• Outdated, outmoded and increasingly inaccurate: is it time to say goodbye to “Miss”?
  
  Sense from @RTaylor_MEP.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• WH Auden advised Tolkien to drop romance
  
  Wanted Aragorn/Arwen taken out!
  (tags: sf Tolkien )
• Agloe, the Paper Town Stronger than Fiction
  
  Made up, yet real!
  (tags: maps )
• ‘Armchair Theatre: The Golden Road’ (1973): Representing lesbianism in the 1970s
  
  Starring Katy Manning.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality television )

Like a lot of people I have mixed feelings about Colin Baker's time as Doctor Who. But unlike a lot of people, I rate Mindwarp, with the return of the horrific Sil, and the brutal end (or is it?) to Peri's travels with the Doctor, as the best of the Sixth Doctor stories; I'm not a fan of Vengeance on Varos, where the violence and the absurd bird transformation kill the story for me; and Mission to Magnus is one of the worst Who stories never made, competing in the gutter with The Prison In Space.

Philip Martin has taken the bold step of writing another story for the Sixth Doctor, Peri and Sil which is a sequel to all three of these. I'm happy to report that it's closest in form and content to Mindwarp, with Baker, Briant and Shaban on excellent form, and a particularly impressive guest turn from Dawn Murphy as Cordelia Crozier, daughter of the scientist chap from the previous story. Martin often has a bit of a bitter satirical edge to his work, not always well deployed; maybe age has allowed him to tune his talent more forensically, but whatever the reason, I felt that he had updated Sil to the era of Cameron rather than Thatcher with brutal success, and that most of his rhetorical shots landed firmly on target. The plot is still a bit all over the pace, but this is firmly at the Mindwarp rather than Magnus end of the spectrum for me.

I still feel like I’m coughing my lungs out, but I struggled into work both yesterday and today, so I guess I am well enough to start catching up on book-blogging… Anyway, God’s War is the first of this year’s BSFA nominees for Best Novel that I have read. I’m taking the approach of reading them in increasing order of pagecount, which nicely orders the first three – God’s War (288), Evening’s Empires (384), and Ack-Ack Macaque (416), though I shall have to toss a coin between Ancillary Justice and The Adjacent (both 432).

These are 288 very intense pages. Our central character, Nyx, is a woman warrior and assassin in a war whose point seems to have been largely forgotten by the combatants, working her way across the battle-scarred landscapes and streetscapes of a ruined world. There’s lots of love, lust, betrayal, and horrible violence. It’s awfully well realised.

I found it in the end a bit one-note – concentrating on the vivid setting, at the expense of a real plot, and without quite explaining how this world got itself into such a mess. Perhaps this will be dealt with in future volumes. It’s a very good book, but I hope that there are better ones to come.

• Christopher Barry 1925 – 2014
  
  One of the great directors of Old Who.
  (tags: deaths doctorwho )

• ‘Tainted Love’ Played By Floppy Disk Drives Is Possibly The Best Use Of Technology Ever
  
  A strong claim, but not without merit.
  (tags: video music )

• People held umbrellas over the people holding umbrellas over him
  
  Sometimes not such a bad world after all.
  (tags: twitter )
• 400 is the magic number: scenarios for electing the next Commission president | Europe Decides
  
  Gaming it out.
  (tags: eu )

Last May I gloated that having had the flu jab the previous November (ie 2012), I hadn’t needed time off work for anything more serious than jet lag since.

Apart from back trouble and a one-day tummy bug, that was still true up till last Wednesday. But that morning both Anne and I went down simultaneously with the nasty infection that young F had been struggling through for the previous weeks. I was able to work from home for most of Wednesday and Friday, and even struggled into the office on Thursday afternoon after a morning asleep in bed, but I am utterly pole-axed today. (Anne is a little better, but this is not saying much.) I also appear to have infected my office-mate.

I vowed last year that we would make sure to all get the flu jab before the winter, but we were travelling a lot in November 2013, and somehow just didn’t get around to it. Having been spared the flu for an unprecedented two years, I had forgotten just how miserable it is. Well, that’s one mistake I’m not making again.

