Babylon 5

I loved Babylon 5 when it first aired. Yes, it was a cross of Lensmen and Lord of the Rings. Yes, it had something of the aesthetic of a saturday morning cartoon (technically, the special effects and make-up were superb, but the designs felt a little cartoony to me even then.) Yes, it sometimes chose to be stagey and dramatic, formal and artificial, but that worked with the material. Yes, it was occasionally amateurish, with something of a 1960s quality which was unexpected in the early 90s. Yes, J. Michael Straczynski’s dialogue could be predictable or cliche (but as Clive James said of Telly Savalas' performance in Kojak “[he] can make bad slang sound like good slang and good slang sound like lyric poetry” and that is the case with some of JMS’s excesses as performed by some of his better actors.)

I’m re-watching it on Amazon Prime. The special effects have suffered transfer artifacts which is sad, because they were stand-out in their day and even more amazing to fans who understood how they were produced. Straczynski got the genre, had a good story to tell, wrote appealing characters portrayed by personable actors. I loved the show in all its aspects and it stands the test of time for good, thoughtful, engaging space opera.

Things Are What You Make Of Them

When you are stuck, or fearful, or feeling inadequate or overwhelmed, turn to Kurtz' book for a little inspiration.

His advice is handwritten on pages torn from notepads, printed on perforated pages which encourage you to tear them out and paste the, up.

A happy book.

The Empress of Ireland

If you know who Brian Desmond Hurst is, I need only report that Christopher Robbins is a fine anecdotist who accurately, amusingly, and affectionately describes the unusual characters and scenes that make up the time he spent with Hurst collaborating on a film. If you do not know him, I can set the stage no better than by reporting that Hurst the film director made Scrooge, the quintessential Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim and offering Robbins’ opening scene: Brian walking into the pub at 11am bearing an orange for the barkeep to make his breakfast mimosa with; builders taking an early pint insult “the old queen”; Brian buying them a round of drinks and, as the cowed and sheepish men mutter their thanks, delivering the exit line, “I am not an old queen, I am the Empress of Ireland.”

The Laundry Files (series)

Stross wrote a fun series of novels combining the Lovecraftian and Spy Thriller genres. He also wrote a fine essay explaining that both genres explore our reactions to vast malevolent forces. In horror novels, we succumb along with the hero, while in thrillers we can at least hope the hero will save us, without succumbing to the malevolent forces of his own service’s bureaucracy… Stross is a great admirer of Len Deighton, and when I ran out of Deightons I moved on to le Carré, neither of whom I had read before (though I have seen both the 1979 BBC series and the 2011 film of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”.)

All highly recommended.

Turing's Cathedral

A nicely written social and technical history of the computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study, starting with the founding of the IAS, treating the lives and personalities of the many fascinating people involved, the history of mathematics and logic in the early 20th century, the engineering developments that led to the computer, the interwoven histories of the computer and of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the effect of the computer on weather prediction and genetics, the inevitable politics and the quirks and foibles and human failures and human successes. The history is solid and well-documented, and this is above all a book about people and ideas and a great accomplishment.

A Natural History of Latin

Technically I didn’t read this - I only skimmed the grammar and didn’t work through the wordlists at all. But I read the afterword :)

The Basque History of the World

I knew nothing of the Basques except that they spoke a language isolate predating the invasion of Indo-europeans. Turns out they played pivotal roles in European history, introduced commercial whaling, figured heavily in the profitable cod fishing industry, were notable explorers and seamen, and early mercantile and industrial promoters (at one time they were the predominant producers of ironware, and had much to do with the spread of the new world crops of beans, corn and peppers.) Fiercely committed to their sense of identity in spite of never having a nation of their own, they resisted invasion from their first appearance in world records in Roman times and always managed to negotiate commercial and legal independence, self-rule by the Fueros, administered under the ancient Oaks… lost at the dawn of the 20th century, viciously suppresed by Franco. They are still here.