Following up my post yesterday about how to get hold of the Retro Hugo finalists in the short fiction categories, these are the conclusions of my reading.

Best Novella

This is by some margin the best of the fiction categories. I know that some argue that the novella is SF's natural length; I don't have strong views on that myself, but this list is good supporting evidence.

5) “The Time Trap” by Henry Kuttner – a very pulp story, with not only a lost city in the Arabian desert but also time-travel, an Evil Queen and a Heroically Nude Heroine. Yet it's very readable, absolutely carrying on the tradtions of Rider Haggard in a new sfnal era.

4) “A Matter of Form” by H. L. Gold – I hadn't read this before, and in fact I'm not sure that I had read anything by Gold before, though of course I was aware of his importance in the history of the genre as an editor (and also that he shared my birthday, 26 April). But it's a very good if rather downbeat story about a man whose personality is swapped with a dog's by a disreputable scientist, and his efforts to reverse the situation.

3) Anthem by Ayn Rand – Actually one of her most accessible books, set in a totalitarian society where individuality has been repressed. The gender politics are still somewhat dodgy, but it's a reasonable stop on the literary path from We to Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. If Rand had restrained her later writing to this sort of pithiness, the world would be a better place. (NB one of two pieces by women, of the twenty fiction pieces nominated.)

2) “Sleepers of Mars” by John Wyndham/John Beynon – I noted previously Wyndham's miscounting of the Soviet Republics, but this is actually rather an attractive story, Bradbury before his time, with the central characters being the Russian cosmonauts (though in fact they include a Ukrainian, a Kyrgyz and a politically exiled Scot) and an opening-the-tomb narrative with a surprising and downbeat ending.

1) “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell/Don A. Stuart – This really is a classic, and I expect that it will win by a country mile. I previously read it as a teenager, before I'd read Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness (which is surely one of the sources). It is a bit clunkier than I had realised, but the increasing sense of paranoia, and the image of the blood test betraying the hidden monsters, are very powerful.

Best Novelette

5) "Rule 18" by Clifford D. Simak – a story about using time travel to ensure the racial purity and excellence of the defending team in an interplanetary sports game. Native Americans play a key role. It is topical because of the World Cup, but it really isn't very good.

4) "Hollywood on the Moon" by Henry Kuttner – takes our plucky cameraman hero with his spunky girl sidekick (her chin is frequently mentioned) from the Moon to Ganymede (the asteroid, not the Jovian satellite) for thrilling adventures. There are no girls in Africa.

3) “Pigeons From Hell” by Robert E. Howard – a horror story rather than SF, much anthologised but marred for today's readers by repeated use of the word "Nigger" (and there is a Magical Negro too, not surprisingly). Likely to win if only because it's the best known.

2) "Dead Knowledge" by John W. Campbell/Don A. Stuart – impressed me with its intense escalation of horror, a story of astronauts landing on a world where everyone appears to have killed themselves rather than allow something awful to happen. Again, the end didn't quite work for me.

1) "Werewoman" by C.L. Moore – a breathless evocation of bodily transformation, lyrically written; with a slightly offkey ending. It's at a completely different level to the other short fiction. (NB one of two pieces by women, of the twenty fiction pieces nominated.)

Best Short Story

5) The best that can be said of “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma” by Ray Bradbury is that he got a lot better after this, his first published story. While the idea (a time-sensitive man foresees his own death, but not how it will come about) is OK, if not especially startling, the execution is, to be polite about it, unpolished. Bradbury was 17 when it was published, which must make him the youngest ever Hugo or Retro Hugo finalist, so some allowance can be made for him, though not for those who nominated it.

4) "How We Went To Mars" by Arthur C. Clarke is also pretty awful; a one-joke story about a pompous English village club who invent an interplanetary rocket, stretched well past breaking point. An early Clarke and not one of his greatest.

3) I have always hated stories about cute anthropomorphic robots, for as long as I can remember. "Helen O'Loy", by Lester Del Rey, is the archetype of such stories (and probably pt me off them when I first read it at the age of 13 or so). It will probably win.

2) "The Faithful", by Lester Del Rey, is a story about how Man's subject races keep the faith after Man's extinction. It does not survive a post-colonial reading terribly well.

1) "Hyperpilousity", by L. Sprague de Camp, struggles with gender and ethnic stereotypes, and tries a little too hard to be funny, but does have an interesting idea at its core: what would it mean for human society (where "human society" = "New York") if we all started growing body hair and so stopped wearing clothes? For my money, it is the best of this bunch.

You can vote in this year's Hugos, and the 1939 Retro Hugos, by joining Loncon 3 at http://www.loncon3.org/memberships .

2014: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist | Best Fan Artist
1939: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist

This is a bold step by BBC books: a set of sketches which basically all revolve around the same joke, the Doctor (and the Whoniverse) intruding in the fictional world of Shakespeare’s plays. The authors include James Goss, who for my money is the best current writer of Who prose, and Matthew Sweet, who brings a certain lit crit depth to proceedings (not to neglect Jonathan Morris and Justin Richards who are both reliable writers of Who fiction). The fifth writer is an undergraduate.

Combining Shakespeare and the Doctor is not new. On TV, quite apart from the 2007 story The Shakespeare Code, references to the Bard go back to his appearance on the Time-Space Visualiser which the First Doctor ripped off from the Space Museum in 1965. Actually the first reference in the Whoniverse is even earlier, in The Dalek Book from June 1964, in which young Daleks are told that “THE SHAKESPEARE PLAYS AND SONNETS WERE WRITTEN BY OUR EMPEROR”. I listed the Who/Shakespeare crossovers of which I was then aware back in 2009.

