Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
This had somehow passed me by – a pastiche of Dickens by Pratchett, with no sfnal elements at all as far as I can tell, introducing us to the Dodger and his elderly Jewish friend as heroes rather than villains, caught up in an international political plot which involves a beautiful foreign princess, Charles Dickens, Sweeney Todd, Benjamin Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel, and a host of other historical figures from the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. It’s good but not great; I felt that Pratchett couldn’t decide between being didactic about the situation of London in the period, smart about his remoulding of Dickens, or just caught up in telling the story as it came to him. He was reaching, I think, for anger at the situation of the poor, but didn’t quite get there (maybe my palate has been jaded by recently rereading Les Miserables).
Doctor Who book recommendations for a literate 11-year-old
Dear Lucy,
I’m very happy to give you some thoughts on what 21st-cetury Doctor Who books to nudge towards your LotR-appreciating 11-year-old. There are some quite good 20th-century Who books out there as well! But I shall stick to my remit. (I’m assuming that you have already got this year’s annual – the Doctor Who annuals have been of consistently decent quality since your 11-year-old was born.)
The three 12th Doctor and Clara novels that came out this year – Deep Time by Trevor Baxendale, Royal Blood by Una McCormack and Big Bang Generation by Gary Russell – look like a good place to start, linked stories by seasoned writers. I am looking forward also to The Legends of Ashildr by Justin Richards and James Goss which comes out next week – James Goss is my favourite current writer of Who books.
If we’re going back a bit further, almost all of the short stories in the Time Trips collection published last year, and the Twelve Doctors, Twelve Stories collection published in 2013, are really good introductions to earlier Doctors.
Favourite books from the 21st century featuring New Who Doctors:
Borrowed Time by Naomi Alderman (11th Doctor and Amy)
Dead of Winter by James Goss (11th Doctor, Amy and Rory)
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who (comic by Paul Cornell)
Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell (10th Doctor, Donna and Wilf)
Prisoner of the Daleks by Trevor Baxendale (10th Doctor on his own)
Dead Air by James Goss (audiobook read by David Tennant)
Only Human by Gareth Roberts (9th Doctor, Rose and Jack)
Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner (9th Doctor and Rose)
Two more to add, more for you than for your eleven-year-old. First, earlier this year James Goss published the novel adaptation of the 1979 Tom Baker story City of Death, with the 4th Doctor and Romana in Paris. It’s a treat. As I said, I rate Goss highly; here he is working with material originally by Douglas Adams. Second, you of all people are likely to appreciate the jokes in The Shakespeare Notebooks, a series of pastiches of various Doctors in various Shakespeare works. All great fun.
I’m posting this in public, so there may well be further suggestions in comments!
Links I found interesting for 05-12-2015
- Xi Jinping meets President Omaba in Paris
- The £100,000 cost of sacking the sysadmin
Which company *could* this have been???
The Invention of Happiness, by Brian Aldiss
A recent book by Aldiss, collecting together several dozen short-short stories, of two or three pages each. Actually rather few of them have a beginning, a middle and and end; mostly they are just one or two ideas (sometimes, frustratingly, an idea and a half) explored at the length of a thousand words or so. But they are all unmistakeably in Aldiss’s unique voice, more than vignettes, reflections of the world as his characters think it is. Mostly non-sf, at least as far as you can tell in the parameters of the story.
Thursday reading
Current
Keeping it Real, by Justina Robson
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 3, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Between The Acts, by Virginia Woolf
Instruments of Darkness, by Gary Russell
Last books finished
Babes in the Darkling Wood, by H.G. Wells
Waiting for Elizabeth, by Joan Rosier-Jones
De Tweede Kus, by Conz
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
Last week’s audios
The Yes Men, by Simon Guerrier
Next books
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Helliconia, by Brian Aldiss
The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin
Books acquired in last week
Lethbridge-Stewart: Mutually Assured Domination, by Nick Walters
Ms. Marvel Volume 2: Generation Why, by G. Willow Wilson, Jacob Wyatt and Adrian Alphona
Saga Vol. 5, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Hoger dan de bergen en dieper dan de zee: kroniek van een migrant, by Laïla Koubaa and Laura Janssens
Links I found interesting for 03-12-2015
- The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing
Report from the global warming front line.
The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar
I actually read this seven years ago, and
Anyway, it’s a straightforward military narrative written by a key figure, and refreshingly clear even two millennia later. Worth the reread.
Links I found interesting for 02-12-2015
- Portaferry tells a sad tale as funding runs dry
Peninsula fan quotes me.
- Dave Sim thought aloud to himself
Tom Whiteley @janeanpatience on Sim after Cerebus.
