Apart from book reviews, reviews of old Doctor Who series, and the odd meme, this lj has been a bit quiet of late. This basically reflects the fact that it has been so sweltering hot recently that apart from work and commuting (in the blessedly air-conditioned office and car) I have only had the energy to read books and write about them, and have been deliberately choosing short books at that.

Anyway, I went out and bought a new TV today. The old one had never had great picture quality, and then the remote control packed it in a few weeks back; it was still within a few weeks of the two year guarantee, so I brought it back to the shop this morning. They promised to fix it, but mentioned a minimum repair period of three weeks. Thinking of my poor square-eyed children, unable to feed their addiction, I consulted with Anne by phone and decided to buy a new one – we can always sell on (or indeed give away) the old one to a good cause.

I immediately spotted the ideal new LCD TV in Fnac, but they refused to sell it to me as the one on display was their only one in stock. I bought a scanner off them anyway, and went exploring. Krëaut were ruled out due to having no staff presence and no serious explanation of which models were best. Vanden Borre got my custom due to very good customer service, both from staff and in terms of explaining what features each model had on the labels attached. Not that it really mattered, as they had the model I had already decided on in Fnac.

So, bought it, brought it home, plugged it in. I was slightly surprised to hear that both daughters had been waiting eagerly for this – I knew that U is a total addict to Fimbles and Miffy DVDs, but one never knows exactly what B is taking in. We were all rather more concerned to find that the new LCD TV was having problems settling in – colour faded within minutes to black and white if you were lucky, then various screen glitches began to manifest until you turned it off in disgust; when turned on again it functioned perfectly well for a minute or so and then the old problems resumed.

Much anxious fiddling with cables and scanning of the internet ensued, with the only plausible solution apparently to unplug it for an hour or so. So I did.

And now it works perfectly.

In the meantime I had bollocksed up the internet connection for the home computer and spent another frustrated hour tinkering with that before it too came right. And then I installed the scanner successfully. So I am feeling like I am Super Tech Man right now.

Plus I bought a headset so I can Skype from home. F now wants a demonstration tomorrow morning. I hope it is a bit cooler. may be interested to know that the second thunderstorm did indeed turn up in the end.

Just went out and bought a scanner (along with a nice new TV). No doubt this will eventually lead to serious picspam, but for now I start with some culture by my progeny:

F’s depiction of Puss In Boots

F’s portrayal of Puss In Boots

Now, where did I put that 17th-century document…

18) The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

Picked this up at P-Con, partly inspired by my memory of Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery”, and was prodded into reading it by ‘s write-up. It was also on the women writers meme that was going round a few months back. Abigail Nussbaum didn’t like it.

Anyway, I loved it. Not in fact a particularly short book (246 pages in my edition) but a real page-turner. Written and set in 1959. Professor invites people to spend the summer in a suppsoedly haunted house with him. The viewpoint character, Eleanor Vance, is obviously somehow affected by the environment, much more so than the other two guests, a young man who is related to the house’s owners and a woman who is taking a break from her (we assume) girlfriend (though her lover’s gender is never specified. The caretakers, and the professor’s wife who arrives with entourage halfway through, make up the numbers.

The pace is kept up very well throughout. Horror isn’t really my thing unless it’s done well, and this certainly is.

17) Under the Devil’s Eye: Britain’s Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915-1918, by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody

Today was a public holiday in Belgium, so I took another step in my efforts to familiarise myself with the Macedonia campaign of the first world war. This is much more of a grass-roots story compared to Alan Palmer’s geopolitical survey, livened up by direct accounts from the soldiers themselves, either from contemporary letters or from memoirs. It also concentrates exclusively on the British, with one benefit being an entire chapter on the Struma Valley battles of 1916 which Palmer almost ignores. The maps are by far the clearest of any of the books I’ve consulted so far (though I do wish I had access to the colour maps which graced Cyril Falls’ first edition).

The true discovery of this book for me was the poetry of Owen Rutter, who wrote an epic called “Tiadatha” (“Tired Arthur”) in the style of Wadsworth’s Hiawatha, itself of course based on the Kalevala, which really caught my eye (not just because of my own recent efforts). There are some particularly moving passages which I will save for a later occasion, but for now his description of the city at the centre of the campaign will do:

Tiadatha thought of Kipling,
Wondered if he’s ever been there
Thought: “At least in Rue Egnatia
East and West are met together.”
There were trams and Turkish beggars,
Mosques and minarets and churches,
Turkish baths and dirty cafés,
Picture palaces and kan-kans:
Daimler cars and Leyland lorries
Barging into buffalo wagons,
French and English private soldiers
Jostling seedy Eastern brigands.

