A very pleasant afternoon spent on the other side of the country (nice to live in a small country) with , Mr and jr. (Thanks for your hospitality: I hope we have the chance to return it soon.)

The way back was not so pleasant. The snow wasn’t heavy but the traffic was barely moving on the motorway – it took literally two hours to get as far as Ghent, not quite 50 km. We moved to the old roads, fossilised remains of the earlier pre-motorway road network, and finally got to B’s respite care place about 9 o’clock rather than the 7 o’clock we had promised; and were home by quarter past ten, the last section proving particularly slippery. So it took the guts of five hours for a journey that should have taken about two.

Tired now. Bed.

I have to admit that I simply cut and pasted from Wikipedia’s article on the USSR State Motto, so you can find more there. The quick guide is as follows:

Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! – Russian, of course.
Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся! – Ukrainian – the letter ї is a giveaway.
Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся! – Belarusian – the letter ў is the clue here
Бутун дунё пролетарлари, бирлашингиз! – Uzbek. I wouldn’t have got this; most of the letters are fairly standard except for ё (which you do get in Russian, but this is obviously not a Slavic language).
Барлық елдердің пролетарлары, бірігіңдер! Kazakh. The letters ң and қ leap out here, but both are used in other Cyrillic Turkic scripts.
პროლეტარ ყველა ქვეყნისა, შეერთდით! – Georgian, obviously.
Бүтүн өлкәләрин пролетарлары, бирләшин! – this of course is now obsolete; Azeri is now written in the Latin rather than Cyrillic alphabet. I guess this would now be written “Bütün ölkələrin proletarları, birləşin!”
Visų šalių proletarai, vienykitės! – Lithuanian, as well knows. The ų and ė are characteristic.
Пролетарь дин тоате цэриле, униць-вэ! – causes some confusion for people who go through the letters and realise that it is actually Romanian in Cyrillic, or Moldavian as it used to be called. I was puzzling a bit over цэриле, and then realised that in Romanian it is probably ţerile which makes both the Cyrillic transcription and the derivation from Latin terræ more obvious.
Visu zemju proletārieši, savienojieties! – Latvian. The letter ā is a crucial one here.
Бардык өлкөлордүн пролетарлары, бириккиле! – Kyrgyz, though I have to admit I would only have been able to work out that it is one of the five Turkic languages. Wikipedia claims that ү is now only used in Kazakh but obviously that isn’t the case.
Пролетарҳои ҳамаи мамлакатҳо, як шавед! – Tajik, the only Persian language on the list. Also the only one with the letter ҳ.
Պրոլետարներ բոլոր երկրների, միացե’ք! – Armenian, obviously.
Әхли юртларың пролетарлары, бирлешиң! Kyrgyz. Note use of ң (like Kazakh) and ә (like old Azeri).
Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege! – Estonian. õ is the crucial identifier.

That’s the fifteen official languages of the USSR’s republics, all now independent states. The bonus two were languages spoken in autonomous parts of the Russian Federation:

Kaikkien maiden proletaarit, liittykää yhteen! – Finnish, as spoken in Karelia
Барлык илләрнең пролетарийлары, берләшегез! – yet another Turkic language, in this case Tatar. Barlıq illärneñ proletariları, berläşegez!

Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!
Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся!
Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся!
Бутун дунё пролетарлари, бирлашингиз!
Барлық елдердің пролетарлары, бірігіңдер!
პროლეტარ ყველა ქვეყნისა, შეერთდით!
Бүтүн өлкәләрин пролетарлары, бирләшин!
Visų šalių proletarai, vienykitės!
Пролетарь дин тоате цэриле, униць-вэ!
Visu zemju proletārieši, savienojieties!
Бардык өлкөлордүн пролетарлары, бириккиле!
Пролетарҳои ҳамаи мамлакатҳо, як шавед!
Պրոլետարներ բոլոր երկրների, միացե’ք!
Әхли юртларың пролетарлары, бирлешиң!
Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege!

So, how many of those can you identify? (or even read?)
And a bonus two:

Kaikkien maiden proletaarit, liittykää yhteen!
Барлык илләрнең пролетарийлары, берләшегез!

5) A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

I was complaining a few days ago about authors who make you work hard to read their fiction, and how I expect to be adequately rewarded. With A Clockwork Orange I do feel adequately rewarded. It’s a very short novel about the violence of youth, based a little I guess on the famous battles between mods and rockers of the 1960s. But Burgess manages to lift it into the realm of the universal by two straightforward but brilliantly executed gimmicks.

