What number is next in this list?
| 2 20 600 141,000 390,000 87,900,000 |
The Australian K9 series
I have rather lapsed in writing up my rewatch of New Who, but that doesn't mean I have stopped my episode-a-day routine – I finished off the David Tennant era a month ago, and have spent the last four weeks (-ish) watching the least-known Doctor Who spinoff, the series featuring K9 as voiced by John Leeson, and partly written by Bob Baker, broadcast in 2009-10.
Leeson and Baker are I think the only creative links with the rest of Who. The series is set in a totalitarian future London in 2050, where civilisation has degenerated so badly that almost everyone now speaks with an Australian accent, and all buildings built since 2009 have been demolished. Also the climate seems to have become more tropical.
The central cast, apart from Leeson as K9, is the Professor (Robert Moloney), the only Canadian character ever to appear in the Whoniverse (or so I am told), accompanied by Starkey (Keegan Joyce) a bad boy hacker who becomes K9's special friend, Darius (Daniel Webber) who is a young rapscallion with an occasionally talking car, and Jorjie (Philippa Coulthard) as the core goodies.
Jorjie's mother June (Robyn Moore) inconveniently is something senior in the sinister Department which actually runs everything. She is actually the less sinister arm of the Department; she is locked in constant bureaucratic infighting with the evil but not terribly convincing Drake (Connor Van Vuuren) who is replaced partway through the season by the much more convincingly evil Thorne (Jared Robinson).
Who fans will be amused by the way that K9 regenerates in the first episode into a much cuter and smaller robot dog, with the ability to hover, fly, carry out detailed scientific analysis and engage in much more humorous banter than we have ever seen from any of the other versions of K9. All viewers will, I think, be irritatingly earwormed by the signature tune. But the format of the show is very much Monster Of The Week, with little pushing of the format boundaries. Even the first series of Torchwood managed better diversity of tone.
IMHO the best episodes, if you want to sample them, are The Lost Library of Ukko (although it must be pointed out that the library itself is not actually lost) and Taphony and the Time Loop. There is, however, a truly teeth-grindingly bad episode, The Cambridge Spy, which is mostly set on 23 November 1963. (Geddit?)
My recommendation to casual Who fans is that there is no real need to sit through all 26 episodes. The first two, the two in the middle that I have mentioned (plus The Curse of Anubis which has a coupe of amusingly subtle references to Who), and the last three are enough to give you a decent sense not only of what the show is about but also of why we are unlikely to see it again. (Though I see that Philippa Coulthard, who is lovely as K9's young friend Jorjie, was also one of the lead characters in Alien Surf Girls.)
OK, tomorrow it's The Eleventh Hour, again.
July Books 13) And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
Sir Thomas Legge said: “Damn it all, Maine, somebody must have killed ’em.”
“That’s just our problem, sir.”
“Nothing helpful in the doctor’s report?”
“No, sir.”
I’m getting a bit bored with Lovejoy as my bedtime reading and might give Agatha Christie a try, working scientifically through her books in order of popularity until I get tired.
I went through an Agatha Christie phase when I was about 13 and had read And Then There Were None at that time. It’s quite far from the normal format of murder mystery: ten people on an isolated island (whose name varies with the edition of the book), all invited because of a fatal incident in their personal past, are bumped off one by one. One of the ten must be the murderer; but who? The solution is just barely credible in the context of the story (requires some impressive good luck from the murderer, and failure to observe some obvious clues from his victims). But it is tautly constructed, and must have been very appealing when first published in late 1939 – no mention of the imminent war, but the previous war’s shadow lies across all the characters.
The book is of course notorious for the racism of its original title. It’s interesting that the two characters, who become the (largely sympathetic) viewpoint for the climax of the story proper, are also the most obviously racist – one of them has explicitly carried out a racist multiple murder as a colonial officer in Africa, the other is the only person to defend him. But it’s also interesting that the murder confesses to inflicting “prolonged mental strain and fear” on “the more cold-blooded offenders” who die last, so the author’s message is ambiguous. There’s a much less ambigous anti-Semitism directed at a minor character, which is not queried in the same way.
