http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085325.html[return][return]Paul Cornell takes us to New Mexico, where the governor has just announced her candidacy forhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085325.html[return][return]Paul Cornell takes us to New Mexico, where the governor has just announced her candidacy for President, and at the same time she and her husband are mixed up in a peculiar incident of apparent alien abduction. It isn't utterly dissimilar to his London Falling, which also has establishment figures from unusual backgrounds (his varied police squad) having to deal with the unexpectedly sfnal in their work.[return][return]Cornell deconstructs the lore of UFOlogy entertainingly (largely through a massive infodump in the last of the six issues collected here, issued by a character who talks to the Pioneer plaque people); meanwhile sinister political forces which want to bring down the governor are at least partly aware of what is going on, and conspiracies simmer. It's good fun....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084069.html[return][return]These are the ten winning entries of an international competition for graphic short stories http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084069.html[return][return]These are the ten winning entries of an international competition for graphic short stories set in Brussels, and specifically using the setting of the Oude Graanmarkt (aka the Vieux March� aux Grains), a city centre square which I occasionally wander through on the rare occasions I am in that side of town.[return][return]Inevitably, the mandate was interpreted in various ways, and in fact two of my favourite pieces (Tom�a Ku erovsk�'s "Stereotypen" and William Goldsmith's "De Moderne Rondeau") both contrast the fading gentility of the central square with the European Parliament's modernist architecture, which of course I know much better. Ku erovsk� has quite a witty deconstruction of what people think they see in Brussels. Goldsmith's protagonist gets sucked into a historical mystery linking Brussels and Canada, a hundred years apart.[return][return]I bought the book mainly to try and improve my vestigial knowledge of comics in Flanders, but only three of the ten pieces are actually by Flemish writers; of these, the one I liked best was "De Wandeling" by Conz (Constantijn Van Cauwenberghe), in which the protagonist takes a ghostly dinosaur on the walk from the Oude Graanmarkt to the Natural History Museum. (The other two locals are Frederik Van den Stock and Steven "Stedho" Dhondt.) All good stuff though....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2083104.html[return][return]It is a four-handed play, two characters being very loosely based on the Observatory's firsthttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2083104.html[return][return]It is a four-handed play, two characters being very loosely based on the Observatory's first director and his assistant in 1799, the other two being a 1999 astronomer and her occasional lover, a historian. It's a fairly simple plot - time-travel romance and revolutionary betrayal - but offers some space for reflection on history and place. I would encourage theatrical folks with sfnal and/or Irish sympathies to give this short piece a try; it could work quite well. (Though I winced a bit at a scene where a transit of Mercury is observed at night.)...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]the middle book of a climactic sequence in which villains from previous volumes have come tohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]the middle book of a climactic sequence in which villains from previous volumes have come together and enslaved Hiccup's village, while plotting magical domination of the known world (or at least the Viking archipelago). The is a fairly spectacular set of scenes around a geographically improbable desert, and Hiccup must deal separately with mummy and daddy issues. I did not feel the urge to seek out any more in the series to see how it ends...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2083743.html[return][return]This is a digestible book of 35 essays about Catalonia, all written at the end of last year,http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2083743.html[return][return]This is a digestible book of 35 essays about Catalonia, all written at the end of last year, which is being widely distributed by sympathisers of the Catalan cause. The two key grievances which come up again and again are the question of fiscal imbalance, where Catalonia feels that it is subsidising the manifestly unsuccessful policies of the central Spanish state, over which is has little say and for which it gets little in return; and the language issue - using Catalan in public could get you arrested not very long ago, and Madrid does little to reassure Catalan concerns on this point. There are two pieces about Europe, a snapshot of Brussels opinion by a leading MEP, and a brief but powerful piece by Edward Hugh on the political economics (or the economic politics) of Catalonia's drive for independence....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2080503.html[return][return]For someone who claims over and over that he hates London, Lovejoy spends a lot of time therhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2080503.html[return][return]For someone who claims over and over that he hates London, Lovejoy spends a lot of time there in this novel, which has all the rambles of the later books in the series (only three more after this, including The Ten Word Game and Faces in the Pool). At least, however, there is a core plot - with admittedly an awful lot of distraction - in which an even randier than usual Lovejoy attempts to wreak justice on those who have hounded a former lover, caused the death of her husband and threatened their son. (Whose son? Hmm.) There are some lovely Lydia moments as well - she is the most entertaining of the semi-regular characters in these books, and will get an unexpected twist in her tale in a couple of books' time - and the usual incredible detail about antiques and other issues (such as the precise distinction between a padparadsha and a tsavorite). I don't think this is a gateway book for non-Lovejoy fans, but it's an entertaining book for those of us who are....