I had already read three out of the five novels on the BSFA shortlist, so have duly equipped myself with the other two. This is a story of a near-future cyberdisaster in California, with all the adults’ brains corrupted by a massive software malfunction and two teenagers caught in the peculiar interactions of the badly damaged society. Neuromancer meets Hurricane Katrina, perhaps.

I previously had tried Sullivan’s Maul, which made the shortlist for both BSFA and Arthur C. Clarke awards a few years back, and wasn’t enthused, completely failing to spot the link between the two story lines until I read someone else’s review months later; Lightborn left me a bit like that too, with densely described incident and characters, but also an abrupt ending which I didn’t understand and lots in the middle which I couldn’t keep track of (I lost my place in it yesterday and found it surprisingly difficult to find again where I had stopped reading). No doubt that is a reflection more on me than on the author, but I don’t think this will be getting my top vote.

This anthology should not be confused with a quite different book with exactly the same title, but edited by Jim McGarry, which I read and didn’t much care for just over a year ago. I did like this one. Haining has constructed it as an introduction to fantastic literature for readers interested in Ireland, rather than desperately grabbing anything vaguely genre and Hibernian; this does mean that some entries don’t strictly fit the remit – “The Canterville Ghost”, by Oscar Wilde, has no Irish connection apart from its author, and the final piece by Ray Bradbury (who also supplies an introduction to the volume as a whole) has no fantasy content. But it’s an eclectic and interesting anthology, with pieces from Giraldus Cambrensis and James Joyce (the passage about Hell from Portrait) as well as the more obvious Maturin, Hodgson, Lovecraft, Le Fanu, Yeats, Dunsany, Sinead de Valera, etc. Worth getting hold of.

I’ve been working my way through various works of Asian religion recently (see my takes on The Koran and Ta Hsüeh and Chung Yung from last year). The Mahābhārata is much more accessible than the other two, though also much much longer – the Penguin edition is 800 pages, and that is with two thirds of the text brutally summarized. Of course, it helps that there is a plot as well as profound philosophical, theological and moral discourse; perhaps the fairer comparison is with Homer (where I think the Mahābhārata still wins).

I did sometimes find it difficult to keep the names straight on my head; John D. Smith’s translation and adaptation makes few concessions. I’m not used to Indian nomenclature and wasn’t quite prepared for Kṛṣṇa rather than Krishna. It was rather late in the book before I distinguished Bhīṣma and Bhīma; and I was puzzled by the brother and sister demons Hiḍimbā and Hiḍimba until I looked a bit closer. But this is how one learns.

The epic itself is a grand mythological tale of a battle between two families, the hundred demonic sons of Dhṛtarāṣtra and the five Pāṇḍava brothers (who between them have four fathers and two mothers). The first five books (of 18) are the setup: the genealogy of the two sides, including various miraculous feats of reproduction – pregnancies varying in length from a day to a year, children born from the landscape after passing heroic men ejaculate upon it; I note also that women in the Mahābhārata actually menstruate which is rare in any fiction I have read. There is even a transsexual charioteer, Śikhaṇḍī.

The actual battle, which occupies the next five books, is about as tedious as most fictional epic battles. I was interested though that the world of the Mahābhārata is actually rather high-tech; Indra’s chariot which takes people to another world is distinctly spaceshippy, and the mystical Weapons of This and That which are wielded on the battlefield are definitely technologies of mass destruction, a thought which famously occurred to Robert Oppenheimer. Also of course one has built up a certain sympathy for the characters in the earlier chapters, particularly the Pāṇḍava brothers and their long-suffering joint wife, Draupadī.

The philosophy comes in two large chunks. The more famous passage is actually the shorter of the two: the Bhagavad Gītā is preached by Kṛṣṇa to Arjuna, the most attractive character among the Pāṇḍava brothers, on the eve of the battle, and is an exposition on the theme of dharma, which encompasses duty, legal obligation, and destiny. But I actually found more interesting the longer passage, two entire books (books 12 and 13) of the dying reflections of Bhīṣma (fatally wounded at the start of the battle, seven books earlier). It is a fascinating blend of very profound meditations on the meaning of life and how one should behave to one’s fellow human beings and the natural world, combined with a fairly strong element of supernatural justification for the continued social supremacy of the Brahman class.

