Tag Archives: bookblog 2025

Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Liss was clearly happier to be sent off to the stables to select the most suitable riding horse and baggage mule. One baggage mule. By midday Ista’s feverish single-mindedness resulted in both women dressed for the road, the horses saddled, and the mule packed. The dy Gura brothers found them standing in the cobbled courtyard when they rode through the castle gate heading ten mounted men in the garb of the Daughter’s Order, dy Cabon following on his white mule.

I got this almost as soon as it came out in 2004, and rather enjoyed it; but a minutely observed story of human nature, with a well-worked out system of gods and worshippers, a society where the social structure is Age of Chivalry but the landscape is the American West, and the boundary between life and death is a real feature that has to be navigated with great skill. It’s also nice to have protagonists who are middle-aged. You can get it here.

It is however very long, and I would not recommend reading it unless you first read The Curse of Chalion which establishes the parameters of the World of the Five Gods. The whole series won the second Hugo for Best Series, Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga having won the first such award.

Back in the day, I actually rated this third of the five Hugo finalists that year, behind Singularity Sky by Charles Stross and Ilium by Dan Simmons.

I’m a fervent Bujoldian, and really like this book; I just happen to think the other two are slightly better. Bujold’s third fantasy novel, and her second in the world of The Curse of Chalion, the action is set in a much smaller scale than the continent-spanning action of its predecessor; the characters are beautifully drawn, in a world where theology is an applied science; and it’s nice to have an adventure and romance story whose character is actually middle-aged.

I regret my preference for Ilium in retrospect, but I still feel that the win for Paladin of Souls was more of a reward for a body of work than for new and exciting writing.

It was the only book on both the Hugo and Nebula final ballots, and won both awards (as well as the Locus Award). The other Hugo finalists were, as noted above, Singularity Sky by Charles Stross and Ilium by Dan Simmons, together with Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson and the awful Humans by Robert J. Sawyer. The other Nebula finalists were Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow, both of which I enjoyed; The Knight, by Gene Wolfe, which I found unreadable; and Omega, by Jack McDevitt, and Perfect Circle, by Sean Stewart, which I have not read.

The other Hugo winners in the written categories that year were “The Cookie Monster”, by Vernor Vinge (novella); “Legions in Time”, by Michael Swanwick (novelette) and “A Study in Emerald”, by Neil Gaiman (short story). The other Nebula winners were “The Green Leopard Plague”, by Walter Jon Williams; “Basement Magic”, by Ellen Klages; and “Coming to Terms”, by Eileen Gunn.

The Nebula for Best Script and the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form (and indeed the Osca) went to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form went to Gollum’s acceptance speech for the MTV Awards,  the only time since the Hugo Dramatic Presentation category was split that both awards went to the same franchise.

The following year saw two joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards in the written fiction categories, “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link and “Two Hearts” by Peter S. Beagle. (As previously noted, I skipped a couple of joint winners after “The Ultimate Earth” by Jack Williamson.)

Dragon’s Wrath, by Justin Richards

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘So, what do you think?’ Benny asked for about the fifth time in as many minutes.

Justin Richards is the most prolific of living Doctor Who authors – I am not completely sure if he has overtaken Terrance Dicks by now, but if not, I am sure that he will. Usually his writing is accessible and enjoyable, so I’m sorry to report that I somewhat bounced off this, the second of the independent Bernice Summerfield novels. It’s a story about a historical artefact which appears to exist in several duplicate forms, but the format kept shifting from strange dig to heist to detective novel to courtroom drama, and I felt too much was being put in without enough explanation of what was going on. A rare miss for me, for both author and series. You can get it here, at a price.

When I listened to the audio version first time round, in 2007, I wrote:

Dragon’s Wrath, like Oh, No It Isn’t!, is detached from the narrative of the other four stories. It is, frankly, not as good; plot too obvious, guest star (Richard Franklin) not sufficiently engaged, sound recording rather poor in places, basically rather skippable.

Re-listening confirmed my impressions from the first time around, and I will add that the end is very rushed. It’s interesting the Big Finish slipped it in at the end of their first Bernice Summerfield season, getting the other (and in my view better) stories out the door first. You can get it here.

A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop, by Kevin O’Rourke

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

As early as 1940 there had been proposals in Britain for sharing sovereignty with another European country, namely France. Jean Monnet was yet again working to coordinate the economic efforts of the two allies, and convinced the British government to seek political union with his native country. On 16 June de Gaulle transmitted the offer to Paul Reynaud’s French government in Bordeaux, but Reynaud lost power to Marshal Pétain on the same day. Pétain, who favoured an armistice with the Germans, asked why France would wish to ‘fuse with a corpse’.² And so it is perhaps not so surprising that Winston Churchill emerged after the war as one of the leading champions of a united Europe. Out of power since July 1945, in September of the following year he gave a speech in Zurich in which he called for the construction of ‘a kind of United States of Europe’. ‘The first step in the recreation of the European Family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral and cultural leadership of Europe … In all this urgent work, France and Germany must take the lead together.’ (At this stage, it must be said, the French doubted the wisdom of giving the Germans such a role.) Over the next two years Churchill tirelessly advocated for a united Europe, which he regarded as being fully compatible with Britain’s imperial commitments. Indeed, Britain’s claim to continuing great-power status lay precisely in the fact that the country, uniquely, lay at the centre of ‘three interlinked circles’: the first and most important was the British Commonwealth and Empire, the second was the English-speaking world, and the third was a united Europe.³
² Ibid. [Grob-Fitzgibbon (2016)], p. 18.
³ https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-160/articles-wsc-s-three-majestic-circles/.

I know Kevin O’Rourke from many years ago when the two of us were invited on a residential seminar in Tuscany by a mutual friend, and I also vaguely knew his father, a senior Irish ambassador, but we have not met in 35 years. Since then he has become a prominent economic historian, currently teaching in Abu Dhabi, but in Oxford at the time this book was being written, during the death throes of Brexit in the summer of 2019.

Because of its timing, the book misses the excitement of the end of the chase – the hasty just-before-Christmas deal of 2019, followed by the Johnson and then Truss governments’ attempts to wriggle out of their own commitments, ending, at least for now, with Sunak’s deal (his only significant achievement in two years at the top).

But it makes up for that with a significant amount of detail about how the EU was set up in the first place, and the UK’s role outside and inside the process, a story which is centred on France and its relationship with Germany and to a lesser extent the UK, and therefore tends to be neglected by British commentators. He also goes in detail into the economic history of Ireland and why EU membership became fundamental to the Irish state. I think that both of these elements are possibly educational for readers who consumed only the mainstream (ie non-Irish) Anglophone media during the process while it was happening.

He doesn’t waste much time on David Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate the UK’s membership of the EU, but looks in some detail at the referendum result (which he feels was overdetermined; I tend to agree), and then does his best to explain Theresa May’s negotiation process. I still find it difficult to believe how pathetic the UK’s approach was in those early stages; May was ill-served by her treacherous and stupid ministers, Johnson and Davis, but the failure to come up with a detailed plan for the UK was her fault and her responsibility.

Anyway, the book itself as an important antidote to the UK perspective that Brexit was a purely British political story, in particular presenting the Irish view in its European context. You can get it here.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my bookshelves. Next on that pile is All American Boys, by Walter Cunningham.

It Came from Outer Space, by Tony Lee et al.

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(Various factors combine to mean that you’re getting a bunch of Doctor Who reviews this week.)

Second frame of third issue:

A collection of five Eleventh Doctor / Amy / Rory stories, of which the most memorable is the two-part second story in which the Doctor and Amy swap bodies. More could be done with that concept, but you’ve got to start somewhere! You can get it here.

How Many Miles to Babylon?, by Jennifer Johnston

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Second paragraph of third section:

‘All I ever seem to do is boring Latin.’

Soon after reading some of her father’s work, I got hold of his daughter’s best known book. The only work of hers that I previously remember reading is The Captains and the Kings, at least thirty-five years ago.

