The Kosovo Indictment, by Michael O’Reilly

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Several children and a pregnant woman were among the 24 people killed in these two actions, most of them from just two families – Ahmeti and Sejdiu. Both families were associated with the KLA and the evidence suggests that both attempted to resist the Serb attack but were quickly overwhelmed.

I know the author of this book, and I know the subject, and I know many people mentioned in the book (including Søren Jessen-Petersen, who wrote the foreword). It’s an account of the war crimes trial of Ramush Haradinaj, briefly Prime Minister of Kosovo, written by a leading member of his defence team. There is a lot of well-crystallised historical information about the roots of the Kosovo conflict and Haradinaj’s role in it, and also a lot of excoriating analysis of the weakness of the prosecution case (Haradinaj was in the end acquitted, twice). I did not spot any errors in the former, and so am more inclined to trust the author on the latter.

The core argument of the book is a strong case that the prosecution of Haradinaj and others was launched as a political sop to the government of Serbia in order to encourage Belgrade to cooperate with the international tribunal. The facts are that the final batch of indictments by ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) included seven high-ranking non-Serbs, every one of whom was ultimately acquitted; but Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, the two highest-ranking Bosnian Serb fugitives, were handed over by Serbia shortly after the indictments were issued. One may draw one’s own conclusions. You can get the book here.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves (sorry Michael). Next on that pile is Political Animals, by Bev Laing.

That Damn’d Thing Called “Honour”: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860, by James Kelly

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Second paragraph of third chapter, with table:

Many factors contributed to the growth in enthusiasm for duelling in Ireland in the late 1760s and 1770s. The social and attitudinal effects of economic prosperity, already referred to,’ were at work a fortiori by the end of the 1760s; while the disinclination of the authorities to use the law to confine the enthusiasm for duelling meant that there was little by way of legal obstacles in their path. Table 2.6, which summarises the response of the law to the recorded duelling incidents that constitute our sample for the years 1716-70, indicates that there was an identifiable decline in the proportion of duellists taken to court in the mid-eighteenth century. By the 1760s the authorities no longer prosecuted duellists as a matter of course, even in cases in which there were fatalities, if the duel was deemed to have been conducted within the code of honour, because judges and juries routinely returned verdicts of manslaughter in self-defence which ensured the defendant’s prompt release.

I got this because I remain very intrigued by the reported incident of about 1723 when one of my 5x great-grandfathers, John Ryan Glas of Inch, Co Tipperary, was killed in a duel in Dublin by another of my 5x great-grandfathers, John White of Leixlip, Co Kildare, in a property dispute that escalated. Kelly doesn’t refer to that in his book, but it’s still a very interesting analysis of socially sanctioned extrajudicial violence in a society which was going through many transitions.

Although the dates given are 1570 to 1860, most of the recorded duels are from the eighteenth century. I do have a family connection with one of the earliest of them, however, the 1583 trial by combat between two of the O’Conors of Uí Failge (Offaly, as we now call it), held in the yard of Dublin castle at the command of my ancestor Sir Nicholas White, Master of the Rolls.

But basically the formal duel came into its own in the aftermath of the Williamite settlement, when the rule of law was weak but the concept of honour remained strong, and intensified in the later part of the century as political change began to build. Indeed it’s striking just how many of the leading politicians of the day were involved with duelling, right up to Grattan and Flood, and the young Daniel O’Connell.

I also realised that I had forgotten whatever I once knew about the complexity of eighteenth-century Irish politics, with the corrupt but stable “undertaker” system during the mid-century upset by the Castle v Patriot dynamic towards the end, which led to autonomy from 1782, failed rebellion in 1798 and Union in 1801. These political struggles were not only carried out verbally. But at the same time, quite a lot of duels were resolved without either combatant being killed, and no major figure lost his life in that way (unlike Alexander Hamilton).

So, plenty to chew on. You can get it here.

2022 Hugo statistics

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The full statistics document for this year, mainly by me, is available here.

Headlines

2235 final ballots and 1368 nominating ballots were received, consistent with 2020 and 2021, less than the 2014-2020 period, more than any year before 2014.

No particularly close results for the top spot. Best Editor Long Form was decided by a margin of 26 votes, and Best Semiprozine by a margin of 27. 

At lower placings, there was a tie for 5th place in the Best Fanzine category, and 5th place in the Best Fancast category was decided by a margin of one vote.

In 16 categories out of 19, the finalist with most first preferences won. Two rose from second place and one from third. 

  • Five nominees declined nomination or were not eligible in Best Editor Long Form.
  • Two nominees declined nomination or were not eligible in Best Professional Artist.
  • One nominee declined nomination in each of Best Novella and Best Fan Writer.
  • One nominee was disqualified in each of Best Graphic Story or Comic and Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. 

The last place on the ballot in the following categories was decided by a single vote: Best Graphic Story or Comic; Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form; Best Editor Long Form; Best Semiprozine; and Best Fan Artist.

The last place on the ballot in the following categories was decided by a margin of two votes: Best Novelette; Best Short Story; Best Series; Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form; Best Professional Artist; and Best Fan Writer.

Best Novel

A Desolation Called Peace was only 14 votes ahead of Light from Uncommon Stars in the first round but finished with a margin of 128. Light From Uncommon Stars came second, A Master of Djinn third, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within fourth and She Who Became the Sun fifth, by just seven votes; Project Hail Mary came sixth despite having the third highest number of first preferences.

At nominations stage, A Desolation Called Peace was also way ahead. Perhaps the Stars, by Ada Palmer, would have qualified with five more bullet votes. 

One of three categories where I voted for the winner myself.

Best Novella

A Psalm for the Wild-Built started with a lead of 70 over Elder Race and finished with a decisive lead of 236. Elder Race came second, The Past Is Red third, A Spindle Splintered fourth, Across the Green Grass Fields fifth and Fireheart Tiger sixth, also exactly the order by number of first preferences.

Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells, topped the nominations poll, but she declined, bringing Elder Race onto the ballot. Comfort Me with Apples, by Cat Valente, and Remote Control, by Nnedi Okorafor, both missed nomination by 9 votes.

Another category where I voted for the winner.

Best Novelette

“Bots of the Lost Ark” won by a substantial margin, a first round lead of 103 over L’Esprit de L’Escalier extending to a final count lead of 275. “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd” came second (I voted for it myself), “Colors of the Immortal Palette” third, “That Story isn’t the Story” fourth, L’Esprit de l’Escalier fifth despite having the second highest number of first preferences, and “O2 Arena” sixth. 

The nominations count was very different, with “That Story Isn’t the Story” topping the poll and the eventual winner in fourth place. “Mulberry and Owl”, by Aliette de Bodard, missed nomination by two votes, one of six categories where this was the case.

Best Short Story

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” started with a lead of 51 over “Mr Death” and finished with a lead of 69. “Mr Death” came second, “Unknown Number” (my own choice) third, “Proof by Induction” fourth, “The Sin of America” fifth by. Three-vote margin and “Tangles” sixth.

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” was also ahead at nominations. This was another category where the last spot was decided by a margin of two votes, the loser this time being “The Cold Calculations”, by Aimee Ogden.

Best Series

Wayward Children started 236 votes ahead of The World of the White Rat, and finished 276 votes ahead, the biggest winning margin of the night. The World of the White Rat came second, The Green Bone Saga third, Terra Ignotafourth, The Kingston Cycle fifth and Merchant Princes (my own choice) sixth.

Wayward Children was also far ahead at nominations stage. We had some head-scratching with the vote tally, as we are not allowed to tally votes for a sub-series together with votes for that series, But the numbers came together for World of the White Rat to take the final place, and Seanan McGuire missed a second place on the ballot for Incryptidby just two votes. 

Best Graphic Story or Comic

Far Sector started with a 105 vote lead over Monstress v6 and extended it to 120 on the final count. Monstress v6 came second, Lore Olympus third, Die v4 fourth, Once and Future v3 fifth and Strange Adventures sixth.

Seanan McGuire topped the nominations poll with Ghost Spider: Party People, but our research indicated clearly that it had been published in 2020 so was not eligible. That brought Strange Adventures onto the ballot. The Girl From the Sea, by Molly Ostertag, missed that place by one vote, one of five categories where this was the case.

Myself I love Once and Future, and voted for it, and also did not understand the lack of love for Strange Adventures, which I quite enjoyed without necessarily considering it a masterpiece.

Best Related Work

Being Seen started 30 votes ahead of Never Say You Can’t Survive, but performed poorly on transfers, ending 53 votes behind. Being Seen then took second place, “How Twitter Can Ruin a Life” came third, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds (my own choice) fourth, The Complete Debarkle fifth and True Believer sixth. 

It was a different story at nominations, with The Complete Debarkle topping the poll and the eventual winner Never Say You Can’t Survive third. F. Brett Cox’s Roger Zelazny missed the ballot by four votes.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Dune started 176 votes ahead of WandaVision and finished with a diminished margin of 141. WandaVison came second, Encanto third, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (my own choice) fourth, The Green Knight fifth and Space Sweepers sixth.

Dune was also way ahead at nominations stage. Spiderman: No Way Home missed the ballot by two votes.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

The Expanse: Nemesis Games started 81 votes ahead of Loki: The Nexus Event and finished 76 votes ahead. The Nexus Event came second; Star Trek Lower Decks: wej Duj (which I voted for) came third; For All Mankind: The Grey came fourth, The Wheel of Time: The Flame of Tar Valon fifth and Arcane: The Monster You Created sixth.

Nemesis Games also topped the poll at nominations stage. Second place went to the WandaVision episode Previously On, but the whole WandaVision series also had enough votes to qualify for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, so we disqualified the episode (which had only 32 nominations, compared to 104 for the series) allowing wej Duj to take its place on the ballot. The Loki episode Journey Into Mystery missed that spot by a single vote.

Best Editor Short Form

Neil Clarke started eight votes behind Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, but picked up transfers to finish 41 ahead. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki took second place by 7 votes ahead of Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya, who then came third. Sheree Renée Thomas came fourth, Jonathan Strahan fifth and Sheila Williams sixth.

Neil Clarke topped the poll at nominations stage. Scott Andrews would have needed 6 more bullet votes to qualify.