I shall persevere with this project. Murder on the Orient Express is next, and I haven’t read it or seen any of the screen adaptations (though, thanks to the spoilers generally abounding in popular culture, I do know whodunnit).
Agatha Christie:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles | The Secret Adversary | The Murder on the Links | The Man in the Brown Suit | The Murder of Roger Ackroyd | The Big Four | The Mystery of the Blue Train | The Murder at the Vicarage | Murder on the Orient Express | Death in the Clouds | The A.B.C. Murders | Murder in Mesopotamia | Cards on the Table | Death on the Nile | Appointment With Death | Hercule Poirot’s Christmas | And Then There Were None | Evil Under the Sun | The Body in the Library | Five Little Pigs | The Moving Finger | Crooked House | A Murder Is Announced | 4.50 from Paddington | Hallowe’en Party
July Books 12) Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
“In principle we can reduce a man to the size of a bacterium, of a virus, of an atom. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of miniaturization. We can shrink an army with all its men and equipment to a size that will fit in a match-box. Ideally, we could then ship that match-box where it is needed and put the army into business after restoring it to full size. You see the significance?”
The story of a mission ministurised and injected into the bloodstream of an ailing scientist to cure him, the protagonists being four men and a woman who, this being an Asimov story, is the centre of some dubious sexual politics. The whole thing is very much in the Cold War context, the miniaturisation technology being fairly blatantly a parallel of nuclear technology.
Although I am aware of the general course of Asimov’s career, I hadn’t previously known some of the details of this book – that it was intended to be the novelisation of the film, but because Asimov finished faster than the studio it was actually published several months before the film was released; that he tweaked various details to make it more plausible than the film script; that the story it was based on was actually set in the nineteenth century. Asimov did his best with some tricky material; basically to keep the film plot going for the full 100 minutes there has to be an unexpected and implausible problem every few chapters which sets our team back. But this is not his greatest work.
July Books 11) Vanishing Point, by Steve Cole
‘You’ve had your child kidnapped by a madman, have you?’ Etty snapped.
‘Oh, yes,’ the Doctor said quietly. He stared off vacantly into space, the memory clearly tugging at him. ‘And I got her out, too.’
‘Safe?’
‘And superb.’ He grinned.
A pretty solid Eighth Doctor Adventure, with Doctor, Fitz and Anji pitching up on a planet where the powers that be are engaged in dark manipulations of genetics with a religious cover for their activities. Much more detailed and thoughtful than Cole’s base-under-siege stories (which are generally pretty good anyway). Loses a couple of points for inconsistency of setting between blasted heath and robot city. Mercifully free of tedious Doctor amnesia.
Other people’s Hugo votes
It’s much more difficult to find online discussion of the Hugo nominees now than it was ten years ago. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening – I’m sure it is. But I suspect that the gardens of the internet are regaining their walls, which is a bit sad. Even two years ago (admittedly two days before the voting deadline, rather than ten) I found a lot more to work on.
Anyway, there are a few brave souls who have posted their likely votes on the fiction categories in places where I was able to find them. There were a number of others who had listed the nominees but didn’t give me a clear enough idea of their rankings to include below; please shout if you feel unjustly excluded. If I am able, I may post an update as the voting deadline nears.
In two categories there is a pretty clear front-runner, and in the other two the votes seem more dispersed. This, of course, doesn’t represent anything even approximating to an opinion poll: it is very far from a random sample, and I can entirely believe that there are fans of particular authors who will vote for their works but don’t feel the need to blog about it, or even necessarily to read the competition. But it’s interesting to read the analysis of people who have read the same stories and taken very different things from them.
