Second sentence of third chapter of Banewreaker:

It was a deeper green than the beeches Tanaros had known as a boy, the leaves broader, fanning to capture and hold the cloud-filtered sunlight. The trunks of the trees were gnarled in a way they weren't elsewhere, twisted around ragged boles as they grew, like spear-gutted warriors straining to stand upright.

Second sentence of third chapter of Godslayer:

All of them had been plagued by strange visions in the night.

I've generally been a huge fan of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books, and picked up Godslayer at a convention ages ago; and then on advice got Banewreaker to read first. They are really a very different kettle of fish. Written between the first and second Kushiel trilogies, these two books take the standard fantasy quest narrative and try to tell it from the point of view of the evil side not really being all that bad. It's a worthy attempt, and I kept reading, spotting different bits and pieces taken from Tolkien and other writers and slightly reinvented, but it didn't really grab me.

In particular, the names of some of the characters are so wrong that it's very distracting. One key figure is called Malthus, and I kept expecting him to start preaching on the problems of overpopulation; another is called Carfax, and unfortunately that name makes me think of traffic jams in Oxford before anything else. It's a real shame; Carey's ear for names in the Kushiel books seems to have been rather good, but here that talent deserted her.

When I got Banewreaker, it bumped Selected Stories by Alice Munro off the top spot in my list of unread books by women, so the latter now returns to the head of that list. Godslayer was at the top of my list of unread books bought in 2010, and is followed by Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

It was Anne's birthday yesterday, and I had some recent good news at work, so we celebrated by going to the Netherlands for two days with F (U went to respite care). It was a good trip.

Kinderdijk

Kinderdijk was a regular excursion for my family when we lived in the Netherlands in 1979-80. The 19 windmills remain a striking picture against the stark landscape.

F was also intrigued by the (decommissioned) Wurlitzer jukebox in the Buena Vista cafe where we had lunch, a different take on rotational technology.

Keukenhof

The farthest point of our trip from home was the flower gardens at Keukenhof, not really my thing (a birthday treat for Anne) but I had to admit that they are pretty spectacular. Photographs can't really capture the majestic sweep of 7 million flowers carefully arranged and curated, but I've tried.

The gardens are also enlivened by sculptures, such as these three women created by Berita Valk:

And this pair, "Freedom" and "Endless" by Karel van Wijngaarden:

Fans of Watership Down will be relieved to know that we also encountered the Black Rabbit of Inlé, and lived:

Leiden

Then it was on to Leiden, for a chat with and family, and Indonesian dinner in the Sumatra House (recommended; inexpensive and tasty). We walked around a bit the next morning, making comparisons with our local university town, but I seem to have taken only two photos, one of the Weighing House and one of the Town Hall framed through the trees at the top of De Burcht, the medieval fortress at the core of the city.

I had lived very close to there in 1979-80 and we detoured past my old house, but did not take pictures.

Escher in the Palace

The main collection of works by the great artist M.C. Escher is in a former royal palace in the Hague. You can see all the familiar prints (some of them apparently more recently produced than others), but also Escher's diaries, working drafts and Italian sketches which led to his later work, and some works that I was less familiar with. Here, for instance is an early tesselation, Eight Heads:

And here's a take on Relativity that I don't think I was familiar with:

And you can pose with a reflecting sphere yourself – here is the birthday girl, the rest of us visible in reflection:

The museum building itself is interesting; Queen Emma used it as her base in town after she retired from the regency which she had exercised in the 1890s, and between 1945 and 1984 her daughter, grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter used it as the royal office in the Hague. Panels in each room describe the former furnishings, which have now almost all been removed to make way for Escher prints.

We had lunch in a Belgian-themed cafe (little change there, I know) and moved on.

Delft

I had chosen Delft as our penultimate destination because, skimming through the available information, I'd formed the impression that there was a major exhibition of his work there in the Prinsenhof. In fact there is only one of his works on display, Het Straatje, The Little Street, a work of the late 1650s on loan from the Rijksmuseum. (This isn't my picture of it, it's a public domain one from Wikipedia.)

Once I'd got over my disappointment at the lack of other Vermeers, I had to admit that the organisers have done a brilliant job of historical detective work to identify exactly which buildings in Delft are shown in the picture. They make a convincing case that it was Vermeer's aunt's house at 42 Vlamingstraat, not all that far from the museum, and you are more or less encouraged to go and see for yourself, even though the current 40 and 42 Vlamingstraat are much more recent buildings and only the passage in between is claimed to be original.

The Prinsenhof was also the location of the first assassination of a head of state with a hand-gun, when the Dutch leader William the Silent was laid low in 1584. The marks left by the fatal bullets in the wall of the staircase have been preserved for posterity.

A sombre version of the Wilhelmuslied is on constant loop, and illuminated silhouettes illustrate the assassin and his victim. Some of the younger tourists were playing Dead William, and I reflected that you can play similar games in a number of other paces around the world. Though in Sarajevo you'd have to lie down in the middle of the road, so it wouldn't be safe.

Den Bosch

Finally, we stayed last night in Den Bosch, currently celebrating the 500th anniversary of the death of its most famous son, the painter Hieronymus Bosch. We had unfortunately missed the main exhibition of many of his paintings, which closed a couple of weeks ago; but we enjoyed wandering around the city (another restaurant to recommend: the Picassojazz festival as well. But at the end of the evening, the jazz stopped for a few moments for Bosch By Night, an ambitious and amazing projection of Bosch’s concepts onto the fronts of several houses on the main square, including the one he actually lived in. Apparently it had to be drastically revised at a late stage when one of the medieval buildings that was supposed to be part of the projecting surface collapsed. But it’s pretty spectacular all the same. (This isn’t my recording, it’s from the local broadcaster.)