The first of these, of course, is the nadsat used by Alex and his friends. Rather than use contemporary teenage slang, Burgess invented his own. My Russian is pretty vestigial but sufficient to get through most of the book without worrying too much – in particular I think he’s managed to catch a few genuine Russian nuances and insert them subversively into English, like chelloveck, which basically means “chap”, from человек. Another good bit of wordcrafting is tolchock, which is originally толчок, the Russian noun for “shove”, but in Burgess becomes either a sustained push or a sudden blow, as when Alex and friends are disposing of a stolen car in the canal: “we got out and, the brakes off, all four tolchocked it to the edge of the filthy water that was like treacle mixed with human hole products, then one good horrorshow tolchock and in she went.” I’ve heard people in Ireland used the word “feck” as a verb with similar meaning. And horrorshow (ie хорошо) for “good” is a lovely riff on “wicked”. (There were a lot of other nice touches; I’ll just mention oddy-knocky for одинокий, “lonesome”.)

The second is his choice of classical music as Alex’s personal fixation. Actually I rather get the impression that Alex is unusual even among his peers in his preference. The two girls he lures home are much more into “pathetic pop-discs”, and he doesn’t listen to music with his friends. (No mention of going to actual live musical performances at all – though there are “worldcasts” where everyone gets to watch the same entertainment around the world, closer to Edward Bellamy than Bob Geldof I think.) However, the fact that the music Alex listens to is (mostly) already known by the general reader helps us to get through the barrier created by the language, and his description of why he likes Beethoven’s Ninth is something anyone else who likes it can relate to.

After all that, the book itself? Plot is easy to summarise: Alex is a very nasty and violent boy; he is imprisoned and subjected to mind control which removes his ability to do evil; after public protest the process is reversed; but he finds that he is growing up anyway. The use of nadsat slang actually makes the descriptions of violence in the early part of the book more bearable than it would be if graphically expressed in standard English. The violence of youth is, of course, universal. Just this morning I read this, via :

I finally realized that the giant puddles of water in the sand court were actually covered with giant sheets of ice that were starting to break up. I lifted a five foot piece of it up by one edge and said, “Wow, cool.” I continued on walking around, and when I came back by this area later, there were two ten-year-old boys looking at the same big sheet of ice and saying, “Whoa, cool! It’s a big’un!” Then they took rocks and hurled it at the big piece to break it up, and stomped on it, and other such things that boys like to do. I know it’s what I would have done if I were 25 years younger and were with a buddy.

Libertarians may jump with glee on the sinister role of the State in all this, the brutal millicents/милиции, but I think the involvement of the State is almost incidental; Burgess’ point is about redemption, and that it must come from within, cannot be imposed from outside. In the last chapter Alex realises this for himself, bumping into his old friend Pete who is now married, and reflecting that “I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, yes.” According to Blake Morrison in the introduction of my Penguin edition, the last chapter was actually deleted from the first American version of the book as the publishers felt it was too upbeat (!). Bizarre.

Anyway, a fascinating, horrible and well-constructed book.

Failed to save the day’s work in the right folder. All lost.

On my way out of a reception in Brussels last night, I bumped into one of Catherine Stihler’s people, and asked her (I thought) in jocular vein if she was planning to move back to Scotland with her boss, or stay here and find a new boss after the by-election. She looked evasive and muttered something I didn’t catch. Now I know why. Well done folks!

I didn’t see Question Time last night, but note the following reactions:

Three who think Simon Hughes won:
Nick Barlow (backing Huhne): “Simon won on points from Chris, with Ming third”
(backing Campbell): “I scored it a narrow victory for Simon Hughes, maybe 8/10 for him, 7.5 for Ming and 7 for Chris Huhne”
: “I’d say Hughes edged it overall”

Three who think Campbell did best or joint best:
Peter Black AM (backing Hughes): “Campbell and Hughes performed well. Huhne’s inexperience counted against him.”
Will Howell (backing Huhne): “Campbell and Huhne were well matched, with Hughes further behind.”
Alan Beddow (backing Huhne): thinks Campbell did best and the other two about equal

And one differently nuanced view:
: “All three LibDem leadership candidates are shite”

Looks to me like it won’t have changed anything much – maybe pulled up Simon Hughes’ first prefs a bit but not enough to save him from third place.

Well, the ballot papers arived today along with the candidates’ election literature. Pretty much as I expected, in fact: Campbell’s two pages full of achievements and endorsements, Hughes’ looking like a Focus leaflet including gruesome pics of supporters and opinion poll graphs of dubious validity, but Huhne’s relatively sparse, only two photos (both of him) and lots of actual policy content. It didn’t change either my view that I myself am voting for Huhne or my view that Campbell is likely to win. Tonight’s Question Time will probably be crucial, but it’s on too late for me to watch.

