I’m too heartbroken to write something original. This is what my colleague Theo and I put together earlier today. Comment there or here.

The UK’s vote to leave the EU will have a number of implications, although the specific, detailed consequences of this unprecedented choice are uncertain. For some it is a brave new world, for others the end of the world, but for all it is terra incognita.

What happens next, from the perspective of Brussels and the wider EU? Even before the vote there were very clear signals from significant European leaders that out would mean out. From early soundings here in Brussels, itself caught in an almost complete (and perhaps symbolic) public transport strike, there is zero appetite to try and renegotiate another deal that might tempt the British back again.

The Council Will be Key

The European Council is the key player in the departure that now seems inevitable. The collected leaders of the EU’s member states, headed by Donald Tusk, hold the reins. There is a meeting of the Council scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, in Brussels. Spaces left in the early draft conclusions of this meeting will need to be filled by something relating to Thursday’s referendum but the question is by what? In part this will be determined by the UK’s actions in the next few hours and over the weekend. The UK will need to bring around governments that may feel threatened by what the result means for their own domestic political futures and it will need to manage the almost inevitable demand that Britain not be allowed to have an easy ride. The realities of the assurances by Leave campaigners that Europe will have to be reasonable will be put to the test within as little as 72 hours. If nothing else the British Prime Minister (or whoever replaces him), possibly bereft of existing relationships with other European leaders, will have to overcome the anger of those on the Council who spent considerable energy and political capital in creating the deal David Cameron brought back, and which the UK has rejected. More likely, and more troubling, is the real feeling in Brussels that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Hollande of France, both having elections next year, will not profit politically by “being nice” to the British, and that other major countries such as Italy and Spain will not hold themselves back either (notably Gibraltar could be a flash point for Madrid).

Uncertainty in the European Parliament

For British Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) the future is currently uncertain. The expectation is that they will serve out their time but there are no real precedents to fall back on. The Parliament is always keen to show its relevance (and power, such as it is), and in the absence of a clear role in the Brexit negotiations that the Council will lead, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some MEPs will be moved to ensure they don’t see Nigel Farage and UKIP sitting across from them for much longer. This could take the form of UK MEPs losing their committee posts and other roles in the mid-term reallocation, due later this year. What is certain is that the political parties within the Parliament will consolidate around the existing power blocks of the EPP, ALDE and S&D. The right of centre EPP will swallow some of what will remain of the British Conservative-led ECR, whilst the UKIP-led EFD might dissolve itself or otherwise break up, in light of its own success, allowing for a realignment of anti-EU MEPs, possibly around Marine Le Pen’s ENF. It seems the current tendency to “grand coalition” solutions and to de fact “back room deals” will go on, and the German perspective will remain the most influential force in the Parliament, by virtue of its strong position in both the EPP and the S&D.

Which Way Out?

The process of exit will hang on when and/or if the UK invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty or, as some have suggested, tries some other route out of the EU. The two-year time limit of Article 50 is very short. When Greenland left the then EEC, it took five years from referendum to exit. Two years might well be long enough to disentangle the UK from the EU institutions, but quite possibly not from the single market or trade arrangements. (Apart from anything else, no UK government official has negotiated a trade agreement since the 1970s.) The departure of the UK also adds a further headache to leaders already wrestling with migration, Greece (still), the fate of the Euro and the dearth of economic growth. Whilst there are certainly medium-term opportunities in relation to lure businesses out of the UK and into the EU, these will take time to realise. One EU official yesterday estimated that the full process of resolving the Brexit will be a huge drain on the time and energy of Europe and the UK for a full decade.

Impact on Other European Countries

For the Republic of Ireland the UK’s departure is an immediate blow. If border control is to be at the heart of the new UK, the land border on the island of Ireland will be its most noticeable manifestation. The psychological as well as commercial impact could be profound. However, in the medium term the fact is that Dublin, already home to many international companies, will be the largest Anglophone city in the EU with a skilled workforce, competitive tax rates and a proven ability to overcome economic crisis. Paris may find it harder to compete for bankers than it thinks.

It will be particularly interesting to see how the EU handles Switzerland in light of the Leave vote. Since 2014’s referendum on limiting immigration, including the newest EU member state of Croatia, the Swiss have been on a collision course with Brussels. The issue was largely put on ice ahead of the UK’s referendum but will Brussels, driven by worries of seeming weak, now be harsh with Switzerland, or will the consequences of another relationship breakdown seem too much to bear?

Long-Term Outlook

Looking at the longer term, the shape of the European Union is going to change considerably in the coming years. Those pro-business member states, focused on jobs and growth in a competitive global marketplace, have lost their champion. The UK’s role as a brake on centralisation and federalisation will vanish, and the natural inclination of certain parts of the European Project to see “more Europe” as the answer to every crisis will be unchecked. Increasingly common budgets, harmonised tax regimes, perhaps even a European army will be quicker to emerge and their implementation deeper and broader. At the same time there are calls for reform of the EU, a restructuring that will somehow lance the rising boil of nationalism and Euroscepticism that isn’t simply confined to one side of the Channel. What form this will take is uncertain, especially as many of the less committed member states were rather hoping the UK would be leading part of this process (not least through its planned but now unlikely Presidency of the European Council in 2017).

Amongst some commentators here in Brussels the referendum has been seen as an odd moment on a somewhat fixed course. Remain would have put the UK back in the EU but not at its heart; as other member states came closer together, the UK would probably have worked hard to stay as it is, effectively becoming an “associate” member of the EU in the coming decades. With a Leave win, the UK may well spend the next few decades slowly reincorporating itself with the EU, if only to access the single market in the only way the EU will allow, thereby becoming in effect an “associate” as well. The difference is of course, that the Remain vote would have kept the UK on the inside of the EU decision-making that will inevitably effect it.

An Uncertain Future

For the leaders of other would be anti-EU referenda, and for their opponents in governments across Europe, the lesson of Thursday 23rd June is that the economic harm of leaving the EU is not the most powerful argument available. It can be countered by driving emotional responses, using issues such as immigration. This clash was characterised as “Project Fear” vs. “Project Hate” in the UK. How this will manifest itself in other states is yet to be seen. President of the European Council Donald Tusk has stated of Brexit “What does not kill us makes us stronger”. He may be right but at the moment in Brussels it is hard to say that the EU is stronger for what has just happened.

Second paragraph of third story (“Postcard”):

It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill, and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blond creature, lit up with neon I suppose at night. She was saying Sleep at my place— that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read, I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare. The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that we’re as good as them.

