The Guardian yesterday (22/1/09) published a list of SF/fantasy works as part of its 1000 books you must read series.

Ian Sales has commented on it on his blog from which I got the list.

Out of the 149 I have read 57 (marked in bold.) There are another five of which I’ve read either part of them or the short story on which they were based (marked in bold and italics.) One is on my to-be-read shelf (italics only.) In addition I’ve seen the TV series of Hitchhiker but not read the books. Ditto for the Disney film of The Sword In The Stone which I suspect had little to do with the TH White book, though Wikipedia says it is based on it. I also watched the TV version of Angus Wilson’s The Old Men at the Zoo.
There are 8 authors on the list of whom I have read other books of theirs (some of them not classifiable as SF or fantasy.) One other of those is to-be-read.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
JG Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
JG Ballard: Crash (1973)
JG Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- )
Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

A startling omission (to me) is that of Robert Silverberg. If any one person is responsible for me continuing to read Science Fiction into adulthood it is him. The Man In The Maze showed me what SF could be, what it could aspire to. Yet it is a relatively minor work. So how can there be no Nightwings, no Son Of Man, no A Time Of Changes?

And no Roger Zelazny? Dear, dear.

Not to mention Alasdair Gray’s towering achievement Lanark. (But the list wasn’t compiled by Scots.)

An amusing aspect of this particular list is that before the turn of the millenium The Guardian compiled various bests of the 20th century. The SF book that topped the relevant list (it was an idiosyncratic choice it has to be said) does not appear in this one! Neither does its author.

Edited to add Brave New World to my read list. I somehow missed it on the run through.

Edited again. Up to 59 now. I’ve also read Lord Of The Flies, but it was donkey’s ages ago (so long I’d just about forgotten.)

Make that 60. How did I miss Nineteen Eighty Four? I must be going blind.

So, after foregrounding local matters over which as a Westminster MP he will have no influence and riding the coat-tails of a financial crisis which has paradoxically redounded to the Government’s benefit, Lindsay Roy saved Labour’s bacon.

Did anyone else think he might have been less than happy at his win?

His winner’s speech was flat and uninspiring. He looked and sounded like a rabbit caught in headlights. Surely, as a headmaster, at School Concert nights etc, he is used to speaking in front of an assembled adult audience?

And will Kirkcaldy High School now go back down the pan he was parachuted in to rescue it from? There were whispers to that effect even before Thursday’s result.

Still, a grateful government will no doubt reward him in a future honours list.

One curiosity. Immediately after the result a BBC graphic stated there had been a swing from Labour to SNP of 8.16%. Labour’s % of the vote went up. So how could there have been a swing to SNP from Labour? Surely any swing was to the SNP from other parties? (Both Tory and Lib Dem votes were hugely down on the last General Election.)

I realise this last cannot be how they calculate swing but the swing figure quoted surely shows the concept of swing is more than a bit misleading.

So, a historic result. Americans can rightly be proud of electing Obama, which even ten years ago would have been unthinkable. And, should the worst happen to him, at least Joe Biden isn’t Sarah Palin.

But better not hope for too much. The problems the new President will face will be considerable and it’s entirely possible that the present incumbent will do things to make them even worse until he finally steps down in January.

And, while much the better of the two main options on offer Obama is still an American politician; not of the left, just to the left of right, and unlikely to change America very much. Britain’s experience of an apparent leftward shift in 1997 didn’t change much on the surface.

Still if Obama shuts down Guantanamo and stops extraordinary rendition, not to mention torture, the world will be a better place. Much less likely, though desirable, will be to extricate from Iraq without it blowing up.

But the financial crisis may top the lot. Is he another FDR? America and the world might need one.

This US Presidential race may be for possession of a poisoned chalice. Whoever wins will potentially face a challenge unlike any since the 1930s. Back then, FDR won and served for over twelve years but the worst of the crisis had unfolded before he became President. That is not the case this time.

The new President risks having the economic situation totally unravel on his watch. The seeds may have been sown earlier but he is where the buck will stop when all the redundancies and foreclosures come in.

It is possible we’re looking at a one term Presidency – especially if McCain wins. In 2012, if he doesn’t succumb to ill-health before then, he’ll look and possibly be worn out. As for Obama, will the voters be forgiving if the bad times roll in in a big way? (It is certain that Republicans will be vociferous in their denunciations if things are anything less than rosy.)

So is this a good election to lose?

In retrospect, Labour’s loss in Britain in 1992 ensured their landslide wins in 1997 and 2001. The problems that beset Major’s Government put voters off the Tories for at least a decade. Arguably they still haven’t recovered.