Although this book is basically 200 pages of the same joke, there are some really good twists on it. One would need a certain amount of familiarity with both sets of canonical texts to appreciate all of it – the insertion of Romana into Pericles is actually really funny but only if you know that particular scene from Pericles, which is not exactly Shakespeare’s best-known play. But A Midsummer Night’s Dream is much better known, and the recasting of the Rude Mechanicals as Sontarans performing a stage interpretation of the events of Horror of Fang Rock is brilliant. And the recasting of the Master as Mephistopheles to Marlowe as Faust, rewriting Shakespeare’s plays to remove him and the Doctor from history, is a genius touch – the Master gets some hilarious lines too.

Most of the rest is predictable but entertaining – I could have skipped the sonnets myself, though I see that other readers liked them. Worth the money anyway.

• Lionel Messi Is Impossible
  
  The numbers prove it.
  (tags: worldcup )

Having invoked them in my discussion of Flemish dialect the other day, it occurred to me that I had never actually read any Suske en Wiske, Belgium’s other favourite comic strip after Tintin, so I borrowed one of F’s collected sets. Assuming that these three are typical, the stories revolve around the adventures of the title characters, a boy and girl; Wiske’s aunt Sidonia; their friend Lambik, who is a less alcoholic and less nautical version of Tintin’s Captain Haddock; their other friend Jerom, who is possessed of supernatural strength and a peculiar turn of phrase; and Professor Barabas, whose researches are often a starting point for the adventure. The strip was drawn for decades by Willy Vandersteen, who then handed over the reins to Paul Geerts, who himself has now retired, though the Vandersteen brand remains on the masthead. The height of the Suske and Wiske stories is apparently considered to be the “Blue Albums” dating from the time of Vandersteen’s short-lived partnership with Hergé in the late 1950s; these three stories all post-date that period.

June Books 20) De Apenkermis, by Willy Vandersteen

This dates from 1965, and features a lot of the considerations of the time: radiation from a passing meteor causes intense heat (at the start of the story, forgotten after a couple of dozen pages), intelligent apes rising to take over the world, a daring spacewalk, explicit reference to James Bond. I was also a little surprised to see our gallant companions travelling to, of all places, Northern Ireland by submarine.

The ape who they meet on the Irish shore explains that he had to leave the circus after it went bust when all the clowns and acrobats went into politics instead.

The rise of the apes reveals some awfully dodgy racial politics, not for the last time I’m afraid. The whole story is rather disjointed and episodic, thrilling episode following thrilling episode without really referring back to earlier events. Like most Suske and Wiske strips, this was originally written for newspaper publication, but it rather felt as if Vandersteen was making it up as he went along.

June Books 21) Amoris van Amoras, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts]

This story, written in 1984, takes the gang to the South Pacific island of Amoras, a magical place where Wiske is in fact queen as the result of an earlier visit, a new and wonderful version of Antwerp is being built, and there are incidentally no black people. The villains, a woman who dresses as a witch and a bloke who dresses as a Sinister Foreigner, have been evilly building, shudder, modern-style apartment blocks in Antverpia, and lead a gang of henchmen who wear metal flowerpots on their heads (the head henchman has a little flower stuck into his so that you can tell which one he is). Other characters include the ghost of Suske’s great-grandfather and a little dog who helpfully pees on things (a line used also on one occasion by Hergé).

Suske and Wiske save the day by befriending the intelligent mortar-munching termites (whose leader is the titular Amoris) which have been unwittingly undermining the foundations of the replica of Antwerp Cathedral on the island (have you been following this so far?); the termites instead are unleashed on the villains’ modern apartment blocks, which collapse to general appreciation. What their potential inhabitants may have thought of this is not reported. I suspect that this is a fairly typical adventure, and it is a little more fun than I have made it sound.

>June Books 22) Het Aruba-dossier, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts]

This 1994 story is much less far-fetched, with the only sfnal elements (apart, as usual, from Jerom’s preternatural strength) being an undersea base and Professor Barabas’s ‘Terranef’, a cousin of the Thunderbirds’ Mole. The Belgian airline Sabena will have ground their teeth at the prominent product placement for their Dutch rivals KLM; apparently there was a long-running connection betweem KLM and the Vandersteen empire, though it must be admitted that once you have decided to transport your central characters from our part of the world to Aruba (which, as you know, Bob, is one of the islands of the former Netherlands Antilles) you’ll probably do it via Schiphol rather than Zaventem.

This version of Aruba actually has got quite a lot of black people, and they are all seen dancing in the street at carnival time; none seem to be in the police or employed on the villains’ undersea base (apart from the stereotypically multiethnic council of villains which is behind it all). There is a scientific McGuffin which is barely used in the plot, and a researcher whose name is Vorser, which means researcher. I thought it was a bit more low-key than the other two, and also slightly shorter; Professor Barabas spends most of the story in hospital, and Aunt Sidonia is sidelined rather abruptly before the group goes to Aruba.

I hope that more recent Suske en Wiske strips have moved with the times; they will have had quite a lot of catching up to do.

Like a lot of people, I excitedly downloaded the Retro Hugo Voter Packet when it became available this week; and like a lot of people, I was sorry that it didn’t include more of the finalists in the fiction categories. Unlike a lot of people, I’m aware of the hard work and immense difficulties faced by the Hugo team in assembling it, and shared some of their frustration in tracking down permissions and reproducible copies. One can make a case to the publishers and authors of today that including their work in the Hugo voter packet is a gain for them in terms of future sales; it’s rather more difficult to make that case convincingly for work that has been on sale since 1938 (or not, in a couple of cases), and whose authors are no longer in a state to care about future sales.

Thanks to ISFDB, I have compiled this list of all of the publications including the finalists in the short fiction categories, including the ISBN numbers where they exist. You may well find, as I did, that you already have some of the relevant anthologies on the shelves – particularly for the much-collected “Who Goes There”, “Pigeons from Hell” and “Helen O’Loy”. A couple of the stories can also be found online; I haven’t dug very deeply (the links to “Hollywood on the Moon” are copied from the Retro Hugo voter packet). Myself, I was able to acquire Science Fiction: The Great Years, eds. Carol Pohl and Frederik Pohl, Sleepers of Mars, by John Wyndham, and The Autumn Land and Other Stories, by Clifford D. Simak, without too much difficulty or cost. I do hope that my making this post doesn’t suddenly drive prices up!

