Matthew's Journal

Books from recent travels

2026-02-05T14:05:30Z

Three books I've read recently. First is A Drop of Corruption, the sequel to The Tainted Cup, which I really liked. I also really enjoyed A Drop of Corruption; like the previous book it's a great page-turner with a twisty mystery plot, with a well-drawn world and some interesting themes (particularly around governance and social institutions). Recommended, but read The Tainted Cup first. Eligible for the 2026 Hugos, I think.

Second, I've had A Half-Built Garden on my Kobo for a while, and finally got round to reading it. It's a near-future first contact novel, although for the aliens its not their first contact. There's a lot here about how we treat our environment and govern ourselves, as well as how we've used sci-fi to imagine alternative futures. I thought this book rewarded having long periods of time to approach it in; it needs thoughtful reading.

Finally, Nordic Visions, subtitled "The best of Nordic speculative fiction", edited by Margrét Helgadóttir. A selection of short stories from (in order) Sweden, Denmark, The Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Finland. These stories are mostly from the horror/fantasy part of speculative fiction, and some of the horror is pretty dark. As with any such selection, it's a bit of a mixed bag, but there are some very strong stories in here; I think the opening She was particularly effective, and I enjoyed the Kalevala story The Wings that Slice the Sky.

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What is a person?

2025-10-25T14:18:32Z

The second chapter of our book group book (Rowan Williams' Being Human) is "What is a person?"

He starts by paraphrasing a slightly obscure[0] essay by Vladimir Lossky, who, he says, declares that we lack good vocabulary to distinguish between something that is simply one unique instance of its kind, and the quality (whatever it is) that makes a conscious thing of this kind irreducible to its nature.

The point he's making, I think, is that there is something more to being a person than simply being an example of a kind of thing. He's saying that there is something about us as a whole that isn't captured simply by listing facts that happen to be true about us. He then quotes Lossky at more length:

Under these conditions, it will be impossible for us to form a concept of the human person, and we will have to content ourselves with saying: “person” signifies the irreducibility of man to his nature— “irreducibility” and not “something irreducible” or “something which makes man irreducible to his nature” precisely because it cannot be a question here of “something” distinct from “another nature” but of someone who is distinct from his own nature, of someone who goes beyond his nature while still containing it, who makes it exist as human nature by this overstepping [of it].

Williams then goes on to talk about how people are shaped by the web of relationships they are part of and influence "A person, in other words, is the point at which relationships intersect, where a difference may be made and new relations created." He asserts that this (at least to Christians) is a mystery that applies to each and every human individual, and that from this it follows that the same kind of reverence or attention is due to all of them (regardless of any of the features of people that result in their marginalisation).

This is all well and good, and I'm sympathetic to the desire to avoid the "meet this set of criteria to be a person" approach that can come out of debates as to what it means to be a person. And from a Christian point of view, the idea that all people are first of all in relation to God before they are in relation to anyone or anything else; and thus that we must bear that in mind in all our doings with other people is useful (and very traditional).

But it doesn't seem to me to be actually answering the question of "What is a person?" Rather like the idea (I think from Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance) that everyone knows what "quality" is, but most people would struggle to define it; fine for the day-to-day, but not a very satisfactory answer to the question posed. Williams at least half admits this, saying later in the chapter that it's only a theological perspective that makes sense of the idea of personhood "But what I'm really suggesting is that when it comes to personal reality the language of theology is possibly the only way to speak well of our sense of who we are and what our humanity is like — to speak well of ourselves as expecting relationship, as expecting difference, as expecting death [...]" But how to talk about personhood to people who reject any sort of theological worldview?

Williams notes that Science Fiction has from time to time looked at this question of personhood - when encountering an alien or a cyborg, how do you decide to accord the status of person to this other being? He concludes that the answer is that "At the end of the day, we can say this is something we could discover only by taking time and seeing if a relationship could be built." That still seems unsatisfactory to me, not least in the age of generative AI systems[1] that produce plausible-sounding answers to any question and with whom at least some people seem to convince themselves they've had a relationship.

Is there a useful way of answering the question "What is a person?" without relying on a theological worldview or having the sort of argument that concludes that some humans are less people than others?