Rachel Neumeier: 1) 2312, 2) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, 3) Redshirts, 4) Blackout, 5) Throne Of The Crescent Moon
William Fuller: 1) 2312, =2) Throne Of The Crescent Moon, =2) Redshirts
Me: 1) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, 2) Throne Of The Crescent Moon, 3) 2312, 4) Blackout, 5) Redshirts
Timo Pietilä: 1) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, 2) 2312, 3) Redshirts, 4) Blackout, 5) Throne Of The Crescent Moon
Chris Gerrib: 1) Throne Of The Crescent Moon, 2) Blackout, 3) Redshirts, 4) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, 5) 2312
Steven Halter: 1) Blackout, 2) Throne Of The Crescent Moon, 3) 2312, 4) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, 5) Redshirts
2312 seems to be the likeliest winner, though not with great enthusiasm. I found a number of posts from people who had not read it yet. No first preferences for Redshirtsvisibility, it is near the bottom of most people’s ballots.
Me: 1) The Emperor’s Soul, 2) On a Red Station, Drifting, 3) “The Stars Do Not Lie”, 4) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 5) San Diego 2014
Timo Pietilä: 1) The Emperor’s Soul, 2) “The Stars Do Not Lie”, 3) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 4) San Diego 2014, 5) On a Red Station, Drifting
David Steffen: 1) The Emperor’s Soul, 2) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 3) San Diego 2014, 4) “The Stars Do Not Lie”, 5) On a Red Station, Drifting
Peter Enyeart: 1) The Emperor’s Soul, 2) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 3) On a Red Station, Drifting, 4) San Diego 2014, 5) “The Stars Do Not Lie”
Rachel Neumeier: 1) The Emperor’s Soul, 2) San Diego 2014, 3) On a Red Station, Drifting, 4) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 5) “The Stars Do Not Lie”
Alan Heuer: 1) The Emperor’s Soul, 2) San Diego 2014, 3) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 4) On a Red Station, Drifting, 5) “The Stars Do Not Lie”
Steven Halter: 1) San Diego 2014, 2) The Emperor’s Soul, 3) On a Red Station, Drifting, 4) “The Stars Do Not Lie”, 5) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
Caleb Huitt: 1) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 2) San Diego 2014, 3) The Emperor’s Soul, 4) On a Red Station, Drifting, 5) “The Stars Do Not Lie”
Chris Gerrib: 1) “The Stars Do Not Lie”, 2) On a Red Station, Drifting, 3) The Emperor’s Soul, 4) After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, 5) San Diego 2014
A pretty clear front-runner there. Surprised by the lack of love for On a Red Station, Drifting which is in the lower half of all but two of the above ballots (one being mine).
Timo Pietilä: 1) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 2) “Rat-Catcher”, 3) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, 4) “Fade To White”, 5) “In Sea-Salt Tears”
Kristin Hill: 1) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 2) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 3) “Rat-Catcher”, 4) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 5) “Fade to White”
Marshall Ryan Maresca: 1) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 2) “Fade To White”, 3) “Rat-Catcher”, 4) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 5) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”
Me: 1) “Fade to White”, 2) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 3) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 4) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 5) “Rat-Catcher”
Peter Enyeart: 1) “Fade to White”, 2) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 3) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 4) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 5) “Rat-Catcher”
Alan Heuer: 1) “Fade to White”, 2) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 3) “Rat-Catcher”, 4) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 5) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”
Steven Halter: 1) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 2) “Rat-Catcher”, 3) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 4) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 5) “Fade to White”
David Steffen: 1) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 2) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, 3) “Rat-Catcher”, 4) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 5) “Fade to White”
Caleb Huitt: 1) “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”, 2) “Fade to White”, 3) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, 4) “Rat-Catcher”, 5) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”
A fairly even split between three front-runners here. I note that those who did not give a first preference to “In Sea-Salt Tears” all put it in the lower half of their ballots, whereas both “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” and “Fade to White” managed a second place somewhere.
