The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

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Second paragraph of third story (“A Summer Night”):

Upon one stage a woman sang.

Gosh. I had forgotten quite how good this is. It's not a novel; it's a sequence of linked short stories, with some internal inconsistencies, about the colonisation of Mars in 1999-2005, and then a coda in 2026 after disaster strikes Earth. Of course, the stories are more about Earth (and specifically Midwestern, mid-century America) than about Mars; but they are beautifully formed parables, and often more than that. You must have read it, because it's essential reading for anyone who cares about science fiction, but if you haven't, you can get it here.

And the end of the last story, “The Million Year Picnic”, never fails to bring a lump to my throat:

They reached the canal. It was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night.
“I’ve always wanted to see a Martian,” said Michael. “Where are they, Dad? You promised.”
“There they are,” said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.
The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.
The Martians were there–in the canal–reflected in the water. Timothy and Michael and Robert and Mom and Dad.
The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water….

And let's take a moment (well, two minutes and forty seconds) to appreciate Rachel Bloom's tribute to the writer:

This was the top book in my library that I had previously read but not reviewed online. Next on that pile is High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby.

The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene

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Second paragraph of Law 3:

Over several weeks, Ninon de Lenclos, the most infamous courtesan of seventeenth-century France, listened patiently as the Marquis de Sevigné explained his struggles in pursuing a beautiful but difficult young countess. Ninon was sixty-two at the time, and more than experienced in matters of love; the marquis was a lad of twenty-two, handsome, dashing, but hopelessly inexperienced in romance. At first Ninon was amused to hear the marquis talk about his mistakes, but finally she had had enough. Unable to bear ineptitude in any realm, least of all in seducing a woman, she decided to take the young man under her wing. First, he had to understand that this was war, and that the beautiful countess was a citadel to which he had to lay siege as carefully as any general. Every step had to be planned and executed with the utmost attention to detail and nuance.

A well-wisher gave this to F a couple of months ago, and it bubbled rapidly to the top of my reading list. I read the first three chapters and put it down with no intention of resuming. (Actually, that's not the full story. I couldn't find the paper copy, was sufficiently irritated with myself to buy a Kindle version from Amazon, struggled through the first three chapters, gave up, got a refund from Amazon and then found the paper copy.)

I thought it was a repulsive book. It claims to be a self-help book about how to gain Power and be Powerful, illustrated by case studied of people who Obeyed or Transgressed the Laws of Power in history. Most of the self-help books that I have read at least pay lip service to becoming a better person, wanting to make the world a better place by your existence, finding and fulfilling your personal mission, that kind of thing. Greene is just interested in Power; he does not define it, just assumes that you want it too; there is no ethical framework here. It's rather sickening, and the worrying thing is that a lot of people seem to have bought and liked the book. I suspect that his historical analysis is bunk as well, but cannot be bothered to check any of the examples. If you really want to, you can get it here.

This was my top book acquired this year, and my top unread non-fiction book,. Next on those piles are respectively Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, and Why I Write, by George Orwell.

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660 days of plague: the boosted notes

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No ill effects yet, though I am braced for an uncomfortable night and morning.

The omicron variant is zooming here, as elsewhere, with a massive 82% increase in infections reported today; I would not be surprised if we burst through the delta variant peak in the next few days. (Today: 11778. Record, reported 2 December: 17917.)

But hospital numbers have not been rising as rapidly as in previous waves. Yes, they are up a bit but really not a lot, all things considered. And ICU numbers are actually sill decreasing. We’ll need another couple of days o be sure, but I think the theoty that omicron may be more infectious but less serious is looking fairly credible.

With all of that, the government solemnly met today and decided not to change anything. There were rumours that they had been advised to shift back to 100% teleworking, but in the end they decided to wait and see. So for now I’ll be going into the office on Wednesdays. (If anyone in Brussels wants to meet for lunch, or a pint after work, on a Wednesday, do give me a shout.)

I’m going to divert a bit and talk about career development in pandemic times. I had lunch yesterday with a friend a couple of years older than me who was recently let go from the non-profit job he had had for two decades. Under Belgian law, he still gets paid a month for every year he worked there, so he’s not under economic pressure until late 2023, but of course he is looking around. I mentioned a few possibilities that seemed obvious to me from his CV, and then at the end of the conversation he started talking about one of his hobbies; and his eyes lit up with an enthusiasm that had been absent when we were talking about political work. For heaven’s sake, I said, build yourself a small business working in that hobby (a niche area with lots of fans and certain high-value items and consequently immense transaction fees). I hope he does that. The current situation makes us all more reliant on existing channels of communication, and deters people (well, deters me at least) from setting up new links in the casual way that was possible in the olden times.

This morning I had two separate conversations with two different 21-year-old women who both graduated with their first degrees last summer, one from Northern Ireland, one from Luxembourg (both daughters of old friends). They have had very different university experiences from anyone older than them. Both were really clear about the policy areas that they were really interested in, which of course is really helpful in terms of thinking about where they could look for future employment, so I think I was able to make some concrete suggestions in both cases. But I thought afterwards, in olden times, I could have recommended conferences for them to attend and meet other people with their specific interests, and so that they could make a good impression as potential future hires. It’s much more difficult now, and it’s going to stay difficult for a while.

Stay well, everyone, and get boosted as soon as you can.

A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff, by Neil Gaiman

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Second paragraph of third piece ("Jerusalem", a short story):

He was glad to be out of it.

A collection of mostly minor stories, essays and speeches by Gaiman, including his first ever fiction publication in Imagine issue 14, which came out in May 1984, so I must have bought it at the time without realising its historical importance. A couple of these were already familiar to me, including the famous George R.R. Martin is not your bitch blogpost which I saw when it was first published. There were a surprising number of typos (especially in that first story). Can be safely skipped; I got it as part of the Humble Bundle, and it seems to be otherwise out of print.

Despite its rarity, this was the most popular book that I had acquired in 2015 but not yet read. Next on that pile is Twice a Stranger, by Bruce Clark.

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August 2014 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.

We started the month in Northern Ireland, where among many pleasant experiences we were visited by H and also my cousin A, and did an enjoyable trip to various ancient places in County Down.

The month was dominated by the 2014 Worldcon, Loncon 3, where I was Division Head for Promotions and had a fantastic time.

At the end of the month we went to Leuven for a cinema screening of the first Peter Capaldi episode, Deep Breath, also fun.

(Which was all just as well, as work continued to be unpleasant.)

Worldcon sucked up a huge amount of my time and energy, and I read only 21 books that month, which is unusually low for a summer holiday.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 38)
F in Exams, by Richard Benson
F in Retakes, by Richard Benson
The Making of Doctor Who, by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke

Fiction (non-sf) 8 (YTD 30)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre
A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson
Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis
Battle for Bittora, by Anuja Chauhan
The Waves, by Virginia Woolf
The Life of John Buncle, Esq: Containing Various Observations and Reflections, Made in Several Parts of the World, and Many Extraordinary Relations, vols 1 and 2, by Thomas Amory

SF (non-Who) 6 (YTD 73)
Brontomek!, by Michael Coney
A Guide to Tolkien, by David Day
The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
No Harm Can Come to a Good Man, by James Smythe
Starry Messenger: The Best of Galileo, ed. Charles Ryan
Peacemaker, by Marianne de Pierres

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 42)
Tomb of Valdemar, by Simon Messingham
Bad Therapy, by Matthew Jones
The Crooked World, by Steve Lyons
Engines of War, by George Mann

Comics 1 (YTD 14)
With The Light… vol 7, by Keiko Tobe

~6,600 pages (YTD ~56,500)
5/22 (YTD 49/197) by women (Jansson, Chauhan, Woolf, ξ1, Tobe)
2/22 (YTD 15/197) by PoC (Chauhan, Tobe)

The best of these was The Waves, by Virginia Woolf; you can get it here. Also really good: Battle for Bittora, by Anuja Chauhan, an Indian election romance novel which you can get hereThe Life of John Buncle, Esq., by Thomas Amory, a fore-runner to Tristram Shandy, which you can get hereA Winter Book, by Tove Jansson, which you can get here. Three books that I found particularly poor: Booker-winning Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre, which you can get hereA Guide to Tolkien, by David Day, which you can get herePeacemaker, by Marianne de Pierres, which you can get here.

