650 days of plague

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So. Enjoying a much quieter Christmas than usual; though still a bit more convivial than last year; for Christmas dinner, we invited our old Cambridge friend P, who normally goes to his family in England but couldn’t this year. I’m happily blogging away (most of my book blog posts are written at least a week in advance). We took B out for a walk today despite the rain (which she doesn’t mind) and did not quite succeed in getting everyone to look at the camera at the same time.

The girls have now had their booster shots, Anne and I have appointments for next week and F has his for later in January. Anecdotally, my sense is that a lot more people are feeling knocked out by the booster than by the first jabs, but it’s still better than the alternative. Next time I write one of these posts, I’ll have had mine.

Despite the rise in Omicron cases, the Belgian numbers in general were improving rapidly before the holiday weekend, with infections falling by 36% weekly. We’ll see what happen tomorrow when (presumably) we’ll get new numbers. One thing that already strike me is that in the current peak ICU cases, rather than deaths, are now the lagging indicator, peaking last and falling more slowly; which possibly points to cases being in general less severe now than in previous waves. (Of course maybe most of the really vulnerable are already dead…

One consequence of the tangibly less severe situation is that in Belgium at least, the social contract of respecting decrees on social distancing is starting to break down; today’s front page headline in De Standaard is that theatres and cinemas are refusing to close as ordered. Being De Standaard, it also says that this is more of a Francophone probem. For now.) We’ll see how that develops.

Otherwise I am reasonably hopeful of getting back to the office more than one day a week some time in January. Stay well, everyone!

2022 according to science fiction, in novels and films

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For the last couple of years, I did a roundup of science fiction set in the year to come – 2020 and 2021. This year I have not looked into TV shows or games, but can present you with three novels and six films, all made in 2002 or before, all set more or less in 2022. I’m going through them in reverse chronological order, frankly because that way we save the best until last. (Most of them are not very good, but I also confess that I watched several of the films when sick with COVID, so my concentration may not have been intense.) How similar to fiction will the reality of 2022 turn out to be?

Novel 1

The Secret, Eva Hoffmann (2002)

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Palm Beach Airport was a two-dimensional, oversharp image against the baby-blue sky. The cab crawled through wall-to-wall traffic, endless cars shimmering metallically in the soupy heat, the air in the taxi feeling as if it were made of cold metal itself. From this close up, the white Hispanic haciendas, the strip of what passed for downtown, the blockbuster hotels rising straight up against the sea, looked like that old Pop Art stuff, flatter than anything I’d remembered from Plato’s Caves. Maybe it was the air which thinned everything down.

What’s it about? Eighteen-year-old protagonist, born in 2004, discovers that she is her mother’s clone, and spends the rest of the book working through her resentment against her family and others.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? Not unless cloning technology had got a lot further in 2004 than we realised.

Is it any good? Moody young women are often quite a good read, and this isn’t awful. You can get it here. 6/10.

Film 1:

देहम / Deham (The Body) (2001)

What’s it about? A young man in Mumbai accepts an offer from an evil company to harvest his body organs in return for making his wife and family rich. His wife is very upset about this and then (spoiler) the company makes a mistake and takes away her deadbeat brother to be chopped up instead of her husband.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? Commercial organ harvesting is a genuine ethical issue, and lurid accounts of people losing parts of their bodies against their will abound. Still difficult to imagine that this could be legitimised – and, crucially, if it were, the harvesters would make damn sure they had the right person.

Is it any good? Frankly, no. Based on a play, it’s very stagey, and the only good bit is Kitu Gidwani as Jaya. Panned by Indian critics, though it won a prize in Sweden. 4/10. The whole thing is on Youtube, so you can judge for yourself. (NB not to be confused with a different 2001 film also called The Body.)

Novel 2:

Black Oxen, by Elizabeth Knox (2001)

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Carlin was out in front, setting an example I think, examining every foot of ground with a kind of comic intensity. I saw him straighten to unkink his back. He put a hand up to shade his eyes. Then he grew still.

What’s it about? Our protagonist, another moody young woman, has started therapy, in the year 2022, to process the peculiarities of her childhood and young adulthood; she seems to have moved between parallel worlds, her father has a strange relationship with reality, and her late husband was a notorious torturer in a fictional South American country where ancient magics are sill practiced.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? Therapy will certainly exist in 2022. Most of the books is set before that, and the specifics of magic as part of a structure of governance have probably not been realised anywhere. (But what do we know?)

Is it any good? I found it frankly difficult to follow, but I see from elsewhere online that it has its diehard fans. You can get it here. 6/10.

Film 2:

No Escape / Escape from Absolom / Absolom 2022 (1994)

What’s it about? Our protagonist, played by Ray Liotta, is sentenced to life in an isolated but large penal colony, where hundreds of convicts, all men and almost all white, fight it out for dominance. Based on the 1987 novel The Penal Colony, by Richard Herley, which is set on an island off Cornwall.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? Penal policies everywhere oscillate between repressive and redemptive. But it seems improbable that next year, or any time soon, large swathes of fertile land would be handed over to convicts for them to do whatever they want.

Is it any good? It looks brilliant – the north Australian setting is utilised to the max. But the plot is plure cliche and the cast not exactly diverse (no woman is seen at any point through the film), and my sensitive soul found the violence icky. 5/10.

Film 3:

Time Runner (1993)

What’s it about? Mark Hamill, unsuccessfully attempting to fight off an alien invasion of Earth in 2022, somehow gets sent thirty years back in time to try and prevent it all from happening. He tangles with a corrupt politician who is destined to become the collaborationist president of the world, and ends up assisting at his own birth.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? Actually most of the film is set in 1992, apart from the very beginning and occasional flashforwards. As of now, we don’t (yet) have a President of Earth; as for the alien invasion, we will have to wait and see.

Is it any good? Frankly, no. The best bit is Brion James (who I confess I only knew as Kowalski in Blade Runner) as the sinister politician Neila – see what that spells backwards? Subtle, eh? Hamill, whose character is 30, was of course already 41. There are some half-decent action scenes but the plot makes little sense even on its own terms. 4/10. As of present writing you can watch it all here:

Film 4:

Alien Intruder (also 1993)

What’s it about? More convicts in the futre, but this time a small group pulled together to salvage a lost space ship (whose original crew were in fact killed by one of them). But as they travel, they each get to pass the time with an individually designed erotic fantasy starring Tracy Scroggins (previously of Dynasty, later of Babylon 5Is 2022 really going to be like that? No. We have no deep salvage space missions staffed by prisoners. Though Tracy Scroggins surely still features in the erotic fantasies of some people of my sort of age.

