I had written off my speculative application to the European Commission, since inside information indicated that the job is probably earmarked for the person who is already doing it. However I juat had an email from the personnel department at the Commission to the effect that I’m now on their data register; which at least means they didn’t just throw my application form in the bin!

I have been rather unimpressed with LiveJournal’s attempts to defend their icons policy. Two specific examples:

1. The comment by a supporter of Livejournal, presumably , here that:
   

   the entire thing smacks to me of bending to entirely the wrong kind of pressure. I can’t speak for LJ’s policy arm, but if they gives in to a spam campaign, that only encourages the next group that wants a change in policy to engage in the same kind of campaign.

   This strikes me as incredibly politically inept. I appreciate that specifically states that he or she does not speak for livejournal, but telling users that the greater the number of them disagreeing with a particular LJ policy, the more likely they are to be ignored, is not a good way to build a community.

2. The response by “Anil” to a post on John Scalzi’s blog, basically telling everyone to cool it, because there are rapes going on in Congo, without disclosing the crucial element of context that “Anil” is Anil Dash, has been working for SixApart since it was founded.

You know what, Anil? I think my colleagues probably know more about what’s going on in the Congo than your colleagues do. And the way you and your colleagues are handling this issue still sucks.

Edited to add: Anil Dash has emailed me apologising for being “intemperate and rude”, which is more than he needed to, given that it wasn’t my blog he posted on. So good marks to him for that. Let us hope that LJ’s considered response shows the same sane and sensible approach.

I’m back. Thanks to those of you who noticed I was gone. I was participating in a one day boycott of livejournal, in protest at their policy on pictures of breastfeeding.

I will delete this journal later today, in protest at LiveJournal’s stupid policies about user icons, which effectively make breast-feeding too obscene to be depicted here. I don’t ever intend to use an icon of a baby being breastfed myself, but I think LiveJournal’s policy against it is unreasonable and am joining the protest.

Bought this in London last week. Excellent value – six Hartnell epsiodes of classic story, plus various mini-documentaries, including a short silent film shot by Carole Ann Ford on her last day as Susan (featuring William Hartnell with no wig and looking ten years younger).

The Dalek Invasion of Earth is good – in fact, the first three episodes are excellent, with the Dalek coming out of the river at the end of episode one, and episode three a real high point, with the scenes of the Daleks in London, wandering past Westminster, congregating in Trafalgar Square, and patrolling the Albert Memorial (having obviously somehow got up the steps) particularly effective. That is also the episode where Susan tells David of her feeling of dislocation: “I never felt that there was any time or place that I belonged to. I’ve never had any real identity.” And the incidental music is great – I hadn’t heard of the composer Francis Chagrin before but he was apparently a well known film composer; shall look out for his other work. There is a real feeling of occupied Europe resisting the Nazis (and I write this in a village which experienced that directly rather than just in the cinema).

It is a bit let down by episode four, with no Doctor in sight and the rather rubber-suited Slyther, and the Daleks’ actual plan when revealed stretches our suspension of disbelief. But the pace is kept up (especially by Jacqueline Hill as Barbara).

And finally the departure of Susan. Beautifully done, the first time that a member of the regular cast had left the show. “Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine,” says the Doctor, promising to return, but we know he never will.

2) [Doctor Who] Managra, by Stephen Marley

recommended this Doctor Who Missing Adventure a while back, describing it as “bonkers, but in a very good way”. Indeed. Great fun as Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith rush around a future landscape including reincarnations of Cardinal Richelieu, Casanova, Byron, another Byron, Mary Shelley, and various popes and poets. I think I just about understood what was going on, but it hardly matters.

In 2005, 2004 and 2003 I listed my preferences among the stories nominated for the Hugo Award, also including as many links as I could conveniently include to other people’s thoughts on the nominees. It seems to have been a popular move, so I have repeated it this year and the results are below. (I also listed just my own preferences among the nominees in all categories in 2002, and for the novels in 2000. My website also has various other statistics on Hugo and Nebula awards.)

I’d thought of doing it a little differently this year, by starting with the short stories and working up to novels, as indeed the Hugo ceremony itself does. However, I then realised that it meant the incoming reader would hit my acerbic remarks about Michaels Resnick and Burstein first, and might therefore be put off science fiction for life. The novels are a far better starting point, so it is business as usual after all.

Last year, pressed for time, I wasn’t able to add review links for the novels. This year there has been so much to choose from that I was only able to add the first few dozen that caught my eye from Google and Icerocket. My apologies if you feel you have been unfairly omitted, but there is an element of chance in all this.

I’ve also made one other significant format change. In previous years I have striven to supply the real names of reviewers, and the name of the website where the review first appeared, wherever possible. This year I have given up; for blogs in general I’ve used the nom de net if the blogger’s real name isn’t obvious, and for LiveJournal users, who are by far the biggest group of bloggers writing about sf books, I have adopted the LiveJournal format for their identities, and given real names in only a very few cases. Indeed I drafted this web-page using a LiveJournal client. In contrast, I have only linked to one myspace blog entry (there were very few of relevance anyway, and too many of them play annoying music at you). If you are one of those I have quoted or linked to, and would prefer me to identify you in a different way than I have done below, please do let me know.

The version of this mega-meta-review on my website should be considered the primary source (though feel free to contribute to discussion threads here or on the usenet partial version).

Having said all that, on with the show…

Novels

I have to say that I was very surprised not to see Neil Gaiman’s excellent Anansi Boys, or Geoff Ryman’s widely acclaimed Air, on the shortlist. I have seen five other surveys of the Best Novel nominations, by here, Evelyn Leeper, Chad Orzel, Henry Farrell and Kevin Drum. Both and Kevin Drum put Accelerando first; Evelyn puts Old Man’s War first. Chad Orzel and Henry Farrell both agree with me about the top two, but rank the bottom three differently. For my own more extended thoughts (linked to individually below, but without spoilers in this view) see here.

