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Sunday reading (a day late)

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Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee
Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe, by Michael Moorcock

Last books finished
Washington, D.C.’s Vanishing Springs and Waterways, by Garnett P. Williams
Dear Old Dead, by Jane Haddam

Next books
Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle
Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: Notes on Science Fiction and Culture in the Year of Angry Dogs, by Philip Sandifer
Everfair, by Nisi Shawl

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Cavalcade: film and theatre script

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Cavalcade won the Oscar for Outstanding Production in 1934 (the first year in which a printed publication, in this case Time, referred to the Academy Awards as the Oscars, though apparently Walt Disney was already talking about getting an Oscar in 1931). For once, I’ve actually heard of one of the other nominated films, 42nd Street. The others were A Farewell to Arms, I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Lady for a Day, Little Women, The Private Life of Henry VIII, She Done Him Wrong, Smilin’ Through, and State Fair. Cavalcade won two other Oscars, Best Director (Frank Lloyd) and Best Art Direction (William S. Darling). The time period of eligibility was the uniquely long 1 August 1932 to 31 December 1933, so that they could switch to calendar years from 1934 onwards. I think most people would agree that the eligible film from that period which has proved to have the most staying power was the original King Kong, which of course got no nominations at all.

Although it’s a Hollywood film, it’s based on a hit West End play by Noël Coward and all the actors are English. Rather like Cimarron from two years before, it’s a family saga, but this time set in London in the years from 1889 to 1933, consisting of a series of vignettes about the Boer War, Queen Victoria’s death, the Titanic, the First World War and the consequent social disruption of the 1920s. I find it really curious that a portrait of English life (or rather of Noël Coward’s concept of upper-class English life) had such drawing power in Depression-era America. Perhas it was received as a fantasy about what life is really like in Britain. As noted below, I thought the movie was considerably more upbeat than the play.

The only Coward play I had previously seen was Blithe Spirit, in Belfast when I was a teenager; I’m trying to track that down – could it have been the Glasgow Citizens Theatre production of 1985, starring Ciaran Hinds, transported across the North Channel? It is much more coherent and less lavish than Cavalcade. Edited to add: On reflection, I think I have the wrong city, and it was the 1985 Gate Theatre production in Dublin that I saw as a teenager.

Things to note, starting with the bits I didn’t like as much:

Whitewashing: This is my sixth Oscar-winning film and so far we have seen precisely one black speaking character (and a few Native Americans), in Cimarron. The non-white population of London wasn’t huge in the 1899-31 period, but it wasn’t zero either. Having said that, the jazz band in the climactic final scene (see video below) does include several black musicians, so we are scoring a bit better than Broadway Melody.

Staginess: As with the previous year’s Grand Hotel, this was adapted from a stage play, and not everything worked as well on the screen. In particular, oddly enough, I am sure that the occasional shift of scene between family life and the music hall (or other entertainment venue) was carried out much more smoothly in the theatre, even though it would have been much less naturalistic. I thought that Clive Brook, starring as Robert Marryot, particularly didn’t seem to catch the camera terribly well. It is of course a challenge to do a film-of-a-play, but my feeling is that Grand Hotel managed the transition better.

Class politics: The central characters in the film are the upper class Jane and Robert Marryot, and the Bridges family, where parents Alfred and Ellen start as the Marryots’ servants and daughter Fanny ends up as their son’s lover. Coward (and screen adaptors Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien) were trying I think to treat the relationship in a natural realistic way, but it still comes across as a bit forced in the early scenes, and the social disruption of the 1920s is shown rather than told. Having said that, Una O’Connor is solid throughout as Ellen Bridges, and Herbert Mundin hams it up very attractively as Alfred.

Coherence: As with Cimarron, it’s a bunch of scenes strung together over three and a bit decades of action, which is a serial violation of the classical unities. I think in general it’s carried off a bit better than Cimarron. There is a huge jump across the whole 1920s taking us from the end of the first world war to the present day (ie 1933), and a bit of a big jump between 1900 and 1908. There is a very silly filmed sequence of knights and ladies riding across a pleasant landscape to break up the scenes (a literal cavalcade, to match the title).

