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Tuesday reading

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Present Danger, ed. Eddie Robson

Last books finished
Expo 58, by Jonathan Coe
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Tweaking The Tail, by John Leeson
The Life of Sir Denis Henry, by A.D. McDonnell
Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson

Next books
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot

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When the square root of n is less than or equal to n’s number of divisors

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Just in case you ever needed to know, there are 55 positive integers whose square root √n is less than or equal to their number of divisors τ(n).

√n < τ(n) in 53 cases, and in two cases √n = τ(n): 1 and 9.

They are:

n τ(n) √n
1 1 1
2 2 1.41
3 2 1.73
4 3 2
6 4 2.45
8 4 2.83
9 3 3
10 4 3.16
12 6 3.46
14 4 3.74
15 4 3.87
16 5 4
18 6 4.24
20 6 4.47
24 8 4.90
28 6 5.30
30 8 5.48
32 6 5.66
36 9 6
40 8 6.32
42 8 6.48
48 10 6.93
54 8 7.35
56 8 7.48
60 12 7.75
72 12 8.49
80 10 8.94
84 12 9.17
90 12 9.49
96 12 9.80
108 12 10.39
120 16 10.95
126 12 11.22
132 12 11.49
140 12 11.83
144 15 12
168 16 12.96
180 18 13.42
192 14 13.86
210 16 14.49
216 16 14.70
240 20 15.49
252 18 15.87
288 18 16.97
300 18 17.32
336 20 18.33
360 24 18.97
420 24 20.49
480 24 21.91
504 24 22.45
540 24 23.24
720 30 26.83
840 32 28.98
1260 36 35.50

Or to put it another way:

n τ(n) √n
1 1 1
2 2 1.41
3 1.73
4 3 2
9 3
6 4 2.45
8 2.83
10 3.16
14 3.74
15 3.87
16 5 4
12 6 3.46
18 4.24
20 4.47
28 5.29
32 5.66
24 8 4.90
30 5.48
40 6.32
42 6.48
54 7.35
56 7.48
36 9 6
48 10 6.93
80 8.94
60 12 7.75
72 8.49
84 9.17
90 9.49
96 9.80
108 10.39
126 11.22
132 11.49
140 11.83
192 14 13.86
144 15 12
120 16 10.95
168 12.96
210 14.49
216 14.70
180 18 13.42
252 15.87
288 16.97
300 17.32
240 20 15.49
336 18.33
360 24 18.97
420 20.49
480 21.91
504 22.45
540 23.24
720 26.83
840 32 28.98
1260 36 35.50

The number whose square root is smallest relative to its number of divisors is 12, whose 6 divisors are almost twice its square root of 3.45.

There, aren't you glad I told you?

Edited to add: Looks like I miscounted and there are only 54.

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Return to Bosnia and Croatia

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Two weeks ago, I took F on his first trip to Bosnia. I lived in Banja Luka, the main city of the Republika Srpska (the Serbian part of Bosnia) from January 1997 to May 1998, and was joined by Anne and B from that September (B, who was born in June 1997, was very tiny). We then moved to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, from May to December 1998, before I got my first job in Brussels at the start of 1999; by then, F was on his way, but did not fully appear on the scene until July.

Since leaving Zagreb, I had been back to Banja Luka only once, in November 2002, though I'd passed through Zagreb a few times (most recently last June when I was stranded there one evening by air traffic problems). F had never been at all – we'd taken him to the Croatian coast when he was two, but not to Zagreb. So when I realised that I could take a long weekend of travel in advance of some work meetings in Zagreb on the first Tuesday in February, it seemed like a good opportunity to revisit the past.

