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Girls on film

Posted on 13 January 2022 by rpg

You will remember, in the Before Times, how Professor Robert Kelly’s interview with the BBC was photobombed by his children (and how ninja-ly his wife, Jung-a Kim, rounded them up).

Even then I thought how very humanizing was this little cameo, and that it would be great if we could see more of this sort of candid behaviour.

Fast forward a couple of years and we’ve all been there of course. With working from home sweeping across the world, those of us lucky enough to be able to do so have had our fill of dodgy internet connections, ‘You’re on mute’s, animals being inappropriate and offspring-ish interruptions—both sides of the Zoom/Teams/Chime (delete as applicable) window.

And the reaction to such ‘interruptions’, in my experience, has been uniformly of the ‘don’t worry’/‘we’ll be here when you get back/‘awww’ variety. I’ve even seriously considered coaching Joshua to come in and be cute while I’m on a pitch. Every little helps, right?

So why do people still worry about it? School’s closed or your childminder has COVID or whatever it is, there’s no need to feel bad for having to dash off to rescue a toddler or the fact that your child has had the temerity to come into your home’ office’ and poke their little face into your webcam. 

We honestly don’t mind.

In fact, I love it. 

For those of us who are working mostly from home it reminds us that our colleagues, many of whom we may have hardly met over the last two years, are still the people they were, far deeper and interesting and real than you’ll ever see on screen.

It reminds us that we are in the middle of a world-changing event, that we’re doing the best that we can, and that we all could do with caring a little more for each other. 

So, please, don’t feel you have to apologize for being human when your home life interrupts your work.

We get it. We accept it.

But those endless pictures of cats on keyboards? You can stop that nonsense right now.

Posted in children, chime, Ill-considered rants, Office life, People, teams, webcam, you, Zoom | Comments Off on Girls on film

Opinions

Posted on 13 January 2022 by Henry Gee

Never a truer word was spoke than when Abraham Lincoln said that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. At least, I think it was Abraham Lincoln. Anyway, the same fellow who said that 95% of what you read on the internet is wrong.

But I digress.

I was mildly bemused to see this review on Amazon of my latest book A (Very) Short &c &c  (if you’ve not heard of this, you are invited to discover more here).

This should be a salutary corrective to this praise seen on Twitter:

I don’t think you need to understand Spanish to see that the reader liked my book a lot. This is especially pleasing in that I do not know the sender. I thanked the person and reminded the world that the book will soon be available in Spanish.

Funny old world!

Posted in a very short history of life on earth, Books, language, Una muy breve historia de la vida en la Tierra, Writing | Comments Off on Opinions

Cynical and Irritable

Posted on 9 January 2022 by Athene Donald

‘This is not an era in which good things are taken at face value. We are cynical, irritable and tired, and if there is a bad intention to be read into anything, someone will scratch away at it until they decide that they have found it.’

These evocative sentences seem, to me at least, to sum up so much of our current daily lives. They are written by Guardian journalist Rebecca Nicholson as counterpoint to the author’s praise of the Wordle (see here if you haven’t yet succumbed to this distraction). Like a rare beam of sunshine in these wintry, grey January days, Nicholson sees the Wordle as simple, unalloyed joy. I can agree that a Wordle usually gives a few minutes satisfaction amongst whatever trials or chores one is facing (tax return, for instance, or are you all so virtuous you did yours last summer?), although it is hardly sufficient to overcome pandemic-induced exhaustion. I suspect everyone would agree the endless saga of the pandemic has long since passed its sell by date, but might not choose the Wordle as their procrastination method of choice.

At the start of this plague, I wrote superficially wise words about being kind to oneself, not expecting too much, not immediately planning on learning a new language or otherwise improving oneself, but simply doing as much as one could under what felt like extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Watching fellow committee members get to grips with Zoom was amusing in those early days, producing a wry smile when someone forgot to unmute themselves again. Or, equally, when they had never muted themselves in the first place and an invisible dog let its annoyance heard when the Amazon delivery arrived, we were just able to smile and move on. No more. As Nicholson says we are ‘cynical, irritable and tired’. All of the above all of the time, or so it feels. Remembering to be kind to others, let alone oneself, seems a task in itself.

