I rather enjoyed this: a canter through the history of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Sartre, as told in a series of mysterious communications from an enigmatic teacher to instruct 14-year-old Sophie. I loved the moment when she learns about Aristotle and immediately goes home and tidies her room – would this tactic work for real teenagers, I wonder?
Then the narrative form abruptly lurches sideways about two-thirds of the way through, and we realise that this is not quite the book we thought we were reading – and in fairness it is a move that has been well enough signalled. This leaves Gaarder with minor difficulties in resolving the plot, but that doesn’t matter all that much.
On the substance: I have (whisper it softly) never been terribly excited about philosophy, but Gaarder does unpack the relationship between Hegel and Kant better than I have seen elsewhere, and also guided me through the relationship between philosophy and literature (at least of the last three centuries or so). So I learned something, which was partly the point.
Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) 1976, Best Short Story, Catch That Zeppelin!
Peter Beagle (1939-) 2005, Best Novelette, Two Hearts
Frederik Pohl (1919-) 1986, Best Short Story, Fermi and Frost Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) 1992, Best Novelette, Gold – Asimov had died before the award ceremony
Clifford D Simak (1904-1988) 1981, Best Short Story, Grotto of the Dancing Deer
Jack Williamson (1908-2006) 2001, Best Novella, The Ultimate Earth
Nebula winners over 65:
Connie Willis (1945-) 2010, Best Novel, Blackout / All Clear
Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) 1975, Best Short Story, Catch that Zeppelin!
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-) 1995, Best Novelette, Solitude
Peter Beagle (1939-) 2005, Best Novelette, Two Hearts
Jack McDevitt (1935-) 2006, Best Novel, Seeker
Harlan Ellison (1934-) 2010, Best Short Story, How Interesting: A Tiny Man
Clifford D Simak (1904-1988) 1980, Best Short Story, Grotto of the Dancing Deer
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-) 2008, Best Novel, Powers
Carol Emshwiller (1921-) 2002, Best Short Story, Creature
Carol Emshwiller (1921-) 2005, Best Short Story, I Live with You
Jack Williamson (1908-2006) 2001, Best Novella, The Ultimate Earth
I somehow doubt that anyone will break Jack Williamson’s record any time soon…
(that is, under the age of thirty when the award was announced or retrospectively might have been announced)
Hugo winners under 30:
Hal Clement (1922-2003) 1946 retro-Hugo, Best Short Story, Uncommon Sense Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) 1946 retro-Hugo, Best Novel, The Mule George R.R. Martin (1948-) 1975, Best Novella, A Song for Lya C.M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) 1950 retro-Hugo, Best Novelette, The Little Black Bag Samuel R Delany (1942-) 1970, Best Short Story, Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones Damon Knight (1922-2002) 1950 retro-Hugo, Best Short Story, To Serve Man Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) 1966, Best Novel, … And Call Me Conrad Larry Niven (1938-) 1967, Best Short Story, Neutron Star Spider Robinson (1948-) 1977, Best Novella, By Any Other Name Spider Robinson (1948-) 1978, Best Novella, Stardance (with Jeanne Robinson, who was already 30 by the time award was announced) Joan D. Vinge (1948-) 1978, Best Novelette, Eyes of Amber
Nebula winners under 30:
Ted Chiang (1967-) 1990, Best Novelette, Tower of Babylon Samuel R Delany (1942-) 1966, Best Novel, Babel-17 Samuel R Delany (1942-) 1967, Best Novel, The Einstein Intersection Samuel R Delany (1942-) 1967, Best Short Story, Aye, and Gomorrah Vonda N. McIntyre (1948-) 1973, Best Novelette, Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand Samuel R Delany (1942-) 1969, Best Novelette, Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) 1965, Best Novelette, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) 1965, Best Novella, He Who Shapes Rachel Swirsky (1982-) 2010, Best Novella, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window Alexei Panshin (1940-) 1968, Best Novel, Rite of Passage Michael Moorcock (1939-) 1967, Best Novella, Behold the Man Spider Robinson (1948-) 1977, Best Novella, Stardance (with Jeanne Robinson, who was already 30 by the time award was announced) Lisa Tuttle (1952-) 1981, Best Short Story (declined), The Bone Flute Gordon Eklund (1945-) 1974, Best Novelette, If the Stars Are Gods (with Gregory Benford who was 34 when award was announced)
22 May 2001: death of Jack Watling, who played Professor Travers in The Abominable Snowmen (1967) and The Web of Fear (1968).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
22 May 1965: broadcast of "The Executioners", first episode of the story we now call The Chase. The Tardis crew play with the Time-Space Visualiser and land on the planet Aridius, where the Daleks have pursued them.