Best Editor Long Form

Ruoxi Chen started on 155 votes to 168 for Navah Wolfe and 160 for Patrick Nielsen Hayden, but picked up transfers to finish 26 votes in front of Navah Wolfe, the closest result of the night (not all that close in fact). Navah Wolfe came second, Patrick Nielsen Hayden third, Sarah Guan fourth, Nivia Evans fifth and Brit Hvide sixth. 

Ruoxi Chen had also topped the poll at nominations stage; but we had an extraordinary situation where one of the top six nominees declined and two of the others told us that they were not eligible. Two more of the next five nominees also told us that they were not eligible, so the sixth place on the ballot went to voters’ eleventh preference. Three nominees, K.B. Spangler, Carl Engle-Laird and Oliver Johnson, could have got that last place with one more vote.

This category had the highest proportion of votes for No Award. I have Thoughts about this, which I will develop in due course.

Best Professional Artist

Rovina Cai started 16 votes ahead of Maurizio Manzieri but finished with a margin of 110. Alyssa Winans came second, Tommy Arnold third, Ashley Mackenzie fourth, Maurizio Manzieri fifth despite having the second highest number of first preferences (including mine) and Will Staehle sixth.

Things were very different at nominations stage. Alyssa Winans topped the poll, and the eventual winner, Rovina Cai, had the equal third highest number of first preferences and came fifth on the EPH ranking. We also had John Picacio declining nomination and Galen Dara informing us that she was not eligible; their places were taken by Will Staehle and Tommy Arnold. Iris Compiet would have qualified with two more votes.

Best Semiprozine

Uncanny was 58 votes ahead of FIYAH on the first count, reduced to 27 at the end, the second closest result of the night. FIYAH came second, Strange Horizons third, Escape Pod fourth, Beneath Ceaseless Skies fifth and PodCastle sixth, the same as the order by first preferences.

This was also almost exactly the same order as the nominations ranking, except that Escape Pod was fourth and Beneath Ceaseless Skies fifth. Mermaids Monthly missed the ballot by one vote.

Best Fanzine

Small Gods had a lead of 108 on the first count over the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog, and ended with a margin of 56. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog came second, Journey Planet third, Galactic Journey fourth, and The Full Lid and Quick Sip Reviews tied for fifth place, the only tie anywhere this year.

Nominations were very different, with the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog  way in the lead and the eventual winner, Small Gods, getting the fewest number of nominating votes among finalists, though ending up fourth under EPH ranking. Black Nerd Problems would  have qualified with three more votes.

Best Fancast

Our Opinions Are Correct, hosted by the MCs of the Hugo ceremony, was 88 votes ahead of Hugo, Girl! on the first count and won by 136 votes. Worldbuilding for Masochists got a lot of OOAC transfers and came second by three votes over Hugo, Girl!; Hugo, Girl! came third, The Coode Street Podcast fourth, Octothorpe fifth by a single vote and Be The Serpent sixth.

Nominations were very different with The Coode Street Podcast top and Our Opinions Are Correct fifth. The Skiffy and Fanty Show would have qualified with 4 more votes.

Best Fan Writer 

Cora Buhlert had a lead of 32 votes (one of them mine – thi was the third category where I voted for the winner) over Bitter Karella on the first round, but ended 102 votes ahead of Jason Sanford on the last round. Jason Sanford came second, Paul Weimer third and Bitter Karella fourth despite having the second highest number of first preferences. Chris Barkley came fifth and Alex Brown sixth.

Cora Buhlert was also way ahead at nominations, and second-placed Camestros Felapton withdrew, bringing Jason Sanford onto the ballot. Amanda Cherry would have needed two more bullet votes for that slot.

Best Fan Artist

Lee Moyer had proportionally the best first preference result of any finalist, starting 106 ahead of Sara Felix and finishing 43 ahead of her. Sara Felix came second, Nilah Magruder third, Iain Clark fourth, Lorelei Esther fifth and Ariel Housman sixth.

At nominations, Iain Clark had the most votes and Sara Felix ranked top under EPH, with Lee Moyer, the winner, third. Richard Man would have qualified with one more vote.

Lodestar Award

The Last Graduate started 80 votes ahead of Iron Widow and finished 55 votes ahead. Iron Widow came second, Chaos on Catnet (my own choice) third, Victories Greater than Death fourth, A Snake Falls to Earth fifth and Redemptor sixth.

At nominations, Iron Widow had the most votes, but The Last Graduate was top under EPH. Along the Saltwise Sea, by A. Deborah Blake, was 14 votes adrift, the biggest gap in any category between finalists and non-finalists.

Astounding Award

Shelley Parker-Chan started 36 votes aehad of Micaiah Johnson and finished with a lead of 7. Micaiah Johnson came second, Xiran Jay Zhao third, Tracy Deonn fourth, A.K. Larkwood (my own chice) fifth and Everine Maxwell sixth.

Shelley Parker-Chan was also far ahead at nominations. Gautam Bhatia missed the last spot on the ballot by four votes.

We decided to include a bunch more statistics at the end, including showing how many categories voters engaged with, and how many nominations and final ballot preferences were given by voters in each category. I’d welcome feedback about what else could be included, without risking confidentiality.

December 2017 books, and 2017 roundup

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

December 2017 started with a trip to Amsterdam, where I found the apartment where Anne Frank and her family had lived before going into hiding.

I went to London twice, the second time for the office party with a James Bond theme:

I also had a day trip to Milan.

H joined us for Christmas, as so often.

I also answered the classic question, which lines of latitude and longitude pass through the most countries?

Which lines of longitude and latitude pass through the most countries?

I had spent nights away from home in 20 places in 11 countries, and tansited another four in the course of the year.

I read 22 books that month:

Non-fiction: 8 (2017 total 57)
Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: Notes on Science Fiction and Culture in the Year of Angry Dogs, by Philip Sandifer
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses, by Kevin Birmingham
Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Whose Cruden’s Concordance Unwrote the Bible by Julia Keay
The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig
A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov, by Peter J. Bowler
Zola and his time; the history of his martial career in letters: With an account of his circle of friends, his remarkable enemies, cyclopean labors, public campaigns, trials and ultimate glorification by Matthew Josephson
Democracy and its Deficits: The path towards becoming European-style democracies in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, by Ghia Nodia with Denis Cenușă and Mikhail Minakov
The Story of English in 100 Words, by David Crystal

Fiction (non-sf): 3 (2017 total 26)
The Lies Of Fair Ladies, by Jonathan Gash
Men Against The Sea, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
Pitcairn’s Island, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
 0805063005.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg

sf (non-Who): 3 (2017 total 68)
Everfair, by Nisi Shawl
Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories, ed. John Joseph Adams
The Power, by Naomi Alderman
  

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (2017 total 51)
Re: Collections, ed. Xanna Eve Chown
Fear Itself, by Nick Wallace
A Life in Pieces, by Dave Stone, Paul Sutton & Joseph Lidster
  

Comics 5 (2017 total 29)
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Aliénor: La Légende Noire, vol 3, by Arnaud Delalande and Simona Mogavino, art by Carlos Gomez
Het genootschap van Socrates by Yves Leclercq and Stéphanie Heurteau
The Autumnlands, Vol. 1: Tooth and Claw, by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey
Aliénor: La Légende Noire, vol 4, by Arnaud Delalande and Simona Mogavino, art by Carlos Gomez
    

6,900 pages (2017 total 60,500)
7/22 (2017 total 64/238) by women (Keay, Shawl, Alderman, Mogavino x 2, Heurteau)
1/22 (2017 total 17/238) by PoC (Shawl)

Top book of the month: Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (reread). Get it here.
Top new book of the month: The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig. Get it here.
Nothing too awful.

2017 books roundup

Total books: 238, 11th highest of the years that I have counted.

Total page count: ~60,500, lowest of any year since 2005.

Diversity:
64/238, 27% by women, a bit below previous and subsequent years.
17/238, 7% by PoC, exceeded every years since.

Most books by a single author: Colin Brake and Leo, both with 5 (previous winners: Christopher Marlowe in 2016, Justin Richards in 2015 and 2014, Agatha Christie in 2013, Jonathan Gash in 2012, Arthur Conan Doyle in 2011, Ian Rankin in 2010, William Shakespeare in 2009 and 2008, Terrance Dicks in 2007, Ian Marter in 2006, Charles Stross in 2005).

Non-Whovian sff (68)

Back to the levels of pre-2014. (I was a Clarke Award judge in 2014-15, and then deliberately cast my sf reading net wider in 2016 as part of the anti-Puppy campaign.)

Best non-Who sff read in 2016: All The Birds In The Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders (review with other Hugo novels) – by a long way my top choice for the Hugos, a magical contemporary Bildungsroman.

Runner-up: The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead (review with other non-Hugo novels)) – fascinating steampunk alternate history of slavery in America.

The one you might not heard of: The Deepest Sea, by Charles Barnitz (review) – much better than usual Celtic fantasy, marred however by a dodgy map.

Welcome rereads: The Illustrated Man (review), The Colour of Magic (review), Dune (review).

The one to skip: The Red Leaguers, by Shan F. Bullock (review) – Irish war of independence in 1904 goes wrong, flawed and unpleasant protagonist.

Non-fiction (57)

This was my highest non-fiction total since 2011, and my highest percentage for non-fiction since I started tallying categories separately in 2009. I think this was partly birthday presents, which were biased towards non-fiction; partly that non-fiction books have been moving to the top of my various piles; and partly a genuine shift in my own reading tastes.

Best non-fiction read in 2017: Common People: The History of an English Family, by Alison Light (review) – lovely micro-history of four lines of ancestry in the recent history of England.

Runner-up: Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (review)- great insight into how we think the way we do, and why we are wrong in what we think about it.

The one you might not heard of, if you’re not in the Dublin or Brussels bubbles: Brexit and Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities, and the Inside Story of the Irish Response, by Tony Connelly (review) – essential reading on both the behind the scenes diplomacy and the stakes for the country most affected by Brexit.

Welcome reread: In Xanadu (review)

The one to skip: 1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies (review) – such a bad rewriting of history that I wondered what its purpose really was.

Doctor Who (and spinoff) fiction (51)

Picking up a bit from the dip of the last couple of years.