Anyway, here you are. Пожалуйста!

Best Novella

Anthem by Ayn Rand
In voter packet
In print: ISBNs 0452281253, 0451191137, 1434100359 and many others
Online at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1250

“A Matter of Form” by H. L. Gold
Big Book of Science Fiction, ed. Groff Conklin
Assignment in Tomorrow, ed. Frederik Pohl (044778699125)
Science Fiction: The Great Years, eds. Carol and Frederik Pohl (0575017848, 0722169248)
The Classic Book of Science Fiction, ed. Groff Conklin
The Mammoth Book of Classic Science Fiction Short Stories of the 1930s, eds. Waugh, Greenberg, Asimov (0948164727)
Great Tales of Classic Science Fiction, eds. Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh (0883657554)
Perfect Murders (coll) by H.L. Gold (0895561301, 978080323359)

“Sleepers of Mars” by John Beynon [John Wyndham]
Sleepers of Mars (coll) by John Wyndham (0340173262, 045042023X)

“The Time Trap” by Henry Kuttner
In voter packet
Evil Earths, ed. Brian Aldiss (0297770055, 0860078892, 0380446367)
Girls for the Slime God, ed. Mike Resnick (0965956903)
Thunder in the Void (coll), by Henry Kuttner (9781893887534)
Armchair Fiction Double with The Lunar Lichen, by Hal Clement (9781612871424)

“Who Goes There?” by Don A Stuart [John W. Campbell]
Adventures in Time and Space, eds. Healy & McComas (0345253744, 0395254965, 0345277473, 0345289250, 0739422146)
Towards Infinity, ed. Damon Knight (0575003723, 0330234315)
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol 2A, ed. Ben Bova (038504576X, 0765305348, 038000385)
Starstreak, ed. Betty M. Owen (0590312642)
13 Short Science Fiction Novels, eds. Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh (0517476460)
The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels, eds. Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh (0948164220)
Cinemonsters, eds, McSherry, Greenberg, Waugh (0880385049)
Movie Monsters, ed. Peter Haining (0727815466)
The Mammoth Book of Classic Science Fiction Short Stories of the 1930s, eds. Waugh, Greenberg, Asimov (0948164727)
Great Tales of Classic Science Fiction, eds. Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh (0883657554)
Between Time and Terror, eds. Weinberg, Dziemanowicz, Greenberg (0451454529)
Science Fiction Classics, ed. Forrest J. Ackerman (1575000407)
Toward Infinity, ed. Damon Knight (0671650934)
The Science Fiction Roll of Honour, ed. Frederik Pohl (0394486773)
The Best of John W. Campbell (0345249607)
Foundations of Fear, ed. David G. Hartwell (0312850743)
Worlds of Fear, ed. David G. Hartwell (0812550021)
The World Turned Upside Down, eds Flint, Baen, Drake (0743498747, 9781416520689)
Who Goes There? (coll), by John W. Campbell (0883553651, 088355450X, 0899667341, 9780575091030, 9780575129023)
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror, eds. Kane & O'Regan (9780762444328)

Best Novelette

“Dead Knowledge” by Don A. Stuart [John W. Campbell]
Who Goes There? (coll), by John W. Campbell Jr (0883553651, 088355450X, 0899667341, 9780575091030, 9780575129023)
The Thing and Other Stories (coll), by John W. Campbell
A New Dawn (coll), by John W. Campbell (1886778159)

“Hollywood on the Moon” by Henry Kuttner
Online at http://www.unz.org/Pub/ThrillingWonder-1938apr-00012, continued at http://www.unz.org/Pub/ThrillingWonder-1938apr-00027 and http://www.unz.org/Pub/ThrillingWonder-1938apr-00029

“Pigeons From Hell” by Robert E. Howard
In voter packet
The Weird Writings of Robert E. Howard, vol. 2
The Dark Man and Others (coll), by Robert E. Howard (044775265095, 0586042938)
Weird Tales, ed. Leo Margulies (0515048771)
The Book of Robert E. Howard (0890831637, 0425044491)
Pigeons from Hell (coll), by Robert E. Howard (0890831890, 0441663206)
Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors (coll), by Robert E. Howard (0671656414)
The Horror Hall of Fame, eds. Silverberg & Greenberg (0709049021, 0881848808)
Young Blood, ed. Mike Baker (0821744984)
The Black Stranger and Other American Tales (coll), by Robert E. Howard (0803273533, 0803224214)
The Robert E. Howard Omnibus (11588739422)
The Haunter of the Rings and Other Tales (coll), by Robert E. Howard (9781840220858, 9781447407683)
The Best of Robert E. Howard vol 2 (0345490209)
The Day They Hanged My Best Friend Jimmy, ed. Barry J. Gillis (9780968593776)
Heroes in the Wind (coll), by Robert E. Howard (9780141189437)
A Thunder of Trumpets (coll), by Robert E. Howard (9780809571703)
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (978159063327)
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! ed Otto Penzler (9780307740892)
The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1901-1950, ed. John Pelan (9781587670800)
Blessings from the Condemned, ed. Robert Friedrich (9781499609264)

“Rule 18” by Clifford D. Simak
The Autumn Land and Other Stories (coll) by Clifford D. Simak (0749301856)

“Werewoman” by C. L. Moore
In voter packet
Horrors Unknown, ed. Sam Moskowitz (0802755348, 0425030636)
The Edge of Never, ed. Robert Hoskins
Dark Imaginings, eds. Boyer & Zahorski (0440531187)
Echoes of Valor II, ed. Karl Edward Wagner (0312931891, 0812557522)
Northwest of Earth (coll), by C.L. Moore (9781601250810, 9781607518594, 9780575119369)

