One of my work colleagues was having a bad day, so I decided to cheer him up. He’d sent me a cross text message, so I replied with a message saying “There were two old men sitting on a park bench.”

He replied, “And?”

So I sent the second bit, “One of them said to the other, ‘it’s nice out, isn’t it?'”

He replied “Yes. And?”

So I sent the third line, “And the other one said, ‘Yes, it is, but you’d better put it away – someone’s coming!'”

This time I got no reply. So I sent a fourth message, saying “Punchline arrived safely?”

Almost immediately the response came: “Yes, unfortunately.”

here, including Catherine Asaro, Ben Bova, Lois McMaster Bujold, Neil Gaiman, Frederik Pohl, Neal Stephenson, Connie Willis and Patricia Wrede, from the Library of Congress 2004 book festival.

One step forward, two steps back.

6) Nebula Award Stories Number Three, ed. Roger Zelazny

This collection has been recently (2001) reprinted, and reviewed it, as did Peter Tillman. There's not a lot I can add to their two reviews (which, contrasted with each other, amusingly demonstrate how one's Mileage May Vary), except to note that the cover image to the left, from the edition I myself have (the 1970 Pocket Book edition), seems to show a reclining female figure behind a much smaller spectral cyclist, above whose head an equally spectral top hat appears to be levitating. The artist's name is unknown.

I bought this as the last step in preparation for my planned piece on Fritz Leiber's story "Gonna Roll The Bones" which is one of the seven included here, but it also ties into my fascination with Roger Zelazny, who had won two of five Nebula awards the previous year, and was only thirty; and as Zelazny himself writes in one of the introductions here, "Consider the fact that everything a man writes is really only a part of one big story, to be ended by the end of his writing life. Consider that, as so many have said, everything a man writes is, basically, autobiographical… I tell you these things because every writer who has ever lived is unique."

Zelazny seems to have taken the job of editing this collection seriously, and though his introductions are as mere postscripts to those of Harlan Ellison in the near-contemporaneous Dangerous Visions, they do give evidence of his commitment to the project, including lengthy quotations from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Czesław Miłosz, and invokes Anne McCaffrey as an aspect of Goethe's Ewigweibliche.

While he had to include the three Nebula winners, his choice of the other four stories (as points out) is pretty idiosyncratic: two of them, "Weyr Search" by Anne McCaffrey and "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" by Harlan Ellison were at least nominated for the Nebula, but the other two are probably not what the readers of 1968 expected to find in the anthology. At least "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" by J.G. Ballard turned out to be a good call, one of the better known stories of an author who has become very well known indeed, but little is known of Gary Wright, author of "Mirror of Ice" – which is barely even an sf story. I can see why Zelazny liked it, as the style is not so very different from his own; I don't really believe the theory that Wright was Samuel R Delanyfour times1976!

Well, it cost me very little to buy, and I'd have paid the price five times over. Three of the other stories – "Aye, and Gomorrah…" by Samuel R. Delany, "Weyr Search" by Anne McCaffrey, and "Behold the Man" by Michael Moorcock – are generally recognised as classics in very different ways. I'll write more when I do my long-planned piece on the Leiber story.

Again.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/01/19/tater.doll.ap/index.html

Anyone out there likely to go to WorldCon in August, not yet sorted for accommodation, and interested in a joint venture? I’m going on my own, and had in mind to look for a mid-range B&B close to a railway station, but am open to persuasion about other options.

I’m reading Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars at the moment, which starts with a bang with a fifty page biography of Julius Caesar. I realise how desensitised I have become to this remarkable story through too much grinding over the text of Shakespeare’s play at school. Caesar broke every law and custom of correct political practice in Rome; he shagged more or less anything that moved, male or female; but he was (and not just by Suetonius’ account) a talented military leader and gifted orator who inspired and reciprocated a strong sense of loyalty from his followers.

But the most dramatic bit of the story is the end, and here I feel that I have been particularly desensitised by overexposure to Shakespeare at a tender age. This man, ruling a huge empire, was actually killed while attending a meeting of the legislature by the legislators themselves. I can’t think of another event like this. There is the case of the slaughter of three leading Croatian MPs, including their leader Stjepan Radić, in 1928 by a Montenegrin radical MP on the floor of the Yugoslav parliamentary chamber; but that appears to have been on impulse rather than a conspiracy, and anyway the Croats were in opposition not in government. The Armenian Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Parliament, and six other MPs were killed in 1999 when gunmen stormed the parliamentary chamber, but again the assassins were not themselves parliamentarians and the inevitable rumours linking them with other political figures in Armenia have yet to be borne out in substance. I find three other prime ministers assassinated in Parliament, but not as far as I know by fellow legislators – Hendrik Verwoerd (South African PM, stabbed by a deranged parliamentary clerk in 1966); Spencer Perceval (British PM, shot dead by a deranged bankrupt in 1812) and Ahmed Maher Pasha (Egyptian PM, shot dead in 1945 immediately after declaring war on Germany and Japan). I haven’t been able to discover if the Egyptian assassin was an MP or not, but even if he was, I think Julius Caesar’s end is the most politically spectacular of them all.

