sf
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I can’t decide on whether to use the old-school all caps, since it’s an acronym, or the more modern approach of making it a standard word. I wonder: what would Nasa do? Oh. Yes. ↩︎
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It’s in The Doll’s House, issue # 13, “Men of Good Fortune”. Hob Gadling; he’s got his own Wikipedia entry ↩︎
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Incomplete in English, at least; the third part is due to be published next year, so it may well be finished in Chinese. ↩︎
Hell and Heaven
We come to the end of what I can now confidently say was my favourite series of new Doctor Who so far. No matter how good it was when it all came back with Chris Ecc (as we still like to call him in my family); how much we liked David Tennant; how manically brilliant Matt Smith was from day one: Peter Capaldi was on fire this season, and Stephen Moffat is at the top of his game as showrunner.
Were this last pair as good as “The Empty Child”/“The Doctor Dances” or “Blink”? It’s hard to say definitively, because those were so shockingly good when they hit us. But I think in time we’ll say so. I don’t doubt that Capaldi and the production team will win BAFTAs this year, and I’m sure that one of the last two will get the Hugo.
Awards may not mean that much (though let’s face it, they do) but when you see an award-worthy performance, or read something that you know is likely to win, that deserves to win – you know you’ve experienced something special.
And we experienced something very special in this season of Doctor Who And particularly in the last three episodes.
I just read a foolish comment on a Tor.com post about how great Capaldi is. It said, in effect, “That episode was only about the gender & skin-colour switching regeneration.” Yes, that was it: it was about that one thing and nothing else.
Seriously, though, that was a nice touch.
One thing I haven’t seen or heard mentioned is how terrified the Time Lords were of him – well, Rassilon, at least: one guy, and they send a vast floating gun platform to bring him in. Of course, it turns out that Rassilon was right to be afraid.
One thing about this episode and more importantly, the previous, seems to be causing people some confusion. The Doctor didn’t spend two billion years (or whatever) in the clockwork castle. Two billion years worth of copies of him – each with some awareness of its past iterations, triggered by the word “bird” – go through a near-identical experience.
Though Hell Bent proves that even The Doctor – or Stephen Moffat – is confused by this.
Mind you, the planet on which the castle is built does experience all that time, we must assume, as The Doctor observes how the stars have changed.
What the episode does do is address the old philosophical question of whether matter transmitters make copies. In the Whoniverse at least, they do.
Unless the whole thing is a simulation, including the changing stars.
Anyway, masterful, glorious work. I’m looking forward to the Christmas special.
Heaven and Lords
I wouldn't have minded if I had guessed it myself. But one little line in the Guardian Guide prompted me. All it did was make me think of something I hadn't thought of before, but it felt like a spoiler: "The Doctor comes closer than ever before to returning to Gallifrey," or some such.
And there it was: “They” from last week had to be the Time Lords.
But why? Why did they do it? Why put the Doctor through that, just to get him to Gallifrey? And also, how? of course: how can he get to Gallifrey when it’s supposed to be locked away in some pocket universe?
And titling: why was it called “Heaven Sent”?
Great episode, by the way. Best of the season. Indeed, I predict a Hugo.
And I expect we’ll find out some of the answers next week.
Raven and... What?
Well. Well, well well.
Well.
I have to say (and spoilers here for “Face the Raven”, if you haven’t seen it yet): that was companion-exit that guarantees they won’t be able to bring her back.
OK, yes, nothing is forever in Doctor Who, and there are already rumours or suggestions that Clara will be appearing in flashbacks or similar in the next two episodes. But that really felt properly final.
And I have to say, I hope it stays that way. Nothing against Clara, or Jenna Coleman – I think she was a good companion played by a very good actor – but it just feels that they’ve done too much of bringing companions back. Sure, we all love to see them again, but really? She’s gone out with a heroic and tragic last scene. It would cheapen it to bring her back.
Unless there was a very good reason, of course.
It occurs to me: if the planned new spinoff programme, Class, is to be set in and around Coal Hill School, where Clara was teaching: what does her death mean for that, for the characters in it? Presumably some of them will be her students, or teachers who knew her.