Best Short Story

“The Faithful” by Lester del Rey
In voter packet
…And Some Were Human (coll) by Lester del Rey
First Flight, ed. Damon Knight
Now Begins Tomorrow, ed. Damon Knight
Early Del Rey (0385027400)
The Early Del Rey vol 1 (0345 25063X)
The Road to Science Fiction #2, ed. James Gunn (0451617363, 0810844397, 0451618599)
First Voyages, eds. Knight, Greenberg, Olander (0380775867)
Isaac Asimov Presents The Best Science Fiction Firsts, eds. Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh (0760702543)
The SFWA Grand Masters, vol 3 (0312868774, 0312868766)
War and Space (coll) by Lester del Rey (9781886778764)

“Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Rey
In voter packet
…And Some Were Human (coll) by Lester del Rey
Beyond Human Ken, ed. Judith Merril
Assignment in Tomorrow, ed. Frederik Pohl (044778699125)
The Coming of the Robots, ed. Sam Moskowitz
Master's Choice, ed. Laurence M. Janifer
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol 1, ed. Robert Silverberg (0722178298, 0380007959, 1568658788, 0765305364, 0765305372, 0380449331, 0980007959)
18 Greatest Science Fiction Stories, ed. Laurence M. Janifer (0448053756, 044812128X)
Assignment in Tomorrow, ed. Frederik Pohl (044778699125)
3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction, eds de Camp and Crook de Camp (068840006X)
Modern Science Fiction, ed. Norman Spinrad (0385022638, 0839823398)
In Dreams Awake, ed. Leslie A. Fiedler
Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Fred Olbrecht (0812006518)
Souls in Metal, ed. Mike Ashley (0709158912, 0515045462)
Robots Robots Robots, eds. Geduld & Gottesman (0821206885)
The Best of Lester del Rey (0345273362, 0345329333, 034543949X)
Science Fiction: Masters of Today, ed. Arthur Liebman (0823905373)
The Analog Anthology #2, ed. Stanley Schmidt
Analog Readser's Choice, ed. Stanley Schmidt (0385276818)
Robots and Magic (coll), by Lester del Rey (9781886778887)

“Hollerbochen’s Dilemma” by Ray Bradbury
In voter packet
Horrors Unseen, ed. Sam Moskowitz (0425025837)
Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, vol 1 (9781606350713)

“How We Went to Mars” by Arthur C. Clarke
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (057507065X, 0312878214, 1857983238, 0312878605, 0312878214, 1857983238, 0312878605)

“Hyperpilousity” by L. Sprague de Camp
In voter packet
Omnibus of Science Fiction, ed. Groff Conklin (0517453703)
Science Fiction of the Thirties, ed. Damon Knight (0380009048)
The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (0345254740, 0345329309)
The Road to Science Fiction #2, ed. James Gunn (0451617363, 0810844397, 0451618599)

• ‘West Wing’ Uncensored: Aaron Sorkin, Rob Lowe, More Look Back
  
  Sidney Poitier as President?
  (tags: westwing tv )
• The Other Side Of Monty Python
  
  Why it worked then, and won’t now.
  (tags: tv montypython )
• Mystery Solved? Why There are No Lunar ‘Seas’ On The Far Side Of The Moon
  
  Baked by the young hot Earth.
  (tags: astronomy )
• UN Climate Summit: The Chance to Prove That We Are Climate Leaders
  
  President Loeak’s call to action.
  (tags: climatechange )

This is a tough read.

Jayne Olorunda's mother, Gabrielle, is from Strabane, on the western fringe of Northern Ireland (incidentally where the great Flann O'Brien was born); she fell in love with a Nigerian accountant in Belfast, and married him around 1974 despite her parents' vociferous objections to his being not only black but Protestant. He was then killed in the 1980 Dunmurry train bombing, and she was left to bring up their three children – Jayne being the youngest – as a single parent, trying to keep her career as a nurse on track. Not surprisingly, her mental health collapsed.

A bit more than half of the book is Jayne's account of her mother's memories of growing up in the repressive Catholic Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s, and the sudden outbreak of violence – she was one of the nurses summoned to Altnagelvin hospital to treat the victims of Bloody Sunday. For Gabrielle Olorunda, 1970s Belfast was a wonderful cosmopolitan horizon-broadening escape from Strabane, which perhaps says all you need to know about Strabane. The Olorunda family lived in the same part of Belfast where I grew up. I must have passed them now and then at the cluster of shops and other services (doctor, optician, dentist, library) around Finaghy crossroads.

Then Max Olorunda was killed by the premature explosion of an IRA firebomb on his commuter train, screaming as he died in agony, burnt to ashes along with a schoolboy and one of the bombers (the other escaped, though permanently disfigured). This struck, quite literally, close to home for me as I read. The bombing took place roughly 400 metres from where we lived. Gabrielle Olorunda heard it clearly, not knowing its significance, in her home in Erinvale three times further away. As it happened, my family was out of Northern Ireland in January 1980; if we had not been, I would certainly have heard the bang while laying the fire or watching the BBC news. (The biggest bang I can personally remember was the forensic labs bomb of September 1992.)

There was no adequate support for the victims of the Troubles then, or indeed now. Gabrielle Olorunda drove herself crazy, with PTSD from her bereavement and from her nursing of the more obvious victims of violence, slipping deeper and deeper into poverty and mental anguish, and confronted also at every turn with deep racism from her neighbours towards her three mixed-race daughters. And let's be clear – although hard-line Ulster Loyalists are visibly (and sometimes proudly) linked to racism, her fellow Catholics were every bit as bad on this score, ranging from the pub-goers in the Markets on the evening her husband died, cheering the fact that the 'RA had killed a nigger that day, to the teacher who humiliated one of the girls as a "Negro" in front of her class. Nobody in Northern Irish society has anything to be proud of in this story. It is rather telling that the media profiles of Jayne tend to describe her father as a "recent" immigrant to Northern Ireland; he must have been there for at least seven years, which is not exactly recent by my reckoning.

