Before bed, I had written to Glisselda about Abdo and Lars’s success. A page boy interrupted my breakfast with an invitation to the Queen’s suite. I put on a nicer gown than I would have otherwise and went to the royal family’s wing of the palace. The guard, who was expecting me, let me into an airy sitting room with high ceilings, salon couches around a tiled hearth, and draperies of gold and white and blue. At the back of the room before the tall windows stood a round table set for breakfast, and behind it sat Glisselda’s grandmother, Queen Lavonda, in a wheeled chair. Her spine was bent; her skin looked pale and fragile, like crumpled paper. Her grandchildren sat on either side, chatting encouragingly at her. Glisselda spooned porridge into her grandmother’s mouth, open like a baby bird’s, and then Kiggs tenderly wiped her chin.
I hugely enjoyed Tess of the Road, the third in this series, when it was up for last year's Lodestar Award, and also liked the first, Seraphina, when I read it earlier this year. The stories are fantasies set in a world where dragons and humans are at odds, but also sometimes interbreed; the dragon/human relationships can be read as race, gender or whatever you like, but in the story they have an integrity of their own. The first half of Shadow Scale seemed to be marking time to get the narrator from A to B, but the second half really pays off in terms of explaining some of the underworkings of the universe. There is some romance, but gosh, it is diverse romance, and I'd hugely recommend this to the YA readership who are its target audience, and indeed to older readers as well. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book by a woman. Next on that pile is The Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan.
Thu, 12:45: RT @AndrewCreak: Some nice news for 2020, Belgium now has a trans deputy prime minister! Congratulations Petra De Sutter!! https://t.co/Pe…
Thu, 12:56: A Message from Members of the UK and Irish Publishing Community — The Second Shelf https://t.co/OOkRV6qrTZ Non-binary lives are valid, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights.
2 October 1932: birth of Gabriel Woolf, who played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars (1975) and voiced the Beast in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit (2006). He also voiced Rossiter in the Big Finish Sixth Doctor audios Arrangements for War (2004) and Thicker Than Water (2005). (We don't see his face, no no photos.)
2 October 1950: birth of Ian McNeice, who played Winston Churchill in several Eleventh Doctor stories between 2010 and 2011.
2 October 1972: birth of Graham Sleight. Happy birthday, mate!
ii) broadcast anniversaries
2 October 1965: broadcast of "The Exploding Planet", fourth episode of the story we now call Galaxy 4. The Doctor and friends manage to repair the Rills' spaceship and escape the Drahvins, who are left behind on the planet as it explodes.
2 October 1976: broadcast of first episode of The Hand of Fear. The Tardis lands in a quarry which is playing a quarry. Sarah and the Doctor are caught in an explosion and Sarah picks up this mysterious hand that starts to take over her mind…
Current Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
Last books finished
“Jeffty is Five”, by Harlan Ellison
“Stardance”by Spider Robinson and Jeanne Robinson Barcelona, Catalonia: A View from the Inside, by Matthew Tree Palestine 100: Stories from a century after the Nakba, ed. Mazen Maarouf
Next books Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop Helen Waddell, by Felicitas Corrigan
Just to remind you, if no presidential candidate gets a majority of votes in the electoral college, the election is decided by the House of Representatives, each state delegation casting a single vote for their state. This has only happened twice before, in 1801 (when the election system was different) and in 1825 (where there was a four-way split among the leading candidates in the popular vote). In 1801 it took 36 ballots before Thomas Jefferson was elected; in 1825 John Quincy Adams secured the necessary majority first time round.
Now that there is a strong two-party system, it's hugely unlikely that the House will have to decide in this way. It would require either the 269-269 split of electoral college votes, or enough faithless electors defecting from a narrow winner to take him or her below the 270 threshold (or I suppose the winning candidate dying and no other solution being found). Nevertheless, both in 2016 and 2004 I looked at what might happen if the presidential election were to be decided in the House of Representatives, specifically at the hill the Democrats would need to climb to win in that scenario. In 2020, two years after a decent result for the Democrats in 2018, the hill is not quite as high.
Afte the 2018 election, Republicans had the majority in 26 state delegations to the House, Democrats had the majority in 22, and Michigan and Pennsylvania were evenly split, and that remains pretty much the case now (well, one of Michigan's Republicans elected in 2018 now calls himself a Libertarian, but is not standing again). Assuming that all Democrats hold their seats, and that there is a uniform swing across the USA from Republicans to Democrats from the 2018 results, the states fall as follows:
0.4% swing: Democrats win Kansas 2nd district, splitting the state delegation 2-2 and depriving Republicans of their 26th state and their majority.
(R 25 – 3 – D 22)
(Michelle De La Isla defeats Jacob LaTurner)
Of course, this is assuming that all Democrats hold their seats, and that there is a uniform swing across the USA from Republicans to Democrats; two assumptions that we know will be wrong.
