- Matthew Parris: For the first time in my life, I feel ashamed to be British
- Anti-immigrant feeling won it for Leave, and they know it. They used it, rode it and are complicit in it. I’ve been dismayed to see people I’ve respected descend to this. I never thought either that the reserves of xenophobia in England were so strong, nor that people who should know better would play upon them with such careless cynicism. I was doubly naive.
(tags: ukpolitics race eu ) - Alton Sterling was shot and killed by Baton Rouge police officers. Here’s what we know. – Vox
- Awful.
(tags: Uspolitics race Guns ) - Philando Castile Minnesota police shooting: girlfriend captures aftermath on Facebook video
- Even more awful.
(tags: Uspolitics race Guns ) - How a $2 Roadside Drug Test Sends Innocent People to Jail
- No justice, just US.
(tags: crime )
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel
Second paragraph of chapter three:
On the same October Thursday the Houston Oilers toiled in practice in the nearby Astrodome, the American balance-of-payments deficit soared to a twenty-year high, three more corporations decided to flee New York City and a man in Boston died of mercury poisoning after eating codfish cakes.
This book is going for a penny plus postage on the online used book store of your choice, and I recommend you buy it now before the rush later this year. Written in 1972, anticipating the 1976 election, it concerns the story of Eddie Quinn, an obscure former Congressman and New Jersey Turnpike Commissioner who is unexpectedly thrust to national prominence when the failing Republican presidential candidate suddenly dies three weeks before the election and the party reaches desperately for a replacement; nobody, including the colourless Vice-Presidential candidate, wants to go down in history as the loser, and Quinn is good-looking, doesn’t drink or smoke, and is not known for dangerous views.
Although the Democrats are well in the lead (with an intellectual Methodist state governor rather reminiscent of their real 1976 candidate, Jimmy Carter), Quinn launches a populist rearguard campaign, promising tax cuts, an end to the military draft for young people, a system of ombudsmen, and much else, which instantly earns him the displeasure of the Republican grandees (particularly the one who is nominally married to his lover) but catches the interest of increasing numbers of voters, leading to a dramatic conclusion to the election.
There are several particularly intense incidents: Quinn’s opening speech, where he attacks vested political interests like the ones that have just nominated him; his gathering of a diverse group of trusted advisers; a confrontation with black radicals in Quinn’s home town (which sounds a bit like my grandmother’s home town of Plainfield); and a fatal car accident which Quinn refuses to allow his team to cover up. The author’s tone towards lefties and feminists is a bit wearyingly snide (not to mention New Jersey, “a corridor of swampy weather and toadstool habitations that called itself a state”), but apart from that it’s a real page-turner.
Of course, a book like this is always going to be partial wish-fulfillment. (See my list of Pope books; was Hadrian the Seventh the orignial Mary Sue?) But Knebel mounts a sharp critique from the liberal Right (a species that barely exists these days) of conventional American political wisdom, and challenges the reader to wonder how change might come? Things have now got worse, of course; I strongly recommend this recent article from The Atlantic, How American Politics Went Insane for a review of what has gone wrong, mostly since this book was written.
Apart from the death of the liberal Right, there are other major differences between how politics happened in 1972 and how it happens today. The most striking is that there was no twenty-four hour news cycle. The press corps did indeed follow the candidates around, but they were print journalists with their early evening deadlines; TV was much more cumbersome and had to be carefully arranged in advance. Minor gaffes by Quinn and his campaign staff are laughed off in a cordial way by all concerned, rather than becoming the focus of faux outrage by media talking heads. There is no chance that a candidate’s love affair with a married Congresswoman could evade scrutiny today for as long as Quinn gets away with it in this book. (There is a sub-plot with a sex tape of which there is only one copy.)
Another point that hit me was that the only mention of TV debates is a brief reference to Kennedy/Nixon in 1960, with the strong implication that that experiment would never be repeated. Debates are now of course an immovable part of the process, but we tend to forget that rather than 1960 that has only been the case since 1976, when Gerald Ford killed his own chances of re-election by mis-speaking about Eastern Europe. (Ford, who was the 1976 Republican candidate in real life, was also something of a dark horse given that in 1972 he was the fading House Minority Leader).
It’s irresistible to compare the fictional 1976 scenario of Dark Horse with the real situation forty years after, where one insurgent from outside the party leadership came within a few hundred delegates of capturing the Democratic nomination, and another insurgent actually is the Republican nominee. Knebel’s Quinn is closer in policy to Trump than Sanders, but has several redeeming points: he values intellectual input and thoughtful policy-making, he instinctively grasps the importance of reaching much wider than the white male demographic and challenges his own party on race and gender issues (even if he doesn’t end up where we might want him to), and he doesn’t tell lies. Immigration is a second or third generation issue, and the terrorists are domestic insurgents neutralised by negotiation. I would probably still have supported Quinn’s Democratic opponent if I’d had a vote in this fictional 1976, but I would have found it a tough choice. Read the book for yourself, and see what you think.
Interesting Links for 07-07-2016
- A prisoner of its past? The future of the Long Kesh/Maze
- @katyusha13 looks at the contested site.
(tags: Northernireland ) - Andrea Leadsom Tried To Abolish All Worker’s Rights For Small Companies In 2012
- Be afraid. Be very afraid.