Exporting here for archive purposes.

Will Martin McGuinness be returned as First Minister in the new Assembly? (12 April)
What will change in this Election? (14 April)
How will the boundary changes impact? (19 April)
Women at Stormont (3 May)
Transfers: Myths and Reality (4 May)
Predictions and Swings (5 May)

Croatian panel debate with two MEPs – the 1.2.2014 edition, starting about 1 minute in.

Serbia’s EU talks, Voice of Russia interview, 22/1/2014, starting 10 minutes in.

Interview on Belfast electoral changes, The Detail, 2/5/2013

Profile of me in Brussel Nieuws (in Dutch, nice picture), 9/3/2013

Comment to Tim Judah of Reuters on UK influence in Europe, 24/1/2013

My profile of disabled Irish political leader Arthur McMurrough Kavanagh for the BBC’s Disability History Month, 6/12/2012

Voice of Russia interview on EU policy in the Balkans, 1/11/2012

Northern Ireland opinion poll analysis by me, Belfast Telegraph, 16/6/2012

Born to be an alien, my profile of Tom Baker’s role in Doctor Who, 29/12/2010

Diplomats for hire, profile of Independent Diplomat in Global Post, 12/4/2010

Two pieces on electoral reform for the BBC, 11/5/2010 and 13/11/2011

• Alex Salmond is within striking distance of victory. Why hasn’t England noticed?
  
  The Spectator is worried.
  (tags: ukpolitics scotland )
• A Spectacular New Martian Impact Crater
  
  Bang!
  (tags: astronomy )
• Concern after no 2013 Loch Ness Monster sightings
  
  Local white witch claims responsibility.
  (tags: ancientmysteries )
• How to use Twitter
  
  By @jonworth.
  (tags: twitter )
• Finding Haiti’s lost Declaration of Independence
  
  Located at @UKNatArchives by @JuliaGaffield.
  (tags: history )
• Why Does America Send So Many Stupid, Unqualified Hacks Overseas?
  
  On average, about 1.79 million reasons why.
  (tags: uspolitics )

• Benedict Cumberbatch and the Sign of Four (or is it Three?)
  
  Sherlock meets Sesame Street!!!!!
  (tags: video funny )
• Gagauzia: A new attack on the Eastern Partnership?
  
  Former Georgian ambassador’s take on the under-reported referendum.
  (tags: moldova russia georgia eu )

Woke up feeling terrible, been in bed most of the day.

Current
The Shining, by Stephen King
God's War, by Kameron Hurley
Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels, by Damien Broderick and Paul di Filippo
The Big Finish Companion v1, by Richard Dinnick

Last books finished
Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heileman
Crowe's Requiem, by Mike McCormack
Jane Austen, by Claire Tomalin
[Doctor Who] Speed of Flight, by Paul Leonard

Last week's audios
Antidote to Oblivion (6/Flip)
The Dying Light (Jamie/Zoe/2)
The Time Machine (11)
Current: Luna Romana (Romana/4)

Next books
The Snowman, by Jo Nesbø
Empire of the Sun, by J.G. Ballard
Evening's Empires, by Paul McAuley
[Doctor Who] GodEngine, by Craig Hinton

Books acquired in last week
God's War, by Kameron Hurley
Evening's Empires, by Paul McAuley
Ack-Ack Macaque, by Gareth L. Powell
The Adjacent, by Christopher Priest
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

• What is it about the Lib Dems and Sci Fi?
  
  Yougov’s database raises more questions than answers.
  (tags: libdems ukpolitics sf )
• How the U.S. Exports Global Warming
  
  The profit motive.
  (tags: climatechange )
• Eurointervju
  
  I’m in the 1.2.2014 broadcast, starting about 1 minute in.
  (tags: my media croatia serbia kosovo )

• The Best of BBC One’s Walk On The Wild Side
  
  From 2010. Hilarious.
  (tags: videos funny )
• Car-to-car talk: Hey, look out for that collision!
  
  What my brother is working on.
  (tags: technology )
• Letters on women in science fiction
  
  The young Isaac Asimov wanted to keep women out.
  (tags: sf sexandgenderandsexuality )
• The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.
  
