I confess that I haven't completely read two of the five nominees, but I am sufficiently confident in what I have sampled of them to vote as follows:

1) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition. The first two editions were essential enough; the third edition may not yet be Wikipedia but it is already more authoritative and in admirably ambitious. It's not a completed work; voting for it in this state it feels a little like giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize (I hope with a better outcome); but it gets my top vote anyway.

2) The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature. A beautiful book from which I learned more than I had expected.

3) Writing Excuses Season 6. I didn't vote for this last year because I could not bear to download and listen to three hours of advice on writing sf from enthusiastic authors whose works I haven't really warmed to. This year I found the transcripts which made it easier to form a judgement. I've read the first quarter of the season and feel it's a decent effort, but I'm just not in the target audience.

4) Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies by Daniel M. Kimmel. It's decent commentary on sf cinema, which pointed me in some interesting new directions. But a book of essays written at different times over a decade inevitably loses some focus.

5) No Award.

6) Wicked Girls by Seanan McGuire. I'm sorry, I enjoyed this very much but I just don't think it is eligible. The rubric for this category is: "Any work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category." This is an album of songs which all describe more or less fictional situations, of which a bit more than half have more or less clear fantasy elements in the narrative. In so far as the songs themselves relate to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, it is precisely in their fictional content. Agreed, the lead singer / writer is an author and fan who has three other Hugo nominations in different categories this year; but that seems to me far too slender a thread to justify nomination in this category, let alone voting for it. I liked it a lot but it drops off my ballot.

See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist | Best Fan Writer | Best Fan Artist | Best Fancast | The John W. Campbell Award (Not A Hugo)

This is perhaps the single most beautiful book in the Hugo Voter Packet, with lavish illustrations of the very visual subculture which it describes. I must admit it also turned around my own opinion on steampunk – I had a lot of sympathy with Marigold’s father on Questionable Content, but VanderMeer and his fellow contributors have convinced me that there is an interesting, potentially subversive and liberating aesthetic and literary movement out there, whose roots are broader than I had appreciated and whose aspects extend further than I had realised. I will give it a good place on my Hugo ballot.

Unfortunately the experience of reading the PDF on a computer screen is rather trying. The lovely illustrations break up the text in a way which might be rather pleasant in a dead tree edition but makes the electronic version difficult to follow. To give two examples: a double-page picture spread about balloons on pages 22-23 interrupts – in mid-word – a two-page feature on Edgar Allan Poe on pages 21 and 24, which itself interrupts in mid-sentence the second chapter, the reader being expected to follow the chain of thought directly from page 20 to page 25. Later on, a sentence started on page 134 finishes on page 143, interrupted by five pages of (admittedly gorgeous) photographs and a three-page feature on steampunk fashion. This really isn’t an e-reader friendly text, and I fear that it will not do as well as perhaps it deserves if voters are deterred from ploughing through it.

I have just been listening to the new Big Finish Fourth Doctor play, The Trail of the White Worm, which reunites Tom Baker and Geoffrey Beevers as the Doctor and the Master, clearly and explicitly set between The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken. I was then moved by an irrational impulse to try and establish a clear timeline for the Master, as seen from his own point of view. Most of this I think is reasonably well-supported, though some of the Third Doctor short stories and the various Masters who confronted the Eighth Doctor in different media are a bit disputable in terms of canonicty and sequencing. Anyway, here goes – the Master on TV, and in novels, short stories, audios, comics and computer games:

The Delgado Master
Time and Relative (Telos novella, 1st Doctor – appears obliquely in Susan’s memories)
The Dark Path (MA novel, 2nd Doctor)
“Reconnaisance” (short story in 1994 Doctor Who Yearbook, 3rd Doctor)
Terror of the Autons (TV, 3rd Doctor)
The Mind of Evil (TV, 3rd Doctor)
[in an alternate timeline, the Doctor was not exiled to Earth and the Master, played by Mark Gatiss, brought the secrets of the Mind Parasite to the Chinese; see BF Doctor Who Unbound audio Sympathy for the Devil]
Deadly Reunion (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor
The Claws of Axos (TV, 3rd Doctor)
Colony in Space (TV, 3rd Doctor)
The Dæmons (TV, 3rd Doctor)
“Doctor Who Fights Masterplan Q” (published on the backs of chocolate bar wrappers in 1971, 3rd Doctor)
The Face of the Enemy (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor)
“The Man in the Ion Mask” (comic strip in DWM 1991 winter special, 3rd Doctor)
“The Switching” (short story from Short Trips: Zodiac, 3rd Doctor)
The Sea Devils (TV, 3rd Doctor)
Who Killed Kennedy? (MA Novel, 3rd Doctor, narrative covers all of previous 3rd Doctor stories but denouement is set at this point)
The Time Monster (TV, 3rd Doctor)
“Doorway into Nowhere” (short story in 1973 Doctor Who Annual, 3rd Doctorl)
Verdigris (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor)
Frontier in Space (TV, 3rd Doctor)
“Hidden Talent” (short story in Short Trips: Companions, 3rd Doctor)
“Smash Hit” (short story in 1973 Holiday Special, 3rd Doctor)
“The One Second Hour”, “Fogbound” (stories in TV Comic holiday issue 1973, 3rd Doctor)
Last of the Gadarene (PDA novel, 3rd Doctor)
“The Seismologist’s Story” (short story in Short Trips: Repercussions, 3rd Doctor)
“Listen – The Stars”, “DWAN: Out of the Green Mist” (short stories in 1974 Doctor Who Annual, 3rd Doctor)
“The Glen of Sleeping” (TV Action comic, 3rd Doctor)
“The Duke of Dominoes” (short story in Decalog, 3rd Doctor)
Legacy of the Daleks (EDA novel, 8th Doctor – the Delgado Master degenerates into the Pratt form)

The Pratt Master
The Deadly Assassin (TV, 4th Doctor)

The Beevers Master
Trail of the White Worm (BF Fourth Doctor audio – the Master has gained energy from the Eye of Harmony to take on the Beevers form)
The Oseidon Adventure (BF Fourth Doctor audio, out next month)
The Keeper of Traken (TV, 4th Doctor – the Master takes over the body of Tremas of Traken )

The Ainley Master
The Keeper of Traken (TV, 4th Doctor)
Logopolis (TV, 4th Doctor)
Castrovalva (TV, 5th Doctor)
Time-Flight (TV, 5th Doctor)
“Night Flight to Nowhere” (short story in 1983 Doctor Who Annual, 5th Doctor)
The King’s Demons (TV, 5th Doctor)
The Five Doctors (TV, 5th Doctor plus 1st, 2nd and 3rd Doctors)
“Birth of a Renegade” (short story in Radio Times 20th anniversary special, 5th Doctor)
“The Creation of Camelot” (short story in 1984 Doctor Who Annual, 5th Doctor)
Planet of Fire (TV, 5th Doctor)
The Mark of the Rani (TV, 6th Doctor)
“The Time Savers” (short story in 1985 Doctor Who Annual, 6th Doctor)
“The Fellowship of Quan”, “The Radio Waves” (short stories in 1986 Doctor Who Annual, 6th Doctor)
The Ultimate Foe (TV, 6th Doctor)
Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror (video game, 6th Doctor)
The Quantum Archangel (PDA novel, 6th Doctor)
Survival (TV, 7th Doctor)
“Stop the Pigeon” (short story in Short Trips, 7th Doctor)
Prime Time (PDA novel, 7th Doctor)
Destiny of the Doctors (video game, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors)

The Master has regenerated:
First Frontier (NA novel, 7th Doctor)
“Housewarming” (short story in Decalog 2, Lost Properties, set in 3rd Doctor era)
Happy Endings (NA novel, 7th Doctor)

The Master degenerates back into the Beevers form:
Dust Breeding (BF main sequence audio, 7th Doctor)
Master (BF main sequence audio, 7th Doctor)

The Roberts Master:
Doctor Who, the TV Movie (TV, 8th Doctor – the Master is executed by the Daleks but takes possession of Bruce the driver )

The Master escapes the Eye of Harmony and takes possession of Sir George Steer:
“Forgotten” and “Prologue” (short stories in Short Trips: The Centenarian, 8th Doctor)