(tags: ukpolitics ) - Chilcot report: key points from the Iraq inquiry
- The brutal summary.
(tags: ukpolitics iraq ) - The paradoxes at the heart of the Brexit campaign make planning impossible
- More great stuff from @telegraph.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Chilcot Report: How Tony Blair Sold the War
- My former colleague @carneross.
(tags: iraq ukpolitics )
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian Aldiss
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Where were you yesterday, I wonder? The ranch, with all its freight of human beings – in which category I include those supernatural beings, our grandchildren – spent yesterday and much of the day before in a benighted bit of somewhere that I presume was medieval Europe! It was our first taste of a major Timeslip. (How easily one takes up the protective jargon – a Timeslip sounds no worse than a landslide. But you know what I mean – a fault in the spatial infrastructure.)
I had not actually read this before – but I had long ago listened to a 1978 commercially released cassette recording of Brian Aldiss actually reading the book. The tapes together were only 2h42m, so it must have been somewhat abridged (though the book is anyway only 216 pages).
Aldiss is at his best when he examines fragmentation and transition. (That’s why the first two Helliconia books are much better than the third.) Here, his protagonist, Joe Bodenland, is yanked from the world of 2020, recovering from a global conflict where space and time have come adrift, and deposited in Switzerland in 1816, in both the world of Mary Shelley and the Villa Deodati and the world of Frankenstein’s Geneva which she invented. Bodenland weaves in and out of both stories, making love to Mary, pursuing the monster, ending in the middle of nowhere anticipating doom. Given Aldiss’s own reverence for Shelley as the originator of science fiction (two hundred years ago this summer) there’s a lot going on here, and I don’t feel fully able to unpack it, but I really liked it.
The 1990 film starred John Hurt as the protagonist (renamed Buchanan, which may be easier to say but has less linguistic resonance), Bridget Fonda as Mary Shelley and Raul Julia as Frankenstein. I may even try and watch it some time.
This came to the top of my list of sf books recommended by you guys. Next on that list was Alif the Unseen, next after that is Ghastly Beyond Belief, edited by Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman.
Interesting Links for 06-07-2016
- my best employee quit on the spot because I wouldn’t let her go to her college graduation — Ask a Manager
- Serves you right. #fb
(tags: management ) - The UK doesn’t have enough skilled trade negotiators for Brexit so we’re going to have to hire foreigners
- Told you so.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Brexit can be started without parliament vote, government lawyers say
- Yes, I thought so. #fb
(tags: )
The latest twist
There is now a perverse incentive for May to organise for 40 of her core supporters to vote for Gove on Thursday. It would certainly exclude the much more threatening Leadsom from the party members’ ballot.
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
Second paragraph of third chapter:
The Doctor was making his way around, prodding at things with the tip of his umbrella, wiping his finger along the pipes and grimacing at the grease. He’d not been very forthcoming about where they had landed. All Ace knew is that it was London and the 1950s.
This is the culmination of the arc of Seventh Doctor novels by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, the previous stories being Illegal Alien, Matrix, Storm Harvest and Prime Time. I really enjoyed this, as I really enjoyed them all, and I’ve realised that this sequence is one of the unsung successes of Who spinoff literature.
The story is suitably complex; the Doctor investigating Ace’s murder, even though she is still alive; confused astronauts arriving from another timeline; cyber-technology and giant ants infesting London. There is sensawunda and emotional intensity. There is homage to Quatermass (and perhaps one or two Tuckerisms). I think I couldn’t recommend this to readers, even Who fans, who had not read the previous four in this mini-series, but I would warmly recommend reading the whole lot.
Next up in this sequence: The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose.
How can the Commission President be replaced?
(This was originally published by EurActiv on 5 July 2016. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)
Nicholas Whyte predicts that in the event of a vacancy at the top of the European Commission, the EPP Vice-Presidents are well-placed to fill it.
At the end of The Commissioner, a 1987 novel by former British Conservative MEP Stanley Johnson (yes, Boris Johnson’s father), the President of the European Commission is forced to resign and his successor is chosen by vote of the remaining Commissioners. Almost three decades on, how would that situation be resolved today?
I hasten to add that as far as I know this is a purely theoretical question. In response to press queries last week, both President Juncker’s spokesman and the President himself insisted that his health is fine and he intends to carry on. But it’s worth recalling the precedents and the current legal situation, should this ever become an issue.
On two previous occasions, the President of the European Commission resigned before the end of his term. In both cases, the replacement was his senior Vice-President. In 1999, when Jacques Santer and the entire college resigned, Manuel Marin took over as Acting President until the Prodi Commission was in place later that year. He had been one of two Vice-Presidents under Santer, and had served three years longer in the Commission than the other, Sir Leon Brittan.
Those were unusual and dramatic circumstances. Any vacancy now would probably bear more resemblance to what happened in 1972, when Franco Maria Malfatti resigned as President of the European Commission to renew his political career in Italy. He had two Vice-Presidents, who had both served since the Commission was established in more or less its present form in 1967. The older of the two, Sicco Mansholt, took over as President for the nine months until François-Xavier Ortoli began his term in 1973.