Gay visibility: A very very brief late scene is set in a gay club in London. This goes further than Wings, six years before, which had a gay couple in a Paris club and a rather chaste same-sex kiss.

Performance: The standout here is Diana Wynyard, then aged 27, playing Jane Marryot who starts the story aged 31 and ends it in her 60s. I found her very convincing as wife, mother, mistress of the household and Victorian woman adrift in the twentieth century. She gets all the best lines and best scenes, and she gets the most out of them. (Unfortunately I couldn’t find any videos of her parts which could easily be included here.) I’ve noted Herbert Mundin as Alfred Bridges already. Special shout outs also to Ursula Jeans as Fanny Bridges, and to John Warburton (who much much later appeared in a Star Trek episode) and Margaret Lindsay as the doomed lovers on the Titanic in this scene (apologies for spoiling the punchline there):

Music: Long long ago I saw the 1969 film Oh! What A Lovely War, which I now realise drew on the tradition of showing and telling the story of conscription and combat through music which Cavalcade must have been an early part of. Both film and play use music to be more critical of militarism than the wording of the dialogue given to the characters. Some of the songs are traditional, some are original to Coward. The high point musically (and there are no low points from that point of view) is at the end, with Ursula Jeans as the servants’ daughter Fanny Bridges, having achieved stardom on the stage and the love of her parents’ masters’ son, singing the chilling “Twentieth Century Blues”:

This is followed by the final scene of Jane and Robert Marryot seeing in the New Year for 1933, looking forward rather happily if with regret for their losses over the years. It’s a sentimental and mildly uplifting end for the film.

After some reflection, I went and sought out the original Coward play. This is the opening of the third scene:

Principals: JANE MARRYOT, MARGARET HARRIS, EDITH HARRIS (aged 10), EDWARD (aged 12), JOE (aged 8), ELLEN.

SCENE: The same as SCENE I [the Marryots’ drawing-room].

TIME: About five o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, May 18th, 1900. When the lights go up EDWARD and JOE MARRYOT and EDITH HARRIS are discovered playing soldiers on the floor. EDWARD is aged twelve, JOE eight, and EDITH HARRIS about ten.

JOE (shooting off a cannon): Bang –bang, bang, bang.

EDITH (giving a little squeak): Oh –oh, dear!

The original play (it says in my book) cost thirty thousand pre-war pounds and kept a cast and back-stage crew of three hundred employed at Drury Lane for over a year – a spectacular in the line of the more modern West End musical. It’s particularly impressive when you remember that these were the first years of the Great Depression. The play opened just before the 1931 election which saw former Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald returned to power at the head of a mostly Conservative coalition. It was received as a patriotic, nationalist piece in tune with the needs of the times, much to Coward’s dismay; he thought he was just writing a piece about the impact of the times on an ordinary (read upper-middle-class) family, and to my eye he was attempting to portray the inevitability of the dissolution of old social structures, and to challenge the audience to get to grips with how the world was changing.

I think he was right to be dismayed. The play is more cynical than the film. The theatrical Diana Wynyard repeatedly makes anti-war comments, and is repeatedly proved right. A couple of grim scenes from the play did not make it to the film – an early fake bucolic musical number, and a scene where the teenage Marryot sons engage in dissolute behaviour with their friends. And the ending is truly chilling. The two final scenes were flipped in the film. In the original, the Marryots see in 1930, much diminished in health and happiness. Jane’s final words are:

Now, then, let’s couple the Future of England with the past of England. The glories and victories and triumphs that are over, and the sorrows that are over, too. Let’s drink to our sons who made part of the pattern and to our hearts that died with them. Let’s drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let’s drink to the hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness and peace again.