And so we woke up this morning and came home, collecting U en route. It’s a public holiday today so we are enjoying the last of the long weekend.

My photography during the trip was made greatly more enjoyable by using Instagram, surely the most good-humoured of all social media channels, where the default behaviour of users is to be nice to each other. If you want to follow me there, I’m @nwbrux (as I am on Twitter, for the same reason – @nwhyte had gone.)

The Nebula winners were announced an hour or so ago:

Best Novel: Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Best Novella: Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor

Best Novelette: "Our Lady of the Open Road", by Sarah Pinsker

Best Short Story: "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers", Alyssa Wong

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Mad Max: Fury Road

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Updraft, by Fran Wilde

Alyssa Wong, at 24, is the first Nebula winner born in the 1990s, and the second youngest winner ever (beaten only by Ted Chiang, who got his first Nebula award a few months before she was born). All of this year's other winners for written fiction were born in the 1970s. This is the first time that no Nebula has been awarded to anyone born before me (1967).

For comparison, the first Nebula winner born in the 1980s was Rachel Swirsky (2010 Best Novella for "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window", awarded 2011 when she was 29) and the first born in the 1970s were Paolo Bacigalupi and Eugie Foster (awarded 2008 Best Novel and 2008 Best Novelette respectively in 2009; he was 36 and she was 37). As noted above, Ted Chiang was the first Nebula winner born in the 1960s. Lisa Tuttle was the first child of the 1950s to be awarded a Nebula (for 1982 Best Short Story), but she declined. Samuel Delany was only a little older than Alyssa Wong is now when he won the 1966 Nebula for Best Novel in 1967.

What about the written fiction categories in the Hugos? The only winner so far born in the 1980s was Thomas Olde Heuvelt, who won last year aged 32. Elizabeth Bear was the first Hugo winner born in the 1970s, winning in 2008 when she was 36. Greg Egan was the first Hugo winner born in the 1960s, winning in 1999 two weeks after his 38th birthday. The children of the 1950s started a bit earlier, three of them winning in 1984 (David Brin, Greg Bear and Timothy Zahn). The first Hugo winner born in the 1940s was again Samuel Delany, but he had to wait until 1970 for it.

I wrote some years ago that I believe a disproportionate number of Hugo and Nebula awards have been won by authors born in the 1942-51 period (see here, here and here). I still think that is the case, but the youngest of those authors will turn 65 this year. The new generation is taking over.

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)

Last books finished
Walking on Glass, by Iain Banks
Where Angels Fear, by Rebecca Levene and Simon Winstone
How Loud Can You Burp?, by Glenn Murphy
George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt, by Lucy Hawking
Lethbridge-Stewart: Mutually Assured Domination, by Nick Walters
George and the Big Bang, by Lucy Hawking
Godslayer, by Jacqueline Carey
A History of Anthropology, by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sievert Nielsen

Next books
The Ragged Astronauts, by Bob Shaw
Master Pip, by Lloyd Jones
Adolf, An Exile In Japan, by Osamu Tezuka

Books acquired in last week
The Karmic Curve, by Mary I. William

Any Welcome to Night Vale fans out there planning to go to the live shows this autumn in Paris (3 October), Cologne (7 October), Amsterdam (13 October) or London (22 October)? I will probably go to one of them – especially if I have company!

Back in 1989-90, I served as Deputy President (Services) of Cambridge University Student Union. CUSU had only three members of staff, plus a part-time assistant in the shop. My year was the first to have four sabbatical students union officers. At NUS meetings, I marvelled at the resources available to my peers at other institutions. My role combined numerous responsibilities that in most British student unions were assigned to several different full-time staff members (which we did not have). Frankly, I did not enjoy it much.

Things have changed. CUSU now has six sabbatical officers at CUSU, and Cambridge’s Graduate Union has a sabbatical president; between them they have more than a dozen employees. My former role was re-christened “CUSU Coordinator” in 2008. Nobody put themselves forward for it in this year’s main CUSU elections, held last term. This was not the first time – the current Coordinator was elected in a by-election in Easter Term 2014, after nobody stood in the full elections that year. She was then (narrowly) re-elected in 2015. (In my day, it was unthinkable that anyone would actually want a second year in office, but since the turn of the century it’s happened a few times.)

Quite sensibly, CUSU is reconsidering the need for an elected Coordinator role, rather than rushing to fill the vacancy an Easter Term by-election. I wish the current team well in their deliberations. I believe that the current Coordinator is the first holder of the post to have been born after my term of office ended in 1990. It’s not such a terrible thing if she turns out also to be the last.

Second paragraph of third story (“Last Rites”, by Marc Platt):

‘All remaining passengers are advised that Flight 600386W, the 1830 hours to Sehebra Space Junction, is now boarding at Gate 91. This is the final personnel flight from Epajaenda Resource Sphere. There are no more flights after this. Remaining time to planetary closure six hours and 45 minutes.’

Didn;t grab me as strongly as some of the previous volumes in this series, with some stories (like Marc Platt’s) trying too hard and others not trying at all. I did particularly like the very first story, “Best Seller” by Ian Mond and Danny Oz, which has the Eighth Doctor and Chaley pollard encountering a evil book in Australia, and a long satire on reality TV, “Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life” by Anthony Keetch which has the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa faced with a cult sf show on contemporary Earth. I note also a story set in 14th-century Ireland, “Screamager” by Jacqueline Rayner, which brings the Second Doctor and Victoria into contact with the Black Death and is nice enough from the character point of view but not hugely historically satisfactory.