If the old rules (such as they were) still applied, the obvious successor in the case of a sudden vacancy at the top today would be Frans Timmermans, the Dutch First Vice-President of the current Commission. Even though he is only in his first term as a Commissioner, his status as First Vice-President clearly puts him ahead of the three Vice-Presidents who are on their second term – Kristalina Georgieva (Bulgaria), Maroš Šefčovič (Slovakia) and Jyrki Katainen (Finland – yes, he is technically on his second term, as he served out the last few months of Olli Rehn’s mandate in 2014.)
But the old rules no longer apply, and while Timmermans would certainly take over for the short term, Article 17.7 of the Treaty, which governs the election of the President, may create a problem for his staying in anything more than an interim capacity. It states:
Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members. If he does not obtain the required majority, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall within one month propose a new candidate who shall be elected by the European Parliament following the same procedure.
(Incidentally only the English, Irish and Maltese translations of the Treaty use a masculine pronoun in that last sentence. The Czech, Greek and Polish texts have a gender-neutral formulation, and all others repeat “the candidate” from the previous sentence. Of course, in a lot of languages “the candidate” is grammatically masculine as well.)
Article 246 of the Treaty makes it clear that Article 17.7 would also apply to a mid-term vacancy in the position of President “in the event of resignation, compulsory retirement or death” – in other words, a successor would still need to be proposed by the European Council, “taking into account the elections to the European Parliament” and then approved by the Parliament. The European People’s Party won the most seats in the 2014 election (but not the most votes) and it is generally accepted that “taking the elections into account” means that a candidate for President of the Commission must come from the EPP ranks of the European People’s Party, who won the most European Parliament seats in the 2014 election. Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President, is a Socialist.
A mid-term replacement is further constrained by the fact that no member state can have more than one Commissioner at a time. The proposed new President of the Commission would need either to be a sitting Commissioner or from a country that did not have a sitting Commissioner. At present, the British place on the European Commission is about to fall vacant due to the resignation of Lord Hill, but it’s difficult to see the UK providing a new President of the Commission under present circumstances. (Not that it matters given everything else that is happening, but there is incidentally no EPP representation in the UK.)
We now run into the next problem. The new President must be elected by a qualified majority of the Council, which on my reading of Articles 16 and 238 of the Treaty means at least 72% of the members of the Council – 21 counting the UK –representing Member States comprising at least 65% of the population of the Union. (The threshold is usually 55% of member states, but that only applies to votes on proposals by the Commission or High Representative.) The EPP, which was dominant on the European Council for many years, now holds the position of head of government in only 7 of the 28 EU member states, the same number as the liberal ALDE and one fewer than the PES, who have eight.
(Since you asked: the EPP are still on top in Germany, Hungary, Cyprus, Ireland, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, with a total of 33.4% of the EU population; the PES in Italy, Slovakia, Malta, Sweden, Austria, the Czech Republic, Franceand Portugal with 33.9% of the population; and the Liberals in Finland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Estonia, Belgium and Denmark, with a mighty 8.5%. The ECR have Poland and, for now, the UK; the Croatian and Latvian prime ministers and the President of Lithuania are independents; and the Greek prime minister represents the far Left.)
It therefore seems likely that in the event of a vacancy arising in the current term, the office of President of the Commission would need to be filled by a sitting Commissioner, with an EPP background, but supported from the governments of other groups (the PES and ALDE would be enough) and also at least 376 members of the European Parliament. On the face of it, this provides a wide choice: as well as current Vice-Presidents Georgieva, Katainen and Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvia), the EPP Commissioners include Günther Oettinger(Germany), Marianne Thyssen (Belgium), Johannes Hahn (Austria), Dimitris Avramopoulos (Greece), ElżbietaBieńkowska (Poland), Miguel Arias Cañete (Spain), Tibor Navracsics (Hungary), Carlos Moedas (Portugal), Phil Hogan(Ireland) and Christos Stylianides (Cyprus).
In practice the field will narrow down pretty rapidly to the three EPP Vice-Presidents, Katainen, Dombrovskis and Georgieva, two of whom are former prime ministers (Dombrovskis also a former MEP, which may help with the Parliament) and the third a second-term Commissioner. Although every president since Jacques Santer in 1994 has been a former prime minister, this is not written into the Treaty. Certainly there is, to put it politely, no obvious correlation between success in one’s term as President of the European Commission and seniority of one’s previous office. If the situation ever arises, it will be interesting to see who is more able to persuade member state governments of differing political hues to support him or her. And perhaps, in the context of the rise of Hillary Clinton and the increasing global focus on women as leaders, those masculine pronouns in the Treaty may start to look somewhat out of date.
Interesting Links for 05-07-2016
- Everything you need to know about Article 50 (but were afraid to ask)
- Andrew Duff in depth.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )
My #RetroHugos1941 votes: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
I nominated three works for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) in the 1941 Retro Hugos – Pinocchio, The Thief of Bagdad and Fantasia. All three of these made it to the final ballot – rather better than my usual strike rate! – but for some reason Pinocchio has been placed in the Short Form rather than Long Form category, even though two of the Long Form nominees (One Million B.C. and Dr Cyclops) are actually shorter.
Anyway, it’s (mostly) a good list, representing a decent spread of what could be considered genre film in 1940 – the nominations process doing what it is supposed to do and giving us a wide field to choose from. I confess that I’ve only watched my two nominees in full, but I feel I dipped into the others sufficiently to establish an order of preference.