Committee meetings with people one has never had the opportunity to meet in real life are much, much harder than when you’ve met each other before as well as had a chance for a natter beforehand over coffee. Body language cannot (readily) be read on Zoom, so it’s impossible to see if your pal up in the top left-hand corner shares your irritation when third from the left in the middle row drones on and on. (I don’t trust sending private messages in the chat to remain private; perhaps others get their laughs through that medium.) But, more importantly, as a Chair it is so much harder to read who is getting irritated and is about to explode when they’re only a couple of inches across, or spot who would love to make a comment but doesn’t quite have the confidence (or can’t find the electronic hand in time).  How do you know when consensus is within grasp when you can’t see the whites of members’ eyes? And so on. To chair meetings like this is exceptionally hard work, and the outcomes are not as good as they might be, as often as not.  Circumstances are against everyone in that room, although we all have to live with the consequences. Irritability and cynicism follow from the tiredness that Nicholson identifies.

Unfortunately, the business of the day does not go away. Patience is a virtue that we all need to practice under these circumstances, as well as that kindness to oneself and everyone around. After almost two years, that has become an increasingly tall order. All the more reason for finding the nuggets of gold in the day, be it a Wordle or (as an example in my case) a long-tailed tit – indeed a family of them – finding their way to the bird feeder in front of the window as I eat my breakfast. I have not yet resorted to a gratitude diary to try to record these brief nuggets, but I can see how the act of identifying some pleasant occurrences might improve internal resilience, as yet another day of Zoom and disembodied conversation approaches.

Working from home is no problem for me. I am spoilt by living in a substantial ‘tied cottage’ (viz, the Master’s Lodge) on the College site. Space is not the issue (albeit tidiness is and always has been. No clear desk policy ever worked for me.). Many who thought during the autumn they had just escaped back to the office from their square metre of space perched on a stool in the kitchen, will be demoralised by the return to their confinement and unsatisfactory working conditions (probably non-ergonomic ones too, if they haven’t thought hard about this). I have green grass outside, not an urban roofscape and dirty pavements. In that too I am fortunate. Nevertheless, like most of my readers I suspect, it is tempting to want to shout from the roof tops ‘I’ve had enough!’.

Will we all become hedonists when this is past, wanting to spend long hours in the exciting surroundings of a Costa or a pub where someone else has done the cooking? No doubt we would be amused to read, in years to come, our top ten guesses of how the world will have changed by the end of the pandemic if placed in a sealed envelope now. Like watching a TV programme many years later which predicted the widgets and gizmos of tomorrow (older readers will remember the joys of BBC Tomorrow’s World which used to do this), no doubt our predictions would be found to be wildly astray. However, first, we have to reach the end of the pandemic, or at least the end of this acute phase, whatever the longer-term chronic situation may be.

 

Posted in committees, pandemic, resilience, Science Culture | Comments Off on Cynical and Irritable

In which I break through

Posted on 7 January 2022 by Jennifer Rohn

Sometimes the things you fear the most aren’t as bad as the fear itself.

About two years ago, I gave my first media interview on what was then generally referred to as “the Wuhan coronavirus”. It was still three days before a case would be confirmed in the UK, so most people were thinking of it as a Chinese problem, remote and unthreatening, even the occasional punchline of British gallows humour. I’d already turned down a few approaches from Sky News when the press office twisted my arm, saying it couldn’t find anyone willing to speak out. We didn’t have any coronavirus experts on staff (that’s all changed now, of course, after diverse scientists from multiple disciplines rolled up their sleeves to expand their research questions), but they’d used me in the past for other infectious disease news items and were keen to get the university front and centre in what was shaping up to be a very large story. As I had a PhD in virology and a broad background, it seemed harmless enough as a one-off favour.

Jenny on TV

First coronavirus media appearance – before I invested in better AV equipment!

But within a week, I’d given a dozen interviews and was rejecting scores more – they flooded in by email, text, landline, FaceBook and Twitter, until I eventually switched off my phone in despair. It would stop eventually, right? Soon, however it became clear that, unlike all the other topics on which I’d commented, the answer was no.