Posting yesterday, I forgot of course the one Shakespeare speech we have written in his own hand, from Sir Thomas More, never performed in his lifetime. We are in London in 1517; anti-immigrant riots are about to break out; Thomas More, the sheriff of London, succeeds where his aristocratic superiors fail and quells the mob, shaming them into submission to lawful authority. He tells the crowd that by using unlawful force against the immigrants (“strangers”) they risk destroying the basis for the stability of their own society, a message that remains grimly appropriate for the present day.

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to th’ ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

Here is Sir Ian McKellen delivering it.

The 30 days:
Day #1: Your favourite play
Day #2: Your favourite character
Day #3: Your favourite hero
Day #4: Your favourite heroine
Day #5: Your favourite villain
Day #6: Your favourite villainess
Day #7: Your favourite clown
Day #8: Your favourite comedy
Day #9: Your favourite tragedy
Day #10: Your favourite history
Day #11: Your least favourite play
Day #12: Your favourite scene
Day #13: Your favourite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favourite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favourite speech
Day #18: Your favourite dialogue
Day #19: Your favourite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favourite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you’ve never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favourite couple
Day #27: Your favourite couplet
Day #28: Your favourite joke
Day #29: Your favourite sonnet
Day #30: Your favourite single line

Belgian local historians are very fortunate from the cartographical point of view: almost all of what became the entire country was mapped in 1777, by Count Joseph de Ferraris, and the results can be consulted online at the Royal Library's website. I'm contrasting below with Google Maps screenshots of the same places now.

Our village is clearly shown, though as Vieux-Heverlé rather than Oud-Heverlee, with today's street pattern almost unchanged.

You can see that there are a lot more houses now – and yet the forest seems to have encroached a bit on the agricultural land as well. The railway, sweeping from top centre to bottom left, was built in 1855, as far from 1777 as 1938 or 2094 are from today. The land across the railway from the village is now marshy with two large ponds, popular with bird-watchers. In 1777 there seem to have been no ponds, but it looks marshy.

Zooming in on our own corner of the village:

It becomes clear just how many more houses there are now than there were then. The church (large yard to left of the top centre) and the parochial hall (just south of it, on the corner) are still there now; so is the house in the middle of the top side of the central triangle (though its line runs north-south in real life rather than east-west as in Ferraris' map). There are no more than a dozen buildings in 1777, perhaps three or four times as many now.

The growth of construction is much more drastic in what is now the European quarter of Brussels, where I work.

Within the city walls, not all that much has changed; but the rolling countryside separating the city from Etterbeek has been completely covered with the 19th-century blocks and 20th and 21st-century offices of the European quarter. A couple of green patches remain, the Parc Léopold, Squares Marie-Louise and Ambiorix, and the western end of the Parc Cinquantenaire, but otherwise it’s gone awfully grey. The old village core of Etterbeek has been reincarnated as Place Jourdan, where you can buy what are reputedly the best frites in Belgium (as Angela Merkel recently discovered). Google barely shows the Chausée d'Etterbeek, which is the main road visible in 1777; in real life, it has a slightly furtive feel as it dips under the Rue de la Loi and snakes past the back of the Justus Lipsius building. Some of the other old roadways remain for a wandering lunchtime sandwich-hunter to explore. But most of the ancient paths have been buried by the expansion of the city, and the more visible breach in the blocks is the railway line of 1854 (a year before it came to our village).

British readers can play this game too thanks to the National Library of Scotland digitising historical Ordnance Survey maps of England, Scotland and Wales, and the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland doing the same for its archive. Others may want to check here.

Looking back on my posts so far, I realised that of the plays I know well I have yet to post about Julius Caesar. Fortunately this question is a jolly good excuse to turn to that play: Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Caesar, turning an initially unsympathetic crowd against the conspirators, is a masterpiece of oratory.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Here’s Damien Lewis performing it:

I’ll give an honorable mention to John of Gaunt’s speech in Rochard II, especially as performed by Patrick Stewart:

The 30 days:
Day #1: Your favourite play
Day #2: Your favourite character
Day #3: Your favourite hero
Day #4: Your favourite heroine
Day #5: Your favourite villain
Day #6: Your favourite villainess
Day #7: Your favourite clown
Day #8: Your favourite comedy
Day #9: Your favourite tragedy
Day #10: Your favourite history
Day #11: Your least favourite play
Day #12: Your favourite scene
Day #13: Your favourite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favourite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favourite speech
Day #18: Your favourite dialogue
Day #19: Your favourite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favourite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you’ve never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favourite couple
Day #27: Your favourite couplet
Day #28: Your favourite joke
Day #29: Your favourite sonnet
Day #30: Your favourite single line

Identifying the second paragraph of the third section (there are no chapters) was not completely straightforward. The various sections are set off with blank lines between them; the third section thus set off has only one paragraph! But the second section is split at one point by a horizontal line, at the top of a page, so I’m taking that as a sign that it’s meant to be a section break. The second paragraph following the horizontal line, you’ll be fascinated to know, is:

There was an ache in the child’s throat because she wanted to say, I guess i left my rag baby back there at the house. I guess I did. She knew exactly where, under the table in the farthest corner, propped against the table leg like ti was sitting there. She could just run in the door and snatch it and run off again. No one would have to see her. But then maybe Doll wouldn’t be here when she came back, and she didn’t know where tat house was anyway. She thought of the woods. It was just an old rag baby, dirty from her hand, because mostly she kept it with her. But they put her out on the stoop before she could get it and the cats wouldn’t even let her touch them and then Doll came and she didn’t know they would be leaving, she didn’t understand that at all. So she just left it where it was. She never meant to.