Anyway, this is a colossally intense read, and probably it’s worth trying to absorb through some other medium rather than a paperback adaptation (eg the Indian TV series, which in this day and age cannot be too difficult to obtain). But I found it rather rewarding.

broadcast anniversaries

6 February 1965: broadcast of “Inferno”, fourth episode of the story we now call The Romans, and nothing to do with the 1970 story of the same name. The Doctor accidentally sets fire to Nero’s plans for Rome, and Nero decides to burn the city down. The time travelers are reunited, the Doctor and Vicki unaware of Ian and Barbara’s adventures.

6 February 1971: broadcast of second episode of The Mind of Evil. The Doctor speaks Chinese, but the Chinese assistant attacks the American delegate to the peace conference.

6 February 2008: broadcast of Meat (Torchwood), the one with the icky alien source of, well, meat.

A fascinating autobiography – though in fact it covers only the years from the outbreak of the second world war, in the late 1930s, to Grass’s first marriage 20 years later. I don’t think you can read it without also reading or having read The Tin Drum, which has a lot of autobiographical elements in it, here carefully untangled and explained. Grass of course did not have the option of not growing up; he ended up rapidly inducted into the SS as the Eastern Front crumbled, hints at being interned together with the future Pope Benedict XVI, and was cast adrift in the Rhineland like so many other easterners after the war ended, finding his way to literature through a sculpture career which began with making tombstones. Often horrifying, at times sexy and funny, it’s not quite the book I expected but I think it is a hugely important contribution to understanding how Germany has become the sort of country it is now from the country it once was. The book’s revelation that Grass had been in the SS was apparently news when it came out, though this basically illustrates the whole problem of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Strongly recommended.

My expectations were low of this month’s Big Finish main sequence release, The Crimes of Thomas Brewster, mainly because I was never impressed by the eponymous character, played by soap heart-throb John Pickard in three Fifth Doctor stories in 2008 and then as one of the Three Companions whose story was released episodically by Big Finish in 2009-10. But actually it was not bad at all: there wasn’t too much Brewster in it, in any case Pickard seems to have raised his game significantly, and the Sixth Doctor / Evelyn Smythe interaction is hugely lifted by the reintroduction of Anna Hope as Mancunian police detective Patricia Menzies, after her appearance in two 2008 Big Finish plays also with Colin Baker but set later in the Sixth Doctor’s continuity; and David Troughton turns up as a wonderfully gravel-voiced East End crime boss. The story is basically a standard alien invasion of contemporary London, with the point being to get Brewster back in the regular cast for the next two stories, but there is some quite clever stuff with working out what people actually know about the Doctor, and who he is. And the cast seem well up for it (Maggie Stables gets to be the voice of an alien intelligence as well as her usual inimitable Evelyn). Reasonably accessible for non-fans, given that the three recurring characters other than the Doctor are from different places in Big Finish continuity and so need the background helpfully explained to them.

I’ve been following the grim collapse of the Irish political system with awed fascination over the last few months, thanks to posts by , Slugger O’Toole and in particular the excellent Irish political reform blog, where Adrian Kavanagh has made a series of posts about the electoral maths. This has sparked my own thoughts about just how badly the main government party, Fianna Fáil, is going to lose; having been the biggest single party in every election since 1932, are now placing not second but third (after Fine Gael and Labour) in most opinion polls, with some hints that they could even drop to fourth place behind Sinn Féin.

This is apocalyptic stuff, but probably accurate. I think that FF will find it much more difficult to attract transfers from other parties’ voters in this election than they have previously. I remember the days of polarisation of the early 1980s, when there were pretty tight transfers between all other parties to keep Charlie Haughey out. The elections in 1981 and November 1982 were, incredibly, the last two occasions on which an FF government failed to get back in (all six subsequent elections have delivered an FF-led government, though one of them was replaced halfway through the Dail term). In those days FF were polling in the mid-40s, percentage-wise, rather than the mid-teens as now. In 1981, Charlie Haughey managed only 78 TDs out of 166 with 45.3% of the vote; in November 1982, he got only 75 TDs with 45.2% of the vote. Note that the ‘seat bonus’ which normally goes to the largest party almost disappeared in 1981 and was actually negative in November 1982. Adrian Kavanagh, I think quite correctly, predicts that FF’s percentage of seats is unlikely to match its percentage of the vote in 2011.

