5) Backdrop of Stars, edited by Harry Harrison

I picked up this collection (first published in 1968, though I got the 1975 paperback) in Dublin the other month, and Ken MacLeod, no less, commended my choice, saying that it had made quite an impression on him when he first read it. A baker’s dozen of stories by well-established authors (Aldiss, Anderson, Asimov, Ballard – they are printed by alphabetical order), some of which go some way to challenging comfortable political preconceptions (though one – L. Sprague de Camp’s “Proposal” – is I fear serious rather than satirical in its anti-feminism). It also struck me that a lot of the stories were really about death; the very first, Aldiss’ “Judas Danced”, is about an execution and the last, Mack Reynolds’ “Retaliation”, is a post-nuclear holocaust vignette (with a sting in the tale – the viewpoint characters, for whom the author has developed our sympathy, are Russians not Americans). Anyway, a good collection.

I am now going through passport control for the third time today. It isn’t often that I have been in four different countries before lunchtime. (But not completely unprecedented either.)

I took the opportunity of a six-hour layover between flights in Istanbul to go explore the centre of the city; the only other time I had been there I saw only what was visible from the taxi between airport and hotel.

This time was different. Though feeling really crap and cold-ridden, I made it safely into the middle of town, and basically orbited back and forth between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque for two hours.

The Hagia Sophia (Ἁγία Σοφία, Holy Wisdom) basilica was built by Justinian in the 530s, and was the largest cathedral in the world for a thousand years.

 
After the Turkish conquest in 1453 it became a mosque.

 
And Ataturk turned it into a museum in the 1930s, so there are a few Byzantine pillars in the grounds..

 

But some of the original Byzantine artwork has resurfaced, or been restored:

 
Including this one at one of the doors, where on the left Justinian offers the Hagia Sofia itself, and on the right Constantine offers the city which bore his name for centuries, to the Mother of God.

From the doorstep of the cathedral, the ancient Hippodrome extends about 500 metres; halfway along its length, the emperor Theodosius erected an Egyptian obelisk in 390 AD. The Blue Mosque is in the background. Just consider the timescales involved: Thutmosis had the obelisk engraved in 1490 BC, almost two millennia before Theodosius brought it here; the mosque was built in the first part of the 17th century, over 1200 years after the obelisk got there; and roughly four hundred years later, I get to take a photograph of it.

 

The Blue Mosque itself is too vast for the humble tourist photographer to capture it, so you will have to be satisfied with the majesty of the entrance…

 
…and this internal view of one of the domes, slightly spoiled in my opinion by the vast number of wires dangling from the ceiling supporting the electric lighting system.

 
Some day I shall go back and see more.

On the road for the next week (to Cyprus right now, Macedonia/Kosovo on Tuesday, back on Saturday). Really sore throat. Hope that improves…

4) Fun Home: a family tragicomedy, by Alison Bechdel

recommended this to me a while back, and it was one of the 20 listed by Nerve, so ended up on my birthday list – thanks, Caroline! Also has just read it.

This is a tremendous piece of work; beautifully drawn, beautifully scripted. One takes it as autobiography, but in a sense it doesn’t really matter, it’s a superb literary achievement whether you treat it as fact or fiction. Alison Bechdel shows and tells the story of her father, whose homosexuality she discovered shortly after herself coming out as a lesbian, and shortly before his mysterious death. In life, he was obsessed with restoring their family home, with a level of effort that he never really put into maintaining the family. The “fun home” of the title is not in fact the family house, but the father’s day job – a funeral home, “fun home” for short.

Lots of references to literature, carefully woven into the text. In years to come, people will give course on the layers of text in this book. One line that really hit home for me was “It’s said, after all, that people reach middle age the day they realize they’re never going to read Remembrance of Things Past.” I know what I’m bringing on the plane tomorrow.

This is really really good. Go and read it.

Top UnSuggestions for this book:

1. The Testament by John Grisham
2. The street lawyer by John Grisham
3. The brethren by John Grisham

Yep, Alison Bechdel is the anti-John Grisham. Oddly enough it is the third on the list, The Brethren, which returns the favour.

Poor Martha, all in lurve and the Doctor doesn’t see it.

Reference to Mr Saxon already!

Big reception reminiscent of that scene in the Eighth Doctor movie.

Martha’s mother has the Doctor beaten!

Lots of flashing lights and switches, even smoke rising, great stuff!

And the man in the box is… Mark Gatiss!

“What it means to be human” – echoes of last week’s plot, such as it was. (Also dodgy DNA science.)

Ah, he’s got the munchies and the Doctor knows why…

Smart Martha, picking up DNA samples!

Hmm, old woman not attractive to newly young man. Not sure if I approve. But he’s going to die, I bet; and her too.

Martha and Doctor in the lab, very sweet.

Yep, Dr Lazarus is going to die.

Oh, I didn’t expect that! Cool!!!

Now he’s back again, right as rain, having had his snack. And Tish is next on the menu…

Sinister waiter! Who is he? A minion of Mr Saxon?

Yay, a monster that doesn’t look crap!

And escaping down a tall building – like last week, only better.

Doctor shouting at the monster – great!

Running down the corridor – great!

Martha has the sonic screwdriver – cool!

Doctor blows up the lab.

Martha’s mother and the sinister waiter again. Can’t lip-read but did he say “he’s not human”?

