15) The Nobel Prizes, by Burton Feldman

I bought this when I visited the Nobel Museum last year, since when my then employers came (we were told) fairly close to winning the Peace Prize, which would have brought the subject matter a bit closer to home. It’s a good book, and I wasn’t especially surprised to find that Feldman is a scholar in the history of ideas. He gives an interesting introduction, first to the life and times of Alfred Nobel himself (whose elder brothers opened up the oil industry in Baku, now the capital of Azerbaijan; Alfred invented dynamite) and then to the machinations around the establishment of the prize – which would have come to naught had the Swedish government not decided that it was a matter of state interest for the prizes to be instituted as a semi-state responsibility.

He then runs through the categories, in all of which there have been questionable awards and clear omissions. The worst offender is the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was not awarded to either Joyce or Proust, but did go to various utterly forgotten writers (sometimes for political reasons, sometimes just because they wrote long best-selling sagas) during the lifetime of both. (Feldman sees Beckett’s Nobel Prize as a compensation for missing Joyce, which I think is a bit unfair on Beckett.) I learnt more about economics from Feldman’s account of the relevant Prize (not strictly a Nobel as it was only instituted in 1969) than I have from any other single source, and raved so enthusiastically about it yesterday to a visiting friend (who is the best-known economist in his country – admittedly a rather small country) that he asked for a photocopy of the relevant chapter.

But the Physics, Chemistry and Physiology/Medicine prizes do seem on the whole to have hit the mark, despite their rampant politicisation, with the odd embarrassing miss (eg Pavlov, for an experiment that did not actually work; though his later research probably makes up for it). And the Peace Prize is clearly a mark of recognition which carries a huge amount of weight on the world political stage. Feldman’s book dates from 2000; I remember watching an interview with Jimmy Carter, shortly after he got his award in 2002, and his reply to the question of whether he had ever regretted that the Peace Prize could only be divided two ways rather than three, since that knocked him out of the running as a co-laureate with Begin and Sadat in 1978: his reply was along the lines of “oh, only about once a day, for about twenty-four hours each time.” He doesn’t, however, answer the mystery of why Nobel charged the Norwegians with the responsibility of the Peace Prize, rather than the Swedes who do all the others.

In the midst of the occasionally bizarre discourse around my review of Old Man’s War last year, one infuriated protagonist asked me rhetorically if I would have Hemingway’s Nobel for Literature revoked on the grounds of his political views. My reply at the time was that it’s up to the Nobel folks who they choose, but since they clearly make decisions on political grounds, I feel perfectly entitled to criticise their choice on political grounds. Feldman’s account makes me even more certain of that.

12) Asteroids: A History, by Curtis Peebles

Asteroids are another long-standing interest of mine. Back in my teenage years I participated in two of the International Astronomical Youth Camps, working on asteroids in Bavaria in 1984 and on meteors in Slovenia in 1985. (Excessive consumption of sljivovic meant that I saw double meteors one evening…) And some day I shall properly write up my semi-successful search for the asteroid 132 Æthra.

This is a good book, but infuriatingly a bit thin on scholarship. There isn’t a single reference to any article published in an academic history of science journal. I found this truly bizarre. More than half the references are to articles in Sky and Telescope, which is all very well, but has the academic community working on history of science completely ignored this topic? And perhaps a few references to the primary scientific literature might have been helpful?

Having said that, Peebles’ heart is clearly in the right place. There’s a whole chapter about the politics of street-lighting in San Diego, California, which is of marginal relevance to the history of asteroids but of great interest to those of us interested in the science/politics interface. There’s a chapter on the naming of asteroids, which ends with the emphatic statement that “Mr Spock is a mythological figure.” There’s lots of interesting circumstantial detail on the personalities and life experiences of those who participated in the search for asteroids.

The scientific point I was left wondering about was the hardness of the boundaries between asteroids, comets and dwarf planets. The book was published before the recent downgrading of Pluto, but it’s pretty clear that Pluto is in the same continuum of objects as Neptune’s moon Triton – they just happen to orbit different primaries – and that at the other end of the scale various asteroids are pretty comet-like and vice versa, including the case of Comet Wilson-Harrington, now reclassified as asteroid 4015 Wilson-Harrington.

Free skiffy story idea, which I shall never get around to writing up: Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, famous for having a relatively circular orbit (for a comet) and suffering occasional inexplicable flare-ups of brightness, is really and Alien Space base left behind by the first intelligent species to explore our system. (Yeah, I know, Gateway, etc. But I think my version is subtly different.)