You may have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of an Alice Munro binge over the last year, generated in the first place by enthusiasm from my wife. These are selected stories from her output in 1968-1994, and they are all good, some of them brilliant, observation of life in southern Ontario (particularly for women) over the decades. “Postcard”, from which I’ve taken an excerpt above, is a particularly good one told by a woman in a doomed relationship that everyone else, including the reader, can see isn’t happening. “Carried Away” is an intricate tale of a librarian, a soldier, and a decapitation. “Dance of the Happy Shades” features the discomfort afflicting the comfortable resulting from a musical performance by children with special needs. In “Fits”, a woman finds her neighbours’ bodies after a murder/suicide pact, but the real story is how the details become known to her community and her husband. All take you into the moment; all recommended.

This came to the top of my reading list as both the most popular non-sf fiction book and the most popular book by a woman on my unread shelves. Next in both categories is another short story collection, Tales from the Secret Annexe by Anne Frank.

No man is an island entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
each man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Fact-Checking Brexit

Hugh has checked the extent of truth or lies in the Remain and Leave campaigns. Read it.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Second paragraph of Chapter 3:

Some well-placed observers believe that this meeting in Crawford, at the start of April 2002 and nearly a full year ahead of the actual invasion, marked the moment at which Tony Blair began to commit Britain to invasion. The hold that the prime minister made a binding, though private pledge.²
²The former British ambassador in Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, told the Chilcot Inquiry he was ‘not entirely clear what degree of convergence was… signed in blood, at the Crawford ranch’ but pointed to the ‘clues in the speech that Tony Blair gave the next day’ in which he mentioned ‘regime change’, Meyer thought, for the first time in public. http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/40453/20091126am-final.pdf, p. 29

In Not the Chilcot Report, Peter Oborne gives a succinct and passionate analysis of the evidence presented to the Chilcot Inquiry, which is now expected to report in July. His findings won’t surprise anyonewho has kept their eyes open. Tony Blair and his government lied about what intelligence reports said about the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (my former colleague Carne Ross is quoted at length). Published intelligence dossiers were manipulated to support the case for war, which legally was pretty much non-existent. I slightly differ from Oborne on the flexibility of the French position immediately pre-war – my recollection of a conversation with a senior French diplomat at the time is that Chirac seemed pretty rigid. But otherwise it seems pretty sound to me.

Oborne makes several further interesting points which I don’t think I’d seen before. He asserts that the British army basically got its ass kicked in both Basra and Helmand, Afghanistan, for the sake of helping the Americans who as it turned out didn’t really want to be helped; that MI5 accurately foresaw that one inevitable result of war in Iraq would be increased homegrown Islamic radicalisation; and that although Blair is probably guilty of war crimes for waging a war of aggression, the fact is that the UK’s veto on the UN Security Council will ensure that he remains safe from prosecution.

He starts and finishes very gloomily. He does not expect the Chilcot report, which apparently runs to over 2 million words, to land any punches, which is why he has written his own analysis of the evidence presented to it. He sees the current UK government as fully on board with the neoconservative project (and repeating the mistakes of Iraq in Libya). Meanwhile the intelligence services have been subverted to the will of the executive, which retains and exploits the monarchical powers acquired by Britain’s unwritten constitution.

What’s particularly interesting is that Oborne is no leftie. He’s the former chief political commentator of the Telegraph, from which post he spectacularly resigned last year, and is associate editor of the Spectator and writes a column for the Daily Mail. I’m well aware of his rabid Euroscepticism and other off-the-wall right-wing views. Yet in this book he refrains from Labour bashing – in fact he has nothing but good things to say of the Labour left-wingers who criticised the rush to war (though omits the Lib Dems who also got it right). If anything that rather strengthens the case he makes. We’ll see what Chilcot has to say.

See my guide to how Referendum night could play out, area by area, hour by hour, now available for download. Enjoy!

Candidates’ Commitment to Human Rights Should Play Crucial Role in UN Secretary-General Election

Who’s failed to deliver?
(tags: humanrights un )

Who Is to Blame for Brexit’s Appeal? British Newspapers

Mr. Johnson and his fellow Brexit proponents are now campaigning against the caricature of the European Union that he himself helped create. They are asking the British people to part with a monster about as real as the one in Loch Ness.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Nicholas Whyte: Brussels policy machinery is actually very open to external input

The Belfast Newsletter prints my email message.
(tags: croatia ukpolitics migration Balkans montenegro eu cyprus moldova kosovo northernireland )

Chicken litter to power up Ballymena biogas plant

Chicken poo illuminates Northern Ireland!
(tags: northernireland )

Second frame of third page:

Tomorrow we’ll have the third round of the presidential election. Schmoll out.

I thought that this was the third in Chroniques de Fin de Siècle, a series of graphic novels by Jacques Santi and Jan Bucquoy which started with Autonomes in 1985 and continued with Mourir à Creys-Malville in 1986. But in fact this is belied by the back cover, which lists Autonomes and Mourir à Creys-Malville as fourth and fifth of a five-book series, Chooz (published in 1988) as third and gives the first two books in the series as Campe de Reforme B and No Man’s Land. To add further confusion, while I do find that Campe de Reforme B is available, there seems to be no book called No Man’s Land by Santi and Bucquoy; instead, the other book available from them is called Au Dolle Mol. A number of on-line sources list Campe de Reforme B and Au Dolle Mol, both published in 1982, as the only two volumes of the adventures of subversive hero Gérard Craan (the chap making a clandestine broadcast in the picture above). The fact is that Chooz features further adventures of Gérard Craan rather than of Gérard Mordant, the hero of Autonomes and Mourir à Creys-Malville. I speculate that Chooz was never meant to be part of the Chroniques de Fin de Siècle sequence but a third volume of the Gerard Craan adventures. The internal chronology doesn’t fit the Chroniques de Fin de Siècle at all – Wallonia has not been annexed by France, and several plot elements are simply repeated. So basically, it’s a bit of a mess.

I can’t recommend it at all. Gérard Craan is a deeply unpleasant chap who enjoys nothing more than a good punchup combined with smashing the system. He allies with an even more unpleasant gang leader whose girlfriend takes a fancy to Gérard and ends up pregnant with twins by both of them (see front cover, below). They attempt to bring the system to its knees by sabotaging the Chooz nuclear reactor to prevent it further poisoning Wallonia. But there is no liberating politics other than overthrowing the caricatures of Chirac and Le Pen who rule this version of 1990s France, and one doubts that the followers of Craan and his allies are any better off for having followed them; those who are still alive at the end of the book, that is. The book was published as co-author Santi was dying in 1988; I wonder if there is a story behind that.

The Brussels Years: The making of Brexit Boris

Those who knew him then reminisce.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

The great superiority complex of the Leave campaign

Britain’s international influence.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

My nominations for the John W. Campbell Award were:

Andy Weir (finalist)
Kelly Robson
L.S. Johnson
Iona Sharma
Sunil Patel

Those who topped the File 770 straw poll were:

Becky Chambers (22)
Andy Weir (22)
Natasha Pulley (16)
Scott Hawkins (10)
Kelly Robson (10)
Alyssa Wong (10)

with nobody else getting more than five. Sebastien de Castell and Pierce Brown were each nominated by one File 770 responder, and Brian Niemeier by none. All of the finalists apart from Alyssa Wong were on the slate; it’s reasonably to assume that Weir would have made it without slate assistance, but Becky Chambers’ exclusion is a travesty.

