- Wed, 12:26: Last year, the Spanish Comisi�n de Arbitraje, Quejas y Deontolog�a del Periodismo found completely in my favour when I complained that OK Diario had published information about me that was completely untrue. OK Diario then complained that they had not had a chance to respond. https://t.co/FDVMEaCmLP
- Wed, 12:56: RT @301N: Very important thread. Well done Nicholas https://t.co/LK3h1eAPWn
- Wed, 18:09: RT @APCOBXLInsider: JOB ALERT Interested in EU affairs and consultancy? #APCO Brussels could be the place for you. We are hiring for sev…
- Wed, 20:11: 610 days of plague https://t.co/hceUhU4sZS
- Thu, 10:09: I just got a positive diagnosis for COVID. I’m feeling generally OK, just a bit of a cough at the moment, but obviously will take it easy and work from home for ten days. Massively inconvenient, but plenty of people have had it worse.
- Thu, 10:45: RT @worldcon2021: Only 2 days left to vote for @thehugoawards! It’s too late to mail more paper ballots, so vote ONLINE and update your v…
610 days of plague
As previously noted, I had hoped to be able to stop this series of posts if there was no big surge in COVID numbers, and declare the pandemic over as a constant concern. But that’s not where we are. The government have just annouced that we’re going back to mandatory teleworking four days a week in Belgium. I am in a special situation where I am arguably working for two different employers, so I’ll see if I can get away with two days a week in Brussels, but I am not very hopeful.
I’m just back from five days in England, where for once I managed to do the Day 2 test (the last couple of times that I went to London, I left so early on Day 2 that the test arrived after my departure). It was gloriously negative.
Still waiting very anxiously as of this writing for the results of my return-to-Belgium test taken this morning. I feel about as grotty as I usually do after a series of late nights with friends, capped by Eurostar yesterday evening.
Belgian cases, hospitalisations and ICU beds are all showing a steady increase of around 27% at the moment; two more weeks of that and the caseload will exceed the record of November last year, so I can see why the government felt that something had to be done. Today’s numbers are:
10283 cases (weekly average from 3-9 days ago), comparable with 8 Nov and 23 Oct last year, when hospital numbers were 6893 and 3649, ICU numbers 1464 and 573, and deaths 173 (!) and 35. Likely to pass November 2020 peak of 15967. (Spring 2020 figures are unreliable.)
2693 in hospital, not yet above the April peak of 3215 but likely to surpass it in the next few days. Nowhere near November 2020 peak of 7461. (April 2020 peak was 5759.)
557 in ICU, way below the April peak of 947, never mind the November 2020 peak of 1470. (Which was higher than the April 2020 peak of 1286.)
25.6 fatalities (weekly average from 3-9 days ago), some way below April peak (42) let alone November 2020 (202) or April 2020 (282).
So, you know, it’s not as bad as a year ago, let along in Spring 2020, but it’s still bad.
And everyone needs to get vaccinated and continue being careful.
My tweets
- Tue, 12:56: Britain of the welcomes. https://t.co/DrUjgiY473
- Tue, 16:05: RT @reclamation2022: Our first Progress Report can be found via the link below. It’s full of useful information for anyone planning to come…
- Tue, 16:13: RT @sundersays: DCMS Select Committee has published a witness statement from @AzeemRafiq30 about his experiences of racism @YorkshireCCC…
- Tue, 17:11: How Your Family Tree Could Catch a Killer https://t.co/dNDB8THTe6 This is a more than usually interesting article about forensic DNA, finishing with an appearance from a well-known science fiction writer.
- Tue, 18:20: December 2013 books and 2013 books roundup https://t.co/yJAkzJHFXv
- Tue, 20:48: RT @that_mc: Finally watching Shang-Chi, here as a bus operator to rate the SFT transit factors of The Bus Scene:
- Wed, 10:45: Billy Bragg: Why I’ve made my old lyrics trans-inclusive https://t.co/6etNhza0mY On the right side.
December 2013 books and 2013 books roundup
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
My travels that month were an awkward work trip to New York followed immediately by a sad trip to England for my aunt's funeral. (Straight off my transatlantic flight, I changed my shirt in the back of my taxi from Heathrow to the memorial ceremony in the Horniman Pavilion.) Little U got a special laptop for her birthday, I got a special Christmas present, and we were visited, as so often, by H who took one of the best family pictures we've had (though I've pasted U's head in from a different shot).
To get you in the Christmas mood, here's "Fairytale of New York" in Irish:
I read 22 books that month.
Non-Fiction 3 (2013 total 46)
Tardis Eruditorum vol 4: Tom Baker and the Hinchcliffe Years, by Philip Sandifer
Information is Beautiful, by David McCandless
Stuff I've Been Reading, by Nick Hornby
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (2013 total 44)
Eyeless in Gaza, by Aldous Huxley
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Popinjay, by Iona McGregor
The Truth Commissioner, by David Park
The Devils, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
SF (non-Who) 8 (2013 total 64)
The Just City, by Jo Walton (feedback on unpublished manuscript)
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton (feedback on unpublished manuscript)
Patternmaster, by Octavia E. Butler
Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
Looking for Jake and other stories, by China Miéville
The Father Christmas Letters, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Next Generation, vol. I, by John Francis Maguire (provisionally classified as sf)
Doctor Who 4 (2013 total 71, 83 councting non-fiction and comics)
Dancing The Code, by Paul Leonard
Death and Diplomacy, by Dave Stone
City of the Dead, by Lloyd Rose
The Men Who Sold The World, by Guy Adams
Comics 2 (2013 total 30)
Animate Europe! (responsible editor Hans H. Stein)
Le Chat du Rabbin tome 1, by Joann Sfarr
~6,800 pages (2013 total ~67,000)
5/22 (2013 total 71/257) by women (McGregor, Butler, Rose and two more)
1/22 (2013 total 11/257) by PoC
The best of these were all sf: Rendezvous with Rama, a re-read, which you can get hereThe Just City, which you can get hereThe Wise Man's Fear, which you can get here. To my surprise I bounced off Patternmaster, but you can get it here.
I failed to do a proper 2012 books roundup at the time, managing only a summary. So here is what I would have written using the methodology I use now.
