Wednesday reading

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This post comes to you from Waterstone’s Piccadilly, where I am being massively entertained by Claire North, Marcus Sedgwick, Adam Roberts and Leila Abu El Hawa.

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Beach Music, by Pat Conroy
Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt
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Last books finished
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ο2
π2
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Rules, by Cynthia Lord

Next books
Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Time Zero, by Justin Richards

Books acquired in last week
None yet, but I am sitting in a big bookshop that doesn’t close for a couple of hours.

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Links I found interesting for 19-11-2014

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The agony of choice

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Tomorrow evening I happen to be in London, and I face a difficult choice:

Will I attend Parliament 2115: re-imagining a democracy of the future at Portcullis House, Westminster, featuring Chris Tyler, Mike Carey, Joseph D’Lacey and Mike Fell,

or

will I attend The Post-Apocalyptic Book Club: Dark Societies with Marcus Sedgwick, Claire North and Adam Roberts at Waterstone’s Piccadilly?

(I thought I’d signed up for the BSFA meeting, but turns out that’s on monday when I won’t be in England.)

Are you planing to attend either of these?

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November Books 3) Empire of Death, by David Bishop

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Set in the gap between Time Flight and Arc of Infinity, like a half-dozen Big Finish audios with the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa; it’s a bit uneven, with the afterlife / alien invasion theme uneasily echoing with what I was watching on Saturday nights earlier this month at the time I was reading the book, and some very off-target stuff about abortion at the very beginning, but also some excellent characterisation of Nyssa who hasn’t generally been well served in print. Bishop always has original ideas, and in this case about half of them come off.

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November Books 2) Sugar Skull, by Charles Burns

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The last of the trilogy of weird graphic story books by Charles Burns which began with X’ed Out and continued with The Hive. I felt it a very satisfactory resolution to the story: I see I hoped after reading the second volume that the punchline would be something sufficiently disturbing to justify the emotional energy we have been asked to invest in the central character, and indeed it is. I was a little disappointed that the pltline involving the real-world characters reading comics slightly fell away, but we got plenty of both the real-world story and its parallel in the world of Doug’s dreams/nightmares. I strongly recommend getting all three together; there’s no need now to delay between each book!

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Links I found interesting for 16-11-2014

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Wednesday reading

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Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Beach Music, by Pat Conroy
ξ2
Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt

Last books finished
Sugar Skull, by Charles Burns
μ2
Empire of Death, by David Bishop
Home, by Marilynne Robinson
ν2

Next books
Rules, by Cynthia Lord
Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Time Zero, by Justin Richards

Books acquired in last week
A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction, by Terry Pratchett
Who’s Next?, by Derrick Sherwin
Sugar Skull, by Charles Burns
Chooz, by Santi-Bucquoy

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Poppies, St Paul’s and Pepys

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I had most of yesterday morning free in London, and decided to try a commemoration of everyone's favourite blogger, Samuel Pepys. Insufficiently thorough research led me to this walk proposed by the Daily Telegraph, and so I set off to Tower Hill to give it a try.

Of course, this is the weekend of the immense poppy display at the Tower of London.
poppies in the moat

Non-UK residents may be unaware of this: a (ceramic) poppy for each of the 882,000 British soldiers who were killed in the first world war has been planted at the Tower of London, producing this tremendous sea of red. Even at 9 am yesterday, it was already crowded, and I shudder to think what it was like later in the day when the Prime Minister and his wife cam to place the last two flowers.
queue for the poppies

It is a moving display of collective remembrance.

I was less fortunate with Samuel Pepys. To begin at the end of his life, St Olave's Church, at the end of Seething Lane where he lived (just around the corner from Tower Hill station) is closed on Saturdays. The Monument to the Great Fire, which I first remember ascending when I was 15, is still there but surrounded by building work; I got a couple of decent shots though.
monument
monument plaque

I walked along Cannon Street to St Paul's Cathedral, thinking of the Great Fire, and Pepys trying to get through to the proper authorities in the burning city:

…At last met my Lord Mayor in Canningstreet, like a man spent, with a handkercher about his neck. To the King's message he cried, like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it."