Anyway, back to Clara, and the Raven. And maybe her death wish?
I was pleased that she mentioned Danny Pink at the end, because I’ve been thinking that it was strange that neither she nor The Doctor had mentioned him in this season. It seemed that she really hadn’t had a chance go grieve properly – or hadn’t let herself do so.
Though we don’t know how long is supposed to have passed. It could be a year, two, since the events of “Death in Heaven”. Which doesn’t mean she’d have stopped grieving – certainly not that she’d have forgotten him. But she could have got to a place where she could carry on without always thinking of him.
But then there’s her mood this series, her mad drive for more adventures, her carelessness – best shown in this very episode with the way she hung out of the Tardis1
So if we want to psychoanlayse her, we can say that she has spent the last ten episodes (and maybe longer) running away from Danny’s death, from her own feelings about it; or running towards her own eventual death, her sacrifice.
This episode for me was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. I was considered quite contentious in my family when I said I thought that the current season was the best of New-Who. That led to much discussion of other past seasons, and my eventual acquiescence into the idea that it’s mainly the best because it’s the one that’s happening now. Like my friend Paul said a while back: “My favourite episode of Doctor Who? The next one.”
But I think the truth of it is that it has been a very even series: not great highs (except maybe this very episode) – no “Blink” or “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” or “Father’s Day”. But no real lows, either (arguably the previous episode, but I still think it was worthwhile.) An entire season (so far) of solid, strong episodes, leading to a climax like this – and who knows what will come next?
I note in passing that this reviewer thinks like me.
Anyway. There is much more I could say – like who are the “they” who have kidnapped The Doctor? The obvious answer would be Davros and the Daleks, possibly with help from Missy. That would bookend the season nicely, and make some sense of Ashildr asking for his “Confession Dial”. But that might be too obvious.
But that’s enough for now. Quoth the Raven, “Neverwhere’s all about hidden London, isn’t it?"
Sleep and No Raven?
Well, as far as we can tell, this one isn't part one of a two parter. So I guess I should write about it on its own.
I enjoyed it immensely – well, quite a lot – but I just wish sometimes they would take the trouble to come up with good, rational explanations for the events. Relatively simple steps, only needing a few extra words – or different words – in the script, could make these episodes be so much better.
The critical example of a story like this from last season is “Kill the Moon”. As I wrote at that link, they could relatively easily have included a few words that would have made the idea less preposterous. It wouldn’t necessarily be good science, but it would at least be less-ridiculous science than the explanation that was actually given.
So too here, then, with “Sleep No More.” The atmosphere and style of the episode were great. And the plot was fine. It was just the execution of the plot, including in particular the explanation for the problem, that let it down.
Let me explain what I mean. The plot, in summary, was: In found footage a mad scientist tells us the story of some soldiers investigating a space station that has dropped out of communication. The crew have been turned into dust-zombies by a machine that enables them to function on five minutes sleep a day. The explanation for the dust conversion is stupid.
The Doctor and Clara, of course, have arrived on the station and help to investigate. Clara gets sucked into the sleep machine, which means she will become a dust monster too.
Our heroes and the surviving troops escape in the TARDIS, and the mad scientist reveals he is a dust monster and is spreading the infection via the very recording we’re watching.
As I write that I realise that the whole Clara/infection thing wasn’t resolved, and nor, of course, was the infection via radio business (it reminded me slightly of Snow Crash, incidentally). So maybe they will revisit it, next week or later.
But the ostensible explanation – before we got the radio part from the mad scientist – was that somehow the sleep-compression machine caused the sleep in the corner of your eyes to – what, grow sentient and consume humans, generating more of itself in the process? It’s hard even to explain what they were getting at.
Yet all they had to do was to say it was an alien intelligence that hade got into the mad scientist’s head and convinced him that helping it to spread was the right thing. then even have the sleep-machines infecting people via nanotechnology.
The aliens could even be cousin-species of the Vashta Nerada, as there’s a certain similarity.