Best Who book read in 2016: The Pirate Planet, by Douglas Adams and James Goss (review) – Goss has ironed off the corners and made this a much smoother story, as usual a delight to read, and also includes bonus material on how Adams developed the plot.

Runner-up: Rip Tide, by Louise Cooper (review) – one of the good Telos novellas, taking the Eighth Doctor to a seaside resort to investigate mysterious goings on.

Worth flagging up for Whovians: Based On The Popular TV Serial, by Paul Smith (review) – a guide to the Target novelisations.

The ones you won’t have heard of: The three novels based on short-lived spin-off Class (review), by Guy Adams, A.K. Benedict and especially (again) James Goss.

Comics (29)

Best graphic story read in 2016: Antarès, by Leo – excellent futuristic yarn. I read it in the original French but it has been translated into English (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Runner-up: The Vision vol 1: Little Worse Than A Man, by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta (review) – I (somewhat reluctantly) really liked this story of an inhuman family trying to fit in.

Welcome reread: Watchmen (review).

The one you won’t have heard of: Re-#AnimateEurope: International Comics Competition 2017, ed. Hans H.Stein, by Jordana Globerman, Stefan “Schlorian” Haller, Štepánka Jislová, Noëlle Kröger, Magdalena Kaszuba, Davide Pascutti and Paul Rietzl (review) – nicely applying the medium of the graphic novel to the problems of Europe today.

Non-sfnal fiction (26)

A historic low for non-sf fiction reading, mainly I think because I had read almost all all the well-known books of that kind on my shelves, which were (and are) still heaving with unread sf and non-fiction.

Best non-sff fiction read in 2016: A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth (review) – brilliant huge story of India just after independence.

Runner-up: Children are Civilians Too, by Heinrich Böll (review) – gripping short stories from Germany of about the same period.

The one you might not heard of: Five Go On A Strategy Away Day, by Bruno Vincent (review) – quite a funny parody of the grownup Famous Five in competition with the Secret Seven.

Welcome reread: Robinson Crusoe (review).

The one to skip: The Angel Maker, by Stefan Brijs (review) – really horrible story set on the Belgian frontier with Germany.

Plays (5)

There were only five of these. The only one I’d really really like to see on the stage, having seen the film that was based on it, is Cavalcade, by Noël Coward (review including also the Oscar-winning film).

Poetry (2)

Just two. Catullus is better than Roald Dahl.

Book of the year

Common People: The History of an English Family, by Alison Light

Other Books of the Year:

2003 (2 months): The Separation, by Christopher Priest.
2004: The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (reread).
– Best new read: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin
2005: The Island at the Centre of the World, by Russell Shorto
2006: Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea
2007: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
2008: The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, by Anne Frank (reread)
– Best new read: Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, by William Makepeace Thackeray
2009: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare (had seen it on stage previously)
– Best new read: Persepolis 2: the Story of a Return, by Marjane Satrapi (first volume just pipped by Samuel Pepys in 2004)
2010: The Bloody Sunday Report, by Lord Savile et al.
2011: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon (started in 2009!)
2012: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë
2013: A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
2014: Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell
2015: collectively, the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, in particular the winner, Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel. However I did not actually blog about these, being one of the judges at the time.
– Best book I actually blogged about: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin
2016: Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot
2017: See above
2018: Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
2019: Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo
2020: From A Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb, by Timothy Knatchbull
2021: Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins.

Saturday reading

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Current
Brasyl, by Ian McDonald
Mr Britling Sees It Through, by H.G. Wells
A Matter of Life and Death, by George Mann, Emma Vieceli and Hi Fi

Last books finished
The Traders’ War, by Charles Stross
Political Animals, by Bev Laing

Next books
Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
Empire Of Sand, by Tasha Suri

The Harp and the Blade, by John Myers Myers

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Walking thus loaded didn’t help my hunger or my disposition, but it warmed me up in short order. My burdens were not too heavy, but they were awkward; and a long sword wasn’t designed for a pedestrian. In consequence, though the new sun was soon lighting a very fair day I wasn’t favorably impressed. I don’t suppose I’d gone more than three miles before I caught sight of the horse, but it seemed as if I’d been walking for a week.

Not sure how this ended up in my library; it was I think an impulse purchase at a convention. The author is a fascinating figure in his own right; the book is a rollicking Dark Ages story of a bard who turns warrior and defender of the vulnerable, which would qualify as straight historical fiction, were it not for the first chapter in which the Little Folk put the protagonist under a geas which compels him to be helpful. As usual, the names are completely wrong, but the story is a decent fist at imagining historical France in the 6th or 7th century, and, as mentioned already, it is rollicking good fun. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2019. Next on that pile is Null States, by Malka Older.

Roger Zelazny’s Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Aber suddenly laughed, then reached into the air, felt around for a second, and plucked a large white towel seemingly from nothingness.

Second of the prequels to Zelazny’s great Amber series, and it is a step up from the first volume. Oberon and his recently acquired father Dworkin (and recently acquired brother Aber) battle their way through family feuds at the Courts of Chaos to head towards the creation of Amber itself (which will presumably happen in the third volume). It’s still rather flat compared to the originals, but at least it does not go on too long. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2016. Next on that pile is The Harem Of Aman Akbar, by Elizabeth Scarborough.

The Time Warrior, by Matthew Kilburn (and Terrance Dicks)

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When I first watched The Time Warrior in 2007, I wrote:

The Time Warrior was the first story in the eleventh season of Doctor Who, over December 1973/January 1974. More significantly, it was the first outing for Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, a role she played until October 1976, the longest continuous run of any companion (and longer than some Doctors had on screen). (Reprised, of course, in 1981 in K9 and Company, 1983 in The Five Doctors, in various Big Finish and other spinoffs, and last year in School Reunion; now getting her own TV series at long last.)

She gets a good introduction, stowing away in the Tardis to investigate the disappearance of scientists, who as it turns out are being kidnapped by time machine by an alien Sontaran who needs them to repair his spaceship which has crashed on Earth in the Middle Ages. (Of course, when they meet again in School Reunion, the Doctor is once again pretending to be Dr John Smith; not, as we now know, for the last time either.) I felt she was a bit screamy compared with the Sarah Jane Smith we came to know and love later on, but in contrast with the awful Jo who came before she is a vast improvement.

There’s also an interesting conversation in Episode 2 between the Doctor and the Sontaran commander Lynx with significant continuity implications. Apparently this was the first time that the Doctor’s home planet had been named. But it’s also interesting that the Sontarans have been considering it as a military target, a plan which comes to fruition in The Invasion of Time in 1978.

Anyway, not one of the great Robert Holmes stories, but not bad at all.

Coming back to it in 2010 for my Great Rewatch, I wrote:

The Time Warrior has the difficult task of introducing the first new companion for three years. But it is also the first story with a historical setting since The Highlanders, which incidentally was also the introductory story for a long-lasting companion (Jamie), which in itself is rather a good signal that the show is still capable of pulling surprises (which is just as well, considering the disappointments in store later in the season). The medieval stuff – Dot Cotton and Boba Fett in alliance against the bad guys – is actually rather well done, to the point that you don’t realise that there is only one castle playing two roles. The Sontarans are off to a good start, and there’s a satisfying bang at the end as the castle blows up.

It’s interesting to note that Sarah actually looks rather boyish here – pageboy haircut, understated bust, wearing trousers rather than skirt – which reinforces the point that the companion is meant to be the audience identification figure, and perhaps makes her easier for small boys to relate to than the much more girly Jo would have been. One can’t take this too far – she is certainly femme rather than butch – but it strikes me that after the first seven seasons of regular characters who just happen to be hanging around the Tardis and the Doctor, we have here the consolidation and further development of the Jo Grant dynamic.

One further character note about the Doctor – we have a bit of a reshaping of the role of the Time Lords here, as galactic ticket-inspectors; and this is also the story where the Doctor says he is serious about what he does, but not necessarily the way he does it. Unmoored from the UNIT setting, this is a new Pertwee in some ways, and we are allowed to sympathise with Sarah to a certain extent when she mistakes him for the villain rather than the hero of the story.

Rewatching once more, a couple of points struck me. First, immediately after the rather drab location shooting of The Curse of Fenric, here things seem much better co-ordinated and coherent. Alan Bromly is not at the top of many people’s list of favourite Doctor Who directors, but (unlike Matthew Kilburn, but we’ll get there) I think he delivers the goods.

Second, the script is neutral but heading towards positive on Sarah’s feminism. The Doctor looks like an ass in the first scene with her when he tells her to make the coffee. There’s a funny moment when she tells the kitchen wenches that they should not be living in the middle ages, just before realising that they have no choice. But to have a character articulating these views at all is (sadly) a step forward. (I also wonder if the wenches had been hiding or hidden when Lynx arrived; it’s clear that Sarah is the first woman he has seen.)

Third, Elisabeth Sladen is really nervous in her first scene as Sarah. We know now that Pertwee had been awful to her in rehearsal, saying how sorry he was that Katy Manning had left, almost as awful as the Doctor is to her in the script. The scene gives context for Sarah thinking the Doctor must be the villain, but one can also sympathise with the jitters of an actor who had just been given her breakthrough role, but with a star who had already had one potential candidate sacked and had made it clear he wished she was someone else. (Pertwee came round in the end, but the production team had already decided to dump him and keep her.)

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Terrance Dicks’ novelisation is:

Linx went to the cellar door. It was closed and locked but he made no attempt to open it. ‘Linx!’ bellowed a hoarse voice from the other side. ‘My lord Linx, will you open the door?’

When I last read it in 2008, I wrote:

Somehow despite the apparently favourable conjunction of DW’s most prolific TV script writer (Holmes) and the most prolific novelisation writer (Dicks), it rarely seems to gel, and this is a typical example: an unexceptional Dicks novelisation of a decent Holmes script, supposedly in this case with Holmesian participation. The Sontaran commander Linx (rather than Lynx) and the myopic Professor Rubeish both get a little more characterisation, but it’s otherwise standard stuff.

It is interesting that both this and the next story are about the bad guys shunting people between the present and the past.

I now accept that this was unfair of me. There are a lot of nice little moments in the novelisation that were missed from the TV show, including Mary, Hal the archer’s girlfriend, whose lines were completely cut from the screen. After a marathon of Pertwee novelisations in 2008, I think I may have been getting a bit fed up with Dicks’ prose, but in isolation it reads much better. You can get it here.

