BSFA Award: Best Non-fiction

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Advance warning: I only had time to read the Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Non-Fiction categories this year, so there will be no write-up here of the BSFA Award shortlist in the new Best Book for Younger readers category. I simply did not have time, and I wonder about the wisdom of adding another full category of books to a fairly short window for reading the shortlists between announcement and deadline. I’m also conscious that, as with yesterday’s post, I’m writing this in a bit of a rush, which is not ideal and means I am not doing any of the nominees justice. Anyway, we shall see. (I have previously written up Best Art, Best Short Fiction and Best Novel)

I have sometimes complained in the past of the Best Non-fiction category not being serious enough. I think it has ended up too serious this year, with all but one of the finalists being firmly academic essays, books or books of essays. My two simple demands of such writing are first, that I feel more educated about what I have already read, and second, that I have some pointers for new stuff to read. I’m afraid that very few of this year’s list did that for me.

6) Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades, by Anna McFarlane. Second sentence of third chapter:

Pattern Recognition is the first novel in the Blue Ant trilogy, which goes on to include Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010). It follows Cayce, a young woman with an acute sensitivity to branding and marketing. This sensitivity, or allergy, manifests itself as a physical reaction that can include nausea and vomiting: ‘some people ingest a single peanut and their head swells like a basketball. When it happens to Cayce, it’s her psyche’ (17). She uses this ‘skill’ in her job as a coolhunter, spotting trends in fashion and passing them on to brands and marketing companies Cayce’s role is based on the sensitivity of her perceptive power – as she puts it, try to recognize a pattern before anyone else does’ (86). She is also a fan of an intemet phenomenon known as ‘the footage’, a series of short films lacking in temporal markers and uploaded anonymously to the intemet. The footage is the subject of much speculation among its followers, the ‘footageheads’ (21) about the origin of the work and whether the short films released online are part of a bigger, complete project. Cayce is hired by Hubertus Bigend of the Blue Ant Corporation, ostensibly to help the company choose a logo. It transpires, however, that Bigend’s real motivation is for Cayce to discover the makers of the footage. Cayce tracks them to Russia via Japan before discovering the truth about the intemet phenomenon: the footage is created by a young woman named Nora, disabled by a piece of shrapnel lodged in her brain, with the help of her twin sister, Stella. Throughout the novel Cayce struggles to come to terms with the loss of her father, Win, a Cold War security expert who went missing on 9/11. To make the connections between Patten Recog-nition and the gestalt I begin by explaining Thomas Kuhn’s concept of the paradigm shift in relation to scientific revolutions before highlighting the nature of the paradigm as a gestalt switch. The ‘anomaly’ of 9/11 undermines the paradigm that existed before, and the reliability of pattern recognition itself. This crisis is expressed through Cayce and her struggle with her own gestalt perception as she attempts to find the maker of the footage and struggles with ‘faulty pattern recognition’. Despite the novel’s contemporary setting it retains some characteristics of science fiction and I argue that the tension between the dystopian impulse of advertising and the utopian impulse of the footage is one of the ways the novel continues to work in a speculative tradition, and begins to imagine a future. Just as the imagery of chaos theory is used to depict human exceptionalism in visual language, the power of the gestalt switch is used as a visual way of describing estrangement from an unpredictable world and the oscillation between utopian and dystopian futures

This is an in-depth analysis of the writing of William Gibson, an author who is much admired by many people, but who I personally find almost unreadable. I read to the end but my views were not changed. Fortunately I was able to get a free copy; you can get it here for a hefty price.

5) The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe in Contemporary Culture, by Mark Bould. Second sentence of third chapter:

Since [Paul] Kingsnorth and [Arundhati] Roy had each published only a single novel at the time [2015], this is hardly a damning indictment or indicative of anything much. But [Amitav] Ghosh’s claims about their work, and his own, betrays a quite stunning literal-mindedness about what it means for a text to be ‘about’ climate change.

Earnest book on climate change and science fiction, which did not really make the arguments very interesting. You can get it here.

4) “Science Fiction and the Pathways out of the COVID Crisis”, by Val Nolan. Third paragraph (of a total of five):

In that way, science fiction is uniquely equipped to envision the ‘charismatic mega-ideas’ which the COVID-19 pandemic asks us to internalise (Robinson 2020). It comprises a dynamic reservoir of assumptions and expectations present ‘both in casual conversation […] and in more formal capacities’ such as disaster preparedness exercises (Mirmalek 2020, 102). Through prose, graphic narratives, films, and TV shows, the genre has long informed us about likely responses to the kinds of revised social contract which now seem to await us, especially that pertaining to human health and enhanced (self-)surveillance. It does this through exaggerated allegories, a process traceable to SF’s originator, Mary Shelley, who herself reconnoitred the viral apocalypse subgenre in her 1826 novel The Last Man. Though Shelley is not quite Patient Zero for pandemic SF, modern science fiction continues to address the themes she emphasised. Take, for instance, the psychological impact of the half-deserted world in Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joseph Russo, 2019), a shared cultural moment prefiguring the miasma of loss, languishment, and constant apprehension which defines our socially distant present. The use of SF in this fashion may seem outlandish, maybe even frivolous to some critics, however one is put in mind of the observation in Max Brooks’s World War Z (2006) that ‘no matter how unlikely or far-fetched a possibility might be, one must always dig deeper’ (Brooks 2006). Science fiction is the genre which digs deeper, and our current ‘space of apocalyptic expectation’ is one which it has explored for nearly two centuries (Caduf 2015).

Nothing much wrong with this essay except that it is less than 1500 words in length, which would be skimping it for an undergraduate assignment, never mind an award-winning piece. You can read it here.

3) Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini. Second sentence of third essay (“Relationships with the Land in Fantasy and Science Fiction: Landscape as Identity, Mentor, or Antagonist”, by Sarah McPherson):

Well known authors from the fantasy tradition who use landscape effectively in this way include J. R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising Sequence), and Alan Garner (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath). As well as these, this paper will discuss more recent works in which the landscape is integral to the characters and narrative, from N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth trilogy), Kazuo Ishiguro (The Buried Giant), and Zoe Gilbert (Folk).

Collection of essays on various aspects of world-building as applied to SF and fantasy, some of them about authors I don’t know or don’t like, some about authors who I do know and like such as Tolkien. The standout for me was Cheryl Morgan’s piece on sex, which had me googling for information about hyena clitorises. You can get it here.

2) Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Colour, by Joy Sanchez-Taylor. Second sentence of third chapter:

The authors discussed in this chapter address this tension between peoples of color as “both dangerous and disposable” through the use of post-apocalyptic landscapes, one of the most recognizable tropes of science fiction. Science fiction and fantasy texts ranging from Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) to screen-adapted popular works such as World War Z (2006) and The Hunger Games (2008–10) portray the end of the world as an unforgiving environment where only exceptional white humans can survive. As authors and scholars begin to consider what role race plays in the end-of-the-world scenario, contemporary authors of color are writing post-apocalyptic works that center the narrative voices of peoples of color. As Lavender III notes in the introduction to Black and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fiction (2014), in order to move forward to a more racially inclusive science fiction, authors and critics must “[lift] blacks, indigenous peoples, and Latinos out from the background of this historically white genre” (6). The works discussed in this chapter are a small sample of the contemporary voices of color emerging in post-apocalyptic science fiction.

Yet another firmly academic tome, but somehow this gelled for me in a way that none of the others did, looking at familiar sfnal themes and their links with historic racism, and providing me with a good reading list for future self-education. Lovely cover too. You can get it here.

1) Octothorpe Podcast, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty. Second sentence of third 2021 episode:

John: So many times, Liz.

It would be astonishing if this does not win by a large margin. John, Alison and Liz have somehow caught the Zeitgeist, and Octothorpe has become compulsive listening for a lot of us. Also I vote on principle for anything that actually names me, and I’ve been referred to a couple of times in the margins (and even got two whole sentences into #45, between 35:20 and 35:40). So it gets my vote. You can listen to it here.

See you all at Eastercon, where I am tremendously honoured to be one of the Guests of, er, Honour, along with three much better-known and more talented people.

BSFA Award: Best Novel

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Advance warning: I only had time to read the Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Non-Fiction categories this year, so there will be no write-up here of the BSFA Award shortlist in the Best Book for Younger readers category. I simply did not have time, and I wonder about the wisdom of adding another full category of books to a fairly short window for reading the shortlist between announcement and deadline. I’m also conscious that I’m writing this and tomorrow’s post on Best Non-Fiction in a bit of a rush, which is not ideal and means I am not doing any of the nominees justice. Anyway, we shall see. (I have previously written up Best Art and Best Short Fiction.)

6) Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Second paragraph of third chapter:

The Vulture God erupted out of unspace, close enough to set Roshu’s traffic control systems complaining, and Idris began bootstrapping the ship’s systems and waking the others. Roshu wasn’t his favourite place in the galaxy, frankly.

Dismayed to admit that I found this very tough going, and I have generally really liked Tchaikovsky’s work before. I think I was reading it during a particularly busy week at work, and my concentration wasn’t up to it. You’ll probably enjoy it more than I did. You can get it here.

5) Skyward Inn, by Aliya Whiteley. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Despite all this, Fosse had known he would return to the farm. There was Geography on the timetable before break, and that sense in the air that he was ready for something, some change, that he wanted to find for himself. He had been told not to return, and yet he needed to understand how the man, the stranger, could have taken that farm away from him so easily.

