Won’t be much use to those who are not already fans of Herbert; Mason interprets “The Collar”, “Love”, “Aaron” and “The Flower” as at least in part expressing the author’s feelings about being a priest, but I do not know enough context to appreciate it.
August Books 21) Early Christian Lives, ed. Carolinne White
Six biographies of important figures in early monatsticism – Athanasius’ life of Anthony, three short biographies by Jerome, Sulpicius Severus’ life of Martin of Tours and Gregory the Great’s life of Benedict. They all live holy lives and perform many miracles (often involving expelling demons from the possessed). Arians and other heretics are at least as bothersome as the pagan authorities (and more so after the early fourth century). Devils take on physical form and wrestle with our heroes. I had come across some of this material in Gibbon (who hates monks and all they stand for) but it was interesting to see it in its own context.
I do find it striking that the Christian tradition links spiritual excellence so closely with self-denial. I know that this is the case for some others as well – the heroes of the Ramayana are forever performing feats of asceticism – but now that I have read Rumi, it is pretty clear to me that this is a policy choice rather than a necessity for spirituality. Christianity missed out by not balancing the ascetic school with institutionalised pleasure.
August Books 20) Granuaile: Grace O’Malley – Ireland’s Pirate Queen, by Anne Chambers
A fascinating account of a shadowy historical figure of varying spellings, an exact contemporary of Elizabeth I, who appears to have used her own resources to prey on shipping along the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland; it’s difficult to be sure what is fact and what is fiction – did she really give birth on board one of her own ships, and then a few hours later struggle to the deck to take pot-shots at Algerian raiders? did she really kidnap the son of the Earl of Howth in retribution for a failure of hospitality? – but it adds up to some interesting material, and Chambers is frank about the gaps in her knowledge, as well as giving us some of the primary documents in an appendix.
The first edition of the book was published in 1979, a very different time for stories of Irish feminist heroes who threaten to divorce their husbands and then take handsome young lovers. For me, though, the most interesting point was the ability of Granuaile to appeal over the head of the local English administrators to the royal court, and her straight-faced ability to portray herself as a loyal subject beset by venal officials (and the paranoid and counterproductive reaction of those officials to her approaches). Chambers writes Granuaile into a traditional English v Irish political paradigm, but there is more going on here. I wish I knew more about the access of male Irish chieftains to the court; I feel I don’t have enough information to know how unusual Granuaile’s treatment was.
Anyway, an interesting read.
August Books 19) Timescape, by Gregory Benford
Written in 1980, with storylines set in 1962-63 and 1998, this is a scientists' sf novel, the future 1998 world facing ecological and social catastrophe and its physicists trying to communicate with their predecessors to prevent it from happening.
As a Cambridge NatSci graduate I loved the visceral detail of the decaying 1998 setting, though Benford failed to predict one element of real life decay, the extinction of independent bookshops – he still has Bowes and Bowes open and staffed by attractive young women, when in real life I think it closed in the early 90s.
But it's a bit less satisfactory as a novel than I remembered it from my first reading. Both ends of the time line feature almost entirely male working environments, with the odd distant woman scientist collaborating but the protagonists enduring varyingly problematic sex lives with their various female partners. I was not completely convinced, though I can see that it's written from the heart.
And the sending-messages-through-time plot, the core of the book, actually doesn't work very well. Rather than the messages from 1998 inspiring scientific research to get the world out of the mess it is in, they accidentally prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and that seems to be the crucial point of departure which kicks the 1963 world out of our timeline and into a better one. Why Kennedy's survival should make the difference is not really explained. (And the elaborate system developed by the 1998 scientists to check that their message is getting through is unnecessary given that their telephone system still works.)
Though I do like the nod to Silverberg's Dying Inside, whose protagonist makes a brief appearance on page 273.
Timescape won the Nebula in 1980; of the other nominees, I have definitely read the Hugo-winning The Snow Queen and The Shadow of the Torturer and I may have read Beyond the Blue Event Horizon but am not sure. I have not read, or even heard of, Walter Tevis' Mockingbird or Robert Stallman's The Orphan. I think it's one of those years when the Nebula went to the kind of novel that would normally have a better chance of winning the Hugo, and vice versa.
2011 Hugos – some (not much) analysis
Full stats are here.
