A brilliant piece of detective work from David A. McIntee, originally posted by him at
I had a chat with Chris Priest at Eastercon, and asked him which of his books I should read that I had not read – I am familiar with both his early and his most recent work, but less clear on the middle. Without hesitation, he said that The Affirmation, published in 1981, is the book that his earlier novels lead to and his later works reflect on. A kind spouse got it for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I devoured it this weekend in post-election haze.
I can see why Priest himself thinks of it as central to his œuvre. The book is about a binary existence, a writer based in England writing about his own life in a fictional archipelago where he can gain eternal life at the cost of his own memory; while his doppelgänger in the archipelago is writing about his life A strange place called England. Families, lovers, writing all intersect across the two strands of reality and we cannot be certain which, if either, is the more real. A number of his earlier books are about a clash between realities, but we readers are usually left less uncertain than we are here about which is “real”. And a lot of his later books pick up themes from The Affirmation and take them further, or in a different direction. Certainly I feel that now I have read it, I appreciate better what Priest was doing in The Islanders and The Adjacent. It’s a bit surprising that the only award it picked up was the Australian Ditmar (though I suppose there were just fewer awards in 1981; it lost the BSFA award to The Shadow of the Torturer). But the 2011 Gollancz SF Masterworks edition features a helpful introduction by Graham Sleight.
I have crunched the numbers from Thursday’s election for each of the Northern Ireland constituencies, simply projecting the votes cast as if the election had instead been for 18 six-seat constituencies, and making a few other assumptions (competent but not perfect balancing of candidates, Unionists transfer to each other more than Nationalists, etc). The raw results are below, with links to each constituency page. I have colour-coded gains and losses, and also indicated in bold the four constituencies where there was a Unionist pact.
| DUP | SF | UUP | SDLP | Alliance | UKIP | PBP | TUV | Hermon | Notes | |
| Total | 32 | 29 | 17 | 14 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | |
| 2011 | 38 | 29 | 16 | 14 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Green 1, Ind 1 |
| E Belfast | 3 | 0- | 3+ | |||||||
| N Belfast | 3 | 2 | 1 | Alliance chasing SDLP for last seat. | ||||||
| S Belfast | 2+ | 1 | 0- | 2 | 1 | UUP and Greens close behind 2nd DUP and 2nd SDLP. | ||||
| W Belfast | 4- | 1 | 1+ | |||||||
| E Antrim | 2- | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1+ | |||||
| N Antrim | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| S Antrim | 2- | 1 | 2+ | 1 | ||||||
| N Down | 2- | 0- | 1 | 3+++ | Greens would also lose seat to Hermon | |||||
| S Down | 0- | 2 | 1 | 3+ | ||||||
| FST | 0– | 3 | 3++ | |||||||
| Foyle | 1 | 2 | 3 | |||||||
| Lagan Valley | 4 | 1 | 1 | UKIP and possibly SDLP close to 4th DUP. | ||||||
| E Londonderry | 3 | 1 | 1+ | 1 | Ind would lose seat to UUP | |||||
| Mid Ulster | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| N&A | 0- | 3 | 2+ | 1 | ||||||
| Strangford | 3 | 1- | 1 | 1+ | Last seat v difficult to call, but UKIP best placed. | |||||
| W Tyrone | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Upper Bann | 2 | 2+ | 2 | 0- |
I have made a few judgement calls here. While there are not quite three Nationalist quotas in North Belfast, if the SDLP can stay ahead of Alliance they should keep their seat; two well-balanced DUP candidates in South Belfast can knock out the UUP there; four well-balanced DUP candidates can keep all four seats in Lagan Valley; and UKIP lead the pack of smaller Unionist parties in Strangford and should overtake the SDLP for the last seat there.
On that basis, the DUP would be down by 6 seats, still the largest single party, but only 3 ahead of SF. True, three of those six notional losses are the result of the electoral pact with the UUP, in Fermanagh and South Tyrone and Newry and Armagh, and another is a by-product of my projection of Lady Hermon into three North Down MLA’s. But slippage to UKIP in East Antrim, the UUP in South Antrim, and the SDLP in South Down looks real enough, compensated by a notional gain from the UUP in South Belfast.