Again I think my concentration was challenged when reading this, apparently drawing on Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, which I have not read. You can get it here.

4) Purgatory Mount, by Adam Roberts. Second paragraph of third chapter:

The drive took a real long time, and he thought: Double-uh-oh.

I don’t always get on with Roberts’ fiction (I’ve always found him very pleasant in person) but I largely enjoyed this one – except that I could not work out the link between the main story and the framing narrative until it was explained in the epilogue. You can get it here.

3) The Green Man’s Challenge, by Juliet E. McKenna. Second paragraph of third chapter:

I walked over to Fin’s Toyota as she was getting out. Her white-blonde hair was quite a lot longer than I was expecting. Other than that, she looked the same as always: average height, average build, and as far as I’m concerned, absolutely gorgeous in jeans and a cream sweater. We stood looking at each other for an awkward moment. I wanted to kiss her, but that probably wasn’t sensible these days. She was making no move to get closer to me.

Here on the other hand I felt a lot more comfortable with the story, a solid intrusive fantasy with a bit of romance on the side. You can get it here.

2) A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine. Second paragraph of third chapter:

(Three months ago, even if she’d somehow reached this exalted position in the Ministry, complete with her own tiny office with a tiny window only one floor down from the Minister herself, Three Seagrass would have been asleep in her house, and missed the message entirely. There: she’d justified clinical-grade insomnia as a meritorious action, one which would enable her to deal with a problem before anyone else awoke; that was half her work done for the day, surely.)

As previously reported, I hugely enjoyed it; horribly lethal alien incursions, grand sweeping palace politics, and a smart kid and a fish-out-of-water diplomat who separately try to save the day. You can get it here.

1) Blackthorn Winter, by Liz Williams. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Serena, fellow list-maker, had once asked her why she didn’t just put them on a tablet or her phone, but Bee preferred paper and pen. It made it easier for her to keep track. She tried not to list things that she had already done, to make the list look more accomplished, but often failed. Now, she took the pen and drew a firm line through church meeting. Because that was about to happen and soon Bee would be on her way out into the wet cold of the night and down the lane and into the meeting room which joined onto Hornmoon church. It was a meeting about the Christmas flowers because Bee, in an unguarded moment, had offered to become a church warden.

Sequel to Comet Weather, which I also really enjoyed last year. Lovely liminal contemporary fantasy, with lots of Doctor Who references as well. Get it here.

December 2015 books, and 2015 reading 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.

My one trip that month was to visit my employers’ headquarters in Washington DC, a first visit to the mothership a year or so after I had got hired (postponed from October when a client assignment to Geneva had killed my plans to include CapClave in the trip). I also had a day in New York.

Back in Brussels, someone took a nice shot of me at the office party (I have no idea who is behind me).

I also managed to get a decent Christmas picture of all three kids.

With the transatlantic flight, I read 29 books that month.

Non-fiction: 2 (Year end 47)
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014, by Adam Roberts
 

Poetry: 1 (Year end 1)
The Whole and Rain-Domed Universe, by Colette Bryce

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (Year end 42)
Between the Acts, by Virginia Woolf
The Oxford Book of Christmas Stories, ed. Dennis Pepper

SF (non-Who): 18 (Year end 130)
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 3, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Keeping it Real, by Justina Robson
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, by Kai Ashante Wilson
Witches of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
Sunset Mantle, by Alter S. Reiss
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
The Reign of Wizardry, by Jack Williamson
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 4, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Fattypuffs and Thinifers, by Andre Maurois
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Helliconia Spring, by Brian Aldiss
Captain Future and the Space Emperor, by Edmond Hamilton
The Last Man, by Alfred Noyes
Helliconia Summer, by Brian Aldiss
The Just City, by Jo Walton
Speak Easy, by Catherynne M. Valente
Helliconia Winter, by Brian Aldiss
Jews vs Zombies, ed. Rebecca Levene and Lavie Tidhar
 

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (Year end 43)
Instruments of Darkness, by Gary Russell
The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin
The Medusa Effect, by Justin Richards
Doctor Who: Big Bang Generation, by Gary Russell
   

Comics: 2 (Year end 18)
Hark, A Vagrant!, by Kate Beaton
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer, by Sydney Padua
 

~7,500 pages (Year end 80,100)
10/29 by women (Year end 86/290) – Robinson, Bryce, Woolf, Robson, Okorafor, Valente, Walton, Levene, Beaton, Padua
3/29 by PoC (YTD 20/290) – Wilson, Okorafor, Padua

2015 Books Roundup

Total books: 290, precisely one less than the previous year’s 291; however 24 of these were dives into the first 50 pages of Clarke nominees that I knew were unlikely to win or be shortlisted. The fifth highest of the years I have been counting, but I have only passed that total in one subsequent year (last year, 2021).

Total page count: ~80,100, sixth highest of the years I have been counting, higher than any year since.

Diversity:
86 (30%) by women, the highest to date, since exceeded in both numbers and % in 2018, 2019 and 2021, and in % only in 2016.
20 (7%) by PoC, highest to date, since exceeded on both counts in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, and in % only in 2017.

Most books by a single author:
6 by Justin Richards (4), who also topped my 2014 tally.

Science Fiction (130)

Top SF books of the year:
Collectively the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, especially the winner, Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel (get it here)

Honourable mentions:
The Affirmation, by Christopher Priest (review; get it here)
Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey (review; get it here)

Enjoyed rereading:
Helliconia, by Brian Aldiss (review; get it here)
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick (review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of:
The Last Man, by Alfred Noyes (review; get it here)

The one to avoid:
The Wonder City of Oz, by John R. Neill (review; get it here)

Non-Fiction (47)

Top non-fiction book of the year:
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin (review; get it here)

Runners-up: 
Letters to Tiptree, eds Alissa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce (review; get it here)
Selected Essays, by Virginia Woolf (review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of: 
Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture, by Rory Rapple (review; get it here)

The one to avoid:
Wisdom from my Internet, by Michael Z. Williamson (review; get it here)

Doctor Who (43, 54 counting non-fiction and comics)

Best Who book read in 2015: 
City of Death, by Douglas Adams and James Goss (review; get it here)

Runner-up (and re-read): 
Walking to Babylon, by Kate Orman (review; get it here)

Best Whovian non-fiction:
Companion Piece: Women Celebrate the Humans, Aliens and Tin Dogs of Doctor Who, eds. L.M. Myles and Liz Barr (review; get it here)

The two that even dedicated Whovians have not heard of: 
Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal and Doctor Who and the Rebel’s Gamble, both by William H. Keith, Jr (review; get them here and here)

The one to avoid:
I did not keep good notes so will be charitable.

Non-genre Fiction (42)

Best non-sff fiction read in 2015: 
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (review; get it here)

Runner-up: 
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro (review; get it here)

Welcome rereads: 
Ulysses, by James Joyce (review; get it here)
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo (review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of: 
The Twenty-two Letters, by Clive King (review; get it here)

The one to avoid:
The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt (review; get it here)

Comics (19)

Best graphic stories read in 2015: 
The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud (review; get it here)
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua (review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of: 
De Tweede Kus, by Conz (review; get it here)

The one to avoid:
Boerke Bijbel, by Pieter de Poortere (review; get it here)

Poetry (just 1 but I enjoyed it)

The Whole and Rain-domed Universe, by Colette Bryce (review; get it here)

Worst Book of the Year

Wisdom from my Internet, by Michael Z. Williamson, possibly the worst book I have read this century

Best Book(s) of the year

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

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: See above
2016: Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot
2017: Common People: The History of an English Family, by Alison Light
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.

My younger daughter and Magritte

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Someone asked after reading about B and the king if I ever write blog posts about U, our other daughter. Well, I do sometimes; and in fact she and I had our own cultural excursion last weekend, when I had the sudden impulse to visit the Magritte Museum in central Brussels. I admit that I am not a massive Magritte fan, but it’s one of those things that as a Belgian citizen working in the capital I feel I ought to have done.

It’s interesting enough. Some of his best known works are elsewhere, of course. I missed my chance to see The Treachery of Images in Los Angeles earlier this year. The Son of Man is in a private collection. Golconda is in Houston. A dozen are in MOMA in New York.

But the Brussels museum does put him in context, and in particular you appreciate how important his wife Georgette Berger was to him. It’s also interesting to see the commercial art that he produced – and one can sense the frustration that drove him to surrealism.

One of the advantages of taking U is that she gets in at a substantial discount, and I get in at a similar discount as her companion. She gets a brisk walk looking at confusing but stimulating things, and I don’t feel I have to spend ages in every room because she doesn’t feel I should spend too long in any room either. But she did gracefully pose for me at a couple of pictures.

U enjoying “Ceci continue de ne pas être une pipe“, a drawing from 1952
which is obviously a sequel to “The Treachery of Images” (1930)
U, the green Android and “The Unexpected Answer” (1932), probably the best known in the collection.

Having tolerated me snapping her in front of those two, in the next room she spotted one that she really liked and stood beside it waiting for me to photograph her and the Android. When we got home she insisted on looking at the picture I had taken. What was going through her mind? Did the two masked men and the candlestick with three female heads resonate for her somehow? Anyway, here she is with Magritte’s Intelligence (1954).

I bought her a mug with Magritte’s clouds on, and we went home.

