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Whoniversaries 16 April

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i) births and deaths

16 April 1936: birth of Derrick Sherwin. On paper, he was producer of Doctor Who for only two stories and 14 episodes, the shortest tenure of anyone in the old regime. In fact he was the man who rescued the programme from collapse in Seasons 5 and 6 (as script editor and de facto assistant producer), invented UNIT and the Time Lords, and successfully rebooted the show in colour with a new Doctor in 1970. He also wrote, uncredited, one of the best single episodes of the entire original run, the first part of The Mind Robber

16 April 1954: birth of Antony Root, briefly script editor of Doctor Who in 1981.

16 April 1974: birth of Paul Marc Davis, the only actor to appear in New Who and all three of its spinoffs: as the Futurekind Chieftain in Utopia (Tenth Doctor, 2007), one of the Cowled Figures in Exit Wounds (Torchwood, 2008), the recurring Trickster in the Sarah Jane Adventures, and Corakinus, leader of the Shadowkin in several episodes of Class. His face is only visible in Utopia.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

16 April 1966: broadcast of "The Dancing Floor", third episode of the story we now call The Celestial Toymaker. Steven and Dodo must deal with a not-very-threatening kitchen and some rather more threatening dancing dolls. (I mistakenly used this picture last week.)

16 April 2005: broadcast of Aliens of London. A spacecraft crashes into the Thames; the Doctor is among experts on aliens summoned to 10 Downing Street, but all is not as it seems. Incldues the very first scenes filmed for New Who (with Tosh and the space pig). That same day, the BBC confirmed that David Tennant would play the Tenth Doctor.

iii) date specified in canon

16 April 1746: Battle of Culloden, followed by the events of The Highlanders (Second Doctor, 1966).

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Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Quanto a Belbo non era in ufficio. Gudrun mi aveva detto che aveva telefonato dicendo che doveva allontanarsi per motivi di famiglia. Quale famiglia? La cosa strana è che aveva portato via il computer — Abulafia, come ormai lo chiamava — con la stampante. Gudrun mi aveva detto che se l'era messo in casa per terminare un lavoro. Perché tanta fatica? Non poteva scrivere in ufficio? Belbo was away. Gudrun told me he telephoned to say he had to go somewhere for family reasons. What family? The odd thing was, he took away the word processor — Abulafia, he called it — and the printer, too. Gudrun also told me he had set it up at home in order to finish some work. Why had he gone to all that trouble? Couldn't he do it in the office?

I read this soon after the English translation came out, and allowed myself to be impressed in the wake of The Name of the Rose. I am older and more cynical now, and I must admit it did not read as well thirty years later. I was once fascinated by conspiracy theories and even at one point by the cabala, and these days I have put away (some) childish things and no longer find these things quite as interesting. Sure, Eco's target is precisely the people who do take these things seriously, but he and his characters somewhat slip over the boundary. The gratuitous fridging of one of the (slender) women characters at the end jarred when I first read it and still jars now. Though it's a bit redeemed by the laundry list moment. Still, There are certainly three books I have read recently which were a third of this length and from which I got more enjoyment. You can get it here.

This was the most popular book on my shelves that I had not already reviewed on-line. Next in that list is Bridget Jones' Diary, by Helen Fielding.

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Whoniversaries 15 April

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i) births and deaths

15 April 1921: birth of David Garth, who played Solicitor Grey in The Highlanders (Second Doctor, 1967-68) and a Time Lord messenger in Terror of the Autons (Third Doctor, 1971)

15 April 1922: birth of Peter Moffatt, who directed State of Decay (Fourth Doctor, 1980), The Visitation (Fifth Doctor, 1982), Mawdryn Undead (Fifth Doctor, 1983), The Five Doctors (Fifth Doctor and friends, 1983), The Twin Dilemma (Sixth Doctor, 1984) and The Two Doctors (Sixth Doctor and friends, 1985). Has any other director directed stories with six different Doctors in them?

15 April 1997: birth of Maisie Williams, who played the recurring character Ashildr/Me in several 2015 stories.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

15 April 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Faceless Ones. Polly and Ben have disappeared; Jamie meets Samantha Briggs; the Doctor is knocked out by gas.

15 April 1972: broadcast of second episode of The Mutants. The Marshall forces the Doctor to work with Jaeger, while Jo is a captive of the Solonians.

15 April 2006: broadcast of New Earth, starting Series 2 of New Who. The Doctor and Rose visit a far-future hospital where they encounter some former acquaintances.

15 April 2017: broadcast of The Pilot, starting Season 10 of New Who, introducing Bill and bringing in Nardole as a regular character. (I remember a fantastic group watch of the episode at Eastercon). The Twelfth Doctor — now living and teaching at St Luke's University on Earth — convinces dinner lady Bill Potts to be his private student. The Time Lord and his companion Nardole soon discover that their new friend has unwittingly made a deal with a prospective girlfriend that threatens their safety in a way that even the TARDIS can't outrun.

(Also NB an earlier Bill and Heather:)

iii) dates specified in canon

15 April 1912: the Titanic, struck by an iceberg late the previous evening, sinks in the early hours of the morning in the North Atlantic with over 1500 lives lost, as seen in the 1979 DWM comic strip Follow that TARDIS!, Kate Orman's 1993 novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird and the 2010 Big Finish audio Wreck of the Titan, also referenced in The Invasion of Time (1978), Rose (2005), The End of the World (2005) and Voyage of the Damned (2007).

15 April 1912: birth date of Charlotte Pollard, companion of the Eighth and Sixth Doctors in many Big Finish audios.

15 April 1980: birth of Samantha Jones, companion of the Eighth Doctor in many BBC-published novels.

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Worlds Apart, by Richard Cowper

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Second paragraph of third section (there are no chapters):

Chnassian astronomers are, of course, faced with a similar situation vis-à-vis our own galaxy, but their mental conditioning being somewhat different from our own they appear to find no great difficulty in accepting the notion that the cosmos and everything within it is one vast sensorial illusion. Thus a Chnassian astro-physicist having counted the number of Cepheid variables in a particular nebula would automatically assume that his result was ‘wrong’ simply because his eyes told him it was ‘right’. Similarly nothing is easier for the Chnassian to accept than concepts like ‘negative mass’, ‘reversed time’ or ‘black holes in the universe’—incidentally, their own term for these latter phenomena is ‘oscitations’. One famous Chnassian museum contains a large room in which a working model of the entire cosmos is said to exist. No one has ever seen it, but countless thousands of Chnassians have heard it. It consists of a quiet chuckle endlessly repeated in total darkness. Its texture, though admittedly indescribable, is rumoured to resemble that of a Gruyère cheese.