This is the latest in the sequence of novels which started with Gilead and continued with Home – not a sequel as such, because all three books cover the same time period, but seen from another perspective. This time it is the turn of Lila, the much younger wife of the clergyman John Ames who was the central character in Gilead. It’s an extended character study of someone finding stability and not quite daring to trust it, with some extended flashbacks explaining who she is and where she has come from, in the leisurely detailed implicit way that we had in the previous books, but this time finding an authentic voice for Lila in words that feel like hers – much more authentic than, say, The Red Badge of Courage. A very good book; interesting that Robinson waited until the third in the series to give a female character the central spot.

 Second frame of third page:

Wiske: “Lambik! Sh! I heard something!”
Lambik: “Probably the guard. You know very well that I don’t believe in ghosts.”

First published in 1948-1950, this was the 150th album in the long-running Suske en Wiske series, which is still going strong. It is justifiably regarded as one of the classics, the first of the Blue Albums printed in Kuifje, the Dutch language version of Hergé’s Tintin magazine. Suske, Wiske and their friend Lambik investigate ghostly goings-on in the museum where Brueghel’s Peasant Wedding is on display, and are approached by the shade of a Spanish nobleman who is doomed to wander the earth because he failed to deliver a royal command to prevent the Duke of Alba from bombarding the (fictional) town of Kriekenbeek during the Dutch Revolt. Suske, Wiske and Lambik are transported by the ghost’s magic back to 1565 where they have numerous adventures with Brueghel, the Duke of Alba, and other historical and fictional personalities, including a thrilling chase round the battlements of Brussels town hall.

It’s a little anachronistic, as the Duke of Alba did not come to the Low Countries until 1567. Also one has to wonder why the ghost himself, who has a comedy gold Spanish accent (unlike the other Spanish characters, whose speech is reported in normal Dutch) did not take care of delivering the letter in spectral form having failed to do so when alive. There’s an odd sequence where we lose the three main characters and follow the mayor of Kriekenbeek for a number of pages. But basically it’s a decent example of the Flemish storyteller, picking up on the themes of Prince Valiant but making them his own.

It came to the top of my pile as the most popular non-English language comic on my unread list in LibraryThing. Next up on that list is De maagd en de neger, by Judith Vanistendael.

The perils of live broadcasting. Mark Devenport and I had agreed that once more than half of the Assembly results were in, we would take off our jackets in the hot studio. But just as Mark Carruthers began to ask what we would take off when three-quarters of the results came in, we were interrupted…

'Results blackout' as power fault interrupts @MarkCarruthers7 and @markdevenport in the middle of live coveragehttps://t.co/hbPXdcdJtj

— BBC News NI (@BBCNewsNI) May 6, 2016

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Walking on Glass, by Iain Banks
How Loud Can You Burp?, by Glenn Murphy

Last books finished
Lila, by Marilynne Robinson
Short Trips: Monsters, ed. Ian Farrington
The Quarry, by Iain Banks
Banewreaker, by Jacqueline Carey
Heritage, by Dale Smith

Next books
Godslayer, by Jacqueline Carey
George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt, by Lucy Hawking
Where Angels Fear, by Rebecca Levene and Simon Winstone

Books acquired in last week
Bételgeuse v 4: Les Cavernes, by Leo

Pausing between flights in Heathrow on my way home, I have time to type up the overall results. Apologies for the slight messiness below, but I think the details are clear.

Democratic Unionist Party 38 seats (no change) 202,567 first prefs 29.2% (-0.8%)
Sinn Féin 28 seats (−1) 166,785 first prefs 24.0% (−2.9%)
Ulster Unionist Party 16 seats (-) 87,302 first prefs 12.6% (−0.7%)
SDLP 12 seats (−2) 83,364 first prefs 12.0% (−2.2%)
Alliance Party 8 seats (-) 48,447 first prefs 7.0% (−0.7%)
Green 2 seats (+1) 18,718 first prefs 2.7% (+1.8%)
People before Profit Alliance 2 seats (+2) 13,761 first prefs 2.0% (+1.2%)
Traditional Unionist Voice 1 seat (-) 23,776 first prefs 3.4% (+0.9%)
Independent 1 seat (-) 22,650 first prefs 3.3% (+0.9%)
UKIP 0 seats 10,109 first prefs 1.5% (+0.8%)
Progressive Unionist Party 0 seats 5,955 first prefs 0.9% (+0.6%)
Conservative 0 seats 2,554 first prefs 0.4% (+0.4%)
NI Labour Representation Committee 0 seats 1,577 first prefs 0.2% (+0.2%)
Others 0 seats 6,745 first prefs 1.0% (+0.8%)

Here's a statement that I did not believe I would be typing before the votes were cast, or indeed this time yesterday when the first preference votes had become clear: the number of seats held by the Unionist parties did not change at all. The DUP took a UUP seat in South Belfast; the UUP took a DUP seat in neighbouring Lagan Valley. Otherwise, that was it, apart from some shifting of personnel. I think it's fair to say that this was unexpected. On the basis of the Westminster and local elections, I (and many others) had expected the DUP vote to be vulnerable to the fringe Unionists – TUV, PUP, UKIP – and to the UUP. Basically, it didn't happen; Jim Allister kept his seat and that was it. Turnout was up in Unionist constituencies, but not necessarily for Unionist parties.