As with the author of the last Black Archive that I wrote up, Matthew Kilburn is a friend, amd as with Una McCormack on The Curse of Fenric, this monograph has made me reassess several aspects of the story positively, though starting from a higher base in that I liked it more to start with.

An introduction points out the rarity of stories set in the historical past at that time of Doctor Who, the most recent having been The Evil of the Daleks, six years before, and also discusses the uninventive style of director Alan Bromly (where as mentioned above I think there is a decent case for the defence).

The first chapter looks at The Time Warrior as a war story, reflecting on Holmes’career both as s soldier in Burma and as a writer for the patriotic boys’ magazine John Bull, but also considering the Vietnam War which was raging at the time.

The second chapter looks at the story’s aesthetic, coming down firmly on the Gothic side of the fence, considering also The Castle of Otranto, Ivanhoe, Frankenstein and the TV series Arthur of the Britons.

The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

The above paragraph offers a brief description of a character who could be either the Doctor or Linx. The parallels are obvious, especially with Spearhead from Space; but so are the objections. While Irongron and his men saw Linx’s vessel cross the sky and fall to Earth, the UNIT officer and her technician saw Nestene energy units, not the TARDIS. The UNIT personnel identified an enemy, while it’s Irongron who finds an ally. However, this latter statement is open to challenge, and it’s part of the Doctor’s function in this story to point out why.

The chapter looks at how Lynx and the Doctor parallel each other, alien wizard/scientists working with local Earth military/political leaders, but also looks at how Lynx portrays racism and colonialism.

The fourth and final chapter looks at Sarah as a character, and the way in which she is both a new and a traditional companion figure for Doctor Who. Her feminism is a character trait; it’s not funny, but it’s not shared by others either. The chapter looks at the story of Elisabeth Sladen’s casting, and also at the changes between script and screen which slightly eased the gendered elements of the story.

A conclusion reflects again on The Time Warrior as a post-imperial story, and how its themes are reflect in other Who stories which Holmes had a hand in.

The whole thing is well worth getting here.

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Daleks (82) | The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Massacre (2) | The Ark (81)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | Mawdryn Undead (80) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)

August Books

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I just realised that this did not go live as I had planned on 31 August, the day I arrived in Chicago, so here it is now.

Non-fiction 8 (YTD 70)
Lenin the Dictator, by Victor Sebestyen
Manifesto, by Bernardine Evaristo
The Life of Col. Samuel M. Wickersham, ed. Edward Wickersham Hoffman
The Curse of Fenric, by Una McCormack
The Time Warrior, by Matthew Kilburn
That Damn’d Thing Called “Honour”: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860, by James Kelly
The Kosovo Indictment, by Michael O’Reilly
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich

Non-genre 2 (YTD 13)
Alaska Sampler 2014: Ten Authors from the Great Land, eds Deb Vanasse and David Marusek
The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard

SF 9 (YTD 69)
Swordheart, by T. Kingfisher
The Initiate, by Louise Cooper
Sprawl, ed. Cat Sparks
The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter
Roger Zelazny’s Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt
The Harp and the Blade, by John Myers Myers
“Tangents”, by Greg Bear
The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett
The Carhullan Army, by Sarah Hall

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 23)
Dalek Combat Training Manual, by Richard Atkinson and Mike Tucker
The Lost Skin, by Andy Frankham-Allen
Scary Monsters, by Simon A. Forward
Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs
Doctor Who and the Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks

Comics 1 (YTD 13)
Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor: Operation Volcano, by Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel

6,100 pages (YTD 49,800)

9/25 (YTD 78/192) by non-male writers (Evaristo, McCormack, Alexievich, Vanasse, Howard, “Kingfisher”, Cooper, Sparks, Hall)

1/25 (YTD 25/192) by a non-white writer (Evaristo)

360 books currently tagged “unread”, after adding lots of Doctor Who comics

Reading now
The Traders’ War, by Charles Stross
Brasyl, by Ian McDonald
Mr Britling Sees It Through, by H.G. Wells

Coming soon (perhaps)
Speaker to the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
Political Animals, by Bev Laing
Empire Of Sand, by Tasha Suri
Goliath, by Tochi Onyebuchi
Jocasta, by Brian Aldiss
Complete Short Stories: the 1950s, by Brian Aldiss
The End of the Day, by Claire North
The Harem of Aman Akbar, by Elizabeth Scarborough
Null States, by Malka Older
Voorbij de grenzen van de ernst, by Kamagurka
Disobedience, by Naomi Alderman
Death of a Naturalist, by Seamus Heaney
The Clockwise War, by Scott Gray
The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
Metamorphoses, by Ovid
What If? by Randall Munroe
Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
The Revolution Trade, by Charles Stross
Thirteen, by Richard Morgan
The World Set Free, by H.G. Wells

November 2017 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

That month I travelled to Washington DC, Sofia in Bulgaria, and twice to London. I don’t seem to have taken a lot of photos; the vast majority were from a pleasant afternoon at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum near Dulles airport.

The Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum

More domestically, here’s a rainbow framing Leuven station.

I read 16 books that month.

Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 48)
Isaiah Berlin, by Michael Ignatieff
Washington, D.C.’s Vanishing Springs and Waterways, by Garnett P. Williams
Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee
Brexit and Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities, and the Inside Story of the Irish Response, by Tony Connelly

Fiction (non-sf): 4 (YTD 24)
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge
Dear Old Dead, by Jane Haddam
Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle
Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

sf (non-Who): 5 (YTD 69)
The Deepest Sea, by Charles Barnitz
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
The Knight of the Swords, by Michael Moorcock
The Queen of the Swords, by Michael Moorcock
The King of the Swords, by Michael Moorcock

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 48)
Short Trips: Indefinable Magic, ed. Neil Corry
A Life Worth Living ed. Simon Guerrier
Doctor Who: The American Adventures, by Justin Richards

4,900 pages (YTD 53,600)
2/16 (YTD 57/214) by women (Lee, Haddam)
0/16 (YTD 16/214) by PoC

It was great to return to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which you can get here, and Tony Connelly’s masterful account of Brexit is going to be a set text for decades; you can get it here. Wolf in White Van was pretty bad, but you can get it here.

The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Eric’s suite contained the pampered luxury I expected, with overstuffed furniture and a magnificent view of the Plaza outside. A bottle of champagne stood on a low glass table, uncorked. The air was filled with the tinny tones of a ragtime band, emanating from a wireless set – not the compact government-issue People’s Receivers you would have found in every British home in those days, and known universally as Marvin’s Megaphones, but a big chunk of American hardware in a walnut cabinet.

This is a sequel to The War of the Worlds, authorised as such by the H.G. Wells estate, set in an Earth which overcame the original Martian invasion and where England has become a dystopian dictatorship. The narrator is the suffragette sister-in-law of the narrator of The War of the Worlds, with vignettes from all over the world as the Martians launch another assault, having learned lessons from their first unsuccessful attempt.

It’s an interesting contrast with the two sequels to The Time Machine that I have read in recent years, The Time Ships, also by Stephen Baxter, and The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest, which also has some Martian sequences in it. Unfortunately it’s not quite as good as either; there are some vivid set-pieces, but otherwise the plot rather plods along from place to place and battle to battle. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The End of the Day, by Claire North.

The impact of EPH

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The system by which the Hugo nominations are converted into the final ballot, known as E Pluribus Hugo, is coming up for renewal at this year’s business meeting, and I thought it would be interesting to see what the actual impact on the last five years of ballot papers has been. (I was involved with the administration of the votes for all but one of those years.) Mike Glyer has written a passionate defence of EPH, which I hope you will all read; but I thought I would add some empirical analysis.

(By the way, I keep an archive of all known Hugo statistics here.)

For each of the last five years, including three when there were also Retro Hugos, I have looked at the published results and compared the real final ballot with the hypothetical final ballot that would have resulted from taking the same nominees and votes, but simply ranking them in the order of total votes received, as would have been done under the old system (hereafter, “the old system”). I have assumed that all disqualifications and withdrawals were the same as in real life, and I have also assumed that nominees who missed the ballot because of EPH were in fact eligible, which they may not have been.

Apologies for posting this as an image; I generally love WordPress, but it is not good at tables. I have also noted below the final ballot ranking of those finalists who got onto the ballot because of EPH, in brackets after each entry.

It’s interesting to note that while the intended effect of EPH was to disadvantage nominees whose support is too similar to other popular nominees (and thus to boost nominees with more localised support), another important effect has been to split ties. It is not impossible to have a tied result in EPH, producing a ballot with more than six finalists, but it is much less likely to happen than under the old system. For voters and administrators, this must be counted as an advantage. With at least 19 categories on the ballot, it is already quite long enough without being extended further by a quirk of the numbers.

The overall effect on Hugo ballots is that 19 finalists in 18 categories who would not have qualified under the old system did qualify for the final ballot under EPH, and 29 finalists in 26 categories who would have qualified under the old system were kept off the ballot paper by EPH. There are also two cases (not otherwise noted here – you can check them out for yourself) of nominees who were disqualified by the administrators under EPH, but would not have had enough votes to even be disqualified under the old system.

There is a surprising skew in terms of diversity. (My apologies in advance to anyone whose identifications I have got wrong, even by implication; I’ll try and fix any mistakes brought to my attention.) Of the 29 potential finalists excluded by EPH, 12 (counting Bill and Ted Face the Music, but not Camestros Felapton) are white men or by white men. Of the 19 finalists who owed their places to EPH, 12 (counting Tenet) are men or by men (all white, I think, apart from John Picacio). Basically the potential finalists excluded by EPH were 41%-45% white men, and the finalists who got onto the ballot thanks to EPH were 58% white men.

These are small numbers of course. There are only four cases in three categories where women who would have qualified under the old system were replaced by men thanks to EPH (all in 2018), and one should balance that against two cases where men were replaced by women thanks to EPH (one in 2019, one in 2021). So the case that EPH systematically replaces one gender with another is weak. The stronger effect seems to be that in the process of splitting ties, the nominees excluded are more often women than men. Is this simply because there are more women nominees in general these days?

