This is a short but tough play. At the opening, Medea resents Jason for bringing her to Corinth and then abandoning her for the local princess: she swears revenge, and using her own children by Jason as unwitting tools, poisons both the king and the princess (and the kids too). It's a horrible but believable scenario, and Medea, despite her monstrous decisions, comes across as a sympathetic character.

If I were ever in the unlikely position of staging this, I think there are three big questions arising from the script. First off, Jason - idiot, philanderer, or Machiavellian? It's not at all clear from what Euripides gives us. I think I would prefer to have him making clear-eyed political decisions, and then devastated by Medea's sabotage. Second, the Chorus - in today's theatre, really you would want her to be a single female character, observing and commenting, but also participating and encouraging. And third, the slightly weird thing is that the entire play takes place in the street outside Medea's house - which therefore becomes not a place of domesticity but a mysterious location which people enter and from which they emerge changed. This may not have fazed the ancient Greeks who expected the three unities to be preserved, but a modern audience will wonder why we never see inside the buildings.

Anyway, it's a powerful character study of a wronged woman exacting revenge. Rather thrilling.

This is a rather unusual Hugo winner. It's a curious amalgam of the great post-holocaust novels Earth Abides and After London on the one hand, and the suspicion of clones latent in Brave New World on the other. The depiction of sexual politics as humanity tries to reinvent itself is core to the narrative: the clones' society turns out to be intellectually and biologically sterile, and their sequestration of fertile women to drug-addled maternity is pretty appalling. I felt that Wilhelm was asking some pretty serious questions here, if not necessarily providing the answers; in any case, as an author rather than a politician, the former rather than the latter is her responsibility.

For once I have actually read all of the other Hugo nominees that year - Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman, Children of Dune by Frank Herbert, Man Plus by Frederik Pohl and Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg. I must say I would have found this a difficult choice: all of them are somewhat difficult and disturbing books, none of them obvious classics but all memorable in a certain way. In the end I would probably have voted for Mindbridge since the sex scenes are more entertaining than those in Shadrach in the Furnace (though of course in the counterfactual situation where I actually had a vote that year I would have been 10, so that particular factor would not have mattered so much to me). I think this was one of those rare years where the Hugo went to a somewhat unlikely candidate, and was all the stronger for it.

I love Les Miserables, both the novel and the show (NB to those who know only the latter - Gavroche is the Thenardiers' son and therefore Eponine's sister), and of course everyone knows the stereotype of the Hunchback, so I was looking forward to reading this. It's a novel of biting social commentary, though set far in the past (1483); the innocent Esmeralda is exploited, persecuted and condemned by the ruling classes, her only defenders the unreliable denizens of the underworld and a disabled bell-ringer. (And her pet goat.) It starts awfully slowly - Hugo takes a very long time to clear his throat, as it were - but the characters are largely engaging, and the action accelerates towards the climax. Knowing that it had been made into a Disney film, which presumably must have a happy ending though I haven't seen it, I was in a state of considerable suspense as to how Hugo would resolve the situation and save the central characters.

It hadn't occurred to me that Disney might have changed the story, so the ending came as a rather brutal shock.

I must say that I still think Les Miserables is the better book, but Notre Dame de Paris is very interesting in the way it takes a lot of the same themes and puts them together with rather different effect.

She has been deported to Spain, apparently because she wrote "Western Sahara" rather than "Morocco" as her country of residence on her immigration form and refused to change it. In terms of international law she is entirely correct, but to assert that the people of Western Sahara should have their country back is in violation of the Moroccan constitution.

I don't often post work-specific stuff here but this is so outrageous that I must.

Aminatou Haidar is a human rights activist from the Western Sahara, most of which has been occupied by Morocco for the last thirty years. Last year she was given the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award; last month she was in New York to receive the Train Foundation's Civil Courage Prize. On her return to the Western Sahara yesterday morning, she was arrested by the Moroccans, purportedly for failing to complete her immigration form on landing.