For completeness, the 22 states which currently have Democratic majorities in their congressional delegation are: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Vermont, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, Connecticut, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and California. The 21 states currently with Republican majorities not mentioned above are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi, Utah, Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina and Ohio.
Incidentally, if no vice-presidential candidate gets a majority in the Electoral College, the Senate gets to choose. This has happened once, in 1837, when 23 Democratic electors from Virginia refused to vote for Martin Van Buren's Vice-Presidential candidate, Richard Mentor Johnson, because he had openly cohabited with a black woman. This left Johnson one vote short of a majority in the Electoral College. The lame duck Senate was controlled by his party, and they duly elected him in February 1837 by a large majority – though interestingly with some defection back and forth: one Democratic Senator and three Whigs (including future Vice-President Thomas Hendricks William Hendricks, uncle of future Vice-President Thomas Hendricks) broke ranks and voted for the other party's candidate, while former Vice-President John C. Calhoun abstained.
It's likely that whichever party wins the presidential election this year will also have a majority in the Senate, and if they don't, it would be very weird for the Senate to choose a vice-president of a different party to the President. But weird things have been happening recently.
Wed, 14:33: RT @Keir_Starmer: If the Prime Minister doesn’t understand the rules, how does he expect the rest of the country to understand and follow t…
Wed, 17:11: RT @TrondyNewman: your excellent debate tweets at 5am are cold pizza slices for my mind i did not have them hot as intended they are bad…
Thu, 08:56: RT @SHKMEP: I am old enough to remember when we were told the #EU27 Capitals would divide on a self interest basis on #Brexit and simply te…
Thu, 09:30: Whoniversaries 1 October: Hinchcliffe, Smuggs #4, Inv Enemy #1, Eye of Gorgon #1, Wedding River Song https://t.co/RjkE1FFJGl
Thu, 10:37: RT @AmIRightSir: Jimmy Carter, US President 1977-81 and the longest-lived and longest-retired US President, is 96 today
1 October 1944: birth of Philip Hinchcliffe, producer of Doctor Who in the glory years of 1974-77 and thus responsible for many of the greatest stories of Old Who.
1 October 1999: death of Noel Johnson who played King Thous in The Underwater Menace (Second Doctor, 1967) and Sir Charles Grover in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Third Doctor, 1974).
1 October 2008: death of Ian Collier who played Stuart Hyde in The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and Omega in Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983), and reprised the role of Omega in Big Finish Productions' excellent Fifth Doctor audio Omega (2003).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
1 October 1966: broadcast of fourth episode of The Smugglers. Blake and his men defeat the Smugglers, and the Tardis lands somewhere cold…
1 October 1977: broadcast of first episode of The Invisible Enemy. Contact has been made! And the old console room returns.
1 October 2007: broadcast of first episode of Eye of the Gorgon (SJA). Sinister nuns, Phyllida Law has a guest spot, and poor Alan gets turned to stone.
1 October 2011: broadcast of The Wedding of River Song, ending Series 6 of New Who. Massive violence to the timeline can only be resolved by tying the knot.
5,000 pages (YTD 52,900)
6/17 (YTD 64/194) by women (Mantel, Hartman, Robinson, O'Connor, Wilgus x2)
None AFAIK (YTD 18/194) by PoC
4/17 reread (YTD 29/194) – The Sky Road, Distraction, “Jeffty is Five”, "Stardance".
Current Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones Gateway, by Frederik Pohl Palestine +100: Stories from a century after the Nakba, ed. Mazen Maarouf
Coming soon (perhaps) Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop Helen Waddell, by Felicitas Corrigan Survivants, Tome 3, by Leo This Must be the Place, by Maggie O'Farrell The Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan Wild Life, by Molly Gloss Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig Borderline, by Mishell Baker For the Love of God, Marie!, by Jade Sarson SS-GB, by Len Deighton Tono-Bungay, by H. G. Wells The Inside of the Cup, by Winston S. Churchill Utopia For Realists, by Rutger Bregman Greybeard, by Brian Aldiss After Me Comes the Flood, by Sarah Perry
“The Persistence of Vision”, by John Varley Painless, by Rich Larson
Tue, 12:56: RT @BlkLibraryGirl: For those of you who wonder why I insist on calling the first Black woman to publish a book in North America Phillis Wh…
Tue, 17:11: Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel https://t.co/OhSUugAjwR An early 1970s book about a fictional US Presidential election. Very interesting to compare with today’s situation.
Tue, 20:48: Sasha Swire’s diaries reveal the crass elitism of the Cameron government https://t.co/mcbuSFxxVP They sound like such awful people.