13) The Megalith Builders of Western Europe, by Glyn Daniel

I’ve been fascinated by standing stones and megaliths since I was very young; the Giant’s Ring near Belfast was a favourite family outing when I was growing up, and as a teenager I combed the valleys and drumlins around Loughbrickland at weekends looking for more standing stones. My fascination has spilled over into this livejournal at times as well. However, I didn’t learn a lot from this book, published half a century ago with a 1961 update for the paperback edition explaining that the new-fangled radiocarbon dating meant all their previous chronological assumptions were definitely wrong. Daniel just lists by typology all the known megalithic tombs in different parts of Western Europe, and about the only conclusion you can draw from the book is that the borders between ancient cultures were not where the modern borders are. I would like to find something more up to date, and more interesting, on this subject.

12) Faith, by Joanna Trollope

Another very short story, published as a separate book by Bloomsbury, about forgiveness and redemption across three generations of the same family. Told in Trollope’s usual lucid prose.

10) Once in a Blue Moon, by Magnus Mills
11) Three To See the King, by Magnus Mills

I tried Mills once before, and didn’t really get him; looking back on my notes at the time, I realise that I was under the weather that day and perhaps my sense of humour was impaired. rightly called me to look more at the human condition that Mills is describing and less at the details.

I loved both of these books; perhaps I was in the right mood this time. Once in a Blue Moon is a collection of four very short stories, and Three To See the King a longer but still very short novel (167 pages). People are very strange, and by putting them in strange yet almost familiar environments Mills brings out our inherent strangeness beautifully. I could spend ages speculating about the symbolism of tin house vs. brick houses, and the sandy plain vs. the canyon, in Three To See the King, but I won’t; I’ll just strongly recommend these two books.

Yes, the interview meme is going round again. I owe a few of you questions from about a year ago; I’ve completely forgotten who you are.

The rules this time around are:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You will either update your LJ with the answers to the questions or post them here.
4. If you repost you will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post; if you answer here, then any of my friends (or me) can do a set of follow up questions, but you get to ask them stuff too.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you can ask them five questions.
6. Or you can just ask me five question in comments here if you prefer.

First up, saved and renumbered from a couple of months ago:

1) What was your major in college?

Astrophysics. Well, in the Cambridge system, it was the Natural Sciences Tripos, with a Part II in Physics and Astrophysics. I then did an M Phil in the History and Philosophy of Science, culminating in research on an obscure medieval astrologer, and a Ph D in a more modern topic in the same field.

2) And how early on did you know you wanted to work in the international arena?

I think it was always a fantasy of mine; but at the same time I never felt sufficiently loyal to either the British or Irish states that I could bear to subject myself to working for their diplomatic services. (I did actually apply for both: blew the second exam for the Brits, and the interview stage for the Irish. Probably a good thing in both cases.) I have been very lucky in that I was able to find other ways of operating.

3) Also, how the hell do you read so quickly?

Speed-reading is one of the most professionally useful skills you can acquire. Seriously. Go and do a course in it.

Also the fact that I am now commuting to work by train helps.

4) Your opinions on election monitoring.

I’m in favour. This will come as no surprise. I think we have to remember that there are two very different aspects to election monitoring: 1) the flying in of international observers to provide some external seal of credibility (or the reverse) and 2) the boosting of domestic non-partisan monitoring of the electoral process. The first approach is the short-term headline news (especially if it breaks down
5) 2nd favorite TV show (If my assumptions are in the right, then Doctor Who safely occupies the throne of 1st place.)

Also has asked me the following:

1) You’ve run for office in the past, can you see yourself holding elected positions in the future?

I’d love to, but it depends a bit on a) seeking nomination, b) getting nominated and c) getting elected. At present, with our family circumstances, the first of these is the really big hurdle. Some day things may be different.

2) Ignoring nationality language and religion, if you could pick the current consitution/system of government of any existing country today to live in, which would you choose and why?

I’m actually not fussy; more or less any liberal democracy will do. We benefit massively from the health system here in Belgium, but the downside is that politics is not only parochial and clientelistic, but also desperately uninteresting; yet, having grown up where I did, I can survive without having a particularly interesting political system.

“Liberal democracy” excludes countries where the current head of state came to power by a judicial coup and where dozens of members of the lower house of parliament get in without having to face an contest due to comfortably gerrymandered electoral districts.

3) I know from previous links that you read some webcomics; which are your favourites?