This was pretty much announced in advance by King Mohammed VI of Morocco in a speech a week ago, when he announced that "it is time to stop outlaws taking advantage of civic freedoms to agitate from within". This in turn was probably helped by Hillary Clinton the week before endorsing the Moroccan policy on the illegal occupation of other people's territory.

I know some of you guys are fans of Hillary's, but really this is disgusting. The EU is not much better. It can put out a statement condemning Azerbaijan's treatment of bloggers, but I haven't heard a peep from them on the arrest of someone who happens to be awkward for the Moroccans. It is a shameful performance.

...Michael Moorcock to write Doctor Who book.

Of course, he has already included the Doctor and a Dalek in one of his earlier works!

A collection of four short graphic stories, each centred around a social misfit and showimg him or her both as they see themselves and as they are seen by others, with sometimes brutal clarity. Tomine's ability to depict multiple viewpoints is pretty amazing. Few of his characters are particularly likeable but they are all fascinating.

I read this book sitting beside its author on a trans-Atlantic plane flight, which is an unusual level of interaction. It is a tremendously detailed account of how, in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, the new Rwandan government invaded its neighbour Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) kicking off a conflict that sucked in military interventions from Burundi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, Sudan and Namibia, and which also entangled Libya, the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Zambia and South Africa before it ended in 2002. Roughly four million people were killed. The conflict was complex and remote, and got almost no coverage in international media. The Rwandans essentially got a free pass from the rest of the world because of the genocide, and because nobody like the Zairean/DRC rulers. Prunier details the horror that resulted, and does not spare his criticism of the local and international actors who made it possible. He even criticises his own earlier book on Rwanda, where he admits having believed the government when he should not have. (Interesting to note that his Rwanda book is quoted several times by Jared Diamond in Collapse.)

An excellent final chapter reflects that probably there will not be another African conflict that is as far-reaching geographically, although the basic conditions for future smaller wars remain. Prunier also analyses the failure of international policy-makers to get to grips with the realities of African political life. I found this point particularly compelling (it should be read as if all in the present tense):

These states were universally weak because they lacked both legitimacy and money. Legitimacy was the biggest problem because even those states that did or could have money, such as the mining states, were also weak. Loyalty to the state is not an internalised feeling in today's Africa... Internally states are seen as cows to be milked. But because there is little milk and the cow can go dry at any time, it would perhaps be better to say that the state is a cow to be bled quickly before it slips into somebody else's hands. The state is an asset for the group in power, but that asset is fragile, there are no commonly accepted rules for future devolution of power, and things have to be grabbed while they last... The state is always somebody's state, never the State in the legal abstract form beloved of Western constitutional law. It is the Museveni dictatorship for the Acholi [Uganda], the Arab state for th southern Sudanese, the mestiço state for UNITA [Angola], or the Tutsi state for the Hutu [Rwanda]. When tribes are not the main problem, pseudo-tribes or other groupings will do.

There is nothing deterministic about conflict: these wars begin because of rational choices made by individuals in leadership positions, reacting to the set of circumstances they find themselves in. Ending them, however, is much more difficult.

A totally fascinating book looking at how the human impact on the environment can cause societies to collapse or disappear. The particularly memorable chapters are on Easter Island and the Viking settlements on Greenland, both cases where the natural resources were exploited to the point of mass death. There are lots of other case studies as well, mostly dealing with larger societies or states, but none quite as dramatic or as detailed.

The final chapters are an excellent synthesis of the message of the book. Diamond has a not very profound but interesting take on the nature of political decision-making, and why it goes wrong; on business and the environment (I would like to know more about the Marine Stewardship Council, and why it has had so little impact in Europe), and finally on future prospects for saving the world, where he is cautiously optimistic but not complacent. He is clear that our current patterns of environmental exploitation are not sustainable, but hopes that a sufficiently conscious public will be able to pressurise its leaders into taking action. The book will certainly help.

This is the book which begins by escribing its heroine as "blond [rather than blonde] and ovately willowy". Thanks to everone who has speculated on the meaning of the last two words there; I guess I am convinced that she is thin with wide, childbearing hips, but it is possible to imagine a more comprehensible description.