This is a short, swift, very sad story about a friendship across class and religious lines in pre-first world war rural Ireland, which then plays out grimly in the trenches. There’s a wealth of hidden sexuality and buried family secrets, and the politics of conflict which plays out as much in the internal tensions of the Irish troops as with the Germans. It’s very well done. You can get it here.

Ganny Knits a Spaceship, by David Gerrold

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No internal divisions, so this is the third paragraph.

She meant that people who live in space live differently than people who live on planets. I’m not talking about the micro-gravity and the sense of confinement and the recycling of air and water and protein, the exercise regimen, and all the implants and augments, like bone-sintering and radiation-nanos and white-blood infusions, and all the other stuff that dirtsiders think about. That’s just mechanics. You live with it.

Entertaining short story about teenage Starling who lives with her grandparents on a space station in the asteroid belt. They are vulnerable to capitalism, betrayal and death, and Starling’s Ganny does her best to outwit them. Very cheerful in the end. You may or may not be able to get it here.

This was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is thirteen fourteen fifteen o’clock, also by David Gerrold.

The Birds, and other stories, by Daphne du Maurier

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Second paragraph of third story (“The Apple Tree”):

It was a fine clear morning in early spring, and he was shaving by the open window. As he leant out to sniff the air, the lather on his face, the razor in his hand, his eye fell upon the apple tree. It was a trick of light, perhaps, something to do with the sun coming up over the woods, that happened to catch the tree at this particular moment; but the likeness was unmistakable.

Six very spooky stories by the author of Rebecca, the title story being well known as the basis of another Hitchcock film. Apart from “The Birds”, which gave me sleepless nights when I first read it at the age of 12, the other really effective piece is “The Apple Tree”, where a woman gets posthumous revenge for a bad marriage though manipulation of vegetation. But they are all splendidly creepy. Two out of six are definitely not sff, but at least three of the other four are, so I’m booking this as genre rather than non-genre in my tally. You can get it here.

Unfortunately Virago don’t give a credit for the striking cover. (They have published a more recent hardback edition with a different cover, by Neisha Crosland.)

This was my top unread book by a woman. Next on that pile is A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske.

The Vetting, by Michael Cassutt

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Second paragraph of third section:

The voice of Gloria Chang. “He’s back.”

A short story from the 2020 Hugo packet, about a Syrian scientist trying to enter the USA with his ideas about the empirically demonstrable connection between the soul and the body. Short but clear. You can get it here.

This was the shortest unread book on my shelves (virtual and physical) acquired in 2020. Next on that list is Zeitgeber, by Greg Egan.

The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

« En avant !» s’écria le reporter.“Come along!” cried the reporter.

I flagged this book to myself as the second most popular book published in 1874 on LibraryThing and Goodreads, after Far From the Madding Crowd. It’s a ridiculously long fantasy (750 pages!) about five chaps who, escaping from Richmond in the closing days of the U.S. Civil War, are swept by balloon to a remote Pacific island, where fortunately they find all the animal, vegetable and mineral resources necessary for them to survive and thrive.

Towards the end they encounter a character from a previous Verne novel, and this firmly tips the book into science fiction (it has been teetering on the edge up until then, with a super-intelligent orang-utan). Lots of incident, lots of Great Engineer solutions, lots of unconscious racism (and some totally conscious racism from Caleb Carr in the introduction to my edition). I think if I had not had been reading two other rather long books at the same time, it might have become a bit tedious, but it’s all done at cracking pace.

My edition also features the glorious line-drawing illustrations by Jules-Descartes Ferat, engraved by Charles Barbant, from the original French version.

You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired last year, and my top unread sf book. Next on those piles are Prophet Song and ‘Salem’s Lot.

Joan and Peter, by H.G. Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

He lay in hospital for a long spell, painful but self-satisfied. The nature of his injuries was not yet clear to him. Presently he would get all right again. “V.C.,” he whispered. “At twenty. Pretty decent.”

This is the last of the set of novels by H.G. Wells that I bought in 2019 and have been working my way through ever since. I’m glad to say that after a couple of real duds, I have ended on a high note. It’s a very long book, and you know where it is going as soon as you see the title, but I found it very worthwhile and interesting.

Joan and Peter are cousins, and are orphaned quite early in the book and brought up together. Their guardianship passes from a pair of eccentric left-wing aunts (“I suspect them strongly of vegetarianism”), to a monstrous conservative cousin (“In spite of its loyalty, Ulster is damp”), to another cousin, war hero Oswald who has been busy civilising Africa and wants to do the same for England, or at least for the two children who he has ended up with.

Wells’ Big Theme for the book is education, and Oswald’s efforts to secure it for both Peter and Joan (“if women were to be let out of purdah they might as well be let right out”), but if you can ignore the lengthy philosophising about that, and the certainty that the White Man hath his Burden, there’s rather a good human story between Oswald and Peter’s parents at the start, and then between Oswald, Joan and Peter.

The two kids both have plenty of other potential lovers apart from each other, but I am a bit of a romantic at heart and I do like the slow path to the (spoiler) happy ending. Adam Roberts didn’t; he found the pace far too slow. I was reading a couple of other very long books at the time, so it suited me. I will agree with Adam that Wells makes Joan sound unnecessarily childish, even as an adult.

There are some great lines. Here’s one of Joan’s unsuccessful boyfriends:

…when Huntley went on to suggest that the path to freedom lay in the heroic abandonment of the “fetish of chastity,” Joan was sensible of a certain lagging of spirit.

Here are the lefty aunts:

Aunt Phoebe sat near Aunt Phyllis and discoursed on whether she ought to go to prison for the Vote. “I try to assault policemen,” she said. “But they elude me.”

Here’s one of the failed educational theorists who Oswald interviews:

Hinks of Carchester, the distinguished Greek scholar, slipped into his hand at parting a pamphlet asserting that only Greek studies would make a man write English beautifully and precisely. Unhappily for his argument Hinks had written his pamphlet neither beautifully nor precisely.

And here’s just a nice bit of scene-setting:

Slowly, smoothly, unfalteringly, the brush of the twilight had been sweeping its neutral tint across the spectacle, painting out the glittering symbols one by one. A chill from outer space fell down through the thin Russian air, a dark transparent curtain. Oswald shivered in his wadded coat. Abruptly down below, hard by a ghostly white church, one lamp and then another pricked the deepening blue. A little dark tram-car that crept towards them out of the city ways to fetch them back into the city, suddenly became a glow-worm…

As with Mr Polly, there is a crucial plot twist depending on a fake death by drowning.

Also, uniquely in Wells’ work as far as I have read it, there is a significant section set in Ireland. Wells’ characters generally float back and forth on Home Rule (more forth than back); here, Peter and Oswald go on a fact-finding mission to pre-war Dublin and are a bit disappointed with the facts that they find, while the monstrous conservative cousin Lady Charlotte throws her energy into Unionism:

“We’re raising money to get those brave Ulstermen guns. Something has to be done if these Liberals are not to do as they like with us. They and their friends the priests.”

There’s a certain amount of “these tedious people and their comic accents quarreling with each other rather than working for a better world society”, but there’s also some good observation based on personal experience, rather than just reading the newspapers.

This was a positive note to end two of my projects on: working through the H.G. Wells back catalogue, as I mentioned, and also finishing all the unread books that I acquired in 2019. So it’s another to add to this list:

Last book acquired in 2019, read in April 2025 (Joan and Peter)
Last book acquired in 2018, read in November 2024 (The Geraldines)
Last book acquired in 2017, read in January 2024 (Rule of Law: A Memoir)
Last book acquired in 2016, read in August 2023 (Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Lifespan)
Last book acquired in 2015, read in November 2022 (Rauf Denktaş, a Private Portrait)
Last books acquired in 2014, read in October 2021 (The Empire of Time and Crashland)
Last book acquired in 2013, read in October 2020 (Helen Waddell)
Last book acquired in 2012, read in May 2020 (A Sacred Cause: The Inter-Congolese dialogue 2000-2003)
Last book acquired in 2011, read in October 2019 (Luck and the Irish)
Last book acquired in 2010, read in January 2019 (Heartspell)
Last book acquired in 2009, read in December 2016 (Last Exit to Babylon)

At this rate I’ll catch up with myself around 2028. (I won’t.)