Yep switching the machine on – will we get Chris Ecclestone back? No, but we get a “reverse the polarity” phrase. Good.

Dead Mark Gatiss. But for how long?

Martha’s mother unable to articulate her feelings.

Yes, with a name like Lazarus of course he is going to come back from the dead.

Much better lines in this episode. Doctor v Lazarus on death and immortality. “No such thing as an ordinary human.” “If you live long enough, the only certainty is that you’ll end up alone.”

Martha and sister up the tower. Very hunchback. And the organ as well! Fantastic!

Killed by a discord. (And a long drop.)

Martha saved not quite by the bell, but by her sister.

Goodbye scene again? Surely not.

“One more trip?” But she puts it well. Doesn’t want to be an extra. Not really “just a passenger” – so what, then?

Oooh. Shiny trailer!

Anne points out that for once it was just a mad human scientist, no aliens for a change. (Though Mr Saxon…)

I’m travelling next week, so I’m glad it’s postponed to the week after.

3) The Life of W.T. Stead, by Frederic Whyte

This is the end of a reading project that has kept me going for just over a year: the works of my distant relative Frederic Whyte (1867-1940). Having spent most of his career as an editor, reviewer and translator, he married a Swedish woman and moved to Sweden some time around the first world war, and in 1925 published the first of a succession of four books over the next six years – two biographical (this and one on William Heinemann) and then two autobiographical (one on Sweden and one on England), each book containing more of Whyte than the previous ones.

I confess I didn’t know a lot about Stead before I read this. He was born in 1849 and famously died in 1912. From 1871 he began to make a career as a crusading journalist on the Northern Echo (which is of course still going); in 1880 he moved from Darlington to London to join the staff of the daily Pall Mall Gazette, and became its editor in 1883. He fell out with the P.M.G. in 1889 and in 1890 started his own monthly, The Review of Reviews which he kept up until he died. In 1904 he tried to start a daily paper (called, with startling originality, The Daily Paper) and hired Frederic Whyte as the book review editor, but it folded in weeks. Twenty years earlier he had been the first – but far from the last – editor to commission a theatre review from George Bernard Shaw.

Anyone interested in the late Victorian and Edwardian history of any of the subjects which Stead campaigned on – child prostitution (against); sending General Gordon to Khartoum (in favour); Cecil Rhodes (mixed); the Boer War (against); Irish Home Rule (in favour); religion (in favour); spiritualism (in favour); world peace (also in favour) – will find much in terms of primary source material here. This is a book much more about trees than about the forest; for each of the memorable events in Stead’s career, we get substantial excerpts from Stead’s own correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, plus where possible the reminiscences of other protagonists (Whyte was writing in 1925, but had obviously started a few years before).

Stead comes across as opinionated, eloquent, persuasive, and fundamentally good at heart, but very poor at acquiring and managing allies, and much better at making enemies through his writing, both through actual hostility and through journalistic indiscretion. His enthusiasm for spiritualism must strike most of us now as pretty barmy, and Whyte doesn’t pull his punches on that score. But on the other big issues he was more right (Boer War, Ireland, prostitution) than wrong (General Gordon).

His death came about as a result of accepting an invitation to speak on the same platform as President Taft at a meeting in New York on the topic of “World Peace”, as part of a new American movement to encourage men and boys to participate more in the Church. His last editorial in the Review of Reviews explains the whole scheme (which seems well-meaning but also wacky) in great detail, and signs off confidently,

I expect to leave by the Titanic on April 10th, and hope I shall be back in London in May.

Of course, he never made it to New York.

Lots more about Stead on this website. Whyte’s biography, two volumes of smallish type-face totalling over 700 pages, is fairly widely available, though I was fortunate to pick mine up for a mere $16.50 – the going rate seems to be about three times that.

2) Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope

Having read and enjoyed The Warden last summer, I asked for and got this as a birthday present. Hmm, not really sure what I think. I found the politics rather more objectionable than in the previous book – most of the central characters just want to do nothing in particular and get rewarded for it by the state, and there seemed a lot of casual anti-semitism which put me off. But this is slightly off-set by the glamorous Signora Neroni, a woman with a Past who nonetheless seems to me to be portrayed positively and sympathetically. And the unexpected beneficiary of her schemes turns out to be the quiet character who has just turned 40, obviously a theme that appeals to me right now (and indeed Trollope himself turned 40 while writing this book). But Obadiah Slope is such a cardboard cut-out of a villain that I suspect Alan Rickman’s brilliant portrayal of him in 1982 was better-rounded. And I didn’t like the author’s occasional interventions to remind you that he is writing a novel and has to fill up the pages somehow. I’ll look out for the other volumes in the series as I see them, but won’t bother putting them on my wishlist in future.

Top UnSuggestions for this book:

1. Stranger than fiction: true stories by Chuck Palahniuk
2. Dead as a doornail by Charlaine Harris
3. Girls in pants: the third summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares

1) Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the year 2660, by Hugo Gernsback

Brian Aldiss blames Gernsback for taking sf away from the literary tradition established by Mary Shelley, and reading this, the Luxembourg-born author’s only well-known work of fiction, I can see why Aldiss accuses Gernsback of “a deadening literalism”; and yet I can also understand why the Worldcon hands out Hugos rather than Shelleys.