The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Have you got everything you need for your child's upcoming birthday party? Is the big work project going as well as it could be? Will your gas hill be more than you can afford? When did your mother last call, is she OK? That ache in your hip hasn't gone away; are you sure it's not arthritis? That left-over mince has been in the fridge for a week; what if someone eats it and gets food poisoning? Why is my foot itching? Remember when your pants fell down in school when you were nine; what if people still think about that? Does the car seem a bit sluggish to you? What's that noise? Is it a rat? What if it has the plague? Your boss will never believe you if you call in sick with that. On and on and on and on and on and on.

A good breezy book about the wiring system that makes us all function. Style maybe a little too chatty in places, but I guess it helps us to digest the complex subject matter (or at least it helped me to). Rightly excoriates Myers-Briggs and the like. Accepts the standard narrative on the Stanford Prison experiment, Milgram and Kitty Genovese, unlike Rutger Bregman. A lot of what Burnett says is also aligned with cognitive behavioural therapy, with the difference that he is at least as interested in physiology as psychology – which maybe actually makes it all easier to accept. Not a lot more to say, but you can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell.

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  • Tue, 15:52: Belgian health ministers have agreed that starting 10 January people who are fully vaccinated will no longer need to quarantine when they have had a high-risk contact for coronavirus. https://t.co/yDiE2p4qp0
  • Tue, 18:51: Seven Deadly Sins, by various writers and artists https://t.co/tenjy9UxjG
  • Tue, 18:54: An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King https://t.co/Zab2FQDhjR
  • Tue, 20:27: RT @DenisMacShane: My grandson will live in 22nd century. Meanwhile tonight Soho newsagent tells me all deliveries of papers from Europe su…
  • Wed, 10:45: This, for me, is the weirdest lie of all. I occasionally lunch with EU celebrities in the brasseries near PLux or Schuman. Everyone else in the restaurant is going, oh look who it is, and they’re with that weird Irish chap. And nobody noticed a prince in Pizza Express? Nobody? https://t.co/RGj2VUdMyu

An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

I’ve been steering BeiBei from one quiet game to another so that he would not overwhelm XX the second he returns. I did not grow up in a nurturing household. Now that Hann has given me a taste of that, I want to create that feeling for my son. For all of us. I crave it like food and water.

One of the Chinese SF books that was recommended to me last spring. In a near future China, polyandrous marriages are the norm thanks to the legacy of the gender imbalance caused by the One Child Policy; homosexuality and divorce are pretty much banned. Our protagonists are a young man and a young woman; he wants to join her marriage, but one of her current husbands is a gaming addict and the other is gay, and everyone is subject to state repression. I confess I was not as blown away by this as by the other Chinese SF novels I read in 2021; in real life, the effects of the One Child Policy are apparently not as severe as first reported, and apart from that, I found it a bit of a soap opera. You can get it here.

This came to the top of my pile of unread books by non-white writers. Next up is Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami.

Seven Deadly Sins, by various writers and artists

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Second frame from third sin ("Sloth", by Neil Gaiman and Bryan Talbot):

One of the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle books that I have almost finished working through, a 1989 collection of short takes on the Seven Deadly Sins by comics writers and artists. The only woman of the fourteen is Roz Kaveney. The best is Neil Gaiman and Bryan Talbot's take on Sloth. You can get it here.

This was the shortest book acquired in 2015 still on my unread shelves. Next on that pile is Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets.

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Black Orchid, by Ian Millsted (and Terence Dudley)

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This is the eighth of the Black Archive brief monographs on Doctor Who, on a two-part 1982 Fifth Doctor story which I well remember watching at the time (it was the month before my fifteenth birthday). When I returned to it in 2008, I wrote:

I did catch Black Orchid first time round in 1992, and it was and is a rather charming story, the Doctor and friends relaxing in a 1920s country household and uncovering the family secret. Davison, playing cricket, and the two girls, partying and in Sutton’s case playing two roles, are great; Waterhouse as Adric won’t dance but will eat. I am left a bit uncomfortable, however, with the idea that you should hide your disabled relatives upstairs and then let then fall to their death off the roof.

When I went back to it for my complete rewatch in 2011, I wrote:

Having had four entire years without a story set in Earth’s past (other than a few scenes in City of Death), we now have two in a row, with Black Orchid taking us forward to the 1920s. There’s not a lot to comment on here; nice characterisation of the regulars, but regrettably the Tardis becomes a taxi again to transport some policemen, appropriately enough given its external appearance, for a distance of only a few miles. The behaviour of the Cranleighs is actually rather reprehensible, and while I hope that the inquest attributed some blame to them, it probably didn’t, since the dead people were only two servants and a disabled person and they had the Chief Constable’s ear.

This time round, for whatever reason, I left it a few days between watching the two parts (they were shown on successive days in 1982; I watched them on the same day in 2008, and on consecutive days again in 2011), and I found myself liking the second episode much less than the first. I have become increasingly annoyed over the years by police procedural fiction where the police do not actually behave like real police would do, and here, having fixed on the Doctor as the likely suspect, they let him hang around the crime scene and bleat on about his innocence, and then while transporting him to custody, stop off to have a trip in his time machine – the TARDIS as taxi, another thing I hate about this era of the show. And, as noted above, the twist is that Cranleigh’s disability turns out to have been morally corrupting as well.

But I will shout out to Ivor Salter as the police sergeant here; he was also the local policeman in several episodes of Here Come the Double Deckers.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Terence Dudley’s novelisation is:

‘It could have been made for me,’ said the Doctor. He dropped the costume onto the bed and picked up the head covering which was all of a piece. The pale green cap that covered the head was fronted by a white face mask. This provided holes for the eyes and nostrils, and two blood-red triangles accentuated the cheeks. The Doctor put the head piece on and his identity promptly disappeared.

When I first read it in 2008, I wrote:

Two-part stories give a lot of space to add more to the narrative when it comes time to write the novelisation, and this has been done well (Ian Marter) and badly (Nigel Robinson). This is definitely more at the Marter end of the spectrum. Dudley adds much detail about the cricket match (as incomprehensible to me as to Adric and Nyssa) and roots the story in the class structure of the Britain of the period, the Dowager Marchioness coming across as a particularly memorable personality. He even succeeds in giving Adric a couple of memorable character moments.

It’s a good book – my favourite Fifth Doctor novel so far – but let down by lousy proofing: repeated references to “Portugese” and “Venezuala” (and by the way, the first is not actually spoken much in the second); also we have someone dressed as “Marie Antionette”. A shame that Target couldn’t take more care.