Fast forward to today, hundreds of interviews later, and I look back on it all from this unusual perspective: the meta-COVID perspective. Whenever I prepare for an interview, I do a lot of research, filling up a few plain A4 sheets with scribbles that I try to memorise before going on air. Every once in a while I stumble over these sheets in the scrap paper pile, or find Joshua drawing on one. They are ephemeral time capsules about a quickly moving target, and I marvel at how obsolete the information is. All those pressing questions, long since answered, even though at the time they seemed so raw and perilous. Will the epidemic reach Britain? Will the epidemic, now arrived, get out of control in Britain? Will many people die? Will coronavirus come back in the winter? Will we need to go into a second lockdown? Will any of the vaccine candidates work? Will the vaccines we’ve bought be enough to end the pandemic in 2021? Will omicron send us back to square one, or herald the beginning of the end? I now wish I’d saved all these notes in chronological order, just so I could remember what we knew when. But of course you never realise you are living through history until you are looking back.

Despite my highly detailed knowledge about the twists and turns in the pandemic story, it was all still rather abstract back in December. But this was soon to change. A few days after my last stint in the lab before the Christmas holidays, I was congratulating myself on having avoided omicron, even though it was already cresting over the capitol during my last few commutes on the crowded, largely mask-less Underground. I was quite worried about it, in a way that hadn’t really gripped me before. In this particular snapshot in history, all we knew was that omicron spread like the clappers, but its severity was still an open question. We did know that even people with a booster vaccine dose, like me, could still be re-infected, but we still didn’t know whether it would protect against severe disease. So I traveled around for over two weeks in this knowledge limbo, trading in my cloth mask for an FFP2 and hoping for the best.

A few days before Christmas, I developed a scratchy throat and eventually some congestion, sneezing and fatigue. None of my symptoms were on the allowable list for a PCR test, but I knew from my media research that omicron had a different spectrum and was more or less indistinguishable from the common cold. (One of my time capsules sheets from that period states “one in two cold-like illness in London is actually omicron”). Still, the lateral flow tests, based on a nasal swab, kept coming up negative. By Day 4 of my “cold”, I’d seen a lot of social media chatter about omicron coming up more easily, or earlier, when a throat swab was taken. As the first LFD kits had been combined tonsil/nasal swab-based before the nasal-only ones were phased in, I knew the correct way to sample the tonsils, so I tried it out in the spirit of scientific research, alongside a test swabbing the approved way (nostrils only). The throat sample came positive straight away, an alarming red line that coalesced as soon as the fluid flowed over the test area, while the nasal swab came back negative. A PCR test taken later that day confirmed the positive result.

Two years after those first Wuhan reports, I was SARS-CoV-2 positive. I wasn’t talking about the news: I was the news – especially when my tweet about throat vs. nasal swabbing went viral. (I’m relieved to see that this anecdotal report, one of thousands, is now backed up by actual data.)

How did I feel about joining the COVID club at last? The oddest thing was the overwhelming sense of relief. Although it was always possible that my illness could take a turn for the worst, my time capsules started recording reassuring data about omicron’s severity, first from Ground Zero in South Africa, and then in the UK. Risk of hospitalisation was slashed. The T-cells were mobilising even thought the antibodies were failing. The virus itself was intrinsically less able to replicate in the lungs, preferring the loftier expanse of the bronchi and the nasal passages, where it was better at transmission but less able to cause bodily havoc. I felt terrible, but my cough didn’t get worse; my oxygen saturation levels remained at 96 or above. I was one of millions of people in the UK (up to one in ten in London alone, says Wednesday’s time capsule) with prior immunity coming to the realisation that this particular variant of SARS-CoV-2 was manifesting as a bad cold. I was going to make it. I’m still concerned about how the already struggling National Health Service will survive the coming weeks and months of onslaught, and about potential longer-term effects of infection, but – at least for the moment – I don’t need to worry about catching COVID again myself.

Is this really the beginning of the end for the pandemic? Many people think it is. Others aren’t so sure. With so much of the world unvaccinated, new variants still have the space to breed and ferment. In line with my usual meta-COVID stance, I’m waiting for more data before I form an opinion worth sharing. But my own little COVID story feels like it’s reached a happy ending of sorts – at least for now.

