Book review: Journey to the Center

I have vague but fond memories of The Halcyon Drift, but have not read any Brian Stableford for... many decades. The cover of this is not promising, but never mind, I gave it a whirl. I slightly regret doing so; the book itself is not worth reading, as I should have known, except perhaps as a slight foreshadow of Bank's Matter.

The first para of this review is pretty telling. Both for why you might want to read it, but why you actually don't.

The plot - I expound it, because I shall rely on your accepting my recommendation not to bother read this thing - is the familiar lone-explorer type of guy getting pressed into leading a group of people into a situation, in this case a quasi-artifical planet with multiple levels. Since each level is, say, only 100 m thick there are - unlike in Matter - potentially tens of thousands of levels in the interior, and who knows what vast riches of alien relics; we get the usual sort of stuff where loners go off exploring. Weirdly, it is supposed that there may be aliens in the interior who have lost contact with the surface, for some reason when building the world they neglected to lay any cable feeds upwards, never mind.

Aanyway, apart from a bit of wham-bam stuff Our Hero ends up meeting the aliens, sort of, and then comes out again. This is but the first of a trilogy so somewhing more exciting might happen in the next two volumes, but I'm not holding my breath or planning to find out.

Scotland, 2026

The 4C's - well, AH - have organised a trip to Scotland again this winter, and it almost feels like a tradition now, harkening back to the days of yore. Following last year's Cairngorms, we're going to Fort William this year. Here, as an aide memoire, is a pic of most of the stuff I'm taking. I'm driving alone in the car so can afford to take whatever I feel like.

So we have:

* (green bag on left): Miranda's boots and raincoat

* (grey bag on top with stripey stuff): misc winter clothes likely not to be used

* (black bag rightwards): Daniel's yellow sleeping bag, a bivvi sac, and inners for me and E; I expect to use none of that

* (white bag above that): rock shoes, chalk: since E has invited me bouldering on Thursday night

* (small black bag rightwards): my usual "little black bag" of compass, spare batteries, spare glasses, lip salve, headtorch

* (purple bag): my walking boots, and my old plastic boots, to go with the skis

* (black and white holdall): two new tech axes, two old tech axes, two lightweight axes, two aluminium crampons and one steel, and the new Leopards, E's helmet, two Z-fold poles and two telescopic poles

* (blue bag): std gear bag, which I guess I'll sort on Friday night, or maybe Thursday

* (rope bag): old slinky blue; new slinky orange 60m, new non-slinky blue, my helmet, E's harness (my two are in the gear bag)

* (in front): my old skis with Silvretta 404 bindings (and, not shown: poles). I might get a chance to try them, who knows. And hope to hire some modern bindings for a day, too.

In my big blue rucksac: old green warm waterproof trousers; new black waterproof trousers; raincoat; down jacket; thin yellow spare raincoat; walky-talkies; yellow bag with chargers and cables.

Also to take: car food, and enough pasta to get us through Friday night if we need it; and 4 x 100g fruit+nut bars.

In retrospect: I took too much stuff, though it didn't actually matter much so maybe I didn't. Had I paid more attention to the wx, I could have skipped the skis and old boots; and I could have pre-winnowed the ropes perhaps.

What actually happened

A quick run through; I don't think I need to trouble you with details. Full pix for the trip are here; just mountain ones here.

Thurs: drive up, starting off about 9, a few stops along the way, most notably at Barter Books in Alnwick and a walk along the coast just before Bamburgh. Arrive at Edinburgh before 8, join E and Milo at The Climbing Hangar for a fun hour and a bit of climbing, nice to be on totally new stuff; then back to their flat, sleep overnight on their sofa.

Friday: wander to the National Gallery in the morning, discovering war memorials in the gardens along the way, and look again at the collection. More slowly this time, with several stops for coffee and fish-n-chips for lunch; discovering that the collection is smaller than I'd remembered, but still good. Leave with E about half 3; arrive with no stops around 7. The hostel is actually about 2.5 miles out of Fort William in Glen Nevis; this is fine for us, with a car, but might have been annoying if we'd been on foot. Present: us, Laurent, Andy Buckley, Seb. They make a chilli; I preserve the remains for tomorrow; we discuss what-to-do and decide on walking in from the North Face car park.

