Picador, 1979, 174 p. Translated from the Spanish El Colonel No Tieme Quien Le Escriba (Aguirre Editor, Colombia, 1961) by J S Bernstein.

This contains the novella, No One Writes to the Colonel (El Colonel No Tieme Quien Le Escriba) and several shorter pieces, Tuesday Siesta, One of These Days, There Are No Thieves in This Town, Balthazar’s Marvellous Afternoon, Montiel’s Widow, One Day after Saturday, Artificial Roses and Big Mama’s Funeral all collected under the umbrella title Big Mama’s Funeral (Los Funerales de la Mama Grande, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico, 1962.)

They illustrate life in the town of Macondo familiar to those who have read the author’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Indeed the memory of the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendía hangs over each of these stories.

The titular Colonel is living a life of less than genteel poverty while travelling to the wharf every Friday to see the post come in. He is waiting for the pension promised to him for his part in the revolution many, many years ago. But no one writes to the Colonel. His is something of a bleak tale. The rest of the stories are beautifully written vignettes or longer pieces all with a touch of oddness about them. The big mama of the last tale was so notable that even the Pope came to her funeral.

Pedant’s corner:- Translated into USian. “The women examined him” (there was only one woman,) a missing opening quote mark before a piece of direct speech, the early part of page 152 is also printed towards the bottom of page 114 after the end of Balthazar’s Marvellous Afternoon, “rusted zinc” (x 2, zinc does not rust, only iron does that: ‘corroded zinc’ unless the zinc was rust-streaked,) “and leaches to her kidneys” (leeches,)

Recently (12/5/25 and 13/5/25) Astronomy Picture of the Day published two reconstructions (one each on consecutive days from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft) of how our home galaxy The Milky Way looks from the side and from above.

Side view:-

From above. Our sun is circled below within the galaxy’s Orion Arm:-

Mandarin, 1988, 394 p.

This is the fourth in Cherryh’s pride of Chanur sequence, featuring the leonine Pyanfar Chanur as a protagonist. I reviewed the previous books here, here and here.

Chanur’s Homecoming seemed to me to be more densely written than the others in Pyanfar’s story so far, with much more of her thoughts and worries on the ongoing situation in the worlds of the Compact. Her main preoccupation here, though, is the threat to her homeworld Anuurn, and to the survival of her han race, represented by the kif Akkhtimakt, who has taken his ships off presumably to attack the planet. Pyanfar has an ally of sorts in another kif, Sikkukkut, who has gifted her one of his slaves, Skkukuk and is a sworn enemy of Akkhtimakt. Other characters familiar from the previous books are Pyanfar’s niece, Hilfy, the rest of the crew of her spaceship The Pride of Chanur and the human Tully – but he takes much less part in the action and the plot than before.

That action takes some time to come to the fore and it is only in the book’s latter stages when the pace ramps up. It is what happens in this book though which sets out why Pyanfar will later become a revered elder in hani society.

Pedant’s corner:- focussed (x 2, focused,) “I can’t shake if off” (it off,) “in common” (common,) unladed (unladen,) “none of them were in the mood” (none of them was in the mood,) touble (trouble,) shortfocussed (shortfocused.) “Neither of us are” (Neither of us is,) Pasarimi (elsewhere Pasarimu.)

The Swa Hus type was an attempt to improve the living conditions in rural Friesland.

Swa Hus at De Spitkeet:-

Interiors:-

Doll’s House in Swa Hus:-

Tool room:-

A Surreal Chronicle, Polygon, 2023, 149 p, including 7 p Afterword.

Nothing Left to Fear From Hell is one of publisher Birlinn’s Darkland Tales which re-examine Scotland’s history from a modern perspective.

In it, a tall man, accompanied by several companions, is making hazardous journeys by small boat between the islands of the Outer Hebrides, mostly under the cover of darkness. They are on the run and at one point the man has to disguise himself as a serving girl, when he is given the name Betty Bourke.

We are of course following the flight of Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart (to give him his full complement of names, never used in the text,) otherwise known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, down on his luck but ever hopeful fortune will favour him in the end.

Though the Young Pretender has featured as a character in many of them, most novelistic examinations of the Jacobite inheritance – a perennial subject of Scottish fiction – have focused on that cause’s adherents and their (mis)adventures. I certainly have not before read one in which the Prince is the protagonist. But my acquaintance with the subject is by no means exhaustive.

Warner inhabits the time and its susceptibilities very effectively, presenting a picture of Charles Stuart as a human being, with every necessity and function we all have, along with his convictions of divine right, plus the all but unthinking deference of his comrades. Not that the text confines itself to the viewpoint of the Prince. A particular highlight is a servant girl’s view of the kenspeckle and overly presumptuous Betty Burke

A quirk of this publication is that on even numbered pages between chapters – and before the Afterword – are depictions of that minute pest of the Scottish summer, the midge, with which the travelling party is plagued, starting with one and going up to ten.

In that Afterword Warner speculates on the conundrums of historical fiction, the difficulties of portrayal. As he says, “they were so like us, and they were so unlike us.”

But apart from the drier and necessarily more restricted approach of historical record and academe, fiction is the only way we can explore past times such as these.

This novella gives us Charles Edward Stuart as a believable, if misguided, human being. But he was trapped by his birth; as most of us are.

Pedant’s corner:- “was like a liquified putrescence” (liquefied,) “he crashed items akimbo” (he crashed items with his arms on his hips?) “the riding party were headed onwards making a cover of what might lay over the roads ahead” (the riding party was headed onwards making a cover of what might lie over the roads ahead,) “Robert Forbes’ remarkable” (Forbes’s,) “Winifred Dukes’ The Rash Adventurer” (Dukes’s.)

Irish songstress Clodagh Rodgers died last month.  She is perhaps best remembered for representing the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1971, singing Jack In The Box (a rather too obvious attempt to repeat the success of Puppet on a String. I also recall Monty Python’s Flying Circus  lampooning the song.) As a result of her agreeing to sing the UK entry she apparently received death threats from the IRA.

Prior to that she had had UK hits in 1969 with Come Back and Shake Me (a no 3) and this song, which made no 4 in the charts.

Clodagh Rodgers: Goodnight Midnight

Clodagh Rodgers: 5/3/1947 – 18/4/2025. So it goes.

This is an even more primitive house than the Earth House at De Spitkeet. The people dug a hole and strengthened it with wooden beams and poles. They further built up the walls and ceilings with grass or heather sods.

Interior:-

A bit further round the grounds of De Spitkeet there was this opening where during World War 2 young men hid from patrols to avoid being taken to Germany to work in factories etc. It must have been better disguised in those days or the bare earth leading to it would have been a giveaway:-

You may have noticed on my sidebar the cover of The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance. This is the latest book sent to me by ParSec magazine for review.

Corrance is a Scottish writer, based in the Highlands, but I have not read any of her work before.

The Hamlet is short, being novella length. It shouldn’t take me long. To read that is.

Corgi, 1955, 188 p.

The humans on Mundis were sent on the last spaceship from a dying, fractious Earth and inculcated with an overwhelming compulsion against atomic power. They have formed a settlement with a large age gap between the space travellers and those born after arrival.

Unknown to them a later expedition was sent out, this time under military control, and it has been waiting on the system’s other habitable planet, Secundis. When confirmation comes that Earth has been destroyed the military ship sets off for Mundis to unite what remains of humanity.

That hierarchy is of the novel’s time in its attitudes to sexual politics, “Only a dozen women on the ship were so useful in one way or another, so indispensable, that their sex was forgiven them,” but in contrast to that McIntosh does try to portray a different approach in the society on Mundis where attitudes to marriage are less rigid than in our 1950s.

Thanks to two Mundans who have struck off on their own for a while the rest manage to avoid the Secundan party long enough to resist assimilation, an endeavour which does require their conditioning to be overcome.

The Born Leader of the title is one Rog Foley of the Mundans who is not as hidebound as his elders or the others of his generation but who is really almost incidental to the plot’s resolution.

This is a typical piece of SF of the middle 1950s. It almost seems quaint now.

Pedant’s corner:- “Mathers’ eyes” Mathers’s eyes,) “impressed by their significance of the occasion” (impressed by the significance,) “the list of elements stopped at eighty-eight” (in 1955 we were actually up to Atomic Number 100 – or 101 – but the Mundans in the book did not acknowledge those above no. 88,) a missing restarting quotation mark at the resumption of a piece of dialogue.

The cemetery at De Spitkeet has a wooden belfry. This was because it was believed bells frightened away evil spirits. No-one was buried there for nine years until the belfry was erected.

Part of cemetery with spitkeet earth house:-

Belfry and spitkeet house:-