Is it any good? Yet again, not really. The effects are poor, the characters almost interchangeable and the plot once again barely coherent even in its own terms. 4/10. I can’t give you the full thing this time, but here is a trailer where even the narrator sounds bored.

Film 5:

The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)

What’s it about? A maintenance ship ends up on the dark side of the Moon, where it encounters an abandoned NASA space shuttle, the legacy of the Bermuda Triangle, and the Devil himself.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? We don’t as far as I know have any nuclear-armed satellites, let alone maintenance ships for them where the computer is in the shape of an attractive woman (Camilla More). So, probably not.

Is it any good? I actually can’t remember. This was the first of the films that I watched when down with COVID, and my brain was too fogged to really make sense of it, which is probably not the film-makers’ fault. I vaguely recall that Joe Tunkel seemed to be quite good. Not giving it a mark as it wouldn’t be fair. Here’s the trailer.

Novel 3:

Staring at the Sun, by Julian Barnes (1986)

Second paragraph of third section:

Jean had often wondered what it would be like to grow old. When she had been in her fifties, and still feeling in her thirties, she heard a talk on the radio by a gerontologist. ‘Put cotton wool in your ears,’ he had said, ‘and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear Vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: instant ageing.’

What’s it about? In fact only the third (and shortest) section of three is set in 2022, and even that is a bit ambiguous in that the year is never identified, though 2022 seems a reasonable best fit given what we are told earlier in the book. The first section deals with the childhood of the protagonist in the 1940s; the second with her unsuccessful marriage to the village policeman; and the third flashes back to her life in between from the perspective of celebrating her hundredth birthday.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? I do hope that 100-year-old ladies will still be able to have joyrides in aeroplanes next year, if they want to. And Barnes’ supercomputer with all the answers is not far off Google, though it requires a lot more human maintenance than the search algorithms that we have come to know and love in real life.

Is it any good? Unambiguously, yes. I don’t think it is as deep and meaningful as Julian Barnes fans evidently do, but it’s an interesting reflection on what the life of an Englishwoman born in 1942 might look like. 7/10. You can get it here.

Film 6:

Soylent Green (1973)

I watched this last year, for the first time.

Soylent Green (1973) and Make Room! Make Room! (1966)

What’s it about? It’s a story of New York in the year 2022, where overpopulation and climate change are making the city into an awful place to live. Our protagonist is tasked with investigating the murder of a wealthy industrialist, and discovers much worse things about his society – with a rather similar theme to that of Deham, discussed above.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? The future claustrophobic and overcrowded New York is realised in great and convincing detail. Thirty-eight years on, New York may not have grown to 40 million, but it’s still a city whose infrastructure cannot cope with a pandemic. And climate change turns out to be a real problem in real life. However people are not being euthanised and turned into food, at least not in New York, as far as we know.

Is it any good? I told you I was saving the best to the end. This is a true classic. The euthanasia scene, and Charlton Heston’s final scramble through the Soylent factory to discover its awful secret, are also very well done. And the scenes of police brutally clearing up a riot hit very close to home. 8/10. Here’s a trailer:

So, wishing you a less apocalyptic 2022 than we saw in fiction. And a less apocalyptic 2022 than 2021, let alone 2020.

The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Martial law was restricted to the south-west to keep Dublin open for those, in Sturgis’s jokey phrase, ‘as wants to negotiate’. A few on both sides seem to have wanted to. They found a new intermediary in Patrick Joseph Clune, Archbishop of Perth, a man with some experience of the war — he had been visiting his native Clare at the time of the Rineen ambush and the reprisals that followed it, and his nephew had died in Dublin Castle along with McKee and Clancy on Bloody Sunday. Shortly after the Kilmichael ambush he was enlisted by Joe Devlin as a go-between, and spent most of December moving between Dublin and London, talking to Griffith in prison, and twice to the Prime Minister, who certified him as ‘thoroughly loyal’.1 He seems to have drafted agreed truce terms that included immunity for Collins and Mulcahy.
1 Lloyd George to Greenwood, 2 Dec. 1920. HLRO F/19/1/28.

This won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize in 2015, along with a special mention for The Whole and Rain-Domed Universe, by Colette Bryce. It took me a while to get around to reading it, but I found it a tremendous book – a blow-by-blow account of the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, looking pretty neutrally at both British and Irish records and coming to some interesting conclusions. Like most Irish people with any interest in history, I was pretty familiar with the outlines of the story, which meant that the new details were very interesting indeed.

Going through it chronologically, there are points of interest in each of the long chapters. The British conceded a massive chunk of territory, quite literally, by evacuating small rural police stations as soon as the first trouble began in mid to late 1919. The Royal Irish Constabulary were more of a paramilitary law enforcement agency than a community police force, but even so, the withdrawal to fortified regional redoubts basically conceded the monopoly on the use of force to the IRA. This created space for the Dáil court system to start functioning a year or so later – the received history is that the Dáil courts were a turning point, but in fact they could not have functioned if the police had been, well, policing.

In 1920 the IRA worked out how to fight a guerilla war more or less from first principles, with ultimately the introduction of the Black and Tans, whose violence shifted what remained of neutral opinion in most of Ireland towards separatism, culminating in Bloody Sunday. This is one part of the generally believed narrative that Townshend confirms. But even so there are some interesting wrinkles. The strike of railway workers – or rather, their refusal to carry British troops on the trains – was a serious blow to British mobility. And also, British policy itself was completely unhinged, with no medium to long term goals – if they were to win the war, what next? But they were too poorly organised to have a chance of winning, with lines of control at the top (and indeed middle) deeply obscure.