22 May 1971: broadcast of first episode of The Dæmons. As archæologists open the ancient tomb at Devil’s End, strange and deadly events occur around the village.
22 May 2010: broadcast of The Hungry Earth. The Doctor, Amy and Rory find that a near-future Welsh drilling project is finding more than it bargained for.
The good news: Terry Pratchett at long last gets a nod, though the Andre Norton Award rather than a Nebula proper. Three out of five Nebula winners for written fiction are women. Rachel Swirsky, who turned 29 last month, is the first Hugo or Nebula winner to have been born in the 1980s, and the youngest winner since Ted Chiang (then 23) in 1990. Of the Short Story nominees, "Ponies" was the only one I had read and I found it brilliant but disturbing.
Less impressed by wins for "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone, which was by far my least favourite of the Hugo-nominated novelettes
Hooray! The 2011 Hugo Voter Packet is out! For a mere US $50, you can get electronic copies of Blackout by Connie Willis, Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold, The Dervish House by Ian McDonald, Feed by Mira Grant, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Chicks Dig Time Lords edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea, The Business of Science Fiction by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg, Fables: Witches by Bill Willingham, Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot, and The Unwritten, Volume 2: Inside Man by Mike Carey, plus loads of other goodies, some already available on-line but gathered together neatly in one electronic bundle. And you get to vote in the Hugos to boot. A bargain. (I haven’t worked out the cost of buying each book separately but it is surely twice the admission price.)
Anyway, having already polished off several of the other categories, I spent parts of today browsing through this year’s nominated novelettes (all available online for free), and without much difficult ranked them thus.
A story about a Mormon missionary converting giant space whales which live in the heart of the sun. Also he is conflicted about the beautiful non-Mormon scientist on the team. Written from the heart, just not very well. Edited to add: What do I know? It won the Nebula!
I may just be getting old, but although I really like de Bodard’s prose style, I’m afraid that when I finished this story I still had absolutely no idea what it was about.
This is actually a half-decent effort, Tom Godwin’s "The Cold Equations" re-written for a crew of cloned teenagers. But I found the pacing very odd, with the final denouement taking place off screen, and the world-building didn’t quite gel.
3) No award.
I think I’m more brutal on this than a lot of people. But I’d be a bit embarrassed if any of the above wins.
A sympathetic account of a guy who goes mad while on mission on a near-future Mars, and who finds his path back to healing through immersing himself in classic sf stories set on the planet. Will appeal on some level to all of us who read sf. Some obvious echoes from Steele’s other stories, both the Coyote series and his award-winning "The Death of Captain Future", but developed differently here.
This was the first one of these stories that I read, and none of the others really matched it – a quasi-steampunk tale of ballooning in 1840, our narrator dealing with a weird semi-human woman who has descended from Tibet (or elsewhere?), and the capitalist who is determined to exploit her. I was particularly impressed by the way McMullen was able to widen the focus as the story went on, and certainly it’s the only one of these that I will still be thinking about next week.
In my continuing quest to track down ancient Belgian sites, we made an expedition today to find the Pierre-qui-Tourne, the supposedly Rotating Rock, of the hamlet of Beaurieux, near the village of Court-St-Étienne (located at roughly 50° 38′ 14.61″ north, 4° 35′ 22.23″ east, for those of you inclined to track it down; about thirty km from us).
