• Gendered merchandising: A rant
  
  @liwella calls out the @sciencemuseum’s lack of women’s T-shirts.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• This is what makes Republicans and Democrats so different
  
  Repubs believe in (wrong!) ideas, Dems in people.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Why are Pluto and Charon so different?
  
  Pluto stole Charon’s atmosphere!
  (tags: astronomy )
• Private messages at work can be read by European employers
  
  @LilianEdwards is quoted.
  (tags: internet work )
• When Video-Game Worlds End
  
  Experiencing online apocalypse.
  (tags: internet games )

Another comic which is the 2015 volume of a series which was nominated for last year’s Hugos, this one about Jon and Suzy who have discovered that time stands still for them when they orgasm. Actually I really enjoyed this (though I cringed at the title); in the world of the story, there are sinister police, rival activists and personal ghosts to deal with. My biggest complaint is that it ends on a cliff-hanger, and so isn’t a complete story. But I am keeping it on my list of potential Best Graphic Story nominations.

A collection of short stories by the great Finnish writer, a surprising number of which are about psychological manipulation and trauma – something I picked up also in her novel, The True Deceiver

I voted for the first volume of this series for last year's Hugos, along with 1728 others, so I had reasonably high hopes for this which weren't quite realised. In particular, once we've got past the rather different background of Kamala Khan as superhero, we're down to fairly standard sorts of adventure in the sewers and streetscapes of New Jersey, and a crossover adventure with Wolverine (well-known, but not to me). I also found the shift between two different artists mid-story very jarring. I still liked it well enough, and it will probably get one of my Hugo nominations, but I'm still much more likely to vote for either The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage or The Sculptor.

Any friends in or near Bristol able to go to a Here Come The Double Deckers event on Sunday morning, 24 January, with Gill Bush-Bailey (Billie) and Debbie Russ (Tiger)?

I would be very interested to hear reports!

Prime Ministers
1921 Sir James Craig (later Lord Craigavon), age 50
1940 J.M. Andrews, age 69
1943 Sir Basil Brooke (later Lord Brookeborough), age 54
1963 Terence O’Neill, age 48
1969 James Chichester-Clark, age 46
1971 Brian Faulkner, age 50

First Ministers
1998 David Trimble, age 53
2007 Ian Paisley, age 81
2008 Peter Robinson, age 59
2016 Arlene Foster, age 45

Only one of the 19 Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland was appointed at a younger age than Arlene Foster is today – the incumbent, Teresa Villiers, who was 44 when she was appointed in 2012. Peter Mandelson was her youngest predecessor, appointed ten days before his 46th birthday in 1999.

• Why David Cameron’s four-year benefits plan won’t reduce EU migration
  
  …if he gets it, that is.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics migration )
• @Forbes forces readers to turn off ad blockers, promptly serves malware
  
  Crazy.
  (tags: internet )
• Missouri bill defines sex between lobbyists and lawmakers as a gift
  
  There is such a thing as too much transparency.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• The EU did not cause the floods in Britain
  
  In case you were wondering.
  (tags: ukpolitics eu )

Reading Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien, eds. Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan, I came across this fascinating snippet in John D. Rateliffe’s essay, “The Missing Women: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lifelong Support for Women’s Higher Education”:

The exact quote is that Renault’s card was “perhaps the piece of ‘Fan-mail’ that gives me most pleasure”. Considering how much fan mail he must have had, that is a very strong statement indeed.

I first read both of these two years ago, before publication, and am duly acknowledged in the afterwords; I have read them both again, now that they are eligible for this year’s Hugos (and The Just City is also on the BSFA long list). I had been wondering whether the two might together be a single nomination, as with the Connie Willis Blackout / All Clear duo which won both Hugo and Nebula. But on reflection, I don’t think they are; The Philosopher Kings is set twenty years after The Just City, with a slightly different set of characters and a completely different set of problems. So I shall treat the two books separately for award voting purposes.

The Just City is about time-travellers attempting to set up a society modelled along the lines of Plato’s Republic by taking children whose destiny otherwise would have been slavery to a purpos-built city on Thera before the explosion. This is a world where the Greek gods (and others) exist, and one of the viewpoint characters is a secretly incarnate Apollo. The basic concept is of course brilliant, and I think this is the most detailed version I’ve seen of it. The grand plan is disturbed by many things, including the gadfly questions of Socrates, and the rise of the city’s robots, from off their knees, disturbing the narrative in a manner very slightly reminiscent of the Mule’s disruption of Seldon’s Plan. The intellectual problem and the emotional arcs of the main characters – particularly the very tricky case of Apollo – are very nicely done, and the denouement is satisfying while also creating space for the sequel.

I enjoyed The Philosopher Kings as well, but not quite as much. There’s a great riff on the adaptation of Christianity to a Platonic society, mirroring the adaptation of Plato to Christianity in our timeline; the ending is also a good conclusion for both books. But we lose a favourite character at the beginning of the book, and another engages in a pretty horrific act in the middle of the story (though in fairness it is well-rooted in mythology); also the whole plot is based on the notion that the traumatic events of the end of the first book would have resulted in a complete loss of contact between some key characters for two decades, which given the geography seemed improbable to me.