Saturday reading

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Current
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell
The Monk, by Matthew Lewis (a chapter a week)
The Ultimate Foe, by James Cooray Smith
Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini

Last books finished
Doctor Who: The Ultimate Foe, by Pip and Jane Baker
Purgatory Mount, by Adam Roberts
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Colour, by Joy Sanchez-Taylor

Next books
Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher
Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters

Northern Ireland Assembly elections 2022: a preview

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2017 Assembly results map
2017 Assembly election results in each constituency

Northern Ireland elects a new Assembly on 5 May, and as usual I have been crunching some numbers to establish a baseline of expectations – basically the results which would not be surprising, given the current polling which has the DUP in particular down a bit from last time. Given that there is more movement on the Unionist side, I’m taking the 18 seats in order from most to least Unionist, Lagan Valley to West Belfast. The headings in each case link to my website, where there is a lot more information.

Edited to add, after the election: Without changing my original text, I’ve noted the results in each seat.

Lagan Valley

Lagan Valley map

The SDLP’s seat, won with UUP transfers after starting from barely half a quota in 2017, is on paper the most vulnerable, and on recent performance Alliance is best placed to pick it up. The DUP’s decision to run only two candidates in a constituency where their third was the runner-up in 2017 is telling. With only five Unionist candidates and almost four Unionist quotas, one cannot exclude a lucky day for the second UUP runner or for the TUV.

What happened: Alliance gained from the SDLP.

North Down

In the most volatile constituency in Northern Ireland, Alliance is strongly placed to gain a seat based on recent performance; each of the other three parties represented here is potentially vulnerable, with the DUP facing the added complication of their former member and sitting MLA Alex Easton standing as an independent candidate.

What happened: Alliance gained from the Greens, and the DUP did indeed lose their seat to Alex Easton.

Strangford

It’s very difficult to see the DUP holding all three seats here, even in a good year (and this probably won’t be a good year). On recent showings, Alliance are better placed than the UUP to pick up; but the SDLP, who have been runners-up here in all six Assembly elections since the Good Friday Agreement, cannot be ruled out.

What happened: Alliance gained from the DUP.

East Antrim

East Antrim map

All five men elected here in 2017 are standing again, and the likeliest outcome is no change. But this is the constituency where the TUV have the best prospects of a gain, which could come from either of the other Unionist parties. If Alliance can balance two candidates ahead of SF, they too have a chance; as indeed do SF, in theory, if they can keep comfortably ahead of the trailing Alliance candidate and pull in transfers.

What happened: Alliance gained from the UUP.

East Belfast

The status quo is the most likely outcome in terms of seats – 2 DUP, 2 Alliance and 1 UUP; another constituency where the third DUP candidate was runner-up in 2017, but they are only running two this year. One cannot exclude a successful challenge from TUV or PUP, given the UUP’s historical weakness here and the DUP’s current low poll ratings. Alliance are some way off a third quota, even with all available Nationalist transfers, and anyway have only two candidates.

What happened: No change.

North Antrim

All five men elected in 2017 are standing again. Alliance will be hopeful of a gain here, but the Unionist vote remains close to four quotas and Sinn Fein’s seat looks solid enough. Within Unionism, the DUP vote would have to fall pretty far, with poor balancing, for either the UUP or TUV to threaten their second seat.

What happened: Alliance gained from the DUP, whose balancing was good but their vote fell.

South Antrim

Another seat where the third DUP candidate was runner-up in 2017, but they are only running two this time. Both Alliance and SF look secure; with only three Unionist seats, the UUP must feel that they are in with a chance of picking up the third.

What happened: No change.

Upper Bann

The SDLP were fortunate to get UUP and Alliance transfers in 2017, securing the second Nationalist seat despite SF starting with almost three times as many votes. Polling shows SF down a bit more than the SDLP, so the status quo is mildly more likely than not to prevail on the Nationalist side. A good day for the UUP would see them take the DUP seat here. Alliance are a bit further behind, but not all that far.

What happened: Alliance gained from the SDLP.

East Londonderry

The SDLP’s 2017 performance here was poor, and hit by defection, yet they still managed to get the second Nationalist seat despite starting far behind SF. If the polls are right, and the SDLP’s rating is stable with SF down a bit, the same result on the Nationalist side is more likely than not. Alliance must have hopes of a gain here; but has Claire Sugden already got those votes? The DUP vote would have to fall quite a long way for their second seat to be under threat.

What happened: No change.

North Belfast

It’s difficult to see a third Unionist seat here, and also difficult to see another Unionist emerging to challenge the DUP for their second seat – in 2017, the DUP had just under two quotas, but their nearest rivals, the UUP, less than a third of one. Alliance expect to challenge strongly, but all three Nationalists look reasonably secure, with perhaps the SDLP least so.

What happened: Alliance gained from the SDLP.

Fermanagh & South Tyrone

SF were very lucky to get the third Nationalist seat in 2017, and the SDLP should expect to regain it if they are to make any headway anywhere at all in the election. The UUP were fortune to pick up the second Unionist seat in 2017, but indications are that this will be a better year for them, so the seat split between parties on the Unionist side is likely to remain the same. Both the DUP and UUP are running strong second candidates along with their incumbents, though, so a change of personnel is distinctly possible.

What happened: No change.

South Belfast

This is the only constituency with MLAs from five different parties; will that continue?  On the 2019 local election results, Alliance could hope for a gain (most likely from the Greens); on the 2019 Westminster results, the SDLP could say the same. In 2017 the DUP’s second candidate (Emma Little-Pengelly, who was later the local MP from 2017 to 2019) was the runner-up behind her running-mate, Christopher Stalford; this year they are running only one candidate, Edwin Poots, who was briefly the party leader in 2021 and transferred here from Lagan Valley after Stalford’s sudden death in 2022.

What happened: Alliance gained from the Greens.

West Tyrone

Unionists had a generally bad year in 2017, and this is one of the three key constituencies in the West where we’ll see if that was a blip or a trend. If it was a blip, the UUP should have a chance of picking up one of SF’s three seats; if it was a trend, there will be no change.

What happened: No change.

Newry and Armagh

The UUP must have a decent chance at taking the DUP seat. Unionists had a generally bad year in 2017, and this is another of the three key constituencies in the West where we’ll see if that was a blip or a trend. If it was a blip, the UUP will gain from SF rather than from the DUP; if it was a trend, they won’t.

What happened: No change.

Mid Ulster

Again, Unionists had a generally bad year in 2017, and this is the third of the three key constituencies in the West where we’ll see if that was a blip or a trend. If it was a blip, the UUP should have a chance of picking up, either from the SDLP or one of SF’s three seats; if it was a trend, there will be no change.

What happened: No change.

South Down

Only two incumbents are standing for re-election, the lowest of any constituency. Alliance, runners up here last time, will be challenging for a seat; both the SDLP and SF are closer to their second quota than Alliance are to their first, but accidents can happen… The Unionist side is messy too, with both DUP and UUP having had certain local difficulties. There is only one Unionist seat, but it’s not necessarily the DUP’s.

What happened: Alliance gained from the SDLP.

Foyle

No change is the most likely outcome. The Unionist vote is slowly crumbling here, hovering around a quota, but it would be a very bad year for Unionists to lose it. The UUP are talking up their chances of taking the DUP seat, but I don’t see it on the previous numbers. On the Nationalist side, SF have a stronger starting point, but their internal problems here will not help, and if PBP (or anyone else) were to make an unexpected breakthrough, it would more likely come from SF than the SDLP. The SDLP are running a third candidate, but that is rather optimistic.

What happened: No change.

West Belfast

4 seats out of 5 is an unusually good result in an STV election. SF have a reasonable chance of retaining all four. The Unionist vote is below a quota, and the SDLP far below that.

Overall, I think that Unionists are likely to continue to outnumber Nationalists, but that SF will pass the DUP as the largest single party. If that is the case, will the DUP accept the results and allow a government to be formed? We shall see.

What happened: No change.

Nine Lives: My Time As MI6’s Top Spy Inside al-Qaeda, by Aimen Dean

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

When I landed, the haggard immigration officer, a man with red-rimmed eyes and a girth barely contained by his thick black belt, leafed through my passport.

Very interesting book, supposedly by a former jihadist who became a British agent within al-Qaeda; I’m sorry to start on a note of scepticism, but this is clearly a very tightly managed narrative, and in fact rather than pretend that he wrote the entire thing himself, his ghost-writers emerge from behind the veil in the afterword.

Even bearing in mind how closely the story has been crafted, it’s a very interesting tale; the author, who grew up between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, went to Bosnia as a teenage foreign fighters supporting (more or less) the Sarajevo government in the early 1990s, and graduated to the Philippines and then Pakistan and Afghanistan, before becoming sickened by the sheer nastiness of jihadism and turning himself in to the British – who promptly sent him back to serve as an asset within the system, where he continued until his cover was blown by a leak from Dick Cheney’s office.

Clearly the purpose of the narrative is twofold: to persuade potential jihadist recruits that there’s really not much in it for them, the rewards both spiritual and earthly being rather poor; and to persuade the wider global intelligence community that the British have still got what it takes. I’m largely in agreement with both propositions; given when and where I grew up, I am not a big fan of terrorism, and my sense is that British intelligence has been less badly hollowed out by the “reforms” of this century than the FCDO. At the same time, I am alert to being manipulated by the book’s authors.

The most interesting thing that I took from the book is just how limited the inner circle of international jihadist leadership is. The author keeps running up against the same people, sometimes many years apart; the core number of human resources is small, and has a tendency to become smaller through enemy action and deliberate self-sacrifice. This is the big difference with my own homeland, where political violence had wider and deeper roots on both sides of the community, and self-sacrifice was largely limited to prison protests. (Some people like to forget that the biggest terrorism campaign in Europe since the Second World War was waged by Christians against other Christians.)