- Significant Digits From The Paris Climate Talks
@fivethirtyeight looks at the numbers.
- Computational Plate Tectonics and the Geological Record in the Continents
@louismoresi explains.
North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones
Sorry to say that I pretty much bounce off Jones’ prose completely – I remember really enjoying the novella version of Bold As Love, but found both the extended version and White Queen rather tough reading. The same was true here: the identity confusion between several of the main characters confused me too, and I just wasn’t really sure what they were trying to achieve. No doubt this reflects my own concentrations levels more than the quality of the prose.
I’ll say one thing though: Jones had characters whose concept of gender was completely and pronoun-wrenchingly different from that of their human interlocutors more than twenty years before Ancillary Justice, as of course did Ursula Le Guin more than twenty-five years before that. Those of us who voted for it last year weren’t giving Ann Leckie cookies for a new idea, we were applauding a number of familiar tropes combined and given new and startling twists.
Links I found interesting for 01-12-2015
- Meet Spencer, the airport robot that will make sure you don’t miss your flight
Aww.
- Where the polls went wrong
The election explained.
- Explaining POLITICO Europe’s overreaction to @jonworth’s blog post: an explorative approach
@ronpatz explains.
[Doctor Who: The Glamour Chronicles] Deep Time, by Trevor Baxendale
This season’s Doctor Who novels are a set of three linked narratives featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, pursuing an alien intelligence called the Glamour through space and time (hence the series title, The Glamour Chronicles). I can’t recall a linked sequence of novels with the current Doctor and companion coming out during the season before – there was a series of ten Tenth Doctor novels in 2009 for younger readers, but with no TV companion, and the New Adventures started with seven novels in two loosely linked series with the Seventh Doctor and Ace, but by then Old Who had ended. It may be a coincidence that this is the year that Who on TV has returned to the idea of having multi-part stories.
Anyway, it’s a decent start, with some homage to Alien, the Doctor and Clara joining a mixed crew taking their ship to solve a historical mystery, and discovering that the problem they face is much worse than they imagined; there is a good who’s-the-real-monster subtheme. The first couple of chapters feel a bit self-consciously written for younger readers, but then it settles down. Clara doesn’t get to do much other than sass the Doctor; the Doctor however is in good form, and this reflects the new confidence the TV show seems to have found of late.
Technically eligible for next year’s Hugos, but I don’t think it is accessible enough to a wider audience to have a realistic chance, and I’ll almost certainly invest my nominations elsewhere than the Who books no matter how much I like them.
Links I found interesting for 30-11-2015
- Ranking the Writing Debuts of the Capaldi Era
Makes the fair point that they have all been strong.
November books
The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar
Bits of Me are Falling Apart, by William Leith
Fiction (non-sf): 8 (YTD 40)
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah
The Summer Before the Dark, by Doris Lessing
Sleepyhead, by Mark Billingham
The Invention of Happiness, by Brian W. Aldiss
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
Babes in a Darkling Wood, by H.G. Wells
Waiting for Elizabeth, by Joan Rosier-Jones
SF (non-Who): 16 (YTD 112)
The Ultimate Egoist, by Theodore Sturgeon (1940 stories only)
Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories vol 2, eds. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
The Clock Strikes Twelve And Other Stories, by H. Russell Wakefield
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein (1940 stories only)
Kallocain, by Karin Boye
The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White
Somewhere! / هُناك , by Ibraheem Abbas
A Million Years to Conquer, by Henry Kuttner
Monkey Planet, by Pierre Boulle
Twice in Time, by Manly Wade Wellman
North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 1, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 2, ed. von Dimpleheimer
The Wonder City of Oz, by John R. Neill
Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 39)
The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton
To the Slaughter, by Steve Cole
Oblivion, by Dave Stone
[Doctor Who: The Glamour Chronicles] Deep Time, by Trevor Baxendale
Comics : 3 (YTD 16)
The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
Saga Volume 4, by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
De Tweede Kus, by Conz
~8,600 pages (YTD 72,600)
6/33 by women (YTD 76/261) – Munro, Lessing, Rosier-Jones, Boye, Jones, Staples
2/33 by PoC (YTD 17/261) – Abbas, Staples
Reread: 4/33 (The Battle for Gaul, The Past Through Tomorrow, The Ill-Made Knight, Monkey Planet), YTD 19/261
Reading now:
Keeping it Real, by Justina Robson
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 3, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Between the Acts, by Virginia Woolf
Coming soon (perhaps):
The Oxford Book of Christmas Stories, ed. Dennis Pepper
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Helliconia, by Brian Aldiss
Selected Stories, by Alice Munro
A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
New Europe, by Michael Palin
The Folding Star, by Alan Hollinghurst
Master Pip, by Lloyd Jones
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
Bitter Seeds, by Ian Tregillis
Streetlethal, by Steven Barnes
The Magic Cup, by Andrew M. Greeley
The Story of Ireland, by Brendan O'Brien
A People's Peace for Cyprus, by Alexandros Lordos et al
Earthlight, by Arthur C Clarke
The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke
Walking on Glass, by Iain Banks
Legacy: A Collection of Personal Testimonies from People Affected by the Troubles in Northern Ireland, by BBC Northern Ireland
Naamah's Curse, by Jacqueline Carey
The Love of a Good Woman, by Alice Munro
Instruments of Darkness, by Gary Russell
The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin
The Medusa Effect, by Justin Richards
Links I found interesting for 29-11-2015
- What really happened on Thanksgiving
Fascinating, and not what kids are taught!