Zagreb, nights 1, 4 and 5:
Night 1: Hotel Jägerhorn: good and central, boutique atmosphere, car park two blocks from hotel which made for slightly tricky navigation and suitcase-trundling, but at least there was a car park.
Friday dinner: Batak Grill, Flower Square branch, F's first ćevapi; basic but filling.
Friday drinks with T (former colleague) and H (T's partner): Grif Bar, newly opened, former button factory, smoky and noisy but didn't make me feel too old.
Zagreb, nights 4 and 5:
Nights 4 and 5: Hotel Westin, formerly the Opera, formerly the Intercontinental; standard international business hotel. Left to myself, I would stay a bit closer to the centre.
Monday dinner: Agava, nice traditional Croatian place among the many restaurants on Tkalčićeva Street (which has gone way more international and diverse than in my day).
Tuesday lunch: Vinodol, efficient business lunch.
Tuesday dinner: my former colleague P kindly cooked for me.
Wednesday lunch: at the airport.

Pictures here are from both legs of the trip to Zagreb, where we started and ended – F returned to Belgium on the Tuesday, but I had to stay an extra day. I rented a zippy little Clio from Enterprise at the airport.


F in front of the statue of Ban Jelačić in the central square.
(Statue by Anton Dominik Ritter von Fernkorn, 1866)


His parents and sister, 21 years earlier on the other side of the horse


Panorama with F in Flower Square (Cvjetni Trg)


His parents and sister in the same square in 1998


My old office at Preradovićeva 22. It's seen better days.


At the end of the street is Šoštarićeva 4, the building where we lived in 1998, then (left) and now (right x2).


St Mark's Church, in 1997 and 2019.


The great local physicist Nikola Tesla, decorated for the occasion. He wasn't there in 1998.


Memorial commemorating Croatia's EU membership, 1 July 2013.


St George doing some smiting. (Anton Dominik Ritter von Fernkorn again, 1853)

I had time to go to one museum, where the rocket attacks on Zagreb in 1991 and 1995 are commemorated, but no photography was allowed.

Here's the funicular between the lower and upper towns, my colleagues talking in the background.

Banja Luka, night 2:
Hotel Jelena: new since my time living there, staff very friendly especially over breakfast.
Lunch: Kod Brke Pizzeria, tasty and good value
Dinner: Kastel, the ultimate dining place in Banja Luka, in the old Roman fort.

In my day, the square at the centre of the city was a building site, with the Banski Dvor, which housed the main government offices, and the National Bank on the northern side of the square.

Now it's dominated by the new cathedral, the Banski Dvor is under wraps and the president's office has moved across the road to the former bank. (I was really lucky with the light here.)

When I arrived in Banja Luka in early 1997, the first thing I did was to hire Danijela Dabić, aged 21, slim as a rake, smart as a whip, sarcastic as only a child of war can be. She was my best friend in Bosnia, and I learned more from her than I can ever express.

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When I was last in Banja Luka in 2002, we met up for what we both knew would be the last time, and indeed we lost her a few months later. This was my first chance to pay my respects.

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After the cemetery, we went to see her mother. We don't have much common language, but sometimes few words are needed.

Danijela's best friend D sorted us out. She was a student back in those days, sometimes playing with young B and dropping by the office for a laugh.

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D now has a pretty responsible government position. For dinner we went to the Kastel, where I had last eaten with Danijela in 2002, and had a brilliant if somewhat emotional time.

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D's parents still live in the apartment that we rented from them in 1997-98. The streetscape has filled out with some more new buildings.

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(1997/8)
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(2019)

Her parents and brother were very hospitable to us before we took the road south to Sarajevo via Travnik.

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Travnik, Sunday lunch: Ćevabdžinica Hari,

The drive over Mount Vlašić to Travnik was, er, interesting. The rain over the previous couple of days had washed significant parts of the road down the slopes, up to half of it in places, and elsewhere rocks from above had fallen onto the road surface; some of them rather big rocks.

As we drove I was listening to a Big Finish audio, The Thousand Worlds, starring John Hurt as the War Doctor, in which he returns to a planet where he has not been for a while and discovers that the young woman student who he had got to know on his previous visit has now has a pretty responsible government position. It seemed to fit.

I wanted to take F to Travnik because of its tremendous cultural history: the Coloured Mosque, and also the heritage of Ivo Andrić who made the town famous in his best book.