Total books: 257 – tenth highest of the 17 years I have been keeping track, so a minor tick below average. (Somehow this turned out to be 237 in previous reports, but it was definitely 257.)
Total page count: ~67,000 – ninth highest of the last 17 years, so firmly in the middle.
Diversity:
71 (28%) by women – higher than any previous year, lower than most subsequent years, augmented by 10 Agatha Christie novels.
11 (4%) by PoC – more than any year before 2009, less than any other year since.
Most books by a single author: Agatha Christie (10), followed by Terrance Dicks (7), Jonathan Gash (6), Philip Sandifer (5), Cressida Cowell, Gary Russell, Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman (4 each).
Novels, collections of shorter fiction, etc excluding comics
| 2020/ | 2019/ | 2018/ | 2017/ | 2016/ | 2015/ | 2014/ | 2013/ | 2012/ | 2011/ | 2010/ | 2009/ | 2008/ | 2007/ | 2006/ | 2005/ | 2004/ |
| 18 | 32 | 32 | 51 | 39 | 43 | 59 | 71 | 75 | 80 | 71 | 71 | 179 | 27 | 28 | 5 | 1 |
| 7% | 14% | 12% | 21% | 18% | 15% | 20% | 28% | 29% | 27% | 26% | 21% | 48% | 11% | 14% | 3% | 1% |
All Who books including comics and non-fiction
| 2020/ | 2019/ | 2018/ | 2017/ | 2016/ | 2015/ | 2014/ | 2013/ | 2012/ | 2011/ | 2010/ | 2009/ | 2008/ | 2007/ | 2006/ | 2005/ | 2004/ |
| 25 | 43 | 42 | 55 | 42 | 54 | 68 | 83 | 76 | 87 | 78 | 81 | 180 | 49 | 32 | 5 | 1 |
| 9% | 18% | 16% | 23% | 20% | 19% | 23% | 32% | 29% | 29% | 28% | 23% | 49% | 21% | 15% | 3% | 1% |
Fourth highest tally, third highest percentage. (Third and second, counting comics and non-fiction.)
Top Doctor Who books of the year:
The first four volumes of Elizabeth Sandifer's Tardis Eruditorum. (Vol 1: reviewget it here. Vol 2: reviewget it here. Vol 3: reviewget it here. Vol 4: reviewget it here.)
Honourable mentions:
Nothing O'Clock, by Neil Gaiman (reviewget it here)
Harvest of Time, by Alastair Reynolds (reviewget it here)
The Doctor's Monsters, by Graham Sleight (reviewget it here)
Enjoyed rereading:
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell (reviewget it here)
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake (reviewget it here)
The one you haven't heard of:
Revenge of the Slitheen, a good Sarah Jane noveliastion by Rupert Laight, who I recently discovered died in 2018 (reviewget it here)
The one to avoid:
A Big Hand for the Doctor, by Eoin Colfer (reviewget it here)
| 2020/ | 2019/ | 2018/ | 2017/ | 2016/ | 2015/ | 2014/ | 2013/ | 2012/ | 2011/ | 2010/ | 2009/ | 2008/ | 2007/ | 2006/ | 2005/ | 2004/ |
| 114 | 77 | 108 | 68 | 80 | 130 | 124 | 64 | 62 | 78 | 73 | 78 | 54 | 75 | 68 | 79 | 76 |
| 43% | 33% | 41% | 29% | 38% | 45% | 43% | 25% | 24% | 26% | 26% | 23% | 15% | 32% | 33% | 55% | 51% |
Third lowest tally and fourth lowest percentage ever.
Top SF books of the year:
The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss (Vol 1: reviewget it herereviewget it here)
Honourable mentions:
The Just City, by Jo Walton (reviewget it here)
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold (reviewget it here)
Enjoyed rereading:
Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke (reviewget it here)
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin (reviewget it here)
The Moment of Eclipse, by Brian Aldiss (reviewget it here)
The ones you haven't heard of:
Two short story collections by the much-missed Eugie Foster, Returning My Sister's Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (reviewget it here) and Mortal Clay, Stone Heart and Other Stories in Shades of Black and White (reviewget it here).
The one to avoid:
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike (reviewget it here)
| 2020/ | 2019/ | 2018/ | 2017/ | 2016/ | 2015/ | 2014/ | 2013/ | 2012/ | 2011/ | 2010/ | 2009/ | 2008/ | 2007/ | 2006/ | 2005/ | 2004/ |
| 50 | 49 | 50 | 57 | 37 | 47 | 48 | 46 | 53 | 69 | 66 | 94 | 70 | 78 | 70 | 42 | 42 |
| 19% | 21% | 19% | 24% | 17% | 16% | 16% | 18% | 20% | 23% | 24% | 27% | 19% | 33% | 34% | 29% | 28% |
Fourteenth highest tally and percentage of 17 years, below average.
Top non-fiction book of the year:
A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf (reviewget it here.)
Honourable mentions to:
A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor (reviewget it here.)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (reviewget it here.)
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857, by William Dalrymple (reviewget it here.)
Tell My Horse, by Zora Neale Hurston (reviewget it here.)
The one you haven't heard of:
The Crocodile by the Door, by Selina Guinness (reviewget it here.)
The one to avoid:
“I have an Idea for a Book …” : The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg (reviewget it here.)
| 2020/ | 2019/ | 2018/ | 2017/ | 2016/ | 2015/ | 2014/ | 2013/ | 2012/ | 2011/ | 2010/ | 2009/ | 2008/ | 2007/ | 2006/ | 2005/ | 2004/ |
| 40 | 45 | 36 | 26 | 28 | 42 | 41 | 44 | 48 | 48 | 50 | 59 | 24 | 33 | 35 | 9 | 19 |
| 15% | 19% | 14% | 11% | 13% | 14% | 14% | 17% | 19% | 16% | 18% | 17% | 6% | 14% | 17% | 6% | 13% |
Sixth highest tally and fourth highest percentage ever.
Top non-genre fiction of the year:
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston, though in fact it turns out that there are other stories which had not then been published (reviewget it here.)