5) Old Man’s War by John Scalzi – a story of future war against the aliens, very much in homage to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, with the difference that the soldiers are rejuvenated 75-year-olds. It is well enough told, but was spoiled for me by the narrator’s unquestioning acceptance of the military environment and by a joke in the middle which I found offensive (but I guess few other readers would). My original review of this caused some very minor tremors in the blogosphere, as Scalzi himself responded gracefully though vigorously, and it went to a second round. Obviously I must resile from my original view that the author is a raving militarist; but I wish he had put into the novel the same depth of political thought that he displays on his blog, and I cannot give it a high vote. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best First Novel.

Mine is obviously a minority view. Most on-line reviews are favourable: Adrienne Martini: “delightful“. Rick Kleffel: “thoroughly entertaining“. Dean: “gripping, enjoyable“. T.M. Wagner: “tremendous, confident… top-drawer“. John DeNardo: “Scalzi scores a home run“. Stephen Bainbridge: “one of those ‘you can’t put it down’ books“. Ron Bierman: “clear, direct prose, heroes you can root for and strange, devious aliens you can loathe“. Also positive: M.D. Benoit, here, Richard L’Esperance, “the Teaching Assistant”, here, here, Elizabeth Carey, Stan Taylor, Chad Orzel, Wally Conger, Devin, Joel Finkle, Christopher K. Davis, skwid, Jerry Kindall, “Waddling Thunder“, Sean Woods, here, here, John Walker, here, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit (he’ll vote for it), Jason Bennion, here, here, Charlie Kinder, here, here, Jonathan Strahan, Rockford Lhotka, here and /Jo Walton here. I am somewhat surprised (as, to his credit, is Scalzi) that Harriet Klausner thought this an “anti-war book“.

Less impressed: Kenneth Sutton, , here, and Elio share my concerns. : “vastly over-rated… exceptionally contrived… I am puzzled that this book is even on the list” thinks it “sucks in a Somebody Never Outgrew Robert A. Heinlein sort of way“, but still likes it more than The Da Vinci Code (though this is not saying much). Carol O “wasn’t a fan of the ending“. Archren, Robert R Chase and Jessica/ (here), here, and Stuart Carter at the SF Site also had mild doubts. Joe Williams: “Fun and quick reading, if not too deep”.

4) Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Ranking the middle three books is not easy – although I have no doubt about my first choice, I liked the others as well and would put them all joint second if I could. But you have to start somewhere, and so Accelerando goes in fourth place. This is a sequence of stories about the Singularity And After originally published in Asimov’s. I had in fact read four of these nine stories before – “Lobsters”, “Halo”, “Nightfall” and “Elector”, respectively nominated for Hugo awards in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Now we have all nine together between one set of covers, mildly revised and tightened up (so the author assures us). As I’ve said before, I found them so full of ideas that they were a little difficult for me to absorb. The confused reader may have recourse to an online Technical Companion for the book, and the author felt compelled to post a note on his blog explaining certain things about the narrator, which gives me some comfort that I am not alone in my confusion. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best SF Novel and for BSFA Award.

Rick Kleffel, Tom Lombardo, Greg L. Johnson, here, David Dyer-Bennett, Todd Brasher, B.W. Richardson, The Trivia Geek, Mark Madsen, John Quiggin, here, / here, remotepush, David Chess, Steven Shaviro (at length) all liked it; will give it his first preference. Markus: “A mesmerizing whirl of ideas. Stunning.“. Cory Doctorow: “magnificent“. Steven Silver thinks Stross “successfully creates a sense of wonder“. Jamais Cascia: “plausibly surreal“. Jim Mann: “a great novel“. Lispmeister: “mind-bending!” Tim Gebhart: “will make your brain hurt – in a good way“. Simon Fell: “couldn’t put it down“. Pedro Pinheiro: “the best singularity book ever“. Armchair Anarchist: “a prime example of how invention and skill can combine in a synergistic fashion“. Todd Wiley: “This book is worthy of hours of debate.” Harriet Klausner: “Charles Stross has written the singular [sic] most explosive work of his career.” Cheryl Morgan: “we’ll just add it to that list of seminal books that anyone wanting to understand SF has to read.”

Russ Allbery: “a great speculative romp, but also unsatisfying“. T.M. Wagner: “a book that I admired immensely but didn’t enjoy, a book that’s impressive but not very entertaining“. Tony Chester: “seems much less accomplished than Charles’ previous offerings“. Jonathan McCalmont: “feels like it is trying to do too many things at once without any of them managing to be totally convincing“. Martin: “it never gripped me on a visceral level“. Jon Courtenay Grimwood: “too dense“. Also Todd Suomela, here, Raph Koster, and Adam Roberts. Mixed reviews from James, Archren and here. Mark Horvath found it simply “unreadable“.