An added attraction, according to D in Banja Luka, is Hari's Ćevabdžinica which she assured us serves the best ćevapi in Bosnia. She was dead right – the ćevapi were very good. When we got to Sarajevo, I mentioned to everyone I met that we'd had good ćevapi in Travnik, and they all said, "Oh, you must have been to Hari's then." Unfortunately the weather did not co-operate, and the Coloured Mosque was closed for renovations, so all we did in Travnik was eat Hari's ćevapi and then leave for Sarajevo.

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The rain was getting worse, and on the fringes of Travnik we were diverted across a park to avoid the main road which was underwater. As we drove south we found ourselves splashing through the Lašva at several points. The little Clio performed well.

Sarajevo, night 3:
Hondo's Pansion: where I had usually stayed on my visits in 1997 and 1998, still run by the same two brothers, still very hospitable if a little basic (but good value).
Dinner: Ćevabdžinica Hodžić, claims more modestly to just have the best ćevapi in Sarajevo; certainly they were very tasty.
Drinks with O: Wine bar Dekanter, very helpful with suggestions; where the political elite hang out.
Monday lunch: Preporod, former Gajret cultural centre, very pleasant airy space

When I first arrived in Sarajevo in 1997, I was struck by the view from Hondo's Pansion where we usually stayed:

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22 years later, exactly the same instinct struck me, but the rain had now cleared and the light was glorious:
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The National Library is particularly fine, especially with the castle in the background.

We met up with several old friends of mine, most particularly O, a former diplomat, who took us on his personal tour of the old city of Sarajevo, taking us around the confectionery shops and also very gently pointing out the street where he was born, and where his sister was killed during the war. We ended up in a very nice wine bar where the Bosnian elite hang out.

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I felt that the old city had not changed much since the 1990s, but others assured me that I should have looked at the modern west of the city a bit more (I was fighting traffic jams when there, which perhaps proves their point about growth). F pointed out that there are very few Bosnian flags on display in either Banja Luka or the old town of Sarajevo (we saw one, outside the Bakijska džamija in the Baščaršija); again, I was told that you’ll see more in the western part of the city.

Time has passed, as demonstrated by these three pictures taken of the same building from the same vantage point over a period of 105 years, the second two by me:


Schiller's bakery (1914)

The remains of the former Young Bosnia Museum (1997)
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The Museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918 (2019)

This museum makes a brave attempt to interest us in life in Sarajevo under Austro-Hungarian rule, but the fact is that most of us are interested in only one thing that actually happened there. They have done well, though, in terms of mementoes of the event that sparked the first world war:

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The coffee cups used by Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek just before the assassination;
the cutlery with which he ate his last breakfast.
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The clothes and weapons confiscated from the assassin.

On Monday morning it was snowing with thick wet flakes which melted on impact, and I discovered that a hole in my shoe was allowing my foot to be saturated with freezing mush. We did manage a bit more culture:


Inside the Emperor's Mosque (actually Sunday evening)


The Svrzo House museum, a wealthy family's residence from the 19th century


The Jewish Museum, and the somewhat disturbing woodcuts of Daniel Ozmo

Finally, the War Childhood Museum's usual Bosnian exhibits were not on display that week; instead, there was a very moving set of objects donated by children of the Syrian conflict, reminding us that this century has not escaped the sins of previous times.

We left Sarajevo after a hilarious lunch with an Irish friend, and drove up to Zagreb by what is the more usual route these days via Doboj. The road from Zenica up to Doboj is pretty dull, slow-moving lorries keeping you honest. The road from Doboj through Republika Srpska is amazing, though, much better than in my day, delivering you to the frontier at Gradiška in an hour (it used to take twice as long). And then I had my work meetings in Zagreb, and F went home, and I went home the next day.

You can fly from Charleroi to Banja Luka for €20. I might do that quite soon.

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Tuesday reading

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Expo 58, by Jonathan Coe
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Last books finished
The Fire Sermon (sample), by Francesca Haig
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Script Doctor: the Inside Story of Doctor Who 1986-1989, by Andrew Cartmel

Next books
The Life of Sir Denis Henry, by A.D. McDonnell
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

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What SF to read? Results of a Facebook/Twitter poll

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I was on the road last week, and will be again next week, so blogging will be light until things settle down.

