- Today we have shaming of prats
A poetic take on Wikipedia.
- Truth behind the death of suffragette Emily Davison is finally revealed
Old footage, new analysis.
- McAlpine v Bercow
The Twitter defamation judgement.
- "Why the Right could doom welfare reform"
@telegraph's dismay at war on disabled.
2013 Hugos: Best Novelette
Now that the Hugo Voter Pack is out, I’m working through the various folders and files; in response to one query, all the fiction (as far as I’ve checked) is available in .mobi and .epub formats as well as PDF. I’ve been reading them on iPhone/iPad in Kindle format (ie .mobi).
I liked this list more than the novels but less than the novellas. There was one that I felt definitely should not win, and my top vote is not very far ahead of my fourth.
4) “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. An interesting concept, a tragic love story between two kids who are different from the rest – one made of glass, the other transparent in a different way. Marred by some misprints and infelicities of expression which should have been caught by the editor (eg “fuckup up” for “fucked up”).
3) “In Sea-Salt Tears”, by Seanan McGuire again. Like “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, a gay love story in which our protagonists face additional problems through not being exactly human, in this case shape-shifters with a difficult family heritage.
2) “The Girl Who Went Out For Sushi”, by Pat Cadigan. Story of post-humans exploring the moons of Jupiter, and the girl who wants to be like them. Some glorious use of language, and I may yet change my mind and put this first. It’s also the closest the list comes to traditional sf (not a recommendation necessarily, but an observation).
1) “Fade to White”, by Catherynne M. Valente. A series of vivid vignettes from an alternate history where McCarthy became President and infertility is widespread due to nuclear war; American society is constrained to promote reproduction. I don’t always like Valente’s style but this largely worked for me.
See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
Ten years on: my Livejournal anniversary
Livejournal is not what it was. My backdated f-list page from the day I started it has about 150 entries of the same date; ten years on it's more like 50. Glad to see that some people are still posting just as much now as they did then (and you know who you are, or at least you will when you look at the page); some have drifted away entirely, but others are simply expressing themselves elsewhere these days. I guess the peak may have been around 2005-2006, before the lure of Facebook and Twitter and the irritations of LJ's policies and performance eroded the momentum. I'm aware that I don't post as often as I did in the hey-day, or comment as much as I used to on other people's posts; I agree with whoever it was that suggested that those of us who are now reading stuff online on devices with crappy keyboards (or no keyboards at all) write less than we used to, because it is a less pleasant experience. I detected a modest revival of fortunes in LJ activity last year, but I doubt that it will ever return to former heights.
I've enjoyed it though, and I think I will keep it up until there is good reason to stop. I do like LJ's archiving of my thoughts about life, as opposed to the black hole of Facebook and the brevity of Twitter, and I regularly back up with ljarchive and onto mirrors at dreamwidth and my own site. I have got to know some very pleasant and very interesting people here – most recently I met
Links I found interesting for 25-05-2013
- The day that Hell was abolished
…in English law anyway.
- If you can’t boost the economy, boost house prices
Peter Birks on the proposed mortgage guarantee scheme.
- Why the world faces climate chaos
The FT explains that we are, in fact, doomed.
- Andrew Jackson’s Big Block of Cheese
The truth behind the story.
May Books 18) The Peoples of Middle-earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
Since the ceaseless ‘making’ of his world extended from my father’s youth into his old age, The History of Middle-earth is in some sense also a record of his life, a form of biography, if of a very unusual kind. He had travelled a long road. He bequeathed to me a massive legacy of writings that made possible the tracing of that road, in as I hope its true sequence, and the unearthing of the deep foundations that led ultimately to the true end of his great history, when the white ship departed from the Grey Havens.
So I have come to the end of The History of Middle-earth, with this volume. The first two-thirds are about the composition of the appendices of LotR; the rest brings together some short essays, mostly unfinished. Two of these are rather interesting. “The Shibboleth of Fëanor” looks at how the original ‘þ’ became ‘s’ in Quenya but remained ‘þ’ in Sindarin, as in the name Sindacollo, the Quenya version of Thingol; Sindarin itself is a Quenya word, the Sindarin calling themselves the Egladhrim. There is also an intriguing late set of thoughts on the true identity of Glorfindel, who appears in quite different contexts in both LotR and the fall of Gondolin; one fascinating possibility is that he actually was killed in the First Age but allowed to return from the Halls of Mandos to accompany Gandalf on his mission, which would explain why the Nazgûl are particularly perturbed by him.