Three superb essays on the three candidates have appeared today on Alex Wilcock’s new blog. Those of you who don’t know Alex, author of the seminal article How Doctor Who Made Me A Liberal, ought to start reading him at . If you don’t have time or inclination for that, let me at least recommend his posts on Menȝies Campbell, Simon Hughes, and Chris Huhne, eloquent presentations of a deeply committed but also deeply perturbed activist who has jolly good reasons for not voting for any of the three candidates. I have to say that his qualms about Simon Hughes are much better argued than about either of the other two, and I leave it there.

His main argument about Campbell is that he may (there is no evidence) have been involved in a Machiavellian scheme to oust Charles Kennedy; since I’m in the clear minority of party members who think that getting rid of Charles was a Good Thing, this doesn’t bother me. More important is his report of Campbell’s attitude to internal party policy-making, and his telling invocation of Star Trek.

His main argument about Huhne is that he is too boringly interested in policy, though Alex disarmingly admits an obsession with precisely the same policy points. Huhne has reinvented himself a couple of times in the past, and I have some confidence that he is not too old a dog to be taught new tricks of self-presentation. He will make a good leader; though as I said above, I don’t think it will be this time round, despite my personal support.

I just discovered that Oliver Postgate, creator of the Clangers, is the grandson of George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935.

All is explained.

As done by YouGov, here. Huhne 38%, Campbell 34%, Hughes 28% – so within the margin of error as between Huhne and Campbell.

I have to say my gut feeling right now is that Campbell will probably win it. Will be interesting to see the ballot paper and election literature (living abroad, I haven’t received it yet, unlike members in the UK).

In Jerusalem, a CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, everyday, for a long, long time. So she went to check it out.

“How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?”

“Like I’m talking to a fucking wall.”

..from , here.

Finally got around to reading the various thought-provoking pieces linked to by here.

Myself, I read sf primarily for escapism. I have an intellectually demanding day-time job dealing with horrible things happening in the world. I want a hobby that takes me out of myself a bit and isn’t too demanding. If a writer produces material that is a bit more difficult, or requires a bit more concentration, to appreciate it, then I want to be additionally rewarded; I am normally reading to relax at the end of the day when my energy levels are low. That makes me a bit more unforgiving of experimental literary techniques than perhaps I should be.

I write about sf because I feel compelled to do so. It’s not so much because of the community aspects of fandom (though they are increasingly important to me) but because it’s a way of turning my hobby into easily quantifiable projects: this year’s nominees, previous years’ winners, all the joint Hugo and Nebula winners (that last a long-term project which I have been working on for five and a half years now). I also have found that since I resolved to write up every book I read (whether sf or not) on this blog, I have been reading in a more profound way, with at the back of my mind the thought that I must find something to say about what I have read once I finish.

Does this make me a critic? I don’t know. I don’t come to anything as a neutral reader; as well as not liking difficult writing, I am easily bored by military sf and have a distaste for horror, and am easily pleased by tales of time-travel and alternate history.

As for the cases in point: Yes, the two sets of critiques of Strange Horizons reviews to which objects are indeed plain silly. The Ian McHugh review is in my view a good, interesting piece of writing which clearly identifies the reviewer’s prejudices. I found fascinating his conclusion that the best stories in the book all share “a distinctive and unselfconscious ‘Australianness’ in their telling, that’s hard to put your finger on but that seems lacking in those covered above. And all but one have an unmistakeably Australian sense of place, either explicitly or through the physical particulars of their settings.” I have been struggling occasionally to identify genuine rather than confected examples of Irishness in the genre, and am rather cheered by McHugh’s conclusion that good sf by Australian writers does end up feeling more Australian than bad sf by Australian writers. It’s sufficiently interesting for me that I will buy the book, if I ever see it on sale, to see if I share his analysis.

As for Dan Hartland – well, I had heard of Naomi Mitchison, but then I am the sort of person who puts footnotes about Saki and Thomas Pynchon into papers on contemporary Balkan politics. It was a slightly silly remark in an otherwise good review.

I read through Bone Women and the various consequent on-line discussions. I didn’t much like the story. It did make me work harder than I want to, and there was no real sfnal element (yeah, yeah, the bits about the giant and Picasso, but there is no reason for us to believe the narrator in either case); on the latter basis I share the puzzlement of those who ask what exactly it was doing in Strange Horizons, but on the former I’m happy enough to accept that it simply isn’t to my tastes, and to be surprised that when others say so it provokes extraordinary reaction from people old enough to know better.

