3) Steppe, by Piers Anthony

This arose out of a conversation with a colleague who remembered having read it years ago. He described the plot to me, I posted his query here (and also on rasfw) and it was swiftly identified by as this book. I told my colleague, he bought it off Amazon, read it over the weekend and passed it on to me.

Our hero, a ninth-century Uighur, is yanked far into the future by players of a massive interactive game called Steppe, in which the history of Central Asia is simulated between the years 841 and 1227 at a rate of a game year for every real day that passes. The author takes the opportunity to regale us with much history transcribed painstakingly from Rene Grousset’s Empire of the Steppes (thanks to Mike Schilling for that tip-off).

Well, one has to be honest and admit that neither the plot, nor the setting, nor indeed the characterisation are quite as well-rounded as the couple depicted by Boris Vallejo on the cover, whose relevance is as minimal as their clothing. (Note how the gentleman holds his long upright pointy thing in one hand, and clutches another weapon at groin level with the other.)

For some reason, rather than have the whole game of Steppe a computer-generated environment, Anthony chooses to try and rewrite the Central Asian landscape into a space opera setting, so that the horses are spaceships, rough terrain equates to nebulas, camps are actually on planets. It’s not as well done as he managed in the five-volume Bio of a Space Tyrant series (and that set rather a low bar to exceed, featuring as it did the bizarre decision of Turks and Greeks to settle on the same asteroid when they had the whole solar system to choose from, purely so that they could reproduce the Cyprus situation in space).

It’s never clear whether the characters are supposed to get marks for recreating the historical record or deviating from it, and this is where Anthony really does run into difficulty with writing a decent story; he cannot choose between history lesson and plot. (A cantankerous afterword complains about his treatment by his publishers.) The women of the future are apparently “unversed in the refinements of pleasure” (this phrase is actually used), but fortunately our time-travelling hero is around to put them right by doing it the old-fashioned Turkic way.

Perhaps not the best book I’ve read all year, but I did at least find it much easier going than Dhalgren.

Of course, I’ve been tracking the Hugos and Nebulas separately; but this was interesting. (Usual – bold if you’ve read.)

Thanks to  here,  here,  here,  here,  here and  here.

1953 HUGO: Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

1955 HUGO: Mark Clifton & Frank Riley, They’d Rather Be Right

1956 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, Double Star

1958 HUGO: Fritz Leiber, The Big Time

1959 HUGO: James Blish, A Case of Conscience

1960 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

1961 HUGO: Walter Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

1962 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

1963 HUGO: Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

1964 HUGO: Clifford Simak, Way Station

1965 HUGO: Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer
NEBULA: Frank Herbert, Dune

1966 HUGO: Roger Zelazny, …And Call Me Conrad
HUGO: Frank Herbert, Dune
NEBULA: Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
NEBULA: Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

1967 HUGO: Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
NEBULA: Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection

1968 HUGO: Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
NEBULA: Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage

1969 HUGO: John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
NEBULA: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

1970 HUGO: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
NEBULA: Larry Niven, Ringworld

1971 HUGO: Larry Niven, Ringworld
NEBULA: Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes

1972 HUGO: Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
NEBULA: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves

1973 HUGO: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves
NEBULA: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama

1974 HUGO: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
NEBULA: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

1975 HUGO: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
NEBULA: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
WFA: Patricia McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

1976 HUGO: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
NEBULA: Frederik Pohl, Man Plus
WFA: Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return

1977 HUGO: Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
NEBULA: Frederik Pohl, Gateway
WFA: William Kotzwinkle, Doctor Rat

1978 HUGO: Frederik Pohl, Gateway
NEBULA: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
WFA: Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness

1979 HUGO: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
NEBULA: Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
WFA: Michael Moorcock, Gloriana

1980 HUGO: Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise
NEBULA: Gregory Benford, Timescape
WFA: Elizabeth A. Lynn, Watchtower

1981 HUGO: Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen
NEBULA: Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
WFA: Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

1982 DICK: Rudy Rucker, Software
HUGO: C. J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station
NEBULA: Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time
WFA: John Crowley, Little Big

1983 DICK: Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates
HUGO: Isaac Asimov, Foundation’s Edge
NEBULA: David Brin, Startide Rising
WFA: Michael Shea, Nifft the Lean

1984 DICK: William Gibson, Neuromancer
HUGO: David Brin, Startide Rising
NEBULA: William Gibson, Neuromancer
WFA: John M. Ford, The Dragon Waiting

1985 DICK: Tim Powers, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace
HUGO: William Gibson, Neuromancer
NEBULA: Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
WFA: Barry Hughart, The Bridge of Birds
WFA: Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood

1986 DICK: James P. Blaylock, Homunculus
HUGO: Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
NEBULA: Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
WFA: Dan Simmons, Song of Kali

1987 CLARKE: Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
DICK: Patricia Geary, Strange Toys
HUGO: Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
NEBULA: Pat Murphy, The Falling Woman
STOKER: Stephen King, Misery
STOKER: Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song
WFA: Patrick Suskind, Perfume

1988 CLARKE: George Turner, The Sea and Summer
DICK: Rudy Rucker, Wetware
HUGO: David Brin, The Uplift War
NEBULA: Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free
STOKER: Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
WFA: Ken Grimwood, Replay

1989 CLARKE: Rachel Pollack, Unquenchable Fire
DICK: Richard Paul Russo, Subterranean Gallery
HUGO: C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen
NEBULA: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Healer’s War
STOKER: Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort
WFA: Peter Straub, Koko