There is also the fragment of The New Shadow, a sequel to LotR which clearly wasn’t going anywhere; it is a story of boyhood orchard-robbing near Minas Tirith which didn’t quite come together. It’s been rather instructive to see the number of false starts Tolkien made on what might have been substantial works – The Lost Road, The Notion Club Papers, and his various attempts, all pretty unsuccessful, to tell the story of Ëarendil. These are not journeyman pieces; they were mostly written when Tolkien was already a published author. Fortunately, of course, he had the luxury of abandoning lines of writing that were just not working out (though he went back to Ëarendil several times over). But it’s worth remembering that many good pieces of writing have quite a lot of less good writing from the same pen behind and below them, most of which we readers will never see.
Most people will either buy all twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, or none of them. My recommendation for the curious is to try the tenth of the sequence, Morgoth’s Ring, with its essay on elf sex among other interesting fragments. As for me, I’ve got John Rateliff’s two volumes about The Hobbit on the shelf, and a few other bits of Tolkieniana; so I shall not get bored.
May Books 17) Tip of the Tongue, by Patrick Ness
“Honestly,” Nettie said, shaking her head again. “The lies people tell themselves and call it the truth.”
These wee Puffin Doctor Who ebooks are having a good run right now. Here we have the celebrated Patrick Ness, delivering a very solid tale of two marginal teenagers in wartime Maine, finding themselves dealing with a peculiar fad for truth-telling gadgets which turn out to be alien tech, with a mysterious celery-wearing stranger and his scandalously dressed companion all mixed up with it as well. This is the first of the books in this series which is not told from the tight narrative viewpoint of Doctor or companion, and all the better for it.
May Books 16) Grandville: Bête Noire, by Bryan Talbot
Short listed for this year’s Hugos, this is another in Talbot’s alternate history of Grandville, where most people are anthropomorphised animals and England is only now recovering from two hundred years of French rule after defeat at Waterloo. As well as taking us to the dark heart of political conspiracy, with overtones of Tintin (and also, frankly, Dangermouse), Talbot reflects art history too in his distorted gaze; the character here illustrated is one Jackson Pollo, and he refers in an afterword to the CIA’s funding of Abstract Expressionism. It’s a witty, absurd and also rather bleak story. I will find it tough to choose between this and Saucer Country for the Hugo.
May Books 15) A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor
Telling history through things is what museums are for.
This brilliant book accompanies the brilliant series of podcasts which I listened to a couple of years ago. It is the same hundred objects from the British museum’s collection, but this time in dead tree format. The individual talks, which were 11-14 minutes on the radio, are down to 5-7 pages here, so I think quite substantially cut; but what we get in return is pictures of the actual objects, which radio cannot give. Actually in most cases I felt I actually had got a fairly good impression of the objects’ appearance from listening to the audio version, but there were a couple where the picture does make a big difference – the sexually explicit Warren Cup, and the extraordinarily detailed mechanical galleon of Augsburg. Anyway, it is all very nicely done (though I did notice as I browsed the maps at the end that none of the objects is from, er, Ireland).
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
Links I found interesting for 24-05-2013
- Dalek Found At Bottom Of British Pond, Probably Just Biding Its Time
Be afraid. Be very afraid. (Thanks to .)
- The exiled Charles II returns home
accompanied by Samuel Pepys, who records all his stories.
Links I found interesting for 23-05-2013
- Two win sickness benefit test legal challenge
"Work Capability Assessment puts people with mental illness, autism and learning difficulties at a substantial disadvantage." But the UK government defends its position in the war on the disabled.
Georgian restaurant in London
Having reached London too late to get to last night’s BSFA meeting, I persuaded
Wednesday reading
Current:
The Peoples of Middle Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (two thirds through)
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (nearly finished)
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash (half way through)
Grandville: Bête Noire, by Bryan Talbot (half way through)
Last books finished
Vincent, by Barbara Stok
Vincent van Gogh: De Worsteling van een Kunstenaar, by Marc Verhaegen and Jan Kragt
“I have an Idea for a Book …”: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg
The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness
Final Sacrifice, by Tony Lee
Magic of the Angels, by Jacqueline Rayner
Next books
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: an Autobiography, by J.G. Ballard
Books acquired in last week:
Hugo voter pack:
Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
Locke & Key: Clockworks, Vol. 5 by Joe Hill
Grandville Bête Noire by Bryan Talbot
“I have an Idea for a Book …”: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg
A couple of Who books:
Hunter's Moon by Paul Finch
Magic of the Angels, by Jacqueline Rayner
Anne's birthday presents:
Japanese Number Puzzles by Tony Yoogi
Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
The Saint Zita Society by Ruth Rendell
The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies
Lost At Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley
LT Unread books tally: 449
Two graphic novels about Vincent van Gogh
Not as the result of any particular forward planning, we got two newish graphic novels about Vincent van Gogh recently: Vincent van Gogh: De Worsteling van een Kunstenaar, by Marc Verhaegen and Jan Kragt (also available in English); and Vincent, by my favourite Dutch comics writer Barbara Stok, which we got in English translation. Both are sponsored by the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, making the most of their cultural assets. It should also be said that part of van Gogh’s legacy is precisely to challenge all visual artists to match his depth and quality of expression, and this may weigh particularly heavily on his fellow Dutch speakers: Verhaegen is perhaps the leading Flemish comics artist of today, and Stok (whose other work I love) is a rising star of the genre in the Netherlands.