Anyway, even with the caveats above, I found this well worth reading. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white author. Next on that pile is The Right to Sex, by Amia Srinivasan.

Nine Lives

Hugo ballot: Goodreads/LibraryThing stats

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The Hugo ballot is out! Congratulations to all of this year’s finalists.

I had a couple of days’ advance knowledge and prepared these tables of the finalists’ standings on Goodreads and LibraryThing; some of these numbers will have changed on GR and LT in the meantime.

Best Novel

  Goodreads   LibraryThing  
  reviewers av rating owners av rating
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir 239,092 4.53 2,252 4.3
She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan 22,276 3.96 525 4.07
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers 15,679 4.44 628 4.42
A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine 13,345 4.37 512 4.18
A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark 9,601 4.15 462 3.95
Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki 6,184 4.14 279 4.16

All very highly rated, though with a clear leader.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric, but had the highest reader rating on both systems.
The 2020 winner was fourth on this metric, and had the second highest rating on Goodreads and joint third highest on LibraryThing.
The 2019 winner was third on this metric, had the second highest rating on Goodreads (again) and the second lowest on LibraryThing.
The 2018 winner was second on this metric and had the top ratings on both systems.
The 2017 winner was also second on this metric, had the third highest rating on Goodreads and the second highest on LibraryThing.
The 2016 winner was fifth on this metric, but had the top ratings on both systems.
The 2015 winner was fourth (out of five) on all counts.
The 2014 winner was third (out of five) on this metric (counting all the Wheel of Time as one) and in the middle-ish on ratings (depending on how you count the Wheel of Time)
The 2013 winner was top on both metrics (uniquely!) and third (out of five) in ratings on both systems.
The 2012 winner was last on both Goodreads owners and ratings, and had the lowest rating on Goodreads, but was ranked and rated third (out of five) on LibraryThing.
It’s clearly an imperfect indicator. The eventual winner was in the top half of the table in four of the last nine years, in the botto, half four times, and in the middle once.

Best Novella

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers22,0314.295814.23
Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire12,3673.823283.96
A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow12,9863.73024
Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard3,2293.511863.85
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky4,0614.21144.03
The Past Is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente1,8254.181244.41

Again, all very highly rated, though again with a clear leader.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric, but had the highest LT rating and second highest GR rating.
The 2020 winner ranked top on this metric.
The 2019 winner was second on this metric but had top ratings from readers.
And I don’t seem to have done it previously.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
Lore Olympus, vol. 136,2484.433544.16
Monstress, vol. 6: The Vow1,6454.451264.22
Far Sector1,3764.29603.73
Once & Future, vol. 3: The Parliament of Magpies7414.17333.94
DIE, vol. 4: Bleed6724.18343.82
Strange Adventures6794.21183.7

A clear leader in ownership, but a different leader on user ratings.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric, third on GR ratings, but only fifth on LT ratings.
The 2020 winner was actually last on this metric, and had the second lowest ratings.
The 2019 winner was third and had the second highest ratings.

Best Related Work

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman9013.8514.38
Never Say You Can’t Survive, by Charlie Jane Anders4424.27574.63
Being Seen, by Elsa Sjunneson2214.55213.75
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds, by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre343.9126–
The Complete Debarkle, by Camestros Felapton142–
“How Twitter can ruin a life”, by Emily St. James (Vox, Jun 2021)––––

The last of these is not a standalone publication, and The Complete Debarkle clearly hasn’t hit the bookstore shelves. The LT reader rating for Never Say You Can’t Survive is the highest for any of these books. I don’t think I’ve done this for BRW before.

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik37,9804.346124.25
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao267964.254614.13
Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko53454.311174
Victories Greater Than Death, by Charlie Jane Anders 19873.552123.66
A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger14504.121013.55
Chaos on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer5384.18634.07

Again, a clear leader.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric and fourth on both GR and LT ratings.
The 2020 winner had the second lowest place on the metric, and among Goodreads reviewers; but LibraryThing readers ranked it top.
I skipped this category in 2019.
The 2018 YA Award winner was top on the metric, and among Goodreads reviewers, but only rated fifth out of six by LibraryThing users.

Elles font l’abstraction/Women in Abstraction, by Christine Macel and Laure Chavelot

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Third entry in the book:

En 1895, Alice Essington Nelson, une artiste anglaise méconnue adepte de spiritualisme, trouve dans l’art abstrait un moyen d’exprimer sa croyance dans l’au-delà. L’unique oeuvre d’Essington Nelson à avoir survécu est une énigme. Le titre Shewing the Influence of Osiris pourrais désigner Osiris comme la force qui l’inspire. Essington Nelson décrit sa technique comme automatique, suggérant par-là que ses aptitudes spirites ou parapsychiques orientent son processus créatif.
In 1895, Alice Essington Nelson, a little-known English artist and spiritualist, found in abstract art a means of expressing her belief in the beyond. Her only surviving work is an enigma. The title Shewing the Influence of Osiris might indicate Osiris as its inspiration. Essington Nelson described her technique as automatic, suggesting that her spiritualist or parapsychic gifts directed her creative process.

This was the souvenir book from the exhibition of women abstract artists that F and I went to in the Pompidou Centre in Paris last summer, listing more than fifty whose works were on display. Most of them are better known than Alice Essington Nelson; I said at the time that I’d have happily paid the entrance fee just to see Bridget Riley’s Tremor:

Tremor

Not to mention Louise Bourgeois’ work.

Bourgeois

The advantage of a book like this is that you can go back and have a longer look at some of the artists that tired feet maybe stopped you from properly appreciating in the exhibition. So for instance I picked up now on Marlow Moss, whose technique was ripped off by Mondriaan:

or Janet Sobel, who ended up a neighbour of my grandmother’s family in Plainfield, New Jersey, her drip painting style having been ripped off by Jackson Pollock:

And it inspired me also to go back and have another look at the video elements, especially Judy Chicago’s Women in Smoke.

The other thing that struck me is how I have changed. As a kid I found that abstract art in general left me baffled and often scornful; I preferred my art to actually look like something. Now I very much appreciate form for its own sake, and like to think that I am much more open to whatever message the work is trying to convey. There’s still some rubbish out there, but it’s usually worth asking what is intended.

You can probably get it here.

November 2015 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 had two nice trips with Anne that month, first to Bruges, where I became fascinated by the portraits of Baron de Keverberg and his young English wife:

Baron de Keverberg de Kessel and Mary Lodge

And then to Sofia, Bulgaria, where my former intern M married D, who I had introduced her to in the summer of 2013.

The celebrations unfortunately had to be downscaled at the last moment because it was the weekend of the Paris terrorist attacks, and D was the foreign minister of Bulgaria at the time. We returned to a locked down Brussels, where worse was to come a few months later.

This was also the month that I formally took on the role of Hugo Administrator for 2017, with Colette Fozard as my deputy. And in London for a work trip, I looked at Charles Babbage’s brain and Jonathan Swift’s cranial cavity in the Hunterian Museum.

I read 33 books that month (though in a couple of cases these were short story collections where I read only the ones from 1940).

Non-fiction: 2 (YTD 45)
The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar
Bits of Me are Falling Apart, by William Leith

Fiction (non-sf): 8 (YTD 40)
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah
The Summer Before the Dark, by Doris Lessing
Sleepyhead, by Mark Billingham
The Invention of Happiness, by Brian W. Aldiss
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
Babes in a Darkling Wood, by H.G. Wells
Waiting for Elizabeth, by Joan Rosier-Jones

SF (non-Who): 16 (YTD 112)
The Ultimate Egoist, by Theodore Sturgeon (1940 stories only)
Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories vol 2, eds. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
The Clock Strikes Twelve And Other Stories, by H. Russell Wakefield
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein (1940 stories only)
Kallocain, by Karin Boye
The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White
Somewhere! / هُناك , by Ibraheem Abbas
A Million Years to Conquer, by Henry Kuttner
Monkey Planet, by Pierre Boulle
Twice in Time, by Manly Wade Wellman
North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 1, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 2, ed. von Dimpleheimer
The Wonder City of Oz, by John R. Neill

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 39)
The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton
To the Slaughter, by Steve Cole
Oblivion, by Dave Stone
[Doctor Who: The Glamour Chronicles] Deep Time, by Trevor Baxendale

Comics : 3 (YTD 16)
The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
Saga Volume 4, by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
De Tweede Kus, by Conz

~8,600 pages (YTD 72,600)
6/33 by women (YTD 76/261) – Munro, Lessing, Rosier-Jones, Boye, Jones, Staples
2/33 by PoC (YTD 17/261) – Abbas, Staples

The best this month were Alice Munro’s collection Too Much Happiness, which you can get here; Scott McCloud’s graphic novel The Sculptor, which you can get here; and (a reread) the third part of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which you can get here.

On the other hand, The Wonder City of Oz has been justly forgotten. You can get it here (for a price).