Some unsporting analysts suggest that the local legend that it turns around every time the nearby church tower strikes midnight may not be true. (We wondered if the local church tower is actually equipped with a bell; if not, it would make the theory rather untestable). Other even less sporting analysts suggest (here, at end) that it may even be a millstone rather than an ancient ritual megalith, but I must say I don’t think you’d get very far grinding with this (also nearest river rather far down steep hill so not very practical).
Anyway, here are another couple of pictures with little U, looking a bit mutinous by the time the second was taken.
I am always intrigued by people who share my exact birth date, and also people who share my name. Through Google Alerts I learn that Nicholas Whyte, better known as Bigga Dean, was killed by the Jamaican police earlier today. Another namesake serving in the US Army (also of Jamaican background, as it happens) was killed in Iraq a few years ago. I am glad to have survived this far.
21 May 1966: broadcast of “The O.K. Corral”, last episode of the story we now call The Gunfighters, and the last episode before 2005 to have an individual title. Doc Holliday and the Earps shoot it out with the Clantons, to the detriment of the latter.
21 May 2005: broadcast of The Empty ChildThe Rebel Flesh
20 May 1926: birth of John Lucarotti, writer of Marco Polo (1964), The Aztecs (1964) and The Massacre (1966).
20 May 1961: birth of Owen Teale who played Maldak in Vengeance on Varos (1985) and Evan Sherman in CountrycideTorchwood, 2006).
20 May 1966: death of Mervyn Pinfield, who was Associate Producer for Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child (1963) to The Romans (1965) and also directed The Sensorites (1964), Planet of Giants (1964) and The Space Museum (1965).
20 May 1977: death of Lennie Mayne, who directed The Curse of Peladon (1972), The Three Doctors (1972-73), The Monster of Peladon (1974) and The Hand of Fear (1976)
20 May 1993: death of William Emms, author of TV story Galaxy 4 (1965) and the widely forgotten Sixth Doctor book, Mission to Venus (1986).
20 May 1996: death of Jon Pertwee, who played the Third Doctor from 1970 to 1974, with occasional returns to the role.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
20 May 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Evil of the Daleks. The Tardis is stolen, and when the Doctor and Jamie pursue it, they find an antique shop with added Dalek.
20 May 1972: broadcast of first episode of The Time Monster. The Newton Institute near Cambridge is in fact run by the Master, who summons Kronos.
20 May 2006: broadcast of The Age of Steel. The Doctor and friends manage to infiltrate Cybus industries and destroy the Cybermen.
By someone who knew him much better than me: "I think Garret lived such a mentally sharp and active life for so long – still writing his regular economics column in the Irish Times to the end – because he was just so curious and endlessly interested in and enjoying the people around him."
"The majority of men are in no persuasion bigots; they are not willing to sacrifice on every vain imagination that superstition or enthusiasm holds forth, or that even zeal and piety recommend, the certain possession of their temporal happiness …
"If anything can tend to revive and keep [fanaticism] up, it is to keep alive the passions of men by ill usage. This is enough to irritate even those who have not a spark of bigotry in their constitution to the most desperate enterprises; it certainly will inflame, darken and render more dangerous the spirit of bigotry in those who are possessed by it. "
I’m sorry to see that Garret Fitzgerald has died, at the age of 85. He was Taoiseach (=Prime Minster of Ireland) twice in the 1980s, and also Irish foreign minister in the mid-1970s. He played as important a role on Northern Ireland as any Southern politician – he was one of the Irish government’s negotiators at Sunningdale in 1973, set up the New Ireland Forum to try and direct Irish nationalism more productively in the early 1980s, and most importantly he persuaded Margaret Thatcher to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, which (rather bitterly) transformed Unionists’ understanding of what might be possible for the future of Northern Ireland. He tried, and largely failed, to liberalise Irish politics, spectacularly screwing up referendums on abortion in 1983 and divorce in 1986, and just about managing a reform of the contraception laws; but all of this paved the way for the secularisation of Irish society which hit only a few years later. Less appreciated now is his crucial role as foreign minister immediately after Ireland had joined the European Economic Community, establishing the state as an independent international actor in a context where it had basically joined on Britain’s coat-tails.