I actually pointed out back in 2016 that the effect of EPH on recent ballots then would also have been to make them more male. It is interesting that this effect seems to have continued. I’m generally in favour of EPH for its deterrent effect on slates and also (we’ll get to this) its impact on the Retro Hugos, but we must also be clear about the empirical evidence of its effect on the ballot. (In, admittedly, only about 10% of all categories.)

I have also recorded the final ballot ranking of each of the 19 finalists who were got their place because of EPH. One of them actually went on to win their category (Gardner Dozois, Best Editor Short Form, 2019) and two won second place. One took third place and another took fourth place; five ended in fifth place, six in sixth place and three finished in seventh place, below No Award (puppy candidates in 2017). So the majority of finalists brought onto the ballot by EPH are not especially popular with voters deciding the winner (as you would expect from those at the lower end of the nominations curve), but the exceptions are exceptional.

Retro Hugos and EPH

Three years of Retro Hugos have been subject to EPH, 1943 (awarded in 2018), 1944 (awarded in 2019) and 1945 (awarded in 2020). The effect here has been much more drastic. It is of course possible that different administrators might have made different calls about which categories to allow on the ballot, but I’m proceeding here on the counterfactual basis that all the same categories would have been run with all the same votes cast.

Because of the lower overall numbers participating in Retro Hugo nominations, the likelihood of ties for the last place on the ballot is much greater, and EPH has come into play as a tie-breaker much more frequently. In those three years, no fewer than 19 potential finalists who would have qualified for the ballot under the old system were knocked off it by EPH, and only 4 were added to the ballot by EPH. All (as far as I can tell) were white men or by white men, so there is no diversity angle to consider.

Of the four lucky stories (they are all stories) added to the ballot by EPH, two finished in last place in the final ranking, and one in fourth, but one, “I, Rocket”, by Ray Bradbury, won.

There’s an obvious fix to make the Retro Hugos less hassle for everyone, which is not to run them in the first place. However, if the decision has been made to run them, I think EPH helps rather than hinders the process, and as an administrator I’d much rather have it on my side than not.

But the Business Meeting gets to decide these things, and I don’t.

Saturday reading

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Current
The Traders’ War, by Charles Stross

Last books finished
“Tangents”, by Greg Bear
The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich
The Carhullan Army, by Sarah Hall

Next books
Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
Mr Britling Sees it Through, by H. G. Wells

Ms Marvel

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We watched the new Ms Marvel TV series over the last few weeks, and loved it. I very much enjoyed the first volume of the G. Willow Wilson comic and voted for it (along with the majority) for the 2015 Hugos, was less impressed by the second volume and not sure if I read later installments. The TV series takes a different angle. Here’s a trailer:

It’s still the origin story of a Pakistani-American girl with super powers growing up in New Jersey; but it links the life of an ordinary-ish American teenager of today, in conflict with the forces of the U.S. deep state, but also processing the trauma of Partition, seventy-five years ago this month; it will be pretty educational for the core audience of Disney+ viewers. The fifth episode in particular takes the story back to Karachi in 1947, conveying the chaos and horror of the time very economically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdpw-nlE5ps

It’s also very attractive to see Islam portrayed in a matter of fact way, as a religion practiced by ordinary middle class Americans, with the local mosque having all the same internal politics manifest in any religious organisation, or indeed any human organisation at all. The mosque itself is played with quiet assurance by the Fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, an enormous movie palace built in 1929 in consciously Islamic style.

The script is witty and wise, and various points are well made. And I get a little patriotic glow from the fact that the directors are Belgian. I don’t think I was familiar with any of the cast before, but they are all excellent, and the whole thing critically depends on Iman Vellani, here in her first significant acting job, in the title role. It’s way more interesting than, say, Harry Potter.

Anyway, strongly recommended (in case that was not clear).

Sprawl, ed. Alisa Krasnostein

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Second paragraph of third story (“How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market”, by Stephanie Campisi – third if you count the opening poem):

There are blobs of fruit flesh on the ground where people have pestled kumquats or grapes beneath their shoes, shoes that are old and friendly sandals or heels thin and high as kebab skewers. Kids, hair carved into waterfalls that trail down their necks or propped up in pineapply plumes with supercute sparkly hair bobbles, stagger about in that toddlerish way, their plump bellies steering them towards tasting plates of chopped up sour mango, glistening papaya, white and virginal dragonfruit and blobs of eyeball-like longan.

An anthology of sff stories by Australian writers, published in 2010 in anticipation of that year’s Worldcon. They’re all pretty good. I particularly liked the opening by Tansy Rayner Roberts, “Relentless Adaptations”, which looks at a dystopian future for literature, and the sinister youth of Angela Slatter’s “Brisneyland by Night”. but I don’t think that there is a dud in the collection. You can get it here.

This was both my top unread book acquired in 2015 and the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on those piles are two books by Brain Aldiss, respectively Complete Short Stories: The 1950s and Jocasta, Wife and Mother.

The Curse of Fenric, by Una McCormack (and Ian Briggs)

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When I first watched The Curse of Fenric in 2007, I wrote:

The Curse of Fenric had been strongly recommended to me, and I adopted the suggestion that I watch the extended director’s cut version on the DVD rather than the show as originally broadcast (in keeping with the non-sequential traditions of the show, this was actually the last story of the four that I watched, during a three-hour stopover in Ankara airport last Friday).

Well, it is indeed a good story – most memorably, Nicholas Parsons, of all people, playing it straight as the doomed vicar Mr Wainwright; a setting in the second world war that actually looks a bit like it might be the 1940s; vampire villains which now seem an eerie foreshadowing of Buffy; secret codes and ancient evils, and the crucial importance of faith. Indeed, of the four last stories, it is the one which most resembles classic Who at its best.

I was not utterly convinced by the plot; I never like stories which crucially depend on some unbroadcast and untold past adventure of the Doctor’s. And although I did like Tomek Bork’s portrayal of Sorin, I was not totally convinced by the behaviour of the Russian soldiers (and to a lesser extent of the British) – as soldiers, that is. However, in general, this was a good ’un.

When I came back to it for my Great Rewatch, I wrote:

I watched the original version of The Curse of Fenric this time rather than the director’s cut, and noticed only one significant difference – we cannot hear what the Doctor is saying when he makes his profession of faith to ward off the Haemovores, whereas the director’s cut makes it clear that he is reciting the names of all his companions in a litany. It’s another excellent story, with the plot of human conflict being exploited by non-human forces which has a venerable pedigree in Who, and the continuing accumulation of details about what the Doctor may really be up to – and, almost two years after her arrival, more about what Ace is there for – I think only Turlough acquires a comparable amount of back-story in the course of his time in the Tardis, and Ace’s tale works much better. My only quibble about The Curse of Fenric is that I have never been impressed by the Haemovores, whose costumes are a bit cheap-looking to the point that we have to be told to be scared of them by scary music.

Rewatching, I wasn’t quite as impressed as I had been on previous occasions – and I note that both times I had seen it before in the context of the rest of the season; this was the first time I had tried it as effectively a standalone. It feels frankly a bit under-directed; too often the actors are just moving from point A to point B without doing much else, and the cinematography is workmanlike rather than interesting. Also this time around I watched the original TV broadcast, which is not as good as the subsequent edits, and that may have been a mistake. I’m glad that Cartmel was trying to revive the show, but he had not yet got there.

Here’s a weird one for you. Pyramids of Mars, already covered by the Black Archive, and Full Circle, also already covered by the Black Archive, were broadcast on exactly the same calendar dates as The Curse of Fenric: 25 October, 1 November, 8 November and 15 November, in 1975, 1980 and 1989 respectively. The first two were shown on Saturday nights, and The Curse of Fenric on Wednesdays. The day after Episode 3 was shown, the Berlin Wall fell.

When I first read the novelisation in 2008, I wrote:

Ian Briggs, on the other hand, does a masterful job with The Curse of Fenric, perhaps the most adult of any of the Who novelisations (in the sense of talking about sex). The most striking change from the TV original is that the vicar, Mr Wainwright, is explictly young (rather than Nicholas Parsons). Apart from that, the whole narrative feels very soundly rooted both in itself and in Who – particularly with Ace’s introduction in Dragonfire (which of course Briggs also wrote). For once, the Doctor’s-hidden-past motif actually seems to make sense rather than feeling like a bolted-on idea (the only other story that achieves this is The Face of Evil). An excellent read.

Also a comfortable pass for the Bechdel test, what with Phyllis, Jean and their landlady on the one hand, and Katharine, Audrey and the Wrens on the other, with Ace wandering between them.

The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

A thin trickle of villagers, all dressed in their grey Sunday best, were making their way home down the country lane. Only Miss Hardaker, a sharp-faced spinster in her fifties, and two teenage girls lingered on the church porch where the young vicar listened patiently. Miss Hardaker was determined to make her point.

Rereading the novelisation, the same points struck me again; it’s a surprisingly adult book for the range, with the London girls and Ace bantering about sex. And given the timings, it does make more sense for the vicar to be a young man, rather than 66-year-old Nicholas Parsons. There are a couple of good interludes as well, one of which appears to have a drown-up Ace marrying a Russian aristocrat ancestor of Sorin’s. It’s one of the best of the 160+ novelisations.

Both of my Black Archive reads for this month are by writers who I consider friends. Una McCormack is a sparring partner on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/unamccormack/status/1473947186853523459

In this monograph, she has gone for an approach of developing at length four of the interesting themes of The Curse of Fenric, rather than an all-round justification of the story, and as someone who loves the story less than she does, I found it helpful and redemptive. I love most of all the Black Archive books that explain to me why I like some of my favourite Doctor Who stories; but I probably get more out of the ones like this that challenge me to think again about some that are less high up my personal list.

The short introduction sets out her stall, making the link between the timing of first broadcast and the Fall of the Wall, and asserting boldly that “The Curse of Fenric is the best story in what was, at that point, the best season yet of Doctor Who. In other words, I love it.”

The first chapter convincingly positions the story and the entire era in the context of a decade of Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher (who as it turned out would last only another year), and the culture wars waged by government supporters, particularly on and in the BBC. The solution to the chess puzzle of the story is, after all, for the pawns to break ranks and join forces against their common oppressor.