The projection gives the UUP a net gain of a seat, which is at first glance encouraging; but if one leaves aside the two southern constituencies where the DUP gave the UUP three notional Assembly seats (and on the other hand the peculiar case of North Down), the overall pattern is of a net downtick, with losses to Alliance in East Belfast, the DUP in South Belfast and UKIP in Strangford counterbalanced by gains from the DUP in South Antrim and the late David McClarty’s seat in East Londonderry.
UKIP had a good election in places, in contention for an Assembly seat not only in Strangford, where they currently hold one thanks to David McNarry’s defection from the UUP, but also in East Antrim, where TUV (as elsewhere) failed to put up much of a challenge.
My projection has both Nationalist parties on the same number of MLAs as in 2011, but with some interesting variation below the headline. The SDLP lost votes in South Down, but still has enough for three quotas, likely squeezing out the DUP. On the other hand, their vote in Upper Bann in this election is below the threshold of a decently balanced Sinn Fein ticket (in fairness, a trick that SF have had difficulty pulling off here). An SF gain from the DUP in Upper Bann is then countered by a loss to Gerry Carroll and People Before Profit in West Belfast.
Alliance had a good election overall – despite losing their one Westminster seat, the vote went up in all but their two worst constituencies, and Naomi Long’s East Belfast vote would deliver a third Assembly seat there at the expense of the UUP. Uniquely among the larger parties all their current seats look safe on this vote, and they are within shouting distance of a second seat in South Belfast and a first in North Belfast.
Westminster elections generally flatter larger parties and suppress the vote of smaller ones. That hasn’t been the case this year, as UKIP are in good position to take two seats and People Before Profit one, plus of course Lady Hermon’s success in North Down – which comes at the partial expense of the Greens, who we could expect to do better in an Assembly election.
Of course, real elections are different from virtual elections. But my sense is that there is in fact a drift away from all four of the large parties, SF and the SDLP losing votes overall, and the DUP and UUP upticks in vote share being almost entirely due to the pacts. But the centre ground is not the sole beneficiary of this drift; Unionist voters are having a fresh look at UKIP and to a lesser extent the TUV and the Conservatives; People Before Profit and single-issue campaigners are nibbling at the other side. Next year’s poll is looking very interesting.
A day late, again; I got a bit distracted yesterday as those of you who were watching BBC Northern Ireland will know…
Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Islands In The Stream, by Ernest Hemingway
Down by Lawrence Miles
Last books finished
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones
Synthespians™, by Craig Hinton
Across the River and into the Trees, by Ernest Hemingway
Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward
The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
Amoras vol 1: Suske, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Marc Legendre and Charel Cambré]
Last week’s audios
The Defectors, by Nicholas Briggs
Next books
Mating, by Norman Rush
The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari
Books acquired in last week
The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
The Evolution Man, by Roy Lewis
Doctor Who and the Communist, by Michael Herbert
Three short stories by the late great DWJ, all about children being menaced by the supernatural. Animated items of furniture feature strongly. Two of the stories have evil (or at least very unhelpful) old ladies. They are good short pieces; the entire book is only 150 pages.
I found myself musing on how DWJ differs from Roald Dahl, partly because these pieces all reminded me a bit of Matilda, but remain closer to Wilkins’ Tooth and The Ogre Downstairs. But I wasn’t able to come to any conclusions. Maybe another time.
After Sasquan's spectacular intake of new Supporting Memberships following the announcement of the Hugo shortlists, I've seen a great deal of speculation on what this might mean in terms of votes. I think we can all be certain that most of these new members have joined with the intention of participating in the Hugos; how will they do so?
I thought one easy measure might be geography. Sasquan has published the geographical breakdown of its members as of 30 April; I have compared these with Loncon's membership as of 31 July last year, the day when Hugo voting closed, looking only at the 50 US states and the District of Columbia. My intention was to see if I could detect a clear shift in Sasquan's membership, as compared to Loncon's, from "red" states to "blue" or vice versa. My reasoning is that if there has been a surge of membership from states where voters are generally right-wing, that might indicate a more right-wing electorate.