Of course, that way we’d lose the radio-transmission-based spread, which was a nice touch too. So maybe nanotech that is quiescent until activated by the code sent in the transmssion.
Either way, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to come up with an idea that doesn’t break the story, but which also doesn’t jerk the viewer out of their suspension of disbelief.
And don’t get me started on the Star Trek-style powered orbit.
In my family we have concluded that what the show needs is, like UNIT, a Scientific Advisor.
Invasion and Inversion
I thought of a couple of alternative titles for this: "Old Enough to be Your Messiah." (I'll bet that played well in parts of America.) "The Basil & Petronella Show." "Who's Gonna Make the Violins?" But for consistency with my other posts. I'm sticking with this.
This was a great pair of episodes. True, some will have found it hard to understand what was going on in the first episode; and true also, the whole Zygon plot might not have entirely made sense (why, in particular, do they have electric zappy powers now, and why does that turn people into sparking wire wool?) But the overall mood, and tone, and writing, were fantastic.
Not to mention the fanservice. The references to Harry Sullivan; the portrait of the first Doctor over the safe; “Five Rounds Rapid!” (Which, I discover, is the title of Nicholas Courtney’s autobiography.) I Loved it all.
This season feels to me like it’s really solid. There are no real highs: no “Blink”, no “The Empty Child” or “Father’s Day”. But there have been no really weak episodes yet either.
On second watching I caught an interesting snippet. When the Doctor is telling Zygella why he didn’t press the big button, he says he “let Clara Oswald get into [his] head.” Then he says, “she doesn’t leave.” Maybe that’ll be the big secret reveal of this season: Clara doesn’t leave after all.
No, I realise that can’t be so, as official BBC announcements have been made. But it was an interesting change from the heavy-handed foreshadowing of her departure that we’ve seen. Clara has been the Doctor’s – and our – companion for a long time now, and it’ll be strange for all of us to adjust to someone new.
I loved the Doctor’s speech – soliloquy, you might say – that reinstated the ceasefire. It’s his statement of Doctoriness.
Still wondering if there’s a big thing for this season. I mean, apart from Clara leaving. It has to be something to do with hybrids of some kind – I noticed that the second part didn’t use that word, though the first did. The Osgoods could be said to be a hybrid, but I can’t see them coming back before the end of this run. There’s the Dalek/Time Lord thing, which will have to play out at some point.
Then there’s the Minister of War – which could just be a throwaway name like the Nightmare Child; but I think it was placed too specifically for that. And Lady Me, or Ashildr. I fully expect to see her again.
I expect we’ll have to wait for the closing two-parter, “Heaven Sent”/“Hell Bent” to find out.
But before that we’ve got “Sleep No More” on Saturday. I don’t know if it’s a two-parter with the one after, “Face the Raven”, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Apprentice and Familiar
Out of sequence, but for completeness I should write a piece about the first two-parter in this year's Doctor Who series. "The Magician's Apprentice" and "The Witch's Familiar".
Excellent that they managed not to include the word “Dalek” in the title of a Dalek story. A genuine surprise when the boy in the minefield said his name.
And great, great interplay between Missy and Clara, especially.
But if we assume, as we must, that the Magician is The Doctor and Missy is the Witch , does that make Clara both the Apprentice and the Familar? Or is Davros one of all of the above? It’s all very mysterious.
And Dalek/Time Lord hybrids? This can’t end well.
Wait, though: following on from my previous: The Doctor isn’t the Scarecrow: he’s the Wizard. But then, who is behind the curtain?
Attack of the Clowns, or: Send in the Clones
Some time in 2002, as I suppose it must have been, I was driving through Hackney with my then-small son in the car, when he said, "Dad, I saw a clown."
OK, I thought, someone probably dressed up for a kids' party. It was a Saturday, as I recall. “Oh, yeah, where?” I glanced around, but couldn’t see any white faces or red noses.
“On a bus shelter.”
“A clown? On a bus shelter?”
“Yes. A clown. You know, from Star Wars.”