The Master is given a new body by Esterath:
“The Fallen”, “The Glorious Dead” (comic strips in DWM, 8th Doctor)

[non-canonical yet somehow true: the Pryce Master who appears with the Atkinson and other Doctors in The Curse of Fatal Death, and ends up in love with the Lumley Doctor]

The Jacobi Master
The Eight Doctors (it is totally speculative as to which of the various Masters is in the main narrative here; of course the Delgado Master also appears in the 3rd Doctor sequence, which is set during The Dæmons)
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (EDA novel, 8th Doctor, the Master is “The Man with the Rosette”)
Brief and contradictory appearances in EDA novels Sometime Never…, The Deadstone Memorial, and The Gallifrey Chronicles, all with the 8th Doctor
[with the Richard E.Grant Ninth Doctor: Scream of the Shalka, “The Feast of the Stone” webcasts – canonical or not, this Master is definitely played by Derek Jacobi]
[during the Time War the Jacobi Master takes on human form as Professor Yana]
Utopia (TV, 10th Doctor)

The Simm Master
Utopia  (TV, 10th Doctor)
“Speech Day” (short story published in The Doctor Who Stories, 10th Doctor era)
The Sound of Drums (TV, 10th Doctor)
The Story of Martha (NSA story collection, 10th Doctor era, cameo appearance in framing narrative)
Last of the Time Lords (TV, 10th Doctor)
The End of Time (TV, 10th Doctor)

And that’s it so far. Corrections and queries gratefully received.

• Which of Doctor Who’s 11 Doctors is your boss?
  
  Not sure, myself!
  (tags: doctorwho )
• Behind the scenes in the EU
  
  Catherine Ashton greets the new president of Serbia. (Page is in Croatian but embedded video entirely in English.)
  (tags: serbia eu )
• The border vote: A trend stretching back 44 years
  
  #fb My piece in Belfast Telegraph.
  (tags: northernireland )
• Vandezande gaat voor zevende legislatuur
  
  Our mayor is seeking a seventh *six-year* term.
  (tags: belgium )

From http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/the-border-vote-a-trend-stretching-back-44-years-16172970.html :

The poll’s results on voting and the border are convincing.

This trend they illustrate goes at least as far back as Richard Rose’s surveys of political opinion in Northern Ireland in 1968. Since then it has been clear that a substantial chunk of the Catholic population do not actually want a united Ireland.

It has been of the order of 20% to 40% in the past and it has varied with circumstances.

People wonder why, if this is true, 80%-90% of Catholics who vote are voting for parties who favour a united Ireland.

I believe that it is about the politics of communal representation rather than Irish unity.

People want to vote for politicians who share their background and instincts and the party’s position on the border is less of an issue.

Historically, pro-Union Catholics have been repelled by the trappings of political unionism like the Orange Order and do not feel inclined to vote for parties that are obsessed with them.

This poll does show that there is, as there has always been, cross-community voting.

Dr Nicholas Whyte runs the NI Election website

[A bit shorter than I would have liked, but 250 words is a pretty tough limit.]

• Time Travel and the Black Death: Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book | Tor.com
  
  (tags: sf )
• Amazon Infographic: How a Single Company Gained a Stranglehold over Online Shopping and the Future of Retail | Institute for Local Self-Reliance
  
  A nice graphic summary of just how evil Amazon are.
  (tags: amazon )
• Georgia: In need of a closer look from US leaders – The Hill’s Congress Blog
  
  “Democracy is deteriorating rapidly as President Saakashvili and his allies are increasing repression and rights of opposition political parties, as well as average citizens.”
  (tags: georgia )

• First Disk Of Rosetta Stone Hungarian Just Urges Listeners To Rethink This Whole Thing | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
  
  “Think really hard for one second: Do you really want to be doing this? Hungarian? Really?” asks the instructional software, which subsequently reminds users that the Hungarian language contains a 44-letter alphabet, with each noun having 17 different forms.
  (tags: funny )

A short collection of short stories about people getting on with their lives, mostly in 1940s Shanghai, while the world changes around them. The title piece, a tale of espionage and seduction, is the most memorable but they are all interesting and well-observed.