3) A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin. Though I loved this to bits on first reading, I have to admit that considered on its own rather than as a building block in Martin’s ongoing Song of Ice and Fire series, it cannot be considered very satisfying; it is probably the least gripping of the volumes in the series so far. The setting is a medieval fantasy world, not so very distant from our own, and the dynastic politics of a European-style continent and its environs. There is a particularly good chapter, “Cat of the Canals”, describing one of the central characters from the earlier books settling into a new city and a new culture, and the rest is all good, but not quite good enough to get my top vote. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Very positive reviews from T.M. Wagner, here, Pauline Finch, here, Harriet Klausner, here, here, Cheryl Morgan, here, here, Scott Andrews, here, here, and Orson Scott Card. But Aaron Hughes, Laura Lehman, Lisa Goldstein, eyeris, Bethany K. Warner here, Will Stuivinga here, here, Eoghann Irving, Random Woman, Rob Webber, here, here, John Davidson, Joe D. Walters, here, Stephen Bainbridge, here, liked it a lot but expressed varying degrees of disappointment – most frequently, that it is not yet finished, and also that it is so long since the previous book came out that it is difficult to keep the characters straight – let’s hope we don’t have to wait so long for the next one. TheReeve, Mapletree7, Rob and here did not like it. Carrie A.A. Frye felt there were too many nipples.

2) Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod. I really liked this book, an original contribution to the list of stories about first contact between humans and aliens. I thought the various cultures and subcultures, both human and alien, were convincingly fleshed out. (Planets in sf novels are too often portrayed as having just one culture and one language.) Macleod is on top form in both depth and humour in his portrayal of the intellectual shock of the encounter for both humans and aliens. Though I would have liked to learn more about the characters’ inner lives; the human characters jump in and out of bed with each other and suffer little emotional embarrassment; as for the aliens, this is the one respect in which we really don’t get inside their heads. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, the Campbell Award and the BSFA Award.

Mark E. Madsen, here, Niall Harrison/, /Jo Walton here and here, F. Brett Cox, Armchair Anarchist, Samantha J. Herdman Cheryl Morgan, Jim, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Lisa Tuttle, here, Kevin Murphy, Rick Kleffel, Tom Easton, Eamonn Sullivan, Svein Olav Nyberg, Jay Tomio and Frank Gilbert Slinkard share my high opinion of the novel. Russ Allbery, Jonathan McCalmont, Tony Chester, Rich, Dan Hartland/ here, here, Adam Roberts, Eric Brown, Jake Beal, Chris Hibbert, Doug Miller, Ted Rose and Roger Camm were underwhelmed. has an unusual complaint: because the book’s sub-title is “A Scientific Romance”, “I kept expecting someone to fall in love with someone else and IT DIDN’T HAPPEN! I felt very abused and frustrated.”

1) Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. While I am deeply ambivalent about my ranking of the middle three, I am in no doubt about which book I put first. Spin‘s basic story is that one day, some time in the near future, humanity wakes up to find that the stars have disappeared, and that the earth is surrounded by a mysterious barrier. The mystery deepens when it becomes plain that time outside the barrier is passing 100 million times faster than time inside. But rather than rely on sensawunda to sell the story for him, Wilson concentrates on the implications of such a massive disruption for human society, telling it as the story of a family who are heavily implicated in the politics of the change. There is also a fascinating Martian character, who gives interesting responses to Wells, Bradbury and Heinlein’s takes on his own planet, and a deeply dubious fundamentalist Christian sect. It takes all the best aspects of Wilson’s previous books, combines them with some very interesting political and philosophical commentary, and delivers a climax whose punch matches the expectations the rest of the story sets up. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best SF Novel and the Campbell Award.

Elisabeth Carey: “This is a beautifully written, completely engrossing book“. Rick Kleffel: “a finely written novel of character and speculation“. Cheryl Morgan: “It is the sort of book that deserves to win Hugos.” James Schellenberg, “a remarkable work that has nearly every element in perfect balance“. MightyCow: “Absolutely fantastic read.” Patrick Nielsen Hayden: “one of the finest science fiction novels of the last decade” (in the interests of full disclosure: he published the book, and sent me a free copy; though he also sent me a free copy of Old Man’s War.) Greg L. Johnson: “one of the best science fiction novels of this or any year“. Gregg Thurlbeck: “quite an exceptional novel“. Chad Orzel: “this is really an excellent book“. here/William Lexner: “works well on just about every level” (though I completely disagree with him on Wilson’s attitude to religion). Leslie Turek: “Wow! This is a book that really brings back the sense of wonder into science fiction.” Tom Easton: “Don’t miss this one.” : “so good that I didn’t notice a single ‘flaw’“. “It rules. Read it.” Also M.D. Benoit and Steve, Carlos Aranaga, Jonathan Cowie, Wally Conger, John League, Firelands, Aaron Davidson, Arcane Gazebo, Specific Floozy, here, here, FFWD, Jared Harley, here, here, here, Peter Darbyshire, Greig Christie, here, here, here, Paul Di Filippo, Jo Walton/ here, here, Bill Brockman, Jeff, here, Adam Rakunas, Eric Rescorla, Mike Hoye, here, here, and recommended by Stephen King in USA Today (though I disagree with him on Blind Lake).

Slightly more muted, but generally positive: Richard Horton: “it’s neat stuff — though I suppose just mildly less overwhelming than I might have hoped“. Matt Freestone: “Nonetheless, it’s a really impressive SF story with real characters.” Tim Gebhart: “Overall, though, Wilson effectively explores this wide-ranging territory in a readable and enjoyable fashion“. Also Archren, JP at SFSignal, Russ Allbery, here, Addison Philips, here, here, here, Christian Sauve, Nat-Wu, here, Dan Lewis, here, Paul Witcover, eric135, here, and here.

Largely unimpressed: Mark L. Irons. Wholly unimpressed: , here.

Continued here.

Continued from this post.

Novellas

Abigail Nussbaum and Evelyn Leeper have blazed a trail here by reviewing all the nominated novellas. Their rankings are completely different from mine. Go have a look.

5) “Inside Job” by Connie Willis. Story of a sceptic and debunker in today’s California who has to deal with the ghost of H.L. Mencken and a glamorous assistant. Willis can do funny, and do interesting characters, and do wacky concepts, but the intellectual foundations of this story were too slender to sustain something of this length before the essential contradictions kill your suspension of disbelief. Also not especially funny. In Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Best Short Novels: 2006. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Novella and the Sturgeon Award.