The two take surprisingly divergent approaches to their subject. Verhaegen’s drawing style is much more realistic than Stok’s; the colours and settings are lush and he includes references to a lot of van Gogh’s works in individual frames. But in terms of text and storyline, he and Kragt opt for edutainment: van Gogh’s biography is recounted to us via a series of infodumps, while a loose linking narrative has a comical art fancier called Dupont (perhaps a Tintin reference, though there is only one of him) chasing a lost van Gogh sketch through Paris. Stok, on the other hand, has a much more cartooney drawing style but sticks much closer to van Gogh’s own viewpoint during his crucial time in Provence, including substantial quotes from his correspondence with his brother (which I was surprised to learn was originally in French, at least during the last years of his life). A key difference between the books is how they portray his hallucinations: Verhaegen shows the scenery turning into lurid and detailed scary monsters to threaten him, while Stok shows us the artist’s despair as his world appears to disintegrate. Verhaegen and Kragt give us quite a good portrait of how van Gogh came across to other people; Stok gives us a strong sense of how he might have thought of himself.
(One other very trivial difference is that the Belgian Verhaegen devotes several pages to the young van Gogh’s time in Belgium, whereas the Dutch Stok barely mentions it.)
These are both good books. Verhaegen’s art is more gorgeous, but Stok’s sparse style is also pretty evocative; and she gets a strong sense of authenticity by using her subject’s own words. Well worth getting both if you are a comics fan with even a mild interest in Van Gogh, or vice versa.
Paul Gauguin patronises van Gogh in Verhaegen and Kragt.
Van Gogh fails to impress some new friends, as shown by Stok.
Unexpectedly in London tomorrow evening
Arriving Trafalgar Square-ish about 7.30 pm. Anyone want to meet up a bit later?
May Books 12) “I have an Idea for a Book …”: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg
The Hugo Voter Pack is out! So I have merrily downloaded all the nominees I hadn’t already read (and a few that I had), and started with this from the Best Related Work category.
Unfortunately it’s not very interesting.
Dr. Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) was the most prolific anthologist and book packager in the world. During his nearly 40-year career in publishing, he created 1,310 anthologies (including 199 single author collections) and more than 950 novels, along with 228 nonfiction books, for a total of almost 2,500 published works. During this time, he commissioned more than 8,350 original short stories and reprinted more than 13,300 short stories (including 807 novels).
This is a list of all of the books he edited, including ebooks, and it will be useful to people who find this sort of thing useful. The authorship attribution is a bit puzzling; there is a short introduction by John Helfers, but no indication that he assembled the rest of the material (indeed he is explicitly given copyright only for the introduction); the very short biographical sketch from which I quote above is listed in the contents page as “Commentary by Martin H. Greenberg” but clearly isn’t, as it refers to him in the past tense and is cast in the first person plural, without ever saying who “we” are. I read the three pages of introductory material, but it would be an exaggeration to say that I even skimmed the rest.
May Books 11) The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness
I'm coming back to Tibradden, to live with Charles again. I've driven down from Belfast with boxes stacked on the back seat; Colin will follow with the rest of his belongings when his term has finished.
Selina was one of my brother's college friends at TCD, and I always vaguely regretted not getting to know her better, and wondered what she ended up doing. Well, she ended up taking on the (small, run-down) family estate in the foothills of the Dublin mountains, and combining the burdens of twenty-first century farming with her academic career and family. This is an extraordinary book about dealing with changes in family and society, beautifully written, lucidly and emotionally told, and with no punches pulled in her own self-examination of dealing with the intricacies of both family commitments and government bureaucracy, in the years of the inflation and bursting of the Irish property bubble. It's brilliant and you should all go and get it. (I see it's just out in paperback as well.)
May Books 10) Final Sacrifice, by Tony Lee and others.