Posted in Epidemics, media | Comments Off on In which I break through

Scientists Who Stand Up to be Counted

Posted on 3 January 2022 by Athene Donald

In the UK the pandemic is rushing towards its second anniversary, changing, but no less dangerous for the life we used to think was ‘normal’, and indeed our very lives. During this time, as a scientist I have had confidence that there are other scientists out there who are doing their best to make sense of the data and doing their utmost to pass on this knowledge to the government and the public. I don’t assume that these people are out there, peddling lies or in the pay of some mega-corporation, but others seem determined to believe such ideas. Consequently, these scientists, who are willing to speak out, have become the target of many – from the political classes to journalists and pundits, right on down to Jo(e) down the pub (almost certainly without a mask or vaccine passport in their pocket).

I am glad to see the Guardian highlighting the sorts of abuse these individuals – and many others who have been providing advice to the Government – are facing from both concerted and individual attacks (see for instance a specific example here). I have the pleasure of knowing David Spiegelhalter (not least as a Fellow of Churchill College), whom I greatly respect. He is an eminent statistician who has spent much of the pandemic trying to put facts out into the public domain. Jointly with his fellow statistician Anthony Masters, he has been writing weekly articles in the Observer about how the data can be interpreted, how it can be misinterpreted, and when it doesn’t exist in a form that is usable. This week they describe how they have been accused of ‘genocide’ and referred to as ‘Nazi collaborators’ and other similar terms of abuse.

David has always taken great pains only to deal with those facts in which he has confidence . During a Zoom talk he gave to the Churchill College Fellowship in the summer of 2020, when he was analysing the early data on deaths and highlighting the extreme dependence of these on age, he would not be drawn on other aspects of the pandemic even to that closed audience. Deaths were things he had hard data on, infections were not, nor variations by country and so on. He would not stray beyond the facts he had to hand, nor speculate about how the pandemic might unfold. David is also a very modest man, who is always willing to hold his hand up when he makes a mistake, but he also has the confidence (and platforms) to challenge those who use the data incorrectly.

Another prominent figure trying to dispense sensible advice based on the data is Devi Sridhar, Professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh and an advisor to Nicola Sturgeon over the handling of the pandemic in Scotland. I’ve not (yet) met her, but am looking forward to hosting a public conversation with her here at Churchill College in May, in person or not only time will tell. This date will be around the time her book about the pandemic is published. Devi too has written about the attacks and lies of which she has been the target. It perhaps should come as no surprise, however dispiriting it is, to realise that as a woman of colour her expertise is regularly dismissed. That she is a professor in an ancient university seems to count for nothing when people decide to spread untruths about her scientific credibility. Jo(e) down the pub knows better than her own university about the worth of her research and can spread misinformation rapidly so that it becomes its own trope. She writes sadly about how clickbait and social media can completely drown out the facts.

Michael Gove, in his infamous remark about this country ‘having had enough of experts’, may have been referring to economists specifically but – if you’ve never met an expert in any discipline – it may be easy enough to think that everyone’s point of view is equally valid. Whereas that may be true when it comes to debating whether you prefer one Strictly contestant over another, or a particular hunk in one of the apparently endless reality TV shows, it hardly applies when dealing with the horrid reality that is a pandemic. The Prime Minister may talk cheerfully about following the science, but not all his actions align with that sensible statement. The media can, in too many instances, propagate misinformation, as Devi despairingly points out in her recent article; too many in the public may swallow it whole, without even realising that’s what they’re doing.

Another Fellow of Churchill College, Sander van der Linden, has been working hard at ways to counter misinformation. Apparently nicknamed as Cambridge’s defence against the dark arts” teacher, his own recent article in the Guardian proposes ways to handle the determined disbeliever in the vaccination programme, trying to counter the misinformation speeding around the web. While many of us may be irritated by those who believe in conspiracy theories, and understand the science well enough to have confidence, just saying ‘you’re wrong’ will not get us far in changing minds.  It is important also to remember, as John Harris has pointed out, there are many people whose lives are so disadvantaged and/or chaotic, that much of the information – positive or negative – floats around them without ever touching. They may have legitimate fears and utterly insufficient routes to access accurate information which they feel confident enough to trust.