Tue, 22:18: RT @sillysarasue: Happy Tiara Tuesday y’all! Dr. Who Tiara. The Gallifreyan says tiara just like my prototypes I showed earlier this week…
Wed, 08:50: RT @davidallengreen: Good morning and the US President tells proud boys to ‘stand by’ and the UK governing party votes to break internation…
Wed, 10:44: RT @DavidHenigUK: Yes to pretty much all of this. But can this administration ever “1 Forget the Polls” or “2 Start being honest about risk…
Wed, 10:45: RT @jonworth: Your jubilation is someone else’s job being lost, someone else’s drugs not being delivered, or someone else’s field being tur…
A quarter of the way through the year, and I'm finding this time-consuming but (so far) rewarding. It helps that I have a skeleton for each day from my 2010-11 series of posts, but I've also enjoyed boosting them with pictures from the TARDIS Data Core and Tragical History Tour, as well as my own screencapping where needed. Closing September, here we go with:
i) births and deaths
30 September 1945: birth of Sandra Bryant, who played disco manager Kitty the night club owner in The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966) and Chicki in the first episode of The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967) – the role was recast and a different actress played the character in episode three).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
30 September 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Abominable Snowmen. The Tardis lands in Tibet; the Doctor is captured by the monks of Det-Sen monastery at the urging of Travers who thinks he is a rival researcher. Meanwhile Jamie and Victoria go exploring in the caves…
30 September 1978: broadcast of first episode of The Pirate Planet. The Doctor and Romana, aiming for the planet Calufrax, discover instead that they are on the mining world of Zanak where the Captain and the Mentiads are in conflict.
April 2008 was the month that we applied for Belgian citizenship. A rare month (before this year) when I don't seem to have left the country at all, having arrived home from Ireland late on 31 March and departed for France early on 1 May. This was also the month that B moved from the place near the Dutch border where she had been living since leaving home in October 2007, to where she now is half an hour east of here.
I remember also a dinner with George Soros and a few others, at which he told us that the subprime mortgage crisis would likely lead to a huge financial meltdown in a few months. He was right, of course. (He was saying this in public too.)
Regular commuting meant that I read 43 books in April 2008.
Mon, 21:21: RT @Tom_deWaal: New thread. I’m quoted here on the #Karabakh fighting. (There is a lot more nuance if you watch the whole interview) I’m aw…
Tue, 08:48: 353, specific fields of public administration. Well, if that includes electoral systems (though they probably go under 324) I can do two hours, no problem. https://t.co/9QyCFPF6PV
Tue, 11:33: RT @CaitrionaPerry: Watch: US Special Envoy Mick Mulvaney @JMMulvaney1 talks about how the US won’t do a trade deal with the UK if there’s…
29 September 1933: birth of Clinton Greyne, who played Ivo in State of Decay (Fourth Doctor, 1980), Stike in The Two Doctors (Sixth and Second Doctors, 1985) and the Sontaran commander in In A Fix With Sontarans (Sixth Doctor but disowned, 1985).
29 September 1961: birth of Nicholas Briggs, voice of the Daleks and responsible for so much more in the Whoniverse. We would not be where we are without him.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
29 September 1979: broadcast of first episode of City of Death. The Doctor and Romana are in Paris, and get mixed up with Duggan the detective and Count and Countess Scarlioni. But the Count is more than he seems…
29 September 2007: broadcast of both episodes of The Last Sontaran, starting Season 2 of the Sarah Jane Adventures. A surviving Sontaran from The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky tries to destroy human life on Earth, but is thwarted by Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria. But (sob!) Maria is moving to America and we won't see much more of her.
29 September 2012: broadcast of The Angels Take Manhattan, and the departure (sob, again!) of Amy and Rory when the angels keep them in 1930s New York, ending the first part of Season
iii) date specified in-universe:
29 September [?2016, a Sunday anyway]: the Hackney Harvest Festival was due to take place in the very first episode of Class (2016), For Tonight We Might Die.
Next in my series of posts of books that won the James Tipree Jr Award, the BSFA Award for best Novel and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in each year. I’ve now reached the turn of the century; these awards were made in 2000, the year I wrote reviews of all five Hugo finalists for my website, including the winner, A Deepness in the Sky; the Nebula went to Parable of the Talents (and the next year’s Nebula, because of the weird eligibility system, went to Darwin’s Radio which had been on the 2000 Hugo ballot). The three books combined are well over 1300 pages, the same as Alan Moore’s Jerusalem and a bit shorter than Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy which I was reading at the same time.
*
The Tiptree Award went to The Conqueror’s Child, by Suzy McKee Charnas, which was the only one that I had not read before. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
Veree sat on my lap questioning and pointing and grabbing at anything within reach. He was too shy of all these new people in a new place to go far from me, which suited me very well.
This is the fourth in a series of which the first two already came up in my Tiptree reading; I have not read the third (The Furies). They are available only in dead tree format, at least for now. The setting is an isolated world where men and women live as separate tribes, often brutalising each other when they have the opportunity; Sorrel, the narrator of some chapters, is the daughter of Alldera, the central character of earlier volumes, who is now trying to construct a lasting society for women that will be robust against male attack. Some readers see the author’s take as utopian; I don’t think so, I think she is showing the warts-and-all out-working of idealism, and in particular in Sorrel’s relationship with her son Veree, and how she can bring up a boy in a society of women. I don’t think it is an optimistic book, but it identifies the challenges of liberation in detail.