Rutter went on to make a name for himself as a travel writer, and was a district administrator in Borneo; his novel “Lucky Star” was filmed as “Once In A Blue Moon” in 1935, and IMDB rates this as having been sf; who knows?

16) The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

Had vaguely been meaning to read this for ages after I bought it last year. I think I had seen some references to it in one of Joe Haldeman’s novels, or something similar. I must say I thought it was rather good. It’s the story of a young soldier in the US Civil War, with a very strong psychological perspective on his frame of mind as he goes into his first battle (and indeed runs away from it, but goes back and tries again). As well as the exploration of the central character’s inner life, the descriptions of landscape and of the battle scenes are vivid and colourful. My one reservation is that the tight third person point of view is somewhat let down on the few occasions that Fleming actually speaks; his words as reported just don’t seem completely consistent with the character whose complex runimations we have been pursuing. Apart from that, good even-handed stuff. (The author was born in 1870, years after the war ended, but based it on interviews with veterans and the battle is generally supposed to be Chancellorsville.)

I’ve linked above to the LibraryThing page for the book; not sure if I will do this regularly but it may be a useful jumping-off point for people.

15) Galactic Patrol by E.E. “Doc” Smith

After I read Triplanetary, the first in the famous Lensman series of early sf novels, and didn’t like it, several people told me that I should have started with Galactic Patrol. So I’ve been struggling through it for the last couple of weeks.

Sorry, folks, but this is really not for me. I found the writing turgid and the characters unengaging; and the setting may have seemed fresh and exciting in the 1930s but now seems underdeveloped. The only really interesting character is Kinnison’s alien friend. I have another two Lensman books on the shelf but I think they are going to stay there (until someone relieves me of them).

I know, I know, I said I was finished with the First Doctor a while back, and today a whole load of Second Doctor goodies arrived for me from Amazon – audio versions of The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, The Abominable Snowmen/The Web of Fear, The Ice Warriors, and Fury from the Deep, and also the DVD of Tomb of the Cybermen. But my guilty secret is that I have in fact been watching The Tenth Planet over the last few evenings.

And it is much better than I had been told. Lots of things to really love about this story. The special title sequence, with a cybernetic theme. The role given to an actual black actor, playing the more sensible of the two doomed astronauts (this was Earl Cameron, who more recently played President Zuwanie opposite Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter). The “base under siege” story, which later became such a cliche of the series, but I think this was in fact the very first Doctor Who with this theme (and anyway it still works well, as we saw this year with The Satan Pit). The sinister appearance – for the first time! – of the Cybermen – who still have human hands; whose voices are a painful electronic lilt, much closer in some ways to their 2006 relatives than some of their intervening representations. Sure, the costumes aren’t great, but they are a significant improvement on the standard man-in-rubber-suit monster. The horrible difference between Cybermen, with their disregard for human life and emotion, and Ben, who regrets having to kill them.

There are problems with it too. The science of the plot – parallel Earth? which nobody can recognise through a telescope?? (Except Polly???) Energy drains???? just doesn’t work on any serious level of analysis. While Pedler and Davies get good marks for internationalism (the stereotyped Italian apart) the only two female characters are Polly (who makes the coffee) and the unnamed secretary to the blok in Switzerland. And the Cybermen are strangely vulnerable to bright lights and uranium rods.

But the Doctor, as so often, is central to this. For the first two episodes Hartnell is doing great – grumbling and sniping at the militarists of the base; pulling out essential pieces of knowledge at – or before- the right moment. Then he disappears, ill, for the third episode; for the fourth, judging from the reconstruction, he seems to be mostly back on form. And as he and his companions stagger out of the Cybermen’s spaceship where he and Polly have been prisoners, past their disintegrated captors, he seems abstracted:

Ben: Hey, come on Doctor, wakey wakey!  It’s all over now.
Doctor: What did you say, my boy?  “It’s all over.”  “It’s all over.”  That’s what you said.  No… but it isn’t all over. It’s far from being all over. [at this point, one of the few surviving video clips, he appears to be addressing the audience through the camera]
Ben: What are you talking about?
Doctor: I must get back to the TARDIS immediately!
Polly: All right, Doctor.
Doctor: Yes…  I must go now.
Ben: Aren’t we going to go back to say good-bye or anything?
Doctor: No!  No, I must go at once.
Ben: Oh well, you better have this. [offering a scarf] We don’t want you catching your death of cold.
Doctor: Ah, yes! Thank you. It’s good. [almost inaudibly] Keep warm.

