national infrastructure The cost of sending a letter was the same, regardless of whether it was sent to someone a few streets away or whether it went from the coast of Cornwall to the highlands of Scotland. This strengthened our sense of geographic identity because, in the eyes of the Royal Mail, we were all equal. Their postcode system unified the country.
This was an impulse purchase as a Christmas present to myself. I had a phase when I was about nine or ten of looking at the maps of England and tracing the paths of the Roman roads – perhaps a little envious that there aren’t any in Ireland. (Now I live within a brisk walk of several Gallo-Roman tumuli.)
Higgs does what I’ve always wanted to do, and frames a series of historical and cultural snapshots along the length of Watling Street, the Roman road that goes from Dover through Canterbury, London, and St Albans, passes near Bletchley Park and Northampton, and then through Wroxeter to Holyhead. It’s all interesting and some of it is glorious, for instance his tour of Northampton as portrayed in Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, guided by Alan Moore himself and one of Moore’s greatest fans. He comes at it from an unapologetically left, counter-cultural perspective, a welcome refresher that interest in your own country’s culture and history belongs to all parts of the political spectrum. Lots of nuggets here, especially commending the bits on London and Bletchley Park, but it’s all good. You can get it here.
Mon, 13:48: RT @davidallengreen: A Guided Tour of the Northern Irish Protocol and Article 16 New @FT video by me and @tomhannen YouTube: https://t.c…
Mon, 16:05: General Unstructured Thoughts On “Being Cancelled” https://t.co/HB0pKIAq3H @Scalzi on celebrities who find that their views are n longer welcome.
Mon, 17:11: Georgia ‘doesn’t care about me’: LGBTQ struggles worsen under lockdown https://t.co/Ywt4SZrvLe Grim in Georgia. (The real Georgia, that is.)
16 February 1926: birth of Rex Robinson, who played Dr Tyler in The Three Doctors (Third Doctor plus guests, 1972), Gebek in The Monster of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1974) and Dr Carter in The Hand of Fear (Fourth Doctor, 1977). All three of his appearances were directed by Lennie Mayne.
16 February 1945: birth of Jeremy Bulloch, who played Tor in The Space Museum (1965), Hal in The Time Warrior (1973-74), and is best known as Boba Fett in the first two Star Wars films.
16 February 1964: birth of Christopher Eccleston, who played the Ninth Doctor in 2005.
We sang Happy Birthday to him at Gallifrey One last year, the last time I was in the USA; a very happy memory.
16 February 1973: birth of Colm McCarthy, who directed The Bells of Saint John (Eleventh Doctor, 2013).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 February 1974: broadcast of sixth episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs
16 February 1982: broadcast of second episode of The Visitation. The Doctor, Nyssa and Mace find cages full of rats; Adric and Tegan are captured by the Terileptils but Adric escapes; the Doctor is threatened with execution by the villagers.
16 February 1983: broadcast of second episode of Terminus. Tegan and Turlough are threatened by gas, the Doctor heads for Terminus, and Nyssa takes her skirt off.
16 February 1985: broadcast of first episode of The Two Doctors. The Second Doctor is captured by Sontarans and taken to Spain; the Sixth Doctor senses a disturbance in the time stream and starts looking for him; Peri is attacked by a ragged Jamie.
16 February 2020: broadcast of The Haunting of Villa Diodati. I watched it with a thousand other fans at Gallifrey One. Hopefully those days will come again.
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
One notable event at work in March 2010 was that my American intern C left, and was replaced by K, an Irish chap. C joined another NGO office in Brussels and ended up running it, before her diplomat husband was posted to her home city, New York, where she still is.
Not a particularly pleasant month for me health-wise; I was wiped out with flu for a couple of weeks, and then had a gruesome tooth extraction, quite the most horrible dental experience of my life, followed by a root canal operation. Still, I read 25 books.
Page count ~8,000 (YTD ~22,400) including a notional 100 for Dead Air and 200 for The Last Voyage.
5/25 (YTD 16/73) by women (Jones, Collins, Mehran, Montgomery, Picoult)
2/25 (YTD 7/73) by PoC (Mehran, Obama)
The title of the anthology co-edited by Ed Kramer is grimly appropriate, though I did not realise it at the time.
