Non-fiction: 4

Shakespeare: 4

Fiction (non-sf): 4

SF (non-Who): 6

Who: 1

Comics: 1

3/20 by women (Greer, Rand and Rowling).
1/20 by PoC (Tomine)
Total page count ~5700.
Owned for more than one year: 5 (The Go-Between, Rasselas, Fortunata and Jacinta, A Case of Conscience [reread], Most Ancient Song)
Also reread: Twelfth Night, Starship Troopers, Farmer in the Sky, The Stainless Steel Rat Omnibus (for a total of 5).

A story of a young boy who becomes involved in a secret romance – some similarity with McEwan’s Atonement, though the outcome is quite different. I found the narrator very naïve for a thirteen-year-old – at that age I was devouring Agatha Christie novels and I like to think I’d have worked out what was going on. However, otherwise Hartley has some acute observations about the way adults treat children, and each other. The coda, set two generations later, manages to be a satisfactory conclusion to the novel and yet shows that the story is not over (and perhaps never will be).

Well, it took me a while to get into it, but I have developed a healthy relationship with Wii Fit. Since the start of the year I have successfully established a routine of doing half an hour on it in the mornings – two yoga exercises, and one fron each of the other three categories – and am at the stage which I never came close to reaching during my flirtation with the gym, where I actually get out of bed looking forward to it, and have missed only one day a week so far. On top of that, I think it is actually doing me some good. I haven’t lost any weight – that will take some attention to my diet, I think – but I feel that it’s better distributed, and working better for me. (In any case my weight is only a shade above the desirable band.)

Meanwhile we seem to have acquired a number of games for the Wii. Young F kindly got us the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix game for Christmas, and has inevitably spent more time on it than we have (I can’t get the levitating to work). He is now campaigning for us to connect the Wii to the internet so that he can do Mario Karting with people round the world. No chance.

I’ve had this hanging around for ages, and eventually read it last week – it is very short, only 112 pages in my Penguin edition, and the original was only 93. Rasselas, as the title declares, is a prince of Abyssinia, who lives in a happy valley of the kingdom where he and his friends and family are preserved from all disturbing outside influences. With his friend, Imlac, his sister Nekayah, and her companion Pekuah, they tunnel out of the happy valley in search of adventure and take up residence in Cairo. They meet a deranged astronomer, and get him back in touch with reality; they get their adventure when Pekuah is kidnapped by Arabs; but she is rescued without too much drama. At the end of the book, they conclude that their dreams are unattainable and resolve to go back home.

I was interested that the action is exclusively set in Africa. There is mention of Europeans being in Cairo, and this making it a cosmopolitan city, but I don’t think we meet any of them. I was also interested that the astronomer character, whose delusion is that he is in sole control of the planets and the weather, is aware of the moons of Jupiter. We are clearly meant to read the African characters as disaffected young English men and women, and that is how they are portrayed (with a touch of Orientalism) in the illustrated editions on-line; I don’t think Johnson is really trying to say anything about Africa (though he had translated Jerónimo Lobo’s book about Abyssinia twenty-five years earlier).

It’s striking that this was written 250 years ago this month, the same year (1759) as Candide, which has a similar basic concept, but the timings I think are such that neither Johnson nor Voltaire can have much influenced the other. It seems to have been the last fiction (indeed, the only prose fiction) that Johnson published. It is somewhat pessimistic but very engaging.

This is a graph plotting the Big Finish Doctor Who audios by internal chronology versus order of release. (Apart from the most recent 8th Doctor ones.) Sourced from the WikiPedia lists.