Saturday: [GPS] up at 6 as decided, b'fast, I'm ready by 7 but Larent is a little late, never mind, we're ready to start walking at 8. Trundle up, mostly in the dry, it is nominally 2 hours into the CIC hut; we manage 1:45, then have a brief break while L+A, who have places tonight, drop stuff. Andy Halley and Jon are presumed climbing up above somewhere. On the basis of <caution> about avalanche risk - Laurent is far more cautious than me - we're doing Ledge Route not a gully. L+A are a party; E and Seb and I will be another, but I'll be relying on L's route finding. At least from below the line of the route is unclear, but then again the cloud level is on the cliffs. There's no snow at the hut but there is by the time we're getting into the gully. As it turns out the route finding is easy; the route itself is natural, there are some footsteps, and there are a couple of other parties. A good route, but long. Wx is cloud, and some rain, and "warm", so we're all a bit damp by the top. I've stuffed up my gloves game - I need to have a spare dry pair accessible but don't; I should have swapped before going over the top but didn't, I should have dried my glasses ditto - so when we finish we come out of comparitive calm into rather strong winds, sufficient that after a bit we abandon hope of actually going to the summit. For the records, the Ben Nevis forecast was 45 mph; that gets you wind strong enough that facing into it is literally painful. Fortunately L navigated us off happily, with the aid of the OS app. Really I should have tried using the Strava heatmap to do the same, but was sufficiently cold-in-the-hands, and fogged-in-the-glasses, that I just let him do it. After a while, perhaps half an hour, we've come down far enough that we can see a bit, and the wind is less, and things go more easily. Around where we take crampons off we've come to above the lochan, where there's a clear path branching off down, so E and Seb and I take that, trusting there's a path from lochan back to the NF path. And... there is, sort of, rather wet underfoot but not actually boggy; you have to continue quite a long way to get to the bridge below the dam to get over the main river. Looking in arrears I think we would have been better just going up the path behind the hostel, which is actually a good path and not boggy at all, and would have made descent easy. Soir: E and I have reheated chilli - and then she has some pasta too - while Seb gets a pizza.

Sunday: [GPS] Seb decides to go back on the train - he has been up since Thurs - and E and I decide on an easy low level walk prior to her taking the 5 pm train home, since the wx today is no better and we don't fancy another long day in the wet. And so we do the Cowhill circuit, with nice views either back to Ben Nevis - still in cloud - or the loch. This bookended by coffee, and then lunch, in The Old Deli. After, to Nevis Sport then Ellis Brigham to get <stuff> in my case to small - #1 and #2 - friends; in E's case some new mountain boots, since her old ones, although nice, are really wearing out all over. Soir: pasta, and a beer. Oh, impressions of Fort William: a bit of a dump. Sorry. Not helped by a grey wet visit, but the way the A82 runs along the loch front rather ruins the ambience.

Monday: [GPS] all alone I get to decide what to do; Strava heat maps show me Stob Ban and Mullan nan Coirean as a circuit so I give that a go; it turns out well. As expected there's quite a lot of up - SB is 999 m - but I can cope with that and have plenty of spare at the top. Navigating purely by heatmap - because of the clouds - works, and although it is somewhat unnerving to commit myself - because there's decent and re-ascent, so after this point I can't simply walk back easily - it is also exciting. There are also occasional footprints. I'm carrying an axe but don't need it, though I consider getting it out on the final slopes up to SB. From SB it is really a walk around the ridge at the head of the corrie of the Allt a Choire Dheirg. And so back. I've managed my gloves rather better this time. Soir: moved from our 4-bed room to a "dormitory" which had 7 beds I think; but I was the only occupant.

Tuesday: time to go home I think. Wx is not improving. Drive along looking over the loch; stop briefly in Glencoe village but it isn't interesting; consider stopping in Glencoe but cloud halfway down the hills puts me off. Stop at Tyndrum; pass the Kelpies; around Edinburgh; stop for an afternoon walk along the sands on the N side of Bamburgh this time, lovely [GPS]; at Barter Books; and so it is about 7 when I get into Durham so just as well I didn't linger in Glencoe. Find "City Hotel and Bar", which is conveniently central. It was lying about having parking, as I suspected, but the main carpark is nearby and I stop for a pint in The Boathouse on the way back; what I didn't realise is that its windows would be thin and the outside have shouty students and traffic till late; but never mind I sleep.

Wednesday: up early no breakfast wander Durham [GPS]. Highlights the river, and the cathedral. Which is kind-of Hereford like: rather heavy and dark outside, thick Norman columns inside. But with redeeming features of interest. After that, it is four hours drive home.

Book review: The Inferno

The Inferno by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle is very much in the style and tone of his other books, but my first impression is that despite the non-stellar¹ prose, it is just more intelligently written than the other stuff I've been surfing through recently.

The plot, in brief: a Scientist, Our Hero, Cameron who is in fact The Cameron, in Australia to arbitrate rival designs for a new radiotelescope, notices a reddish patch in the sky that isn't Mars, and which turns out to be not a supernova but even more excitingly the first signs of the galactic core turning into a quasar. Returning to his home in northern Scotland, conveniently shielded by the season from the core, he and a few others survive and begin to rebuild, encountering and overcoming vicissitudes along the way. At the end, he discovers that a providential darkness that had shielded the Earth from overheating had some unexplained extraterrrestrial origin.

All of this is quite nicely handled. There's a bit of religion thrown in - Cameron's wife gets religion and leaves him for the madness down south, there's a nice singing-in-ruined-cathedral scene at the end, and Cameron ponders the observations made by the Mad Astronomer which reveal that the darkness-that-saved wasn't natural. Cameron speaks gaelic to ghillies and ponders Culloden. I could find out if the Hoyles had roots up there, but perhaps it is just the climbing: there's a lot of names of mountains and the A9 out of Pitlochry stuff. The initial build up is nice: our man is from CERN, but knows enough to arbitrate UK vs Oz radiotelescope designs, flys around the world a bit, and sees kangaroos or are they wallabies in Oz. It all seems a bit like the rather more gentle pace of scientific life in the 60s. The scene when "Mars" is seen is almost comic, undoubtedly by design: Hoyle is either making fun at, or just replaying in-jokes, about astronomers only looking through computer-pointed telescopes and not actually knowing where any of the planets are.

In a way the ending, by which I mean all the stuff after the inferno, is - apart from the cathedral - a bit mechanical, working through "the obvious" sort of problems, but not in a heavy-handed maner.

Notes

1. Arf arf.

Book review: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe by Ralf Dahrendorf is a book; Goodreads starts off The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 effectively ended the division of Europe into East and West, and the features of our world that have resulted bear little resemblance to those of the forty years that preceded the Wall's fall. The rise of a new Europe prompts many questions, most of which remain to be answered. What does it all mean? Where is it going to lead? Are we witnessing the conclusion of an era without seeing anything to replace an old and admittedly dismal way of life? What will a market economy do to the social texture of various countries of Central Europe? Will it not make some rich while many will become poorer than ever? That last question at least turns out to be answerable No: most have become better off, some greatly so; few have become worse off.

However, I read this thing more than a year ago and, as Spike Milligan memorably said, it left an indellible blank on my mind. The title aims far too high; not only does it - as I recall - fail from this distance in time to manage much in the way of foresight, but philosophically it falls far short of Burke.

Books read, 2026

I have a (crudely ranked) sci-fi books list; and an "other" list. This I one find myself in need of: simply a list of books read, in order. See-also the 2025 version.

* As On a Darkling Plain, Ben Bova

* The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner

* Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Ralf Dahrendorf 

* The Inferno, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle

* Journey to the Center, Brian Stableford

Book review: As On a Darkling Plain

Scifi tosh of my least favourite genre, a self-conscious² attempt to be a proper book. By Ben Bova; see-also The Exiles Trilogy which I also didn't like. So why did I buy it? Mostly for the title, and the hope that it would be an interesting Icehenge knock-off. But it isn't.

Indeed to my surprise it predates Icehenge. This post tells me also that it is a fix-up, which neatly explains the pointless "Jupiter" part which takes up 2/5 of the book, and in which our author runs through yet more cod psychology, and fails to think of an alien animal more interesting than a whale or a shark, but like really really big.

Unlike Icehenge, which manages to imbue the monoliths with a sense of mystery, here the buildings on Titan are just big buildings that throb like a post office motorbike¹.

Going for two out of two on annoyingness³, the book also displays the irritating trope where the character sees something - in this case the buildings - and instantly and unshakeably adopts some prejudice - in this case that the aliens are hostile. And then even more irritatingly the characters have a stupid discussion in which the hero blatantly fails to advance any plausible arguments in favour of his prejudice, and no-one calls him a dimwitted tosser. Sorry, am I ranting?

Lastly, at the end of the book, it turns out that the mysterious throbbing motorbike - sorry, I mean buildings - are emitting gravity waves aimed at causing sunspots and solar flares, in a pathetically inefficient attempt to erase life on Earth. Why the aliens would choose such a hopelessly wigmawolishly woundabout way of killing us all instead of just tossing a couple of asteroids or even a few big nukes at us is never made clear.

Trivia: Sirius B went white dwarf 120 million years ago, so his timeline doesn't fit; but that may not have been known then, for all I know.

Notes

1. What's big and red and throbs between your legs?

2. If, per Lewis, the chief virtue of medaeival literature is its lack of strain, this type of book is the opposite.

3. I shall discretely ignore the dull love triangle stuff, but make it 3/3 if you like.

New gear: wires, crabs

I was in Wales last weekend with the 4C's in the Rucksack Club hut in the Llanberis pass - more on that anon - and passing by Joe Brown's in Capel Curig stopped to poke around. They have an excellent selection of gear, I've not seen better elsewhere, probably better than Outside in Hathersage. Anyway I've begun my project to renew my gear, some of which dates back to the early 90's so is up to 35 years old. Although I do have a lot of newer stuff. First up is a set of wires, technically Wallnuts, from DMM.

And some crabs aka carabiners.

Note what isn't desperately obvious from the picture: they are smaller than standard, by a little, thus lighter, hence "Wisp". Looking at the online prices, Joe Brown's was actually slightly cheaper, something to remember.