Links I found interesting for 20-05-2013
- For those wondering where the clips came from
David McIntee explains.
- Ancient discovery set to rewrite Australian history
African coins found in 1944!
- The benefit of European Union membership outweighs the cost
British business leaders doing their best.
Nit-picking about the Celtic Otherworld of 1666
If you set a story in a Celtic Otherworld which is co-located with London, your otherworldly Celts are not all that likely to speak Irish; a lost eastern dialect of Welsh is more probable.
If you set a story in 1666, and your viewpoint character does not have access to time-travel, he probably would not be familiar with the concepts of telegraphing, or oxygen.
Just saying, like.
A letter from George Bernard Shaw
Somewhere around 1994 I did some research for my PhD in the archives of the Plunkett Foundation near Oxford, as its founder – Sir Horace Plunkett – was quite important to my topic. In the end I found his own diary of rather little use, but I did come across this excellent letter about him from George Bernard Shaw, written to Margaret Digby (who Shaw assumed was male) in 1948, sixteen years after Plunkett's death, when Shaw was 92 but clearly still with it.
16th June 1948
Dear Mr [sic] Digby,
By all means quote as much as you please of my correspondence with H[orace] P[lunkett]. There were more interesting letters than the one you copied for me; but he may not have kept them.
I do not envy you your job. Plunkett was a puzzle. He devoted his life to the service of his fellow creatures collectively; and personally he disliked them all. He kept open house in Foxrock for all visitors of any note, rich or poor, to Ireland; and he hated all his guests. He remained a bachelor for the sake of Lady Fingal[l], and was unquestionably in love with her; yet I never felt convinced that he quite liked her. He took the chair as a matter of course at all meetings in which he was interested. I have, perhaps, more experience of public meetings than most people; and I can testify that he ranked first among the very worst chairmen on earth. He went round the Congested Districts to persuade Irish farmers whose farms were uneconomic to move into better holdings: a task which would have taxed the persuasive powers of a barrister earning £20,000 a year, and took with him small schoolmasters of the £150 type, who could only make Plunkett's offer in the baldest terms, and when it was refused say no more than "Well, you are a very foolish man". Except within his own class he was a bad mixer.
And yet with all this against him he was an amiable man whom nobody could dislike, a highly talented writer with a sense of humor [sic], great political intelligence, and tireless public spirit, the greatest political Irishman of his time.
I liked him thoroughly and always stayed at Foxrock when I went to Ireland even after I found out that his hatred of his guests probably included me.
I repeat, you will find it hard to do justice to a man of such high virtues hampered by so many trivial contradictions.
G.Bernard Shaw
I’ve linked to a few explanatory articles and pictures. The original letter is here and here.
Links I found interesting for 19-05-2013
- Dear Class of ’13: You’ve been scammed
The appalling costs of college tuition.
- What Is Going on With the Accents in Game of Thrones?
Indeed.
- Matt Smith and David Tennant Behind the Scenes of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special
Whogasm.
- The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
Review of the masterpiece.
- Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia
"how many others are also creating spiteful havoc under the hood, where no one is watching?"
Riverdance, 1994
Remembering Eurovision, nineteen years ago:
(Thanks to Adrian McMenamin for reminding me.)
Links I found interesting for 17-05-2013
- Disability benefit assessments ‘unfair’, says ex-worker
An Atos whistleblower’s tale of the war on the disabled.
- World’s fish have been moving to cooler waters for decades, study finds – Washington Post
- The Cabinet of tomorrow?
Predictions from 1997; no Cameron, Miliband or Clegg!
- 3-D Scans Reveal Caterpillars Turning Into Butterflies
Wow.
- A vote for Europe
Pär Stenbäck rejects despair.
May Books 9) Magic of the Angels, by Jacqueline Rayner
He was wearing a white T-shirt with the slogan My companion went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
I thought I had read all of the Amy and Rory books, before the first Clara ones come out, but realised I had missed a couple. This is from the Quick Reads series, and it’s a typically competent story from Rayner (who is one of the most prolific authors of written Who these days); take the basic concept of Blink, add a dodgy stage magician (reminiscent of Priest’s Prestige?) and the X-Factor, and a twist in the tale involving a beloved small dog, and then update it for a new Tardis crew. Short but very sweet.
May Books 8) The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
Chronicler dipped his pen and Kvothe looked down at his folded hands for as long as it takes to draw three deep breaths.
Then he began to speak.
After a run of epic fantasy novels that didn’t really impress me, I picked this up, the last of my Christmas presents, noted with dismay that the last page was numbered 662, sighed and started reading.