Anyway, Freda Caron is a botanist working on some strange flowers from a newly discovered planet. That's basically the plot. Boyd appears to be trying to say deep things about sexuality and sexual politics, and the nature of humanity, but it really doesn't work. I was surprised to discover that the book dates from as late as 1969; it feels of an earlier 60s vintage. The ending, where ( spoiler ), is particularly silly.

The book I am reading right now begins by describing the heroine as "Blond and ovately willowy".
Poll #1481960
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 80

If you are writing about a fair-haired woman, which is correct:

Can a thing or person which is ovate also be willowy?

If you think you know what the author meant by "ovately willowy", please explain to me in comments. Extra points if you identify the novel in question.

(I am about to get on a twelve-hour transatlantic flight from Istanbul to New York so it will be a while before I can respond.)

No actual plot, just a series of very short vignettes of cities each of which embodies some aspect of human social interactions, told as a set of reminiscences by Marco Polo to his ruler / leader / captor, the Great Khan. Some of them are pretty vivid; they would have been more memorable if I weren't on a red-eye flight reading them.

I'd read the same author's Crescent City Rhapsody some time back and wasn't overwhelmed. Same here; some nice descriptive passages, but I never quite grasped what was going on - setting too peculiar and characters not interesting enough to be worth following. I finished it because my plane was stuck with technical problems on an African runway so I had nothing else to do.

An excellent Rebus mystery: raking through the ashes of an Edinburgh hotel brings out all kinds of seamy connections between the business elite and Scotland's criminal underworld, with Rebus and his colleagues bending rules slightly beyond my suspension of disbelief, but accepting the consequences when things go wrong. Rebus' brother reappears as well. I worked out the significance of the gas being turned on before Rebus did, but there was a sufficiently satisfying series of twists before we reached the end. One of the better Rebuses I have read (of five so far).

Livejournal's "detect location" thingy thinks I am at Calle del Caballero de Gracia 21, Madrid, Spain.

In fact I am at 4° 51' 30.6" N, 31° 35' 54.1" E.

Well, what's a mere 3300 miles / 5300 km difference???

I found this an unexpectedly brilliant novel. As it starts it seems like simply a fairly plain tale of being black in Michigan. But it opens up into a fascinating voyage for the protagonist, Macon "Milkman" Dead, as he discovers the truth about his own family's past, criss-crossing America to explore both geography and history in a process of self-emancipation. The title of the book is a beautiful piece of misdirection as well - several of the characters have bizarre biblical names (Milkman has a sister called First Corinthians), so I expected that we would encounter some similar reference to the Song of Solomon, but in fact the explanation is quite different and entirely satisfying. Barack Obama claims this is one of his favourite novels, and I can bring myself to believe it.

This is the first Torchwood book I have read, rather than listened to, and it was a good start. Set before the end of the first season (indeed before Gwen's affair with Owen), the immediately striking thing is that the team has acquired a sixth member, James, who is rather too good a fit to be true. It's fairly obvious from the first page what the problem is; Abnett supplies us with a decent chewy and often witty tale of suspense as to how he will get to the inevitable conclusion (and exactly what form that conclusion will take), along with the usual weird alien menaces. I've seen some fans complain that apart from Gwen and Jack the team are rather obscured by the rest of the story, but really this points more to a problem of having a large ensemble cast to begin with.

I am not surprised that Herman Van Rompuy, who has been prime minister of Belgium since the turn of the year, is the front-runner for the first EU presidency now that Vaclav Klaus has signed the Lisbon Treaty.

First of all, Tony Blair was never really a candidate. He got backing from people who hadn't really thought about it much, including I suspect himself, but once it became clear that the centre right wanted one of their own, he was toast. In any case, the small states were always going to be unenthusiastic about a leader from a large state taking on the role. So, of the 27 member states, the heads of government of Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the UK are ruled out for being in the wrong political family. That leaves 13 countries. But we can also rule out France, Germany and Italy because the small states are unlikely to agree to an EU President from a large state (and anyway Sarkozy, Merkel and Berlusconi are not interested). That leaves 10. But we can also rule out the newest member states, who are not sufficiently known quantities as yet; there will in due time be a Bulgarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish or Romanian candidate, but that time is not now.