On the Nationalist side, the thesis of the demographic determinists ("we'll outbreed yez!") must now be in disarray. The Nationalist vote decreased for the fourth electorasl cycle in a row; the combined SF and SDLP vote fell by over 5%. Both SF and the SDLP lost seats to the People Before Profit Alliance in Foyle and West Belfast; the SDLP also lost a seat to the Greens in South Belfast; the SDLP regained the seat they should not have lost last time from SF in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, but lost to them in Upper Bann. The new Assembly will have only 40 members from Nationalist parties, the fewest since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

In between, Alliance had something of a damp squib, holding their own (with tight squeezes for eg the party leader in South Antrim); but the Greens surged to take a South Belfast seat and hold North Down. The PBPA success demonstrated that voters in Nationalist areas are not always concerned about voting for Nationalist candidates – or indeed about voting; turnout was down in all Nationalist-majority seats. And it was nice to see Claire Sugden, thrust into public life at a relatively young age, making a successful defence in East Londonderry with no party infrastructure behind her.

And overall, the lack of change among the headline figures masks a shift towards the younger generation and to a more diverse Assembly. If I have counted correctly, 31 30 women were elected in Thursday's election, compared to 20 in 2011 and 23 in the outgoing Assembly after co-options. In the first election to the Northern Ireland House of Commons, in 1921, two women, Dehra Chichester and Julia McMordie, were elected to its 52 seats, both Ulster Unionists. There was only one woman member of the Stormont House of Commons when it was prorogued in 1972 (Anne Dickson, later leader of the UPNI). Times have changed.

In terms of the make-up of the next Executive, Alan Meban has crunched the D’Hondt numbers, coming to the same conclusion as my back-of-the-envelope calculations in the studio yesterday. (Let me also recommend my local garage and roofer/plumber.)

Closest results:
West Tyrone: Declan McAleer (SF) beat Grace McDermott (also SF) by 20.92
West Belfast: Alex Attwood (SDLP) beat Frank McCoubrey (DUP) by 88.99
East Antrim: Oliver McMullan (SF) beat Noel Jordan (UKIP) by 104.7
Mid Ulster: Keith Buchanan (DUP) beat Ian McCrea (also DUP) by 160.62
Lagan Valley: Brenda Hale (DUP) beat Jonathan Craig (also DUP) by 168
Upper Bann: John O'Dowd (SF) beat Dolores Kelly (SDLP) by 168
South Antrim: Trevor Clarke (DUP) beat Paul Michael (UUP) by 211

On my way to Belfast City airport after hours of non-stop commentary, I bumped into a UUP friend, who expressed their regret that UKIP had gained a seat in East Antrim. “Actually, that didn’t happen,” I told them. “Your voters didn’t transfer to UKIP in sufficient numbers, and Sinn Fein kept their seat.” Their face lit up with glee. Every vote counts, and not always the way you would expect.

The first preference votes are now in, and over half the 108 seats have now been allocated. There has been no dramatic shift of support from the parties, and at least 11 of the 18 constituencies will return the same mix of MLAs as they did in 2011. But two themes are emerging for me.

First, the vote for all of the established parties is down. Down only slightly, 0.7%-0.8% for the DUP, UUP and Alliance, who will each return with (probably) the same number of seats as in 2011 but will have to struggle in some cases. Down 2.2% for the SDLP from an already low base, down 2.9% for Sinn Fein – the SDLP struggling mightily to minimise losses; the worst ever election in vote share for the SDLP and UUP. The beneficiaries are the smaller parties – the new Assembly will have two Greens rather than one, two new MLAs from the People Before Profits Alliance, and 19 29-year-old independent MLA Claire Sugden has held her seat, as has Jim Allister of the TUV.

Second, yet again the overall vote for Nationalist parties is down, even if you count in the votes for various independents in Nationalist areas; and the smaller Unionist parties failed to make a breakthrough – the PUP nowhere, Jim Allister unable to bring in a party colleague, UKIP wth a small chance of displacing SF in East Antrim and that's it. (The Northern Ireland Conservatives had another ultra-lousy election.) It's early days yet, but I think we are seeing the continuing fraying of the old ways.

In detail: the constituencies where there has been a change of line-up, or where one is still possible, are as follows.

East Antrim: Both Sinn Fein and the DUP are in trouble here, with the UUP and, uniquely, UKIP in the running for the last two seats. My guess is that the DUP's Alistair Ross will make it, but that SF will lose their seat to the UUP or UKIP. The latter are currently ahead, but I think they may prove less transfer-friendly.
East Londonderry: The SDLP seat here was under threat from SF. But I think Alliance transfers have now saved the SDLP so no change is now the more likley outcome.
Foyle: Veteran activist Eamonn McCann took one of the SDLP's three seats.
Lagan Valley: On first preferences I thought the DUP might repeat 2011's remarkable feat of winning four seats – despite having only three quotas, their balancing was good. But the UUP in the end managed not only to regain Basil McCrea's old seat but to add another.
South Belfast: For my money, the most dramatic result of the election, with likely two seat changing hands – the SDLP will lose one of their two to the Greens, and the DUP wll squeeze out the UUP.
Upper Bann: On first preferences, SF look well-placed to gain the SDLP seat, but I think Alliance transfers (as in East Londonderry) will save Dolores Kelly. Some observers are trying to convince me that there are not enough Unionist votes for four seats, and the SF could therefore gain from the UUP. I don't see it myself.
West Belfast: The other PBPA success, Gerry Carroll getting elected on the first count with a massive surplus, taking one of the five SF seats. It looked for a long time as if Alex Attwood was also in danger to the DUP, but in the end SF transfers salvaged the SDLP seat.