However. An old friend contacted me on the first day of my trip, asking for recommendations for either “the three best sci fi novels? Or your three favourites?” I didn’t really have time while travelling to give this the thought it required, so I outsourced the question to friends on Twitter and Facebook. The results indicate only the views of a bunch of people responding to a straw poll on a Sunday evening or Monday morning, but I hope that they are interesting. I recorded 264 recommendations for 143 different books by 101 authors. (I slightly lost count of how many people had contributed to the discussion, but given that people were generally recommending three books, it must have been around 80-90.)

The top two, with 19 and 18 votes respectively, were not hugely surprising: Dune, by Frank Herbert, and The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Dune has its faults, but it has a lot of merits too – the ecology, the planetary politics, the role of religion in society – and I think it’s fair to say that by reading it you get a good sense of where sf has come from in the last fifty years. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the best books ever written about sexuality without being particularly erotic; its politics is ever so slightly more progressive than Dune‘s.

Le Guin was the top nominated author on the list, mentioned by 31 people. This is mainly because the third book in the overall poll, The Dispossessed, with 10 votes, is also by her. (The other three Le Guin votes went to The Lathe of Heaven.) The Dispossessed is even more political, partly a parable about how where you stand affects what you see. These are all great books, and I am heartily recommending them to my friend if he wants only three.

As you would expect from a survey like this, people generally opted for the classics rather than more recent work. In fourth place, with seven votes, is the only book published this century that got more than three recommendations. It was, of course, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, which blew most of us away when published in 2013 – a book that is more military and cybernetic than Le Guin, but equally feminist and progressive. I think it would be particularly interesting for someone unfamiliar with the field to read it soon after The Left Hand of Darkness. In fifth place, with six votes, is a personal favourite of mine, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, which I will admit has dated a bit but is still a good read about men and women trying to be gods. I’m quite pleased that the top five include three books by women.

Finishing off the detailed reporting, three books by men tied for sixth place with five votes: Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (which my friend has surely already read), Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (which I’m sure he has at least heard of) and Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (which I suspect is less well known outside the genre). Probably I should allow Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy here too, if I combine all the votes for it. I loved all of these when I first read them, though again I don’t think Asimov has aged well.

My friend can stop reading here, as he’s got his top three (indeed top nine) recommendations, but I’m sure others will want to know the final scores. The following six books, by four men and two women, got four votes each:
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
• Neuromancer, by William Gibson
• The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
• The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
I like all but one of these; if I had to pick a favourite, it would probably be The Handmaid’s Tale (recently a TV series of course). Personally I can’t take Neuromancer, but I know I’m in a minority.

Eight books, by five men and three women, got three votes:
• Cyteen, by C.J. Cherryh
• Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
• The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin (counting also votes for the Broken Earth trilogy)
• The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
• The Lathe Of Heaven, by Ursula K. LeGuin
• The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
• The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
• Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
It’s difficult for me to choose a personal favourite between The Lathe Of Heaven, The Man in the High Castle and Stranger in a Strange Land. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is of course the basis of Blade Runner. The Man in the High Castle is another recent TV series. Both are by Philip K. Dick, who got six books on the list, the most of any author. Particularly significant is that The Fifth Season and its two sequels won the Hugo Awards for Best Novel for 2016, 2017 and 2018, the only time an author has managed to win it three years in a row. Myself I’m not all that excited about them, but clearly lots of other people are. It’s also the highest ranking on this list for a book by a writer of colour. Here my disrecommendation is for Cyteen, but again I know that most other readers think it’s great.

Seventeen books by thirteen men and five women (one book is co-authored) got two votes. Five of these were published this century (marked with a copyright symbol ©).
• Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith
• Blindsight, by Peter Watts ©
• Brasyl, by Ian McDonald ©
• A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
• A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
• Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, by Philip K. Dick
• Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
• Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
• Kindred, by Octavia Butler
• The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers ©
• Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood ©
• A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers
• A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
• The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
• The Star Fraction, by Ken MacLeod
• The Three Body Problem (counting also a vote for the trilogy as a whole), by Cixin Liu ©
Again there’s one here I really bounced off while everyone else was excited by it, and it’s Blindsight. (Also not wild about A Fire Upon The Deep or Hyperion.) I confess that I may not have actually read A Princess of Mars. But there’s a particular favourite of mine here as well, A Canticle for Leibowitz. I also very much like Brasyl, Flowers for Algernon, Kindred and A Scanner Darkly. I am not sure if The Sparrow will stand up to re-reading.