1921 saw the two sides edging towards a truce, and eventually to the December 1921 Treaty. What’s especially interesting is that both sides were motivated to keep talking because neither believed that they could win if war resumed. My father always used to say that most armies are so badly organised that it’s just as well that they only ever have to fight other armies. The turning point here, and I guess I knew this but had not seen it that way before, was the election in May. The British commanders had assured the government at the start of the year that they would have crushed dissent by late spring, so the elections were duly scheduled and organised. But in fact Sinn Féin won every seat outside the new territory of Northern Ireland (er, and Trinity college Dublin), unopposed. As Asquith put it (not quoted by Townshend, but I’ve seen it elsewhere), London gave Ulster a parliament that it did not particularly want, and the rest of Ireland a parliament which it would not have.

1922-23 saw the difficulties in implementing the Treaty eventually spill over into the Civil War. I had not realised quite how quickly the Republican side basically lost the war by default. They assumed that as in 1919-21, the latent support of the people as a whole would sustain them and delegitimise the Collins / Griffith / Cosgrave government; and they controlled large parts of the south and west of the country, and two small but strategic parts of Dublin. But the Free Staters picked off the areas of Republican strength one by one, and retaliated brutally to individual attacks by executing prisoners; meanwhile the Legion of the Rearguard waited for a popular revolt that never happened.

It’s a great chronology. I do have two complaints. There is not enough about Northern Ireland / Ulster; Townshend remarks several times that Collins rather ignored it, but is somewhat guilty of doing the same himself. On the other hand, there is too much about political ideology. The understanding of the Republic mattered a lot to many of the participants, De Valera in particular, and not only him. but I find it personally rather difficult to grasp.

Anyway, this is a great book which anyone interested in that place and time should read. You can get it here.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is a Bolivian government production, El Libro del Mar (fortunately in English), if I can find it. If I can’t, the next will be Neither Unionist nor Nationalist: the 10th (Irish) Division in the Great War, by Stephen Sandford.

Ewart-Biggs Prize winners: Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, by Frank McGuinness | From A Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb, by Timothy Knatchbull | Setting the Truth Free: The Inside Story of the Bloody Sunday Campaign, by Julieann Campbell | The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend | The Whole and Rain-Domed Universe, by Colette Bryce | The Sun is Open, by Gail McConnell

O Christmas Tree

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The modest tree has its own story. We got it in 1997 in Banja Luka, our first Christmas abroad, when B was a baby and F and U unthought of. It has cheered us every year since.

Here’s the post I wrote about that Christmas a few years ago.

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The Life of Evans, John Peel; Night of the Intelligence, Andy Frankham-Allan

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A novella and a novel in the ongoing spinoff series about the Brigadier from Doctor Who.

Second paragraph of third chapter of The Life of Evans, by John Peel:

For the first time in his life, Evans actually felt as though he was fitting in.

Private Evans is a minor character in the TV story The Web of Fear, and here he gets a nice backstory all his own, with of course an alien incursion, firmly rooted in the life of a Welsh army recruit.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Night of the Intelligence, by Andy Frankham-Allan:

Simon would have none of it. ‘It’s just noise,’ he said.

Frankham-Allan is the brains behind this series, and here he pulls together a lot of the threads from the previous novels, along with several different versions of the Brigadier’s long-lost brother from different timelines, and of course the Great Intelligence and Professor Travers. It would have been easy to lose the run of a complex story like this, but I felt that Frankham-Allan pulled it off.

Friday reading

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Current
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

Last books finished
An Introduction to the Gospel of John, by Raymond E. Brown
Doctor Who – Black Orchid, by Terence Dudley
Black Orchid, by Ian Millsted
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
An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King
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

Next books
The 48 Laws Of Power, by Robert Greene
Jani and the Greater Game, by Eric Brown

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Top tweets of the year

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5) Highest engagement rate:

4) Most URL clicks:

3) Most impressions and most retweets:

2) Most replies and likes:

1) Most engagements, user profile clicks, detail expands, media views and media engagements:

June 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 started the month relaxing at my sister's in Burgundy:

…had a Worldcon planning trip to London midmonth:

…and ended with another visit to Barcelona.

The World Cup was on, which absorbed some of my attention as well.

I read 31 books that month. A couple of them didn't get written up at the time as they were potential Clarke nominees. (Indeed, one of them ultimately was a Clarke nominee.)

Non-fiction 7 (YTD 29)
Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It, eds Sigrid Ellis & Michael Damian Thomas
Speculative Fiction 2012: The Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary eds. Justin Landon & Jared Shurin
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, by Jeff VanderMeer, with Jeremy Zerfoss
Green Living for Dummies, by Michael Grosvenor and Liz Barclay
The Global(ized) Game: A Geopolitical Guide to the 2014 World Cup, by Harrison Stark
Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Jayne Olorunda
Ireland Under The Tudors vol 1, by Richard Bagwell

Fiction (non-sf) 2 (YTD 18)
Het Verdriet van België, by Hugo Claus
Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann

SF (non-Who) 11 (YTD 53)
Orbitsville by Bob Shaw
The Blazing-World, by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone
A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar
Nexus, by Ramez Naam
The Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, by Theodore Roszak
The Goblin of Tara, by Oisin McGann
Age of Shiva, by James Lovegrove
Europe in Autumn, by Dave Hutchinson

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 34)
A Device of Death, by Christopher Bulis
Damaged Goods, by Russell T. Davis
Trading Futures, by Lance Parkin
The Bog Warrior, by Cecelia Ahern
The Shakespeare Notebooks, by James Goss, Jonathan Morris, Julian Richards, Justin Richards and Matthew Sweet

Comics 6 (YTD 11)
The Meathouse Man, by George R.R. Martin and Raya Golden
Saga, Volume 2, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Bételgeuse v. 1: La Planète, by Leo
[Suske en Wiske] De Apenkermis, by Willy Vandersteen
[Suske en Wiske] Amoris van Amoras, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Paul Gheerts]
[Suske en Wiske] Het Aruba-dossier, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Paul Geerts]

~7,800 pages (YTD ~41,100)
9/31 (YTD 38/145) by women (Ellis, Barclay, Olorunda, Cavendish, Samatar, Butler, Ahern, Golden, Staples)
6/31 (YTD 10/145) by PoC (Olorunda, Samatar, Naam, Chu, Butler, Staples)

The best of these were Europe in Autumn, by Dave Hutchinson, which you can get here, and Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Jayne Olorunda, which you can get here. Underwhelmed by Age of Shiva, by James Lovegrove, which you can get hereMeathouse Man, by George R. R. Martin and Raya Golden, which you can get hereThe Bog Warrior, by Cecelia Ahern, which you can get here.