asks what a zelazny is. As I know she’s an sf fan she may just be taking the piss, but anyway, the answer is the sf author Roger Zelazny (1937-1995). I have a brief page about him here, and I’ve blogged books about him here and here. Best known for the Amber series. Best works are his early novels and later short stories.

is sure the single transferable vote is “something political and wondrous”. Well she’s right, and if she voted in the 2002 general election or last summer’s local and European elections, she has in fact used it – the defining characteristics from the user’s end are a) you get to number the candidates in order of preference (or increasing dislike) and b) you’re in a multi-member electoral area so electing more than one person at a time. It’s the voting system used in both parts of Ireland (except Westminster elections in the North) and also in Malta, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory and for the Australian Senate. I have a short page about it here and there’s a much longer Wikipedia article here. It is simply the best voting system around – accept no alternatives.

asks about molvania. My boss introduced me to this via the book and the website. I blogged it here and here, and even Ken MacLeod got in on the act. I keep on asking for it to be added to my area of responsibility at work (indeed, should have similar ambitions) but so far have been unsuccessful.

Hah, the Washington Times quoted me today.

From : Throw darts at the map of Europe! Hit the capitals!

On-line here, at ‘s other blog.

asks about monthy python. “My experience of you suggests this isn’t simply an idle mistake,” she says. Very nice of you to say so, but unfortunately in this case is is an idle mistake. I’ll take it off my interests list later today but in the meantime people might like to click on it to see who else has fallen into the same trap!

asks about nagorno karabakh about ajara about transdniestria. These are all conflict zones in the former Soviet Union that I work on professionally. I’m the only person on livejournal who lists Ajara as an interest. It’s a part of Georgia that used to be ruled by a local chieftain, who got chucked out by the Georgian authorities in May. Most people think the problems have all been resolved there but we’re keeping an eye on it.

I discovered one other person on livejournal who lists both Nagorno Karabakh and Transdniestria, in fact a friend of ‘s, so I’ve added him or her to my f-list. Nagorno Karabakh is a mountainous region that was part of Azerbaijan under the Soviet Union but has been occupied by Armenia (along with surrounding territories) since the war ended ten years ago. There are (unusually and dangerously) no international peacekeepers deployed on the ceasefire line, the soldiers keep on taking pot-shots at each other (several killed each month) and although the leaders of the two countries meet regularly I see no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough. Very depressing.

Transdniestria is a part of Moldova (a small and usually forgotten state wedged between Romania and Ukraine) which is, effectively, still occupied by the Soviet army. Attentive observers will note that the Soviet Union dissolved fourteen years ago. Older readers may remember the name of General Alexander Lebed, who at one time appeared to be a rival to Boris Yeltsin for the Russian leadership, before dying in a convenient plane crash; he was also involved in the early stages of the Transdniestrian crisis. I am currently trying to finish another report about it to add to our first two.

Apropos of nothing in particular: “You will find us only on the very best atlases, because we are the smallest country left in Europe… a self-respecting country which deserves and sometimes achieves a colour of its own on the map – usually a dyspeptic mint green, which misses the outline of the frontier by a fraction of an inch, so that one can almost hear the printer saying damn.” – the General, in Peter Ustinov’s play Romanoff and Juliet.

asks about lemony snicket. This is the pseudonym of the author of the books in “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, which are completely hilarious and strongly recommended. A letter from Lemony Snicket to the potential reader on the back of the first in the series, The Bad Beginning, warns: “I’m sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children… In this short book alone, the three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge. It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing.” The film starring Jim Carrey as the greedy and repulsive villain has just been released.

asks about livejournal. Like her, I don’t actually know anything about that subject and only put it on my interests list to try and impress people.

And I’ll remind those of you who haven’t done so that if you’ve asked a question, you’re supposed to post this meme in your own journal as well.

From

Scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd to you.

I’ll explain it.

Then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests.

from Language Log.

here.

The Oxfam Bookshop on Parliament St is having a table quiz on January 27th at 8pm in the Teachers Club on Parnell Square. A reliable source tells me that “There will be prizes and questions to suit all tastes on the night, and the usual cut-throat ambience you only get at a table quiz.” Tables cost €30 and you can have a maximum of five people per table.

1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.
2. Do not go near the edges of it.
3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

According to NASA.
Thanks to .

4) Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan

I actually finished this several days ago but have been so busy working on Kosovo that I can only now gather my thoughts. And livejournal having been down I tried submitting by email, twice, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Anyway…

This is great fun. I did a little research on the sfnal pedigree of the key concept of human personalities being stored electronically and then reincarnated a few months ago. Here Richard Morgan takes the idea and puts it into a James Ellroy settling a few centuries into the future. It’s a little reminiscent of David Brin’s Kiln People or going further back Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead, but much better than either.