And I’m going to keep on writing reviews, for no better reason than that I feel compelled to do so; and no doubt sometimes I will upset people, and more usually I won’t.

Missed this at the time:
BBC interview
NASA podcast

, given your interest, I guess you already knew about this?

4) First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, by James R. Hansen

Biographies are always fascinating, and when they are good they are very very good. Since I started bookblogging I have tremendously enjoyed works on J.R.R. Tolkien by Tom Shippey and John Garth, and on and/or by Saki, Judith Merrill, Kurban Said and most of all Samuel Pepys. (I notice looking at that list that the biographies I’ve tended to enjoy have been of writers – even though Pepys was best known in his time as a government official and amateur scientist, it is his secret writing for which he is remembered today. I’ve tended to be less enthusiastic about biographies of statesmen – John Adams, William Huskisson, early Roman Emperors – or scientists – Richard of Wallingford.

This biography of Neil Armstrong is not quite in the top rank, but it is exhaustive and generally satisfying. Most particularly, I think the author manages to answer pretty completely how it came to be that this particular man was the first man to set foot on the moon. He describes at justifiable length several key moments from Armstrong’s career as a combat pilot in the Korean War, as a test pilot of rocket planes, and as an astronaut when he managed to save himself (and his expensive equipment, and whoever else was in it) from potentially fatal disaster by quick but deeply analytical thinking and solving the problem. Perhaps other astronauts had similar records of dealing with such situations before they came to the space program; but Armstrong happened to be the man in charge when his spacecraft, Gemini VIII, suddenly developed serious problems while out of radio contact with the ground, and he brought it home early but safely, which must have helped with his selection to command NASA’s highest-profile mission ever.

Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong’s pilot on the lunar mission, comes off badly here. The work-focused Armstrong simply didn’t care who would be first off the ladder and onto the lunar surface; Aldrin, perhaps his own worst enemy, pretty much ensured that it would not be him by insistently raising the question at an early stage, especially when his politically well-connected relatives got involved. Aldrin then omitted to take any decent photographs of Armstrong actually on the moon – all the classic shots are of Buzz, taken by Neil (including the one I sometimes use as an icon). I felt that the biographer was a bit unfair to Aldrin, who was by far the best academically qualified astronaut (he had just finished a Ph D on guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous) and had an even better combat record than Armstrong’s; once the decision was made, he appears to have managed his disappointment perfectly well, and Hansen’s rather mean-spirited suspicion that the lack of photographs of Armstrong on the moon was Aldrin’s subtle revenge is wholly unsupported by the evidence he provides. The real hero of that particular story, as I suspect with many others in the space program, is Deke Slayton, the head of the astronauts office at NASA, and I would have liked to hear more about him.

(I did wonder why Aldrin’s role was designated as “lunar module pilot”. Armstrong actually did all the flying, which was fair enough given that he had had a hand in the first proposal for a lunar lander design even before he became an astronaut, and had spent more time than any of his colleagues designing and testing the actual lander. Aldrin was clearly kept pretty busy by his various duties – so busy that he forgot to take the pictures whose absence so troubles Hansen – but his precise job description is never explained.)

Armstrong comes across as a very reserved and self-contained person, not in fact well-prepared or well-suited for celebrity, although able to rise to the occasion when it was demanded of him. Hansen explores the character of his evangelical Christian mother to quite an extent; we hear almost nothing about his father, a financial officer in the Ohio state administration. His reserve was clearly a source of much frustration to his first wife (who gets a very sympathetic treatment from Hansen), and one senses that as a couple they never made time to work through a succession of tragedies – the death of their two-year-old daughter from a brain tumour in 1961, just at the moment when Armstrong was deciding whether or not to become an astronaut; a house fire in 1964, which destroyed many of their personal possessions and from which they were rescued by their neighbour, fellow astronaut Ed White; and a succession of deaths among Armstrong’s professional colleagues over the next couple of years, culminating with the loss of White and two others in the January 1967 Apollo 1 launchpad fire. Armstrong’s response was to lose himself in his work, and the fact that he continued to do so even after leaving NASA to become an engineering professor in his native Ohio was obviously crucial to the breakdown of the marriage in 1991. He has since remarried and the book finishes with a nice anecdote of a visit to family friends whose five-year-old daughter suddenly realises that the visitor has the same name as the first man on the moon.