  A bit optimistic…
  (tags: academe )
• Potent Pro-Israel Group Finds Its Momentum Blunted
  
  AIPAC in trouble?
  (tags: )
• Merkel makes U-turn, backs Juncker for Commission job
  
  Enda Kenny as dark horse?
  (tags: eu )
• Former UKIP spokesman was kidnapping gang ‘boss’
  
  You couldn’t make it up.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Gagauzia Voters Reject Closer EU Ties For Moldova
  
  It’s a tough sell in Comrat.
  (tags: eu moldova )
• Holding Sri Lanka to Account
  
  New York Times calls it right.
  (tags: srilanka )

• Atos scandal: Benefits bosses admit over half of people ruled fit to work ended up destitute
  
  Speaks for itself.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• MAD Magazine’s parody of The Shining (“The Shiner”)
  
  I thought it was funnier in 1981. (I was 14.)
  (tags: films comics funny )

A short fantasy novel, which has been on my list of sf and fantasy set in Ireland for a while. Crowe is drawn partly from Oskar in Die Blechtrommel, in that he has a biologically unusual childhood and adolescence, and then like Stephen Dedalus he heads off to university in Dublin. Though in fact his experience is closer to that of the unnamed protagonist of At Swim-Two-Birds, with some turns of phrase particulalry in the first half of the book sounding very Flann O'Brien-ish. Crowe goes through sinister medical experiences and emotional trauma with his lover, and does not get a happy ending; and we wonder a little how reliable a narrator he has been. I felt a little let down by the ending, but most of the book was very good, and I am surprised not to have heard more about it.

I absolutely loved the previous book by these authors, covering the 2008 US election campaign, a small part of which became the basis of the brilliant movie Game ChangeDouble Down, refers to Romney's determination to stick to his guns as a right-wing candidate rather than be dubbed a flip-flopper, and his unwillingness to even try to soften the impact of his self-inflicted blows is consistent.

The most disturbing point for a foreigner is the huge role of fund-raising in the campaign. Jeb Bush, whose personal fortune is of the order of $1.3 million, said that he could not afford to run. Rick Santorum, whose politics are of course completely repulsive, actually evokes some sympathy when a lack of financial resources makes him completely unable to capitalise on his early successes. Romney refuses to bankroll his own campaign, having, he felt, spent enough on it in 2008, and consequently nearly runs out of money. Obama hates fund-raising almost as much as debating, and in the end the team more or less give up on him and start using Michelle instead. America, where anyone can be President, as long as they are richer than Jeb Bush.

There are some nice vignettes. Paul Ryan, settling down for the Republican convention in Florida, is unwillingly hooked by a showing of Game Change which he comes across while channel-hopping. A senior Republican campaign official is so appalled by Clint Eastwood’s speech that he is physically sick. But more cheerfully, a carefully timed plan to reveal Obama’s support of gay marriage is thrown into complete disarray when Vice-President Biden, quite spontaneously, makes the same political call; and despite the botch of the announcement, there is absolutely no blowback. The times, they are a-changin’.

• 7 Theories of Why Putin Freed Khodorkovsky
  
  “Ни один сколько-нибудь серьезный наблюдатель… ” “No serious observer… “
  (tags: Russia )
• Nurse makes heartfelt apology after Atos forced her to trick disabled people out of benefits
  
  Inside Atos, and the UK’s war on the disabled.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )

Here's a total surprise: the BBC are following up last year's sequence of short ebooks featuring each Doctor in succession with another series of short ebooks, under the name Time Trips, also to be written by well-known writers. I don't know how I had missed them – this first one was published in December, and the next, published in January, is by Jenny Colgan.

Anyway, the estimable Scottish writer and comedian A.L. Kennedy has written a short but entertaining romp, with Tom Baker's Doctor (very much in his Tom Baker persona) investigating strange and 'oribble goings-on on a bunker of a Scottish golf course; there's bad management and good romance as well, all in a nice short package. A good start to this series.