Full film:
I have to say this one lost me in the first few minutes with the awful acting in the first few scenes. Perhaps if I’d been more patient, the special effects might have lifted it above No Award on my ballot. It may yet happen; we have four weeks to go.
5) No Award. All the others seemed to me to have sufficient points of strength.
4) One Million B.C.
Full film:
I skimmed this, to be honest. It’s very much in the shade of the 1960s remake with Raquel Welch, and one can’t help but be reminded of the later better version while watching this. However, the special effects are pretty remarkable for the 1940s, in particular the dinosaurs and other monsters, and for me that redeems it.
3) Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe
In full starting with first episode:
I watched the first of the twelve episodes, which I hope is enough to give me a decent feel for it. One has to laugh at the unimaginative approach to the Earth of
whatever century Flash Gordon is set in, which looks just like the 1940s without even any extra flanges. The plot is pretty formulaic. But it’s all done very zestfully, and I think it’s largely forgiveable.
2) Fantasia
Full (probably not legit, watch it soon before it disappears):
This has tremendous sentimental value, and I’m sure it will win. The animation is superb and its merging with the music is genius. But I found myself a bit annoyed on rewatching by the overt didacticism, and for modern tastes some of the sequences drag a bit. So, somewhat to my own surprise, I’ve bumped it down from the top spot to second.
1) The Thief of Bagdad
Full (again, probably not legit, watch it soon before it disappears):
I nominated this on the strength of the scene with Mary Morris as Kali but I sat down and watched it from beginning to end the other night, and, good lord, I was blown away. This is one of very few films with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and while I wouldn’t go that far, it’s tremendously enjoyable. On the one hand, it’s supposed to be about the romance between the rightful but displaced Sultan of Bagdad and the daughter of the Sultan of Basra; on the other, the stars of the show are Sabu as Abu, the eponymous thief, and the amazing special effects – this was apparently one of the first films to use greenscreening, and they used it very well. Sure, one can rightly question the Orientalism of the project; but the fact is that it’s rather nice to be reminded of a time when Iraq was celebrated for its cultural and scientific heritage, even in Holywood style, rather than for other reasons. It gets my vote, and I commend it to your attention.
Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Bet Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award
My #RetroHugos1941 votes: Best Novelette – revised
When I reviewed the finalists for Best Novelette, I queried the inclusion of “Darker Than You Think” by Jack Williamson as it seemed to me too long for the category. This year’s Hugo Administrators have concurred, and the story has been replaced by “Vault of the Beast” by A.E. van Vogt, which you will easily find in the widely available collection edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, and published under three different titles: The Great Science Fiction Stories: Volume 2, 1940 (1979); Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction (second half, 1983); and Great Science Fiction Stories of 1940 (2002). It includes also two of the other novelette finalists (the two that aren’t by Heinlein) and one of the short story finalists (Asimov’s “Strange Playfellow”).
“Vault of the Beast” is actually rather similar to “It!” by Theodore Sturgeon; I’m marking it down slightly for dodgy gender stereotypes, but still above No Award. So my revised ballot in this category is:
6) “Blowups Happen” by Robert A. Heinlein
5) No Award
4) “Vault of the Beast”, by A.E. van Vogt
3) “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein
2) “It!” by Theodore Sturgeon
1) “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates
For completeness, the second paragraph of “Vault of the Beast” is:
It crept along the corridor of the space freighter, fighting the terrible urge of its elements to take the shape of its surroundings. A gray blob of disintegrating stuff, it crept, it cascaded, it rolled, flowed, dissolved, every movement an agony of struggle against the abnormal need to become a stable shape.
The full text is available here.
Interesting Links for 04-07-2016
- Magnificent Macedonia is one of Europe’s undiscovered holiday highlights
- Amen.
(tags: macedonia ) - A FiveThirtyEight Guide To Veepstakes Speculation
- From a few weeks ago but still valid.
(tags: uspolitics ) - The Tory party has probably now passed peak chaos. Not so Labour
- These are extraordinary times. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics ) - Thousands marched, but what are the options for keeping UK in EU?
- Dave gives four scenarios. #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Cthulhu launches late bid for Conservative leadership
- “would favour trade links with other EU countries on an exclusively import basis.”
(tags: eldritchhorrorsfrombeforethedawnoftime ukpolitics ) - Brexit roadmap: A guide to what happens next
- Another attempt to draw the roadmap. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Bullish Q
- Good advice.
(tags: debate )
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong
Second paragraph of third chapter:
"-back! Go back, go away, do not go down there, you must help me, go back!"
I gave up on this one after fifty pages; it's a rather routine mil-sf story about a soldier with wonderful technological device working to overthrow the invader, clunky in style, and obvious where it was going from the first few chapters.
Was the unread sf book which had been longest on my shelves. Next on that list is The Host, by Peter Emshwiller.
Interesting Links for 03-07-2016
- Europe can’t rescue Britain. It’s too busy trying to save itself
- A sober and sobering analysis.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - On Brexit: Stabbed in the Eye
- “What I’m sad about is the damage to Britain’s moral core. We’ve poked out one of our eyes. We now look uglier to the rest of the world, we’ve become more blinkered, and our vision is that bit more one-dimensional.”