Best Novel: Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (beating Feed, which got the most first preferences, by 24 votes on last count; The Dervish House came fifth, though the honours were fairly evenly divided, third place going to Cryoburn by a six-vote margin over The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms)
Best Novella: The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang (a pretty clear result: the others, in order, ranked 2) "Troika", 3) "The Lady…", 4) "The Sultan…", 5) "The Maiden Flight…")
Best Novelette: “The Emperor of Mars”, Allen M. Steele (again a clear result with clear rankings for the others: 2) "Eight Miles", 3) "Plus or Minus", 4) "That Leviathan…", 5) "The Jaguar House…")
Best Short Story: “For Want of a Nail”, Mary Robinette Kowal (a clear result, with fans of Kowal's story also liking "Amaryllis" which came second; "The Things" third and "Ponies" fourth.)
Best Related Work: Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (followed by Heinlein biography, then The Business of Science Fiction gets third place by three votes from Writing Excuses and Bearings – the only nominee not available electronically – a lon way behind.)
Best Professional Artist: Shaun Tan (by 14 votes from Dos Santos; Martiniere is second, Dos Santos and Picacio joint third – the only tie of the night – Eggleton fifth.)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Inception (by a massive margin; the others ranked How To Train Your Dragon, Harry Potter 7.1, Toy Story 3, Scott Pilgrim.)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who: “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang” (followed by Vincent and the Doctor and A Christmas CarolFuck Me Ray Bradbury actually got the most first preferences but was overtaken by Whovian transfers, and eventually takes fourth place by ten votes from The Lost Thing.)
Best Editor, Long Form: Lou Anders (by 23 votes from Buchanan; others rank Meacham, Gorisky, Feder, Mamatas, Ulman.)
Best Editor, Short Form: Sheila Williams (Schmidt top on first prefs but loses by a wide margin on transfers; Adams takes third place by six votes from van Gelder, who ends behind Strahan in fifth.)
Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse (followed by Fables: Witches, Schlock Mercenary, Grandville Mon Amour and The Unwritten in that order; I find this incomprehensible.)
Best Semiprozine: Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, Sean Wallace; podcast directed by Kate Baker (Locus top in first preferences but must settle for second place; Interzone takes third from Lightspeed by five votes; Lightspeed nine ahead of Weird Tales for fourth place.)
Best Fanzine: The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon (followed by File 770 and then StarShipSofa which was top in first preferences, Challenger beats Banana Wings for fourth place by seven votes.)
Best Fan Writer: Claire Brialey (by six votes, over Steven H Silver who has to settle for third place behind Chris Garcia; James Bacon also six votes ahead of James Nicoll for fourth place.)
Best Fan Artist: Brad W. Foster (by one vote over Randall Munroe who was way ahead on first preferences; others rank 3) Starkey, 4) Stile, 5) Wayne)
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Lev Grossman (by fifteen votes over Lauren Beukes; 3) Saladin Ahmed, 4) Dan Wells, 5) Larry Correia.)
Congratulations to all winners! Eleventh Hugo (and fifth Hugo/Nebula double) for Connie Willis (born 1945); fourth for Ted Chiang (born 1967); third for Allen Steele (born 1958); first for Mary Robinette Kowal (born 1969).
Well, I guess I can't complain too much; I voted for the winners in Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, and Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form, and I'm not too disappointed by the winners of Best Novelette, Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form and the John W. Campbell Award. Still shaking my head over the appeal of Blackout/All Clear and Girl Genius though.
Nominees that weren't:
"Elegy for a Young Elk" by Hannu Rajaniemi missed the Best Short Story list by 0.75 of a vote, if I have my maths right.
Ellen Datlow missed Best Editor, Short Form, by a single vote. Notes from Coode Street was one vote away from the Best Fanzine list.
"A Jar of Goodwill" by Tobias Buckell and "The Naturalist" by Maureen McHugh both missed the Best Novelette list by two votes. Guy Lillian III missed the Best Fan Writer list by two votes. Spring Schoenhuth missed the Best Fan Artist list by two votes.
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor missed the Best Novel shortlist by four votes (China Mieville's Kraken missed it by six). I see last year's winner still got ten nominators for Best Graphic Story, where Hereville by Barry Deutsch missed the list by four votes.
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach missed Best Related Work by five votes.