The second chapter points out that this is the first Doctor Who story to explicitly use the Second World War as a setting. (Surprisingly, the Nazis in Silver Nemesis are not named as such.) The war itself is of course a crucial cultural historical experience for the UK, as for other countries. But it’s interesting to look, as McCormack does, at the other later presentations of the war in Who, some of which work and many of which don’t, and to explore the good and bad side of using it as the background for a Who story.

The third chapter looks at Ace as a character, arguing that her arc is the first example of the more modern approach to companions that we have seen in the New Who era, and applying some good feminist analysis to the Doctor and his relations with the women who he tracvels with. The second paragraph of the third chapter, including a quote from Joanna Russ, is:

Russ, in her essay, and in typically acerbic fashion, rapidly sketches and dispenses with the clichés of science fiction: the ‘intergalactic suburbia’ in which the 1950s household remains intact and the woman is wife, mother, and home-maker; the ‘passive and involuntary’ women as prizes or motives for space-faring ‘He-Men’; and the domineering Amazons of matriarchies, waiting to be brought to heel by the arrival of men. Her most illuminating criticism for our purposes, however, is of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. This novel, published in 1969, a Nebula Award winner and generally accepted to be ground-breaking in its treatment of gender, concerns the inhabitants of the planet Gethen, who have no sex or gender, except that every four weeks they pass through a cycle in which they become either male or female, and sexually potent. The story is motored by the arrival on Gethen of a male human observer, who becomes immersed in Gethenian culture and politics. Russ skilfully argues this is a book from which women are absent:

‘It is, I must admit, a deficiency in the English language that these people must be called “he” throughout, but “put that together with the native hero’s personal encounters in the book, the absolute lack of interest in child-raising, the concentration on work, and what you have is a world of men.’4

4 Russ, ‘Image of Women’, p215.”

The brief short chapter reflects on myth and Doctor Who, and the way in which Cartmel was setting up the Doctor as a mythic figure and using themes from mythology to help tell the story.

I guess my biggest complaint about the book is that it’s a bit short. But you can get it here.

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Daleks (82) | The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Massacre (2) | The Ark (81)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | Mawdryn Undead (80) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)

October 2017 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

The highlight of the month was my first trip to South Africa, the farthest south that I have been in my life, for a Liberal International meeting.

The highlight of that was probably the tour of the Constitution Hill complex, including the Constitutional Court and the prison where both Mandela and Gandhi were imprisoned at different times.

Rigorous analysis of social media found that I was the 37th most influential of the top 40 EU twitterers.

Even more important, I got my photo taken with Jenna Coleman at FACTS in Gent.

I read 21 books that month.

Non-fiction: 6 (YTD 44)
What Made Now In Northern Ireland, ed. Maurna Crozier
1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies (not finished) (tempted to put this in the fiction category)
Memoir of the Queen of Etruria, Written by Herself / an Authentic Narrative of the Seizure and Removal of Pope Pius VII, with Genuine Memoirs of His Journey Written by One of His Attendants
An Assessment of the Economic Impact of Brexit on the EU27, by Michael Emerson, Matthias Busse, Mattia Di Salvo, Daniel Gros, and Jacques Pelkmans
Running Through Corridors 2: Rob and Toby’s Marathon Watch of Doctor Who, the 70s, by Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman
A Crocodile in the Fernery: An A-Z of Animals in the Garden, by Twigs Way
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Poetry: 1 (YTD 2)
From Bed to Bed, by Catullus, trans. James Michie
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Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 20)
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
Cimarron, by Edna Ferber
Grand Hotel, by Vicki Baum
Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett
Cavalcade, by Noël Coward (theatre play)
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sf (non-Who): 4 (YTD 64)
The Dancers at the End of Time, by Michael Moorcock (not finished)
The Last Castle, by Jack Vance
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein
Thorns, by Robert Silverberg
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Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 45)
Short Trips: Christmas Around the World, by Xanna Eve Chown
The Big Hunt, by Lance Parkin
Plague City, by Jonathan Morris
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Comics: 2 (YTD 23)
Antarès, Épisode 5, by Leo
Antarès, Épisode 6, by Leo
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4,700 pages (YTD 48,700)
7/21 (YTD 55/198) by women (Crozier, Queen Maria Luisa of Etruria, Way, Ferber, Baum, Dunnett, Chown)
0/21 (YTD 16/198) by PoC

Several of these were very good, specifically:

  • What Made Now In Northern Ireland, ed. Maurna Crozier (get it here)
  • An Assessment of the Economic Impact of Brexit on the EU27, by Michael Emerson, Matthias Busse, Mattia Di Salvo, Daniel Gros, and Jacques Pelkmans (get it here for free)
  • From Bed to Bed, by Catullus, trans. James Michie (get it here)
  • Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett (get it here)
  • Thorns, by Robert Silverberg (get it here)

On the other hand, 1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies, is absolute tosh. You can get it here but I wouldn’t bother if I were you.

Manifesto: On never giving up, by Bernardine Evaristo

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Romantic love. Random sex. Hopeless crushes. Short-lived flings. Proper relationships. All of these experiences contributed to making me the person and writer I became, one for whom the pursuit of freedom was paramount: freedom to move home, freedom from a conventional job, freedom to follow the whims of my sexuality, freedom to jump from one encounter to another, freedom to write experimental fiction. Even when my freedom was seriously curtailed, as it was during one relationship in my twenties, I broke free and carved out the life I wanted for myself again.

This is a tremendously entertaining and thought-provoking short book, the autobiography of the author of Girl, Woman, Other and of The Emperor’s Babe, taking her from childhood in Woolwich to fame and success as a Booker Prize winning author. As with all good autobiographies, there is a fair bit of self-reflection; I found her accounts of her love life (mainly lesbian in her 20s, mainly straight before and since) interesting (other people’s lovel lives are almost always interesting) and I also appreciated her frankness about the shortcomings of some of her earlier books, though I may try and get one or two of them anyway – in particular Blonde Roots, an alternate history which was on the 2008 Artchur C. Clarke Award shortlist. She is also very clear about the impact of racism and sexism on her career, which originally was intended to be on the stage (and she has done a good deal of stage work). Punches well above its weight, as does the writer. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white writer. Next on that pile is Goliath, by Tochi Onyebuchi.

The Lost Skin, by Andy Frankham-Allen; Scary Monsters, by Simon Forward

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Two more in the Candy Jar series of Lethbridge-Stewart stories, a novella by the “showrunner” and a novel by a veteran Who writer.

The Lost Skin, by Andy Frankham-Allen. Second paragraph of third chapter:

He eventually found the Docherty house, but Mr Docherty was of no help.

This is really good, one of the best of the series so far. It takes the Brigadier and friends to John O’Groats in the far north of Scotland, where they are investigating something resembling the selkie myth; at the same time they are pursued by journalist Harold Chorley and his associate Larry Greene. It turns out that Chorley is actually from Monaghan and reinvented himself with posh English accent to become a journalist, making him one of very few Irish characters in the Whoniverse. The whole thing is very well done, playing with identity and fate, and I strongly recommend it even for those who are less familiar with this continuity. Spinoff fiction at its best. You can get it here.

The Laughing Gnome: Scary Monsters, by Simon A. Forward. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Major Grigoriy Bugayev parked the service truck at the base of the steps. In his mirror, the fuel truck veered gently to a stop under the airliner’s wing.

Perhaps my concentration was weak while on holiday, but I found this rather confusing and not all that interesting. The Brigadier and friends jump all along their own timelines, including alternative timelines, and it did not make a lot of sense for me. I may try it again. You can get it here.

The Initiate, by Louise Cooper

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Back in 2017 I read a Doctor Who novella by Louise Cooper, who I had not previously heard of, and was really impressed. Her best known work is the Time Master trilogy, which I picked up pretty cheaply at Eastercon, and The Initiate is the first volume. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

Taunan pointed towards a familiar dark patch in the sward ahead, and carefully the two riders guided their horses over it, making sure that not one hoof strayed beyond its boundaries. And as they crossed it, the change began.

I enjoyed it. The protagonist undergoes a fairly standard fantasy narrative arc, exiled from his home after an unfortunate magical accident to get trained at wizard school; but he is a deeply flawed individual, and the effect of the dark side of his personality on his colleagues and friends is well depicted. A rounded off novel in itself which still leaves us well set up for the next book. You can get it here.

This was my top unread sf book; next on that pile is Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri.

Saturday reading

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Current
The Traders’ War, by Charles Stross
The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich

Last books finished
Doctor Who and the Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks
The Time Warrior, by Matthew Kilburn
Roger Zelazny’s Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt
That Damn’d Thing Called “Honour”: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860, by James Kelly
The Harp and the Blade, by John Myers Myers
The Kosovo Indictment, by Michael O’Reilly
The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Next books
The Carhullan Army, by Sarah Hall
“Tangents”, by Greg Bear

Inception

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Inception won the 2011 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and also SFWA’s Ray Bradbury Award for that year. Hugo voters gave it a thumping win at both stages of the ballot.

IMDB users rank it the top film of the year on both scales. It beat How To Train Your Dragon, Toy Story 3 and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for both Hugo and Bradbury; the other Hugo finalist was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, and the other Bradbury finalist was my favourite Doctor Who episode of that year, Vincent and the Doctor. I voted for it myself for the Hugo.

A few Oscar and Doctor Who crossovers here. At the top is Leonardo di Caprio, here the protagonist Cobb, previously Billy in The Departed and before that Jack in Titanic.

Tom Berenger, Browning here, was a sergeant in Platoon (my least favourite Oscar winner).

And Earl Cameron, credited here as “elderly bald man” though he clearly is not bald, was the astronaut Glyn Williams in The Tenth Planet, William Hartnell’s last story as the lead actor of Doctor Who in 1966, 54 years before Inception.

Slightly to my surprise, neither Michael Caine nor Pete Postlethwaite (who died soon after the film was released) had previously been in Oscar-winning or Hugo/Nebula/Bradbury winning films.