At a very young age, Jayne became the household manager in her mother's frequent mental absences, and tells frank stories of dealing with dodgy landlord after dodgy landlord, attempting to get non-pharmaceutical help for her mother, and treatment for her own eating disorders. She became a public figure after this book was published, and was a candidate for the abortive NI21 political party in the recent elections. She has now joined the Alliance Party. Her mother is now in permanent residential care.

There is, believe it or not, the occasional funny moment amid the awfulness. At one point the Olorundas were rehoused to a pretty hardline Catholic area, where almost everyone was an IRA supporter. Given the circumstances of her husband's death, Gabrielle was not exactly pro-IRA; and this meant that in the frequent raids on the estate by the security forces, the Olorundas were never targeted. Jayne takes up the story:

Often we would arrive home to find every front door in the street wide open, many having been kicked down; personal effects would be strewn across hallways that were on open view to all. All of this was evidence that frantic searching had went [sic] on; that another no warning raid had taken place.

The people we lived next to would eye us with distrust; suspicions were high in those days. They must have wondered why we were being excluded, if we [were] watching them or worse if we were we were [sic] some sort of informers. At this stage Mum was already running scared due to her previous stunts. She didn’t need any more reasons to be targeted.

Soon the other children began making comments, calling us “Brits” or what they took to be the ultimate insult “Protestants”. It got so bad that in the end Mum went to the police and explained our predicament , how she was quite possibly the only non-sympathiser in the town. They swiftly informed her that they knew exactly who she was. They too had heard of her one woman mission to rid the country of [the] IRA. An officer brought her into an interview room and told her that she had every reason to fear, these people were unscrupulous.

That day the police arranged for our house to be “included” in any further raids. This simply meant that when the army raided our street that they would also come into our house. In practice it meant that whilst everyone else had their front doors kicked down, their possessions scattered and often destroyed we had our front door carefully opened, never would we find an item out of place. Sometimes a little note was left stating they walked through as requested.

One imagines the bizarre tableau of a helmetted and body-suited RUC officer pausing in the Olorundas' front room to scribble them a quick message, before heading off to kick the neighbours' front door in. It's an extraordinary vignette of a sort of reverse security theatre in the midst of repression and the collapsed legitimacy of state authority.

While I appreciate Jayne's authentic and occasionally breathless account of her life and her mother's, I wished that the publishers had exerted a slightly stronger editorial hand. The paragraphs I have copied above are entirely typical in their casual approach to proofreading. There's also a very odd slip where Gabrielle recalls a sinister vision, shortly before her husband's death, in the "Europa Train Station" in Belfast – but the Great Victoria Street station was closed from 1976 to 1995; it must have been the cavernous and antiseptic Belfast Central Station where this happened, or where she thinks it happened. Gabrielle's visions are an important part of the story; Jayne reports them as they have been recounted to her, and leaves us to make our own judgement. Whatever happened, it was very real for Gabrielle, and the story of the premonitions is clearly important for her and her family's attempts to make sense of how their world was shattered.

I have read a lot about Northern Ireland over the years. I did not think that there was much left for me to learn. But this story of a family falling through the cracks in the integrity of our ancient quarrel is heartbreaking and important. More power to Jayne Olorunda for picking herself up by her own shoelaces, and working for a better future.

Current
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
Beowulf, tr. J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
γ1
[Doctor Who] Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards

Last books finished
β1
Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Jayne Olorunda
[Suske en Wiske] De Apenkermis, by Willy Vandersteen
[Suske en Wiske] Amoris van Amoras, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts]
[Suske en Wiske] Het Aruba-dossier, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts]
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 1, by Richard Bagwell
The Shakespeare Notebooks, by James Goss, Jonathan Morris, Julian Richards, Justin Richards and Matthew Sweet

Last week’s audios
current:Masquerade, by Stephen Cole

Next books
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 2, by Richard Bagwell
How Languages are Learned, by Patsy M. Lightbown
Brussel in Beeldekes
Crash, by J.G. Ballard
[Doctor Who] So Vile a Sin, by Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman

Books acquired in last week
Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Jayne Olorunda
Science Fiction: The Great Years, eds. Carol Pohl and Frederik Pohl
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
Perilous Dreams, by Andre Norton
Sleepers of Mars, by John Wyndham
The Autumn Land and Other Stories, by Clifford D. Simak
King’s Inns and the Kingdom of Ireland, by Colum Kenny

Reading John Wyndham’s Retro Hugo nominated story, “The Sleepers of Mars”, I was startled to see that his cosmonauts knew of only seven Soviet Republics (in a story published in 1938 and set in 1981). When the USSR broke up in 1991, there were fifteen of them. What, I wondered, had Wyndham done with the other eight?

Four were easy enough. In 1938, most of what is now Moldova was part of Romania (with what’s now Transdniestria part of the Ukrainian SSR), and the three Baltic states were enjoying a precarious independence (incidentally, they’ve now been independent again for longer than they were between the World Wars).

However, Wyndham was actually a little out of date with regard to the other four. There had indeed been only seven Soviet Republics up until the new Soviet Constitution of December 1936. But from then on, the former Transcaucasian SSR was split into the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSR’s; and the Kyrgyz and Kazakh SSR’s were split off from the RSFSR (now the Russian Federation). The Uzbek and Turkmen SSR’s had been constituents of the Soviet Union since 1924, and the Tajik SSR was split off from the Uzbek SSR in 1926. His cosmonauts should have made Mars the twelfth republic to be attached to the Soviet Union, not the eighth.

It’s a slightly surprising slip from Wyndham. It would be odd to write a story set 43 years in our future about, for instance, making Mars the fifty-third state of the US, or the thirty-fifth of the European Union, without checking how many states there are in that entity at the moment and deciding how many you thought there might be in 2057. Perhaps the story was written before December 1936; or perhaps (I guess most likely) the news of the new Soviet internal arrangements hadn’t seeped very far into popular discourse by the time he wrote the story in 1937.