Both David Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden decliend nomination for Best Editor, Long Form, resulting in the multiple tie for fifth place which gave us seven nominees. (Toni Weisskopf was two votes adrift.)
Gibbon Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade
A very good chapter on a tragic and horrible episode, the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, illustrated by lucid narrative and pungent analysis. We haven’t had a chapter relating so closely to a single set of military incidents since Chapter XLI on Belisarius in Italy, which was good, or Chapter XXXI on the Sack of Rome, which was a refreshingly direct chapter after several dull ones. In a grand sweeping history like this, which covers 1300 years in 71 chapters, it makes sense to occasionally zoom in on key moments of inflection, and this is certainly one of them – the capital of the Eastern remnant of the Roman Empire, destroyed by the heirs of the West. Gibbon is helped, as he readily admits, by the survival of two eyewitness accounts of events from opposing sides, to both of whom he extends an essential sympathy while at the same time sparking off them. It enables him to show himself at his best.
August Books 18) Dominion, by Nick Walters
An imaginative combination of the elements which make up a Who story: the Tardis, with Eight, Sam and Fitz, lands in Sweden in 1999, but an unstable wormhole is allowing nasties from a dying dimension through, and the Doctor has to save the nice aliens before it is too late, with no help from UNIT. Well described, and the nice aliens have an interesting biology. Though I was sorry that the nice Swedish girl didn’t get to go with the Tardis at the end.
An old joke, but still a funny one
A man in a hot air balloon over the Belgian countryside realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below.
Descending a bit more he shouted, “Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am”.
The woman replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above the ground, between 40/41 degrees latitude, north, and 59/60 degrees longitude, west.”
“You must be a middle-grade Commission Official”, said the balloonist.
“I am”, replied the woman, “How did you know?”
“Well”, answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct but I have no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you have delayed my trip.”
The woman below responded, “You must be a Senior Commission Official”.
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “But how did you know?”
“Well,” replied the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”
August Books 17) Science & Technology in 19th-Century Ireland, ed Juliana Adelman & Éadaoin Agnew
Nice book of essays, which I read for review elsewhere.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-19-2011
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"…stress created by incivility can be so intense that, at the end of the day, it is taken home."
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"…avoid moral panic and a rush to historically-illiterate judgement."
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He began a speech so pained and passionate that I could not tell if it meant the beginning or the end for us. I retained none of it as I concentrated on keeping my face neutral and my breathing steady, ready to bear the worst with dignity, until the very end when the tumble of words paused and he said “… and that’s why I want to marry you.”
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-18-2011
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On a recent episode of South Park, the kids got all excited about reading The Catcher in the Rye, the supposedly scandalous novel that's been offending teachers and parents for generations. They were, of course, horribly disappointed: As Kyle says, it's "just some whiny annoying teenager talking about how lame he is."
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1. One is entitled to one’s own opinions, but not one’s own facts. 2. If you make an assertion that implies a factual basis, it is entirely proper that others may ask you to back up these assertions with facts. 3. If you cannot bolster said assertion with facts beyond the anecdotal, others may not find your general argument persuasive. 4. people asking for facts is in itself non-partisan; implications otherwise are a form of ad hominem argument. 5. If you offer evidence and assert it as fact, you may reasonably expect others to examine such information and to rebut you if they find it wanting.
August Books 16) The Collector of Treasures, by Bessie Head
An excellent collection of short stories set in Botswana shortly after independence, mostly about women affected by the changes in a colonised and modernising (but pre-AIDS) society: Christianity, traditional religion, education and especially marriage rites and expectations all get critical attention from Head in a set of sharp vignettes, of which the most memorable is perhaps the title piece, about a woman who murders her husband. It is a more gritty, sexy and brutal Botswana than is to be found in the works of Alexander McCall Smith, and feels more realistic too.
August Books 15) No Future, by Paul Cornell
I loved this. The Doctor, Ace and Benny arrive in England in 1976 and team up with UNIT, to discover the person behind their recent set of misadventures is none other than
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-17-2011
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I really do not want my teenage sons unconsciously absorbing notions of male privilege and entitlement in stories where a woman’s importance is always defined by who she might choose to sleep with, or better yet, save her precious virginity for. Where women who transgress male authority are invariably punished by supposedly indifferent twists of fate. I don’t want my niece and god-daughters reading stories which imply that true happiness lies in meekness, submission and doing the cooking and mending to facilitate so much more valuable male heroics.