This unlocks my lists of books acquired in 2020:

  • The Vetting, by Michael Cassutt (shortest)
  • Ganny Knits a Spaceship, by David Gerrold (SF longest unread)
  • A Short History of Brexit, by Kevin O’Rourke (non-fiction longest unread)
  • All American Boys, An Insider’s Look at the U.S. Space Program, by Walter Cunningham (top on LibraryThing)

None of the unread non-genre fiction on my shelves was acquired in 2020.

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

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Second paragraph of thirs part (“Flaming Trees”):

그녀는 아주 젊지 않다. 딱히 미인이라고 부르기도 어렵다. 다만 목선이 고운 편이고 눈매가 서글서글하다. 자연스러워 보이는 옅은 화장을 했으며, 흰 반소매 블라우스는 구김 없이 청결하다. 누구에게든 호감을 줄법한 그 단정한 인상 덕분에, 희미하게 얼굴에 배어 있는 그늘은 그다지눈에 띄지 않는다.She isn’t really young anymore, and it would be difficult to call her a beauty, exactly. The curve of her neck is quite attractive and the look in her eyes is open and friendly. She wears light, natural-looking makeup, and her white blouse is neat, uncreased. Thanks to that smart impression, which one might reasonably expect to attract curiosity, attention is deflected away from the faint shadows clouding her face.
translated by Deborah Smith

This came top of my survey of books set in South Korea, and contribute to the author winning the Nobel Prize for Literature last year; and it also came strongly recommended by a number of friends in whose judgement I generally have faith. It’s the story of Cheong Yeong-hye, who decides to stop eating meat, to the dismay of her extended family who eventually commit her to a mental hospital. It’s told in three parts, by her husband, her sister’s husband and then her sister, so that we get the events of each part retold and reflected on by the next narrator.

It’s not really about the merits or demerits of meat. It’s much more about shame, choice, illness and desire, and it’s very closely and intensely written. It really does stick in the mind. You can get it here.

Han Yang is the only Nobel Prize winner for Literature who is younger than me (born in 1970). She celebrated her 54th birthday between the announcement last November and receiving the award in December. She was the youngest writer to win it since 1987 when it went to Joseph Brodsky, then 47; Orhan Pamuk was a few months past his 54th birthday when he won in 2006.

See also translator Deborah Smith’s thoughtful and vigorous rebuttal to criticism of her rendition of the book into English.

This was my top unread book by a non-white writer and my top unread book by a woman. Next on those piles respectively are The Birds, by Daphne du Maurier, and The Water Outlaws, by S.L. Huang.

A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, by John Barton

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

It has long been traditional to group together certain books in the Bible under the heading ‘wisdom’: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job, and in the Apocrypha, Sirach or the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sira (also known as Ecclesiasticus) and the Wisdom of Solomon.¹ All these books contain many short sayings or aphorisms, summing up the fruits of experience or giving explicit advice on how to behave. Many seem to reflect life in a village or small community, and draw ‘morals’ from activities such as farming:

The field of the poor may yield much food,
but it is swept away through injustice.
(Proverbs 13:23)

Like vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes,
so are the lazy to their employers.
(Proverbs 10:26)

The righteous know the needs of their animals,
but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
Those who till their land will have plenty of food,
but those who follow worthless pursuits have no sense.
(Proverbs 12:10-11)

Many of these proverbs are paralleled in other cultures, and could be seen as part of a popular understanding of the world, like our own ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ or ‘Look before you leap’.

¹ Excellent guides to biblical wisdom literature are J.L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, third edition 2010), and Katharine J. Dell, Get wisdom, Get Insight: An Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Literature (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000).

A really fascinating, detailed book about the sacred text of Christianity and Judaism, starting at the very beginning with the compilation of the older parts of the Old Testament, and finishing with the most recent translations for today’s audience. Too much information to synthesis crispily, but it puts lots of things together that I had not really thought about, for instance:

  • There are lots of manuscripts for the New Testament, but the accepted version of the Hebrew Old Testament largely depends on a single eleventh-century manuscript, the Leningrad Codex.
  • Syriac, the first language into which the New Testament was translated, is the local version of Aramaic used in Edessa (now Şanlıurfa) – I had always been a bit confused about this. Aramaic was certainly Jesus’ native language, but he would have spoken the Galilean dialect.
  • The Epistle of Barnabas and The Shepherd of Hermas were the two texts that came closest to getting into the New Testament without making it. The Letter to the Hebrews was the New Testament book that came closest to getting left out.
  • The story of the woman taken in adultery is a very late addition to the Gospel of John. (Incidentally one of the few gospel passages that mentions writing.)
  • Leaping forward, translating the Bible can be a crucial step in codifying a language; alongside Luther’s impact on German you could add Jurij Dalmatin’s impact on Slovenian, for instance.

I think even non-Christians will find quite a lot of interesting stuff in this account of one of the world’s most important literary artefacts. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2023 which is not by Ben Aaronovitch. Next in that list is Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi.

The Undying Fire, by H.G. Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The host was Sir Eliphaz Burrows, the patentee and manufacturer of those Temanite building blocks which have not only revolutionized the construction of army hutments, but put the whole problem of industrial and rural housing upon an altogether new footing; his guests were Mr. William Dad, formerly the maker of the celebrated Dad and Showhite car de luxe, and now one of the chief contractors for aeroplanes in England; and Mr. Joseph Farr, the head of the technical section of Woldingstanton School. Both the former gentlemen were governors of that foundation and now immensely rich, and Sir Eliphaz had once been a pupil of the father of Mr. Huss and had played a large part in the appointment of the latter to Woldingstanton. He was a slender old man, with an avid vulturine head poised on a long red neck, and he had an abundance of parti-coloured hair, red and white, springing from a circle round the crown of his head, from his eyebrows, his face generally, and the backs of his hands. He wore a blue soft shirt with a turn-down collar within a roomy blue serge suit, and that and something about his large loose black tie suggested scholarship and refinement. His manners were elaborately courteous. Mr. Dad was a compacter, keener type, warily alert in his bearing, an industrial fox-terrier from the Midlands, silver-haired and dressed in ordinary morning dress except for a tan vest with a bright brown ribbon border. Mr. Farr was big in a grey flannel Norfolk suit; he had a large, round, white, shiny, clean-shaven face and uneasy hands, and it was apparent that he carried pocket-books and suchlike luggage in his breast pocket.

H.G. Wells attempts to rewrite the Book of Job for a 1919 audience. For the love of God, why???

Again, Adam Roberts liked it more than I did.

One more to go! Roll on Joan and Peter.

A Christmas Carol, by Jaime Beckwith and Leslie Grace McMurtry (and Steven Moffat); and Charles Dickens

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A Christmas Carol was the first Doctor Who Christmas special produced and written by Steven Moffat and starring Matt Smith. It has Amy and Rory trapped on a doomed spaceship, which for handwavium reasons only the Scrooge-like Kazan Sardick (Michael Gambon) can save. The Doctor goes into Sardick’s past to make him into a nicer person through the love of the beautiful Abigail (Katherine Jenkins). Unfortunately for more handwavium reasons this means that Sardick no longer has the power to save the doomed spaceship, but luckily Abigail’s voice resonates at just the right frequency, so she saves the day (it is implied that she then dies of some fatal but not very debilitating illness). The music is good.

I ranked it fourth out of five votes in that year’s Hugo Awards, noting:

Don’t get me wrong – this was a lovely episode of Doctor Who and just right for Christmas evening. But as a work of SF, I think the other nominees are better.