Hansen does a lot to explode the many myths about Armstrong, usually using Armstrong’s own laconic comments to the effect that he does not remember doing or saying “anything like that”. One or two, however, which seem too good to be true are none the less fully supported by the record. It is true, for instance, that he got his pilot’s license as early as possible, a couple of weeks after his sixteenth birthday, but on the ground he was a terrible driver. It is also true that his parents appeared on a TV show called “I’ve Got A Secret” in September 1962, and their “secret” was that their son had just been named as an astronaut that day; and that the presenter asked how they felt about the prospects that he would be the first man to land on the moon. It is true that after a near-fatal accident when he had to eject from the prototype lunar module in 1968 he just went back to his office and got on with his paperwork. It is also true that the only flight he ever took with the legendary Chuck Yeager ended in an embarrassing crash, and each blamed the other for the accident – one senses that in Yeager’s world, it was usually other fools who screwed up and never him, while Armstrong’s disagreement with Yeager’s account is, strikingly, the closest he comes to direct criticism of anyone in the book.

There’s a lot in this book, as the above comments make clear. There’s also a lot that isn’t. There’s very little about the general political background for the space program; we learn that the first seven astronauts, and many of the second nine including Armstrong, all came from small-town America, but I’d have liked more about how that came to be; at the other end of the story, we hear about Armstrong’s testimony to Congress in support of continued funding for the space program, but learn almost nothing about why Congress chose not to do it. On the other hand, in some cases there is too much; I must say I skimmed some of the blow-by-blow of the Korean War (itself insufficiently contextualised) and early rocketplane tests. There’s a baffling error in a crucial passage on the Korean War, where the relevant year is incorrectly given several times as 1951 rather than 1952.

But all in all, I felt satisfied that this book had answered the question of how and why it was Armstrong, rather than anyone else, who ended up as the first man on the moon. If I want to read about the wider meaning of his mission and of space exploration, I will have to look somewhere else. And I will.

Last time I did a trip to Macedonia and Kosovo I took most of my pictures in Macedonia. This time the balance is different. Will do a proper narrative post later, but meantime here is the gallery. (F wants his go on the computer.)

3) EU’ve got mail! by Graham Watson MEP, ed. Sarah Kent

A terrible title, but quite a fun little collection of Graham’s weekly emails to constituents in the south-west of England, giving an insight into the life of an MEP (sanitised for public consupmtion of course). Occasionally he mentions events in Brussels which I remember seeing him or even talking to him at, which is personally interesting. His observations on Silvio Berlusconi and Cyprus are particularly trenchant, and there is an interesting account of how one Liberal MEP got nobbled by industrial interests to the point where the rest of them effectively disowned his proposed legislation. Towards the 2004 elections he is writing longer and more EU-focused messages; predicts that the Liberal group of MEPs may increase from 52 to as many as 85 or 95 (in fact they now have over 100) and that the European Parliament will not give the new European Commission an easy ride in the second half of 2004 (as indeed they did not). Would be a fun little text for any international or European studies student.

2) Ghosts of Albion: Accursed, by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

For review elsewhere. Not bad.

I’ve been resisting this, but have succumbed…

Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life
1. Archaeology site “volunteer”.
2. Researcher for the Alliance Party delegation at the Northern Ireland peace talks.
3. Administrator of a book prize (part-time). Ironically my father won it, posthumously.
4. Conference gopher.

Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over
1. An American in Paris
2. The Wall
3. Return of the King
4. Life of Brian

Four Places You’ve Lived
1. Belfast
2. Banja Luka, Bosnia
3. Belgium
4. Wassenaar

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch
1. Doctor Who
2. Buffy
3. Mastermind
4. University Challenge

Four Places You’ve Been On Holiday/Vacation
1. Cyprus
2. Croatia
3. Ireland (Loughbrickland, Co Down)
4. The Hoge Veluwe

Four Of Your Favorite Foods
1. Anything Georgian
2. Anything Indian
3. Asparagus lightly fried in butter
4. Oysters

Four Places You’d Rather Be
1. Right now? Home.
2. Washington DC
3. London (but for less than 24 hours)
4. Loughbrickland

Four Albums You Can’t Live Without
(These answers are not quite in the spirit of the question)
1. Sibelius, pretty much anything – esp Kullervo Symphony and Swan of Tuonela
2. Dire Straits – I like almost all of their output but especially Telegraph Road
3. Les Miserables
4. Carmina Burana

Four Vehicles You’ve Owned
1. The Skoda Estelle we bought just after we got married
2. The Ford Fiesta a friend gave us after the Skoda broke down irretrievably
3. The Skoda Favorit we bought when the Fiesta broke down after a week
4. The Ford Sierra we bought after it proved unfeasible to import the Skoda into Belgium

1) Azem Berisha’s One and Only Flight to the Castle, by Veton Surroi

Veton is a friend of mine, the leader of a small but impressive political party in Kosovo, a former journalist and well-known commentator, whose tone is so characteristic that I think if I had been given samples of the text from this book and asked to guess the author it would not have taken me long. He kindly gave me a copy of his new book on Monday night, and I finished it today while sitting in Pristina airport waiting for confirmation that my plane home had got lost in the fog (symbolic, perhaps).