1990 CLARKE: Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
DICK: Pat Murphy, Points of Departure
HUGO: Dan Simmons, Hyperion
NEBULA: Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu
STOKER: Robert R. McCammon, Mine
WFA: Jack Vance, Madouc

1991 CLARKE: Colin Greenland, Take Back Plenty
DICK: Ian McDonald, King of Morning, Queen of Day
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game
NEBULA: Michael Swanwick, Stations of the Tide
STOKER: Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life
TIPTREE: Eleanor Arnason, A Woman of the Iron People
TIPTREE: Gwyneth Jones, The White Queen
WFA: James Morrow, Only Begotten Daughter
WFA: Ellen Kushner, Thomas the Rhymer

1992 CLARKE: Pat Cadigan, Synners
DICK: Richard Grant, Through the Heart
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
NEBULA: Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
STOKER: Thomas F. Monteleone, Blood of the Lamb
TIPTREE: Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
WFA: Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life

1993 CLARKE: Marge Piercy, Body of Glass
DICK: Jack Womack, Elvissey
DICK: John M. Ford, Growing Up Weightless
HUGO: Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
HUGO: Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
NEBULA: Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
STOKER: Peter Straub, The Throat
TIPTREE: Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
WFA: Tim Powers, Last Call

1994 CLARKE: Jeff Noon, Vurt
DICK: Robert Charles Wilson, Mysterium
HUGO: Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars
NEBULA: Greg Bear, Moving Mars
STOKER: Nancy Holder, Dead in the Water
TIPTREE: Nancy Springer, Larque on the Wing
WFA: Lewis Shiner, Glimpses

1995 CLARKE: Pat Cadigan, Fools
DICK: Bruce Bethke, Headcrash
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance
NEBULA: Robert J. Sawyer, The Terminal Experiment
STOKER: Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
TIPTREE: Elizabeth Hand, Waking the Moon
TIPTREE: Theodore Roszak, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein
WFA: James Morrow, Towing Jehovah

1996 CLARKE: Paul J. McAuley, Fairyland
DICK: Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships
HUGO: Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
NEBULA: Nicola Griffith, Slow River
STOKER: Stephen King, The Green Mile
TIPTREE: Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
WFA: Christopher Priest, The Prestige

1997 CLARKE: Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
DICK: Stepan Chapman, The Troika
HUGO: Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars
NEBULA: Vonda N. McIntyre, The Moon and the Sun
STOKER: Janet Berliner and George Guthridge, Children of the Dusk
TIPTREE: Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine
WFA: Rachel Pollack, Godmother Night

1998 CLARKE: Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
DICK: Geoff Ryman, 253: The Print Remix
HUGO: Joe Haldeman, Forever Peace
NEBULA: Joe Haldeman, Forever Peace
STOKER: Stephen King, Bag of Bones
TIPTREE: [a short story by Raphael Carter]
WFA: Jeffrey Ford, The Physiognomy

1999 CLARKE: Tricia Sullivan, Dreaming in Smoke
DICK: Stephen Baxter, Vacuum Diagrams: Stories of the Xeelee Sequence
HUGO: Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
NEBULA: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
STOKER: Peter Straub, Mr. X
TIPTREE: Suzy McKee Charnas, The Conqueror’s Child
WFA: Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife

2000 CLARKE: Bruce Sterling, Distraction
DICK: Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward
HUGO: Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky
NEBULA: Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio
STOKER: Richard Laymon, The Traveling Vampire Show
TIPTREE: Molly Gloss, Wild Life
WFA: Martin Scott, Thraxas

2001 CLARKE: China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
DICK: Richard Paul Russo, Ship of Fools
HUGO: J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
NEBULA: Catherine Asaro, The Quantum Rose
STOKER: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
TIPTREE: Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child
WFA: Tim Powers, Declare
WFA: Sean Stewart, Galveston

2002 CLARKE: Gwyneth Jones, Bold as Love
DICK: Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
HUGO: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
NEBULA: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
STOKER: Thomas Piccirilli, The Night Class
TIPTREE: M. John Harrison, Light
WFA: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind

2003 CLARKE: Christopher Priest, The Separation
DICK: Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon
HUGO: Robert J. Sawyer, Hominids
NEBULA: Elizabeth Moon, Speed of Dark
STOKER: Peter Straub, lost boy lost girl
TIPTREE: Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order
WFA: Graham Joyce, The Facts of Life
WFA: Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow

2004 CLARKE: Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
DICK: Gwyneth Jones, Life
HUGO: Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
NEBULA: Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
STOKER: Peter Straub, In the Night Room
TIPTREE: Joe Haldeman, Camouflage
TIPTREE: Johanna Sinisalo, Not Before Sundown (US title, Troll: A Love Story)
WFA: Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw

2005 CLARKE: China Miéville, Iron Council
HUGO: Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
WFA: Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Bah, just realised that I’ve been reading Dhalgren for the last few days in the mistaken belief that it was also a Nebula winner. Oh well.

Apparently my website is the 60th most popular Belgian weblog. If you believe these figures. Which I don’t. (Many of the sites listed, including mine, are not weblogs at all; I don’t really understand the criteria for listing them.)

shame, by Pam Noles

I’ve never told my parents that, in a way, they ruined these books and movies for me. Nor did I ever tell them that gradually, during near-weekly pilgrimages to the neighborhood branch library, I’d started asking the librarian if she had books with magic and spaceships and dragons and stuff in them, but with some black people, too. Black would be the first choice, but anybody kind of brown would do. It seemed the answer, for my age group anyway, was no. When I got older, there would be a few.
…
Later that summer, during the weekly hajj to the library, the librarian gave me a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea. She told me it had just come in, that she held it special for me, and that she knew I would like it a lot.