I have to say that this proved impossible to detect. I give the figures below, but there are only 11 of the 51 territories in question where Sasquan now has proportionally more members than Loncon did at close of Hugo votes. Those are:
Washington (20.1% of US-based Sasquan members, 5.9% of US-based Loncon members, up 14.2%)
Oregon (up 3.1%)
Idaho (up 1.1%)
Montana, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, Missouri, Oklahoma (all up less than 0.5%).
Aside from the obvious geographical effect, these are such small changes as to be meaningless. Edited to add: On reflection, though I was looking for reaction to the ballot announcement and did not find it, I should also add here that the geographical effect favours two strongly blue (pro-Democrat) states, Washington and Oregon, and weakly favours a red (pro-Republican) state, Idaho.
At the other end, there are between 1.2% and 2.6% fewer US-based members at Sasquan compared to Loncon from Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and California. These are all pretty blue (ie pro-Democrat) states, but perhaps more importantly they are all places with decent air connections to London. Illinois will also have been skewed upwards by Loncon's efforts to sign people up in the run-up to the convention site selection ballot in Chicago. (Edited to add: California was likely also boosted by the fact that both of Loncon's successive excellent US agents are from San Francisco.)
My conclusion is that the Hugo electorate this year is likely to be similar to the Hugo electorate of previous years; if anything more so.
Detailed figures below for anyone who wants to crunch them further.
| State | Sasquan | Loncon | Population | %Sasquan | %Loncon | %USpop |
| Alabama | 41 | 50 | 4,849,377 | 0.6% | 1.2% | 1.5% |
| Alaska | 23 | 12 | 736,732 | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| Arizona | 130 | 65 | 6,731,484 | 1.9% | 1.6% | 2.1% |
| Arkansas | 22 | 20 | 2,966,369 | 0.3% | 0.5% | 0.9% |
| California | 1092 | 693 | 38,802,500 | 15.9% | 17.2% | 12.2% |
| Colorado | 161 | 105 | 5,355,866 | 2.3% | 2.6% | 1.7% |
| Connecticut | 50 | 37 | 3,596,677 | 0.7% | 0.9% | 1.1% |
| Delaware | 14 | 10 | 935,614 | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| District of Columbia | 36 | 31 | 658,893 | 0.5% | 0.8% | 0.2% |
| Florida | 145 | 107 | 19,893,297 | 2.1% | 2.7% | 6.2% |
| Georgia | 83 | 58 | 10,097,343 | 1.2% | 1.4% | 3.2% |
| Hawaii | 11 | 10 | 1,419,561 | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.4% |
| Idaho | 95 | 11 | 1,634,464 | 1.4% | 0.3% | 0.5% |
| Illinois | 238 | 246 | 12,880,580 | 3.5% | 6.1% | 4.0% |
| Indiana | 56 | 41 | 6,596,855 | 0.8% | 1.0% | 2.1% |
| Iowa | 90 | 47 | 3,107,126 | 1.3% | 1.2% | 1.0% |
| Kansas | 50 | 37 | 2,904,021 | 0.7% | 0.9% | 0.9% |
| Kentucky | 36 | 24 | 4,413,457 | 0.5% | 0.6% | 1.4% |
| Louisiana | 38 | 27 | 4,649,676 | 0.6% | 0.7% | 1.5% |
| Maine | 22 | 18 | 1,330,089 | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.4% |
| Maryland | 215 | 152 | 5,976,407 | 3.1% | 3.8% | 1.9% |
| Massachusetts | 302 | 282 | 6,745,408 | 4.4% | 7.0% | 2.1% |
| Michigan | 114 | 78 | 9,909,877 | 1.7% | 1.9% | 3.1% |
| Minnesota | 136 | 117 | 5,457,173 | 2.0% | 2.9% | 1.7% |
| Mississippi | 4 | 7 | 2,994,079 | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.9% |
| Missouri | 88 | 51 | 6,063,589 | 1.3% | 1.3% | 1.9% |
| Montana | 37 | 4 | 1,023,579 | 0.5% | 0.1% | 0.3% |
| Nebraska | 22 | 24 | 1,881,503 | 0.3% | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| Nevada | 34 | 30 | 2,839,099 | 0.5% | 0.7% | 0.9% |
| New Hampshire | 41 | 43 | 1,326,813 | 0.6% | 1.1% | 0.4% |
| New Jersey | 103 | 92 | 8,938,175 | 1.5% | 2.3% | 2.8% |
| New Mexico | 39 | 33 | 2,085,572 | 0.6% | 0.8% | 0.7% |
| New York | 251 | 235 | 19,746,227 | 3.6% | 5.8% | 6.2% |
| North Carolina | 111 | 69 | 9,943,964 | 1.6% | 1.7% | 3.1% |