And with that odd echo of his exchange with Polly in the first episode (Polly: “Are you sure you’re going to be warm enough?” Doctor: “Oh, like toast, my dear.”) the Doctor staggers wordlessly back to the Tardis and Ben and Polly are briefly shut out; when they get in, the Doctor collapses, the Tardis engines start, and the Doctor’s face begins to glow; and, shockingly, when the glow fades, it is someone else’s face.

OK, we have been through this eight times since (though of course with only six real regeneration scenes), and it’s a scene that we are now used to (see various regenerations here – though having said that, the very first regeneration is technically the best apart from the most recent two). But having watched various First Doctor series over the last while, I found it easier to get into the mind-set of the 1966 viewer for whom there had only been one Doctor, and suddenly we were in a whole new situation – a feeling of both bereavement and renewal. Those who got into the show for the first time in 2005 must have had much the same feelings when watching The Parting of the Ways.

Well, I think I’ve done my duty by Hartnell, having watched or listened to ten of the 29 stories of his time (he made more individual stories than any other Doctor except Tom Baker!). My favourites were The Edge of Destruction, The Dalek Master Plan, and The Tenth Planet. The only one I thought more bad than good was The Chase. (The others – all definitely more good than bad – were The Daleks, The Aztecs, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Crusade, Mission to the Unknown and The Massacre.) Roll on the Troughton era…

…this time last week I was at one of the most extarordinary diplomatic occasions I shall ever attend.

My Balkans trip was pretty much designed around this one event, a reception to mark Montenegro’s historical independence day, for the first time as an independent state since 1918.

I flew into Skopje (in Macedonia) on the Monday, and did a bunch of meetings in a cafe next door to the presidential offices (one presidential aide and three former colleagues who have gone on to other things), ending with a dinner with Dame Audrey arranged by , and drove up to Priština getting in around midnight (it’s an hour and a half from Skopje). Over breakfast on Tuesday morning, I was delighted to discover that I was sharing the hotel with L, a former colleague from my NDI days, who has worked in Montenegro for eight years and who was therefore the likely answer to my minor problem of getting out of Kosovo the next day.

An intense day and a half of meetings in Kosovo followed. The new president is a massive improvement on his predecessor, who had a terrible tendency to bleat on pompously at great length. (He did at least give vistors rocks from Kosovo as souvenirs. I have several.) The new guy speaks a little English and better French. I was rather surprised that he had kept the presidential office very much as a memorial to his predecessor who died in January. (Especially as his predecessor tended not to use the office but to receive guests in his villa elsewhere in town.) We also met, among various others, a French two-star general who enjoyed talking to us so much that his aides practically had to drag him out of the room to his next meeting. Also in the course of the day I bumped into an old friend who used to be a background figure in Fine Gael but has dedicated his life to Kosovo politics for the last few years. I hadn’t seen him since 1998.

Then on Wednesday it was the long five-hour drive with L from Priština to Podgorica. The first hour or so, across the Kosovo plain, is pretty dull. But then you hit the mountains. It has been said that Montenegro, if you ironed it, would in fact be the size of Brazil. (OK, only said once, and by a friend of mine who was trying to be funny, but you get the point.)

Please copy and paste the following and reply to this entry with everything (or not exactly everything, it’s up to you) filled out:
first name/nickname:
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recommend me someone’s lj that isn’t on my flist:
if you could travel in time where would you go?:

See my answers to her here.

From today’s Financial Times:

Europe And US Are Lost On Road Map To Nowhere, By Gideon Rachman

In a crisis people fall back on familiar instincts. So, as the fighting in the Middle East escalated, the Americans defended Israel, the French condemned Israel, the British searched for the middle ground and the United Nations called for restraint. The Group of Eight in Moscow nonetheless managed to issue a joint statement. But this facade of unity could soon crack. The fighting has broken out at a time when Americans and Europeans were already facing an unusual number of serious and worsening security threats. The latest – and possibly gravest – crisis will severely test an unheralded new period of transatlantic co-operation, which had been quietly closing the divisions opened up over Iraq.

