I heard on the radio at the weekend of the death of Wanda Young, latterly lead singer of the Motown female vocal group The Marvelettes.

The Marvelettes were Motown’s first successful female group with a US no 1 in 1961 with Please Mr Postman (a song which was in the UK mainly associated with The Beatles – they covered it on their second album – until The Carpenters had a no 2 hit with it in 1974.)

Young became the group’s lead singer in 1965. This was th efisrt single she sang lead on

The Marvelettes: I’ll Keep Holding On

Wanda LaFaye Young (Wanda Rogers;) 9/8/1943 – 15/12/21. So it goes.

Guild Publishing, 1982, 246 p.

Years before the start of this novel Anne Elliot of Kellynch Hall had allowed herself to be persuaded by her family not to marry Frederick Wentworth, a junior officer in the navy. Now with her father needing to reduce expenditure he has been forced to rent the Hall to Admiral Croft. Mrs Croft is Frederick’s sister and so the meeting of Anne and Wentworth again will be a certainty. He is now a something of a catch as he is a Captain and wealthy due to prize money from the war. Nevertheless they both observe proprieties when they do meet.

Anne convinces herself Wentworth no longer has feelings for her and affects to be content. There are complications introduced by the other characters, not least the heir to Kellynch Hall, William Elliot, Anne’s cousin, who pretends to marriage with her and Louisa Musgrove, thought to be interested in Wentworth. A trip to Lyme Regis leads to Louisa falling from steps on the Cobb and suffering serious effects as a result of which she has to remain at the home of Wentworth’s acquaintances the Harvilles, where his friend Captain Benwick helps in her recovery, eventually leading to their engagement and a clear path for Anne and Wentworth.

In essence this is girl met boy, girl spurns boy, girl now meets man – but there are only supposed to be seven plots in literature. The interest is in how the matter of the relationship is resolved.

There are only really two of what might be called Austenisms. One about Anne’s father, “to his good looks and his rank” he “owed a wife of very superior character to any thing deserved by his own,” and Anne herself reflecting, “Like many other great moralists and preachers she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.”

Again, this is all rendered too familiar by television adaptations. In the twenty-first century it is all but impossible to come to Austen’s works with a fresh, penetrating eye.

Pedant’s corner:- there are the usual early nineteenth century spellings – the Streights (Straits,) stopt (though later we do have ‘stopped’,) staid for stayed, sirname (surname) etc. Otherwise; the Miss Musgroves (the Misses Musgrove,) the Mr Musgroves (the Misters Musgrove,) the Miss Hayters (the Misses Hayter.) “There certainly were a great multitude of ugly women in Bath” (was a great multitude.) “‘You did not use to like’” (used to like.)

The second issue of digital SF mag Parsec was published on Christmas Eve, shortly before midnight.

You can buy it here.

I have three reviews in this one:-

Best of British Science Fiction 2020 edited by Donna Scott.

Three Twins at the Crater School by Chaz Brenchley and

The Second Rebel, Linden A Lewis’s follow-up to The First Sister which I reviewed for Parsec 1.

Ace, 1991, 269 p.

Émile Saint-Just is a member of the Syndicat of the planet Beau Solis, the last bastion of French speaking culture. The mark of Syndicat membership is the cuff, worn round the wrist, binding its wearer to the group. Beau Solis is also the sole producer of sadece senin, a drug highly prized throughout the human worlds but subject to strict controls and taxes by the Justica, a polity somewhat sketchily delineated here but said to be uniform and rule bound and which seems to dominate the rest of human civilisation. Selling sadece senin is a lucrative business for the Syndicat, especially if the regulations and taxes of the Justica can be avoided.

Saint-Just takes a place on the Mary Damned, a spaceship running sadece for the Syndicat between the patrols of the Justica. These are relativistic journeys. When Saint-Just gets back no-one on Beau Solis will remember him. But he doesn’t get back. The Mary Damned is captured with no resistance, since Justica operatives flood it with a soporific gas. When Émile wakes up, sans cuff, he is on a Justica prison ship, the Constanza. The Mary Damned becomes a famous ghost ship, drifting through the spaceways.

Life on the Constanza, as in any prison, is tough but Émile has a few allies and they hatch a plan to escape, but the group splits into two, one of which plans to rendezvous with the Mary Damned. (Outside the prison time has flown.)

It is a very different Beau Solis to which Émile returns. The Justica has taken control and is eliminating as much sadece senin as it can. Émile’s lack of cuff means he is no longer recognized as a Syndicat member and he is thrown onto his own resources and those of the latent resistance, whose project takes up the remaining half of the book.

Reading a thirty-year-old Science Fiction novel can be a jolting experience. Noticeable to a 2021 audience is the importance of newspapers in Beau Solis. (Nothing dates as quickly as the future. Think of all those redundant flashing lights on the computer panels in the original Star Trek or Arthur Clarke’s journalist taking a typewriter along with him to the Red Planet in The Sands of Mars.) This is not Lewitt’s fault. There is only so much invention an author can put into an SF book. And we all have unexamined assumptions about what may be constant in our world. Her storytelling and characterisation make up for any such minor irritations. This is good solid readable SF.

Pedant’s corner:- Académie Français (since Académie is a feminine noun that should be ‘Académie Française’,) tsunumi (tsunami,) spit (spat,) “and he didn’t; understand at first why” (no need for that semi-colon,) “everyone can grown sadece” (can grow,) crosier (crozier,) Reims (Rheims,) “the group grew in size as they made their way” (as it made its way,) “it seemed that none of the them were” (no ‘the’,) good-by (goodbye.)

As usual these books are listed in order of my reading them. 18 this year; 17 fiction, one* not; 10 written by women, 8 by men; 4 could be described as SF or Fantasy; 6 were originally published in a foreign language.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
Light by Margaret Elphinstone
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
Snapshot* by Daniel Gray and Alan McCredie
The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Landscape Painted with Tea by Milorad Pavić
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Being Emily by Anne Donovan
The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson
Their Lips Talk of Mischief by Alan Warner
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh
Scandal by Shūsaku Endō
Ru by Kim Thúy

(I normally make the “year’s best” post nearer Hogmanay but I doubt any of the books I ought to have finished by then will make the list.)

Again this comes from Tull’s Christmas album. Unusually though it was written by guitarist Martin Barre.

Those of you who know me well will also know why this is appropriate for today.

Altered Images: Happy Birthday

It’s that time of the year when people post ‘best of’ lists.

This isn’t a best of, merely a list of the books with Scottish authorship or Scottish flavour which I read this year. A round 30, of which (since Scotland in Space was an anthology* containing stories and articles** by both men and women) 14½ were by men and 15½ by women, 28½** were fiction (Snapshot being about Scottish Football Grounds.)

The Corncrake and the Lysander by Finlay J MacDonald
Light by Margaret Elphinstone
Snapshot by Daniel Gray and Alan McCredie
And the Cock Crew by Fionn MacColla
A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh
Ringan Gilhaize by John Galt
The Gates of Eden by Annie S Swan
Close Quarters by Angus McAllister
Vivaldi and the Number 3 by Ron Butlin
End Games in Bordeaux by Allan Massie
The Gleam in the North by D K Broster
A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
Scotland in Space Ed by Deborah Scott and Simon Malpas
Being Emily by Anne Donovan
The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
Their Lips Talk of Mischief by Alan Warner
The House by the Loch by Kirsty Wark
Summer by Ali Smith
Glister by John Burnside
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
The End of an Old Song by J D Scott
The Rental Heart and other fairy tales by Kirsty Logan
Republics of the Mind by James Robertson
The Dark Mile by D K Broster
Highland River by Neil M Gunn
The Clydesiders by Margaret Thomson Davis
The Last Peacock by Allan Massie
A Day at the Office by Robert Alan Jamieson

That last one was of course my final (unless I ever get round to Trainspotting) book on the Best 100 Scottish Books list.

I am part way through George Mckay Brown’s collection of short stories, Hawkfall, which would make the above sex ratio of authors 1:1 but am unlikely to post about it here before the New Year. (I’m four behind as it is, though one of those is for ParSec.)

* It was also the only one to be SF or Fantasy.

The 2021 Hugo Awards have just been announced at the 79th Worldcon (DisCon III) in Washington, DC, USA.

They’re a bit late; Worldcons are usually held in August.

As far as the fiction goes the nominees were (the award winners are in bold.)

Best Novel

Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press / Solaris)
The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)
WINNER: Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books / Solaris)

I read the Jemisin for Interzone and posted my review here. The Roanhorse, Kowal and Clarke novels are on my tbr pile. Judging by The Calculating Stars I wouldn’t have expected The Relentless Moon to have been on the short list.

I have read none of the below.

Best Novella

Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)
WINNER: The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
Finna, Nino Cipri (Tordotcom)
Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi (Tordotcom)
Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey (Tordotcom)

Best Novelette

“Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super,” A.T. Greenblatt (Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2020)
“Helicopter Story,” Isabel Fall (Clarkesworld, January 2020)
“The Inaccessibility of Heaven,” Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, July/August 2020)
“Monster,” Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2020)
“The Pill,” Meg Elison (from Big Girl, (PM Press)
WINNER: “Two Truths and a Lie,” Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com)

Best Short Story

“Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse,” Rae Carson (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2020)
“A Guide for Working Breeds,” Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris))
“Little Free Library,” Naomi Kritzer (Tor.com)
“The Mermaid Astronaut,” Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2020)
WINNER: “Metal Like Blood in the Dark,” T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine, September/October 2020)
“Open House on Haunted Hill,” John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots – 2020, ed. David Steffen)

Rochester lies on the A 68 between Otterburn and the Scottish border. Its War Memorial is of the tabernacle type.

Dedication: “To the glory of God and in proud memory of the men of this country-side who fell in the cause of right and freedom 1914 – 1918.” Plus Great War names:-

Great War names:-

Second Dedication: “Also in gratitude for service rendered in the same cause by” followed by the names of those who served:-