Even that may be optimistic. Looking at Kavanagh’s detailed figures, FF are teetering on the edge. There are only six constituencies out of 43 where Kavanagh expects FF candidates to get a full quota, if their national vote is 15-16% (Louth, Cork North West, Cork South Central, Dublin South, Carlow–Kilkenny, Limerick City, and Laois–Offaly – and that last depends on the party retaining the personal vote of outgoing Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who is not standing). But it is notable that the party is running more than one candidate in 23 of the other 37 constituencies, in other words two or three candidates will be scrapping it out for a vote share barely enough to elect one of them. That way lies disaster (look at the SDLP in West Tyrone in 2007).

My sometime co-author Noel Whelan has been saying recently that there is no floor below which Fianna Fáil’s support cannot fall. It’s worth noting that the 16% they are currently looking at in the polls is identical to the vote share gained by the Canadian Conservative government in the 1993 election there, where they won precisely two seats out of 308. Of course the proportional system means that 16% of the votes in Ireland still gets you, ideally, a sixth of the seats. But the threshold for annihilation is not a lot lower than 16% for a party like FF whose support is smeared fairly evenly across the country rather than with strong local pockets of support. (The other side of that coin is that it is more difficult for small parties like Labour and SF, who have depended on strong local pockets of support in previous elections, to break into the territory where their vote share matches their tally of seats, but to be honest I think we are looking at numbers for both parties where this won’t be a problem.)

Anyway, roll on 25 February, and the days of counting and recrimination which will follow.

broadcast anniversaries

5 February 1966: broadcast of “War of God”, first episode of the story we now call The Massacre. The Doctor and Steven land in France; the Doctor wanders off looking for an apothecary, and Steven falls in with Huguenots.

5 February 1972: broadcast of second episode of The Curse of Peladon. Jo and the Doctor suspect the Ice Warriors, but they in turn suspect Arcturus; and the Doctor is condemned to death.

5 February 1977: broadcast of second episode of The Robots of Death. Poul suspects Uvanov and relieves him of command; the sandminer’s engines are stopped and it starts to sink…

i) births and deaths

4 February 1919: birth of Peter Butterworth, who played the Meddling Monk in The Time Meddler (1965) and The Daleks’ Master Plan (1966).

4 February 1980: death of David Whitaker, the first script editor of Doctor Who (from An Unearthly Child to The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and writer of The Rescue (1964), The Crusade (1965), The Power of the Daleks (1966), The Evil of the Daleks (1966-67), The Enemy of the World (1967-68), The Wheel in Space (1968) and The Ambassadors of Death (1970); also of the 1965 stage play, The Curse of the Daleks, and of two of the first three novelisations, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (1964) and Doctor Who and the Crusaders (1965).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

4 February 1967: broadcast of fourth episode of The Underwater Menace. The Doctor and friends prevent Zaroff’s plan but Atlantis is flooded and destroyed.

4 February 1978: broadcast of first episode of The Invasion of Time. The Doctor returns to Gallifrey and has himself inaugurated as President, but collapses on contact with the Matrix.

• BBC News – Six exoplanets in close orbit around far-flung star
  Everyone's been linking to this, but it is tremendous news.
  (tags: space astronomy)

broadcast anniversaries

3 February 1968: broadcast of first episode of The Web of Fear. The Tardis lands in a deserted London Underground; Jamie and Zoe are captured by the soldiers of an outpost and the Doctor encounters the Yeti.

3 February 1973: broadcast of second episode of Carnival of Monsters. The Doctor and Jo explore further inside the Miniscope, and encounter the Drashigs.