Do you want to know what the other 105 books that got one vote each were? OK, though I must warn that the gender balance is a little embarrassing. For the record, they were:
Accelerando, by Charles Stross; Austral, by Paul McAuley; Babel 17, by Samuel R. Delany; The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal; Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut; The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman; Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke; Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky; The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham; The City And The City, by China Mieville; Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny; The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke; Dahlgren, by Samuel R. Delany; The Dark Side of the Sun, by Terry Pratchett; The Death of Grass, by John Christopher; The Demolished Man , by Alfred Bester; Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Terrance Dicks; Dogs of War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky; Downbelow Station, by C.J. Cherryh; Enders Game, by Orson Scott Card; Engine Summer, by John Crowley; Europe In Autumn, by Dave Hutchinson; Excession, by Iain M. Banks; Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury; The Female Man, by Joanna Russ; The Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe; The Forge of God, by Greg Bear; The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse; God’s War, by Kameron Hurley; Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson; The Hammer and the Cross, by Harry Harrison; Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami; Helliconia Winter, by Brian Aldiss; Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, by James Tiptree Jr; High-Rise Darkness, by J.G. Ballard; His Majesty’s Starship, by Ben Jeapes; Hothouse , by Brian Aldiss; I am Legend, by Richard Matheson; If/Then, by Matthew de Abaitua; The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson; Isle Of The Dead, by Roger Zelazny; Jizzle (anthology), by John Wyndham ; The Kraken Wakes, by John Wyndham; Komarr, by Lois McMaster Bujold; Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon; Light, by M. John Harrison; Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow; Little, Big, by John Crowley; Lock In, by John Scalzi (who was one of the contributors to this survey); Look to Windward, by Iain M. Banks; Madd Addam trilogy, by Margaret Atwood; The Man Who Fell to Earth, by Walter Tevis; The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury; Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K. Dick; Memoirs of a Spacewoman , by Naomi Mitchison; Mission of Gravity, by Hal Clement; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein; More Than Human , by Theodore Sturgeon; The Mote in God’s Eye, by Niven & Pournelle; The Murderbot stories, by Martha Wells; Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock; The Name of the Wind , by Patrick Rothfuss; Nemesis Games, by James SA Corey; The Neutronium Alchemist, by Peter Hamilton; The Night Sessions, by Ken Macleod; Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny; Nova, by Samuel R. Delany; Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi (as noted above, a contributor; he did not vote for himself); On A Red Station, Drifting, by Aliette de Bodard; Passage, by Connie Willis; Past Master, by R. A. Lafferty; Permutation City, by Greg Egan; Pollen, by Jeff Noon; The Reality Dysfunction, by Peter F. Hamilton; Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke; Restoration Game, by Ken MacLeod; Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds; Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban; The Roderick trilogy, by John Sladek; Science Fiction for People Who Hate Science Fiction, edited by Terry Carr; The Separation, by Christopher Priest; The Shadow Of The Torturer) (and sequels), by Gene Wolfe; Shadow’s End, by Sherri S. Tepper; Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut; Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem; Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente; The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison; Star King, by Jack Vance; Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon; Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, by Harry Harrison; Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick; The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells; Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer; 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke; Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks; Voyage Of The Space Beagle, by A.E. van Vogt; Who Goes Here, by Bob Shaw; The Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss; The Wrong Man, by Danny Morrison; Women of Wonder, edited by Pamela Sargent; and The Year of the Flood , by Margaret Atwood.

Thanks, everyone who contributed.