Rewatching it, I felt the same; it’s a remake of Dickens in Doctor Who terms with light comedic relief from Rory and Amy, the story line is a little too clever and also a little too simple (often the case with Steven Moffat), and it’s perfect fare for a day when you’re not expecting anything too demanding on the brain cells. It did inspire one of the more remarkable cosplays that I saw at Gallifrey One in 2013:

Jaime Beckwith and Leslie Grace McMurtry have taken the interesting tack of looking at the TV episode in the context of Charles Dickens, asserting firmly that it “remains the only explicit adaptation of another text in the Doctor Who back catalogue.” I disagree with that – I think that The Androids of Tara is even more closely aligned with The Prisoner of Zenda – but I can see their point.

A short introduction looks at Christmas specials in Davies and Moffat era Doctor Who.

The first chapter, “A Traditional English Christmas With Sharks”, considers the history of Christmas in Britain, the previous adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and its importance in British popular culture.

The second chapter, “A Blot of Mustard, a Crumb of Cheese”, looks at Steven Moffat’s gift for transforming apparently normal situations into fairy tales.

The third chapter, “Time and Relative Child-centrism”, looks at children as focal narrative figures in Moffat’s Doctor Who. Its second paragraph is:

Had it always been thus? Could British audiences expect throughout the 20th and 21st centuries to encounter Dickens (and ACC [A Christmas Carol]) in late December? Certainly, on British television December was seen as a good time to air adaptations of Dickens’ works. On the BBC, adaptations of ACC aired on Christmas Day 1950, Christmas Eve 1977 and a few days before Christmas in 2019. The 1999 TV series of David Copperfield debuted on Christmas Day, and the 1976 episode of A Ghost Story for Christmas was an adaptation of the short story ‘The Signalman’ (1866). The Pickwick Papers (1952), David Copperfield (1974) and Great Expectations (2011) all first aired in December. In 2007, Dickens was central to the battle for the Christmas season ratings, with the BBC broadcasting a five-part adaptation of Oliver Twist in the week leading up to Christmas, and ITV airing a feature-length adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop on Boxing Day (with production design by Michael Pickwoad, of whom more in Chapter 4).

The fourth and longest chapter, “The Pickwoad Papers”, looks in great and pleasing detail at the superb design of the story.

The fifth chapter, “What Right Have You To Be Merry?”, looks at the Doctor’s habit of interference in human timelines.

A brief conclusion, “Everything’s Got To End Some Time”, summarises the above.

I still feel that the actual story is not particularly memorable, but Beckwith and McMurtry gave me some pause for thought about where it came from. You can get their Black Archive here.

I only recently watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time, which sticks surprisingly closely to the original text, but as a result of that experience combined with reading the Black Archive monograph, I was inspired to go back and read Dickens once again, probably for the first time since I was a child. The second paragraph of the third ‘Stave’ of the short book is:

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.

It’s tremendous, even when you know what is going to happen; Dickens sometimes succumbed to mawkish sentimentality, but here he largely keeps himself restrained and lets the story tell itself. I found I had something in my eye as I got to the end, and you will too. God bless Us, Every One!

You can get it here.

Bealby, by H.G. Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Amidst the ivy was a fuss of birds.

I am nearing the end of my H.G. Wells marathon and I can see why this book is not very well known. Bealby is a comic lad because he is working class and has ideas above his station, which is as a servant in a posh house. There are shenanigans involving the Lord Chancellor and a holiday caravan which I did not find very funny. At least it is short. Adam Roberts liked it more than I did.

Next up (and penultimate) in my Wells-a-thon: The Undying Fire.

March 2025 books

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Non-fiction 4 (YTD 18)
A Christmas Carol, by Jaime Beckwith and Leslie Grace McMurtry
Track Changes, by Abigail Nussbaum
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, by Jordan S. Carroll
A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, by John Barton

Non-genre 3 (YTD 13)
The Research Magnificent, by H.G. Wells
The Friend Zone Experiment, by Zen Cho
Bealby, by H.G. Wells

Plays 1 (YTD 1)
The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, vol 3: Radio and Television Plays

Poetry 1 (YTD 1)
Calypso, by Oliver K. Langmead

SF 8 (YTD 28)
Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett
The Butcher of the Forest, by Premee Mohamed
Heavenly Tyrant, by Xiran Jay Zhao (did not finish)
Lies Sleeping, by Ben Aaronovitch
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
The Undying Fire, by H.G. Wells
A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher
The Practice, the Horizon and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar

Doctor Who 1 (YTD 7)
Oh No It Isn’t!, by Paul Cornell

Comics 4 (YTD 8)
Sky Jacks!, by Andy Diggle, Eddie Robson and Andy Kuhn
The Child of Time, by Jonathan Morris, Dan McDaid, Mike Collins, Roger Langridge and Rob Davis
Star Trek: Lower Decks – Warp Your Own Way, by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio
We Called Them Giants, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowell

6,400 pages (YTD 19,400)
8/22 (YTD 26/76) by non-male writers (McMurtry, Nussbaum, Cho, Mohamed, Zhao, “Kingfisher”, Samatar, Hans)
4/22 (YTD 11/76) by non-white writers (Cho, Mohamed, Zhao, Samatar)
3/22 rereads (Men At Arms, A Christmas Carol, Oh No It Isn’t!)
232 books currently tagged unread, down 1 from last month, down 99 from March 2024.

Reading now

The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne
Joan and Peter, by H.G. Wells
Sheine Lende, by Darcie Little Badger

Coming soon (perhaps)

Dead Man’s Hand, by Tony Lee et al
Dragon’s Wrath, by Justin Richards
Heroes and Monsters Collection, by Justin Richards et al
Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis, by Kevin Clarke
Silver Nemesis, by James Cooray Smith

The Vetting, by Michael Cassutt
Ganny Knits a Spaceship, by David Gerrold
A Short History of Brexit, by Kevin O’Rourke
All American Boys, An Insider’s Look at the U.S. Space Program, by Walter Cunningham

The Vegetarian, by Kang Han
Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Nine Lives, by William Dalrymple
City of Last Chances, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi
The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire, by Bart van Loo
Ancient Paths, by Graham Robb
Métal Hurlant Vol. 1: Le Futur c’est déjà demain, by Mathieu Bablet et al
Voyage to Venus, by C.S. Lewis
Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett
False Value, by Ben Aaronovitch
Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, vol 3: Radio and Television Plays

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Opening of third play (“Great Parliamentarians: Lord Palmerston”):

ANNOUNCER. ‘Great Parliamentarians’. We now present as the next in this series, a radio biography of Lord Palmerston, written and produced by Denis Johnston. (Fade in music) The scene opens in the Balkans where a British resident will tell of a dramatic incident in which he took part.
(Peak music and then fade out.)
BRIDGEMAN. We called it Wallachia in those days. But now it has some new fangled title and a king of its own no less! (He laughs to himself) One evening – I think it was in 1849 – I was standing outside my warehouse looking across the brown swirling waters of the Danube at a boat crossing over from the further shore. Close by me, my little step-daughter was playing on the rough wooden pier that juts out into the stream and always seemed to me to be on the point of being swept away by the current.
(Fade in distant drumming.)
BRIDGEMAN. Eliza, come away from there!
CHILD (aged about 12). Papa, Hëren sie die Trummele?
BRIDGEMAN. Speak English, my child. Do you wish to forget your native tongue?
CHILD. I hear drums, Papa.
BRIDGEMAN. It is the Turks over the river in Widin.

(Linguistic note: “Hëren sie die Trummele?” is pretty bad German. “Hören Sie die Trommeln?” would be grammatically correct, but a child speaking to her father would be much more likely to say “Hörst du die Trommeln?”)

Denis Johnston (1901-1984) has gone out of fashion now; the only play of his that I have seen on stage was “Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye” in the early 1990s. His daughter Jennifer, who died only last month, had much more staying power with the Zeitgeist.