On the day the Israelis began to bomb Beirut airport, I met a European Union diplomat in Brussels. In an effort to lighten the gloom, I asked him if he could think of a part of the world where western diplomacy was working well. After a long silence, he said: “Moldova”.

14) Buddha, Volume 1: Kapilavastu, by Osamu Tezuka

Another one of Time‘s top 25 and the first graphic novel I’ve read in almost six months. Originally published in 1974, this is the first of eight volumes retelling the life of the Buddha by one of Japan’s greatest manga artists, known as the “Walt Disney of Japan” because of his involvement in anime (he invented the “large eyes” style).

I’m therefore rather sorry to report that this didn’t do much for me. The Buddha himself barely appears in this first volume (born about two-thirds of the way through, still a baby at the end); the other characters seemed to me never to move much beyond going trhough the mythic motions, in a way that reminded me of why I am ususally left unsatisfied with books retelling the Cuchullain or other Irish legends. The female characters were difficult to tell apart, apart from the (unnamed) mother of the central character, Chapra, who can be distinguished from other women in that she is permanently topless for some reason. The one intriguing character, a child thief called Tatta, was also somewhat infuriating in that he had the magical power to transfer his consciuousness into animals – a pretty effective mystical trick that didn’t really seem to fit with the otherwise rather gritty and realistic setting of the story.

I did like the fight scenes, though, which are not easy to draw effectively. But unless you guys can convince me otherwise, I’m not going to invest in the other seven books of the series.

The Bush/Blair conversation in full.

Blair/Bush exchange: transcript

Bush: Yo, Blair. How are you doing?

Blair: I’m just…

Bush: You’re leaving?

Blair: No, no, no not yet. On this trade thingy…[INAUDIBLE]

Bush: Yeah, I told that to the man.

Blair: Are you planning to say that here or not?

Bush: If you want me to.

Blair: Well, it’s just that if the discussion arises…

Bush: I just want some movement.

Blair: Yeah.

Bush: Yesterday we didn’t see much movement.

Blair: No, no, it may be that it’s not, it may be that it’s impossible.

Bush: I am prepared to say it.

Blair: But it’s just I think what we need to be an opposition…

Bush: Who is introducing the trade?

Blair: Angela [Merkel, the German Chancellor].

Bush: Tell her to call ’em.

Blair: Yes.

Bush: Tell her to put him on, them on the spot. Thanks for [INAUDIBLE] it’s awfully thoughtful of you.

Blair: It’s a pleasure.

Bush: I know you picked it out yourself.

Blair: Oh, absolutely, in fact [INAUDIBLE].

Bush: What about Kofi? [INAUDIBLE] His attitude to ceasefire and everything else … happens.

Blair: Yeah, no I think the [INAUDIBLE] is really difficult. We can’t stop this unless you get this international business agreed.

Bush: Yeah.

Blair: I don’t know what you guys have talked about, but as I say I am perfectly happy to try and see what the lie of the land is, but you need that done quickly because otherwise it will spiral.

Bush: I think Condi is going to go pretty soon.

Blair: But that’s, that’s, that’s all that matters. But if you… you see it will take some time to get that together.

Bush: Yeah, yeah.

Blair: But at least it gives people…

Bush: It’s a process, I agree. I told her your offer to…

Blair: Well…it’s only if I mean… you know. If she’s got a…, or if she needs the ground prepared as it were… Because obviously if she goes out, she’s got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.

Bush: You see, the … thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.

Blair: [INAUDIBLE]

Bush: [INADUBILE]

Blair: Syria.

Bush: Why?

Blair: Because I think this is all part of the same thing.

Bush: Yeah.

Blair: What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way…

Bush: Yeah, yeah, he is sweet.

Blair: He is honey. And that’s what the whole thing is about. It’s the same with Iraq.

Bush: I felt like telling Kofi to call, to get on the phone to Assad and make something happen.

Blair: Yeah.

Bush: [INAUDIBLE]

Blair:[INAUDIBLE]

Bush: We are not blaming the Lebanese government.

Blair: Is this…? (at this point Blair taps the microphone in front of him and the sound is cut.)

Thanks to Ian.

I haven’t written about it here before, and of course there are other better-known conflicts around, but my colleague and I have been trying to flag up the current crisis over Nagorno-Karabakh, where the international mediators have issued (privately of course) a statement to the effect that they are giving up on the peace process.