• Shakespeare: real thing
  
  Compared to George R.R. Martin by Jo Walton.
  (tags: writing sf shakespeare )
• Justice Department files suit against Florida to stop voter purge
  
  Democracy in Florida (US): prevent the other guys from voting.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Ivanishvili fined 148 million GEL for illegal donations
  
  Democracy in Georgia (non-US): fine the other guy for campaigning.
  (tags: )
• NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal
  
  Headline not quite fair: proposal is to ban scientists from considering *accelerated* sea rise as a possibility. “Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.”
  (tags: climatechange )
• 10 Changes Made in Season Two of Game of Thrones
  
  Just in case you were trying to remember the books as you watched.
  (tags: sf )
• 569 – Germany’s Equators | Strange Maps
  
  From Aldi to Weisswurst.
  (tags: germany maps )
• sierra_le_oli: Young Housewife
  
  Bethnal Green, 1937
  (tags: england )

Let the crossover fanfics begin!

Carl Haglund, a Finnish MEP who was crucial in the European Parliament rejecting the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement in December, has just been elected leader of his party and will also become Minister of Defence in a couple of weeks.

This will mean he must resign as an MEP. His replacement in the European Parliament is likely to be one Nils Torvalds, who is twice his age (66 rather than 33) and is also the father of Linus Torvalds, the inventor of Linux.

One of the few remaining sf books available on Bookmooch that I vaguely felt like reading; a Big Dumb Object is found on the ocean floor, and though it turns out to be of future human manufacture it also contains another Smaller Dumb Object which is alien. (I see that there was a film version starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and Samuel L. Jackson as the three surviving scientists, which completely passed me by.) It teeters on the edge of becoming interesting, especially when it seems like the psychologist who is the viewpoint character may be an unreliable narrator, but basically all of this has been done better before, and Crichton’s desperate attempts to address race and gender are rather painful to read. You can skip this one in good conscience.

And that brings me to the end of my travel reading catchup. Though I am also well behind in writing up the Doctor Who audios I have been listening to…

This is the last of the Rebus books for me – though I still have about a half-dozen other Rankins on the shelves – a collection of short stories published in 1992, when Rebus's sidekick was still Brian Holmes rather than Siobhan Clarke; I missed her but otherwise really enjoyed all the stories, excellent little crime vignettes – in some cases you can see what the twist is likely to be but still admire Rankin's skill in getting us and Rebus there. (A couple of odd stylistic lapses in the second story, "The Dean's Curse", which almost made me wonder if Rankin had taken on an understudy; or else a case of Homeric nods.) Glad to finish Rebus on a high note, though chronologically I should have read it after Tooth and Nail or Strip Jack, much much earlier.

This was one of the sf anthologies that made a huge impression on me as a teenager, and I think about half of the ten stories fully retain their magic for me – “We Purchased People” by Fred Pohl, “The Hole Man” by Larry Niven, “The Author of the Acacia Seeds [etc]” by Ursula Le Guin, “A Little Something For Us Tempunauts” by Philip K. Dick, and “If The Stars Are Gods” by Gordon Eklund and Gregory Benford. (And the other five aren’t bad either.) God be with the days when you could credibly do a Year’s Best SF with only ten stories, though. Also notable that there is only one woman (Le Guin) of the ten, which I hope would be impossible today.

My grandmother’s step-brother, explaining how New England in the early nineteenth century saw an extraordinary outburst of literary talent, which he attributes in part to the region developing its intellectual resources through Harvard and proximity to Europe, while at the same time it became increasingly politically and economically sidelined as the continent opened up, benefiting New York and points south. (This then of course doesn’t explain why the era of literary excellence ended at the time of the Civil War, but perhaps the war itself is explanation enough.) I had not previously appreciated the literary importance of Concord, Massachusetts. As in his other book, which covers largely the same period but in the rest of the US, Brooks has a breezy and entertaining style telling us about all the connections between writers and other artists of the period; I felt also that he gave more attention to women writers (though none at all to non-whites) here. The most striking observation was that most schoolteachers across the entire country in the early nineteenth century came from New England, so it was very much setting the cultural pace for the new nation. (Another striking observation – Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been translated into Welsh in three different editions before any of Charles Dickens or Walter Scott had appeared in that language.) Anyway, rounds out my political knowledge of the era nicely.

