The list for this year’s Clarke Award is:-

God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)

The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann (Gollancz)

Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)

The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

The Machine by James Smythe (Blue Door)

Unusually (I think) I’ve read – or nearly finished – three of these; the same three that appear on the BSFA Award ballot. I’ve linked to my reviews of two of them. I’ll be publishing a review of The Adjacent soon.

My contributor copy of Interzone issue 251 arrived today. It contains my review of The Copper Promise by Jen Williams.

My review of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North has now been sent off and is set to appear in issue 252.

Access is now cut off to the whole of the prom. These two photos are from early March showing more drilling out of the old sea wall and the stumps of the metal supporting struts that strengthened it. Not to mention a demolished lamp standard.

SPFL Tier 2, The Rock, 15/3/14.

Excellent. I’d take this every week.

Nearly everyone was available for this. Only Scott Linton was missing. It seems a strange decision to play our best midfielder, the returning Chris Turner, (we missed his influence last week) at left back to replace him. That doesn’t show much confidence in reserve left back Scott Smith who did all right when he came on last week but admittedly looks overweight.

So. Positive goal difference restored and a league placing higher than before we started. And Cowdenbeath have to catch up ten points on us in eight games in order to overhaul us. Time to look up the table rather than down. Amazing.

5 games in two weeks coming up, though.

The pundits on Sportscene Results were also inciting manager Ian Murray to “better” (or was it bigger?) things. Not just yet, please, Ian. You are still learning.

Crème de la Crime, 2013, 218 p.

After a myriad of SF books and stories this is the author’s first foray into straight detective fiction. I don’t read very much in the crime genre but this one worked for me. Partly that was the result of the old-fashioned, and welcome, feel of the story, which can be read as an homage to the golden age of detective fiction.

We are in the 1950s. Donald Langham is a writer of detective stories with a good relationship with his patrician agent, the florid of speech Charles Elder, and an unstated affection for Elder’s more than competent secretary Maria Dupré, the daughter of a French diplomat. The murders of the title have started before the narrative does but we do not learn this till later. The first crime we read about is the blackmailing of Elder for gross indecency with a rent boy. Before he settled down to writing Langham had previous experience of detecting so he offers to investigate and find the blackmailer. Things do not go easily and it is not long before Maria has to make a contribution to the endeavour. Meanwhile it emerges that writers of detective stories are dying or being murdered in ways that nag at Langham’s mind. The plot bowls along, with plenty twists and turns and the narrative incorporates both the camaraderie and the resentments of crime writers.

Keen observers of Brown’s previous works will notice certain resonances in the text, especially in the nascent and building relationship between Langham and Maria, which at times has more than a feel of Brown’s “Starship Seasons” quartet of novellas, among others.

In an article in the Guardian Review on Saturday 8^th March John Banville identified an “unacknowledged but vital ingredient of a really satisfying whodunnit: cosiness.” In setting his book in the 1950s Brown has caught that cosiness perfectly. It is, after all, the function of the detective story to set the world to rights.

There is at least one more Langham and Dupré novel to come. I’m looking forward to it.

Two in two days. First Bob Crow, then Tony Benn. Are there any prominent left wingers left in the UK?

I must say it has been faintly sickening to hear those who had nothing good to say about them in their lifetimes come out with all sorts of praise now they are safely dead. I did think it was unwise of David Cameron to say of Tony Benn, “There was never a dull moment listening to or reading him, even if you disagreed with him,” as it invites invidious comparisons.

Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as Viscount Stansgate, was the first person in the UK to renounce a peerage. This was in order to retain his seat as an MP which as a peer eligible to sit in the House of Lords he could not under the law as it stood. Had his elder brother not been killed on active service in the Second World War his campaign to be allowed this would not have been necessary and that law might still be in place. Ironically Benn’s success in getting the law changed afforded Alec Douglas Home the opportunity to do just the same with his peerage and so become Prime Minister – an office Benn himself never achieved.

Benn has been represented in today’s news coverage as somehow unwilling to come to terms with politics as it unfolded. Another way of saying this would be to say he was not a trimmer. Instead he stuck to the principles of fairness he had long espoused. I note here that a certain other conviction politician broadly contemporaneous with Benn was lauded for not being a trimmer. Funny old world, eh?

Mind you, if you’re anti-establishment in the UK you seldom receive a good press. (Unless you are recenty deceased, obviously.)

Robert (Bob) Crow : 13/06/1961 – 11/3/2014.
Anthony Neil Wedgwood (Tony) Benn : 3/4/1925 – 14/3-2014.
So it goes.

Do It Again would have made a good title for this category.

The single represented something of a comeback for the Beach Boys and brought back memories of the early surfing songs.

As I recall Do It Again was one of the singles which featured in an unprecedented (and unrepeated) three-way tie at No 1 in the charts along with Herb Alpert’s This Guy’s in Love With You and a third one I’m not sure of but may have been the Bee Gees’ I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You.