Trust sits at the heart of so much of this debate. Who do you trust? The answer apparently is, for too many, social media not established scientists. The position is of course complicated because not all scientists say exactly the same thing. Analysing the data around mortality, as David Spiegelhalter does, is one thing. Predicting how omicron will spread as soon as it touches our shores quite another. Believing herd immunity is the solution, as those scientists who signed the Great Barrington agreement did, another thing again. How the JCVI weigh up evidence around vaccination for children, without factoring the damage (mental as well as physical) that their ill health might cause to their families and hence indirectly themselves, different again. Scientists are used to critical thinking; to weighing up the evidence and to assessing who to trust versus those actors may who have underlying motives not simply related to evidence. It is part of our daily bread and butter.  In some senses this awareness is our privilege. Not everyone is so fortunate. It is to the immense credit of those scientists who try to tackle the misinformation head on, for the good of all regardless of the hostility that is meted out to them. More power to their elbows.

Posted in abuse, Communicating Science, David Spiegelhalter, Devi Sridhar, pandemic, Sander van der Linden, Science Culture | Comments Off on Scientists Who Stand Up to be Counted

Books of the Year

Posted on 31 December 2021 by Stephen

One final look back before I turn to face 2022. Following a practice started last year, I have maintained a thread of tweet-sized reviews of the books that I read in 2021 – all of them.

211231-Books-of-2021

The Twitter thread of the books I read in 2021. Click on the image to see the high-res version.

There are only eighteen in total, a singularly unimpressive tally – fewer even than I managed in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The only thing I miss about my commute is the loss of a regular slot for reading during the working week. Although life settled into a wearisome rhythm while working from home, the time gained from not taking the bus and train into London was not recovered for reading. Clearly, I lack discipline.

Even so, there was a decent level of diversity within my 18 titles – around 36% were written by women and 31% by Black or minority ethnic authors. I like to think I’m not too old to have my mind broadened. However, only three of my reads were novels and while my non-fiction selections demonstrate — I hope — a reasonable breadth of interest, most of those are rooted in history, and scientific history at that.

So much for numbers. Quality should usually trump quantity and this year’s titles have afforded me a great deal of pleasure and insight. While I have long been a fan of Marilynne Robinson, Jack seemed to take a while to reach the deep resonances that I recall from the opening pages of Gilead, the first instalment of her Iowa novels. Zora Neale Thurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, written over eighty years earlier, was a fresher and more impactful encounter.

As for this year’s non-fictional forays, Obama’s A Promised Land and Power’s The Education of an Idealist both provided terrific insights into the challenge of trying to do some good in the world through politics (as did Michael Barber’s more practical tome, Accomplishment). I was also gripped by Ananyo Bhattacharya’s prodigious biography of John von Neumann (The Man from the Future) and by Spike, Jeremy Farrar’s and Anjana Ahuja’s blistering account of the Covid-19 pandemic, while Matthew Cobb’s The Idea of the Brain gave a fascinating and sobering view of our faltering attempts to understand that most precious organ.

The most important book I read this year was Shon Faye’s The Transgender Issue which brought much needed cool-headedness – and a human heart – to a topic that seems only ever to be debated in screams on social media.

But my favourite of the year has to be Ian Dunt’s How to be a Liberal, a rich and thoughtful exploration of the development of liberal thought over the past several centuries. It’s a strand of thinking that seems to be under relentless assault from the populists who have taken centre-stage for the moment, but Dunt’s book ably demonstrates that its roots run deep. So we can still hope for another flowering.

Happy new year, everyone.

 

Posted in book review | Comments Off on Books of the Year

My Reads of 2021

Posted on 30 December 2021 by Henry Gee

Yes, the time is coming up to the top of rapidly fast approaching when I list my favourite reads of the past year.  I’m amazed I’ve managed 54 books this year given that I have been very busy elsewhere. Going back through this list I discover titles that I remember enjoying hugely at the time but had since forgotten about completely. To qualify for inclusion on this list a book has to have been both country and western enjoyable and memorable. Competition for the ten spots on this year’s list has been fierce. So fierce that I have snuck in a few as ‘honourable mentions’ (hey, I make the rules, so I am allowed to do this).