A short sf novel from 1974 about a middle-aged lecturer in an unsatisfactory marriage who distarcts himself by science fiction and flirting with a student. You can get it here. Both activities suddenly get more serious as the world that he is writing about turns out to be real and distant, and intruding on Earth, and the student starts to flirt back. The story ends with restoration of the status quo rather than any change to the frame of reference. It's about halfway between Kingsley Amis and Douglas Adams, and I was so struck by a certain similarity of tone with Hitch-hiker that I wrote and asked Christopher Priest, who knew both Cowper (John Middleton Murry Jr) and Adams personally, if he thought that one had partly inspired the other. (He said no.)

This was the shortest book acquired in 2014 that I had not yet read. Next on that pile is Cloud on Silver by John Christopher.

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  • Wed, 08:57: RT @DavidHenigUK: Since there seems to be some confusion on the matter I think it is worth restating that the EU did not force Boris Johnso…
  • Wed, 09:30: Whoniversaries 14 April https://t.co/mtUE793vCR
  • Wed, 10:23: Six months ago, when most commentators were stuck in the narrative that the Nagorno-Karabakh war would end in another bloody stalemate, I sent this note to @Tom_deWaal suggesting that an Azeri victory was much more likely than people seemed to think. Three weeks later, they won. https://t.co/Xq8Cq75KWC
  • Wed, 10:45: RT @Mij_Europe: Per Jon below, as we observe drama of CDU/CSU choosing their Chancellor candidate, let’s not forget both @ArminLaschet & @M…

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Whoniversaries 14 April

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i) births and deaths

14 April 1935: birth of the late great Terrance Dicks, who began in 1968 as script editor for the last four Second Doctor stories, remained as script editor throughout the Pertwee, wrote or co-wrote six TV stories for five Doctors, and most crucially wrote 82 novelisations and spinoff novels, a total which is unlikely ever to be surpassed (Justin Richards is on less than half of that number)

14 April 1956: birth of Peter Capaldi, who played Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii (Tenth Doctor, 2008), Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009) and most of all the Twelfth Doctor (2013-2016)



14 April 2020: death of Pip Baker, as a result of COVID-19. He and his wife Jane wrote The Mark of the Rani (Sixth Doctor, 1985), Terror of the Vervoids (Sixth Doctor, 1986), the second part of The Ultimate Foe (Sixth Doctor, 1986) and Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

14 April 1973: broadcast of second episode of Planet of the Daleks. The Daleks capture the Doctor; Jo links up with Wester the Spiridon; a second Thal ship lands.

14 April 2007: broadcast of Gridlock. The Doctor returns with Martha to New New York, where everyone is locked in a perpetual traffic jam, unwittingly serving the Macra.

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Hugo final ballot: Goodreads/LibraryThing stats

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As usual, I'm looking at the Hugo finalists as owned on Goodreads and LibraryThing – LibraryThing is my first love, but Goodreads seems to have about 30 times as many users, so I am including stats for both. (I prepared this a couple of days ago so it may not be 100% up to date.) The tables below give the number of people who have reviewed each book on Goodreads, their average rating, the number of LibraryThing owners who own each book, and then the average rating. They are listed in order of the geometrical average of the first and third columns. (Which in most cases is the same as each column taken alone.)

Best Novel

Goodreads LibraryThing
reviewers av rating owners av rating
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke 46553 4.31 1350 4.24
The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin 30847 3.98 1124 4.05
Network Effect, by Martha Wells 26892 4.44 813 4.42
Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir 17529 4.28 549 4.12
Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse 10409 4.26 427 4.01
The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal 3795 4.43 222 4.44

This is actually the tenth year that I have done this calculation.
Last year's winner was fourth on this metric, and had the second highest rating on Goodreads and joint third highest on LibraryThing.
The 2019 winner was third on this metric, had the second highest rating on Goodreads (again) and the second lowest on LibraryThing.
The 2018 winner was second on this metric and had the top ratings on both systems.
The 2017 winner was also second on this metric, had the third highest rating on Goodreads and the second highest on LibraryThing.
The 2016 winner was fifth on this metric, but had the top ratings on both systems.
The 2015 winner was fourth (out of five) on all counts.
The 2014 winner was third (out of five) on this metric (counting all the Wheel of Time as one) and in the middle-ish on ratings (depending on how you count the Wheel of Time)
The 2013 winner was top on both metrics (uniquely!) and third (out of five) in ratings on both systems.
The 2012 winner was last on both Goodreads owners and ratings, and had the lowest rating on Goodreads, but was ranked and rated third (out of five) on LibraryThing.
It's clearly an imperfect indicator. The eventual winner was in the top half of the table in four of the last nine years, in the botto, half four times, and in the middle once.

Best Novella

This year's clean sweep for Tor.com is not unprecedented – Asimov's Science Fiction got all the slots in this category in n1991 and 1996 – but it is unusual. It means we can make the same comparison as follows:

Goodreads LibraryThing
reviewers av rating owners av rating
Come Tumbling Down, by Seanan McGuire 13727 3.94 429 3.97
Upright Women Wanted, by Sarah Gailey 10303 3.66 449 3.67
The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo 9909 4.06 358 4.3
Ring Shout, by P. Djèlí Clark 8165 4.15 247 4.19
Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi 5697 3.87 282 4
Finna, by Nino Cipri 2512 3.78 138 3.7

Of the five finalists published as standalone novellas last year, the winner ranked top on this metric; the 2019 winner was second on this metric but had top ratings from readers; and I don't seem to have done it previously.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

Goodreads LibraryThing
reviewers av rating owners av rating
Monstress, vol. 5: Warchild 1984 4.36 101 4.06
Once & Future vol. 1: The King Is Undead 1534 4.08 61 3.78
Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation 1137 4.04 75 3.77
DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party 1474 3.99 49 3.92
Invisible Kingdom, vol 2: Edge of Everything 478 3.82 21 3.71
Ghost-Spider vol. 1: Dog Days Are Over 313 3.78 20 3.8

A clear leader! But last year's winner was actually last on this metric, and had the second lowest ratings; the 2019 winner was third and had the second highest ratings.