I guess I must have been able to give some explanation of what “clone” means, to a five-year-old. But it wasn’t till last weekend that we finally saw the relevant movie.
And as before… it wasn’t as bad as I’ve been led to believe. Keeping your expectations low always helps.
It wasn’t great, it’s true. In particular I wasn’t convinced by Anakin and Padmé falling in love. Anakin, yes, but Padmé, really, no.
I had a hard time working out what the sides were in the big battle. The clones end up fighting on the side of the Republic? I didn’t expect that.
And this bothers me: if you are an assemblage of planets joined together in common cause by treaty, and some of those planets decide they want to leave – going to war over it should be the furthest thing from your mind. It would be like if a country wanted to leave the EU, and the rest of the EU formed a vast army to force them to stay in it. That’s not the action of a peaceful democratic entity.
It’s also insane. Even if you win and make the would-be-leavers stay, you’ve now got a load of people – whole worlds – who are actively hostile to the grouping they are within. That can’t be healthy.
Now, if a subset leaves peacefully, and then war developed later on, that would be more believeable. After all, we acknowledge the EU’s effect of helping to keep Europe peaceful these past seventy years. It’s one of the reasons I am strongly against the idea of Britain leaving.
But most importantly of all: you can’t say “federation starships” and mean the bad guys. I know they were talking about the Trade Federation, but “federation starship” means something in SF, and to hear it used here was really jarring. Did Lucas have beef with Roddenberry, or something?
Yoda fighting was fun. He’s so tiny.
And I’ve booked a work outing to see Episode VII on the 17th of December, the day it opens.
Died and Lived
Some quick thoughts on the "The Girl Who Died"/"The Woman Who LIved" Doctor Who diptych.
It’s unusual and intriguing to see what was effectively a two-part story with different writing credits for each part. Yet there was no real need for these two episodes to be shown back-to-back, and indeed I partly got the sense that they might have been stronger if they had been separated by a few other stories.
On the other hand I’m fairly sure that the second part had to happen now because they’re gearing up to something. Maisie Williams’s Ashildr or “Me” character is, I feel sure, fundamental to this season’s overall story, if it has one.
After the first part I had the idea that Ashildr was going to become “The Minister of War”, the mysterious figure that was referred to by O’Donnell in “Under the Lake” as being something that 1980 was before – along with the moon blowing up and Harold Saxon.
Such an ominous-sounding figure is surely going to be an enemy of The Doctor, and at the end of “The Girl Who Died” he had created a near immortal who might not be at all happy with him about the situation, and who might use her longevity to gain power.
As indeed was the case, as we saw in “The Woman Who Lived”. However by the end of the second part I was less sure that Ashildr’s future role will be that one. It seems fairly likely that she’s going to have one, though, with her promise to pick up the pieces after The Doctor runs away, the giant foreshadowing of Clara’s departure, and of course her appearance in the background of Clara’s pupil’s photo.
However I get the feeling that her intentions will be more benign.
All just wild speculation, of course.
This pair of episodes were probably the weakest of the series so far, but they were still very good. Effective lightening of the mood with the comedy elements, while still not shying away from the darkness.
One last thought: in the pub scene at the end there were two people at a table in the foreground. I haven’t checked yet, but I’m fairly sure that the shot was a visual allusion to the Sandman episode whose title escapes me,1 but in which Death agrees with her brother that she won’t take this one guy, and Morpheus meets him in taverns every hundred years. Which would tie in with the immortality theme, of course.
Oh, and: on Jason Snell’s Incomparable Flashcast about the second part (which episode Mr Snell wasn’t on, but never mind), the alien was likened to an “angry Cowardly Lion”. Now I’m sure there was also a mention by The Doctor of Ashildr’s heart “rusting” or “needing lubrication”, or some such – which was surely a reference to the Tin Woodsman. Which makes The Doctor The Scarecrow?
And Clara is Toto, of course, since Missy already likened her to a small dog.
I’m sure it’ll all make sense eventually.
Lake and Flood
Well, I'm not quite sure that Toby Whithouse quite managed to make the second episode as good as the first, but I'm loving the new series of Doctor Who.