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079774.html[return][return]A rambling combination of detective story, solar system travelogue, and rather unconvincing http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079774.html[return][return]A rambling combination of detective story, solar system travelogue, and rather unconvincing romance, this book may be the favourite on the BSFA shortlist for Best Novel, going by GoodReads / LibraryThing statistics. James Nicoll and Vandana Singh have pointed out some of its failings. I too was disappointed by it; I found myself several times looking up from the screen (reading on various combinations of iPad and iPhone) and thinking, "This narrative technique was done much better in the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Who is it who wrote this book and is trying to rip off KSR's style? Oh..."[return][return]In particular, I felt that a couple of important plot points were simply badly done - the mysterious person who appears on Io quite early on, and the kidnapping of our heroine while visiting China, are both important developments which are just under-reported. Also, the policeman at the heart of the detective story element behaves in an utterly unprofessional way in terms of sharing his speculation on the crime (the destruction of a large city on Mercury, and related events) with our protagonists - it is as bad as The Terminal Experiment. As both Singh and Nicoll point out, our heroes' decision to crucially intervene in the ecosystem of Earth is arrogant and crazy, but reported in entirely positive terms. And there is a crashingly dull lecture on revolutions in the middle.[return][return]There are good bits too. There are two excellent descriptive set-pieces - the long walk through the tunnels of Mercury, and the dangerous spacewalk in the orbit of Venus - which really grabbed me. The descriptions of worlds other than Earth are vivid and engaging (just a shame about Earth then). But it's a bit of a trudge to get to those parts.[return][return](Also, annoyingly, "Yggdrasil" was mis-spelt "Ygassdril" at several points.")...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2077343.html[return][return]This is a terrifically well-researched and fluently written account of occupied France durinhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2077343.html[return][return]This is a terrifically well-researched and fluently written account of occupied France during the second world war. It is a subject where of which my previous knowledge could probably have fitted on the back of a postcard - collapse in 1940, P�tain and Laval, resistance, D-Day, don't take 'Allo! 'Allo! seriously. I had never considered the impact on France of the continuing imprisonment of the two million - two million! - soldiers captured in 1940, plus the hundreds of thousands more subsequently conscripted for forced labour in Germany even as the Nazi regime was collapsing. It was also interesting to learn about the internal ideological manSuvres of the P�tain regime, building a cult of personality as a replacement for actually exercising power and delivering services. And he reports humanely and fairly neutrally on the �puration, the retaliation by both state structures and people taking the law into their own hands, against collaborators after the Liberation.[return][return]Vinen also illustrates well a point that I often consider in my professional work - that people rarely know the full picture of what is going on, and definitely don't know the future; in the summer of 1940, it seemed entirely probable that the war might be over in a few months with a German victory; in 1944, we tend to remember Operation Overlord as the successful sweep from Normandy to Belgium that it became, forgetting that to those on the ground, the winner did not seem at all clear, and in any case pockets of Germans were left behind as the invasion swept past.[return][return]But much the most interesting parts of the book deal with the effect of the occupation on women, looking especially at those on the margins - those who fell in love with Germans, or became prostitutes, or were successful entrepreneurs in the black market, or found some other nonconformist means of survival in miserable circumstances; and they of course were most likely to be targeted in the �puration. He makes the point that we have very few first-person accounts from these sources; the odd iconic photograph which represents only one story of the many. All of it is fascinating, but some of those accounts are heart-breaking....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]The origin story, where Hiccup bonds with a rather useless dragon called Toothless and then http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]The origin story, where Hiccup bonds with a rather useless dragon called Toothless and then must help his tribe deal with a giant dragon which turns up and threatens to eat them all....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]I liked this the most of the four; to save his friend, Hiccup must retrieve a mysterious veghttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]I liked this the most of the four; to save his friend, Hiccup must retrieve a mysterious vegetable called a potato from a vicious neighbouring tribe who have found it in a new land to the west. The is a lot of humour about how America and the potato are actually taboo topics among the Vikings who ought not to have discovered them yet, and Camicazi is a welcome foil to Hiccup....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085481.html[return][return]A collection of linked Tenth Doctor graphic stories, the first two issues set in Hollywood ihttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085481.html[return][return]A collection of linked Tenth Doctor graphic stories, the first two issues set in Hollywood in 1926 with the Doctor collaborating with film star Archie Maplin (an obvious duplicate of Charlie Chaplin) and the following four taking him through a struggle with the Shadow Proclamation, or more particularly with Mr Finch / Brother Lassar from School Reunion, aided by a Draconian, an Ogron and a Sontaran. Lee is sensitive to his material and there were several great squee moments for my fanboy heart (including shoutouts to Big Finish continuity).[return][return]Unfortunately I felt the artists failed to quite capture David Tennant's (or Anthony Stewart Head's) facial features, with Matthew Dow Smith, doing the second run of four issues, slightly better than Al Davison, doing the first two. (The frame shown here is Smith rather than Davison.) If you can swallow that, the story is quite good, and I will work through the next volumes happily....