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McSweeney's pieces don't always work for me, but this one did.
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Wise advice from Frankie.
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What's in Carl Bildt's suitcase?
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Looking into alignments.
August Books 14) Last Call, by Tim Powers
I didn’t really get in with this, and almost gave up after the first third: most of the characters too unpleasant and unengaging, too many cultural references that simply sailed past me. I stuck with it in the end, and appreciated as ever Powers’ dense description and evocative spookiness, but didn’t really feel I grasped what it had all been about or why it mattered at the end.
August Books 13) A Reader’s Companion to A Civil Campaign, edited by Nikohl K. & John Lennard
This is an absolute must-have for any fan of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books, which reach their dramatic climax in her 1999 novel, A Civil Campaign. The editors examine the novel’s debt to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer and the works of Shakespeare as well as various other sources; they then give a set of page-by-page annotations to explain references and in-jokes as they come up, and finally a long long list of further reading (which I was gratified to discover includes my name). It does exactly what I want of such books, deepening my enjoyment of the original work, encouraging me to query it and my other reading more intensely in future, and pointing me to other literature I might enjoy. (I know Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, and have read a lot of Sayers but not Gaudy Nightread that one of the co-editors dropped off the internet before the book was completed, and hope she knows how much pleasure I and other readers are deriving from her efforts.
August Books 12) Old Goriot, by Honoré de Balzac
A short classic French novel, whose central character isn’t so much Goriot as Eugène de Rastignac, who shares a Paris boarding-house with Goriot and falls in love with one of his daughters. The Goriot daughters have some nasty emotional manipulation going on with their father and their ennobled husbands, and Eugène is way out of his depth. One of his other fellow tenants is a master criminal in disguise, who makes Eugène the original offer that he cannot refuse, a line directly borrowed by The Godfather. (NB however that Eugène actually does refuse the offer.) I found the translation a bit clunky but the plot rather engaging. Apparently Balzac wrote dozens of novels in his Comédie Humaine series, and died with over a hundred more planned but unwritten.
Ardboe, Beaghmore and Tullahogue
We took advantage of the decent weather yesterday to take a trip up to County Tyrone, to see three ancient mystical sites.
The first of these is the ruined abbey and High Cross at Ardboe, on the shores of Lough Neagh:
It was actually a strategic mistake to come here at noon; the cross is in an awkward place to photograph and it’s rather difficult to capture properly.
I think if one came in the evening the light from the west would be kinder both to the cross and to Lough Neagh, which is never going to win a prize for most beautiful lake in these islands:
But the mingling of new and old monuments at the site is rather striking:
And the medieval abbey church has become a public space of commemoration:
I’ll do another post on the carvings on the cross, but for now we move on to
I had known about the Beaghmore circles for decades but had never been to find them. They are very peculiar indeed. There are seven stone circles altogether, most of them in pairs.
But one on its own is filled with smaller stones, known as the ‘Dragon’s Teeth’:
Mysterious lines of stones radiate from between the circles:
And small cairns, apparently containing cremated human remains, mark the last resting places of some of the people who lived here three millennia ago.
Reception up there is not fantastic but I was able to tweet a picture of it, which two people recognised.
Our last stop was Tullahogue, the ancient fort where the Kings of Ulster were inaugurated. Note the greengrocer’s apostrophe in the official sign welcoming visitors:
There’s not in fact a lot to see here; it’s a well-kept green space, unused since Mountjoy’s troops destroyed the ceremonial chair and burnt the vicinity in 1602:
I was able to add Tullahogue as a check-in on Foursquare; not terribly surprised that I was the first to do so!
And so we returned home in time for me to cook the dinner.
August Books 11) Lords of the Storm, by David McIntee
Fifth Doctor, Turlough and Sontarans, on a human colony with an Indian cultural background, and the Rutans make an appearance as well. Lots of good continuity for both Turlough and the Sontarans, and lots of good world-building, combined with a decent plot; one to look out for.
Gibbon Chapter LIX: The Later Crusades
In this chapter, the Crusades continue for almost two hundred years, as the Christian outposts in the Eastern Mediterranean dwindle and eventually disappear – some good descriptions of the eventual falls of Jerusalem, Louis IX and Acre. (The end of the Fourth Crusade is left for the next chapter.) See also comments on Bernard of Clairvaux’s penis, Pope Innocent III, the Kurds, colonialism, and the emperor Frederick II.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-14-2011
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Asteroid discoveries from 1980 to 2011
Who Trivia – The Doctor Cooks?