• The Secret of Belgium’s Success
  
  “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
  (tags: belgium economics )

This Penguin edition includes also Tristan and Tonio Kröger. I liked the famous novella, but wasn’t blown away by it; everyone knows what the plot is, and to a large extent it’s also what the whole thing is about, told lucidly enough to be sure, but moored in the sexualities of a bygone age.

I didn’t particularly care for Tristan, a short story of manly one-upmanship for the affections of a fellow-patient in a sanatorium. I see other reviewers commenting on the story’s humour; perhaps it was the translation, perhaps just my frame of mind, but I didn’t get it.

But I thought Tonio Kröger much more interesting, with the title character struggling with the artistic identity which, he believes, sets him apart from the common herd; and yet his evidence for this doesn’t even really convince himself. One can imagine it as a somewhat rueful self-portrait.

1) The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton. Ticked all my boxes. Possibly the first Hugo finalist to actually feature the venue where the awards will be made.

2) Saga, vol 2, by Bryan Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Solid stuff.

3) No Award.

Not voting for:

The Meathouse Man, by George R.R. Martin and Raya Golden. Didn’t really push my buttons. But if I give it a lower preference, I am effectively putting it ahead of the other two finalists.

Girl Genius, Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne & The Sleeping City, by Phil and Kaja Foglio – simply not my thing; I’ve tried several previous volumes when they were nominated and bounced off them, so I didn’t even try this year.

“Time” by Randall Munroe – sat through the first couple of minutes of this a couple of times, waited for something interesting to happen, went and did something else when it didn’t. Maybe there is a punchline that I just have to be patient about.

You can vote in this year’s Hugos, and the 1939 Retro Hugos, by joining Loncon 3 at http://www.loncon3.org/memberships .

2014: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist | Best Fan Artist
1939: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist

Most of you got most of the answers right in Sunday’s quiz, which may reflect my lack of imagination in inventing alternatives. I was sorry that nobody was atrracted by the option of someone “on the broo” being a bar-tender. Perhaps too good to be true.

Anyway, in order of decreasing difficulty, the answers were:

bake = mouth, as in the oft-heard phrase “shut your bake!” It is obviously derived from local pronunciation of “beak”, which is why you might think it meant the nose, working from first principles. But the image conveyed is of someone screeching like a small bird, so it’s the beak as source of sound rather than as a protuberance on the face that matters.

sheuch / sheugh (supposedly from the same root as “sough” as in “Sough of Despond”) means a trench. Confusingly, a “ditch” in Ulster usually means a raised bank, rather than a trench, though “dyke” is also used, as in The Black Pig’s Dyke. I was delighted that my alternative meanings of “horse” or “bread roll” found some favour here.

boke/boak is pretty onomatopoeic. I remember a schoolfriend, on being told by our teacher that a classmate had been sent home sick, asking with interest, “Did he boak, Miss?” He was reproved for asking a personal question but not for using incorrect language.

footering / futering does indeed mean wasting time. In Scotland it has more of a fidgeting connotation, which is sometimes has in Ireland also. Compare: David Trimble said: ‘Sir Patrick is footering around” with Suzanne muttered something I couldnay hear, her haun footering with her silk scarf. There is an Irish verb “fuadar” which some see as a possible root, but since it means “hurry” and “footer” means the opposite, I would take some convincing.

In Ulster, a wain / wean / weean is a child, a wee ‘un. Of course the word wain means “wagon” in standard English, but never in Ireland.

And almost everyone understood that someone who is on the bru / broo is claiming unemployment benefit from an office known at one time as the “bureau”. Etymologies suggest “welfare bureau” specifically, but in fact the only entities I find in Northern Irish history with that official name are linked to political parties rather than the government. Of course, official names are not always the names that are used.

As she often does, had the best comment.

• Nowhere Land
  
  Foreign Policy magazine looks in depth at the Western Sahara. A fascinating piece.
  (tags: westernsahara )

A couple of weeks ago, I had almost caught up with bookblogging. Then I slacked off from LJ for a week, read a lot of short books, and suddenly I am literally 14 behind. (Well, 12, in that two of them I won’t blog about here.)

Non-fiction 7 (YTD 29)
Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It, eds Sigrid Ellis & Michael Damian Thomas
Speculative Fiction 2012: The Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary eds. Justin Landon & Jared Shurin
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, by Jeff VanderMeer, with Jeremy Zerfoss
Green Living for Dummies, by Michael Grosvenor and Liz Barclay
The Global(ized) Game: A Geopolitical Guide to the 2014 World Cup, by Harrison Stark
Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Jayne Olorunda
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 1, by Richard Bagwell

Fiction (non-sf) 2 (YTD 18)
Het Verdriet van België, by Hugo Claus
Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann

SF (non-Who) 11 (YTD 53)
Orbitsville by Bob Shaw
The Blazing-World, by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone
A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar
Nexus, by Ramez Naam
The Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, by Theodore Roszak
The Goblin of Tara, by Oisin McGann
α1
β1

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 34)
A Device of Death, by Christopher Bulis
Damaged Goods, by Russell T. Davis
Trading Futures, by Lance Parkin
The Bog Warrior, by Cecelia Ahern
The Shakespeare Notebooks, by James Goss, Jonathan Morris, Julian Richards, Justin Richards and Matthew Sweet

Comics 6 (YTD 11)
The Meathouse Man, by George R.R. Martin and Raya Golden
Saga, Volume 2, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Bételgeuse v. 1: La Planète, by Leo
[Suske en Wiske] De Apenkermis, by Willy Vandersteen
[Suske en Wiske] Amoris van Amoras, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Gheerts]
[Suske en Wiske] Het Aruba-dossier, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts]

~7,800 pages (YTD ~41,100)
9/31 (YTD 38/145) by women (Ellis, Barclay, Olorunda, Cavendish, Samatar, Butler, Ahern, Golden, Staples)
6/31 (YTD 10/145) by PoC (Olorunda, Samatar, Naam, Chu, Butler, Staples)
Reread: 0/28 (YTD 6/145)