One of the nominees for Best Related Work in this year’s Hugo, this is a collection of essays about sf cinema, mostly published before in fanzines and on the now sadly defunct Internet Review of Science Fiction. Several of the early pieces are a bit peevish, but most of them brim with enthusiasm and certainly gave me a few thoughts for films which I haven’t seen but might enjoy. (The gaps in my cinematic knowledge, both of sf in particular and of classics in general, are pretty huge.) Inevitably, as you get from any collection of previously published pieces, it is not perfectly structured and in places repetitive, but generally interesting reading for someone like me who would like to know more about the subject.

I came home from points east today, a rather horrible journey where the planned travel time of seven hours ended up more like thirteen. However, this meant that I read a lot of books en route, combined with a small backlog from the outbound leg, so there will therefore be much bookblogging this afternoon.

Hard Times was flagged up to me by first F.R. Leavis and then you guys as an interesting Dickens book. I must say I liked it; of course, part of the usual charm of Dickens is where he goes over the top, but it was really interesting to read him being rather restrained in style and concentrating both on characters and background, and aiming at uncomfortable subjects like divorce rather than the easier targets of poverty and cruelty. I wasn’t completely convinced by the efficacy of Louisa’s final confrontation, but I guess I’ll trade a well-written if ot quite convincing scenario for another two hundred pages of fervent exaggeration. Perhaps this is a Dickens book for people (like Leavis) who don’t really like Dickens; it’s certainly unusual, though still very recognisable as his style, and I found it refreshing.

Logged into the new social network Zurker to be greeted by this banner:

Oh well, that’s one less password to try and remember I suppose.

The nominees for John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer submitted a diverse portfolio of work for voters to consider last year – five novels and five short stories between the five candidates. This year it is even more diverse and overall a little sparser: one long novel, one short novel, three short stories (twice) and one short story. It is therefore very difficult to make an objective judgement based on the material we have in front of us, and I suspect most voters won't even try. Some may of course have read other work by some of the writers; many, I suspect – myself included, as I will explain below – will allow their votes to be influenced by their personal knowledge of the candidates, rather than solely by an objective assessment of their writing. (Actually the award itself is a bit ambiguous – it is for "the best new science fiction or fantasy writer whose first work of science fiction or fantasy was published in a professional publication in the previous two years", not for the author of the best work by a new writer to published in a professional publication in the previous two years, which may or may not be significant). Utterly subjectively and a little unfairly, then, my votes are as follows:

1) Karen Lord. Redemption in Indigo is a brilliant piece taking a different culture and telling a credible story about it, as I just said. If there is any justice (and, an important proviso, if her other work which I have not raed is as good as this) she should win the award easily.

2) Stina Leicht. The author was kind enough to consult me on the Northern Irish aspects of …And Blue Skies from Pain, the sequel to Of Blood and Honey which is the book included in the Hugo pack, and I appreciate that attention, even though Martin McGrath has thoroughly and mercilessly catalogued the deficiencies of the setting. It's an honest if imperfect effort to write urban fantasy in the unlikely setting of 1970s Belfast, and I'll give the author my second place.

3) E. Lily Yu. This is a vote on (paucity of) quantity as much as quality; three very short stories are actually rather difficult to rate against two novels, and although all three are pretty good, there's a part of me that wants to reward the authors here for the total enjoyment they have given me; and 14 pages just isn't the same as 200 or 300.

4) No Award. I explain my methodology below.

[no vote] Brad Torgersen. Torgersen has submitted three stories, including one which I had already read as it was on one of the Hugo shortlists, and I didn't much like any of them. They are all about a troubled male character after the Earth has been destroyed reassessing his relationship with the woman of his life (in one case his daughter, in another his wife, in another his adoptive mother), and all could have been written (and in some case were written better) in the 1950s. One of these lucky ladies is described as "literally flowing with stories and spunk". Maybe not literally literally. And maybe not the same kind of "spunk" that leapt to my mind, though that may be a dialectal variation – an unexpected ejaculation, perhaps.