A Hugo voting scandal from 1960

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I am grateful to David Langford for putting me on the track of an open letter from Dirce S. Archer, the Chair of Pittcon, the 1960 Worldcon, addressing allegations about the 1960 Hugos. Specifically the letter denies allegations that votes for Fanac, one of the Best Fanzine finalists, had been destroyed; but then goes on to state that 78 identical ballots from England had been disqualified. The letter was published in the April 1962 issue of the fanzine Axe, edited by Larry and Noreen Shaw, which is why Dave flagged it up, as it’s exactly 60 years ago this month.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

It has been reported to me that a certain individual is now claiming that FANAC won PITTCON’s fanzine Hugo, and that he and Lynn Hickman “witnessed” an occasion when a stack of ballots naming FANAC were destroyed “on the grounds that the handwriting is similar”. This story, the last in a series of vengeful attacks upon our group, is entirely and totally false and with no basis whatsoever.

1) I have never met this man to my knowledge and do not even know what he looks like.

2) Lynn Hickman was not in Pittsburgh at any time during the year prior to the convention and, since ballots must be counted weeks before a convention so Hugo plates can be engraved, he could not have been present at a ballot counting session. Lynn’s character is such that it is not even necessary to check as to whether he had any part in this malicious gossip. [While we agree entirely about Lynn’s character, a convenient opportunity allowed us to check with him, and he confirms these statements completely.-Larry & Noreen Shaw]

3) Even PITTCON committee members’ wives and husbands were excluded at ballot counting sessions–as at all business meetings. It would be ridiculous to share knowledge of the most carefully guarded secret of any convention, the ballot results, with outsiders!

4) FANAC, although tops in nominations, did not win a Hugo. In fact until the last seven days before the deadline SF TIMES was leading and we expected it to win. In the last seven days four of the five nominees changed places. [NW adds: the actual winner was Cry of the Nameless, edited by F. M. Busby, Elinor Busby, Burnett Toskey and Wally Weber.]

PITTCON did toss out some nominations but with excellent reason. We received 78 ballots–packaged, not sent separately–each nominating the same novel, short story and publisher, with an accompanying’ letter saying, “These are all bona fide nominations, as are attested by the individual names and addresses”. They nominated a single author (author of the novel and short story) totally unknown to our committee, whose stories appeared in an obscure British publication (not Nova Publications) which was nominated for best magazine.

Surely no one could expect us to believe that one English village of something under 7,000 population contains upwards of 60 bona fide fans, many with identical handwriting, seven with identical addresses and last name (the author’s) and ALL with identical nominations!

It was our belief that duty required we discard these obvious attempts to stuff the ballot box. We would do the same thing again under such circumstances.

I trust, for his own sake, the fertile imagination of this individual will be kept under control in the future. We deplore legal action and have ignored previous slander, but there is a point of no return in these matters. We could and would take steps.

Dirce S. Archer
Chairman, PITTCON

In those days the Hugos were much less formalised than they are now. It was only the seventh time that they had been run; it was only the second time that there had been a nominating round (introduced in 1959); non-members could both nominate and vote. Here is the 1960 nominating ballot:

18th WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION
“PITTCON” – 1960

“HUGO” NOMINATION BALLOT

We think the Detention Committee established the fairest and most practical basis for awarding the science fiction/fantasy world’s annual marks of achievement–the “Hugos,” named in honor of science fiction’s patron saint, Hugo Gernsback.

The 1960 “Hugos” will therefore be awarded for the best science fiction or fantasy books, stories and artwork published during 1959, or in a magazine bearing a 1959 date. This means that stories in the January 1959 issues are eligible, even though they were on the newsstands in 1958. By the same token, stories in the January 1960 issues are not eligible, even though they were on sale in 1959. The date on the issue determines a magazine’s eligibility; the copyright date decides for hardbound and paperback books.

Voting will take place in two steps. Fandom as a whole is asked to nominate its choice in each of the six categories for which “Hugos” will be awarded. Use the ballot on this page or make up your own. You can list 1st and 2nd choices in each category, and the vote will be weighted accordingly. All nominations must be postmarked on or before May 1, 1960.

The stories, artists, and magazines getting the greatest number of nominations will be listed on a second Awards Ballot. Your votes on that ballot determine who gets the “Hugos,” If there is no majority in any category, there will be no award for that category.

Interesting to note that dating eligibility questions were already an issue back then. Also interesting that only two nominations in each category were allowed. I wonder what the weighting system was between first and second preferences? And what does ”no majority” mean?

Going back to the 78 disallowed ballots, Rob Hansen reports that they would all have benefitted Lionel Fanthorpe, then a 25-year-old teacher, now a retired vicar and author of 250 books. In 1959, according to ISFDB, he had published 12 novels and 20 shorter pieces, four of each under the name “R.L. Fanthorpe” and the rest under various pseudonyms; it’s not known which of these were featured on the controversial ballots. Most of his short fiction was published in Supernatural Stories, edited by “John S. Manning” (a pseudonym for Sam Assael and Maurice Nahum), so presumably that was the magazine named on the 78 ballots. (Please don’t anyone take this as an excuse to hassle the 87-year-old Rev. Fanthorpe about events of six decades ago; there is no evidence that he himself was directly involved.)

The result was that the rules were changed to restrict Hugo voting to members of the seated Worldcon, from 1961 onwards. Nominating, however, remained open to all until the late 1970s, when it too was restricted to the members of the seated Worldcon; that has since been expanded to include members of the previous Worldcon, and at one point also members of the following year’s Worldcon. Poul Anderson translated L. Sprague de Camp’s record of the 1960 WSFS Business Meeting discussion into a fictional dialect of English all of whose words are derived from Germanic roots:

 __Polling for Meeds__: The workly polling for morrowish “Hugin” meeds, but not outnamings for the meeds, shall be inheld to betaled dealsmen of the World Knowledge Sagas Forgathering at which the meeds will be made. (LOOK WELL: This forsetting is binding on the 1961 Forgathering. It was eyesightly the hencelook of the foresetting that “betaled deals-men” be bethought those who have betaled the –D–2.00 waybefore inwriting gild — –D–1.00 in the falling of overseas dealsmen. Otherwise the polling could not find stead save at the Forgathering itself, and it would be unmightly for the meeds to be readied and incut in time for forth-giving.)

As a Hugo Administrator I myself haven’t seen anything quite on that scale, but if and when it should ever happen to come up, I would allow one of the duplicate nominations to stand – the WSFS Constitution states clearly that “No person may cast more than one vote on any issue or more than one ballot in any election”, but doesn’t allow administrators to punitively disallow all of them.

The stucco ceilings of Jan Christian Hansche, part 9: Schoonhoven Castle, Aarschot (and Roland Rens)

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My quest to find the remaining stucco ceilings of the 17th century artist Jan Christian Hansche is reaching a conclusion. (The story so far: Park Abbey in Leuven; the Chateau de Modave near Namur; the ones that have been destroyed in Germany; the Church of St Nicholas at Perk near Brussels; the Church of St Remigius at Franc-Waret also near Namur; the Church of St Charles Borromeo in Antwerp; two ceilings in Gent; the Sablon in Brussels and Beaulieu Castle in Machelen.)

Yesterday I ventured a little bit to the north of Leuven, to visit Schoonhoven Castle near Aarschot. The castle is the private property of Dr S and Mrs B, who bought it as a ruin in the 1990s and have restored it to a state of glory. Most of the building dates from the 18th century, but the 17th century chapel survived, and the stucco ceiling by Hansche, dated to 1671, has been partially reconstructed by Dr S and Mrs B.

Dr S and Mrs B in the chapel

Sadly, it is the least extensive of any of the surviving Hansche works that I have found. In this panoramic shot of the chapel, you can see the three gilded monograms immediately above the altar:

And here is a closer shot – from left to right, there is the Marian monogram IXXR (actually MAR written together), the standard IHS for her son, and a curious third monogram: a crowned combination of S and, I think, L.

I can’t agree with Marc Van Vaeck who thinks it is a St Joseph monogram; the other letter is clearly an L, not a J, and St Joseph is not usually crowned. The work was commissioned by Charles-Philippe d’Eynatten / Karel-Filips van Eynatten, none of whose initials are S or L in French or in Dutch. S could of course be for Schoonhoven, the name of the castle itself, but the L still baffles me. Charles-Philippe did not marry, and his siblings were Philippe-Gilles, Catherine, Marie-Madeleine and Anna Maria, none of whom has either of the right initials.

We can compare the other two monograms to their equivalents in Hansche’s earlier ceiling in Antwerp. The iconography of the pierced heart is familiar.

There’s also a splendid ceiling lantern, which is however difficult to photograph.

Dr S and Mrs B have only been able to restore the altar end of the chapel. In the attic they have several more pieces of Hansche stucco which they found literally lying on the floor, having fallen off the ceiling, which they have not yet been able to put back – the necessary infrastructure just isn’t there. They kindly allowed me to look at the fragments, which are laid out next to a rather alarming Jesus from a later date, who has also been removed from the chapel. This is literally the closest I have physically got to Hansche’s work, since it’s usually way up high.

Marc Van Vaeck says that originally there were also two scenes of the life of the Holy Family here, one of which was similar to the one Hansche had done a couple of years earlier in Franc-Waret; no trace remains of them. It’s awfully sad that this beautiful art was allowed to decay, but I’m glad that what remains is in the loving hands of Dr S and Mrs B.

I went to nearby Aarschot to buy lunch, and came across two striking modern sculptures there, both by local artist Roland Rens. First is a 1995 tribute to the Grenadier Guards who liberated the town in 1944:

And also the Demerwachter, a mythic figure monitoring the River Demer, and not really looking like he enjoys the assignment:

So, that’s one more Hansche ceiling ticked off my list. I have booked to visit the last surviving Hansche ceiling in Belgium, at the Kasteel van Horst, on 24 April; and I’ve also found a reference suggesting that there is some of his work at Boxmeer Castle in the Netherlands, near to the lost works at Kleve and Wesel, and hope to visit there on 1 May. The quest is the quest!

