Another Brian Gerald Art-drawn postcard from the Empire Exhibition Scotland 1938. Pavilions for South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada on left with Palace of Engineering at far end:-

Valentine’s sepia postcard of the Dominions and Colonial Avenues at the Empire Exhibition Scotland 1938 featuring fountains, Australian Pavilion and Palace of Engineering:-

Reverse view. Another Valentine’s postcard. Australia and Canada Pavilions to near right, Palace of Industries at far end:-

Valentine’s sepia postcard of Canada Pavilion plus Palace of Engineering at far end. Tower of Empire in background left:-

The shortlists for this year’s Hugo Awards have been announced. Amazingly I have actually read some of these (the ones in bold the one also in italics as an extract only, in the BSFA Awards 2019 booklet) – partly due to Interzone, but also becasue I read Ted Chiang’s collection Exhalation towards the end of last year.

Since the Worldcon (at which these awards are presented) which was to take place in New Zealand has been cancelled for attendees I assume the ceremony will now have to be virtual, as will the con itself.

The nominations are:-

Best Novel

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)

Best Novella

“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador))
The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Gallery)
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books)
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)

Best Novelette

“The Archronology of Love”, by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed, April 2019)
“Away With the Wolves”, by Sarah Gailey (Uncanny Magazine: Disabled People Destroy Fantasy Special Issue, September/October 2019)
“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2019)
Emergency Skin, by N.K. Jemisin (Forward Collection (Amazon))
“For He Can Creep”, by Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com, 10 July 2019)
“Omphalos”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador))

Best Short Story

“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 September 2019)
“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July 2019)
“A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2019)
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 2019)
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019)

Best Series

The Expanse, by James S. A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
InCryptid, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
Luna, by Ian McDonald (Tor; Gollancz)
Planetfall series, by Emma Newman (Ace; Gollancz)
Winternight Trilogy, by Katherine Arden (Del Rey; Del Rey UK)
The Wormwood Trilogy, by Tade Thompson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

See yesterday’s post.

Bomb dropped from Zeppelin. (Luckily for the citizens of Edinburgh where it dropped, it seems not to have exploded.):-

Model (in the shop) of a Sopwith Camel:-

Real seat from a Sopwith Camel. It looks like a garden chair with its legs cut off:-

Compare and contrast. A more modern ejector seat:-

Hawk Training Aircraft:-

A Red Arrows XX308:-

A New Zealand War Memorial. Inscribed, “In memory of the men from the Dominion who served in Scotland during the 1939 – 1945 conflict. Also in heartfelt remembrance of those who, whilst flying from Scotland’s sea and shore in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, made the ultimate sacrifice. ‘They watch over Scotia still’.”

The 1930s were possibly the high point of aviation displays – exciting and new. This poster advertises one in Fife:-

I’ve been watching this year’s edition of the Confederations Cup. Well I missed the first half of the first game and of today’s.

The games have been fairy enjoyable. Well, Russia-New Zealand was a bit of a mismatch and Russia fairly plodding. The results in the other ties have been about right. Mexico and Portugal seemed evenly matched and both Chile and Germany deserved their wins though Germany’s decision to go with a young squad might have backfired on them. (Actually, who am I kidding? They’re Germans.) Unusually it did provide the spectacle of a German goalkeeper who wasn’t on top of his game.

The main topic of conversation among the pundits though has been the supposed shortcomings of the video assistant referee system, VAR, being used at the competition. A welcome innovation I’d have thought.

It’s only a trial, though. There are bound to be teething problems.

So far when it has been employed it has got the decisions correct – as is intended. Those occasions were when the ball was dead after the referee’s original decision and there was therefore no interruption to the game, only a slight delay in restarting.

The possible penalty incident in the Russia-New Zealand game – which the ref didn’t opt to have reviewed – did not fall into that category. If he did receive advice that he “might want to look at the incident” (it actually wouldn’t be him – it would be the assistants) that would have been in the course of ongoing play. In effect that makes the video assistant the actual referee. And when does the referee then blow the whistle?

And what would have happened if he had so opted and on the subsequent video review the decision was “no penalty”? Would that not make a mockery of the review? And where would play restart?

Better to leave the referee to it and restrict any such interventions to times when the ball is dead.

Such reviews are all very well in the case of Rugby, League or Union, where stoppages can be relatively common. Football is a much more fluid game, not so amenable to interruption.

Here are two more of my collection of postcards of the Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938.

The first shows three of the Colonial Pavilions, part of the South African building on left – one of the few “traditional” structures present (rather than the deco/moderne that dominated the Exhibition) – then New Zealand and finally Canada. As ever Thomas Tait’s Tower of Empire is in the background.

This next one is captioned wrongly. It shows the South African and New Zealand Pavilions and not Australia.

I was thinking about Cadbury’s Caramello again today and I suddenly remembered that the bar had another name, Caramilk. It had disappeared once before and was brought back under a new name.

I can’t now remember which name came first – possibly Caramilk was the one which was around in my youth and Caramello came later.

I looked up Caramilk and it seems there is a bar of this name sold by Cadbury’s in Canada, and Caramello is found in the US, Australia and New Zealand. The Wiki article doesn’t mention Ireland though.

Here’s a link to the Irish shop and its picture of a Caramello bar which looks more like the non-vending machine size I remember buying back in the day. When I looked there though it said, “Sold Out!”

Some of the images on this page (I see mine has got on there somehow; it’s about halfway down) are of the old packaging.

Royal Bafokeng Stadium, Rustenburg, 24/6/10

A thoroughly deserved win for Japan. Denmark were turgid, uncreative and pedestrian. The Japanese were quick, bright and incisive, passing the ball delightfully, and in Keisuke Honda had the best player on the pitch – though some of the other Japanese ran him close. If it weren’t likely to be construed as politically incorrect I’d have said the Japanese were nippy. The Danes weren’t at the races.

Their first two were magnificent strikes (goalkeeping aberrations accepted) but Japan’s third goal was a thing of beauty, Honda turning the Danish defender inside out and giving Thomas Sorensen the eyes before laying it on a plate for Okazaki.

(Speaking of un-PC-ness, what was it with the Germans and that black outfit in the Ghana game? I know it’s one of the colours on their flag but a black uniform on Germans has unfortunate resonances. What was wrong with their traditional green second strip?)

And what odds could I have got on New Zealand going through their group unbeaten?

As I thought in game 1, Italy were vulnerable at the back. Buffon’s absence probably didn’t help them. At least they weren’t wearing that sky blue effort – not to mention the brown shorts – they had at the Confederations Cup.

And France went out early as I expected.

More 1966-all-over-again nonsense to endure from the commentariat.

At least until Sunday.