I know I didn’t start reading it that day. But I was deep into it before the week was out. And because Le Guin snuck up on it, let us thrill with Sparrowhawk as he made his way, the Revelation came as a shock. I do remember bursting out into tears on the living room couch when I understood what was going on. And the tears flowed again when Mom came home from work and I showed her the book while trying to explain. Sparrowhawk is brown. I think he’s like an Indian from India. And Vetch is black like from Africa. There’s a bunch more and they have real power. Not the girls, though. But still they are also the good guys. It’s the white people who are evil. And Sparrowhawk is also Ged, and he’s going to be the most powerful one of them all, ever.
…
Le Guin’s racial choices in “A Wizard of Earthsea” mattered because her decision said to the wide white world: You Are Not The Whole Of The Universe. For many fans of genre, no matter where they fell on the spectrum of pale, this was the first time such a truth was made alive for them within the pages of the magical worlds they loved.

And

As We Mean To Go On, by Kelley Eskridge & Nicola Griffith

The first time I saw her, in the hallway of the unairconditioned dorm, close and hot as a greenhouse, I opened my mouth to say How was your trip? as if we were already each other’s friend, lover, partner, joint explorer. I knew in our first three sentences that she would be the best writer there; that I would help her be better; that all my assumptions about how my life would unfurl were wrong; and that I would someday be the writer I yearned to be, because she wouldn’t have it any other way.
…
By the time we met, we had both read the quintessentially English C.S. Lewis, and the resolutely American Jack London. We had both read Lord of the Rings and internalised it to such an extent that even from that first day we could quote it wryly (“It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!”) and understand a variety of meanings, heartfelt and ironic, wistful and smug, depending on context. We were connected by story; we came together in that space where character and plot illuminate and influence each other, much as Kelley and I do.

The first on sf and race; the second on being two writers in a relationship. Both excellent and thought-provoking reading.

draws my attention to this sales catalogue:

As a result of the new structure of Belgian Defence, a part of the major military equipment has become redundant and is therefore offered for sale.

1 x 560-tonne minehunter, with 20mm gun, crew of 49 not included;
1 x hovercraft “used during artillery exercises along the sea-side, to recover the targets and to keep the fire-area clear of ships (yachts & fishing boats)”
5 x Britten Norman BN 2A aircraft, plus spare parts
25 x Alouette 2 Astazou helicopters
14 x Lockheed Martin F16 combat planes (12 x single seat, 2x double seat)
9 x A109BA military helicopters, may need some servicing
various Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicles
325 x M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers
53 x Leopard 1 A5 battle tanks
5 x bridges, suitable for crossing rivers or other obstacles (NB best used if mounted on a Leopard 1 A5 battle tank)
219 x CVR-T light-weight armoured vehicles
8 x MOR 120 MM RT mortars, no spare parts or ammunition supplied
etc

Just what you want to give that special someone in your life.

Finally, after eight months, I have done the next in my series of reviews of those works of written sf which have won both Hugo and Nebula.

Clifford D. Simak’s “Grotto of the Dancing Deer”.

Surprisingly little to be written about it, in the end, probably partly why it took me so long. Right, now about those other reviews I owe Keith Brooke…

Ian has found hidden meaning in Prince Caspian:

Oddly, it seems to be an allegorical commentary on the Palestinian situation. Narnia is under occupation, and its indigenous folk have been pushed to the margins by the settlers. That Lewis sees the liberation of Narnia coming from a scion of their oppressors’ royal family is interesting. Maybe the time will yet come when Omri Sharon leads Palestine to freedom.

You do have to wonder about Narnia. For a magical place, it seems to be a bit lacking in solid governmental institutions. In both of Lewis’ first two books, the country’s government has been overthrown by invaders. I wonder is Lewis’ message that the Narnians would have been better off spending less time partying in the woods and more organizing a well-trained militia equipped with the latest weaponry?

Much has been said about the way Lewis works his religious propaganda into the Narnia books. This one is no exception. Not merely does a pagan river god show up, but well-known Graeco-Roman deity Bacchus makes an appearance, together with his retinue of Maenads and some old geezer on a donkey. At one point they show up in a convent school, chase away the nuns, and then one of the schoolgirls is helped out of her overwear so that she can join the wild girls who follow Bacchus. This marks out C.S. Lewis as the originator of the video for ‘Prime Mover’ by Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction.

See for more.

Charles Kennedy has indeed resigned. Poor guy. A week ago this seemed quite improbable.

And I see that the Menzies Campbell bandwagon is starting to roll. Nothing is inevitable in politics, but he certainly wouldn’t be a bad choice, a safe pair of hands for the next few years until some of the newer MPs are sufficiently well known to be electable.

Went to Paris yesterday for a series of work meetings. Very cold out, but beautiful. Had time for a very quick browse in Shakespeare and Company as well; beautiful setting across the river from Notre Dame.

But there appears to be no internet cafe anywhere in Paris, and I couldn’t get the WiFi in my Palm T|X to work for me. A bit frustrating.

Obliquely on Charles Kennedy: I was once involved with a political party which at one point had a leader who was generally regarded as an awfully nice guy but simply not a leader. At one point his friends called a “vote of confidence” in his leadership at the party’s quarterly Council meeting. He won by a large margin, but with a dozen votes against and four abstentions, mostly from other party officers and staff; and his leadership limped on painfully for another couple of years, until there was another mini-crisis, he narrowly won a vote of confidence at the party executive, but decided it wasn’t enough and fell on his sword.