This book is the third of three volumes of his collected plays, devoted to his work for radio and television. It includes a biographical note and some fascinating essays about the early days of TV drama, when the producer could see only one other camera besides the one that was actively recording (or indeed broadcasting) and the art of cutting between shots was unknown. On a related point, it was not at all obvious that reporters doing outside broadcast should simply hold a microphone and speak into it – much fruitless effort went into managing booms in windy conditions, and in other inhospitable situations.

As well as the essays on TV drama, there are seven radio plays here, five TV plays and two theatre scripts that escaped the previous volumes. I got the book ages ago because my great-grandfather, James Stewart, is credited as one of the bit players in the very first of the radio plays, “Lillibulero”, an account of the siege of Derry in 1688-89, broadcast in 1938. One of the actors brought over from England to narrate the story was 19-year-old Jon Pertwee, his first broadcast job. It’s dramatic stuff; I managed to get hold of a recording and it carries itself well, 87 years on. Unfortunately I am not sure which of the voices is my great-grandfather’s. (Jon Pertwee, even at 19, is unmissable.)

It’s the best of the radio plays. The others are a farce about working in radio drama which I have to hope was funnier on air than it is on the page; a biography of Lord Palmerston which can’t quite decide if it is being funny; a play about the German high command in the first world war which tries to be funny about an awful subject; another funny historical about Lady Blessington where it’s clear that Micheál Mac Liammóir stole the show as her camp lover the Comte d’Orsay; a rather mean-spirited portrait of the novelist Amanda McKittrick Ros, who had only recently died; and a dramatisation of Frank O’Connor’s short story “In The Train” which prompted me to go and re-read the original text, which is better.

The TV plays are more satisfying. There’s a strong start with The Parnell Commission, which succeeds in being didactic and dramatic at the same time; a biographical play about Jonathan Swift; a skit set in the early Irish Free State; a satirical take on the IRA’s 1950s Border Campaign; and an effective story about an 1871 murder in County Tyrone.

The two theatre scripts in an appendix are Blind Man’s Bluff, a comedic adaptation of Die Blinde Gottin (The Blind Goddess) by Ernst Toller, which actually has the same punchline as “Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye”, and a four page skit called Riders to the Sidhe, whose title pretty much says it all.

It’s very much work of its time – even the plays set in the nineteenth century have a slightly tired mid twentieth century feel about them. It’s also pretty long, at 516 pages. But I was glad to work through it. You can get it here.

This was the very last unread book that I had acquired in 2019 which is not by H.G. Wells. Next on the Wells list is Bealby.

Lies Sleeping, by Ben Aaronovitch

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘We didn’t find a phone,’ I said, although it was true I hadn’t thought of that.

Tremendously executed climax to the arc of stories about occult London police detective Peter Grant, and his adversary the Faceless Man, with loving detail to the history and geography of London and the river spirits who sometimes ally with us mortals. The frustrations of working in the fictional bureaucracy of the magical side of the Met is also well imagined. I wasn’t so wowed by the previous book in the sequence but definitely enjoyed this. Two more to go (at least, two more that I have left over from a previous Hugo packet). You can get it here.

Oh No It Isn’t!, by Paul Cornell (and Jacqueline Rayner)

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield woke up, stretched, and sang a single pure note. The stretch had brought on the singing. It was all because of the look of the day. Sunlight was dap­pling through leaves above her. Birds were cheeping. The air smelt of a summer morning.

The first of the Bernice Summerfield spinoff novels, adapted to become the first Big Finish audio. Bernice, settling into her new job as a professor of archæology, finds herself sucked into a world where she and her colleagues are transformed into pantomime characters, and facing down the alien Grel. (Facts! Good facts!) It’s actually rather well done – the concept risks being either too twee or too clever for its own good, but Paul Cornell bends the rules of narrative here just enough to get away with it. You can get it here.

The audio adaptation – from 27 years ago, good heavens! – is particularly memorable for Nicholas Courtney’s performance as Wolsey, Bernice’s cat, though everyone is good including Alastair Lock as the Grel. I listened to it just after re-reading the book, so can’t really tell how well it stands on its own. You can still get it here.

On my first encounter with the Grel of the Whoniverse (which was actually in the Sixth Doctor audio The Doomwood Conspiracy), I confusedly assumed that they were the same as the Grell, a D&D creature that I remember from White Dwarf #27 back in 1981 (actually invented by Ian Livingstone in WD #12, two years earlier). But the D&D Grell, with two ‘l’s, are disembodied hovering brains with a beak and barbed tentacles, while the DW Grel, with one ‘l’, are humanoids with squid-like faces. You’re welcome.

The Friend Zone Experiment, by Zen Cho

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

He hadn’t come for Alicia’s company, any more than he’d come for the exhibition itself. The name Dior meant as little to him as, he supposed, Shostakovich or Britten would to someone who didn’t care about classical music.

I know Zen of course both as a friend (I believe that we are the only Eastercon Guests of Honour with parents born in Malaysia) and for her intriguing fantasy novels and shorter fiction; I believe that this is her first venture into contemporary romance, a genre which is sometimes taken less seriously than it should be.

Renee Goh gets dumped by her pop star boyfriend on page 6, and bumps unexpectedly into her ex Ket Siong on page 26, and despite Renee’s experimental attempts to keep Ket Siong in the Friend Zone, we basically know where they will have got to by the end on page 341. I really enjoyed the ride; human beings are complex creatures, capable of misunderstanding their own best interests and getting confused about the signals they receive from others, and it’s entertaining (occasionally painful) to read.

As well as being a good empowering love story, with the dynastic intricacies of the Malaysian business community’s presence in London as backdrop, there is a grim subplot involving a massive political corruption scandal and human rights abuse, which peripherally touches both our lovers and also the Bad Boy rival for Renee’s affections. Renee manages to triumph here too, thanks to her ability to think outside the box, though it has an impact on her relations with her own family.

I am interested that the last Asian romance novel I read, Those Pricey Thakur Girls, also had a really grim political subplot underlying the girl-meets-boy main current. I don’t know how common this is for romance novels.

Anyway, this is a good one, and you can get it here.

Sky Jacks!, by Andy Diggle, Eddie Robson and Andy Kuhn

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Second frame of third part:

Clara (in her first appearance in comics) falls through what appears to be a black hole, into a pocket universe where there are lots of stranded airmen and the like, and eventually the Doctor as well. The big reveal of What Is Really Going On is well done. The art seemed to me not to capture the Doctor and Clara terribly well, but is fine on the big sweeeps of scenery.

There’s also a short story about alien mind control through getting everyone on earth to wear an electronic fez, but they are rescued by Eleven, Amy and Rory, which is dire as you would expect.

You can get it here.

The Research Magnificent, by H.G. Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

White had not read the book of Tobit for many years, and what he was really thinking of was not that ancient story at all, but Botticelli’s picture, that picture of the sunlit morning of life. When you say ” Tobias” that is what most intelligent people will recall. Perhaps you will remember how gaily and confidently the young man strides along with the armoured angel by his side. Absurdly enough, Benham and his dream of high aristocracy reminded White of that. . . .

Not far to go in my foolish effort to read all of Wells’ fiction. This one is generally awful. (Adam Roberts didn’t like it much either.) Benham, the protagonist, decides to make his life goal the ‘Research Magnificent’ on how to live a noble and aristocratic life; he does this from a position of immense wealth and privilege; he marries a teenager and it doesn’t work out; and he gets killed in a political riot in South Africa. There are many many tedious speeches about politics and personal vision.

There are however one or two good lines. When Benham meets his first lover:

There was in particular Mrs. Skelmersdale, a very pretty little widow with hazel eyes, black hair, a mobile mouth, and a pathetic history, who talked of old music to him and took him to a Dolmetsch concert in Clifford’s Inn, and expanded that common interest to a general participation in his indefinite outlook. She advised him about his probable politics — everybody did that — but when he broke through his usual reserve and suggested views of his own, she was extraordinarily sympathetic. She was so sympathetic and in such a caressing way that she created a temporary belief in her understanding, and it was quite imperceptibly that he was drawn into the discussion of modern ethical problems. She herself was a rather stimulating instance of modern ethical problems. She told him something of her own story, and then their common topics narrowed down very abruptly. He found he could help her in several ways.