Actually I read very few. I have my daily Doonesbury and Dilbert feeds; the only web-specific comic I read is Questionable Content / . I used to read Queen of Wands
4) Autism is obviously something that affects your life in a number of ways; do you think the growing awareness of more minor conditions is a good thing, or do you worry it may be a “geek fashion” thing that diminishes the impact of more serious problems?

Hah, you have made my trawl my own LibraryThing catalogue, to see whose books published in the last couple of years I have given five stars out of five.

I’m jolly impressed with Zoran Živković, Lois McMaster Bujold, and (when they are on form) Terry Pratchett and George R.R. Martin. I guess Bujold is currently out in front, partly because her latest book arrived today and we have had merry discussions (“we” being me, my wife and my mother-in-law) about who gets to read it first.

7) The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, translated and edited by Jeffrey Frank and Diana Crone Frank

I thought this was a tremendously good presentation of the great HCA stories; some of them of course I knew from the various versions of my childhood, but all of them (Except the very short “Princess and the Pea”) have something a little more in the original. For once, the introduction was interesting and the endnotes helpful; a really good presentation from Granta.

Google Maps appears not to recognise roads in either Slovenia or Croatia – though oddly enough it does cover Bosnia.

I imagine that driving from Trieste in Italy to Bihać in Bosnia would take about three or four hours. The Google route, via Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade and Sarajevo, will take you, er, rather longer.

“Så, nu kan jeg da sove, så længe jeg gider.”

“Well, now I can sleep in as late as I like.”

(King Frederik VII of Denmark, having just granted a liberal constitution in 1848)

The last few pages of The Making of Doctor Who deserve their own separate post: for some reason, it was felt necessary or appropriate to include a short essay by “the Rev John D Beckwith, AKC, Chaplain to the Bishop of Edmonton” about the relationship of Doctor Who in particular and sf in general with Christianity in particular and religion in general. It is a rather bizarre piece of writing; I do wonder why Dicks and Hulke (or their editor) felt it should be in the book. Anyway, I am posting it beneath the cut; make up your own minds.

5) The Making of Doctor Who, by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks

Way way back in the mists of childhood, and I got hold of the second edition of this book, which was tremendously informative about Doctor Who up to, I think, The Hand of Fear, but was particularly important for me as it was the first book I had read which was about sf; it was possible, I realised, to think and write more deeply about sf as well as just reading it.

This is the first edition, which states on the first page, “Doctor Who has now been running over eight years, which makes it one of the most successful shows on British television.” I think I got it at WorldCon. It is very much aimed at a younger audience; quite a long chapter, for instance, on how a television programme is actually made, what the director does, etc. Here is the end of the section about the Master:

That last bit seems rather prophetic now!

One section which was completely changed in the second edition was the re-telling of the Doctor’s televised adventures as a continuous narrative, presented as memoranda from the files of the Time Lords and of UNIT. (The second edition simply presented each story separately in a list, as all serious Doctor Who reference books have done since.) This section is preceded by the indictment and initial defence for the Doctor at the end of The War Games, revealing also the Doctor’s “real name”.

Of course, this bears very little resemblance to the trial we actually saw in The War Games, but it is a nice bit of chrome.

(Can we really bear to refer to the Doctor as ∂³∑x² in future?)

Anyway, certainly superseded in usefulness by pretty much every work of reference on Doctor Who published since, but very nice to have.

4) The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black

One of the books I discovered in last weekend’s trawl through the shelves. Some interesting possibilities here, which I will report back on as and when my experiments progress.

From WikiPedia

was asking what classic Who he should watch to get up to speed (or, as he put it, to become “a legitimate Who fanboy”). He already has Genesis of the daleks and The Deadly Assassin; my other recommendations to him were as follows.

First Doctor
The first two stories, An Unearthly Child and The Daleks; then I think the Dalek Invasion of Earth, and finally The Tenth Planet (where unfortunately most of the crucial fourth episode is lost). The Daleks Master Plan is also really good but unfortunately only three of the twelve (or thirteen, depending how you count) episodes survive on video.

Second Doctor
Sadly most of the stories have been destroyed, at least in video format; the best surviving ones are the Tomb of the Cybermen, the Mind Robber, The Invasion and The War Games.

Third Doctor
Starts really well with Spearhead From Space, and then Inferno; then try Terror of the Autons (first story with Jo and the Master), The Three Doctors (a bit silly but if you have followed the course so far you will be keen for nostalgia), Carnival of Monsters and The Green Death

Fourth Doctor
Well, you’ve got two of the best – some would even say the two best – already. I would also recommend The Ark in Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and City of Death.