Pan’s Labyrinth

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Pan’s Labyrinth won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, beating four other films which I have not seen, though in each case I have read the book on which they were based (Children of Men, The Prestige, V for Vendetta and A Scanner Darkly). It was in fact narrowly behind The Prestige at the nominations round, but had a strong lead on the final ballot (in which The Prestige came third behind Children of Men).

Pan’s Labyrinth is ranked 5th and 6th of that year’s films by IMDB users, with The Prestige, The Departed and 300 ahead of it on both rankings.

Pan's Labyrinth

None of the actors have appeared in other Hugo-winning, Oscar-winning or Nebula-winning films, or in Doctor Who. Seriously impressed, however, by Doug Jones as Fauno, the main monster; we know him as Baru from Star Trek: Discovery. Apparently he learned Spanish specially for this film (though in fact his voice is dubbed).

I’ve seen two other del Toro films – Hellboy II and The Shape of Water – and liked Pan’s Labyrinth almost as much as The Shape of Water, which is to say, quite a lot. It’s in Spanish, making it the second film in a language other than English to win the Hugo (the first being Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The setting is the early years of the Franco regime, shortly after the Civil War. The protagonist, Ofelia, played superbly by 11-year-old Ivana Bauero, crosses back and forth between the otherworldly Labyrinth dominated by Doug Jones’ Fauno, and our world where her Falangist stepfather is hunting down Communists in the woods and her pregnant mother is slowly dying.

I thought it was superbly done. The CGI and other effects of the Labyrinth are totally convincing; the humans of 1940s Spain are more monstrous than the monsters; Ofelia’s own heroic journey is sympathetically depicted. I’ll reserve judgement until I have seen The Prestige, but I felt that the Hugo voters that year knew what they were doing.

Saturday reading

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Current
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell
Purgatory Mount, by Adam Roberts

Last books finished
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Nine Lives, by Aimen Dean
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell
Blackthorn Winter, by Liz Williams
Human Nature / Family of Blood, by Naomi Jacobs and Philip Purser-Hallard

Next books Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher
Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters

Snotgirl Volume 1: Green Hair Don’t Care, by Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung

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Second frame of third part:

An impulse purchase when I was in Seattle in February, having very much enjoyed Scott Pilgrim a few years back. Lottie Person is a fashion blogger in LA, whose allergies combined with medication have occasionally disastrous nasal consequences. On top of that she keeps meeting potential doubles and, by the end of the first part of the story, she thinks she may have killed someone accidentally. On the one hand I’m not sure how interested I am in reading about fashion bloggers; on the other it’s really rare to find a comic in which every character is as well delineated and differentiated as they are here, a combination of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s writing and Leslie Hung’s rather gorgeous and sympathetic art. This first volume ends with nothing resolved, so I guess I will get the second to find out what happens next, which means the creators have succeeded in hooking me. You can get it here.

March books

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Pressure of work and Hugos meant I only read 15 books this month, the lowest since March 2019, when I was Hugo Administrator.

(NB I’m still struggling with the best way to display images in WordPress.)

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 21)
The Twinkling of an Eye, by Brian Aldiss
The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe in Contemporary Culture, by Mark Bould
Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades, by Anna McFarlane
Elles font l’abstraction/Women in Abstraction, by Christine Macel and Laure Chavelot
Nine Lives, by Aimen Dean

The Twinkling of an Eye cover
elles font l'abstraction

SF 6 (YTD 21)
The Green Man’s Challenge, by Juliet McKenna
Skyward Inn, by Aliya Whiteley
Light Chaser, by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell
The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest 
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 11)
The Unofficial Doctor Who Annual 1972, ed. Mark Worgan
A Very Private Haunting, by Sharon Bidwell
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell

Unofficial Doctor Who Annual 1972 cover
Very Private Haunting

Comics 1 (YTD 3)
Snotgirl Volume 1: Green Hair Don’t Care, by Brian Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung

4,300 pages (YTD 16,600); average length 288 pages
Median LT ownership 54 (Skyward Inn)
7/15 (YTD 21/63) not by men (McFarlane, Macel/Chavelot, McKenna, Whiteley, Zhao, Bidwell, Hung)
3/15 (YTD 10/63) by PoC (Dean, Zhao, Lee O’Malley/Hung)
321 books currently tagged “unread”, 4 more than last month

Reading now
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Blackthorn Winter, by Liz Williams
Human Nature / Family of Blood, by Naomi Jacobs and Philip Purser-Hallard
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell

Coming soon (perhaps)
Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher
Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters
Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, by Mark Blake
The Limbless Landlord, by Brian Igoe
Tower, by Nigel Jones
Flicker, by Theodore Roszak
Demons and Dreams: v. 1: Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, ed. Ellen Datlow
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
Mort, by Terry Pratchett
Make Your Brain Work: How to Maximize Your Efficiency, Productivity and Effectiveness, by Amy Brann
A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells
Junker: een Pruisische blues, by Simon Spruyt
Killdozer!, by Theodore Sturgeon
Intimacy, by Jean Paul Sartre
Lenin the Dictator, by Victor Sebestyen
The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter
Roger Zelazny’s Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, by Amia Srinivasan
Half Life, by Shelley Jackson
The Happier Dead, by Ivo Stourton

October 2015 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 started the month in Windsor at a work retreat, and had another trip to London within the week, followed by a family trip to Luxembourg and another work trip to Geneva. The best photograph I took all month was actually of the Dijlepark in Leuven at twilight on the 31st.

With lots of daytime travel I read only 15 books that month.

Non-fiction: 5 (YTD 43)
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 6: Peter Davison and Colin Baker, by Elizabeth Sandifer
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us: Or Why You Have No Idea How Your Mind Works, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to “Faerie”, by Verlyn Flieger
A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571-1641, by Jon G. Crawford
Family Britain, 1951-1957, by David Kynaston
TARDIS Eruditorum 6 Invisible Gorilla Question of Time Star Chamber Court Family Britain

Fiction (non-sf): 1 (YTD 32)
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
Les Mis

SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 96)
Jacaranda, by Cherie Priest
Forsaken, by Kelley Armstrong (did not finish)
Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds
The Arabian Nights, ed. Muhsin Mahdi, tr. Hussein Haddawy
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
Slan, by A.E. van Vogt
Jacaranda Forsaken Galactic North Arabian Nights Dark Tower Slan

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 35)
Business Unusual, by Gary Russell
The Deadstone Memorial, by Trevor Baxendale
Walking to Babylon by Kate Orman
Business Unusual Deadstone Memorial Walking to Babylon

~6,400 pages (YTD 64,000)
4/15 by women (YTD 68/228) – Flieger, Priest, Armstrong, Orman
1/15 by PoC (YTD 15/228) – Mahdi/Haddawy

The best of these was of course Les Misérables, which you can get here; the best new reads were The Invisible Gorilla, which you can get here, and Family Britain, 1951-1957, which you can get here.

I bounced off Kelley Armstrong’s Forsaken, but you can get it here.

A Very Private Haunting, by Sharon Bidwell

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Silence stood sentinel between them for a few minutes. Bishop broke first. ‘I read the report about the last encounter. That kid was lucky.’

Another good entry in the sequence of short novels about Brigadier Alexander Lethbridge-Stewart in the earlier part of his career. Here he and Anne Travers go to Scotland (again) and get caught up in a missing persons mystery combined with a sinister doll. Well executed, and recommended. You can get it here.

BSFA Short Fiction

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(See also: Best Art)

There are only four finalists in the Short Fiction category for the BSFA Awards this year. From shortest to longest, they are:

“Things Can Only Get Better”, by Fiona Moore

Second paragraph of third section:

“What?” Wills set her drink down very carefully on the melamine-look surface.

A fun short story about intelligent machines (“Things”) and crime.

“O2 Arena”, by Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald

Second paragraph of third section:

We had a plethora of assignments and projects that kept us buried to our eyebrows, even on weekends. But assignments were rarely my concern on weekdays, much less weekends. And on this weekend, Ovoke was gone.

Grim tale of a near-future Nigeria where people have to pay for everything, even the air that they breathe.

Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard

Second paragraph of third section:

It burnt. The tea burnt. Soggy tea leaves caught fire right in the throne room, in full view of everyone else. Not just in her nightmares or in her bedroom.

Vietnamese-flavoured court politics combined with a g/g love story. Loved it.

Light Chaser, by Peter Hamilton and Gareth Powell

Second paragraph of third section:

“Hello.” She bent down and tickled the purring creature behind its ears. “You liked the fish I made for you, did you?”

Very interesting timeline mystery where the central character keeps visiting planets after very long intervals to find a peculiar legacy.

I liked all of these, but one has to express a preference, so I think mine will be 1) Fireheart Tiger, 2) “Things Can Only Get Better”, 3) “O2 Arena”, 4) Light Chaser. I don’t see an obvious front-runner.

Covers

My daughter and the king

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The king died suddenly, aged 62, on 31 July 1993, on holiday in Spain. He is affectionately but not deeply remembered in a country where people are generally positive but unenthusiastic about the monarchy. A modest man, there are not many things named after him, apart from the country’s major football stadium and the canal from Bruges to Zeebrugge.