A note on links – wherever possible, I have linked the books to pages where they might be bought on Bookshop, an aggregator for UK independent bookstores. If the book can’t be found there, I link to the publisher’s website directly. I have no particular preference for Bookshop, other than a wish to support independent bookstores. Amazon continues to be a godsend chez Gee for household items, such as if one happens to run out of acrostic spline defibrillators last thing on a Sunday night, but I am resolved forthwith fifthwith to shop for books such that independent bookstores might get the benefit. Ironic, really, given that Amazon started as an online bookstore, that I use it for just about everything except books. None of this need affect you: I shall assume that if you both can read this then you are capable of making your own purchasing decisions.

And so, as they say on all the game shows, in no particular order…

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel – The concluding chapter of Mantel’s epic trilogy based on the life of Thomas Cromwell (the first two were Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies). That it all ends badly for Cromwell won’t be a spoiler (things usually ended badly for anyone connected with Henry VIII). Cromwell’s reflections as he heads for his inevitable demise are tragic and wonderful. There are those that cannot get on with Mantel’s peculiar style, in which she writes from Cromwell’s point of view but in a curious mix of what seems to be second and third person. But for me, The Mirror and the Light is a capstone to what will prove an enduring literary achievement.

 

 

 

 

Erebus by Michael Palin – Comedian, explorer and all round Nice Chap Palin tells the history of the Erebus, one of the two ships which (with the Terror) ended its long and storied life wrecked in the remote North American Arctic, as part of Franklin’s failed expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Amazingly, the Erebus represented the peak of technical achievement of the mid-nineteenth century – today’s equivalent would be something like sending an expedition to the Moon. Erebus had sails and a steam engine. Also, tinned food. But the steam engine was underpowered, and the tinned food spoiled, and, having been sealed with lead, poisoned the crew. There’s a lesson here somewhere.

 

 

 

 

Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel – Diversity and Inclusion are everywhere, and quite right too. Or it would be, if it included perhaps the most persecuted minority in history — Jews. This extended pamphlet (it’s only 28,000 words long) conceals an iron fist in a velvet glove. Though deftly written (Baddiel is after all a comedian) it hits hard at the hypocrisy of progressives who espouse diversity and inclusion but ignore Jews, and who even tolerate antisemitism – witness that just over a year ago, Britain could have had a government in which antisemitic attitudes had become mainstream. This should be required reading for self-appointed thought leaders in academia and HR departments everywhere. They won’t read it, of course, because in their own minds they are always right. And even if they did, they wouldn’t get the jokes.

 

 

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson – A girl is born on a snowy night in 1910 and immediately dies. A girl is born on a snowy night in 1910, survives for a bit, and then dies. A girl is born on a snowy night in 1910, grows up, and changes history. Possibly. If like me you have wondered what life would have been like had you chosen a road not taken, this is for you. Atmospheric, and, it has to be said, a bit spooky. An honourable mention goes to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which explores a very similar theme, and which I also read this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens – a tale of a girl who, alone from the age of eight, grows up in a shack in the coastal back-country of the Carolinas and becomes something of an expert of the local wildlife. Not surprisingly so, because she is as much a part of the wildlife as the animals and plants she describes. Explores issues of parenthood, childhood, race, sexual abuse, misogyny and entitlement, but with a refreshingly light touch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Accidental by Ali Smith – a very curious one, this, written in what I’d call an ‘experimental’ style. I am not a great fan of literary fiction, suspecting that a lot of it might well be too far up its own fundament for its own good. This one, however, was worth the effort. It concerns a family that’s relocated to a holiday home in Norfolk and welcomes into its orbit a strange young woman of unknown history – a cuckoo that could have a variety of effects on the family’s equilibrium. Stephen King wrote much the same thing in Needful Things, but at three times the length and with far less elan.