Me: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Timo Pietilä: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Kristin Hill: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Marshall Ryan Maresca: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Alan Heuer: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Peter Enyeart: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Rachel Neumeier: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Caleb Huitt: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Immersion”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Steven Halter: 1) “Mono no Aware”, 2) “Mantis Wives”, 3) “Immersion”
David Steffen: 1) “Immersion”, 2) “Mono no Aware”, 3) “Mantis Wives”
Chance Morrison: 1) “Immersion”, 2) “Mantis Wives”, 3) “Mono no Aware”
A pretty extraordinary consensus – with only three nominees, there are only six possible rankings, but one of those rankings is supported by 70% of those who have posted their views (including me). It rather looks as if Ken Liu will make it two years in a row, a feat last achieved by Michael Swanwick in 1999-2000.
So, there we are. When I did the same exercise two years ago, the blogging consensus did not pick a single one of the eventual four winners.
Needless to say, if any of those linked to feel that I have mischaracterised them (or even worse, mis-identified them) in any way, please get in touch.
Links I found interesting for 21-07-2013
- Take a closer look at the House of Lords
Interesting and largely (but not wholly) sympathetic piece.
- The E.U.’s New Guidelines on Israel Are Not a Boycott
Daniel Levy (@ecfr) on EU getting it right, for once.
- If Detroit were a country, would it be a failed state?
Not quite, apparently.
July Books 10) The Last Empress, by Anchee Min
It was the spring of 1868 and rain soaked the soil. Blue winter tulips in my garden began to rot. I was thirty-four years old. My nights were filled with the sound of crickets. The smell of incense fluttered over from the Palace Temple, where the senior concubines lived.
This is a historical novel framed as the autobiography of the Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi (normally transcribed as Cixi these days; she'd have written it 慈禧) from her consolidation of power in 1863 to her death in 1908. I knew almost nothing of Chinese history in this period (or indeed any); I had encountered Tzu-hsi previously in Flashman and the Dragon, where the hero (inevitably) conducts a love affair with her in 1860, before this book is set. I found the historical detail fascinating but, alas, some of the most dramatic incidents turn out to have been invented (or at least elaborated) by the author; I was impressed by the sense of a woman trying to prevent the disintegration of her regime against the twin threats of a series of weak emperors and external pressure from the Europeans and Americans. There are also some lovely descriptive set-pieces. Unfortunately it didn't really grab me emotionally, and towards the end got a bit rushed – I was simply confused by the account of the Boxer Rebellion. Also I had not realised that this is the sequel to Empress Orchid which describes her rise to power; I will look out for it – struggle to get to the top is generally a more interesting read than struggle to stay at the top!
2013 Hugos: Best Professional Artist
The deadline is drawing nearer, and it’s time to quickly look through the Hugo nominees in a couple of the other categories. I was struck by how many of the Best Professional Artist pictures were sketches just of sultry individuals looking sultry; then the question is, how much circumstantial detail can be fitted in to make this image more memorable than that? It is very much a matter of individual taste and mood. I feel pretty sure of my first and fifth rankings, but the middle three placings are much more difficult because I found them so similar to each other.
2) John Picacio submitted four studies of individual figures; he shades it for me over the others by this rather good fiery disintegration.
3) Chris McGrath again had a sequence of sultry figures, of which I liked this the best.
4) And Dan Dos Santos had a similar set of works, all in much the same style as each other.
5) I feel a little bad at putting Julie Dillon last, especially since her pieces were generally much busier and varied. But I didn’t always feel that they were balanced, and the colouring didn’t grab me. Not that these are bad artworks: here’s a lovely detail from one of them.
There you are: my carefully considered judgement. Or something.
See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
July Books 9) Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
Ma mi colse allora un’altra piccola malattia da cui non dovevo più guarire. Una cosa da niente; la paura d’invecchiare e sopra tutto la paura di morire.
At that time I was attacked by a slight illness from which I was never to recover. It was a mere trifle; the fear of growing old, and above all the fear of death.
This is supposedly one of the great twentieth century novels, the tale of Trieste businessman Zeno Cosini, his smoking, his father, his wife and mistress, and his largely unsuccessful business dealings. James Joyce, who had taught the author English in Trieste, boosted it and it’s pretty clear that Zeno Cosini is a very close ancestor of Leopold Bloom’s and that the novel is consciously placed in the wider Proust / Woolf / Joyce tradition.