There is one small corner of land dedicated to his memory. Hoegaarden, 40 km east of Brussels, is most famous for its distinctive white beer. Like many small Belgian towns, it was originally a settlement around a monastery. The monks were kicked out in the late eighteenth century revolutionary period, and the chapterhouse with its gardens sold to a local family. The last of the family died in 1980 (murdered by his gardener, as it happens) and the municipality took over the property, renting out the gardens to the Flemish Show Garden Association from 1991. They weren’t able to maintain it in the long term, and management has now reverted back to the municipality.

A number of small show gardens were set up in the park in the 1990s, and a year after the king died, a special patch was created in his honour, a prize-winning design by Ingrid Garcia Fernandez. In 1998 a terracotta bust of the late monarch was unveiled, produced by local artist Karel Hadermann. The king’s dovecote was moved to be near the bust and garden, but unfortunately the doves were all eaten by stone martens and the dovecote itself was allowed to decay. It has now been demolished and there is a new entrance to the park at the corner of Elst and Maagdenblokstraat, opening straight onto the memorial garden.

My daughters live close to Hoegaarden, and it’s one of the places I sometimes take my older daughter B when I visit. The first couple of times that we went, I got the feeling that she didn’t really like it that much, and then in the summer of 2016 she spotted the king, and fell in love.

I don’t bring her all that often – you don’t want the charm to wear off – but I take her one a year or so. Here she is in 2018, getting up close to the king.

In 2020 I got a short video of her interaction with him.

And we went back again last weekend, where I took the picture at the top of this post.

I think that for someone like B, people are fundamentally puzzling and not always attractive to engage with. She often likes to get up close and stare into people’s faces. The king doesn’t mind her doing that, and he doesn’t mind her poking him with her fingers. Looking at these pictures again, I think she’s also interested by the way his body merges with the plinth. He has a somewhat enigmatic and intriguing expression, which on the other hand is not at all threatening. (Here’s a better shot of his face, with F beside him.)

So, if you’re in the Hoegaarden area, do pop by and visit the king; and say hi from me and B.

Edited to add:

I sent this post to the sculptor. He replied:

Dear Nicholas Whyte,

I was very moved by your email and the information on the webpage.  The statue of King Boudewijn was my first commissioned statue.  King Boudewijn was not a very happy man.  He loved children very much but did not succeeded in having one of his own.  He was very young and rather unprepared when he was put upon the throne after the abdication of his father King Leopold III.  So I gave him that look that is at the same time worrying and friendly.  I have since that statue evolved in the use of techniques and materials.  Your daughter demonstrates exactly what I think that art should do.  It cannot make the world a better place but when it succeeds – even for a short moment – to bring joy (or another emotion) to a person it has fulfilled his goal.  Many thanks for sharing this with me.

Greetings to you and your daughter,

Karel

Saturday reading

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Current
Nine Lives, by Aimen Dean
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Last books finished
Snotgirl Volume 1: Green Hair Don’t Care, by Brian Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung
Elles font l’abstraction/Women in Abstraction, by Christine Macel and Laure Chavelot

Next books
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell
Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher

The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

As I should have known it would, though, the next move came from Amelia, for waiting for me on the Saturday evening was a letter postmarked in Richmond.

I was given this by the author back in 2016, with an entertainingly ambiguous inscription:

Chris Priest autograph

I guess that the love story which is not between the characters is an old one between the author and H.G. Wells. It’s a very entertaining mash-up of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Our protagonist is a goggles salesman, who hooks up with the lovely Amelia (who is way better than he is; we can see this, though he does not know it); they are transported to Mars, where she undermines the structures of government by bringing them revolution; and return to Earth where they encounter H.G. Wells in the flesh. Witty and well-executed. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2016. Next on that list is Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt, of which I have lower expectations.

September 2015 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.

This month saw the beginning of a short project in (North) Macedonia, work trips also to Paris, Belgrade and London, and my godson’s wedding in Wales.

This was immediately followed by a visit to the Doctor Who set in Cardiff. The lights were off but the thrill was there.

Even though my uncle photo-bombed me at the Tardis door.

This was also the month in which I was approached for the role of Hugo administrator for the 2017 Worldcon, a role which has continued to resonate for me (much more than the Promotions Divion head role I’d had for London the year before).

I read 17 books that month.

Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 38)
The Ancient Languages of Europe, by Roger D. Woodard
Companion Piece, eds. L.M. Myles and Liz Barr
Who’s Next?, by Derrick Sherwin

Fiction (non-sf): 3 (YTD 31)
Girls in Love, by Jacqueline Wilson
The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbø
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 96)
A Vampire Quintet, by Eugie Foster
The End of All Things, by John Scalzi (did not finish)
The Wild Reel, by Paul Brandon (did not finish)
Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Manuscript Found in a Milk Bottle, by Neil Gaiman
The Unlimited Dream Company, by J. G. Ballard
Luna: New Moon, by Ian McDonald

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 35)
The Shadow in the Glass, by Justin Richards and Stephen Cole
The Sleep of Reason, by Martin Day
Tempest by Christopher Bulis

Comics : 1 (YTD 13)
It’s A Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, by Seth

~4,600 pages (YTD 57,600)
4/17 by women (YTD 64/213) – Myles/Barr, Wilson, Adichie, Foster
2/17 by PoC (YTD 14/213) – Adichie, Foster

Standout best for me this month was Americanah, which taught me a lot about Nigeria. You can get it here. Least impressed by Manuscript Found in a Milk bottle, which Neil Gaiman describes as his own worst short story; I would not disagree. You can’t get it anywhere.

The Twinkling of an Eye, or my life as an Englishman, by Brian Aldiss

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Some years previously, one of the innumerable Framlingham bullies, a creature with the skin of a bullfrog and hyperthyroid eyes to match, grabbed me and declared that I resembled Adolf Hitler. Dragging me into his foul den, he pulled a lock of my hair down over my forehead and painted a moustache of black boot polish on my upper lip. I was then made to goose-step round a senior common room, giving the Sieg Heil for the delectation of all the other bullies – many of whom would doubtless have given their eyeteeth to dress up in Nazi uniforms, rape Slav women, and bugger each other while strangling Jews.

One day, back in August 2015 I happened to be in London not too far from Forbidden Planet, and spotted that Brian Aldiss, then almost 90, was doing a signing that evening. I got there just in time to buy this book and get his signature on it before sprinting for the 1935 Eurostar; whew! I knew that there would not be many more chances, and indeed it was the second and last time that I met Aldiss in person before his death, two years later. (This, a year earlier, was the first.)

I realised on reading this now that I had read it before, around the turn of the century; I don’t know what happened to my previous copy, but it was great to come back to it again. Even if you have no interest in his work, Aldiss is very good at the self-perception of the various elements and experiences that go to make up a human soul. He goes in some detail into his childhood, school days and military service (much of which has been recycled in his novels). He is frank about his marital difficulties, in both of his marriages, and even goes a bit mystical on how he managed to unblock himself psychically to become healthier.

He was also devoted to making British science fiction an accepted part of British literature, pushing hard to find allies. This despite himself not being initially all that strongly moored in fandom – when he woke up one morning to find that the 1962 Hugo Award for Hothouse had been left outside his door with the milk, he did not actually know what it was. But this did not last long; by 1965 he was the guest of honour at the second London Worldcon, and in 2014 the massed members of the third London Worldcon sang “Happy Birthday” to him at the closing ceremonies.

One winces for Aldiss occasionally – he was the architect of most of his own romantic misfortunes (though not of his first love affair, with the matron of his boarding school); a crooked accountant’s bad advice meant that he had at one point to sell his house and, (one senses this was worse) his science fiction collection. But he is admirably devoted to his children and to his second wife, who died after this written but before it was published in 1998. His daughter Wendy returned that devotion.

Recommended. You can get it here.

This was the non-fiction book that had spent longest on my unread shelf. Next on that pile is Make Your Brain Work: How to Maximize Your Efficiency, Productivity and Effectiveness, by Amy Brann.

The Twinkling of an Eye cover

The Unofficial Doctor Who Annual 1972, ed. Mark Worgan

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Second paragraph of third chapter (“Phantoms of the Mind”, by Paul Vought):

In Elm House, a recently built concrete tower block, in a very contemporarily furnished apartment an author sits at tier desk tapping away at the keys of her typewriter, totally absorbed in tier work. Now and then site takes a break by sipping a tepid coffee front a brown mug with an orange floral pattern on it. She has completely lost track of the time.

One of several unofficial annuals produced recently by Terraqueous, edited by Mark Worgan, filling the gap between the official 1971 Annual and the official 1973 Annual. In fact it has more pages (180) than the two of them combined, featuring comment from Katy Manning, Mike Tucker, John Levene and Richard Franklin, and twenty stories in prose and comic strip format, almost all of which also feature the Master, as well as the usual rather pointless games. It’s a little variable but its heart is in the right place. It seems to no longer be obtainable, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Unofficial Doctor Who Annual 1972 cover

Lost in Translation, by Ella Frances Sanders

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Third entry in full:

Perhaps people don’t notice these glimmering, lyrical moments enough anymore, but the way the moon reflects and leaps across the black water of the ocean at night is surely a sight to behold.

SWEDISH
noun

MÅNGATA
n. The road-like reflection of the moon in the water

This is very easily digestible; a young writer’s collection of fifty words in other languages that she describes as “untranslatable”, while also supplying translations for them. For anyone who speaks more than one language, it’s no surprise that there are ideas that can be expressed more effectively in one language rather than another. In general the ones I already knew raised more of a smile for me than the ones with which I was less familiar. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a woman, my top non-fiction book and my top book acquired in 2018. Next on those piles respectively are Demons and Dreams: the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (1989), eds. Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling; Lenin the Dictator, by Victor Sebastyen; and The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter.