[no vote] Mur Lafferty. This is a slightly different matter: While E. Lily Yu submitted only 14 pages, at least they were of three different stories so one feels able to make some kind of overall assessment. Lafferty has submitted a single 7-page story, and I simply don't feel that I have enough evidence to judge her ability. I was originally going to simply leave her off the ballot and vote down to Torgersen, but then realised that that raised the awful possibility that my vote might count for Torgersen against Lafferty. So the only sensible course is to leave them both out.

I suspect it's between Torgersen and Leicht, judging by their respective followings on-line, so if my vote ends up being tallied for Leicht I am not at all displeased.

See also: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) | Best Professional Artist | Best Fan Writer | Best Fan Artist | Best Fancast

A really excellent short novel, part of the Hugo Voter Package as Lord is a Campbell nominee this year; a fairy-tale set in Senegal, with various spirit creatures (some of which clearly have sfnal counterparts) helping our heroine interrogate the roles that society has set for her. I can’t really do it justice in a short write-up and haven’t the energy right now to do a longer one, but there are a load of other positive reviews of this around the internet. I will look out for more from this writer.

Again, a decent Torchwood novel – I remain impressed by the overall quality of the range – this time featuring a time-travel mystery centred around a particular Cardiff house, one which Jack himself has personal links to. Adams is a good descriptive writer and takes us much further into Jack’s background over the decades in Cardiff than other authors have done, with decently creepy alien forces to boot. Another good ‘un.

• My Zurker
  
  I don’t know if this is any use…
  (tags: socialmedia )
• Leeds Roman Terminalia walk
  
  Beating the bounds of the city.
  (tags: maps )
• marnanel: Exeter Book
  
  An Anglo-Saxon riddle
  (tags: jokes )
• The dark flip side of European technocracy
  
  The problems of German political culture.
  (tags: eu )
• A little bird tells me…
  
  The new panopticon, as illustrated by Melissa Stetten and Brian Presley.
  (tags: internet socialmedia )
• Some free advice for ASUS
  
  What does your corporate tweeting reveal about your corporate values?
  (tags: internet sexandgenderandsexuality )

• BBC News – LinkedIn passwords ‘leaked by hackers’
  
  Change your password – now!
  (tags: internet socialmedia )
• Ray Bradbury: Inspiration for “The Fire Balloons”
  
  Brilliant piece.
  (tags: writing sf )
• Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Ray Bradbury
  
  A warm and heartfelt tribute.
  (tags: sf )

Published just this week in the New Yorker, a beautiful short piece by Ray Bradbury about writing.

He will be missed.

• Game of Thrones, Season 2
  
  “Game of Thrones falls into the pitfall of soap opera storytelling. It is enormously, addictively, compulsively watchable, but also easily set aside.”
  (tags: sf )
• Some Recent Fantasies
  
  Ursula Le Guin on “Among Others”, among others.
  (tags: sf )
• The New Elizabethans « Through the dark labyrinth
  
  British science fiction of sixty years ago.
  (tags: sf )
• Mini-essays responding to inquiries on language subjects of more than individual interest
  
  together with answers to IAQ (i.e. infrequently asked questions)
  (tags: linguistics )
• NASA SDO – The Venus Transit
  
  Seven hours in thirty seconds.
  (tags: astronomy )

The jolly gentleman who I use in this icon is the great Irish astronomer Sir Robert Stawell Ball, probably the best known populariser of astronomy in the British Empire (and possibly America too) of the later Victorian era; he was Astronomer Royal for Ireland from 1874 to 1892, and then director of the Cambridge Observatory until his death in 1913. I had the great pleasure of going through his archives while doing my M Phil back in the summer of 1991. In his best-selling book, The Story of the Heavens, he has quite a long section on the 1882 transit of Venus; and since there won't be a more appropriate evening to post it for another 105 years, this is what he had to say about the one before last.

I venture to record our personal experience of the last transit of Venus, which we had the good fortune to view from Dunsink Observatory on the afternoon of the 6th of December, 1882.