It’s not helped when the two sides wilfully mistranslate statements made even by outsiders.

My colleague made this statement to an Azeri journalist:

The most important text to consider is the statement made by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs at the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on 22 June, 2006. This statement provides a coherent and unified approach to the resolution of the conflict. It is perhaps the most open and critical statement the OSCE Minsk Group has ever made.

It is also the first time since the start of the Minsk Group facilitated negotiations in 1994 that the co-chairs have said that they see no point in continuing their work. I am very surprised that few in Azerbaijan or in Armenia are commenting on this point. The Minsk Group statement means in practice that there is no longer any internationally facilited negotiations format for the resolution of the NK conflict.

What does this mean? Will the two sides manage to negotiate on their own without any third party mediation? Will another mediator appear? If the United States, Russia and France are giving up, what other international forces have the influence and authority to play a negotiator role? I don’t believe that any new mediators will appear. Rather we are entering a very dangerous phase where there will be no peaceful negotiations between the sides. Again since 1994 this is the first time that we are in such a situation.

The Azeris printed it thus in Russian (significant changes in bold):

The text of the statement made by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs at the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on 22 June, 2006 is a document very important for consideration. This statement provides a clear and unified approach to the resolution of the conflict. It is perhaps the most sincere and self-critical statement the OSCE Minsk Group has ever made.

Because for the first time since the start of the Minsk Group facilitated negotiations in 1994 the co-chairs started to speak about inanity of their work. I am very surprised that there is too few talk in Azerbaijan or in Armenia about this. In fact the Minsk Group statement says that there is no longer any internationally facilited negotiations format for the resolution of the NK conflict.

It turns out that the two sides will manage to negotiate on their own without any third party mediation? Will another mediator be appointed? If the United States, Russia and France are giving up, what other international forces have the influence and authority to play a negotiator role? I don’t believe that any new mediators will appear. We gradually enter a very horrific phase where there will be no peaceful negotiations between the sides. Since 1994 this is the first time that we are in such a situation.

And the Armenian press then picked it up from the Azeri press and translated it back into English thus:

The statement submitted by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs in Vienna June 22 to the OSCE Permanent Council is a very important document, International Crisis Group Caucasus project director Sabine Freizer said. In her words, the statement maintains a common approach to the conflict settlement. “It appears to be the most sincere and self-critical statement made by the mediators so far, as for the first time since the beginning of the talks in 1994 they have declared of inanity of their activities,” Freizer said.

She said she is surprised that Armenia and Azerbaijan hold little talk about it. “As a matter of fact the OSCE Minsk Group’s statement proves the absence of any international format of the talks. It turns out that the sides can proceed with the talks without mediators. Will another mediator be appointed? If the United States, Russia and France recede which international forces possess sufficient authority for performing the mediating mission I do not believe in a new mediator. We gradually enter a horrific stage where there is no place for peaceful talks between the sides. Such situation has occurred for the first time since 1994″.

I think the Armenians twisted it slightly more than the Azeris, but it is a close call.

13) The Belgian House of Representatives: From Revolution to Federalism, by Derek Blyth, Alistair MacLean, and Rory Watson

This was a freebie from a conference I spoke at in April in the Belgian Parliament (I had been there once or twice before). The book was produced as part of the 175th anniversary celebrations of the Belgian Parliament (or something), and I get the impression that it has been very heavily rewritten by three British journalists (on commission from the parliament itself) from a much more academic tome produced in 2003. I have to say it is far more digestible than the only other history of Belgium I have attempted, The Political History of Belgium by Els Witte, Jan Craeybeckx, and Alain Meynen (though I’ve read one other political commentary). As with any institutional history, of course it tries to put the Belgiam Parliament (and especially the House of Representatives) at the centre of the narrative, but often if you are describing the political life of a country that is not completely inaccurate. I certainly came out of it feeling that I understood more about why Belgium is the way it is.

Partly because of what is between the lines. The establishment of parliamentary democracy in the 1830s is described in terms which make it sound a uniquely Belgian achievement, when in fact most of Belgium’s neighbours were doing much the same, a point reinforced by a) the number of other countries said to have copied large chunks of Belgium’s constitution into their own, and b) the other previous constitutions which the authors admit were ripped off by the Belgians. On the other hand, the awful record, for which both the executive and legislative branches must bear responsibility, of keeping the public finances honest (in the years between 1832 and 1989, the budget was adopted on time precisely once, in 1839) is trreated as an administrative question with nobody much to blame. While the authors bemoan the loss of power to the executive from the legislature, they report without much comment the shift to wide consultation on draft laws with a) the social partners and b) the other five legislatures in Belgium, which basically means that although you have got a wide consensus among the social partners, it is through a very closed and opaque process.

