The BSFA Long List is out. Here are the 56 (!) Best Novel nominees, ranked by the product of their number of owners on Goodreads and LibraryThing.
Goodreads
LibraryThing
reviewers
av rating
owners
av rating
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
27,961
4.34
1,033
4.26
The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
24,512
4.01
990
4.08
Network Effect by Martha Wells
22,649
4.43
729
4.42
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
15,259
3.8
486
4.06
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
13,520
4.3
465
4.21
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
10,990
3.9
411
4.26
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
9,187
4.04
464
4.08
The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty
13,803
4.53
279
4.32
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
9,894
4.15
374
4.16
Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis
9,418
3.89
271
3.6
Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin
7,136
3.65
189
3.56
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook
5,260
3.8
171
3.81
Burn by Patrick Ness
4,401
3.82
196
3.98
The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey
3,744
4.11
207
4.03
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
4,323
3.62
166
3.63
The Silence by Don DeLillo
3,824
2.8
184
2.86
The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal
3,075
4.45
187
4.49
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
2,626
4.11
172
3.94
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
1,725
4.02
211
4.02
Afterland by Lauren Beukes
2,208
3.31
142
3.47
The God Game by Danny Tobey
2,758
3.74
113
3.68
Picard: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack
2,236
4.07
93
3.93
Saints of Salvation by Peter F Hamilton
2,509
4.46
63
4.32
The Last Human by Zack Jordan
1,473
3.71
99
3.54
The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
1,581
3.92
82
4.39
Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
932
4.03
116
4.08
88 Names by Matt Ruff
1,046
3.44
66
3.21
Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow
736
4.11
73
4.13
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang
574
3.43
83
3.5
Light of Impossible Stars by Gareth L. Powell
847
3.95
56
3.65
Beneath The Rising by Premee Mohamed
437
3.68
60
3.67
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
308
3.75
57
3.56
Mordew by Alex Pheby
220
3.92
54
3.4
Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston
183
3.75
58
3.5
Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock
274
3.58
27
3.44
Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen
245
3.85
29
3.17
War of the Maps by Paul McAuley
194
3.8
35
3.5
Space Station Down by Ben Bova & Doug Beason
270
3.39
18
3.33
Ghost Species by James Bradley
330
3.84
11
3.75
Comet Weather by Liz Williams
81
4.46
38
4.25
Noumenon Ultra by Marina J. Lostetter
164
3.94
11
–
Chosen Spirits by Samit Basu
143
3.73
5
4.25
Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught
87
4.01
8
–
Liquid Crystal Nightingale by Eeleen Lee
39
3.56
17
4.25
The Breach by M.T. Hill
86
3.52
7
3.25
People of the Canyons by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
71
4.13
8
–
The Evidence by Christopher Priest
49
3.37
11
5
Threading the Labyrinth by Tiffani Angus
47
4.04
10
5
Fearless by Allen Stroud
51
4.04
7
4.25
Dark Angels Rising by Ian Whates
35
3.86
9
4.33
King of the Rising by Kacen Callender
75
3.59
3
–
Greensmith by Aliya Whiteley
23
4.13
6
3.5
Analogue/Virtual by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
13
4.31
7
–
Water Must Fall by Nick Wood
8
4.25
8
1.75
Ivory’s Story by Eugen Bacon
7
4.29
6
4.67
Club Ded by Nikhil Singh
3
4.67
2
–
This is of limited predictive value, but does give a sense of how far these books have penetrated the wider market.
Three books are in the upper quartile of all four metrics – Piranesi, Network Effect and The Empire of Gold. Striking how poorly The Silence seems to have landed with readers.
This year's Worldcon, DisCon III, to be held in Washington DC, has had a difficult few days, with a number of people leaving the team.
I have been appointed the new Division Head of the WSFS Division, which is the part of the Worldcon that admininsters the Hugo Awards, the Business Meeting which reviews the rules, and the Site Selection process for the 2023 Worldcon (currently contested between Chengdu, China and Memphis, Tennessee) – the three obligatory things that every Worldcon must do.
I was previously the Administrator of the Hugo Awards in 2017 and 2019, and one of the deputy administrators last year; and also Division Head for Promotions at the London Worldcon in 2014. I had not anticipated having any executive role this year, but life does not always work out as we expect.
The Hugos have had some reputational issues to deal with. Having fought off direct assault by ill-wishers in 2015 and 2016, some pretty significant mistakes were made more recently. Many of those were outside the immediate responsibility of the Hugo Administrators, including most notably the awful botching of last year's Hugo ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party in 2019, and the hostile response from some in the community to the winners of the award for Best Related Work in both of those years (cases where I very much stand by the eligibility decisions that were made by teams that I was a part of).
I have made mistakes as well, and I hope that I have learned from them. In particular, it's clear, not least from the problems that arose in the last few days, that the Hugos as a whole need to be less siloed and need to improve communication in both directions with the rest of the Worldcon and with the wider stakeholder community (as my work colleagues would put it). DisCon III had already started putting structures in place that would improve this side of things, and I look forward to working with those and building on them.
The 2021 WSFS team structure currently has a lot of gaps, including the Site Selection Administrator and many of the supporting roles in Hugo Administration and the Business Meeting. Worldcon and the Hugos are entirely run by volunteers, and cannot survive without active support from fans. I do have some people in mind already, but nothing is set in stone and I would welcome (private) expressions of interest, to go please to wsfs at discon3 dot org rather than any of my other addresses.
And I cannot make any comment on what the physical arrangements for this year's Worldcon will actualy be, given the global situation. But it will happen, and there will be Hugo Awards, and I am glad to play my part.