If Labour had won in 1992, joined the ERM, and suffered the same fortunes with it as the Tories did, then we in Britain might have had John Redwood or an unreconstructed Michael Portillo as PM in 1997 and a harder-nosed Thatcherism instead of the Blair version. Gordon Brown might now be ganging up with Vince Cable in opposition to a David Cameron chancellorship.

A similarly troubled Obama Presidency might see the Republicans entrenched for the foreseeable future from 2012 on. On the other hand I can’t see McCain (still less Palin if the worst happens) charting a way out of the financial mess we all seem to be in. In which case the Democrats would be sitting fair for 2012 and beyond.

In an article in Monday’s Guardian, Michael Tomasky wrote about the latest Republican tactic against Barack Obama which is effectively to say that he – or his supporters – are anti-American. This obviously plays not only on the race card but also up to the “he’s really a Muslim” or even an Arab(!) aspect of opposition to Obama.

Quite why being black or of Arabian descent or even a Muslim means that you’re anti-America I haven’t a clue. After all, apart from the native Americans, all Americans are descendants of immigrants and the melting point was supposed to be one of the things that made the US great, was it not?

But never mind the illogicality of the position, this “who is not like me is beneath dignity” attitude is of itself deeply unappealing and repellent and for this reason alone would be enough to make me not vote Republican if I were American.

But just who is being anti-American? A lot of Republicans seem to believe that only they are true patriots and anyone who is not Republican or who even disagrees with them slightly are not, and are somehow betraying their country. Reflect for a while on the insufferable arrogance of that attitude.

What it seems to lead to is the belief that non-Republicans are illegitimate holders of office, have somehow perpetrated a fraud on the public and must be got rid of by any means possible (so far, thankfully, short of a coup d’etat.*) In other words to a rejection of the will of the people as expressed in the electoral process. What this means is that such Republicans are actually against democracy. They do not want government of the people, for the people, by the people but government of the people by people who are only like them. Does this not make them the real anti-Americans?

Note here that, despite hanging chads and all that possible disenfranchisement argument that marred Florid’s electoral process in 2000, once George W Bush was sworn in as President, Democrats accepted him as the legitimate Head of State. There was none of the orchestrated opposition that has manifested itself in my lifetime in the hounding, whilst in office, of two Democratic Presidents, Carter and Clinton. (*Not to mention Kennedy being assassinated.)

Now, Carter was a manifestly good man who had the courage to tell Americans what they didn’t want to hear, was pilloried for it and subsequently lost to someone clearly not intellectually up to the job, who mouthed nothing but platitudes and apparently spent most of his time in office asleep. It may be, of course, that Republicans believe good men are not fit for office as they will not for some reason be able to make the necessary decisions, but the track record of less good men isn’t so hot either.

Clinton’s case is different. Not a good man in the family sense that Carter seemed, he was nevertheless pursued through the courts throughout his Presidency over first of all, Whitewater, a fraud of some sort in which he and his wife actually lost money as I recall, and then over sexual peccadilloes – which it has to be said Republicans are not exactly immune to.

In defence of the pursuit of Presidents for wrong doing Republicans will immediately cry, “Nixon!” and that Democrats were foremost in the chase.

But. Don’t let us forget that Nixon was a crook who, as President, broke laws which he had sworn to uphold. None of that applied to Carter or Clinton. And Nixon got himself into it. Were it not for Watergate Nixon would have served out his second term and in all likelihood be remembered as one of the better Presidents

So do Republicans accept fellow Americans are as legitimate as they are, or not? Will they accept the verdict of the vote in November if Obama wins?

On past evidence I will make a prediction.

If McCain wins everything will proceed smoothly (and let’s also hope fervently he manages out his term without medical mishap.)

If Obama wins we’re in for four – or eight – years of hounding.

I caught a phone-in on the US TV channel C-Span which was broadcast on BBC Parliament on Sunday.

In it a male caller claimed that in everyday discourse he was “not allowed” to use Barack Obama’s middle name.

Two questions occurred to me.

1. Who, precisely, is “not allowing” him to do this?
As far as I’m aware there is no law against it in the US.

2. Why should he want or need to use Obama’s middle name?
Does he for example always say John Sidney McCain when referring to the other candidate? And if not, why not, if he is so upset about “not being allowed” to say Hussein? Or is he “not allowed” to say Sidney either?

Btw it is so little used that I had to look up McCain’s middle name just for this post.

I personally think this last fact reveals more about the caller than he might realise.