Failure of leadership tends to be much more visible to those at the top of the party than the average member. Party headquarters inevitably spends a lot of time building a public image of the party leader as a person of stature, and the average member has a strong motive to believe this. On the other hand, those who are working with the leader every day will tend to have reliable perceptions, but operationalising these is difficult, and the specific issue that sparks a crisis may be completely unexpected and largely unrelated to the wider problem, which is one of style rather than substance. (In the case I mentioned above, the final straw was the botched appointment of a new deputy leader.)

Part of the problem is with the shift from leaders being elected by the MPs to election by a wider group within the party, which in general is a good and desirable thing, but which does almost inevitably have this awkward consequence. If your leader is elected by the membership as a whole, how can they be made properly accountable?

As regards Kennedy in particular, I voted for him, rather to my own surprise, back in 1999, largely because his named supporters included three senior party activists who I perceived as a) having good judgement generally and b) coming from three very different strands within the party. I don’t regard Simon Hughes as reliable, and none of the other three candidates at the time seemed to me to have the necessary spark.

But like many activists I too was disappointed by last year’s election campaign, a general feeling that we didn’t make the inroads against the Conservatives that should have been possible with their fourth crap leader in a row and their disgraceful pandering to the right. A Lib Dem friend of mine in Brussels went to help with one of the “decapitation” campaigns, against a senior Conservative, and reported a sad lack of vigour, or even strategic thinking, in that particular constituency. Another friend was actually working in Cowley Street (party headquarters), and painted me a picture of a campaign whose leader was largely absent, rumoured to be drinking heavily, and with a lack of direction starting from the top.

All election results depend to a certain extent on luck; but the harder you work, the luckier you get, and especially in the British system, where there are few professional party workers and most activists are unpaid volunteers, the malaise which is a consequence of the leader not pulling his weight can spread awfully fast without anyone really quite knowing why.

(And, folks, let’s drop the line about it-was-OK-for Churchill-to-be-drunk. Two very big differences. First off, the job of being a politician was very different fifty or sixty years ago than it is now. Second, Churchill at least appears to have been doing a full day’s work; Kennedy has not even been able to give that appearance.)

So as of now, I think Kennedy should go, and I hope his refusal to resign even when asked to by half the parliamentary party is simply a temporary attempt to emerge with dignity. As of now, if he is a candidate in the forthcoming leadership election, I think I would vote for any other candidate. Even Simon Hughes, or Norman “who?” Baker.

As for Ariel Sharon, since I can’t say anything nice, I’d better not say anything at all.

A: Accent – Rather odd. English people can usually tell I’m Irish, though few manage to identify my Belfast upbringing. On the other hand Denis Donaldson, recently unmasked British agent within Sinn Fein, accused me of having an upper class English accent. (I told him he should get out more. Which was a bit unfair of me, given his bail conditions.)

B: Breakfast – If I make time for it, poached egg on toast. If in New York I always try and make sure I have a decent New York breakfast (since my body clock thinks it’s lunchtime).

C: Chore you hate – All of them. Especially cleaning the toilet.

D: Dad’s name – John.

E: Essential everyday item – Slippers.

F: Flavour ice cream – Mint chocolate chip.

G: Gold or silver – No strong preference. Both please.

H: Hometown – Belfast. More specifically Finaghy. (With a side order of Loughbrickland, Co Down, the ancestral home.)

I: Insomnia – Often generated by children.

J: Job Title – Programme Director for Europe.

K: Kids – Three.

M: Mother’s birthplace – Dublin.

N: Number of Significant Others – One.

O: Overnight hospital stays – None.

P: Phobia – Brain surgery.

Q: Queer – No.

R: Religious affiliation – Catholic.

S: Siblings – One of each.

T: Time you wake up – Aim for 0730.

U: Unnatural hair colours – No. And dwindling hair. (“Lord! I am afflicted by a Bald Patch!”)

V: Vegetable you refuse to eat – Spinach, unless cooked with garlic (or woth cheese).

W: Worst habit – Picking my nose all the time.

X: X-rays – Teeth. And occasional chest.

Y: Yummy – Georgian food.

Z: Zodiac sign – Taurus.

My former assistant has just been hired by a Balkan government – her first duty, to help them react to the recommendations of our report on visa liberalisation – which she helped to write when she was working for me!

http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2006/01/if_youre_going_.html
http://www.article-hangout.com/Article/Linked-In—Basic-Marketing-Blunders/5313
http://blogs.worldwit.org/job-jungle/index.php/dont-be-hatin-or-boilerplatin.html

I posted back in July about an embarrassing moment which was entirely my own fault. I’ve discovered (via a casual google) that the woman to whom I asked my tactless question is about to take maternity leave.

So in fact she probably was pregnant in July. But perhaps didn’t know, or wasn’t sure, or hadn’t told her husband yet, and in any case was too early on for it to really have been showing, and anyway there are perfectly understandable reasons (though it would have been uncharacteristic of her) why she would have enjoyed winding me up.

Oh well. I shall stand by for further news, and not ask any more questions.

Query from a colleague:

Can anyone identify an sf book, published before around 1990, in which the protagonist is put into a simulation game setting where he becomes a medieval character, and ends up conquering most of the known world a la Genghis Khan? (My colleague has a vague memory that Fred Hoyle was the author, but this seems unlikely.)

Thanks in advance.

Doctor Who Mastermind special from last year.