(tags: ukpolitics eu )
Saturday reading
Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll
Last books finished
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel
The Commissioner, by Stanley Johnson
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
Fanny Kemble and the lovely land, by Constance Wright
Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, ed. Paul Cornell
Next books
Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel, by Jeff Kinney
The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose
Interesting Links for 02-07-2016
- The Remain campaign ads that got away
- This is infuriating. Things could have been very different!
(tags: Marketing eu ukpolitics ) - Citizen Khan
- The Muslims of Wyoming. A brilliant piece.
(tags: migration islam usa )
Tenth Doctor audio adventures, with Donna Noble!
The David Tennant / Catherine Tate partnership was a particularly good pairing in the history of Who (and actually there have been very few obviously bad pairings). It's weird to think that that was already back in 2008, longer ago than the entire Tom Baker era lasted, or as long ago as any two other Doctors from Old Who combined.
And Big Finish, hurrah! have brought them back – just for three 75-minute adventures, plus a bonus disc of extra interviews with cast and crew, but gosh it's entertaining. If you're nostalgic for the days when Bertie handed over to Brian and Boris defeated Ken, that brief moment of time just before the Great Crash hit us, you'll love these.
Technophobia, by Matt Fitton, is a decent re-introduction of the characters, visiting a contemporary England where the population has become completely deluded about their own best interests, a scenario therefore with no contemporary relevance whatsoever. There is some particularly sparkling Doctor/Donna dialogue, and an overall plot that is fairly standard but executed with grace. Good guest cast includes Rachael Sterling as the potential villainness, and Niky Wardley as Donna's fellow temp Bex.
Jenny Colgan, who has written three New Who novels as well as her best-selling other output, makes what I think is her audioplay debut with Time Reaver, a story where the focus is on one weird organism that has the ability to change the subjective passage of time, and how it is used for good and for ill (mostly for ill) by the human societies that encounter it. It's a slightly flaky scenario, lifted to impressive heights by a strong ending and especially David Tennant.
Catherine Tate gets her turn in Death and the Queen by James Goss, where Donna Noble appears to be on the verge of achieving the fairy tale marriage that she was deprived of in The Christmas Invasion. As my regular reader knows, I rate James Goss as one of the very best Who writers working at present. I don't think that he's quite at the top of his game here, but Catherine Tate definitely is, and sparks off David Tennant and her romantic interest Blake Ritson very compellingly.
All in all, well worth getting hold of.
Interesting Links for 01-07-2016
- Brexit: Loss of passporting rights could halve UK exports
- “could” ≠ “will”. But sobering enough. #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Brexit Just Made Dublin Look Even More Attractive for Tech
- Yup.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ireland ) - The European Union has agreed on two important questions regarding Brexit
- A good summary.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - The World’s Most Efficient Languages
- Something a bit different!
(tags: languages linguistics ) - On parliamentary sovereignty and post-Brexit Britain
- “Parliament, and the political class, simply do not have the moral authority to overturn a popular vote at the moment.”
(tags: ukpolitics ) - What’s wrong with the WTO Option?
- A Leaver writes – sensibly enough. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Is Brexit Reversible?
- There is a spectrum of opinion.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - The dangerous delusion that the Americans in Benghazi could have been saved – The Washington Post
- Sane analysis.
(tags: waronterror libya ) - Police log fivefold rise in race-hate complaints since Brexit result
- Empowering the racists.
(tags: race ukpolitics eu ) - The Really Big One
- The coming complete destruction of the Pacific Northwest. Chilling.
(tags: geology usa ) - The Great (Brexit) Escape
- How to get another passport.
(tags: migration eu )
June books
Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986, by Marc Aramini (not finished)
SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, by Vox Day (not finished)
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 14)
Selected Stories, by Alice Munro
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel
The Commissioner, by Stanley Johnson
sf (non-Who): 10 (YTD 47)
Space Raptor Butt Invasion, by Chuck Tingle
The Builders, by Daniel Polanski
Perfect State, by Brandon Sanderson
Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson
Nethereal, by Brian Niemeyer (did not finish)
Traitor's Blade, by Sebastien de Castell
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong (did not finish)
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian W. Aldiss
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham
Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 22)
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone
Comics: 1 (YTD 14)
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
6,200 pages (YTD 32,600 pages)
2/22 (YTD 41/109) by women (Munro, Dunnett)
1/22 (YTD 10/109) by PoC (Dumas)
Reread: 3 (The Count of Monte Cristo, Dark Horse, The Commissioner), YTD 8
Reading now
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Fanny Kemble and the lovely land, by Constance Wright
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll
Coming soon (perhaps):
Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel, by Jeff Kinney
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
The Secret History of Science Fiction, ed. James Patrick Kelly
Boy, by Roald Dahl
Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank
Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Between structure and No-thing: An annotated reader in Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Patrick J. Devlieger
Gráinne, by Keith Roberts
De Mexicaan met twee hoofden, by Joann Sfar
Corona, by Greg Bear
Earthlight, by Arthur C Clarke
A Delicate Truth, by John le Carré
Holes, by Louis Sachar
The Host, by Peter Emshwiller
Ghastly Beyond Belief, eds. Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman
The Last Theorem, by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment, by Bryan Talbot
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich
Tove Jansson: Work and Love, by Tuula Karjalainen
Oracle, by Ian Watson
See How Much I Love You, by Luis Leante
Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, ed. Paul Cornell
The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose
Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles
Interesting Links for 30-06-2016
- Looking behind the Brexit anger
- It’s political culture, rather than economics. #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Why Brexit Might Not Happen at All
- Wishful thinking, I suspect; though widely shared. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - UK voted for Brexit – but is there a way back?