It’s not really as good, though. Zeno is difficult to like or sympathise with; he is the author of his own misfortunes, but not in a terribly interesting or engaging way. The stories are presented as if published by his psychiatrist, who warns that they are full of lies; but if so, we never really find out what the lies are, which I find a weakness. However the detailed depiction of Trieste in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, brick by brick, is very good and again is something Joyce drew on later. Recommended for fans of early twentieth century literature.
July Books 8) The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
One bright morning the citizens of me!Xu!xi-si!cisisa had got out of bed to find that their entire city was suddenly in the middle of a lake the size of Arizona. Which was why Bernice and saRa!qava had to catch a hydrofoil from a terminus on the lake shore.
This New Adventure is an obvious tribute to Iain M. Banks: the People of the title are very similar to the Culture, a post-scarcity interstellar society with intelligent drone robots and spaceships. Banks himself had mixed feelings about the show. In 2008 he wrote that “some of the Doctor Who episodes over the last few years have been amongst the best SF ever to appear on TV or film and may well prove much more influential than anything I’ve ever written”, but by the time of his last interview he had “fallen out of love” with it. Banks fans who are at least vaguely acquainted with Who will enjoy Aaronovitch’s adaptation of the Culture to the Whoniverse; for Who fans, who are of course the primary audience, it’s one more well-realised alien culture, with a bit more depth to it than is the norm.
Apart from the audacity of the setting, it’s quite a good story. The Doctor and friends (two of his current companions being their time’s equivalent of police officers) are asked to investigate the mysterious murder of a drone, and work through the suspects despite various distractions. Roz in particular gets some very good character development time, which she hadn’t really had much in her previous five books. I was less happy about the sub-plot involving the Brigadier’s descendant Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart and Bernice; the Seventh Doctor as manipulator doesn’t always work for me. But it’s a small element of an enjoyable whole.
July Books 7) Desert, by J.M.G. Le Clézio
Ils sont apparus, comme dans un rêve, au sommet de la dune, à demi cachés par la brume de sable que leurs pieds soulevaient.
They appeared as if in a dream at the top of the dune, half-hidden in the cloud of sand rising from their steps.
When Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years back, I was fascinated to discover that he had written a book set partly in the Western Sahara, which is indeed where his story starts and ends, following an uprising of then indigenous people against the Europeans of 1910-11, told from the viewpoint of a young boy close to but not in the events. But more than half of the book, interwoven with the sections set earlier, is the story of Lalla, set perhaps in the early 1950s, following her from a shanty-town near the coast, with her unspeaking herdsman lover, to Marseilles and back. It is Marseilles that turns out to be the real human desert, full of alienation for Lalla; Nour’s desert is a vibrant human space, full of physical and cultural significance. It would be interesting to read some critiques of this from sources nearer the region, but I very much enjoyed Le Clézio’s turning round the questions of who is alien, what is normal, where is the real desert.
On yer bike, again
One fine Friday three years ago I tried cycling to work and back. I did the inbound leg again today, but this time with a couple of distinct advantages: first of all, I had the Cyclemeter app on my iPhone, tracking my every movetoday and 2010, in Google format.)
Wednesday reading
Current:
Spend Game, by Jonathan Gash
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
Kiss of the Butterfly, by James Lyon
Last books finished
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clézio
[Doctor Who] The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min
[Doctor Who] Vanishing Point, by Stephen Cole
Next books
[Doctor Who] Plague of the Cybermen, by Justin Richards
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Katherine Swynford, by Jeannette Lucraft
Books acquired in last week:
Kiss of the Butterfly, by James Lyon
LT unread books tally: 444.
Links I found interesting for 16-07-2013
- Unionism’s Europe Problem
…shared by Republicans.
- Defending Diplomacy in Court by John Bruton
A European take on Snowden.
Links I found interesting for 15-07-2013
- 22 Odd Ads From National Geographic Magazine in the 1910s
Health Underwear For Men!