The Beethoven bit at the start was unnecessary: a rare example of the modern show not expecting the viewer to keep up, but assuming they’ll need an explanation – a pre-explanation in this case, but still. (Also breaking the fourth wall; most unusual.)
On the other hand, maybe some people would have been a bit lost at the end without it. Maybe all of us would have missed the point and weeks later we’d have gone “Wait, but he only did that because he –” Which has its own pleasure too, of course.
My main concern was that The Doctor let O’Donnell die, without any apparent remorse. I have a feeling that might come back to haunt him.
Also: loving the two-parters. Proper cliffhangers and all. How about a traditional four-parter next season?
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Translated by Ken Liu (Books 2015, 8)
I feel that we should be rendering the author’s name in the Chinese way, with the family name first: Liu Cixin. That’s how he signs himself in the “Author’s Postscript”, and that’s how the translator renders all the characters’ names. But the above is how the publishers have done it, so we’ll stick with that for now.
As a work in translation, The Three-Body Problem fits well within the parameters of The Tempest Challenge, which, as I told you, I’m taking this year. It’s also this year’s Hugo winner, so I was keen to read it for that reason.
Right at the start I felt a mild sense of annoyance, because it was only then that I realised it is part of an incomplete trilogy.1 I’m not keen on starting unfinished serieses (it is so a word).
I finished it last night with a sense of surprise. According to my Kindle I was only at 85%; more importantly it didn’t exactly feel like the end, though to be fair I wasn’t quite sure where it could go from that point. I knew there were notes from the author and the translator, but they surely couldn’t be that long?
They couldn’t. But it turns out that the digital copy contains an extract from the next book in the series. I’m not sure how I feel about this trend in general. I don’t think I’ve ever read one of them. But I do think they’re getting too damn big: this one was fully 10% of the file, according to the Kindle. One tenth of a novel is not in fact that novel, but an extract from the next one? I don’t think that’s a great trend. But to the content. What did I actually think of the work? Umm… mixed. I enjoyed it overall, am glad I read it, and will probably read the sequels. But it has problems that I don’t think are just caused by my cultural expectations. Though they might be: the translator, Ken Liu, in his postscript says:
But there are more subtle issues involving literary devices and narration techniques. The Chinese literary tradition shaped and was shaped by its readers, giving rise to different emphases and preferences in fiction compared to what American readers expect. In some cases, I tried to adjust the narrative techniques to ones that American readers are more familiar with. In other cases I've left them alone, believing that it's better to retain the flavour of the original.
Which is fair enough, and for “American” it’s safe to read “British”, as well. But perhaps the most important literary technique – or at least, the admonition most often drummed into beginning writers – is “show, don’t tell”. As I have argued myself, it’s not a rule that can or should be set in stone; but there are times when violating it comes across as clumsy at best.
There are many such times in The Three-Body Problem. Long sections of characters' lives are told to us as a history. Similarly with the sections that take place in the “Three Body” game.
There are some great ideas here; in particular the best use of monomolecular fibres since – was it “Johnny Mnemonic”? One of William Gibson’s shorts, anyway. It’s also worth reading for the historical parts: the terror of living through China’s Cultural Revolution is well evoked. But the aliens are hard to believe in.
And part of the initial setup: scientists are killing themselves because things seem to have gone fundmentally wrong with physics. I found that unconvincing. If as a scientist you find things not behaving as you expect – even seemingly randomly – you don’t give up on science and life; you try to find a new theory to fit the facts.
Lastly, I don’t think we ever found out what’s supposed to happen at the end of the countdown.
But I don’t mean to do a hatchet job. I did enjoy it, and as I say, I’ll probably read the sequels. Would it have won the Hugo in a less puppy-infested year? Maybe. You can never tell.
Mind of My Mind by Octavia E Butler (Books 2015, 6)
The next book in the Patternist series after Wild Seed, which I wrote about before. I would describe it as the sequel to the other one, except that it turns out that they were written out of sequence.