Lodestar Award for best YA book

Goodreads LibraryThing
reviewers av rating owners av rating
A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik 37044 4.04 848 4.11
Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas 21452 4.41 395 4.25
Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn 19096 4.48 381 4.38
A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher 7297 4.13 217 4.16
Raybearer, by Jordan Ifueko 7055 4.44 213 4.22
Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger 476 4.13 217 4.14

Last year's winner had the second lowest place on the metric, and among Goodreads reviewers; but LibraryThing readers ranked it top.The 2018 YA Award winner was top on the metric, and among Goodreads reviewers, but only rated fifth out of six by LibraryThing users.

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Whoniversaries 13 April

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i) births and deaths

13 April 1929: birth of David Fisher, writer of The Stones of Blood (Fourth Doctor, 1978), The Androids of Tara (Fourth Doctor, 1978), The Creature from the Pit (Fourth Doctor, 1979) and The Leisure Hive (Fourth Doctor, 1980).

13 April 1941: birth of Christopher Tranchell, who played Roger Colbert in The Massacre (1966), Steven Jenkins in The Faceless Ones (1967), and Andred in The Invasion of Time (1978). Happy 80th birthday, Chris!

13 April 1951: birth of Peter Davison, who played the Fifth Doctor from 1982 to 1984, and subsequently. Happy 70th birthday, Peter!

13 April 1967: birth of Simon Paisley Day, who played the Steward in The End of the World (Ninth Doctor, 2005) and Rump in Face the Raven (Twelfth Doctor, 2015).

13 April 1984: death of Richard Hurndall, who played the First Doctor in The Five Doctors (1983).

13 April 2015: death of Rex Robinson, who played Dr Tyler in The Three Doctors (Third Doctor plus guests, 1972), Gebek in The Monster of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1974) and Dr Carter in The Hand of Fear (Fourth Doctor, 1977). All three of his appearances were directed by Lennie Mayne.

13 April 2017: death of Eric Pringle, writer of The Awakening (Fifth Doctor, 1984).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

13 April 1968: broadcast of fifth episode of Fury from the Deep. Weed and foam spread throughout the refinery.

13 April 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of The Monster of Peladon. The Pels unite against the Ice Warriors, but the Doctor is unable to prevent Ettis from firing the sonic lance.

13 April 2013: broadcast of Cold War. In 1983, the tensest point of the Cold War, a Soviet submarine discovers a strange creature frozen in the ice of the Arctic. When one of the Firebird's crew breaks it free, it starts attacking…

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Kaleidoscope: diverse YA science fiction and fantasy stories, eds. Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios

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Second paragraph of third story (“The Legend Trap”, by Sean Williams):

It’s the oldest story in the world. Some dumb kid always wants to put it to the test. “It” could be any number of things. Jumping when the d-mat process starts to see if it makes you taller. Spinning in a circle anticlockwise in the hope of being switched from left to right. Squeezing thirteen people in at once just in case the one with the guiltiest secret disappears.

Often when I am auditing my library against the list of books I know I have acquired in a previous year, I find some of them have gone missing. This is a different case – I realised that I had contributed to the Kickstarter for the book's publication in 2014, and never got around to downloading it! Anyway, that was easy enough to remedy once I realised my mistake.

I thought this was a tremendously strong anthology, and my money was well spent. One of the stories, Amal El-Mohtar's “The Truth About Owls”, went on to win the Locus Award, and several others were shortlisted elsewhere or included in various Year's Best volumes. All of them were good and some of them were really stick-in-the-mind good; to pick just two, Jim Hines' tale of the Chupacabra, and John Chu's about the time-travelling skater. The stories are all written with diversity as an axiom, ie none of them is about cishet white men (like me); but the point is the story in each case, and the strength of the narrative, which is considerable. Strongly recommended for those of you with YA readers, or indeed who just like stories. You can get it here.

This was the most popular unread book acquired in 2014 (for certain values of "acquire") on my shelves. Next on that pile is The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, ed. Alex Dally MacFarlane.

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December 2010 books, and 2010 books roundup

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days (though this one is very soon after the previous one, which was late) 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.

No travel, and a significant non-development in my professional life in December 2010: I applied for a job leading one of the Brussels political thinktanks, and did not get it. I must say I think they chose the right person; in due course he left, and both of his successors were and are friends of mine. I realised that thinktankery was not going to be a big part of my future.

I am still cursing the crappy HTC Desire phone that I was then using. I was lucky enough to attend a Northern Ireland event with Peter Robinson and Martin mcGuinness, then First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, and Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, but my photos were all pretty crappy. (Peter Robinson astonished me by saying that fans of Tottenham Hotspurs like himself could well adopt Martin's slogan, "Tiocfaidh ár lá!")

There was a massive snowfall just before Christmas. Our visitors included my sister and little S, our old friend H, and little U's favourite uncle and aunt R and V.

I am particularly pleased with the piece I wrote for Tor on the Fourth Doctor. “I think there are worse places to rest your moral compass than the TARDIS console.”

I read 23 books that month.