Top book for the month is Barack Obama's autobiography, which you can get here, though I always enjoy returning to Moby-dick, which you can get here. Some real clunkers this month too, however, of which the most disappointing was the lazy Doctor Who guide Timeless Adventures, probably the worst reference book on Who that I have read; still, you can get it here.
Sun, 19:37: RT @onefussyone: Let the history books show, Officer Eugene Goodman did more to save American democracy than Mitch McConnell and 42 other R…
Sun, 20:11: RT @Simon4NDorset: The trains could be pulled by an inexhaustible herd of Unicorns overseen by stern, officious dodos. A PushmePullYou cou…
Mon, 07:37: RT @Iainbking: @nwbrux One problem is that there are a few ‘cool’ dinosaurs which everyone remembers from when they’re five. Once those ha…
Mon, 07:37: RT @MrBeamJockey: @nwbrux In our defense, Illinois does have a State Fossil, the weird & mysterious Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)…
15 February 1993: death of Dallas Cavell, who played the road works overseer in the story we now call The Reign of Terror (First Doctor, 1964), Bors in the story we now call The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965), Trask in The Highlanders (Second Doctor, 1966-67), Sir James Quinlan in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970) and the head of security at the radio telescope in Castrovalva (Fifth Doctor, 1982), getting steadily less hairy as the years went on
broadcast anniversaries
15 February 1964: broadcast of "The Brink of Disaster", second episode of the story we now call The Edge of Destruction. The Doctor works out that the Tardis was trying to warn them that it was heading for destruction, fixes the problem and apologises all round.
15 February 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Seeds of Death. The Doctor is captured by the Ice Warriors, who start transmitting their deadly seeds to Earth.
15 February 1975: broadcast of fourth epsiode of The Ark in Space. The Doctor manages to save the beacon by tricking the Wirrn onto the shuttle, which Noah then blows up in a last act of his human self.
15 February 1982: broadcast of first episode of The Visitation. The Tardis lands in England in 1666, where an alien ship has recently landed with fatal consequences for the local manor house.
15 February 1983: broadcast of first episode of Terminus. Turlough sabotages the Tardis and it lands on a ship full of people suffering Lazar's disease.
15 February 1984: broadcast of second episode of Resurrection of the Daleks
As noted last week, this is the fourth of seven dates in the year when six episodes of Old Who were broadcast.
15 February 2010: broadcast of Fear Itself, fifth episode of the Australian K9 series. London is out of control. Riots erupt because of a strange, irrational fear that fills the air. The focal point of the paranoia is in an old junkyard where a strange alien consciousness is at work. K9 discovers the emotion of fear for himself.
Second paragraph of third section of first chapter:
Professor Redwood was one of those scientific men who are addicted to tracings and curves You are familiar — if you are at all the sort of reader I like — with the sort of scientific paper I mean. It is a paper you cannot make head nor tail of, and at the end come five or six long folded diagrams that open out and show peculiar zigzag tracings, flashes of lightning overdone, or sinuous inexplicable things called “smoothed curves” set up on ordinates and rooting in abscissae — and things like that. You puzzle over the thing for a long time and end with the suspicion but that the author does not understand it either. But really you know many of these scientific people understand the meaning of their own papers quite well: it is simply a defect of expression that raises the obstacle between us.
A H.G. Wells book that I had never read, or even really heard of. A scientist carelessly develops a food that causes rapid growth in both animals and plants; the experimental farm that he sets up is overrun with gigantic vermin (in scenes satirising middle-class life); twenty years later, there is a reckoning between the giant human children who have emerged, enlarged in body and mind, from exposure to the new food, and the rulers (for now) of England. It's pretty short and makes its points very clearly. I'm surprised that it is not better known. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2019, my top unread sf book and my top unread book by H.G. Wells. I'm stripping Wells off into a separate reading stream, so the next books in each of those piles respectively are The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi, Greybeard by Brian Aldiss and In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells.
As noted some time ago, I signed up for the genetic analysis company 23andMe and have got some interesting new connections as a result. 23andMe gives you a bewildering amount of information, not always hugely useful, but enough that you can do your own playing around with it.
One chunk of information that I have been browsing is the precise list of what bits of DNA I share with other 23andMe users. The site allows you to download data on your 1500 or so closest DNA relatives in its system, including the actual chromosome sequences that you share with those who have given you permission to share. (Which for me is 1200 of the 1500.)