I met him several times, most recently at a seminar I gave in DCU in 2006 (I note that the official photo of the event shows Garret flanked by the host and the chair of the meeting, with no visible trace of either of the actual speakers) where he asked some typically sharp questions about the situation in Georgia (where his grand-daughter, who now works around the corner from me in Brussels, was about to go on a mission). I also remember meeting him at an Anglo-Irish political seminar about ten years before, and admitting to him my past research into medieval history. He pondered for a moment, and then asked me a rather unexpected question, of the type where the questioner already knows the answer: “Do you know what the main means of goods transport over land was in France in the eighth century?” I shook my head in bafflement. Garret gave his characteristic chortle. “The camel!” he declared. (I have no idea if this is true, and suspect that it isn’t.)
He also wrote the foreword to the book that my father had finished writing the week before his own death in 1990, and gave the first of a series of annual lectures dedicated to his memory – the title was “What Makes Politics Tick? Interests, Ideals or Emotions?” and it was a typically quirky reflection on his own time at the top; by a coincidence of timing, the day he delivered it in Belfast was the day that Margaret Thatcher resigned, and he leavened his text with some personal anecdotes (I remember one about them both being soaked to the skin while on a boat ride at the European summit in Corfu). Someone asked him how he thought Charles Haughey, his enemy and successor, would deal with the recent election of Mary Robinson as president of Ireland. He gave his characteristic chortle. “The Taoiseach,” he declared, “is a pragmatist.” And so it proved.
19 May 1935: birth of Michael Wisher, who played Wakefield in The Ambassadors of Death (1970), Rex Farrel in Terror of the Autons (1971), Kalik in Carnival of Monsters (1973), Davros in Genesis of the Daleks (1975), Magrik in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975) and Morelli in Planet of Evil (1975) as well as Dalek voices in several stories.
19 May 1947: birth of Michael Cochrane, who played Charles Cranleigh in Black Orchid (1982) and Redvers Fenn-Cooper in Ghost Light (1989).
19 May 1982: death of Elwyn Jones, who co-wrote The Highlanders (1966-67).
19 May 2006: death of Peter Bryant, script editor of Doctor Who from the second half of Evil of the Daleks (1967) to The Enemy of the World (1967-68) and then producer from The Web of Fear (1968) to The Wheel in Space (1969).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
19 May 1973: broadcast of first episode of The Green Death. The Brigadier and Jo go to Llanairfach in Wales to explore why people are turning green.
19 May 2007: broadcast of 42. The Doctor and Martha have 42 minutes to save the S.S. Pentallian.
iii) date specified in canon
19 May 1553: Rani appears in London and meets Lady Jane Grey, as seen in Lost in Time (SJA, 2010).
"First of all there needs to be some honesty from Ashton, ideally presented in a set-piece speech. She needs to publicly acknowledge that there are very major challenges to overcome in European Foreign Policy.
"Second, Ashton needs to ask for a pause of at least 6 months during which her focus must uniquely be on the administrative side of the functioning of the EEAS.
"Third she needs to work out who she trusts, and put at least some of those people in her cabinet.
"Relating to the third point, Ashton needs to address the low morale and staffing disorder that currently reigns inside the EEAS.
"Fourth, Ashton needs to get her communications in order, by employing a decent speechwriter, and by improving the web communications of the EEAS.
"Fifth, her timekeeping needs to improve – an unfortunate reputation of turning up late is now well known. "
"One of the most intriguing ‘fantasy politics’ games in Brussels is calculating when Cathy Ashton, the embattled European External Action Service head will return to Britain. While she has charm, this has not covered what has been described as a dismal performance in the new post-Lisbon position."