This fairly short novel was written in 1911, and concerns Ralph 124C 41+, the greatest inventor of his age, who one day meets the beautiful Alice as a result of a crossed videophone conversation, and saves her from an avalanche in distant Switzerland by remote control. He takes her on a tour of 27th century New York and rescues her from abduction and certain death in space at the hands of his rivals for her affections.

Of course the narrative (such as it is) is interrupted frequently by breathless descriptions of the technical advances of the year 2660. Some of these (e.g. radar and solar panels) are now familiar to us in 2007, while in some cases one wonders why he didn’t take the idea a step further (you can watch live broadcasts from Europe, and phone calls use video as a matter of course, but no mention of video recording of any kind – and this was written several years after the dawn of cinema).

No robots (still nine years before Čapek invented them in R.U.R.), and perhaps more unexpectedly no rockets – space flight happens via antigravity. (Robert Goddard only began his rocket experiments that same year, 1911; Tsiolkovsky had been writing on the subject for decades, but I don’t know how well know his work was in the English-speaking world.)

Yet Gernsback’s most spectacular miss is in his failure to understand how technology would revolutionise society. Ralph’s sleep is enlivened by a recording of Homer’s Odyssey; his manservant puts it on for him. Ralph’s dictation machine means that his secretary can devote her time to other things, not that he can dispense with her services. As noted above, we hear a lot about live entertainment, but not much about other forms of literature. The technicalities of how the newspaper of 2660 is produced and read are described in detail; its contents are not.

(And Gernsbach’s asteroids have atmospheres.)

Still, I can find a lot more forgiveness for him than Brian Aldiss did: for me, Gernsbach’s enthusiasm makes up for his desperately clunky prose. And I love the line, “Martians in New York were not sufficiently rare to excite any particular comment.”

(NB: got this as an ebook from Renaissance ebooks.)

Edited to add: At least he tried harder to have an actual plot than Edward Bellamy.

A fascinating 10-page paper from www.brusselsstudies.be on linguistic diversity in Europe and especially in Brussels.

In particular, check out this graph from page 6:

English is more widely spoken than Dutch in both Wallonia and Brussels, and almost as widely spoken as French in Flanders. The paper then gives 1999 figures, and reasonably extrapolates from them to conclude that fewer than half of Brussels residents are now native French speakers (fewer than 10% native Dutch speakers, and very few indeed native English speakers). The author is upbeat:

…the spectacular spread of English is not only inevitable but also desirable, especially in Brussels. In Europe and the rest of the world we absolutely need a common language, one that is not monopolized by a small elite but is widely spread amongst all sections of the population. Through accidents of history this role has fallen to English. For us Belgians, what a stroke of luck! Whether our mother tongue is French or Dutch, of the 6000 languages spoken in the world today, English is one of the 10 to 15 languages that lie closest to our own. Even better: if there is one language in the world that can claim to lie precisely midway between French and Dutch, it is English and only English, which is after all but a dialect very similar to Frisian, which the Angles took with them when they crossed the Channel in the fifth century and which was later made unrecognisable by some Vikings who, after a few centuries of French lessons in Normandy, crossed the channel in turn to simplify its grammar and graft 10,000 French words onto it. Some inveterate narcissists will perhaps still manage to complain about the fact that the chosen language is not precisely the same as the one in which they were rocked by their mum. But this should not stop us rejoicing at our incredible luck.

Worth reading the whole thing.

I bought this CD of three radio plays related to Doctor Who when in Forbidden Planet in London last month. Two of the three are very good indeed, and I guess I can ignore the third.

In Regenerations, Daragh Carville brings together two of my personal obsessions: Doctor Who and Northern Ireland. I thought it was very good indeed. There are three main plot strands – the local lad with his relatively newly acquired English girlfriend, introducing her to his mates (I’ve never been there, oh no, not at all); the gay couple not sure if their relationship still exists; and the unfortunate organiser of the local Doctor Who convention trying to keep it on the road while his friends’ relationships, and the city around them, descend into chaos.

At the same time, Carville examines three different levels of reality: the diehard Doctor Who fan, of course, insisting that it is all in some way real (the play was written in 2001 and set in 2002, so before the BBC Wales revival was on); the surrealism of Northern Irish politics (at one point Rachel is teasing Ciaran about dressing up as a Cyberman, and the music of a Loyalist marching band, presumably also bizarrely dressed, comes through clearly in the background); and the peculiarities of being gay in Northern Ireland.

All the cast give of their best, including (portraying themselves) Sophie Aldred and Tom Baker. There are some beautifully chosen audio clips from the classic series, tying in perfectly with the themes and plot. I love this play to bits.

You can buy it on the CD, and of course I urge you to do so, or you may find this link helpful. You can also find more reviews of it here and here (also reviews the other two plays on the CD collection).

Blue Veils and Golden Sands, by Martyn Wade, is a biographical sketch of Delia Derbyshire, who was basically into weird sounds and generated the first and still the best version of the Doctor Who theme tune – Ron Grainer, who had written the original sketch of it, requested unsuccessfully that she be co-credited with him as composer. I must say that the life story of someone who is famous for making wacky noises is absolutely made for a radio play, and this is good, though I felt I would have liked to know a bit more; I’m glad to discover from Derbyshire’s obituary in the Guardian that her personal life was not quite as bleak as is portrayed in Wade’s play.