The streets were a lot quieter than usual because of the Lord Mayor's Show and the various Remembrance Sunday events going on; the clouds were lowering behind New St Paul's, which was only half-built by the time Pepys died (and featured also on Doctor Who later that evening):
2014-11-08 10.02.19

I went into St Paul's for perhaps the second time in my life – I think I went with my family when I was a teenager – and had a good look around. There was a remembrance concert starting at 1100, but the crowds were not yet thronging. I was particularly interested in contrast between the tombs of Nelson and Wellington, and Napoleon's tomb in Paris (which I've visited several times over the years). Nelson's tomb is the more similar to Napoleon's (and of course that's chronologically the wrong way round; Napoleon was still alive when Nelson was buried):
Nelson's tomb

Nelson is very much in the place of honour, the focus of the crypt as a whole, giving him prime position as a supreme national hero; but the crypt itself is a very enclosed space, an element but only one element of a national place of worship. Napoleon occupies the central place in the Dôme des Invalides to the point that I'm sure many visitors think it was built for that purpose.

It is interesting to note that Nelson's sarcophagus had been commissioned almost 300 years earlier for Cardinal Wolsey, but was never used by him. Apparently it had been sitting around Windsor waiting for the right occupant.

Wellington, who presumably had more say in his arrangements than Nelson did, is in a less prominent place:
Wellington's tomb

He is surrounded by the gradually decaying flags from his funeral in 1852, which look like campaign flags and make him appear to be in mute dialogue with his former colleagues. The places of his victories are inscribed around his sarcophagus. There is no mention of the fact that he served two terms as prime minister; it's the resting place of an old soldier who knew when his best days had been.

Somewhat ironic that Wellington and Nelson ended up so close to each other in death, in that in life they met only once, shortly before Nelson's was killed (he didn't know Wellesley, and had to ask who he was).

Anyway, back to Pepys. Having failed on his tomb, I did better on his birthplace in Salisbury Court off Fleet Street.
Pepys birthplace plaque

But I was not very satisfied. I felt that there must be some better guides to Pepys' London out there. And of course, once I got home, I found that there are: Glyn Thomas has compiled three excellent walks, one for Westminster, one for the west of the City and the South Bank, and one for the east of the City and Greenwich. Thanks to my recent change of job, it is likely that I will be in London a lot more often in the next year or so. Would others be interested in joining me in doing any or all of those walks, either on a winter weekend or a decently daylit evening?

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The Fall of the Wall, twenty(-five) years on

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Originally posted by at The Fall of the Wall, twenty years on

The day the Wall fell, I split up with my girlfriend. She had moved to a different city, and the long-distance thing wasn’t working; I went to visit her that Thursday evening, and we had an intense conversation over drinks and pizza, vaguely aware that people were staring at the television screens but assuming it was some sports event. By the time we had worked out that we had both reached the same conclusion about the future of the relationship, I had missed the last train; we went back to her place, I slept on the couch and got up early to go home. And then I bought a newspaper and discovered that while one (short and mostly sweet) chapter of my life was ending, the world had changed forever.

I first went to Berlin in 1986, over the long weekend of German Unity Day which was then on June 17, hitch-hiking there with a friend who I was working with in Heilbronn way off in the southeast. In those days Berlin was a slightly hippyish enclave (the hostel we stayed in was very hippyish and slightly threatening) on the front line of the Cold War. The inner German border remains the most vigorously fortified frontier I have ever seen. We went east as well as west (by tram to Frieedrichstraße), and took pictures of the Brandenburg Gate from both sides which I guess I must still have somewhere; I went to an eastern bookshop and made the mistake of referring to "Ost-Berlin" (rather than "Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR"). At that point the Wall had been up for almost 25 years and looked like it would remain a lot longer.

I went back with Anne in 1992. It was utterly transformed, of course. I cried as we walked through the Brandenburg Gate, which had appeared so utterly blocked by historical circumstance and concrete fortification only a few years before. The west of the city had found a new security and confidence, a strong sense of libeartion; the east was still shell-shocked by defeat. The transport system, now unified, charged considerably less to former easterners buying tickets. The frenzy of new build was just getting going but the momentum wasn’t yet there. Since then I’ve been back perhaps half a dozen times. Earlier this year I took an afternoon to retrace the Wall, helpfully marked out by bricks in the road. It remains a fascinating city for me, and every time I go I find something new.