Non-fiction: 8 (total 74)
Tintin and the Secret of Literature, by Thomas McCarthy
The I.R.A., by Tim Pat Coogan
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Sex and Science, by Mary Roach
I, Who: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Novels, by Lars Pearson
I, Who 2: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Novels and Audios, by Lars Pearson
I, Who 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Novels and Audios, by Lars Pearson
The Space Race, by Deborah Cadbury
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English, by John McWhorter

Fiction (non-sf) 2 (total 47)
The Falls, by Ian Rankin
Fair Play, by Tove Jansson

SF (non-Who) 5 (total 73)
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Cryoburn, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper
The Space Opera Renaissance, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Doctor Who 5 (total 69, 79 counting comics and non-fiction)
The Hollow Men, by Keith Topping and Martin Day
Revenge of the Judoon, by Terrance Dicks
Short Trips: Destination Prague, ed. Stephen Savile
Vanderdeken's Children, by Christopher Bulis
Doctor Who Annual 1978

Comics 3 (total 20)
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers vol. 1, by Fumi Yoshinaga
Scott Pigrim vs. The Universe (volume 5) by Bryan Lee O'Malley
With the Light… / 光とともに…, vol 3, by Keiko Tobe
  
7,600 pages (total 91,000)
8/23 by women: Roach, Bujoldx2, Cooper, Yoshinaga, Jansson, Cramer, Tobe (total 65/287)
4/23 by PoC: Yoshinaga, O'Malley, McWhorter, Tobe (total 24/287)

The best of these were Tove Jansson's Fair Play, which you can get here, and Bujold's Cryoburn, which you can get here. None of them was too awful, but Coogan's The I.R.A. is overrated; you can get it here.


2010 books roundup

I did this at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system. 287 books for the year was a lot lower than the two previous years, but ahead of most years since. 91,000 pages is my third highest ever. 23% by women was my highest percentage to date, though I have exceeded it every year but one since. 9% by PoC was also my highest percentage to date, and I have exceeded it only in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

1) Science Fiction and Fantasy (excluding Doctor Who)

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

Well below average – fifth lowest for both numbers and percentages.

Top sf book of the year:
Ian McDonald's The Dervish House. My reviewget it here.

Also excellent and read for the first time:
Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. My reviewget it here.
Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia. My reviewget it here.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn. My reviewget it here.

The one you have't head of: Chris Beckett, The Turing Test (short story collection). My reviewget it here.

The one I bounced off: Colin Greenland's Mother of Plenty. My reviewget it here.


2) Non-fiction

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% 19% 20% 23% 24% 27% 19% 33% 34% 29% 28%

Above average in both absolute numbers and percentages.

Top non-fiction book of the year:
The Bloody Sunday Report, whose 5000 pages I read over the course of late June, July and early August. A tremendous and necessary enterprise. More below.

Also excellent in category:
Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. My reviewget it here.
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. My reviewget it here.
Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (vols 1 and 2 of the original, vol 1 of the Penguin edition). My reviewget it here.
Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter. My reviewget it here.
Thomas More, Utopia. My reviewget it here.

The one you haven't heard of:
Too Many Agreements Dishonoured, by Abel Alier. My reviewget it here.

The one to avoid:
Timeless Adventures: How Doctor Who Conquered TV, by Brian J. Robb; a total ripoff. My reviewget it here.


3) Doctor Who

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 72 75 80 71 71 179 27 28 5 1
7% 14% 12% 21% 18% 15% 20% 30% 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 81 75 87 79 81 180 49 32 5 1
9% 18% 16% 23% 20% 19% 23% 34% 29% 29% 28% 23% 49% 21% 15% 3% 1%

One of the stronger years, though not as strong as 2008.

Top Doctor Who (audio)book of the year:
James Goss, Dead Air (audiobook); the very last Tenth Doctor story to be released. My reviewget it here.

Other decent efforts in the Whoniverse:
Best 11th Doctor story (other than the ones on TV): Stephen Cole, Ring of Steel. My reviewget it here.
Best New Series Adventure: Dale Smith, The Many Hands. My reviewget it here.
Best EDA: John Peel, Legacy of the Daleks. My reviewget it here.
Best Virgin New Adventure: Mark Gatiss, Nightshade. My reviewget it here.
Best Missing/Past Doctor Adventure: Jonathan Morris, Festival of Death. My reviewget it here.
Best Doctor Who annual (probably also the one you haven't heard of): 1971. My reviewget it here.
Best other Whoniverse story: Joseph Lidster, In the Shadows (Torchwood audiobook). My reviewget it here.
Best non-fiction: as above, Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter. My reviewget it here.
Best comics: see below.

The one to avoid:
Again, Timeless Adventures: How Doctor Who Conquered TV, by Brian J. Robb. My reviewget it here.

4) Non-genre fiction

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% 19% 19% 16% 18% 17% 6% 14% 17% 6% 13%

Top non-genre book of the year:
Tove Jansson's Fair Play. My reviewget it here.

Also excellent in category:
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises. My reviewget it here.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. My reviewget it here.
James Joyce, The Dubliners. My reviewget it here.
Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice. My reviewget it here.
Leifur Eiricksson, Njal's Saga. My reviewget it here.

The one you haven't heard of: Unauthorised Departure, by Maureen O'Brien. My reviewget it here.

Worst, but so bad it's good:
Rookwood, by William Harrison Ainsworth. My reviewget it here.

5) Comics

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% 13% 8% 9% 6% 8% 2% 8% 3% 6% 5%

Lowest of any year since 2008.

Top comic / graphic novel of the year
I voted without hesitation for Neil Gaiman's Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? for the Hugo. It didn't win. My reviewget it here.

Other comics / graphic novels particularly enjoyed:
Charles Burns, Black Hole. My reviewget it here.
Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim vols 1 (review), 2 (review) and especially 4 (reviewreview) and 5 (reviewGet the whole lot here.)
Fumi Yoshinaga, Ooku: The Inner Chamber, Volume 1. My reviewget it here.
Keiko Tobe, With the Light… Vol. 3. My reviewget it here.
Gareth Roberts, The Betrothal of Sontar (Tenth Doctor) (also probably the one you haven't heard of). My reviewget it here.
Justin Richards, The Only Good Dalek (Eleventh Doctor). My reviewget it here.

The one to avoid:
As before with this series, I thoroughly bounced off Schlock Mercenary: Longshoreman of the Apocalypse, by Howard Tayler. My reviewyou can get it here.

6) Poetry, plays and religious literature

Only four of these, all read in AprilThe Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo (reviewget) and The Crucible by Arthur Miller (reviewget).

Most read author of the year: Ian Rankin (7 books) unless you count the ten volumes by Lord Savile of Newdigate and his colleagues. Also-rans in this category: Lois McMaster Bujold, Justin Richards and Brian Lee O'Malley with 5 each.