This perhaps explains why the character of Anyanwu, who, as you’ll recall, I felt was slightly disappointing in the first book, is completely sidelined and, indeed, thrown away, in this one.
The other reason is that the focus has moved on to a new generation of Doro’s descendants. We are in mid to late 20th-century America, and his breeding programme is finally beginning to pay off. More spectacularly than he had ever imagined, it seems, as some of his telepaths – who up until now have not been able to bear being near each other – form a kind of group or meld they call the Pattern.
This makes them able to both work and live together, and increases their power and effectiveness enormously.
Things ensue. It’s good, but still feels kind of weak to me. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t that compelling.
Also I thought I had read this one, years ago, but none of it was even the slightest bit familiar to me, so I guess not.
Wild Seed by Octavia E Butler (books, 2015, 5)
Halfway through the year and only five books in? This is shocking behaviour!
I’m glad I read this, and I sort of enjoyed it, but I wasn’t entirely happy with it.
There are two main characters, both of whom appear to be functionally immortal, though with different mechanisms for keeping them alive. The shapeshifting, self-healing (and healer of others) Anyanwu is an African woman in the seventeenth century when we meet her. She is already two or three hundred years old.
The male immortal, Doro, is even older. For perhaps thousands of years he has survived by stealing bodies. His consciousness hops from his current one to another when the latter threatens him, or just when he chooses it. The personality of his destination body is of course destroyed in the hop, and the body he leaves also dies. Anyanwu is attracted to his power and the fact that they are apparently the only such long-lived people on Earth, but is repelled by the mechanism of his survival.
As she is by his long-term (really long-term) project to try to breed people with special abilities – many of the subjects of which are, or may be, distant descendants of her, or of his original people (most of whom he killed in panic when he first “died” and found himself in a new body).
I was annoyed at Anyanwu as a character at times, by the way she didn’t resist Doro when he had her do things she didn’t want to do. But he is an expert manipulator and is willing to threaten her kids to bend her to his will. And I guess that cleverly evokes the reality of women’s situation often in history, and certainly at that time.
This is the start of the Seed to Harvest series, and I’m keen to see where it goes.
The Phantom Menace
Just who (or what) is the menacing phantom?
Following on from my On things never seen post, yesterday was Father's Day, and we watched The Phantom Menace.
It is not as bad – not nearly as bad – as nearly everyone makes out.
It starts badly, oddly enough. Not just the dull scroll about the Trade Federation, but then you have the Japanese-sounding guys in charge of the blockade and invasion, who are voiced by people who seemingly can't act. Their dialogue is frankly embarrassing.
But much of it is fine. Sure, there are holes in the logic, places where it doesn't exactly make sense; but what film doesn't have instances like that?
Even – and I realise I'm committing a kind of geek sacrilege as I write this – even Jar-Jar Binks isn't that annoying. Could the plot have worked without him, or with him not being a comedic figure? Of course. But having him as he is, does no harm.
But hey: I liked Wesley Crusher, too.
And that's about as much as I'm going to say about it for now.
On things never seen
There's a programme on Radio 4 from time to time (and it has made the transition to TV) called I've Never Seen Star Wars. In it Marcus Brigstocke gets a guest to try things that they have never tired before. Conversation ensues, and it can be amusing.
Anyway, the title clearly derives from how unlikely it is that anyone (of a certain generation or three, at least) will not have seen it.
In case you’re worrying, I saw the original – back when it was just called Star Wars, without the Episode IV: A New Hope subtitle – in the cinema (probably second run, not first, but still). And the second and third, of course.
But then there was the prequel trilogy. To be honest, when The Phantom Menace came out, I don’t think I was all that interested. I had known from early on that Lucas had planned the original as part of the middle trilogy of three. But by the time the prequels started, it had been so long that it just didn’t seem very important, you know?
And more importantly, in 1999 when it came out, I had a small child. We weren’t going to many films that weren’t aimed at like two-year olds. And after that, there was always something more interesting, more pressing to see…
I mislead you slightly, here. I did, in fact, see The Phantom Menace, after a fashion: on a shonky old VHS, with a three-year old sweetly chattering on the sofa next to me throughout. It hardly counts. And I definitely haven’t seen the others.