So I think The Just City is likely to make my Hugo list, but The Philosopher Kings is not; however I still recommend them both.

Thanks to the new two-round system of nominations for the British Science Fiction Association's awards, we have a long list of 30 pieces of art from which we can nominate up to four to create the eventual shortlist of five. There were a couple that didn't really seem to me to belong – there isn't a BSFA award for graphic stories, and not much point in pretending that there is – but the others all seemed legitimate and attractive to me. With some difficulty, and my usual doubt in my own taste, I've drilled down to my personal shortlist of four, in rough order of preference (top to bottom):

Vlada Monakhova, illustration for "Utrechtenaar" in Strange Horizons

Vincent Sammy, illustration for "Songbird" in Interzone

Jeffrey Alan Love, cover for Fabulous Beasts

Jim Burns, cover of Pelquin's Comet

As usual, I found it very difficult to choose between very different styles of art, and I expect that others will find the same.

Thanks to the BSFA’s new two-round nomination system, we have a long list of 41 stories in the Best Short Fiction category, from we we can choose four to be aggregated into the eventual shortlist of five. This is actually quite tough, because four of the stories of the 41 are there because I nominated them, and so I am reading the others in competition with the vote I cast in the first round. Of course, these are all also eligible for the Hugos, so I also read with a view to augmenting my Hugo nominations for this year.

I was able to get almost all of the stories – not quite dedicated enough to buy back issues of Interzone or anthologies with only one entry of interest, but the rest I was able to access reasonably easily. In contrast to some of the other categories, I didn’t detect much gratuitous log-rolling (compare the Best Novel contenders with zero following on Goodreads or LibraryThing). And my conclusion is that for the BSFA second round, I’m nominating:

• “Utrechtenaar” (Strange Horizons), by Paul Evanby
• “The New Mother” (Asimov’s Apr/May 2015), by Eugene Fischer
• Wylding Hall (PS Publishing), by Elizabeth Hand and
• “Wooden Feathers” (Uncanny Magazine), by T Kingfisher / Ursula Vernon.

Wylding Hall is actually 43,000 words in length, but the BSFA has ruled it into the short fiction category. If that ruling should change, my backup nomination is:

• “A Short History of Migration in Five Fragments of You” (Omenana), by Wole Talabai.

Of those, Wylding Hall (which is just over the Hugo novella word limit), “Wooden Feathers (a short story) and “A Short History of Migration in Five Fragments of You” (also a short story) are new to my Hugo list. However, the following also hit me sufficiently hard to be added to my expanding list of Hugo potential nominees:

• “Liminal Grid” (Strange Horizons), by Jaymee Goh (short story)
• “The Game of Smash and Recovery” (Strange Horizons), by Kelly Link (short story)
• A Day In Deep Freeze (Aqueduct Press), by Lisa Shapter (novella) and
• “Everything Beneath You” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies), by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (short story).

My list of short stories in particular is getting congested…

Episode 2: The Case of the Missing Doughnut
First shown: 19 September 1970 (US), 8 January 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writer: Peter Miller
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Melvyn Hayes as Albert the Street Cleaner
Julian Orchard as the Toy Shop Owner
Roy Evans as the Baker
Jack Haig as Harvey the Toy Shop Assistant

Plot

Brains is working on a new experimental gloop. Doughnut, who has just been chucked out of the neighbourhood toyshop and the bakery, eats it and becomes invisible. He takes his revenge on the toy shop owner and assistant, and the baker, but the gang trick him by pretending that he is still invisible after it wears off and watching in glee as he returns to the toyshop one last time. And then he wakes up; for it was all a dream.

Glorious moments

Let's face it, this is probably the single episode of Here Come The Double Deckers
which has weathered the test of time least well. Still, Bruce Clark as Sticks gets a very good shock-horror reaction to Doughnut's apparent invisibility; the special effects of the invisble boy are good; and the second scene in the bakery is almost the definition of slapstick.

Also another great Brains/Tiger exchange:

Brains: Skepticism didn't get the Americans to the moon, now did it?
Tiger: No. It was a rocket!

Less glorious moments

Er, most of it.

What's all this then?

The story of a person who becomes invisible and uses that power for evil goes all the way back to Plato's fable of the Ring of Gyges, in which he argues that the man who uses the ring to become invisible will use that power to satisfy his appetites because he does not have to worry about the consequences. OK, seducing the queen, killing the king and usurping the throne isn't quite the same as disrupting a toy shop and a bakery, but you see what I'm getting at. I will admit that a more likely influence was the 1957 film The Invisible Boy, in which the eponymous boy uses his power to play tricks such as interrupting his parents embracing in their bedroom. (Not to mention H.G. Wells, or the 1959-59 ITV series starring Deborah Watling as the invisible man's niece.)

There's also a little more (though only a little more) to Doughnut's role as the show's clown than meets the eye. Clowns are often linked to magic, as were medieval jesters before them, and so if you are going to make one character invisible, it may as well be the clown. A Clown is also a Fool, and the Fool's role is often wish fulfilment for the audience, who may well want to have a free run of local toy shops and bakeries, or more generally to defy authority without consequence.

Where's that?

All filmed in studio.