- ‘World’s oldest calendar’ discovered in Scottish field
A strong claim!
- 50 years after JFK, Dallas sheds shadow of history
Commemoration season starting early.
- Arabic in the Sky
How the Arabic names for stars came to be used by us.
- Florida man shoots and kills 17-year-old teen after argument over loud music at gas station
One to watch…
Links I found interesting for 14-07-2013
- Zora Neale Hurston discusses her research into actual zombies in Haiti
Really.
- Changing The Creepy Guy Narrative
Sauce for the gander.
- “The Conscience of the Court”, by Zora Neale Hurston
Justice in Florida, 1950.
- A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell
"tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country"
100 years after Gerald Ford’s birth
On 14 July 1913, Leslie Lynch King Jr was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up as Gerald Ford of Michigan, which is how history knows him: the only man to serve as both Vice-President and President of the United States of America, without ever being elected to either office; no President served a shorter term than Ford and lived to tell the tale; no President has lived longer.
He tends to be particularly remembered for his fluffs: his term of office began by pardoning his predecessor (and even then he fluffed the announcement, getting the month wrong) and ended when in debate with Jimmy Carter he stated that there was “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”, a pretty massive fluff.
In fact Ford was perfectly well aware of the situation in Eastern Europe, and presumably simply had one of those foot-in-mouth moments that happen to us all from time to time (though hopefully not in the defining public appearance of our careers). By negotiating the Helsinki Accords, he laid the foundations for the strengthening of civil society and embedded human rights in the geopolitical discourse of Europe, laying the foundations for the collapse of Communism two decades later to take a largely peaceful course (with some rather obvious exceptions). Those of us who live in a united, peaceful and free Europe today owe him, and I’ll raise a glass to his memory this evening.
It should also be noted that he took a markedly more liberal line on LGBT rights than most of his own party. But the 1970s were a different time.
July Books 6) Shakespeare’s Handwriting: A Study, by Edward Maunde Thompson
…as for the Shakespearian MS., who could have made bold, any time within these last hundred and sixty years, to proclaim that he who would set eyes upon it need only raise his hand and take it down from its shelf in the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum?
This is one of the classics of Shakespeariana and indeed of palæography, and you can now read it here. Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, one of the world's experts of his day, looked carefully at the six surviving signatures of William Shakespeare, and the three pages of the manuscript of Sir Thomas More which were written in a different hand to the others and sounded a bit Shakespearian; and concludes that they are by the same person. His description of how the letters are formed is meticulous, especially given that there are not that many letters in six signatures (one prefixed by the words "By me") to analyse. Scholars continue to debate whether or not Thomspon was right, and no doubt there is wishful thinking on both sides. In fact, why not judge for yourself:
The six "William"s from the six signatures:      |
the words "of Wisdome" from the Sir Thomas More manuscript: |
The six "Shakespeare"s from the six signatures:      |
The word "Serjant" (="Sergeant") from the Sir Thomas More manuscript:
Stage directions for Shrewsbury and Surrey from the Sir Thomas More manuscript: |
The word "By" from Shakespeare's will: |
The words "Bushell and Beeff" from the Sir Thomas More manuscript: |
I think this illustrates how fiendishly difficult these judgements are. I dabbled in palæography myself in times past and can appreciate just how difficult it is to get one’s eye in, and certainly don’t feel I can challenge Thompson’s verdict, which has made me all too aware of how little I know about the normal variation of individual handwriting around 1600. I have deliberately looked only at the capital letters above, because they are easiest on the unaccustomed eye; it should be noted that Thompson makes his case much more on the lower case letters, ‘a’ in particular. It’s quite a short book and pretty lucid in explaining why Thompson comes to the judgement he did.
I dug this up because I was reviewing the comments on my last Shakespeare post. Not surprisingly, this summary of Thompson’s research is not just a distortion but almost entirely inaccurate. This is the biggest problem with engaging with the Oxfordians (and the anti-Stratfordians in general): many of them simply lie about what is in the record, and are never called out by their own side even when the lies are blatant. The 9-11 Truthers are similar (I had a brush with them a few months back).