It’s a bleak end to her role in the play. In the film, the pessimistic impact is deadened by Robert repeating “Dignity, greatness and peace” back to her, and a crowed scene of revellers singing “Auld Lang Syne” before the final titles. In the orignal play, the final song, “Twentieth Century Blues”, comes after rather than before the Marryots’ New Year scenem with some difficult but bloodcurdling stage directions:

SCENE: A Night Club.

TIME: Evening –1930.

This Scene begins with a night club in which FANNY is singing, seated on a piano. The decoration is angular and strange, and the song she is singing is oddly discordant.

TWENTIETH CENTURY BLUES

VERSE

Why is it that civilised humanity
Must make the world so wrong?
In this hurly burly of insanity
Your dreams cannot last long.
We’ve reached a headline —
The Press headline –every sorrow,
Blues value is News value tomorrow.

REFRAIN

Blues, Twentieth Century Blues, are getting me down.
Who’s escaped those weary Twentieth Century Blues.
Why, if there’s a God in the sky, why shouldn’t¹ he grin?
High above this dreary Twentieth Century din,
In this strange illusion,
Chaos and confusion,
People seem to lose their way.
What is there to strive for,
Love or keep alive for? Say —
Hey, hey, call it a day.
Blues, nothing to win or to lose.
It’s getting me down.
Blues, I’ve got those weary² Twentieth Century Blues.

When the song is finished, people rise from table and dance without apparently any particular enjoyment; it is the dull dancing of habit. The lights fade away from everything but the dancers, who appear to be rising in the air. They disappear and down stage left, six ‘incurables’ in blue hospital uniform are sitting making baskets. They disappear and FANNY is seen singing her song for a moment, then far away up stage a jazz band is seen playing wildly. Then down stage JANE and ROBERT standing with glasses of champagne held aloft, then ELLEN sitting in front of a Radio loud speaker; then MARGARET dancing with a young man. The visions are repeated quicker and quicker, while across the darkness runs a Riley light sign spelling out news. Noise grows louder and louder. Steam rivets, loud speakers, jazz bands, aeroplane propellers, etc., until the general effect is complete chaos.

Suddenly it all fades into darkness and silence and away at the back a Union Jack glows through the blackness.

The lights slowly come up and the whole stage is composed of massive tiers, upon which stand the entire Company. The Union Jack flies over their heads as they sing ‘God Save the King’.

THE END

¹ The film version has “didn’t” rather than “shouldn’t”.
² The film version ends “escape those dreary Twentieth Century Blues“ rather than “I’ve got those weary Twentieth Century Blues”.

Given the necessary scale of the theatre production (drawing-room, crowds, music-halls and the Titanic), it has been staged only a handful of times since the original 1931 West End production (including the two film adaptations). It’s an ambitious and vicious piece which would reward a determined and talented director. I’d pay money to see it on stage.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

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Washington, D.C.’s Vanishing Springs and Waterways, by Garnett P. Williams

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Second paragraph of third section:

The accompanying map (fig. 1) shows the downtown area’s original streams and shorelines, to the extent that I have been able to locate them. The original boundaries and features of figure 1 are based on the maps of A. Boschke (1856-58), James Kearney and others (1838), A. C. Harmon (1931), James R. Dermott (1797), Joseph M. Toner (E. F. M. Faehtz and F. W. Pratt, 1874), Arthur B. Cutter (1952), Campbell Graham and S. T. Albert (1849), William T. Partridge (1895?), And. Ellicott (1792; Upper Anacostia), the map accompanying the Commissioners Proceedings of 1793, on several references cited in this paper (especially Hines, 1866; Proctor, various dates; Taggart, 1908) and on anonymous articles in the Evening Star. The canal routes are based on Boschke’s 1856-59 map. Present-day features and shorelines were taken from the U.S. Geological Survey’s 1:24,000 scale topographic map “Washington, D.C., and Vicinity” (1965).