Two seats where no change happened: Strangford, where the SDLP yet again failed to make the breakthrough; and South Antrim where the UUP's success at Westminster failed to translate to the Assembly. Some optimists are trying to persuade me that Unionist transfers in Fermanagh and South Tyrone could sneak the SDLP in ahead of the third SF candidate, reversing the tightest result of the 2011 election. I'm not convinced.

My final seat tally:
DUP 38 (no change)
SF 27-28 (down 1-2)
UUP 16-17 (up 0-1)
SDLP 10-13 (down 1-4)
Alliance 8 (no change)
PBPA 2 (up 2)
Greens 2 (up 1)
TUV 1
Claire Sugden 1
UKIP 0-1 (up 0-1)

This gives the DUP 3 ministries, SF 2, the UUP 1 and the SDLP 1 of the seven allocated by d’Hondt – if they choose to take them – along with a DUP First Minister, Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister, and Justice Minister to be appointed by cross-community vote (likely from the Alliance Party).

Those with access to the BBC can watch my final stint this morning from 1030 till lunchtime at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bkyd3 – then I’m flying home!

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Smoke and chemical fumes belched from the shattered glass windows. Occasionally another pane gave up the ghost; a brief burst of light colored the sky, and fractured crystal rained into the streets below.

Sequel to Streetlethal, which I read earlier this year. I liked it better – a bit more variety of scene and tone, while still restricted to a dystopian future California and points north; we explore genetic mutation and single-sex societies. It still didn’t grab me particularly hard, and I don’t think I shall seek out the third of the trilogy.

This reached the top of my pile as the most popular book on my shelves by a non-white author that I hadn’t read yet. Next on that list is Adolf, An Exile In Japan, by Osamu Tezuka.

The votes in yesterday's election for the Northern Ireland Assembly are being counted today and tomorrow. (Elections here use the Single Transferable Vote, because unlike in England, they have to be fair.) I've already done one stint in radio studios for Good Morning Ulster, with presenters Conor Bradford and Julie McCullough, and Father Alan McGuckian gathering inner strength for his Thought For The Day:

If you want to, you can hear me at 0750 here, and then saying much the same to BBC Radio Foyle at 0820 here. (I believe that radio can be listened to anywhere in the world.)

And then I'll be on TV from 3pm UK time until 1130, and again tomorrow morning (for UK viewers only, I'm afraid):

I reported in an earlier entry that it was Hamlet, but on reflection that was wrong; it was a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1979 when I was 12. My friend Padraig played the little Indian boy, in blackface. Those were different times.

The 30 days:
Day #1: Your favourite play
Day #2: Your favourite character
Day #3: Your favourite hero
Day #4: Your favourite heroine
Day #5: Your favourite villain
Day #6: Your favourite villainess
Day #7: Your favourite clown
Day #8: Your favourite comedy
Day #9: Your favourite tragedy
Day #10: Your favourite history
Day #11: Your least favourite play
Day #12: Your favourite scene
Day #13: Your favourite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favourite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favourite speech
Day #18: Your favourite dialogue
Day #19: Your favourite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favourite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favourite couple
Day #27: Your favourite couplet
Day #28: Your favourite joke
Day #29: Your favourite sonnet
Day #30: Your favourite single line

Why Republican voters decided on Trump

And how @fivethirtyeight got it wrong.
(tags: uspolitics )

The elevators of New York

Fascinating.
(tags: usa newyork )

TTIP under pressure

Serious analysis from @VoteWatchEurope.
(tags: eu ttip )

Romeo and Juliet, taught in my English class in Belfast, the year I turned 12. Oddly enough I am back in Belfast this evening. We performed Act 3 scene 1, and I won a prize for acting Mercutio.

The 30 days:
Day #1: Your favourite play
Day #2: Your favourite character
Day #3: Your favourite hero
Day #4: Your favourite heroine
Day #5: Your favourite villain
Day #6: Your favourite villainess
Day #7: Your favourite clown
Day #8: Your favourite comedy
Day #9: Your favourite tragedy
Day #10: Your favourite history
Day #11: Your least favourite play
Day #12: Your favourite scene
Day #13: Your favourite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favourite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favourite speech
Day #18: Your favourite dialogue
Day #19: Your favourite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favourite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favourite couple
Day #27: Your favourite couplet
Day #28: Your favourite joke
Day #29: Your favourite sonnet
Day #30: Your favourite single line

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Dobyns belonged to a research team led by his doctoral advisor, Allan R. Holmberg of Cornell, the Holmberg after whom I have unkindly named Holmberg’s mistake. Holmberg had persuaded Cornell to let him lease an old colonial estate in rural Peru (the Carnegie Corporation, a charitable foundation despite its name, provided the funds). The estate included an entire village, whose inhabitants, most of them Indian, were its sharecroppers. @It was really a form of serfdom,” Dobyns told me in a long conversation shortly before his death in 2009. “The villagers were just heartbreakingly poor.” Holmberg planned to test strategies for raising their incomes. Because land tenure was a contentious issue in Peru, he had asked Dobyns to finalize the lease and learn more about the estate’s history. With his adjutants, Dobyns visited a dozen archives, including those in the cathedral.