Alas, the set of two CDs also includes Colin Sharpe’s Dalek, I Love You. Apparently Doctor Who fans live with their mothers, are mildly autistic and get swept off their feet by mysterious females. Nigel Kneale did this better with Kinvig twenty-five years ago; and that wasn’t very good in the first place. At least the other two plays are worth the price on the box.

Liveblogging the presidential debate, though my French is far from perfect:

Did Segolène Royal just say that if she is elected president, every policewoman will be walked safely home after work?

Did Nicolas Sarkozy just say both that there are too many civil servants in France and too few?

Did Royal just say that she will bring in conscription for young offenders?

Now Sarkozy is accusing Royal’s boyfriend of proposing a new CSG. What is a CSG?

“Je rédeployerai!” Not one of the great slogans of our time.

I haven’t seen the female moderator say anything so far; her male colleague seems to be doing it all.

I don’t like Sarkozy or his body language at all, but I think he has her on the run on the economic arguments.

No I don’t, not any more. Apparently if he is president, no unemployed person will be allowed to turn down more than two job offers, because this works so well in the UK.

Nice strike back by Royal, “if the 35-hour week is such a bad thing, how come you haven’t repealed it?” It’s a good debating point.

And did Sarkozy just say he wouldn’t change the 35-hour week, “Je n’y toucherai pas”? After appearing to have argued precisely the opposite earlier?

Royal is grinning now as she says that the whole problem is that, compared with the dynamic social partnership economies of Scandinavia, there are not enough French trade union members.

F has just come downstairs although it is long past his bedtime. We explained that what we were watching was a kind of argument between two people who want to be President of France. He said firmly, “I hate squabbles!” And stomped back upstairs.

Royal looks bad at the end by interrupting Sarkozy when it was his turn to speak. But since he appears to be promising to revitalise France through early retirement, and refunding the costs of false teeth, maybe she was right. And now he is interrupting her even more grumpily that she did him a few minutes earlier.

F is absolutely right, that’s enough listening to people arguing in French for one night. No mention of Europe or foreign policy as far as I could tell. I’m going to bed.

Those interested in Torchwood and those who are related to one of the panellists (and the small minority who like me are in both categories) may be interested in this podcast from Cult TV Insider featuring Brian Minchin, Torchwood’s script editor, and Cath Treganna, who wrote two of the better episodes (the one with the timeslip aeroplane, and the second last one with the other Captain Jack); with a contribution also from Lindsay Alford who is the script editor for the most recently shown episodes of Doctor Who and for the Sarah Jane Adventures. 45 mins, listened to it on the way to work this morning. Some interesting hints also for those of you who may want to break into writing for the Beeb.

(On the emancipation of Jews in Britain, but much more widely applicable):

If there be any proposition universally true in politics it is this, that foreign attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule. It has always been the trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home, and then complain that they look for relief abroad; to divide society, and then to wonder that it is not united; to govern as if a section of the State were the whole, and to censure the other sections of the state for their want of patriotic spirit. If the Jews have not felt towards England like children, it is because she has treated them like a step-mother.

(As quoted in W.T. Stead’s 1886 pamphlet on Irish Home Rule, For Home and Gladstone, quoted in turn in Frederic Whyte’s 1925 biography of Stead.) It is not difficult to think of contemporary examples which can be substituted for “Jews” and/or “England” in the last sentence.

Although I have no idea of the context Macaulay was writing about, I find this an astonishingly clear statement from a writer who I don’t normally regard as a source of inspiration.

links to my earlier posts, and describes young F’s artwork in glowing terms!

has a typically impassioned defence of New (and Old) Who

Ten Years On

Three Hundred Years On

My son F’s portrayal of the “10th Docter or Docter for the 3rd season”:

More Doctor Who audios – I know I said I was taking a break, but had problems finding and then ripping the CDs I actually wanted to listen to, so they will have to be later in the week. Two clunkers, one OK and one superb one this time.

I picked The Maltese Penguin under the impression that it came roughly here in sequence, though it looks like I was incorrect; anyway, it features the Sixth Doctor and his penguin-shaped companion Frobisher from the comic strips, in a spoof of The Maltese Falcon which won’t mean a lot unless you are a) a fan of the original film and/or b) remember the original Six/Frobisher comic strips with some affection. I fall into neither category and it left me rather cold.

The Holy Terror also has Six and Frobisher in a peculiar mock-Roman Empire world with bizarre rituals of imperial succession. I started out rather liking this setting (more grist to the mill of those researching the reception of the classics in sf) but ended up not liking it much after all; the off-hand treatment of violence and torture reminded me of the worst of the Sixth Doctor TV stories (I may be thinking of Vengeance on Varos). Frobisher is basically a one-joke character, and it just wasn’t very funny.

Last of the Titans is a nice little piece, with the Seventh Doctor (sounding very Scottish) materialising on an all-but-abandoned spaceship and gradually working out what the two other creatures on board are really up to. The solution is a bit implausible but everyone does it with great conviction.