Who's that?

Douglas Simmonds, who played Doughnut, did one other TV appearance in 1971 and then became a real scientist, working in medicine, physics and computing. He died suddenly in 2011, aged only 52.

Julian Orchard (the Toy Shop Owner) was one of the typical rep actors doing vaguely posh or stuck-up comedy parts. At the time this was made, he was regularly appearing as sidekick to Harry Secombe in The Harry Secombe Show, Jimmy Edwards in Whack-O!, and Spike Milligan in The World of Beachcomber. He died in 1979, aged only 49.

Roy Evans (the Baker) was another actor who turned up in the background of everything – he was in Doctor Who three times, most notably as Trantis in The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-66) but also as Bert in The Green Death (1973) and another unnamed miner in The Beast of Peladon (1974). He was born in 1930 and appears to have last worked in 2004, which is fair enough.

Jack Haig (Harvey the Toyshop Assistant) was already in his late 50s, and had done many comedy support roles for many years without quite hitting the big time. His heyday was yet to come: from 1982 until shortly before his death aged 76 in 1989, he played Roger LeClerc in 'Allo! 'Allo!, memorable for his catchphrase, "It is I, LeClerc!"

Peter Miller wrote four Double Deckers episodes; the other three are all better than this. His biggest hit before this was a sitcom about a vicar called Our Man at St Marks, which ran for four seasons in 1963-66, starring first Leslie Phillips and then Donald Sinden along with Joan Hickman; he wrote all 46 episodes. After Double Deckers he became a producer on the revisionist 1972-73 series Arthur of the Britons, and both produced and wrote a short-lived 1980 sitcom called The Square Leopard. His credits peter out in the mid-1980s.

See you next week…

…for Let's Get A Movie On.

• How to Cultivate the Art of Serendipity
  
  Or, how to be brilliant.
  (tags: psychology )
• Bird-Watching, Patriotism and the Oregon Standoff
  
  From my sister-in-law.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• DWP fit-to-work assessments cost more money than they save, report reveals
  
  Waging war on the poor – and losing!
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Searching for the ‘Armenian Lobby’
  
  Azerbaijan’s paranoid propaganda, by @ArzuGeybulla.
  (tags: azerbaijan )

I had a quick visit to London last week, and unusually flew to Heathrow because the Belgian trains were on strike and Eurostar was going only as far as Lille. The flight over was very slow boarding; a lot of passengers were clearly transferring from an African flight, and their visa status was being checked with what seemed to several of them to be deliberate lack of speed.

I was hailed in the queue by a fellow passenger, an Ulsterman living in Slough, who recognised me from my BBC election broadcasts. He was returning to England with his Ugandan wife from Christmas with her family. It seems that there is no longer a direct flight from Heathrow to Entebbe (which I find extraordinary) so the best way is to take the Brussels flight that starts in Kigali and takes on more passengers after a short hop east.

We chatted about Northern Irish politics (I imagine he doesn’t find many fellow enthusiasts for that subject in Slough, let alone Uganda) and then parted company as we boarded; he had to wait for the rest of his family to get through. At the end of the short flight, we were told that the UK Border Agency would be waiting for us at the door and would check every passenger’s passport as we disembarked. They did not check mine, and it was fairly obvious why not.

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Travelling Light, by Tove Jansson
Relative Dementias, by Mark Michalowski
Ms. Marvel Volume 2: Generation Why, by G. Willow Wilson
Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand

Last books finished
Saga vol 5, by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Zodiac ed Jacqueline Rayner
Jews vs Aliens, eds Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene
A Day In Deep Freeze, by Lisa Shapter
Rupert Wong: Cannibal Chef, by Cassandra Khaw
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton

Last week’s audios
The Yes Men, by Simon Guerrier
The Forsaken, by Justin Richards
The Black Hole, by Simon Guerrier

Next books
Dry Pilgrimage by Paul Leonard
Bételgeuse, tome 3 : L’Expédition by Leo

Books acquired in last week
Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand
Rupert Wong: Cannibal Chef, by Cassandra Khaw
A Day In Deep Freeze, by Lisa Shapter

This was the first of 29 anthologies of stories featuring the first eight Doctors published by Big Finish between 2002 and 2009. This takes the dubious proposition that astrology as developed on Earth might somehow be relevant to Gallifrey, and asks twelve writers to write stories based on signs of the Zodiac. The results are variable; the one that particularly grabbed me was Ian Potter’s Third Doctor / Brigadier / Liz Shaw story “Still Lives”, though I did not really see its relevance to the sign of the Crab which it supposedly represents. Also noted for one of my other lists, Joseph Lidster’s “I Was a Monster!!!”, representing Capricorn, which is set in Dublin.

I’ll be reading these in order, but skipping those I have previously read, including the next two in the series which I read back in 2006.

Latest in the excellent and entertaining series by Vaughan and Staples, though I feel a bit less enthused than by some previous volumes – most of the fun characters have now been introduced, some have been removed from the scene, and there is a bit of shuffling the pieces around the story board to get them into the right place. It will probably get one of my Hugo nominations, but probably not my vote.