Sat, 13:02: At the same time as @FranckenTheo & @de_NVA collapsed the Belgian govt over the (pretty anodyne) Marrakesh Accord on migration, an NVA elected representative was taking massive bribes for humanitarian visas. Francken was told, did nothing. Disgusting. https://t.co/yH4ar63McF
Sat, 15:37: RT @PrinceJvstin: Faith of our Fathers, being probably my favorite PKD story, period, is my favorite story in the entire book. Although Lei…
Sat, 16:24: RT @PeterStefanovi2: ‘If somebody asks you (to fill in a form) you tell them to ring up the Prime Minister & I will direct them to throw th…
Sat, 17:01: RT @KissyFacedBrute: @nwbrux RR was one of the greats, try one of her novels she wrote as Barbara Vine since you liked this one. I didn’t k…
Sun, 00:11: RT @BSFA: The BSFA is pleased to announce the longlist for the 2020 BSFA Awards, in the categories of Novel, Short Fiction, Non-Fiction, an…
Sun, 00:14: Jeepers, 56 novels on the long-list? And 56 short stories? Hmm, will do my best to read diligently… https://t.co/OrCOaBpvZV
17 January 1970: broadcast of third episode of Spearhead from Space. Meg Seeley brings the swarm leader to the Doctor, Liz and the Brigadier; meanwhile General Scobie is confronted by his own double.
17 January 1976: broadcast of third episode of The Brain of Morbius. The Doctor restores the Sisters' flame, and Solon forces Sarah to help him operate on Morbius.
17 January 1981: broadcast of third episode of Warriors' Gate. Romana is rescued by the Tharils and brought to join the Doctor at a feast on the other side of the Gate. K9's condition continues to deteriorate.
17 January 2012: broadcast of second part of K9's Question Time, which as noted yesterday is one of the three episodes here:
By contrast, the first show-runner of the TV show was a woman, Verity Lambert, the first woman director was Paddy Russell for the 1966 story we now call The Massacre, and the first credited woman writer was Leslie Scott, for the following story which we now call The Ark – though it is disputed as to whether she actually worked on the script, whose other credited writer was her husband Paul Erickson. The next credited woman, adn the first with a solo credit, to write for the TV show was Barbara Clegg, for Enlightenment in 1983, and nobody disputes that. (She will turn 95 this year.)
The art in both books is gorgeous, and the brisk and charming script captures the nuances of the four lead characters rather well, especially Jodie Whittaker's Doctor. The story of A New Beginning is frankly a bit dull. It follows on from incidents in earlier Titan comics which I haven't read, with the TARDIS crew pursing a mysterious portal from which a hand emerges, beckoning. We get from A to B to C with some time-travelling incidental characters. More or less satisfying, but not very deep. I wondereed if the team's creativity was a bit stifled by having to round off an existing platline. Anyway, you can get it here.
Second frame of the third part of Hidden Human History:
The second volume, on the other hand, I thought a lot better. The companions are given a bit more inner life than usual, as it turns out that they are all fans of a podcast about obscure historical events (which sound plausible, though I have not checked to see how many of them are real). The alien enemy becomes humanised through contact with the Doctor, and we end up with a story where everyone wins, told across a set of neatly portrayed historical scenes. To be honest, I'd recommend starting with this one. You can get it here.
These both bubbled successively to the top of my pile of unread comics in English, one towards the end of last month and the other earlier this month, so I'm giving this post two bookblog year tags. The next is volume 3 in the series, Old Friends.
Aliens won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1987, beating in order Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, The Fly, Little Shop of Horrors and Labyrinth, in that order– a year when all the contenders were cinematic. Weirdly, I’m not entirely sure that I have seen Star Trek IV; I have definitely seen Little Shop of Horrors though. IMDB users rate Aliens ahead of the other contenders, top of the year on one ranking and fourth on the other. I’d certainly rate it ahead of Little Shop.
Two returnees from Hugo or Oscar-winning films. Most obviously, Sigourney Weaver is back from Alien as Ellen Ripley, having also briefly appeared at the end of Annie Hall as Woody Allen’s latest girlfriend.
And Alan Polonsky, the unnamed insurance attorney in an early scene in Aliens, apparently played Paxton in Chariots of Fire; but I have been unable to work out who Paxton is in the earlier film. Here he is in Aliens.
This film does only one thing, but it does it very very well for two hours and seventeen minutes. It’s not quite as good as the original – few sequels are – but the whole thing comes together on a single trajectory to a very gratifying conclusion. It looks good, it sounds good, and it very nearly smells appropriately disgusting. I’m not a big fan of military fiction in general, or of MilSF in particular, so I find the early scenes of the marines getting it together irritating rather than entertaining. But then their discipline and experience turn out to be worth very little against the implacable xenomorphs. In case you have forgotten about it, here’s the trailer.
A lot has been made of the film’s approach to womanhood and motherhood. Others have gone into this in greater detail, for instance here. I must say I haven’t given it a great deal of conscious thought, but the resonances certainly enhance the viewing experience, compared to the average action/horror film where the heroic men protect the wimminfolk. I have watched very few horror films, and not read a lot of the genre; the best counterpart I can think of where the horror is continually ratcheted up until almost the final page is H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. The final sequence in particular is a masterpiece of tension.