- I just finished watching Battlefield, in which the Seventh Doctor promises to cook dinner in the final line.
- In The Lodger, the Eleventh Doctor actually is seen cooking (as is the Tenth Doctor in the original comic strip story that the TV episode is based on).
- Over on Twitter, Ian Potter points out that it is strongly implied that the Sixth Doctor cooked the nut roast that Peri reports throwing out in Resurrection of the Daleks.
Any other references to the Doctor actually cooking, on TV or in spinoff literature and audios?
August Books 10) The Broad Highway, by Jeffery Farnol
This was the best-selling novel of 1911, a romantic tale set in about 1811 where you know what is going to happen from the very first page, when Peter Vibart is promised a vast legacy if he will marry Sophia Sefton, but declares he would rather not. He flees metropolitan life to the village of Sissinghurst in Kent, where he encounters many good-hearted comic yokels and falls in love with a mysterious woman who comes to live with him in his cottage. She has firm, well-rounded arms. (That’s arms, I say, arms.) It takes Peter (unlike the reader) most of the book to work out her real identity, and to deal with his rival for the marital legacy, his rather two-dimensionally villainous cousin, though I guess he is distracted by the occasional staggering coincidence and his anachronistic inclination towards Christian Science doctrine. I had never heard of Farnol before but apparently he was one of the most successful popular novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and I suppose I can see the attraction of his undemanding yet breathless style. (Sissinghurst, by the way, was called Milkstreet in 1811 and changed its name only later in the century; more anachronism.)
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-13-2011
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Dissecting the difference between faith (believing things that cannot be disproved) and superstition (believing things that can).
August Books 9) Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb
This was on my list to read this summer anyway, but it was nice to have got to it after the references in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Carlo Gebler’s play about the Lambs. It’s really very good – a retelling of Shakespeare’s dramas, which are not really easy reading for today’s reader (or even the reader of 1807) in digestible prose, aimed at sophisticated teenagers. It’s surprising what is censored and what is kept in, given how we tend to imagine nineteenth-century senisibilities – the blinding in King Lear is out, and the detail of Antiochus’ incest (and Marina’s life in the brothel) in Pericles, but so for some reason is the entire Malvolio subplot in Twelfth Night. However, the immorality laws of Vienna in Measure for Measure are explained, and so is the detail of Macduff’s birth in Macbeth (of course an important plot detail but one that could have been worked round with imagination). Knowing what I now do about the authors, I was also struck by the sympathetic treatment of mental illness in the summary of Hamlet, which sets a good example rarely met in later literature. Strongly recommended.
The new 100 books meme
Bold if you’ve read, italicize ones you fully intend to read, underline if it’s a book/series you’ve read part but not all of. Strikethrough if you never plan to read the book or hated it.
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
22. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
23. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
24. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
25. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
26. The Stand, by Stephen King
27. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
28. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
29. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
31. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
32. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks68. The Conan the Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis
I must say that of those I haven’t read (or series I haven’t finished) the only ones that really appeal are The Princess Bride and Something Wicked This Way Comes. But feel free to convince me otherwise in comments.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-12-2011
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Extraordinary.
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I’m proud that I was one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first machine and was fortunate to have lead subsequent IBM PC designs through the 1980s. It may be odd for me to say this, but I’m also proud IBM decided to leave the personal computer business in 2005, selling our PC division to Lenovo. While many in the tech industry questioned IBM’s decision to exit the business at the time, it’s now clear that our company was in the vanguard of the post-PC era.
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Interview with Canada's foreign minster. "A friend of mine's daughter is a consultant at one of the major consulting houses and she needed to bring her university degree to show, which she did and it had a nice Princeton logo on it. The border guard then explained to her that the United States was an English-speaking country and she should get it translated because it was in Latin."
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Linkedin tries to be like Facebook. Bad idea.