Still my favourite Fifth Doctor novelisation, though I like the comics of the era and the later Big Finish audios rather more in general. Dudley came very close to making me understand cricket. (But still did not quite succeed.) You can get it here.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Ian Millsted’s Black Archive analysis of Black Orchid is:

The identification of the Doctor as part of a race called Time Lords did not happen until nearly six seasons had been broadcast. However, from the outset, the Doctor always seemed happier in the company of whoever made up the ruling class of whatever place the travellers found themselves. In Marco Polo (1964) he befriends Kublai Khan. In The Keys of Marinus (1964) he opts to travel straight on to the advanced civilisation while the others slum it in icy wastelands. (To be fair, that was a plot insert to allow William Hartnell a couple of weeks’ holiday.) Even when aristocrats are out of favour in The Reign of Terror (1964), the Doctor manages to ingratiate himself with, and as one of, the new rulers of France. He talks with Robespierre on more or less equal terms.

I thought this was one of the better Black Archive books, though Millsted misses the point I make above about the unrealistic behaviour of law enforcement. The chapters are as follows:

  • an introduction, in which we learn that writer Terence Dudley actually pitched a story to Doctor Who at the very beginning, under Verity Lambert;
  • the story’s roots in Agatha Christie, Murder Must Advertise and Jane Eyre
  • the roots of the horror elements of the story in Frankenstein, The Elephant Man, and the presentation of mental illness and disability in Jane Eyre (again), The Woman in White, East Lynne, The Secret Garden and also other Doctor Who stories;
  • class, race and (briefly) colonisation in Black Orchid and in Doctor Who as a whole;
  • cricket in Doctor Who as a whole, and how Black Orchid successfully rises to the challenge of making it look interesting in a short TV story, despite awful weather on the day of filming;
  • doubles in Doctor Who, from The Massacre to Osgood, circling back to Black Orchid
  • a brief note on two-part stories in Old Who and 45-minute stories in Who generally;
  • an appendix asking if Black Orchid is a true historical story (answer: more or less);
  • another appendix on the Cranleigh family in spinoff fiction, most notably in Justin Richards’ The Sands of Time (which I loved
  • a final appendix responding to critique of the story by the “Watcher” column in Doctor Who Magazine (but mostly agreeing).

Like I said, one of the better Black Archives, with a lot to think about for a very short story. You can get it here.

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

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The stucco ceilings of Jan-Christian Hansche part 5: the church of Saint Rémi at Franc-Waret

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I ventured into darkest Wallonia yeteday, to find another example of the ceiling work of 17th century stucco artist Jan Christian Hansche. This was in the church of St Remigius, Saint Rémi locally, in the village of Franc-Waret near Namur. It’s the least well-known of Hansche’s work – I found it not on a Belgian site but in the Netherlands Institute for Art History lists. The Wikipedia page for the church goes into great detail about the art and who paid for it, but fails to name any of the artists.

I knew that the church is only open for 5pm Mass on Sundays, so got there at 4.30, to find it locked of course, with dusk falling. The priest arrived just after a quarter to, and made it lear that I was welcome to come in and photograph the ceiling. A slightly older couple appeared and it became obvious that it would be churlish not to stay for Mass, since the three of us were the only congregation, so I stuck around.

As I should have anticipated, they asked me to do the readings – but my French is not really up to public speaking and I stumbled a bit over “se prosterneront” in Psalm 72:11. It was not exactly the Volunteer Organist. I don’t think I have been to any religious service in French in the last twenty years, and it will be a while before I go again.

Anyway. The point of the trip was the stucco work of Jan Christian Hansche, and there is a really fine Holy Family above the choir of the church, dated 1663, with Christ’s parents leaning out of the ceiling into our space.

Above the crossing is a representation of the Holy Trinity, which surely must also be by Hansche – it’s very baroque.

I suspect that the nave may have originally had more Hansche ceilings; unfortunately the church was “improved” in the nineteenth century, and there are three rather flat depictions of St Anne educating her daughter, the Virgin and Child and Christ triumphant which are not a patch on Hansche’s work.

The whole church is pretty ornate.

Hand on heart, I could not recommend the church of Saint Rémi at Franc-Waret to the casual tourist. But if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Namur early on a Sunday evening, or if you are able to get it thrown in as an extra when visiting the castle next door, it’s definitely worth dropping in.

An Introduction to the Gospel of John, by Raymond E. Brown, ed. Francis J. Moloney

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The very fact that John is classified as a Gospel presupposes that John is based on a tradition similar in character to the traditions behind the Synoptic Gospels. Even those commentators who treat the Fourth Gospel simply as a work of theology devoid of historical value must be impressed by the fact that this theology is written in a career-of-Jesus context (unlike the Johannine Epistles).1 Paul too was a theologian, but he did not write his theology in the framework of Jesus' earthly ministry.
1 Indeed, some would regard the Fourth Gospel as an attempt to prevent the kerygmatic preaching of the church from being mythologized and divorced from the history of Jesus of Nazareth.

Anne has returned to studying theology, and it's a subject that vaguely interests me as well so I was glad when this popped up at the top of one of my reading lists. It's a book with a slightly sad history – Brown, the original author, died in 1998 when it was almost finished, and Moloney stepped in to edit his notes and supply a last chapter. This gives rise to the odd situation on pages 257 and 258 where a short footnote by Brown disagreeing with Moloney has been substantially extended with a long defensive comment from Moloney explaining his own argument in more detail.

That aside, I found this a lot more digestible than the biography of St Paul that I recently tried. I have a particular affection for the Gospel of John anyway – way way back, the great C.-J. Bailey (who is 95, if he's still alive, but I don't see any indication that he isn't) tried to teach me New Testament Greek on the basis of the first chapter, and I can still recite it by heart:

1 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
2 οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.
3 πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν
4 ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ·
5 καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.		 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God;
3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

(It's always puzzled me why, given that the original text for the end of the first verse is, literally, “and God was the Word”, “καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος”, most translations choose to put the two nouns the other way round.)

A lot of the theological discussion here is beyond me, but I found Brown's speculation about the process of composition very interesting: that there may have been an original text, now lost, heavily revised and supplemented a few decades later to produce the Gospel that we have, possibly by the same person. Moloney points out very pleasingly in the last chapter that this is also the story of this book – it is based on Brown's numerous earlier writings, but is itself a revision of them by Brown and then by Moloney.

I was also interested in the question of who John was writing against. There is clear polemic against followers of John the Baptist (though one wonders how many of them were left by the time the Gospel was written); against "the Jews", unhelpfully generalised; and against other followers of Jesus who were in disagreement with the writer. In the end, though, Brown agrees with the Gospel's own statement of its purpose at 20:31: "these [things] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" – the key purpose is encouragement for the believer, whatever their previous background may be.

Also pleasingly, Brown refers to John the Baptist throughout as "JBap", as if he were a rapper. You can see why, of course, there are a lot of Johns in this story.

I don't think even my regular reader will be rushing to add this to their library, but I got more from it than I had hoped, and you can get it here.

This was the top unread book added to my catalogue in 2019. Next on that list is Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, by Mark Blake.

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The Incredibles

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The Incredibles won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form made in Glasgow in 2005, the first time that I was there in person for the ceremony and I think the first time I voted as well. I had not seen anything in this category and did not express a preference. Voters liked it; it was well in the lead both for nominations and on the final ballot, beating, in order, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Spider-Man 2, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Since then I have seen the Harry Potter, and started watching Eternal Sunshine… on a plane once but fell asleep. I will give it another go some day; it looked promising and is the only film ahead of The Incredibles on both IMDB ratings (one puts them 1st and 3rd respectively, the other 6th and 16th with Spider-Man 2 top.) It was a Nebula finalist, along with Eternal Sunshine… and The Butterfly Effect, but beaten by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King due to the Nebulas' then wacky eligibility timeframe.