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This Town Will Never Let Us Go, by Lawrence Miles

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Hard to say what they were watching for. Signs of life? A later-than-last-minute reprieve?

Having got all enthusiastic about the first of the Faction Paradox books last month, I'm afraid this left me rather cold. It's a story of a few key characters interacting with a town that is being devastated by a mysterious war. I didn't care about them and I was annoyed not to know more about what was going on. And there is a chapter written almost entirely in anagrams, which is really self-indulgent.

Many people like it more than I did, or find it more interesting.

Next up is Of The City Of The Saved… by Philip Purser-Hallard. I'll give it a fair try. (I'm in slightly sunk cost territory here, having bought a number of the Faction Paradox books in my first wave of enthusiasm.)

Doctor Who Annual 2022, by Paul Lang

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The third section is a comic, of which these are the second and third frames:

I am not one of those who delights to dump on the Whittaker/Chibnall era of Doctor Who. I think it’s had its highs and lows, and while its highs have not perhaps been as high as other eras of the show, its lows have not been epochal either (though we came close with Kerblam!). I was astonished when a Twitter poll of all 296 Who episodes up to mid-2019 put The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos at the very bottom, behind even The Twin Dilemma; I can only guess that a lot of those voting had not seen The Twin Dilemma, and to be honest, I can’t really make a strong argument as to why they should.

However. Chibnall has clearly not been as assiduous in pushing spinoff material in the way that Stephen Moffat was, let alone Russell T. Davies, and the first two Thirteenth Doctor annuals, for 2019 and 2020, are the least impressive by far in a series of publications going back to 1965. The 2021 Annual was a step up; I’m afraid that this year’s is half a step back down again. Marketed to kids who have been watching this year’s six episodes, it goes into detail about last year’s ten, just like the last annual did, with the addition of this year’s New Year special and a little bit of retrospective acknowledgement of the show’s history. There is no original fiction; the comic strip is a print adaptation of part of the (excellent) 2020 Daleks! animated webcast which you can watch here. There are some pointless games and quizzes. When you compare it to the 2006 annual, the first produced by Russell T. Davies, there really is no competition. You can get it here, but if I was looking for Christmas presents for a young Whovian I might look elsewhere.

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The 2021 overnights meme: a new low

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Places where I spent the night away from home this year. As usual, places where I spent more than one non-consecutive night are marked with an asterisk.

Durbuy (added in revision)
Paris
London*
Loughbrickland*
Dublin
The Hague
Buxton

Six seven places in four five countries, the lowest since I started tallying in 2005. (Last year I had been to five places in three countries before 1 March, and fitted in another three in three more countries before the end of the year.)

This is only the second calendar year since 2001 that I have not been to the USA.

Let’s hope for better in 2022. (I said something similar a year ago.)

Previous years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

Lying Under the Apple Tree, by Alice Munro

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Second paragraph of third story ("My Mother's Dream"):

My mother looked out from a big arched window such as you find in a mansion or an old-fashioned public building. She looked down on lawns and shrubs, hedges, flower gardens, trees, all covered by snow that lay in heaps and cushions, not levelled or disturbed by wind. The white of it did not hurt your eyes as it does in sunlight. The white was the white of snow under a clear sky just before dawn. Everything was still; it was like "O Little Town of Bethlehem" except that the stars had gone out.

This is a sort of "Best of" collection, with three stories each from five of Alice Munro's short story collections. I had read three of these (The Love of a Good Woman, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and Too Much Happiness) but not the other two (Runaway and The View from Castle Rock, which includes the title story). They're all really good, as per usual, though I remembered very little about the nine out of fifteen that I know I had already read. (More than five years ago.) I think I'd recommend getting the individual collections separately, rather than the "Greatest Hits". Still, you can get it here.

This was the non-genre fiction work that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is A Darker Shade, edited by Jean-Henri Holmberg, but I'm going to leave it until I've finished all the sf and non-fiction books I acquired in 2015.

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  • Mon, 18:49: Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells https://t.co/sg6mfHWh7I
  • Mon, 20:46: Oud-burgemeester van Amsterdam en PvdA-coryfee Ed van Thijn (87) overleden https://t.co/CsM9klNydO via @NUnl Sorry to hear this – I did a bit of work with him 15 years or so ago, and I was in touch again five years ago when he told me he was already rather ill.
  • Tue, 10:45: RT @PoorlyAgedWho: Season 18 is just the story of two people entering the rocky years of their marriage before inevitably splitting, one of…

Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

She was not obliged to go to the Tredgold College, because as yet the College had not settled down for the session. She was supposed to be reading at home, and after breakfast she strolled into the vegetable garden, and having taken up a position upon the staging of a disused greenhouse that had the double advantage of being hidden from the windows of the house and secure from the sudden appearance of any one, she resumed the reading of Mr. Manning’s letter.

Latest in my slow procession through the novels of H.G. Wells. This is a feminist story of liberation from the shackles of convention. Ann Veronica is a young woman who is studying science, much to her parents' disapproval, and makes a break for freedom; she is pursued by various different men, becomes a suffragette (the year is 1909) and eventually settles for one of the chaps. I liked this more than some of the other Wells non-sf novels that I have read; his wit at the expense of Ann Veronica's stuffily conventional family did not seem quite as patronising as in some other cases, and his sympathy for the heroine and her friends was contagious. You can get it here.

Next in my Wells progression is The War in the Air, which I'm assuming is more sfnal.

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May 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.

There were a number of trips that month, starting with a weekend jaunt to the twin towns of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog, which are notable for the fact that they straddle a set of complex intersections of the Dutch / Belgian border.

I also made short trips to Paris and Berlin for work, and a longer trip to Belfast to cover the local council and European Parliament elections for the BBC. Mark Cheah, an old schoolfriend who became a BBC cameraman, caught this rather brilliant shot of the elections team in action. (Not sure what was up with Mark D!)

We ended the month at my sister's in Burgundy, for a much-needed break.