The BBC has a handy list of walls that remain, including two of which I have direct experience (Belfast and the Green Line in Nicosia) and another which I work on (the Moroccan berm closing off the illegally occupied part of the Western Sahara). Just as the Berlin Wall disturbed me in 1986, any restriction like this disturbs me now. Robert Frost wrote "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall"; his New Hampshire boundary markers were threatened by natural forces, perhaps elves, built by old stone savages. The conflict-built walls of the world are also perpetually under threat from the erosive force of history. And a good thing too.

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Links I found interesting for 08-11-2014

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Wednesday reading

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Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
ℵ1
Beach Music, by Pat Conroy
Home, by Marilynne Robinson
Empire of Death, by David Bishop

Last books finished
TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5: Tom Baker and the Williams Years, by Philip Sandifer
θ2
ι2
κ2 (gave up, won’t finish)
λ2

Next books
Rules, by Cynthia Lord
Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt
 
Books acquired in last week
TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5: Tom Baker and the Williams Years, by Philip Sandifer
CHOOZ, by Santi & Bucquoy

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Links I found interesting for 04-11-2014

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November Books 1) TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5: Tom Baker and the Williams Years

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The latest in Sandifer’s collections of pieces from his long-running blog, this time looking at the post-Hinchcliffe Fourth Doctor stories (and therefore including not only the Graham Williams era, but the first year of Jon Nathan-Turner’s producership). This includes some of the least popular stories ever (eg Underworld) but also some of the most (City of Death). Sandifer mounts a credible defence of Graham Williams – unfairly maligned by Nathan-Turner, and by fandom during the JNT era; dealing with appalling constraints both creative (instructed to tone down the violence after the Hinchcliffe years; then instructed to dial back the humour, which didn’t leave much) and technical (the show, and the BBC, simply running out of money). He also finds more evidence than I thought possible for the influence of Douglas Adams on the show, not only during his time as scipt editor, but both before and after. (And, of course, vice versa.)

Most importantly, he finds that Williams was compelled to turn Doctor Who into the Tom Baker Show, which is of course great for us Tom Baker fans, but not so great for the show’s long-term health. Nathan-Turner then took over and found himself in the same position as Innes Lloyd in 1966 – the show was defined around the lead actor; how to take it forward without him? One senses that Sandifer has more to say about JNT in future volumes, but here he concentrates on Christopher Bidmead’s contribution to Season 18. There are the usual excellent side essays – one previously unpublished on versions of Shada, several on comics, novels and other SF media (in particular Star Wars), an explanatory note on the Winter of Discontent, and what I think is the first write-up of a Big Finish play in this series of books (a lovely piece on The Auntie Matter).

I confess I was a little disappointed on one or two points. The pieces on The Invasion of Time and The Leisure Hive didn’t actually say much about either story, and I think both are interesting in their own right, for good or ill. Although he rightly singles out Lalla Ward for praise, I would have liked to read more about Louise Jameson and particularly John Leeson, who is given less page time than Matthew Waterhouse. A sequence of thought about David Fisher is started but not finished. There seems to be a lot of dialogue with Wood and Miles. And some of the key points about Williams and Nathan-Turner, summarised above, are repeated as often as you would expect in a series of blog posts, but perhaps more often than you would expect in a book that has been edited.

Still, if this is the weakest of the four volumes so far, that should in no way be considered faint praise; I’m nominating it enthusiastically for the BSFA and Hugo awards next year, and I hope you will too.

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October Books 12) Lights Out, by Holly Black

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This is the very latest Doctor Who prose to be published, a short ebook by Holly Black, well-known horror writer for younger readers, which is actually a coda to the eleven ebooks published last year, one for each Doctor; presumably the whole lot will appear in paper as a collection soon. (My advice – buy it, but skip the rather weak opening story by Eoin Colfer.)

This is very good. We have a non-human protagonist and the Twelfth Doctor (between Deep Breath and Into The Dalek) having an adventure as a consequence of getting coffee at an interplanetary coffee joint, in which you find just precisely the sorts of aliens from both Old and New Who who you would expect to see stopping off for a break between adventures. The tropes of both the Whoniverse and sf more widely are beautifully handled and the story, though very short, packs a decent punch. Well worth the (very low) price.

I had not read any of Black’s work before, being a couple of decades out of the target readership, but if this is her standard I can see why she has a following.

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