3 February 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Armageddon Factor. The Shadow tries to get the first five segments from the Doctor, who escapes; the Marshal launches his “final attack”.

3 February 1984: broadcast of fourth epsiode of Frontios. The Doctor gets the Gravis to reassemble the Tardis and removes him from Frontios, neutralising the other Tractators.

3 February 1996: broadcast of third episode of The Ghosts of N-Space on BBC Radio. The Doctor discovers that Vilmio is an immortal alchemist, while the Brigadier and Jeremy attempt to retake the castle.

• No Sleep 'Til Brooklands: A True Story Of Daily Mail Lies (guest post)
  If you know anyone who actually reads the Daily Mail, get them to read this.
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• Expelled after interviewing Saharawi on EU fisheries
  "They explained that we, as foreigners, are not allowed to speak with the local population. The more we asked about why that is not allowed, the angrier the police got."
  (tags: westernsahara)
• Free ebook: The Best of Edmond Hamilton edited by Leigh Brackett – Grasping for the Wind
  I was rather impressed by the work of both Hamilton and Brackett when I sampled them recently in the Hartwell / Cramer _Space Opera Renaissance_ anthology. Now we have a chance to read the best of Hamilton for free, I shall gladly take it.
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• Iylliana – I hate my phone – a rant
  Don't call Angela, and she won't call you.
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• Complicating the transition in U.S.-Egyptian relations by Daniel Levy | The Middle East Channel
  Brilliant piece by Levy, who was on Cambridge University Students Union's executive committee with me many years ago.
  (tags: middleeast usa)
• All Icelandic literature to go online? | Internet Archive Blogs
  "The total literature of Iceland is under 50,000 books, which is easily scannable in 2 years by 12 people". This proposal is being put forward by the wonderfully named Þorsteinn Hallgrímsson. With a capital Þ.
  (tags: books internet iceland)
• The Lipstick Chronicles: The Least Among Us
  What happened to Melissa Mia Hall.
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I was rather pleased to find that I had already read three of the novels on this year’s BSFA Award shortlist, and it seems eminently possible to assess everything on the list; though I would appreciate guidance on Notes from Coode Street – any particularly good episodes to recommend? I doubt I will have time to listen to all of it.

The short fiction category in particular is easily digestible – only four stories on it this year, and all are now available online. I thought they were all very good – even “Arrhythmia”, which I did not find especially adventurous, is at least very well written – and recommend them all. In reverse order, my votes will be for:

4) “Arrhythmia” by Neil Williamson (PDF)

A grim dystopian tale of an industrialized small-minded society, and an illusory spark of youthful rebellion through music. Somehow very English in the way it is told, though the factory environment reminded me most of Zamyatin (who apparently was using contemporary England as his model for We). Very nicely done, though one has a good idea from the start of where it is likely to end up, and it’s really the kind of story Brian Aldiss might have been scornful of fifty years ago.

3) “The Shipmaker” by Aliette de Bodard (PDF)

This is a rather lyrical tale setting in close juxtaposition the creation of a spaceship and the birth of a its future pilot. I wasn’t always quite sure what was going on, and I suspect I missed some of the context by not being familiar with de Bodard’s Xuya sequence of stories in which China discovered America before Columbus, but I loved reading it.

2) “Flying in the Face of God” by Nina Allan (PDF)

Like Williamson’s story, somehow very British in tone: a journalist explores the effects of spaceflight (and interrogates the reality of memory) through both her friend, who is being gradually mutated by a new treatment for astronauts, and her mother, who was killed many years before when her mission was sabotaged on take-off. There is lots of stuff here in such a short story and it is juggled very well. (I wasn’t quite sure about the timing of some of the biographical details of the protagonist’s mother, but I guess good stories are often told about unusual people.)

Interesting to note that both the de Bodard and Allan stories are by women, about women, set in an alternate history where space flight developed differently from our reality, and published in Interzone. Maybe I will start subscribing again.