• Space Debris: 1957 – 2015
  
  Brilliant visualisation.
  (tags: space )
• The Developer Formerly Known as FreeBSDGirl
  
  Failing to deal with harassment.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality games )
• Open Carry Gun Laws Make It Harder to Protect the Public, Police Chiefs Say
  
  Indeed.
  (tags: uspolitics guns )
• State Papers: Disapproval of gardaí retaining maiden names
  
  1985 – a different time!
  (tags: ireland sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Researchers create genetic map of the British Isles
  
  Fascinating.
  (tags: genealogy )
• The Rise and Decline of Wikipedia
  
  How it repels users.
  (tags: wikipedia )
• Ten Things 2015 Showed Us About Diplomacy
  
  The Naked Diplomat writes.
  (tags: politics diplomacy )
• Predictability is going through some unpredictable changes.
  
  The Future No Longer Works the Way We Thought It Did
  (tags: work politics )
• A Farewell to Istanbul
  
  @Hugh_Pope reflects on his 28 years in the city.
  (tags: turkey )
• Britain, immigration and Brexit
  
  @SimonTilford nails it.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics migration )
• Medieval Gothic Graffiti from the Crimea.
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: languages )
• Our Absurd Fear of Fat
  
  A little extra can be good for you.
  (tags: health )
• A day out in Calais
  
  The shame of the Jungle.
  (tags: ukpolitics migration )
• Why Saturn Is the Best Planet
  
  @TheAtlantic eats its words.
  (tags: astronomy )
• Twitter is not broken, and they should stop trying to fix it
  
  Amen.
  (tags: twitter )
• Comic-book festival bows to pressure over all-male award shortlist
  
  Good.
  (tags: comics sexandgenderandsexuality )
• Curtin University meteorite discovery could hold clues to solar system creation
  
  Dug out of the ground with their bare hands.
  (tags: astronomy )
• Thirteen trends for 2016
  
  @ecfr looks ahead.
  (tags: politics )
• Happy Birthday Roy Batty! Or would that be Happy Incept Day for a Blade Runner replicant?
  
  8 January 2015 in sf history.
  (tags: sf )

These are two short charity anthologies of short stories published last year, doing more or less exactly what their titles promise. They caught my eye in particular because of the co-editors – I’ve enjoyed Tidhar’s alternate history treatments of Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, and Levene has been a friend of mine since 1987 – though as it turns out neither of them has contributed fiction to either volume. Both books, of course, are filled with Hugo-eligible stories.

Jews vs Zombies is the easier concept to grasp (there are fewer varieties of zombie than of alien). It struck me on reading the stories that both Jewish historical experience and zombie stories tend to converge on urban environments. There’s an obvious part-way cross-over with the golem, which one or two of the writers explicitly invoke. The one that particularly grabbed me was the final story, Adam Roberts’ “Zayinim”, about a young girl fighting off zombies while thinking about philosophy.

In the foreword to Jews vs Aliens, Lavie Tidhar points out that “The alien in science fiction, it is often said, stands in for the Other in all its myriad forms… To [John W.] Campbell, of course, the Jews were the aliens – but what happens when the roles are reversed?” Another theme that came through to me here more than in the other book was the military tradition of aggressive defence; Roseanne Rabinovitz’s story “The Matter of Meroz” combines the two very effectively.

I approached these with some trepidation, as the last time I read a themed anthology of Jewish sf I was unimpressed. There are one or two awful or incomprehensible stories in each of these anthologies, but in general they are very much worth reading.

This was a book I picked up on the basis that it was likely to be on the BSFA long list (as indeed it is), and also because the bulk of it consists of Roberts’ reviews of sf and fantasy books published in 2014, many of which I also read for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (Roberts was also a juror for two of the Kitschies’ awards). We agree more often than I had expected, but where Roberts’ opinion differs from mine it is always entertainingly so.

The reviews, of course, cannot be separated from the wider context. As Roberts says,

…to cast a cold eye over the landscape of SF and Fantasy as it appeared in 2014 is surely to be struck by how polarised, how ideologically and aesthetically divided it has grown.

He goes on to say many interesting things about awards, and the landscape of the genre, and though (of course) I completely disagree with his views on the Hugos, it’s a well-presented argument, and I intend to frustrate him by casting a nominating ballot for this book this year. (I suspect he will somehow live with that frustration.)

I still have a few 2015 books to write up (though finished the first of 2016 this morning).

Moon over Soho is second in the Peter Grant series of novels about an occult policeman in London, of which I very much enjoyed the first a few months ago. I liked this one a lot too; I had hoped for more adventures with the personified London rivers, but I am happy to settle for jazz-loving brain-eating monsters. The narrator gets very convincingly grasped in the clutches of the bad guys without realising it. The ending is suitably downbeat and signals a narrative for at least the next book. Much enjoyed.

The BSFA has announced the opening of Round 2 of this year's BSFA Awards. This time round, nominations were accepted in all categories to the end of December; we now have January to winnow down the candidates to a final four in each case. As usual, the list of Best Novel options gives me grist for my statistical mill: here they are, listed in descending order of aggregate popularity on Goodreads and LibraryThing (the number in each case is the number of users who own each book).

It becomes painfully clear that Goodreads has about 80 times as many users as LibraryThing!