But in fact I really really enjoyed it. For once, the world-building and languages worked for me; the coming-of-age story of the disguised magician hero had some new wrinkles; the university setting of much of the book has of course echoes of other fantasy educational establishments, but remains very much its own; and basically, Kvothe as a character engaged my interest and I needed to find out what happened next. And having reached page 662, I still want to know what happens next, and will get more books in the series in order to find out.
Links I found interesting for 16-05-2013
- Hamlet Mash Up (2013)
198 Hamlets in 15 minutes!
- How Bernard Cornwell became a writer
It’s all because of BBC Northern Ireland.
- Pregnancy and consent
"Yes is meaningless if there is no way to say No."
- Who should not be making the abortion law?
"The Irish government is finally getting round to drafting a new law on abortion. The law will only cover cases where the mother’s life is in danger without an abortion. Even so, the Catholic Church in Ireland is opposing the legislation. How fixated do you have to be to oppose an abortion where the mother (and of course, the baby), will die without one?"
- The case for Britain in Europe
by one M. Thatcher.
Wednesday reading
Current:
The Peoples of Middle Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (just started)
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (halfway through)
Last books finished
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake
The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash
Doors Open by Ian Rankin
Toy Soldiers by Paul Leonard
Next books
The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness
Final Sacrifice, by Tony Lee (10th Doctor comic)
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash
Books acquired in last week:
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: an Autobiography, by J.G. Ballard
LT Unread books tally: 446
Links I found interesting for 15-05-2013
- Dull Flag and Tongue of Gangsta
The Place-names of Shetland and Orkney
- Foreign policy could change Europe beyond recognition
…if given a chance, says @Jan_Techau.
- Space is now a reality TV show
@cmdr_hadfield ‘s success.
- One cent, two cents, nonsense
The small change costs more than it is worth! (Thanks @quarsan)
Links I found interesting for 14-05-2013
- So Long, Commander Hadfield
Hadfield’s greatest moments of the last five months.
- From Winterfell to King’s Landing
Strange Maps looks at Westeros.
- The Down Survey of Ireland
A fantastic archive – Ireland in the wake of Cromwell.
- European Commission not seeking to restrict seeds
Another Euromyth busted.
- Indian historical linguistics: Setting the record straight
The Economist on Sanskrit.
May Books 7) Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake
Sorry for the lengthy quote, but when a character in a Doctor Who novel literally walks past the building that my office is in (not the Berlaymont, but the opposite side of Rue Stevin, just along from the Indian restaurant) I find it worthy of note. (Though the novel is set in 2000 or thereabouts, and I moved in only in 2008.)A short Metro ride from the centre of the city brought him to a station called Schuman, from which Fitz emerged eating a chocolate-coated waffle, to find himself at a roundabout. Apparently roundabouts were quite rare in Belgium and from what Fitz had seen of the local driving habits he could see why – the average Belgian apparently happier to drive in a straight line, no matter who or what might be in their way, rather than have the inconvenience of having to steer in a circle. Consulting the curious local version of an A-to-Z – a thick handbook whose map pages were so small that you had hardly begun to walk before you needed to turn the page – Fitz took a side street away from the EC offices, past a clutch of Indian restaurants (must be here for the Brits, he thought as he passed) and behind the giant and futuristic Berlaymont building.
According to his guide book the Berlaymont building had been constructed in the 1970s to house the European Commission but in the 1990s it had been found to be full of dangerous asbestos and had been evacuated. Since then it had been wrapped in plastic, waiting for the asbestos to be safely removed. So far it had been closed for getting on for ten years and most people at the Commission considered it a long-running joke that it would be reopening ‘soon’.
Fitz almost missed the street he was looking for. The street sign was in Flemish – Stevinstraat – and he had to look twice to see the French translation, Rue Stevin.
I quite liked this Eighth Doctor novel when I first read it in late 2008, and I liked it more this time round. In particular, Fitz’s return after a five-book gap is very welcome, making the reader (or at least this reader) feel that we are getting back to a format we recognise; and new companion Anji has a far better start than the unfortunate Sam or the incomprehensible Compassion. I also appreciated the amnesiac Doctor’s vague memories of his previous life – I find the Eighth Doctor’s repeated vulnerability to amnesia a bit tedious, but this is now the sixth successive amnesiac!Doctor novel so the irritation is wearing off. The notion of orbital launching sites either on the Belgian coast or in Southern England, with or without alien technology, is a bit fanciful but I’ll forgive it. A novel that makes a lot more sense as part of the sequence but is probably decent enough on its own.