My investigation of the pre-urban hydrogeography of the capital of the United States brought me eventually to this paper published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1977 and written by Garnett P. Williams, better known for his 1997 book Chaos Theory Tamed. It’s a brief, fact-filled yet entertaining survey of the historical evidence of D.C.’s waterways, starting with the springs and working up through the streams, creeks and canals to the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. The Franklin Square springs get half a page, and there is also a description of the stream that they fed, called Goose Creek. “At F Street, near Ninth Street [immediately north of the future site of Ford’s Theater], the ravine carrying the stream was some 14 feet deep. (This was quite hazardous at night, with no street light. On one occasion, Mr. Philip Fendall, a leading member of the bar, fell in and broke his leg in two places.)” However, it was entirely filled in during the mid-1800s. Such is the fate of watercourses which compete with property developers.

Garnett regrets that so many of the old streams have been filled in (the fate of Goose Creek) or covered over, mostly to become sewers, and points to Rock Creek as an example of how a different path could have been chosen. (My comment: of course, Rock Creek is mostly elevated above the flatter topography of the city centre, so it was bound to be more robust in the face of humanity.) He points out how central the vanished waterways were to the city until the later part of the nineteenth century – the White House and Washington Monument were both up against the river shore (the future sites of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials under water), and the old canal (obsolete almost as soon as it was built) cut through the heart of the city.

And he concludes that the rivers in particular filled in and narrowed because of massive deposits of sediment, “made available to the rivers over the last 200 years by man’s carelessness”, and calls for more sensitivity to the natural waters of the landscape in city planning. He has a point.

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A Crocodile in the Fernery: An A-Z of Animals in the Garden, by Twigs Way

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Third entry:

Assapanick

On 26 July 1788 William Thornton, American physician and architect of the U.S. Capitol, wrote the following to Dr Lettsom, English amateur botanist. ‘I have sent you four assapanick or flying squirrels and four ground squirrels. The flying squirrels are a family, male and female, with two young ones; the young are very easily tamed; the ladies here have them running all over them, and carry them in their pockets or bosoms, with a small collar of leather round their necks, and a little chain. They do not bite, but soon grow familiar. The old ones and ground squirrels are more difficult, but may, by constantly handling them in gloves, be tamed. You may keep the old, male and female, of the flying variety, and one of each sort of the ground, to breed.’ Lettsom took his correspondent at his word and installed the squirrels in his large Surrey garden as a delight to his visitors, friends and family. Here they joined his tortoises, pyramidal bee-houses, and the collection of mangle-worzels that this eccentric man was attempting to introduce into England.The assapanick were apparently a success in their new home and word spread of these charming and hardy pets. Fifty years later the fellows of the Zoological Society were recording that there was no creature ‘more graceful, or one better fitted for a lady’s pet’. Its diminutive size, the singularity of its form, the expression of its physiognomy, the vivacity of its motions, and the gentleness of its disposition all combine to render it one of the most interesting as one of the most beautiful’. Lady’s pet or not, President Theodore Roosevelt also took to the assapanick, continuing the tradition set by Dr Lettsom by allowing the creatures run of the house and gardens.

I knew the delightfully named Twigs Way almost thirty years ago when we were both postgraduate students in Cambridge, and a few years ago decided to renew acquaintance via the first two of her dozen or so books on the history of gardening. This is a rather nice little listing of peculiar choices of garden pet made throughout history – not straying far from the UK (though clearly the Assapannick is an exception) and only occasionally varying from the concept of what we might agree on as a pet (Charles Darwin’s obsession with worms is a bit of a stretch).

It doesn’t claim to be more than what it is, a collection of anecdotes, some of which cast new light on historical figures (the poet Cowper and his hares; the diarist John Evelyn and his bees and tortoise; the gardener Gertrude Jekyll and the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti both kept rather surprising menageries) and some of which are just “Gosh!” stories, like Charlemagne’s elephant or the Duke of Richmond’s moose. And I confess I had not heard of the assapanick before (you can find it also on a list of words which sound rude but are not).