| North Dakota | 4 | 5 | 739,482 | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| Ohio | 113 | 102 | 11,594,163 | 1.6% | 2.5% | 3.6% |
| Oklahoma | 39 | 23 | 3,878,051 | 0.6% | 0.6% | 1.2% |
| Oregon | 335 | 73 | 3,970,239 | 4.9% | 1.8% | 1.2% |
| Pennsylvania | 142 | 108 | 12,787,209 | 2.1% | 2.7% | 4.0% |
| Rhode Island | 12 | 9 | 1,055,173 | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| South Carolina | 29 | 23 | 4,832,482 | 0.4% | 0.6% | 1.5% |
| South Dakota | 7 | 8 | 853,175 | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| Tennessee | 52 | 45 | 6,549,352 | 0.8% | 1.1% | 2.1% |
| Texas | 422 | 234 | 26,956,958 | 6.1% | 5.8% | 8.5% |
| Utah | 92 | 67 | 2,942,902 | 1.3% | 1.7% | 0.9% |
| Vermont | 11 | 7 | 626,562 | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Virginia | 207 | 142 | 8,326,289 | 3.0% | 3.5% | 2.6% |
| Washington | 1384 | 239 | 7,061,530 | 20.1% | 5.9% | 2.2% |
| West Virginia | 9 | 8 | 1,850,326 | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.6% |
| Wisconsin | 82 | 73 | 5,757,564 | 1.2% | 1.8% | 1.8% |
| Wyoming | 11 | 1 | 584,153 | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.2% |
Incidentally, Florida is drastically underrepresented, in proportion to its population, on both lists.
Edited to add: Table has been revised as I got Loncon numbers for Maine and Connecticut wrong. The result is that they are not as divergent from Sasquan as I first reported, but California is a bit more so.
2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award
These emerged from my recent survey as the best-known books set in Iceland and Spain respectively. They actually have some elements in common – both are about untangling decades-old family secrets, involving sex, violence and intellectual endeavour.
In Jar City, the intellectual endeavour is science, both forensic medicine and the Icelandic national genetic research database; and the mode of the novel is a detective story. The winning factor is the portrayal of this small island society, where almost everyone knows almost everyone, but people still slip between the cracks and the genetic mapping project starts to uncover hidden history. Our detective hero is much more at home with ordinary criminals, and dealing with the fallout of his broken family, than with the scientists who seem an alien culture grafted onto Iceland’s gritty foundations. It also features a character who is not gendered, which takes some linguistic manoeuvring in a society where most people take a gendered patronymic. In fact the plot once entangled is fairly straightforward, and the resolution (dare I say it) a little glib, but it was a jolly good read, and the image of a room full of jars containing various things that forensic scientists might be interested in (the “jar city” of the title) will linger with me longer than I wanted it to.
In The Shadow of the Wind, the intellectual endeavour is literature, and how a writer and his works became erased and maimed by love, religion, the Spanish civil war and the Franco regime. It’s a much better book than Jar City, tracing family histories through generations, with recurrent themes of locked rooms and hidden knowledge, which is not always as good to find as you may think. Ruiz Zafón somehow catches the mood of Barcelona at different times in the twentieth century very well, particularly the stifling ideology of the Franco period. One point that is a little surprising is that the Catalan language is nowhere mentioned, though almost all the characters (one notable exception being the psychopathic police officer) have obviously Catalan names. I wonder if the author felt he needed to finesse that point for his Spanish audience?
Anyway, both recommended, though The Shadow of the Wind more so.
Post delayed by a horrible stomach bug which has completely flattened me.