One of the things I’ve done as part of my find-a-new-job plan is to sign up with an on-line social network called LinkedIn, or rather to make full use of the signup I had done some time ago. I think five of you on my f-list are also on my contacts list, so you already know about it. (And I will happily link to anyone else who is interested.) I have managed to ramp up my list of contacts to a pretty good total, largely by running the comparison script with my existing Outlook address book, and also a little by checking to see if old friends were on, and by recruiting former colleagues.

Last week I did a search on LinkedIn for users involved in “Staffing and Recruiting” located in Belgium, three degress of separation or less from me. There are 59 of these. One of them runs a head-hunting firm, and his profile page actually invites people to get in touch directly, “to confidentially discuss your career aspirations”. So I did precisely that, and sent him a CV and covering note to the effect that I am thinking of getting into the private sector. (Which I am, though my preferred option would be to get a job on the inside of NATO or the EU as a political adviser.)

Slightly to my surprise, he phoned this morning. He started by explaining that his usual line of work is to take an order from a company with specifics of the sort of person they want to hire, and then to try and lure the equivalent person who is already doing that job in a rival firm away from their competition. He went on to say that he had almost no experience of getting people out of the “public sector” (which he seemed to feel I’m currently in, though I think “non-profit” is more accurate) into the private sector. I was poised to thank him politely for his advice and end the conversation.

But then he said that his normal line of business was a bit slow at this time of year, so if I had any ideas of large firms who I might consider working for as a EU affairs adviser, then he would happily call their HR managers if he knew them and see what the options were, at no cost to me (though of course charging the company a finder’s fee if they decided to take me), in the vague hope of developing a new line of business for himself. Sounded good to me. So I’ve sent him another email with the information he requires. It’s a long shot, but even if nothing more comes of it, I’ve already learnt more about what head-hunters do, and if nothing comes out of it in the end I’m no worse off.

There’s No Such Thing As Too Many Books

Here’s Your Sign {pictures included}
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, Iain Banks is pretty smart: confirmed twice in one night.

2) Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman.

Previously noted by here, here, and Cheryl Morgan. (No serious spoilers on any of those.)

I love Neil Gaiman’s writing, though I was disappointed to discover that both American Gods and Coraline had hidden shallows, in that neither of them moved very far from his previous work, and neither had a really profound message despite the flashy packaging. Anansi Boys is different, taking a new look at Gaiman’s old themes of family, death, divinity and identity and doing it very well, with an impressive dollop of humour throughout. I creased up with laughter at the story about President Taft in the first few pages (OK, my sense of humour is peculiar) and basically couldn’t put the book down last night once I had started it properly. Yeah, it takes a wee while to get going (the plot only really takes off on page 146, when Daisy goes to work); yeah, the fact that all our characters are going to converge in the same place at the end is signalled so far in advance that I don’t think saying so can possibly count as a spoiler (but at least that makes it look more like Fate than Coincidence); yeah, it’s a bit corny that I got the “special edition” a la DVD (with a deleted scene, author’s note book, interview with the author, and discussion questions to make sure you’re read it properly); but I loved it. Cheryl’s prediction that it will win lots of awards is, I suspect, a good call.

I loved the central premise of the two brothers, one divine, one human. (In some accounts there are classical precedents, Castor and Pollux, Helen and Clytemnestra, but it’s never a central feature of the stories.) OK, perhaps it is then fairly obvious that the divine brother will discover his human side, and the human brother his divine side, but it worked for me. I am amused that they have much the same origin as the two Xanders in Buffy 5.03, “The Replacement”; do we know if Neil Gaiman is/was a Buffy fan?

Taleswapper complains that “Much like in Neverwhere, he starts with a character who is obviously entangled with the wrong woman, he isn’t really aware of it (though everybody else is), and it takes external forces to make him see the truth and rescue him from the horror of a woman.” The complaint is I think tongue-in-cheek, but I’d like to defend Gaiman against it anyway. Rosie is not a “horror” (though her mother certainly is), and in fact she ends up with a slightly different version of Charlie anyway. She too is drawn into the world of the gods and tested, whereas Jessica in Neverwhere is simply a cipher for the mundane world, rather more two-dimensional than Graham Coates here.

I wasn’t completely sure about one aspect of the book. Until I read the last of the “Discussion Questions” at the end it hadn’t really occurred to me that Charlie and Spider were both black, even though it is pretty obvious that their father was and Daisy is, and Rosie, I suppose, probably isn’t. (And Neil Gaiman thanks Nalo Hopkinson for help with the Caribbean dialogue, and Lenny Henry for general inspiration, so I am obviously very stupid.) Ursula Le Guin tackles this in a rather different way in the Earthsea books (see her furious reaction to the TV version in Slate and Locus), by telling us that most of the characters are not white and letting us just get on with it. Having grown up as an (admittedly white) minority in a divided and disputed territory myself, I do wonder whether Gaiman’s portrayal of what it is like to be black in Florida, London or the Caribbean really rings true; it almost feels as if the characters are “colour-blind”, apart from Rosie’s awful mother. But I am not really qualified to judge that.

Apparently Lenny Henry is going to read the audio-book. I’m not into those as a rule, but I just might get this one.

Getting 17 out of 18 questions right on “Sex and the City, Series 3” as your specialist subject is rather naff. The only thing that is more naff is to then get only one question right in the general knowledge round, a sign perhaps that one needs to turn off the television, and read some of these things called books. (Or indeed just look at a map – when the first general knowledge question, “What continent are the Kalahari and Namib deserts in?” elicited a look of horrified incomprehension, I knew Iain Banks was pretty safe.)