 

 

 

 

 

Coraline by Neil Gaiman – rarely a year goes by without the inclusion in my roster of a book by Neil Gaiman, whose books are (in my opinion) consistently first-rate. Coraline, the child heroine, lives with her family in a large crumbling pile long since divided into flats, and so also inhabited by a number of other residents. Well, one day, she opens a door that shouldn’t be opened, and … well, suffice it to say that this is the most frightening book for children (or adults) I have ever read, alongside Struwwelpeter and Peter Rabbit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Modern Myths by Philip Ball – we tend to associate myths with the far past. The doings of Zeus, or Achilles, or Gilgamesh, or Thor. Ball argues that myths are continuously created, and offers some modern examples of tales that started in popular culture but which have transcended their often humble or tawdry beginnings to become mythic tropes. Frankenstein. Dracula. Batman. Jekyll and Hyde. The key to myths is that the originals are often so badly done that they offer scope for others to adopt the tales and run with them. Great literature, it seems, rarely works as myth. I enjoyed this book enormously but found I didn’t agree with all of it. This is the mark of a good book – it leaves plenty of space left for debate and discussion. It made me think.

 

 

 

Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder – Theoretical physicists love to sound off grandly about everything, under the impression that such theorising explains just that. Everything, that is. The fact that theoretical physics is broken seems to be a side-issue. Quantum mechanics and gravity can’t be friends. The Standard Model of particle physics, in which everything is made of so many mysterons, schleptons, croutons &c. &c., only works if you pencil in arbitrary values plucked from nowhere that don’t fall out naturally from all the equations. The experiments required to test new hypotheses require equipment far too huge and costly to build. Thus becalmed, physicists have resorted to a kind of scholasticism in which equations have validity as long as they look pretty. It’s not too great a stretch to say it’s become a kind of religion. I’m reminded of the episode of The Big Bang Theory in which theoretical physicist Leonard’s girlfriend, also a theoretical physicist, breaks up with him as they have irreconcilable views. If one believes in loop quantum gravity, and the other in string theory, how would they bring up the children? Sabine Hossenfelder — a theoretical physicist who has seemingly had Doubts — dissects the current crisis in theoretical physics with waspish glee.

And the winner is…

Dune by Frank Herbert, which, with its sequelae Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, constitute just one long novel. I read Dune (but not the sequelae) when I was a teenager and thought it poor. I was subsequently unimpressed by the 1984 Magic Lantern production by David Lynch. I only came back to it following the announcement of the new Magic Lantern Production by Denis Villeneuve (which I have yet to see), and think a great deal better of it. I re-read the first novel and immediately plunged in to Dune Messiah, which I think is better, and then Children Of Dune, which is okay. I haven’t yet read God Emperor of Dune, Antimacassars of Dune, Gloucestershire Grummet-Tinkers’ Scrodes of Dune, Cash-In of Dune, or Jejune Swoon Spitoon of Dune. Just to make that clear.

So, without wishing to tell you the entire plot, here is the entire plot. Human beings have colonised the Galaxy, but at a cost. Thanks to a kind of luddite revolution some thousands of years before the story opens, all thinking machines are banned, so spaceships are piloted by crew addicted a drug called Spice, or Melange, which is only found on a single planet, Arrakis — or Dune, on account of the fact that the entire planet is a desert. Spice has mind-expanding properties that allow the pilots to access hyperspace and thus direct their spacecraft. Spice is a natural product, the effluvia of sandworms, burrowing creatures so gigantic that they make tube trains look like small pieces of wet string loosely tied together.

Dune is governed as a fiefdom awarded by the Galactic Emperor to one or other of the several Noble Families. As the novel opens, the horrible Harkonnen family is to step down to make way for the heroic Atreides family, formerly of the pleasant planet Caladan. But it’s all a wicked plot by the Emperor and the Harkonnens to dispose of the Atreides as the result of a decades-long ritual feud. But the wicked plot of those naughty Harkonnens is foiled by Paul, the Atreides heir, who turns out to have Special Powers, being as he is the culmination of a generations-long breeding program set up by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood (imagine the Shaolin Monks, but as nuns). Notwithstanding inasmuch as which Paul falls in with the Fremen, the spice-addicted Bedouin-like human inhabitants of Dune; gets himself addicted to Spice, which supercharges his Special Powers (did I mention his Special Powers?);  foils the Horrendous Harkonnens; and, well, you can take it from there.