I’m putting this in my top ten Hugo-winning films. There’s not a lot more to write about it – as I said, it only does one thing – but I’m putting it ahead of The Empire Strikes Back and behind Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Fri, 12:56: RT @johnnythin: #Archaeology31 The problem of the ‘hiddenscape’: a challenge for archaeologists is to develop models capable of predicting…
Fri, 13:07: A thought for Belgian friends at a loss for something to do this weekend – the lovely exhibition of Jean-Michel Folon’s sculptures at Villers Abbey @abbayedevillers is open until 21 February. https://t.co/WOcuKFIiw7
Fri, 14:19: RT @DavidHenigUK: There is a sense of disbelief about the new trade problems between Great Britain and the EU / Northern Ireland. Which we…
Fri, 16:01: RT @worldcon2021: Colette H. Fozard has resigned from her position as Co-Chair of DisCon III. We thank her for her long-term efforts on Dis…
Fri, 16:32: RT @WritersFrock: @nwbrux Did you know (you probably did) that Ridley Scott based much of Gladiator on Anthony Mann’s 1964 film adaptation?…
Fri, 16:46: RT @piersb: @nwbrux I’ve been meaning to read this for years. Your tweet has just persuaded me to buy a copy. 🙂
Fri, 16:46: RT @CallidusDominus: @nwbrux I recall glancing through from my first year in Uni where one of our courses was on Rome to Renaissance and ea…
Fri, 19:54: RT @NotAdric: Who, these days, would want to volunteer to run a convention? Reminds me of the points made here, many years ago https://t.c…
Fri, 20:38: RT @IanMoore3000: @nwbrux The twitter discourse on that post does rather support the points she is making.
Fri, 20:48: GOH Restoring the Past https://t.co/ckPkXcD8te Restoring Belfast’s 1895 Grand Opera House. I remember the last time this was done, in the 1970s!
Fri, 22:01: RT @RobotArchie: One of a regrettably few books switch shows Terry Pratchett could be just as brilliant at ‘ironic Science Fiction’ as he w…
Sat, 10:45: RT @AlecMacGillis: Wow. Belgian consulate in NY sends alert to Belgian citizens living in the area about avoiding danger during any coming…
Sat, 10:54: Whoniversaries 16 January: Peter Butterworth, Romans #1, Terror of Autons #3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang https://t.co/uKjMqvI98F
Sat, 11:44: Nice to see the new CDU leader being congratulated by an MEP from a completely different party (Die Gr�nen). https://t.co/CkNZAg1Lme
Sat, 11:52: RT @BastonBorders: New CDU leader Armin Laschet is from a borderland family. This tablet (with several Laschet casualties) is in Kelmis chu…
Sat, 11:52: RT @BastonBorders: The Laschets, like many others in the area, had branches of the family across the national boundaries – Moresnet, Prussi…
Sat, 11:55: I am not a supporter of either party, but I find it very weird to react to a tweet from @uuponline leader @SteveAikenUUP in which he criticises the DUP by complaining that he never criticises the DUP!!! https://t.co/jxSHeGXFLq
16 January 1979: death of Peter Butterworth, who played the Meddling Monk in The Time Meddler (1965) and The Daleks' Master Plan (1966)
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 January 1965: broadcast of "The Slave Traders", the first episode of the story we now call The Romans. The Tardis crew are relaxing in a Roman villa. The Doctor and Vicki decide to walk to Rome, and the Doctor takes on the identity of a murdered musician. Barbara and Ian are captured by slavers.
16 January 1971: broadcast of third episode of Terror of the Autons. Plastic daffodils are programmed to asphyxiate people all over Britain, and the Doctor is attacked by his telephone cable.
16 January 2008: broadcast of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starting the second season of Torchwood. This is the one with James Marsters appearing as Captain John Hart; the team prevent him from destroying Cardiff and he disappears remarking that he has 'found Gray'.
16 January 2012: broadcast of first episode of K9’s Question Time, a segment of Stargazing Live. Here are the first three episodes.
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 important point I missed last month: the departure of my German intern E and her replacement with American C, recently moved to Brussels with her Austrian diplomat husband. E is currently in Ukraine, montoring the ceasefire for the OSCE, after several years working for a humanitarian relief agency in DR Congo, South Sudan, Gaza/Palestine and other places. I remember taking them both to a very boozy reception hosted by the Welsh government, at which the late great Rhodri Morgan came over and chatted to us, very knowledgeably, about Somaliland. (He announced his retirement a few days later.) I had a nice picture of the three of us at the reception, but E prefers not to be seen, so this is me and C.
At the end of October, I travelled for the first time to South Sudan, or Southern Sudan as it then was, setting off on the evening of the 30th on an Ethiopian flights that stopped off in Paris before taking me overnight to Addis Ababa; the flight was uncomfortable and I spent the morning looking dazedly out of the window in the airport before my connection to Juba. Clémence Pinaud, whose cheerful book War and Genocide in South Sudan comes out next month, collected me at the airport and delivered me to the hotel where I think I slept for about 18 hours and woke up in November.
On the cultural front, I started my rewatch of Old Who. (Well, I started that in September too, but the first write-up was this month.)
Total page count ~8,200 (YTD ~88,900)
6 (YTD 60/305) by women (Jenkins, Hurston, Kingsolver, Brontë, Mosse, Gentle)
1 (YTD 16/305) by PoC (Naipaul)
The best of these was Brendan Bradshaw's detailed study of the Dissolution in Ireland, which you can get here (at a price). Several very disappointing books, the worst being Eric Saward's novelisation of the radio play Slipback, one of the worst Doctor Who books ever, though you can get it here. The Corrections did not live up to its hype; you can get it here. And To Your Scattered Bodies Go turned out on rereading to have been visited by the suck fairy; you can get it here.
Current Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake The Lowest Heaven, eds Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin T.K. Whitaker, by Anne Chambers
Last books finished At Childhood’s End, by Sophie Aldred Out of Africa, by Karen Blixen Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Volume 2: Hidden Human History, by Jody Houser Into the Ashes, by Lee Murray Midnight Blue-Light Special, by Seanan Mcguire Gallimaufry, by Colin Baker Kaamelott: Het Raadsel Van de Kluis, by Astier/Dupre
Next books The Food of the Gods: And How It Came to Earth, by H. G. Wells Greybeard, by Brian Aldiss
Thu, 16:35: RT @JohnValenciacf: @nwbrux The Return of Sherlock Holmes showed there was still life in the detective (pun intentional.) His Last Bow was…
Thu, 19:05: RT @Malmstrom4OECD: Happy and proud to be in the next round in the race for the post as Secretary General for @OECD. OECD has a key role to…
Thu, 19:54: Really interesting, thank you, @JohnValenciacf. My own draft comes out almost exactly the same as yours, with the exception of Moneyreagh, which can stay in Strangford, and Ballydugan can then stay in South Down. This of course uses Rule 7; otherwise it is very difficult indeed. https://t.co/u9idFCNjxi
Thu, 21:29: RT @kylegriffin1: Impeachment manager Rep. Ted Lieu: “All Donald Trump has to say to calm tensions down is one sentence: ‘The election was…
15 January 1934: birth of Richard Franklin, who played Mike Yates in four of the five Third Doctor seasons (1971-74).
15 January 1941: birth of Geoffrey Beevers, who played the Master in The Keeper of Traken and with Big Finish. Was married to Caroline "Liz Shaw" John until her death.