[0] e.g. the WP article doesn't mention it at all. But then Williams did his thesis on Lossky. The article "The Theological Notion of the Human Person" is online
[1] which are stochastic models of "what would an answer to this question likely sound like", and I am axiomatically going to declare as neither conscious nor persons

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I Saw The TV Glow

2025-09-06T19:53:52Z

This is the last of this year's Hugo Award shortlist for dramatic presentation long form. It's very strange. Owen and Maddy are disaffected teenagers who bond over their obsession with The Pink Opaque. How much of it is warping their perception of reality or actually warping reality is left unanswered; the whole film proceeds at a very slow pace, and that plus the occasional breaking of the fourth wall give it a dreamlike or nightmareish quality. I think it is talking about fandom, queerness, and gender, but I didn't really get it. And the end was a damp squib.

I didn't vote in this category, but if I had I think I would have ranked Flow first; it came second behind Dune.

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More Hugo Films: Dune, The Wild Robot

2025-08-10T19:10:04Z

It's past the voting deadline, and I didn't vote in the dramatic presentation long form category, but I'm still trying to watch the shortlisted films.

I'd not seen Dune part one, so watched that and then part two (which was on the shortlist this year). It's one book turned into two lengthy films, and part two has a rubbish ending - we get no sense of Paul becoming Emperor as any kind of triumph before it's undermined by the immediate start of the next war. They are both grand spectacles, but their pacing is odd - at times it seems to be dragging and then key events are rather rushed over (so you're left not really quite understanding what happened without resorting to plot summaries after the fact). And the racial politics have dated poorly, shall we say? And I don't think the whole sandworm ecosystem is even vaguely plausible. But there's some great scheming and some interesting characters (albeit that a lot of the villains are entirely 2-dimensional).

The Wild Robot is an altogether different film, very heavy-handed with its messaging and happy to tug on the heart-strings. The plot doesn't really stand up to scrutiny (robot has access to all human knowledge, but doesn't know how geese swim? etc.), but it's well-animated and has lots of fun moments. And despite being the film of the first book of a trilogy, it actually has a decent ending! But I really struggled to suspend my disbelief because the plot is so full of holes.

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Next Chancellor of the University of Cambridge

2025-07-09T09:32:03Z

It's time to vote for the next Chancellor (previously); I've looked at the candidates and their statements, but still don't have an obvious-to-me choice of who to vote for.

When I asked on mastodon, I got two responses (one for Sandi Toksvig, one for her or Gina Miller); FB has shown me one friend saying that Chris Smith is "a nice bloke, but also the only candidate worth of the role"; and I've been sent this from someone who evidently doesn't share my general political view (though I'm inclined to agree that being the author of tuition fees probably rules John Browne out).

I can see why people might think Wyn Evans is a good option, but his proposals seem to me more the sort of thing you'd expect the vice-chancellor to do, rather than the chancellor who is not really involved in the running of the university directly.

I'm currently inclined to put Sandi Toksvig first; I'm sure she'd be great at the schmoozing-major-donors thing, but also at engaging with staff & students and advocating for the University.

I'm planning to vote in person on Saturday...

[this post is public, I am screening comments by anyone not already on my DW access list, will unscreen if I think they're making a useful contribution]

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

2025-07-03T17:52:29Z

This is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, and provides the backstory for Imperator Furiosa in that film. So here we see her life from a child in one of the remaining green places to the Imperator we meet in Fury Road.

Aside from the opening, this film is very much in the orange-and-black dieselpunk post-apocalyptic vein of Fury Road. There's a lot of high-speed chase-come-fight sequences, which are quite the spectacle, a fair amount of bloody violence, and some quirky funny moments (especially from Chris Hemsworth as Dementus), which provide a little comic relief.

Furiosa doesn't let off full throttle very often, so this is not one to watch for interesting ideas or a nuanced plot. But if you can avoid thinking too hard about how plausible it all is (or isn't), it is pretty entertaining.