A Slip of the Keyboard, by Terry Pratchett
Here’s One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves
The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 4)
Wages of Sin, by Andrew M. Greeley
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
SF (non-Who): 32 (YTD 63
χ2
η3
λ3
μ4 – 50 pages
ν4 – 50 pages
ξ4 – 50 pages
ο4 – 50 pages
π4 – 50 pages
ρ4 – 50 pages
σ4 – 60 pages
τ4
υ4 – 50 pages
φ4 – 50 pages
χ4 – 50 pages
ψ4 – 50 pages
ω4 – 50 pages
Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey
α5 – 50 pages
β5 – 50 pages
γ5 – 50 pages
δ5 – 50 pages
ε5 – 50 pages
ζ5 – 50 pages
η5 – 50 pages
θ5 – 50 pages
ι5 – 50 pages
κ5 – 50 pages
λ5 – 50 pages
μ5 – 50 pages
ν5 – 50 pages
υ5 – 50 pages
φ5 – 50 pages
Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 15)
Burning Heart, by Dave Stone
Timeless by Steve Cole
Ship of Fools, by Dave Stone
Lethbridge-Stewart: Top Secret Files, by Andy Frankham-Allen, Nick Walters, Graeme Harper and David A. McIntee
Comics : 2 (YTD 8)
Ms Marvel vol 1: No Normal, by G.Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch
~6,500 pages (YTD 25,500)
12/43 by women (YTD 32/107) – Dunnett, χ2, η3, ξ4, π4, σ4, φ4, Carey, κ5, λ5, μ5, Wilson
4/43 by PoC (YTD 8/107) – ω4, γ5, Alphona, Upchurch
Reread: 3/43 (χ2, η3, λ3), YTD 11/107
Reading now:
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason
Coming soon (perhaps):
Mating, by Norman Rush
The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari
The Painted Man/The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett
The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov
The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999, by Misha Glenny
Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture: Military Men in England and Ireland, 1558-1594, by Rory Rapple
Een geweer in het water, by Hermann
The seven-per-cent solution; being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D, by Nicholas Meyer
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong
Sculptor’s Daughter, by Tove Jansson
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, by Ursula Le Guin
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Meditations on Middle Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
Prisoner, by Dave Rogers
The King’s Speech, by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi
Divorcing Jack, by Colin Bateman
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal
Synthespians™ by Craig Hinton
Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward
Down by Lawrence Miles
Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason
Last books finished
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
Next books
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones
Islands In The Stream, by Ernest Hemingway
Synthespians™, by Craig Hinton
Books acquired in last week
The Affirmation, by Christopher Priest
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason
Saga, Volume 4, by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Amoras, vol 1: Suske, by Willy Vandersteen [Marc Legendre]
Ys: De Legende vol 1: Verraad by Jean-Luc Istin and Dejan Nenadov
Apostata, bundel 1 [De purperen vloek and De heks], by Ken Broeders
It’s International Jazz Day today, and though I don’t think of myself as a jazz fan, there’s something incredibly exhilarating and actually revolutionary about the best of it. I remember committing grievous harm against “Take the A Train” in the school band thirty years ago; the song is much stronger than our puny efforts to defeat it, though, and will live on when we are all dust. Here’s the classic film version from 1943, with vocals by Bettie Roché (who, naturally, did not get screen credit). Just give yourself three minutes to listen to it.
Thanks to the BBC making all back issues of the Radio Times available online, you can now see what the Beeb put on air on any day since Edwin H. Lemare and Harry Goss-Custard played the organ at Steinway Hall on 30 September 1923. I am looking here at what was broadcast on a particular Wednesday 48 years ago.
Other things that caught my eye later on BBC One:
An educational programme with the title Power for 1980 – Coal. When 1980 came round in real life, of course, coal was heading for oblivion.
Jackanory with Marian Diamond reading part 3 of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. She lated voicer Galadriel in the BBC Radio Lord of the Rings. This page has pictures of her making phone calls in 1960 and 1974.
This episode (Space Monkey) of Top Cat. (There was also a Magic Roundabout episode, but the Radio Times does not record which one.)