Fifth Doctor
Much more difficult to pick here. The only ones I have re-watched recently are Earthshock (not so great), The Five Doctors (OK) and The Caves of Androzani (brilliant – directed by Graeme Harper who has also directed several of the better episodes of New Who). But I also plan to go back and re-watch the linked stories Kinda and Snakedance some time fairly soon, and I have very good memories of Mawdryn Undead.

Sixth Doctor
There is a widespread view in fandom that holds that all the Sixth Doctor stories were terrible. I agree with that view, but you may want to make up your own mind.

Seventh Doctor
I really liked two of the last three stories ever broadcast, Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric. I don’t like Remembrance of the Daleks, though almost everyone else does.

Eighth Doctor
Only one story, but you have to have watched it to gain your fannish credentials!

Discussion welcome!

3) Pussey!, by Daniel Clowes

I’ve liked some of Clowes’ work, but you can give this one a miss; a graphic novel about being a graphic novelist, exploited and corrupted by the system; unattractive, caricatured characters, and not really sure if he was satirising his own experience or some received wisdom about how the industry works.

1. Go into the archives of your LJ.
2. Find your 42nd entry ever. Yes, this may require some counting and basic maths. Deal with it.
3. Link to that entry in a new entry. This is the meaning of your life.

My 42nd entry was about buying sf books in London, and drew a response from the late . Certainly true that I spend a lot of time on both London and sf books, but I don’t think it is my entire life!

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it’s too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).

The nearest book is Patrick Carroll’s Science, Culture and Modern State Formation for which I’m approaching a review deadline. The relevant sentences are about the views of the 18th century Austrian writer Johan Frank about the policing of public events:

In relation to the policing of popular entertainments, he was acutely aware of the need for police personnel to be dispatched with good judgment and respect for citizens. The notion that the police could “lord it over” the citizens had the result that the public, instead of feeling grateful for the “care” police provided, expressed the “greatest aversion to everything that is called police, and considers as nothing all the good that the police provides against the tyranny of … impetuous judgments.” Frank compared the “obstinacy of the police superintendent” to stubborn parents who rule their child with an “iron rod”. Such a mode of policing, exercised under the “pretense of good order,” could only result in the police earning the “hatred of the entire nation.”

Has a certain contemporary resonance, doesn’t it?

I’ve just been added as a friend on Facebook by the editor of the Guardian. Bizarre; I don’t think I’ve ever had dealings with him, apart from one email sent by me (and not replied to) eighteen months ago, and certainly don’t remember sending him a friending request!

Hat-tip to , from :

Obsessed as I am with alphabets, I have had to identify the 26 flipped letters:

zʎxʍʌnʇsɹbdouɯ1ʞظıɥbɟǝpɔqɐ

Most are from the International Phonetic Alphabet – which you can search on WikiPedia.

z is just z
ʎ is a a phonetic sign for the sound written ‘gl’ in Italian or ‘lj/љ’ in the languages formerly known as Serbo-Croat
x is just x
ʍ is the way I pronounce the first letters of “what”, though this is not standard English
ʌ is a short ‘u’ sound
n is just n
ʇ is the click sound often written ‘tsk’ in English
s is just s
ɹ is the normal English pronunciation of ‘r’ (unrolled)
b is just b
d is just d
o is just o
u is just u
ɯ is Turkish ‘ı’ sound, a very short ‘uh’
1 is the number 1
ʞ is an obsolete phonetic sign for a click sound (now written ‘kǃ’)
ظ is the rarest letter of the Arabic alphabet (Ẓāʼ).
ı is the Turkish letter which is written ɯ in phonetic script
ɥ is a sound halfway between ‘w’ and ‘y’, as in the start of the French word ‘oui’
b is just b
ɟ is a sound a bit like ‘y’ found only in the Natsilingmiutut dialect of Inuit
ǝ is the phonetic sound for the ‘scha’ or unstressed vowel, as in the second syllable of ‘vowel’ when you pronounce it at normal speed. It is also pronounced a bit differently (like standard English ‘a’ in ‘hat’) as a normal letter in Azeri.
p is just p
ɔ is the short ‘o’ in German and Dutch (and some English dialects, esp Australian and New Zealand). A long ɔ (ɔ:) is the standard English ‘aw’ sound.
q is just q
ɐ is the standard English short ‘u’.

