- Continuum GoH Speech
N.K. Jemisin on race, gender, history and SF.
Links I found interesting for 08-06-2013
- What if…Ireland had joined the Allies in World War ll?
A pleasing fairy tale by @jasonomahony.
- The Guilty Pleasure of Seanad Abolition
@jasonomahony again, on getting rid of the Irish Senate – completely right.
- China inside out
An Australian journalist reflects.
Links I found interesting for 07-06-2013
- 22 Maps That Show The Deepest Linguistic Conflicts In America
Do *you* pronounce "Mary", "marry" and "merry" differently? (I do!)
- Woman was incorrectly assessed as fit to work – twice
More news from the UK government’s war on the disabled.
- The YouGov Doctor Who poll
Ten still rules, apparently.
- Tartaglia attacks ‘injustice’ of Coalition benefit reform
News flash: Catholic Archbishop makes compassionate and sensible statement!
Links I found interesting for 06-06-2013
- Why this army wife says no to the Snoopers’ Charter
"What the UK leads on is exporting the policy, laws and, increasingly, the actual technology of political suppression and social control to some of the nastiest countries in the world."
- Where was Game of Thrones Filmed?
Largely in County Antrim.
- Project Gutenberg books ranked by download popularity
Surprised by #1; never heard of #9.
Wednesday reading
Current:
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash (a bit more than half way through)
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (a bit more than half way through)
Rags, by Mick Lewis (half way through)
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (a third of the way through)
Last books finished
Aldébaran, tome 4: Le Groupe, by Leo
Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone
Next books
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw (Tudor Ireland)
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (birthday present)
Locke & Key: Clockworks, Vol. 5, by Joe Hill (Hugo nominee)
Head Games, by Steve Lyons (New Adventure)
Books acquired in last week:
Empire of the Sun, by J.G. Ballard
Street Lethal, by Steven Barnes
LT Unread books tally: 458
Someone just knocked on our office door asking if he could check into his hotel room
Obviously the unseasonable sunshine was getting to him. The hotel is two doors down from our building!
Links I found interesting for 05-06-2013
- Somewhere, there’s a couple all of a sudden reconsidering their Game of Thrones-themed wedding.
Tweet of the week!
- Germany ditches longest word
Farewell Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz.
- House of Lords backs same-sex marriage
Hooray! #fb
- The Grieving Process
"How I am and how you can help."
- Japan’s radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
Despite a tsunami and three reactor meltdowns.
Another reference to Belgium in the Whoniverse
Gita: It can’t be any worse than *our* honeymoon. Total disaster!
Haresh: Um, I *enjoyed* it!
Gita: Brussels. There’s nothing there!
(At 23:00 into here.)
Links I found interesting for 04-06-2013
- Protocol 15 gives Tories what they want on European court of human rights – so why leave?
They need a reason?
- Emily Davidson
@cobrunstrom against electoral cynicism.
- EU Shouldnât Reward Russiaâs Repression With Visa Deal
"Sleepwalking into a huge blunder"
Links I found interesting for 03-06-2013
- Why do we have to trawl for the facts about Britain and the EU?
"a great example of an increasingly democratic EU beginning to work rather well."
- Istanbul’s demonstrators celebrate victory in Istiklal and Taksim Square
Hugh reports. #fb
- For Obama’s ex-aides, it’s time to profit from experience
Azerbaijan buying US expertise.
- Geld aus Aserbaidschan für deutschen Abgeordneten Michael Fuchs
Azerbaijan buying German expertise.
- What is Happenning in Istanbul?
Another eyewitness account.
2013 Hugos: Best Short Story
There are only three nominees in this category. I think that is a problem, but I don't have any bright ideas about what to do about it. Anyway, I found it pretty easy to rank them:
2) “Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard. Nice style but didn’t engage me.
1) “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu. Superb stuff, updating “The Cold Equations” with a huge dollop of cultural awareness. No doubt experts will whine that the engineering in the story is unsound, but it convinces me enough for the emotional impact.
I feel much more strongly about this ranking than any of the other three fiction categories.
See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
The giants of Leuven
I picked up an interesting story in the news yesterday morning: a group of enthusiasts in Leuven had decided to revive / invent an old (or new) tradition, of constructing giants to parade through the streets of the city. Belgium is a place where ancient civic traditions and pagan ceremonies are often rather weirdly linked, and this seemed worth checking out, so young F and I ventured into town to see what was going on.
As the sound of drumming from behind them intensified, I wondered if this was goiing to be something like the drumming exercises prescribed in Iron John, especially since the basis for the event was a group of men born in the same year (1973). Also the banners combined with the drumming were vaguely reminiscent of Orangemen marching, back home.
But any such impression was dispelled when the percussionists themselves came into sight.
Definitely not orange, and mostly not men either.