I normally do compare-and-contrast photos of actors who have been in previous Hugo or Oscar or Nebula winning films, but since The Incredibles is an animation there's not a lot of point. I'll note that we saw Samuel L. Jackson (Frozone here) as a doomed technician in Jurassic Park, Wallace Shawn (Gilbert Huph here) as Vizzini in The Princess Bride and John Ratzenberger (Underminer here) in small roles in Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, and Gandhi.

I guess that seen from the vantage point of 2005, this looked fresh and interesting and new, an affectionate riff on super-hero stories. (TV Tropes has done a brilliant deconstruction of the themes, as usual.) Fifteen years on, it didn't seem as special to me, with various newer better animations having come in the meantime. I laughed in the right places, but not a lot. Maybe I'm just tired from the Christmas break, and i guess it's entertaining enough, but it didn't do a lot for me; my willing suspension of disbelief must be a bit jaded. I'm putting it about 70% down my list, lower than I've put any Hugo or Nebula winner since The Sixth Sense, ahead of Sleeper but below The Princess Bride.

Next up is Serenity, but before that Oscar-winners Million Dollar Baby and Crash.

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My 2021 books in review

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I read 296 books in 2021, the fourth highest of the eighteen years that I have been keeping track, and the highest since 2011. I was less distracted by real-life politics and by Hugos this year, and also I admit to reading some very short books which bulked up the numbers

(Full numbers: 266 books in 2020, 234 in 2019, 262 in 2018, 238 in 2017, 212 in 2016, 290 in 2015, 291 in 2014, 237 in 2013, 259 in 2012, 301 in 2011, 278 in 2010, 342 in 2009, 371 in 2008, 236 in 2007, 207 in 2006, 144 in 2005, 149 in 2004)

Page count for the year: 77,200, eighth highest of the eighteen years I have recorded, closer to the middle; as mentioned, there are some very short books in there.

(70,400 pages in 2020, 64,600 in 2019, 71,600 in 2018, 60,500 in 2017; 62,300 in 2016; 80,100 in 2015; 97,100 in 2014; 67,000 in 2013; 77,800 in 2012; 88,200 in 2011; 91,000 in 2010; 100,000 in 2009; 89,400 in 2008; 69,900 in 2007; 61,600 in 2006; 46,400 in 2005; 46,800 in 2004)

Books by non-male writers in 2020: 124/296, 42% – a new record in both absolute numbers and percentages.

(77/266 [29%] in 2020, 88/234 [38%] in 2019, 102/262 [39%] in 2018, 64/238 [27%] in 2017, 65 [31%] in 2016, 86 [30%] in 2015, 81 [28%] in 2014, 71 [30%] in 2013, 65 [25%] in 2012, 65 [22%] in 2011, 65 [23%] in 2010, 68 [20%] in 2009, 49 [13%] in 2008, 53 [22%] in 2007, 34 [16%] in 2006, 30 [21%] in 2005, 33 [22%] in 2004)

Books by PoC in 2020: – 42/296 (14%) – highest absolute number, second highest percentage.

(25/266 [9%] in 2020, 34/234 [15%], in 2019, 26/262 [10%] in 2018, 17/238 [7%] in 2017, 14 [7%] in 2016, 20 [7%] in 2015, 11 [5%] in 2014, 12 [5%] in 2013, 15 [5%] in 2011, 24 [9%] in 2010, 16 [5%] in 2009, 6 [2%] in 2008, 5 [2%] in 2007, 8 [4%] in 2006, 4 [3%] in 2005, 2 [1%] in 2004)

Most-read author this year: Neil Gaiman, as I worked my way through the Humble Bundle of his books acquired in 2015. This is the second time that he's been my most-read author of the year.

(previous winners: Kieron Gillen in 2020,  Brian K. Vaughan in 2019, Tove Jansson and Marcel Proust in 2018, Colin Brake and Leo in 2017, Christopher Marlowe in 2016, Justin Richards in 2015 and 2014, Agatha Christie in 2013, Jonathan Gash in 2012, Arthur Conan Doyle in 2011, Ian Rankin in 2010, William Shakespeare in 2009 and 2008, Terrance Dicks in 2007, Ian Marter in 2006, Charles Stross in 2005, Neil Gaiman and Catherine Asaro in 2004).

1) Science Fiction and Fantasy (excluding Doctor Who)

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
131 114 77 108 68 80 130 124 65 62 78 73 78 54 75 68 79 76
44% 43% 33% 41% 29% 38% 45% 43% 27% 24% 26% 26% 23% 15% 32% 33% 55% 51%

Highest total ever, fourth highest percentage.

Top SF book of the year:

I was really impressed by Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, by Matt Ruff, winner of the James Tiptree Jr Award in 2003, a story of multiple personalities and strange things in Seattle; the author went on to write Lovecraft Country, now a TV series. (reviewget it here)

Honourable mentions to:

My votes for the BSFA Award for Best Novel and the Hugo for Best Novel went to, respectively:
(BSFA) Comet Weather, by Liz Williams, a great English fantasy (reviewget it here)
(Hugo) The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin, a great New York fantasy (reviewget it here)

Welcome rereads:

Favourite classics:
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (old reviewget it here)
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (not yet reviewed; get it here)

BSFA Award winners:
River of Gods, by Ian McDonald (reviewget it here)
The Separation, by Christopher Priest (reviewget it here)

Short fiction which won both Hugo and Nebula:
“Sandkings”, by George R.R. Martin (reviewget it here)
“Stories for Men”, by John Kessel (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:

A collection by new-ish British writer Priya Sharma, All the Fabulous Beasts – not sure why she is not better known, I think her writing is great (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:

The 2002 collection of Roger Zelazny's short stories with the title The Last Defender of Camelot – not because of the content, but because of the lazy and incompetent formatting; the 1980 collection of the same name is much better (reviewget it here)





2) Non-fiction

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
53 50 49 50 57 37 47 48 46 53 69 66 88 70 78 70 42 42
18% 19% 21% 19% 24% 17% 16% 16% 19% 20% 23% 24% 26% 19% 33% 34% 29% 28%

Joint eighth highest total of eighteen years, so squarely in the middle; only 15th highest percentage, near the bottom.

Top non-fiction book of the year:

Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins; more on that below.

Honourable mentions to:

Goodbye To All That, by Robert Graves, mainly about the First World War but also about his privileged background and family (reviewget it here)
A Woman in Berlin, a first-person account of the collapse of the Third Reich, particularly the attendant sexual violence (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:

I was very sorry that The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest, by Paul Kincaid, did not win the BSFA Award for Non-Fiction. I like both author and subject, as writers and also as people, but even without that I think it's a great insight into a great writer. (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:

Exploding School to Pieces: Growing Up With Pop Culture In the 1970s, by Mick Deal – sloppy and contributes very little to our knowledge of a well-researched era. (reviewget it here)




3) Comics (and picture books)

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
48 45 31 28 29 27 18 19 30 21 27 18 28 6 20 6 8 8
16% 17% 13% 11% 12% 13% 6% 7% 13% 8% 9% 6% 8% 2% 8% 3% 6% 5%

Highest total ever, second highest percentage. I've padded a little (but only a little) by including a photo book and an art book here, but that wouldn't change the rankings.