1) “The Things” by Peter Watts

An excellent atmospheric re-telling of The Thing from the Thing’s point of view. I haven’t seen either the 1951 or the 1982 films, but I have read the original story, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell jr, sufficiently long ago that I was hazy on the names of the characters (which are from the film here, rather than the original story) but still familiar with the scenario of the shape-shifting alien entity taking over the scientists (and dogs) on an Antarctic base, one by one. I thoroughly enjoyed it; Watts is disturbingly convincing at conveying the alien entity’s disgust with humanity, and its own efforts to work out what is actually going on make an effective counterpoint to the efforts of the humans to defeat it.

With some hesitation, because I liked all the others, particularly Nina Allan’s story (which I note has the support of Williamson and de Bodard!), “The Things” gets my top vote.

And I must say I’m impressed by the tastes of the BSFA selectorate. I haven’t read much short SF in recent years – reading big heavy books has biased my mental gears towards the long form, though I do try and at least what has been shortlisted for the major awards. But unlike last year’s list, where I found three of the six stories awful (including the winner), and unlike the Hugo nomination lists, which occasionally make me despair, I actually get the feeling from this rather short shortlist that I may be missing out by not reading more widely.

i) births and deaths

2 February 1930: birth of Don Houghton, who wrote Inferno (1970) and The Mind of Evil (1971).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 February 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Sarah is indoctrinated by the People; the Doctor is framed as the man behind the appearance of the dinosaurs.

2 February 1982: broadcast of second episode of Kinda. The unhinged Hindle takes over the base; Todd returns, equally out of his mind; Tegan, possessed by the mara, takes over Aris.

2 February 1983: broadcast of second episode of Mawdryn Undead. The Doctor meets the Brigadier and shocks him into remembering his previous incarnations; Tegan and Nyssa meet the younger Brigadier, and then a man with no top to his skull.

2 February 1984: broadcast of third episode of Frontios. Turlough remembers his own world’s lore about the Tractators, who still have Tegan and the Doctor trapped in the tunnels.

2 February 1985: broadcast of first episode of Mark of the Rani, introducing Kate O’Mara as the Rani. In 1820s England, the Rani’s experiments, aided by the Master, are turning locals into violent Luddites.

• Scale on Vimeo
  Scary Jupiter!
  (tags: astronomy space)
• http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/orrery_2006.swf
  Copernican or Tychonian?
  (tags: astronomy space)

i) births and deaths

1 February 1948: birth of Elisabeth Sladen, who plays Sarah Jane Smith (companion to Third and Fourth Doctors, 1973-76; various appearances since then culminating in her own series since 2007). Happy Birthday, Lis!

ii) broadcast anniversaries

1 February 1964: broadcast of “The Rescue”, seventh episode of the story we now call The Daleks (and nothing to do with the story we now call The Rescue). Ian, Barbara and the Thals destroy the Daleks’ power source, defeating them, and rescue the Doctor and Susan.

1 February 1969: broadcast of second episode of The Seeds of Death. The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie head for the Moon by rocket; Miss Kelly T-Mats to the Moon and repairs the equipment but is captured by the Ice Warriors.

1 February 1975: broadcast of second episode of The Ark in Space. The humans on the Ark start to wake up; but Noah, their leader, has been infected by the Wirrn.

1 February 1982: broadcast of first episode of Kinda. The Doctor and Adric are captured by the Earth expedition on Deva Loka; Tegan’s mind is ensnared by the wind chimes.

1 February 1983: broadcast of first epsiode of Mawdryn Undeadiii) date specified in canon

1 February 1967: birth of Jackie Tyler, née Prentice. (At least of the parallel version from Pete’s World.)

Non-fiction: 5
The Hiſtory of That moſt Eminent Stateſman, Sir John Perrott
Sisters of Sinai, by Janet Soskice
For Noble Purposes, by Richard Porter
Tyrone’s Rebellion, by Hiram Morgan
The Secret Life of Trees, by Colin Tudge

Non-genre fiction: 1
The Undiscovered Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov

SF (non-Who): 3 (4 counting comics)
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake

Who: 6
Heart of TARDIS, by Dave Stone
Doctor Who Annual 1979
AHistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe, by Lance Parkin
Shadowmind, by Christopher Bulis
The Scarlet Empress, by Paul Magrs
Doctor Who Annual 1980

Comics: 1
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers vol.2, by Fumi Yoshinaga

Page count: 4396 (I know, suspiciously precise).
2/16 books by women (Soskice, Yoshinaga).
1/16 by PoC (Yoshinaga).
Owned for more than a year: 5 (The Undiscovered Chekhov, For Noble Purposes, The Secret Life of Trees, The Scarlet Empress, Shadowmind).
Rereads: 3 (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Doctor Who Annual 1979).