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid1[return][return]This is the first of Terrance Dicks' three novels about the Players, a mysterious rachttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid1[return][return]This is the first of Terrance Dicks' three novels about the Players, a mysterious race of manipulators of human history for the sake of a grand Game, reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's "The Game of Blood and Dust" (a favourite short story of mine). Anyone who wondered why Ian McNiece's character seemed so chummy with the Doctor back in 2010 can find the answer in this book, which is largely about the Sixth Doctor and Peri encountering Churchill in the Boer War and then in 1936, though with a brief flashback to an adventure of the Second Doctor with Churchill in 1915, in which the future prime minister is rescued from capture by the Germans.[return][return]Dicks is of the generation who knew Churchill as a genuine time-travelling hero, in that he progressed from a young officer in the British army's last meaningful cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898 to being the man in charge of a nuclear power. It sort of seems obvious in retrospect that Churchill and the Doctor should meet, and it's almost surprising that it hadn't happened on screen or page before.[return][return]The plot itself is thrilling stuff, ending in confrontation with Joachim von Ribbentrop and a direct intervention into the 1936 abdication of Edward VII, where the Doctor and Peri successfully keep history back on the right lines despite the efforts of the Players. Fun, if not profound, told in Dicks' characteristically clear prose, and bringing in plenty of references to Dicks' other Who work - The War Games, of course, but also Dekker from Blood Harvest and off-screen references to the events of Timewyrm: Exodus. Interested readers can pick up a brand new edition, as it is one of the 11 books reissued by the BBC for the 50th anniversary....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid3[return][return]we have a brief return to Carstairs and Lady Jennifer in the First World War, and thehttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid3[return][return]we have a brief return to Carstairs and Lady Jennifer in the First World War, and then the Second Doctor and new Time Lord companion Serena, dipping in and out of the timeline of the Napoleonic wars, trying to prevent history from being diverted by the Players. This is all set during Season 6B (as is the Second Doctor section of Players) with the Doctor sent on mission by the Celestial Intervention Agency in order to diminish his sentence to exile and forced regeneration. It ends with the Doctor accepting the mission which we know as The Two Doctors. Lots of Napoleonic romping, particularly with the very steampunkish submarine which was indeed designed for Napoleon by American inventor Robert Fulton, though some liberties are taken with the historical timeline. [return][return]The climax comes just before the Battle of Waterloo, and one inaccuracy tweaked my Belgian sensibilities: the Doctor walks from the denouement at the Duchess of Richmond's Ball to the Parc de Bruxelles via the Place Royale, which is rather a long way round. (The ball, as far as I can tell, was held roughly on the spot which is now the location of the car park for the City 2 shopping centre.)[return][return]It's an interesting case of Dicks reinterpreting bits of later continuity to fit what he might have done in 1969, had he been thinking about it then; the inclusion of psychic paper (the book was published in 2005, one of the last of the Past Doctor Adventures range, and after New Who had started) is perhaps the most dramatic example. Serena is perhaps a thought experiment as to how Romana might have been done in the black and white era, and the Players themselves are an odd combination of the War Lords and perhaps the Eternals. (The Sarah Jane Adventures took the concept and tweaked it into the Trickster, who operates on a much more personal rather than historical level.)...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085719.html[return][return]Not a lot of best-selling novels set in fifteenth-century Belgium, though I have to say I wahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2085719.html[return][return]Not a lot of best-selling novels set in fifteenth-century Belgium, though I have to say I wasn't hugely satisfied with this one; bad boy artist Nicolas travels between Paris and Brussels impregnating young women, one of them the blind daughter of the weaver of the tapestry which he has designed. There's a fair bit about art and patterns of patronage and so on, but I felt the writer was a little too much in love with her irresponsible hero....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid2[return][return]Continuing the arc of the amnesiac Eighth Doctor, this novel actually has some similahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid2[return][return]Continuing the arc of the amnesiac Eighth Doctor, this novel actually has some similarities with The Turing Test, its immediate predecessor in the series, but I enjoyed it more (not saying much, I'm afraid). We are now in 1951, with the Players trying to resolve their Game through causing, or preventing, nuclear war. The story swirls round the Cambridge Spies, with Burgess, MacLean and Philby playing key roles and the Doctor and Peri eventually flying to Washington and Moscow to prevent the Players from working their way on the minds of Truman and Stalin, with a final emotional appeal on behalf of humanity melting their inhuman hearts. The research was clearly meticulous, but the results not all that inspiring....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084161.html[return][return]good to read a New Advnture that deliberately and successfully played up the comedy - this ohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084161.html[return][return]good to read a New Advnture that deliberately and successfully played up the comedy - this often misfires for me, but in this case I was able to roll with the very alien creatures and their sinister plans while also sympathising very much with the confused new companions Roz and Chris; like them, I was never completely convinced that I knew what was going on, but it was fun and kept me engaged....more
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