The morning of the eventful day appeared to be about as unfavourable for a grand astronomical spectacle as could well be imagined. Snow, a couple of inches thick, covered the ground, and more was falling, with but little intermission, all the forenoon. It seemed almost hopeless that a view of the phenomenon could be obtained from that observatory; but it is well in such cases to bear in mind the injunction given to the observers on a celebrated eclipse expedition. They were instructed, no matter what the day should be like, that they were to make all their preparations precisely as they would have done were the sun shining with undimmed splendour. By this advice no doubt many observers have profited; and we acted upon it with very considerable success.

There were at that time at the observatory two equatorials, one of them an old, but tolerably good, instrument, of about six inches aperture; the other the great South equatorial, of twelve inches aperture, already referred to. At eleven o'clock the day looked worse than ever; but we at once proceeded to make all ready. I stationed Mr. Rambaut at the small equatorial, while I myself took charge of the South instrument. The snow was still falling when the domes were opened; but, according to our prearranged scheme, the telescopes were directed, not indeed upon the sun, but to the place where we knew the sun was, and the clockwork was set in motion which carried round the telescopes, still constantly pointing towards the invisible sun. The predicted time of the transit had not yet arrived.

The eye-piece employed on the South equatorial must also receive a brief notice. It will, of course, be obvious that the full glare of the sun has to be greatly mitigated before the eye can view it with impunity. The light from the sun falls upon a piece of transparent glass inclined at a certain angle, and the chief portion of the sun's heat, as well as a certain amount of its light, pass through the glass and are lost. A certain fraction of the light is, however, reflected from the glass, and enters the eye-piece. This light is already much reduced in intensity, but it undergoes as much further reduction as we please by an ingenious contrivance. The glass which reflects the light does so at what is called the polarising angle, and between the eye-piece and the eye is a plate of tourmaline. This plate of tourmaline can be turned round by the observer. In one position it hardly interferes with the polarised light at all, while in the position at right angles thereto it cuts off nearly the whole of it. By simply adjusting the position of the tourmaline, the observer has it in his power to render the image of any brightness that may be convenient, and thus the observations of the sun can be conducted with the appropriate degree of illumination.

But such appliances seemed on this occasion to be a mere mockery. The tourmaline was all ready, but up to one o'clock not a trace of the sun could be seen. Shortly after one o'clock, however, we noticed that the day was getting lighter; and, on looking to the north, whence the wind and the snow were coming, we saw, to our inexpressible delight, that the clouds were clearing. At length, the sky towards the south began to improve, and at last, as the critical moment approached, we could detect the spot where the sun was becoming visible. But the predicted moment arrived and passed, and still the sun had not broken through the clouds, though every moment the certainty that it would do so became more apparent. The external contact was therefore missed. We tried to console ourselves by the reflection that this was not, after all, a very important phase, and hoped that the internal contact would be more successful.

At length the struggling beams pierced the obstruction, and I saw the round, sharp disc of the sun in the finder, and eagerly glanced at the point on which attention was concentrated. Some minutes had now elapsed since the predicted moment of first contact, and, to my delight, I saw the small notch in the margin of the sun showing that the transit had commenced, and that the planet was then one-third on the sun. But the critical moment had not yet arrived. By the expression "first internal contact" we are to understand the moment when the planet has completely entered on the sun. This first contact was timed to occur twenty-one minutes later than the external contact already referred to. But the clouds again disappointed our hope of seeing the internal contact. While steadily looking at the exquisitely beautiful sight of the gradual advance of the planet, I became aware that there were other objects besides Venus between me and the sun. They were the snowflakes, which again began to fall rapidly. I must admit the phenomenon was singularly beautiful. The telescopic effect of a snowstorm with the sun as a background I had never before seen. It reminded me of the golden rain which is sometimes seen falling from a flight of sky-rockets during pyrotechnic displays; I would gladly have dispensed with the spectacle, for it necessarily followed that the sun and Venus again disappeared from view. The clouds gathered, the snowstorm descended as heavily as ever, and we hardly dared to hope that we should see anything more; 1 hr. 57 min. came and passed, the first internal contact was over, and Venus had fully entered on the sun. We had only obtained a brief view, and we had not yet been able to make any measurements or other observations that could be of service. Still, to have seen even a part of a transit of Venus is an event to remember for a lifetime, and we felt more delight than can be easily expressed at even this slight gleam of success.