Lots of nasty violence and a couple of graphic sex scenes which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I thought it was artistically justified. I have to object to one pedantic point – we are told that our narrator’s surname, Kovacs, is correctly pronounced with a “Slavic tch“. As those of us who deal with the remnants of the Habsburg empire know, the Slavic version of the sound is spelt cz, č or at a stretch ć; cs is clearly not Slavic but Magyar, and Kovacs is Hungarian for Smith. But this is great fun.

Trish Doller,
Andreas Gantenbein (on a break)

Posted these a while back but in the current state of LiveJournal who knows…

• Roger Zelazny’s short short story “The Bands of Titan”
• Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan
• Arthur C Clarke’s underrated Imperial Earth
• Greg Benford and Gordon Eklund’s over-rated If The Stars Are Gods
• John Varley’s eponymous trilogy
• Stephen Baxter, Titan
• Philip K Dick, The Game Players of Titan
• Edmond Hamilton, [Captain Future and] The Harpers of Titan
• James Patrick Hogan, Code of the Lifemaker
• Alan E Nourse, Trouble on Titan
• Ben Bova, As on a Darkling Plain
• Manley Wade Wellman, Sojarr of Titan

Also of course there’s the infamous film Saturn 3, with screenplay by Martin Amis of all people, starring Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel and Farrah Fawcett.

and , happy birthday!

Can you speak Sumerian?

10 January 1661/62:

So home to dinner, and in the afternoon to the office, and so to Sir W. Batten’s, where in discourse I heard the custom of the election of the Dukes of Genoa, who for two years are every day attended in the greatest state; and four or five hundred men always waiting upon him as a king; and when the two years are out, and another is chose, a messenger is, sent to him, who stands at the bottom of the stairs, and he at the top, and says, “Va. Illustrissima Serenita sta finita, et puede andar en casa.”—”Your serenity is now ended; and now you may be going home,” and so claps on his hat. And the old Duke (having by custom sent his goods home before), walks away, it may be but with one man at his heels; and the new one brought immediately in his room, in the greatest state in the world.

Another account was told us, how in the Dukedom of Ragusa, in the Adriatique (a State that is little, but more ancient, they say, than Venice, and is called the mother of Venice, and the Turks lie round about it), that they change all the officers of their guard, for fear of conspiracy, every twenty-four hours, so that nobody knows who shall be captain of the guard to-night; but two men come to a man, and lay hold of him as a prisoner, and carry him to the place; and there he hath the keys of the garrison given him, and he presently issues his orders for that night’s watch: and so always from night to night. Sir Win. Rider told the first of his own knowledge; and both he and Sir W. Batten confirm the last.

Ragusa is of course better known these days as Dubrovnik.

Doing a bit of research on the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, I just came across the transcript of one of President Truman’s press conferences, and it’s surprisingly funny; Truman, obviously slightly deaf (or perhaps just suffering from poor acoustics), but entirely relaxed about just saying “I can’t answer that question”, “I have no comment”, or “I am not making any statement this morning”. Some particular jewels:

Q. Mr. President, I never know how to spell anybody’s name. Walter J. Donnelly, how does he spell it?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, I will spell it for you–D-o-n-n-e-l-l-y. You know how to spell “Walter,” don’t you?

On correspondence with congressmen:

Q: I understand that you recently received a letter from Congressman Cole of Kansas, relative to an RFC loan to Lustron, calling your attention to that. I wonder if you have any comment?

THE PRESIDENT. I have received no such letter. It is customary for Congressmen, when they are running for office, to write letters to the President and give them to the press long before he ever receives them.

And finally, showing a sensible attitude about delegating responsibilities:

Q. Mr. President, will the Secretary of State go to New York to attend the General Assembly meeting?

THE PRESIDENT. I have an idea that the Secretary of State will be there on occasion, if it is necessary. He is not a delegate necessarily, but he is always welcome if he wants to go there. He has my permission to go, if he wants to.

It’s particularly interesting to compare the crisp style of Truman’s delivery with the incumbent. Though to be honest I think it’s as much as anything a change in the habits of public presentation over the last fifty years; I’m sure Clinton’s press conferences, if I could be bothered to find the transcripts, would have a much stronger resemblance to Bush’s than Truman’s in style.

My only personal encounter with this kind of thing was at the time of President Clinton’s visit to Belfast in November 1995. I was one of the 2,000 or so invited to the audience for his morning speech at Mackie’s, and then was outside the City Hall for his turning on the Christmas lights that evening. I’ll always remember his historic words:

I got a letter from 13-year-old Ryan from Belfast. Now, Ryan, if you’re out in the crowd tonight, here’s the answer to your question. No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. And, Ryan, if the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn’t tell me about it, either, and I want to know.

Three good posts on what Shakespeare deniers believe:

One, two, and three.