My Book of the Year for 2010

Certainly the one I spent longest reading, and wrote and thought most about: The Bloody Sunday Report. My write ups of each part: Volume I | Volume II | Volume III | Volume IV | Volume V | Volume VI | Volume VII | Volume VIII | Volume IX | Volume X and conclusions. The best place to get it is off the UK government archive website, but you can also get individual volumes here.

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Whoniversaries 12 April

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i) births and deaths

12 April 1989: death of Gerald Flood, who played Kamelion in 1983 and 1984, and also King John in The King's Demons (1983)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

12 April 1969: broadcast of sixth episode of The Space Pirates. Caven is defeated and captured; the Space Pirates are neutralised.

12 April 1975: broadcast of sixth episode of Genesis of the Daleks. The Daleks take over the bunker, killing everyone including (apparently) Davros; but the Thals bury them for centuries.

(Intersting that the six episodes of The Space Pirates and Genesis of the Daleks were broadcast on exatly the same dates, six years apart. It is safe to say that most people have a rather different judgement of the two.)

12 April 2003: webcast of "No Child of Earth, part 3", tenth episode of Death Comes to Time.

12 April 2008: broadcast of The Fires of Pompeii, first apearance of future regulars Karen Gillan and Peter Capaldi. The Doctor adn Donna are in Pompeii; and it's Volcano Day.

12 April 2010: broadcast of The Last Oak Tree, fourteenth episode of the Australian K9 series. Panic ensues when a museum exhibit is stolen. K9, Starkey, Darius and Jorjie are on the trail of the culprit. They find a giant menace hiding in London's abandoned sewers. Is the alien the threat or is Drake the real evil? Starkey and K9 face annihilation as they try to rescue the alien's hatchlings before a bomb destroys them all.

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390 days of plague

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To start with, a stunning visualisation of the last year. It loses a bit by treating France (and Belarus and Serbia) as single blocs, but it shows the three waves clearly.

The Belgian infection numbers have turned the corner and are starting to drop again, hospitalisations are teetering, the ICU numbers are flattening and sadly the death rate, the most lagging of the indicators, is still spiking. But most important, vaccination rates are soaring. Robin de Nooij’s daily updates on vaccination rates (@cygie on Twitter) always include a projected future date for at-the-current-rate-everyone-will-have-been-vaccinated-by then. For the first time, today the projected date for first jabs for the whole of Belgium is this calendar year. Last Sunday it was 10 February 2022, the Sunday before it was 25 March, the Sunday before that it was in the summer of next year.

And personal news for me: I got a note from the doctor that I’m getting priority for vaccination, presumably because of my high blood pressure. So I would not be surprised if I get my first vaccine this month, and my second four weeks later.

I’m in reflective mood (trying out a new biryani recipe from Mridula Baljekar’s book and writing this while it’s in the oven) so here are some other pieces that made me think about this over the last few days.

The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work — Are We Ready? by Jared Spataro. Microsoft has some fascinating research on how people are experiencing work. Flexible work is here to stay. Many business leaders are faring better than their employees. High productivity is masking an exhausted workforce. Sixty percent of those between the ages of 18 and 25 say they are merely surviving or flat-out struggling right now. Shrinking networks are endangering innovation. Work has become more human. People no longer have to leave their desk, house or community to expand their career. Read it.

What have we learned? Lessons from the pandemic, by Ian Leslie. A selection of very interesting links, culminating with this observation:

Whew, that was close. Imagine if this virus had emerged two decades ago – perfectly plausible, and nothing in historical terms. Scientists would have not have had the wherewithal to crack the code of the virus or to share it globally and instantaneously. Office workers, in firms and in governments, would not have been able to meet over video, businesses would have not been able to reinvent themselves. Friends and family would have even less connection with the outside world than before. Food and other essential goods and indeed non-essential goods would have not have remained accessible to nearly so many people. Neighbours wouldn’t have been able to look after each other as easily. Governments, health services and businesses wouldn’t have been able to gather data or share information nearly so efficiently. A huge part of the reason we were able to adapt as we have is down to technologies that didn’t exist or were not in widespread use twenty or even ten years ago. It’s enough to make you believe in progress.

One of his links is to his own essay for the BBC, Why your ‘weak-tie’ friendships may mean more than you think, a really interesting piece reinforcing what we already knew, that it’s not your best friends but your wider acquaintances who will help your career most.

And a different perspective from Laurie Penny, A Report from the After Times: Normal is never coming back. We’ve got to be gentle with each other.

I’m furious because it didn’t have to be like this. None of it was necessary. Every horrendous, inhuman choice over decades of political consensus that prioritized profit over people, every failure to protect healthcare and welfare and human rights and Black lives, and all of it was deadly, for someone, somewhere. For millions of people who might have coped with a crisis like COVID if they hadn’t already hanging on to bare life by their fingernails.

I guess the only thing I can really be sure of is that it’s impossible to be sure of what will come next.

With a couple of exceptions. This year’s Worldcon has been postponed to December, and the Hugo final ballot will be announced on Tuesday. I’m pretty certain of both of those.

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My tweets

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  • Sat, 12:56: Mummies on the move: Egypt holds grand parade to transfer antiquities to new museum https://t.co/cenqP36VT3 Wow. This happened last weekend.
  • Sat, 14:48: RT @robfordmancs: Election trivia 2019 continues – in one Welsh seat no fewer than 7 different parties (including an independent) have won…
  • Sat, 14:55: I found this choice quite tough (though apparently other voters did not). Planet of the Spiders is over-rated – six episodes are way too long for the plot. And Keys of Marinus is under-rated – an early, if flawed, implementation of today’s new-situation-each-week format. https://t.co/c1a3F0K04M
  • Sat, 16:05: Brussels-Prague night train looks to ride on green momentum https://t.co/DN2AMIA6K8 Via Antwerp and Amsterdam? A long way around, surely?
  • Sat, 16:11: The Silence of the Lambs https://t.co/Yen56jp1B3
  • Sat, 16:42: RT @Feorag: @nwbrux It’s a night train – long way round is good for sleep!
  • Sat, 20:48: P�rplasjet Kosov�-Serbi p�r regjistrat kadastral� (Kosovo-Serbia clashes over cadastral registers) https://t.co/8FiqJp7qou A good article looking at this important issue. Not one of the cadastral documents held by Serbia has been returned to Kosovo, despite 2011 agreement.
  • Sun, 09:18: Long thread on whether Remainers could have got behind a softer Brexit and made it happen, concluding that they could not. I agree. Neither May nor Johnson was interested in losing control of the process, and other forces did not align to take it from them. https://t.co/CZUxDYe2li
  • Sun, 09:30: Whoniversaries 11 April https://t.co/14rrRvxWfZ
  • Sun, 10:45: RT @JohnRentoul: Brilliant series of reflections on coronavirus from @mrianleslie in his newsletter https://t.co/t6I4vnSrDX https://t.co/sz…
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Whoniversaries 11 April

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i) births and deaths

11 April 1940: birth of Sheila Dunn, who played Blossom Lefavre in The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965), the computer voice of the Electromatic company in The Invasion (Second Doctor, 1968), and Petra Williams in Inferno (Third Doctor, 1970). She was married to Douglas Camfield, who directed all three of those stories.

11 April 2005: death of John Bennett, who played General Finch in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) and (shamefully in yellowface) Li H'sen Chang in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977).

11 April 2010: death of Richard Shaw, who played Governor Lobos in The Space Museum (First Doctor, 1965), treacherous prisoner Cross in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1973) and also Lakh, one of the imperviously helmeted Seers in Underworld (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

11 April 1964: broadcast of "The Sea of Death", first episode of the story we now call The Keys of Marinus. Arbitan, Keeper of the Conscience of Marinus, sends the Tardis crew to find the lost keys of the machine.

11 April 1970: broadcast of fourth episode of The Ambassadors of Death. The aliens go on the rampage at the Space Centre.

11 April 2009: broadcast of Planet of the Dead. A London bus is transported to a desert planet via a wormhole, its passengers including the Doctor and high-class thief Christina de Souza.

11 April 2020: release of Rory's Story.

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The Silence of the Lambs

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The Silence of the Lambs won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1991, and four others: Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally). It lost Best Film Editing and Best Sound, the latter to Hugo winner Terminator 2: Judgement Day. So far it is the third and last film to win Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Screenplay, after It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

That year’s other Best Picture nominees were Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK and The Prince of Tides. I have not seen any of them, and had not seen the winner before either, the first year since 1970 for which that is the case. I have seen thirteen other films made that year, listed here roughly in IMDB order: Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Cape Fear, Thelma & Louise, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Fisher King (actually only got part way through this one), The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, The Commitments, Highlander II: The Quickening (there should have been only one!), Soapdish, Operation Condor (a Jackie Chan film which I watched because the female co-lead, Eva Cobo, is my twin), Enchanted April and Prospero’s Books. I liked all of these except The Fisher King and Highlander II, but I think The Silence of the Lambs is a worthy Oscar winner in that company.

Unusually, IMDB users rate the film top on both systems. (The last film to top both lists was Alien, from 1979; the other Oscar-winners to top both lists were One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975, Casablanca back in 1943 and All Quiet on the Western Front way way back in 1929/30.)

Here’s a trailer.

None of the cast had been in Hugo-winning films or in Doctor Who. There is a surprise crossover with a previous Oscar-winner: Roger Corman, much much better known as a director and producer. Here he plays the Director of the FBI; seventeen years ago, in The Godfather, Part II, he was one of the senators ineffectively quizzing the Corleones. He turned 95 last Monday. (Trivia: the office where he is filmed as FBI Director was at the time the real-life office of Elizabeth Dole, the U.S. Secretary of Labor.)

This is a film about the relationship between novice FBI Agent Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, and imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins. The actual plot is barely relevant, but it concerns Starling’s pursuit, advised by Lecter, of another serial killer, and Lecter’s concurrent escape from custody. We had four Oscar-winners in a row in the 1970s which were about crime and law enforcement (The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting and The Godfather, Part II), but this is the first one since then.

I really liked it. Thrillers are not my genre in general. I find screen violence very icky. There are some other problems which I will get to below. But its’s well-made, well-paced and looks and sounds utterly convincing. I’m putting it in tenth place in my overall league table of Oscar winners, ahead of Rain Man (which has a less convincing plot) and behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which is a little less icky).

Having said that, there are problems. Trans (and indeed queer) people can justifiably feel aggrieved that the killer who Starling is chasing is depicted as a man trying to become a woman. The script mumbles that real trans people are not like that at all, but I fear that point will be lost on most viewers. (The book is a lot clearer on this.) However, as I said before, the actual hunt for the serial killer is background to the central business of Starling and Lecter.

All the main characters are white, but there are a sprinkling of black actors, most notably Kasi Simmons as Starling’s best friend Ardelia Mapp. Simmons has gone on to a very successful career as a director.

I thought Howard Shore’s music was pretty good. We will be hearing from him again when I get to The Lord of the Rings.

The supporting actors are all good – I’ve called out Kasi Lemmons above, but also worth noting Scott Glenn as Clarice’s boss Jack Crawford, Anthony Heald as Lecter’s banal guardian Chilton, and Brooke Smith as potential victim Catherine Martin.

But the film is utterly made by the dynamic between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in the four (only four!) scenes that they have together. Hopkins is a convincing monster, always several steps ahead of the game, compellingly horrible. (More trivia: with twenty-four minutes and fifty-two seconds of screen time, Hopkins’ performance in this movie is the second shortest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, with David Niven in Separate Tables (1958) beating him, at twenty-three minutes and thirty-nine seconds.)

And Jodie Foster is impossible to take your eyes off as Starling. A neat directorial trick: when characters are talking to her, they often talk directly to the camera, but when she is talking to them, she is always looking slightly off-camera, meaning that we directly experience her point-of-view, but not theirs, hence encouraging us to more readily identify with her. She carries the weight of the narrative; we learn lots about her and perhaps also reflect about how we would react when put into a similarly stressful situation. She is completely fascinating.

The film’s key moments are the four conversations between the two, which are just masterpieces of acting and cinematography. This is the last of them.

I had not seen this film before, but it’s been one of the better discoveries of this project.