6) Brian Niemeier. The Hugo packet includes a novel by Niemeier, Nethereal, and a shorter story, “Strange Matter”. I lost patience with the novel within the first hundred pages, an astonishingly dull mixture of magic, sf and combat. The short story had a more original idea but botched the execution. In case it matters to you, Niemeier is a full-on supporter of the Puppies, but more importantly, his writing just isn’t that good. No hesitation in putting him last.

5) No Award. Despite the puppydom, I actually thought that all the others had points of redemption, and I’m feeling in a generous mood.

4) Pierce Brown. I had actually read Red Rising for the Clarke Award last year. My note to fellow judges was as follows: “I thought this was good but not great; leant a little too heavily on Ender and Hunger Games, though to an extent also on Homer, and was frankly turned off by the violence (not all of which was plausible). Readable enough but I won’t be pushing it.”

3) Sebastien de Castell. His novel The Traitor’s Blade was also included in the Hugo packet, and I found it pretty readable, even though sword-and-sorcery isn’t usually my thing. I felt it lost its way a bit towards the end.

2) Alyssa Wong. Her short story “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” is included in the packet, and has already made her the second youngest Nebula winner ever. I thought it was a great piece, but it veers rather far into horror for my taste, and it’s the only writing that I can judge her by.

1) Andy Weir. I quite enjoyed The Martian as a book; I really loved the film, which perhaps makes me view the book more favourably. There’s also a bit of me that feels that the Campbell Award can reasonably recognise precocious achievement, and it’s clear that both Weir and Wong have displayed that. In the end, I enjoyed The Martian just a bit more than “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers”, so Weir gets my vote.

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

Clothes, Cameras and Coffee: My Grandma, President of the Earth

A lovely family reminiscence. #fb
(tags: doctorwho photos )

How undemocratic is the EU?

Nothing like its portrayal in the media.
(tags: eu )

Four Goods and a conclusion

Some points in favour of the EU.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Failed Daily Caller ‘Writer’ Throws Temper Tantrum About Being Debunked by snopes.com

Snopes stands up for its own.
(tags: Media )

Letter to an old, old friend who is voting to Leave the EU

Nick Harkaway writes. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Berlin ready to lure tech firms after Brexit

Choices have consequences.
(tags: eu germany ukpolitics )

As you may know, I was born in Belfast. I grew up in a country which was not at peace. I sat in the back row during the first six months of the 1996-98 talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Peace in Northern Ireland would simply not have been possible without the European dimension, which transformed the relations between the UK and Ireland from a zero-sum game over sovereignty and loyalty, to a co-operative project of shared growth.

I see the Leave campaign asserting that nothing would change between Northern Ireland and the Republic if Britain left the European Union. I can’t reconcile this with their commitment to regain control of Britain’s borders. At the very least, there would need to be customs posts if the UK is no longer in the EU customs union. (And if nothing is going to change, what is Thursday’s vote actually for?)

On similar lines, I recently had a very interesting chat with leading members of the government of Gibraltar, who are very concerned that their delicate relationship with Spain will be critically undermined if the UK votes to leave. Northern Ireland and Gibraltar are both likely to deliver strong votes for Remain on Thursday; these are the people who face the sharp end of the sovereignty question, and perhaps their views matter.

I’ve worked in other troubled parts of the world. I contributed to the 2001 EU-brokered Macedonian peace agreement. I advised Croatia’s negotiators on their EU accession, and Montenegro and Kosovo on how to anchor their independent status in the European framework. In the Balkans, the governments and peoples that were at war with each other in the 1990s are now committed to working out their differences peacefully, in the framework of joining the EU.

I have also advised the Turkish Cypriot leadership and the Moldovan government. In both cases, the attraction of the EU is proving to be crucial in overcoming the deep divisions that have previously erupted into conflict. These are imperfect processes – what process is perfect? – but the shared factor is clear. Compare these two situations, inching forward, with other frozen conflicts in the neighbourhood (Israel/Palestine being the most obvious) which remain intractable and coincidentally have no prospect of European integration.

Britain may well choose to walk away from the project of making and keeping peace in Europe by building a common future. But that will certainly weaken the mission as a whole, increasing the risk of new conflict. I hope it doesn’t happen.

Just two other points, if I may. First, I’m really saddened by the vicious rhetoric about migration that has characterised the campaign. I take it personally. I am a migrant, as are several of my closest relatives. It seems to me, from afar, that if public services in Britain are under stress, that is because of a broader problem with the funding model. Blaming migrants, particularly considering how much they actually contribute to delivery of those services, is a distraction.

I also want to say that, contrary to some perceptions, I find the Brussels policy machinery very open to external input. It’s not surprising that this is the case, given that a broad consensus from business, unions, consumers and citizens is needed to persuade a sufficient majority of elected governments and elected MEPs to agree to any particular proposal. I may have been fortunate – I work on a fairly narrow range of issues – but I really think that this is the single aspect that has been most maliciously reported by the UK media. I’m happy to talk more about this if you have any questions.

Of course, Brexit will be a bonanza for public affairs consultants like me. The process itself will include lots of moving parts to report on and to try and influence; the end result will be more decisions taken in London, where lobbying is barely scrutinised, rather than Brussels, where the demands of transparency are getting tougher. But my pocket does not always rule my head.

Anyway, I’ll be up all night on Thursday, hoping for the best. Good luck.

(Sent to a large number of people this evening – not quite as large as I’d have liked, as Gmail has a limit to the number of messages you can send!)

Second paragraph of third chapter:

After a residence of about a year at Ullswater, Adrian visited London, and came back full of plans for our benefit. You must begin life, he said: you are seventeen, and longer delay would render the necessary apprenticeship more and more irksome. He foresaw that his own life would be one of struggle, and I must partake his labours with him. The better to fit me for this task, we must now separate. He found my name a good passport to preferment, and he had procured for me the situation of private secretary to the Ambassador at Vienna, where I should enter on my career under the best auspices. In two years, I should return to my country, with a name well known and a reputation already founded.

This is in some ways a slightly silly book, but in other ways profoundly interesting. The first half of it is dominated by the debate about the best way forward for Art, and for England, between Adrian – a thinly disguised Percy Bysshe Shelley, who happens to be the displaced heir to the recently abolished British throne – and his more ebullient friend Lord Raymond, who (apologies for the spoiler) eventually dies fighting for the Greeks against the Turks; can you imagine who he might be based on? In the year 2073 there has been no advance on technology since 1826, but our chums can just live in Windsor Castle and pop down to London now and then for a spot of governing. But given the importance of the relationship between Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to literature and especially to sf, it is fascinating to have an insight, even if a fictionalised insight, from one of the protagonists. However the interpersonal relationships bit is not as exciting as I would have liked.