Good for Banksie. Though he was taking a wild guess about the Planet Venus.

University Challenge coming up next.

Career: Determined to make serious efforts here. None of last year’s leads has really come to anything. I need to sit down and work through What Color is Your Parachute again, and then devote some more time to working out what sort of organisation I would like to work for.

Family: Not bad. We have managed to watch two whole Buffy seasons, and Firefly. I wish we had more regular babysitting arrangements, and that we could get out to the cinema more reliably.

Work: Yuck. Of the five non-field office reports of six months ago, I still have Albania, Moldova and Cyprus hanging over me, and only Macedonia (a new one) is near completion. That’s very depressing. The field offices performed well, with three from the Caucasus, and two each from James and Alex though the Kosovo one is frustratingly delayed. I allowed myself to get into a real panic/depression about it at the end of last year. Need to watch out for that. Should be possible to clear all three of Albania, Moldova and Cyprus and get the usual office cycle in motion for the summer. And with any luck by then I should be on my way somewhere else.

Elections site: Well, ARK have put in for a decent bit of funding for it, so that may just work. Otherwise there is not much to do this coming year.

Reading and SF: Detailed goals set. The only one from six months ago that I met was Babel-17. I still owe half a dozen reviews to Keith Brooke. I also would like to do a couple more in my Hugo/Nebula series: next up is Grotto of the Dancing Deer. I also have vague ideas of attending the EasterCon and P-Con III, and even also MeCon in the summer. This may be too ambitious.

Other: We seem to have actually got the pension stuff sorted at last. I would like to learn a bit more Russian. Must sort that out; it shouldn’t be impossible to finally finish that Oxford course this year.

Happy birthday, !
Happy birthday, !

Bloody hell.

One particular draft report has been the bane of my existence for the last several months. A decent draft was submitted to me the day of my car accident back in October. I wasn’t properly functioning again until the start of November, and after that it was pushed to the end of the queue by more urgent deadlines for other things (all of which were, with difficulty, met). By December it needed more updating, and the field office duly did so. At that point the boss decided that it needed massive restructuring. I was supposed to do that before Christmas, but couldn’t find the energy. I did take Friday and half of Saturday out of my holiday and completed the restructuring and sent it back to the field for final amendments.

Now the field guy has sent me a response pointing out that he has another deadline from me to meet on 20 January and doubting that he will be abel to meet it if he has to concentrate on finalising the first report in the meantime. Problem is, I think he is probably right; and it’s largely my own fault for not turning the previous drafts round in time.

I hate the way I spend too much of my precious family time in this job working hard to meet deadlines that turn out to be illusory.

1) God’s Clockmaker: Richard of Wallingford and the Invention of Time, by John North.

So as one year turns to another, I’ve returned to a youthful passion: the fourteenth century scholar Richard of Wallingford, who as Abbot of St Albans designed an elaborate astronomical clock capable of predicting lunar eclipses, as chronicled once again by John North, who published the definitive edition of Richard of Wallingford’s works thirty years ago, and here attempts to give a more accessible account (at a cost of £15 rather than the £400 that the 1976 version will cost you).

I’m sorry to say that I don’t think he has succeeded. The first half of the book, a biographical treatment of Richard and his times, just somehow doesn’t sparkle; lots of detailed description, but I came away without really much of a feeling of context, or even of the internal chronology of the eight years of his time as abbot up to his early death (he was not yet 45).

In addition, North is very much an old school historian of science. He goes out of his way to reject two ideas that I wrote about while doing my M Phil – first, that the technology of the watermills so important to the monastery’s finances might have had some relevance to the construction the clock (this on p 195 despite the evidence offered in his own footnote 98 on page 395) and second, that there was any economic motive whatsoever in trying to regulate time by building clocks (see pp 219-220). I don’t claim ownership of (or even particular attachment to) either idea, but I think North’s arguments against in both cases are poor, and it feels a bit as if he is taking an ineffective swing at the whole concept of sociology of knowledge.

There are some annoying slips in presentation as well, most of them minor, but one particularly tantalising – note 21 on p 387 refers to text on page 59, but the marker for note 21 is way back on page 34 and comes after a completely irrelevant paragraph; working out what is going on is rather reminiscent of North’s own description of putting together Richard of Wallingford’s plans for the clock from the much hacked-about surviving manuscript in the Bodleian.

Having said all that, most of the second half of the book provides a completely superb summary of the state of knowledge in medieval physics, tackling not just astronomy but also optics, theories of motion, and the intellectual legacy of Aristotle, and the transmission of learning from the Arab world via Al-Andalus and Sicily in as lucid a presentation as I have read. To be honest one would happily pay the cover price for a text book including just those chapters. If ever I go back to my medieval research I’ll take the astronomy chapter as a starting point.

We’ve had a lot of guests this year, which has been great. Almost all family, with the exception of and who dropped over on Thursday for the afternoon. But we had Anne’s sister here from the Thursday before Christmas, her brother from Christmas Eve (with all his worldly goods, his plan to move to Baden-Württemberg not having worked out), and my sister and her husband from Tuesday. B went off to her respite care that day, but Anne’s parents then arrived on Wednesday so we had eight adults and two children in the house. (That night we had a large Chinese take-away.) Thursday was a day of departures, Anne’s brother off to a New Year party in the Baltic States first thing, then my sister and her husband mid-morning, then Anne’s sister dropped to Leuven station along with and in the evening. On Friday I had to spend most of the day at work, but picked up B in the evening through an unpleasant snow storm, so now with all three of our children and just Anne’s parents it almost feels normal again.