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  • Wed, 17:52: RT @mrjamesob: Donald Tusk calls out liars who wilfully misled people. Liars respond by wilfully misleading people about what Tusk said.
  • Wed, 19:07: RT @garvanwalshe: I’m surprised no Brexiteer has appeared on my timeline quoting Paradise Lost to the effect of better to be free in Hell t…
  • Wed, 19:39: RT @AdamBienkov: Conservative MPs: Donald Tusk’s comments are a completely outrageous insult. Also Tory MPs: https://t.co/ITci2XrAuA
  • Wed, 20:48: Theresa May is making impossible promises in Northern Ireland https://t.co/ShwewsuyZ3 Well put.
  • Wed, 21:09: RT @newsthump: The genius of the Donald Tusk insult is that to be offended by it, you have to admit to having no plan for delivering Brexit…
  • Wed, 21:18: RT @Channel4News: “I didn’t know… that he was in any sense a delicate flower.” Speaker John Bercow responds to Brexiteer Peter Bone after…
  • Thu, 08:39: The Donald Tusk affair shows that Britain is in an abusive relationship with the EU – and we’re the abuser https://t.co/IxUFlEe3Qm
  • Thu, 09:16: RT @damonwake: PM will not ask for a specific unicorn but seek acceptance that the carrot on the donkey’s head needs to be glued on, not at…
  • Thu, 10:45: RT @mrjamesob: Fair enough. Because it’s Brussels that said they need us more than we need them, weaponised free movement, stuck lies on th…
  • Thu, 11:30: For those in Brussels interested in Hungary: “The European elections in Hungary and the EU”, 19 Feb evening event,… https://t.co/z0PhlryqBy

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Tuesday books

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Last books finished
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
Candide, by Voltaire
Molten Heart, by Una McCormack

Next books
The World of Poo, by Terry Pratchett
Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson

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Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, The Wall, & the Birth of the New Berlin, by Paul Hockenos

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

You don’t have to look very far in Berlin today to find traces of the gifted dilettantes and their creations; they’re everywhere in the old stomping grounds, and beyond Berlin too. The protagonists of the post-Wall techno scene, for example, were embedded among them, experimenting with electronic music more than a decade before its global boom. And there’s not an industrial offshoot worth its salt, from Marilyn Manson to Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails, that doesn’t pay homage to Einstürzende Neubauten, the most renowned Berlin brand of the ’80s. The Brilliant Dilettantes even managed to alter Germanness a shade too.

It’s always good when someone you like writes a book you like about a subject you like. Paul Hockenos and I were friends in Bosnia in 1997, where I worked for a democratisation agency and he was a spokesperson for one of the big international NGOs, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. (Oddly enough, this review is set to post as I return to Banja Luka for the first time since 2003.)

In fact that Balkan interlude was a rather brief phase of his life, which as an adult has been mainly spent in Berlin, far from his upstate New York origins. I too love Berlin, though I don’t know it as well as he does. My own first visit was to a divided city in 1986; and I went back again after the Fall of the Wall, in 1992. I was last there in June, where I attended a reception on the top floor of the Reichstag building; in 1986 it was dilapidated and still partly burnt out, but now it is the democratic heart of Europe’s most important country.

The book divides roughly into thirds. The first part tells the story of how the growth of the alternative music scene in West Berlin, from the 1970s to 1989, was facilitated by the peculiarities of West Berlin’s governance; if you had a salary, the government boosted it by 11% to encourage you to stay (a rare example of a negative income tax) and the absence of the draft meant that the sorts of young men who didn’t want to do military service clustered there. David Bowie was deeply inspired by his three years there from 1976 to 1979, where he collaborated with Brian Eno and Iggy Pop, and loved Romy Haag. People experimented with new ways of living and loving; it was an energetic city living, as it turned out, on borrowed time.

The second part tells the story of the links between the alternative music scene in East Berlin, the connection with dilapidated church buildings and the decaying regime’s inability to prevent young people from getting together to overthrow it. The vision here is a rather Berlin-centric one (indeed, a rather Friedrichshain-centric one), but that’s fair enough given the theme of the book. One point I found striking: John Peel was a hero of the Eastern kids, who taped his shows and acquired his musical tastes. They weren’t alone. The wonderful film Good Vibrations chronicles Peel’s effect on divided Belfast at the same time. A couple of hundred kilometres to the south, a friend of mine who grew up outside Limerick has written of how liberating Peel’s shows were for a teenage girl in early 80s Ireland. When the cultural history of Europe in the late twentieth century is written, I hope that Peel is given his due.