August Books 8) The End of the Peer Show?, edited by Alexandra Fitzpatrick
I was alerted to this book (PDF download) by the excellent Jonathan Fryer, who like me (but with more regret) concludes after reading it that the most likely outcome of the current push to reform the House of Lords is that nothing will happen. The book is a collection of thirteen essays on the subject by various figures, roughly evenly balanced between practitioners and academics (with some fitting both categories), published jointly by the (Lib Dem leaning) thinktank CentreForum and the Constitution Society. I had not previously heard of either of these organisations, but the latter’s Alexandra Fitzpatrick, who edited the book, provides an eight-page introduction which summarises the essays so well that you can almost skip the rest of the book.
A couple of points are clear from the majority of the essays. In general, the need for elections to an upper house is asserted as self-evident by reformers but dissected rather forensically by other contributors. But specifically, apart from those actually on the government’s payroll, support for the current proposals seems non-existent, with the Labour Party, which like the two coalition parties went into the 2010 election promising reform, unlikely to back this particular set of ideas, which do not go far enough for reformers, and go too far for those comfortable with the status quo.
Many of the contributors make the functional point that a more democratic upper chamber will be much more comfortable in challenging the Commons and the government of the day, and that the current coalition proposals are dishonestly silent about this. People vary as to whether or not this rebalancing of powers would be a good thing, but agree that it should not be so flippantly introduced. (My old friend David Howarth is particularly strong on this.)
I hadn’t taken in a couple of the weirder points of the current proposals – that elected members won’t be eligible for re-election ever, and won’t be allowed to stand for the House of Commons for four years after leaving the upper house. I feel this critically weakens the democratic credibility of the reform – you can vote them in, but you can’t vote them out. You might as well go for sortition, which is cheaper (but not mentioned in this book). And there is no discussion (not even by Richard Harries) of why twelve Church of England bishops should get to stay on ex officio, actually increasing the episcopal percentage of the house.
Finally, two of the contributors (Bob McLennan and Dawn Oliver) propose that alongside a democratic reform of the Lords, a body of independent experts should be established to take over the job of revising draft legislation. This seems to me a classic case of reinventing the wheel; the present system has essentially produced such a body anyway. (My own views have been vented a couple of times, here and here.)
Anyway, it’s a good digestible set of perspectives on the debate, recommended also to Irish readers given the push for reform (or, in my preference, abolition) of the Seanad.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-11-2011
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"A3: Please.""Q3: Should I avoid top posting on this mailing list?"
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" Is there a way of contributing to email conversations that allows you to make your contribution easy to find for people who've been following the discussion, while preserving the entire thread for the benefit of people who are new to it?"
Doctor Who Rewatch: 26
Six more Seventh Doctor stories today:
(Interesting to note that Seven/Mel is literally the only canonical Doctor/companion team never to have featured in any spinoff novel.)
Adrian Mole Gian Sammarco who finds that the object of his fascination is a fatal obsession; but Jessica Martin and Chris Drury are excellent too, and the whole thing just looks so much better than we were getting two years ago (or even one year ago). Let’s hope they can keep up the standards for a few more years.
So there we have it – the second-last of my write-ups, and a much more positive one than I had expected it would be. I should wrap up the enire project later this month – I am extending my definition of Old Who to include Dimensions in Time and The Movie which will mean I will once again have six stories in my final write-up.
< An Unearthly Child – The Aztecs | The Sensorites – The Romans | The Web Planet – Galaxy 4 | Mission To The Unknown – The Gunfighters | The Savages – The Highlanders | The Underwater Menace – Tomb of the Cybermen | The Abominable Snowmen – The Wheel In Space | The Dominators – The Space Pirates | The War Games – Terror of the Autons | The Mind of Evil – The Curse of Peladon | The Sea Devils – Frontier in Space | Planet of the Daleks – The Monster of Peladon | Planet of the Spiders – Revenge of the Cybermen | Terror of the Zygons – The Seeds of Doom | The Masque of Mandragora – The Talons of Weng-Chiang | Horror of Fang Rock – The Invasion of Time | The Ribos Operation – The Armageddon Factor | Destiny of the Daleks – Shada | The Leisure Hive – The Keeper of Traken | Logopolis – The Visitation | Black Orchid – Mawdryn Undead | Terminus – The Awakening | Frontios – Attack of the Cybermen | Vengeance on Varos – In A Fix With Sontarans | The Mysterious Planet – Paradise Towers | Delta and the Bannermen – The Greatest Show in the Galaxy | Battlefield – The TV Movie >