Honourable mentions:
Housekeeping, by Mailynne Robinson (reviewget it here.)
Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (reviewget it here.)
Enjoyed rereading:
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (reviewget it here.)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie (reviewget it here.)
The one you haven't heard of:
The one to avoid:
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (reviewget it here.)
| 2020/ | 2019/ | 2018/ | 2017/ | 2016/ | 2015/ | 2014/ | 2013/ | 2012/ | 2011/ | 2010/ | 2009/ | 2008/ | 2007/ | 2006/ | 2005/ | 2004/ |
| 45 | 31 | 28 | 29 | 27 | 18 | 19 | 30 | 21 | 27 | 18 | 28 | 6 | 20 | 6 | 8 | 8 |
| 17% | 13% | 11% | 12% | 13% | 6% | 7% | 12% | 8% | 9% | 6% | 8% | 2% | 8% | 3% | 6% | 5% |
Third highest tally and fourth highest percentage.
Top comic of the year:
The Blue Lotus, by Hergé (reviewget it here)
Honourable mentions:
The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright, by Bryan Talbot (reviewget it here)
The Hive, by Charles Burns (reviewget it here)
The ones you haven't heard of:
Misschien/Nooit/Ooit, by Marc Legendre and Kristof Spaey (reviewhere, here and here)
The one to avoid:
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, by Hergé (reviewget it here)
Making up the numbers: Observatory by Daragh Carville (reviewget it hereMeeting the British, by Paul Muldoon (reviewget it here).
My Book of the Year
A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf: a tremendous, passionate, witty and forensic analysis of the barriers faced women who try to get anywhere in literature, or indeed in almost any other way of life. One of the great feminist texts, and at 112 pages mercifully succinct. I wished I had read it twenty-five years earlier. Get it here.
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: See above
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
My tweets
- Mon, 12:56: How Nella Larsen’s Passing deconstructed the question of race https://t.co/HfgLJKgXOX Larsen’s 1929 novel, now a Netflix film, illustrates the degree to which race is a construct – without lecturing the reader.
- Mon, 14:41: RT @PadraigBelton: My biggest #DoctorWho squee yet: @ThaddeaGraham. 24 and Chinese-Northern Irish, she writes music too and reminds us ther…
- Mon, 18:09: RT @chriscurtis94: How have views on Boris Johnson changed since the end of the vaccine boost since May. The biggest shifts are on…[% ag…
- Mon, 18:50: Shadowboxer, by Tricia Sullivan https://t.co/mMjK863P44
- Mon, 19:22: Novacon https://t.co/patMJBoa9x
- Mon, 20:48: She is soooo sweet!!! https://t.co/7r3zTWPw0w
- Tue, 10:45: RT @alexhallhall: Some might wonder why I have suddenly decided to be come so vocal, after two years of relative quiet since my resignation…
Shadowboxer, by Tricia Sullivan
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Mya’s muscles burned with the effort of dragging the injured man. Beside her, Mr. Richard did nothing to help. The altitude had set him gasping for breath from the moment Mya’s meditation had brought them to the forest. In the outer world it was rainy season, but everything was different here. Sometimes when Mya came to the immortal forest she found lush mangroves, sometimes bamboo jungle. Today it was cold and the air was thin. Trees spiked the blue sky, ending in the snowfields of the Himalayas. There were fir needles under her slippered feet.
A good read, about a young American MMA fighter who goes to Thailand and gets mixed up with a plot to steal people's souls. Both physical fighting and combat with ghosts described in detail. Well paced and engaging.
The writing of this book was one of the threads in the Requires Hate affair a few years back, but it was good to read it on its own merits.
This was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold.
Novacon
Simply tremendous to get together with a lot of fen at Novacon this weekend, in the somewhat old-fashioned Palace Hotel in Buxton. I am a huge fan anyway of Guests of Honour Christopher Priest and Claire North, both of whom gave amusing speeches detailing their problems with the publishing industry; a surprise appearance from Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, whose husband has just published a science fiction novel; a recording of the Octothorpe podcast with Marguerite Smith standing in for absent Liz Batty; and much planning ahead for next year’s Hugo administration and for the ever more energetic Glasgow 2024 Worldcon bid. And the delight of just hanging out in the many public seating areas with old friends, and even new friends. Many many thanks to the organisers for bringing us all back together.
Let’s hope this is the first reunion of many.
My tweets
- Sun, 12:39: “I rather guiltily enjoyed lockdown. For fifty years I’ve been sitting in a room on my own, and all of a sudden it’s legal” – Christopher Priest https://t.co/NZ1ut7iTm3
- Sun, 12:56: RT @MSmithsonPB: The Tweet of the day so far https://t.co/pFiqPMnnkK
- Sun, 14:05: Recording of @OctothorpeCast with @BohemianCoast @JohnCoxon and guest @MargueriteS_IE standing in for @lizbatty at @Novacon50. https://t.co/WjUtBE34fZ
- Sun, 16:17: My 2021 Hugo votes: Best Novel 1) The City We Became, @NKJemisin 2) Piranesi, Susanna Clarke 3) The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal 4) Network Effect, Martha Wells 5) Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse 6) Harrow The Ninth, Tamsyn Muir https://t.co/8EA4a3WfDp
- Sun, 16:35: “The Sunday Times said that my book 84k was a comedy of manners about religion! It isn’t! There is no religion in it! And it isn’t funny!” @ClaireNorth42 https://t.co/Xe23HNR4Po
- Sun, 18:06: Discipline or Corruption, by Constantin Stanislavsky et al https://t.co/vU8Uz9rIoM
- Sun, 18:47: RT @bbcdoctorwho: “I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren’t there.” A very happy birthday to the Eighth Doctor, Paul Mc…
- Sun, 19:34: At long last! Another (rare) Northern Irish voice in Doctor Who! https://t.co/Caui1UQRrI
- Sun, 19:45: “Who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my reflection?”
- Sun, 20:11: RT @morganjeffery: Barbara Flynn! Brilliant in everything. #DoctorWho
- Sun, 20:48: Featuring my elbow and knee, on the left. https://t.co/J8bzpVzIdd
- Mon, 10:45: Why Mobility Across Borders Is A Human Right https://t.co/wbjDS7bYkr Amen.