This was the shortest book of those I acquired in 2010 and had not yet read. The next in that sequence is Daystar and Shadow, by James B. Johnson.

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Thorns, by Robert Silverberg

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Nix.” Nikolaides drew the final consonant out luxuriously. “Chalk gave her to me, him to you. She’s a bore, anyway. Why switch?”

Classic sf which was beaten by Lord of Light and The Einstein Intersection for the Hugo and Nebula respectively; I thought I had read it before but in fact it seems I hadn’t.

It’s a short but pretty powerful book. The central characters are a media mogul who is also a psychic vampire who draws sustenance from other people’s pain, and the two people who he brings together purely for entertainment, an astronaut who has been horribly mutilated by aliens and a young woman who has been at the centre of a media storm after allowing a hundred of her eggs to be fertilised for donor pregnancies. The notion that a senior media figure is obscenely benefiting from causing people pain remains horribly valid today; now that it’s possible, egg donation seems much less scandalous than Silverberg anticipated, as far as I can tell. (And while we don’t yet have aliens mutilating astronoauts, we have plenty of unwilling celebrities who have been horribly injured in public.)

I’ve seen this described as Silverberg’s first good novel, and while I’m not familiar enough with his early work to pass judgement, it is pretty good (even if deservingly beaten by Lord of Light for the Hugo). The set-up is all too plausibly done in the context of the story’s future technology, and the payoff delivered in due course after some grim sidetracks. Well worth getting hold of.

This was my top book acquired in 2010. Next in that pile is Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Isaiah Berlin.

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The Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum

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Thanks very much to C for ferrying me around northern Virginia at the weekend to see a couple of things that had long been on my list: the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, and the battlefield at Manassas/Bull Run.

At the Udvar-Hazy Center, obviously the standout exhibit is the space shuttle Discovery, which flew 39 missions from 1984 to 2011, more than any other spacecraft. It was amazinfg to stand in front of it. It dominates but does not fill the McDonnell Hall, and is well positioned so that you can photograph it from all angles.



For scale, some of the earlier manned capsules – a couple of Mercury backups and the real Gemini 7.


Many more satellites.

And more.

The Mars Rover.

In contrast to the Space Shuttle, it's very difficult to take a picture of Concorde – it is so big!

The Enola Gay has also been preserved:


Cabin of a Goodyear blimp, made in 1934 and in service until very recently.


A German WW2 rocket plane.


I knew it was there but it still gave me a shock of recognition – Willy Ley's 1956 Hugo Award. (Smaller than today's trophies.) 1956 was only the third time the Hugos were awarded. (Willy Ley also won one of the first ones, in 1953.)

Earlier in the day we looked at the museum of the two Battles of Manasses at Henry Hill, 20 km south of Dulles. As with most battlefields, not all that much to see apart from a film about the battles.
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This is where Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson acquired his nickname "Stonewall" for standing firm in the face of Union fire. It was much quieter on Saturday.

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Sunday reading

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Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee

Last books finished
A Life Worth Living ed. Simon Guerrier
The Deepest Sea, by Charles Barnitz
Doctor Who: The American Adventures, by Justin Richards
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl

Next books
Dear Old Dead, by Jane Haddam
Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe, by Michael Moorcock
Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle

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The invisible creek in the heart of Washington DC

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I'm in D.C. for a few days, and have been musing on the geography of the city – how the familiar grid of streets attempts to drown out the underlying landscape, and sometimes succeeds.

Googling around historical maps, I discovered Don Lockwood’s fascinating 1990 reconstruction of the topography of the Federal City as it would have been in 1791, before the building started. Here’s the central stretch:

Isn’t it interesting that the old shoreline path (the Ferry Road) was not all that far from the later route of Pennsylvania avenue?

And my attention was caught by the clustering of contour lines, with a spring emerging from them, to the northeast of the future site of the White House. The spring – two springs, in fact – fed a creek that flows southeast and then south, before joining the Tiber Creek estuary. The heads of the spring seemed roughly to be in the location of today’s Franklin Square. Was there any historical record of it, I wondered?