And I know everyone says, “Don’t bother, don’t waste your time, they’re terrible;” but they can only say that because they’ve seen them. And now – now there’s a new one coming down the line. Episode VII, The Force Awakens is due out in December, and I’ll certainly want to see it. Of course, it will follow on from Return of the Jedi, and it probably won’t matter if you haven’t seen episodes I-III; but it just wouldn’t feel right to not see them.
So I intend to watch the prequel trilogy. I was going to start today – the fourth of May be with you, and all that – but events got in the way. Still, over the next few weeks I’ll watch all three, and report back here.
Wish me luck.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Books 2015, 2)
There's an old saying by Robert Heinlein (or by one or more of his characters): "It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time." Technological advances -- and implicitly, other changes, such as social ones -- will happen when a certain weight of events and situations accrues, irrespective of the individuals involved. The steam engine would have been developed around that time with or without Stephenson; the radio in its era even without Marconi, and so on.
By that token these few years seem to be time-jump-story time. For here we have a story that, superficially at least, is very similar to Life After Life, which I wrote about last year as part of The First Three Books of the Year.
The similarity is that we have a character who lives his life, dies, and then lives it all over again. The major differences in this case are that he remembers his previous lives; and that there are others like him.
Also in this one the characters – some of them, at least – question their situation, wonder about how and why it happens. They make use of their gift or curse. As such it is more a work of SF than Life After Life was.
Claire North, we are told at the start, is the pseudonym of a British author. Turns out it’s Catherine Webb, of whom I’ve written before, here. I see that I was critical then of her plotting, and the ending. The current book is much stronger in both regards.
Though it’s not entirely satisfactory. I find it slightly annoying because – and I’m moving into spoiler territory, so you might want to stop reading – while the people who have this affliction – members of the Cronus Club, or kalachakra, as they are called – do ask some questions of their situation, the only one who really tries to explore, to investigate, to understand it: he’s the bad guy. The engine of the plot is to preserve the status quo.
True (within the book, and probably in reality), messing with the status quo – trying to make significant changes to the way historic events play out – tends to make a big mess of things, because history is too complex for anyone to really understand all the causes and effects and so guide it. But Vincent, the antagonist in question, is at least trying to gain some understanding. An alternative to trying to stop him might have been to work with him, but find a less destructive way to do it.
On the other hand, of course, that would have made for a less interesting, less fun story. And as it stands, this is both. So I can’t really complain.
Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains
Malcolm Reynolds’ twelve-headed hydra wang of hate for the alliance doesn’t come from outrage over the dubious morality of a couple of black bag cabals within the government
An excellent analysis of Firefly and Serenity, by someone who loves them as all right-thinking people should.
via Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains | Jay Kristoff - Literary Giant.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Books 2014, 13)
This is the one that's won them all: BSFA (jointly), Clarke, Nebula, and more recently, the Hugo Award. Never before has a single book had such a sweeping effect on the world of SF awards.
And does it deserve them all? Does it live up to the effusive reaction of the community?
Err, well… no, not really.
Which is not to say it’s bad. In a sense, nothing could live up that level of praise.
However, my personal problem with it – at least at first – was this: I like my super-intelligent spaceship minds to be the good guys. To be part of, and defending, Utopia. In short, I want The Culture. And I guess I hoped that Ann Leckie might sort of take Banksie’s place.
Obviously there wasn’t much chance of that, and it isn’t fair to judge the book on those terms.
So, back to its own terms. In any case, these super-intelligent spaceship minds aren’t necessarily bad guys; but they’re in the service of a pretty unpleasant empire. Though things get ambiguous. And interesting. And of course, there’s the gender-blindness of the viewpoint character, which is great. So yeah, it was fun, I enjoyed it, it goes to some interesting places, and it sets things up nicely for a series.
Oh, god, a series. Does nobody write books in ones any more? I was just looking at the current crop of so-called “Black Friday” deals on Kindle. There were quite a lot of books for crazy-cheap prices. Except… there weren’t really that many if you count a series as one.