I'm baffled by the one book which has hundreds of Goodreads owners, but none at all on LibraryThing as far as I can see. Sure, it's self-published (and you'll spot some similar patterns on the list), but that skew is extraordinary.

Regular readers will know that Brian Aldiss is one of my favourite writers, and the Helliconia trilogy is one of his core works: three novels set centuries apart on Helliconia, a planet whose orbit brings it from freezing winter to hot summer over the centuries, and whose two major races (humans and horned furry Pharos) are under constant observation from Earth. Aldiss himself promoted it at the time as a major breakthrough, and I think it was – for him, as it was his first really long fiction, and for the genre, in that he caught the wave of Gaia-style ecology but managed to wear his (extensive) research pretty lightly while hanging interesting stories on the context.

Reading Helliconia Spring when it first came out in 1982, when I was 15, was tremendously exciting. I last reread it, along with the other two, on holiday in Croatia in 1996, I think. I'm glad to say that it pretty much stands the test of time. It is in two parts, the first being the short tale of Yuli, who escapes the (vividly drawn) theocratic underground city of Pannoval (I was sorry that we saw no more of it) to bring new expertise to the town which becomes known as Oldorando, and the second, many generations later, being the story of how the people of Oldorando adapt to the coming of Spring. We readers are told what is going on in terms of climate change, but the characters are in the situation of their world gradually (and sometimes suddenly) changing out of all recognition.

Helliconia Spring popped up on my reading list again thanks to having won the BSFA Award in 1983 (beating a pretty tough field: Little, Big, Nebula-winning No Enemy But Time, Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion and Gene Wolfe's The Sword of the LictorFoundation's Edge). It also won the Campbell Memorial Award (again beating No Enemy But Time).

Helliconia Summer also still worked for me – the twist here is that the Earth observation satellite sends a volunteer from its crew to the surface of Helliconia, where he knows he will not survive long due to a lack of immunity from local diseases, but gets very much mixed up in a complex dynastic / political / gendered dispute among local rulers. Aldiss plays the theme of technologically advanced individual failing to impress a much more medieval civilisation very nicely. It didn't win any awards, the BSFA going that year to Tik-Tok.

On the other hand, Helliconia Winter didn't work for me anything like as well as the first two. I found the plot meandering, the gender politics pretty unpleasant, and the Earth observation sections taken in unwelcome and not very interesting directions. I may be in a minority; it also won the BSFA award, though I must say I have not heard of three of its four opponents – Free Live Free by Gene Wolfe, Kiteworld by Keith Roberts and The Warrior Who Carried Life, by Geoff Ryman, though of course I know other work by all three authors. The other BSFA nominee that year was The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers, which I read and loved when it came out. The Hugo and Nebula that year both went to Neuromancer. None of the BSFA shortlist was on either the Hugo or Nebula ballots.

Anyway, a refreshing return to an old favourite.

As in my two previous posts, I've read through the short fiction output of Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Asimov's and Strange Horizons for the third quarter of this year, plus one novella from Subterranean Press and four novellas from Tor.com (but see my doubts on that score below), following my methodology. I had hoped to finish this at the beginning of September, but got sidetracked by investigating the Retro Hugo eligible fiction of 1940, a satisfying but lengthy process. My conclusions are as follows:

I bought and read all four of the books marketed as "Tor.com novellas". It was more difficulty than I expected to find a listing of authors, title and publication dates – the best I found was this prospective listing of the covers posted in June, before any of them had been issued, and although all the listed works do appear to have been published on schedule, it would have been helpful to have an index. More seriously, by my count two of the four are over the 40,000 word limit for the Hugo Best Novella category – I reckon that Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson is more like 43,000 and Sunset Mantle by Alter Reiss looks like 42,000 to me. I'm open to correction, of course, and even if I'm right, both are within the range of discretion for the Hugo administrators.

I read the four on a transatlantic flight, which may not be the best circumstances to appreciate them. Paul Cornell's Witches of Lychford grabbed me; the other three (the last is Binti by Nnedi Okorafor) less so. So I'm adding Witches of Lychford to my nominations list.

While we're on separately published novellas, Subterranean Press's Speak Easy, by Catherynne M. Valente, also failed to grab me; Valente's prose is gorgeous as usual, but I was not engaged by the plot or characters. I am in some doubt as to whether my hit rate for separately published novellas justifies the outlay in acquiring them, and I am considering how thoroughly I feel I need to look at all nine of the Tor.com novellas published in the last quarter of 2015.

From the Tor.com website, the three stories that jumped out at me were "Islands off the Coast of Capitola, 1978", by David Herter, a novelette; "Fabulous Beasts", by Priya Sharma, also a novelette; and "Please Undo This Hurt", by Seth Dickinson, a short story at just over 7,000 words.

Clarkesworld achieved the impossible with an anthropomorphic robot story that actually worked for me, "Android Whores Can't Cry", by Natalia Theodoridou – in general, it's a trope that I absolutely hate, but this had sufficient originality and verve to overcome my resistance. The other two that particularly grabbed me were "Security Check", by Han Song, and "Loving Grace", by Erica L. Satifka, but neither sufficiently to get on my list. Clarkesworld also published the worst story I have read from 2015, "The Hunger Tower", by Pan Haitian, which has been expertly dissected by Greg Hullender and Vivienne Raper.