Mike Kozlowski: “the story’s actually less irritating than I was expecting. But then, I was expecting something pretty damn irritating, so that’s not saying a whole lot.” Abigail Nussbaum: “simply dull”. Evelyn Leeper thinks it has “a major underlying flaw“. was underwhelmed. Amber Taylor: “ultimately unsatisfying“.  Vardibidian: “terribly light“. But Rick Kleffel liked it (and again). So did Leona Wisoker, Katey Knapp, here, Jeff Youngstrom, Alohatiki, lislemck, L. I. Rapkin, Anne K.G. Murphy, Mark R. Kelly, Cabell Gathman, here, here, here, here, here, here, and Emily Reich. : “adorably funny“. Carol O liked it with reservations, as did Cap’n Neurotic.

4) “Identity Theft”, by Robert J. Sawyer. I actually nominated this one, a Sawyer story that for once I found acceptable, taking the absurd premise of last year’s dismal Hugo nominee “Shed Skin” and putting it into a film noir setting on Mars. The ending is a bit too pat but it is otherwise enjoyable. But really, the other three nominees are all far better. Full marks for imagination and genre combination; unfortunately let down a little in the execution, as we the readers can see the plot coming from miles away. Shortlisted for the Nebula (which is why I read it).

I found surprisingly few other on-line comments on this story. Abigail Nussbaum is suitably caustic. John DeNardo is a little more positive. Joe Karpierz liked it.

3) “Burn”, by James Patrick Kelly (PDF, text, RTF). Lots and lots to like here, planet at the edge of the universe trying to revert to Thoreau-style union with nature against the wishes of the original inhabitants, complex hero, society disrupted by contact with the galactic mainstream, all pretty absorbing. I still think the other two stories are better, but this is a good long read and would have been a worthy winner in a different year. In The Year’s Best Science Fiction #23 edited by Gardner Dozois. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Novella.

Cory Doctorow: “I can’t recommend it enough“. Jeff VanderMeer: “intelligent, thoughtful, and provocative“. Cheryl Morgan: “very thoughtful“. Jonathan Strahan: “extraordinary“.  felt it was too short. Also positive: Mark Watson,  here, Wally Conger, Tom Easton.

But : “well written but really didn’t have a satisfying conclusion“. Niall Harrison/: “rather average and quite predictable“. Evelyn Leeper: “impenetrable“.  was utterly unimpressed.

2) “The Little Goddess”, by Ian McDonald. Set in a similar time and place to his superb River of Gods (runner-up for last year’s Best Novel Hugo), this is the story of a little girl who becomes a Nepalese goddess. So far, so Tombs of Atuan. But South Asia in the mid-twenty-first century is very very different from Earthsea, and we get a gripping narrative of growing up while nanotechnology messes (literally) with your head. Very very good. In Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Best Short Novels: 2006 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction #23 edited by Gardner Dozois. Shortlisted for the Sturgeon Award

Russ Allbery: “one of the best short stories I’ve read“. Kate MacLeod: “Every detail is perfect, but unlike in many scifi stories, the technical details are not the point” and “I liked it immensely“. Evelyn Leeper puts it top of her list. Also positive: Dawn Burnell/Brittany Marschalk. Abigail Nussbaum has the peculiar objection that it is too similar to River of Gods (though she liked the novel too). The “mundane sf” crowd claim it as one of theirsdisagrees.

1) “Magic for Beginners”, by Kelly Link. I have to say that I really don’t have the faintest notion what was going on in this story, but I simply loved reading it. I can’t begin to describe it other than to say that it is about teenagers, fandom, families, and magic, and that doesn’t seem to come near capturing its essence. A true classic which will keep people puzzled for years. In Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Best Short Novels: 2006. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Novella and the Sturgeon Award. Won the Nebula and the BSFA Award.

Abigail Nussbaum: “a better written, more intelligent, more imaginative piece than any other on the shortlist, or for that matter any other I’ve read this year, and great fun to boot”. : “This is beautiful. It’s brilliant. It’s not perfect–to be perfect it would have to continue on and on; it’s not nearly long enough, as long as it is.” Dennis Lim: “heartbreakingly perfect“. : “breathtakingly wonderful“. : “it really blew me away“. : “absolutely sublime“. Also very positive (in most cases reviews are of the collection with the same title): Cory Doctorow, Claude Lalumiere, Geneva Melzack, Laura Miller (and here), Missy Schwartz, Lev Grossman, Miriam Jones, Alan Williams,  here,  here, Phyllis Fong, Carol O, Steven Shaviro, Jenny Spadafora,  here, Sean Melican, Peter Bebergal, Kim Hollis, James, Paul Jessup, and Nina MacLaughlin (who seems to have the wrong photographs).

However  is baffled,  “didn’t like it at all“, and  was not completely convinced. Russ Allbery: “Where’s the rest of the story?” Evelyn Leeper: “It seemed fairly pointless and uninvolving to me.”

Novelettes

Abigail Nussbaum and Evelyn Leeper have also written up the nominees. All three of us agree on which is the worst story of the bunch, but differ on the rest. Interestingly, two nominees (my favourite two), “The Calorie Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi and “Two Hearts” by Peter Beagle, were both published in the same issue of F&SF.

5) “Telepresence”, by Michael Burstein. Burstein’s one really memorable story is “TeleAbsence”, published in 1995, which probably helped get him the 1996 Campbell Award for Best New Writer. That story was about a future society in which education for the privileged few comes via virtual reality “spex”; a kid from an impoverished background gets hold of a pair of spex and his life is (of course) transformed. This year’s nominee, “Telepresence”, takes the same central character, but grown up now, and trouble-shooting a nasty incident involving the latest virtual reality educational software. It is a huge disappointment. The prose is clunky, the plot unengaging.