That leaves only four countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden. The Swedes' stock is high, but they have the disadvantage that they hold the EU presidency at the moment and it looks really bad if you are chairing the meeting which selects you for promotion. That leaves the Benelux prime ministers, Balkenende, Juncker and Van Rompuy. Juncker is the longest serving PM in the EU (since 1995), and is personally well regarded, but his country is not; where France, Germany, Italy and the UK are too big, Luxembourg is really too small, at least for the first holder of the post. That leaves Balkenende and Van Rompuy.

Balkenende is the second-longest serving PM in the EU (since 2002), which has given him time to put a lot of people's backs up; the then Belgian foreign minister, now European Commissioner, Karel De Gucht described him with brutal accuracy as "a mix between Harry Potter and a rigid bourgeois without charisma" (and this is not a linguistic problem as they share the same native language). Van Rompuy on the other hand is rather sweet and writes haikus on his personal website. More to the point, in his ten months as prime minister he has rescued Belgium from the point of institutional collapse which it reached under his disastrous predecessor, and thus has a proven record of getting people with different native languages and very different political perspectives to work together. He won't be a tremendously high profile EU president, but he will be a consensus-building figure who will make his bits of the institutions work and not interfere with other people's turf - be that member states or other senior EU officials.

I'm not a fan of his party, but I am rather a fan of Van Rompuy, and although most of the reasons why he will get the job are actually bad reasons - there is really no good justification for excluding non-Christian Democrats, or anyone from big, tiny or new member states - I think he will actually do it rather well, which is the best reason imaginable to give it to him. The downside is, of course, that Belgium will then need another prime minister, which raises the depressing prospect of Leterme coming back to screw things up again.

This also improves the chances of David Milliband getting the foreign policy job, whose fate matters much more to me. Again, most of the reasons why are bad - the Socialists get the foreign policy job if the Christian Democrats get the top spot, and then there is a real shortage of Socialist foreign ministers that a) anyone has heard of and b) would be personally and politically acceptable (Bernard Kouchner being the best example of someone who clears the first hurdle but not the second). However, while Milliband may have pulled his punches a bit in the current vicious Labour internal struggle, he is a credible at European level (and not tainted by Iraq to the extent that Blair would have been). The question really is does he want it?

(See also discussion here. And you'll note that many of the above links go to the excellent blog of the Economist's David Rennie, which is syndicated to Livejournal, though with technical difficulties, as econ_charlemgne.)

( The Sensorites: 'You've checked everything, Doctor?' 'Yes, yes, plenty of fresh air, temperature normal...' 'Ah - just the Unknown, then?' 'Precisely!' )

( The Reign of Terror: 'I suppose you think you're very clever!' 'Well, without any undue modesty, yes!' )

( Planet of Giants: 'There are no earthworms that size on your planet!' )

( The Dalek Invasion of Earth: 'I've never felt that there was any time or place that I belonged to...' )

I was originally planning this as a set of reviews just of the stories, but it's impossible to resist the temptation to reassess each of the regular characters as they depart. (Which is going to make the write-up after next rather fun...) ( Susan )

( The Rescue: 'My dear, why don't you come with us, hmm?' )

( The Romans: 'My first real sight of history!' )

So, a rather weak start and end to this run (The Sensorites being the worst Hartnell story so far) but a sequence of decent efforts in the middle, in particular The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

I developed a mild interest in Marcus Aurelius, the second-century Roman Emperor, when I discovered that of the various celebrities who share my birthday (26 April), he is by far the most ancient. My interest intensified after reading the very positive account of his career and achievements in Gibbon, and there are a couple of editions of his Meditations available from Project Gutenberg. (Here, here and here.)

It is rather a remarkable book. It's not totally clear that Marcus Aurelius wanted it to be published, or if this was basically his commonplace book (or books) for Deep Thoughts which his admirers circulated after his death. It's a bit jumbled thematically, so I'm inclined to the latter - I think he was a good enough stylist that he'd have organised it a bit better if he was interested in publishing it, and also I don't think he particularly was interested in publishing it. So we basically have the secret thoughts of the ruler of the Roman Empire at its height, which is really quite something. (Gibbon tells us, in footnote 47 to chapter III, that he actually gave public philosophy lectures, as Emperor, in Rome, Greece and Asia; presumably we have here some of the raw materials for those lectures.)