Of course, for those of who who think that Shakespeare actually wrote the plays that have his name attached to them, it doesn’t really matter very much whether or not three more pages of a play that was not printed or performed for centuries after his death can be added to the list of his works. For those who are desperate to prove that the William Shakespeare of the documentary record, whose signature appears on four legal documents (a witness deposition, two property records and three on his will), was not the same bloke who wrote the plays, it is obviously problematic if that bloke actually did write three pages of a play. But they have bigger problems to contend with.
July Books 5) Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
— Я полагаю приобресть мертвых, которые, впрочем, значились бы по ревизии как живые, — сказал Чичиков.
‘My intention is to obtain dead serfs, who, however, are indicated as alive in the census list,’ said Chichikov.
Dead Souls is presented to the reader in a rather odd way. Supposedly it was intended to be a trilogy, of which the first book is complete and the parts of several chapters of the second were written; like The Castle, it ends in mid-sentence. I guess it’s useful for completeness to have that material, but in fact the first book works perfectly well on its own: Chichikov, who is a right chancer, arrives in a small provincial town, and buys himself status by ostentatious expenditure and also by purchasing the “dead souls” of the title. Each of the chapters is an effective sketch of individuals in the town and nearby countryside, and the satirical descriptions of Chichikov’s interactions with them. Gogol is puncturing respectable bubbles here, and holding a slightly distorting mirror up to the world. I have to say that, by modern standards of satire, it’s all rather gentle, but I still found it pretty entertaining with hints of hidden depths.
July Books 4) Harvest of Time, by Alastair Reynolds
“We are what we are, Doctor. If I did not exist, the universe would soon fill the void left by my absence. You could almost say that the universe requires us. We are order and disorder. We balance each other very effectively.”
This wheeze of getting well-known writers to contribute new Doctor Who books is proving an awfully good adventure. This is an excellent Doctor/Master/Jo story with UNIT in a supporting role, with adventures on oil rigs and a brilliant time paradox which poses an existential threat to the Master, and through him to the universe – very neatly done, and the Doctor is forced to make a crucial choice about his old enemy. Reynolds has caught the spirit fo the Pertwee era and made something new out of it. Strongly recommended both for Who fans and Reynolds fans. (Many of the latter are already in the former category, of course.)
July Books 3) The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Mother Superior couldn’t be drearier! Life is opressive and lonely and dun! Little Miss Celia envied Ophelia – Hamlet ignored her and then there was none!
This won the second BSFA Best Novel Award in 1970 (after the same author’s Stand on Zanzibar the previous year). It is set in 2014, mainly in and around New York, with a background of racial conflict, proliferation of privately owned weapons, and mass media which presents news as entertainment; there was a particularly good paragraph predicting spam, which unfortunately I failed to mark and couldn’t track down again. The story also involves a young woman who has visions of the future when in a drug-induced trance, which is less noticeably a feature of today’s society. As with Brunner’s other books, it is interspersed with news items giving a wider context, though here a lot of them are apparently from British news coverage of the racial tension in the USA in the late 1960s.
While I liked the intensity and indeed accuracy of the setting, I found the basic plot rather less engaging, and the characters not awfully sympathetic or memorable. It’s not recorded what else was up for the 1970 BSFA award, but The Left Hand of Darkness won both Hugo and Nebula (The Jagged Orbit was nominated for the latter).
July Books 2) A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young–alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.
I wish I had read this twenty years ago, or perhaps better twenty-five years ago when I was still a Cambridge undergraduate myself. I wish, indeed, that Cambridge would make it compulsory consciousness-raising reading for all students (and perhaps academic staff too). It is a tremendous, passionate, witty and forensic analysis of the barriers faced women who try to get anywhere in literature, or indeed in almost any other way of life. One of the great feminist texts, and at 112 pages mercifully succinct.