- Difficult to see, but these are the scenarios. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Turkey airport attack: 41 killed #fb
- Awful. My favourite airport.
(tags: terrorism turkey ) - We’re out of Europe!
- How British science is already being hit by Brexit. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu science ) - A national catastrophe, and a vacuum in leadership. This is what Britain voted for
- @campbellclaret: passionate and mostly right. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - The unbearable lightness of Michael Gove
- @jonworth is angry. (As are many of us.)
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Brexit: UK cannot have ‘single market a la carte’, say EU leaders
- Of course not. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - What if Labour splits?
- Looking at parliamentary rules, and the law.
(tags: ukpolitics ) - Brussels sees surge in nationality requests from British residents
- Not a *huge* surge, but no surprise.
(tags: ukpolitics Belgium ) - Of course the Brexiters didn’t plan. Arsonists never carry water
- Actually an extended Paddington Bear analogy.
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - 2016 Election Forecast | FiveThirtyEight
- It begins!
(tags: uspolitics )
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Un jour, une colonie mystérieuse partit de l’Espagne et vint aborder à la langue de terre où elle est encore aujourd’hui. Elle arrivait on ne savait d’où et parlait une langue inconnue. Un des chefs, qui entendait le provençal, demanda à la commune de Marseille de leur donner ce promontoire nu et aride, sur lequel ils venaient, comme les matelots antiques, de tirer leurs bâtiments. La demande lui fut accordée, et trois mois après, autour des douze ou quinze bâtiments qui avaient amené ces bohémiens de la mer, un petit village s’élevait.
One day, a mysterious group of colonists set out from Spain and landed on this spit of land, where it still resides today. No one knew where they had come from or what language they spoke. One of the leaders, who understood Provençal, asked the commune of Marseille to give them this bare and arid promontory on to which, like the sailors of Antiquity, they had drawn up their boats. The request was granted and, three months later, a little village grew up around the twelve or fifteen boats that brought these gypsies of the sea.
(In the French original, “bâtiments” in the last sentence is surely a mistake for “bâteaux”?)
I see that it took me roughly a month to read to the end of this – it has 1244 pages of narrative, densely action-packed. I’d read it before of course, once as a teenager and once as an undergraduate, so that must have been at least twenty-five years ago. But it’s great stuff. The start is a bit wobbly as we get the set-up of the happy Edmond Dantès, on the verge of a loving marriage and successful career, brought down by envious rivals; but I think from the moment that Dantès is arrested, the story picks up a momentum that it never again loses despite the tortuous tales of complex vengeance, inflicted on the next generation. Dantès / Monte Cristo’s personal tragedy and retribution are beautifully linked in with French politics, culture and science – Chapter 61, in which Monte Cristo suborns a semaphore operator, is a great circumstantial description of the latest communications technology.
The underlying theme is filial loyalty, and you don’t have to look too far into Dumas’ own life to see where that came from, and justice, though in the end Monte Cristo does temper his vengeance with some mercy, and there’s an early hint that justice may not be all it’s cracked up to be in the gruesome account of an execution in Rome. There is also some illicit sex; the affair between Baroness Danglars and Gérard de Villefort is shameful and engenders one of the less plausible plot twists (and that’s saying something), though the obviously lesbian relationship between Eugénie Danglars and Louise d’Armilly gets more sympathetic treatment. (Incidentally, it’s never said explicitly, but Eugénie narrowly escapes marriage to her long lost brother, her mother’s son by de Villefort.) There’s even some Balkan politics, with the entirely historical fall of Ali Pasha of Ioannina turning out to have a key role in the back story. There are so many brilliant set-pieces – Albert de Morcerf’s encounter with the bandits, old de Villefort revealing the truth behind the death of General d’Épinay, the disgrace of Count de Morcerf in the House of Peers – that you keep turning the many many pages. Very glad that this has not lost its attraction over the decades.
(Incidentally I’m tallying Dumas as a writer of colour.)
This came to the top of my reading list as the book in my catalogue with most LibraryThing owners that I had not yet reviewed online (not counting Watership Down, which I am currently reading at a chapter a week). Holes, by Louis Sachar, has now overtaken A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to be next in the list.
Interesting Links for 29-06-2016
- Brexit is great news for the rest of the EU
- This is probably more true than I would like it to be. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Volkswagen to Pay Up to $14.7 Billion to Settle Diesel-Emissions Claims
- And it won’t end there.
(tags: uspolitics environment )
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns
Second paragraph of third story (“Thinking Warrior”, by Huw Wilkins):
I chamber a smoke round and fire it up into the air to obscure the sniper’s view, then sweep the blank-fronted tower block with the microwave radar.