- Spam has fallen to a 10-year low and is unlikely to make a comeback
Hooray!
- Supreme Court judge could rule a ‘cuckoo in the nest’ topples ancient lineage
Science vs privilege.
- 300 Kate Bush impersonators perform Wuthering Heights
The most bonkers thing you’ll see all day.
#RetroHugos1941 Twice in Time, by Manly Wade Wellman
At last, another novel that I feel I can nominate for the Retro Hugos alongside The Ill-Made Knight and Kallocain. It’s a short book about a time-traveller who goes back to Renaissance Italy and finds that he cannot return to his own time due to a combination of local politics, equipment constraints and fuzzy memory. Any reader who is actually awake will spot the eventual punchline by the end of the second chapter, but Wellman has fun taking us there and unashamedly invokes various cliches of the time-hopping subgenre. A shame that this isn’t better known, and I’m nominating it for the Retro Hugos to try and fix that.
Links I found interesting for 28-11-2015
- Paris attacks: Is bashing Belgium justified?
Not entirely, says the BBC.
- One fifth of Stormont Assembly members are ‘unelected’ or appointed by parties
I am quoted.
- The true cost of becoming British
A first-person account.
- The future of Chinese science fiction
Interview with Cixin Liu 刘慈欣.
- The Recent Gilbertese Settlement of the Line Islands
It’s Christmas! (Or Kiritimati)
- Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Gamergate
Spoilers!
Monkey Planet / Planet of the Apes / La Planète des Singes, by Pierre Boulle
I confess that I haven't seen any of the films based on this book, but this is still a very interesting read (or rather reread; I had first bought it around thirty years ago). Of course, the reversal of human and ape is meant to make the reader reflect satirically on what it means to be human, and on how we treat other species; some of those points are well-aimed. But at the same time, for a French writer of 1963 fresh from the national traumas of Algeria and Indochina, it’s pretty obvious what is meant and feared by the concept of the apes taking over; and it’s noticeable that all the “humans” in the book seem to be pale-skinned. It’s uneasy reading in places, but fascinating all the same.
Links I found interesting for 27-11-2015
- Trump’s tirade mocking journalist with disability
@steveddaunt reacts.
- An EU-wide constituency: Be careful what you wish for!
Who really won the 2014 European Parliament election?
- Seven Condoms Don’t Equal 21 Orgasms, German Court Rules
Good to know.
- Benefit cap discriminated against disabled people, court rules
UK Govt’s war on the disabled hits a snag.
Thursday reading
Current
Waiting for Elizabeth, by Joan Rosier-Jones
Babes in a Darkling Wood, by H.G. Wells
Keeping it Real, by Justina Robson
Last books finished
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 1, ed. von Dimpleheimer
The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar
The Invention of Happiness, by Brian W. Aldiss
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 2, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
The Wonder City of Oz, by John R. Neill
Bits of Me are Falling Apart, by William Leith
Next books
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Books acquired in last week
The Reign of Wizardry, by Jack Williamson
The Wonder City of Oz, by John R. Neill
Babes in a Darkling Wood, by H.G. Wells
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 3, ed. von Dimpleheimer
An EU-wide constituency: Be careful what you wish for!
(This was originally published by EurActiv on 26 November 2015. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)
On 11 November the European Parliament called for a series of changes to future elections of its own members, including a common minimum voting age across EU states, electoral thresholds in the larger countries, guaranteed voting rights for EU citizens living abroad, and a requirement to finalise candidate lists promptly.
Most of all, the Parliament wants to enshrine the Spitzenkandidat system used in the 2014 election – where the nominee of the largest political group was presented as the Parliament’s choice for President of the European Commission – by setting up a single EU-wide electoral constituency, for which all transnational European parties would nominate their Spitzenkandidaten.