Now, if those 1200 people were randomly chosen from my wider family tree, you would expect that there would not be a lot of variation in which bits of DNA are shared by how many. In fact there is a great deal of variation. 15% of my total genome is not shared with any of the other 23andMe users. Of course, very few of them are related to me more closely than fourth cousin, so it's entirely possible for whole strands of genealogical relationship to disappear completely from the genetic record.
I have identified precise relationship links with a handful of other 23andMe users, from quite a small number of lineages:
3 are descended from my 3x-great-grandparents Clarke McIlroy (1813-1891) and Mary Perry (1818-1880), my maternal grandmother's maternal grandfather's parents. Two of them are parent and child, and obviously the child's 0.41% DNA overlap with me is a subset of the parent's 0.84%; the other is from a separate line of descent and is linked to me by a separate chunk of DNA, a rather weak 0.28% overlap.
1 is descended from my paternal grandmother's maternal grandparents, my 2xgreat-grandparents Samuel Morris Wickersham (1819-1894) and Frances Wyatt Belt (1837-1912). He is much the most closely related to me, sharing 1.89% of my DNA in six different chunks.
1 is descended from my paternal grandmother's paternal grandparents, my 2xgreat-grandparents William Charlton Hibbard (1814-1880) and Sarah Ann Smith (1815-1891), my 2xgreat-grandparents. We have only 0.41% of our DNA in common.
4 are descended from the Whyte/Ryan connection on my paternal grandfather's side. This is a little complicated. One of them (sharing 1.04% of my DNA) is descended from my great-grandparents John Joseph Whyte (1826-1916) and Caroline Letitia Ryan (1843-1921). But they were first cousins once removed. The other three are descended from Caroline's parents, George Ryan (1791-1875) and Catharine Margaret Whyte (1818-1884). Catherine was John Joseph's first cousin, so presumably already shared some of his DNA. He was also more distantly related to George Ryan on his mother's side. Anyway, the other three Whyte/Ryan DNA connections share 1.46%, 1.27% and 0.49% of their DNA with me (the sibling of the second is the parent of the third).
That still leaves one pair of great-grandparents for whom I have not yet established a line of connection to anyone on 23andMe. And while all four pairs of 2x-great-grandparents on my father's side are accounted for, only one of the four on my mother's side is. It's not all that surprising; my father's mother was American, and they seem to be the biggest user base for 23andMe, and his father's family were a bit obsessional with keeping records so are easier to map.
To sum it up graphically, I hope:
Now, the next bit is something I haven't seen done before, and it's a work in progress. I have mapped out exactly how many of the 23andMe users share DNA with me at every point of the genome. There are some suggestive results. Here, for instance, is my Chromosome 3, showing the overlaps with three of the groups mentioned above.
The first green patch is shared with the McIlroy/Perry connection, the orange patch is the single chunk of Hibbard/Smith DNA, and the yellow is one of the many Wickersham/Belt patches.
We can maybe get a little further by shading DNA shared with users whose DNA overlaps with those who I have firmly identified, as they are a little more likely than not to originate from the same source:
The best chromosome here is Chromosome 4:
A lot of this has direct overlaps – a chunk of Whyte/Ryan at the beginning, a chunk of Wickersham/Belt in the middle, the a chunk of McIlroy/Perry and finally another chunk of Wickersham/Belt. It does give you a sense of how DNA is transferred in discrete blocks.
As I said, 3 and 4 are the two best chromosomes for showing links; there are several where none of the DNA belongs to any of the four groups that I have identified. It's all rather pretty, but it doesn't leave me much the wiser.
Two particular mysteries have emerged for me. The pattern of matches on my X chromosome demonstrates very clearly just how chunky the process of DNA transfer betwen the generations can be, much more so than any of the others. To remind you, for us people with an X and a Y chromosome, we inherit only an X chromosome from our parent who had two of them (and a Y chromosome from the parent who had one); for those of you with two X chromosomes, the DNA on them is inherited from each parent like the other 23 pairs. I wonder if this more chunky pattern is typical of X chromosomes, given the slightly different path through which they are passed on? It's also pretty clear that there are plenty of 23andMe users on my mother's side, though none of the identified McIlroy/Perry DNA is here, and of course there is none from my father's side.
The other mystery is an exceptional patch on Chromosome 1. The peak of 57 people sharing a bit of X-Chromosome DNA with me is unusual; there are only two higher peaks, one on Chromosome 8 with 60 people, and then a real anomaly on Chromosome 1. (Chromosome 1 also has three separate patches of identifiable Whyte/Ryan DNA, the first two of which have a couple of other people overlapping both.)
So yes, there is a very clearly defined chunk of DNA there shared by me and over 160 other people – 13% of the 23andMe users who share any DNA with me at all, share that bit. But none of them are people for whom who I have identified a genealogical link. It's such a massive contrast that I assume it must be one of those bits of DNA that is actually very widely shared, possibly even giving some genetic advantage to those who possess it. None shares more than 0.43% of DNA with me, which suggests at least eight generations of difference, which becomes very difficult to track down.
But I am going to have to leave it there. My technical knowledge simply is not good enough to take this much further, and there's a limit to how far you can take the 23andMe evidence. Something to chew on for the future.
Sat, 16:44: RT @ceemage: @EuanTaylor4 @nwbrux Ted Heath was clearly a risk-taker compared to modern, staid politicians. Round the world yacht sailing,…
Sat, 17:59: RT @AndrejPlenkovic: Congratulazioni al Presidente del Consiglio Mario Draghi e al nuovo governo italiano. Sono lieto di poter lavorare ins…
Sat, 18:37: RT @PadraigBelton: To @nwbrux I owe the splendid knowledge that in this photograph of Ted Heath on a skateboard, the owner of the skateboar…
Sun, 09:46: RT @MichaelAodhan: 1. It took 30 years for the channel tunnel – 5 from breaking ground 2. There was no munitions dump under the channel 3.…
Sun, 10:11: This is rather glorious. Our mayor, having banned skating on the ponds due to the thinness of the ice, demonstrates how unsafe it is a little more vividly than he perhaps anticipated. https://t.co/eyMkjRF3wy
Sun, 10:15: RT @arrroberts: I don’t speak the language, but I think I understand what this Belgian mayor is saying in the last 6-seconds of this clip (…
Sun, 10:45: Sad: Only 13 states have voted on an official state dinosaur https://t.co/wbLi2XdNj3 But Massachuetts is now one of them.
Sun, 10:45: RT @lukemcgee: While EU is no stranger to perpetual crises, the past few weeks have shone a light on the bloc’s inherent weaknesses. No one…
14 February 1942: birth of Michael E. Briant, who directed Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1971), The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972), The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1973), Death to the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1974), Revenge of the Cybermen (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and The Robots of Death (Fourth Doctor, 1977).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
14 February 1970: broadcast of third episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians. Quinn, who is shielding the wounded Silurian, is found dead by the Doctor.
14 February 1976: broadcast of third episode of The Seeds of Doom. The Doctor and Sarah return to England, and are captured by Harrison Chase as the second pod begins to open…
14 February 1981: broadcast of third episode of The Keeper of Traken. The Keeper dies, Kassia replaces him and is in her turn replaced by the Melkur.
14 February 2002: webcast of first part of "Planet of Blood", the second episode of Death Comes to Time. Two London academics are killed by a vampire; meanwhile the Doctor is concerned at an increasing number of black holes.
iii) dates specified in-universe
14 February 1929: the St Valentine's Day Massacre, as witnessed by the Seventh Doctor, Benny and Ace in Terrance Dicks' 1994 novel Blood Harvest.
14 February 1980: birth of Owen Harper, regular in the first two series of Torchwood. (NB that Burn Gorman who plays him was born in 1974, six years earlier!)
Coincidentally, it was an appropriate week to watch Rain Man, as it turned out. On Thursday, we had a brief court hearing, done informally and swiftly but none the less fully official, to assign guardianship rights for U to us, now that she has turned 18 – six years, almost to the day, after we done the same for B. Belgian law used to have a concept of prolonged minor status for people in the same position as us and our daughters; as a result of a European Court of Human Rights ruling, it has been changed to guardianship, where the court gives us full responsiblity for exercising all decision-making power for the girls. They are both legally adult, and it’s reasonable to have a proper process for depriving them of the rights that most adults have, but which they will be unable to exercise. First time around in 2015, the magistrate (like us) was new to the process and navigated his way through it with care; six years on, he is an old hand and knew exactly what to do.
When I first watched Rain Man, soon after it came out, autism was not a particularly well known issue and of course I had no idea of how it would affect my own life. Once it did become part of my life, the legacy of Rain Man both was and wasn’t helpful; on the one hand, it gave people a cultural reference point when I explained about our family situation; on the other hand, the specifics of Raymond Babbitt as portrayed often raised expectations that our daughters might have savant-type mathematical skills, or even just be able to talk. Still, on balance the existence of the film has been more helpful than not.
Rain Man won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1988, and also three others: Best Director (Barry Levinson), Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass) and Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman). That year’s Hugo Winner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, also won four (one a special award), beating Rain Man for Best Film Editing. (I’ll get to it next.)
That year’s other Best Picture nominees were The Accidental Tourist, which I have not seen, and Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning and Working Girl, which I have. IMDB users rank Rain Man2nd on one system and 11th on the other, with Die Hard ahead of it on both lists.
I have seen 17 other films made in 1988, not quite as many as last year. They were: Beetlejuice, Die Hard, Big, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Naked Gun, A Fish Called Wanda , Mississippi Burning, Dangerous Liaisons, Working Girl, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Big Blue, Earth Girls Are Easy, Gorillas in the Mist, Without a Clue (1988) and The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey. I have fond memories of most of these, though I don’t really get the general love for Beetlejuice.
Here’s a trailer for Rain Man.
There is only one returning actor from previous Oscar-winning films, but it’s a big one: Dustin Hoffmann won his second Best Actor Oscar here, his first being for Kramer vs Kramer and having just missed in Midnight Cowboy. The three roles are utterly different from each other, and all three are great performances.
Incidentally, I was struck by how many of the smaller parts are played by people who have no other film appearances recorded in IMDB.
In case you didn’t know, it’s the story of self-centred young Charlie Babbitt from the Midwest, living in LA, who discovers that his dead father has left most of his estate to the autistic older brother who he had completely forgotten. They journey across America together and Charlie finds redemption. I have complicated feelings about this film for reasons that should be fairly obvious.
To start with the usual, there is precisely one significant black character, Ray’s main carer Vern, who is clearly his main relationship in his residential home, played by Michael D. Roberts.
And the plot, we have to admit, is a bit contrived. If I were running a place like Walbrook, I’d have put some security protocols in place to decrease the chance of relatives turning up out of nowhere and absconding with the residents. Ray’s autism is finely tuned to get them where they need to be. The least realistic part of his portrayal is the way in which Charlie is able to calm him down very very quickly when he has a meltdown; if only it were that easy in real life! The other very atypical part is Ray’s ability to count cards in Las Vegas, which wins Charlie just exactly enough money to pay off his debts and get luxury hotel rooms for them both. (Hoffman’s insistence on the character having savant skills apparently led to the original director quitting the film.)
It’s a film about two white brothers, so not surprisingly it’s a Bechdel fail; there are several named women characters, but I don’t think we see them talking to each other at any point. However, Valeria Golino is lovely as Charlie’s girlfriend Susanna, who calls him on his selfishness and also finds ways to connect to Raymond.
The music by Hans Zimmer, who went on to The Lion King, is atmospheric and haunting.
It also gave The Belle Stars a lift when their song Iko Iko, a favourite of Hoffmann’s, was included in the soundtrack.
While I have my concerns about the plot, I don’t have so many about the two leads. Tom Cruise was only 26, but had already achieved stardom with Top Gun. It’s actually quite rare to have an Oscar-winning film with such a strong arc for the main character; I think the last was The Godfather. The scenes where he makes the connection between Raymond and his own childhood memories are very moving.
But the film belongs to Dustin Hoffmann. Having complained above about some aspects of the scripting of his character, he performs beautifully and convincingly. He particularly catches the way many autistic people carry themselves, with hands clutched protectively close; and he catches the disjointed speech and thought patterns of those who are a bit more able than our girls very well as well. Despite the problematic aspects, it’s a brilliant portrayal.
So, it’s going in my top ten, just behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which deals with similar issues but I think has a better constructed plot, and ahead of Terms of Endearment which has slightly less oomph.
Next up is Driving Miss Daisy, but before that it’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Fri, 13:22: RT @duncan3ross: @nwbrux Misses out a lot (and I disagree with some of his interpretations, for example he won the election by NOT paying o…
13 February 1933: birth of Patrick Godfrey, who played Tor in The Savages (1966) and Major Cosworth in The Mind of Evil (1971).
13 February 1943: birth of Donald Sumpter, who played Enrico Casali in The Wheel in Space (Second Doctor, 1968), Commander Ridgeway in The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972), Erasmus Darkening in The Eternity Trap (SJA, 2009) and Rassilon in Hell Bent (Twelfth Doctor, 20157) – one of the few cases where I've had to update one of my 2010-11 lists of roles.
13 February 2015: death of Hugh Walters, who played three different roles in three different decades of Old Who: William Shakespeare in the story we now call The Chase (First Doctor, 1965), Runcible in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976), and Vogel in Revelation of the Daleks (Sixth Doctor, 1985).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
13 February 1965: broadcast of "The Web Planet", first episode of the story we now call The Web Planet. The Tardis is pulled off course to the planet of Vortis; Ian and the Doctor explore, and a mysterious force controls Barbara through her bracelet.
13 February 1971: broadcast of third episode of The Mind of Evil. The Master takes over the prison with the help of the prisoners, captures the Doctor, and subjects him to 'orrible visions.
13 February 2008: broadcast of Adam (Torchwood), the one with the alien ringer in the Torchwood team.
also 13 February 2008: broadcast of Reset (Torchwood), the one where Martha arrives and Owen is killed (for the first time).
Turner does a cartoon for the Irish Times most days; I've been following his work since I was a teenager, which must mean that he's getting on these days. This collection covers the last five years, and to be honest it's rather difficult to find much that is funny to say about Trump, COVID or Brexit, and where he does find something funny the joke is belaboured by repetition in a collection like this. (For instance, Boris Johnson is invariably depicted as a clown, which is hardly shocking.) It got a bit more interesting in the later parts about Irish politics more generally. Turner has always been hostile to the men of violence, but it's interesting to see his contempt now liberally applied to the main parties of government as well.
I think Turner's Micheal Martin looks more like his Charlie Haughey, back in the day, than like the real Micheal Martin, but there's no doubt who it's meant to be.
I'm afraid it seems to be sold out at present, but the ISBN is 9781999307820 if you want to look out for copies as they become available.
Current A Buzz in the Meadow, by Dave Goulson Bold As Love, by Gwyneth Jones Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers, edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereaka A.I. Revolution vol 1, by Yuu Asami
Last books finished The Kappa Child, by Hiromi Goto Koko Takes a Holiday, by Kieran Shea Ring Shout, by P. Djèlí Clark The Autumn Land, by Clifford D. Simak My Father’s Things, by Wendy Aldiss Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor – Old Friends, by Jody Houser The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin
Next books Three Daves, by Nicki Elson Goodbye To All That, by Robert Graves
Thu, 12:37: A year ago in Rome, I found, tucked away in a back staircase of the @FAO, this striking sculpture by Gina Lollobrigida, better known as a film actress. She has a very solid record in sculpture too. https://t.co/VS3iyUHiz5https://t.co/Lfb2jZBXCa
Thu, 20:48: The Age of Chaos: Barrie Mitchell responds to my 2007 review https://t.co/rZRIptlZdZ He did not draw The Four Marys, but did do a lot else.
Fri, 00:16: RT @tconnellyRTE: Joint statement following Gove Šefčovič meeting: After a frank but constructive discussion, and taking into account the…
Fri, 10:18: RT @patrickgaley: I keep imagining what the Daily Mail and Peston and co. would be like if Corbyn had overseen the world’s highest Covid de…
Fri, 10:45: Yup. Or rather, Unionism needs to learn to sell the benefits of the UK to the middle ground, especially those who are so disaffected by politics that they do not vote. (And Nationalists need to learn to do the same.) https://t.co/FiGPk6QeTM
12 February 1930: birth of Henry Lincoln, who together with Mervyn Haisman wrote The Abominable Snowmen (Second Doctor, 1967), The Web of Fear (Second Doctor, 1968) and The Dominators (also Second Doctor, 1968). Together with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, he later wrote The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
12 February 1953: birth of Nabil Shaban, who played Sil in Vengeance on Varos (1985), Mindwarp (1986) and Big Finish audios starting with Mission to Magnus (Sixth Doctor, 2009).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
12 February 1966: broadcast of "The Sea Beggar", second episode of the story we now call The Massacre. Stephen continues his search for the Doctor, while the Huguenots look for Anne Chaplette to resolve the rumours of the planned mass killing.
12 February 1972: broadcast of third episode of The Curse of Peladon. The Doctor is condemned to trial by combat; he escapes but is recaptured. As he defeats Grun, shots ring out…
12 February 1977: broadcast of third episode of The Robots of Death. Dask/Taran Capel sends the robots to kill the remaining crew; the Doctor teams up with D84.
Second paragraph of third story ("Ashen Light" by Archie Black):
Hartmann was founded in 2448, one of a hundred roughly nucleated villages developed on the IT by the Venusian terraformers. Farms, it had been decided, would most closely mimic the comfortable terrestrial existences that the colonists would be forsaking and create the powerful sense of community the terraformers believed necessary to their long-term colonial agenda: the creation of a self-sustaining second Earth
An anthology that seems to have coincided with an exhibition in Greenwich, with stories themed around parts of the solar system – starting with Mercury and working out to Voyager I. Got it as a prize from Strange Horizons. I thought a lot of these were very good, and wished I had got to them in time for Hugo nominations that year (2014). In particular the very first one, "Golden Apple" by Sophia McDougall, about a child dying of sunlight, and "The Comet's Tale" by Matt Jones, about a forbidden love affair and Halley's Comet, will both linger with me. You can get it here.
This was the SF book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that list is another anthology, Science Fiction: The Great Years, edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl.
Wed, 20:48: RT @pmdfoster: NEW: ⚗️ the U.K. chemicals industry calls for common sense re-think of U.K. post-#brexit plan to build copycat…
Thu, 08:59: Brexit’s third act gets underway with a familiar plot line — Northern Ireland – setting the scene for the next step in the perpetual negotiation. https://t.co/1LSeyOHZXw
Thu, 09:17: RT @CharlesTannock: Even if UK vaccine success were down to Brexit which it clearly isn’t it’s curious that the EU so called ‘rotting corps…
11 February 1989: death of John Bailey, who played the Commander in The Sensorites (First Doctor, 1964), Edward Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks (Second Doctor, 1967) and Sezom in The Horns of Nimon (Fourth Doctor, 1980).
11 February 1993: birth of Jordan Renzo, who played Matteusz in Class (2018).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
11 February 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Moonbase. The Tardis lands on the Moon, near the base which controls Earth's weather. Crew members are falling ill; but it is the Cybermen behind it all.
11 February 1978: broadcast of second episode of The Invasion of Time. The Doctor expels Leela from the Capitol, and laughs as three alien beings materialise in the Panopticon.
Yeah, ten more days have passed in this weird situation. We've seen two of the worst weeks I can remember for the leadership of the European Commission, with the botch over Article 16 of 29 January followed by the President of the Commission alternating between taking full responsibility herself and blaming her colleagues – notably the health commissioner, who the German media are briefing heavily against right now.
Meanwhile the numbers are edging back to the point where I'm going to risk going into Brussels occasionally for walks in the park with my contacts – very Cold War. (Actually the weather is very cold, this week.)
Before Christmas I bought a game to play with Anne and F. Last weekend we finally opened it – Pandemic Legacy, which as most of you know is a game where everyone wins or everyone loses, the situation evolves every month and the rules gradually change each time you play.
The cost of sending a letter was the same, regardless of whether it was sent to someone a few streets away or whether it went from the coast of Cornwall to the highlands of Scotland. This strengthened our sense of geographic identity because, in the eyes of the Royal Mail, we were all equal. Their postcode system unified the country.
You are familiar — if you are at all the sort of reader I like — with the sort of scientific paper I mean. It is a paper you cannot make head nor tail of, and at the end come five or six long folded diagrams that open out and show peculiar zigzag tracings, flashes of lightning overdone, or sinuous inexplicable things called “smoothed curves” set up on ordinates and rooting in abscissae — and things like that. You puzzle over the thing for a long time and end with the suspicion but that the author does not understand it either. But really you know many of these scientific people understand the meaning of their own papers quite well: it is simply a defect of expression that raises the obstacle between us.