15 January 1948: birth of David Warwick, who played Kimus in The Pirate Plant (Fourth Doctor, 1978) and the police commissioner in Army of Ghosts (Tenth Doctor, 2006); former partner of Louise "Leela" Jameson.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
15 January 1966: broadcast of "Escape Switch", tenth episode of the story we now call The Daleks' Master Plan. The Daleks take Steven and Sara hostage and force the Doctor to hand over the taranium core. But the Doctor steals the directional unit from the Monk's Tardis. I incorrectly used a snap from this episode last week; here it is again.
15 January 1972: broadcast of third episode of Day of the Daleks. The Doctor travels to the future, is captured by the controller and the Daleks, and subjected to mind analysis (summoning images of the First Doctor and Second Doctor).
15 January 1979: broadcast of third episode of The Face of Evil. The Doctor and Leela are captured by the Tesh and narrowly escape being subjected to particle analysis (disintegration); the Doctor confronts the mad computer Xoanon.
It was not the Other. He was thinner, and not quite so tall.
Clarke's first novel in the fifteen years since Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a much much shorter book, in which the eponymous protagonist is one of two living inhabitants of a vast building which seems to be the entire world. Gradually the truth about the narrator's past and about the world they are in becomes clear. Intense and intricate. You can get it here.
Wed, 17:11: Europe revives its night trains to fight climate change https://t.co/Hf6MCe7CwQ Looks like the only line relevant for me is Brussels-Berlin – but that will certainly do!
Wed, 19:13: RT @JoostvanHezik: To all my dutch followers, read this mindblowing and delightfully written history of out nation: the birthplace of both…
Thu, 09:30: Whoniversaries January 14: Richard Briers, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Underwater Menace #1, Underworld #2 https://t.co/J73fy8LzG7
Thu, 11:29: “We talked of many things, including Great Britain’s position in the world as some kind of honest broker. I agreed with him when he said no nation could be more honest, and he agreed with me when I said no nation could be broker.” https://t.co/BmkQSjVWdN
14 January 1934: birth 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).
14 January 1963: birth of Adjoah Andoh, who played Sister Jatt in New Earth (Tenth Doctor, 2006) and Martha's mother Francine Jones in the 2007 series 3.
14 January 1965: birth of Jemma Redgrave, who played Kate Stewart (not my cousin) in several Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor stories.
14 January 1974: death of Paul Whitsun-Jones, who played the Squire in The Smugglers (1966) and the Marshal The Mutants (1972).
14 January 2005: death of Jack Kine, visual effects designer whose photograph is used on screen for the facist leader of the parallel Britain in Inferno (Third Doctor, 1970).
14 January 2016: death of Robert Banks Stewart, author of both Terror of the Zygons (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and The Seeds of Doom (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
broadcast anniversaries
14 January 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Underwater Menace. The Doctor and friends land on a marine volcano around 1968. They escape sacrifice to the god Amdo, but Polly is threatened with transformation into a fish creature.
14 January 1974: broadcast of second episode of Underworld. The Doctor, Leela, Jackson and the crew explore the planetoid around the P7E.
iii) date specified in canon
14 January 2594: Benny Summerfield turns up on the planet of Tyler's Folly (in Lawrence Miles' 1997 novel Down).
As previously mentioned, I have been following the Doctor Who multi-platform "event", Time Lord Victorious, of which the most substantial elements not written up so far are a novel, a comics story and a couple of audios.
DWM comic story: "Monstrous Beauty", by Scott Gray
Second frame of third installment:
The Ninth Doctor returns to the pages of DWM, with a story involving Rose, vampires and the pre-Time Lord Gallifreyans. Neatly executed.
Novel: All Flesh is Grass, by Una McCormack
Second paragraph of third chapter:
‘Under attack! Return fire! Return fire!’
Follows on from the above, and from the Tenth Doctor novel The Knight, the Fool and the Dead, and from the Eighth Doctor audio The Enemy of My Enemy. I thought this was the best new Who book I read last year (though I did not read all that many). The Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors are brought together, together with Brian the Ood assassin and a Dalek time squad to confront the Kotturuh. Sparkling repartee between the three of them, and a grouping which perhaps Big Finish may be able to persuade the principals to reproduce in audio before too long. You can get it here.
Eighth Doctor audio:Mutually Assured Destruction, by Lizzie Hopley
A coda to All Flesh is Grass, with the Eighth Doctor still uncomfortably with the Daleks after the battle is over, and discovering more about them than he really wanted to know. You can get it here.
Fourth Doctor audio: Genetics of the Daleks, by Jonathan Morris
This is only loosely connected to the rest of the Time Lord Victorious plotline, as it is the prequel to an Escape Room game which due to obvious current circumstances has not yet been launched. But as with most Tom Baker performances (and much of Morris's work) it's rather glorious, with the Doctor on a generation starship whose crew is deeply factionalised and plotting against each other, and which also has been infiltrated by our favourite malevolent pepper-pots. A good entry point for Old Who fans wondering what this audio lark is all about (if there are any left). You can get it here.