But better things were in store. My assistant came over with the report that he had also been successful in seeing Venus in the same phase as I had. We both resumed our posts, and at half-past two the clouds began to disperse, and the prospect of seeing the sun began to improve. It was now no question of the observations of contact. Venus by this time was well on the sun, and we therefore prepared to make observations with the micrometer attached to the eye-piece. The clouds at length dispersed, and at this time Venus had so completely entered on the sun that the distance from the edge of the planet to the edge of the sun was about twice the diameter of the planet. We measured the distance of the inner edge of Venus from the nearest limb of the sun. These observations were repeated as frequently as possible, but it should be added that they were only made with very considerable difficulty. The sun was now very low, and the edges of the sun and of Venus were by no means of that steady character which is suitable for micrometrical measurement. The margin of the luminary was quivering, and Venus, though no doubt it was sometimes circular, was very often distorted to such a degree as to make the measures very uncertain.

We succeeded in obtaining sixteen measures altogether; but the sun was now getting low, the clouds began again to interfere, and we saw that the pursuit of the transit must be left to the thousands of astronomers in happier climes who had been eagerly awaiting it. But before the phenomena had ceased I spared a few minutes from the somewhat mechanical work at the micrometer to take a view of the transit in the more picturesque form which the large field of the finder presented. The sun was already beginning to put on the ruddy hues of sunset, and there, far in on its face, was the sharp, round, black disc of Venus. It was then easy to sympathise with the supreme joy of Horrocks, when, in 1639, he for the first time witnessed this spectacle. The intrinsic interest of the phenomenon, its rarity, the fulfilment of the prediction, the noble problem which the transit of Venus helps us to solve, are all present to our thoughts when we look at this pleasing picture, a repetition of which will not occur again until the flowers are blooming in the June of A.D. 2004.

I wonder if this blog entry will be read by someone in 2117?

Ball concludes this section:

It may be asked, what is the advantage of devoting so much time and labour to a celestial phenomenon like the transit of Venus which has so little bearing on practical affairs? What does it matter whether the sun be 95,000,000 miles off, or whether it be only 93,000,000, or any other distance? We must admit at once that the enquiry has but a slender bearing on matters of practical utility. No doubt a fanciful person might contend that to compute our nautical almanacs with perfect accuracy we require a precise knowledge of the distance of the sun. Our vast commerce depends on skilful navigation, and one factor necessary for success is the reliability of the "Nautical Almanac." The increased perfection of the almanac must therefore bear some relation to increased perfection in navigation. Now, as good authorities tell us that in running for a harbour on a tempestuous night, or in other critical emergencies, even a yard of sea-room is often of great consequence, so it may conceivably happen that to the infinitesimal influence of the transit of Venus on the "Nautical Almanac" is due the safety of a gallant vessel.

But the time, the labour, and the money expended in observing the transit of Venus are really to be defended on quite different grounds. We see in it a fruitful source of information. It tells us the distance of the sun, which is the foundation of all the great measurements of the universe. It gratifies the intellectual curiosity of man by a view of the true dimensions of the majestic solar system, in which the earth is seen to play a dignified, though still subordinate, part; and it leads us to a conception of the stupendous scale on which the universe is constructed.

I'm sorry to report that Ball lost all sight in his right eye in 1883, shortly after the solar observations which he records here in such detail. I hope that this was just a coincidence; it certainly encouraged him to develop the writing career which made his name.

• Doctors 4-8 at collectormania 18 – talk part 1
  
  Tom Baker, joined after a few minutes by Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann.
  (tags: doctorwho )
• Doctors 4-8 at collectormania 18 – talk part 2
  
  More of Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvestery McCoy and Paul McGann.
  (tags: doctorwho )
• Doctor Who: Moving Right Along
  
  Brilliant DW fanvid to Muppets song.
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• Doctor Who: Someday
  
  Another great Muppet / DW fanvid.
  (tags: doctorwho )