We did manage to have a five-player go at “Europa 1945-2030”, a game I’ve had for years but rarely get to play.

The game is basically about constructing a united Europe, and forces players to colaborate. We did rather well in the first round:

You probably can’t see, but by 1973 we had not only the original EU-6, but also Switzerland as member states. Things continued to go well:

By the time Communism had fallen we had not just the EU-15 of 1995 but also Switzerland, Norway and Iceland – the European Economic Area, in fact. But then one sharp-eyed player noticed that we had been interpreting the rules a little too generously, so expansion in the next round was slower if none the less a little dramatic:

That’s all 25 current member states, with the peculiar exception (sorry, ) of Lithuania, but with the addition of the three EEA states, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia (yay!) and, gloriously, Russia. We called it a night there rather than play the final round, with my sister and my mother-in-law joint winners.

There was also a cake, though not the traditional Christmas version, much enjoyed by all:

And much watching of Doctor Who. But I’m saving that for another post.

Happy New Year, everyone. We will have a wee glass of bubbly at midnight.

The word ჩანახი should look rather like this:

It tastes delicious.

I have been cooking ჩანახი. I put it in the oven after lunch, and then had to come into work for the afternoon. Now I am going home to eat it. Mmmm.

Some kind person has posted these as a comment to an earlier entry:

1. Father Ted repeatedly makes what claim about the missing money that was the cause of him being sent to Craggy Island?
   It was resting in his account.

2. Which unfortunate priest is frequently distracted by phone calls from Ted doing activities like knife throwing, downhill skiing, and being held at gunpoint?
   Larry Duff.

3. In the first episode what song does Father Dougal slip into his recitation to the Lord’s Prayer?
   Papa Don’t Preach.

4. In Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest, under which statue does Ted say he has left the money for the milkman?
   Our Lord Being Embarrassed By The Romans.

5. As physiotherapist to the over-75’s football team what does Dougal believe the magic sponge does?
   Soaks up germs.

6. What’s the headline on the front page of the newspaper that someone is trying to show Ted while he is denouncing hypocrisy to Neve Connelly in Rock-A-Hulu Ted?
   Ted has described the lovely girls as having lovely bottoms.

7. In Competition Times Ted is seen reading which glossy magazine which has a picture of The Pope on the front?
   Halo.

8. During the protest over the banned film The Passion of Saint Tibulus, Father Ted has a placard with “Down with this sort of thing”. What’s on Dougal’s?
   Careful Now.

9. In Tentacles Of Doom, what does Father Dougal think bishops do until Father Ted puts him right?
   Fumigate houses.

10. When the parochial house is infested with rabbits Father Ted says he won’t rest until there is only one rabbit left. Which one?
    The one in Dougal’s head.

11. What make of ear clamps for stopping crows from pinching glasses are advertised in opticians on the mainland?
    Hanratty’s.

12. According to Ted in Entertaining Father Stone, what was the only side-effect of Dougal being struck by lightning?
    Balloons stuck to him.

13. In the episode Hell, Mrs Doyle said she had put cocaine in the cake but then realised she meant what?
    Cinnamon. (WRONG, the right answer was raisins.)

14. In the final episode of Series One how does an exasperated Ted suggest Dougal managed to get into the priesthood?
    He gets in on crisp packets.

15. In his escape from the airplane in Flight of Terror, Father Jack wants one parachute for himself and one for what?
    The drinks trolley.

16. In the first episode of Father Jack’s Dream about taking a group of schoolgirls for volleyball practice, what is written on the blackboard behind him?
    Natural Procreation.

17. In the beginning of New Jack City which horse is Ted cheering on in the race he is listening to on the radio?
    Divorce Referendum.

18. In Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading, what does Ted suggest that Dick Byrne should give up for Lent?
    Being the biggest eejit in the parish.

We’ve just been to the about-to-close American bookshop in Leuven and spent vast amounts of money, as my Library Thing catalogue bears witness. This brings me to my resolutions for reading books in 2006. I made two posts this time last year about the books I hoped to read in 2005, and have to report not total success:

In this post I resolved to finish reading Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote, Little Women and The Trial. I managed the first and last of these but have not re-opened either Cervantes or Alcott. I also resolved to at least start reading some or all of The Brothers Karamazov, Catcher in the Rye, In Search of Lost Time, Mrs Dalloway, Things Fall Apart and The Tin Drum. I haven’t touched a single one of them. So, I hereby resolve to finish both Don Quixote and Little Women in 2006, and to read two of the other six.

In this post I resolved to read Foundation’s Edge, The Snow Queen and The Wanderer, completing my set of the Hugo-winning novels. I managed to read all three of them by quite early in the year. I also resolved to read all the 2005 Hugo nominees, and indeed did so. I also resolved to re-read Dangerous Visions and to read at least five of A Clockwork Orange, The Space Merchants, A Princess of Mars, City, Babel-17, Tau Zero, Grey Lensman, Again, Dangerous Visions, The Female Man, Last and First Men, Deathbird, and Dhalgren. Here I was less successful, managing only the Simak and one Delany. I therefore resolve to read five of the others in 2006. I also resolved to read a few more of the Time list of 25 must-read comics and in fact read four, all of them pretty satisfactory. I therefore resolve to read another four in 2006.

There are seven Nebula winning novels that I have not read (The Einstein Intersection, Rite of Passage, A Time of Changes, The Falling Woman, The Healer’s War, Stations of the Tide, and The Terminal Experiment). I hereby resolve to read at least four of these in 2006.