There are a bunch of other bits and pieces of Time Lord Victorious as well.
Short stories
These basically speak for themselves and you can digest them pretty easily.
"Secrets of Time Lord Victorious, by James Goss" in full:
Hi, your Data Worm here.
Just back from another mission into the Archive of Islos, digging up some secrets of the Dark Times. I really work so vrrr vrrrrr hard for you.
Here’s a weird fact – Time Travel back to the Dark Times is impossible. There’s a block around them. Many believe that Rassilon (founder of the Time Lords) put up an impenetrable barrier around them. But why? Was it to stop the time-capable races from travelling back and altering the origins of the universe we now have? Whatever, not even during the Darkest Days of the Time War could anyone manage to go back there.
What would happen – just take a moment and think about this – what would happen if the Time Lords and their Laws Of Time weren’t around anymore? Is there anything to stop you from going back to the Dark Times? And if not, then what would you do there? If you put a stop to one of the harmful species lurking back there, what would the consequences be to our universe? Just a bit of food for thought.
I’ll tell you this, though, we should have a chat about the Kotturuh – the Bringers of Death. Did you know they’re so scary that the Eternals ran away from them? And have been running ever since?
Comic Creator: Tales of the Dark Times (no author given)
Five short-short comic stories from the Comic Creator app which add a little (though not all that much) to the overall narrative, and whose main point seems to be to get Who fans to try out the app for themselves. Well, tried it but no huge reason to go back.
The major remaining part is an Eighth Doctor/Tenth Doctor audio to be released next month. I've enjoyed most of this so far, but will have some thoughts on the whole enterprise at the end.
Tue, 20:48: RT @BrigidLaffan: In this piece, I argue that EU emerged stronger from #Brexit. Brexit has enabled the EU to reveal its essential essence v…
Tue, 23:58: RT @OxfordDiplomat: Go EU Diplomacy “U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancelled his Europe trip at the last minute on Tuesday after…
Wed, 05:30: RT @sahilkapur: House votes 223-205 to call on @VP Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Trump. This won’t have any prac…
Wed, 10:45: The World’s Oldest Story? Astronomers Say Global Myths About ‘Seven Sisters’ Stars May Reach Back 100,000 Years https://t.co/kQaEM6Gi4H Wow.
13 January 1923: birth of Jack Watling, who played Professor Travers in The Abominable Snowmen (Second Doctor, 1967), The Web of Fear (Second Doctor, 1968) and Downtime (unofficial, 1995).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
13 January 1968: broadcast of fourth episode of The Enemy of the World. The Doctor and friends escape Salamander's base, at the cost of Fariah's life. Salamander visits the underground base where he has imprisoned his scientists.
13 January 1973: broadcast of third episode of The Three Doctors.The Second and Third Doctors confront Omega, and discover that his physical body has been destroyed.
13 January 1979: broadcast of fourth episode of The Power of Kroll. The Doctor realises that the fifth segment is part of Kroll, and retrieves it, destroying the giant creature; most of the miners are killed and the Swampies survive.
13 January 1984: broadcast of fourth episode of Warriors of the Deep. The Doctor regretfully wipes out the reptiles with Hexachromite gas. "There should have been another way."
iii) date specified in canon
13 January 1213: On the 13th day of the 13th year of the 13th century, on the 13th moon of the 13th planet of the 13th galaxy, the Doctor and Rose encounter the Triskaidekaphobes (in the September 2006 Doctor Who Adventures strip, "Triskaidekaphobia" by the ever excellent Alan Barnes).
(Accidentally posted in draft form yesterday – this is the real thing.)
Second paragraph of third chapter:
"Good afternoon, honourable students."
When I first read this the year it was a Hugo finalist (2010), I wrote:
didn't really grab me I'm afraid. It is a tale of time police and overlapping universes and histories, broken up by some reflections on the evolution of the solar system presented in rather odd powerpoint format. I wasn't really convinced either by the astronomy or the mathematics of deep time, and they appeared to be the point of the story.
On the other hand, the story does get my approval for being the only one presented to Hugo voters in a format that my handheld can read without a conversion process.
I should note that despite my ranking it sixth, it actually won the award, proving once again that my tastes do not always align with those of Hugo voters. I voted for the Scalzi story, which lost by 11 votes.
Rereading it ten years on, I’m again struck by how different it is from most of the author’s usual work (and usually I like Stross’s work much more than Scalzi’s). I think I am more sympathetic now, though. It’s a real Big Picture story, packed into a few dozen pages, with a grand sweep of time-manipulating narrative but characters who are pretty human. You can get it here.
This was (I thought) my top unread book acquired in 2014 (directly from the author, I think – my copy is signed), but it turned out I had read it before. Next on that pile is Symbiont, by "Mira Grant".
Mon, 18:54: RT @its_johnmartin: THREAD My wife is crying with frustration. She manages a supermarket that gets about 16,000 customers a week. About 160…
Mon, 21:22: RT @apcoworldwide: .@MargeryKraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO Worldwide, reflects and shares her thoughts on the January 6, 202…
Tue, 09:53: RT @astroehlein: Republicans: Sure our people just tried to overturn a democratic election using deadly violence, but why are Democrats try…
12 January 1974: broadcast of first episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, billed simply as Invasion. The Doctor and Sarah land in a deserted London under martial law, and are attacked by first a pterodactyl and then a tyrannosaurus rex.
12 January 1980: broadcast of fourth episode of The Horns of Nimon, ending Season 17 prematurely. K9 rescues the hostages and the Doctor and Romana blow up the Nimons' complex.
12 January 1982: broadcast of fourth episode of Castrovalva. The Portreeve turns out to be the Master, and the whole of Castrovalva based on Adric's computations. The Doctor rescues Adric and leaves Castrovalva to fold in on itself, trapping the Master.