Now for the good one. Storm Warning is the best DW audio I have heard to date. I had been warned by Alex Wilcock, and of course he was right. Funky new arrangement of the signature tune, and the return of the Eighth Doctor, in a brilliant soundscape evoking the disastrous maiden voyage of the R101. Gareth Roberts (Blake from Blake’s Seven) is fantastic as the sinister Air Minister, Lord Tamworth, India Fisher is great as new companion Charley Pollard, and Paul McGann is simply superb. Also I see that this appears to have been the first DW written by Alan Barnes, who also wrote the two Gallifrey episodes I most enjoyed. I believe the next three in sequence are all Eight stories, and very much look forward to them.

21) Alias vol 2: Come Home, by Brian Michael Bendis

I reported previously that I enjoyed the first in this series about a disaffected private eye with super powers, and I enjoyed this one as well; the main story is about our heroine on the track of a missing teenager, and uncovering a nasty family background and awful small-town environment; then there is a tail-end to the story where she goes on a dinner date. I find it very compelling.

Back in 1973, Dalek stories were real Dalek stories. Here we have the megalomaniac pepperpots preparing an army to take over the universe, and the Doctor encounters the Thals for the first time since way back when, giving us one of the most explicit continuity references ever. OK, the story is perhaps two episodes too long (how on earth did they get away with six-parters in those days?), the plot has a few holes (what do the Time Lords actually do with the information that the Doctor sends?) and the Daleks, alas, just a little less threatening than they might be (10,000 Dalek toys in a box, and the two who are simply pushed into the lake by our heroes); but it is all great fun. I remember being completely gripped by this when I first read it as part of the Doctor Who and the Daleks Omnibus produced by Marks and Spencer in 1976. The reviewers at the Doctor Who Reference Guide rate the novelisation ahead of the TV story. They may be right, but I found the original version still decently watchable.

To my slight surprise, I found myself liking Jo Grant more than usual. I’m afraid I normally find her deeply annoying, being the blonde companion who screams. Here she goes off to try and get help for the Doctor, dictating her thoughts into a voice recorder; she volunteers for dangerous parts of the adventure herself, and the Doctor lets her go. And there’s her almost-romance with Latep the Thal, though one can’t quite understand what she sees in him; she is of course destined to fall in love and leave the Doctor in her next story, having previous refused not only Latep but the King of Peladon and an Ogron in Frontier in Space. Indeed, there’s romance all round with the Rebec/taron relationship, the later played by Bernard Horsfall (of whom I have written before), the former by Jane How who apparently went on to be Dirty Den’s mistress in EastEnders.

Which brings me to another topic of unhealthy fascination for me: the women of the Thals. Nation’s attitude seems to undergo a steady improvement over the years, with Dyoni in The Daleks being little more than an object of protection (Ian shocks the Thals into action by threatening to hand her over to the Daleks), Rebec here being definitely more proactive but accused by Taron of being a distraction because he is in love with her, and finally Bettan in Genesis of the Daleks as a soldier in her own right who takes charge of cleaning up the mess after the Doctor and his companions depart. This is the chain of thought that culminates in Glynis Barber’s portrayal of Soolin in Blake’s Seven, and someone better versed than I am in analysing the portrayal of women in sf (and especially in the works of Terry Nation) can take this thought further.

“Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.”

This turns out to be quite onerous! One person’s questions were not specially icon or interest related, and will have to wait.

Interests

ajara (asked by  and ): This region (known as აჭარა in the local language) is part of Georgia (ex-Soviet rather than US state). It used to have a strongly autonomous government under the leadership of Aslan Abashidze; he got kicked out a few years back, and I was fairly closely involved in monitoring the situation at the time. Various spellings are used, since the Georgian letter ჭ is usually transliterated “ch”, but I am sticking to “Ajara” rather than the alternatives.

ansible (asked by ): Here I really mean not the device for instant faster-than-light communication to be found in the novels of Ursula Le Guin and Orson Scott Card, but the monthly newsletter of what’s going on in science fiction produced by David Langford, archived here, which itself has won six Hugo awards and has helped Langford win another 20 for best Fan Writer.

careers advice (asked by ): As some on my friends list will know, I do like from time to time to offer my input into how to shape career plans. This is partly because I feel my career path has been unconventional which maybe gives me a different perspective. Partly also that I never got any good careers advice myself, apart from the day I bought What Color is your Parachute? and realised that it is in fact OK to have wild dreams about your career, you just have to work out how to get there (and also OK to look for a job where you can do more of the work you like and less of the work you don’t).

cusu (asked by ): The Cambridge University Students Union, of which I was Deputy President (Services) in 1989-90, the yeah after I graduated (though I stuck around Cambridge for another year after to do my M Phil). Not in fact a great year of my life, as I have written here, but I learnt a lot from doing it. And I stay in touch with what’s going on to the limited extent of seeing who has been elected to my old post (now “Services Officer”) every year and sending them a commiserating email.

father ted (asked by ): This was a hilarious sitcom produced between 1995 and 1998, telling the story of three very strange Irish priests on an island and their equally eccentric housekeeper. I don’t know how well the humour would travel; I have occasionally baffled American friends by making them sit down and watch it.

gerald ford (asked by ): Ford was the first president whose term I remember in full (I was not yet two years old when Nixon was elected). It’s a scary thought that the kids who were born the year he lost the election to Jimmy Carter have now turned thirty. I am instinctively leftish of the political spectrum, but I retain a soft spot for Ford. He clearly was a more pleasant person than the average Republican candidate – it oozes out of this 1976 campaign commercial – but more importantly, his intervention in the Helsinki Accords process in 1975 made a greater contribution to bringing about the end of the Cold War through the peaceful implosion of Communism than any of Reagan’s adventurist efforts. Any of us living in a peaceful Europe today – especially in Eastern Europe – owe him a huge debt.