The next group of marchers were again mostly women in costume, holding up garlanded arches and occasionally pausing to have their pictures taken.
And after them came the actual giants.
The tall chap with the hat is Jan Van den Graetmolen, a fifteenth-century mill owner, or at least a personification of him.
Next up is amateur rifleman Kobe Koeienschieter, who commemorates a military adventure of the 16th century when the Leuven militia attacked a herd of cows instead of the French, though tradition is a bit hazy on the details.
And finally the new giant, Fiere Margriet (Proud Margaret), whose story is actually rather a grisly 13th-century legend (here, potentially triggering), but who remains popular in tradition without people worrying very much about what actually happened to her.
The parade ended at the town hall with Fiere Margriet being registered as an inhabitant of Leuven, the other two giants looking on.
Stalls were set up all round the square with our best known local product widely available (I don't like it that much myself). I think we also narrowly missed meeting up with
It's interesting that this is billed very much as a Flemish, rather than Belgian, tradition. Of course this sort of thing goes on all over this corner of Europe, not only in Belgium but in nearer bits of the Netherlands and Germany. But I'm getting to sense a particular local twist to it, where for instance the festivals I knew as Beltane, Lughnasa and Samhaim continue to be celebrated in their own special way. Maybe these traditions go back a hundred years; maybe two thousand. Who knows?
Links I found interesting for 02-06-2013
- GeoGuessr – Let’s explore the world!
Another images/maps game – cool.
- Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers
Headline of the month!
- 6 lines of JavaScript that write Doctor Who plots indistinguishable from the current series…
Waiting for the Big News…
- Matt Smith to leave Doctor Who
Official BBC story.
Links I found interesting for 01-06-2013
- NMBS ontbindt contract met constructeur Fyra
The awful story of the Brussels-Amsterdam high speed trains.
- Gunkanjima Island
Once the most densely populated place on Earth, now abandoned.
May Books
The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness
“I have an Idea for a Book …”: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg
A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor
Miracles of Life, by J.G. Ballard
Fiction (not sf) 2 (YTD 9)
Doors Open, by Ian Rankin
The Judas Pair, by Jonathan Gash
SF (not Who) 6 (YTD 33)
Redshirts, by John Scalzi
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
The Peoples of Middle-earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone
Doctor Who 5 (YTD 27)
Deadly Reunion, by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts
Toy Soldiers, by Paul Leonard
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake
Magic of the Angels, by Jacqueline Rayner
Tip of the Tongue, by Patrick Ness
Comics 5 (YTD 13)
Final Sacrifice, by Tony Lee and others
Vincent van Gogh: De Worsteling van een Kunstenaar, by Marc Verhaegen and Jan Kragt
Vincent, by Barbara Stok
Grandville: Bête Noire, by Bryan Talbot
Aldébaran 4: La Groupe, by Leo
~5,800 pages (YTD 24,800)
3/22 (YTD 23/95) by women (Guinness, Rayner, Stok)
2/22 (YTD 2/95) by PoC (Ahmed, de Bodard)
Rereads: Escape Velocity – 1 (YTD 5), though I'd also listened to an audio expansion of A History of the World in 100 Objects.
Acquired 2011 or before: 7 (YTD 32) – Escape Velocity, Toy Soldiers, Toward the End of Time, Doors Open, Deadly Reunion, A History of the World in 100 Objects, The Quantum Thief
Acquired 2012: 1 (YTD 15) – The Peoples of Middle-earth
Acquired 2013: 14 (YTD 48) – The Name of the Wind, Final Sacrifice, Redshirts, The Crocodile by the Door, Le Groupe, Vincent, Vincent Van Gogh: de worsteling van een kunstenaar, The Judas Pair, Miracles of Life, Magic of the Angels, “I have an Idea for a Book …”, Grandville Bete Noire, Three Parts Dead, Tip Of The Tongue
Reading now:
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
The Gondola Scam by Jonathan Gash
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
Coming Next (perhaps):
Miradal: erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud by Hans Baeté et al
Locke & Key vol 5: Clockworks, by Joe Hill
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw
Starship Fall, by Eric Brown
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
Kraken, by China Mieville
The Flood, by Ian Rankin
TheMonsters and the Critics, by J R R Tolkien
The History of the Hobbit vol 1: Mr Baggins, by John D. Rateliff
Rebus's Scotland: A Personal Journey, by Ian Rankin
Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb
Rags, by Mick Lewis
Head Games, by Steve Lyons
EarthWorld, by Jacqueline Rayner
Hunter's Moon, by Paul Finch
Links I found interesting for 31-05-2013
- Characters, Complicity and Caring: My Wiscon Speech
Jo Walton on writing
- Tiny moon discovered around asteroid that’s due to fly by Earth tomorrow
with radar animation.
- BBC News – Cracking down on dissent in Ilham Aliyev’s Azerbaijan
BBC catching up with this story at last.