None of the Tiptree short list (three other novels and four shorter pieces) was in the running for any other award apart from the Locus lists. The Tiptree long list (of eight novels and four shorter pieces) included A Civil Campaign, which was also a Hugo finalist that year and a Nebula finalist the next year, and was frankly my favourite book of the year.
*
The BSFA Award went to The Sky Road, by Ken MacLeod. This is the fourth and last of the Fall Revolution series, though it works perfectly well as a standalone book (and the author thinks it is in a slightly different continuity to the third volume, but I’m not going to make a fuss). The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
The sun’s growing heat was burning off the morning mist on the loch and between the hills. I felt as though I might at any moment rise and float away myself. My eyes felt sandy and my brain felt hot, but these discomforts did not diminish the kinder glow of elation somewhere in my chest and gut. In a strange way I could hardly bear to think about Merrial – every time I did so brought on such an explosion of joy that I quivered at the knees, and I almost feared to indulge it to excess. I wanted to keep it, hoard it, dole it out to myself when I really needed it, not gulp it all down at once. (Which is of course a mistaken notion – that particular well, like all too many others, is bottomless.)
Here the setting shifts between a near-future Central Asian statelet, run by one Myra Godwin-Davidov; and a utopian anarcho-communist Scotland centuries hence, where young historian Clovis is working out what exactly Myra did to change human society and is seduced by the “tinker” Merrial (actually a member of a technologically advanced separatist tribe). MacLeod is, like Charnas, a political writer, but his interest is more in the overthrow of the class structre as a means to liberation. The book is tightly constructed and builds to a coulpe of revelations in each timeline that are both surprising and satisfying, with shafts of humour which are sometimes satirical and sometimes just Scottish. I enjoyed returning to it, and you can get it here.
The Sky Road was also a Hugo finalist the following year. One other BSFA finalist (Silver Screen, by Justina Robson) was also a Clarke finalist. I really enjoyed Eugene Byrne’s ThigMoo. I am surprised to learn from this fascinating website that of all Hugo Best Novel finalists this century, now well into three figures, The Sky Road is owned by the fewest members on GoodReads; and of all BSFA finalists this century, ThigMoo is owned by the fewest Goodreaders.
* The Arthur C. Clarke Award went to Distraction by Bruce Sterling. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
‘I’m a corner-stone,’ the cinder block announced.
This too is a political book, set in a crumbling USA of 2044, whose protagonist is a political operator who switches from electoral campaigning to protecting his lover’s laboratory. Some parts of the setting now seem eerily prescient:
We get taken into the depths of the politics of Sterling’s future America, with weak governance (Senator, Governors, President), armed militias (mostly benign), a vat-born hero, and self-funded scientific breakthroughs. It’s funny and fast-paced, and has more owners on both Goodreads and LibraryThing than the other two put together. But I felt that of the three, it is the most superficial and has aged least well. Sterling was of course the apostle of cyberpunk, and the fact that this book actually has a coherent plot and interesting (if not always sympathetic) characters set it apart from some others in that genre. You can get it here.
The Clarke Award (unusually) had the strongest crossover with other ballots. Distraction had been a Hugo finalist the previous year. The shortlist included two of that year’s Hugo finalists (Cryptonomicon and A Deepness in the Sky), one BSFA finalist (Silver Screen, as noted above) and a Tiptree finalist from a previous year (The Bones of Time, by Kathleen Ann Goonan).
*
It’s interesting that these three awards threw up three winners that are very political, in very different ways – The Conqueror’s Child addressing gender politics, The Sky Road looking at the overthrow of capitalism, and Distraction with its focus on the transformative effects of communications technology on society. Not a surprise for the Tiptree, which was set up on political principles, but a bit more unusual for the two British winners. I found it a bit distressing to have to conclude that McLeod and Sterling now look Pollyannaish in their assumptions that post-Soviet separatist statelets will be a force for good in the world, or that armed American militias will be benignly idealistic and open to reasonable argument. Charnas’s world, technologically degenerate and divided violently on gender politics, seems a bit too grimly plausible.
Literally as I was writing this, a couple of days ago, this year’s winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award announced what she is planning to do with the prize:
I won the @ClarkeAward within an hour of hearing that the cops who killed Breonna Taylor weren’t charged. To honor Breonna and the ongoing fight against state-sanctioned violence, I’m donating the £2020 prize money to bail funds for protestors. Join me: https://t.co/mRGmN4Pop3
Next up will be the 2001 winners: Wild Life, by Molly Gloss; Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle; and Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville – once again, two that I have read and one that I haven’t.