Sam Tomaino liked it, as did Brit Marschalk/Douglas Hoffman, and here. Abigail Nussbaum and Evelyn Leeper did not. Mark Watson found it “cheesy” and poorly paced.

4) “i, robot”, by Cory Doctorow. Written as part of the author’s plan to “pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf’s classic narratives”, this story “describes the police state that would have to obtain if you were going to have a world where there was only one kind of robot allowed and only one company was allowed to make it”. Unfortunately, though well written and tightly plotted, the story pushed several of my “blah” buttons. I hate most stories about intelligent humanoid robots, and I am not at all fascinated by Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics (these two facts are probably related); and on top of that, though I agree with the political point Doctorow is making, I thought it was done much too heavy-handedly. In Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Novelette and the BSFA Award.

Rave reviews from Elf Sternberg, Ian Spray, Bill Kerr. Peter Hollo/ here, Dolemite, here, Jiri Baum, Vhata Vas Hyah, Aaman Lamba, Alexandre Lemieux, Jordan, and Mark Watson liked it too. But Matt Arnold shares some of my reservations.

3) “The King of Where-I-Go”, by Howard Waldrop. This is a nice story about the Fifties, telepathy experiments, and alternate realities, in Alabam and Texas. It didn’t pack quite the emotional punch that I would have liked such a story to include, but is generally OK. In Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005, and Rich Horton’s anthology, Science Fiction: The Best of the Year. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Novelette.

Sam Tomaino: “wonderful“. Mark R. Kelly, “evocative… though its change-the-past story is fairly routine”. James Palmer: “a nice, quiet, little nostalgia piece“.

2) “The Calorie Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi. In a future energy-starved Mississippi valley, a petty criminal is sucked into a plan to subvert the laws on genetically modified crops. Neatly and competently done, but without the emotional spark that some writers would have included. In The Year’s Best Science Fiction #23 edited by Gardner Dozois, and Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005.

John Knouse: “nothing short of brilliant“. Niall Harrison/: “elegantly built“. E. Sedia liked it. So did David Roy. Sam Tomaino: “very good“. Abigail Nussbaum rather grudgingly thought it “probably the best of the bunch”. Mark Watson: “not quite up to the standard of [Ted] Chiang, but close enough“. Russ Allbery thought it “rather straightforward”.

1) “Two Hearts” by Peter S. Beagle. Back in 1968, Beagle published his classic fantasy novel, The Last Unicorn. I have never read it, nor have I seen the film made some time back (apparently very successful, though Beagle did not profit much from it) and so I expected this follow-up novella (written almost four decades later!) to leave me pretty cold. In fact, it had entirely the opposite effect: I was totally captured by the lyrical and moving story of a king’s last quest, told through the eyes of a young girl, in a fantasy world where Bad Things Happen but you can hope for Good to have a partial victory at the end. Perhaps I am just getting sentimental in my old age, but I loved it. Will look out for The Last Unicorn. In Jonathan Strahan’s anthology, Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Novelette.

David Roy and Mark Watson have similar takes to me. David Roy: “the story is wonderful, the setting is interesting, and Beagle’s prose (especially as told through Sooz’s eyes) is masterful”. Jed Hartman, Eugie Foster, Russ Allbery and Tom Mula loved it. So did and here, here, here, and here, here. Sam Tomaino: “a true gem“. See also Tasha Robinson.

On the other hand, was a little disappointed and rather more so. Abigail Nussbaum didn’t like it much but expects it will win. I am really puzzled by Abigail’s description of Sooz as “Mary-Sue-ish”. In my innocence, I thought that Mary-Sue characters are generally considered to be stand-ins for the author, and it seems to me unlikely that the sixty-something Beagle secretly thinks of himself as a nine-year-old girl.

Short Stories

Abigail Nussbaum, Wally Conger and Evelyn Leeper have posted their thoughts on the whole short story category. I quote from their reviews, and from others’, below. I must say I found this category much the easiest to rank; for me there was a pretty clear ordering between two very bad stories, two decent ones and one that is outstanding and destined to become a classic of the genre.

5) “Down Memory Lane”, by Mike Resnick. This is quite simply awful. Bloke discovers that his wife has Alzheimer’s and voluntarily has the treatment to give it to himself. This makes such a mockery of the awfulness of the real experience of such illnesses that I found it quite offensive.

Abigail Nussbaum: a “seventeenth-rate Flowers for Algernon rip-off”. : “unrealistic and cloyingly patronising”. Russ Alberry: “I really would have preferred something else”. Wally Conger: “sweet but ultimately forgettable”. Evelyn Leeper: ” I just cannot get enthused about it”. But Dave Truesdale in Tangent Online loved it, and Mark Watson thought it clever.

4) “Seventy-Five Years” by Michael A Burstein. Flat prose, plot is both obvious and unconvincing – Senator’s ex-wife in the year 2098 works out his secret personal motivation for a particular piece of legislation. Dismal.

Abigail Nussbaum: “this year’s worst story” (implictly, of those on the ballot, not of all stories published.) David R. Williams (): describes it as “quite literally an awful, terrible story that displays all the literary flair of a five year old writing a ‘what I did on my holidays’ report on his first day back at school”. Wally Conger: “an extremely lightweight attempt at political and social commentary”. Evelyn Leeper: “a fairly obvious ‘twist’, and was heavy on the ‘message’ element”. Atara Braun: “boring”. Nick Mamatas fears that it will win the Hugo, “The SFnal equivalent of that Norman Rockwell print your mother has hanging opposite the commode in her bathroom”. But Sam Tomaino: “very good”.

