Pittenweem is a fishing village in the East Neuk of Fife. It’s got a famous* chip shop (which was queued out of the door when we tried to buy some of its product.) There are two other chippies in the place. We tried the one furthest west next time. Much quicker service and a very good fish supper.

A few weeks ago I found the War Memorial. The left photo is from the road, the one on the right is from the churchyard itself.

*Famous in Pittenweem. (To be fair Prince Charles and Camilla are said to have partaken of its wares.)

One of the famous SF writer Arthur C Clarke‘s well known sayings was, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Demonstrate, for instance, a Star Trek communicator (or, better, a modern day mobile phone; because effectively that’s what those communicators were, minus the photo and internet functions) to a hitherto isolated tribe in the deep remote somewhere and its working principles would be impossible for them to comprehend. The same would be true of us confronted with some really advanced piece of hardware.

But it’s always seemed to me that the reverse of Clarke’s saying could equally be true and that any sufficiently effective magic would be indistinguishable from advanced technology. Certainly it could be explicable as such. “I do this with this and that happens.”

Ian Sales has been complaining about the latest Hugo Awards.

This is a subject nobody outside the SF world (not to mention many inside it) gives a toss about but to others it’s important. The Hugos claim to identify the best SF in any particular year but as Sales says the categories are now somewhat out of date and their boundaries can be obscure.

I used to pay some attention to them as a guide to what to seek out to read – and later when an acquaintance/friend was up for one of them. This year’s mainly passed me by. The results are here.

Since only attendees of any year’s Worldcon (Worldcon = the annual world SF convention) or its supporting members (financial contibutors who cannot attend) have a vote in the nominations or final ballot the awards are in essence a popularity contest so not necessarily giving an indicator as to quality.

The main flaw though is that since the Worldcon is usually held in the USA – and even when it isn’t – most of its members are from the US. This means they are and always have been essentially USian awards. This is historically inevitable since the US was the largest SF market and largest source of writers. But it does unlevel the playing field.

FIFA World Cup Qualifier: Europe, Group A, Hampden Park, 8/9/12.

I only saw the highlights – and had managed to avoid finding out the score beforehand, which wasn’t worth it.

We made heavy weather of this but shouldn’t grumble about a draw with a team above us in the rankings. (Only Macedonia in our Group aren’t above us.) Serbia might have scored themselves.

Still, judging from this it’s “Brazil, here we don’t come.”

I suddenly realised today that I hadn’t posted the photo of Alloway War Memorial that I took in early August. It’s set into the wall of the Public Hall more or less opposite Burns’s cottage. The upper area commemorates the Great War. The smaller plaque below is for World War 2.

Just to the side is a seat. I like the fact it is inscribed “Lest We Forget.”

Hal David’s death was reported last weekend.
For sure he was not at the cutting edge of rock and roll but Hal David was simply one of the best lyricists of the 60s and 70s. In collaboration with Burt Bacharach he wrote so many memorable songs for so many performers. Many 60s artists might not have had a career without their songs and well after it was written their (They Long to Be) Close to You provided The Carpenters with a first hit in 1970.
With Bobbie Gentry’s 1969 no. 1 I’ll Never Fall in Love Again David’s inventive rhyming of pneumonia with phone ya, certainly stuck in the ear. I Say A Little Prayer made Aretha Franklin in the UK.

Bobbie Gentry: I’ll Never Fall in Love Again

Aretha Franklin: I Say A Little Prayer

Harold Lane “Hal” David, 25/4/1921 – 1/9/2012. So it goes.

I was amused when I heard that Mr Irresponsible, aka David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, had reshuffled half his cabinet.

The same thing was done by Harold Macmillan, Conservative Prime Minister in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in 1962 when it was dubbed Night of the Long Knives in comparison with the Nazi purge of 1934.

(Macmillan may or may not have uttered the phrase, “Events, dear boy. Events,” under which I have categorised this post.)

Whatever, the Night of the Long Knives incident offered his Labour opponent Harold Wilson a brilliant line when he talked about this some time later. Wilson said, “I remember the then Prime Minister sacking half his Cabinet – the wrong half, as it turned out.”

I wonder if Ed Miliband can somehow reuse that one.

Science Fiction is dead – again.

Or at least moribund according to Paul Kincaid in his review of both of the Year’s Best SF collections for the LA Review of Books.

Actually I have some sympathy with parts of his argument – which does chime with what I said about this year’s BSFA Award short story nominees.

I also agree that when the SF tips over into Fantasy or wish fulfillment, the “six impossible things before breakfast” scenario, we might as well give up.

He may also have a point about a lot of modern short story – or novel length come to that – SF being retreads of well-worn themes. (But the writer in me says that if I nevertheless have something to say, a newish angle on a trope if you will, doesn’t that story deserve to be told? We can’t all be dazzlingly inventive all the time. And while of course SF ought to harbour, even showcase, the experimental the virtue of a story starting at the beginning and going right through to the end is often a relief as a reader.)

Where we really differ, though, is in Kincaid’s seeming request for optimism. I don’t know about Paul but I can’t see much to be optimistic about right now; nor for the foreseeable future.

I obviously can’t say often enough SF is never about the future. It’s about now. And the here and now is profoundly depressing.

I suppose a little hope would not go amiss but where is it to come from? The Arctic ice is melting at a rate of knots, extreme weather events are multiplying and we haven’t been back to the Moon for 40 years.

We might not deserve it perhaps but we may be getting the only SF that is presently possible.

…… that the last Glasgow Tram ran along the rails.

The trams were much loved in Glasgow. Thousands turned out to watch their final passing.

There’s film of Glasgow’s trams at the Scottish Screen Archive and The Last Tram appears on You Tube.

Two more ships and an old favourite.

This is the cruise ship M S Rotterdam heading out of the River Forth last week en route to Invergordon! Apparently 100,000 cruise passengers dock at Invergordon every year, which is somewhat baffling. One of my work colleagues comes from Invergordon (as often as possible.)

This is the Rotterdam in the Netherlands six years ago (photo from Wikipedia.)

Just off Dysart is the rather rakish from of the cargo ship M S Troms Capella. She’s been hanging around for well over a week.

Here’s our old friend Solitaire from the same vantage point above Dysart harbour that I photographed the Troms Capella.

Behind her stern that’s North Berwick Law on the opposite shore.