Sun, 12:56: RT @BarristerSecret: It’s worse than that. This sinister conspiracy was in fact started in 1994 by Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz. https://t.c…
Sun, 14:48: RT @five_books: “As the Philip K Dick once put it: ‘The sci fi writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities’” —@nwbrux. From s…
Sun, 22:55: RT @LaurenceBroers: New Armenian-Azerbaijani violence: some reflections at the end of day 1 (thread). Any reflections at this stage are ine…
Mon, 10:45: Euroskeptics Take Note: Over the Last Decade, the European Union Has Outmatched China, the U.K., Russia, and the U.S. https://t.co/WquSzYYtsf Bullish analyis from @andrewmoravcsik.
28 September 1919: birth of Terence Dudley who directed Meglos (Fourth Doctor, 1980) and wrote Four to Doomsday (Fifth Doctor, 1982), Black Orchid (also Fifth Doctor, 1982) and The King's Demons (Fifth Doctor, 1983) not to mention K9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend (1981).
28 September 1937: birth of Donald Gee, who played Major Ian Warne in The Space Pirates (Seocnd Doctor, 1969) and Eckersley in The Monster of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1974).
28 September 1986: death of Denis Carey, who played Professor Chronotis in Shada (unbroadcast Fourth Doctor, but would have been 1980), the Keeper in The Keeper of Traken (Fourth Doctor, 1981), and the Old Man (the front identity for the Borad) in Timelash (Sixth Doctor, 1985).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
28 September 1968: broadcast of third episode of The Mind Robber, where Jamie turns back into himself, and the team meet Rapunzel, the Minotaur and the Medusa.
28 September 1987: broadcast of fourth and final episode of Time and the Rani. The Doctor defeats the Rani and rescues the kidnapped geniuses.
I got The Mirror and the Light for Anne's birthday earlier in the year, and before tackling it directly myself, decided to go back and read the two previous books in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. That of course became quite a big reading project, at the same time as I was reading Alan Moore's Jerusalem (1300 pages, to the 1800 pages of Cromwell) and an SF mini-project of similar length which I'll write up tomorrow. It took me about seven weeks to reread the trilogy, but it was well worth it.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Wolf Hall is:
In Mantel's hands Cromwell becomes a fascinating character, carrying the baggage of a brutal London upbringing, always mindful of his family away from court, ascending the greasy pole of power rather in spite of his own best instincts. She really summons up the smell and feel of Tudor London, and the alarming sense of fragility of life – not just from the king's displeasure, but from illness, violence, or accident. The novel ends with Cromwell's ascent to full power; I believe a sequel is brewing which will cover the last five years of his life, and I will certainly buy it.
After reading this and The Other Boleyn Girl, the one person who I really ended up wanting to know more about was Anne Boleyn. Only Mantel explores her character at all positively – she is the villain of Gregory's book, and the depiction of her as the court flirt in The Tudors goes back at least to Shakespeare and Fletcher. But she kept Henry chasing her for years (from their first encounter in 1525 to their marriage in 1533), which is pretty impressive considering that he could basically have had any Englishwoman he wanted. It's also strongly suggested that she was genuinely Protestant in sentiment, which would make her a rather advanced thinker and would perhaps give her an extra motive (besides the obvious personal one) for wanting the Church to be under direct royal control.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Bring Up the Bodies is:
From the amphibian mouth, a juvenile chortle. ‘Simon. Merry Christmas, sir, how do you?’
This is the second of Mantel's acclaimed trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII. Like Wolf Hall, it is intensely told in the present tense, but it concentrates on a much briefer historical period, the months leading up to the execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536. Again Mantel is very good at getting us into Cromwell's head, but I found it a less satisfying book than the previous one; there is much less variety of setting for Cromwell to react to – it is entirely about the sexual politics of the court, though rooted of course in the wider European context; and the most interesting person in this story is clearly Anne herself, and it is a shame that we do not really get to hear her voice (in this book or indeed in most books about the period, fiction or non-fiction). However, "not quite as good as Wolf Hall" is still pretty good.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Mirror and the Light is:
Early July, the grandi hold a triple wedding, combining their fortunes and ancient names. Margaret Neville weds Henry Manners. Anne Manners weds Henry Neville. Dorothy Neville weds John de Vere.
Rereading the first two books, I think I must resile a bit from my complaint that we don't get enough insight into Anne Boleyn. Actually, given that she is a women liviing a dangerous life at a dangerous time, we get pretty close to her, and the disintegration of her relationship with Henry is captured tremendously well. Wolf Hall has her rise (and the fall of Cromwell and More), and Bring Up the Bodies has her fall. And I think it's pretty clear that she drives the ideology of the King's new approach to religion, until he decides that she can't provide what he really wants, which is a son.
I also now recognise the theme of dynastic fragility throughout all three books. When Henry came to the throne in 1509, he was the son of a usurper who had ruled for less than 25 years, his only brother was dead, one sister was married to the King of Scots and the other engaged to the future Empereor Charles V, which effectively took them and their children out of the succession. (Of course, 94 years later, the English throne did go to Henry's great-great-nephew, uniting the Scottish and English thrones.) So the need to provide heirs for dynastic and social stability was imperative, and other claimants, more closely related to the Plantagenets, were ready to move if the situation developed in their favour; meanwhile the other great families, Norfolk/Howard, Suffolk/Brandon, Seymour, all put their eligible girls in the king's line of sight.