Marcus Aurelius was a believer in the Stoic philosophy: that one should accept one's lot in life, not worry too much about what other people think or about death, and just get on with doing as much good as you can given your personal circumstances. Of course, if your lot in life happens to make you the Roman Emperor, you possibly have fewer grounds to complain about it, or to worry about issues of personal status, than most people. But we all worry about death, including emperors. And Marcus Aurelius is not obsessed with his own celebrity or achievements; the first section of the book is a series of thank-yous to the influential people in his life for their wisdom and intelligence.

Sufficiently edited and bracketed with explanations, this could make a rather successful if somewhat unusual self-help book. It is not in the usual paradigm: rather than helping the reader look at their insecurities and work through and past them, Marcus Aurelius urges the reader (who in the first instance is himself) to put it all aside, reflect on the immense infinity of space and time, and just get on with it. In some circumstances that actually is the right advice. Though I wonder if even he was really convinced - was his recording of different material covering the same themes a matter of finding several different beautiful thoughts which appealed to him? Or was he trying to persuade himself by repetition?

Marcus Aurelius' biological legacy to the empire was his appalling son Commodus, whose reign Gibbon marks (in Chapter IV) as very much the crucial starting point of the decline of Rome. His intellectual legacy is rather more impressive, and certainly longer-lasting. I shall look out for a decent dead-trees edition of this; it is very much worth having on the shelves.

I finished this on Saturday, and was hoping to do the same write-up comparing its contents with the 2001 stories on the Hugo and Nebula shortlists, but won't really have time to do that. Just to note, though, that this was a year when I think the shortlists were at least equal to if not better than Hartwell's selection - there are only two overlaps, Michael Swanwick's "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" and James Patrick Kelly's "Undone". Other stories I liked from Hartwell's selection included Richard Chwedyk's "The Measure of All Things" (to which the Nebula-winning "Bronte's Egg" is a sequel) and Ursula Le Guin's "The Building".

Poll #1479662
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 133

Quick question, no googling:

(And of course I mean the father rather than the son, for those of you who have heard of the latter.)

Sit down for breakfast. Notice a badly bruised mango under a nearby chair. Wonder where it came from. Look up at nearby tree. Notice clumps of large fruit dangling from it. Stop wondering.

I have to say this is one of the more interesting biographies of Elizabeth I that I have read. Jenkins makes a good argument that Elizabeth's determination to remain unmarried stemmed not just from the abuse she suffered in her teens from her stepmother, Catherine Parr, and Parr's new husband Seymour, but also from the childhood echoes of her own mother's execution - an event she could barely remember, but which was echoed in the beheading of another stepmother when she was eight. Apparently she told Leicester at one point that she had been determined never to marry since the age of eight; as Jenkins more or less puts it. join the dots.

Armed with this assumption, Jenkins has Elizabeth enjoying the thrills of the romantic chase but consciously or subconsciously determined never to reach the point that her male suitors desired to reach - she almost got caught out by the Duc d'Alençon, but I think she always knew that Parliament would never approve the marriage. She flaunted her body to her suitors (and indeed to others) but evaded physical contact. I found Jenkins' analysis very convincing.

Jenkins also offered further insights into a number of other Elizabethan questions. First, she is very good at analysing Mary Queen of Scots - there is an interesting study to be done comparing and contrasting how she and her grandson ended up losing their heads for rather similar reasons. Second, I now understand rather better one of the ways in which the Irish question shifted during Elizabeth's reign - once her cousin and prisoner Mary had been acknowledged as potentially legitimate by the Pope and the French and Spanish, a wholly new basis emerged for continental intervention in Irish affairs. Third, Jenkins is rather positive on English Catholics, most of whom remained loyal to Elizabeth except in extremis; the students at the English College in Rome cheered when they heard the Armada had failed in 1588.