mediaeval or medieval history (asked by ): I’m a purist for spelling and prefer “mediæval” but you can’t have everything. I described my interest in the period in an earlier round of interviews here, but would add that I found my mediæval work almost the most intellectually stimuating thing I have ever done: trying to decode the thoughts and mind-sets of 800 years ago. I would like to get to the stage professionally where I could spend a week a month doing lucrative consultancy, two weeks reading science fiction and the rest of the time on continuing my medieval research. Give me ten or fifteen years.

prime numbers (asked by ): I just find them fascinating. I have almost certainly lived through more than half the years in my lifetime which are prime numbers (seven of them – 1973 1979 1987 1993 1997 1999 and 2003; the next seven would take me to 2063, and the one after is 2069). I like taking random large numbers and seeing how quickly I can break them down to their prime factors – say with people’s phone numbers – I remember discovering with glee that three of my four best friends at school all had phone numbers that were divisible by 23 (the fourth didn’t have a phone). Yes, I am weird that way.

rasfw (asked by ): In the old days before blogging and livejournal, a lot of people on the ‘net communicated through a system known as usenet. It’s still out there, though I should think most people think of it as “Google Groups” these days. The key area of usenet for exchanging sf-related thoughts was (and still is, as far as usenet goes) rec.arts.sf.written; I appear to have contributed of the order of 200 posts to it over the years, which makes me a small blip on a large radar screen.

single transferable vote (asked by , who has probably used it): this is the Best Electoral System in the World. Voters get to rank the candidates in order of increasing dislike, and then votes are transferred until the right number of candidates have been chosen. Used for elections in discerning jusrisdictions like the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta, and Australia. (In Northern Ireland it is used for local government, Assembly and European Parliament elections, because they Have To Be Fair; but not for Westminster elections.)

Icons

1915 (asked by and ):

This icon originated in this post, part of my efforts to get informed about the Lake Doiran campaign and the Battle of Kosturino in December 1915, in which my grandfather participated. The map is a sketch from Ward Price’s book on the campaign, showing what is now the south-eastern corner of the Republic of Macedonia, a country I know fairly well though I have spent only a day and a night in that part of it (a seminar in Štip, many years ago, followed by an overnight and another seminar in Strumica). I hope to get down there the weekend after next to complete my researches.

alphabets (asked by ):

As explained at some length a while back to , I am entirely fascinated by alphabets. (See also the many entries with the alphabets tag on this journal.) I generated the icon so as to have a proper one for future alphabet-related posts. The text is my name in (from top to bottom) Bulgarian, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Thai and Chinese, with Japanese down the right hand side. of course the orthographic eccentricities of the way I actually spell my name in the Latin alphabet (that silent ‘h’ in ‘Nicholas’, the ‘y’ instead of ‘i’ in ‘Whyte’) do not survive the process.

buzz (asked by ):

This was practically the first icon I designed for myself, one of the many photographs taken of Buzz Aldrin on the moon by Neil Armstrong. I use it here for all posts and comments on sf and fantasy matters which are not actual book reviews (for which I use a separate icon). Rather to my surprise I found a few months ago that someone had started using it as their default icon – not just a case of great minds thinking alike, but the two icons were identical as far as my graphics software could tell, and I knew I had made this one!

dancing cyberman (asked by ):

This icon was made for me by the wonderful, Hugo-winning gag reel from last year’s Doctor Who stories. The cybermen are among Doctor Who’s most famous adversaries (probably in third place after the Daleks and the Master); they have famously had all of their emotions surgically removed, to become creatures of pure logic. The sight of people in robotic costumes running around an English park is funny, but in the context that these are supposed to be joyless creatures it is even funnier. I use this icon for happy posts, and congratulating other people when they make happy posts. (One of ony two animated icons among my userpics.)

Lib Dem (asked by ):

The often mocked Bird of Liberty logo is the symbol of the Liberal Democrats, the third party in British politics. I’ve been a member of the party since it was founded in 1988, and was elected on a Lib Dem platform to Cambridge University Students Union (see above); I was also a candidate for Cambridge City Council in 1990 on the Lib Dems ticket, and am still a member of the Brussels branch. I was more prominent, of course, in the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, which is a sister party of the Lib Dems; I was their central director of election/party organiser for three years, and was again a candidate in North Belfast in 1996. I tend to use my Northern Ireland icon for posts on NI politics, but am occasionally moved to comment on the Lib Dems (especially during last year’s leadership election) and so have this icon in reserve.

orac (asked by ):

Orac was one of the group known as Blake’s Seven in the British science fiction series of the same name which ran from January 1978 to December 1981, a bleak view of the future which seems eerily reminiscent now of the rise of Margaret Thatcher to power. (Though there were not always seven of Blake’s Seven, and Blake was barely seen in the third and fourth seasons.) In general Orac was a deeply annoying know-it-all computer, so his occasional variations from that were very amusing. I use the icon to illustrate posts about computers and IT generally, and I’m getting into the habit of using it also for memes. Am planing to re-watch Blake’s Seven in the near future.

plovdiv (asked by )