Cromwell, having switched from Wolsey to the king at an early stage, and with no dynastic capital to spend at first, dedicates himself to maintaining the regime. But he seems to me always conscious of two things: first, that he is a smarter and better operator than the King, and second that it could all end rather rapidly; every few pages someone is burnt, hanged or beheaded. One subplot from the second book that I didn't pay enough attention to first time round is Cromwell's rescue of the eldest daughter, Mary, from potential disaster; and by the end of the trilogy it's reasonably clear that Henry is set to rehabilitate his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom had been declared illegitimate at the point that their mothers' marriages were annulled. And of course we know that they did both inherit the throne in the end; but Mantel shows us that there was nothing inevitable about it.
I thought the third book a tremendous capstone to the other two. We know how the story is going to end; but until we get to the dramatic denouement, Cromwell continues to consolidate power around himself, and juggles the demands of Henry VIII, the other lords and the foreign powers, not to mention the women in Henry's life – the book is very much centred around managing his third and fourth marriages, and the fifth takes place at the very end (and the future sixth wife is hovering around the edges of the scene as well). There's also a great sub-plot about a long-lost Belgian daughter, and the dead Thomas Becket and the live ambassador Chapuys are fascinating characters too.
The single most powerful scene is in fact reported indirectly – when Anne of Cleves first sees Henry, who against Cromwell's advice has approached her incognito, and reacts badly. The witness is Cromwell's son Gregory (who has incidentally married Jane Seymour's sister); it's very well described. And the blow to Henry's ego because of the failure of the Anne of Cleves plan is enough to end Cromwell as well. His fall was suddent and dramatic: he was made Earl of Essex and Lord Chamberlain on 18 April, and three and a half months later he was dead.
As noted above, it took me a while to read, but the pages came close to turning themselves at various points. I'm also storing up impressions of the Tower for when I finally write something about my ancestor Sir Nicholas White, who died there in 1593. Really memorable stuff.
The Mirror and the Light was my top unread book acquired in 2020. Next on that list is Utopia For Realists, by Rutger Bregman.
Sat, 17:02: RT @namwalien: I won the @ClarkeAward within an hour of hearing that the cops who killed Breonna Taylor weren’t charged. To honor Breonna a…
Sat, 20:13: RT @sethspeirs: @nwbrux It has rather exposed SFs two headed approach. The increasingly crazy approach down South is not helping either. Th…
Sun, 10:45: RT @lionelbarber: A first rate analysis based on multiple sources that Johnson and his team want (and need) a Brexit deal. In a lightweigh…
27 September 1911: Birth of John Harvey, who played Professor Brett in The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966) and Officia in The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967)
27 September 1921: birth of Milton Subotsky, who produced and wrote Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), the two cinema films starring Peter Cushing as Doctor Who.
27 September 1939: birth of Garrick Hagon, who played revolutionary/evolutionary leader Ky in The Mutants (Third Doctor, 1972), and the undertaker A Town Called Mercy (Eleventh Doctor, 2012).
27 September 2000: death of Daphne Dare, who did costumes for most of the first four seasons of Old Who.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
27 September 1975: broadcast of first episode of Planet of Evil. The Doctor and Sarah land on Zeta Minor and are captured by the crew of a Morestran space ship, who have been mysteriously losing team members to an ‘orrible invisible monster…
27 September 1980: broadcast of first episode of Meglos. The Doctor and Romana materialise in the Prion system, but are trapped in a chronic hysteresis loop while Meglos, an evil cactus, plans to take over the planet of Tigella with the help of the Gaztaks, some passing space pirates. The local priestess resembles a former companion.
27 September 1986: broadcast of fourth episode of The Mysterious Planet (ToaTL #4). It all goes bang, really.
27 September 1989: broadcast of fourth episode of Battlefield. Morgaine frees the Destroyer, but the Brigadier shoots it with silver bullets, and Morgaine surrenders to UNIT; the girls go out for a night on the town in Bessie.
27 September 2014: broadcast of The Caretaker. The Doctor takes a job at Clara’s school, greatly disrupting her relationship with Danny Pink.
iii) production anniversaries
27 September 1963: principal photography on the pilot episode of Doctor Who; it all starts here.
Superman won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1979, beating Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the animated Lord of the Rings, Watership Down and the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For once I have actually seen/heard all of the finalists. Even though the Worldcon that year was held in the UK, which should have given the BBC a natural home turf boost, Superman won (and Christopher Reeves actually turned up, as did Tom Baker). It's a tough call, but I think I would have just voted for the Hitch-hiker's Guide ahead of Superman (though at 12 I would probably not have had a vote). One of the best shortlists for years before and after, anyway. IMDB users rank it 4th and 6th best film of the year, with Grease and The Deer Hunter at the top. I actually remember seeing this in the cinema when it first came out, and enjoying it; I'm glad to say that the magic mostly remained after forty years.