And actually, yes there is. This map from Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co's 1850 Atlas gives the creek a slightly different but recognisable course (and let’s bear in mind that Lockwood possibly used this map, or a version of it, as the basis for his imagined 1791 topography):

There are two springs marked in Franklin Square, with streams joining in its southeast corner; the creek is shown flowing south along 13th Street for a block, then heading east between G and H Streets, then directly south between 9th and 10th Streets, past the Patent Office (now the National Portrait Gallery) before flowing into the canal opposite the Smithsonian. A rather odd street, G Place, now runs east-west between 9th and 10th Streets, bisecting the block where the map shows the creek turning the corner.

The creek would have flowed through the backyard of Ford’s Theatre (which is labelled 33 on the map, then the First Baptist Church), where John Wilkes Booth had his getaway horse waiting after his fatal attack on President Abraham Lincoln. The last two blocks of its course are now occupied by FBI headquarters and the Department of Justice. (That first part of Louisiana Avenue, part of the infamous Murder Bay in the old days, has been obliterated by the DoJ, and the rest of that end of it is now Indiana Avenue.)

It's also marked, with much the same route, on Faehtz and Pratt's 1874 reconstruction of the pre-development landholdings of the site of the city, rising on the land of John Davidson and flowing through the land of David Burnes.

Here's my attempt to draw it onto the map of downlown DC today (click to embiggen).

There’s no trace of it in later nineteenth century maps, and I think the depiction of the creek may already have been out of date by 1850. According to this site, water from the springs in Franklin Square was piped to the White House along 14th St and F Street from 1816 until 1832, which presumably means the creek ran dry. According to this site, more underground pipes ran from the Franklin Square springs after 1832. In the 1880s the hotels around Franklin Square were built and the springs dried up entirely.

But I think you can detect its legacy in some of the building plots and shapes that survive to the present day. I find the gap to the west of the Martin Luther King Memorial Library particularly suggestive.

We're used to the mildly hidden histories of great (and also small) European cities. But the newer cities of America have their own hidden depths as well. 

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Running Through Corridors 2, by Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman

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Second para of discussion of third episode of Spearhead from Space:

This is what makes Spearhead from Space frightening. It doesn’t play fair. It lulls you into a false sense of security, saving a lot of its chills for long sequences of tension — then turns about and shouts “boo”! You can’t relax with it, because it’ll slow down, then speed up, then slow down again, all the best to create its scare moments. It’s extremely clever.

This is the much-delayed second volume of commentary between Shearman and Hadoke; I read and enjoyed the first back in 2011, and look forward now to the third when it comes out. It’s now several years since I completed my own rewatch of Old Who, so this was a nice return to that exercise for me, especially since (like the authors) this is the period of the show that I remember most vividly from my own childhood. And there was one surprise – I had forgotten Tom Baker’s appearance in character on Animal Magic, which I think I must have missed when it was shown in 1979:

The two don’t deviate much from the received wisdom (or my own views) of the high and low points of the show – in particular, the later parts of both Season Nine and Season Fifteen, where they struggle in their mission to say only nice things about each episode. In fact, they are much harsher on The Claws of Axos than I would be. But it’s interesting to consider that one of my recurrent complaints about New Who – that the punch of the season finale has often been pulled – was often just as true of Old Who during the Pertwee and Baker years.

The write-ups of each episode, presented as correspondence between Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke, are very specifically tied to May-August 2009, a period when both writers went on various travels and Hadoke embarked on what turned out to be a short-lived marriage; but the seven-year gap has meant some occasionally poignant endnotes noting the subsequent passing of key figures in the making of the programme (notably Barry Letts).

This is also a milestone in that I have now finished my 50th birthday present books – I read most of them in the month or so after my birthday, but then spent some Amazon tokens in the summer and got another six, of which this was the last. Thanks, everyone!