There are a few things I would have liked more on. Why have a Senate as well as a House of Representatives – OK, it makes slightly more sense now that the state is formally a federal one, but what about the period before 1993? Why has compulsory voting lasted so long here? What about all these periods when Wilfried Martens felt he had to rule by extraordinary power? What about (to choose a local issue that became national) the Leuven University question? How and precisely why did the three main parties split into Fracophone and Flemish branches? Still, I feel I have better grounds for asking the questions now that I’ve read the book – which is beautifully presented and illustrated (apart from the incorrect reference to Northern Ireland on page 50). Nice work, though probably not available in the shops (no ISBN number visible anywhere, which is not a good sign).

12) Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Prodded by Anne I read this, rather quickly, last night and today. I thought it was rather good. Of course, due to the massive amounts of discussion of the book, I thought I had been spoiled for the main plot point, that it centres around a group of children who are being bred as cloned organ donors, and was expecting a treatment like that of Lois McMaster Bujold in Mirror Dance where the practice is generally seen as unacceptable, and our heroes try to wipe it out. But in fact the shock comes at the end, when we discover that the cloned organ-ripping is in fact completely sanctioned by wider society (which appears in other respects to be identical to present-day England), and the situation is much closer to that of Barry Norman’s End Product (where Africans are routinely lobotomised at birth and farmed for food by Europeans) and that the guardians of the children whose stories are told in the novel are somewhat heroic in their own way. It’s done very well.

There is of course more here, in the exploration of friendship, growing up, death, wondering what life is like for people whose lives are very different from ours, and so on, but it is crazy to suggest (as Dave Langford ruthlessly records Ishiguro and his mainstream reviewers as doing) that this is not a work of science fiction. Definitely worth reading.

This was the last of the First Doctor stories that I felt I must Get Hold Of. I think you have to allow for the fact that it is mid-1960s drama to take into account the rather slow pacing. I liked it all the same; a real attempt to get into the spirit of the historical period, with some difficult dilemmas for the time-travellers – Barbara determined to abolish human sacrifice, but ultimately fails; and the Doctor has someone fall in love with him for the first time (but not, of course the last) in his on-screen adventures. Cameca’s helping them to escape in the end, even though she knows she will never see them again, was as touching as Barbara’s acceptance of her inability to change history. A minor gem, I would say.

Right, now to order up some Second Doctor series.

1) If you are using the LJ Navigation strip, and like it (as I do), nevertheless please go to the Viewing Options page and uncheck the box for “Always show the navigation strip to anyone who views your journal or community”. This allows you to use the strip without imposing it upon anyone else.

2) I’ve taken up the new LiveJournal jabber service, where (obviously) I am nhw@livejournal.com – and also seems like I can use jabber for gmail chats. See you there! (My other online ID’s are all listed on my lj info page.)

11) The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

To be honest, not wildly impressed by this story of the boy who goes to find his Personal Legend in the desert. I think I might have found it deep and meaningful when I was 14. But the images seemed pretty heavy-handed to me now. If I want to read spiritual literature I’ll go straight to the real thing.

10) Eleven on Top, by Janet Evanovich

Checking back I see I have missed the tenth in this series about Stephanie Plum, New Jersey bounty hunter. Not as bad as To The Nines, but again, it’s difficult to make a story about a serial killer funny. Having said which, she comes close to succeeding.

9) Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, by M.J. Simpson

This is really an exploration of Adams in his own words and in the words of people around him, including attempts to get at the truth or otherwise of various anecdotes told by or about him during his life. Simpson conveys well both Adams’ charm and the way in which he infuriated friends and colleagues. He is probably fair to put some of the blame of Adams’ failure to produce on his editors. Apart from that, it’s a bit unsatisfying; as John Lloyd hints in the introduction, Adams’ family life, particularly his relationship with his father, remains pretty much unexplored. Also I would like someone to look at Adams’ work in perhaps a more literary way, with more reflections on the social context of his writing and how he did (or didn’t) link into the issues of the day.