Discipline or Corruption, by Constantin Stanislavsky et al
Second paragraph of third chapter ("Easy Entertainment", by Karen Cooper):
To be ambitious and hopeful about your future is very commendable. The dreams and aspirations of each individual are the driving force towards the progress of each nation and towards the evolution of mankind.
On 22 January 1972, Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister, was spattered with ink on arriving at the Egmont palace in Brussels to sign the treaty admitting the UK to the European Communities. It's a striking moment and the press photographers were well placed:
I have attended at least a dozen events in the Egmont Palace since moving to Brussels in 1999, so I know the scene of the event very well; and I now smirk every time I wander up to the foot of the grand staircase in the entrance hall.
The ink-thrower had registered as a photographer from a non-existent newspaper, the England-Sweden Times, which is how she managed to be in the press scrum, conveniently placed for both ink-throwing and photography. She gave the name Karen Cooper, but it turned out that her name was really Marie Louise Kwiatkowski, born in Murnau, Germany (presumably the Murnau near Oberammergau, just north of the Austrian border) on 8 January 1941, a registered resident of Sweden but living in London.
And her protest was not, in fact, an anti-European one. There were anti-European protesters outside the palace, led by Christopher Frere-Smith, who was arrested, but she was not one of them. Instead, and this is where it gets a bit weird – well, here's the Glasgow Herald's version:
So, she was protesting that the gummint had personally stolen her plans for the redevelopment of Covent Market into a conference centre – in other words, not actually a protest against government policy, but a gripe that the government had agreed with her preferred outcome without giving her credit. Here is the transcript of ITN's News at Ten coverage of her eventual conviction and sentence:
"Andrew" here is presumably Andrew Gardnerfuture author of Harry's GameMichael Palliser, or by Sir John Beith? Walter Scheel, the German foreign minster, quipped that all future German ambassadors should be chosen for their physical similarity to the foreign minister of the day, in case this should happen to him or his successors. (Scheel also suggested that they try and pass off the incident as honoring an ancient Norwegian custom of throwing ink at people to whom you wish the best of luck.)
See also the legal analysis (in French) here, pp, 321-323, which asserts that Kwiatkowski was not prosecuted under the 1852 law against attacking foreign heads of government because Heath himself did not wish to press charges, and not (as another bit of Belgian mythology has it) because the law applied only to Heads of State and Heath was not the Queen (it seems clear that the law would have applied to him as well).
As for Marie-Louise Kwiatkowski, here's a photograph from June 1972 found on eBay:
[eBay description] This is an original press photo. The Girl who threw ink over Mr.Heath is thrown out of Britain: German-born- Marie-Louise Kwiatkowski, 31, the girl who threw ink over Premier Edward Heath in Brussels five months ago, and was three times refused entry into Britain, sneaked back here at her fourth attempt wearing a dark wig to fool the immigration officials, Karen Cooper, the name she used, arrived back in this country aboard a passenger ship from Ansterdam and then hitched several lifts to London five days ago. Yesterday the Special Branch moved into the London hotel, where she was escorted to Heathrow Airport and put on a flight to Frankfurt. Photo shows Karen Cooper (real name Marie Louise Kwiatkowski) is pictured in these two photos at her London Hotel yesterday. On the left she is seen wearing the clothes and wig she wore to cover her long fair hair when she entered the country five days ago, and on right as she really is.
The taking of the photograph is the subject of a somewhat incomprehensible article in Der Spiegel, whose text has got mixed up with an entirely different story involving nude photography and the Norwegian artist Gerd Tinglum.
More coverage, in order, from the Times, 24 January 1972 (two days after it happened):
From the Guardian, 1 March:
From the Times, 26 April (my fifth birthday):
And from the Times Diary column, 24 June:
(Nora Nicholson has the leading guest role in a 1971 episode of Here Come The Double Deckers, "The Helping Hound".)
I hate linking to the Daily Mail, but for once they have the best roundup of all of the information on this in a piece published in 2016, a year after my original blog posts (but I think based on original research). Karen Cooper / Marie-Louise Kwiatkowski took her own live in a Swedish prison in 1976, having married George Martin but facing charges of theft and arson. George Martin, who appears to have escaped any punishment for helping her to forge her press pass (and I bet he bought the ink himself), is not this chap, not Basil Brush's scriptwriter, not the Beatles' manager, but in fact a Russian who had been born in Harbin, then in Manchuria, and grew up in Tianjin, a bit further south in China.
The book Discipline or Corruption, published in 1967, is basically the bible of George Martin's cult-like Institute for Personal Development, which combined a reverence for the works of Russian theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski with prejudice against gays and an obsession with transforming the world through the redevelopment of Covent Garden. Yes, really. To Slanislavski's essay on Ethics and Discipline, Martin and four of his women colleagues, including Karen Cooper, add their own personal accounts of develeopment and the need for us all to reject corruption and embrace Stanislavski. (And Covent Garden). It's earnest and a bit dull; the Sixties produced much more exciting stuff than this.
Now. As far as I can tell, there is almost no evidence that Heath – or indeed anyone in the 1970-74 Tory government – stole any plans for the Covent Garden redevelopment. The history is difficult to reconstruct at this distance, but as far as I can see from here (note future MEP Lord Dartmouth, Princess Diana's step-brother, hiding behind his mother in one of the photographs) and also here, the massive redevelopment plans for Covent Garden had been agreed in 1968, before the government came to office; but by early 1972, all concerned were preparing the ground for dignified retreat, paving the way for the creation of the streetscape that we know today. It would have made more sense (admittedly, only a little more) if Kwiatkowski had protested Heath's likely dumping of the plans rather than his supposed "theft" of them. However the Institute for Personal Development crowd were obsessed with Heath, and Karen Cooper actually published a book about him, making various unfounded allegations. This generated a brief flurry of interest more recently which has now died down.
George Martin and Susanne Harris, one of the other co-authors of Discipline or Corruption, bought the island of Stora Ekholmen in Stockholm harbour in 1965 for the Institute; but they do not seem to have got very far. Swedish sources suggest that at least one of them was still living there as recently as April 2019. Nothing much more, however, was heard from the Institute for Personal Development.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my unread shelves. Next on that list is Exploding School to Pieces: Growing Up With Pop Culture In the 1970s, by Mick Deal.