3) “Tk’tk’tk” by David D Levine. Rather charming tale of huckster seduced by alien culture. The aliens are, however, rather like Asians in rubber suits (as someone else pointed out). And the ending was a bit too hasty. But fun all the same.

Wally Conger: “a clever and entertaining story”. Abigail Nussbaum gave it rather a mixed verdict. Evelyn Leeper: “a premise that seems very “Golden Age”…but [with] a very 21st-century sensibility.” Russ Allbery: “didn’t make psychological sense to me.” But Sam Tomaino: “very good”.

2) “The Clockwork Atom Bomb” by Dominic Green (pdf). Brilliant combination of horror and humour, set in an international peacekeeping context in a not-too-distant future central Africa. Really good, entertaining stuff. In The Year’s Best Science Fiction #23 edited by Gardner Dozois.

Wally Conger: “will get my top vote” – and Evelyn Leeper’s as well. Jeff Spock gives Green “great credit for originality”. Sam Tomaino goes beyond “very good” to “exceptional“. Lavie Tidhar: (with mild reservations): “This is the kind of stuff I want to see more of”. But Abigail Nussbaum: “very nice, but not remarkable in any way”

1) “Singing My Sister Down” by Margo Lanagan. Has already won the World Fantasy Award, two Aurealis Awards and the Ditmar Award; the Nebula voters, to their discredit, shortlisted it but failed to give it the award. Well, now we are cooking on gas. When I first read it, I thought it was “a beautifully written, intense, powerful and surprisingly short piece that will probably win any award for which it is nominated”. To say that it is a story about a ritual execution would give entirely the wrong impression and yet be technically accurate; it’s really a story about family, society, youth, the loss of innocence, all very densely packed – I think it may be the shortest of the nominees. And yes, on reflection, I completely accept that it is a genre piece; apart from anything else, I don’t know of any society, past or present, which uses that particular method of execution. Heartily deserves to win.

Australian teachers and pupils rave about Black Juice, the original collection in which “Singing My Sister Down” was published. Cheryl Morgan, Dominique Hecq, Colin Greenland, Gwyneth Jones, Robin Osborne, Saxon Bullock, Scott Fabirkiewicz, Roz Kaveney also positive.

On the story itself: Lila (): “fresh and powerful”. Josephine Crowley: “beautifully written … disturbing and horrific and not for everyone” Stephanie Burgis: “it totally lived up to all the hype”. Abigail Nussbaum’s first choice (see also here). Tero Ykspetäjä’s local group ranked it first (though I’m not quite sure which story they put second). Katherine Nabety: “Very nicely done with no over-sentimentality.” : “hands down[,] the eeriest short story I’ve EVER read”. : “really fantastic“. : absolutely astounding“. Nick Mamatas thinks it should win the Hugo. : “wonderfully and horribly compelling” (and more). loved it.

Dissident voices: Wally Conger: “been there, done that”. Evelyn Leeper: “while the idea showed some creativity, I did not find the story itself particularly engaging”. liked it more on second reading. Dan Hartland’s (aka ) praise is a little fainter than some.

Asked to name the “authors moving science fiction forward”, Harlan Ellison names Lanagan (and nobody else) on the basis of “Singing My Sister Down”. And reminisces about how it was written.

I was intrigued by this story after the positive write-up given it by Cornell, Day and Topping in The Discontinuity Guide. Although the film of this Hartnell story is lost, I managed to get hold of a fan “reproduction”, with black and white pictures of scenes from the programme montaged against the original sound-track. I watched it late last night, and was not wildly impressed. But this may have been due to just being too tired to take it in properly – I went back to a couple of key scenes this morning to check points for this review and suddenly found myself being drawn into it much more.

Is this the only Doctor Who story featuring just the Doctor and a single, male, companion? Indeed the Doctor himself features only in one and a half episodes out of four, with William Hartnell credited as the Abbot of Amboise in the middle two episodes, though of course Steven (and the audience) are unsure about whether he is really the Doctor in disguise. Peter Purves really has to carry the entire story until half way through the last episode, and is just about up to it.

In some ways it’s actually the basic Doctor Who plot – Tardis arrives in the midst of fiendish political plotting, our heroes make friends with one of the locals and have to sort out the goodies from the baddies. The interesting wrinkles are that the setting is not an alien planet but an obscure corner of French history, the 1572 massacre of the Huguenots, and that the baddies win. Looking at its place in the original broadcast sequence, it came immediately after The Dalek Master Plan in which not one but two companions were killed off, so fitted into a bleak rather than comic phase.

But it really does come alive in the fourth and final episode, when the Doctor reappears without deigning to explain where he has been. He and Steven actually leave Paris with ten minutes of story yet to go, leaving time for them to have a row, Steven to walk out of the Tardis in disgust, Dodo Chaplet to walk into it by mistake, and then Steven to return. In his brief moment on his own, the Doctor delivers a soliloquy which sounds much much better than it looks in script:

Steven:	I tell you this much, Doctor, wherever this machine of yours lands next I’m getting off. If your researches have so little regard for human life then I want no part.
Doctor:	We’ve landed. Your mind is made up?
(The TARDIS doors open.)
Steven:	Goodbye.
Doctor:	My dear Steven, history sometimes gives us a terrible shock, and that is because we don’t quite fully understand. Why should we? After all, we’re all too small to realise its final pattern. Therefore, don’t try and judge it from where you stand. I was right to do as I did. Yes, that I firmly believe.
(Steven walks out of the Tardis.)
Doctor:	Even after all this time, he cannot understand. I dare not change the course of history. Well, at least I taught him to take some precautions. He did remember to look at the scanner before he opened the doors. Now they’re all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. Yes. And there’s Barbara and Chatterton… Chesterton! They were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can’t. I can’t.