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The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein

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Second paragraph of third story (“Blowups Happen”):

The man addressed turned slowly around and faced the speaker. His expression was hidden by a grotesque helmet, part of a heavy, leaden armor which shielded his entire body, but the tone of voice in which he answered showed nervous exasperation.

Heinlein’s mammoth future history, some of which I had re-read recently; 21 stories published as a collection in 1967, though in fact all but two originally came out between 1939 and 1949, outlining the future development of humanity through the coming centuries. The 1941 stories alone provided four of Heinlein’s five final ballot spots in last year’s Retro Hugos for Best Novella and Best Novelette.

Heinlein misses a lot of things – notably the rise of information technology; his 23rd century spaceships are still running with slide rules. Some of these are a bit too sentimental, some based on concepts that don’t really resonate today, and the last, “Methuselah’s Children”, is pretty weak – 100,000 people surviving on a spaceship built for a much smaller number??? But the idea of framing a future history based on technological advance rather than, say, the mysticism of Olaf Stapedon remains engaging. In particular, the theocratic America of If This Goes On- is rather closer to the bone now than it was in the 1940s. The whole collection is one of those taproot texts of the genre that remains well worth reading.

This reached the top of three unread piles simultaneously; it was my top book acquired in 2016, my top unread sf book, and my top remaining book from your recommendations. Next in those lists respectively are The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells, and Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams.

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The Last Castle, by Jack Vance

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

A hundred such cases were known, and while the hardheaded scoffed, none needlessly traveled the countryside by night. Indeed, if ghosts truly haunt the scenes of tragedy and heartbreak, then the landscape of Old Earth must be home to ghosts and specters beyond all numbering – especially that region across which Xanten rolled in the power-wagon, where every rock, every meadow, every vale and swale was crusted thick with human experience.

The Last Castle won the Nebula for Best Novella and the Hugo for Best Novelette. For the Nebula, it beat Avram Davidson’s Clash of Star-Kings and Charles L. Harness’ “The Alchemist”; for the Hugo, it beat Gordon R. Dickson’s “Call Him Lord”; Robert M., Green, Jr.’s “Apology to Inky”; Charles L. Harness’s “The Alchemist” (again); Charles L. Harness’s “An Ornament to His Profession”; Hayden Howard’s “The Eskimo Invasion”; Thomas Burnett Swann’s “The Manor of Roses”; Roger Zelazny’s “For a Breath I Tarry”; and Roger Zelazny’s “This Moment of the Storm”. I think I’ve read the Dickson; I know I’ve read and love both the Zelazny stories, which I think have stood the test of time a bit better.

The Hugo for Best Novel went to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, which however lost out to both Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany for the Nebula. The Hugo for Best Short Story went to “Neutron Star” by Larry Niven; the Nebula for Best Novelette went to “Call Him Lord” by Gordon R. Dickson, and the Nebula for Best Short Story went to “The Secret Place” by Richard McKenna. I must say this was a tremendous year. Bob Shaw’s heartbreaking “Light of Other Days” was a finalist for both Best Short Story categories.

I don’t think The Last Castle has aged particularly well. The story is about a decadent aristocratic race of humans at the end of time, whose oppressed non-human slaves have risen and destroyed all but one of the humans’ castles. Our hero (there are no notable female characters) makes an alliance with the barbarian humans outside the castle gates, crushes the slave revolt and sends them back where they came from. The racial undertones are rather difficult to ignore.

On the other hand, it’s a triumph of world-building, even if the world is an unequal and racist one. The social order of the aristocrats is mapped out in loving detail, perhaps far too much of it, and the descriptions of the different environments of the far-future earth are vivid and distinct.

However, it’s not really Vance at his best; apart from anything else, it isn’t very funny.

The next in my chronological run of joint winners is “Gonna Roll the Bones”, by Fritz Leiber.