And the third part tells the story of the Fall of the Wall, and the disruption to the alternative lifestyles that had grown up on both sides as Germany reunified into a bourgeois bloc, Easterners voting for stability and rapid integration under Helmut Kohl rather than for any more risky alternative. At the same time, the influx of international interest and the very light touch of the last months of East Germany’s existence opened up more space for discourse and experimentation. Disturbingly, neo-Nazis grew in numbers, and actually killed one of Paul’s friends, the activist Silvio Meier. But time passed. The old hip neighbourhoods became gentrified. People settled down. Berlin is still edgy, vibrant, exciting in a way that no other German city is, but it’s not what it was. Well, it’s a city that has a lot of past to wear.

Even if you don’t know much about Berlin or music, it’s still a great book, and you can get it here.

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January Books

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Non-fiction: 2
Blue Box Boy, by Matthew Waterhouse
Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, The Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin, by Paul Hockenos

Fiction (non-sf): 3
Milkman, by Anna Burns
From Here To Eternity, by James Jones
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

sf (non-Who): 8
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition, ed. Rich Horton
Heartspell, by Blaine Anderson
α1
"The Queen of Air and Darkness", by Poul Anderson
Tales from Moominvalley. by Tove Jansson
γ1
Avalanche Soldier, by Susan Matthews
δ1

Doctor Who, etc: 2
The Time Lord Letters, by Justin Richards
Secret Histories, ed. Mark Clapham

Comics: 2
β1
Lambik by Marc Legendre

α1, β1, γ1 and δ1 to be revealed later.

5,100 pages
7/17 by non-male writers (Burns, Anderson, Jansson, γ1, Matthews, δ1, β1)
3/17 by PoC (Adiga, δ1, β1)
1/17 reread (Tales From Moominvalley)

Reading now
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
Candide, by Voltaire
Molten Heart, by Una McCormack
ε1

Coming soon (perhaps):
The World of Poo, by Terry Pratchett
Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson
The Life of Sir Denis Henry, by A.D. McDonnell
The Secret Lives of Garden Birds, by Dominic Couzens
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot
Troll Bridge, by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran
The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
De Terugkeer van de Wespendief, by Aimee de Jongh
Dark Lord of Derkholm, by Diana Wynne Jones
Feersum Endjinn, by Iain M Banks
The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy
Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, ed. Kevin J. Anderson
In Another Light, by Andrew Greig
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O'Driscoll
“Goat Song”, by Poul Anderson
A Sunless Sea, by Anne Perry
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Graham
Present Danger, by Eddie Robson

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Avalanche Soldier, by Susan R. Matthews

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Stepping carefully between berry-bush roots and fronds of fern and the long thin branches of ground-level shrubs, Salli smiled to herself. It was Fenka. She liked Fenka. She kept her mouth shut and walked on.

I bought this on seeing a recommendation from someone back in 2011; and I cannot not find whose recommendation it was, or why. I thought at first it might have been Liz Bourke, but her review is from 2012, after I had bought it. Lisa DuMond wrote it up in 2000, the year after it was published, but I don’t think I saw that either.

It’s a book about the intersection of religious doctrine and security politics, in a society where a Reformation is up-ending traditional power structures. Unfortunately I never quite understood what was going on, and was particularly thrown at the very beginning when the central character’s brother, a serving member of the security forces, fears he may be in trouble because he accidentally killed a member of a minority group during a riot. This doesn’t seem very plausible. I note that Bourke and DuMond, who are otherwise boosters of Matthews’ work, are frank about the imperfect execution of this one. I haven’t read anything else by her, and I’m not going to look out for it based on this. But if you want, you can get it here.

This was the unread sf book that had lingered longest on my shelves. Next on that pile is The Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, edited by Kevin J. Anderson.

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