At 6.17 pm (another curiously specific timeslot) we got highlights from that year’s Wembley concert organised by the Stars Oganisation for Spastics (now the Stars Foundation for Cerebral Palsy), featuring Paul Jones, the Kinks and Lulu.
Tomorrow’s World previewed Expo 67 in Montreal, which was then about to open. I remember wandering through its decaying plastic exhibit space five years later.
Then police drama Softly, Softly, starring Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor, reached the 26th episode of its second series.
The Wednesday Play was another repeat, first shown in 1966: The Executioner by Robert Muller, directed by Michael Hayes (who also directed three Doctor Who stories including City of Death), with the cast including a couple of actors (David Garfield, Eileen Way) who also appeared in Doctor Who. It is about the assassination of Trotsky.
BBC One ended its day with a reflection on the life of the Quaker pioneer George Fox, featuring John Abineri (another multiple Who actor) following his path through England with readings by Paul Eddington (who was himself a committed Quaker).
All the presenters of all the current affairs programmes appear to have been men.
The channel then took a break, presumably illustrated by a test card (though not the famous girl with the clown, which was first shown only in July 1967) until 7.30 pm, when it returned with a hard-hitting documentary about angling, followed by another about Catholic priests and celibacy. (Actually it’s possible that only one of these was hard-hitting).
It then switched to drama with a thirty-minute theatre piece, Boa Constrictors by William Bast, who is best known now for his early relationship with James Dean and his later show-running of Dynasty spinoff The Colbys. He lived in the UK in the mid-1960s; this play is about a couple attempting to go out for a party while being impeded by their cleaner. (Though the fact that the non-cleaner characters are called Frankie One, Johnny One, Frankie Two, Johnny Two, and Frankie Three and Johnny Three makes it sound interesting, especially as Johnny Two is black and Frankie Three is a man.)
That was followed by the 1943 Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt, and then by the tremendously highbrow experience of Sir Hugh Casson extolling the virtues of St Pancras Station. The evening ended with a report from the Golden Rose festival at Montreux, where The Frost Report won the overall prize.
The Home Service centred its evening around, believe it or not, the annual dinner of the Royal Academy, at which the guest speaker was the prime minister, Harold Wilson. I note that the president of the RA got his knighthood later that year. The Book at Bedtime was Silas Marner, read by Alec McCowen.
Over on the Light Programme, Woman’s Hour reported from Belgium, Round the Horne repeated the previous Sunday’s episode, The Phantom Of Bogmouth Hip, and featured a new play, Safari to Paris, by Anton Delmar starring Barbara Cavan and Carol Marsh.
I wasn’t paying attention to any of this, because I was born just a few minutes before the world premiere of The Turtle Drum, and I suspect I concentrated on other issues for the rest of the day.
It’s more than ten years since I read the first Kushiel trilogy, and just over five years since I read the first book of the second trilogy, but I found myself enjoying this just as much, despite the relative lack of kink. Here, Imriel engages in an unwise but passionate love affair in his home city in the shadow France of Carey’s world, before heading off to his arranged marriage in his world’s shadow Britain. It all goes horribly wrong and he must pursue a were-bear across the frozen steppes, dealing also with zealous worshippers of Yeshua setting up a homeland state in the far North. I am guessing that the last book of the trilogy will feature further eastern excursions; I know I’ll get to it a bit sooner than I got to this one.
I have often whined about the quality or suitability of some of the Hugo finalists in previous years. For instance, I considered that two of last year’s short fiction finalists were not very sfnal, and I voted them down accordingly (as did, I note, the voters as a whole – neither won in its category); and the pool of nominators and candidates for all the short fiction categories has sometimes seemed shallow and even dry in places. I don’t think anyone believes that the Hugos infallibly catalogue the best of the genre.
That of course is a very different position from concluding that the entire nominations process is steered by a secret left-wing conspiracy (it isn’t, and never was), let alone nominating your own choice of bad stories rather than the ones you fear might otherwise make the ballot. Even less is it a justification for attempting to destroy the awards entirely, just because you and your friends never win.