There are a number of familiar faces from previous Oscar and Hugo winners, starting with Superman's parents, Jor-El and Lara, played by Marlon Brando and Susannah York.
Brando had the lead role in two Oscar-winning films, The Godfather (1972) and On The Waterfront (1954). I must say he looks younger here than he did in 1972.
Susannah York, who was a schoolfriend of my aunt's, was Thomas More's daughter Margaret in A Man for All Seasons (1966) and Sophie the Good Girl in Tom Jones (1963).
And we saw Trevor Howard, here the First Elder of Krypton, thirty-two years ago as Fallentin the Reform Club member in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
We've had Gene Hackman, who is Lex Luthor here, in both Oscar-winning and Hugo-winning films. He was one of the lead cops in The French Connection (Oscar 1971) and then the blind man in Young Frankenstein (Hugo/Nebula 1975).
Valerie Perrine, who plays his sidekick Ms Techmaker here, was Hollywood starlet Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse-Five.
And to my immense surprise, there is a Doctor Who link. Somewhat out of focus, one of the Elders of Krypton is played by William Russell, who was Ian Chesterton, one of the First Doctor's first companions way back in 1963-64.
Right. On to the substance. This was a lot of fun in 1978, and it's a lot of fun now. I think the biggest complaint I have is that it's a bit too long, at 3 hours and 3 minutes. There's a lot of story to pack in there, and the Boyhood Years segment in particular maybe could have been trimmed a bit.
(And the Lex Luthor slapstick too – but doesn't he remind you of another meglomaniac New York property developer?)
The silliest bit of the plot by far is Superman turning back time so that he can save Lois. Even at twelve I thought this was over the top – if he can do that, he can undo anything so what's the point? Nice graphic though.
Teetering on the edge, but in the end safely enough, is the chemistry between Christopher Reeves and Margot Kidder as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane. Reeves himself is just brilliant and in a debut role (for which many much better-known actors were apparently considered) acquits himself gloriously. He was born 68 years ago yesterday.
The effects are glorious too.
And, well, the music. Let's finish with the music.
I'm putting this near the top of my Hugo/Nebula list – probably just after 2001, and ahead of A Clockwork Orange. The latter is probably a better film, but frankly less fun.
Fri, 16:05: RT @Nat_Vasilyeva: “Well done, Belarusians!” – Mikhail Gorbachev has spoken in support of anti-Lukashenko protesters in Belarus (in Rus) ht…
Fri, 17:11: Georgia: From the Coronavirus to a Critical Test of Democracy https://t.co/SuHVTeLToq Three former US ambassadors write.
Fri, 20:48: RT @BeschlossDC: The defeated George H.W. Bush’s letter to Bill Clinton on the day of their peaceful transfer of power, 1993: https://t.co/…
Fri, 21:15: “Are you so stubborn that you’re willing to risk death by eels?”
Sat, 10:43: Good analysis. Northern SF: we should do whatever Dublin Govt is doing. Southern SF: Dublin Govt is getting it wrong. Northern SF: Actually if you’re in government you have to make tough decisions… https://t.co/lmlQU0Ij0j
Sat, 11:21: Dublin Mean Time was abolished 104 years ago this week, at 2 am on 1 October 1916. Some of the First D�il sittings are recorded defiantly in Dublin Time as well as GMT. https://t.co/Yxe2hGsR1f
26 September 1946: birth of Togo Izawa, who played Dr Tanizaki in Cyberwoman (Torchwood, 2006) and the Secretary General of the United Nations in The Pyramid at the End of the World (Twelfth Doctor, 2017).
26 September 1909: birth of Leonard Sachs, who played Admiral de Coligny in The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966) and President Borusa in Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983)
26 September 2014: death of Maggie Stables, who played the Sixth Doctor's audio companion Evelyn Smythe in Big Finish audios from 2000 to 2011.
ii) production anniversaries
26 September 2003: the BBC announced that Doctor Who would return in 2004.
26 September 2015: broadcast of The Witch's Familiar. The Doctor and Davros are stuck together on Skaro; Clara and the mysterious Missy are on the way.
Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The Arethusa addressed himself to these. One of them said there would be no difficulty about a night’s lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by Searle and Son. The name was quite an introduction. Half-a-dozen other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the superscription ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names of English boat-builders and English clubs. I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so warmly received by the same number of people. We were English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great tribulation. But after all, what religion knits people so closely as a common sport?
Stevenson's first non-fiction book, a voyage by canoe through Belgium and France in 1878 with a Scottish baronet friend. It's interesting to look at the route between Antwerp and (more or less) Paris by water rather than by the more familiar road or rail. There are some nice moments of local colour. But this isn't Three Men in a Boat, and the ending is rather abrupt. Free online here.
Thu, 16:05: Boris Johnson’s autumn of discontent https://t.co/IlNFIurx5U “Some who loudly sponsored Johnson over the more stable and conservative Jeremy Hunt have worked out that Johnson, when he does anything at all, does not seem to know what he is doing.”
Thu, 17:11: RT @hhesterm: Dmitry is right. Maybe it has not been explained often and simply enough why there won’t be frictionless trade – even with a…
Fri, 10:45: Experts question Belgium’s call to relax coronavirus rules https://t.co/lXVY3N4cNo Not surprisingly. But I feel that if hospitals are not overwhelmed and the mortality rate is under control, it’s OK.
25 September 1965: broadcast of "Air Lock", third episode of the story we now call Galaxy 4. Vicki is captured by the Rills, but persuades the Doctor to help them; Steven is threatened with asphyxiation by the Drahvins. This may be the one episode of Old Who that I have not actually seen since its recovery in 2011.
25 September 1976: broadcast of fourth episode of The Masque of Mandragora. The brotherhood attempt to infiltrate the masque at the gathering of Renaissance savants, but the Doctor and Sarah foil their plan.
Last books finished The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel Distraction, by Bruce Sterling Blood Monster, by Neil Gaiman and Marlene O’Connor Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back, by Alison Wilgus East West Street, by Philippe Sands Chronin Volume 2: The Sword in Your Hand, by Alison Wilgus Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus, by Neil Gaiman Beren and Luthien, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Next books Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones Barcelona, Catalonia: A View from the Inside, by Matthew Tree
Wed, 19:14: RT @AhirShah: If there is to be a border with Kent, it should be drawn with a ruler by a brown guy who has never been there
Wed, 20:25: RT @davidallengreen: Just imagine if anyone had suggested in 2016 we would end up with legal recognition for Kent border, with police power…
24 September 1939: birth of Maurice Colbourne who played Lytton in Resurrection of the Daleks (Fifth Doctor, 1984) and Attack of the Cybermen (Sixth Doctor, 1985).
24 September 1951: birth of David Banks, who played the Cyber-leader in Earthshock (Fifth Doctor, 1982), The Five Doctors (1983), Attack of the Cybermen (Sixth Doctor, 1985), and Silver Nemesis (Seventh Doctor, 1988) and also wrote the New Adventures novel Iceberg (1993).
24 September 1963: birth of Jaye Griffiths, who played UNIT operative Jac in The Magician's Apprentice and The Zygon Invasion (both Twelfth Doctor, 2015)
ii) broadcast anniversaries
24 September 1966: broadcast of third episode of The Smugglers. It's the Doctor's turn to escape from his captors by magic; and everyone comes to the church for the final confrontation.
24 September 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of Horror of Fang Rock. The alien is revealed as a Rutan; the Doctor destroys its ship with a laser, and Leela's eyes change from brown to blue.
24 September 1993: broadcast of the fifth and, thank God, last episode of The Paradise of Death on BBC Radio. Does it help if I tell you that in the climactic scene, the president's son is mauled to death in an arena by a giant toad? No, I thought not.
24 September 2007: on a much happier note, first broadcast of both parts of Revenge of the Slitheen, which kicks off the first regular season of the Sarah Jane Adventures. Maria and Luke, with Sarah Jane and their new friend Clyde, discover that the Slitheen have taken over their school; but are able to destroy them with vinegar.
24 September 2013: broadcast of Closing Time, ending the regular run of the sixth season of New Who (though there was a Christmas special yet to come). The Eleventh Doctor reunites with Clive and Clive's baby to confront Cybermen under a department store.
This is the latest post in a series I started last November, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
I started the month with a trip to Cyprus, and the following weekend went to Dublin for P-Con and on to Limerick to give a lecture.
A rare picture taken at Easter weekend of the five of us together:
The long travel to Cyrpus and Limerick, and the long weekend, and the short length of the Doctor Who novelisations, meant that I red no less than 44 books in March 2008. This was my record to that date, but I've broken it a couple of times since.
10,700 pages (YTD 19,600)
2/44 by women (YTD 10/75), though I don't know anything about the author of the Berlitz Turkish Travel Pack or the editor of Pass the Port
2/44 by PoC (YTD 2/75), subject to the same caveat
The best of these was Alan Garner's classic The Owl Service, which you can get here. The worst by some way are the two novelisations by Nigel Robinson of the stories we now call The Edge of Destruction and The Sensorites, which you can get here and here.
Tue, 12:56: Why the first black British prime minister is likely to be a Conservative https://t.co/3CJlPb9aFx Very interesting analysis from @StephenKB – basically, the Conservatives are better at diversity and at winning elections.
Tue, 17:05: RT @MehreenKhn: This week’s European Council has been delayed by a week to Oct 1-2 because @eucopresident is in quarantine after having c…