My tweets
- Sat, 14:50: Why ћ and ħ are different from ℏ https://t.co/HcaUqGmfjf
- Sat, 15:02: Phryne the basset hound has decided that I am her friend. https://t.co/5F4pq6XEOU
- Sat, 16:09: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring https://t.co/ZjfUpY5tWl
- Sat, 18:20: RT @reclamation2022: Our Guest of Honour @nwbrux with adorable hound Phryne. We are at @novacon50. Come find us and say hello. https://t.c…
- Sat, 18:41: RT @SirJJQC: Just remembered I once worked with a government minister who claimed for the cost of a poppy
- Sat, 20:48: RT @chrisgreybrexit: Welcome to Brexit 2.0. Latest post on my Brexit & Beyond Blog looking at different scenarios arising from the Article…
- Sun, 10:45: Michelle Yeoh: ‘Jackie Chan thought women belonged in the kitchen – until I kicked his butt’ https://t.co/oKn3d0gyzr She rules.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 2001 (the last before the category was split into Long Form and Short Form), and the Nebula for 2002 (awarded in 2003)
It also won four Oscars. IMDB users rank it top film of 2001 on one system but only fourth on the other, behind Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Thir13en Ghosts (which I had not heard of) and Donnie Darko. For the Nebula, it beat Shrek, The Dead Zone episode “Unreasonable Doubt” and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Once More, with Feeling”.
For the Hugo, it beat, in the following order, Shrek again, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Monsters, Inc. and “Once More, with Feeling” again. I haven't seen any of The Dead Zone, and I'm not sure if I have seen Shrek – I think I've been in the room while other people's children were watching it without paying too much attention – but I've certainly seen the other three. “Once More, with Feeling” is one of my favourite Buffy episodes, but I think I'd have voted with the crushing majority that gave the Hugo to The Fellowship of the Ring on the first count. It was also far ahead at nominations stage. (“Once More, with Feeling” got the second highest number of first preferences, but was overtaken by the other films in the counts for later places and ended up fifth out of five, which I think is an injustice.)
I usually start with actors who have appeared in earlier films that won the Hugo, Nebula or Oscar, but I'm going to step slightly outside that for Elijah Wood, so memorably Frodo Baggins here and in the next two films; he was the kid playing video games at the start of Back to the Future II back in 1989, when he was eight.
We've seen John Rhys-Davies, Gimli here, as Sallah in the two Hugo- and Nebula-winning Indiana Jones films, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Ian Holm is the only cast member with a speaking role in an Oscar-winning film. Before being Bilbo here, he was Abrahams' coach Mussevini in Chariots of Fire, as well as of course being the android Ash in Alien.
According to legend, Christopher Lee, Saruman here, was an uncredited and non-speaking palace guard in Olivier's Oscar-winning 1948 Hamlet
Slightly surprisingly there is only one crossover with Doctor Who, and there it's a voice-only role; Ian McKellen, Gandalf here, was the voice of the Great Intelligence in The Snowmen (2012), though to be really meta, he also appeared the following year as himself playing Gandalf in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
I saw this in the cinema when it first came out, and loved it then, and enjoyed the whole trilogy in 2005, and twenty years on I love it still. Of course I know the original book backwards, so I was poised to be hyper-critical of ways in which the film failed to live up to expectations (as the Bakshi version largely failed). I'm also still a fan of the BBC radio version from forty years ago, which is surely a high water mark for dramatisation of any novel in any medium. And in general I start these reviews with things I didn't like so much, so I'll do the same here.
Though there's very little to object to. Yes, we lose the Elves in the Shire (though they are in the extended edition), the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Wight, which are really vivid parts of the book, but IIRC the BBC and Bakshi did the same; I think it would be difficult to dramatise Bombadil without being twee – he fulfills a function in Tolkien's mind and on the page, which sensible scriptwriters have resisted adapting.
(There is a hilarious adaptation of Bombadil in Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney's parody, Bored of the Rings. “Toke a lid, smoke a lid, pop the mescalino! …Hop a hill! Pop a pill! For old Tim Benzedrino!”)
The fervent Tolkien fan must also twitch at the infantilisation of the characters of Merry and Pippin, who in the book are well abreast of Frodo's plans to the point of maturing their own plan to travel with him, like it or not, but are set up in the film as mere comic relief. At the same time, fervent Tolkien fans know and expect a significant future narrative trajectory for them both. (Also, re Billy Boyd's accent – lots of planets may have a North, but even a small patch of hobbit territory in Middle Earth has a Scotland.)
The last and most trivial ground of complaint is that the timescale of the book is drastically compressed – seventeen years elapse between Bilbo's party and the formation of the Fellowship in the original novel, whereas in the film we get the sense that it's only a matter of weeks.
OK, onto the good stuff, and there is a lot of it. The sense of scale is in general very well done. In particular, making the hobbits and dwarves look shorter than humans, orcs, elves and wizards is a cinematic masterpiece. There are one or two moments where it slips (meaning distance shots of the Fellowship where it's fairly obvious that the hobbits and Gimli are being played by shorter standins, and a slightly awkward overlay at the Council of Elrond). But for most of the three hours (four if you watch the director's cut) it works well and convincingly. Likewise the battle and chase sequences have occasional weak moments, but the tolerant viewer will ignore them for the sake of the greater spectacle.
Dramatising Isildur at the beginning is a great move, setting the epic tone which would have been lost if we had just jumped straight into the birthday party. At the same time, the first reveal of the Shire is an amazing piece of establishment and world-building. In general the places of Jackson's Middle Earth look beautiful and they look like you wanted Tolkien's Middle Earth to look. New Zealand has a starring role in all three films.
Boosting the role of Arwen is also frankly an improvement on the book. As Una McCormack has observed, there are more named horses than named women in The Lord of the Rings. It remains a story about male chaps having male adventures, but Jackson has mildly redressed the balance. It’s also entirely right for dramatic purposes to relocate Boromir’s death from the beginning of The Two Towers to the end of The Fellowship of the Ring.