Back in 2011, I wrote:

In forty years’ time, when my grandchildren (or yours) ask me how I voted in this year’s Hugos, I think this is the only defensible choice. Admittedly I found it rather hard to follow, due to being in pain and on various drugs while watching it in several installments, but that was true when I watched all the others as well, so in fact not a great excuse. It looks and sounds utterly fantastic, and is clearly paying homage to Philip K. Dick while bringing in various other sexual and social paranoias, in the ultimate example of someone’s personal relationships interfering with their career. I wasn’t totally sure about [Elliot] Page, but maybe my appreciation would have been greater under normal circumstances. In any case, no work of art is perfect, and I can happily give this my top vote.

Again, unfortunately, I watched the film while suffering from a mild tummy upset so again my concentration was not all that it should have been. But I felt that a lot of balls were juggled with consummate skill here – the layers of dreams, the gradual realisation of what is really true and what isn’t, the capitalist struggle for resources taken into the realm of the subconscious. I also liked Elliot Page’s performance more this time around. I’m putting it in 12th place in my rankings, just below Contact and ahead of Superman.

That year’s Oscar winner was The King’s Speech, which I will turn to next.

Dalek Combat Training Manual, by Richard Atkinson and Mike Tucker

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First page of Section III:

This is a lovely lovely book about the Daleks, supposedly by the Time Lords, citing all of the Doctor’s televised adventures with them and constructing as much continuity as is possible. Nothing very new for me, but a joy none the less. Well done Richard Atkinson and Mike Tucker for putting it together. You can get it here.

September 2017 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

I went to Sofia once and London twice that month, the second London trip combining with a conference at Christ Church in Oxford, where I met Sir Tim Berners Lee:

and finished with a formal dinner at Blenheim Palace.

Back in London the next day, I went to the Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Their Mortal Remains: The Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum

My other cultural expedition was to Leuven for a really great historical tour.

Along the Dijle with Bo

This was also the month that I started my sequence of Oscar-winning films with Wings.

I read 15 books that month.

Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 38)
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
A Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction, by Jack Fennell
Peoplewatching, by Desmond Morris
Space Helmet for a Cow, vol 2, by Paul Kirkley
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sf (non-Who): 4 (YTD 60)
Synners, by Pat Cadigan
Press Cuttings, by George Bernard Shaw
The Red Leaguers, by Shan F. Bullock
The Famished Road, by Ben Okri
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Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 42)
How The Doctor Changed My Life, ed. Simon Guerrier
Life During Wartime, ed. Paul Cornell
Diamond Dogs, by Mike Tucker
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Comics: 4 (YTD 21)
Antarès, Épisode 2, by Leo
Onthuld, by Kristof Spaey and Bart Vaessens
Antarès, Épisode 3, by Leo
Antarès, Épisode 4, by Leo
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3,600 pages (YTD 44,000)
1/15 (YTD 48/178) by women (Cadigan)
1/15 (YTD 16/178) by PoC (Okri)

The best of these by a long way was Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking, Fast and Slow; you can get it here. The worst is the near-future (of 1904) Irish independence novel The Red Leaguers, but you can get it here.

Alaska Sampler 2014: Ten Authors from the Great Land, eds Deb Vanasse and David Marusek

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Second paragraph of third chapter (an extract from Still Points North: An Alaskan Memoir, by Leigh Newman):

Some identifiers: The Great Alaskan Dad flies his plane on floats in the summer and on skis in the winter. He hunts for caribou, moose, wild sheep, wild goats, geese, and ducks, plus fishes for halibut, salmon, and trout. No matter where he goes, his outfit remains the same: falling-down hip boots, patched wool pants, drugstore sunglasses with Polaroid lenses for spotting fish underwater, and a Stearns life jacket with a red plastic tag that reads PULL-IN-THE-CASE-OF-AN-EMERGENCY, which has never been pulled, despite his frequent, always almost fatal emergencies. A buck knife — the blade stained with dried unidentified blood and slime — dangles from a lanyard somewhere on his person.

This is a collection of ten pieces by ten Alaskan writers, which I guess I picked up due to the unlikely happenstance that Alaskan author David Marusek was my roommate at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow. The majority of the pieces are fiction, but I found myself more drawn to the non-fiction pieces – the standout pieces are extracts from A Time Machine Called the Chilkoot Trail, by Dana Stabenow (better known as a mystery writer) and from Cold River Spirits by Jan Harper-Haines. Though it’s all good, and certainly knocks on the head any thought you may have had that Alaska is devoid of culture.

You can get both the 2014 and 2015 Alaska samplers for free here. The 2015 version has the same editors and twelve authors, some overlapping with the 2014 volume.

This was the shortest unread book that I had acquired in 2015. Next on that pile is Political Animals, by Bev Laing.

Operation Volcano, by Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel

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I realised a couple of weeks ago that I had paid for a couple of Humble Bundles of Doctor Who comics published by Titan over the years, and now had dozens of unread books to add to my Librarything catalogue. (Which is going to mean a big jump in the number of unread books that I log at the end of this month.) I’m going to go through them in order of internal chronology, hopefully at a rate of one a month, which will be enough for several years to go…

So that means starting with Operation Volcano, a collection of Seventh Doctor stories first published in 2018 as a three-shot series and then collected as a graphic novel. The majority of pages are taken up with the title story, by no less than Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch, which takes the Doctor and Ace to Australia for an adventure of alien infiltration with Group Captain Gilmore. It’s a well done, densely written adventure, which perhaps shows that the comics medium does not suffer the same limitations as the screen.

Second frame of third part of “Operation Volcano”:

There are also three shorter stories in the volume. “Hill of Beans”, by Richard Dinnick, takes the Psychic Circus from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy to a planet ruled by a president who looks just like Donald Trump. the art is by Jessica Martin who played Mags in the TV story and whose character features here. I’m afraid it did not really work for me.

“The Armageddon Gambit”, by John Freeman and Christopher Jones, is a less ambitious but more successful Doctor-and-Ace-outwit-the-aliens tale. Given that it is the third story in the book, I’ll give you its second frame as well.

(I think we know the answer to the alien commander’s questions)

Finally, an unexpected treat: a six-pager from Paul Cornell and John Stokes, “In-Between Times”, which explores the relationships between Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, the First Doctor and the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan. Rather lovely; and I suspect it may be the most recently published new First Doctor comic as of the time of writing.

You can get Operation Volcano here (if you didn’t get the Humble Bundle like I did). Next up is an Eighth Doctor volume, A Matter of Life and Death.

Three books from the Hugo packet

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Hugo voting is over for this year, and the winners will be revealed in three weeks. The Hugo voter packet included several books that were not themselves on the final ballot (though their authors or editors were). I’m therefore giving myself a bit more licence to write up those that I read in the last couple of weeks.

Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell (who is an Astounding finalist). Second paragraph of third chapter:

Kiem had the photo in his head, but it was still a shock to see that grave stare right in front of him. Jainan’s dark eyes gave a hidden spark of electricity to an expression that was otherwise entirely proper and neutral. His clothes were Thean, a half-sleeved tunic with a blunter, looser cut than Iskat styles, in a muted blue that split the difference between a formal outfit and mourning grays.

A space empire tale with full marriage equality and gender diversity. Yet at the same time there are arranged marriages, and the two chaps at the centre of the story are forced into one at the very beginning (and inevitably discover that they quite like each other by the end). Inventive and entertaining, but I struggled a bit with the empire’s political and diplomatic structures, which are completely inflexible up to the point where the plot needs them to be suddenly flexible. You can get it here.

Soulstar, by C.L. Polk (third in the Kingston Cycle, one of the Best Series finalists). Second paragraph of third chapter:

Marlon handled the Windweaver shifts and sent two of them to board the train’s engine car. It looked strange to see its stack smoking with the leavings of burning coal, but all trains could run on coal if there was an emergency. People gathered on the platform, some gathered in clumps organizing their roles on the trains, others getting in the way with their gawking.

I could not get into this, not having read the first two volumes, and gave up not very far into it. This illustrates one of the real problems of the Best Series category, as I have repeatedly argued; a diligent voter cannot possibly familiarise themselves with all of the relevant material, so most votes are cast from imperfect knowledge of the finalists. Though if I had been the author, I think I would have included the first rather than the third volume of the trilogy in the Hugo voter packet. You can get it here.

Swordheart, by T. Kingfisher (part of the World of the White Rat, also a Best Series finalist). Second paragraph of third chapter:

“A man just came out of the sword. I drew the sword and he appeared.”

This was much easier to grasp. A fantasy world with, again, gender diversity, but where old gender roles remain strong and our protagonist, a young widow, discovers that she has inherited a sword which summons a long-dead warrior when it is drawn. The warrior may be long-dead but he is perfectly vigorous when he needs to be, and they have a very satisfying confrontation with the forces of conformity and greed. I enjoyed this one a lot. You can get it here.

Heaven Sent, by Kara Dennison; Hell Bent, by Alyssa Franke

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The two next in sequence in the generally wonderful Black Archives series of monographs on particular Doctor Who stories. In general I write one post per Black Archive, but that’s partly because in general I have already written a lot of material on each story; that’s less the case with the more recent stories, and in any case these two stories are quite closely linked, so I’m giving you both of them here.

Heaven Sent is, in my completely objective view, one of the best episodes of New Who and possibly the best of the Capaldi era. It’s the one where the Doctor finds himself imprisoned in a tower, doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again until he achieves freedom; Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor is the only speaking part, though we also see Jenna Coleman as the recently deceased Clara, and the mysteriously threatening Veil (played by Jami Reid-Quarrell). It is directed by Rachel Talalay, who is one of the best directors of Doctor Who ever, and written by Steven Moffat, who sometimes dropped the ball but is fantastic when on form, and this time he is on form. It looks great and was the last Doctor Who episode to do at all well in the Hugos (coming second to Jessica Jones). I mentioned it as my top Twelfth Doctor episode in my list of recommendations for people who want to get into New Who.

Kara Dennison’s excellent monograph starts with an introduction wherein she makes the point that this is a rare, possibly unique, case of a Doctor Who story which is all about the character development of the title character. We have the Doctor grieving and guilty over Clara’s death, imprisoned in a castle which will take billions of years to break out of, learning from repetition. An extraordinary setup.

The first chapter analyses the story in Jungian terms, which after all is a pretty obvious thing to do: the rooms, the dust and skulls, the moat, the ascent and descent. This analysis mainly works because Jung was largely right, and hit on some pretty deep threads of the mind.