2) Vicious Circles and Infinity: An Anthology of Paradoxes, by Patrick Hughes and George Brecht

A very slim Penguin (75 pages) found while sorting the books at the weekend. Goes through the standard paradoxes – the class of all classes that do not include themselves, Zeno, Cantor on infinity, the unexpected hanging, etc, and many variations. Slightly confusing layout in that every page has a vaguely relevant quotation at both top and bottom, which breaks up the main text rather abruptly. Mostly of interest to teenage proto-geeks, but I laughed out loud when Russell, worrying about the class of all classes that do not include themselves, confides his concerns to Whitehead, who ripostes, “never glad confident morning again!” You bastard, Whitehead, is the thought which probably went through Russell’s mind.

The book did help me crystallise a serious point too. Logic and science are powerful tools for exploring and explaining the natural and human worlds. But as this book reminds us, they are necessarily incomplete, and sometimes contradictory; just like any other system of thought ever developed by humans. This is why I take Richard Dawkins’ views on biology more seriously than his views on religion.

…in ‘s poll, here.

1) Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde

I was a bit disappointed with the third of the Thursday Next books, but Something Rotten is a real return to form – hilarious slapstick moments, literary wit, and some real drama as well. The depiction of the love affair between Hamlet and Lady Hamilton (“We both have friends called Horatio”) is a particular touch of genius, and the dramatic climax involving Neanderthal substitutes in a crucial croquet match is pretty memorable too. Really good stuff.

I always like to pause at the half-way marks of the year to think where I am, and where I am going. Often I have copied Paddy Ashdown’s habit of writing a letter to himself describing what he wanted to accomplish, personally and professionally, in the next six months. If I do that again I’m not posting it here; but I have done a big rearrangement of the bookshelves, besically centralising all the unread books in the shelf nearest the bed. One side effect of this is that I have come across another two dozen books which I would like to read, so the “unread” list has jumped from 125 to 149. Thanks to the magic of LibraryThing, I can reveal the covers of most of them (some aren’t on Amazon so it won’t work for them):