But I’ll admit that I too bear some responsibility. I’m one of those people who in the past has rarely nominated short fiction for the Hugos because I don’t actually read that much of it as it comes out. I have looked to the BSFA shortlist and the Hugos themselves to inform my short fiction reading, and then the anthologies that come out later in the year. My personal reading style is to try and get through the mountains of unread books, mostly novels, on the shelves by my bed. Maybe I need to start seeking out short fiction more proactively.
On a happier note, I’m inclined to feel that the high-profile press coverage of the last three weeks, which has been generally pretty hostile to the slates, will have motivated people who previously passively appreciated the Hugos, but did not feel sufficiently invested in the outcome to take part. Now they do and they will. There will be significantly increased participation in both voting this year and nominating next year. That has to be a good thing in itself, and it’s a good chance to bring genuinely greater diversity to the voter base. The slate architects deserve no credit whatsoever for this, as their intention was to pull a political stunt rather than actually to improve matters.
To the short fiction categories.
Four of the five finalists in this category are on the ballot because of an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos, rather than because of their ostensible literary merit, and the fifth is there because of an allied campaign whose organisers have made it clear that they have no problem in colluding with the organiser of the more successful campaign which has dominated the nominations this year. Their position on the ballot is illegitimate and they will not get my vote.
I am not interested in the views of those nominated on either the process or more general political issues; it just seems to me pretty clear that if you don’t want a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos to succeed, it’s better not to vote for those candidates that he has pushed onto the ballot. My vote will therefore have a single preference:
1) No Award
Even if I could put aside the circumstances of the nomination process, I would have difficulty in voting for some of the finalists. The behaviour of at least two of the authors would make me hesitate about giving them a chance to strut onto the stage as winners, regardless of the merits of their fiction.
Four of the finalists in this category are on the ballot because of an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos, rather than because of their ostensible literary merit. Their position on the ballot is illegitimate and they will not get my vote.
It must be admitted that this is one of the more respectable parts of the slate, though also a category where any pretension to “democratic” or “transparent” crowdsourcing was simply abandoned. I’m particularly sorry to lose the chance to vote on Michael F. Flynn’s story. I’ve generally enjoyed his fiction, and often voted for it. But not this year.
My vote will therefore have two preferences:
1) No Award
2) “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt
I’m afraid that once again Olde Heuvelt’s writing has failed to grab me. The story is close in spirit to Ted Chiang and to last year’s winner by John Chu, but I felt it did not have the same finesse of execution. Chance Morrison has given her own typically caustic take on the story; it lost me with gur tbyqsvfu va gur 7 Hc obggyr; fheryl gur pbapragengvba bs pneoba qvbkvqr naq gnegnevp npvq jbhyq xvyy gur cbbe perngher bss?
However, if through some awful chain of circumstances my vote should be decisive in whether the Hugo (or one of the lower places in this category) goes to “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” or to one of the slate nominees, I would prefer that “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” won and the slate nominee lost; I am therefore giving it my second preference.
All five finalists in this category are on the ballot because of an organised campaign by a racist misogynist whose declared aim is to destroy the Hugos, rather than because of their ostensible literary merit. Their position on the ballot is illegitimate and they will not get my vote. My ballot will therefore have a single preference:
1) No Award
Even if I could put aside the circumstances of the nomination process, I would again have difficulty in voting for some of the finalists. Three of the nominated stories are by an author whose online conduct has been so grotesque that I would be disinclined to give him the chance to appear as a winner even if I liked his writing. (I did like some of his early work, but have been less enthusiastic about his more recent output.) One of the other two is by an author who has repeatedly resorted to obscene and vicious abuse of those who disagree with him, and again I don’t particularly want to reward that behaviour. This is not about political views; it is about professionalism.
I have not engaged in systematic research on the behaviour and views of all nominated authors, and I’m not interested in finding out more about any of them at this stage, because as I have said this isn’t going to sway my vote. In any case I am dubious about demanding loyalty oaths – or disloyalty oaths, for that matter – from writers or indeed anyone. I am just recording what I’ve noticed in general reading around this year’s Hugos, and I suspect I am not alone in making some of those judgements.
Sorry to be grim. But we are in grim circumstances.
2015 Hugos: Initial observations | Voting No Award above the slates | How the slate was(n’t) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel | Short fiction | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Pro and Fan Artist | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award