Fifth Doctor	Sixth Doctor	Seventh Doctor	Eighth Doctor
BFA 91 Circular Time (i) BFA 4 The Land of the Dead BFA 10 Winter for the Adept BFA 15 The Mutant Phase BFA 26 Primeval BFA 34 Spare Parts BFA 44 Creatures of Beauty BFA 66 The Game BFA 91 Circular Time (ii) BFA 93 Renaissance of the Daleks VI Return to the Web Planet BFA 107 The Haunting of Thomas Brewster BFA 110 The Boy That Time Forgot BFA 113 Time Reef & A Perfect World BFA 91 Circular Time (iii) BFA 47 Omega BFA 1 The Sirens of Time Ex1 Excelis Dawns BFA 2 Phantasmagoria BFA 20 Loups-Garoux BFA 76 Singularity BFA 8 Red Dawn BFA 95 Exotron & Urban Myths BFA 24 The Eye of the Scorpion BFA 38 The Church and the Crown DWM4 No Place Like Home BFA 41 Nekromanteia BFA 56 The Axis of Insanity BFA 59 The Roof of the World BFA 69 Three’s A Crowd BFA 71 The Council of Nicaea BFA 81 The Kingmaker BFA 87 The Gathering DWM9 Cuddlesome BFA 99 Son of the Dragon BFA 102 The Mind’s Eye BFA 104 The Bride of Peladon BFA 102 Mission of the Viyrans BFA 117 The Judgement of Isskar BFA 91 Circular Time (iv)	BFA 48 Davros IV Cryptobiosis BFA 90 Year of the Pig BFA 3 Whispers of Terror BFA 35 …ish BFA 86 The Reaping BFA 51 The Wormery BFA 33½ The Maltese Penguin BFA 14 The Holy Terror DWM3 The Ratings War Ex2 Excelis Rising III Her Final Flight BFA 94 I.D. & Urgent Calls BFA 6 The Marian Conspiracy BFA 1 The Sirens of Time BFA 9 The Spectre of Lanyon Moor BFA 11 The Apocalypse Element BFA 22 Bloodtide BFA 23 Project: Twilight BFA 37 The Sandman BFA 40 Jubilee BFA 43 Doctor Who and the Pirates I Real Time BFA 45 Project: Lazarus BFA 57 Arrangements for War BFA 60 Medicinal Purposes BFA 78 Pier Pressure BFA 84 The Nowhere Place BFA 100 100 BFA 105 The Condemned BFA 108 Assassin in the Limelight BFA 111 The Doomwood Curse BFA 114 Brotherhood of the Daleks VII Return of the Krotons BFA 116 The Raincloud Man BFA 27 The One Doctor BFA 65 The Juggernauts BFA 68 Catch-1782 BFA 73 Thicker than Water BFA 97 The Wishing Beast & The Vanity Box	BFA 70 Unregenerate! BFA 85 Red BFA 39 Bang-Bang-a-Boom! BFA 46 Flip-Flop BFA 12 The Fires of Vulcan BFA 5 The Fearmonger BFA 7 The Genocide Machine BFA 21 Dust Breeding BFA 25 Colditz BFA 36 The Rapture BFA 58 The Harvest BFA 67 Dreamtime BFA 74 LIVE 34 BFA 79 Night Thoughts BFA 82 The Settling BFA 89 No Man’s Land BFA 92 Nocturne BFA 106 The Dark Husband BFA 115 Forty Five BFA 13 The Shadow of the Scourge BFA 42 The Dark Flame Ex3 Excelis Decays DWM2 Last of the Titans BFA 45 Project: Lazarus BFA 49 Master V Return of the Daleks BFA 1 The Sirens of Time BFA 96 Valhalla BFA 98 Frozen Time BFA 109 The Death Collectors & Spider’s Shadow BFA 112 Kingdom of Silver & Keepsake	II Shada BFA 16 Storm Warning BFA 17 Sword of Orion BFA 18 The Stones of Venice BFA 19 Minuet in Hell BFA 28 Invaders from Mars BFA 29 The Chimes of Midnight DWM5 Living Legend BFA 30 Seasons of Fear BFA 31 Embrace the Darkness BFA 32 The Time of the Daleks BFA 33 Neverland BFA 50 Zagreus BFA 52 Scherzo BFA 53 The Creed of the Kromon BFA 54 The Natural History of Fear BFA 55 The Twilight Kingdom BFA 61 Faith Stealer BFA 62 The Last BFA 63 Caerdroia BFA 64 The Next Life BFA 72 Terror Firma BFA 75 Scaredy Cat BFA 77 Other Lives BFA 80 Time Works BFA 83 Something Inside BFA 88 Memory Lane BFA 101 Absolution BFA 103 The Girl Who Never Was

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is apparently about to become Prime Minister of Iceland.

I hope that the various commentators on this do at least make an effort to spell her name correctly.