Reading now:
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
Beowulf, tr. J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
γ1

Coming soon (perhaps):
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 2, by Richard Bagwell
How Languages Are Learned, by Patsy M. Lightbown
Brussel in beeldekes
Crash, by J. G. Ballard
Teenage Religion and Values, by Leslie J. Francis
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O’Farrell
Rogue Queen, by L. Sprague de Camp
334, by Thomas M Disch
Billionaire Boy, by David Walliams
The Essence of Christianity, by Ludwig Feuerbach
Lost At Sea, by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Brontomek!, by Michael Cobley
Liberal Language, by Graham Watson
Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis
Starry messenger: The best of Galileo, ed. Charles Ryan
The Making of Doctor Who, by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke
A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson
[Doctor Who] Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards
[Doctor Who] So Vile a Sin, by Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman
[Doctor Who] The Book of the Still, by Paul Ebbs

I’m not a huge sports fan in general, but like a lot of people I will make an exception for the World Cup every four years. Pressure of work and Worldcon has meant that I have been less engaged this year than I would have liked, but I did my vital preparation anyway by reading FiveThirtyEight and also this modest book which runs through the star players, and also the footballing heritage and politics of each of the 32 competing countries, breezily and articulately.

Not quite all of the stories he tells about individual countries check out in every detail. It is true that Oscar Gestido, brother of Uruguay’s 1930 star player Álvaro Gestido, was president of Uruguay; however it’s not quite as good a story as it might be, because he was only president for a few months in 1967, ten years after his footballing brother had died and almost four decades after they won the first World Cup. Other stories in the book may have similar credentials; I don’t know.

I did actually finish it some time ago, a couple of days after the tournament started, and am still woefully behind with writing up my reading; of course, two-thirds of the teams are now out of the running, so it’s a bit late to recommend it, but despite the occasional fantasising, I’ll look out for Stark’s guide to the 2018 World Cup with interest. Like most people, I still think this is Brazil’s competition to lose; but they are showing signs of losing it…

And I’ll be cheering for Belgium tomorrow night, but I hope that they can get into the habit of scoring in the first three-quarters of the match for a change!

Having very much enjoyed the five volumes of the Aldébaran sequence of bandes dessinées by Brazilian writer/artist Leo, I have now started the next five-volume sequence, Bételgeuse. Once again we have lush illustrations of a completely alien world, with humans clinging to its rim and feuding with each other. This time round, a colonisation effort has collapsed, leaving the survivors divided into two armed camps over, among other issues, whether or not the indigenous aliens are sentient.

Unlike the previous series, this volume is divided pretty firmly into two different viewpoints. For the first half, the young Mai Lin (whose parents are clearly of Vietnamese descent) escapes from the two sets of humans and reveals her own ability to communicate with the aliens. In the second half, Kim from the Aldébaran sequence arrives in the Betelgeuse system to start finding out what has happened. Neither story line is resolved, so I'll just have to get the next one.

Latest so far in the series of Time Trips, short Doctor Who ebooks by famous writers not generally known as Whovians – Ahern is a best-selling chick-lit writer, known in Ireland also as the daughter of a former Taoiseach. Alas, while this series has delivered some excellent stuff in small packages, this is not the best of the bunch; although we are informed via the cover that this is a Tenth Doctor story, there is very little characterisation of the main character; the story itself includes some very self-conscious rewriting of Cinderella, and the brokering of peace between two warring factions, but it’s really not terribly exciting or even well-written. I am sure that her work in her more habitual genre is better.

I see several people doing blog posts about their native dialects today, so I thought I’d follow suit – but in the form of a poll. Running through these I was slightly surprised to realise how few of these words actually have standard English spellings.

Answers in due course (and no sneaky googling).

I was slightly, but only slightly, spoiled for this by reading Abigail Nussbaum’s review, part of her submission for the Hugo Packet where she is nominated as Best Fan Writer. This too is part of the Hugo Packet, as evidence for Samatar’s candidacy for the John W. Campbell award; and it is good evidence. I’m always a sucker for apprentice sage stories; the best of them, like this, entangle the narrative of learning with political power struggle and the awful consequences of hidden knowledge. Into that you can throw an interesting take on colonialism (it’s made clear on the book’s cover, though not very directly in the text, that the narrator is black, trying to navigate the white scholarship of Olondria) and on how books change your brain. I liked this a lot.

Oh dear. I was actually on the verge of catching up with bookblogging here a week or so ago. but now it’s the third last day of June, and I have a dozen unread books to write up here (plus another two that I won’t). Time to crack on, then…

I am not always a big fan of Lance Parkin, but I rather enjoyed Trading Futures. Good old Anji, the longest-running non-white Who companion (Feb ’01-Aug ’03, compared with Martha’s single season run, generously extensible to one and a bit) gets a proper story here where the Doctor and Fitz are rather in the background, and she gets both a James Bond-like storyline and a wee bit of character development. There are various other nods to both Bond and Who continuity, and some deliberately crap aliens. I don’t claim it as Great Literature, but I was very entertained, if not quite as much as by the previous 8th Doctor novel.

For reasons which may eventually become clear, I am resorting to code for some books.

Current
Ireland Under The Tudors, by Richard Bagwell
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
Beowulf, tr. J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
β1

Last books finished
Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann
Nexus, by Ramez Naam
The Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, by Theodore Roszak
The Goblin of Tara, by Oisin McGann
α1

Last week's audios
The Wrong Doctors, by Matt Fitton
current: Masquerade, by Stephen Cole

Next books
How Languages are Learned, by Patsy M. Lightbown
Brussel in Beeldekes
Crash, by J.G. Ballard
[Doctor Who] Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards

Books acquired in last week
Doctor Who: The Shakespeare Notebooks
Who Goes There? (collection), by John W. Campbell

• Death of Little Germany: How a Ship Sank an Enclave
  
  The Germans of New York.
  (tags: history languages )
• Why the Summer Solstice isn’t the start of summer
  
  In case it needed saying.
  (tags: calendar )

• Espionage in the EU Capital
  
  @KristofClerix explains what is going on.
  (tags: espionage belgium eu )

Thanks, all, for filling in my poll last week – this was basically the word for "Brussels" in various different scripts, and I thought it would be interesting to see which are readable, and which less so, by various browsers. I arranged them in order of the number of people in the world who actually use the script in question.