Since it’s a book of details, there are several that particularly appealed to me. Long ago as I was in the throes of deciding to abandon my academic career, one of the rare external shoves in that direction came from the editor of an academic journal to whom I had submitted an article, giving his reasons for rejecting it. I was stunned to discover that the editor in question had been Douglas Adams’ room-mate and first writing partner.

I was completely convinced about the origins of Arthur Dent; also (though Simpson doesn’t mention it directly) about the influence of The Dalek Master Plan on Life, the Universe and Everything.

Apparently, while 42 is the funniest two-digit number, 359 is the funniest three-digit number. +359 is the international dialling code for Bulgaria, while +42 used to be Czechoslovakia (now +420 for the Czechs and +421 for the Slovaks). Draw your own conclusions.

Strange Horizons published my review of Impossible Stories by Zoran Živković on Tuesday.

Anne asks where my review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is. I haven’t yet read the book, so haven’t written a review yet – though I did get it for Christmas and have firmly resolved to try and read it this year!

8) Café Europa: Life after Communism, by Slavenka Drakulić

Collection of short pieces (presumably newspaper columns) by this Croatian writer, who I have not previously read. To be honest, after the first third of it, I was ready to put the book down: too much whining about the state of the world, very much reminding me of why I didn’t much like living in Zagreb in 1998: Croatia then seemed both smug and fragile, a curious combination. (Edited to clarify: There was too much whining about the way the rest of the world was treating Croats (who, unlike most of the rest of the former Yugoslavs, actually were never required to get visas, and enjoyed better access to the EU than Romanians and Bulgarians until surprisingly recently); too much slagging off of the peasantry and bemoaning the fact that they had gained power at the expense of the sophisticated urban elite to which she belongs.)

Things have improved, however, and every time I return to the country now I find myself liking it more and more as normality takes deeper root. The same was true of Drakulić’s book: there were two really good pieces about Croatia’s failure to deal with its fascist historical legacy, and about the psychology of Arkan’s uniform, and after that it somehow all seemed to make more sense and become more readable. So, worth persevering with, though perhaps the editors should have chopped a bit more of the early stuff.

Cybermen sing “Knight of the Round Table”

Doctor and Rose to “Moonlight Shadow”, mainly drawn from the end of the most recent episode. This vid has the considerable merit of making a lot more sense than the original video for “Moonlight Shadow”.

Both by and posted to .

…to Gerald Ford, who is 93 today.

Misread my ticket and turned up at airport 45 minutes early. Still, better than 45 minutes late…

I’m working away on the terrace of the Hotel Crna Gora. It’s their Independence Day so am surrounded by hum of conversation. Very nice.

7) The Compleat Enchanter – The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea, by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Reading “The Compleat Enchanter”,
when I came to the fourth section,
(set in Finland’s Kalevala)
somehow I began to wonder:
Can one write LiveJournal entries
in iambic tetrameter?
(Yes, I know that last word’s bogus
and perhaps that gives the answer.)

This, a five-book compilation
of the works of Pratt and de Camp,
brings together the adventures
of a man called Harold Shea from
Ohio, mid-20th century,
who is, with his friends and lover,
thrust in various fant’sy poems,
first Norse legends, second Spenser,
third Orlando Furioso
(also Kubla Khan here featured),
fourth (as mentioned) Kalevala
ending in Cuchulain’s Ireland.

Though Mark Twain perhaps began it
writing of King Arthur’s Yankee
(don’t think I can really mention
which state that wayfarer came from
as it has two unstressed vowels
in succession, so won’t scan here)
this ambitious and effective
merging of mundane and mythic
surely was an inspiration
for much else in the same genre.

Even the stock story setting –
visitors arrive from elsewhere,
get entwined in local issues,
solve the problem (sometimes fail to)
disappear to next adventure
using magic means of travel
sounds a bit like Doctor Who, ne?

Also, use of spell components
such as “verbal” and “somatic”
was employed by Gary Gygax
in so far as I remember
from my teenage D&D days.

Anyway, this book is harmless.
Irish bit is, sadly, least good –
use of silly plot devices
to prevent our heroes making
any diff’rence to the story.
But the rest is entertaining.
And I think I’d recommend it.
Four stars in my on-line cat’logue.