Has anyone else ever noticed that in the train carriages where it tells you not to lean out if the window, it is phrased as a direct imperative – “Nicht hinauslehnen!” “Ne pas se pencher au déhors!” “Do not lean out!” – in German, French and English, but in Italian it is “E pericoloso sporgesi!” – you are given the information that it is dangerous, but it’s up to you whether you choose to lean out or not!

There are five countries in the world (out of 173 surveyed, though there are 192 UN member states so some must have fallen through the cracks) which do not provide, or require employers to provide, any form of paid maternity leave.

Four of them are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea.

Can you guess what the fifth is?

The United States of America.

(Hat-tip to Steven Hill on the always excellent .)

Tiptree award meme: bold if you’ve read it, italic if you’ve started, struck through if you hated it. (From .)

2007 The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall
2006 The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente and Half Life by Shelley Jackson; with special recognition for Julie Phillips biography of James Tiptree, Jr., James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
2005: Air by Geoff Ryman
2004: Camouflage by Joe Haldeman and Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo
2003: Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls by Matt Ruff
2002: Light by M. John Harrison and "Stories for Men" by John Kessel
2001: The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto
2000: Wild Life by Molly Gloss
1999: The Conqueror’s Child by Suzy McKee Charnas
1998: "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation" by Raphael Carter
1997: Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey and "Travels With The Snow Queen" by Kelly Link
1996: "Mountain Ways" by Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
1995: Waking The Moon by Elizabeth Hand and The Memoirs Of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Theodore Roszak
1994: "The Matter of Seggri" by Ursula K. Le Guin and Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer
1993: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
1992: China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
1991: A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason, and White Queen by Gwyneth Jones

Retrospective Award: Motherlines and Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Female Man and "When It Changed" by Joanna Russ

Not too bad, but capable of improvement.

When the person you are arguing with claims to be able to read your mind, it is probably time to walk away from the argument.

This is a Dutch translation of Blondy’s short (120-page) 1996 history of Cyprus in the Que sais-je? series. Its most interesting feature is that, where most books on Cyprus start the clock in 1974 (or if you are lucky 1963 or even 1960), Blondy fits the first thirty-five years of independence into the last seven pages. The narrative is therefore a bit rushed. We start off in prehistory, then Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians and Arabs rule in turn, and by page 40 we have reached Richard the Lion Heart. The next 35 pages are about the 300 years of francophone rule mainly by the de Lusignans; in contrast, 80 years of rule by Venice are disposed of in four pages (mostly about fortifying Nicosia), and the next 30 pages cover 400 years under both the Ottomans and the British; which is an interesting insight into what gets put in and what gets left out if a professor from the Sorbonne writes your history. Frankly (and I choose that word very carefully) the most interesting thing about the de Lusignans was that they and their government spoke French.

Blondy’s real interest is in Malta under the rule of the Knights, as you can tell from the enthusiasm with which he mentions them here when he can. He tends otherwise to concentrate on the standard Greek Cypriot version of the island’s history, which made my revisionist hackles rise: quite apart from the Turks, what happened to the Latins who were so powerful under the Lusignans and Venetians? When do we first see a permanent Islamic presence on the island? What difference did the Suez Canal make? None of these questions is asked, let alone answered.

I shouldn’t be too harsh: one can’t expect too much from books in the Que sais-je? series. There were lots of facts here I hadn’t known (eg that Cyprus was the birthplace of the philosopher Zeno and Paul’s disciple Barnabas). I didn’t catch any actual errors of fact other than omission. And I haven’t seen any history of Cyprus of this short length covering such a long time period. But I couldn’t really recommend this as more than a starting point for French (or Dutch) readers.

Obama Signs Two Environment Memorandas

Memorandas would be a collective noun, I suppose?

Edited to add: I see they’ve changed it to “memos”!

Frozen Time revives the Ice Warriors for the first time in ages, and also the Seventh Doctor who appears to have been frozen in with a consignment of criminal Martians only to be unfrozen in a somewhat amnesiac state. The idea of the amnesiac Doctor is just as annoying when it is Seven compared to Eight, and the plot is really a retread of the original Ice Warriors story, but the cast is stellar – Bond girl Maryam d’Abo plays a French scientist, Nicholas Calf plays Lord Barset, doomed and deluded leader of the expedition. Some great scenes here, and generally good stuff.