An over-wrought combination of Space Opera and Sword-and-Sorcery Epic, this could so easily have fallen flat on its face. But the density of plotting, the high adventure, the exploration of exotic philosophies, and the sheer sensawunda keeps it in a state of never quite collapsing. Dune was published around sixty years ago, in the Golden Age of pulp SF that gave us Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and so on, and has that same vitality, for all that some of it seems dated.  In hindsight you can see how much Star Wars owes Dune. The Jedi owe a great deal to the Bene Gesserit — especially the use of tones of voice to influence others. That, and the connection between bloodlines and the Force. Sandworms are the Sarlacc; Dune is Tatooine; Paul is Luke; Duncan Idaho is Han Solo; the Harkonnens are … well, you can work that one out for yourself.

Posted in ali smith, antisemitism, asimov, batman, bring up the bodies, children of dune, clarke, coraline, david baddiel, delia owens, dracula, dune, dune messiah, Erebus, frank herbert, frankenstein, golden age of SF, heinlein, hilary mantel, jekyll and hyde, jews don't count, kate atkinson, life after life, lost in math, matt haig, michael palin, my books of 2021, needful things, neil gaiman, peter rabbit, philip ball, sabine hossenfelder, star wars, stephen king, struwwelpeter, terror, the accidental, the big bang theory, the midnight library, the mirror and the light, the modern myths, thomas cromwell, where the crawdads sing, wolf hall | Comments Off on My Reads of 2021

Photographs of 2021

Posted on 30 December 2021 by Stephen

Continuing the theme of gently exercising the writing muscle by composing posts made mostly of pictures, I present here the round-up of what I think are the best photographs that I took in the past year.

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2021 has been a tad leaner than last year on the photography front because the longeurs of lockdown took a firmer hold, mentally and physically. Being confined to working from home for much of the year and having scant opportunity to travel beyond these shores might have dulled the appetite and reduced the variation the world has to offer, but looking back I find my eye isn’t quite so jaded as I feared.

There’s a small selection below but the full album of 65 photographs can be found on flickr.

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In the garden

Posted on 27 December 2021 by Stephen

What is it about living through a pandemic that has quelled the motivation to write? I suspect is may have something to do with the unstructuring of time, or rather its reduction through confinement to rhythms that bore through repetition. Whatever the reason, a quick glance through the log of posts here over the past year reveals a loss of activity – or is it a loss of discipline? I am faintly troubled by the notion but still only in a place to regard it obliquely.

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For now, I will take an easy way out by relying more on pictures than words. Here below are some of the birds and animals I photographed in the garden in 2021. Normally, my camera roll of the year would provide a kaleidoscope of travels, my view this twelve month has mostly relied on the local fauna for variation. I am grateful to them.

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The full album (31 photos) can be found on flickr.

 

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PR

Posted on 16 December 2021 by Henry Gee

First, I’d like to wish you (both) a happy holiday.

Second, I’d like to share with you my recent experiences promoting my latest book. My agent advised spending a chunk of advance on hiring a PR company for the US market. Which I did. To the tune of $$$$$ a month. For 5 months.

My PR person worked tirelessly – and I mean tirelessly – opening doors for me to write op-ed pieces in print; fixing it so that high-profile print and online media could publish excerpts; getting me on radio shows with large audiences (such as Coast-to-Coast AM, which goes out on 640 US radio stations and reaches 2 million people); organising ‘virtual’ speaking events in the US; and also guesting on podcasts (eight broadcast so far, including Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People, with another recorded and two more scheduled).

PR costs a LOT of money, and is a lot of work, too. My PR person had me doing my homework — writing op-ed articles; recording audio segments; organising web resources and generally being more organised than I usually am.

Although some PR is organised by one’s publisher (and some media comes to one directly) a publisher’s in-house PR people have to spread their resources over the authors they think will sell. When you pay extra for your own PR, they tailor a campaign specifically for you, do much more and go deeper.

And the PR trail requires some stamina. Last night, for example, I was recording a program for radio New Zealand, where it was this morning; and this morning I guested live on a US radio talk show, where it was last night, so right now I don’t know if I am coming or going.

Is it worth it? Time will tell. But, these days, there are so many books, and so many authors, that like the Red Queen you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. Consider – just about every person you see or hear interviewed on radio and TV talk shows is there because they have a book to sell. And unless you’re already a celeb, you have to work much harder to get airtime. These guests are there because they have PR people forever pitching on their behalf to broadcast producers and bookers.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

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