PS If you see Sid, tell him.

Gordon Brown’s ministerial reshuffle has gone beyond satire.

Peter Mandelson? PETER MANDELSON?

A man whose judgement has twice been shown to be distinctly dodgy and had to resign as a result? And I must say who looked even more rumpled and seedy than before as he entered Downing Street. Smarm doesn’t begin to describe his oiliness.

At this rate he’ll get more second chances than Joey Barton…

The post title paraphrases a poster from the Nixon Presidency in the US, which reflected Tricky Dicky’s lack of trustworthiness – and that was before Watergate. David Cameron’s “I have a plan” speech for some reason reminded me of it.

Cameron was possibly trying to echo Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” but failed bathetically. The insipid phrase evokes not only the canal in Panama palindrome (link via doctorvee) but also Jamaica’s Michael Manley who subsequently became known as “The Clot With The Plot” and moreover it apparently originated with Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell ca 1959.

More importantly though, it shows lack of foresight and imagination. Cameron is surely old enough to be familiar with the works of Stevie Wonder. That he did not, therefore, steer clear of the phrase is astonishing.

For it reminded the good lady, who reminded me.

“He’s a man with a plan” is followed by “he’s got a counterfeit dollar in his hand” and later, “if he shakes on a bet he’s the kind of dude who won’t pay his debt.”

So, does David Cameron think he’s mister-know-it-all? And that we haven’t noticed?

Please beware of a man that just don’t give a care.

Boormt, boo-boo, boo-boo.

So: Scottish Labour has elected Iain Gray as its leader.

I can’t say the choice they had was inspiring as only Cathy (Oh Bernard, son) Jamieson had really impinged on me but he seems spectacularly dull. Gray by nature perhaps.

But going on precedent he’ll be around for a while and won’t be brought down by a kerfuffle around his finances.

Dewar, McLeish*, McConnell, Alexander*, Gray. After Donald Dewar, the only one of that lot who seemed a bit more than a boring party hack was Wendy.
*financial irregularities.

I also can’t see him bringing Labour’s fortunes up quickly.

In an article in the Guardian on 29th August, Labour has got Cameron wrong, David Marquand says David Cameron is not a raging Thatcherite in disguise.
The first point to make here is that Cameron does not have to be. (Disguised, that is.)

He would not be taking over from a radical reforming Labour government like the 1950s Tories were. Instead he would succeed a government which has seen the woman’s policies outstripped and which has presided over the greatest rise in inequality since the nineteenth century.

Merely to continue their policies would be to carry forward her legacy and, in any case, despite his attempts to be cuddlier Cameron has adumbrated some pretty right wing stuff.

However, Marquand’s contention that Cameron is really a Whig and not a Thatcherite manqué (which given George Osborne’€™s pronouncements over tax and the like I do not accept for a second) raises a more interesting question.

Just how did Thatcher and her cohorts manage to hi-jack the Tory Party?

Marquand states correctly that the 1950s Tories did not alter the framework that the post-war Labour Governments had erected (beyond denationalising steel and road haulage.) They were, in other words, conservative. Yes, Harold MacMillan affected to be about change, as Cameron does at the moment – with little in the way of policy to back it up – but who noticed any?

Now, whatever else Thatcher may have been she was certainly not conservative. She took a wrecking ball to the post–war consensus – and a lot of babies went out along with the bathwater.

Note that she also thoroughly undermined the other main strand to the Tory party in that the Unionist part of its name became redundant as a result of her endeavours. She was such a spur to anti-unionism she might almost have been an SNP or Plaid Cymru mole. (Perhaps not Sinn Fein, though; the IRA did try to blow her up.)

The Scottish Conservatives are now firmly behind the devolution settlement – but that’s only because it gave them the oxygen of (Scottish) Parliamentary seats. They’d drop it in a flash if they thought it would harness them more influence or a chance at power.

So how on Earth did Thatcher do this at the head of a party whose purpose (stated in its name) is to preserve things? Were they all blinded by the fact that she was a woman?

I never could comprehend Thatcher’s appeal, neither to the Tories nor to anyone who voted for her. She always seemed blatantly insincere to me. How could they not see through her?

Was her electoral success really something to do with the wish to be nannied? (What does that say about Tories?) I don’t want to think that it was a tendency towards selfishness and greed but her policies did stoke the drift in that direction which has lately become a surge among the highest paid – and devil take the hindmost.

However she managed it, the party she presided over and bequeathed was a very different beast to the one she had joined, largely as a result of her promptings.

And we live in its shadow.

So, was it really she who was the enemy within?