Top comic of the year:

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall – brilliant and timely historical exploration of slavery in places where we don't often think of it as having happened (reviewget it here)

Honourable mentions:

Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Damian Duffy and John Jennings – the only thing I voted for that actually won a Hugo; great treatment of a classic story (reviewget it here)
Le dernier Atlas, tome 1, by Fabien Vehlmann, Gwen de Booneval, Hervé Tranquerelle and Frédéric Blanchard – a great start to a counterfactual series; I felt the other two volumes didn't quite live up to the promise of the first, but still worth reading (reviewget it here)
My Father's Things, by Wendy Aldiss – lovely lovely book about dealing with grief (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:

Mijn straat: een wereld van verschil, by Ann De Bode – beautiful portrayal of a diverse Antwerp street (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:

Kaamelott: Het Raadsel Van de Kluis, by Alexandre Astier and Steven Dupre – based on a TV series, does nothing new (reviewhere in Dutch and here in French)


4) Doctor Who

Novels, collections of shorter fiction, etc excluding comics
2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
30 18 32 32 51 39 43 59 72 75 80 71 70 179 27 28 5 1
10% 7% 14% 12% 21% 18% 15% 20% 30% 29% 27% 26% 19% 48% 11% 14% 3% 1%
All Who books including comics and non-fiction
2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
40 25 43 42 55 42 54 68 81 75 87 78 80 180 49 32 5 1
14% 9% 18% 16% 23% 20% 19% 23% 34% 29% 29% 28% 23% 49% 21% 15% 3% 1%

I ended my sabbatical from DW reading late in the year. 13th highest total, 15th highest percentage for DW fiction; 14th highest total and again 15th highest pecentage for all DW books.

Top Doctor Who book of the year:

(Black Archive) The Massacre, by James Cooray Smith – second and best so far of the Black Archive analyses of past Doctor Who stories. I flagged it up to actor Annette Richardson, and was thrilled to get a brief but happy reply from her. (reviewget it here)

Honourable mentions:

(Comics) Old Friends, by Jody Houser et al – the Doctor meets the Corsair (reviewget it here)
(Novelisation) The Crimson Horror, by Mark Gatiss – adds a lot to the TV story (reviewget it here)
(Official BBC spinoff) Adventures in Lockdown – somewhat random collection but it works (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:

(Non-BBC spinoff: Lethbridge-Stewart) Night of the Intelligence, by Andy Frankham-Allen – pulls together a lot of threads in this excellent series (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:

(Non-BBC spinoff: Erimem) Angel of Mercy, by Julianne Todd, Claire Bartlett and Iain McLaughlin – you know what's going to happen really very early in the book (reviewget it here)


5) Non-genre fiction

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
30 40 45 36 26 28 42 41 44 48 48 50 57 24 33 35 9 19
10% 15% 19% 14% 11% 13% 14% 14% 19% 19% 16% 18% 18% 6% 14% 17% 6% 13%

13th highest total, 16th highest percentage, so pretty far down; not quite sure why that is.

Top non-genre fiction of the year:

Joint honours to two novels which were both the basis for Oscar-winning films:
The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris – chilling story of a mass murderer (reviewget it here) and
Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally – chilling story of mass murder (reviewget it here)

Honourable mention:

Jack, by Marilynne Robinson – another look at the same events she has told us about before, from a new perspective (reviewget it here)

Welcome reread:

Middlemarch, by George Eliot – one of my favourite books ever (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:

The Ice Cream Army, by Jessica Gregson – ethnic tensions in WW1 Australia (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:

Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom – also the basis of an Oscar-winning film; awful film, worse book (reviewget it here)



6) Others: poetry and scripts

I read four works of poetry, of which the best new read was Maria Dahvana Headley's Hugo-winning translation of Beowulf (reviewget it hereWelcome to Night Vale volumes, Mostly Void, Partially Stars (reviewget it here) and Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (reviewget it here)

My Book of the Year

My Top Book of 2021 is Carrying the Fire, by astronaut Michael Collins. Funny, moving, gripping, who would have thought that the best account of the first Moon landing would be written by the guy who wasn't there? (And died aged 90 earlier this year.) Absolutely worth reading, not just for space exploration fans but for anyone interested in the human side of one of the most famous events of the twentieth century. You can get it here.

Previous Books of the Year:

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

Poll

Since nobody much is on LJ these days, I've outsourced my 2021 book poll to Surveymonkey. How many have you read?

Friday and December reading

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Roundup for 2021 coming shortly.

Current
Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver
Calvin, by F. Bruce Gordon
A Radical Romance, by Alison Light

Books finished last week
The 48 Laws Of Power, by Robert Greene (Did not finish)
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
Les Mondes d’Aldébaran: L’Encyclopédie Illustrée, by Christophe Quillien
Barbarella vol 1, by Jean-Claude Forest, tr Kelly Sue DeConnick
Northern Ireland a Generation after Good Friday, by Colin Coulter, Niall Gilmartin, Katy Hayward and Peter Shirlow
Jani and the Greater Game, by Eric Brown
Barbarella vol 2: The Wrath of the Minute-Eater, by Jean-Claude Forest, tr Kelly Sue DeConnick
Once & Future Vol. 1: The King is Undead, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvilain
The Young H.G. Wells: Changing the World, by Claire Tomalin
Once & Future Vol. 2: Old English, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvilain

December Books

Non-fiction 9 (2021 total 53)
The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend
The Mind Robber, by Andrew Hickey
An Introduction to the Gospel of John, by Raymond E. Brown
Black Orchid, by Ian Millsted
The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett
A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff, by Neil Gaiman (more non-fiction than sf content)
The 48 Laws Of Power, by Robert Greene (Did not finish)
Northern Ireland a Generation after Good Friday, by Colin Coulter, Niall Gilmartin, Katy Hayward and Peter Shirlow
The Young H.G. Wells: Changing the World, by Claire Tomalin

Non-genre 3 (2021 total 30)
Staring At The Sun, by Julian Barnes
Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells
Lying Under the Apple Tree, by Alice Munro

SF 9 (2021 total 131)
A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine
The Secret, by Eva Hoffman
"Blood Music", by Greg Bear
Black Oxen, by Elizabeth Knox
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Startide Rising, by David Brin
An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
Jani and the Greater Game, by Eric Brown

Doctor Who 7 (2021 total 30, 40 inc non-fiction and comics)
Doctor Who Annual 2022, by Paul Lang
This Town Will Never Let Us Go, by Lawrence Miles
The Life of Evans, by John Peel
Night of the Intelligence, by Andy Frankham-Allan
The Wonderful Doctor of Oz, by Jacqueline Rayner
Doctor Who – The Mind Robber, by Peter Ling
Doctor Who – Black Orchid, by Terence Dudley

Comics 6 (2021 total 48)
Seven Deadly Sins, by Roz Kaveney, Graham Higgins, Tym Manley, Hunt Emerson, Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Dave Gibbons, Lew Stringer, Mark Rodgers, Steve Gibson, Davy Francis, Jeremy Banks, Alan Moore and Mike Matthews
Les Mondes d’Aldébaran: L’Encyclopédie Illustrée, by Christophe Quillien
Barbarella vol 1, by Jean-Claude Forest, tr Kelly Sue DeConnick
Barbarella vol 2: The Wrath of the Minute-Eater, by Jean-Claude Forest, tr Kelly Sue DeConnick
Once & Future Vol. 1: The King is Undead, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvilain
Once & Future Vol. 2: Old English, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvilain

9,300 pages (2021 total 77,200)
13/34 (2021 total 124/296) by non-male writers (Hayward, Tomalin, Munro, Martine, Hoffman, Knox, King, Rayner, Kaveney, DeConnick x2, Bonvilain x2)
1/34 (2021 total 42/296) by PoC (King)
7/34 rereads (2021 total 38/296) – "Blood Music", The Lord of the Rings, Startide Rising, The Martian Chronicles, Doctor Who – The Mind Robber, Doctor Who – Black Orchid, Once & Future Vol. 1: The King is Undead

Coming soon (perhaps)
Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets
El Libro del Mar / The Book of the Sea, by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bolivia (if I can find it)
Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, by Bruce Clark
Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell
“Bloodchild”, by Octavia E. Butler
Why I Write, by George Orwell
Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami
Indigo, by Clemens J. Setz
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
Scherven, by Erik De Graaf
The War in the Air, by H. G. Wells
The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters
Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, by Mark Blake
Tower, by Nigel Jones
Flicker, by Theodore Roszak
The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake
After Atlas, by Emma Newman

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The Mind Robber, by Andrew Hickey (and Peter Ling)

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Working through the Black Archive monographs on Doctor Who, I’ve now reached the seventh, on the 1968 story The Mind Robber, which features the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie transported to a Land of Fiction, and includes one episode where Fraser Hines is briefly replaced by another actor as Jamie because he had caught chickenpox. I like it. When I watched it for the first time in 2007, I wrote:

The Mind Robber features… Oh, let’s get it over with. Zoe. Nobody can keep their hands off her. Certainly not the Doctor (see right). Certainly not Jamie. And the first episode ends like this. In the fourth episode she has a catfight with a caped and masked comic book superhero and wins. No wonder today’s Guardian lists her as one of the top five companions ever! I have to say that I can’t think of a more confident and sexy performance from any of the companions in any other old Who story; Leela, I think, comes closest but that is not very close. (Of course, if we count new Who as well, nobody can hold a candle to John Barrowman.)

And the confidence on her part (and indeed that of the rest of the cast) is remarkable because in fact the story very clearly doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The Doctor and companions are trapped in the Land of Fiction by its Master (not that Master but a different cosmic villain of the same name). We have a forest made of words. We have Jamie transformed into a different actor for an episode, to cover up the fact that Frazer Hines contracted chicken pox. We have clockwork soldiers. We have Rapunzel, we have E. Nesbit’s Five Children, and best of all we have Lemuel Gulliver, played superbly by Bernard Horsfall (and more on him later [in The War Games]). We have glorious moments of Jamie and Zoe becoming fictional, becoming hostile to the Doctor, being nostalgic for their lost homelands (to which of course they will be returned by the end of the season).

But we also have Doctor Who coming close to breaking the fourth wall, not in the overt way of the First Doctor in the Daleks’ Master Plan (or the charming Morgus in The Caves of Androzani), but in terms of exploring Story and what it means to be in one. It’s fascinating and bizarre and I’ll have to re-watch it soon, along with all the DVD extras. And not just because I want to ogle Zoe again.

When I did my rewatch of the whole of Old Who in 2010, I wrote:

The Mind Robber is one of the most extraordinary Who stories ever. The first episode, bolted onto Peter Ling’s script at the last minute by Derrick Sherwin, is full of wonderful moments of inspired lunacy; the only single episode that does a better job of dimension-hopping is Part One of The Space Museum, and it of course is let down by the rest of that story. In The Mind Robber we have the paradoxical idea of fictional characters (the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe) trying to avoid becoming fictional characters (like Gulliver, Rapunzel and Cyrano de Bergerac). Jamie’s temporary change of body – made necessary by circumstances totally outside anyone’s control – adds an extra element of surrealism to the mix. My one quibble is that the ending is a bit abrupt, and we never see what happens to the Master of the Land of Fiction.

Bernard Horsfall is particularly memorable here as Gulliver, aggravating the Doctor in a world of the mind as he was to do again under David Moloney’s direction in The Deadly Assassin. And having griped about the costumes for The Dominators, those for The Mind Robber – produced by the same designer – are superb; particularly Zoe’s catsuit. The moment when she is shot from behind clinging to the console of the destroyed Tardis is a moment when Doctor Who starts to grow up. Or at least enter adolescence.

Coming back to it again – with the production subtitles on the DVD – I still really enjoyed it, for all the reasons set out above. It’s worth noting that it was the first story directed by David Moloney, who also oversaw the production of such classics as The War Games, Genesis of the Daleks, The Deadly Assassin and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Patrick Troughton is very good, using force of personality to overcome the low-budget sets. I also must try and get to High Rocks near Tunbridge Wells some time, used both here and in Castrovalva.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of the novelisation is:

‘I can’t – hold on – much longer – ‘ Zoe gasped.

When I read it in 2008, I wrote:

This is much more fun. The original TV version was one of the most surreal stories ever; the novel takes some liberties with the script, but basically improves it further to make it one of the better Second Doctor novels. Even the Karkus somehow makes better sense here. One to look out for.

I endorse this assessment. One point to add is that even though Ling did not actually write the first of the five TV episodes, he gives it more page time (38 out of 144 – 26%) than any of the others in the novelisation. Completists will already have it, but if you don’t, you can get it here.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Andrew Hickey’s study of the Mind Robber is:

The grafted-on opening by Sherwin means that the serial effectively has two ‘episode 1’s – the story proper does not really start until the second episode – and one could even argue that the plot doesn’t start until near the end of the story. For much of the adventure, this is a picaresque, with the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe exploring an unfamiliar landscape and the characters within it. We will look later at the similarities between the Doctor and Lemuel Gulliver, but in this story the Doctor has become part of Gulliver’s genre – he, like Gulliver, is our representative in a strange place, discovering the rules along with us, and this is enough to carry the narrative without having to have a plot per se.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Hickey’s writing online over the years, though he has more recently shifted to podcasting and Patreon, neither of which is really my thing, so I was looking forward to this. My expectations were not completely fulfilled. I felt it leant a bit too heavily on the traditional fannish resources for Doctor Who – articles from DWM, Howe et al, Cornell et al – and not enough on other sources. In particular I missed any reference to Who’s Next, by Derrick Sherwin, the writer of the first episode of The Mind Robber and script editor for the whole; his autobiography was published in time for the 50th anniversary rush in 2013, and Hickey’s Black Archive study almost three years later. So there was a lot more telling me what I already knew than telling me new stuff.

Having said that, for those less familiar with Whovian reference books, it’s a workmanlike summary of the state of play, comprehensibly structured and decently written. The chapters cover:

  • the production of the story, and its roots in Platonic philosophy and Alice in Wonderlandthe questions of authorship and the nature of fiction;
  • a very short chapter on the story’s structure;
  • a defence of Season Six and brief bio notes on the main cast and crew;
  • a much longer survey of the characters in the Land of Fiction, especially Gulliver, the Karkus and the Master himself;
  • another very short chapter on why The Mind Robber is different to the First Doctor story The Celestial Toymakerwhat a shame it is that a subtle story full of nuance is chiefly remembered for one male gaze scene [I plead guilty];
  • why the Doctor is not from the Land of Fiction (only one reference is given for this argument);
  • other appearances of the Land of Fiction in the Whoniverse, unsurprisingly omitting The Wonderful Doctor of Oz, published five years later.