In Son of the Dragon, the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem end up in a straight historical story where they are the only sfnal elements, encountering the real Dracula (played by James Purefoy) and his brother Radu the Handsome (played with rather more authority by Douglas Hodge). There is always a problem with the pure historical stories (which Erimem has more than her fair share of – see also The Church and the Crown, The Council of Nicæa, The Veiled Leopard and arguably The Kingmaker which is at least as historical as The Romans) in that they have to decide if they are going for entertainment or being didactic. Steve Lyons here has gone more on the didactic, sticking almost too close to what is known of the historical record, with the entertainment provided by the usual companions-getting-separated larks, and Erimem being prepared to meet her fate, which makes this one of his less gripping efforts. Poor Nicola Bryant in particular gets some lousy material to work with as Peri, but Caroline Morris, obviously preparing for her exit, is good as ever. I will have been among the few listeners who winced at the mispronunciations of Târgovişte and the Argeş river.

100 BC is another pure historical play: the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn get all mixed up with whether or not they have accidentally-on-purpose prevented Julius Cæsar’s parents from conceiving him in the year of the title. It’s essentially a one-joke story, and a good joke too, but perhaps stretched a little bit.

Rob Shearman picks up some of the ideas from his own Jubilee and reworks them in My Own Private Mozart, in which John Sessions plays millions of (well, half a dozen) clones of Mozart including the original. Again a one-joke story, but less funny.

Joe Lidster’s Bedtime Story has a shape-shifting alien working through the centuries to get its revenge on a human family, and the Doctor trying to break the spell. It has the typical Lidster success of little moments of horror with his equally typical failure of overall plot implausibilities.

Paul Cornell’s The 100 Days of the Doctor has the Doctor fighting off an intelligent virus which will kill him in, well, 100 days, and visiting various other parts of his own Big Finish continuity to try and prevent his own death. Very fannish, but nicely done.

Robert Glenister was brought in as Selateen in The Caves of Androzani to help kill off Peter Davison, and here he is brought in to help dispose of Conrad Westmaas as C’rizz. Given that C’rizz is a reformed psychopathic killer reptilian, we always knew what the end was likely to be, and indeed the story is rather better on the Doctor/Charley relationship, where she accuses him of reminiscing about how things were better before C’rizz joined them (though in my humble opinion, if this is the Doctor’s view, he is right). Still, C’rizz manages to go out with a bang.

Since C’rizz is now gone, I should write up my general impressions of his 14 appearances (all with the Eighth Doctor and Charley). To be honest, they are a bit patchy. Part of this is because the whole narrative goes down a blind universe at the very beginning; and what is probably the best of the C’rizz stories, The Natural History of Fear, depends rather crucially on the listener having built up an affection for the character which I really hadn’t managed to do at that stage (it is only C’rizz’s second story, and arguably not even that). The others I particularly liked were The Twilight Kingdom, Caerdroia, Terror Firma and Time Works. There are some real turkeys as well, which I won’t embarrass by naming here except to point out that The Next Life is the only misfire I have yet encountered from the pen of Alan Barnes. Not C’rizz’s fault, and certainly not Conrad Westmaas’s, but the concetration on weird bendings of time and space as opposed to, you know, plot and character which seemes to have typified Big finish’s approach to the Eighth Doctor did not do him any favours.

Ah, nostalgia… Not quite sure what I’ll use this for, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

I realised that I have already written up two of the three winners of the retro-Hugos for Best Novel (here and herePebble in the Sky, C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, E.E. 'Doc' Smith's First Lensman and Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, in that order. I've read them all except, oddly, the Asimov, and would certainly have voted for the Vance (incidentally the only author still living either today or in 2001 when the award was made). But my tastes are peculiar.

Farmer in the Sky is what would now be called a YA novel a juvenile (thanks, ), with our narrator, his father, his stepmother and her daughter leaving Earth to build a new colony on Ganymede. There is a significant amount of product placement for the scouting movement, which is not surprising as it was originally serialised in a scouts magazine. We encounter nice guys and nasty guys, and even a few women, though they don't get to speak much. There is a major natural disaster which wipes out two thirds of the colony, but our hero and most of his family survive. At the end of the book, our hero discovers some alien technology which incidentally saves his life.

