Via Jim Steel’s blog we have this year’s Awards as given on tor.com.

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts won for best novel. (I have not yet read this.)

Best short story was Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales.

I’m delighted for Ian.

Best Artwork was Blacksheep for the cover of Jack Glass

Best Non-Fiction winner was The World SF Blog, Chief Editor Lavie Tidhar.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Edited to add:- I have now added the World SF Blog to my sidebar.

SFL Div 1, New Douglas Park, 30/3/13

Well, I got my win. Any positive result on Tuesday night will be a bonus.

Mind you, we were against only ten men for an hour of this game. I wasn’t there so don’t know how good a performance this was but at least we converted the advantage into three points.

Seventh place and four points ahead of ninth!

Tuesday night at Hamilton is beginning to look attractive.

The place The Troggs had for me in the 60s and Sweet in the early 70s was taken by Marillion in the early 80s.

Marillion have been forever tagged with the Prog Rock label and while their first songs – especially the 17 minute long Grendel and most of the debut album Script For a Jester’s Tear – fit that bill (which was why I got into them in the first place) by the time of Fugazi they had mainly moved on to a more guitar based rock sound.

Their initial success, though, shows that Prog wasn’t as moribund a genre as its detractors would have had it.

Mind you their third and fourth LPs, Misplaced Childhood and Clutching at Straws were those most Prog of things, concept albums (though arguably one concept album spread over two releases.)

I think I first saw them on television on The Oxford Road Show (who remembers that!) when this was one of the songs they played. Despite it being from Fugazi there is still a hint of Prog and echoes of Genesis.

This clip, though, is from Top of the Pops. Check out Fish – with hair!

Marillion: Punch and Judy

SFL Div 1, The Rock, 27/3/13.

Another come back.

Another four goals, three for Jim Lister.

And at last another home win.

The giddy heights of eighth place.

I “watched” this on the BBC sport page and the Twitter feed on the club website. (At 2-0 down I switched off for a while. And again at 2-2.)

This result means we’ve now beaten every team in the Division, not bad going for a promoted side. Mind you, there are four bites at each cherry.

Hamilton on Saturday – and Tuesday!

Right now I’d take a win and a loss. Two draws would be one point too few.

FIFA World Cup Qualifier: Europe, Group A. Karadorde Stadium, Novi Sad, 22/3/13.

And so it goes on..

What was that pitch like? I know they’d just cleared snow off it but I thought pitches like that were long gone.

Scotland weathered the first half and had started to look good, putting some passes together and getting into Srbia’s penalty area.

Then the sucker punch. Jordan Rhodes hurried his shot straight to the keeper and they ran up the park and scored.

A further defensive mix-up gifted them a second. Game over.

Liam Bridcutt played well for a debutant and George Boyd had the look of a footballer. (To be specific, he reminded me of John Wark minus the ‘tache. It must be the long hair.)

Where’s a win going to come from?

All the Shortlisted Stories BSFA, 2013, 90 p.

(The awards for 2012 will be presented this Sunday (31/3/13) at the Bradford Eastercon.)

Immersion by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, no. 69)

A domineering culture known as Galactic has a piece of tech called an immerser which at once disguises its wearer but also provides him or her with cues to fit in culturally.
The narrative is twofold – one in second person from the viewpoint of a non-Galactic woman who never takes her immerser off (originally in an effort not to embarrass her Galactic husband,) the other in third person focusing on Quy, a non-Galactic inhabitant of Longevity Station, and whose sister Tam is trying to unravel the complexities of Galactic tech to neuter the effect of immersion.

The story could be read as an allegory of US influence on the modern world, the (possibly unthinking) extension of its ways and attitudes onto other cultures. Equally valid is the view it is about addiction (in this case to immersion) or even submersion. The immerser acts as a kind of hijab, hiding its wearer behind a persona. In the process it removes some of the personality it covers.

Doubts concern the mechanics of the story and the relationships within it, examination of which makes it, in the end, unconvincing.

There was a strange usage (late minute revisions) and a typo (it wasn’t where Quy’s had last left it.)

Song Of The Body Cartographer By Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Philipine Genre Stories)

Among a set of creatures known as Timor’an, Siren is a body cartographer tasked with examining her lover Inyanna’s body map to find the reason for her inability to fly with a windbeast. And then to carry out the repair work which might mean Inyanna will leave her forever. Told in third person from Siren’s viewpoint this is a simple love story with an unusual setting.

The reading experience is marred by a few infelicities (dispair, a simply relocation) plus some misplaced commas.

The Flight of the Ravens by Chris Butler (Immersion Press)

This is a novella rather than a short story. Set mainly in Amsterdam in 1889, with excursions to Vienna and Frankfurt and also to the Amsterdam of 1452, it starts with two children entering a house and encountering an old man and a vortex which absorbs one of them. The remainder works through the ramifications of this for the girl, Elizabeth, and the father of the boy, Huginn Raaf, who form a compact to try to prevent a reoccurrence of the tragedy. The narrative features a fire giant confined within the vortex and a rather unconvincing Sigmund Freud whom, under Huginn’s prompting, Elizabeth consults. The ravens of the title are Odin’s companions, Muninn and Huginn. (Yes.) The characters don’t come to life and Butler’s use of words is occasionally awkward while his adoption of viewpoint within a scene can be too diagrammatic -“This was it then,” when we reach the climax? Otherwise the text was clean. To my mind this is a fantasy story, and not SF.

Limited Edition by Tim Maughan (1.3, Arc Magazine)

In an intensely surveilled society – an exaggerated version of our consumer driven one – a new type of must-have trainers which make stuff appear round them every time thee touch the ground is advertised on to the spex people wear. On spex, ))blink((ing takes the place of mouse clicking on a computer. Cash-starved Grids and his mates decide to raid the shop the trainers will be sold in to get themselves the shoes. The narrative is interspersed occasionally with Twitter style comments from the affluent or deprived commenting on the proceedings as they unfold.

The characters speak in a demotic that attempts to be futuristic or “street.” The twist, when it comes, is not really surprising.

There were two grammatical oddities. “Him and College look skyward.” “His clothes is splattered.”

Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville (Rejectamentalist Manifesto)

This is an extremely short piece (550 words or so) featuring the extension of marketing into warfare and (here) demolition projects. Logos appear in the explosion remnants. Its main thrust, though, deals with people who use a time-dilating drug to climb and descend the building as it collapses in what would be the most extreme of sports. It did contain, though, an irritating overuse of “&” instead of “and.”

Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales (Whippleshield Books)

My (extended) thoughts on this are here.
The more remote from it I get the better this story lies in my memory.

A Romance. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003, 292 p.

A novel about King Arthur? What new is there to be said?
Well, Massie’s approach is different. This is the second part of his Dark Ages trilogy as told by Michael Scott (known as the wizard) to his pupil, the Hohenstaufen Prince who would become The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.

In Arthur the King the focus is not so much on the legend we all think we know as on Arthur the man, a very human creature, from his humble upbringing, through his kingship to his gritty death. The effect is to demystify, to demythologise, to render Arthur into history. Michael Scott has his own reasons for this, to educate the prince, to remind him of a monarch’€™s duty to maintain peace and justice, to underline the burden of kingship but it also serves to emphasise the Hohenstaufen line’s links back to the Roman Empire. It’€™s a nice piece of ventriloquism by Massie and allows the use of wonderful Scottish words like howdumdeid.

In addition he has Scott locate Camelot in Scott’s boyhood environment – the Scottish border country – and mentions, among others, the legend of Arthur still residing in a hollow under the Eildon Hills. There are of course many parts of Great Britain which claim Arthur as their own. Indeed a cave by the Clyde shore at the Havoc in Dumbarton was/is known as Merlin’€™s Cave (though others have it as Bruce’s cave, such is legend.)

In the narrative the point is made that most of the tales of Arthur are actually those of the Knights of the Round Table. Here, there are some digressions of that sort but they are short and we are never away from Arthur for long.

Characters who might have seemed important, like Merlin and Lancelot, are bit parts; even Morgan Le Fay isn’€™t Arthur’€™s main antagonist. Merlin, though an instigator of the sequence of events which lead to the complications inherent in the tale, is disappeared offstage about halfway through.

The main problem with all this is the narrative style. Massie, as Scott, digresses frequently and irritatingly, leading to a certain turgidity in the delivery. I remember this trait as being worse, though, in the first book of The Dark Ages, The Evening of the World, which I read before I started blogging. So much so in fact that I left off reading this one for years.

It probably won’€™t be so long, I suspect, till I undertake the last in this series, Charlemagne and Roland.

SFL Div 1, East End Park, 23/3/13

Astonishing!

The scale of this result can be measured by the fact that Dunfermline had won their last 12 games against us and we hadn’t won at East End Park since 1986.

1-0 down at halftime I couldn’t see it coming. We weren’t 2-0 down long enough for me to be too despondent but at 3-1….?

Fortunately Chris Turner hit an absolute belter to make it 3-2 almost straight afterward and that sowed seeds of doubt in the home team.

We actually had a good first ten minutes but fell out of it for the rest of the half apart from Chris Turner having an effort chalked off for offside. I was in line and he looked OK to me. Not the last time the linesman was to be derided.

Their first goal came from when Nick Phinn was pushed off the ball in our half and they ran up and scored. Stephen Grindlay seemed to be beaten very easily.

Their second was dreadful defending. Their forward went through about three half-arsed tackles before hitting it in the corner.

Two minutes later a great passing move saw the ball hit across goal by Paul McGinn and Steven McDougall was free just beyond the back post to score our first against Dunfermline this season.

This was immediately after Jim Lister had come on for Nick Phinn. He made a difference. The home centre backs knew they were in a game then.

Their third was a joke. The through ball that led to it saw two Dunfermline players offside both of whom subsequently touched it, one playing it forward to another while both were well beyond the defenders. The linesman’s flag stayed resolutely down. He made gestures to suggest a defender was playing them on on the far side. Utter rubbish. The rest of the match was filled with Dumbarton fans shouting at him and raising ironic cheers when he finally did flag someone offside. (It’s what we pay our money for.)

The equaliser came from a defender dwelling on the ball and Jim Lister chasing him down, he then picked out Scott Agnew with a cut back, not the more obvious ball across the box. Aggie finished cleverly back the way it had come. Dreamland.

It then got better.

Our fourth was another intricate passing move finished off by Steven McDougall, calmness personified in the box, beating his man before slotting it past Paul Gallacher.

Dunfermline pressed for the few minutes remaining but we always managed to get bodies in the way or tackles in.

Up to today we had only 4 points out of the last 21 and the Murray magic seemed to have gone. Now it’s 7 out of the last 24. Even with Dunfermline’s troubles this must give the lads great confidence.

Games come thick and fast now, starting at home on Wednesday, then two in a row at Hamilton.

Edited to add:- Chris Turner was lucky to stay on the field after his deliberate hack at Josh Falkingham. I know Falkingham’s an annoying wee so-and-so but serious foul play is serious foul play no matter who it’s committed against.

FIFA World Cup Qualifier: Europe, Group A. Hampden Park, 22/3/13.

Wretched. That’s the only way to describe Scotland’s opening to this game. Misplaced passes galore – and in the worst area of the field to commit that footballing crime.

And yet we went in one up. From a set piece obviously. (Nicely taken by Grant Hanley as it was.)

Then it was suicide in the second half as Robert Snodgrass over-committed in the penalty box and the side couldn’t reorganise quickly enough after his sending off and the loss of the first goal.

No new manager bounce.

It is becoming increasingly obvious we just no longer have the players to compete for qualification places in World Cup and European Championship groups.

Having said there weren’€™t many protest songs in the 1980s this is another one – of sorts. It was performed by the Hull based Housemartins (out of whose demise came both The Beautiful South and Fat Boy Slim.)

The Housemartins: Build