My Library Thing catalogue currently lists 130-odd books as “unread” (ie I plan to read them some day, as opposed to other books on my shelves which I doubt I will ever read). Some are already covered above. Purely for personal reference, to cross off as I read them in 2006, they are:
The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod
Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction
What Ifs? Of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been
The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen
Μακεδονία (Macedonia): A Greek Name in Modern Usage
Hotel Rwanda: Bringing the True Story of an African Hero to Film
Little women Louisa May Alcott
Trillion year spree : the history of science fiction Brian Wilson Aldiss
Sunrise Alley Catherine Asaro
Persuasion Jane Austen
After Dinner Speaking Fawcett Boom
Villette Charlotte Bronte
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee : an Indian history of the American West Dee Brown
Notes From a Small Island Bill Bryson
The Conquest of Gaul Julius Caesar
The Complete Enchanter L.Sprague De Camp
Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey
Wild Swans Jung Chang
Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow
The Faded Sun Trilogy C. J. Cherryh
Appleseed John Clute
Shadowkings Michael Cobley
Lord Jim Joseph Conrad
The Prince of Tides Pat Conroy
The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway
The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
Astra and Flondrix Seamus Cullen
Daughter of the Drow Elaine Cunningham
The Age of Kali William Dalrymple
The Ill-Made Mute Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Dhalgren Samuel R. Delany
The Prisoner Thomas M Disch
The great English pilgrimage Christopher Donaldson
The Man in the Iron Mask Alexandre Dumas
Teranesia Greg Egan
The Mill on the Floss George Eliot
The Enchanted Isles K.C. Flynn
The Wreck of the River of Stars Michael Flynn
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire Amanda Foreman
Anansi Boys Neil Gaiman
Fortunata and Jacinta Benito Perez Galdos
Jennie Paul Gallico
The Mabinogion Jeffrey Gantz
White Crow Mary Gentle
The epic of Gilgamesh
Rocks of Ages Stephen Jay Gould
Sacred Visions Andrew M. Greeley
Misspent Youth Peter F. Hamilton
First Man the Life of Neil Armstrong James Hansen
The go-between L. P. Hartley
This Was Not Our War Swanee Hunt
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 Tony Judt
Sailing to Sarantium Guy Gavriel Kay
The Way to Babylon Paul Kearney
The Prisoner of Chillon James Patrick Kelly
800 Years of Womens Letters Olga Kenyon
Athens-Skopje: An Uneasy Symbiosis Evangelos Kofos
Crooked little heart Anne Lamott
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century Mark Leonard
The Search for Roots Primo Levi
The pilgrim’s regress C. S Lewis
Shutterbug Follies Jason Little
Red Branch Morgan Llywelyn
No great mischief Alistair MacLeod
Learning the World Ken MacLeod
Endgame in Ireland Eamonn Mallie
The Sunday Philosophy Club Alexander McCall Smith
The Kalahari typing school for men Alexander McCall Smith
The full cupboard of life Alexander McCall Smith
Southern Fire Juliet McKenna
The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography Wim P. Van Meurs
Three to see the king Magnus Mills
Once in a Blue Moon Magnus Mills
The Cornelius Quartet Michael Moorcock
Spin State Chris Moriarty
Beloved Toni Morrison
Cities of salt Abd al-Rahman Munif
Dreams of the Compass Rose [Excerpt] Vera Nazarian
God’s Clockmaker John North
Democratisation in Southeast Europe Dusan Pavlovic
The English: A Portrait of a People Jeremy Paxman
Master of Earth and Water Diana L. Paxson
Kosova Express James Pettifer
A hat full of sky Terry Pratchett
Science Fiction and Postmodern Fiction: A Genre Study Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz
The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
The Duke And I Julia Quinn
Blind Voices Tom Reamy
The triumph of the West J. M. Roberts
Gilead Marilynne Robinson
Quidditch through the ages J. K. Rowling
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
Blindness Jose Saramago
The Shore of Women Pamela Sargent
The embarrassment of riches Simon Schama
The Reader Bernhard Schlink
Malachy Brian Scott
England’s Troubles Jonathan Scott
The lovely bones Alice Sebold
Wilt In Nowhere Tom Sharpe
Hitchhiker : A Biography of Douglas Adams M.J. Simpson
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies Alexander McCall Smith
Galactic Patrol E. E. Smith
Grey Lensman E. E. Doc Smith
Second Stage Lensmen E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer Elizabeth Spencer
The Druid King Norman Spinrad
Last and first men Olaf Stapledon
The System of the World Neal Stephenson
The lady of the shroud Bram Stoker
Star songs of an old primate James Tiptree
Resurrection Leo Tolstoy
Music & silence Rose Tremain
Alternate Generals Harry Turtledove
Great War Breakthroughs Harry Turtledove
The Art of War Sun Tzu
The Devil’s Highway Luis Alberto Urrea
Battle of Forever A E Van Vogt
The color purple Alice Walker
The Discovery of the Germ John Waller
The revolution of the saints Michael Walzer
Joan of Arc : the image of female heroism Marina Warner
National Lampoon’s Doon Ellis Weiner
The Secret Visitors James White
The Happy Prince and Other Tales Oscar Wilde
Peace Gene Wolfe
In Search of the Dark Ages Michael Wood
The Phoenix Exultant John C. Wright
The Golden Transcendence John C. Wright
Islam in Azerbaijan Arif Yunusov
An intimate history of humanity Theodore Zeldin
Hidden Camera Zoran Živković

Getting through a third of them, including especially the history ones, seems a reasonable target.