12 January 1983: broadcast of fourth episode of Arc of Infinity. Omega attempts to transfer across to our universe, but the Doctor prevents him; and Tegan rejoins the Tardis.
12 January 1984: broadcast of third episode of Warriors of the Deep. The Doctor kills the Myrka, but the Sea Devils take over the base.
Also 12 January 1984: filming of the regeneration scene from the Fifth Doctor to the Sixth.
12 January 1985: broadcast of second episode of Attack of the Cybermen. The Doctor helps the Cryons attack the Cybermen, and Lytton, dying, kills the Cyber-Controller.
12 January 2020: broadcast of Orphan 55. Not everything is as it seems at Tranquility Spa — why is the staff so worried about oxygen levels? What are the monsters stalking the corridors? And why does the planet on which they're all standing bear the ominous name of "Orphan 55"?
ii) date specified in canon
12 January 1898: death of Florence Sundvik (in The Curse of Fenric, Seventh Doctor, 1989)
300 days on; eleven into the new year, and I've started my second week back at work – I got straight back into it last Monday, as there is really not much else to do. I must say I’m finding the start of the year hard. This lockdown has gone on much longer than the first, and crucially the weather has been less good, because it’s winter. The nights are now getting shorter again, but they are still pretty long.
I've already had one tweet that has gone viral:
The first chapters of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip K. Dick novel on which the film Blade Runner is based, are set on 3 January 2021. pic.twitter.com/0lzu8JCQ9N
The Belgian numbers were cheering me up when I wrote on 1 January. The infection rate has unfortunately been trending up again in the last few days, though there is some speculation that this represents people who skipped getting tested during the holidays (which means the apparent decrease over Christmas was more apparent than real). Hospitalisations, ICU beds, and deaths continue to decrease in general, which is something. But it's clear that we are a long way off getting back to the office. I note that on 16 May, two months into the first lockdown and just after our first tentative return to the office, I wrote that "Today's numbers are again encouraging – 1750 in hospital, 364 in intensive care, 57 new fatalities" – well, today's numbers are not that different, 1955 in hospital, 371 in ICU and a daily average fatality rate of 53.4 for 1-7 January, but not especially encouraging; back in May we were watching a steady decrease after two months, and now it seems much more wobbly after three. A sobering tweet from Peter Donaghy (who sometimes writes as "Salmon of Data") over the weekend:
Over the last 7 days 0.9% of the population of Ireland have tested positive for COVID-19. Not only is this the highest in the world as of now, it's one of the highest rates ever reported. Excluding microstates, only one country (Belgium) has ever reported more cases per capita. pic.twitter.com/zrXC1SNtZW
As @peterdonaghy said last night, this 1 Nov Belgian figure was the highest per capita infection rate ever reported for anywhere apart from the microstates; more than 1% of the population over 7 days.
Our municipality is still one of those where the incidence is lowest, and Leuven is still the least affected big city. I had been thinking of going into Brussels this week to see a few people and run a few errands, but the rise in numbers in the capital has persuaded me to postpone that to the second half of the month.
Anyway, still here and still watching what is going on.
Mon, 09:37: RT @BillKristol: We have “a bipartisan, blue ribbon panel” to deal with this crisis. It’s called the Congress of the United States. The Hou…
11 January 1941: birth of Malcolm Terris, who played Etnin in The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968) and the Co-pilot in The Horns of Nimon (Fourth Doctor, 1980).
11 January 1995: death of Peter Pratt, who played the Master in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
11 January 1964: broadcast of "The Ambush", fourth episode of hte story we now call The Daleks. The Doctor and friends escape the Dalek city, and the Thals are ambushed by the Daleks; the Doctor realises that the Daleks still have the mercury fluid link.
11 January 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Krotons. The Doctor and Zoe prepare to attack the Krotons, who still hold Jamie prisoner in the Dynotrope.
11 January 1975: broadcast of third episode of Robot. Sarah goes to the Scientific Reform Society and discovers that Kettlewell is one of the conspirators. Hilda Winters and Think Tank retreat to their bunker.
11 January 1982: broadcast of third episode of Castrovalva. The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa explore Castrovalva; but the captive Adric makes an appearance and the town starts to fold in on itself…
11 January 1983: broadcast of third episode of Arc of Infinity. The Doctor's execution has been faked by Hedin, who is under the control of Omega.
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.
My only trip this month seems to have been to Cyprus; I note in several of the book reviews below that I came back with an upset stomach. But I had a sensual shaving experience while I was there. I was also exercised about the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
F and I had a nice visit with B (B is 12 here, and F 10), taking her to a nearby park and blowing bubbles for her.
F and U (aged 6) also enjoyed their uncle and aunt's company at home.
Sat, 12:41: RT @JulianSmithUK: Whatever the frustrations, whatever the imperfections since @niassembly it is such a relief that ultimately everyone sai…
Sat, 12:56: Q&A: Kathleen Belew on The Turner Diaries and Capitol riots https://t.co/tCbXKDMNvJ The novel inspiring the terrorists. “The fact that he can call these people to arms does not mean he can call them off.”
Sat, 13:34: RT @rtraister: My lengthy conversation w @RepJayapal about Wed’s violence, being left in the House gallery as rioters broke windows, her ra…
Sat, 16:51: RT @j9fingers: @nwbrux I almost replied before I looked at your original review; and then I realised I had already done so. Repeating myse…
Sat, 22:02: RT @Edgecliffe: The editor of @forbes tells companies tempted to hire any former Trump press secretary that if they do so “Forbes will assu…
Sat, 22:04: RT @bigfinish: It’s the ninth of the first, so here’s the first of the Ninth Doctor Adventures. Find out more and PRE-ORDER Ravagers he…
Sun, 10:45: As @peterdonaghy said last night, this 1 Nov Belgian figure was the highest per capita infection rate ever reported for anywhere apart from the microstates; more than 1% of the population over 7 days. Though Ireland will beat it in the next couple of days. https://t.co/EUwdjuMQVe
10 January 2018: death of David Fisher, writer of four Fourth Doctor stories.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
10 January 1970: broadcast of second episode of Spearhead from Space. The Doctor steals some clothes and joins up with the Brigadier and Liz. Meanwhile there are sinister goings-on at the plastics factory.