But how would this look in practice? Last year, the centre-right European People’s Party claimed victory, and anointed Jean-Claude Juncker as the voters’ choice, by winning 215 seats in the new European Parliament to the 185 won by the Party of European Socialists, who supported European Parliament President Martin Schulz.
It is not generally realized that if there had been a single EU-wide constituency, Schulz would likely have been the winner. The fact is that the EPP got slightly fewer votes than the PES,but ended up with more seats. Wikipedia, which also includes votes for MEPs who joined the groups after the election, gives the PES 40.2 million votes to the EPP’s 38.6 million; my own calculations, counting only those who were affiliated on election day, make the gap much narrower, 39.6 million to 39.3 million, but the outcome is still clear.)
The EPP won more seats with fewer votes for three reasons. First, the EPP is stronger than the PES in most of the smaller EU member states, where MEPs represent fewer electors per capita. So, rather small leads in terms of votes delivered disproportionate benefits in terms of seats in Slovenia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Croatia, Ireland and Bulgaria. Denmark was the only smaller state where the PES won more seats than the EPP.
Second, the PES lead in votes was diluted in some countries by relatively high turnout. Among the enthusiastic voters of Italy, the Partito Democratico won 31 seats with 11 million votes, while three EPP groups won 17 seats between them with just under 6 million votes. But that 14-seat margin in favour of the PES, gained by 5 million more votes, was more than counterbalanced by the result in low-turnout Poland, where two EPP groups had a combined lead of only 2 million votes over the centre-left, yet won 18 more seats.
Third, the electoral system in some countries, whether by accident or design, favours the EPP. In Belgium and in Italy, there are reserved single seats for German-speaking minorities, who tend to vote for EPP-affiliated candidates. In Ireland, Fine Gael won four seats for the EPP – 36% of the country’s 11 seats – with only 22% of the votes, while Labour, with 5% of the votes won no seats at all. (Fine Gael actually won fewer votes in Ireland than ALDE-linked Fianna Fail; but the latter elected only one MEP, and he promptly defected after the election.)
Looking further down the ticket, the situation becomes even murkier. The third-placed party in the European Parliament at present is the conservative ECR grouping, with 75 MEPs. But in terms of the popular vote (according to Wikipedia’s figures), they came not third but seventh, with 8.6 million votes to 9.2 million for the Greens/EFA, 10.8 million for the UKIP-led EFDD, 11.7 million for the liberal ALDE and just over 12 million for the hard-left GUE, who have only 51 MEPs. Like the EPP, the ECR benefited from picking up easily won seats in smaller countries, and by doing well in two large countries with low turnouts, the UK and Poland.
Those who want to open up the strengths and weaknesses of the European Parliament elections to further public interest should be careful what they ask for – because they may get it. It’s entirely possible to imagine a situation where a Spitzenkandidatwins a decisive lead in the EU-wide popular vote, but his or her party lags badly in terms of seats in the European Parliament. Arguably that is actually what happened last year. A single European constituency, by exposing the disconnection between votes won and seats gained, may weaken the credibility of the process in practice.
Links I found interesting for 26-11-2015
- Sorting Out What Russia and Turkey Say Happened in the Sky
- The Serial Swatter
Harassment online, again.
- An Alarming New Escalation in the Syria War
*gulp*
- Satellite launch accident provides unexpected test of Einstein’s theory
Timewarps, for real.
#RetroHugos1941 A Million Years to Conquer, by Henry Kuttner
One of the less obscure novels of 1940, this concerns a survivor of a dying extraterrestrial race who comes to Earth and superintends the development of human civilzation over the millennia. There's a nice flashback technique between the world of today and the historical set-up, but it's a truly pulpy set of concepts, mishmashed together a bit chaotically. Those who are fans of Kuttner's work in general may be a bit more sympathetic to it than I am.
Links I found interesting for 25-11-2015
Oblivion, by Dave Stone
A Bernice Summerfield novel, reuniting her with her ex-husband Jason and her New Adventures friends Chris and (from a younger part of her timeline) Roz, and the rather excellent shapeshifter Sgloomi Po. Apart from this last, however, not much of interest is done with this promising cast and the potentially interesting scenario of reality splintering into many possible futures. Appropriately enough, given the title, I find it quite difficult to remember anything that happened.
Links I found interesting for 24-11-2015
- Britain needs to start doing favours to win EU friends
Excellent analysis by Paul Taylor @ReutersAyataylo.
- Doctor Who: Steven Moffat finally reveals the truth about the 50th anniversary
Some of it, anyway.