18 May 1928: birth of John Abineri, who played van Lutyens in Fury from the Deep (1967), Carrington in The Ambassadors of Death (1970), Railton in Death to the Daleks (1974) and Ranquin in The Power of Kroll (1978-79).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
18 May 1968: broadcast of fourth episode of The Wheel in Space. The Cybermen emerge and start to take over the Wheel.
18 May 1974: broadcast of third epsiode of Planet of the Spiders. While exploring the meditation centre, Sarah is transported to Metebelis Three, and the Doctor follows her in the Tardis.
iii) date specified in canon
18 May 1969: setting of much of Paul Leonard’s 1999 Eighth Doctor novel, Resurrection Man.
Yet more refinement of the events of the Silmarillion, in various different formats; I’m rather glad that the next volume in this series takes us to Númenor and away from Beleriand. The most interesting thing in this volume (though unfortunately also the least readable) is Tolkien’s casting of the Annals of Beleriand into Anglo-Saxon, a very visible piece of his commitment to reshaping English mythology by giving it new roots as invented by himself, though as it turned out rather a blind alley creatively. There is also some impressive forensic work on the faint pencil-drawn maps on which Tolkien planned out the geograohy of early Middle-Earth. But this is probably the least accessible so far of this rather obscure series.
If I have a mortgage secured on my house, and then sell said house to you, but neglect to use the proceeds of the sale to pay off the mortgage, does the lender of my mortgage still retain a claim on the house which you have bought?
17 May 1969: broadcast of fifth episode of The War Games. The Doctor infitrates the Chief Scientist’s laboratory, but Jamie’s raid on central control goes badly.
17 May 2008: broadcast of The Unicorn and the Wasp. The Doctor and Donna arrive at a house party in 1926 and, together with Agatha Christie, defeat the Vespiform.
16 May 1964: broadcast of “The Keys of Marinus”, sixth episode of the story we now call The Keys of Marinus. Susan, Barbara and the Doctor expose Eyesen and Kala and liberate Ian; the Voords have taken over the Conscience, but Ian gives them a false key and it explodes.
16 May 1970: broadcast of second episode of Inferno. More slime bubbles up, infecting Stahlman; and the Doctor vanishes, with Bessie and the Tardis console.
16 May 2003: webcast of second episode of Shada. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and Chris find Skagra’s invisible spaceship.
Latest of the Big Finish sequence of Companion Chronicles audios, this time bringing Mary Tamm to contemporary(ish) Norfolk to confront a somewhat sinister former astronaut turned cyborg aristocrat played by Madeleine Potter. Peter Anghelides hits a lot of good notes, the result being pretty faithful both to the Key to Time season and to the more steampunkish end of the Big Finish universe, and Tamm and Potter do it well.
I did notice a possible connection with Mary Tamm’s Baltic homeland – the observatory whose nickname is the title of the story has a tame astronomer called Öpik (I think – might be ‘Erpick’ I suppose) who presumably commemorates the famous scientist from Estonia who lived out his declining decades in Northern Ireland, and whose grandson Lembit became a prominent Liberal Democrat. Or maybe it is just coincidence.
15 May 1925: birth of Roy Stewart, who played Toberman in Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) and Tony in Terror of the Autons (1970).
15 May 1937: birth of Darrol Blake, director of The Stones of Blood (1979)
15 May 1990: death of Peter Grimwade, director of Full Circle (1980), Logopolis (1981), Kinda (1982) and Earthshock (1982) and writer of Time-Flight (1982), Mawdryn Undead (1983) and Planet of Fire (1984).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
15 May 1965: broadcast of “The Final Phase”, fourth episode of the story we now call The Space Museum. The Xerons revolt and kill the Moroks, allowing the Tardis team to escape.
15 May 1971: broadcast of sixth episode of Colony in Space. The Guardian destroys the ancient weapon, and himself; the IMC surrender to the colonists; the Master escapes, and the Doctor and Jo return home.
15 May 2010: broadcast of Amy’s Choice. Amy is forced to choose between different versions of reality by the Dream Lord.
iii) dates specified in canon
15 May 2008: death of Donna Noble’s father, Geoff.
15-18 May 2009: events of Gary Russell’s 2009 novel, Beautiful Chaos.
This book has been lingering on my ‘unread’ list for several years so I was a little annoyed with myself to realise that I had actually read it; I don’t have a note of having done so after buying it in 2007, so I must have previously owned a copy in the late 1990s or early 2000s. As usual, it is full of McDonald’s lush, dense, descriptive prose, taking us to various richly imagied environments (mostly near-future Earth, but not usually in the First World). The standout piece for me is “Toward Kilimanjaro”, the prequel to Chaga / Evolution’s Shore, but they are all great.
A solid tale of the life of Gogol Ganguli, born in Boston to Bengali parents in the late 1960s, coming to terms with America and his Indian background. I enjoyed it a lot; it’s basically an account of a complex love life against a complex cultural background, and Lahiri caught me out with a couple of the plot develoments. Recommended.
This is a collection of historical essays, edited by David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait, about political violence in Ireland between the mid-sixteenth century and the 1690s.
I found the first essay, by Edwards, much the most interesting for my own selfish purposes; he finds that political violence escalated during the sixteenth century because the English government increasingly used it as a political tool; he challenges the received wisdom that the endemic violence of the system before roughly the 1540s was as serious as it subsequently became, and also points out that violence of the earlier period hit the topmost echelons of society particularly hard – he has a nice table breaking down deaths of Irish rulers as to whether they took place in peacetime, or at the hands of their own kin, or at the hands of others. The change then comes with the removal of Butler supremacy in the 1540s and the attempts of the governments of Henry VIII’s children to enforce Dublin Castle / Whitehall control across the island. There were indeed counter-attacks by Irish chieftains on English-led forces, and on each other, but Edwards finds unambigously that the English used violence as a political tool first, and on a larger scale than the Irish were able to (including hitting the common folk as much as the lords).
It’s a provocative and counter-revisionist piece, and the editors of the books argue in their introduction (and a number of other contributors agree) that Irish historiography is perhaps more liberated to inquire honestly into the facts of political violence in the past, now that the threat of violence in the present is largely over. One contributor blames C.S. Lewis and W.B. Yeats for whitewashing Spenser, who was clearly initmately involved with the 1580 massacre at Smerwick. On the same period, Hiram Morgan has a typically profound analysis of the murders carried out on the orders (probably) of Hugh O’Neill.
There are a number of pieces on the traumatic 1640s, the best being one by Kenneth Nicholls on the 1642 massacres of Catholics by Protestants in Leinster and Munster (which followed the even bloodier 1641 massacres the other way round in Ulster), though I was also interested to read John R. Young’s account of the reception of Protestant refugees from Ulster in Scotland (it’s a shame that he doesn’t match this up with Ulster geography) and Mark Clinton, Linda Fibiger and Damian Shiels on the archaeology of a massacre at Carrickmines south of Dublin.
John Morrill and Micheál Ó Siochrú take two different looks at Cromwell and Drogheda, Ó Siochrú unpacking the contemporary published accounts of the massacre, Morrill looking at it in the context of Cromwell’s whole career – anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, but markedly less so than most of his allies. While Ó Siochrú sticks to (and reinforces) orthodox interpretations, Morrill is interestingly revisonist: for instance, he interprets Cromwell’s infamous description of those he ordered killes as “barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands with so much innocent blood” as referring to Royalists in general rather than Irish Catholics in general.
Anyway, relatively cheap for an academic volume and worth a read for a deeper understanding of the topic of the title. A couple of the writers make parallels with more recent wars in the Balkans, and I can see the point, though will have to reflect a bit further.
14 May 1925: birth of Ysanne Churchman, the voice of Alpha Centauri in The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974), and a Spider in Planet of the Spiders.
also 14 May 1925: birth of Tristram Cary, who wrote incidental music for six First Doctor stories and two later ones.
14 May 1942: birth of Prentis Hancock, who played a reporter in Spearhead from Space (1970), Vaber in Planet of the Daleks (1973), Salamar in Planet of Evil (1975) and The Ribos Operation (1978).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
14 May 1966: broadcast of “Johnny Ringo”, third episode of the story we now call The Gunfighters. Ring arrives in search of Doc Holiday, with fatal consequences for Charlie the barman and (indirectly) Warren Earp.
14 May 1998 1996: broadcast of Doctor Who: The Movie on Fox. The Doctor arrives in San Francisco at the end of December 1999, and regenerates after being shot; the resurrected Master attempts to take the Doctor’s body and/or destroy the Earth, but Grace prevents him.