And the full list (alphabetical by author, at least as far as LibraryThing records the author), is
Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction,
What Ifs? Of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been,
More Real Than Reality: The Fantastic in Irish Literature and the Arts (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction an,
The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen,
Μακεδονία (Macedonia): A Greek Name in Modern Usage,
Hotel Rwanda: Bringing the True Story of an African Hero to Film,
The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Second Annual Collection,
“Interzone”: Anthology: 5th,
Talkback: The Unofficial and Unauthorised “Doctor Who” Interview Book: Sixties v. 1,
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (Penguin Classics S.),
Tales of Human Waste,
Irish Tales of Terror: Twenty-Two Bewitching Tales of Irish Mystery and Magic,
Trillion year spree : the history of science fiction, Aldiss, Brian Wilson
Darkness Audible, Andrews, Graham
Sunrise Alley, Asaro, Catherine
Earth is Room Enough, Asimov, Isaac
Abarat, Barker, Clive
On the place of Gilbert Chesterton in English letters, Belloc, Hilaire
The Medieval Cookbook, Black, Maggie
Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Doctor Who Missing Adventures), Bulis, Christopher
Doctor Who: City at World’s End (Doctor Who), Bulis, Christopher
The Conquest of Gaul, Caesar, Julius
Rethinking Europe’s Future (Century Foundation Book), Calleo, David P.
Analog 6, Campbell, John W (editor)
Oscar and Lucinda, Carey, Peter
Summerland., Chabon, Michael
The Faded Sun Trilogy, Cherryh, C. J.
Pussey!, Clowes, Dan
Appleseed, Clute, John
Shadowkings, Cobley, Michael
Forbidden Acts, Collins, Nancy A.
The Prince of Tides, Conroy, Pat
The Road from Coorain, Conway, Jill Ker
Letter from America : 1946-2004, Cooke, Alistair
Astra and Flondrix, Cullen, Seamus
From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, Dalrymple, William
The megalith builders of Western Europe, Daniel, Glyn Edmund
The Ill-Made Mute, Dart-Thornton, Cecilia
Dhalgren, Delany, Samuel R.
Doctor Who-Caves of Androzani, Dicks, Terrance
Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, Dicks, Terrance
Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, Dicks, Terrance
Vellum, Duncan, Hal
Teranesia, Egan, Greg
Fatal Attraction, Fara, Patricia
The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige, Feldman, Burton
Between the Woods and the Water : On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland – The Middle Danube to the Iron Gat, Fermor, Patrick Leigh
Something Rotten, Fforde, Jasper
Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, Fisher, David
Most Ancient Song, Flint, Kenneth C.
The Enchanted Isles, Flynn, K.C.
Fortunata and Jacinta, Galdos, Benito Perez
Jennie, Gallico, Paul
The Owl Service, Garner, Alan
Faith in Europe?: The Cardinal’s Lectures (Cardinals Lectures), Geldof, Bob
White Crow, Gentle, Mary
Rocks of Ages, Gould, Stephen Jay
Sacred Visions, Greeley, Andrew M.
Seasons of Plenty, Greenland, Colin
Mother of Plenty, Greenland, Colin
Misspent Youth, Hamilton, Peter F.
The go-between, Hartley, L. P.
Visions of Wonder: The Science Fiction Research Association Reading Anthology, Hartwell, David G.
The Space Opera Renaissance, Hartwell, David G.
Daughters of Britannia: The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives, Hickman, Katie
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future, Hopkinson, Nalo
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the future, Hubbard, L. Ron
Vicious Circles and Infinity: An Anthology of Paradoxes, Hughes, Patrick
The Making of Doctor Who, Hulke, Malcolm
Half-life of a Zealot, Hunt, Swanee
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Judt, Tony
The Successor, Kadare, Ismail
The Prisoner of Chillon, Kelly, James Patrick
Athens-Skopje: An Uneasy Symbiosis, Kofos, Evangelos
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence, T. E.
City of Illusions, Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Great Tradition (Pelican S.), Leavis, F.R.
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century, Leonard, Mark
The pilgrim’s regress, Lewis, C. S
Red Branch, Llywelyn, Morgan
King Solomon’s ring: new light on animal ways, Lorenz, Conrad Z.
No great mischief, MacLeod, Alistair
Back Home, Magorian, Michelle
The Mind of Mr. Soames, Maine, Charles Eric
Endgame in Ireland, Mallie, Eamonn
Earth Logic, Marks, Laurie J.
Radical Islams Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law, Marshall, Paul
The Kalahari typing school for men, McCall Smith, Alexander
The full cupboard of life, McCall Smith, Alexander
Brasyl, Mcdonald, Ian
Irish tales of terror, McGarry, Jim
Harpist in the Wind, McKillip, Patricia A
The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography, Meurs, Wim P. Van
Three to see the king, Mills, Magnus
Once in a Blue Moon, Mills, Magnus
The provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian, Mommsen, Theodor
The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Program, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak, Moorcock, Michael
George and Sam, Moore, Charlotte
Thunderbirds Bumper Storybook: “The Uninvited”, “Brink of Disaster”, “Sun Probe”, “Atlantic Inferno”, Morris, Dave
Cities of salt, Munif, Abd al-Rahman
Dreams of the Compass Rose [Extended Excerpt], Nazarian, Vera
“Star Trek”: The Next Generation Companion, Nemecek, Larry
Bel Canto, Patchett, Ann
Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs, Patten, Christopher
Democratisation in Southeast Europe: An Introduction to Election Issues, Pavlovic, Dusan
The English: A Portrait of a People, Paxman, Jeremy
Kosova Express, Pettifer, James
The Republic, Plato
Expiration Date, Powers, Tim
In Search of Lost Time: Guermantes Way, Proust, Marcel
Science Fiction and Postmodern Fiction: A Genre Study, Puschmann-Nalenz, Barbara
Vineland, Pynchon, Thomas
The Duke And I, Quinn, Julia
Blind Voices, Reamy, Tom
Quidditch through the ages, Rowling, J. K.
The Child Garden, Ryman, Geoff
The Shore of Women, Sargent, Pamela
The embarrassment of riches an interpretation of Dutch culture in the golden age, Schama, Simon
The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism, Schwartz, Stephen
Sarajevo Rose: A Balkan Jewish Notebook, Schwartz, Stephen
England’s Troubles : Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, Scott, Jonathan
Wilt In Nowhere, Sharpe, Tom
First Lensman, Smith, E. E. Doc
Second Stage Lensmen, Smith, E.E. ‘Doc’
The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might, Soderberg, Nancy
The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer, Spencer, Elizabeth
The Atrocity Archives, Stross, Charles
Satires and personal writings, Swift, Jonathan
Laserlicht, Teng, Tais
The lost heart of Asia, Thubron, Colin
Resurrection, Tolstoy, Leo
Music & silence, Tremain, Rose
Faith, Trollope, Joanna
Great War Breakthroughs, Turtledove, Harry
The Devil’s Highway : A True Story, Urrea, Luis Alberto
Peter Abelard, Waddell, Helen
Desert Fathers, The, Waddell, Helen
The Discovery of the Germ, Waller, John
God’s Politics : Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, Wallis, Jim
Liberal Democracy and Globalisation, Watson, Graham
National Lampoon’s Doon, Weiner, Ellis
The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Wilde, Oscar
Sunset at Blandings, Wodehouse, P. G.
Peace, Wolfe, Gene
The Wizard Knight, Wolfe, Gene
The Phoenix Exultant, Wright, John C.
The Golden Transcendence, Wright, John C.
The seeds of time, Wyndham, John