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From Bed to Bed, by Catullus, trans. James Michie

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Third poem in the book (actually Catullus 5):

My Lesbia, let us live and love
And not care tuppence for old men
Who sermonise and disapprove.
Suns when they sink can rise again,
But we, when our brief light has shone,
Must sleep the long night on and on.
Kiss me: a thousand kisses, then
A hundred more, and now a second
Thousand and hundred, and now still
Hundreds and thousands more, until
The thousand thousands can’t be reckoned
And we’ve lost track of the amount
And nobody can work us ill
With the evil eye by keeping count.		 Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis.
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum,
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Language nerdery alert: This is the first ever recorded use of the word bāsium to mean a kiss; most Latin-derived languages have kept it (French baiser, Italian bacio, Spanish beso) whereas the Latin synonyms ōsculum and suāvium have vanished from the lexicon.

Many many years ago, two friends who were getting married had the nice idea of giving everyone at the wedding one of the Phoenix paperbacks then produced by Orion, and this was one of the two we got. (No idea now what the other one was.) I've dipped into it from time to time, and finally decided to read it through. Less than 120 poems by Catullus survive, all presumed to have been written around 60 BC, and 57 of them are presented in this book (omitting I think the longer and less romantic ones).

It's difficult to sum up poetry, especially translated from a foreign language; I must say the ones that grabbed me most were not the poltiical references (though it’s interesting to see disparaging remarks about Julius Caesar from someone who knew him) but the short narrative poems about some particular incident, and the passionate ones like no 5 above, whose first half Sir Walter Ralegh translated thus:

The sun may set and rise,
But we, contrariwise,
Sleep, after our short light,
One everlasting night.

And there’s the well known 85:

I hate and love. If you ask me to explain
        The contradiction,
I can’t, but I can feel it, and the pain
        Is crucifixion.		 Odi et amo. quare id faciam fortasse requiris.
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

James Michie’s translations seem to me to catch both humour and passion, from a writer of over 2000 years ago who still catches our humanity.

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Antarès, Épisodes 2-6, by Leo

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Second frame of third page of each book:

Épisode 2

Kim: "You called me?"
Ashley: "Come in, Miss Keller."

Épisode 3

Maï Lan:"What? You arrive on an unknown planet after a long journey, and instead of sharing in the exploration, breathing fresh air, looking at the sky and feeling the wind, you let yourself get shut in a dungeon and you don't care? I don't get it!"
Lorna:"You don't get it because you have privilege. You can't understand how it feels to be like me, with my father a total asshole and my mother a moron!"

Épisode 4


Ashley: "Can you smell something burning?"

Épisode 5

Kim: "No sign of alien presence, no radar aimed at us during the whole landing, and there, the antennae aren't picking up any kind of radiation for thousands of kilometres around…"
Alexa: "It's strange…"
Épisode 6

Kim: "Good… Let's not waste time."
(and in next frame she says "Wish us luck, we'll need it.")

I got properly hooked by this after reading Épisode 1, and ploughed enthusiastically through the rest of the sequence. I felt that Leo is on top of his game here, balancing the travails of the exploration party (led of course by Kim, who is the heroine of the entire story) with the story of the evil fundamentalist cultists who are trying to assert control over the entire colony and put women like Kim in their place. At the same time the sensawunda is maintained, with the last volume knitting together strands from the Aldébaran and Bételgeuse cycles to reach a pretty satisfying conclusion to Kim’s story, all as ever gorgeously illustrated. But I see there is a five-volume spinoff cycle, Survivants, which was completed earlier this year; I guess I’m going to have to read that too.

Incidentally I had not realised that the English translation has some bizarre censorship. As so often, better to read the original if you can.

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Sunday reading

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Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
The Deepest Sea, by Charles Barnitz
A Life Worth Living ed. Simon Guerrier
Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee

Last books finished
Cavalcade, by Noël Coward
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge
Isaiah Berlin, by Michaël Ignatieff
Short Trips: Indefinable Magic, ed. Neil Corry

Next books
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
Dear Old Dead, by Jane Haddam
Doctor Who: The American Adventures, by Justin Richards

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