Best book of the month: Sisters of Sinai

Programmed reads: 12 from 10 lists
d: Undiscovered Chekhov (non-genre books by entry order)
i and j: Gormenghast Trilogy (sf by popularity among LT readers and on LJ poll)
l: Shadowmind (NA’s in sequence)
m: Scarlet Empress (EDA’s in sequence)
n: AHistory (New Who books by popularity, though this has Old Who elements too)
o: Heart of TARDIS (Old Who books by popularity)
r: The Hiſtory of Sir John Perrott and Tyrone’s Rebellion (Tudors and Ireland)
t: For Noble Purposes (unreviewed books acquired by end 2005 in reverse entry order)
u: Secret Life of Trees (unreviewed books acquired from 2006 on in entry order)

Coming next, possibly:
The Mahābhārata (already started)
Peeling the Onion by Günther Grass (already started)
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan (already started)
Irish Tales of Terror edited by Peter Haining
The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay
How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ
Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin
Book of Lost Tales Pt. 2 by J.R.R. Tolkien
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
Elizabeth I by C. Haigh
Short Trips by British Broadcasting Corporation
Chicks Dig Time Lords edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea
The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Fall of the House of Usher, And Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Birthright by Nigel Robinson
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
The Janus Conjunction by Trevor Baxendale
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Onion’s Our Dumb World: 73rd Edition: Atlas of the Planet Earth
In the Heart of the Desert by John Chryssavgis

i) broadcast anniversaries

31 January 1970: broadcast of first episode of Doctor Who and the SiluriansThe Seeds of Doom. A mysterious pod is found in Antarctica; it opens, infecting a nearby scientist. The Doctor and Sarah come to investigate.

31 January 1981: broadcast of first episode of The Keeper of Traken. First appearance of Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, and of Anthony Ainley though not yet as the Master. The dying Keeper invites the Doctor to come to Traken, where social balance is threatened by the evil calcified Melkur.

ii) date specified in canon

31 January 2007: the SS Elysium arrives in Panama after its encounter with Cybermen, as told in David Banks’ 1993 novel Iceberg.

That brings January to an end, much the heaviest month in this project with 107 Old Who anniversaries, five Torchwood, one each of Sarah Jane Adventures and New Who, and various other things to take into account. February and March are also fairly intense; April and May (where many Old Who seasons had finished, and the numbers are not quite balanced out by the start of New Who) less so, and June will be a welcome relief.

With due respect to the anonymous commenter on the previous review in this series, I think that it is clearly Mary Tamm depicted in the 1980 Annual, and it’s a definite improvement from the previous few years. One feels somehow a lot more grounded in the series. Unfortunately, of course, by the time most kids were reading this, Mary Tamm had transformed into Lalla Ward, so the impact was a bit muted, but I read it while still watching The Armageddon Factor so it worked reasonably well for me.

The stories are about average, and the filler material below. However I was interested that the crossword had a number of references to Who continuity (indeed more, apart from Romana, than the whole rest of the annual). Several stories also imply that the Doctor is taking Romana on a regular training mission on behalf of the Time Lords’ Academy, which is amusing considering the role both she and it play in the much later Big Finish Gallifrey stories. As in the TV show, K9 is in some stories but not in others. There is one interesting comment on politics of the late 1970s from the story “Reluctant Warriors” in the middle of the annual:

Alix lowered his voice. “You may remember Leondin from your last visit, when he was campaigning for more leisure and shorter working hours.” The Doctor nodded. “People were fooled by his persuasive talk and he was elected. Of course, some of us tried to block him on the grounds that he was mentally unstable, but we were outnumbered.