14 May 2005: broadcast of Father’s Day. Rose prevents her father’s death, causing tremendous paradoxes which can be fixed only for a very high price.
13 May 1938: birth of Milton Johns, who played Benik in The Enemy of the World (1967-68), Guy Crayford in The Android Invasion (1975), and Kelner in The Invasion of Time (1978).
13 May 1946: birth of Tim Piggot-Smith, who played Captain Harker in The Claws of Axos (1971) and Marco in The Masque of Mandragora (1976).
13 May 1949: birth of Zoe Wanamaker, who played Lady Cassandra in The End of the World (2005) and New Earth (2006).
broadcast anniversaries
13 May 1967: sixth episode of The Faceless OnesThe Mutants. Ky is transformed into a superbeing and kills the Marshal; Sondergaard stays on to help the other Solonians transform.
13 May 2006: broadcast of Rise of the Cybermen. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey arrive in a parallel world where Rose’s father is still alive and the Cybermen are coming.
Here’s a third post on my Hugo nominations – I took advantage of my recent indisposition to watch the nominees for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) from a recumbent position, and formed therefore the following scientific views.
6) Toy Story 3. I had somehow missed the first two Toy Story films, and based on this I don’t feel especially deprived. The animation is cute but the plot risible. Woody’s barely reciprocated loyalty to Andy is rather pathetic, and the rest of the characterisation is wafer-thin. You more or less know what will happen in the film from the first five minutes, and I found it difficult to keep up my interest.
5) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. There are some good moments in this – notably the legend of the Three Brothers, told in animation about three quarters of the way through – and Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe are still very watchable, as are many of their older costars. But it’s awfully slow and yet also disjointed. Shame that they didn’t gut the book (which is also too long) and just make a single film of the good bits.
4) How to Train Your Dragon. Another animated film, but one with actual plot and humour, as the geek among the Viking warrior kids discovers that intelligence and compassion can be better than brawn and bashing things when dealing with awful threats like dragons and adolescence. It’s not exactly profound, but the script is witty and the animation excellent.
3) No Award. I mean, seriously, folks, it would be embarrassing for any of the above to win.
2) Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I found it pretty easy to rank the lower three, but wavered between my top two. In the end, though I greatly enjoyed this, I am putting it second. It’s a lovely film, but I was sorry about the inevitable screen truncation of Scott and Ramona’s relationship from the series of graphic novels and concentration on action sequences (of which my favourite, the library fight between Knives and Ramona, was also axed). The film also seemed a bit more racially dodgy than the original. Still very enjoyable though.
1) Inception. In forty years’ time, when my grandchildren (or yours) ask me how I voted in this year’s Hugos, I think this is the only defensible choice. Admittedly I found it rather hard to follow, due to being in pain and on various drugs while watching it in several installments, but that was true when I watched all the others as well, so in fact not a great excuse. It looks and sounds utterly fantastic, and is clearly paying homage to Philip K. Dick while bringing in various other sexual and social paranoias, in the ultimate example of someone’s personal relationships interfering with their career. I wasn’t totally sure about Ellen Page (either her character or her performance), but maybe my appreciation would have been greater under normal circumstances. In any case, no work of art is perfect, and I can happily give this my top vote.
12 May 1968: birth of Catherine Tate, who played Donna Noble in New Who from 2006 to 2010.
12 May 2001: death of Norman Kay, who composed the incidental music for An Unearthly Child (1963), The Keys of Marinus (1964) and The Sensorites (1964).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
12 May 1973: broadcast of sixth episode of Planet of the Daleks. The Doctor, Jo and the Thals trap the Daleks in the ice volcano.
12 May 1996: first broadcast of Doctor Who: The Movie on a local cable channel in Edmonton, Canada.
12 May 2007: no Doctor Who episode shown today, the series taking a break for the Eurovision Song contest between The Lazarus Experiment and 42.
iii) date specified in canon
12 May 1999: birth of Adelaide Brooke, who we meet in The Waters of Mars (2009).