From Asimov's, the standout story for me was "Caisson" by Karl Bunker. Greg Hullender complains that it had no sf element at all, but I think he's simply wrong; it's about a fossil egg that (probably) hatches. I also liked “Acres of Perhaps” by Will Ludwigsen and “The God Year” by Jim Grimsley. One story where the sfnal element did seem to me completely irrelevant to the plot was “Calved” by Sam J. Miller. I suspect it will pick up a fair few nomination votes but mine won't be one of them.

Perhaps I was suffering from pre-Christmas slump at the time of reading, but Strange Horizons' fiction didn't grab me as much as on some previous readings. Having said that, I did enjoy "It Brought Us All Together", by Marissa Lingen, a great high school plague story.

I see that my tastes are in almost complete opposition to Greg Hullender's aggregation at Rocket Stack Rank (apart from "The Hunger Tower"), but I really appreciate the work he has done in pulling the lists of recommended stories together for July, August and September. Likewise I have precisely one crossover (Priya Sharma's "Fabulous Beasts") with the Ladybusiness list for the third quarter. Tastes vary.

What I'm still considering for nomination

Novellas
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Demon (Spectrum)
Paul Cornell, Witches of Lychford
Eugene Fischer, "The New Mother" (Asimov's, Apr/May 2015)
Kristine Kathryn Rusch "Inhuman Garbage" (Asimov's, Mar 2015)
Allen M. Steele, "The Long Wait" (Asimov's, Jan 2015)

Novelette
Eneasz Brodski, "Red Legacy" (Asimov's, Feb 2015)
Paul Evanby, "Utrechtenaar" (1, 2 – Strange Horizons, June 2015 – surprised to find it only 9,000 words)
Sarah Pinsker, "Our Lady of the Open Road" (Asimov's, Jun 2015)
Priya Sharma, "Fabulous Beasts" (Tor.com, July 2015)
Vandana Singh, "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" (Tor.com, Apr 2015 – at 7800 words it just scrapes into this category)

Short Stories
Karl Bunker, "Caisson" (Asimov's, August 2015)
Nino Cipri, "The Shape of My Name" (Tor.com, Mar 2015)
L.S. Johnson, "Vacui Magia" (Strange Horizons, Jan 2015)
Jay O'Connell, "Willing Flesh" (Asimov's, Apr/May 2015)
Robert Reed, "The Empress in Her Glory" (Clarkesworld, Apr 2015)
Kelly Robson, "The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" (Clarkesworld, Feb 2015)
Iona Sharma, "Nine Thousand Hours" (Strange Horizons, April 2015)
Natalia Theodoridou, "Android Whores Can't Cry" (Clarkesworld, July 2015)

All three categories full, but I shall read the fourth quarter’s sf from those outlets anyway, and a few more, then start pruning.

Those of you who grew up in the UK around the same time as I did will surely remember this fun BBC series, shown on Saturday mornings in the 1970s. It concerns the adventures of seven kids whose den is a disused double decker bus somewhere near Watford (actually of course Elstree studios). Here are the absurdly catchy opening titles:

Here Come The Double Deckers may not be Great Art, but I think that it is overdue for an episode-by-episode analysis of the kind we've seen for many cult shows. (An interesting coincidence – 17 episodes were made in total; the same number as The Prisoner.) I can't pretend to follow the likes of Tat Wood, let alone Philip Sandifer, but this is a first step towards reclaiming this show.

Each of the episodes used to be individually available on Youtube; alas, they have been taken down, but it's pretty easy to get hold of on DVD and by other means. Each episode is only 20 minutes long. Give it a try; you may be surprised how much you like it.

Episode 1: Tiger Takes Off
First shown: 12 September 1970 (US), 1 January 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writers: Glyn Jones and Harry Booth
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Melvyn Hayes as Albert the Street Cleaner

Plot

This is the one everyone remembers: Brains designs a hovercraft, and Tiger accidentally gets inside it and switches it on, giving rise to hilarious chase scenes through studio sets and carefully selected streets.

Glorious moments

• The opening scenes where Brains enters the den by a complex locking mechanism.
• The other complex mechanism by which Brains moves a bit of paper to the top of a flight of steps which he then climbs himself.

• Tiger: "What's 'decorum'?"
  Scooper: "Whatever it is, this meeting hasn't got it."

• The slapstick of assembling the hovercraft, with the kids actually holding still for the sequence of snapshots at the end rather than using freeze frames or, god help us, actual photographs.
  
• The chase is really well put together (if just a little repetitive, but come on, it doesn't last all that long).
• The classic line is when the rest of the gang have established communication with Tiger and are trying to help her tell right from left:
  

  Brains (reminding Tiger which is her right hand): "The hand you hold your spoon in…"
  Tiger (indignantly): "I haven't got a spoon!"

  (One of the best lines in the entire series.)
  

Less glorious moments

Doughnut is fat. It's funny, you see. (More of this to come, I'm afraid.)

Billie ends up nursing the boys at the end. (Though this is because she was sensible enough not to go into the water.)