A lot of this was already pretty standard sfnal fare even in 1950, but Heinlein fuses it all together into a coherent and literate package, which has a colossal amount of sensawunda, sufficient to keep the book going at full pace to the end and to keep its reputation alive among fans for decades. (He even manages the pro-scouting propaganda fairly discreetly, though of course this also helps underpin the gender and racial constraints of the narrative.)

It is not my intention to detain the reader by expatiating on the variety or the importance of the subject, which I have undertaken to treat; since the merit of the choice would serve to render the weakness of the execution still more apparent, and still less excusable. But as I have presumed to lay before the public a first volume only of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it will, perhaps, be expected that I should explain, in a few words, the nature and limits of my general plan.

The memorable series of revolutions, which in the course of about thirteen centuries gradually undermined, and at length destroyed, the solid fabric of human greatness, may, with some propriety, be divided into the three following periods:

I. The first of these periods may be traced from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, when the Roman monarchy, having attained its full strength and maturity, began to verge towards its decline; and will extend to the subversion of the Western Empire, by the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished nations of modern Europe. This extraordinary revolution, which subjected Rome to the power of a Gothic conqueror, was completed about the beginning of the sixth century.

II. The second period of the Decline and Fall of Rome may be supposed to commence with the reign of Justinian, who, by his laws, as well as by his victories, restored a transient splendor to the Eastern Empire. It will comprehend the invasion of Italy by the Lombards; the conquest of the Asiatic and African provinces by the Arabs, who embraced the religion of Mahomet; the revolt of the Roman people against the feeble princes of Constantinople; and the elevation of Charlemagne, who, in the year eight hundred, established the second, or German Empire of the West

III. The last and longest of these periods includes about six centuries and a half; from the revival of the Western Empire, till the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and the extinction of a degenerate race of princes, who continued to assume the titles of Caesar and Augustus, after their dominions were contracted to the limits of a single city; in which the language, as well as manners, of the ancient Romans, had been long since forgotten. The writer who should undertake to relate the events of this period, would find himself obliged to enter into the general history of the Crusades, as far as they contributed to the ruin of the Greek Empire; and he would scarcely be able to restrain his curiosity from making some inquiry into the state of the city of Rome, during the darkness and confusion of the middle ages.

As I have ventured, perhaps too hastily, to commit to the press a work which in every sense of the word, deserves the epithet of imperfect. I consider myself as contracting an engagement to finish, most probably in a second volume, a the first of these memorable periods; and to deliver to the Public the complete History of the Decline and Fall of Rome, from the age of the Antonines to the subversion of the Western Empire. With regard to the subsequent periods, though I may entertain some hopes, I dare not presume to give any assurances. The execution of the extensive plan which I have described, would connect the ancient and modern history of the world; but it would require many years of health, of leisure, and of perseverance.


P. S. The entire History, which is now published, of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, abundantly discharges my engagements with the Public. Perhaps their favorable opinion may encourage me to prosecute a work, which, however laborious it may seem, is the most agreeable occupation of my leisure hours.


An Author easily persuades himself that the public opinion is still favorable to his labors; and I have now embraced the serious resolution of proceeding to the last period of my original design, and of the Roman Empire, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in the year one thousand four hundred and fifty-three. The most patient Reader, who computes that three ponderous volumes have been already employed on the events of four centuries, may, perhaps, be alarmed at the long prospect of nine hundred years. But it is not my intention to expatiate with the same minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history. At our entrance into this period, the reign of Justinian, and the conquests of the Mahometans, will deserve and detain our attention, and the last age of Constantinople (the Crusades and the Turks) is connected with the revolutions of Modern Europe. From the seventh to the eleventh century, the obscure interval will be supplied by a concise narrative of such facts as may still appear either interesting or important.



Diligence and accuracy are the only merits which an historical writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit, indeed, can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty. I may therefore be allowed to say, that I have carefully examined all the original materials that could illustrate the subject which I had undertaken to treat. Should I ever complete the extensive design which has been sketched out in the Preface, I might perhaps conclude it with a critical account of the authors consulted during the progress of the whole work; and however such an attempt might incur the censure of ostentation, I am persuaded that it would be susceptible of entertainment, as well as information.

At present I shall content myself with a single observation.