Another of the Big Finish collections of Doctor Who short stories, this time all set in the year 2040 (an anagram of the year of writing, 2004, though the link is also made with the Doctor’s TARDIS being a Type 40). I didn’t think this was one of the more successful collections, with the linking narrative between the stories (about the invasion of Earth by an entity called the Ethereal) seeming to get in the way a bit. But there were a couple that I really enjoyed – “Artificial Intelligence” by Andy Campbell, a retake of Flowers for Algernon, and “Anteus” by Rebecca Levene featuring a fractured future London which seemed all too much in tune with this month’s events.
Next in sequence is Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, edited by Paul Cornell. I have realised that because I’m reading these at one a month rather than the original publication rate, I’ll be reaching several Christmassy volumes at non-Christmassy times of the year.
Interesting Links for 28-06-2016
- The UK and the EEA
- Francis Davey on how the UK could stay in the EEA when leaving the EU – if, of course, it wants to.
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - The EU referendum: An attempt to analyse the in-play betting
- Fascinating.
(tags: gambling eu ukpolitics ) - Five Lessons We Urgently Need To Learn From The Remain Campaign’s Failure
- “move the focus from factsplaining to building a European culture based on shared values.” Very provocative and probably wise.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - Britons swamp Ireland with passport applications
- I wonder why?
(tags: ukpolitics ireland eu ) - W Is for Why – How bad can a President be?
- The new George W. Bush biography. Acidic.
(tags: uspolitics ) - A New Justice
- How Anthony Kennedy has shifted from conservative to liberal.
(tags: uspolitics ) - A Note to My Friends Who Voted Leave
- A bit kinder than I feel.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )
My Hugo and #RetroHugos1941 votes: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
I made only one nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for the 1941 Retro Hugos. It was:
Weltraumschiff 1 startet
Despite what it says on YouTube, this was apparently made in 1940, not 1937. I doubt that many others nominated it though.
I also nominated Pinocchio in Long Form. It’s 88 minutes long, which is just under the cutoff, but I (and several other voters whose votes were posted on File 770) felt that it belonged in the Long Form category. The Hugo administrators took a different view, so it’s my one nominee on the Short Form final ballot.
My vote is as follows:
6) Looney Tunes: “You Ought to Be in Pictures”
Come on, this is ridiculous. It features Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, who I guess are vaguely fantasy characters as talking animals, and there are some good special effects, but otherwise there’s nothing much sfnal about it. Dubious message: bosses will always beat uppity workers who talk and look funny.
5) Merrie Melodies: “A Wild Hare”
Likewise. It’s apparently the first proper Bugs Bunny film, and so I suppose the fact that it features a talking rabbit qualifies it as sfnal, but there’s no way this is Hugo-worthy. Incidentally, a hare is not the same as a rabbit.
4) No Award
3) Pinocchio.
A Disney classic, this will probably win – I nominated it myself – but I was not all that satisfied on re-watching. Good technically, but some rather serious plot holes. (Incidentally, check out the rather distrurbing clockwork puppets from 06:59 to 7:15 – what the heck???)
2) The Adventures of Superman: “The Baby from Krypton”
The only radio play in the mix (as opposed to two years ago, when we had four radio plays and a TV play than nobody had seen), it’s the origin story of Superman, and does what it says on the tin perfectly competently. Lara, Kal-El’s mother, is played by Agnes Moorehead, later Endora in Bewitched.
1) The Invisible Man Returns.
Brilliant horror film, taking the HG Wells novel to gritty British industrial setting, with lots of upsetting issues about capitalism subtly raised. Vincent Price superb even if we only see him for 60 seconds. Also rather impressed by Nan Grey as the female lead. Gets my vote.
My nominations for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for the 2016 Hugos were unashamedly one-sided. They were:
Doctor Who: Face The Raven
Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died
Doctor Who: Heaven Sent
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
Doctor Who: The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion
One of these made the final ballot, which is about my average.
I’ve tallied results from the File 770 straw poll, which showed the following as favoured nominations in this category by those who contributed:
Doctor Who: Heaven Sent (8)
Jessica Jones: AKA Smile (8)
Person of Interest: If-Then-Else (8)
The Expanse: CQB (8)
Kung Fury (5)
Uncanny Valley (5)
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song (4)
Game of Thrones: Hardhome (4)
Marvel’s Agent Carter: Snafu (4)
Sense8: What’s Going On (4)
Welcome to Night Vale: Triptych (4)
Archer: Drastic Voyage 1+2 (3)
Rick and Monty: Total Rickall (3)
Welcome to Night Vale: The Librarians (3)
Doctor Who: Face the Raven (2)
Doctor Who: Heaven Sent / Hell Bent (2)
Marvel’s Agent Carter: Now is not the End (2)
Orphan Black: Certain Agony of the Battlefield (2)
Orphan Black: Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate (2)
Sense8: I Can’t Leave Her (2)
Steven Universe: The Return / Jail Break/ Full Disclosure (2)
The Expanse: Dulcinea (2)
The Man in the High Castle: A Way Out (2)
The Venture Brothers: All This and Gargantua 2 (2)
and another 79 candidates with a single nomination each.
Two of the top four in the File 770 list did indeed make it to the final ballot. The other three finalists are slate nominations, none of which got a single nomination from the File 770 readers who responded to the straw poll. I think it’s pretty likely that both Person of Interest: If-Then-Else and The Expanse: CQB, as well as some other worthy candidate, were pushed off the ballot by slating.
My own vote is as follows:
I was prepared to give this a fair wind, despite the blatant slate support, but the strident voices of the characters cut right through my brain and I couldn’t take more than three minutes of it.
5) Grimm: Headache.
I managed twenty minutes of this, but just didn’t get it. Not as annoying as My Little Pony, but that’s not saying much
4) No award.
3) Supernatural: Just My Imagination.
I’d never seen a single episode of this show before, and didn’t recognise any of the actors, but this is a good creepy story about childhood fantasies returning and I enjoyed it despite the stench of slating, sufficiently to bump it above No Award.
2) Jessica Jones: AKA Smile.
I’ve been a huge fan of Jessica Jones since I read the original comics, and the webcast series has been a brilliant chilling update. The nominated episode is the climax of the first season, but I think it will be pretty accessible to those who had not seen the rest.
1) Doctor Who: Heaven Sent. Doctor Who has, I admit, been a bit variable of late, but this is a fine fine episode with Capaldi putting in a bravura solo performance and a story based around long long passages of eternity. (Actually it draws on The Curse of Fatal Death, but ends up in a completely different place.) Brilliant.
Anyway, some worthy nominees there and I hope also a couple of worthy winners.
Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award
Interesting Links for 27-06-2016
- Big Data and the Law
- Fascinating.
(tags: crime statistics ) - UK physics faces huge uncertainty after EU referendum result
- Solving the problem of experts by getting rid of ’em.
(tags: eu science ukpolitics ) - The EU will treat Britain like Greece
- Only worse. Great article – in @Telegraph!
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Brussels bickers over Brexit
- The dynamics of the EU’s response. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
Second paragraph of third chapter:
‘So where, you fortunate man, is your charming wife Gelis?’ asked Anselm Adorne, seating himself two places from Nicholas at Master Lamb’s table shortly afterwards. Behind them, Albany’s trumpeter let off a blast, and Julius, in the middle, began cheerfully to cut up his meat.
Fifth in the series of eight novels about Dunnett’s fifteenth-century hero Claes van der Poele, now rebranded Nicolas de Fleury, on a canvas that takes us from a long first section in Scotland at the court of the young James III, to Cyprus, Alexandria and the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. I must confess that I felt Dunnett was not fully in control of her material here. The core of the narrative is the feuding between Claes on the one hand and his estranged wife Gelis and his secret father Simon de St. Pol on the other. I was not convinced by Gelis’s means or motivation; her end game is not at all obvious, and she seems to have almost supernatural means of keeping Claes apart from his son and his treasure (and at one point his liberty in a gruesome torture scene). Claes meantime has acquired his own supernatural powers of divining the location of sought objects and people by pendulum – though this only works as effectively as the plot needs it to. The attention to local historical and geographical detail is still very worthwhile and engaging, but I hope the next book (which I have ordered, naturally) is more coherent.
This was the top book on my non-genre poll from the end of last year. Next on that list is A Delicate Truth, by John Le Carré.
Interesting Links for 26-06-2016
- What Europe must do, now that England has decided to leave
- Former Taoiseach John Bruton on the next steps.
(tags: eu ) - Seven Immediate Lessons From the Brexit Vote
- My colleague Geoff Beattie, on what went wrong and what comes next.
(tags: ukpolitics eu ) - How to apply for an Irish passport
- Just in case you wanted to know.
(tags: ireland ) - The path to Belgian citizenship: an expat trail guide
- Just in case you wanted to know.
(tags: Belgium ) - Brexit, devolution and legislative consent
- Holyrood and Stormont do *not* have a veto. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics northernireland eu scotland ) - Europe Today… and Tomorrow?
- @SirGrahamWatson writes of the coming shitstorm (his word). #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Tales from the Coffeeshop: Our hearts go out to those misled Brits
- Cyprus commentary. “Call me a reactionary, but I would feel much safer in a Europe under the control of a super-state run by unaccountable, unelected, loan sharks and bureaucrats when the alternative would be a Europe of ultra-nationalist, anti-immigration fascist states.”
(tags: eu ukpolitics cyprus ) - I want my country back – Laurie Penny
- “This was a working-class revolt, but it is not a working-class victory.”
(tags: eu ukpolitics )
Saturday reading
Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
Last books finished
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian W. Aldiss
Next books
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
Fanny Kemble and the Lovely land, by Constance Wright
Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, edited by Paul Cornell
Books acquired in last week
American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization, by James A. Thurber
Interesting Links for 25-06-2016
- EU Referendum Reaction from APCO’s Brussels Office
- My colleague @ChairmanYaffle and I reflect.
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Will parliament try to foil Brexit?
- Matthew Parris thinks so.
(tags: eu ukpolitics ) - Americans Confused By System Of Government In Which Leader Would Resign After Making Terrible Decision
- Ho ho.
(tags: Uspolitics ukpolitics ) - How Brexit should be done
- The EU has the upper hand.
(tags: eu ukpolitics brexit ) - Britain’s Democratic Failure by Kenneth Rogoff
- Wider argument against referendums. Sensible.
(tags: ukpolitics voting ) - How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
- “Trump didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump.” – A long, but really good article on US politics. Read it.
(tags: Uspolitics ) - The independent city state of Bristol
- Have had similar reports from elsewhere (eg Cambridge).
(tags: ukpolitics )