Of the 143 books that were on my “unread” list at the end of last year, I have read 32 (among the 123 books read so far this year). With the summer break coming up, I should be able to get through the same number off this list in the second half of this year.

My classic literature reading resolution was to either i) finish Don Quixote, and read Catcher in the Rye and The Tin Drum, or ii) to read In Search of Lost Time. I’m on the way to achieving both arms of this, being two volumes into Proust, and having read both the Salinger and the Grass.

I’m a bit behind on my classic sf resolution, to read three of A Princess of Mars, Tau Zero, Grey Lensman, Again, Dangerous Visions, The Female Man, Last and First Men, Deathbird, and Dhalgren, in that I have read only the Anderson.

My main comics resolution was to find a new master list, and I did.

These are the two episodes which introduce the seventh member of the original Seven, telepathic Cally, and give us a lot more rounding out of the Blake’s Seven universe (which up until now has been humans vs humans, with occasional Mysterious Objects like the Liberator floating past).

Time Squad: The title of this episode is very peculiar. I suppose it could refer to the alien guards on the captured space pod, but the only sense in which they are a “time squad” is that they are drifting forward in time in suspended animation. It’s even more difficult to make it fit any of the other groups of characters in the story.

However, a lot of this episode is about misdirection of the audience by the writer. At the start, it looks like we are going to settle into a pattern of Blake and team attacking Federation assets à la Resistance fighters of the second world war, and each episode is therefore going to be a raid of the week. But once we have the problems of the pod’s inhabitants running wild about the Liberator, and the sense that the ship itself is powerful but not completely reliable, it looks like this is actually a story about beating off an infiltration on-board while still trying to pull off the mission on the ground. And then there is a further twist, as it turns out that the resistance fighters planetside have been reduced to one telepathic babe.

The episode then resolves in a fairly standard way – alien threat defeated, Federation base blown up as planned – but there have been enough twists getting there that you feel you’ve had your money’s worth. And we now know who the Seven are.

The Web: This episode is partly about more back-story for Cally, but I think much more about Blake and to a lesser extent Avon. I saw this first time round in 1978, but had forgotten the detail (possibly lost on me when I was ten) that the evil scientists on the ground are dissidents from Cally’s people. It’s noticeable that the three people who we see being taken over by the baddies’ brain influence are the three women, Cally, Jenna and the female cyborg. I found the crew’s willingness to forgive Cally for sabotaging the ship (even if under mind control) rather too swift. Surely after what happened last episode they should have learnt to be wary of alien interlopers?

But we have lots of Blake here, both ethical!Blake and gay!Blake. Ethical!Blake in his growing realisation of what the situation actually is, and in the end in his refusal to countenance the destruction of the Decimas, even though this means danger for his own crew. (That final scene in the lab, with the Decimas contemptuously trashing the bodies of the cyborgs, is pretty horrific and did linger in my memory for the last thirty years!)

But also gay!Blake in his relationship with Avon – that moment when Avon throws himself at Blake to protect him from the bomb which is about to explode is fantastic – Avon tries to explain it away as an instinctuive reflex – yeah, right, their hands are practically intertwining. And there is practically no body chemistry between the men and the women on the Liberator, apart from Vila’s attempt to chat up mind-controlled Cally – which would probably have been disastrous anyway, as rather than compliment her on her appearance he asks her to compliment him on his!

NB also lots of classic Terry Nation twists – this is basically a riff on Davros and the Daleks, with the important difference that the Decimas are not in fact evil.

Full marks to for spotting this link.

Well, It wasn’t actually bad, but it was disappointing; didn’t rise to the heights of Blink, or even of the two previous season finales. The pacing was curiously off, almost always a problem with RTD scripts.

Martha in general was pretty cool throughout, including her (temporary?) departure, and her links with the real world. The devastated Earth was well done, though, you know immediately that this means that the cast just have to find the Reset button and press it.