I read 29 books that month.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 22)
The Rise and Fall of Languages, by R.M.W. Dixon
The Road To Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
The Eleventh Hour, ed. Andrew O'Day

Fiction (non-sf) 4 (YTD 16)
Mr Norris Changes Trains, by Christopher Isherwood
Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad

SF (non-Who) 15 (YTD 42)
Neptune's Brood, by Charles Stross
10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights, by Ryu Mitsuse
The Finches of Mars, by Brian Aldiss
Warbound, by Larry Correia
The Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker
Parasite, by Mira Grant
Out Of The Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
Carson of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Cyberabad Days, by Ian McDonald
The Sword In The Stone, by T.H. White
The Legion of Time, by Jack Williamson
The Butcher of Khardov, by Dan Wells
Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau S. Wilce
Six-Gun Snow White, by Cat Valente
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, by Samuel R. Delany

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 29)
Island of Death, by Barry Letts
The Death of Art by Simon Bucher-Jones
Anachrophobia, by Jonathan Morris

Comics 2 (YTD 5)
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, by Mary and Bryan Talbot

~7,000 pages (YTD ~33,300)
5/27 (YTD 29/114) by women (Baker, "Grant", Wilce, Valente, Talbot)
2/27 (YTD 4/114) by PoC (Mitsuse, Delany)

My favourite book(s) of the month: the compilation of Isherwood's Berlin novels, which you can get here. Also greatly enjoyed the two comics, The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell, which you can get here, and Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, by Mary and Bryan Talbot, which you can get here. On the other hand you can definitely skip Edgar Rice Burroughs' Carson of Venus, which you can get here, and Larry Correia's Warbound, which you can get here.


2021 Hugos in detail

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Final ballot stats here, nominations here.

Headlines:

Four categories saw the total number of votes for finalists other than No Award dip below 30% of the total poll – Best Fan Writer (28.8%), Best Professional Editor (Long Form) (28.2%), Best Fanzine (27.2%), and Best Fancast (26.8%). Best Fancast was within 43 votes of not being awarded at all, due to dropping below the 25% threshold.

Close results on the final ballot:

  • The closest results among winners were Best Short Story and the Astounding Award, both decided by margins of nine votes.
  • The winner of Best Fancast was decided by a margin of twelve votes.
  • Fourth place in Best Fan Artist was decided by a margin of two votes, and second place by a margin of nine.
  • Third place in Best Fancast was decided by a margin of three votes.
  • Second place in Best Professional Editor (Short Form) was decided by a margin of four votes.
  • Fifth place in Best Fanzine was decided by a margin of six votes.

Close results at nominations phase:

  • The Magic Fish, by Trung Le Nguyen, and Far Sector, by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell, were 0.25 and 0.3 points from qualifying for Best Graphic Story or Comic.
  • Lee Harris would have qualified for Best Professional Editor, Short Form, with 0.67 more points. (He was also the runner-up for Best Professional Editor, Long Form, but was further adrift there.)
  • Meg Frank would have qualified in best Fan Artist with one more vote.

Strongest performances:

  • Murderbot got 44% of first preferences in the final ballot count for Best Series.
  • Hades won 55% of the total vote for Best Video Game with two contenders remaining in play.
  • Hades also got nominating votes from 54% of everyone who nominated in that category.

Disqualifications and withdrawals:

  • The Mandalorian, Season 2, qualified for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, but was removed because two episodes had also qualified in Short Form, thus bringing Soul onto the ballot.
  • Toni Weisskopf declined nomination for Best Professional Editor, Long Form. Her place was taken by Nivia Evans.
  • Tithi Luadthong received enough votes to qualify for Best Fan Artist, but informed the Administrators that he had produced no eligible art in 2020. His place was filled by Cyan Daly.

The top finalist in terms of first preference votes lost in nine out of twenty categories; in eight cases to the finalist with the second highest number of first preferences in that category, in one case – Best Editor (Long Form) – to the third-placed finalist in terms of first preferences.

In thirteen categories, the winner also topped the poll at nominations stage. In three, the winner placed second at nominations stage; in two, the winner was third in nominations, and in two, the winner was fifth in nominations. (No winners had placed either fourth or sixth at the nominations stage.)

Full details:

Best Novel

Network Effect led throughout and won by 1139 to 707 for Piranesi. The City We Became overtook both The Relentless Moon and Piranesi to take second place. Piranesi took third place. Black Sun overtook The Relentless Moon for fourth. The Relentless Moon came fifth and Harrow the Ninth sixth.

Network Effect was also quite a long way ahead at nomination stage. The nearest miss was Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia which needed another 8 votes worth 4.33 points to qualify.

Best Novella

Come Tumbling Down got the most first preferences, but was overtaken by The Empress of Salt and Fortune which won by 838 to 674. Come Tumbling Down was also then overtaken by Ring Shout for second place, but won third place. Upright Women Wanted took fourth place, Finna fifth and Riot Baby sixth.

Come Tumbling Down, The Empress of Salt and Fortune and Ring Shout were all well ahead of the other three at nominations stage. Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho needed another 5.69 points to qualify.

Best Novelette

Helicopter Story had the most first preferences but was beaten by Two Truths and a Lie by 781 to 564. In an extraordinary case of transfer toxicity, Helicopter Story was then overtaken by The Inaccessibility of Heaven for second place, by Monster for third place, and by The Pill for fourth place before taking fifth, despite starting with the most first preferences in each count. I cannot remember any other cases of the finalist with the most first preferences in the first count scraping only fifth place overall. Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super came sixth.

Two Truths and a Lie was well ahead at nomination stage. "Yellow and the Perception of Reality", by Maureen McHugh, would have qualified with another 4.5 points. "On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera", by Greg Elizabeth Bear, would have qualified with another 5.17 points.

Best Short Story

In the joint closest result of the evening, "Metal Like Blood in the Dark" beat Little Free Library by nine votes, 712 to 703; Little Free Library had overtaken "A Guide for Working Breeds" and "Open House on Haunted Hill". Little Free Library then won second place, overtaking the same two stories which had more first preferences. "A Guide for Working Breeds" overtook "Open House on Haunted Hill" for third place, "Open House on Haunted Hill" came fourth, "The Mermaid Astronaut" fifth and "Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse" sixth.