I don’t think I have seen much innuendo from Wells, but that did make me chuckle.

A bit later, the protagonist and his young bride go on a disastrous honeymoon in the Balkans, taking in various places which I know from a century or so later. One passage here puzzled me. The couple are stuck in Monastir (now Bitola) in (North) Macedonia, and Benham has fallen ill with measles. After they find a doctor,

The Benhams went as soon as possible down to Smyrna and thence by way of Uskub tortuously back to Italy.

I was really puzzled by this. Uskub is now Skopje, and these days to get there from Bitola you go by the highland road through Prilep before joining the main Vardar Valley route at Gradsko or Veles; it’s 173 km according to Google. This would take you nowhere near the Aegean port of Smyrna, which is now Izmir in Turkey, 1000 km by road from either Bitola or Skopje.

I raised this question on social media, and a couple of people pointed out that ‘Smyrna’ here is obviously a mistake for ‘Salonica’, ie Thessaloniki in Greece. Back in the day, the old Via Egnatia would have taken you easily there from Bitola, and the railway back up north to Skopje had been built in 1873. Full credit to the several people who tried to convince me of a plausible route from Bitola to Izmir to Skopje, but I don’t think that’s what Wells meant.

Just a few more books acquired in 2019 to go now. The next by Wells is Bealby, but before that I have volume 3 of the Collected Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston.

Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

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Second paragraph of third section:

He became aware of what seemed to be thoughts in his head. They went something like this:

The second of the City Watch subsequence in the Discworld series. As I work through the Pratchett novels in order of popularity, I suspect that I’m going to find that I’ve already read all the really good ones, and although Men at Arms is funny and passionate, the two most overt bits of satire somewhat miss the mark, or perhaps have aged less well since 1993 than some of PTerry’s other work.

His spoofing of affirmative action surely came from a place of love and respect, but it lands rather awkwardly in a 2025 where the US government is stripping away DEI policies to the cheers of conservative forces at home and abroad. (Also, stupid people are not always automatically funny.)

And the idea that society faces utter collapse if fire-arms are to be allowed to exist at all, well, yes, one can see the point and the target, but it’s a bit heavy-handed; it’s effectively finger-wagging at the Americans for allowing their country to get so screwed up by the supposed Second Amendment rights. Sure, that’s not all it is; there’s also a bit of the loss of innocence of embracing any new technology, though later Discworld books are more enthusiastic about the embracing.

Anyway, still a good read, if not quite as superlative as some of the others in the series. You can get it here.

Next up: Feet of Clay.

The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! | Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Small Gods | Lords and Ladies | Men at Arms | Soul Music | Interesting Times | Maskerade | Feet of Clay | Hogfather | Jingo | The Last Continent | Carpe Jugulum | The Fifth Elephant | The Truth | Thief of Time | The Last Hero | The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents | Night Watch | The Wee Free Men | Monstrous Regiment | A Hat Full of Sky | Going Postal | Thud! | Wintersmith | Making Money | Unseen Academicals | I Shall Wear Midnight | Snuff | Raising Steam | The Shepherd’s Crown

From Narnia to a Space Odyssey: Stories, Letters, and Commentary By and About C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke, ed. Ryder W. Miller

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

But Clarke was also a famous visionary linked with developments in space exploration, and he explored the role and potentials of technology. He has been one of our guides to the grand adventure of space exploration, one who could write a story and one with wit, but also one who could bring clarity to the explication of complicated scientific issues.

I skimmed this book when writing up Childhood’s End and then came back to it a couple of days later. It has three parts: 1) an analytical introduction, including short profiles of Lewis and Clarke and a preface by Clarke himself; 2) the actual correspondence between Lewis and Clarke, which consists of fifteen letters over the years between 1936 and 1954, some of them very short; and 3) stories and essays by the two writers, three by Lewis and eight by Clarke. The publication history is rather droll, but Miller isn’t a terribly deep analyst and he makes a number of obvious mistakes in reading Lewis’s handwriting; also the first of the stories included, “Ministering Angels” by Lewis, is just repulsive (a sex worker and a feminist go to Mars). The primary non-fiction material is welcome, but the rest a bit superfluous.

Good Vibrations, and Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem, Good Vibrations, by Terri Hooley and Richard Sullivan

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I don’t think I have written here before about my love of the 2013 film Good Vibrations, starring Richard Dormer as Terri Hooley, and pre-Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker as his first wife Ruth Carr (in reality a significant cultural figure in her own right, who is only in the film as the protagonist’s love interest). The film is the story of how one idealistic man kept music, especially punk, alive in the worst years of the Troubles, and finally made it big with The Undertones’ classic Teenage Kicks. In case you need to get a taste of it, here’s the trailer:

I confess part of the sentimental attachment for me is that I went to see a special showing of the film in mid-2014 at the Northern Ireland representation in Brussels, with Andy Carling, a good friend who sadly died a few years later. We both cried at the crucial scene where The Undertones turn up in the studio to record their hit, and my eyes well up every time I think of it.

Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem, Good Vibrations is the ghost-written autobiography of Terri Hooley on which the film is very loosely based. The second paragraph of the third chapter:

One by one, all the weird and wonderful clubs that I had loved when I was a teenager began to disappear. As people retreated into their own areas there was little need for the Fiesta Ballroom, the Plaza or Betty Staff’s and they soon closed. Belfast became a ghost town.

As a Belfast kid in the 1970s and 1980s, I was not into the contemporary music scene at all; the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra was more my gig. But I do remember the cut-out of Elvis outside the Good Vibrations music shop on Great Victoria Street, and the cool kids at school were into Stiff Little Fingers. Otherwise I was surprised by the lack of crossover between my own lived Belfast experience and Terri Hooley’s world of gigs, girls, business and bankruptcy. I was well aware that I was not one of the cool kids, and this book confirms it.

The book is gorgeously illustrated, with many black-and-white photos, posters, ticket stubs, record sleeves and other souvenirs from the era. It’s an important reminder that history is not just words on paper, but images and sounds as well, if you can gather them for your archive. And it’s also a reminder that while the grim politics and violence were playing out in front of the world’s cameras, there was something much more joyous happening behind the scenes.

As for the text… well, it’s obviously been organised by Richard Sullivan as co-writer, but you do get the sense of a man sitting down in the bar next to you and spilling his life story, good, bad and ugly. Hooley’s passion for music is admirable and the driving force of his life; he has been unlucky in business and not always lucky in love. Some of his life decisions have been, er, wiser than others. The book gives a raw picture of him and his time and place. You can get it here (at a price).

The Queen’s Gambit, series and book by Walter Tevis

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Five years behind everyone else, we recently watched the Netflix The Queen’s Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as fictional 1960s chess prodigy Beth Harmon, and hugely enjoyed it.

It’s not just the superb performances of Anya Taylor-Joy and the rest of the cast (including Thomas Brodie-Sangster, briefly on Doctor Who on TV and less briefly on Game of Thrones); it’s the amazing use of interior sets in Berlin, and exteriors there and in Toronto, to look like a dozen major cities worldwide, from Mexico to Moscow. One really felt a (totally confected) sense of time and place.

I know that everyone else watched it during the first lockdown, and you were all quite right to do so.

Back in 2005 I read a book by Walter Tevis whose protagonist has extraordinary talents but descends into addiction, particularly to alcohol, and which was then adapted very successfully for the screen: The Man Who Fell to Earth, remembered mainly for the film version starring David Bowie. At this distance I don’t remember much about it, except that it’s pretty depressing, as the alien hero ends up as a crushed victim of cruel humanity.

The Queen’s Gambit is more optimistic. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:

“Yes, ma’am.” Beth was seated in the straight-backed chair in front of Mrs. Deardorff’s desk. Fergussen had come and taken her from study hall. It was eleven in the morning. She had not been in this office for over three years.