I somehow missed this when it first came out back in 2008 – the very first New Who original audiobook, a story that was never published in hard copy, but just read by David Tennant on two CDs. It's actually very good, with Tennant doing all the voices – his Doctor, Donna, various other characters including a centaur with an Ulster accent – and narrating in his native Scots burr. I thought the story was a notch above average – centaurs and humans are fighting, but giant insects and huge robots make an appearance too, and there's some consideration of body shape and destiny, and telling the truth. Glad to have caught up with this at last.

A compilation of two albums telling two quite different stories. The first, "Heaven on Earth", is a bit of a meditation on stories and telling them through the mysterious figure of Malka, the Rabbi's cousin whose companion is an aging lion, set against the real background of the rise of an anti-Semitic regime in Algiers in the mid-1930s. In the second, "Africa's Jerusalem", the Rabbi, his cat and friends set off to explore their continent, taking an improbably indirect route from Algiers to Ethiopia which brings them into contact with another icon of bande dessinée who happened to be in the neighbourhood:

I read this in English translation, which was just as well as the second volume also features a lost Russian character (who is able to talk to the cat) and I might not have got the linguistic nuances in the original French.

Sfar says in his introduction to the second album that he was trying to write about racism. I'm not sure that he quite managed to address colonialism or race – there are various scenes of the urbanised rabbi and friends (and cat) dealing with tribes which seemed a bit cliched – but he did at least widen his canvas.

• The orign of 0°F
  
  Mr Fahrenheit basically made it up. (With help.)
  (tags: science )
• It’s Raining Men becomes anti-Ukip protest song
  
  Hee!
  (tags: music ukpolitics )
• Heart-attack victim in cash-axe shock
  
  Man has heart attack during health test, is fined for not completing it.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Mentally ill woman in coma: fit to work?
  
  Atos thinks so. Marvellous,. eh?
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Economic aspects of Catalan independence
  
  Interesting discussion in comments.
  (tags: catalonia )
• Clarity
  
  A poem by Roz Kaveney.
  (tags: poetry )

Non-fiction 4
About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who, 2005-2006; Series 1 & 2, by Tat Wood
Amsterdam, by Russell Shorto
British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland, eds Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer
Do Elephants Ever Forget?, by Guy Campbell
   

Fiction (non-genre) 4
Saints of the Shadow Bible, by Ian Rankin
The Secret River, by Kate Grenville
Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
The Saint Zita Society, by Ruth Rendell
   

Sf (non-Who) 6
The Next Generation, vol ii and vol iii, by John Francis Maguire
Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett
Walk to the End of the World, by Suzy McKee Charnas
Motherlines, by Suzy McKee Charnas
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch
   

Doctor Who 5
Last of the Gaderene, by Mark Gatiss
Happy Endings, by Paul Cornell
Grimm Reality by Simon Bucher-Jones and Kelly Hale
Pest Control, by Peter Anghelides
The Death Pit. by A.L. Kennedy
    

Comics 2
With The Light vol 6, by Keiko Tobe
The Rabbi’s Cat v2, by Joann Sfarr
 

~6,500 pages
9/21 by women (Ohlmeyer, Grenville, Rendell, 2xCharnas, Ohlmeyer, Hale, Kennedy, Tobe)
1/21 by PoC (Tobe, though possibly I should count Sfarr too)

Reread: 0

Reading now:
Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heileman
Jane Austen, by Claire Tomalin
Crowe’s Requiem by Mike McCormack
The Big Finish Companion v1, by Richard Dinnick

Coming soon (perhaps):
God’s War, by Kameron Hurley
The Shining, by Stephen King
Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010, by Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo
Empire of the Sun, by J. G. Ballard
The Kindness of Strangers, by Kate Adie
The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s Greatest Invention, by Guy Deutscher
The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman
Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave
Essays on Time-based Linguistic Analysis, by Charles-James N. Bailey
Brick Lane, by Monica Ali
Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann
Inverted World, by Christopher Priest
Revelation, by C. J. Sansom
Anglicizing the Government of Ireland, by Jon G. Crawford
Cheese, by Willem Elsschot
Rupert Bear Annual: No. 72
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell
Any Given Doomsday, by Lori Handeland
[Doctor Who] Speed of Flight, by Paul Leonard
[Doctor Who] GodEngine, by Craig Hinton
[Doctor Who] The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, by Lawrence Miles
[Doctor Who] The Forever Trap, by Dan Abnett

• Devoted to voting
  
  Excellent profile of my former intern, Jenny de Nijs. (Though her time with ID has been edited out!)
  (tags: eu li )
• Which is your favourite Hugo-wining novel?
  