I got interested in this book from an extract that I reported in November, What really happened on Thanksgiving, which told the story of the Pilgrim Fathers from the Indians’ point of view: these incompetent Europeans arrived in a fertile area recently depopulated by plague, and eventually were co-opted by the locals into existing power struggles. It’s a really solid book, based on extensive research and reporting scholarly disputes and the evolution of interpretations of the evidence, combined with anecdata of Mann’s own encounters with both researchers and the descendants of the researched. (Incidentally, he reports that the latter generally identify with and use the term “Indians” to refer to themselves, so he follows their lead.)

I took three main points away from the book. First, that the series of plagues inflicted on the peoples of the Americas by Europeans was one of the most catastrophic events in human history. The lowest estimate of population decrease due to disease in what is now Latin America (home to two large and well-developed polities) in the 16th century is a whopping 90%. Disease spread much faster than Europeans, who often arrived (like the Pilgrims) into territory where the indigenous human activity had simply died off. It’s difficult to grasp the scale of the catastrophe.

Second, immense amounts of important human culture have therefore simply been lost. I was aware of the fact that only four Mayan manuscripts survive. I wasn’t aware that there are also eight from the Ñudzahui (Mixtec) culture, including the brilliant story of 8-Deer Jaguar Claw, which is surely ready for dramatization. I had certainly never heard of the Cahokia Mounds, in southern Illinois just across the Mississippi from St Louis, Missouri, which sound utterly fantastic. So little is known; so much has been destroyed.

Third, Mann makes the daring suggestion that American concepts of liberty and freedom actually owe much more to the influence of the Haudenosaunee confederacy (aka the Iroquois) than is generally relised. He quotes John Adams reminiscing about his relationship with local Indian chiefs in mid-18th-century Massachusetts, and points out that the ideals of personal freedom from oppression were practiced much more by Indians than by Europeans. He goes a step further, and wonders if it’s coincidence that slavery was generally practiced by Indians south of what became the Mason-Dixon line, but not by those to its north. I’m not sure about the latter point, but the rest of it is a very attractive concept.

Anyway, a book that thoroughly illuminated my own ignorance.

This book came simultaneously to the top of three of my reading lists: books acquired in 2015, unread non-fiction, and non-fiction recommended by you guys. The next book in both the first and second of those categories is The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss; the next in the third was Thing Explainer, by Randall Munro, which I have since read and will report on shortly.

I've just been to the town hall to pick up my Belgian passport. This gives me a grand total of three. Article 1(vi) of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement recognises my right to both British and Irish citizenship; I also acquired Belgian citizenship back in 2008, but had not bothered getting a passport until today. (Neither the British nor Irish object to you acquiring Belgian citizenship; nor does Belgium require you to give up your previous citizenship before becoming Belgian).

So here are my three passports, showing signs of age (on two of the passports themselves, and in the photograph on the third).

I must say I'm fundamentally a bit libertarian about nationalities. It seems to me that if I want citizenship of a country, and they are prepared to grant it to me, it's not really anyone's business whether I am also a citizen of anywhere else. I'm glad that the UK, Ireland and Belgium are relaxed about this. And if the UK ever does leave the EU, I have not one but two backups.

America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny

Gloomy reflections from @sullydish, drawing on Plato. #fb
(tags: uspolitics )

Negotiating TTIP

Characteristically vigorous pushback by @MalmstromEU re #TTIPleaks.
(tags: ttip eu )

Can you hear the hum?

No, more like a high-pitched but very soft buzz.
(tags: The Hum )

2015 Locus Ward Finalists

I’ve read 3/5 on the sf list, 4/5 on the fantasy list.
(tags: sf )

Post-Brexit negotiations “could last 9 years” – House of Lords

It took 5 yrs for both Greenland and St-Barthélemy.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Another list (this time from here), another poll.

If you don’t have a Livejurnal account, I believe that you can sign in with Twitter, Facebook or Google accounts to tick the boxes.

It's a close run between this and the play I'm going to talk about tomorrow, but I think the end of Macbeth has it. It combines a strong dramatic closure to the violence of Macbeth's story with the punchline about Macduff. It's also the root of the Ngaio Marsh novel, Light Thickens, which I mentioned earlier.

Macbeth: Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back; my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Macduff: I have no words:
My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out!
[They fight]
Macbeth: Thou losest labour:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
To one of woman born.
Macduff: Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.
Macbeth: Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.
Macduff: Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
'Here may you see the tyrant.'
Macbeth: I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
[Exeunt, fighting. Alarums]

Here's Patrick Stewart, being brutally killed by Michael Feast in a Stalinist version of eleventh-century Scotland. It’s pretty graphic.

The 30 days:
Day #1: Your favourite play
Day #2: Your favourite character
Day #3: Your favourite hero
Day #4: Your favourite heroine
Day #5: Your favourite villain
Day #6: Your favourite villainess
Day #7: Your favourite clown
Day #8: Your favourite comedy
Day #9: Your favourite tragedy
Day #10: Your favourite history
Day #11: Your least favourite play
Day #12: Your favourite scene
Day #13: Your favourite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favourite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favourite speech
Day #18: Your favourite dialogue
Day #19: Your favourite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favourite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favourite couple
Day #27: Your favourite couplet
Day #28: Your favourite joke
Day #29: Your favourite sonnet
Day #30: Your favourite single line

Second to fourth paragraphs of third chapter:

John [Nathan-Turner], never backward in coming forward, took advantage of tis to lobby [Bill] Slater about his aspirations to produce. “One day, during an annual interview,” he recalled in his memoirs, “I restated my ambition yet again. ‘Well, if you’re serious, you’d better learn the PUM’s job [Production Unit Manager] by doing it, then the script editor’s job, then we’ll talk again.’
‘When do I start?’
‘Tomorrow, as far as I’m concerned.’