All of the performances are excellent, starting with Elijah Wood, who was still a teenager when filming began, and ending with Cate Blanchett, who at 30 successfully conveys millennia of authority. I think Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn isn't quite as interesting as Robert Stephens in the BBC audio, but that's a high bar.
And, well, the music.
F, having previously read The Hobbit but not LOTR, watched it with me and enjoyed it. So it's not just me.
Two more notes.
Here's a brilliant blog post by Dimitra Fini, looking at how Jackson's imagery of the hobbits hiding from the Black Rider derives from Bakshi and ultimately from the early twentieth century art of Arthur Rackham.
And here's Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jack Black infiltrating the Council of Elrond.
You're welcome.
Of course I went back to re-read the book, for the first time since 2004. The second paragraph of Chapter III, "Three is Company", is:
‘I know. But it is difficult to do both [go quietly, and go soon]’ he [Frodo] objected. ‘If I just vanish like Bilbo, the tale will be all over the Shire in no time.’
A couple of points struck me in the light of having rewatched the film. The first is that the foreword to the second edition and the prologue are both in their different ways integral to the text. The foreword is a curious piece of soul-baring which tells us how not to read the book and refuses to tell us how we should read it.
The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.
And a moving note on personal experience:
An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.
(Though it’s telling that the “close friends” don’t seem to include Edith. The survivor is Christopher Wiseman.)
I’ve noted some points of difference with the film above, but I’ll also note here that the hobbits we hear about in the Shire are almost all chaps. It would be nice to know more about Melilot Brandybuck, who dances the Springle-ring with Everard Took. (Some have speculated.)
Anyway, I’ll get onto The Two Towers in due course, but first the 2001 Oscar winner, A Beautiful Mind.
My tweets
- Fri, 16:16: I have voted. And I voted for Winnipeg. https://t.co/0ayEB7URET
- Fri, 17:34: https://t.co/xvfYszsfjA https://t.co/cTXA7MB95J
- Fri, 18:14: RT @PickardJE: the Cummings blog on Boris Johnson & the customs union is quite an eye-opener https://t.co/Tyqmy5t26K
- Fri, 18:52: Day of the Dead, by Neil Gaiman https://t.co/7eRrlSFeaX
- Fri, 18:57: 2021 Hugo ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) https://t.co/GJ0oOG6Fw1
- Fri, 21:58: Yeah, that’s what “peak” actually means… https://t.co/guVET2bSIN
- Sat, 10:45: Interesting that the change of tone from London happened after Julian Braithwaite’s visit to Dublin… https://t.co/jAnReE9wFk
2021 Hugo ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
So, the last category I'm writing up for the Hugos this year: seven television episodes (one double nomination) of which only two are from shows that I know.
6) The Mandalorian: Chapter 13: The Jedi
5) She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Heart (episode 1 and 2)
4) The Expanse: Gaugamela
Without going into tedious detail, I dutifully watched all of these and felt that they were really dependent on knowing the continuity of the show in question. The episode of The Mandalorian made very little sense without knowing who these people are. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power was at least interesting to look at. Gaugamela had massive destrution of the planet Earth and political machinations at the highest level. So I have ranked them accordingly.
3) The Mandalorian: Chapter 16: The Rescue
As noted, I don't know The Mandalorian particularly, but (of course) am familiar enough with the Star Wars universe to hugely appreciate the Big Reveal at 34:30 of this episode. Apart from that (admittedly very glorious) moment, it's another episode of a show I don't know with people I don't know running around shooting other people I don't know.
2) The Good Place: Whenever You’re Ready
I've gone back and forth on this vote, to be honest. I really expect the final, climactic, moving episode of The Good Place to win, capping off a four-year narrative of a series that has won in this category in each of the last few years. It's a great piece of TV and rounds off 53 episodes of narrative. Hugely enjoyed it. And yet…
1) Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon
Obviously I'm a huge Who fan anyway, so this was always likely to get my top vote. I'll admit that the Whittaker/Chibnall era has been a bit uneven. But the reveal in this episode is one of the best in the whole 58 years of Doctor Who – in New Who, surpassed only by Derek Jacobi in 2008. I don't think it will win, but it has my vote.
This is probably going to be my last Hugos post until after next year's awards, because I am Deputy Administrator for 2022. None of the 2023 bids has as yet approached me (and to be honest I would not mind a year off) but if the Glasgow bid wins the right to hold the 2024 Worldcon, I am likely to be involved again.
2021 Hugos: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar | Astounding
Day of the Dead, by Neil Gaiman
Opening of Act 3:
INT. SHERIDAN'S QUARTERS.
Rebo and Zooty and Sheridan and Delenn are having a pleasant time. They're up to dessert, which is fresh kreebish1. Sheridan's link breeps.
CORWIN (V.0.) Can I talk to you privately, Mr. President?
Sheridan stands up.
SHERIDAN (to his guests) I won't be a moment. Enjoy the kreebish.
1 I discovered when I was on set that Kreebish is pink. I never got to try it, so I don't know what it tastes like.
Another of the Gaiman Humble Bundle books, this is his script for an episode of Babylon 5, a show that I never really watched. Death and the afterlife are recurrent preoccupations of Gaiman's, most obviously in The Graveyard Book and the portrayals of Death and Hell in Sandman, but always present in the background. It takes some chutzpah however to make a Halloween episode of a relatively hard sf show like Babylon 5, and I think it more or less succeeds on those terms, certainly better than when Doctor Who tried the same. Without knowing much about any of the regular characters, you can still appreciate the different emotional reactions that they have when confronted with dead loved ones, each of whom has a story to tell – I think I was most grabbed by the dynamic between Captain Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scroggins) and her reesurrected friend – possibly lover – Zoe (Bridget Flanery), perhaps because it was less rooted in the continuity.
I didn't really get how the comedy of the two magicians fitted in – it seemed a rather awkward celebrity cameo, with an additionally awkward call to political action from Sheridan at the end. Gaiman also supplies some interesting footnotes and commentary on what it feels like to see your words become screen action. I would have found it more interesting if I knew the show better.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2015. Next on that list is The Last Witness, by K.J. Parker.