Little Free Library topped the nominations poll; the winner, "Metal Like Blood in the Dark", was third, also behind "Open House on Haunted Hill". "The Eight-Thousanders" by Jason Sanford would have qualified with another 3.34 points. Also not far off: "The Ransom of Miss Caroline Connolly" by Alex Harrow; "My Country is a Ghost" by Eugenia Triantaphyllou; "50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know", by Ken Liu; "St Valentine, St Abigail, St Bridget", by C.L. Polk; "Cold Crowdfunding Campaign", by Cora Buhlert.

Best Series

Murderbot won one of the more convincing victories of the night, with 977 votes to 447 for October Daye and 381 for The Lady Astronaut Universe. It had 44% of the first preferences, the highest of the evening. The Lady Astronaut Universe came second, October Daye third, The Interdependency fourth, The Poppy War fifth and The Daevabad Trilogy sixth.

Murderbot was also far ahead of the field at nominations. The Peter Grant/Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch would have qualified with 5.73 more points.

Best Related Work

Beowulf: A New Translation led throughout and beat George R. R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun by 766 votes to 478. A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky came second. FIYAHCON overtook George R. R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun for third place. George R. R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun took fourth place. The Last Bronycon came fifth and CONZealand Fringe sixth.

Unusually, Discon 3 published No Award runoff figures for every place in every category (the constitution only specifies that this shoudl be done in determining the winner). The numbers for No Award here were particularly high in the last four places, with 358 preferring No Award to 753 who preferred George R. R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun.

The two convention events FIYAHCon and CoNZealand fringe were both far ahead of the field at nomination stage, with Beowulf third. Biology and Manners: Essays on the Worlds and Works of Lois McMaster Bujold, eds Regina Yung Lee and Una McCormack, would have qualified with five more votes, or four worth 3.5 points.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

Parable of the Sower overtook Ghost Spider 1 to win by 501 votes to 454. Ghost Spider 1 took second place, Monstress 5 third, The King is Undead 1 fourth, Invisible Kingdom 2 fifth and Die 2 sixth.

Monstress 5 topped the nominations poll, with Invisible Kingdom 2 not far behind and Parable of the Sower, the winner, down in fifth place. It was very tight at the end, though. The Magic Fish, by Trung Le Nguyen was the last excluded and would have qualified with 0.26 more points. Far Sector, by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell, would have qualified with 0.3 more points. Superman Smashes The Klan by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru probably would have qualified with two more votes, and Fangs by Sarah Anderson was also not far off.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

The Old Guard was ahead throughout and beat Birds of Prey by 715 to 552. Birds of Prey came second, Soul third, Palm Springs overtook Fire Saga for fourth place, Fire Saga came fifth and Tenet sixth.

The Old Guard also topped the poll at nominations convincingly. Series 2 of The Mandalorian had enough votes to qualify, but was removed because two episodes had also qualified in Short Form. This brought Soul on to fill the gap. Next down was Wolfwalkers, which would have needed another five votes. The first season of Lovecraft Country would have needed another eight.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Whenever You're Ready, the final episode of The Good Place, had a crushing victory with 793 voteson the final count to 425 for The Expanse: Gaugamela and 348 for The Mandalorian 16: The Rescue (which overtook She-Ra: Heart). The published results seem to have an error at the bottom of the third pass – presumably Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon was eliminated and the two Mandalorian episodes got some of its votes – but the result is clear.

The Expanse: Gaugamela came second, She-Ra: Heart was again overtaken by The Mandalorian 16: The Rescue for third place, The Mandalorian 13: The Jedi came fourth, She-Ra: Heart fifth and Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon sixth.

Whenever You're Ready was also well in the lead at nominations stage, followed by The Expanse: Gaugamela. The Star Trek: Picard episode Nepenthe would have qualified with another three votes.

Best Editor, Short Form

Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya got the most first preferences but were overtaken by Ellen Datlow who won by 436 to 370. Lafferty and Divya then won second place by just four votes over Neil Clarke, who came third. Sheila Williams came fourth, Jonathan Strahan fifth and C.C. Finlay sixth.

The top three at nominations, Jonathan Strahan, Ellen Datlow and Neil Clarke, were tightly bunched. Lee Harris, a perpetual near-finalist in this category, would have qualified with 0.67 more points. Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas also missed very narrowly.

Best Editor, Long Form

Diana M.Pho was third in terms of first preference votes, but overtook Navah Wolfe and beat Sheila E. Gilbert by 311 to 269. On the penultimate count, Gilbert was only three votes ahead of Wolfe. Navah Wolfe took second place, Sheila Gilbert a convincing third, Sarah Guan overtook Brit Hvide for fourth, Brit Hvide came fifth and Nivia Evans sixth. Turnout in this category was low, at 28.2%.

Diana M. Pho was top of the nomination votes. Toni Weisskopf received enough nominations under EPH to qualify for the final ballot, but declined. That brought Nivia Evans on to fill her space. Lee Harris was the runner-up here as well, but would have needed nine more votes to qualify. Miriam Weinberg, eliminated on the penultimate round, would probably have qualified with just two more votes.

Best Professional Artist

Rovina Cai overtook John Picacio to win by 441 to 412. Picacio came second, Galen Dara overtook both Maurizio Manzieri and Tommy Arnold to come third, Arnold came fourth, Manzieri fifth and Alyssa Winans sixth.

Rovina Cai topped the poll at nominations. Will Staehle would have qualified with 1.05 more points, and Iris Compiet was not far off either.

Best Semiprozine

FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction was ahead throughout and beat Uncanny Magazine by 496 to 449. Uncanny Magazine took second place, Strange Horizons third, Escape Pod overtook Beneath Ceaseless Skies for fourth place, Beneath Ceaseless Skies came fifth and Podcastle sixth.

FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction was well ahead at nominations stage. Fireside Magazine was the runner up, but would have needed another twelve votes to qualify.

Best Fanzine

nerds of a feather, flock together overtook Journey Planet to win by 286 to 211. Journey Planet was then overtaken again by Lady Business for second place, before winning third by six votes over the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog came fourth, and The Full Lid beat Quick Sip Reviews by six votes for fifth place. Quick Sip Reviews then came sixth. Turnout was low in this category at 27.2%.

nerds of a feather, flock together got the most nomination votes and points. Galactic Journey would have needed six more votes to qualify.