What's all this then?

The hovercraft was cutting-edge technology, not to mention a triumph of British engineering, when this was made – the first commercial services across the Channel had launched in 1968. Brains' real innovation is the fuel, which is rather lightly skipped over.

Lots of kids would have played at building a hovercraft and taking it for a ride. The plot, such as it is, is glorious wish fulfillment.

Where's that?

This episode has some of the most extensive location work of any, and thanks to David Noades we can identify most of it. As he comments, the shot of Doughnut feeding pigeons in Trafalgar Square must have been very tricky (and presumably expensive) to set up, for not very much payoff. The libary is the Elstree library. Most of the hovercraft chase is in the Borehamwood Estate, and the pond at the end of that sequence is the duckpond in Letchmore Heath, which still looks much the same according to Google Maps.

Who's that?

Debbie Russ is the youngest of the regular cast, playing Tiger when she was only 10. This is one of her best episodes of the 17. It was her first filmed role; after Double Deckers she did a couple more in the early 1970s, but did not stay in acting. She is available for voiceover work.

Melvyn Hayes appears as Albert in 11 of the 17 episodes, and is also credited as dialogue coach for the kids. His first big TV role was as Edek in a 1957 production of Ian Serrailler's novel The Silver Sword, in which Barry Letts played his father and Fraser Hines the mysterious Jan. His first big film role was in 1957 as the young version of Peter Cushing's Victor Frankenstein; he also appeared as a sidekick to Cushing in 1960 in The Flesh and the Fiends, and then as Cliff Richard's sidekick in The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1963), the last of these also featuring a converted double-decker London bus. Hayes is the one in the hat; Jeremy "Boba Fett" Bulloch also appears:

At the time Here Come The Double Deckers was made, he was married to Wendy Padbury, who had just finished her time as Zoe on Doctor Who. He is probably best known in the UK for his role as Bombardier 'Gloria' Beaumont in every episode of the 8 series of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, which ran from 1974 to 1981. He is still working, and turns 81 later this month.

See you next week…

…for The Case of the Missing Doughnut.

A poll about books which are celebrating their anniversaries this year. Recommendations (including from me) in the comments.

As with the previous year, the best-selling book of 1916 was a forgotten work by Booth Tarkington, in this case Seventeen. The best-selling book of 1966 was Valley of the Dolls.

The traditional poll of books I read this year; inconsistency in numbers with my previous post is largely due to omertà over the Clarke process. If you like you can advise me what to read in 2016 as well.

I read 290 books this year, precisely one less than last year's 291. However 24 of these were dives into the first 50 pages of Clarke nominees that I knew were unlikely to win or be shortlisted. My total pagecount was 80,100, compared to last year's 97,100 (cf ~68,000 in 2013, ~77,800 in 2012, ~88,200 in 2011). However, those totals are for books only; since August I've been reading a lot of short sf which had not yet been collected into book form – nine months' worth of Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Asimov's and Strange Horizons – so I guess my "real" total won't be a lot less than last year's.

Diversity: 86 books out of 290 by women, just shy of 30%. That's the highest in both numerical and percentage terms since I started measuring. (81 [28%] in 2014, 71 [30%] in 2013, 65 [25%] in 2012, 22% in 2011, 23% in 2010, 20% in 2009, 12% in 2008.)
20 (7%) by PoC, a shade under last year's 11 (5%). (cf 12 [5%] in 2013, 5% in 2011, 9% in 2010, 5% in 2009, 2% in 2008.)

Most books by a single author: 6 by Justin Richards, who also topped my 2014 tally. (Previous winners: Agatha Christie i 2013, Jonathan Gash in 2012.)

Non-fiction

Best non-fiction read in 2015: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin – brilliant biography of fascinating woman.
Runner-up: Letters to Tiptree, eds Alissa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce – I hope we'll be seeing this on some shortlists next year.
The one you might not heard of: Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture, by Rory Rapple – looking at the politics of violence in Ireland, not only in the 16th century.

Non-sfnal fiction

Best non-sff fiction read in 2015: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Bildungsroman set in Nigeria, the USA and the UK, with hair.
Runner-up: Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro – Brilliant short stories.
Welcome rereads: Ulysses and Les Misérables.
The one you might not heard of: The Twenty-two Letters, by Clive King – the origin of literacy in the Levant.

Non-Whovian sff

Best non-Who sff read in 2015: I'm going to cheat slightly, in that I read a couple of them first in 2014, but I'm collectively re-nominating the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, in particular the winner, Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel. But I also really enjoyed The Affirmation, by Chris Priest.
The one you might not heard of: The Last Man (aka No Other Man) by Alfred Noyes – novel set after almost all of humanity has been wiped out by a super-weapon, published in 1940.

Doctor Who (and spinoff) fiction

Best Who book read in 2015: City of Death, by Douglas Adams and James Goss – true to the televised story with extra dollops of style.
Runner-up: Walking to Babylon, by Kate Orman – mild homage to Iain Banks as well.
The two that even dedicated Whovians may not have heard of: Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal and Doctor Who and the Rebel's Gamble, both by William H. Keith, Jr – two US-published game books from 1986 that are way better than the British game books of the same year.