I did like the Doctor/Master relationship, and the Doctor’s devastation at being the last of his people again, even though I am Old Skool enough that I cannot really believe it is the Master without a beard or a decaying face.

The Doctor-goes-all-glowy bit is, IMHO, actually a homage to the end of the Pertwee story The Mutants, where the same effect is tried (not on the Doctor but on another character) and done really really badly. Several other Pertwee-era homages, mainly to stories I haven’t seen (Claws of Axos, Sea Devils).

The Doctor-turns-into-Dobby-the House-elf bit was, sadly, rubbish; and the Master keeping Martha’s family alive on the off-chance that she might show up doesn’t make sense.

Jack didn’t get much to do except turn into the future Face of Boe, did he? And Mrs Master did hardly anything except shoot her husband. Waste of good characters.

Well, here comes the Christmas special.

Caitlin Moran, in The Times, puts it well.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♩.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♩.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♩.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♩.

Well, this brings me to the end of the First Doctor stories, and almost to the end of the Second Doctor (just The Wheel In Space and The Seeds of Death to go; and strictly I saw The Seeds of Death some years ago). Will do a full retrospective some time soon (probably when I am on holiday). For now, notes on these three:

An Unearthly Child is of course where it all begins. The first episode, where the teachers Ian and Barbara follow the mysterious pupil Susan home and discover that her grandfather’s police box has an unexpectedly large interior, is still electrifying to watch after almost half a century. The Doctor doesn’t even appear until almost halfway through, which gives him an air of authority and mystery. The great lines – “Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you?” – are all there.

The remaining three episodes, where the Tardis crew are captured by and escape from a Stone Age tribe who have lost the secret of fire, are OK. The second episode, with Susan’s surprise that the Tardis has not changed shape, and Ian and Barbara trying to work out what to call the Doctor, is the most interesting.

The Underwater Menace, from Patrick Troughton’s first season in early 1967, is notorious – even the normally upbeat Howe and Walker describe it as “undoubtedly the weakest of the second Doctor’s era, if not of the sixties as a whole”. Fortunately, in a way, only episode three (out of four) survives, and today’s fan can buy the soundtrack with narration by Anneke Wills who played Polly (the story featuring her, Ben and new companion Jamie). This means that we are not subjected to the awful production values and can let our imaginations fill in for the cheap-looking sets. As a sound only production it comes close to succeeding, with the main problems being the baffling ballet of the fish people in episode three (which in fact becomes more rather than less confusing when you actually see it) and the utterly clichéd villain, Professor Zaroff, who actually ends the third episode by declaring that nothing in the world can stop him now. The director, Julia Smith, went on to create EastEnders; this cannot have been a high point of her early career.

It does feature the most extensively featured Irish character in any Doctor Who story, P.G. Stephens’ trapped sailor Sean (who is teamed up with Jacko, a trapped Asian sailor played by Paul Anil). As I have previously noted, there is not a lot of competition. It is not fair to say that he has “the least convincing Irish accent in television history”, as he has a long acting career both in Ireland and England (playing mainly Irish parts, including a comedy IRA bomber), but he is certainly as wobbly in his acting as any of the rest of the guest cast, especially in the deeply embarrassing scene where he urges the fish people to revolt.

The Faceless Ones: Set in July 1966 in London, the established companions subject to brainwashing and written out after the first two episodes, seems a bit familiar? Though in fact the story is a startling contrast with The War Machines in many ways. The most striking difference is that it is much more boring, stretched across six episodes set in Gatwick Airport, which is somehow not as exciting as the Post Office Tower. I have to say that I listened to most of them last Wednesday while on a flight from Kosovo back to Brussels via Ljubljana, not at all sure if I was going to reach my destination, so it struck a bit closer to home than I normally like my Who to do. But really, the Chameleons’ predicament makes no sense, the resolution makes no sense, the departure of Ben and Polly makes little sense (though the Doctor gets a nice wistful line as they go) and the plot barely progresses from episode one to episode six. I do wish Pauline Collins had stayed on as potential companion Sam Briggs, rather than the dismal Victoria – that would have been a tension worth watching, as Jamie has already snogged her twice. But it was not to be.

Personal fact: I was born on the Wednesday between the broadcasts of episodes 3 and 4 of this story (by this point the Doctor Who cast were filming the Evil of the Daleks). Continuing the theme of the story, that same day Captain Terence O’Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, sacked his Minister for Agriculture due to a property scandal involving an airport.

Anyway, An Unearthly Child is a must-see; the two early Troughton stories are not.