Anyway, we’ve been watching The Dalek Invasion of Earth as well, and loving it. More on that in due course.

Hat tip to :

Wow. In the old days that would have been padded out to three episodes. Excellent, and terrifying.

Our enjoyment may come at a price. Young F was dawdling over bedtime, and after I’d explained why it was not in black and white (unlike the William Hartnell series he has seen me watching) he settled into the programme, and of course wanted to watch the next episode immediately. Well, so do I, but unfortunately we will have to wait until next week! Let’s hope it doesn’t give him nightmares.

I couldn’t really get into the one novel of hers I tried to read, but Elaine Cunningham’s tale of proof-reading had me grinning in sympathy… (Hat-tip )

Very very nice to catch up with people last night, and exchange words, however brief, with , , , and . Particularly nice to have long chats with , , , , and most of all after many years (apart from family, the lj-user I have known for longest, jointly with ). Sorry not to have even managed to exchange words with , , , and anybody else who I knew who was there – come ten o’clock the week’s travels caught up with me and I just had to disappear off to bed.

Alex Wilcock makes the first sensible comment I’ve read.

I am joining the Great Breast Boycott of June 2006.

On 6 June this journal will be deleted, in protest at LiveJournal’s stiupid policies about user icons, which effectively make breast-feeding too obscene to be depicted here.

More on why here, here, and here. It’s a quiet form of protest – it doesn’t cost me anything (heck, it even gains me time I would otherwise have spent on LJ) – but I hope it will send a message.

15) [Doctor Who] Goth Opera, by Paul Cornell

This was the first of the Missing Adventures of Doctor Who, published 1994 at (I suppose) the same time as Terrance Dicks’ Blood Harvest. It features the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan, shortly after the death of Adric, and another brief appearance from Romana, and (of course) vampires; setting is between Manchester in England, Tasmania, and bits of Gallifrey. Paul Cornell’s vampires seem much more familiar, much more like Buffy’s than did those in the Terrance Dicks stories; I wondered for a brief moment if Joss Whedon might have read this, but then realised that of course he and Paul were both born in the mid-1960s and educated in southern England, so will have read the same vampire books, and seen the same vampire movies, as me, whereas Terrance Dicks is thirty years older.

All good stuff. Paul brings religion and a dodgy evangelist into the novel without sermonising; Tegan’s Balkan roots are explored (there are a couple of Balkan references which I found of interest). Tegan must be much easier to write than Nyssa, which might explain what happens to the latter during the course of the book. I was left largely satisfied, though feeling that the conclusion was perhaps a little implausible. (But then, it may not be completely fair to demand total plausibility in a book featuring vampires and Doctor Who.)

14) [Doctor Who] Blood Harvest, by Terrance Dicks

A sequel to State of Decay, published in 1994, featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace, Bernice Summerfield, a guest appearance from Romana, a Dashiell Hammett private eye, more vampires, and conspiring Time Lords back on Gallifrey (reference is also made to The Five Doctors). Very interesting to see what Terrance Dicks could do once liberated from the novelisation format. Here we have the Doctor and Ace running a speakeasy in Al Capone’s Chicago, while Bernice and Romana return to the planet of State of Decay (now mysteriously easier to get to – it is only towards the end of the book that someone remembers that it is in E-Space – and with a much larger population) to check on the return of vampirism there. Bernice’s attempts to bring British parliamentary democracy to the peasants and aristos may not bear immediate fruit. It all hangs together remarkably well, though, with only a few lapses of prose that reminded me, ah yes, this is by Terrance Dicks. (The private eye character gets a few first-person sections of narrative, though otherwise we are in standard omniscient narrator territory.) Good fun.

13) Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide, by Yiannis Papadakis

This is an honest, courageous, very intelligent and very emotional book. Papadakis, himself a Greek Cypriot from Limassol, examines the stories told about their past by Greek and Turkish Cypriots. And he does it through a candidly effective mixture of analysis and chronicling his own reactions as he learns and experiences more about his own past, as well as the history of his island. I couldn’t recommend the book to an absolute beginner on Cyprus – the lack of a map or a timeline would I think make it too confusing – but for anyone who knows even a little about the place I think it is a great read.

Papadakis starts by going to “Constantinople” to learn Turkish in preparation for his hoped-for fieldwork. This in itself causes him to re-examine everything he thought he knew about Greek and Turkish history and culture. There are then three chapters in Nicosia (which he correctly refers to by the Greek name, Lefkosia, or the Turkish name, Lefkosha, depending on which side of the line he is on); he starts by settling into a neighbourhood in the east of the old city, to find out what people say about the conflict and their past relations with the Turkish Cypriots; then he gets to spend a month in the north, hearing the other side of the story; and then he finds that on his return to the south he is a target for special attention from the Greek Cypriot secret police. Barred from returning to the north, he goes back to Turkey – this time to Istanbul – to talk to young Turkish Cypriots there. He finishes up with a few weeks in the shared village of Pyla/Pile, within the UN-controlled zone. In every chapter he returns to the potent images of the Dead Zone of the book’s title, and of Aphrodite, who starts as a cuddly Greek goddess of love, and ends up as a much more sinister figure. He comes to the following conclusion about the way in which the two communities in Cyprus fail to confront their own, and each other’s, histories, conclusions which are probably generalisable to other situations:

It was all based on four simple premises.

First premise: They have propaganda, we have enlightenment. They try to deceive others, we try to show them the truth.