Friday reading
Current
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve
River of Gods, by Ian McDonald
Last books finished
The Book of the War, ed. Lawrence Miles
The Burning God, by R.F. Kuang
Building Healthy Boundaries: An Over-giver’s Guide to Knowing When to Say ‘Yes’ and How to Say ‘No’ in Relationships, by Helen Snape
The HAVOC Files 3, ed. Andy Frankham-Allen
The Ice Cream Army, by Jessica Gregson
The Witchfinders, by Joy Wilkinson
Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman
Summer, by Ali Smith
Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl, by Terrance Dicks
Image of the Fendahl, by Simon Bucher-Jones
Next books
Iron Council, by China Miéville
The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots, by Laetitia Coryn and Philippe Brenot
My tweets
- Thu, 12:56: RT @femme_thoughts: Absolutely astonishing stuff from @PatrickStrud on a book that upends the legal precedents for denying trans people equ…
- Thu, 16:34: November 2013 books https://t.co/c34PeMKysl #fb #doctorwho
- Thu, 18:53: Yeah. Right. https://t.co/5n6jY5QL1H
- Thu, 20:48: RT @Mij_Europe: Everyone in EU should read @Dominic2306 point below re @BorisJohnson decision-making – & thread above, below it https://t.c…
- Thu, 22:17: Minority view, I know, but Sontaran Experiment to Genesis of the Daleks. Also agree with Dominators to Mind Robber. Also, Faceless Ones to Evil of the Daleks. https://t.co/cvWnvgqnGq
- Fri, 08:20: RT @Samfr: The absolute chef’s kiss headline of this whole debacle https://t.co/H9l8by16a2
- Fri, 09:11: First flight out of Brussels since Feb 2020! (@ Gate B17 – @brusselsairport in Zaventem, Vlaams-Brabant) https://t.co/R8JgHiyd3l
- Fri, 11:34: I’m at Manchester Airport – @manairport in Manchester, Greater Manchester https://t.co/JxkP0EzEEW
November 2013 books
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
This of course was the month of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, with Peter Davison's The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot) featuring me in the background of an early crowd scene.
Doctor Who also provided me with one of my most successful Tweets ever ()to the extent that it featured in a Buzzfeed roundup of pictures we can stop tweeting in 2014):
#fb Tom Baker's answer when asked about his favourite memory of #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/li28XFwyXj
— (@nwbrux) November 14, 2013
I had a lot of leisure travel this month – we took the long 1 November weekend in Amsterdam, where we visited the Anne Frank House; F and I went to Novacon in Nottingham in the middle of the month (as it happens I am going to this year's Novacon tomorrow); and on 23 November we drove to Germany to see Day of the Doctor in a cinema near Cologne. I also flew to Edinburgh on a work trip, though even there I stayed with Charlie and Feorag. At the end of the month came the sad but not unexpected news of my aunt Nora's death. Here's Jo Walton, the Guest of Honour at Novacon, with the coins that she named her excellent Small Change trilogy after.
Work continued to be unhappy and I started seeing a career counsellor, which was quite expensive but money well spent, as we shall see when I get to that stage.
With a lot of driving, I read only 11 books.
Non-Fiction 3 (YTD 43)
The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I, by Stephen Alford
Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction, by Michael White
Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea
Fiction (non-sf) 2 (YTD 39)
Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
Reamde, by Neal Stephenson
SF (non-Who) 1 (YTD 56)
There Will be Time, by Poul Anderson
Doctor Who etc 5 (YTD 67, 78 counting non-fiction and comics)
Nightdreamers, by Tom Arden
SLEEPY, by Kate Orman
Dark Progeny, by Steve Emmerson
Nothing O'Clock, by Neil Gaiman
Torchwood: Long Time Dead, by Sarah Pinborough
~3,400 pages (YTD ~60,200)
3/11 (YTD 66/235) by women (Paterson, Orman, Pinborough)
0/11 (YTD 10/235) by PoC
The two I enjoyed most were Jacob Have I Loved, which you can get here, and The Watchers, which you can get here. Michael White's Asimov biography was forgettable, but you can get it here.
My tweets
- Wed, 12:56: RT @FaullJonathan: Interesting take on the Brexit negotiations and @MichelBarnier by an eminent Irish diplomat The Professional – DRB http…
- Wed, 17:24: The Splinters books, by William Whyte https://t.co/Nfg1cSsAyk
- Wed, 18:09: RT @Glasgowin2024: Meet Nicholas Whyte, DH for the WSFS and GoH at Eastercon 2022. This blog post delves into Nicholas’ long love affair wi…
- Wed, 18:37: 2021 Hugo ballot: Best Series https://t.co/nf2xwKMjM3
- Thu, 10:14: RT @AndrewPRLevi: Follow @arthistorynews. For the art. And the history. And the politics.
- Thu, 10:45: RT @reclamation2022: Our friends over at @Glasgowin2024 have produced a lovely introduction to @nwbrux , who is also one of our Guests of H…
2021 Hugo ballot: Best Series
Less than a week to go for Hugo voting, later than usual this year for reasons we are all very familiar with. This will be my second last post on this year's finalists.
I'm not a fan of the Best Series category. I feel it's important that the Hugo Awards represent the best in the genre of the previous year. With the Best Series final ballot this year, we are being asked to judge between a series that started in 2009 (October Daye), four recent trilogies (one of which has some associated short fiction) and a series of novellas capped by a novel. I don't think it's really comparing like with like, and we're certainly not comparing 2020 with 2020.
In addition, as a conscientious Hugo voter I have tried to read every work on the final ballot every year I've had a vote. That's completely impossible with Best Series. I did read at least one more volume than I had already done in each of the series on the final ballot, and actually finished the one I liked best, but did not complete any of the other five. I don't find this satisfactory, but I don't think any other approach is realistic if we have a Best Series award.