The second half, when a great plague comes and wipes out humanity, is better executed but perhaps not quite as interesting. I recently read The Last Man (aka No Other Man) by Alfred Noyes, written over a century later but, I now realise, leaning a bit on Shelley; in both cases, the surviving central characters flee the post-holocaust England through a devastated France to find refuge in Italy. There are some great descriptions of places Shelley must herself have known quite well, and she doesn’t shirk the awfulness of death by disease (which she had far too much personal experience of). Romantic ideals fail through death of the gallant protagonists. (Adrian, the Shelley character, drowns in a boating accident, in case you were wondering.)

There’s a nice framing narrative of Shelley herself finding the text of the story in prophecy in the cave of the Cumaean Sibyl near Naples. And in general, it’s very interesting as an early example of post-apocalyptic fiction. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in knowing what happened to the author after Frankenstein – which was written 200 years ago this summer.

This came to the top of my pile as the most popular unread book that I acquired in 2014. Next on that list is Earthlight by Arthur C.Clarke – one I have in fact read before, but not for decades.

Episode 17: A Hit For A Miss
First shown: 2 January 1971 (US), 2 April 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writers: Glyn Jones and Harry Booth
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Georgina Simpson as Miss Petit
Damaris Hayman as Miss Finch
Brian Hayes as the Head Master
John Clive, Lucy Griffiths and Bryan Hunt as amdram members

Plot

Billie and Tiger are jealous of the boys’ attraction to Miss Pettit, the new teacher. But they are won over by working together on a show to help an old people’s home.

Soundtrack

The boys alone sing “With A Little Bit Of Love”, by Ivor Slaney and Glyn Jones. It’s one of Jones’ better songs, but the performance is a bit ragged especially on the higher notes, and we definitely miss Billie’s voice keeping them in line.

The climax of the episode, and thus of the entire series, is everyone except Tiger singing “Fat Ladies”, by Ivor Slaney and Michael Begg, the boys in drag. The kindest thing to say is that not all aspects of Double Deckers have aged well.

Glorious Moments

The sequence of the boys attempting to clear up the den is a good bit of slapstick. (NB that the vacuum cleaner doesn’t seem to be plugged in.)

The first song is well-choreographed (shame about the singing).

Less glorious moments

It is a bit jarring to be honest. The scenes where each of the kids sees Miss Pettit as their own fantasy are well dodgy – for Springer she’s a Hawaiian maiden (wrong ocean, folks); for Sticks a Calamity Jane type.

The old people’s home for which they are supposedly raising money is also conspicuous by its absence.

And the “Fat Ladies” song… a very disappointing last note for the show.

What's all this then?

This episode opens up new areas to explore. It’s the first time we’ve seen the gang at school. The boys’ attraction to Miss Pettit, and Billie’s jealousy of her, is the first real acknowledgement of grown-up things like relationships; it’s all bee pretty chaste up till now. If there had been a second series, this might have been fertile ground for plot development. (Or, in fairness, it might just have been excruciating; this episode is a little embarrassing as it is.)

The Hot Teacher trope is one of the oldest in the book, and the usual outcome is, as here, that it’s a learning experience for the pupils without the relationship being consummated (even though we tend to remember the minority where it does lead to mutual romance). It’s rarer though for the boys to have a crush on a young woman teacher; one recent movie which could have fed into this (rather indirectly) might be The Graduate (1967).

Who's That?

Georgina Simpson (Miss Pettit), born in 1946, had a pretty brief acting career between 1967 and 1972, of which the high point was playing Blanche (one of Lucy’s posh Belgian pupils) in a BBC adaptation of Villette earlier in 1970. She married the actor/director Anthony Andrews in 1971. Her family owned Simpsons of Piccadilly, the inspiration for Are You Being Served? – the building now houses the big Waterstone’s.

Damaris Hayman (Miss Pike) is revered by Doctor Who fans as the white witch Miss Hawthorne in The Dæmons (1971). Born in 1929, she appeared in a string of minor character parts from 1953 to 1995. (Doctor Who seems to have been the best known thing she did, but I remember her also in The Small World of Samuel Tweet, a short-lived BBC kids sitcom from 1974.)

Brian Hayes (the Headmaster), born in 1912, has the same name as a member of the European Parliament who I know. His biggest role seems to have been the stationmaster in the 1968 TV version of The Railway Children, which starred Jenny Agutter as Roberta and Gillian “Billie” Bailey as Phyllis. He died in 1983.

John Clive (one of the amdrams), born in 1933, got a couple of leading roles in chldrens shows later in the 1970s – the titular Robert in Roberts Robots (1973), and Rosko in the 1974 show Perils of Pendragon – and then turned to writing from 1977. He died in 2012.

Lucy Griffiths (another amdram), born in 1919, played minor roles of spinsters and then little old ladies from 1952 until 1981; she died in 1982.

Bryan Hunt (third amdram) has six credited roles in IMDB from 1964 to 1971. (There’s also one given for 1999, but I think this must be someone with the same name, as the part is “Young Toby”.)

Where's that?

The school is St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School on Brook Road in Borehamwood, around the corner from the studio. Another scene is shot on Barton Way, ten minutes’ walk from the school.

See you next week…

…well, I’m afraid not. Although the gang cheerfully sing the closing line at the end, this is the final episode. But I will do a roundup post in due course.

Azerbaijan imprisoned me. Pharrell Williams and others should stop helping my jailers.

Khadija speaks out.
(tags: azerbaijan )

Exploring your surroundings through GPS-based games

Unleash the power of location!
(tags: Games Internet )

AGAIN

A sonnet by Roz Kaveney for Jo Cox.
(tags: poetry ukpolitics )

Apple Withholds Support For GOP Convention Because Of Donald Trump

Choices have consequences.
(tags: uspolitics )

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian W. Aldiss
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham

Last books finished
Nethereal, by Brian Niemeyer (did not finish)
Traitor’s Blade, by Sebastien de Castell
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong (did not finish)

Last week’s audios
Tenth Doctor/ Donna 1.1 Technophobia by Matt Fitton
Tenth Doctor/ Donna 1.2 Time Reaver by Jenny T Colgan
Tenth Doctor/ Donna 1.3 Death and the Queen by James Goss

Next books
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone

Books acquired in last week
The Deep State of Europe: Welcome to Hell, by Basil Coronakis
Britain and Europe: A new settlement?, by Stephen Wall, David Hannay, David Edward, Peter Goldsmith, Robert Cooper, Heather Grabbe, Fraser Cameron, Graham Avery, Malcolm Harbour, Quentin Peel, Kirsty Hughes, Caroline Lucas, Brendan Donnelly and Andrew Duff
The Cyprus Crisis and the Cold War: USSR Duplicity versus US Realpolitik (1974-1977), by Makarios Drousiotis