You may remember me mentioning that one of my school mates was a big Beach Boys fan. He really liked Do It Again’s b-side Wake the World – a very short song indeed – which I include here for your pleasure.

The Beach Boys: Do It Again

The Beach Boys: Wake the World

Pittodrie Stadium is the home of Aberdeen FC.

Approach to Beach End Stand:-

Approach to Away Section – Not very prepossessing, what with the menacing metal fencing all round the approach:-

East Stand (Beach End.) Houses away fans:-

North (Main) Stand, houses the players’ changing rooms and home fans seating. The players’ tunnel is not as is usual in the centre but at the right hand end as you look at it here:-

West Stand. Home fans again:-

South Stand. In the photo Sons fans are nearest. This doesn’t give the impression of how many were there (600.) Beyond a fence, most of the stand was taken up with Aberdeen fans:-

Home fans embracing the insult and carrying an inflatable sheep/lamb. As well as the sheep there were loads of balloons in Sons colours of black, white and gold floating around during the Scottish Cup game on 8/3/14:-

Sons players applaud fans at end of game:-

Scottish Cup, Round 6, Pittodrie Stadium, 8/3/14.

So, the dream lasted 53 minutes. It was good while it lasted.

Actually the dream was still on till the final whistle – but only of salvaging a draw.

A large contingent of Sons supporters travelled up to Pittodrie – for long stretches making more noise than the home fans, at least from the area where the away contingent was closeted. Several old favourites were trotted out along with the usual “Dumbarton,” clap, clap, clap, and “Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh. You’re shite, aaaaaah,” including, “We forgot that you were here,” “What a shitey home support,” “You only sing when you’re winning.” Special kudos to Aberdeen keeper Jamie Langfield for responding to the chant, “Jamie Langfield, you’re a wanker, you’re a wanker,” with a grin and thumbs up.

Aberdeen were undoubtedly the more accomplised team, they achieved more subtle angles and passes than we are used to but we matched them for just about the whole game. That their defenders had their arms around our two strikers every time the ball came up to them says a lot (one particular instance in the penalty box comes to mind.) So does the fact that the Aberdeen man of the match was centre half Russell Anderson. They looked vulnerable to the ball over the top (until Colin Rhyming Slang was substituted – he’d pulled up after an aerial challenge in their box and lasted only a few more minutes.) We resorted to that direct ball a little too often after they scored but our normal passing game was not as fluid as I’d hoped, Aberdeen not allowing us the space we’re used to. Aberdeen played with much more assurance after the goal but they still couldn’t produce the killer pass, tribute to our defence.

The goal was preventable, Scott Linton showed admirable confidence in trying to shepherd the ball out for a goal kick but he should have hoofed it. I just knew when the corner was awarded that the goal would come from it. And the corner could have been defended better.

(Poor Scotty’s day got worse when he got injured in a challenge and had to come off. Looked like a hamstring pull. We’ll miss his long throws.)

It wasn’t even our strongest team. Chris Turner was still out and loanee Mike Miller hasn’t started at centre half before.

Aberdeen got the benefit of 50/50 decisions from the referee – as you might expect for the “bigger” club.

One curiosity. The pitch was being watered, by pop-up sprinkler, before the game and at half time. Is this usual practice at Pittodrie or were they trying to make the pitch heavy because we’re a part time team?

Special mention to Andy Graham. He looked as if he was injured with about 25 minutes to go but kept on running and chasing and tackling even though he looked totally knackered.

It shows how far we’ve come in the past five years that the overriding emotion after we’ve lost 1-0 away to the second best team in the country is disappointment rather than relief.

I just hope that the efforts of this game and the injuries sustained don’t cost us in the league.

For those of you who know me see if you can spot me in this photo from the Dumbarton FC website.

For those of you who don’t, I’m somewhere above the D of the Dumbarton in the banner.

Gollancz, 2013, 375 p.

Another BSFA Award ballot book. I didn’t have to go far to find this one. I managed to pick up from one of my local libraries.

Gajananvihari Pilot is part of a family which operates as space salvagers in the decades after an event precipitated by Sri Hong-Owen and known as the Bright Moment. One day their ship, a Mobius ring called Pabuji’s Gift, is hijacked by pirates. Hari escapes with the head of Dr Gagarian, which is supposed to contain files relating to the work he and Aakash, Hari’s father, had been doing to try to understand and replicate the physics of the Bright Moment. The plot revolves around Hari’s search to seek out those responsible for the hijack and to revenge himself on them.

Like the two other books of McAuley’s Quiet War sequence which I have read there is a lot of attention paid to his history of the future. Again, though, the characters seem almost incidental.

The book is riddled with references to SF works of the past including the titles of each of the six sections which make up the novel. This homage may explain its appearance on the BSFA Award ballot.