There is no more controversial figure in the history of Doctor Who than John Nathan-Turner, the show’s producer for the last 11 years years of its first run. And, apart from the man himself, there can surely be few better qualified to write about it than Richard Marson, who cut his teeth as a teenage correspondent for Doctor Who Magazine and then went into television production himself. On the strength of this I went out and bought Marson’s biography of Verity Lambert.

It’s a very good biography, portraying its central character warts and all, through his own interviews, interviews with others at the time, interviews with his co-workers and friends and lovers specially for the biography (Peter Davison comes across as a particularly thoughtful commentator on Nathan-Turner, Doctor Who and what was really going on), and the copious documentary evidence that is available from various sources. It’s difficult to imagine anyone doing a better job (or indeed wanting to).

As in his own memoirs, JN-T comes across as a gifted but flawed character. He was addicted to spectacle and activity rather than plot, characterisation or reflection; without really trusting them sufficiently he relied too much on his script editors, the longest-serving of whom, Eric Saward, savagely and viciously turned on him. He was usually drunk by the afternoon and often bad-tempered (perhaps not unconnected). Some blame must attach to the BBC hierarchy, who could find nobody else to take on Doctor Who, and could find no other use for him, leaving both to slowly spiral into decline.

In a couple of memorable passages, Marson catalogues the sexual interactions between JN-T, his partner Gary Downie, and male fans in their late teens and early 20s. It’s clear that neither was a predator on the scale of Jimmy Savile, and also that Downie was a much more unpleasant character than JN-T. But, while one can have sympathy for the fact that the homosexual age of consent was still 21 until 1994, one can’t have much sympathy for JN-T’s exploitation of the relationship he had with enthusiastic young men, and even less so with Downie whose behaviour sounds like it crossed the line of what would be legal today (this is my view; Marson doesn’t seem to think so).

Marson’s forensic analysis of what actually happened during the Great Cancellation Crisis of 1986 is surely going to be the classic account; he recounts what happened in the last week of February 1985 almost hour by hour, JN-T stuck at a convention in America as the story raced out of control behind him. He also has a decently brief but clear account of the circumstances of Patrick Troughton’s demise. And the story of JN-T’s decline into ill health and early death (at 54, on 1 May 2002) is a very sad one of talent misdirected and eventually wasted.

Most of this book will only be really interesting to Who fans, because Doctor Who took up most of JN-T’s career (he was hired by the BBC in 1968, and worked on Doctor Who almost continuously from 1977 until he was fired in 1990). But I think there are some wider lessons as well, about the shift of BBC internal culture leaving some people behind who were not ready for change, about the interactions between show-runners and fans, and about the ways in which creativity can be a curse to individual creators.

DUP likely to drop seats but stay top

My piece for the News Letter.
(tags: northernireland my media )

The forgotten occupation

The broken promise of an independence referendum for Western Sahara.
(tags: westernsahara )

Regarding My 2016 Hugo Award Nomination

Tom Mays withdraws his story from 2016 Hugos.
(tags: sf )

Rabid Puppy Finalists’ Reactions, Compiled

What the slated finalists said.
(tags: sf )

Northern Ireland Assembly election 2016

All you need to know, in Kindle format.
(tags: northernireland )

John Boehner just confirmed everything liberals suspected about the Republican Party

*gulp*
(tags: uspolitics )

Seanad Elections 2016 – A Final Overview

Adrian Kavanagh’s overview.
(tags: ireland elections Seanad )

Diary of a somebody: could I solve the mystery of 148 lost notebooks?

Wow.
(tags: writing cambridge )

io9 Was Founded on the Idea That Science Fiction Belongs to Everyone

Charlie Jane Anders speaks out.
(tags: sf )

More Details Revealed About Iceland’s “Woman in Blue”

Apparently some bits of her are now blue.
(tags: archaeology )

Half of Western European men descended from one Bronze Age ‘king’

It’s a small world, after all.
(tags: archaeology genealogy )

Large Hadron Collider: Weasel causes shutdown

Great headline!
(tags: physics )

Analysis of Slate Voting for the 2016 Hugos

It took just over 200 Puppies to hijack the process.
(tags: sf )

‘Normal America’ Is Not A Small Town Of White People

It’s more like New Haven-Milford, Connecticut.
(tags: usa )

Hugo Awards: 3-Stage Voting

Kevin has a proposal.
(tags: sf )

Who Will Speak for Northern Ireland? The Looming Danger of an Ulster Brexit

Indeed.
(tags: northernireland ukpolitics eu )

Hello, operator, Kosovo wants its own calling code

If normalisation means anything, it means this.
(tags: kosovo serbia )

The UK Referendum on EU Membership: How Much Will Turnout Matter?

Who knows? Who can tell?
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The Transit of Mercury

Next Monday, May 9th, in the morning European time.
(tags: astronomy )

Alyson Bailes, 1949-2016

Sad though not unexpected news. Not only a great diplomat, but also a science fiction fan.
(tags: deaths )

The Harmonic Series grows to infinity, unless you throw out numbers with a 9 in the denominator.

WHAT?
(tags: mathematics )

Indiana is weird

In case you were wondering.
(tags: uspolitics )