The biographers, who, under the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, composed, or rather compiled, the lives of the Emperors, from Hadrian to the sons of Carus, are usually mentioned under the names of Aelius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Aelius Lampridius, Vulcatius Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus. But there is so much perplexity in the titles of the MSS., and so many disputes have arisen among the critics (see Fabricius, Biblioth. Latin. l. iii. c. 6) concerning their number, their names, and their respective property, that for the most part I have quoted them without distinction, under the general and well-known title of the Augustan History.



I now discharge my promise, and complete my design, of writing the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, both in the West and the East. The whole period extends from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, to the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second; and includes a review of the Crusades, and the state of Rome during the middle ages. Since the publication of the first volume, twelve years have elapsed; twelve years, according to my wish, “of health, of leisure, and of perseverance.” I may now congratulate my deliverance from a long and laborious service, and my satisfaction will be pure and perfect, if the public favor should be extended to the conclusion of my work.

It was my first intention to have collected, under one view, the numerous authors, of every age and language, from whom I have derived the materials of this history; and I am still convinced that the apparent ostentation would be more than compensated by real use. If I have renounced this idea, if I have declined an undertaking which had obtained the approbation of a master-artist, my excuse may be found in the extreme difficulty of assigning a proper measure to such a catalogue. A naked list of names and editions would not be satisfactory either to myself or my readers: the characters of the principal Authors of the Roman and Byzantine History have been occasionally connected with the events which they describe; a more copious and critical inquiry might indeed deserve, but it would demand, an elaborate volume, which might swell by degrees into a general library of historical writers. For the present, I shall content myself with renewing my serious protestation, that I have always endeavored to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend.

I shall soon revisit the banks of the Lake of Lausanne, a country which I have known and loved from my early youth. Under a mild government, amidst a beauteous landscape, in a life of leisure and independence, and among a people of easy and elegant manners, I have enjoyed, and may again hope to enjoy, the varied pleasures of retirement and society. But I shall ever glory in the name and character of an Englishman: I am proud of my birth in a free and enlightened country; and the approbation of that country is the best and most honorable reward of my labors. Were I ambitious of any other Patron than the Public, I would inscribe this work to a Statesman, who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfortunate administration, had many political opponents, almost without a personal enemy; who has retained, in his fall from power, many faithful and disinterested friends; and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigor of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper. Lord North will permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth: but even truth and friendship should be silent, if he still dispensed the favors of the crown.

In a remote solitude, vanity may still whisper in my ear, that my readers, perhaps, may inquire whether, in the conclusion of the present work, I am now taking an everlasting farewell. They shall hear all that I know myself, and all that I could reveal to the most intimate friend. The motives of action or silence are now equally balanced; nor can I pronounce, in my most secret thoughts, on which side the scale will preponderate. I cannot dissemble that six quartos must have tried, and may have exhausted, the indulgence of the Public; that, in the repetition of similar attempts, a successful Author has much more to lose than he can hope to gain; that I am now descending into the vale of years; and that the most respectable of my countrymen, the men whom I aspire to imitate, have resigned the pen of history about the same period of their lives. Yet I consider that the annals of ancient and modern times may afford many rich and interesting subjects; that I am still possessed of health and leisure; that by the practice of writing, some skill and facility must be acquired; and that, in the ardent pursuit of truth and knowledge, I am not conscious of decay. To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor; and the first months of my liberty will be occupied and amused in the excursions of curiosity and taste. By such temptations, I have been sometimes seduced from the rigid duty even of a pleasing and voluntary task: but my time will now be my own; and in the use or abuse of independence, I shall no longer fear my own reproaches or those of my friends. I am fairly entitled to a year of jubilee: next summer and the following winter will rapidly pass away; and experience only can determine whether I shall still prefer the freedom and variety of study to the design and composition of a regular work, which animates, while it confines, the daily application of the Author.

Caprice and accident may influence my choice; but the dexterity of self-love will contrive to applaud either active industry or philosophic repose.