“As soon as he could, he threw out all the old senators and replaced them with his pleasure-seeking cronies. Soon the whole city seemed to think of nothing but pleasure, and Leondin provided more and more sophisticated entertainments to keep them happy in their long hours of leisure.”

“Surely there must be some sensible people left,” said Romana.

“There are a few of us,” said Alix, “but we cannot get together because Leondin has us watched. He has forbidden meetings of any kind, and controls all press and television. I suspect that he even has his spies in this building.”

This annual was written and published shortly after the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent and the subsequent Conservative election victory, and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the writer was trying to make some allusion to current affairs.

Despite its flaws, which I discuss in the full post, this chapter is basically a really good introduction to the reign and times of Justinian.In 61 pages, it covers i) the Empress Theodora, ii) the factions at the Circus, iii) the economy of Justinian’s empire, especially relating to silk and taxes, iii) the Hagia Sophia and other famous buildings, including the fortifications, iv) the state of learning in the empire. It is the first of four chapters covering Justinian’s reign, with more about the Persians and the church, and I think that if the level of quality continues then I’ll be recommending this sequence of chapters as a way in to Gibbon as well as Justinian.

i) births and deaths

30 January 1966: birth of Daphne Ashbrook, who played Grace Holloway in the TV Movie (1996).

30 January 1997: death of Nicholas Mallet, who directed The Mysterious Planet (1986), Paradise Towers 1987) and The Curse of Fenric (1989).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

30 January 1965: broadcast of “Conspiracy”, third episode of the story we now call The Romans. The Doctor is made to play the lyre but pulls an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’; the empress Poppæa conspires to poison Barbara; and Ian is ordered to fight to the death in the arena.

30 January 1971: broadcast of first episode of The Mind of Evil. Peculiar goings-on with the Keller Machine in Stangmoor Prison; meanwhile UNIT is guarding both a nuclear missile and a peace conference. What can possibly go wrong?

30 January 2008: broadcast of To The Last Man (Torchwood), the one with Toshiko’s annually defrosted boyfriend.

• APOD: 2011 January 29 – Opportunity at Santa Maria Crater
  Wow.
  (tags: astronomy space)
• Samuel F B Morse has a posse – The Wilkinsons and 'Christian' opposition to anti-discrimination laws
  "How have the Wilkinsons achieved virtual martyrdom status in UK conservative evangelical circles in the space of about 12 hours since Archbishop Cranmer reheated the story? Either they are as naive as they are projecting, or alternatively they knew the law, knowingly broke the law, and have little to complain about if they are then subject to the consequences of the law."
  (tags: genderandsexandsexuality religion ukpolitics)
• http://belgiq.eu/
  Speaks for itself really.
  (tags: belgium)
• 'Leaving bitterness behind' – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
  "As his country begins the countdown to independence, legendary South Sudanese commander Gen. Joseph Lagu talks about days gone by, and of his people's secret ties with Israel."
  (tags: sudan middleeast)
• S. Worthen | Weblog – Tea with Triffids (this time with biscuits)
  "Five cups of tea are drunk on approximately two occasions over the course of The Day of the Triffids… Coffee appears sooner, but no more frequently… This book is chockful of alcohol in a very 50s way."
  (tags: sf)

This is one of the best plays Big Finish have ever done. I had reasonably high hopes after reading the very connubial mutual interview between author Nev Fountain and star Nicola Bryant in the last Doctor Who Magazine, and even more so after reading Andrew Hickey’s very positive and detailed review, and I was not disappointed. Nicola Bryant has been awfully good as Peri throughout the Big Finish run of audios; here Fountain has picked up on a number of the things that made The Kingmaker also one of the best Big Finish audios, and managed to both tie up a number of loose ends in Peri’s story and add considerable depth to her character without overburdening her. The two actors involved, Bryant and Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, are both called on to perform rather more intensely and diversely than usual and both really rise to it. Like Andrew Hickey, I was left full of admiration for Bryant’s convincing portrayal of young Peri with the Fifth Doctor just before The Caves of Androzani, combined with her equally convincing portrayal of 2009 Peri who has no memory of the Sixth Doctor at all. I am always attracted by doppelganger-style stories anyway but I loved the layers of disguise and identity in this one. And Fountain and Bryant managed to mix some pretty grim subject matter (which Big Finish don’t always manage to pull off) with the comedy elements where they are perhaps more at home. Very strongly recommended, though I think one would need at least a passing familiarity not just with Doctor Who but with the Peri era to really enjoy it.