Top unread non-fiction:
Peleponnesian War | Innocents Abroad | Terre des Hommes | The Hero with a Thousand Faces | Race of a Lifetime / Game Change | Proust and the Squid | The Tipping Point | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Elementary Forms of Religious Life | Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | History of Christianity | History of the World in 100 Objects | A Room of One’s Own | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | The Last Mughal | Reading the Oxford English Dictionary | Jane Austen | Homage to Catalonia | The Road to Middle Earth | Essence of Christianity | The Strangest Man
July Books 1) The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
Unpleasant things were ahead of Laura Lee Kimble, but she was ready for this moment. It might be the electric chair or the rest of her life in some big lonesome jail house, or even torn to pieces by a mob, but she had passed three long weeks in jail. She had come to the place where she could turn her face to the wall and feel neither fear nor anguish. So this here so-called trial was nothing to her but a form and a fashion and an outside show to the world. She could stand apart and look on calmly.
A couple of years back I was fascinated to read Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, and then back in January someone on my f-list posted a glowing review of this book (in a locked entry). This is, as I hoped, an awfully good collection. There are some journeyman pieces about love, lust and death in a small town; there are some awesome character sketches, a great story written in Harlem slang, and an unfinished novel telling the story of John the Baptist’s execution from Herodias’ point of view. I chose the quote above, from an account of a black person being wrongfully prosecuted for attacking a white man, for its eerie resonance with the racially charged trial currently taking place a hundred miles farther south. Some things take a long time to change.
The stories are topped and tailed by essays by Henry Louis Gates, but the gold nugget at the end, mysteriously not even mentioned on the contents page, is Alice Walker’s account, “Looking for Zora”, of how she tracked down Hurston’s grave in 1973, 14 years after her death in 1959. It’s an incredible tale of erasure, hidden history and exclusion. For the moment it’s online here and well worth reading. It finishes:
There are times — and finding Zora Hurston’s grave was one of them — when normal responses of grief, horror, and so on do not make sense because they bear no real relation to the depth of the emotion one feels. It was impossible for me to cry when I saw the field full of weeds where Zora is. Partly this is because I have come to know Zora through her books and she was not a teary sort of person herself; but partly, too, it is because there is a point at which even grief feels absurd. And at this point, laughter gushes up to retrieve sanity.
It is only later, when the pain is not so direct a threat to one’s own existence that what was learned in that moment of comical lunacy is understood. Such moments rob us of both youth and vanity. But perhaps they are also times when greater disciplines are born.
Links I found interesting for 13-07-2013
Links I found interesting for 12-07-2013
- The Man who wasn’t Hamlet
100 reasons why The 17th Earl of Oxford did not write Shakespeare’s plays.
- On the naming of an asteroid after Iain Banks
@RozKaveney nails it.
- Following ‘Game of Thrones’ to Belfast and Beyond
GRRM locations in Norn Iron!
Connections
Random moment of utter puzzlement when someone whose name I simply didn’t recognise accepted a friend request I must have sent months ago on Facebook.
On further perusal, I realised that her surname had changed when she got married very recently; and she was in fact our former au pair, whose grandfather was Harry Secombe.
Mystery solved.
Links I found interesting for 11-07-2013
- http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/how-carne-ross-created-a-new-kind-of-diplomacy
What we do at work all day.
- The Essential Map of Europe and Environs.
@feorag looks at words for "beer".
Wednesday reading
Current:
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clézio
[Doctor Who] The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min
Spend Game, by Jonathan Gash
Last books finished
A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
Harvest of Time [Doctor Who] by Alastair Reynolds
Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Shakespeare’s Handwriting: A Study, by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson
Next books
[Doctor Who] Vanishing Point, by Stephen Cole
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
Books acquired in last week:
Shakespeare’s Handwriting: A Study, by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson
Spend Game, by Jonathan Gash
LT Unread books tally: 448.
Links I found interesting for 10-07-2013
- Strife in the Sahara
Excellent video from @washingtonpost.
- An Ethical Guide To Consuming Content Created By Awful People Like Orson Scott Card
The Ender’s Game debate.