It’s a quick read, only 160 pages, with an introduction by Tim Judah. In a combination of fictionalised commentary and of semi-fantasy which reminded me most (and I’m sure it’s not accidental) of Ismail Kadarë, Veton explores the coming negotiations over the future status of Kosovo through the lens of the experience of ordinary Kosovo Albanians and Roma who were affected by the war, but also exploring the (real but imagined) personalities of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica and the UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, and their (fictional) advisers.

He’s at his best in describing life in wartime Kosovo and the Kosovo Albanians’ attitude to their neighbours. Time has already overtaken his account of the negotiations, fictional though it is, with the death of President Rugova (though he does hint at this in the text, written mostly last November as far as I can tell) and more importantly with this week’s statement from the Contact Group which clarifies the terms of the talks very helpfully.

I have to say I will come back from this trip a lot more cheerful about the future of Kosovo (and indeed of Macedonia, where I have also spent some time) than I was when I came.

Fog at Pristina airport meant all flights were cancelled today (because incoming planes couldn’t land) so I get an extra 24 hours in Kosovo.

Still, if the weather improves, I should be home by this time tomorrow. If.

Reviewed by me for Strange Horizons, here.

6) Shutterbug Follies, by Jason Little

Nice little graphic novel about a girl who discovers disturbing things while working in a photography shop developing films. New York and the characters of the city are nicely portrayed. The plot, however, was rather cliched and improbable: at one point our heroine, Bee, is asked by her friend “So, uh, when are you going to call the cops?” The answer is, not just yet as we are only on page 25 out of 150… Still, good fun, if not exactly great literature.

Off to Kosovo now. Drive to Macedonia tomorrow. Drive back to Kosovo on Wednesday. Fly home on Thursday.

Inspired by trying to remember where http://www.yournotme.com/ is (there are 16 people called Nicholas Whyte in the UK, apparently), I’m using this entry to bookmark the following:

UCL’s surname profiler, which shows Whytes of Great Britain concentrated in eastern Scotland (Angus and Fife in 1881; shifting north by 1998), and my wife’s maiden name concentrated in North Yorkshire in 1881 and mysteriously absent in 1998.

US Census Bureau – gives you total numbers and ranking of your name in the US. (Whyte is the 4460th most common name in the US, with a frequency of 0.003%, ie about 1 in 30,000. Nicholas is the 64th most common first name, with a frequency of 0.275%, 1 in 36.)

Nice map of US surname distribution. (Whytes very much absent from the Deep South; concentrated in New York and Washington. My wife’s maiden name appears only in North Carolina.)

There are presumably equivalents for other countries.

Looking at the three candidates’ published lists of supporters, I count the following (possible) duplicates:

At least 30 on Hughes’ list twice:
Mohammed Hanif Asmal, Jan Clein, John Coyne, Brian Ellis, Joan Garrity, John Halliday, Lesley Hardy, Matthew Harris, EP Helme, Jon Hunt, Lawrence Hurt,Altaf Khan, Richard Knasel, Jonathan Lees, Isobel McCall, George Molyneux, Mark Pursey, Jan Revell, Paul Revell, Debbie Roberts, Paul Robinson, Jennifer Sefton, Max Smith, Tim Smith, Marilyn Sumner, Nick Sumner, Tim Symonds, Matthew Thomas, Joy Vincent, Michael Williams; (and a couple more possibles, eg “Powell Mrs E R” / “Nellie Powell”; “J (Mrs) Fisher” / “Jan Fisher”; but there is no reason to doubt the note on the site that there are two different supporters called Norman Fraser, Andrew Morris, David Rendel, MArtin Roberts and Derek Williams.)

3 on Campbell’s list twice:
Colin Hall, Graham Watson, and Sheila Clarke (none of these are uncommon names; possibly there is an elected official and a non-elected member of the same name; also note of two different supporters both named Sarah Green)

6 on both Campbell and Huhne’s lists:
Alan Dean, Pambos Economides, Brenda Smith, John Stevens, David Thomas, Peter Wilson

2 on both Huhne and Hughes’ lists:
Christopher Thomas, David Walker

2 on both Campbell and Hughes’ lists:
Jock Gallagher, Ricardo Sajor

commented re a previous entry that the Lib Dem bloggers appear to be drifting to Huhne. Much consultation of Icerocket reveals that in fact the honours are fairly even so far, though it’s certainly the case that the bloggers backing Huhne are comparatively more heavyweight. Campbell’s internet presence is being run by my old friend Martin Tod, which will certainly give him an edge in cyberspace – in so far as that helps…

Edited to add: I’m updating this entry as things move. When I originally published it on Friday 20 January, the blog count was 9 (and two leaning) for Campbell; 10 (and two leaning) for Hughes; and 10 (and two leaning) for Huhne.