Best Fancast

The Coode Street Podcast was ahead throughout and beat Worldbuilding for Masochists by twelve votes, 259 to 247. Worldbuilding for Masochists came second. The Skiffy and Fanty Show beat Be the Serpent by three votes for third place. Be the Serpent beat Claire Rousseau's Yotube Channel by fourteen votes for fourth place. Claire Rousseau's Yotube Channel came fifth and Kalanadi sixth. As previously noted, turnout was particularly low here at 26.8%, and if 43 fewer votes had been cast for nominated finalists there would have been no Best Fancast award.

The Coode Street Podcast was well in front at nominations stage. Octothorpe would have qualified with 1.51 more points. Hugo, Girl! and Our Opinions Are Correct were also not far behind.

Best Fan Writer

Elsa Sjunneson overtook Cora Buhlert to win by 290 to 260. Cora Buhlert came secon, Jason Sandford third, and Paul Weimer beat Alasdair Stewart for fourth place. The published statistics then show Paul Weimer also taking fifth place ahead of Charles Payseur, but presumably this is a mistake. Charles Payseur is recorded as coming sixth. Turnout was again low here at 28.2%,

Cora Buhlert was well ahead at nominations stage, followed by Charles Payseur. The winner, Elsa Sjunneson, came fifth. James Davis Nicoll would have qualified with another 1.5 points. O. Westin and Adri Joy were also not far off.

Best Fan Artist

Sara Felix was ahead throughout for Best Fan Artist, Beating Laya Rose (who had overtaken Grace P. Fong) by 353 to 284. Only two votes separated Fong and Rose on the penultimate count. Rose then beat Fong by nine votes for second place. Fong convincinglty won third place, Iain J Clark overtook Maya Hahto to win fourth place by two votes, Hahto came fifth and Cyan Daly sixth.

Sara Felix also topped the poll at the nominations stage. Tithi Luadthong got enough nominations to qualify for the ballot, but informed the Administrators that he had produced no eligible art in 2020. That brought Cyan Daly onto the ballot, with only ten nominating votes, so basically everyone who got even a single nomination in this category was within ten votes of getting on the ballot. The nearest miss was Meg Frank, who would have qualified with just one more vote.

Best Video Game

Hades had proportionally the most crushing victory of the night, with 478 votes on the final count to 246 for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and 144 for Spiritfarer. Animal Crossing: New Horizons came second, Spiritfarer third, Final Fantasy VII Remake fourth, The Last of Us: Part II fifth and Blaseball sixth.

In the most lopsided nominations ballot this cycle, Hades qualified with literally three times as many votes and four times as many points as the next nominee, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The nearest miss was Ghost of Tsushima, which would have needed another two votes. (Though it's apparently questionable to what extent it has sfnal content.)

Lodestar Award

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking was ahead throughout, beating A Deadly Education by 784 to 412. A Deadly Education came second, Elatsoe third, Legendborn overtook Cemetery Boys for fourth place, Cemetery Boys came fifth and Raybearer sixth.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking was also way in the lead at nominations. The runner up was When We Were Magic, by Sarah Gailey, but it would have needed another 11.05 points to qualify.

Astounding Award

in the joint closest result of the evening, Emily Tesh overtook Micaiah Johnson to win by nine votes, 364 to 355. Johnson came second, Jenn Lyons third, Lindsay Ellis fourth, Simon Jimenez fifth and A.K. Larkwood sixth.

Micaiah Johnson and Emily Tesh were in the lead at nominations phase. The nearest miss was Caitlyn Starling, who would have needed another 10.35 points or thirteen votes to qualify.

For myself, only one of my first preferences actually won, the same as last year.

The stucco ceilings of Jan-Christian Hansche, part 4: The Church of St Nicholas at Perk

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My little project to see all the remaining work of the 17th-century stucco sculptor Jan-Christian Hansche promises to pose a number of challenges. Very few of the eleven buildings where his magnificent ceilings remain are open to the public on a regular basis. Also, not many of them are all that close to here, as you will see from my map:

One of the exceptions is the church of St Nicholas at Perk, a small village in the municipality of Steenokkerzeel, right beside the runways of Zaventem Airport, 20 km from here. I first tried to visit as an excursion to prove that I was getting well after my bout with COVID, two weeks ago on Sunday 5 December. Unfortunately I arrived at 1030 just as the sacristan was locking up, so I gritted my teeth and tried again last weekend, arriving at 0930 in time for Mass which lasted just over half an hour. After Mass there was no problem for me to photograph Hansche’s work, and indeed another tourist had also come just for a look, but the lesson is that you need to be prompt sometimes.

Just to give you perspective, here are two shots of the ceiling from different directions, first from the door looking towards the altar, second from the altar looking towards the organ over the door.


The six panels show the four Evangelists, the church’s original patron (the Blessed Virgin) and its current patron (my own saint, St Nicholas). The order from door to altar is John, Matthew, Nicholas, Mary, Luke, Mark for some reason. I’ll present them in the more traditional order, starting with St Matthew and the angel:

St Mark and the lion:

St Luke and the ox:

Poor St John and the eagle are hidden by the organ:

The Blessed Virgin and child – not sure what she is holding, but it’s one of the classic Hansch leaning-out-of-the-ceiling pieces:

And St Nicholas with the three children who he resurrected; his mitre and the middle child both leaning into our space.

The stucco is not in the best of shape after 350 years, and apparently major restoration work is planned between now and 2023, so if you can postpone your visit until then you’ll be rewarded. Even so, the middle two panels, of St Nicholas and the Blessed Virgin, are electrifying.

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  • Sun, 11:39: RT @haveigotnews: Lord Frost reportedly furious with the terms of his resignation after negotiating them himself.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

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So, my sequence of Oscar-winning, Hugo-winning and Nebula-winning films has intersected, uniquely, with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It won eleven Oscars altogether, tying with Titanic and Ben-Hur for the most in history; in fact it did not lose in a single category in which it was nominated, thus also exceeding the nine-strong clean sweeps of Gigi and The Last Emperor. As well as Best Picture, it also won Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound Mixing, Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Visual Effects. It did not get a single nomination in any of the acting categories (the tenth Best Picture winner out of 76 where this was the case).