Comics

Best graphic stories read in 2015: I'm still making my mind up between The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud, and The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua – leaning a bit more towards the former, if I'm honest.
The one you might not have heard of: De Tweede Kus (originally published in three separate volumes, Ringo, Martha and Hanne), by Conz (Constantijn van Cauwenberge). If you don't read Dutch or French, you have a treat to come when some wise publisher translates it into English.

Poetry

I don’t read a lot of poetry but I do try and get through at least one collection each year. This year that was amply rewarded with Colette Bryce’s tremendous The Whole and Rain-domed Universe, reflecting on growing up in Northern Ireland.

Worst book of the year: It's a matter of public record that I bounced off several of the Hugo finalists. It's fairly close at the bottom, but the absolute worst was the infamous Wisdom from my Internet by Michael Z. Williamson.

Next year I shall probably ease off on new sf once the Hugo nominating season is over. (BSFA members! Get you nominations in tonight!) I would like to read a few more comics, and alsowork through some of the more obscure corners of Who literature,

Non-fiction: 2 (Year end 47)
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014, by Adam Roberts

Poetry: 1 (Year end 1)
The Whole and Rain-Domed Universe, by Colette Bryce

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (Year end 42)
Between the Acts, by Virginia Woolf
The Oxford Book of Christmas Stories, ed. Dennis Pepper

SF (non-Who): 18 (Year end 130)
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 3, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Keeping it Real, by Justina Robson
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, by Kai Ashante Wilson
Witches of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
Sunset Mantle, by Alter S. Reiss
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
The Reign of Wizardry, by Jack Williamson
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 4, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Fattypuffs and Thinifers, by Andre Maurois
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Helliconia Spring, by Brian Aldiss
Captain Future and the Space Emperor, by Edmond Hamilton
The Last Man, by Alfred Noyes
Helliconia Summer, by Brian Aldiss
The Just City, by Jo Walton
Speak Easy, by Catherynne M. Valente
Helliconia Winter, by Brian Aldiss
Jews vs Zombies, ed. Rebecca Levene and Lavie Tidhar

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (Year end 43)
Instruments of Darkness, by Gary Russell
The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin
The Medusa Effect, by Justin Richards
Doctor Who: Big Bang Generation, by Gary Russell

Comics: 2 (Year end 18)
Hark, A Vagrant!, by Kate Beaton
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer, by Sydney Padua

~7,500 pages (Year end 80,100)
10/29 by women (Year end 86/290) – Robinson, Bryce, Woolf, Robson, Okorafor, Valente, Walton, Levene, Beaton, Padua
3/29 by PoC (YTD 20/290) – Wilson, Okorafor, Padua

Reread: 5/29 (Helliconia trilogy, Fattypuffs and Thinifers, The Gallifrey Chronicles), YTD 22/290

Reading now:
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton

Coming soon (perhaps):
Saga vol 5, by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Travelling Light by Tove Jansson
Bételgeuse, tome 3 : L’Expédition by Leo
The Story of Ireland by Brendan O'Brien
Streetlethal by Steven Barnes
The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
A People's Peace for Cyprus by Alexandros Lordos et al
Tik-Tok by John Sladek
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
The Magic Cup by Andrew M. Greeley
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Naamah's Curse by Jacqueline Carey
Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis
A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park
Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch
Legacy: A Collection of Personal Testimonies from People Affected by the Troubles in Northern Ireland by BBC Northern Ireland
The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst
1491 by Charles C. Mann
See How Much I Love You by Luis Leante
Zodiac ed Jacqueline Rayner
Citadel of Dreams by Dave Stone
Dry Pilgrimage by Paul Leonard

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton

Last books finished
Hark, A Vagrant!, by Kate Beaton
Helliconia Summer, by Brian Aldiss
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer, by Sydney Padua
The Just City, by Jo Walton
Speak Easy, by Catherynne M. Valente
Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014, by Adam Roberts
Helliconia Winter, by Brian Aldiss
Jews vs Zombies, ed. Rebecca Levene and Lavie Tidhar

Next books
Short Trips: Zodiac, ed. Jacqueline Rayner
Travelling Light, by Tove Jansson

Books acquired in last week
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbott
Hark! a Vagrant, by Kate Beaton
The House of Shattered Wings, by Aliette de Bodard
A History of the World in Twelve Maps, by Jerry Brotton
Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho
Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, by Bruce Clark
The Queen’s Spymaster, by John Cooper
A Buzz in the Meadow, by Dave Goulson
The Ice Cream Army, by Jessica Gregson
The Humans, by Matt Haig
Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver
Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie
Common People: The History of an English Family, by Alison Light
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann
Lying Under the Apple Tree, by Alice Munro
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, by Randall Munroe
Touch, by Claire North
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer, by Sydney Padua
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Waltonj
Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014, by Adam Roberts
Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons: Notes on Science Fiction and Culture in the Year of Angry Dogs, by Philip Sandifer
The Bad Christian’s Manifesto: Reinventing God (and other modest proposals), by Dave Tomlinson
The Parrot’s Theorem, by Denis Guedj

It was a good Christmas haul. Next year I’ll be publishing my weekly roundups on Fridays rather than Thursdays.