As usual, I read the book as well. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself reclined on his bunk, perusing the Italian edition of Vogue. He held the loose pages in his right hand and put them beside him one by one with his left. Dr. Lecter has six fingers on his left hand.

It’s impossible to read the book now without seeing Foster and Hopkins in your mind’s eye, but this is not necessarily a bad thing of course. A couple of plot points which are really important did not make it to the screen – the illness and death of Crawford’s wife, much of Starling’s back story, Lecter’s pun on the colouring agent for feces, and the explanation of the serial killer’s psychology and strategy. Starling is if anything an even more three-dimensional character on the page. It’s just as well paced, and if anything it’s even better than the film. You can get it here.

Next up is that year’s Hugo winner, Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

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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Whoniversaries 10 April

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i) births and deaths

10 April 1954: birth of Glen McCoy, writer of Timelash (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and the first writer of colour to write for televised Who (I think also his novelisation is the first Who book by a writer of colour).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

10 April 1965: broadcast of "The Wheel of Fortune", third episode of the story we now call The Crusade. Barbara remains a captive; the Doctor is forced to reveal Vicki's true gender.

10 April 1971: broadcast of first episode of Colony in Space. The Time Lords send the Doctor and Jo to a colony planet where the Doctor is attacked by a robot. As usual with a Malcolm Hulke story, there are green lizard people.

10 April 2010: broadcast of The Beast Below. In the 33rd century, all of the United Kingdom's citizens (apart from the Scots) live onboard Starship UK, searching for a new home amongst the stars as the Earth is being roasted by solar flares. What is going on? What secrets does Starship UK hold at its depths, and who is hiding them? Soon, the Doctor is forced to make an impossible choice.

iii) date specified in-universe

10 April 2013: Clara Oswald receives a letter from Madame Vastra while attempting to bake soufflés. It contains an invitation to an emergency psychic conference call with herself, Jenny Flint, River Song, and Strax.

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Friday reading

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Current
Kathedralen uit de steentijd, by Herman Clerinx
Adventures in Lockdown, ed. Steve Cole

Last books finished
Worlds Apart, by Richard Cowper
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
Network Effect, by Martha Wells
Kaleidoscope: diverse YA science fiction and fantasy stories, eds Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios

Next books
Le dernier Atlas, tome 1, by Fabien Vehlmann, Gwen De Bonneval and Fred Blanchard
The Serpent Sea, by Martha Wells

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Scottish independence: EU membership and the Anglo–Scottish border

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Second paragraph of third section:

The TCA is a basic trade deal that eliminated tariffs on goods that meet the relevant rules of origin but did little to reduce non-tariff barriers. If Scotland were to join the EU it would trade with England and Wales on the same terms as other EU member states do now, so new checks and processes would be required on trade across the Anglo–Scottish border. It would also mean that border infrastructure would need to be erected on the Anglo–Scottish border, across which there are 21 road and railway crossings.32
32 HM Government, Scotland analysis: Borders and citizenship, Cm 8726, The Stationery Office, 2014

This is a short paper that caught my eye the other day, published by the Institute for Government and available for free here. I’m neutral tending to positive on Scottish independence, and felt that this paper laid out well some of the issues regarding Scottish frontier policy that would arise inevitably from an independence status, especially in the light of Brexit (which was not an issue during the 2014 referendum). Basically, it’s impossible to see how an independent Scotland could avoid frontier controls with England (and therefore Wales), whether or not it joins the EU, because of the particularly hard form of Brexit that Boris Johnson chose, unless it chose to remain essentially a vassal state of London (which would also require London’s collusion). The desired end-state of course is EU membership; the authors are I think a little pessimistic about how long that would take (though they do slay the myth of the Spanish veto), but clear that this would certainly mean that the trade frontier between Scotland and England would end up looking much the same as that between France and England, or Ireland and Wales. Northern Ireland is of course a different matter, but the authors rightly do not devote too much time to that as it’s not a Scottish issue. I think it’s also worth pointing out that the 21 border crossings between Scotland and England would be pretty easy to police, and the landscape is favourable, unlike the situation in Ireland.

The authors also look at other alternatives to EU membership that Scotland could try, but one comes away with the sense that there is no real middle way; Scotland can choose continued Union with England, Wales and (to an extent) Northern Ireland, or independence which inevitably means economic disruption to its relationships with the rest of the UK. A renewed relationship with the EU will partially but not completely substitute for that, and there’s not much point in considering anything other than EU membership as an end point. Scottish Nationalists should not pretend that independence will come without a price; of course, the lesson from other cases (including Brexit) is that voters can be persuaded that it is a price worth paying.

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Whoniversaries 9 April

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i) births and deaths

9 April 1972: birth of Neve McIntosh, who played both Alaya and Restac in The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood (Eleventh Doctor, 2010) and Madame Vastra in later stories


ii) broadcast anniversaries

9 April 1966: broadcast of "The Hall of Dolls", second episode of the story we now call The Celestial Toymaker. Steven and Dodo, competing with the King and Queen of Hearts, must find the two safe chairs to sit in.

9 April 2005: broadcast of The Unquiet Dead. The Doctor and Rose, with the help of Charles Dickens, investigate reanimating corpses in Cardiff in 1869.

9 April 2013: Strax reports from Trafalgar Square.

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Romeinse sporen: het relaas van de Romeinen in de Benelux, by Herman Clerinx

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Een van de eerste maatregelen die gouverneur Agrippa had genomen, was het aanleggen van nieuwe en efficiënte wegen, zoals van de Gallische hoofdstad Lyon naar het militaire knooppunt Keulen. Zijn opvolgers lieten op hun beurt nog meer wegen aanleggen, tot uiteindelijk heel Gallië vlot over land kon worden bereisd. One of the first measures taken by Agrippa as governor was to build new, efficient roads, such as the one from Gaul's capital, Lyon, to the military hub of Cologne. His successors, in their turn, had even more roads built, until eventually smooth land travel was possible over the whole of Gaul.

This is a great book, whose title translates as both "Roman tracks" and "Roman traces", looking at vestiges of the Roman Empire in the Benelux countries (somewhat broadly defined as including Trier in Germany and Bavay in France – today's borders did not apply). There's a sensible structure moving from the historical cycle of events to more thematic issues such as religion, wellness and death. There are lovely illustrations, and GPS co-ordinates given for every monument mentioned.