You can get it here.

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

July 2014 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 spent most of July 2014 at work in Brussels, escaping at the end to Northern Ireland. Before that, F and I went to a re-enactment of the Battle of Wavre:

And the following weekend we had a day-trip to Huy.

Little U was overwhelmed with fangirlishness on seeing the Teletubby ride at the Eurotunnel terminal.

I read 30 books that month. Those that were potential Clarke Award finalists did not get written up at the time.

Non-fiction 6 (YTD 35)
Napoleon Bonaparte for Little Historians, by Bou Bounoider
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 2, by Richard Bagwell
How Languages are Learned, by Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 3, by Richard Bagwell
The Essence of Christianity, by Ludwig Feuerbach (not fnished)
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 (not finished)
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Fiction (non-sf) 4 (YTD 22)
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
Crash, by J.G. Ballard
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O'Farrell
Billionaire Boy, by David Walliams
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SF (non-Who) 14 (YTD 67)
Binary (®Evolution), by Stephanie Saulter
Andromeda’s Fall, by William C Dietz
The Moon King, by Neil Williamson
Beowulf, tr. J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
The Girl With All The Gifts, by M.R. Carey
My Real Children, by Jo Walton
Plastic Jesus, by Wayne Simmons
The Echo, by James Smythe
Rogue Queen, by L. Sprague de Camp
The Bees, by Laline Paull
334, by Thomas M Disch
The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch
Glaze, by Kim Curran
Shovel Ready, by Adam Stermbergh
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Doctor Who 4 (YTD 38)
Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards
So Vile a Sin, by Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman
The Book of the Still, by Paul Ebbs
Doctor Who: Cybermen Monster File, by Gavin Collinson and Joe Lidster
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Comics 2 (YTD 13)
De Sterrensteen, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Peter Van Gucht & Luc Morjaeu]
Brussel in Beeldekes: Manneken Pis en andere sjarels, ed. Marc Verhaegen
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~8,800 pages (YTD ~49,900)
8/30 (YTD 44/175) by women (Lightbown/Spada, Kingsolver, O'Farrell, Saulter, Walton, Paull, Curran, Orman)
3/30 (YTD 13/175) by PoC (Bounoider, Saulter, Paull)

The best of these was The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which you can get here, followed by Crash, which you can get here, and The Girl With All The Gifts, which you can get here. The worst was Napoleon Bonaparte for Little Historians, by Bou Bounoider, acquired at the Wavre re-enactment; readers will be startled to learn that "Wellington was an Englishman, a bit like Paddington Bear." In fact, as we all know, Wellington was born in Ireland, and Paddington Bear was a) from Peru and b) a bear. You can get it here.

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“Blood Music”, by Greg Bear; Startide Rising, by David Brin

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My slow progress through the list of works which won both Hugo and Nebula has now taken me to the awards made in 1984 for work of 1983; two winners, both of which are based on humanity's manipulation of genetics, but in very different ways.

The second paragraph of the third section of “Blood Music” is:

He explained with his characteristic circumlocutions. Listening was like trying to get to the meat of a newspaper article through a forest of sidebars and graphic embellishments.

When I first read “Blood Music” in 2001, I wrote:

A friend of mine gave me a copy of the novel length expansion of “Blood Music” shortly after it was published. I did not really get it; the plot seemed to me to start from a very good idea and degenerate into silliness. The original short story, however, is excellent. Brian Aldiss once characterised good sf as not so much “What if…” as “My God! What if…” [actually it was Philip K. Dick] and “Blood Music” is firmly in that category.

The story begins with a classic first sentence, “There is a principle in nature I don't think anyone has pointed out before”. This leads to a couple of paragraphs of exposition of the prinicple that micro-organisms die all the time and it doesn't really matter, followed by the couplet: “That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it.”

Our narrator, Edward Milligan, unexpectedly meets up with his old friend Vergil Ulam, who has succeeded in developing intelligence in bacteria by unlocking the information processing potential of RNA molecules. He transfers the intelligent RNA into his own white blood cells, and now finds his body being changed from within as the cells take over. Terrified by the potential dangers of Vergil's research, Edward kills his friend.

But it is too late. Vergil has managed to infect Edward with his geneticially modified microbiota, and Edward in turn infects his wife Gail. The story ends as the couple find their bodies completely under the control of the newly evolved intelligences, now expanding to take over the rest of the human world, and come to terms with a new mode of existence.

Basically Bear has taken two very ancient sf themes, the story of man's creation gone wrong (which dates back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and the evolutionary transcendence theme which is surprisingly common among hard sf writers, most notably in Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End“Gene Hive” aka “Journey to the Interior”) to create a cracking piece of narrative.

And the quality of the narrative is one reason I can't easily place “Blood Music” in the nanotechnology or cyberpunk traditions which it is said to have kicked off. Other novels I have read dealing with the theme of nanotechnology include Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Ian McDonald's Necroville, Kathleen Anne Goonan's Crescent City Rhapsody. Not one of these books has a really satisfying ending, and since I know that McDonald and Stephenson at least can write real endings in their other books, it would seem that the gosh-wow factor of describing nanotechnology has a tendency to distract the author from conventional narrative guidelines – my fading memory of the novel version of Blood Music bears this out.

Orson Scott Card, in his introduction to the story in Future on Ice, argues that Bear cannot be a cyberpunk writer because he is an “all-around nice guy”, the implication being that real “cyberpunk” authors are not. Card's antipathy to cyberpunk is well known, so this is not a hugely convincing argument. However, given that no less than Bruce Sterling hailed “Blood Music” as one of the founding texts of cyberpunk, there is a case to answer. It seems to me though that true cyberpunk, when it deals with biological engineering, is exhilarated by the possibilities of a new technology under human control. The moral of “Blood Music” is ambiguous; in so far as Vergil Ulam's invention of molecular nanotechnology leads to new possibilities of human existence, this can only come about through an awful compromise with what used to be the components of our own bodies.

“Blood Music” gets it just right in terms of characterisation, pace and an ending which raises even further questions about the universe. Strongly recommended.

Coming back to it twenty years later, I was again impressed with the pace and skill of the story-telling, and the convincing portrait of what is frankly a rather stereotypical character in Vergil Ulam. I am a bit less annoyed by cyberpunk and stories about nanotechnology now – I must have got out of bed on the wrong side that morning. I got it in the Future on Ice anthology, which you can get hereThe Big Book of Science Fiction: The Ultimate Collection, which you can get here.

There was an unusual congruence between the Hugo and Nebula Best Novelette ballots that year; all five Hugo finalists were also Nebula finalists. Apart from “Blood Music”, these were “Black Air”, by Kim Stanley Robinson; “The Monkey Treatment”, by George R. R. Martin; “The Sidon in the Mirror”, by Connie Willis; and “Slow Birds”, Ian Watson. There were two additional Nebula finalists, “Blind Shemmy”, by Jack Dann and “Cicada Queen”, by Bruce Sterling. I don't recall having read any of them.

The third chapter of Startide Rising starts with two prose paragraphs each followed by reported speech in the language of dolphins. The second of each of these are:

The operator’s report confirmed the discovery made by neutrino sensor moments before. It was a litany of bad news, related in trance-verse.