Eastern Europe Is Both Dreading Brexit and Ready for It

Ivan writes of the consequences.
(tags: slovakia eu czechrepublic ukpolitics serbia hungary poland bulgaria romania )

If you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream, somebody will get sick

Sensible commentary, alas.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Five truths about referendums

Quintin reflects.
(tags: eu ukpolitics elections )

Britain flirts with economic insanity

I wish the Washington Post would say what they really think!
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The Rock of remain: why Gibraltar is rejecting Brexit

Funny how those who bang on about sovereignty ignore the views of those most affected!
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The Guardian view on Jo Cox: an attack on humanity, idealism and democracy | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian

Amen.
(tags: ukpolitics death )

The unspeakable truth – Charlie’s Diary

“I’ve been saying a while that when fascism comes to Britain it will be wearing a tweed jacket and a cheeky grin, holding a pint of beer in one hand and a noose in the other.

“I wasn’t expecting to be proven right so soon.”
(tags: ukpolitics )

A Day of Infamy

Alex Massie nails it in the Spectator.
(tags: ukpolitics death )

All LinkedIn with Nowhere to Go

A hilarious (if lengthy) takedown of LinkedIn.
(tags: linkedin )

Donald Trump: ‘Belgium is a beautiful city’

Previously he called it a “hellhole”. #fb
(tags: Belgium uspolitics )

Second frames of the third pages of part I and part II:

(First frame: Sofie’s mother says, “AHA! Madam is home!”)

I’m always on the lookout for good Flemish graphic novels, given that Belgium’s tradition is generally strong and not entirely Francophone, and I think this counts as a decent find. De maagd en de neger comes in two parts, the first telling the story from the point of view of the father of Flemish student Sofie of his unhappy accommodation to her relationship with Togolese refugee Abou, and the second with Sofie, years later, telling her side of the same story to Leentje, her daughter by a later relationship. Of course, it’s a white-people-talking-about-black-people story, but it’s tenderly observed for all that. Sofie’s father’s personal journey is particularly affecting, and I always like stories where the same events are viewed from two different perspectives, getting two very different answers.

This came to the top of my list of unread graphic novels in a language other than English. Next on that list is De Mexicaan met twee hoofden, by Joann Sfarr, which I should really have got in the original French.

Secrets And Lies Behind The Other Big Election That Will Shape The World

Behind the scenes of the UNSG race!
(tags: un )

Open Letter to Mr Farage from a small business owner

Samantha writes.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Vajt: Brisel svoje pozicije nije promenio

Expert commentary on EU-Serbia relations (by me, in Serbian)
(tags: eu serbia )

Brexit polling: Leave is gaining ground. But do not rule out Remain just yet

The @Economist puts on a brave face.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Norwegian PM’s message to Britain

Don’t leave, you’ll hate it.
(tags: norway ukpolitics eu )

I want my country back! Personal thoughts on the EU Referendum

Dr Burnley reflects.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Brussels is in Brexit denial

Tim tries to explain Britain to the bubble.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

We can already see a post-Brexit economy emerging. It’s grim.

Gerry is scared.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

My nominations for Best Novelette for the 1941 Retro Hugos were:

“It!”, by Theodore Sturgeon (finalist)
“Farewell to the Master”, by Harry Bates (finalist)
“New York Fights the Termanites”, by Bertrand L. Shurtleff
“Into the Darkness”, by Ross Rocklynne
“The Sea Thing”, by A.E. van Vogt

I admit that I deliberately avoided Heinlein in my pre-nomination reading; I knew he would need little help from me, and indeed he got two stories on the final ballot in this category as well as three in Best Novella.

My own vote is as follows:

6) “Blowups Happen” by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph:

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.

One of those Heinlein stories that you think you know and then discover has a lot more in it than you remembered. Too much so, in fact: psychologists controlling nuclear reactors, the craters on the Moon caused by the death of a lost civilisation. The story gets significant good marks for foreseeing how nuclear power could work in practice, but unfortunately the version in The Past Through Tomorrow has clearly been revised to catch up with reality mid-1940s, so it’s difficult to form a clear judgement of the 1940 version (which is ostensibly the version on the ballot).

5) “Darker Than You Think” by Jack Williamson

Second paragraph:

She had a million dollars’ worth of flame-red hair. White, soft, sweetly serious, her face confirmed Barbee’s first dazzled impression. Her rather large mouth appeared humorous and quickly expressive. Barber looked twice into her alert, grave eyes and decided that they were distinctly greenish.

I am frankly a bit surprised about this nomination. I know of a couple of people who nominated it but did so in the novella category, and my impression is that its’s well over the 17,500 limit for novelettes; a File 770 contributor think’s it’s 38,000, which is almost novel length. The 1940 version has been reprinted only twice, in two collections published by Haffner Press in 2008, neither available electronically and with paper copies going for rather heavy prices; but you can read the original here. To add further confusion, it is the 1948 novel-length expansion, not the original 1940 short version, that has been included in the Hugo packet. I do wonder whether those who nominated it were thinking of the 1948 rather than 1940 version.

Anyway, it’s a story of shape-shifting magic and the ancient revenge of the Black Messiah, which turns out not to be quite as awful as it sounds (though still pretty bad); the female characters are either evil or passive; there are some good descriptive moments, but I’m marking it down because of my suspicions about the categorisation.

4) No award

3) “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein

Second paragraph:

The speaker stood still on the rostrum and waited for his audience to answer him. The reply came in scattered shouts that cut through the ominous, discontented murmur of the crowd.

This on the other hand is a very political story about how a new transport technology will be managed; one may not like the angle Heinlein chooses to take, but it’s undeniable that he goes beyond the “Isn’t it cool!” description of how the roads work and into the human dimension. The inclusion of a government minister from Australia is a rare acknowledgement in sf of this era that the world outside the USA exists as well.

2) “It!” by Theodore Sturgeon

Second paragraph:

It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and in darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living.

Great creepy story of possession and body-horror.

1) “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates

Second paragraph:

He himself had come to feel an almost proprietary interest in the exhibit, and with some reason. He had been the only freelance picture reporter on the Capitol grounds when the visitors from the Unknown had arrived, and had obtained the first professional shots of the ship. He had witnessed at close hand every event of the next mad few days. He had thereafter photographed many times the eight-foot robot, the ship, and the beautiful slain ambassador, Klaatu, and his imposing tomb out in the center of the Tidal Basin, and, such was the continuing news value of the event to the billions of persons throughout habitable space, he was there now once more to get still other shots and, if possible, a new “angle.”