- Brussels Lockdown: X-Ray of the Belgian Security Apparatus
What’s keeping us safe (or not).
Brussels report
I’m very grateful to all of you who have expressed concern about us in the last few days. In fact we live far enough outside Brussels that the situation had almost no impact on us, except that my visiting mother-in-law found it much easier than usual to make her train connections on Saturday night due to the lack of crowds. Our village is far from any place of current interest; yesterday I took B and her grandmother to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Neerwinden, where we meditated on past conflicts and the origin of the poppy as their symbol.
I was luckier than a friend from England, who had chosen Saturday for a day trip to Europe’s capital. He reported that it was “Quiet, but not OK. The closure of the metro didn’t bother me – it’s a compact place and I know my way around on foot. But what hasn’t been as well publicised on the news is that all the museums and an awful lot of the shops were shut. Which was made worse by the rain, and then the snow and the near freezing temperatures. So not many places to shelter, not even City2 which they shuttered down at midday. Ho hum.”
Today, I had little difficulty getting into Brussels; trains were delayed, but that is normal enough on the first cold day of winter. But I arrived to find the office two-thirds empty; those with children at school in Brussels, or dependent on cancelled public transport, or just not wanting to make the trip, were sensibly encouraged by our management to stay at home. The rest of us went out for a morale-boosting lunch, and afterwards I walked into the city centre for an errand. There was a more visible police presence around the Central Station, but more striking was the comparative absence of other people; it was like a wet Sunday in February. In the evening I counted myself lucky to get home smoothly – trains are now being cancelled due to staff staying home for whatever reason. Having grown up in Belfast in darker days, this is all tedious rather than frightening to me.
All non-essential meetings in the Brussels bubble have been cancelled for the next few days. The police who would normally show up to look like they were doing something now actually are doing something. Last Thursday I unexpectedly bumped into an old friend, the foreign minister of [redacted], on the street. I don’t think we’ll be seeing foreign ministers wandering around Brussels so casually for a while. Meanwhile we understand that the security forces are continuing their operations, though they have successfully persuaded social media users not to give blow-by-blow accounts of police movements but post cat pictures instead. I do hope that this turns out to be something more than security theatre to steady the nerves.
One of the winners of the current situation is the news website POLITICO.eu, who have run a series of incisive and insightful pieces starting (with eerie prescience) two days before the Paris attacks by interviewing the Belgian interior minister, excusing his inability to keep our country and our neighbours safe (it’s well worth reading most of POLITICO’s recent output). Well, maybe it will occur to voters in the next elections that if you support politicians who are intent on underfunding and undermining the institutions of the Belgian state (outlined in detail in this excellent piece by the excellent Kristof Clerix), there are associated costs to that support. Once the current security crisis is over, I hope that there will be a reckoning.
Somewhere! / هُناك, by Ibraheem Abbas
An sf novel by Saudi writer Ibraheem Abbas, which the author signed for me at Loncon last year. It’s short and digestible, about a young man who finds himself in a Somewhere which could be a dream world, could be a virtual reality, could be time travel; it is rooted in contemporary online and gaming culture, yet also brings in certain important historical personalities (some European, one East Asian), all told in a breathless contemporary voice, full of exclamation marks. (Could have done with a little more editing for correct English.) I look forward to reading the other book I have by the same writer.
Links I found interesting for 23-11-2015
- Cyprus: Where Does The Solution Lie?
Esra Aygin @esraaygin explains to her neighbours.
- Niall Ferguson slammed for saying the West is in danger of falling like the Roman Empire
Poorly thought-out nonsense.
- The Threat Is Already Inside
@Brooks_Rosa brings some perspective.
- Georgia and the Rose Revolution
First person account by then US ambassador Dick Miles.
- Facebook: I want out
@VioletBlue explains how Facebook endangers lives.
#RetroHugos1941 The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White
The Sword In The Stone won a convincing victory in the Best Novel category for last year’s 1939 Retro Hugos. The Ill-Made Knight, which is the third part of The Once And Future King, will have it tougher this year – despite being in large part the basis for the musical Camelot, I think it’s less well-known than the first part, and faces strong rivals with traditional fan appeal in Slan and Gray Lensman. It will, however, get one of my nominations and probably my vote. Years before The Mists of Avalon, White grappled with the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle and came up with his own solution, of real people trying on the whole to do the decent thing in a time of bitter conflict, to a certain extent making it up as they go along; drawing on Malory and Spenser and Tennyson, but also making the story his own. I think I first read it when I was thirteen, and had maybe reread it once in the subsequent 35 years, but I was pleased at how much of it seemed both familiar and fresh. Well worth your consideration.