C’mon, folks, write a book that doesn’t have a sequel, hey?
But I digress. Go read about Ancillary Justice: you’ll find reviews of it all over the place. Then go and read it. It’s great.
Space bat angel dragons hatch in their own way
Sometimes you're thinking about writing a blog post and then you write a long comment on someone else's post that contains most of what you were planning on saying. So I wrote this as a comment on The Reinvigorated Programmer, and thought I should repeat it here.
The background: Mike, the Programmer and Doctor Who fan, if that’s not too tautologous, was complaining about the latest episode, “Kill the Moon”. Now, I didn’t think it was all that bad, as these things go, but I knew that other people, on Facebook and elsewhere, have both complained about it and praised it. Which seems to be par for the course this series (and maybe every series). Anyway, I had some thoughts on the matter, and put them like this.
I was disappointed that they didn’t put in at least a handwavy explanation of the extra mass (which they could have done: posit highly-effecient energy-to-mass conversion, and the sun). But as people have said in other places, you’re accepting a time-travelling, dimensionally-transcendental blue box, and a regenerating Time Lord, so…?
As to the biology of the creature… well, it’s alien. Possibly one of a kind. Why wouldn’t it lay an egg as soon as it hatched? Remembering that “egg” and “hatch” are only our Terracentrist words for something entirely other.
Indeed, that could be exactly why the creature’s mass spikes in the last few years or months of its dormant cycle: it’s forming the new “egg” so it itself will be ready to “hatch”.
And by default it would be in the same orbit, unless something displaced it.
But yes, while you can argue all that, the story would have been improved if it had included at least a nod to those points. And they should have got their sums right.
But I think there’s something bigger going on across this whole series. It’s the development of Clara’s character, and Danny’s secret, and everything. It’s more: I just have a feeling that there’s something else behind it all. Maybe I’ve just been trained to expect a season arc since the Bad Wolf, but… there’s definitely something going on.
And Missy and the promised land, of course.
Someone somewhere suggested that maybe the whole series is taking place in a miniscope, since the Doc mentioned them in episode 3. I hope it’s more than that.
Pavane by Keith Roberts (Books, 2014, 6)
This is considered to be one of the seminal works of alternative history; often mentioned alongside The Man in the High Castle
Instead of the Axis forces winning the Second World War, as in Dick’s classic, the break point is Queen Elizabeth I being assassinated, which leads to the Spanish invading England (Scotland’s situation is never mentioned) via the Armada, and so the Catholic church becomes the dominant force in the world (at least Europe and the Americas) for centuries.
Most of which is told in a short prologue. The body of the novel (which a I believe is a fix-up, and certainly feels like it) consists of four short stories with some overlapping characters, which tell the tale of how rebellion against the Church comes to England.
I quite enjoyed it, but was put off at the start, because frankly the nuances of the workings of a traction engine running the freight across the country through a frozen winter night, were not all that interesting. In fact, it was downright boring. Would it have been less so if it were about a spaceship, instead of a traction engine? Obviously; anything is more fun with spaceships in it. But that’s not the point.
In fact, the point is largely our old friend “show, don’t tell.” I don’t automatically hold with that myself; there are plenty of examples of good stories working by “telling.” The problem is that if you rely entirely or mainly on telling, it’s easy to lose either or both of the characters and the action. Certainly you can tell us what’s happening; but it’ll have a much stronger impact if you make us feel it.
The second section, for example, starts with a young man bleeding to death in the snow, and then jumps back to his training as a signaller. A much more gripping way to handle things.
The time period appears to be from around the sixties through to the eighties, but the Church’s dead hand has so stifled technological progress that semaphore and steam remain the height of technology.
And there are fairies; old English magic that the Church hasn’t quite managed to wipe out. But they are kind of abandoned after the second (maybe third) story.
Anyway, after that initial hump it was enjoyable enough, but it’s a pleasingly slim book. If it had been the size of a modern novel, I’m not sure it would have held my interest.