Lost in Translation

The stucco ceilings of Jan Christian Hansche, part 8: the Sablon in Brussels, Beaulieu Castle in Machelen

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As my regular reader knows, I have been hunting down the remaining stucco ceilings of the 17th century artist Jan Christian Hansche for the last few months. (The story so far: Park Abbey in Leuven; the Chateau de Modave near Namur; the ones that have been destroyed in Germany; the Church of St Nicholas at Perk near Brussels; the Church of St Remigius at Franc-Waret also near Namur; the Church of St Charles Borromeo in Antwerp; and two ceilings in Gent.)

Earlier this week I came across a fascinating article by Marc Van Vaeck of the Catholic University of Leuven, which looks in detail at three of Hansche’s ceilings, two of which I had seen and one of which I haven’t yet. The article is in Dutch, but I think anyone can appreciate the photographs.

One fact particularly caught my eye: there is actually some of Hansche’s work in Brussels, in the church of Our Lady of the Victories between the Place du Petit Sablon and Place du Grand Sablon, beside the Rue de la Régence. I have gone past the church probably hundreds of times in the last 23 years, but only been inside once, for a concert three years ago.

The Sablon is only a quarter of an hour’s walk from my office, so I went over there one day last week, and by coincidence professor Van Vaeck phoned just as I was walking and we had a long conversation while I looked at the ceilings. You can actually tour the Sablon church virtually – the Hansche stuccos are on the vault immediately above the entrance and under the organ loft.

There’s not all that much here – I think only the church at Franc-Waret has less Hansche work, of what I have seen – and I was a bit confused by the iconography, no doubt reflecting my own ignorance. But the panels themselves are typically vivid examples of Hansche’s work, three-dimensional figures leaning out of the ceiling into our space.

It’s three large panels flanked by two smaller ones; my pictures of the smaller ones are not good, but going left to right we’ll start with a pope, though I do not know which one:

Then a knight (St George?) slaying a dragon:

In the middle, a really ambitious piece showing Our Lady and the Holy Child on a ship, from which a pennant flies with her name on, and two other passengers or crew lurking at either end. There may be a specific legend at play here that I don’t know; in any case, Our Lady, Star of the Sea is the patron saint of the Netherlands, and a miraculous statue of her in that capacity is venerated at Maastricht, which is not so very far away.

Next is another dragon-slaying knight, or possibly the same one again. St George is very popular around here.

And finally, I’m afraid I did not get as good a shot of the final panel, which appears to be Our Lady again.

Hansche helpfully dated the work, so we know it was done in 1684.

That was unexpected and very welcome, and those of you in or passing through Brussels can easily check it out for yourself. There is much else to see in the church, of course.

Earlier today, Anne and I were able to visit the Kasteel van Beaulieu in Machelen (which is a different place from Mechelen), on the northern fringe of Brussels. The castle has had a chequered past; the Duke of Marlborough stayed there in 1706 after the battle of Ramillies, but in the twentieth century it fell into disrepair, before being rescued by the Quirynen family. who now maintain it.

The main reception room in the castle originally had nine panels by Jan Christian Hansche, reflecting excerpts from the Labours of Hercules. Three of the nine have been completely lost, and two are damaged and stored in the attic. There was also a Hansche ceiling on the vault at the very top of the castle, which has been lost apart from a few fragments. Jo Quirynen was good enough to give us a tour.

Despite the fragmentary survival rate of the Beaulieu panels, they are tremendously gripping. The most vivid is the depiction of Hercules slaying the Hydra – here the Hydra has the usual multiple serpentine heads sinuously rippling out of the ceiling, but also a tremendous arthropod-like set of legs. If you are able to cross your eyes for the stereoscopic effect, you may be able to see just how strong it is. Herk’s nephew stands behind the beast with a flaming brand to cauterise the stumps as each head is cut off – if he did not, two would grow to replace each one as it is removed.

The other particularly three-dimensional panel (above Anne in the photo) is Hercules slaying the dragon that guards the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, which is also one of the vivid panels in the Brouwershuis in Gent. I am interested that, unlike in Gent, the apples themselves are not visible.

There are in fact two different and contradictory versions of the story of Hercules and the Golden Apples, and we have both in Beaulieu. In one as we have just seen, Hercules does the job himself by slaying the dragon. In the other, he encounters the giant Atlas, holding up the heavens, whose daughter is the guardian of the Apples, and Hercules persuades Atlas to go and ask her nicely for them in return for holding up the burden while he is away. There is then a moment of drama, as Atlas unsuccessfully attempts to trick Hercules into holding the heavens up forever, and that’s what we have here, Herk’s elbow and knee sticking out.

Finally for my purposes (actually earliest in the internal chronology of the legend), Hercules battles the three-headed Geryon, in a scene later stolen by Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Hercules has already slain Geryon’s two-headed dog, Orthron, whose hindquarters are also visible in the panel (above Jo Quirynen in my photo above). Geryon’s cattle, who were the object of Herk’s quest, are not seen here. I’m struck by the loving depiction of Hercules’ own hindquarters, and there is more evidence from one of the lost panels (which sadly I cannot yet share here) that confirms my suspicion that Hansche was more interested in the male than the female body.

The lost panel also has the date 1659, so these are a full quarter-century older than the stuccos in the Sablon, and have survived the ravages of three and a half centuries for us to enjoy today.

That leaves just two more castles to visit with Hansche ceilings, both near here, both of which I hope to get to in April, though I have also picked up a rumour that there is some more surviving Hansche work down near Namur. I will keep you informed.

Saturday reading

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Current
Nine Lives, by Aimen Dean
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Last books finished
A Very Private Haunting, by Sharon Bidwell
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao

Next books
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell
Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher

August 2015 books

Posted on by

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.

Apart from a quick work trip to London – where Brian Aldiss signed his The Twinkling of an Eye for me – we spent most of the month in Northern Ireland. On the way, we looked in on the replica of the great clock of Richard of Wallingford in St Alban’s.

Little U was not completely convinced by the seaside.

The Hugo Award results came through, and No Award won in five categories, equal to the total number of times it had previously won in the history of the awards. The Puppies were defeated, but had inflicted damage,

I read 31 books that month, some of them mercifully short.

Non-fiction: 8 (YTD 35)
1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, by James Shapiro
Building Confidence in Peace, by Erol Kaymak, Alexandros Lordos and Nathalie Tocci
Resolving the Cyprus Conflict: Negotiating History, by Michális Stavrou Michael
A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England, by Suzannah Lipscomb
Selected Essays, by Virginia Woolf
Space Helmet for a Cow, by Paul Kirkley
The Story of Kullervo, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Verlyn Flieger
Letters to Tiptree, eds Alissa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce

1606 Building Confidence in Peace Resolving the Cyprus Conflict Visitors Guide to Tudor England Selected Essays Space Helmet for a Cow Letters to Tiptree

Fiction (non-sf): 6 (YTD 28)
Divorcing Jack, by Colin Bateman
The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Tragedy of the Goats, by Francis Hamit
History, by Elsa Morante
The Land of Green Plums, by Herta Müller
The Twenty-Two Letters, by Clive King

Divorcing Jack The Lowland The Tragedy of the Goats History The Land of Green Plums Twenty-Two Letters

SF (non-Who): 12 (YTD 89)
Lord Valentine’s Castle, by Robert Silverberg
Buffy: The Lost Slayer: Prophecies, by Christopher Golden
Buffy: The Lost Slayer: Dark Times, by Christopher Golden
Buffy: The Lost Slayer: King of the Dead, by Christopher Golden
Buffy: The Lost Slayer: Original Sins, by Christopher Golden
Transition, by Iain Banks
Naamah’s Kiss, by Jacqueline Carey
Penric’s Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Elric of Melniboné and Other Stories, by Michael Moorcock
11/22/63, by Stephen King
The Shepherd’s Crown, by Terry Pratchett
And Another Thing…, by Eoin Colfer (did not finish, totally failed to grab me and I gave up at page 70)

Lord Valentines Castle Prophecies Dark Times King of the Dead Original Sins Transition Naamahs Kiss Penrics Demon Elric 11/22/1963 And Another Thing

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 32)
Mission: Impractical, by David A. McIntee
The Tomorrow Windows, by Jonathan Morris
Mean Streets, by Terrance Dicks
Erimem: The Last Pharaoh, by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett

Mission Impractical Tomorrow Windows Mean Streets Erimem: The Last Pharaoh

Comics : 1 (YTD 12)
An Age of License: A Travelogue, by Lucy Knisley

An Age of License

~9,500 pages (YTD 53,200)
12/31 by women (YTD 60/196) – Tocci, Lipscom, Woolf, Flieger, Krasnostein/Pierce, Lahiri, Morante, Müller, Carey, Bujold, Bartlett, Knisley
1/31 by PoC (YTD 12/196) – Lahiri

Several very good reads this month: The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri, which you can get here; History, by Elsa Morante, which you can get here; Selected Essays, by Virginia Woolf, which you can get here; and Letters to Tiptree, eds. Alisa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce, which you can get here.

However you can avoid the official Hitch-hiker’s Guide sequel, And Another Thing…, by Eoin Colfer in good conscience. If you want to get it anyway, it is here.