In St Mungo’s churchyard, Penicuik, Midlothian, just off the main road through the town.

Lance Corporal R P Brown, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 3/6/1920, aged 26.

The latest issue (no 275) of Interzone has arrived (cover image centre below.)

This one contains my reviews of The Great Chain of Unbeing by Andrew Crumey and of Fifty-One by Chris Barnham.

There is a further waterfall on the Ceres Burn at Kemback, a bit upriver of the village. There has been some sort of man-made interference with the flow of the burn though with a stone projection at its centre:-

Video 1:-

Video 2:-

(aet 0-2.)

SPFL Tier 2 Play-off Final, Second Leg, The Rock, 13/5/18.

Well; we all knew that the good times wouldn’t last forever.

Yet for 93 minutes of this we were still a Tier 2 team.

Then all of a sudden no longer. That it was such a scruffy goal only put the knife in even more.

But after that I knew it was hopeless. Our defensive substitutions meant that there was no way we would be conjuring a goal in extra time. Our only hope was hanging on for penalties and that was unlikely given the momentum was against us and Alloa would be lifted and us deflated.

And the final nail in the coffin was driven in by an ex-Son in Jordan Kirkpatrick. Cracking goal though.

If only….

Kevin Nisbet had directed his header downwards more – or even to the near post rather than back across the keeper….

Andy Stirling had kept that rebound chance down instead of skying it….

Liam Burt had taken the ball for a walk to the corner flag instead of trying to score in injury time….

Alloa had scored from that double chance in the first, not the last minute. We’d have had to come out a bit and at least try to score. Froxy might even have been given a run-out….

We’d made the most of our breaks up the park in the second half last Wednesday….

Craig Barr hadn’t been suspended again. Dougie Hill looked much less comfortable than he did against Arbroath and Andy Dowie seemed affected too….

We actually had a striker….

Manager Stevie Aitken was not so wedded to defensive tactics….

It was a game too far really. We looked leggy and inhibited. All those catch-up games and the Challenge Cup run had taken their toll.

And so the great adventure comes to an end after six years.

Back to proper football grounds again next season. Ones where you can stand, not sit, that you can walk round to the other end at half-time, where you’re not stuck in a wee corner of the main stand. (New Broomfield, Stark’s Park and possibly Ochilview excepted.*)

We’ve had seven promotions in my lifetime. And now eight relegations.

I wonder how long it will be before we get promoted again.

And from which division.

*Edited to add:- and New Bayview. I’d forgotten it’s a one stand effort like ours at the Rock. Only the Angus grounds for the old-style experience, then. I can’t see me making it down to Stranraer.

Thsi one is on the Ceres Burn which runs through the village:-

Closer view but through trees:-

Video. It looked like goats that were in that small compound near the waterfall:-

Drugstore Indian Press, 2014, 283 p plus vi p Introduction by Eric Brown.

Michael G Coney was a writer of the 1970s and 1980s whose work I remember most fondly. Despite winning a BSFA Award for best novel for Brontomek! he never achieved the wide success and readership he deserved perhaps because his novels tended to focus on the dilemmas and relationships of his characters rather than any SF ideas they might contain. In this regard his influence on the work of Eric Brown (who provides the introduction to this volume) is unmistakable.

Never published in the author’s lifetime, I Remember Pallahaxi is a sequel of sorts to Coney’s 1975 novel Hello Summer, Goodbye but is set hundreds of years after the events of that book. Here we are among the stilk, a humanoid race, inhabiting an unnamed Earth-like planet orbiting a sun called Phu with a giant planet named Rax dominating the system’s celestial mechanics. The stilk inherit their ancestors’ memories up to the moment of their own conception, boys only their father’s line, girls only their mother’s. The resulting hierarchy means those who can trace these memories back furthest become manchief or womanchief of their respective villages. Inheritance therefore falls to the youngest son or daughter – the ones with the most such memories. Gender roles are also rigidly demarcated as are the living arrangements. There are no nuclear families; association of mothers and fathers beyond their initial sexual encounter is looked upon as unnatural. Boys are taken into the men’s house on coming of age, girls remain in the women’s.