The second chapter looks at the only other significant presence in the story the Veil, and how it reflects the Doctor’s own personality and experience. And also Freddy Krueger from Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.

The very short third chapter looks at how the Doctor’s repetition of the path through the castle changes both him and the path, and how the clues are laid out; is he the king or the shepherd boy? Or both? Its second paragraph is:

It is, of course, the way of the Doctor. Despite the Doctor’s constant talk of ‘fixed points,’ with everything from Jack Harkness1 to moon dragons2, he can’t claim that he’s ever left a site untouched.
1 Utopia (2007).
2 Kill the Moon.

The fourth chapter looks at the Doctor’s personality in itself, and how it has been developing since the last season of Old Who (including in Moffat’s The Curse of Fatal Death); and in particular how Heaven Sent exposes some of the flaws in his character.

The fifth chapter looks at time loops, bringing in the fascinating case of the Endless Eight anime which I was previously unaware of. (Also of course Groundhog Day and The Dark Tower.)

A final brief sixth chapter admits that Moffat may not have been thinking about Jung at all. To be honest that misses the point for me; if Jung was right (and I think he was), we are all subconsciously thinking along Jungian lines, whether we like it or not.

Anyway, a book that gave me new things to consider about a favourite story. You can get it here.

The season finale which immediately followed Heaven Sent was Hell Bent, which I do not rate as highly, though rewatching I realised that it does have a number of excellent aspects. The Doctor, having escaped at the end of the last episode, seizes control on Gallifrey, brings Clara back to life but ends up with no memories of her; meanwhile she ends up romping around the universe with Maisie Williams’ character Ashildr/Me.

On first watching, and on rewatching before writing this, I found the story a bit too convoluted to be completely entertaining. However there are some lovely bits. The regeneration of the Gallifreyan general, previously played by Ken Bones, into Tnia Miller is the first clear onscreen change of a Time Lord between apparent races and genders. It was also my first introduction to Miller, who I have since found captivating in Years and Years and Foundation.

And on the one hand, I slightly regret Moffat’s tendency not to let the dead stay dead, but on the other, I actually prefer this closure to Clara’s story than the one we got in Face the Raven; and Maisie Williams is always a fun element to add to the mix.

When I visited the Doctor Who studio in 2015, the Tardis set was still set up from this story. The books on the shelves include a lot of H.E. Bates.

Alyssa Franke (who in real life works on the staff of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand) has provided what I found a rather redemptive reading of Hell Bent, persuading me that there are indeed hidden depths to it; in particular she brings a feminist analysis to the story, which certainly made me reconsider it (in a good way). And also I have to admit that her fannish enthusiasm for Hell Bent is slightly infectious.

A brief introduction sets out her stall, quoting a glorious line from the script:

‘The Doctor is flying around the classic console, like a distinguished Scottish actor who’s slightly too excited for his own good.’

and concludes,

My hope is that you will read this and not see it as a definitive statement on Hell Bent’s feminist values, but rather as an exploration of how it explores themes of power, privilege, patriarchy, and autonomy. It’s the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

The first full chapter examines the Doctor’s patriarchal flaws, particularly of the Tenth and Twelfth Doctors, and looks at how he often erodes, or attempts to erode, the autonomy of the women who he meets and travels with. Clara’s fate is in stark opposition to Donna’s, and must surely be read as a commentary on it.

The second chapter looks at the Western genre in Doctor Who, given that large chunks of Hell Bent are set in the US desert (in a diner which turns out to be Clara and Ashildr’s Tardis) and also given the dynamic between the Doctor and the Gallifreyans. Franke makes some telling comparisons with Shane.

The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

Clara was always a character who was never content to play second fiddle to the Doctor. When Steven Moffat first wrote the character, he imagined her as a young, contemporary, female version of the Doctor, who would be ‘terribly clever’ but also have ‘a wayward ego’, reflecting both the Doctor’s strengths and flaws. And like the Doctor, she isn’t particularly suited to living an everyday, domestic life. Moffat said that Clara ‘doesn’t feel like she particularly fits in the world that she lives in’ and that ‘she’s not really very good at living a normal life.’ 1
1 Anderson, Kyle, ‘Steven Moffat on Clara Becoming the Doctor in Doctor Who Series 8’.

It looks in more detail at Clara and the extent to which she was always set up as a contrast to the Doctor – I had not noticed that Jenna Coleman is credited ahead of Peter Capaldi in Death in Heaven – and compares her arc and departure with the other New Who companions, again notably Donna, but also Rose and Amy. (Martha, who leaves completely of her own volition, is the exception.)

The fourth chapter looks briefly at Clara’s leitmotif – I like that fact that the Black Archives often do include a look at the incidental music for the show. It’s really neat that the Doctor plays it diegetically on his guitar when he meets Clara in the desert without knowing who she is.

The long, final fifth chapter mentions Hell Bent only incidentally as part of a sustained campaign by Moffat to normalise the possibility that the Doctor could be a woman, undoing the harm of his jokey introduction of Joanna Lumley in The Curse of Fatal Death. I mentioned above that my own most vivid memory of the episode is the General’s regeneration into Tnia Miller, and I’m sure that I’m not alone. But Franke goes in depth into public statements and other sources to show how the ground was prepared for Jodie Whittaker by Moffat.

So, this is the Black Archive at its best: I like it when (as with Heaven Sent) they produce good and thought-provoking analysis of a story that I already like; but I love it when they produce good and thought-provoking analysis of a story that I did not particularly care for, and prod me into reassessing the experience. You can get the Hell Bent monograph here.

Next up: The Curse of Fenric.

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Daleks (82) | The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Massacre (2) | The Ark (81)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | Mawdryn Undead (80) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)

Saturday reading

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Current
Roger Zelazny’s Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt
The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
That Damn’d Thing Called “Honour”: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860, by James Kelly
Doctor Who and the Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks

Last books finished
Scary Monsters, by Simon A. Forward
Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs
Sprawl, ed. Cat Sparks
The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter
The Curse of Fenric, by Una McCormack

Next books
The Harp and the Blade, by John Myers Myers
The Revolution Trade, by Charles Stross

Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie

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I finished rereading Midnight’s Children almost two weeks ago, but had not yet got around to blogging it until yesterday’s terrible news pushed me into action. It’s good to hear that Salman Rushdie is likely to survive this dreadful attack, but awful that he has been grievously wounded in the course of what should have been a normal professional engagement.

I fear that there are lessons here for anyone involved with organising cultural events; none of us is safe from a determined malefactor. I know that the internal culture of sf conventions is increasingly conscious of security risks, both internal and external. It sucks but it is necessary.

It should also be noted that the risk comes from all extremes. No ideology or belief system has a monopoly on the use of political violence. Christians, Jews, atheists, leftists and right-wingers all use terrorism. Anyone who says that it is a uniquely Muslim phenomenon can go forth and multiply with themselves.

This particular incident is almost certainly rooted in the fatwa pronounced against Rushdie back in 1989 by Ruhollah Khomeini, shortly before his death. I have always suspected that it was an outworking of Iranian politics at the time; the dying Ayatollah wanting to reinforce the place of his regime as a champion of Islam against the West, as the world in general was undergoing revolutionary changes, and therefore picking on a very prominent Westernised Muslim writer as an easy target of opportunity.

The practical effects for Rushdie were devastating even before yesterday. I recommend reading the account he wrote (in the third person) for the New Yorker ten years ago. He makes a very interesting point about the real problem as he saw it:

When friends asked what they could do to help, he pleaded, “Defend the text.” The attack was very specific, yet the defense was often a general one, resting on the mighty principle of freedom of speech. He hoped for, felt that he needed, a more particular defense, like those made in the case of other assaulted books, such as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Ulysses,” or “Lolita”—because this was a violent attack not on the novel in general, or on free speech per se, but on a particular accumulation of words, and on the intentions and integrity and ability of the writer who had put those words together.

I don’t feel well informed enough to comment in much more detail. I read The Satanic Verses fifteen years ago and found the critique of Islam pretty mild stuff, at least to what I am used to reading about Catholicism. I hope that Rushdie survives to write more.

My copy of Midnight’s Children was given to me 35 years ago by a dear friend who I have since fallen out of touch with. Opening it again was a return to the better times of that relationship, and I felt a warm glow of nostalgia just from the title page. I enjoyed it over Christmas in 1987, and I enjoyed it again now. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug – that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust. That is why I have resolved to confide in paper, before I forget. (We are a nation of forgetters.)

This weekend is the 75th anniversary of the Midnight of the title, the moment of India’s independence in 1947. The book is the story of India in the last years of British rule and the first thirty-odd years of independence, and it covers also Pakistan and Bangladesh, because you can’t tell the full story otherwise. We know we are onto a good thing in the second chapter, when hereditary nasal problems prove an unexpected blessing to the narrator’s grandfather during the Amritsar massacre:

As the fifty-one men march down the alleyway a tickle replaces the itch in my grandfather’s nose. The fifty-one men enter the compound and take up positions, twenty-five to Dyer’s right and twenty-five to his left; and Adam Aziz ceases to concentrate on the events around him as the tickle mounts to unbearable intensities. As Brigadier Dyer issues a command the sneeze hits my grandfather full in the face. ‘Yaaaakh-thoooo!’ he sneezes and falls forward, losing his balance, following his nose and thereby saving his life.

The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, is one of the thousand children born in the first hour of India’s independence, all of whom are endowed with supernatural powers of one kind or another. He is perpetually conflicted about his own identity, unaware that in fact he was swapped at birth with the child of a poorer neighbour. His life loops in and out of Indian (and Pakistani and Bangladeshi) history; his powers prove more a curse than a blessing; the political becomes personal and the personal political. It is tremendously engaging; sometimes funny, sometimes very bleak, sometimes both.

If you don’t know a lot about India (or Pakistan or Bangladesh), as I did not in 1987, you’ll learn a lot from this and enjoy the process. If you do know a bit more, I think you’d still enjoy it. I think the one point that has not aged all that well is that the protagonist is actually not a very pleasant person, especially to the women in his life (who are in general as well drawn as the men), and that gets a bit tiresome. But overall I can see why it was acclaimed at the time and why it remains popular. You can get it here.

This was the top book on my shelves which I had read but not yet written up on line. Next is a much older magical book, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.