Several people had been recommending this to me. I laughed and laughed. Only a shame it was Mobistar rather than Belgacom.

i) births and deaths

29 January 1930: birth of William Emms, author of TV story Galaxy 4 (1965) and the widely forgotten Sixth Doctor book, Mission to Venus (1986).

29 January 1976: birth of Mark Clapham, author and co-author of various Doctor who novels and books.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

29 January 1966: broadcast of “The Destruction of Time”, twelfth episode of the story we now call The Daleks’ Master Plan. The Doctor activates the Time Destructor, killing the Daleks, but also aging Sara Kingdom to death. Last appearance of Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom, though she comes back again as Morgaine in 1989.

29 January 1972: broadcast of first episode of The Curse of Peladon. The Doctor and Jo arrive on Peladopn and are mistaken for the Earth delegation of ambassadors adjudicating Peladon’s application to join the Federation.

29 January 1977: broadcast of first episode of The Robots of Death. The Tardis lands on a giant mobile sandminer, whose crew are being murdered one by one.

A hint from and some more googling found me the bande dessinée I was trying to identify: it is Autonomes, the first of a trilogy called Chroniques de fin de siècle, by Jan Bucquoy (better known as a film director, including of La Vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-78). There is a plot summary herecomics shop.

Browsing in a Paris bookshop, in about 1983, I remember looking through a bande dessinée set in a post-breakup Belgium, Flander under authoritarian rule and Wallonia kind of free and easy.

Does that ring any bells for anyone? If you know it please tell me; I’d love to track it down now.

i) births and deaths

28 January 1938: birth of Christopher Coll, who played Phipps in The Seeds of Death (1969) and Stubbs in The Mutants (1972).

28 January 1976: death of James Mellor, who played Sean Flannigan in The Wheel in Space (1969) and Varan in The Mutants (1972).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

28 January 1967: broadcast of third episode of The Underwater Menace. This is the first surviving Troughton episode, the one with the appalling dance of the fish-people and “NUZZINK IN ZE VURLD CAN STOP ME NOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!” I would swap it for any of the dozen lost Troughton episodes which preceded it.

28 January 1978: broadcast of fourth episode of Underworld. The Trogs are rescued by Jackson and the Doctor, and the P7E is blown up.

• Let His People Go: Sudan’s Lesson for Secession « EJIL: Talk!
  My old friend Tim Waters: "the real danger to peace is not peoples’ desire to form new states. It is the willingness of the present powers in this world to resist that desire with violence. Chaos and death are not consequences of opening Pandora’s box – they *are* the box. We have stumbled onto that truth in Sudan, after 40 years and Niles of blood. We should not have to learn it all over again, in every war, and every generation."
  (tags: sudan)
• In the Dock, in Paris « EJIL: Talk!
  Latest on the bizarre case of the Israeli academic using the French courts to sue the American editor who published a German professor's book review in an online law journal. Verdict expected in March.
  (tags: freespeech reviews)
• Supreme Court Mistakenly Used Belgium's Constitution For Last 3 Rulings | The Onion – America's Finest News Source
  The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it would have to review two weeks' worth of procedure after determining it had mistakenly based its last three rulings on a copy of the Belgian constitution left in the justices' chambers. "When I presented my case on legal citizenship status under proposed changes to immigration law, I wondered why they said my argument was in direct opposition to the parliamentary rights of the Walloons," said lawyer Hector Martinez, who argued before the court last week. "In light of this information, I think their denying my case based on a precedent set by the Duke of Beaufort in 1782 is null and void." Martinez has appealed his case, but is still awaiting confirmation of his audience with His Majesty Albert II.
  (tags: belgium usa funny)