- Crash landing
"Over the past five years, there’s been exactly one fatal crash of a US airplane."
- Pacific islands’ deadly threat from climate change
The Marshallese foreign minister writes. (Don’t bother reading the comments…)
May Books 22) Aldébaran 4: La Groupe, by Leo
I do like this particular sequence; Li, who has been in a relationship with the rather younger Marc, calmly tells him that she always knew it was only a matter of time before he realised his true feelings for Kim; in the last frame, Kim's expression is brilliant (as is Marc's) while Li is already on the lookout for her next lover.
In this penultimate album of the five that make up the Aldébaran sequence, it all comes together: Marc and Kim finally realise their attraction for one another, and together with most of the mysterious people they have encountered in the previous three volumes, they find themselves on a vast airship heading for the mystery at the core of their world – pursued by agents of the clericalist oppressive government which appears to be determined to stop them. I do hope that the last volume rounds this narrative off properly – the buildup so far has been very good.
May Books 21) Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone
When the Hidden Schools threw Tara Abernathy out, she fell a thousand feet through wisps of cloud and woke to find herself alive, broken, and bleeding, beside the Crack in the World.
One of the novels included in the Hugo Voter Pack to represent the author’s œuvre (so far) for the Campbell Award. It’s a decent enough fantasy novel with some vivid steampunk moments; I felt it comparable to Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, which is a Hugo nominee in its own right, in that the setting is more imaginative but the writing not quite as passionate.
May Books 20) Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
My body fluids are leaking out into the community.
I'm trying to find comments made to my annual book polls here where kindly friends advised me to skip this depressing, miserable piece of whining, but apparently I imagined it. Author who hasn't done much sf writes a post-apocalypse novel where the decline of society mirrors the narrator's the decline into old age, and thinks it's something special. Avoid.
May Books 19) Miracles of Life, by J.G. Ballard
In reality there are two Cambridges, the faculties on the one hand – history, physics, archaeology and so on – where research, lectures and laboratory work take place, and the colleges, which are residential clubs that provide poor food, a small amount of often poor teaching and the bulk of the myths about the Cambridge lifestyle. I was very happy with the first, and bored stiff by the latter.
This is a brilliant book – passionate, opinionated, reflective, sometimes angry and occasionally self-critical; fascinating on the details of life in Shanghai before and during WW2 (a fifth of his life, which takes up almost half of the book).
Empire of the Sun comes back towards the end, with an account of how Spielberg made the film of Ballard's book about his wartime experiences, but apart from that there is a lot of interesting reflection on how he became a writer, why in particular he chose science fiction – shown as a fairly calculated choice rather than instinct – and the rewards of being a parent to three children. It's rare I would say this of a book, but I actually wished it had been twice as long.
Links I found interesting for 30-05-2013
- Europe’s strategic cacophony
"The crisis in Mali once again exposed the hollowness of European military pretensions and lack of common purpose."
- Geo-popularity of Given Names
In the US: Sophia v Emma, Mason v Liam/William.
- Tilting at European windmills
The lies in the British EU debate.
- Going Down by Jake Chudnow
Nice 7/8 piece of music, with nifty space video.
- In memory of Jack Vance
@RozKaveney’s poetic obituary.
- EU bashing and olive oil
Euroscepticism, political opportunism and a European Commission ‘own goal’.
Wednesday reading
Current:
Aldébaran, tome 4: Le Groupe, by Leo (half way through)
Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone (almost finished)
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash (half way through)
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (just started)
Last books finished
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
Grandville: Bête Noire, by Bryan Talbot
Tip of the Tongue, by Patrick Ness
The Peoples of Middle Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: an Autobiography, by J. G. Ballard
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
Next books
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Hugo nominees)
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw (Tudor Ireland)
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (birthday present)
Books acquired in last week:
London trip:
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot
The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
[Doctor Who] A History Of The Universe In 100 Objects, by Steve Tribe and James Goss
[Doctor Who] The Dalek Generation, by Nicholas Briggs
[Doctor Who] Shroud of Sorrow, by Tommy Donbavand
[Doctor Who] Plague of the Cybermen, by Justin Richards
[Doctor Who] Tip of the Tongue, by Patrick Ness
Also acquired
Between the Acts, by Virginia Woolf
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
LT Unread books tally: 460 (several uncatalogued books also found on the shelves during a weekend stocktake…)
Links I found interesting for 29-05-2013
- Government spends £37m fighting benefit cut appeals
Might it not be cheaper just to give people the money?
- Humour – Richard Corbett MEP
Some of these jokes are very venerable indeed – Roy Jenkins as King John XV!
- Employing a student to criticize my teaching
A more positive story from academe.
- Farewell to academia
Philip Sandifer isn’t going to take it any more.
Links I found interesting for 26-05-2013
- 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.