* They scream and lust—
       To win and capture … *

I was hugely disappointed with The Uplift War, Brin's other Hugo-winning novel in the Uplift Saga, when I revisited it a few years back. I'm really glad to say that Startide Rising maintained its magic for me. It's set in the early days of humanity's encounters with a much older galactic civilisation, where the pecking order between alien races who have genetically developed their client species is a matter of intense conflict. Humans have contributed to this by “uplifting” dolphins and chimpanzees, and the first dolphin-crewed starship, having made a epochal discovery, is hiding on an obscure planet from stronger alien forces pursuing its secret. The humans and dolphins are all very well characterised, and the planetary environment and other alien races well depicted (though the aliens sometimes slip just a little into stereotype). And Brin has put a lot of work into thinking about how intelligent creatures with completely different mindsets might work together, especially with the undertones of slavery and colonialism which are the foundation of the series. I really enjoyed revisiting it. Where “Blood Music” is “My God! What if…”, Startide Rising is sensawunda reflecting contemporary debates (as always). You can get it here.

In contrast to the Novelette ballots, Startide Rising was one of only two novels that year to be a finalist for both Hugo and Nebula; the other was Tea with the Black Dragon, by R.A. MacAvoy. The other Hugo finalists were Millennium, by John Varley; Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey; and The Robots of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov. The other Nebula finalists were Against Infinity, by Gregory Benford; The Citadel of the Autarch, by Gene Wolfe; Lyonesse, by Jack Vance; and The Void Captain's Tale, by Norman Spinrad. The only one that I am sure I have read is the Wolfe, though I guess I must have read the Asimov at some point as well.

The Hugo for Best Novella that year went to “Cascade Point”, by Timothy Zahn, and the Nebula to “Hardfought”, by Greg Bear. The Hugo for Best Short Story went to “Speech Sounds”, by Octavia E. Butler, and the Nebula to “The Peacemaker”, by Gardner Dozois. I'm sure I've read “Speech Sounds”, and not sure about the rest. The Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation went to Return of the Jedi.

Next in this sequence is a rare triplet: “Bloodchild”, by Octavia E. Butler; “Press Enter ◾️”, by John Varley; and Neuromancer, by William Gibson, which all won Hugo and Nebula awards in 1985 for work published in 1984.

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Tropical Beach Sounds and Other Seascapes #4; Daughter of the Gods; Ninth Doctor v2

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I’m going to try and be more diligent about writing up my Big Finish listening next year, but for today here are notes on five audios that I have recently enjoyed.

First up is Tropical Beach Sounds and Other Seascapes #4, by Tim Foley, a Torchwood story recommended by my friend M. This is just glorious. It starts off like any other self-help tape narrated by Michael Palin, and gradually gets darker and darker, all told in the second person, present tense. It’s really audacious to put one of England’s best known actors on for an hour and eighteen minutes of dramatic monologue about Torchwood, but it works really well. My first story by Foley, not my last as we shall see shortly. You can get it here.

Next, Daughter of the Gods, by David K. Barnes is a multi-Doctor story with a twist: the First Doctor and Second Doctor meet in a slightly divergent timeline from the canonical Daleks’ Master Plan. Peter Purves plays both Steven and the First Doctor, Frazer Hines plays both Jamie and the Second Doctor, Wendy Padbury plays Zoe and Ajjaz Awad plays Katarina. The dynamic between the first two Doctors is written as very fractious indeed, and of course that makes total sense – they have no particular reason to like each other, and the First Doctor is wracked with guilt when he learns from the Second what will happen to Katarina – played by Ajjaz Awad, who must be forty years younger than the other three TARDIS crew actors, and successfully takes on a role that was written out of the show two decades before she was born. Again, Barnes was a new writer to me but I’ll look out for more of his work. You can get this here.

I was not as impressed as I had hoped to be by the first trilogy of Big Finish audios starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, released in May. The second trilogy, Respond to All Calls, came out in the summer and I am glad to say that I enjoyed it a lot more. There’s no common character between the three adventures apart from the Ninth Doctor himself, and although Eccleston loves a regular sparring partner, he’s also pretty good at one-off angst and heroism which is what we get here. Apparently there was a plan at one point to make these three the first Ninth Doctor box set from Big Finish; I think it would have been a good idea, but no doubt internal production constraints played a role. You can get the box set here.

The first of these, Girl, Deconstructed, is by Lisa McMullin whose other work I’ve enjoyed – I don’t seem to have written it up here, but she did a glorious Leela / River Song mash-up for the Eighth of March anthology, and also a couple of the recent Gallifrey: Time War series. This one is set entirely in Scotland in 2004, and apart from Christopher Eccleston, all the voices are Scottish, which makes a nice change. Fifteen year old Marnie has disappeared, and she’s not the only one; Mirren Mack as the missing teenager and Pearl Abbleby as the detective looking into it who uncovers some of her own secrets are very good, especially the detective / Doctor interactions with Eccsleston.

The second, Fright Motif, is by Tim Foley who also wrote Tropical Beach Sounds and Other Seascapes #4. It has a pretty damn good guest cast – Gemma Whelan, of Game of Thrones and Upstart Crow (a Big Finish regular of course); Adrian Schiller, who played the evil Uncle in the Hugo-winning Neil Gaiman Eleventh Doctor story The Doctor’s Wife; and Damien Lynch, another Big Finish regular who I’d most recently heard playing Leela’s love interest. I thought it was tremendous, and several times went back to listen to good bits again. Despite the fact that there are only four characters, they are all excellent, the Paris 1948 atmosphere is convincingly portrayed, and the alien menace convincingly threatening. Tim Foley is now on my must-buy list of authors.

The final part of the trilogy, Planet of the End, is set in the future rather than the past or near-present; the writer, Timothy X Atack, is I think new to me. I mostly listened to it navigating around an unfamiliar supermarket while shopping on Christmas Eve, so sympathised with the Doctor’s confusion as he tried to work out what was going on. Having landed on a mausoleum world, he is taken prisoner by the local AI on the instructions of the mysterious Incorporation, who then make extreme demands of him. I thought the plot maybe slightly over-reached, but it’s more than made up for by Margaret Clunie as the computer that gradually develops a soul through her interactions with Eccleston’s Doctor. I was also more than a little thrilled that half of the mysterious Incorporation is played by Jan Francis, who I loveed as Yvette in the first series of Secret Army, but in fact she isn’t given as much to do as I’d have liked. Still, it hangs together well enough.

Here’s a trailer for all three of the stories, which has nice visuals and music but not much content.

I have the third Ninth Doctor box set downloaded and ready.

The Wonderful Doctor of Oz, by Jacqueline Rayner

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Theodore hadn't stopped apologising for the last mile, even though Yaz kept insisting it was unnecessary – if she hadn't clicked that, outside the protection of the TARDIS, any update to K9's systems would overwrite the data, then he couldn't possibly be expected to know.

A good Thirteenth Doctor novel by the experienced Jac Rayner, taking us into the world of L. Frank Baum's Oz, and neatly written on the assumption that the average reader will be half-familiar with the 1939 film but maybe less so with the 1900 book. K9 and a guest character, Theodore, bulk out the usual TARDIS crew (although two had been written out months before this book was published last summer); Graham, Yaz and Ryan recapitulate Dorothy's companions on her journey; and we get a bonus invocation of The Mind Robber (which I'll come to shortly). The worst thing about the book (and it is not all that bad) is that the question of Who Is Behind It All is thoroughly spoilered by the cover. Otherwise it's decently in the traditions of both Who and Oz, and I think would be accessible to fans of the one who don't know the other.

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