Another Balkan map, this one done as a one-off for a particular entry on the history of Eastern Rumelia, which was carved off the Ottoman empire in 1878 and became part of Bulgaria in 1885 (the ensuing war with Serbia being the setting for George Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man”. The icon is taken from this map. I just love the fact that western policy-makers were gravely discussing the fate of Philippopolis when the locals just called it Plovdiv (Пловдив). I will probably never do another post about the Eatern Rumelia question, unless some miracle of fate actually brings me there, but I do occasionally use this icon to illustrate posts or comments about peculiar and confusing situations.

smile (asked by ):

This is actually a picture of the great Victorian Irish astronomer, Sir Robert Stawell Ball (1840-1913), the subject of one of my M Phil essays in 1991. He was very well known as a populariser of science, though his actual scientific discoveries were in fact more in the exotic field of the mathematics of screws (now apparently an important concept in robot engineering). This is one of the famous series of caricatures of public figures done for the magazine Vanity Fair by Leslie Ward (known as ‘Spy’). I use it for mild amusement; several other happy icons (including the dancing cyberman, above) get more use though.

usa (asked by ):

Yeah, my fascination with body paint again; I think I found the original image by googling “patriotic body paint”, though it doesn’t come up when I try the search now. I use it to illustrate posts about contemporary America which are not related to the institution of the presidency in general (for which I use this, taken from Google Earth’s view of the White House) or Gerald Ford in particular (for which I use this).

Ooof, that was hard work. Feel free to ask again about more interests or icons, or to ask me to ask you about yours, but it may be a while before I compile another set of answers!

I think the idea of the hybrid Dalek is crazy but the execution is good.

The rather nice moment of Sec picking up the radio.

The doubting Daleks.

Dalek attack on the camp is a bit half-hearted…

Solomon tries to talk to the Daleks. Bet they kill him.

Yep.

has just put a comment on an earlier post saying that this episode has already started badly. Indeed, and not just because this storyline was already done in 1967.

Martha left behind by the Doctor in Hooverville as companions always are. To show her dismayed expression the camera tracks up from her cleavage. Slowly.

But she’s very clever, and while the Doctor is engaging in pointless banter with the Daleks, she is working out what is in the sewers.

My wife sniggers scornfully at the reference to gamma radiation.

Crumbs, Davros was wrong? Dalek Sec has decided to undo the mutation? (I preferred The Mutant Phase’s take.)

Daleks ask the Doctor to take them to a better place, and he agrees!!!

“If aliens had to come to earth, no wonder they came here!” Of course these days it would be San Francisco.

Doctor has his glasses on again.

Tallulah and Martha on the Doctor and love, etc.

“The line feeds are ready.” (Aren’t line feeds old-fashioned computer printers?)

Oh, very Frankenstein! The solar flare rather than lightning of course, but still…

Now the Daleks are rebelling. This is being done much better than the Dalek conflict in Resurrection of the Daleks. Also of course my sympathies are very much with the anti-Sec faction.

“First floor, perfumery” – ah, Rocky Horror nostalgia.

(How is the solar flare going to make much difference at night time?)

Poor old Laszlo. Obviously doomed, but it solves the problem of how he and Tallulah can get together again; they won’t because he will be dead.

Whoops, dropped the sonic screwdriver!

Really great shot of the lightning strike!

Martha’s remorse, and Laszlo’s reassurance, nicely done.

Dalek army of humans awakes… Despite getting electrocuted the Doctor failed.

The Daleks have not got out of the habit of imprisoning captives in their control room, first seen in Dalek Invasion of Earth.

The silent dalek hybrid army and Carmina Burana style music – very effective.

“If you choose death and destruction, death and destruction will choose you” – a good line, must mean he is about to die.

Yep.

Hah, the radiation passing through the Doctor’s body obviously is enough to save the day.

So are these people going to be a new generation of Time Lords then?

Hah, Daleks killed by their own creation.

But they had a way of killing them off. No new Time Lords then.

“Just one.” Dalek Caan is the last one left. Will he get away?

Yep.

Laszlo is doomed. Or is he? Hah, the Doctor is not completely useless. Indeed, “The Doctor is in.” Well, that’s a plot twist I didn’t expect.

Back at the Statue of Liberty. “There’s someone for everyone.” “Maybe.” Awww.

I see we’re back in Martha’s home period next week. Will be better, I expect. This wasn’t as bad as last week’s, but the two-parter was the weakest story so far this year.

Sarah Jane/Rose fanvid, by . Lovely.

has been listening to The Space Pirates, and likes it more than I did.

20) Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters, by Terrance Dicks

A good Robert Holmes script, turned into an average Terrance Dicks novel. I remember seeing this one in 1981 during the “Five Faces of Doctor Who” repeat season; wonder how well it would stand up to re-watching now?

(Apologies if this appears twice; problems posting)

There’s nothing like watching or listening to a good Dalek story to make you realise how bad a bad Dalek story can be. But more of that after this evening’s episode has been broadcast. Thanks to my new commitment to Being Fit, I have been listening to more of the Big Finish audio plays than I usually manage. I’ve gone slightly out of order, in that I skipped straight from The Shadow of the Scourge to The Mutant Phase without listening to the two Frobisher stories in between, but since they aren’t really sequential it doesn’t really matter.