It would have been very easy to slip into the rabbit hole of chess jargon and make it substitute for telling a story, but Tevis manages to make the chess serve the plot, and we’re in no doubt that it’s a story about a person rather than a game. Here’s a list of differences between the novel and the TV show, of which I think the most important is that Beth in the novel is not as pretty as Anya Taylor-Joy – young Beth sees herself as ugly, though Jolene tells her when they reunite that “You ain’t ugly anymore anyhow.” That of course is one of the demands of the screen format – you have to cast attractive stars and make them look pretty, unlike on the printed page. (Also in the book, Beth doesn’t get seduced by a sexy woman in Paris, she just gets outplayed by Borgov; but that makes for less exciting television.)

Otherwise I was rather impressed by how the series stayed true to the narrative arc of the book, and enjoyed the book as much as I did the show, which was a lot. You can get it here.

One of my personal minor historical fixations is the famous round-robin tournament in April 1979 where the unrated Garry Kasparov, who turned 16 during the event, won against 15 international grand masters including former world champion Tigran Petrosian. (The USSR had sent Kasparov by mistake, under the impression that it was a youth tournament.) The event was held in Banja Luka, then in Yugoslavia, where I later lived for fifteen months in 1997-98, and I have always wondered exactly where the venue was. Here’s an interview with Kasparov, showing a nice picture of him playing Petrosian, but without enough clues to show which building it is in. It could possibly be the Banski Dvor, which was the major cultural venue at the time.

DallerGut Dream Department Store: The Dream You Ordered is Sold Out, by Miye Lee

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

24시간 열려 있는 가게의 특성상 모든 직원은 정해진 시간에 교대 형식으로 근무하고 있었다. 그 때문에 일찍 들어가 봐야 할 일도 없었다. 페니는 좀 더 햇살 아래서 여유를 만끽하기로 했다. 거리의 중심에서 위용을 뽐내고 있는 5층짜리 목조 건물. ‘꿈 백화점’. 역시 놀면서 바라보는 가게의 모습이 훨씬 더 근사했다.All employees at the DallerGut Dream Department Store have their shifts carefully assigned to them so the store can be run twenty-four seven unless they sell out of dreams. There is no point in coming in early. Penny decides to enjoy the sun outside. She looks up at the five-storey building towering over the centre of the city. The DallerGut Dream Department Store. The sight of it is indeed a marvel to behold when not at work. But her rest doesn’t last long.

I got this for Anne a couple of Christmases ago, but I don’t think it is terribly deep; it’s a whimsical set of stories about people working in a department store that happens to sell dreams, and Santa Claus is one of the characters. I can see how some people might get very invested in it, but it wasn’t for me. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white author. Next on that pile is another (and I suspect better) book by a Korean author, The Vegetarian by Han Kang.

The Americans who married C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke; and Childhood’s End

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In C.S. Lewis’s earliest surviving letter to Joy Davidman Gresham, dated 22 December 1953, he wrote:

Dear Joy–

As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood’s End: I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers…

[three paragraphs of substantial analysis follow]

And now, what do you think? Do you agree that it is AN ABSOLUTE CORKER?

…It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognoscenti, while any ‘realistic’ drivel about some neurotic in a London flat–something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious books–as if it really mattered. I wonder how long this tyranny will last? Twenty years ago I felt no doubt that I should live to see it all break up and great literature return: but here I am, losing teeth and hair, and still no break in the clouds.

One of many interesting things about this is that Joy actually knew Arthur C. Clarke, and other London science fiction writers such as Sam “John Christopher” Youd, long before she knew C.S. Lewis; her previous husband, William Lindsay Gresham, knew Martin Gardner, Frederik Pohl and Robert A. Heinlein, and Joy herself was a regular attender of the science fiction meetups at the White Horse Tavern which is how she knew Clarke.

She showed Lewis’s letter to Clarke, and (needless to say) he was thrilled, and fired off an enthusiastic reply. An exchange of views between Lewis and Clarke began, though there was no real meeting of minds. Clarke himself wrote in a preface to the published correspondence:

As far as I can recall, Lewis and I met only once. The encounter took place at Oxford in the well-known pub, the Eastgate. I was accompanied by my fellow Interplanetarian, Val Cleaver, and Lewis brought along a friend whose name I didn’t catch. Needless to say, neither side converted the other, and we refused to abandon our diabolical schemes of interplanetary conquest. But a fine time was had by all, and when, some hours later, we emerged a little unsteadily from the Eastgate, Dr. Lewis’s parting words were: “I’m sure you’re very wicked people—but how dull it would be if everyone was good.”

C.S. Lewis’s friend? It was another Oxford don, one J.R.R. Tolkien, who I met again some years later at a lunch in London. My only recollection of that occasion is Tolkien pointing to his diminutive publisher and whispering to me: “Now you see where I got the idea of the Hobbits?”

Perhaps one reason why our correspondence was virtually non-existent in later years was that I was in indirect touch with Lewis all the time through Joy Gresham. Every week we London science fiction writers, editors and publishers met in the White Horse tavern—the scarcely disguised background of my Tales of the White Hart. It was Joy who sent Lewis Childhood’s End—I don’t know whether she did it on her own volition, but can well believe I did a certain amount of arm-twisting.

I was very fond of Joy, one of the most charming and intelligent people I’ve ever known. Her ultimate marriage to C.S. Lewis was a great surprise to everyone. Its tragic outcome has been dramatized in the play, Shadowlands, and was described by Lewis himself in A Grief Observed, which I have never had the heart to read.

(I’ve now also read the correspondence between them, and will write that up in a couple of days.)

As well as seeing the TV play Shadowlands when it was first broadcast in 1985, I actually saw it on stage in London in 1990, with Nigel Hawthorne as C.S. Lewis, Jane Lapotaire as Joy and Geoffrey Toone as Lewis’ brother Warren. I can still count the number of West End shows I have been to on the fingers of both hands, and this was definitely in the top three.

Childhood’s End was Clarke’s fifth novel, after Against the Fall of Night, Prelude to Space, The Sands of Mars and Islands in the Sky. It’s in a completely different league to the others, and indeed to most science fiction of the day; and it’s impossible that Joy could not have recognised this. So it’s entirely plausible that Lewis’s guess was right, and she did deliberately underplay her enthusiasm for Childhood’s End to him, partly out of concern that he might not like it and partly in hope that he would be pleasantly surprised when he did.

It is an interesting coincidence that within a couple of years of each other, both Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis married much younger American women. While thinking about what I was going to write here, I looked a bit more into Clarke’s own brief marriage to Marilyn Torgeson née Mayfield, which almost precisely coincided with the finalisation and publication of Childhood’s End in 1953 – the first edition is dedicated “To Marilyn, who let me read the proofs on our honeymoon.” (You will probably not find this in your edition of the book.)

The received wisdom is that when they met in March 1953, Marilyn was 22, divorced and had a son by her previous marriage. However, the data I have gleaned on Ancestry.com suggests a more complex backstory, as follows:

  • 28 April 1931: born as Marilyn Martin Mayfield to David Alexander Mayfield jr (1901-1997) and Nellie Lee Martin (1907-1932) in Jacksonville, Florida. She had one older brother, David Alexander Mayfield III (1928-2008).
  • 1932 (precise date unknown): death of Marilyn’s mother.
  • 1933: father remarries to Erma E. Myers, née Eleazer (1908-1964), from South Carolina.
  • 12 August 1948: Marilyn, age 17, marries 19-year-old Robert Ives Brooks (1919-2011) in Jacksonville, which is where both were born.
  • 24 May 1949: Marilyn, now 18, marries 21-year-old Edwin Torgeson (1927-2003) in Los Angeles. He was born in New York. Presumably her first marriage had been formally dissolved; available records are incomplete.
  • 1950: Edwin and Marilyn Torgeson are recorded as living together in Jacksonville in a city directory.
  • 24 April 1950: the federal census records Edwin as living in Alachua, Florida, 120 km / 70 miles from Jacksonville. His marital status is given as “Separated”.
  • 25 March 1951: Marilyn gives birth to Philip Alexander Torgeson (1951-2005), who lives all his life in Jacksonville (and did not marry, as far as I can tell).
  • 21 February 1953: Edwin Torgeson remarries in Los Angeles to Mary Jane Highfield (1930-2008). They have one son.
  • 28 May 1953: Marilyn meets 35-year-old Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) a month after her 22nd birthday. She is working at the Ocean Reef Harbor Club in Key Largo, Florida.
  • 15 June 1953: Marilyn and Arthur marry in New York, and she moves to London with him, leaving her son in the care of the Torgesons.
  • August 1953: Childhood’s End is published, and rapidly becomes a huge success. As previously noted, it is dedicated “To Marilyn, who let me read the proofs on our honeymoon.”
  • Late 1953: the Clarkes’ marriage does not work out.
  • December 1953: Marilyn returns to Florida.
  • January 1954: Arthur visits Marilyn in Florida to agree the terms of their separation.
  • February 1955: publication of Arthur’s next novel, Earthlight. This time the dedication is “To Val/who massacred the second draft/And Bernie who slaughtered the third—/but particularly to Marilyn who spent the advance before I got to Chapter 2.”
  • 1956: Arthur moves permanently to Sri Lanka, where he later develops a relationship with Leslie Ekanayake (1947-77).
  • December 1964: Marilyn and Arthur’s divorce is formalised. Neither married again.
  • 24 June 1991: Marilyn dies aged 60 in Jacksonville, still using the surname “Clarke” after almost forty years.
  • 19 March 2008: Arthur C. Clarke dies aged 90 in Sri Lanka.

Clarke’s authorised biographies say that Marilyn had one previous marriage and a child at the time that they met, but in fact, as far as I can tell, she had been married twice. I note that her son was born eleven months after Edwin was recorded in the census as ‘separated’, though it’s also clear that Edwin exercised paternal rights and treated Philip as his child. It’s not really anyone else’s business, of course.

So, coming back to Childhood’s End for myself, I had read it a couple of times previously but needed to be reminded of it. (I’m a bit ashamed to realise that the last time I name-checked Clarke’s best books in a blog post here, I forgot about it.) It was a happy return.

To get one thing out of the way, here’s the second paragraph of the third chapter:

This was another of those restless nights when his brain went on turning like a machine whose governor had failed. He knew better than to woo sleep any further, and reluctantly climbed out of bed. Throwing on his dressing gown, he strolled out on to the roof garden of his modest flat. There was not one of his direct subordinates who did not possess much more luxurious quarters, but this place was ample for Stormgren’s needs. He had reached the position where neither personal possessions nor official ceremony could add anything to his stature.

Many of Clarke’s books explore, with some fascination, the world of metaphysics and the spirit, and I think Childhood’s End sets the tone for that exploration. It’s a book that is ahead of its time, sowing the seeds for the hippy era a decade in the future, with the whole of humanity being prepared by for a massive shift of consciousness, into transcendence – but overseen by the alien Overlords who force the people of Earth to give up childish things like war and religion. It feeds directly into the climax of 2001. Yes, it’s a clunky 1950s story in form and style, but not in content.

It’s also got the closest examination of human relationships that I can think of in any of Clarke’s works. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the women (or indeed the men) are particularly memorable, but the book shows a sympathy for emotional and family life that is unusual both for sf of that time and for Clarke’s work as a whole. We know that he did not meet Marilyn until the book was almost finished, but I surmise that he was emotionally ready for a committed relationship, and she happened to be in the right place at the right time. (Though unfortunately they turned out to be the wrong people for each other.)

You can get it here.

So, this was the top book on my shelves which I had not already reviewed online. Appropriately enough, the next is Voyage to Venus, by C.S. Lewis.

The Secret Places of the Heart, by H.G. Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Both men were considerably reassured when at last they set eyes on each other again. Indeed each was surprised to find something almost agreeable in the appearance of the other. Dr. Martineau at once perceived that the fierceness of Sir Richmond was nothing more than the fierceness of an overwrought man, and Sir Richmond realized at a glance that the curiosity of Dr. Martineau’s bearing had in it nothing personal or base; it was just the fine alertness of the scientific mind.

I’m trawling through the bottom end of H.G. Wells’ novels, and this one is not particularly good. The protagonist (rather obviously Wells himself) goes on a road trip with his psychiatrist to try and sort out his feelings about his wife (Jane Wells) and his lover (Rebecca West), and while exploring the West of England he meets a charming American (Margaret Sanger) with whom he eventually starts an affair. The book is rather short but seemed to go on for ever. In some of his other novels, Wells captures emotion and love rather well, but not here. The ending is particularly weak. Adam Roberts thinks much the same as me (for once) but at much greater length.

There are some rather good descriptions of Avebury, Stonehenge and other tourist attractions, which are among the book’s redeeming features, and the protagonist has a very silly Fawlty moment of beating up his car after it has broken down. But you can really skip this. Otherwise, get it here.

This was top of my rapidly dwindling pile of books by H.G. Wells. Next up there is The Research Magnificent, which I do not promise to read through to the end – it has almost 800 pages and is probably as bad as this one.

Eastern Nights – and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure, by Alan Bott

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Living in Paris in the spring of 1925, my grandmother, Dorothy Hibbard, went to stay in the French countryside with her artist friend Jan Juta and his sister, Réné Hansard (born Henrietta Irene Louise Juta).

Rene invited me to go to stay at her little Provencale farm, Lou Miracle, at Mougins. Alan Bott was also there, an English writer who was helping Rene with some of her writing – at least that’s what I wrote to Papa. Alan had been in the R.A.F. and had been shot down in Palestine and made prisoner by the Turks; he wrote a book about it, Eastern Flights, which I still have, though only in a paper-back. At Rene’s I walked a lot while the others were working, and I did some work myself, though not much, I think. I also fell more or less in love with Alan.

By her account, she and Alan Bott saw a lot of each other, in Paris and in England, over the next year and a half, until they had a furious row when she wouldn’t wait for him while he was interviewing Rudyard Kipling, probably in September 1926. Less than a year later, she met and married my grandfather. Insert your own alternative history of my family here…

Alan Bott (1893-1952) is best remembered these days as the founder of Pan Books, the main paperback publishing rival to Penguin, and the first to publish James Bond, Modesty Blaise, and a bit later (long after he had died) The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He married Josephine Blumenfeld in 1930, and they had three children, the youngest of whom died in 2018.

However, he was also a British airman ace in the First World War, and shot down three German aircraft in France in September 1916 and then two more in the Sinai in April 1918, before being himself shot down and captured by Ottoman forces later that month. His book Eastern Nights – and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure is a record of his captivity and ultimate escape. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:

“For a walk. I was upset by the air raid. My head has been very bad since the smash, and sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m better now, and I give my word of honour that I will stay quietly in bed. Only say nothing to the Turks.”

It’s a thrilling tale, as Bott along with other Allied prisoners is transported from Palestine, to Damascus, to a dreadful prisoner-of-war camp in Afion-kara-Hissar in Anatolia, to Constantinople where, after some time faking mental illness, he escapes on a Ukrainian steamer to Odessa, and makes his way from there to Varna in Bulgaria, finally arriving at Thessalonica just as the Armistice is declared. The cultural history of the First World War, in the UK anyway, tends to concentrate on the Western Front, and it’s a useful reminder that there was a lot more going on elsewhere.

It’s also a healthy reminder that transport around that region, even in the late days of the war, was in some ways much easier in 1918 than it would be today. Bott’s observations on the cultural differences among the various cultures through which he travels are somewhat bigoted (there’s a horrible anti-Semitic passage about the Jews of Odessa) but still vivid and interesting. His favourite city is Damascus, which chimes with what I have heard from other Syria experts.

The whole book is online at Project Gutenberg, and you’ll read it very quickly, if you want. I do note that although my grandmother says that she had a copy, she doesn’t say whether or not she had actually read it.