  Important poll!
  (tags: sf )
• Dr. Seuss Went to War
  
  The war cartoons of Theodore Geisel.
  (tags: war comics )

Views on this book were mixed in my what-to-read-in-2014 poll, but I have to say I rather enjoyed it. Like Paul Cornell's London Falling, which I read this time last year, it has contemporary London police being caught up in a world of eldritch horror; but it scored for me in the central character's continuing self-doubt, not so much about whether he wants to be a policeman caught up in the occult, but about whether he wants to be a policeman at all; and in the clever invocation of a well-known folk tale which is stunningly revealed about halfway through. The personified rivers themselves (Fleet, Tyburn, Beverley Brook) are a brilliant concept, and the London streetscapes convincingly envisaged. I will definitely go get the sequels now.

It took me ages to track down the sixth volume of this manga series about bringing up an autistic child in contemporary Japan, but it was worth waiting for. Here, Hikaru has started to hit puberty, and has to be dissuaded from touching himself or pretty women inappropriately; family and school dynamics continue to be a strain; and we get sidetracked for a couple of diversions, when his father attracts too devoted an admirer at work and a couple of his classmates come to terms with their own fannish obsessions. But the core narrative remains sound, of Hikaru and his mother Sachiko dealing with a world which has not been designed for his needs, and doing the best they can. I have the next volume ready to read.

A rather odd Eighth Doctor Adventure, with the Doctor, Fitz and Anji trapped in a fantasy world where fairy-tales (hence the ‘Grimm’ of the title) are more or less true. Some good Anji moments in particular, and a few nice descriptive passages, but this has been done better elsewhere.

I sent an old friend an email yesterday to ask about a particular policy issue in his country, which I used to follow quite closely but have slightly lost track of recently.

He called me back today, saying that he was rather busy so thought we should just sort it out by phone rather than by email. We had a jolly good conversation, and at the end of it I asked what he was doing now.

I could practically see his grin down the phone. “I’m Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development – have been since December 2012.”

Oops.

As before, I have tabulated how many people list the shortlisted works for the BSFA Award on the two major library sites, Goodreads and LibraryThing, and what average rating the books have been given.

I haven't read any of these, though I bought God's War last year based on recommendations around the place. It and Ancillary Justice are the clear leaders on both sites, with the latter scoring significantly ahead on reader appreciation. Publication date doesn't seem to be a factor – Ancillary Justice appears to have been the most recently published of any of them. Note that it has also put on 100 Goodreads users (and 12 from LibraryThing) since last week.

Current
Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heileman
Jane Austen, by Claire Tomalin
Crowe’s Requiem, by Mike McCormack
The Big Finish Companion v1, by Richard Dinnick

Last books finished
[Doctor Who] The Death Put, by A.L. Kennedy
[Doctor Who] Pest Control, by Peter Anghelides
The Rabbi’s Cat v2, by Joann Sfarr
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch
With The Light vol 6, by Keiko Tobe
[Doctor Who] Grimm Reality by Simon Bucher-Jones and Kelly Hale
Do Elephants Ever Forget?, by Guy Campbell
British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland, eds Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer

Last week’s audios
The Beginning (Susan/1) by Marc Platt
Current: Antidote to Oblivion (7/Flip)

Next books
The Shining, by Stephen King
Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels, by Damien Broderick and Paul di Filippo
Empire of the Sun, by J.G. Ballard
[Doctor Who] Speed of Flight, by Paul Leonard

Books acquired in last week
Ireland Under The Tudors vols 1-3, by Richard Bagwell
The Death Pit, by A.L. Kennedy
Into the Nowhere, by Jenny Colgan
Prisoners of Time, by Scott and David Tipton