It is now (28 January) 14 (and two leaning) for Campbell; 15 (and three leaning) for Hughes; and 22 for Huhne.

Best quote on Campbell, from : “Fin and I were talking about yoghs (Ȝȝ) in bed last night.”

I always used to find that the BSFA and Arthur C Clarke awards were better predictors of my personal tastes than, say, the Nebula, and that was even vefore I got to know the people running them. We now have shortlists for both the UK-based awards, and as usual there is a certain overlap:

On both lists
Ken MacLeod, Learning the World
Geoff Ryman, Air
Charles Stross, Accelerando

First off, congratulations to and Ken MacLeod for making the shortlist. I have read Accelerando, and Learning the World is on my to-be-read shelf. Looks like I must now do what everyone who has read it suggests, and buy Air, also the only novel on either list to be nominated for the Nebulas this year. (Though I see last year’s Clarke Award winner is also on this year’s Nebula shortlist.)

On the Clarke Award shortlist but not the BSFA
Liz Williams, Banner of Souls
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Alastair Reynolds, Pushing Ice

As before, I have read the one by the author with a livejournal – Banner of Souls – own another but haven’t read it yet – Never Let Me Go – and don’t have the third. I have rather bounced off Alastair Reynolds on previous encounters; is this time likey to be any different?

On the BSFA shortlist but not the Clarke
Jon Courtenay Grimwood, 9Tail Fox
Justina Robson, Living Next Door to the God of Love

Really loved Grimwood’s Arabesk trilogy (Pashazade, Effendi and Felaheen), but was less impressed by his singletons, redRobe and Stamping ButterfliesMappa Mundi which I guess must have been shortlisted for a previous BSFA or Clarke award.

Anyway, am inclined to put in an Amazon order for these two and Air, and perhaps also the Reynolds if I can be persuaded, for diversion during my imminent travels.

Thoughts towards a future web page for my site:

I just read the first story in Gardner Dozois’ 2004 collection – Pat Murphy’s “Inappropriate Behaviour” – and it is about a girl with autism. Two of the stories in the Hartwell/Cramer collection also featured brilliant academics with autism – Terry Bisson’s “Scout’s Honour” and Brenda Cooper’s “Savant Songs”.

There are a number of other sf stories, some well-known, others less so, featuring autism. Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark of course won the Nebula Award two years ago, and deals specifically with a “cure”. Most of the others feature an autistic child as the centre of some almost (or even explicitly) magical events: Mary Doria Russell’s Children of God, Zoran Živković’s short story “The Whisper”, Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip, William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. I also rather liked Brenda Clough’s “Tiptoe, On a Fence-Post” where the autistic child was marginal to the story but gave the author an excuse for some sensitive character-building.

Other sf stories that I understand feature autism which I haven’t read: Greg Egan, DistressA Wizard AloneDaystar and ShadowThe Reindeer People and Wolf’s BrotherPutting Up RootsWinterlongDykstra’s WarLight MusicHome FreeThe Truth Out ThereChildren with Emerald EyesNew York DreamsSomething’s At My ElbowThornsThe Universe Between.

Anyone want to particularly recommend (or dis-recommend) any of those, or add to the list? I don’t know for sure if autism is a subject which crops up more often in sf than in “mainstream” literature, but it seems rather likely; I can’t think of any non-genre novel dealing with it apart from Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but then I don’t read an awful lot of non-genre fiction.

For the sf writer, different ways of perceiving and sensing the world are of profound interest, and the enigma of the autistic experience is perhaps an attractive topic. (Of course, this tends to mean that the autistic characters are rather bunched towards the high-functioning end of the spectrum.) For a writer with personal experience of autism, projecting this crucial experience into a fantasy or far-future milieu may also be an important part of the coping mechanism. (I find it interesting that writer Nick Hornby, who has an autistic son, has never used autism in his fiction, which is set in the gritty contemporary world.)

From in this instance, though in fact I did answer this one before. Now I have to do it again and give different answers.

Name a CD you own that no one else on your friends list does.

The Orthodox Celts: “The Celts Strike Again” and “Green Roses”.

Name a book you own that no one else on your friends list does.

Thanks to Library Thing this one becomes much easier. Anyone else got What does Joan say? my seven years as White House astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan by Joan Quigley?

Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that no one else on your friends list does.

Much the most difficult and I suspect whatever I say I am doomed to failure. But, what the heck. Anyone else out there own The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon?

Name a place that you have visited that no one else on your friends list has.

This I think may be a bit easier. Anyone else been to Prčanj in Montenegro?

And another more showoffy meme from :

Which languages do you know? How did you learn them (e.g. natively, from classes, by immersion)?

Native English speaker

Lived in the Netherlands for a year when I was 13 and went to a Dutch school, still retain pretty decent fluency

Did German at school up to A-level under the genial guidance of Mrs Owens at Rathmore, then worked on an archaeology site near Heilbronn for a few months, so that’s not too bad

French at school to O-level (yes, kids, I am that old), and can manage casual conversations for day-to-day purposes in Brussels and struggle through business conversations with native speakers

Did Latin O-level as well for what that’s worth

Have dabbled in New Testament Greek, but not in the real thing

Absorbed a certain amount of Serbo-Croat through osmosis while living in Bosnia and Croatia, similarly Macedonian though less exposure means less expertise – the former gets you a bit less than half-way into Slovenian and the latter a bit more than half-way into Bulgarian

Started a Russian course but haven’t finished it

Can struggle in tourist Italian, Spanish and Romanian though deeply conscious of making it up as I go along

Odd other phrases – Hyvää päivää! Falemenderit! გამარჯობა! Köszönöm!

No Irish at all, sadly.

Which language would you most like to learn? Why?

It’s a toss-up between Italian and Finnish, because they sound so beautiful, and Russian/Arabic/Chinese, because they would actually be useful for communicating with people. I guess at the moment Russian is at the top of the list.

Have you visited any places where you did not know the predominant language? If so, which ones? Was it hard to manage?

Well, just in 2005 I visited Albania, Ukraine and Georgia (and indeed South Ossetia). Fortunately I was with colleagues or friends in all cases so it wasn’t such a big deal. Last time I was more or less on my own in such circumstances was in Moldova in September 2004, but my vestigial Russian and Romanian was just about enough to get through.

Which language do you most enjoy hearing, seeing, or expressing? Why?
I just love the sound of both Italian and Finnish. Italian hardly needs explanation. Finnish – well, just listen to some of Koskenniemi’s lyrics to Sibelius’ music (these are the official lyrics for Finlandia):

Oi Suomi, katso, Sinun päiväs koittaa,
yön uhka karkoitettu on jo pois,
ja aamun kiuru kirkkaudessa soittaa
kuin itse taivahan kansi sois.
Yön vallat aamun valkeus jo voittaa
sun päiväs koittaa, oi synnyinmaa.

Oi nouse, Suomi, nosta korkealle
pääs seppelöimä suurten muistojen,
oi nouse, Suomi, näytit maailmalle
sa että karkoitit orjuuden
ja ettet taipunut sa sorron alle,
on aamus alkanut, synnyinmaa.

I love the look of Georgian, even though I can’t read it:

დილასა ადრე მოვიდა იგი ნაზარდი სოსანი,
ძოწეულითა მოსილი, პირად ბროლ-ბადახშოსანი,
პირ-ოქრო რიდე ეხვია, შვენოდა ქარქაშოსანი,
მეფესა გასლვად აწვევდა, მოდგა თეთრ-ტაიჭოსანი.

(Note how the last four syllables of each line rhyme. Obvious now I point it out, isn’t it.)

I like speaking Dutch. Not something I do very often, but normally rather shocks native speakers – especially here in Flanders, where they assume I must actually be Dutch (ie from the hated North).

Which languages, other than the one(s) you know, are you exposed to your daily life?

I get bits and pieces of many languages. Even at McDonald’s.

Several things arrived by post today.

Three books sent by their author(s):

• Da nije bilo Oluje i drugi eseji / Who saved Bosnia and other essays by Vitomir Miles Raguž
• Media Guide to the New Scottish Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies, compiled and edited by David Denver, Colin Rallings & Michael Thrasher
• The Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies, Colin Rallings & Michael Thrasher

And Interzone, though I’ve only glanced at it so far. Who is Michael Lohr? And why does he feel the need to apologise to us quite so abjectly for doing a duff interview with Terry Pratchett?

Two great links. From , love for gamers (you have to listen past the first minute). And, via, , on Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History – good spoiler-free review of a favourite book.

Am sitting here listening to The Celts Strike Again, the second album of The Orthodox Celts, a fairly standard Irish music band except that they are Serbs:

She is handsome, she is pretty, she’s the belle of Belgrade city

which is not quite the wording I am used to.