And fourth, danciing at court masques and balls is frequently mentioned by Jenkins as an essential part of the political equation. There's lots of exciting interdisciplinary research to be done there. I'll bluntly assert that it's difficult to imagine dancing being an important factor while either of Elizabeth's siblings was on the throne. (NB that Shakespeare's Henry VIII has her father gatecrashing a dance incognito, in order to seduce her mother.) But again, I don't recall a single mention of dancing among the distractions available for government officials in Ireland in Elizabeth's day; it looks like this was an activity driven by the queen's personal preferences. (And my namesake and ancestor gets two brief mentions in the book, both fabourable!)

Anyway, this was well worth searching out. The book is fifty years old, but stands up well in comparison with more recent works on the same subject.

There is a minor character in this novel who is an unsuccessful author:

When Horace's book was finally published, it was viciously attacked by the critics. This was sad, as no-one had been able to disprove anything he had written. It was even sadder that the critics, blinded by their own prejudice, could not see the energy, grace and skill that had gone into the book's construction. Even if, as they believed, every word was untrue, they chose to ignore the incredible flights of imagination necessary to argue such a theory. But worse still - as they were supposedly people of education and letters - they could not see or appreciate the pure, good writing which was on the page. Although the book sold well, it was bought for all the wrong reasons. People would memorise passages from it, then regurgitate them at drinks parties, laughing. like blocked drains as they did. It had become chic to mock Horace. Unable to cope with the ridicule, Horace retired into obscurity. Two years later he died of a broken heart.

It's tempting to interpret this as Eric Saward justifying himself: a misunderstood and underappreciated genius, the quality of whose work will be apparent to the ages though not to the contemporary critic. Given everything else I know about Saward, actually, I am pretty convinced. Doctor Who - Slipback is a desperate attempt to channel Douglas Adams, even more desperate than the radio series on which it was based. Planets and people have comical names and bizarre characteristics; and threats to the universe are both gruesome and bathetic. I think this actually is a worse book than Saward's novelisation of The Twin Dilemma, though I'm not rereading it in order to form a more precise judgement. Certainly neither is interesting enough in their awfulness to be worth memorising and regurgitating at drinks parties.

Douglas Adams did it much better, not just because his prose style in general was vastly superior to Saward's but also because he had a coherent sense of world-building, both for his own fiction and for the Who stories he wrote; and his humour was self-deprecating rather than defensive.

I have to say that I don't quite get Wuthering Heights. Yes, I suppose the destructive psychological relationship between Heathcliff and the elder Cathy is rather grimly fascinating, as is a train crash; but that takes up only the second quarter of the book. There are elements which are difficult to accept for today's reader - the appearance of Cathy's ghost at the beginning, the almost nonchalant violence perpetrated by Heathcliff throughout. The descriptive passages, both of the human relationships and of the natural environment, are vivid and memorable, but I find the repeating pattern of destructive and inescapable family relationships rather depressing and, frankly, not terribly interesting.

Back in late 2005, I entered all the books on our shelves into LibraryThing, and tagged 133 of them as "unread", ie hoping that I would read them some day. Well, that day has arrived; I have read 122 of them, and will not read the other 11. (Why not? Well, three were ebooks on my Palm T|X when it finally gave up the ghost - I think they were all short stories or extracts anyway, so probably shouldn't have counted. Two of them I just can't find, but will read if they ever show up. Three are from series of books that I do not feel I need to rea any more of - the Alexander McCall Smith books, and E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman books. Two I gave up on before starting, when I realised that they were academic works too specialised for my tastes or interest. And one I realised I had in fact already read.)

Of the 122 which I have in fact read, I got through 41 in 2006, 39 in 2007, 24 in 2008 and the last 18 in 2009. (Those figures include 10 that I started but gave up on.) The full list, with font size adjusted for how much I liked them, is as follows:

( 122 books which I did read )
( 11 books that I didn't read )

There are currently 15 books on my shelf tagged "unread" and acquired during the calendar year 2006, mostly sf anthologies (( list )). Will report back when I have finished them.