The book starts at a time when the crops of Yam village are beginning to fail, the animals the men hunt scarcer, and the chiefs have to make a journey to the fishing village of Noss to borrow food for the winter against future crops. The crude boat young Yam Hardy, nephew of Yam’s manchief, has taken along on the trip for adventure begins to sink under him and he is rescued by Noss Charm, the most eligible girl in Noss. They form an instant attraction to each other despite the long-standing mutual prejudices of each village. The sinking wasn’t an accident though. They find a hole in the upturned boat. A mystery then, along with the SF elements. Subsequently, Yam’s food situation gets no better as the crops fail again and the animals become ever fewer. When Hardy’s father Bruno is murdered on another supplicant trip to Noss Hardy realises he is in danger.

All this is almost by the way to what is really the main driver of the book, the importance of “stardreaming” (the accession to those ancestral memories,) the mysterious creatures called lorin (with apparent telepathic abilities) and the casual discarding of the stilk by the humans, who arrived after the time in which Hello Summer, Goodbye was set, in order to exploit the planet’s resources – albeit with treaty obligations – as humans do.

I note that by the end the conceit that Hardy is relating this to a human (his narrative makes frequent references to this and compares both races’ backgrounds) does not quite stand up. Not that it matters. In most respects the stilk we are shown might as well be human. They behave in the way we would expect humans to. Barring the living arrangements (which in the novel are beginning to break down and are found in some human societies anyway) they have the same flaws, strengths and idiosyncrasies as humans. Most crucially, Coney makes the reader care about them. Along the way he takes a wide swipe at religion and the fervour it can induce, the mask it can provide.

Quite why this novel took so long to be published is a mystery to me. It is quintessential Coney which makes it very good indeed.

Pedant’s corner:- various USianisms and spellings (no doubt Coney hoped for US publication when he was writing this,) “‘What’s you name?’” (your,) “trying the race the motorcart” (trying to race,) “what was going on it my mind” (in my mind,) “and from time to time and drank deeply” (from time to time drank deeply,) “as boiler ran out of steam” (as the boiler,) “ten, eleven generations ago” (on next page is “ten, eleven years ago”,) inclintions (inclinations,) “much older that Dad” (than Dad,) “‘you’d rather to show me around’” (rather show me around,) womn’s (women’s,) “‘she’s an easy women to let go of’” (woman,) “the lay of the rocks” (the lie,) “‘Come one’” (Come on,) a missing quote mark at the start of a paragraph of direct speech, “a small group of trees were shaking violently” (a small group was shaking,) “and finally spoke words that seem to crackle like ice” (seemed.) “His audience were not so familiar,” (his audience was not,) Browneyes’ (Browneyes’s,) “one of Stance’s huntsman” (huntsmen,) “not having their parents memories” (parents’,) “‘it was never mean to be opened’” (meant.)

Well, after this we’ll know Sons’ fate for next season.

Will my nerves be able to stand another 90 (or 120) minutes or, heaven forfend, penalties?

You can again catch it on BBC Alba. Kick-off is at 4.10 pm.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 8/5/18.

The observable Universe; from our Solar System out to the cosmic microwave background.

The caption says that “in light the farthest we can see comes from the cosmic microwave background.” That would be “in electromagnetic radiation the farthest we can see comes from the cosmic microwave background.”

This waterfall at Kemback is to the left of the Community Hall:-

Reverse View:-

Video:-

Video reverse view. The building in the background is the Community Hall:-

The waterfall goes into a gully that goes underneath the road and into the Ceres Burn:-

Video:-

There are two bridges over the burn at Kemback. This one is up the village a bit:-

This one is just by the junction of the road which goes to Cupar eventually:-

While we were coming back down from the church these aeroplanes flew overhead:-