6) [Doctor Who] Timewyrm: Exodus, by Terrance Dicks

Gosh, Terrance Dicks can actually come close to writing tolerably well. Here we have the Seventh Doctor and Ace pursuing the Timewyrm (last seen in ancient Babylon) to Nazi Germany – or rather, first to a 1951 Festival of Britain celebrated after a German victory; then following Adolf Hitler from the Munich putsch to 1940. It would be easy to do this very crassly, but Dicks manages to stay (for my money) the right side of the line. Still a slight feeling that he wished he was writing a TV series rather than a novel, but satisfying enough. Also brought back a villain from one of the series I have not yet seen…

5) Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Having read Asimov a few days back, I thought I would continue picking through the chronology of Hugo winners that a) I haven’t yet written about on-line and b) are on my shelves. It is therefore entirely by coincidence that I read this just after George Soros’ book, which has extraordinary resonances with Bradbury’s chilling vision of a future America addicted to interactive yet completely brainless television shows, fighting pointless yet very violent and highy visible wars, and rejecting intellectualism as a crime against the state; where firemen are the burners of books, not the savers of lives.

“Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?”
“No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it.”
“Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.”

Bradbury’s brilliance is that once you swallow the (rather huge) premise, the plot works very well as a thriller. Montag is the classical sfnal hero rebelling against all he has been taught (and what a great role model – to rebel in favour of reading great literature!), and at every turn the bad guys, his own former comrades, seem about to catch up with him. The character of Clarisse, at the very beginning, is interesting too – partly that it is rather neat to put a teenage girl as the person who opens the central character’s eyes, partly also because her ambigous demise sets the tone for much of what is to follow. (I take it that we are meant to understand that her uncle is the protagonist of Bradbury’s short story, “The Pedestrian”.) But Beatty, the fire captain, is also a more interesting character than I had remembered as well – Montag’s flash of revelation (after murdering him of course) is that his boss “actually wanted to die“, that his own belief in the burning of books was in the end not strong enough to sustain him.

Anyway, a great book, well worth the re-read.

4) The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, by George Soros

Kindly sent me by the author, who of course I know through work anyway. To get a quick summary of his views, you could start with his New York Times interview here or his videoblog interview here. In effect, he is attempting to provide the American liberal tradition with a stronger intellectual base. He is disarmingly frank about why he does it:

To sum it up, I believe I combine three qualifications. First, I have developed a conceptual framework that has given me a certain understanding of history, and, in particular, what I call far-from-equilibrium situations; second, I have a set of firm ethical and political beliefs; and third, I have made a lot of money.

When you’re in that position, you can write whatever you like, and it is therefore with some bemusement that the casual reader expecting a book on contemporary US politics will find that the first seventy pages actually address the nature of reality and its relationship to human thought, in order to better contextualise Soros’ ideal of an open society. I’m not especially well placed to rate this in terms of academic content of originality; I never studied philosophy or politics, though I have been a practitioner of the latter, and I did scrape a little below the surface of the philosophy of science back in my historian days. However it seems sound enough, particularly his linkage with and development of the notions of Karl Popper. It is certainly an awful lot more convincing, as an analysis of human history, than Hari Seldon.

In the introduction he gleefully quotes Branko Crvenkovski as describing him as a “stateless statesman”, but in fact he reveals a very strong sense of U.S. citizenship and even patriotism. His exploration of the question of “What’s Wrong with America?” is that of a grieving insider. He worries that America is so busy trying to feel good that it has lost any thirst for knowing the truth. He thinks that America has difficulties dealing with death (and his own shorter time horizon, since he is now seventy-five, is a recurrent theme in the book). He is appalled at the way America’s reputation in the world, and its ability to persuade others to its cause, have been destroyed by its own policy on the “war on terror” (a concept which he dissects forensically).

There is a confusion in President Bush’s mind about what democracy means. When he says that democracy will prevail, he really means that America will prevail. But a democratic government needs to gain the backing of the electorate and that is not necessarily the same as the backing of the United States. The contradiction became evident in the recent elections in Egypt, and even more in Palestine.

He swipes also at globalisation and fundamentalist belief in the free market, and devotes a brief but intensely argued section to the question of energy and preventing global warming (a cause to which he says he was converted by Al Gore), but criticises the anti-globalisation Left’s attacks on the WTO and various summits on the grounds that these are the wrong target: “The international institutions largely reflect the policies of the member states; it is the member states that have to be held responsible.”

So, rather a thought-provoking little book; much less shrill, much more reflective, more prescriptive, and in many ways much sadder than what I’ve read of, say, Noam Chomsky. I think anyone who is seriously interested in fixing what’s wrong with the US should try and get hold of it.