The Apocalypse Element brings the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn – clearly one of the great pairings of Doctor Who – to the back-story of the Gallifrey audios that I listened to a couple of weeks ago (and a sequel of sorts to The Genocide Machine). Negotiations on a Time Treaty between Gallifrey and the other time-travelling powers are at a climax, Romana as President has been missing for twenty years, and of course it turns out that the Daleks are behind it all. OK, poor old Gallifrey has been under siege so many times now that it is surprising the place is still standing, but I really enjoyed this one – everyone seems to be on top form, and I begin to believe those who say that Colin Baker’s performance in the audios shows what a great Doctor he could have been on TV, if he had given better material to work with. I see it has been much maligned by fan commentary in general; wonder what its critics think of it in comparison to Daleks in Manhattan?

The Fires of Vulcan brings the Seventh Doctor and Mel to Pompeii the day before the eruption of AD 79. I have managed to miss Bonnie Langford’s presence on TV completely, so this was actually the first story of hers I have experienced. McCoy is utterly splendid as bleak!Doctor, convinced that he has brought himself and his companion to their doom. Langford is not especially remarkable, doing standard female companion role, but not especially annoying either. Unfortunately much of the plot makes very little sense (too much running around in order to get stuck in dramatically dangerous situations), and my reaction to the Doctor’s eventual escape was D’oh, why didn’t he think of that in the first place???

The Shadow of the Scourge At one point in this story I thought, Hmm, the characters are all trapped in a building in which religious rituals have been taking place and are under siege by creatures from another dimension. I wonder who wrote this? And I was right. Actually it was striking to listen to two consecutive stories featuring dark!Seven taken from opposite ends of his timeline. I enjoyed this one rather more; the story is rather better constructed, the characterisation of the hotel guests caught up in the horrors of alien invasion rather well done. Slightly annoyed by the Doctor trying to appear villainous and conniving – although Ace calls him on it, she is right to point out that this is getting old by now. For once, I found Sophie Aldred not too annoying, and very much liked Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield. And Paul Cornell has a “cross-stitch convention” taking place in the hotel, a nice and recognisable spoof of sf conventions.

The Mutant Phase was another good Dalek story (ie a good story about Daleks, rather than a story about a good Dalek). I have to say that Sarah Sutton as Nyssa particularly impressed me this time round, unlike the previous two audios I heard her in, and . Lots of time travel action, two very bleak and convincing pictures of Earth at different tragic stages in its future, lots of continuity references to, of all stories, The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It got a little tangled up in time paradoxes and who the Dalek Emperor was actually being at the time towards the end, but very much kept my attention.

As has been mentioned around the place, I just turned 40. The time has come to start trying to keep fit. So I have joined a gym club in the European quarter, in an effort to do some systematic exercise.

I do do the occasional bike ride at weekends, but I feel that isn’t very systematic and also eats into my family time. I suppose I could have saved the membership money and just gone for systematic jogging and cycling first thing in the morning; but to be honest I felt I needed to make a financial commitment to increase the chances that I would stick with it (sunk cost fallacy I know, but it works psychologically). Also with the membership you do get advice from the instructors, which saves me trying to navigate through websites or read up on it from elsewhere.

I have never done regular exercise, and need all the incentives I can manufacture to stick at it. The really big incentive is of course the most intangible one of increased longevity. My father died as a result of an unexpected heart attack changing planes in JFK airport when he was 62, in 1990. His father had dropped dead beside him, also after a sudden heart attack, at church one day in 1949; he was 68. My mother’s father also died of a sudden heart attack in his mid-60s, in 1977. The pattern is clear, and so is the moral. My paternal grandfather was probably the fittest of the three, and also lived longest. (Though like many ex-colonials he suffered from the aftereffects of malaria, etc.)

Anyway, I have now done two gym sessions and feel very virtuous. They have put me on what is presumably the standard beginner’s programme, 15 minutes biking, 20 on the walking belt, 15 on the striding machine, and then a few dozen abdominal stretches. I did it for the first time on Tuesday and felt tired but good for the rest of the day. Wednesday was hell, though, with every part of my body (especially the abs) thoroughly aching. But I got out of the house early enough on Thursday to do it again, and now feel fine this morning.

Timing is a bit of an issue. The gym’s location makes it tricky to get to work on time even leaving home an hour early. Also I am still looking for somewhere to get a decent breakfast – there are loads of places between gym and office which will do the standard Belgian croissants and coffee, but I do hanker after bacon and eggs.

Anyway, will report back here regularly on how it goes.

On a largely different topic, thank you everyone for your birthday wishes yesterday! And I particularly appreciated the thoughtfulness of this card (you know who you are – it was in a locked entry so I feel I can’t give you the credit you deserve).

19) The Way to Babylon, by Paul Kearney

I think I picked this up as part of my Worldcon haul in 2005. A rather lyrically done tale of a fantasy novelist who is recovering from an accident in which his wife died, and finds himself sucked bodily into the world he has created – or has he? Was it perhaps “really” there all the time?

The protagonist’s grief and healing are nicely observed. It would be very easy to fall into being twee with a plot like this, and Kearney skilfully avoids that trap. All very well described.

18) Blindness, by José Saramago

Back to Nobel prize winners rather than sf for a change. Blindness is the story of a city where everyone starts going blind. But it is very different from Day of the TriffidsUnSuggestions for this book: