Book review: Dark Light

By Ken McLeod. I've read other of his stuff - in particular, I've read Cosmonaut Keep, which is the volume one of which this is two. If you're inclined to read this stuff, start there.

Verdict: generally reasonably good without rising to any heights. The canny tinged-with-Scottish-socialism type political threads are reasonable and less wildly unrealistic than many another author's attempts. What's less realistic is the apparently implausible influence the various central characters have, apparently by virtue of being said characters.

The sex-vs-gender stuff - one of the central characters has female gender, despite being physically and sexually male - feels clumsy and heavy handed.

Past here, plot spoilers.

It is some time since I read CK but the general idea is that there is a "second sphere" populated by Earth type creatures I recall. I can't recall why the light-speed drive across 5 light years takes 200 years for a round trip, I missed something there. Never mind. In CK, if I recall correctly, dealing with the "gods" was reasonably deftly handled, disguising well what must be disguised: that we can have no idea what a "god" (aka super-intelligent being) would say. This time round it is less fortunate; the gods are rather less super-intelligent and more dumb-old-gods; and their "plans" are nothing more than tedious war and suppression of the young folk; I'd have liked a better answer than that.

Revue d'un livre: A World Out Of Time

[Ce revue en Francais, pour... une epreuve.]

Par Larry "Ringworld" Niven. Ringworld prit soi-meme trop serieusement, et ansi c'est ennervant. Ce livre est un jeu d'esprit et est plus leger. Nominalement c'est le SciFi "dur": il y a des Bussard Ramjets, la dilation des temps, le trou noir au cour du galaxy, et tout ca. Mes en effet, tout ca est du surface; a bas, c'est un roman picaresque.

Un homme prit un trajet grand, qui dure 70 k yr; quand il retourne a la terre, tout est change. Je doubte si tous les changements sont vraiment necessaire ou possible, mais c'est tout une blague (a la cote: le homme est dans le bateau d'etoile pour le diriger; je doubte beaucoup s'il etait possible pour lui de retourner, mais on ignore ca). Il voyage vers l'Antarctique, parce que le monde is plus chaude; it decouvre des gens, dans des societies etranges, et avec la seule femme de son type, it decourve le secret de l'immortalite des "dikta"s.

Je lui donne des pointes pour la description de la societe du future; et pour le secret d'immortalite, et pour le tone generale du livre. Mais c'est etrange qu'il y a seulement deux personnes "transporte" dans le future; et c'est beaucoup etrange que l'etat leur fait confiance.

Chesterton / Simoco M1 over the years

It occurs to me that we don't have a good record of club crews over the years, which is a bit of a shame. Quite who might care is another matter, of course. Anyway, this post begins to attempt a record. Note: between 2007 and 2008, Simoco was renamed Chesterton.

2024

Stroke: Harry Bulstrode, Jon Hachett, Conor Burgess, Jonathon Pilgrim, Lars Okkenhaug, David O'Loughlin, Me, Klaus Okkenhaug. Cox: Theo von Wilmowski. Blog post. Result: -1.

2008-2023 chart from McShane.

2023

Stroke: Shuowang He, Alistair Goodman, Conor Burgess, Adam Townson, Ralph Hancock, Harry Bulstrode , Jon Hachett, Bow: William Connolley. Cox: Will Miller. Coach: Joe Lillis. Blog post. Result: +1.

2022

Stroke: Harry Bulstrode, Jonathan Pilgrim, Steve O'Rourke, Conor Burgess, Adam Townson / Alistair Goodman, Jon Hatchett, William Connolley, Ralph Hancock. Cox: Theo von Wilmowski. Blog post. Result: -1.

2021

Stroke: Harry Bulstrode, Will Miller, Steve O'Rourke, Conor Burgess, William Connolley, Dave Richards, Ralph Hancock, Chris Wood. Cox Maddy Scragg. Blog post. Result: -2.

2020

Covid.

2019

Stroke: Tom Pryke, William Connolley, Conor Burgess, Harry Bulstrode, Dave Richards, Steve O'Rourke, Matthew Myers, Bow: Chris Wood. Cox: Manja Neumann. Coach: Charlotte Payne. Blog post. Result: row-over x4.

2018

Stroke: Tom Pryke, William Connolley, Jonathan Pilgrim, Alexander Fanourakis, Conor Burgess, Steve O'Rourke, Chris Wood, Bow: Ralph Hancock. Cox: Keith Lee. Coach: Dan McGreal. Blog post. Result: -1, +1.

2017

Stroke: Andy Southgate, Steve O'Rouke, Conor Burgess, Steven Andrews, Steve Penson, Dan McGreal, Chris Wood, William Connolley. Cox: Manja Neumann. Blog post. Result: -2.

2016

Stroke: William Connolley, Dan McGreal, Matt Woodthorpe, Conor Burgess, Simon Lloyd, Steve Penson, Brian Stevens, Keith Lee. Cox: James Tidy. Blog post. Result: +3.

2015

Stroke: Andy Southgate, Chris Wood, Mike Parrott, William Connolley, Rob Doubleday, Dan McGreal, Simon Emmings, Bow: Dave Richards. Cox: James Tidy. Blog post. Result: -2.

2014

Stroke: William Connolley, Ian Foster, Andy Southgate, Chris Wood, Ralph Hancock, Paul Holland, Dave Ifould, Bow: Dave Richards. Cox: James Tidy. Blog post (mine). Result: +1, -2.

2013

Stroke: James Howard, William Connolley, Andy Southgate, Chris Wood, Will Wykeham, Ian Foster, Ralph Hancock, Bow: Dave Richards. Cox: James Tidy. Coach: Kate Hurst. Blog post. Result: +3.

2012

Stroke: Andy Southgate, James Howard, Ollie Crabb, Will Wykeham, Chris Flowers, Steven Andrews, Paul Holland, Bow: William Connolley. Cox: James Tidy. Blog post. Result: +1, -1.

2011

Stroke: Ollie Crabb, James Howard, Tom Watt / Chris Smith, Steven Andrews, Andy Southgate, Sipper, Chris Wood, Bow: William Connolley. Cox: James Tidy. Blog post. Result: +1.

2010

Stroke: Ollie Crabb, James Howard, Tom Watt, Chris Smith, Andy Southgate, Steven Andrews, Ralph Hancock, Chris Metcalfe. Cox: James Tidy. Source: this pic. Result: -2.

2009

Stroke: Andy Southgate, Ollie Crabb, Tom Watt, Andy Hurst, Chris Wood, William Connolley, Ralph Hancock, Dave Richards / Nick Lee. Cox: James Tidy. Sources: emails, this video. Result: -3.

2008

Stroke: Andy Twigg, Tom Watt, James Howard, Chris Braithwaite, Chris Metcalfe, Ollie Crabb, John Aspden, Bow: Chris Wood. Cox: James Tidy. Source: email from JH. Result: -1.

Before 2008 we were Simoco. I joined in... 2008 perhaps? And rowed M2 that year, with Ralph as stroke. Here's a chart (from McShane) of those years.

2007

Stroke: Andy Southgate, Tom Watt, James Howard, Chris Braithwaite, Chris Smith, John Aspden,  Chris Metcalfe, Chris Wood. Cox: James Tidy. Coaches: John Aspden, Rev Ian Thompson, Chris Braithwaite. Result: +3. Pic.

2006

Stroke: Andy Southgate, Jeremy Davies, Chris Braithwaite, John Aspden, Tom Watt, Chris Metcalfe, Chris Wood, Lyndon Jenkins. Cox: Lisa Edwards. Coach: John Aspden. Result: +3. Pic.

2005

Stroke: Andy Southgate, Jeremy Davies, Chris Braithwaite, Darren Payne, John Aspden, Tom Watt, Chris Wood, Alister Bailey. Cox: Emma White. Coaches: Peter Jeffrey, Paul Knights, Andy Nicol. Result: row-over x4. Pic.

2004 - 2002

Missing.

2001

Stroke: Andy Southgate, John Aspen, Andy Nicol, David Sinclair, Andy Hurst, Ralph Hancock, S. Mackrae, A. Hendrick. Cox: A. Pearce. Result: +2, -1. Pic (slightly better version, was JA's, now with KH).

2000 and before

Missing.

Book review: Involution Ocean

By Bruce Sterling. Wiki says "The premise is influenced by Moby Dick by Herman Melville" which is right; there is a distinct tang of mad sea captain in the air, and a semi-observerish narrator, and something approaching a Whale. But none of the detail fits MD.

There is musing - in the storyline context, sane people get an extended life - about yearning for death. There are perhaps could have been more explored hints about the Elder Cultures. And the mystery of what lives down in the dust. And then there's the plot, which in some ways is less interesting.

I first read this oh most of forty years ago; and it has stayed unread on my bookshelf ever since, tagged in my mind as "interesting", and has survived numerous culls since then. But I had long forgotten in what way it was unusual, and now I find to my dismay that while a little unusual it is well within genre: strange things happening on a distant planet.

Book review: the Mystery of the Blue Train

Another Christie. Not too bad, though (for me) rather broken up; I read it over about a month with gaps; so I was even less than usually encouraged to guess the solution. Another with "Americans" as the source of money and hence action; the Europeans are predators mostly. The driver of the story, fabulous rubies and a divorce, seems rather dull now.

Quibbles: that Ava Mason should be a male impersonator seems an over-clue. She doesn't need to be. She just walks off the train dressed as a man, FFS, she could do that just as any old female actor. I also feel that the two-unreliable-narrators means that a lot of the story / description - who was the man on the train? - is effectively nulled out, which is dissatisfying. Had I been paying more attention, I'd have felt cheated.

Book review: the Memory of Earth

By Orson Scott Card. Book one of a 5-book series but I doubt I go further; either I'm getting rather curmudgeonly in my old age or this book is a bit pale. Goodreads doesn't seem impressed either.

The world: Harmony, a distant (100 light years, it emerges) world settled 40 million years ago after the Earth suffers what sounds like a nuclear war. Immeadiately you, but not the book, will think: what, we had starships but only sent them out after a war? Why did we only settle one planet? And so on. But we must cast those aside.

The idea is that the world is stable, because a computer-in-orbit aka the Oversoul keeps people from advancing tech far enough to kill themselves too badly: so, for example, no wheels-for-transport. But 40 million years is a very very long time; unimaginably long. Compare (from Ashmolean: Egypt) the picture I've inlined below. And that's only 3,000 years ago; there's even stranger stuff from 2,000 years before that. We see nothing like that; never do the characters come across say an obelisk even 100,000 years old. Or even 10,000 years, worn unintelligible, and say to themselves: the older stuff has just worn away. Instead, we might be in say Constantinople 1,000 years ago, but with limited use of computers.

By which I mean, the 40 million years idea is cute, but he does nothing with it. As a contrast, an image I recall from another book: we're inside a generations starship, where barbarism has occurred, as the makers predicted, and civilisation is gradually re-establishing itself; scattered across the interior are vast pillars, inscribed with knowledge, simple at the bottom and more exotic higher up, and as tech advances people can read higher (ladders, telescopes, balloons). Somewhere across the plain, one of the pillars has fallen and forbidden tech can be read by anyone... That kind of image is totally absent from this book.

Since this isn't really thought out at all, it seems a shame to waste complaints on it, but the total failure to develope in 40 million years would suggest to me giving up, rather than continuing to fight. The people, as described in the book, have essentially lost all that history: they must, there is too much of it. By contrast, there's a lot of human history, but "we" (the West) haven't lost it, because it is embodied in our society. But since their society is quasi-static (like the weather: always slightly different, but the same patterns recur) they have lost most of those 40 million years.

Side note: apparently the story in some way parallels the Book of Mormon (close enough to spoil the plot, according to this review), which Book at a quick glance seems like totally wacky maaan.

Ashmolean: Egypt

I didn't realise the old place had so much Egypt in it. See set: Ashmolean, Oxford 2023/12. This post created in the hope I might fund these pictures again one day. There's also an Assyrian protective spirit, but I didn't find that.

Superb stuff. I like to imagine - it would be what my novel was about, if I ever wrote one - that these beasts and gods really used to walk amongst men, and the sculpters simply drew what they saw; but over the millennia we have forgotten what once was, and assume the images are merely fabulous.

Stepping back a little to around 3300 BC, we have a colossol statue of the fertility god Min (see-also).

3300 BC is an unfathomable amount of time away. Quasi-randomly, a vulture's head.

And then, suddenly, the Greeks took a completely different turn.

The Coton Pavillion Rebuild of 2005/6

The Coton pavillion rebuild was a thing in... 2005/6, gosh that was a long time ago. At the time I (I think I...) started a blog about it, called https://coton-pavillion.blogspot.com/. Run by an account called "sofaman". And so it sat, for many years. I wonder if it is now owned by Ross? Google tells me it may soon be disappeared as no-use-for-ages.

So I made an archive of it, and this post to link to it. My pix on Flickr.

Refs

* Congratulations to Ross Chandler.

Book review: Murder on the Orient Express

A classic, of course. See wiki for tedious details of the plot and so on, that I won't trouble myself too much with.

I enjoyed reading this; it is an interesting story well enough told. It is pleasant to be drawn back to ye olde dayes when pipe-smoking colonels came back from India via Stamboul abord the Orient Express. I think that AC doesn't dwell on that too much, it perhaps being sufficiently obvious; but unlike (I think) a modern film adaption we are not drowned in opulence, it's just there¹.

From here: caution, spoilers.

Towards the end, as Poirot unwinds the event, a thing become clear that in a way should have been much earlier: that the train is improbably full, and this itself is a Klew. This has been introduced earlier, rather nicely, well before we think we should be looking out for clues. And another, that to some extent smooths over some awkwardnesses: because the snowdrift has upset plans, but nonetheless the event goes ahead according to script: there are so many people involved, who cannot be seen to plot with each other,  it cannot be replanned.

Set against that, we have the improbability of both Poirot and the director of the line (conveniently there to allow Poirot authority) being on the train. Ah well, unavoidable perhaps. I feel that the plot being driven by Americans Yet Again is lazy of her. Oh, and having Mr Evil speak French is odd, since he so obviously can't. I think the Poirot sometimes speaks English-as-French, and this is sweet, but sometimes is swept into idiomatic English, and this is careless.

Notes

1. But then again, as time goes by, the main interest in these stories is as reflections on bygone times. People travelling from "Mesopotamia" and so on. So a little dwelling on the physical infrastructure would be good.

Book review: the Forever War

A nice little blast from the old days. Goodreads likes it, as it should (my recollection is that the rest of the series is duff, though). Its kinda hardish scifi, overlaid on Vietnam-type US soldierly thinking (e.g. to improve morale, the army has mandated that the soldiers say "fuck you sir" when dismissed).

The hardish element largely works, as long as you don't peer too closely (finding planets around a collapsar would be pretty tricky, why would you build a base on one anyway when you could more conveniently operate in space; I think he's a bit casual about quite what accelerations are in place; I never even tried to check if his mooted accelerations matched the distances / times required. Oh, and while his spaceships have engines capable of generating n gravities thrust, those are the main engines, and wouldn't be capable of manoevering at anything like that thrust).

The fighting described is a sort of sketch of how such fighting might go; it is a fairly short book so the details are thin, but this is OK; you can supply your own.

The final twist is nice, and adds to the pointlessness of the whole thing, which is so to speak the point.

Oh yeah the title: due to time dilation on the way to the jumps, much objective-so-to-speak time passes. This gets him a bit of social commentary on how-things-change. His guesses now don't look so good (general homosexuality to avoid overpopulation is fun, but doesn't now look plausible), but again this is not real problem. The idea of collapsing down to just one clone now doesn't seem like a very good idea from any perspective, particularly genetic diversity but also diversity of thought.

C++ lambda pointers

 Every now and again I get surprised by C++. TIL that if you want to write:

    auto l = [] { std::cout << "I like goats\n"; };
    l();
    l = [] { std::cout << "I like boats\n"; };                                 
    l();       

then it doesn't work: the compiler complains

error: no match for ??operator=?? (operand types are ??main()::?? and ??void (*)()??)

You're trying to overwrite the lambda, and you can't. You want "l" to be a pointer. You can have this if you write

    void(*l)(void) = [] { std::cout << "I like goats\n"; };                                                  

but that's tedious: you have to remember the deeply confusing C function-pointer syntax; and when you're gaily tossing off complex lambda's in the middle of code, it's worse. But it turns out that you can write

    auto l = +[] { std::cout << "I like goats\n"; };                                   

and the "+" magically converts the lambda into a pointer-to. This stackoverflow post "explains" it. Fiddling around with std::function probably works too.

Book review: All the Colors of Darkness

This is a nice enough Olde Tyme story, notice the four shillings price on my cover picture. By Lloyd Biggle Jr. who I know of - you remember the name - but I can't think of ay of his other stuff that I've read. Unlike With a Strange Device which is really a detective story posing as scifi this one is actually scifi, and it has a crude moral theme, of aliens-judging-Earth (see-also Conviction by Aldiss), or even fellowship-under-the-skin. Goodreads doesn't seem to have any interesting opinions.

You're unlikely to run across this, so I'll tell you the story: UT Company have invented a matter-transporter. Unaccountably they completely fail to think of the infinite-energy possibilities (transport stuff upwards capture the PE) or even the military, and instead boringly use it as a people transmitter. The legal difficulties are obvious, but laughably they shrug them off - they have offer insurance, which they get from a company they've told there will never be any claims, so its all very cheap. WTF? Also laughably they prefer people to freight. Never mind, it is necessary for the story. Which is: they start losing people, but, only people with fake IDs. They hire a PI, who noses around and ends up following one such, and ends up... on the Moon. Woo. Seeking to persuade the now-revealed-to-be aliens to talk, he accidentally blows up their power plant. Despite the explosion being large enough to be seen from Earth, he and the aliens survive, albeit in a restricted environment with little spare air. While they're getting to know each other, the USA prepares a new Moonbase, which it will put by the site of the explosion, so they can expore it. We wave away some considerable implausibilities here, but this allows Our Hero to steal a space suit and save his alien-now-chums, and allows one of the aliens to teleport to their base on Earth, and everyone is saved. Also, the aliens realise he is a Good Egg, which is nice for humanity. Also, he has his memory consensually erased, which is a bit weird, but may be necessary for the rest of the series. Which I won't be reading.

Book review: With a Strange Device

Eric Frank Russell, who I've very vaguely heard of (aah: Wasp). The story starts in a top-secret govt research lab, with a loving description of its many levels of security, and then a fade-out to "but there was a flaw...". Switch to: someone resigning, unexpectedly. Our Hero, discussing this and others who have left recently. And then... Our Hero overhears two worker-types talking, and his repressed memories of killing Arline twenty years ago are triggered. Oh noes, he must run! But he doesn't, quite. In the end (skipping over some tolerably but not very interestingly described detective-y stuff) it turns out that evil Foreigners have devised a machine able to imprint memories, and they have been doing this to knock out govt scientists, thereby crippling the national effort.

Remind you of anything? Yes: The IPCRESS file. Which is 1962. This one is 1964. TIF is also far better written and in all respects superior.

Minor: for most of the book the country it is set in (UK or US) is unclear. Gradually it becomes the US. But it would have been nice and a nod to IPCRESS's unnamed protagonist for it to have remained unclear.

Book review: Mickey 7

This is OK; indeed, better than the modern average. Reasonably well written, decent starting idea and plot, but a bit pedestrian. This review says some other things, some of which I agree with.

The basic idea is that people can be replicated. To get round the obvious problem - rich people would use this to copy themselves - takes a bit of not terribly plausible gymnastics, and we're left with social taboos against replication, so that only low-level Expendable folk are replicated, to do dirty jobs that will kill them. For no obvious reason Our Hero is left alive between jobs - on a resource-poor colony with food in short supply why would you do that?

Due to errors, he gets re-instantiated while still alive. No-one notices, which is weird because they all have implants. Never mind. There's then some rather desultory attempts at philosophy - are they the same person? Is #7 the same as #6 the same as... but there is no solution, of course (see some prior discussion in Derek Parfit, Ex-Philosopher). We see all this from the perspective of #7, whose relations with #8 are strained (they're both on the same, short, food ration; and short of space too) but there's no hint they feel any bond to each other. In the end (spoiler) #8 dies and #7 doesn't give a toss.

The "enemy", in true Forever War style, turns out to be a hive entity which gives not a toss about the loss of individuals, and so doesn't understand the human's worry about the death of some of its individuals. Our Hero somehow can talk to them, and so ends up as a sort-of ambassador, which resolves his status. Until the inevitable sequel, obvs.

Our Hero suffers at the hands of The Boss, sometimes being literally killed. In the story, of course, we just sympathise. But if this was reality, we'd wonder if there shouldn't be some kind of checks and balances. A frontier colony needs stern discipline, obvs; but nonetheless you'd expect some constraints on power. Although that would get in the way of the story.

Food is in short supply, because their agriculture is a bit shonky. But they have a machine that can transform goo into humans. Why not transform goo into food? That would take energy, obvs, but as we discover towards the end, they have available starship-engine amounts of energy, so that's no excuse.

An oddity, which is forced upon the book by what-the-book-is-about, is that in the end we do indeed discover that the "Creepers" are sentient. And what do our characters do with this info? Nothing, other than persuade them not to attack, and to split territory. Do they converse, exchange ideas, world-views? Good grief no this isn't even thought of. FFS.

Book review: The Forge of God

Greg Bear again. Against my better judgement I bought this from Oxfam on Saturday, and read it quite quickly, but with the expected mounting frustration.

Amusing point: about 2/3 of the way through, the science journo / scifi author re-reads one of his old books, skimming through the makeweight character-building stuff he was obliged to put in, in order to get to the ideas.

The plot: Europa disappears, and then aliens arrive in America to say "I'm sorry there is bad news" and in Australia to say "we're here to help". Investigating this takes up half or more of the book. Eventually it turns out that these are decoys; that the Earth will be destroyed, by special planet-destroying aliens (distinct shades of Across the Sea of Suns), by a combo of a delayed neutronium - anti-neutronium collision in Earth's core, and a pile of fusion bombs along the mid-atlantic ridge. Meanwhile, helpful aliens turn up and rescue what they can, amidst some poorly-described war-in-the-asteroid-belt between the nice and nasty aliens.

None of this really makes any sense, and feels like multiple ideas got mashed together unfinished.

The initial crashed spacecraft, with the "I'm sorry" alien, is nicely done. The problem is that its a complete waste of time, and goes nowhere. The novel writes it off as a decoy, designed to distract us from forming an effective response; this makes no sense, as we could have no possible response to 100 million tons of neutronium / anti-neutronium. Which, also, feels like massive overkill. And there's no reason why it would be delayed. And that's without the second kill mechanism, whereby ocean water is being split into H and O, and the H being taken for H-bombs, to an extent that the atmospheric O2 level is seen to rise. Which is also massive overkill. Also the first two alien spacehips are found on Earth, having apparently just materialised there inside fake geological features, which makes no sense either: if they were decoys, they would have been seen landing, as spaceships. Other than invoking supa-speshial-tech, none of these things get any kind of how-did-they-do-it explanation.

So much for that. But the human responses don't make sense either. The first crashed space ship is barely examined. One bloke climbs up a tunnel and has a brief look around. That's it. They don't attempt to unbury it from the cinder cone it was found in, or investigate its structure in any way. Perhaps this is because the author knows it is just a fake decoy, and so can't be bothered to write it; or perhaps he has no idea what the spaceship should look like.

There's a sub-plot in which the POTUS goes a bit rogue with religious mania, but all that turns out to be totally irrelevant as the human response doesn't matter a fig, since the destroying aliens are so supa-powerful.

Oh, and Europa: was broken up by the nice aliens, so they could (a) refuel and (b) send 100-km-size chunks off to impact Mars and Venus, thus starting the terraforming process. But... I doubt that would appear as Europa disappearing suddenly; it would more naturally look like... Europa being broken up. My suspicion is that the book started with the Europa disappearing idea, he kept writing hoping to fit it in somewhere, and eventually couldn't.  Also there's not a word about the orbits of the other moons of Jupiter being minutely examined for gravitational influences of Europa fragments, which would be the obvious thing to do.

Meanwhile... the book takes the nice aliens at their word as rescuing fragments of Earth (cue now-rather-amusing stacks of CDs representing the Library of Congress; see-also October the First is Too Late). But the nice aliens' explanation that, very regrettably, they were just a little bit behind the nasty aliens is not very plausible, coincidence-wise. A more parsimonious explanation is only one set of aliens, who wish to destroy Earth and save a bit of it.

The nice aliens have a Law (with a capital letter, so you aren't allowed to question it) that aliens who destroy other alien's planets must be destroyed themselves, even if they've subsequently seen the error of their ways. This seems so desperately heavy handed that I can't wait not to read part two.

Book review: the Incandescent Ones

By Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. Who have form; I liked Fifth Planet, though you may struggle to deduce that from my review. And I fondly recall The Black Cloud from my childhood. 

However this one is weird, and not in a good way. Perhaps reading the plot on Wiki will give you some idea of why. Goodreads doesn't like it, but has few reviews, which is also telling. It is also more novella than novel.

It is set (like 5P!) in the distant future, whose social mores and political context are, unsurprisingly, exactly those that F+G grew up with. It is weirdly obsessed with skiing, as though they've just started watching Ski Sunday or summat.

Briefly: Our Hero has been recruited to Moscow by shadowy presumed intelligence services to do something on a given trigger; that trigger occurs, as does a succession of following events. That Our Hero, a Westerner in a Cold War Moscow / Soviet Union, gets to move around so freely seems odd. He meets up with his long-presumed-dead father, but is in no way surprised, who is carrying a super-battery of alien tech, which they use to melt water for tea (faint shades of The Left Hand of Darkness). They cross a border, some skiing happens, he has brushes with intelligence, is sent off into space on a ship the book can't be bothered to describe to be at a conference on Mars, changes ship to go to Jupiter instead, arrives at an empty space station, is told he is really a robot and surfs off into Jupiter to enter a glowing ball of light (rather more than just shades of 2001).

If that plot sounds disconnected, it is: the book feels like it is missing bits. For example, on leaving Earth he is heading for Mars to take an unspecified intelligence role at an Earth-Aliens conference. For no obvious reason this plan gets cancelled (actually even that implies too much: the plan is never cancelled, its just that a new thread takes its place) and he is dragged off to Jupiter instead.

The sudden assertion that Our Hero is a robot is another: he accepts it with no thought, yet he is at the very least a biological robot: he has grown from childhood to adulthood; he eats, drinks, pisses, shits, bruises and fucks. Nor does it have any particular consequences. Mind you, before that he thought he was an Alien, and Outlander, and yet his biology differed in no visible way from human.

Hard Sci-Fi books are often written around a core of a genuine idea: Fifth Planet, of the idea that solar systems move and could intersect. Here, the skiiing (surfing?) down Jupiter's magnetic field feels like the original core, but unfortunately there's nothing built "on top of that"; instead it just trails into that at the end.

Book Review: Revolt in 2100

Revolt in 2100 is a charmingly jejune work, at least stylistically, I can't be bothered to check if it is so chronologically. Wiki has an article.

To be fair, the plot itself is decent enough and fairly well told in traditional RAH style, considerably better than what one might get from a number of others.

It can be read as one of his "political" works I suppose; in it we discover that theocracy is bad, who could possibly have guessed. Our Young Naive Hero is slowly disabused of his naivity by both experience and his Hard Bitten Room Mate; he joins the rebellion, which seems implausibly well-organised as well-resourced, and which eventually suceeds. The End.

There are two mini-novellas afterwards: Coventry, in which a Naive Young NotReallyAHero discovers that without the Civil Sword, no compacts and hence no civil society is possible, who could possibly have guessed, certainly not the author of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, oops. And The Misfit, which records RAH's rather tedious fascination with instantaneous calculator type folk.

Refs

* Scifi and Fantasy reviews

Bad beekeeping, autumn 2023

A little late, but I've been away, I decide to go and wish the girls a happy over-winter.

Alas - for my ease and comfort, but happily for my honey supply - it turns out that they have had a good summer. All five supers are full. Or so I assume, I only went through the top three. I decide to compromise, and leave them the bottom three, and take the top two off. I'll return them in a few days, or next weekend, which will leave them stores for the winter and space for the spring. A closer view of the hive-after, with only the three supers on it.

And so the two full supers - in N's wheelbarrow, thankfully for the state of my back - go to the car, and back home, for processing.

There I discover that the frames are a little laden with rape residue, probably a hangover from the spring recolte, or even the year before. I compromise, and after spinning off both, melt down one of them. Or actually, half of one of them. How much can I actually be bothered to fix up?

 

Update: in the end I ony melted down about four frames. It is very messy and I didn't really have time for more. That left other frames outside, which neighbouring bees inevitably found. And so in the end I ended up with nines tolerable frames I could put back, so I ended up with four supers on the hive, one currently empty. And I discarded some frames I decided to call unsalvegeable. So I need to order some more frames, since breaking down the old ones is more trouble than its worth, when they get old enough; and they break.

Refs

* Bad beekeeping, spring 2023.

Book review: Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility; Mansfield Park

By Jane Austen. Classics, as you're doubtless aware. In the unlikely event of your being unfamiliar with the Austen oeuvre, see Wiki for P+P; S+S; MP. I enjoyed reading them, which is why I read all three². They are well written, athough in inevitably somewhat dated form, but occasionally charmingly so in the spelling: people for example do not choose, they chuse.

To an extent the books blur together in my mind: young ladies - genteel young ladies, of course - floating in society with thoughts of matrimony to suitable - and of course suitably moneyed - men are the subject of all of them.

Wiki calls P+P a novel of manners and this seems fair of all; whilst one can still see that many of the judgements would still be valid today, for example of Mr Crawford's character in MP, nonetheless the suffusion of bowing to social convention is far stronger that could be entertained now.

In all the books a central driving force is money, or estate, in the sense of marrying for it, this being the only way that a poor but genteel person could hope to become rich or even well off. There is a delightful fragment in one of PoB's where Mrs Williams worship of fortune is excused, on the grounds that neither she nor any of her friends would be able to earn even pin-money from their own talents. And one feels that none of the central characters in Austen ever display much in the way of skills that could ever earn them anything¹. Perhaps even in this theme there is a lot of excuse: her real theme is people's emotions and characters and development under stress; impending marriage is her chosen stress; and estate merely drives the plot conveniently. What stratum of society are these people? I find it hard to know. By their houses ye shall know them? In which case they are near the top, in that they occupy the largest of houses, at least in their neighbourhoods. And so I think I do not know any people like them today, and so perhaps I don't know whether marriage-for-money still applies, in today's analogues.

As well as stories the books are intended to be, and are, instrunctional, moral. We learn what behaviour will lead to ultimate rather than short term happiness. We see flashy fashionable characters reproved by steady and more sensible ones; even excessive sensibility is criticised. Good sense, sound judgement, quiet reflection, continence in speech are all praised.

On the relativity of morality

A question that could be asked is, "how much is Austen arguing for morality, in the sense of person's being guided by the one known to a given society, as against arguing for one particular morality - the one she herself knew?" Phrased like that the question doesn't really work because I doubt she ever considered it, being so sure that the one she knew was the only possible one; but phrased as "as illuminated by the stories she tells" it would make sense.

I think I could make a case for her being in favour of the former. Her principle desire seems to be family and sociable stability, and reputation, and decourous and honourable behaviour, all of which are satisfied by obedience to whatever code of morality is currently present.

Obviously, the plot devices would have to be different: our own code can hardly conceive that putting on a play might be immoral.

Refs

* Book review: Ancillary Sword.

Notes

1. To be fair, the lawyer in S+S is sympathetically described; Austen herself feels no need to look down upon him.

2. As well as them being available on Gutneberg for free for Kindle, of course.

Book review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Read Wiki or Goodreads if you will; you'll get what you expect, I expect.

As a space-opera type story it's good: poor oppressed ex-convicts revolt against evil bureaucratic oppressors to form the Free State of Luna, with the aid of a sentient computer. And as usual for RAH, there's the political philosophy: in this case, anarcho-capitalism (not Libertarianism, I think). He doesn't make any attempt to indicate why A-C is a good idea here, whereas limited-franchise democracy was a good idea in Starship Troopers. And by the end of the story we have a Congress elected by univeral suffrage with law making power, so I'm not really sure there's a lot of consistency in his thoughts.

The expounding-of-ideas is too irritatingly didactic, more Glory Road than ST. The vision of "law" that he presents us with, as being of the choose-your-own-judge sort, doesn't seem entirely plausible; and the narrator's insistence that there are no laws, just customs, is dishonest. We're presented with one example of law in action, where the right answer is achieved, but that does not convince.

I'm not sure why he felt the need to kill off the computer in the end; perhaps because it would have been left all to obviously in charge otherwise?

Book review: the Moat Around Murcheson's Eye

Bought from the Abbey Bookshop in Paris, as something to read while waiting for the 23:45 bus from Bercy-Seine to London. As such, it was adequate.

This is a sequel to The Mote In God's Eye, which I read oh-so-many decades ago; but even then was slightly iffy about; the militarism and social attitudes jarred even on teenage me. But as a review at Goodreads says, The novel takes the conclusion from the first book and follows it logically, ploddingly, through several hundred pages of military, political, and economic maneuvering. And I endorse that: there is no imagination at play here, no verve, just bashing at typewriter keys until the book is finished. On the other hand, at least its better than Ringworld, which I recently tried to read and gave up on as being too stupid and badly written.

Quibbles: I think the "blockade" is badly organised; leaving a few nuke mines around would be more efficient. As always with such books, everything is personalised; instead of dealing with a vast impersonal bureaucracy, decisions are made by individuals. In theory this connects us with characters we care about, but in practice we don't give a toss. Oh, and the contraceptive: the book, deeply embarassed by its own implausibility, doesn't even attempt to explain why humans are able to create this in a few decades when millenia of motie effort has failed. Oh, and also, I was disappointed that the Library of Alexandria popped up and was never seen again. Perhaps they couldn't work out what to do with it.

Perhaps more interesting: moties are, I think, supposed to be more intelligent than humans. But the authors can't imagine that, perhaps unsurprisingly. So instead they just get individually better abilities: better at engineering, better at mediating. But they're no better at thinking.

Notes

1. OMG I've just realised that Mote / Moat is a Punne. They get points for that.

France part five: Belledonne

After B d' O to V; around V; Ailefroide to Les Deux Alpes; and back to B d'O I start off in the Oberland. We're now in the seriously unplanned section of the trip; I need to get to Arles by the weekend, but otherwise have some time free, and the Belledonne seems like a good choice.

Mon 28th: [GPS, pix]: wake in night and open window to let in the sound of rain. Wake 7: yup, cloud and not-heavy rain. Duolingo in comfort of bed. B'fast 8 is good, looking out at the cloudy hills. Talk with Dutch cyclist and Oz walker, the latter about to start the GR54, probably from la Grave skipping the "relatively boring" Huez / Emparis stage. I'm probably going to do Huez and see how it goes. There's snow at 2200 m! I'm starting to worry about my shoes a bit, they're getting frayed.

11: I've managed to leave (b'fast was elongated) and ask in the best sports shop for a solar powered battery charger but failed (not that it would be any use today…). So now in cafe des Negotiants which is the most Fr cafe I've been in all hols: crappy Fr daytime TV, old blokes mumbling, a walker waiting out the rain (not me: its going to rain all day: I'm just doing my duty), little old ladies, football club scarves over the bar and so on.

Oberland is an old place; here it is when the gare was a gare, not a gare routiere.

I've realised the obvious: BdO is more of a cycling town. 11:20: off. Sign: Lautaret open, Galiber ferme. The 21 lacets are famous; we count them down; even I have heard of Fausto Coppi. And views down to Bourg on a grey day. Don't forget G or Tom.

Top: 2:30. Just under 3h. Interesting to walk up, and perhaps more pleasant than the path would be on a wet day. There are signs every km and every turn and graffiti on the road though less than I expected. There's also no pavement but not too much traffic. Its a fairly constant ~10% gradient and I'm going well so the 3h passes happily. For lulz, I enter my ascent as a "ride" in Strava, and discover that I'm 150,008th.

Alpe d'Huez is really bleak and empty, either in summer or just today. Which is tbh a poor day: 100% cloud, rain, somewhat windy, and cold: 6 oC says meteo. Currently in the Blueberry cafe which looked half shut but is open and warm. Just as I was thinking it was only decent to leave, as the only customer, several others come in. So I'll lurk a bit more. Vacillating: to push on, or wimp out and get a hotel? My contortions over whether to spend E95 amuse and frustrate even me. Also the meteo has worsened to 4 mm ppn in the next hour. Booked.

And so to the happily nearby Odalys AppartHotel. Which, appart from being a monstrosity, is really very nice. In terms of decor and cleanness, almost madly so. Of course it is really for the skiers. Very few hotels are open now; I wonder if they arrange amongst themselves? Go for swim mostly because I can. Watch a Falcon 9 launch. View out of window.

Tues 29th: [GPS, pix]: leave s'market 9:15 having malingered in nice Appt for a while. Also, its cold and will get warmer. Cloudy, but with breaks. Faint rainbow. Looking back to AdH:

Path is slowly up along road. Giant digger convoi exceptionel comes the other way through cloud, summer is the time for works. AdH feels bleaker, bigger, less human than L2A and while some of that is wx not all is. Oh, and most of it was shut whereas most of L2A was open.

On, and the feeling is Lakes. Navigation would be tricky if not for GPS. 10:30: chalet du lac Besson for a cafe. I am the only customer. Il y a un chat.

12:10: past the lakes, and largely past the ski crap, descend a bit towards Enversin d'Oz and stop for lunch. Fine views over to the Belledonne but not the summits. Snow above me, say at 2200 m. Sun is shining! Convert from cold gear to normal: rm down, coat, and tracksters. I've realised I'm not set up for cold wet walking: would need w'proof trous. Anyway day, whilst cloudy, is better than f'cast.

Here I'm about to drop off the L2A plateau down towards l'Enversin d'Oz; we're looking WNW; lac du Verney peeps shyly.

We're on the circuit des sangliers. 1:20: might be turning to light rain but I've just got to the resto un l'Enversin and will start with a cafe.

3: stop for some bread+cheese. Finish the last of the la Berade bread. It didn't rain. Walk up the valley nearly on traverse through lovely woods often beech a la Ashridge.

Towards the end (and its about 2:30 going through, so it does start to feel a bit endless woods most beautiful), lose my way a bit and follow logging road not track but this turns out to be fortunate as it is easier and ends in a better place. 5:30: to start of track up to Sept Laux. 2h to first lac says the sign lets hope for less. Have more b+c and some dates which are getting quite squishy.

Looking up, after a bit. Half way up: unimpressed bouquetin. 7:30: to first little (nameless) lake. Just before I get over that hump there are views back down into the valley and (probably) the village of Le Rivier D'Allemont.

Then up a bit and around lac de la Sagne because the bank provides some shelter from the wind. There's some lying snow yum. A couple of other groups tenting. There's some kind of conrete wall (hydroelectric stuff) which I consider briefly, but reject. 8:10 tarp up and me in bag. Hopefully I'll warm up a bit. Wx: in cloud. Due to slope I'm forced to be slightly head down so put boots under head. Sleepy so don't read.

Wed 30th: [GPS, pix]: well I survived and quite well. Toes a bit cold and s'bag got a bit wet that end since touches tarp. I thought of putting bin liner over and should have but was too tired to bother. In night sky clears bright moon; up for wee; pix of moonlit lac.

Lie in till 8:30 hoping for sun but no so up. There's ice on my tarp! So I know I'm good down to 0 oC and medium wind. Was in thermal leggings, tracksters, one pair socks, yellow top, down, and raincoat the latter because I forgot to take it off. Vue interieur.

Off 8:50 ref 10:30. As I go up ground gets to cts snow, quite hard frozen. I'm feeling slow perhaps lack of b'fast perhaps I worked harder y'day eve than I realised. Looking to Lac Jeplan:

Get a cafe though formally she is ferme pour menage. Sit out: wx is now clear, but haze. Spread out tarp and s'bag and socks to dry. View across lake to snowy mtns. 

Q: what next? Plan was col de la Vache 2556 and the ref was but a diversion to see it and to let the sun come out. But its 3km back to the start of the col part and perhaps more importantly I'm a bit doubtful I'll get over sans crampons / axe (pic: at lac du Cos, looking up towards the col path). The alternative is a long but hopefully pleasant diversion on the "balcon des sept laux". Thought: that means that quite a lot of what I've done this month is currently out of reach.

12:10: off down. Back in trainers: wore boots this morning for the first time in ages. A little down: an old concrete hut that's used as a rather grimy bivvi.

Pass through PraPoutel, a little skiing place, and stop for a coffee. I guess I could have stopped here, but I'm still trying to reconnect to the "high" path that I wimped out of. Paths are sometimes grassy roads.

8:10: stop and bivvy. I'm kinda in the middle of nowhere… on a traverse / balcon path. Roughly here. When I decided not to col des Vaches this morning I didn't realise quite how far round it would be. Nonetheless its ok. Not as interesting as y'day's traverse, too many ski roads. But good views across to limestone cliffs of Chartreuse. Wx: still, sky clearing, won't bother with tarp to start with.

Thurs 31st: [GPS, pix]: a still dewy night with thin overcast and bright moon. Stopping in the middle of nowhere distinguished by nothing, just because I'm out of light and legs, is odd and feels wrong.

A car comes past at 7:10 - which is a surprise, this is a small track - so up and off, 7:30. Along, up through trees, then out with views of Chartreuse, and then up. After a while, views of the Ref in the sun on its out-thrust, with snowy hills behind.

Grenoble is down in the far valley. To Ref Jean Collet at 9:30, 1941 m.

Slight ache in R side back so will aim for easy day. Sun. Still. Ref appears empty so no cafe for me but! G'ienne arrives 10, warns of heli, and there will be cafe eventually. There is. 11:15: heli. Impressive flying in that there's only about 10 feet from blade tip to hut. Also top tip: the backwash is much bigger when it takes off again. Apart from a few packages it seemed to mostly deliver a couple of young children. Now I can put my s'bag out to dry again.

Cloud fills the cirque to our height. And goes again. Mme reckons snow now to 2300 and melting a little. Its quiet up here. A few people come, perhaps have a coffee, and go. By 12, more people for lunch. Mme feeds her infants indoors so sadly no pic but: small place, wood and tin, 33 places. Traditional loo. Despite the sun it isn't warm: my hands get cold, I've still got the down on. And the snow above isn't melting. Plat salé: omlette and cold rice salad. I may be hungrier than I realised.

Impressive views from ref: its on a point so view down and across; and behind cirque up to scarp with waterfalls hiding lac Blanc. Which if I keep to my "easy day" I won't see. Meantime at home M has had to book a car to Londres due to train strikes. Hopefully it will work out.

Off 12:20 as cloud fills again and a small troupeau with clean black faces misbehaves. Looking back. Pic: hut is in cen ter; path I took traverses around spur then descends into the stony river valley to R, which would lead up to lac Blanc.

Oops! went past turning and towards lac. Realise (and that I've not turned gps on) and come back, take path down too early but meh (actually, don't do that if you have the choice; it was hard work over scree). Passarelle du Mousset, 1:20, so I only lost 20 mins. And they weren't entirely wasted. Habert du Mousset: looks to be a (state sponsored) little shepherd's hut and mini refuge, with roof space for a few to sleep. A little further on, plaque to Mr Eugene Lombard, Cure Archipretre de Goncelin.

2:25: col du Sifre 2150. Leave pac, climb knoll, wonderful views: ahead to path gently slanting up into snow (err…), back across to ref, and towards bowl of lac Blanc though lac itself is hiding. Even wider pano. 2:50: off. 3:35: col 2350. It was ok.

Snow quite deep (someone said 40 cm) but there was a well trodden path. Nice to be back on snow! Listening to small stones / ice falling off cliffs. 4: little lac du Loup. Chamois.

Eat last of dates. And of the Abondance. The once mighty foodbag now contains but a trace of bread. Off: 4:20. Lac du Crozet 4:50. Sign: ref 55 min. Wash feet and paddle but cold. Off 5. From above, the still blue lake looks contiguous with the sky and the hazy blue background; lovely.

Ref de la Pra 5:40. Two buildings one old which is the dortoirs, new with cuisine / salle.

Big terrasse. View over plain with meandering stream. Go in. Power! Plug in I'm rather low. Order "petit planche" and biere. Quiet inside but then again it is lovely out: some children playing in the stream. Pano: the valley onwards.

For dinner a planche (cheese+saucisson). Save a bit of dry bread and nice cheese for b'fast. Have a biere, then a second with citron tarte. Talk to two Germans. Off 7: once again a lone figure walking out on a darkling plain. It is quite cold once the sun has gone. Because of the mtns it is setting behind, it goes and comes again. Pra was a good refuge; would come again. As I'm walking out the shepherdess is rounding up her sheep with two dogs. View back to ref; and back over lac Claret:

Stop 7:35 at the end of lac Longet with view further on (looking back). Lovely. All is calm and still the lakes mirrors. Bivvi.

Fri 1st Sept: [GPS, pix]: up 7:20 buzzed by hoverfly. Overnight: scratch off tick inside right knee. Wx good, didn't bother with tarp. Off 7:40 after scrap of b'fast saved from yesterday's planche. O'night fine v thin o'cast another bright moon. Ground is limestone, Chinese-looking, up and down.

9:15: Ref des lacs Robert. Non-guarde 4 places. Outside view.

Looking back to the lacs Robert. The tiny Ref is just visible at the far R edge in the shadow (a little above, now I look, the shadow of a bit of ski-lift).

9:45: "top" of the ski-junk area. And so we come nearly to the end of the mountains. One last distant view back to the Ecrins through the pass.

Down we go. Lots of lakes; here's a small nameless lake above lac Achard, which was goaty. And... just pause a moment and look at it: the whole scene is gorgeous.

2: whew. To Uriage les Bains. And a lot of descending that was. Quite a lot of it was pleasant through trees on paths; some on roads; but there was just lots of descent.

And my dream of walking into G is abandoned: it might be possible but its a looong way. Cafe here (finally! So many little villages no cafe) now in bus stop awaiting bus. I considered Uber, but was dubious of it in France, and also I'm cheap. Cats hug the shade.

2:38: off on bus (thnx Google). A/C! And €2 to St M d'Heres. Note: buses are much less frequent during vacances scholaires. Uni, 3; walk through uni to river to G, 3:50 cafe. Look up hotel / travel as well as I can with junk internet and… hmm, why not go to Valence?

And so to station, €20 (I was expecting less?), cafe and p-au-c in cafe, and 5:15: we're off. Crowded. Power: down to 23% phone and 11% battery. In mtns, spent some time optimising this. So would be v good to have other options.

Valence 18:30. End up in hotel de Lyon (les Negotiants was full) cheap but ok. No a/c but the noise of someone else's). Shower. Whew: several days grease comes off, much better. Realise supermarket shuts soon so rush out, get juice, yog, cheese and peaches but no bread. Ah well. Go down to river through park as recce for tomorrow then try and fail to find cafe / resto I like… I may be in wrong district. Valence fails to impress; never mind it was an experiment based on name. Retire and eat and catch-up.

Well that's all folks for this phase of summer; my trip round the mountains is concluded. It was lovely. I must do it again before my body falls apart.