This will get a lot of votes because it is the basis for the great sf film The Day The Earth Stood Still, but I think it’s a good piece of work in its own right, meditating on how humanity is capable of screwing up relations with the Other and also of missing the point. The twist at the end did not make it into the film, so will take readers by (mild) surprise.

My nominations for Best Novelette for the 2016 Hugos were:

“Red Legacy”, by Eneasz Brodski
“Utrechtenaar”, by Paul Evanby
“So Much Cooking”, by Naomi Kritzer
“Our Lady of the Open Road”, by Sarah Pinsker
“English Wildlife”, by Alan Smale

None of these were finalists.

Two of the finalists – “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead”, by Brooke Bolander, and “Folding Beijing”, by Hao Jingfang – did moderately well in the File 770 straw poll, whose top nominated stories were:

“So Much Cooking”, by Naomi Kritzer (18)
“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan”, by Ian McDonald (14)
“Another Word for World”, by Ann Leckie (13)
“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead”, by Brooke Bolander (11)
“Entanglements”, by David Gerrold (8)
“Our Lady of the Open Road”, by Sarah Pinsker (8)
“Folding Beijing”, by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (7)
“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild”, by Catherynne M. Valente (7)

Two other finalists, “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke and “Obits” by Stephen King, were each nominated by one of File 770’s respondents; “Flashpoint: Titan” by Cheah Kai Wai was nominated by nonoe of them. It is reasonable to suppose that these three owe their position on the final ballot entirely to the slate – despite King’s prominence as a writer, the nominated story is horror rather than sf or fantasy,. (NB that the one non-Rabid Puppy nominee on the ballot was supported by the Sad Puppies.)

6) “Flashpoint: Titan” by Cheah Kai Wai

Second paragraph:

The console displayed the data as a three-dimensional hologram. In the center of the display, Takao was a blue triangle pointing towards a bright yellow mass. That was Titan, the largest moon in the Saturnian system, ten thousand kilometers away. Other yellow dots indicated satellites, orbital structures and shuttles with Titanian registration. White tracks indicated civilian space traffic. A number of small green dots orbited Titan, each representing American orbital patrol ships. Each contact carried a unique tag, displaying vector, velocity, name and other critical information.

Future space combat which I found pretty dull and gave up on half way through. Would not have been on the ballot without slate support.

5) “What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke

Second paragraph:

While gathering strength, they raid, attacking our outposts and asteroid acquisition operations, our transiting cargo ships and task forces, looking for easy victories, forcing us to expend more resources than they. In accordance with their conservative –the misinformed might say cowardly –nature, they hit and run, always with the aim of preserving themselves while damaging us.

The scenario of human weapons becomes obvious to the reader in the first few pages, and then doesn’t really go anywhere. Would not have been on the ballot without slate support.

4) “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander

Second paragraph:

Rhye has her guns drawn before the other Ganymede fuckers can twitch, but it’s way too late — the damage is done and smeared across the walls and floor and ceiling. Synthetic blood and bone look exactly the same as the real deal. She puts three shots into the flesh slab that did it (he’s dead he’s dead gods fuck it no nononono) and then the rest of his pals are on her like the three-times-fucked human jackals they are, pulling her down. The room stinks of blood and gunsmoke and fear-sweat. For the first time in her life, those smells make Rhye want to gag. Her ears are ringing — whether from the gunshots or god knows what else — and it feels like the floor is falling away beneath her motorcycle boots.

I found this pretty violent and at the same time I wasn’t sure what it was about. It’s the only non-Rabid Puppy finalist and so quite likely to win, but I won’t vote for it.

3) “Obits” by Stephen King

Second paragraph:

That was the gospel according to Vern Higgins, who headed up the journalism department at the University of Rhode Island, where I got my degree. A lot of what I heard at school went in one ear and out the other, but not that, because Professor Higgins hammered on it. He said that people need clarity and concision in order to start the process of understanding.

Good creepy story, though with only a few tech changes it could have been written a hundred years ago. But it’s a horror story rather than sf or fantasy, and should not be a Hugo finalist. Would not have been on the ballot without slate support.

2) No Award

1) “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu

Second paragraph:

After the end of his shift at the waste processing station, Lao Dao had gone home, first to shower and then to change. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown pants—the only decent clothes he owned. The shirt’s cuffs were frayed, so he rolled them up to his elbows. Lao Dao was forty–eight, single, and long past the age when he still took care of his appearance. As he had no one to pester him about the domestic details, he had simply kept this outfit for years. Every time he wore it, he’d come home afterward, take off the shirt and pants, and fold them up neatly to put away. Working at the waste processing station meant there were few occasions that called for the outfit, save a wedding now and then for a friend’s son or daughter.

Given that two or three of the finalists would quite possibly have made the final ballot without slating, I feel that the Foster principle is weaker here; and I really liked this story (as I liked the same author’s “Summer at Grandma’s House” which I nominated for Best Short Story), an evocative look at a future densely populated and rigidly stratified society. I hope voters will overlook the slate support for it (as I’m sure they will for strong candidates in a couple of other categories) and recognise it.

One of the categories where even a relatively weak 1941 ballot is markedly better than the 2016 one.

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

Leuven most innovative university in Europe

Hooray!
(tags: )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

From the window of his study he had a panoramic view of the city’s various districts – residential, commercial, industrial, administrative – as they sifted down to the Borann river and on the far bank gave way to the parklands surrounding the five palaces. The families headed by the Lord Philosopher had been granted a cluster of dwellings and other buildings on this choice site many centuries earlier, during the reign of Bytran IV, when their work was held in much higher regard.

This is one of Shaw’s best known books, second in LibraryThing and Goodreads ownership only to Orbitsville. I don’t think it has aged particularly well. Shaw’s protagonist, Toller Maraquine, is chief engineer of a culture under pressure from its human(ish) neighbours on the planet of Land and also facing extinction at the hands of the non-human Ptertha. Toller’s rulers therefore order a mass emigration through space to the neighbouring twin planet of Overland, conveniently linked with Land by a common atmosphere. I thought that the book’s attitude to women (never a strong point of Shaw’s) was pretty appalling. The female characters are either invisible or two-dimensional, and there is some nasty sexual violence as a defining moment for the most important woman character. It doesn’t even do a terribly good job as engineering fiction; because the Land/Overland universe is very different from ours (we learn at one stage that π=3 exactly) we can’t really thrill to the solution of engineering problems which are designed to pad out the thin plot. That leaves us with Toller Maraquine’s inner journey, and he’s just not a very interesting chap. I must say I’m fully on board with Robin McKinley’s devastating contemporary review in the L.A. Times. Where I love Shaw’s work, it’s when he takes people in a contemporary or near-contemporary setting to somewhere unexpected – A Wreath of Stars, Other Days, Other Eyes. His more space-y books haven’t usually worked for me.

The Ragged Astronauts came to the top of my reading list as the winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel of 1986. The other shortlisted works were Blood Music, by Greg Bear; Count Zero, by William Gibson; Queen of the States, by Josephine Saxton; and Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling. I’ve read the first two of these, and to be honest The Ragged Astronauts looks like a pretty undaring choice – perhaps the ecological crisis message seemed more exciting then than now, and the misogyny was less of an issue among voters? It was also runner-up for the first Arthur C. Clarke Award (which went to The Handmaid’s Tale) and was shortlisted for the Hugo (but not the Nebula), both of which went to Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

Next on this particular list is the 1987 BSFA winner, Gráinne, by Keith Roberts. (In principle I’m alternating BSFA winners with Clarke and Tiptree winners, but I wrote up The Handmaid’s Tale not all that long ago and the Tiptree hadn’t got going yet in 1987.)

Why I am not signing written declarations

Kaja Kallas has had enough.
(tags: eu )

Middle England’s immigration referendum

Ben Judah reports.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

My nominations for Best Novel for the 1941 Retro Hugos were:

Kallocain, Karin Boye (finalist)
The Ill-Made Knight, T.H. White (finalist)
Twice in Time, Manly Wade Wellman
The Last Man, aka No Other Man, Alfred Noyes
Captain Future and the Space Emperor, Edmond Hamilton

I was under no illusions that two slots at least would go to novels I didn’t care for, Slan and Gray Lensman, but hoped that I would at least boost the signal for T.H. White and for at least one of the other four. I’m glad that Kallocain was the one that made the cut, though I do not expect it to win. My votes will be:

No vote: Gray Lensman by E.E. “Doc” Smith (Astounding Science‐Fiction, Jan 1940)

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Here’s to love!” Haynes gave the toast.

I confess that I didn’t actually read this one; I bounced so firmly off Triplanetary, Galactic Patrol and First Lensman that I did not think there was much point in trying the fourth of the series.

5) No Award

4) Slan by A.E. van Vogt

Second paragraph of third chapter:

But there was so much at stake, she dared not miss a single thought or picture. Her eyes and mind jerked open, and there it was again— the room, the men, the whole menacing situation.

I didn’t really warm to this. But it’s a classic story which informed a lot that came later.

3) The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson (Unknown, Mar 1940)

Second paragraph of third chapter :

Theseus pushed through the ring. He found Cyron standing angrily over a small yellow-brown man, who was bound to the mast. The prisoner was squealing in terror, trying to writhe away from another red-hot lance that the enraged pirate was flourishing in front of him.

This almost made my own nominations list, replaced by the Alfred Noyes novel at the last moment. It’s a decent retelling of Greek legend.

2) Kallocain by Karin Boye

Second paragraph of third chapter :

“Soon everyone will know what State-threatening speeches I’m making,” I complained bitterly. “Go ahead and ask for a divorce, please do, even though the children are so small. It’s better for them to be fatherless than to live with an individual dangerous to the State.”

I’m pleased but also rather surprised that this made the shortlist; it’s a dystopia in the Brave New World / Nineteen Eighty-Four mould, but with some interesting wrinkles of its own.

1) The Ill‐Made Knight by T.H. White

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Uncle Dap was the only one in the family who took Lancelot seriously, and Lancelot was the one who was serious about Uncle Dap. It was easy not to be serious about the old fellow, for he was that peculiar creation which ignorant people laugh at—a genuine maestro. His branch of learning was chivalry. There was not a piece of armour proofed in Europe but what Uncle Dap had a theory about it. He was furious with the new Gothic style, with its ridges and scallop-patterns and fluting. He considered it ridiculous to wear armour like the ropework on a Nelson sideboard, for it was obvious that every groove would be liable to hold a point. The whole object of good armour, he said, was to throw the point off—and, when he thought of the people in Germany making their horrible furrows, he nearly went frantic. There was nothing in Heraldry which he did not know. If anybody committed any of the grosser errors—such as putting metal on metal or colour on colour—he became electrified with passion. His long white moustaches quivered at their tips like antennae, the ends of his fingers came together in gestures of the wildest passion, and he waved his arms and jumped up and down and wagged his eyebrows and almost fizzed. Nobody can be a maestro without being subject to these excitements, so Lancelot seldom minded when he got his face slapped in a mêlée about shields cut à bouche or about whether it was a good idea to have a guige on your shield or not. Sometimes Uncle Dap was tantalized into beating him, but he bore that also. In those days they did.

I reread this with some trepidation, possibly decades since I last read it, but I love it stillThe Once and Future King is way ahead of the other finalists on both LibraryThing and Goodreads, and I hope this translates into votes.

For the 2016 Hugos, I turn again to the File 770 straw poll in order to make an educated guess at the effect of the slate on the final ballot. The novels reportedly nominated by the most contributors to that thread were:

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie (33)
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik (20)
The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin (18)
Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente (9)
Bryony and Roses, by T. Kingfisher [Ursula Vernon] (8)
Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear (8)
The Just City, by Jo Walton (7)
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson (7)

The top three of these are finalists, and Seveneves was probably in the zone as well even without slate intervention. The Aeronaut’s Windlass, however, was nominated by only one person on the File 770 thread.

My own nominations were:

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie (finalist)
Europe at Midnight, by Dave Hutchinson
Mother of Eden, by Chris Beckett
Touch, by Claire North
The Just City, by Jo Walton

So I got one out of five here, which is around my average.

My votes are:

6) The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass, by Jim Butcher

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Bridget?” called her father’s deep voice from the entrance of the chamber. “Bridget, are you back here? It’s time.”

Military fic isn’t usually my thing; steampunk isn’t usually my thing; the first 116 pages, supplied with the Hugo packet, didn’t change my mind; and the fact that it was almost certainly slated onto the final ballot pushes it below No Award for me.

5) No Award

4) Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Down in the pantry, using a long-handled pot for a lever, I pried up the great iron cap that covered the refuse-pit and looked down. Deep below a fire gleamed; there was no escape there for me. I pushed the iron lid back into place with an effort, and then I searched all along the walls with both my palms, into every dark corner, looking for some opening, some entry. But if there was one, I didn’t find it; and then morning was spilling down the stairs behind me, an unwelcome golden light. I had to make the breakfast and carry the tray up to my doom.

This has already won the Nebula, so the fact that I wasn’t wild about it won’t do it much harm.

3) The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin

Second paragraph of third chapter:

But you still don’t know where Nassun is buried, if Jija bothered to bury her. Until you’ve said farewell to your daughter, you have to remain the mother that she loved.

Again, I think this just didn’t click with me as it obviously has for a lot of people.

2) Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson

Second paragraph of third chapter:

He could see that the president didn’t like that. Julia Bliss Flaherty, currently nearing the end of her first year on that job.

This, on the other hand, confounded my expectations; I had read a lot of very disappointed commentary, and was prepared for masses of dry infodump, but in fact I thought it was quite a good, if old-fashioned, example of the “My God! What if…” aspirations of sf. Despite the almost 900-page length I kept turning the pages. There are some serious problems: the reason why the Moon explodes at the start of the book is never explained, the celebrity cameos are just a bit annoying, the Evil Woman President is much more annoying than that, and the last section of the book, which is set literally 5000 years after the rest, should really have been a separate novel and could actually have been expanded a bit more. Nevertheless, I warmed to it enough to give it my second preference.

1) Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie

Second paragraph of third chapter:

If you grew up in such a household, or took an assignment associated with one, you didn’t need to request housing from Station Administration. Your housing assignment had been made long before you were born, long before the aptitudes sent you to your post. It helped, of course, to belong to a family that had been present when a station was first built, or annexed. Or to be related to one somehow. When I had been a ship, every one of my officers who had lived on stations had belonged to such households.

I find it difficult to articulate why I like these books so much, but I do.

The 1941 ballot has three acknowledged classics of sf and fantasy, and a great work of Swedish literature. I wonder what the critics of 2091 will make of the 2016 ballot? I certainly won’t be around to ask them.

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

Nailing the lie about unelected Brussels bureaucrats

Robin Lustig’s lucid analysis #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Frank Bruni on Orlando

An attack “on freedom itself”.
(tags: guns uspolitics sexandgenderandsexuality )

10 steps to Brexit

What could go wrong between now and next week…
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

1.5 million registered to vote last week

Will it help?
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

WikiLeaks to publish more Hillary Clinton emails – Julian Assange

Assange helping Trump.
(tags: wikileaks uspolitics )

GOP blocked bill to stop terrorists buying guns

A year ago.
(tags: uspolitics guns )

Second frame of chapter three:

At the not terribly impressive Brussels Comic Con, I thought I might try classic manga again, having bounced off the first volume of Tezuka’s Buddha when I tried it ten years ago. Mistakenly, I thought that this was the first of Tezuka’s Adolf series; in fact it’s the second, which may explain why the plot goes around in circles without really getting anywhere. At the beginning of the book, the central character, journalist Sohei Toge has returned from the 1936 Olympics with evidence that Adolf Hitler is in fact of Jewish descent. On this not terribly substantial and somewhat offensive idea is hung a run-around plot of getting beaten up and escaping certain death while attempting to retain the precious documents. I’m not sufficiently attracted to want to get any more in the series, or indeed, anything else by Tezuka.

The format of the book has been flipped left-to-right rather than the original Japanese right-to-left, and I wondered if that might apply to the pictures as well. But in fact the sign in the frame excerpted above is pretty clearly an unreversed 協合通信社, the last three characters meaning “News Agency” and the first two could be pronounced Kyogo, though I see the more usual pronunication fo the second character is “Ai” (as in “Aikido”, 合気道).

This came to the top of my list as the most popular book (on LibraryThing) by a non-white author. Next on that list is Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, which I think I will enjoy more.

Episode 16: Up To Scratch
First shown: 19 December 1970 (US), 30 April 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writer: Glyn Jones
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Timothy Bateson as Mr. Furber
Ann Lancaster as the Landlady

Plot

Billie is looking after a dog called Scratch. Brains is trying to communicate with Mars. Mr Furber arrives with his flea circus, and the gang manage to reinstate him into his previous lodgings after finding his landlady’s dog..

Soundtrack

While setting up their pet sanctuary, the gang (except Brains) sing “Old MacDonald Had A Farm”:

Glorious Moments

This is quite a charming episode, with the pets and the flea circus. As often with Glyn Jones, he took a single idea, which had already been done twice (in Episode 7: The Pop Singer and Episode 13: Barney) – the kids take mercy on a passing performer – and did something rather good with it.

There is a very cute sequence at the end where Tiger takes some performing dogs through their paces.

Less glorious moments

Transatlantic interpretation: Sticks excitedly cries, on being informed that Billie is getting two pounds a week for dog-sitting, “Why, that’s over five dollars!”

What's all this then?

The flea circus with non-existent fleas has been around for a while, but was popularised on British TV by former Goon Michael Bentine, best remembered by my generation for Michael Bentine’s Potty Time (1973-74), though the flea circus apparently was first shown on It’s A Square World (1960-64). I have a dim memory of seeing huim demonstrate it to Michael Aspel on Crackerjack! in the very early 1970s. I can’t find any clips of it online, unfortunately.

This is the fourth (and last) of the 17 episodes whose plot revolves around a dog. (The others were Episode 3: Starstruck, Episode 11: A Helping Hound, and Episode 14: Man’s Best Friend – the latter admittedly a bit of a stretch in that the dog is a hypothetical dog until the very last scene.)

Who's That?

Timothy Bateson (Mr Furber) was born in 1926, and had many supporting roles on film and TV without ever quite hitting the big time (he had the lead role in a sitcom about lighthousemen in 1970). I did not recognise him at all, but he played Binro the Heretic in the 1978 Doctor Who story The Ribos Operation, and was also the voice of Kreacher in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), his last role before his death in 2009.

Ann Lancaster (the Landlady) was born in 1920. She too played a lot of supporting roles, mostly in comedy, ending with Ruth the parlourmaid in the classic 1970 film of The Railway Children and with this episode, both of which were shown only after her death in 1970.

J.C. Penney, born in 1975 so aged 95 when the show was made, owned the stores that provided the wardrobe for the kids in the show. Several of the actors have reminisced in interviews about how much better dressed they felt they were for the show than English children were in real life at that stage. Obviously for J.C. Penney, the advertising potential was pretty important – and entirely US-based; there were no Penney’s shops this side of the Atlantic. (The Irish chain originally called Penneys, now Primark, was only in Dublin in 1970 and anyway is a completely different company.)

Where's that?

Mr Furber is kicked out of, and later restored to, 16 Essex Road in Borehamwood, which is still there though the bow windows have been renovated.

See you next week…

…for A Hit for a Miss.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Class, we are very lucky today,’ began Mr Watts. ‘Mrs Kabui has agreed to share with us the remarkable life and times of the heart seed.’

A short but very powerful book, about the power of literature to transcend the horrors of humanity. Mr Watts brings education to a remote part of Bougainville in the middle of the war there (probably the most horrible conflict in the Pacific since WW2, with 15-20,000 killed of a population of less than a quarter million). Pip from Great Expectations becomes a focal cultural reference point for Matilda and her neighbours, before war comes and destroys their world. After the dust has settled, Matilda finds out where Mr Watts actually came from; and her memories of him are not tarnished but enhanced as a result. It’s a grim read in places, but ultimately encouraging.

This came to the top of my list as the most popular of my unread non-sf/fantasy books on LibraryThing. Next on that list is Selected Stories by Alice Munro.