10 January 1976: broadcast of second episode of The Brain of Morbius. The Sisters threaten the Doctor, and blind Sarah; Solon wants the Doctor's head very badly, and we see the disembodied brain.
10 January 1981: broadcast of second episode of Warrior's Gate. Romana is forced into the navigator's chair, and the Doctor forced to repair the Gundan robots until he falls through a mirror.
iii) date specified in-universe
10 January 2540: The President of Earth is unable to address the annual meeting of the Historical Monuments Preservation Society because she has to attend a cabinet meeting.
Out of Africa won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1985, and also five others, Best Director (Sidney Pollack), Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score (John Barry) and Best Sound. Meryl Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer lost in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories. That year’s Hugo winner, Back to the Future, got four Oscar nominations and won one (Best Sound Editing, where it beat Out of Africa).
The other Best Picture nominees were The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman and Prizzi’s Honor, which I have not seen, and Witness which I have. IMDB users put it pretty low down for an Oscar winner, 15th on one ranking and 32nd on the other, which is the lowest for any Oscar winner since Tom Jones. Other films I’ve seen from that year (in rough IMDB order, which largely coincides with my own rating): Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Brazil, A Room With a View, Witness, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Spies Like Us, Revolution, Defence of the Realm. Like IMDB users, I would rank Out of Africa on a par with Witness, and agree that Back to the Future is the best. Here’s a trailer for Out of Africa (I actually think it’s not a very good trailer):
Well, we have a few returnees from earlier Oscar-winning films, and also a couple of actors who appeared in Doctor Who over the years. Top of the list, obviously, is the film’s star, Meryl Streep, playing Karen Blixen on whose memoirs the film is based. She was Joanne Kramer in Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, and Linda in The Deer Hunter in 1978.
And next up is Robert Redford as her lover Denys Finch-Hatton, who we previously saw in front of the camera as Johnny Hooker in The Sting in 1973, but he also directed Ordinary People in 1980.
Michael Gough is Lord Delamere here, and had been in Doctor Who twice, as the celestial Toymaker in the 1966 First Doctor story that we now call The Celestial Toymaker, and as Time Lord Councillor Hedin in the 1983 Fifth Doctor story Arc of Infinity. (He was also married to Anneke Wills.)
Going back a bit further, Rachel Kempson, who is Lady Belfield here, was Squire Allworthy’s sister Bridget in Tom Jones in 1963.
Graham Crowden, here her onscreen husband Lord Belfield, was High Priest Soldeed in the notorious 1979-80 Fourth Doctor story The Horns of Nimon.
Shane Rimmer, the decaying estate manager Belknap, has been in an Oscar-wining film (Gandhi, as a news reporter), two Hugo-winning films (the original Star Wars and Dr Strangelove, both times as a pilot), and Seth Harper in the 1966 First Doctor story that we now call The Gunfighters. In sf lore he is of course best known as the voice of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds.
There are a couple of others who I cannot quite believe were never in Oscar- or Hugo-wining films, or in Doctor Who: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Leslie Phillips, Michael Kitchen (whose character’s African partner is played by Iman, later to marry David Bowie).
Well. I was not blown away by Out of Africa, and I’m ranking it just below the halfway mark in my listing, below Lawrence of Arabia but ahead of Rocky. The biggest problem with it is the racial portrayals: this is a drama about white people in Africa, and the actual Africans are basically scenery. The non-white communities are barely differentiated – the original book makes a point of distinguishing between the Kikuyu, Masai and Somalis, plus of course the Indian community, and it’s clear that Nairobi is a very mixed community; all Africans are the same on screen, and anyone who matters in Nairobi is white. 10 minutes in, we get a gratuitous shot of four young topless African women; Meryl Streep’s body remains decorously covered throughout her love scenes. Malick Bowens, as the protagonist’s right-hand man Farah, is given higher billing in the credits than several of the names I mentioned above, but not given very much to do.
I have to say that I thought the plot and script were also rather dull. Girl meets boy, girl marries his brother and then meets another boy, the last boy dies. There are no real surprises; you know that the Blixens’ marriage is going to be a disaster because we are told so in the third of 160 long minutes in the film, and as soon as Robert Redford appears you pretty much know his character arc.
But I have to give it better marks on gender. I have a poor track record with Meryl Streep’s films, but she is a good performer, and Karen Blixen is an impressive heroine who deals with men on her own terms and runs the coffee plantation single-handed. She defends herself with firearms and flies a plane. The film even passes the Bechdel test, with a couple of educational conversations between Karen and her young neighbour Felicity.
John Barry’s music is rather good, and the cinematography justly deserved an Oscar; the physical landscape is breathtaking anyway, but somehow they have caught it at its most attractive, and the music (which is frankly a bit gushy for the romantic scenes) is well suited to rolling landscapes.
But again, it goes on for 160 minutes, and there is not really enough plot to sustain that length. The makers clearly bet correctly that enough viewers would salivate at the thought of Robert Redford and/or Meryl Streep and/or both to make it a commercial success; but the IMDB voters of today have not sustained the verdict of the Oscar voters of 1986.
I was fully aware that the film is based on more than one book, again because we are told so very early in the credits.