The second was a bit more complicated: their propaganda has been more successful than our enlightenment. This was based on a sub-premise, itself a manifestation of the Dead Zone: the rest of the world is with them. The world was split into those with us or against us. Nothing in between. Since no one was completely with us – as they should be since we were absolutely right – they were unfairly against us.

Then came the last two premises involving assertions and threats, but posing as understanding whispers of admission. “This is a critical time for Cyprus. The discussions are in a critical phase. Let’s not talk about our mistakes now.” This was an argument whose strength had not diminished after forty years of use. The main news headlines had been the same for more than forty years: “THE CYPRUS PROBLEM IS IN A CRITICAL PHASE”

And finally: “You may be right, we did some bad things too. But we can’t admit to these. Do they ever admit theirs? Do they ever criticize their side?”

Put together, these four premises worked wonders. Those who used them claimed to be opposed but were in perfect cooperation.

I met Papadakis briefly when I visited Cyprus back in March; wish I had had longer to talk with him.

12) Doctor Who and the State of Decay, by Terrance Dicks

This is Dicks’ novelisation of his own script for the 1980 Fourth Doctor story featuring Romana, K9, Adric (who stowed away on the Tardis at the end of the previous story) and vampires. Suffers from the usual problems of the novelisations – too much reliance on dialogue in particular, and Dicks’ rather flat prose. Still I remembered a couple of vivid moments from the series – the high-tech destruction of the Great Vampire by the Doctor, and also the rather clumsily written moment where Adric attempts to assure Romana that he’s on her side – weakened the dramatic impact drastically as I remember, though perhaps that was the fault of Matthew Waterhouse’s acting. I had forgotten that the Doctor found the key piece of information on magnetic data disks left by Rassilon in every Tardis just in case. Good nostalgia, though I really read it as preparation for the two sequels.

My contribution to Sweden’s debate on the future of Europe, here.

Would be very grateful for some Swedish speaker to explain to me if the response in the right hand column is complimentary or vituperative!

English original version can be found, among other places, here.

Beautiful buildings, glowing in the sunset.

Just had a call from a gentleman who needed to telk me that “je suis” is an anagram of “I Jesus”. Must check visibility of my phone number.

One of my colleagues has sent around this news item, with the heading “Ethnic Group of the Month”:

ADYGEYA PRESIDENT MEETS WITH SHAPSUGS: Khazret Sovmen met on May 25 in Maikop with representatives of the Shapsug community from neighboring Krasnodar Krai, caucasustimes.com reported. The Shapsugs expressed gratitude for 500,000 rubles ($18,513) he donated to help finance the publication of the newspaper “Shapsugiya.” That paper was first published 15 years ago and currently appears twice a month in a print run of 3,700, according to an article by its editor Anzor Nibo on the heku.ru website. The Shapsugs are a tiny ethnic group, numbering approximately 10,000, related to the Adygs (Cherkess); they speak a dialect of Adyg.

Well, I’m glad to hear it.

11) Daughter of the Drow, by Elaine Cunningham

Sorry, got a hundred pages into it and just can’t be bothered. Unattractive characters and derivative world. If I was still roleplaying it would probably grab me a bit more effectively. But I’m not, so it doesn’t.

I do remember the AD&D mudule Vault of the Drow with great affection. But not in much detail….

Haven’t seen this BBC interview linked from anyone else on my f-list…

Over the last few weeks, an episode here and an episode there, I’ve been watching the first ever appearance of the Doctor’s ultimate foes, first broadcast in 1963-1964 in seven episodes. Great fun. I had of course read David Whitaker’s novelisation, roughtly 25 years ago. A few things that sprang to mind:

1) the settings were very convincing – the Dalek city (OK, we know with the eye of hindsight that it was a model shot), the sense that this was a big landscape with forest, swamp and caves.

2) Barbara’s romance with Ganatus – there is surely some fanfic dealing with that somewhere?

3) The devious Doctor, sabotaging the TARDIS deliberately to get a chance to explore the city.

4) The time travellers, despite Barbara’s relations with Ganatus, are all set to just bugger off and leave the Thals to their doom at the end of episode 4.

5) The end of episode 6 is indeed a literal cliff-hanger – with a brutal resolution

6) Terry Nation’s attack on pacifism. A lot more ideological than I remembered from the book.

7) The Daleks at the end talking about the total extermination of the Thals practically raise their plungers in Nazi salutes – sounds silly when I describe it but actually very effective.

8) the one bit that really didn’t work – the fight at the end; the time-travellers and Thals win too easily.

Anyhow, well worth it. I watched with the closed caption commentary, which to be honest was more annoying than helpful on the whole. Though it was interesting that the very day of the filming of the Doctor’s first encounter with the Daleks was 22 November 1963, the day before the first Doctor Who (recorded over a month before) was to be broadcast, and also the day of John F Kennedy’s assassination. (And of the deaths of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley; but who remembers that?)

Walt Willis on Bob Shaw:

They reached a position of great wealth and influence during the famines of the 1840’s, attaining a prestige in Ireland comparable with that of the Campbells in Glencoe, and ranking second only to Cromwell in the esteem of the Irish people. Even today their name can occasionally be seen scrawled by simple peasants on the walls, coupled with a sincere, if somewhat crude, suggestion that the populace should demonstrate their love in a practical manner.

Also I obviously need to read some Garth Ennis – I caught Troubled Souls when it first came out but have completely missed his work since.

(Why yes, I am working on that article for and .)

That was a bit disappointing.

I thought they got the 1950s atmosphere well, but didn’t think much of the rest.

Apart from anything else, we already know that in 1953 the entire population of London did not turn into faceless zombies, so the element of suspense was slightly lacking.