The other Oscar nominees were Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mystic River and Seabiscuit; I haven’t seen any of them. The other contenders for the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, were Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which I have seen, and 28 Days Later and X2: X-Men United, which I haven’t. Because of the (then) weird Nebula rules, the other contenders for Best Script were all from the following year, 2004: The Incredibles, The Butterfly Effect and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; I started watching the last of these on a plane once but fell asleep before the halfway point. I think I have seen only three other films from 2003: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Underworld and American Pie: The Wedding. I would very happily put The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at the top of my list for the year, as Hugo voters, Nebula voters and Oscar voters all did.

We have the Hugo figures, and I can tell you that it got nominations from more than 82% of those who nominated in this category, and romped home on the first count of the final ballot with 69% of the first preferences. I don’t know of any other winner in any category that has done quite as well for the regular Hugos (for the Retros there have been some pretty skewed results).

ROTK1.png
ROTK2.png

I’m not going to go through the returnees from previous Hugo, Nebula or Oscar-winning films because it’s the same as last time. (There are a couple of actors in RotK who were not in the previous films, but don’t have a track record with other award winners either.)

I love this film too. It has a lot packed in – as noted last time, the last 20% of Book 3 and the last 30% of Book 4 were not in The Two Towers and were saved for here. The result is that we lose some stuff – Houses of Healing, Scouring of the Shire, various other bits and pieces. To be honest we can live without them. The major innovation in the film is the rift in the relationship between Frodo and Sam. Like a lot of the additions made by Jackson, the fairly blatant goal is to create more dramatic tension. But unlike the temporary mislaying of Aragorn or the flip-flopping of Faramir on whether to bring the Ring to Minas Tirith, this actually works very well; I would even go so far as to say that by making Frodo a somehat more flawed character than he is in the book, the story becomes more interesting. And the fact that it’s done as a result of Gollum’s manipulation makes him more interesting too.

Incidentally this is the only time since the Hugo Dramatic Presentation category was split that both awards went to the same franchise, Gollum winning the Short Form category for his MTV acceptance speech.

I’m really tired today because of weird and disreputable events happening in DC, so I won’t go on at great length about how much I love this film. But I will give you two bits that I particularly love. F, who has not read the book, was completely transfixed by the scene with Shelob. So was I, and I’ve been having nightmares about it roughly since I was nine. It’s a superb bit of animation.

And when I first saw it in 2003, I was overwhelmed by the lighting of the beacons. It’s not quite as good on the small screen as it was in the cinema, but still pretty good.

And the ending gets ever more bittersweet as the years pass.

Also I love the music.

In my running tally of Oscar-winning films, I’m putting this in my top ten, below The Bridge on the River Kwai and above One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m putting it even higher up my list of Hugo and Nebula winners, in second place, behind Alien and ahead of the original Star Wars. Next up are The Incredibles (Hugo winner – there was no Nebula for any film made in 2004) and Million Dollar Baby (Oscar winner)

Of course I went back and finished rereading the book. The second paragraph of the third cahpter of Book 5 is:

Day was waning. In the last rays of the sun the Riders cast long pointed shadows that went on before them. Darkness had already crept beneath the murmuring fir-woods that clothed the steep mountain-sides. The king rode now slowly at the end of the day. Presently the path turned round a huge bare shoulder of rock and plunged into the gloom of soft-sighing trees. Down, down they went in a long winding file. When at last they came to the bottom of the gorge they found that evening had fallen in the deep places. The sun was gone. Twilight lay upon the waterfalls.

Again, I practically know it by heart, but I had forgotten the funny bit with the senior healer in the Houses of Healing. And again the ending hits me harder each time I read it. A welcome re-engagement with a dear old friend.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

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640 days of plague

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I’ve continued to feel more and more like my normal self. My blood oxidation is back up to a healthy 97%-98%, and I also seem to have lost a couple of kilos (down to 78 from 80, from 176 pounds/12 stone 8, to 172 pounds/12 stone 4). Most excitingly, the booster jabs are being rolled out in our area earlier next year and I immediately signed up for 6 January (which is 20 days from now, so will be in the next-but-one COVID update).

I went into the office both yesterday and a week ago. Last week I was still too tired to stay at the office Christmas dinner to the very end, but yesterday was fine (apart from very heavy traffic caused by the EU summit). I also went in on Wednesday this week, not to the office but to a couple of external meetings, one of them a guided tour of this exhibition, which I recommend.

I am glad to say that the Belgian numbers are all now moving in the right direction. Yesterday was the first day since June that all four metrics that I follow – new cases, hospital occupancy, ICU occupancy and deaths – had posted both day-on-day and week-on-week decreases. (Seven out of eight down today; deaths, which are generally a trailing indicator, blipped slightly upwards from yesterday’s number.)

However disruption still continues. Anne’s parents had planned to visit us in the week after Christmas, but their Eurostar has been cancelled so they will now come later in January. More worryingly, the omicron variant has not yet hit Belgium very hard, and that will probably push the numbers back up again in the next few weeks.

I sometimes use these posts to comment on British politics, and I can’t ignore last night’s spectacular by-election result in North Shropshire; the shape of things to come, hopefully. The only bigger swing from Conservatives to Liberal Democrats in history was the Christchurch by-election of 1993, which is also the only parliamentary election in Great Britain that I’ve ever campaigned in, putting in two days and a night for the Lib Dems. Ironically, in recent years I have become very friendly with the Conservative candidate who lost Christchurch in 1993, bonding over a shared interest in psephology.

Anyway, I’m still working next week until Thursday, and I’ll go straight back in January; plenty to do, and all great fun too.

Friday reading

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Current
An Introduction to the Gospel of John, by Raymond E. Brown
An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King

Last books finished
Night of the Intelligence, by Andy Frankham-Allan
The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend
Black Oxen, by Elizabeth Knox
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Wonderful Doctor of Oz, by Jacqueline Rayner
Startide Rising, by David Brin
Doctor Who – The Mind Robber, by Peter Ling
The Mind Robber, by Andrew Hickey

Next books
The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett
Seven Deadly Sins, by Neil Gaiman

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