P. S. I shall embrace this opportunity of introducing two verbal remarks, which have not conveniently offered themselves to my notice. 1. As often as I use the definitions of beyond the Alps, the Rhine, the Danube, &c., I generally suppose myself at Rome, and afterwards at Constantinople; without observing whether this relative geography may agree with the local, but variable, situation of the reader, or the historian. 2. In proper names of foreign, and especially of Oriental origin, it should be always our aim to express, in our English version, a faithful copy of the original. But this rule, which is founded on a just regard to uniformity and truth, must often be relaxed; and the exceptions will be limited or enlarged by the custom of the language and the taste of the interpreter. Our alphabets may be often defective; a harsh sound, an uncouth spelling, might offend the ear or the eye of our countrymen; and some words, notoriously corrupt, are fixed, and, as it were, naturalized in the vulgar tongue. The prophet Mohammed can no longer be stripped of the famous, though improper, appellation of Mahomet: the well-known cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, would almost be lost in the strange descriptions of Haleb, Demashk, and Al Cahira: the titles and offices of the Ottoman empire are fashioned by the practice of three hundred years; and we are pleased to blend the three Chinese monosyllables, Con-fu-tzee, in the respectable name of Confucius, or even to adopt the Portuguese corruption of Mandarin. But I would vary the use of Zoroaster and Zerdusht, as I drew my information from Greece or Persia: since our connection with India, the genuine Timour is restored to the throne of Tamerlane: our most correct writers have retrenched the Al, the superfluous article, from the Koran; and we escape an ambiguous termination, by adopting Moslem instead of Musulman, in the plural number. In these, and in a thousand examples, the shades of distinction are often minute; and I can feel, where I cannot explain, the motives of my choice.

This and this were next to each other in my friends list when I checked this evening.

The Guardian’s 1000 books series comes to an end with the rather peculiar assortment of Travel and War (and thanks once again to for posting the list). 129 books here, of which I have read 36 (and started two more). My vote for neglected classic on the list goes to The Good Soldier Švejk.

Previous Guardian lists:
Love
Crime
Humour
Family and Self
State of the Nation
SF and Fantasy

Analysis of all of these coming tomorrow.

I’ve been idly speculating of late: how small would an asteroid, minor planet or satellite need to be for the average person to be able to jump right off it?

The world record for the high jump at present is 2.43 metres. Ouch. More modestly, I guess I can raise my own centre of gravity by at least a metre if I jump up from a crouching position. So using the old equation:

makes my takeoff velocity around 4.5 metres per second, before gravity inevitably drags me down.

Now, the escape velocity of any spherical body of mass M and radius r is √(2GM/r) – actually, I think I want to chage this around a bit: the volume of yer sphere is 4πr³/3, so its density is 3M/4πr³, so the escape velocity expressed in terms of the density ρ and the radius r is √(8πGρ/3) * r.

Well. The Earth’s escape velocity is about 11 km per second. This is roughly 2400 times faster than I can jump. Since the Earth’s radius is around 6400 km, I could probably jump off a celestial body of the Earth’s density which had a radius of about 2.7 km or smaller

The Earth’s density is roughly 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre (we live on the densest of the planets in our system). Asteroid densities are reckoned to be more in the 1.5 – 3 grams per cubic centimetre range. So in practice, I could probably jump off yer average asteroid or satellite of the 4-6 km size range. Most of the well known ones are bigger than that. Most of the obscure ones, almost by definition, are smaller.

Indeed, Mars’s satellite Phobos, whose mean radius is 11.1 km, has a numerically similar escape velocity of 11.3 metres per second – as you may vaguely remember fron Arthur C. Clarke’s story, “Hide-and-Seek”.

OK, bedtime now.

Too many favourites on here to pick any in particular. Not surprisingly I score better here than on any three of the previous lists combined, with 85 out of 149 books that I have read and also most of Pratchett (though he’s not quite as prolific as Balzac). Indeed, I have reviewed no fewer than 38 of these at greater or lesser length on line, and three of them are in my imminently-to-read pile.

Previous Guardian lists:
Love
Crime
Humour
Family and Self
State of the Nation

I prefer this one to the other one, even if the questions are now a bit dated.

Two days’ worth of Guardian novels to report here, because of last night’s distractions. Thanks again to for supplying the lists. They are two particularly odd selections.

I have read only 24 out of 145 of the Guardian’s the “Family and Self” selection, with another four started but not finished. It is interesting that they have chosen a number of comics in this section – my pick of the lot is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. The selection also includes Proust as a single unit.

I did far worse on the “State of the Nation” selection – presumably these are meant to be the more political novels, and I actually work in politics, but nonetheless scored a mere 17 out of 133. My picks are boringly conventional, Middlemarch, Les Miserables and Vanity Fair.

To be reviewed elsewhere.