There were five non-Latin scripts which everyone could see clearly:
ब्रुसेल्स – Devanagari (Hindi)
Брюссель – Cyrillic (Russian etc)
பிரசெல்சு – Tamil
บรัสเซลส์ – Thai
Βρυξέλλες – Greek

There were another five that all but one person could see clearly:
بروكسل – Arabic / Farsi
ব্রাসেল্স – Bengali
בריסל – Hebrew
Բրյուսել – Armenian
ბრიუსელი – Georgian

Another two South Asian scripts could be seen by all but two people who answered:
ബ്രസൽസ് – Malayalam
બ્રસેલ્સ – Gujarati

And then for five scripts which could be seen by 90 of the 93 respondents, we swing first east and then back south:
布鲁塞尔 – Chinese
ブリュッセル – Japanese
브뤼셀 – Korean
బ్రస్సెల్స్ – Telugu
ಬ್ರಸೆಲ್ಸ್ – Kannada

Three more were visible to over 80 of the 93 who replied:
ବୃସେଲ – Oriya/Odia (87/93)
බ්රසල්ස් – Sinhala (84/93)
པུའུ་ལུའུ་སེལ​། – Tibetan (83/93)

It's not surprising, but it's a bit sad, that the Ge'ez script used for Amharic and Tigrinya in East Africa is so far down:
ብሩክሴል 76/93

It's not at all surprising that Aramaic is very close to the bottom:
ܒܪܘܟܣܠ 59/73

And it's an extraordinary demonstration of the international isolation of Burma / Myanmar that not even 30% of respondents could see the Burmese script for "Brussels", despite the fact that Burmese has more native speakers than, say, Amharic, Sinhalese, Greek, Armenian, Hebrew, Georgian, or indeed Dutch, Hungarian etc. Last time I did one of these polls, only one person in 97 could see the Burmese; it's improved a lot since then but still has a long way to go.
ဘရပ်ဆဲလ်မြို့  26/73

Overall, I'd say that internationalisation is moving forward; there are a lot more people who can see a lot more languages  in the original script, whether or not they can actually read them. It's gratifying to see that Devanagari, Tamil and Bengali have made gains, and Sinhalese in particular has leapt up the charts, though a bit surprising that Chinese and Japanese still are not right at the very top.

(I'm sorry to have missed Divehi, Khmer, and Inuit, Cherokee and Deseret this time; will do better next time.)

My Worldcon is going to be dominated by being Loncon 3's Director of Promotions, and yet somehow my friends in the Programme Division have scheduled me on more items than any other member of the Committee. (Having said which, at least I am not Paul Cornell who admits to being on seven items, including the Thursday interview of George R.R. Martin and Connie Wilis.)

So moderate is my reputation that I am currently down as moderator for three panels and as sole presenter for another item. The full list isas follows.

Thursday 14 August, 16:30 – 18:00: Libertarianism's Conquest of the Future

Science fiction once took government for granted. Writers like Asimov and Clarke often assumed that advances in technology and knowledge would naturally spawn rational world governments. Speculative societies, like Star Trek's Federation, could be utopian or, like those of Huxley, Zamyatin, LeGuin, dystopian, but government was central. However, increasingly, authors like MacLeod, Doctorow and Vinge write governments out of our future. Why has so much SF lost faith in government? Has government failed, or has familiarity bred contempt? Do we value personal freedom, and resent government intrusion into our lives, more than our predecessors? Or do we undervalue the benefits of government, and take its safety net for granted?

Nicholas Whyte (Moderator), Brenda W Clough, Charles E. Gannon, John-Henri Holmberg, Farah Mendlesohn, Justin Landon

Sunday 17 August, 10:00 – 11:00: The Spies We (Still) Love

From James Bond, UNCLE, and the (British!) Avengers to SHIELD and Person of Interest, the world of spies and conspiracy has long been a fixture of Western SF on screen. Yet there has always been ambivalence about such agents' real-world counterparts, and these days most of us have reservations about the extent of US/UK surveilance and big data manipulation. Bearing in mind this context, how have espionage stories evolved over the last forty years? Which shows and films have endured? And which modern examples are most artistically or politically successful, and why?

Nicholas Whyte (Moderator), Elizabeth Bear, Colin Harvey, Gillian Redfearn, Stefanie Zurek

(NB that I've pulled out of a promising panel early on the Sunday evening, as I suspect I may need to be on hand for media wrangling of the Hugos.)

Monday 18 August 10:00 – 11:00: How to Decide – Voting Systems

Nicholas Whyte discusses voting systems, from the Hugos to the European Union.

(There will be little flags to wave, or at least that is my plan.)

Monday 18 August 15:00 – 16:30: The Ruling Party

Is there an Alternative? Increasingly it seems that, no matter which party is elected, they do the same things. Charlie Stross has suggested that no matter who is elected, the Ruling Party, an agglomeration of top level politicians across all parties, always has the controls. Is there any alternative to this? Is this a bad thing? And if it is, what can we do about it?

Nicholas Whyte (Moderator), Paul Graham Raven, Charles Stross, Nigel Heffernan, David Nickle

Monday 18 August 18:00 – 19:00: How do you divide a railroad

This panel looks at the issues that face new independent nations as they separate from a larger state–whether as colonised entities, federated or equal partners.

Phil Dyson (Moderator), Nicholas Whyte, Ivaylo Shmilev

(A decent preparation for my return to work…)

• Climate of Denial, by @algore
  
  Long but very important piece.
  (tags: climatechange uspolitics )