Some have been lost. One dramatic story is what happened to the relics of the goddess Nehalennia, of whom about 30 inscriptions were found in the Zeeland town of Domburg in the 17th century. They were all stored in the church, which was struck by lightning in 1848 and completely destroyed. Spooky, eh? (Though many more have since been found, and the temple has been reconstructed.)

As someone who grew up in a country that was not conquered by the Romans, I was always a little envious of those who were, with all the extra layers of archaeology that they left. In fact in Flanders there is not all that much. Our part of the world was well known for one thing in Roman times: Menapian ham, a delicacy much enjoyed to the south. (A bit surprising that our local pigs tasted better than the Italian ones, but maybe that's branding.) The road from Bavay to Tongeren was to a certain extent an internal frontier, not too far off today's taalgrens, the Rhine (in its older more northern route) being the official fortified border. In between there wasn't a lot, basically farms feeding the garrisons and buildings which have mostly been disassembled by stone-hungry medievals.

There's more than nothing of course. One of the tumuli near our house is classified as Gallo-Roman, and there are more a bit father south. Near where B and U live are the Three Tumuli of Grimde, from which a cameo brooch of the Emperor Augustus was recovered, later stolen by Hermann Göring. But that's barely scratching the surface. Luxembourg has an underground Roman aqueduct, there's plenty from the forts in the Netherlands, and of course I've been to the museum at Oudenburg recently as well. Reading the book inspired me to go to Het Toreke museum in Tienen again, where there is an impressive tableau of the horse, dogs and woman (slave? lover? both?) found sacrificed in another tumulus near the town, as well as the remnants of a mithræum.

Anyway, I was relieved that my Dutch was good enough to get through the book, and excited to find that Clerinx has also written about Belgium's megalithic remains (so I bought that immediately).

This book was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next is Discipline or Corruption by Konstantin Stanislavsky, but I'm saving that until I've finished my books acquired in 2014.

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My tweets

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  • Wed, 12:56: RT @UrsulaV: I thought there was a thing these guys were supposed to carry that would totally protect them from shooters…hang on, it’ll c…
  • Wed, 16:05: RT @luna_plath: Since learning about Jay Kristoff’s 4 special arcs for his upcoming book, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss a ve…
  • Wed, 17:10: RT @worldcon2021: It’s official – DisCon III is moving For the first time in Worldcon history, Worldcon will happen in December. ❄️☃️…
  • Wed, 19:22: Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake https://t.co/z809KAmKcU
  • Wed, 22:03: RT @AlexTaylorNews: Let’s just remind ourselves of what some UK newspapers said about EU leaders when they had “concerns” about AZ causing…
  • Thu, 08:12: RT @florianeder: I could have sworn there was someone else in attendance at that meeting …. Can’t figure it out… #SofaGate https://t.c…
  • Thu, 09:30: Whoniversaries 8 April https://t.co/lfkodqoJug
  • Thu, 10:45: RT @DaveKeating: So, when EU countries restrict AstraZeneca by age group they are being irresponsible and over cautious, and causing deaths…
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Whoniversaries 8 April

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i) births and deaths

8 April 1942: birth of Lovett Bickford, director of The Leisure Hive (Fourth Doctor, 1980)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8 April 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Faceless Ones. The Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie land at Gatwick Airport to get mixed up in an affair of vanishing corpses; Polly is apparently brainwashed.

8 April 1972: broadcast of first episode of The Mutants. Geoffrey Palmer is the best thing in this story and he gets killed before the end of this episode; five more to go, folks…

iii) dates specified in-universe

8 April 1809: birth of Joseph Sundvik

8 April 1969: setting of The Impossible Astronaut (Eleventh Doctor, 2011)

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Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Titus rose to his knees, the aftermath of a dream remaining like remorse, though he could remember nothing of it save that it was Gormenghast again. He picked up a stick and began to draw in the dust with the point of it, and the moonlight was so fierce that every line he drew was like a narrow trench filled up with ink.

When I previously reread this in 2011, I wrote:

I'm afraid I was simply not convinced by Titus Alone. In fact, I was bored and confused by it. Titus, having run away from his home, finds himself in the neighbouring industrialised countryside (where people have never actually heard of Gormenghast, despite its absolute domination of its own hinterland). He becomes the object of obsession – in particular of the two women, Juno, with whom he has a love affair, and Cheeta, who rejects him and then develops a bizarrely elaborate plan to humiliate him by throwing a party at which various aspects of Gormenghast are satirically brought to life, but also of the self-appointed guardians from the Under-River. The imagery was intense, and I suppose it is in some way a spiritual and allegorical journey for Titus growing up, but in the end he ends back exactly where he started, and it did not work for me.

Also fails the Bechdel Test. I had hopes that the mysterious Black Rose would have a conversation with Juno, but she died before waking up.

As previously mentioned, I've been part of a group reading the Gormenghast trilogy for the last few months. We did the first two books at a chapter a day; many of the chapters in Titus Alone are very short, so we grouped them together and did 122 chapters in 44 days. I noticed that even so, Titus Alone completely killed the group's momentum, and where previously we had a collective running commentary going, very few people seem now to be up to date with their comments (I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, but I sense that most of the others in the group haven't and perhaps won't). Where the first two books had some pretty improbable events, at least things seemed to happen for a reason. Here it's one bizarre scene after another, with plot developments that are never resolved – who are the two stalkers in helmets, for instance?

I really recommend skipping this and ending your reading of the trilogy with the second book, with Titus' departure from Gormenghast as the ending. Titus Alone is much shorter than either of the other two, but you will wonder why you bothered. If you really want to, you can get it here.

One last thing – Peake's concept of hydrogeology is a bit counterfactual. Gormenghast Castle is almost drowned in a great flood – where did the water come from? Is Gormenghast not on elevated ground anyway? And in Titus Alone, you have the network of caverns under the river. Normally caves are created by rivers which then drop down to lower levels. There is so much else wrong with Titus Alone that I won't dwell on it, but it struck me as a curiously consistent blind spot.

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