However, it was marketed as a dramatisation of Blixen’s original memoir with the same title from 1937, which I found a quick and very absorbing read. The second paragraph of the third part is:
When Denys Finch-Hatton came back after one of his long expeditions, he was starved for talk, and found me on the farm starved for talk, so that we sat over the dinner-table into the small hours of the morning, talking of all the things we could think of, and mastering them all, and laughing at them. White people, who for a long time live alone with Natives, get into the habit of saying what they mean, because they have no reason or opportunity for dissimulation, and when they meet again their conversation keeps the Native tone. We then kept up the theory that the wild Masai tribe, in their Manyatta under the hills, would see the house all afire, like a star in the night, as the peasants of Umbria saw the house wherein Saint Francis and Saint Clare were entertaining one another upon theology.
Blixen is no anthropologist, but she makes a serious effort to engage with Kenya and the people on their own terms and to describe it respectfully to her European audience. She goes fairly deeply into religion, which is not mentioned on screen at all. As already noted, she carefully distinguished between the different African and non-African groups, and it’s clear that her Kenya is very racially mixed, and that the days of white rule, only a few decades old, are already numbered.
It’s not actually a novel. It’s a collection of short reflective pieces, all of course linked, four of the five sections pursuing their own internal thread (though the penultimate sections is a grab-bag of vignettes). I think perhaps a third or a quarter of what’s in the book made it to the screen. The core plot of the film, her romance with Finch-Hatton, is not at all explicit in the book, though it’s pretty obvious what is going on from the number of times his name is mentioned, and it’s almost a shock when her husband is mentioned for the first time on page 193 of 283. There is not a lot explicitly about racism, but here’s one of the short pieces in full:
The Elite of Bournemouth
I had as neighbour a settler who had been a doctor at home. Once, when the wife of one of my houseboys was about to die in childbirth, and I could not get into Nairobi, because the long rains had ruined the roads, I wrote to my neighbour and asked him to do me the great service of coming over and helping her. He very kindly came, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of tropical rain, and, at the last moment, by his skill, he saved the life of the woman and the child.
Afterwards he wrote me a letter to say that although he had for once, on my appeal, treated a Native, I must understand that he could not let that sort of thing occur again. I myself would fully realize the fact, he felt convinced, when he informed me that he had before now, practised to the élite of Bournemouth.
And there is some gorgeous description, especially of the landscape. Here’s the description of her first plane flight with Finch-Hatton (the subject of the film clip I used to illustrate the music above):
We flew in the sun, but the hillside lay in a transparent brown shade, which soon we got into. It did not take us long to spy the buffalo from the air. Upon one of the long rounded green ridges which run, like folds of a cloth gathered together at each peak, down the side of the Ngong mountain, a herd of twenty-seven buffalo were grazing. First we saw them a long way below us, like mice moving gently on a floor, but we dived down, circling over and along their ridge, a hundred and fifty feet above them and well within shooting distance; we counted them as they peacefully blended and separated. There was one very old big black bull in the herd, one or two younger bulls, and a number of calves. The open stretch of sward upon which they walked was closed in by bush; had a stranger approached on the ground they would have heard or scented him at once, but they were not prepared for advance from the air. We had to keep moving above them all the time. They heard the noise of our machine and stopped grazing, but they did not seem to have it in them to look up. In the end they realized that something very strange was about; the old bull first walked out in front of the herd, raising his hundredweight horns, braving the unseen enemy, his four feet planted on the ground – suddenly he began to trot down the ridge and after a moment he broke into a canter. The whole clan now followed him, stampeding headlong down, and as they switched and plunged into the bush, dust and loose stones rose in their wake. In the thicket they stopped and kept close together: it looked as if a small glade in the hill had been paved with dark grey stones. Here they believed themselves to be covered to the view, and so they were to anything moving along the ground, but they could not hide themselves from the eyes of the bird of the air. We flew up and away.
There’s also a lovely anecdote about a young Swede teaching her Swahili, who is embarrassed by the fact that the Swahili for “nine” (tisa) sounds like the Swedish for “pee” (tisse), and convinces her that there is in fact no number nine in Swahili until someone puts her straight. I sympathise a little. I have known a number of baronesses in my time, and I don’t recall ever saying the word “pee” in front of any of them.
One other point that I noted while researching this post: they were all younger than we see on screen, the men much younger. When Karen married Baron Blixen in 1914, she was 28 and he was 27. She first met Denys Finch Hatton in 1918, when she was 33 and he was 31. Meryl Streep was 36 when the film was made, Klaus Maria Brandauer 42 and Robert Redford 49. Knowing the real ages of the protagonists does change the way you understand the story, I think.
Kenya is not a country I know much about – I changed planes in Nairobi three times in my South Sudan days, with long stopovers but no tourism each time, and the only other books I’ve read that explore it in any detail are also autobiographies, by Barack Obama and Vince Cable. Unlike the other two, this book made me want to know more. You can get it here.
My next Oscar-winning film is Platoon, but I’ll watch Aliens first.
Fri, 13:25: RT @jburnmurdoch: NEW: a common response to reports of hospitals struggling this winter is “it’s no different to a bad flu season!” I’ve t…
Fri, 17:11: RT @johnnythin: Development-led archaeology making the ‘non-places’ (in the sense of Augé or Relph) of shopping malls, business parks and h…
Sat, 00:49: RT @TwitterSafety: After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently su…
9 January 1965: broadcast of "Desperate Measures", second episode of the story we now call The Rescue. Koquillion is unmasked as Bennett; the Didonians kill him, and Vicki leaves with the Tardis.
9 January 1971: broadcast of second episode of Terror of the Autons. McDermott is killed by the chair; the older Farrel by the doll; and the Doctor and the Brigadier are abducted by Auton policemen.
8 January 1981: filming of the regeneration scene from the Fourth Doctor to the Fifth.
8 January 2013: broadcast of fourth episode of K9's Question Time as part of the Stargazing Live show. (I haven't seen this!!!)
iii) date specified in canon
9 January 2000: Jack Harkness becomes leader of Torchwood Three, as explained in Fragments (2008).