The four winners of Best Series so far have been worthy victors – Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan and Five Gods, Becky Chambers' Wayfarers (where I was honoured to present the award to Becky Chambers in person in 2019) and The ExpanseCthulhu was clearly the most significant entry on last year's Retro Hugo ballot, and given that we were having the category at all (a decision that I unsuccessfully opposed) it was the right winner. But I can't see that level of quality being continued indefinitely. As I wrote in 2018 (the only year of the most recent five where I was not myself involved with the administration of the Hugos, when three series got enough votes for the final ballot but were disqualified on grounds of length, and a fourth declined nomination):
I do query how long the Best Series category will be sustainable. No winner can be eligible again; no finalist can be eligible again until another two volumes with 250,000 words have been produced. My feeling is that the well of plausible nominees may run dry rather quickly.
I think we are seeing that this year already.
One other point worth making – there were some complaints that some of this year's Best Series finalists also included works that appeared on the ballot in other categories, and that the rules should preclude this. That wasn't our reading of the constitution, this year or in 2019 – some people clearly thought that was what they were voting for when the category was created, but it isn't what we got. It's worth noting, in line with my previous comment, that if we had excluded those series (or asked authors to choose which nomination should stand) it would have been a weaker ballot overall.
Anyway, to this year's finalists. I found this a really easy ranking, though I'm equally certain that voters will take a very different view.
6) October Daye, by Seanan McGuire – I read volumes 1 (Rosemary and Rue), 2 (A Local Habitation) and 8 (The Winter Long). I completely bounced off the core concept of a Gaelic otherworld conveniently located in the American West, with no visible representation from other less foreign supernatural traditions. The fact is that San Francisco has been a major European settlement for less than 200 years; how then does it mysteriously have a parallel world of ancient Celtic entities full of European chivalric traditions sitting alongside it? And what has happened to the supernatural beings of the more indigenous traditions? On top of that, the characters need to constantly infodump to us about the rules of their parallel society. I think this has a good chance of winning, because McGuire has an enthusiastic fanbase which she actively cultivates (and there is nothing wrong with that), but it won't be with my vote.
5) The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells – I read three of the first four novellas (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition and Exit Strategy) and the novel Network Effect. I'm one of the three people in fandom who rather bounced off the novellas, largely due to my antipathy to cute anthropomorphic robot stories (even if the robot is also a killer robot). The most recent volume was OK, as it turns out that Murderbot does actually have a space for friendships and possibly even growth, making it a bit more than a one-joke story. It's on the Best Novel ballot and won the Nebula and Locus (SF), and the whole sequence is now qualified in the Best Series category for the first time. Also has an enthusiastic fanbase which may get it the award, but again not with my vote.
4) The Lady Astronaut Universe, by Mary Robinette Kowal – I read the first and third of the trilogy, The Calculating Stars and The Relentless Moon, and the original novelette (two of them won the respective Hugo ballots of their years, the votes are not yet in for the last). Full marks for descriptions, but really not convinced by the scenario of a devastated mid-twentieth century USA turning towards liberalism and space flight; we should be so lucky… and the plot twists in the latest book really challenged my suspension of disbelief just a bit, as did the postscript after the main action of the book was over. Best of luck to Kowal personally as she has ended up chairing this year's Worldcon after the dramatic events of June, in which I myself had a hand.
3) The Interdependency, by John Scalzi – I read the first two of the trilogy, The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire. The first volume had grand sweeps of interstellar space, the second concentrates very much more on court politics in the capital of a galactic empire which is being undermined by the collapse of the wormhole network on which it depends. The political and sexual intrigue is well done, but I keep running into the same problem with Scalzi's books, which is that all the characters sound the same
2) The Daevabad Trilogy, by S.A. Chakraborty – I read the first two of the trilogy, The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper, and got 100 pages into the third, The Empire of Gold. This is a tremendously assured tale set partly in eighteenth century Cairo but with links to the world of djinns. Lots of court politics, well sketched characters and intricate plotting. A really good bit of secondary world-building. I admit that I put down the third volume because voting deadline was looming and I knew from the first hundred pages that it probably wouldn't change my ranking, but I may come back to it.
1) The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang – this was the only Best Series finalist where I read the entire set of volumes, The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic and The Burning God. As with Chakraborty, it's a big fantasy trilogy, with politics, military strategy, young woman protagonist and dark magical forces which are difficult to control and threaten to destroy the world and our protagonist, whose successes and flaws are very well portrayed. I thought it a tremendous series; ticked a lot of my boxes and it emphatically gets my vote. As noted above, I'm not sure that mine will be a majority view. I suppose that the fact that I would probably not have read this if it had not been a finalist is a point in favour of the Best Series category. From the adminsitrator's or conscientous reader's point of view, it's still a lot more work.
2021 Hugos: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar | Astounding
The Splinters books, by William Whyte
Second paragraph of third chapter of Splinters and the Impolite President:
“I need to have a word with you,” Coach Prince said. “It’s about your linemates for the tournament.”
Second paragraph of third chapter of Splinters and the Wolves of Winter:
“First,” said Elsa, “a shooting challenge. Second, a skating challenge. You have to pick different players for each. The overall winner gets a medallion. What's that for? Later.” She bounced the puck high in the air, spun round on her skates as it arced above her, caught it perfectly on the blade of her stick, and pointed with her stick at the four nets.
My brother wrote these a couple of years ago, based on characters from a book by Kevin Sylvester
In both books, Cindy Winters, impoverished but talented hockey player, goes to Europe for a tournament with her team, augmented by the unpleasant (and rich) Blister sisters. In the first book, the setting is Iceland, where the President turns out to be a former ice hockey player with a historic grudge and a monster; in the second, it is the central European principality of Luxenstein, where the Graf, his wolves and Alberich the dwarf are maintaining a supernatural secret. Both are great fun and I think could be enjoyed by younger (and indeed older) readers even if they don't know anything about ice hockey – the values of good sport and team spirit are universal. You can get Splinters and the Impolite President here and Splinters and the Wolves of Winter here.
I had foolishly thought that the books were not sfnal, and that Splinters and the Impolite President was therefore the non-genre book that had lingered longest on my shelves. However when the Fairy Goaltender appeared at the start of Chapter 2, I realised that I was mistaken. Be that as it may, the next book in that pile is also by someone I know in RL, The Ice-Cream Army by Jessica Gregson. (She will no doubt now inform me that it's actually about witchcraft.)