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Wicked (2024 film)

2025-06-30T15:37:54Z

This is the first in a two-part adaptation of the musical of the book (which is in turn a re-interpretation of The Wizard of Oz investigating the Wicked Witch of the West's backstory). It's a very long time since I saw The Wizard of Oz, and I've not read the Wicked book nor seen the musical. ( review, with spoilers )

The songs are reasonable (though none of them have stuck in my head), the leads are very good, and it's very pretty. And I was pleased to recognise Peter Dinklage by his voice :) But I don't think I'd recommend it as a film.

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Starting on the 2025 Hugo Shortlist

2025-05-25T19:04:14Z

I've consumed two things from the 2025 Hugo Award shortlist recently. They're Quite Different.

The first was The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett. I loved this; it's a crime thriller set in a fantasy world, where The Empire exists to keep its people safe from Leviathans. It has a lot of what you'd expect from the crime genre; whilst a couple of times that meant that I spotted the plot twist or reveal coming, there was still plenty here to keep me guessing (and turning the pages). It also talks about power and money (and how those with both can often keep clear of the law), and perhaps something about how we treat those who aren't the same as ourselves. There are some quite gruesome bits. I have a suspicion that there may be a sequel or two, which I look forward to reading :)

Flow is an animated film without any dialogue. After some apocalypse that has removed all of humanity, a flood comes, and a little cat (our point-of-view character) is nearly swept away. Over time it meets and befriends some other animals, and they have adventures together. This is not a plot-driven film, and I think works better if thought of as a poem in cinematic form. There are moments of very authentical animal behaviour, and also some rather less plausible ones (like animals being able to operate a tiller). I would have liked to have seen this on a big screen, I think.

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Trans-Galactic Bike Ride

2024-11-13T18:24:45Z

This book is subtitled "Feminist bicycle science fiction stories of transgender and nonbinary adventurers", and that's a pretty good summary of the contents. The stories are delightful, and capture some truths about the experience of riding a bike as well as trans & non-binary representation. They're fun stories, but also thought-provoking, and generally at least somewhat optimistic. I enjoyed them a lot.

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Raven Black / Shetland

2024-10-26T16:46:58Z

I've recently been watching Shetland on iPlayer. It's a pretty good crime series set on Shetland. After a bit of a wait, I got Raven Black, the first of the books on which the series is based, from the library.

It's not the first novel to be adapted (they did Red Bones, the third book, first), so it's possible some of the changes relate to events that will happen later in book-canon, but I was quite surprised at how different the book and TV were. The main plot is quite similar (in terms of who killed whom and why), but there are changes even then (Magnus Bain's involvement in historic events, particularly), but there are number of quite significant changes to characters - Tosh doesn't appear at all, and book-Cassie is a young girl still living with her mother, whilst Perez is significantly less sympathetic (in particular around his opinions on Sandy). And the solution in the book seems quite rabbit-from-a-hat, even when I knew who the killer was in advance.

I am undecided if I want to try and read more of the books by Ann Cleeves, but it was certainly interesting to read Raven Black (and unusual for me to be coming to the book-canon second rather than first).

ETA: There's a short film Alison O'Donnell Remembers: Shetland where the actor who plays Tosh talks about how and why the character was developed for the TV adaptation.

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2024 Hugo Award voting

2024-07-18T13:50:31Z

I've already voted for the Best Novel. This is my voting for the further categories I've had time to engage with - Novella, Novelette, Short Story, and Dramatic Presentation Long Form.( Read more... )

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Hugo shorts

2024-07-15T15:20:34Z

Again, in reading order:

美食三品 (Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times), 宝树 / Baoshu. What if you could experience food as another eats it? Quite a nice story, but I found the biology hard to swallow...

The Sound of Children Screaming, Rachael K. Jones. An angry story about gun violence in schools.

The Mausoleum’s Children, Aliette de Bodard. A strange and well-sketched world, with some good twists.

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub, P. Djèlí Clark. What could possibly go wrong? I'm afraid I found the plot here a bit too obvious.

Better Living Through Algorithms, Naomi Kritzer. I was expecting this to head for one of two obvious cliché endings (and thus to be annoying), but actually it went elsewhere and I thought it was pretty good.

Answerless Journey, Han Song (tr. Alex Woodend). Two people wake up on a spaceship without their memories; an interesting idea, but it needed some answers to actually be engaging.

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Poor Things

2024-07-11T21:47:54Z

This is a very strange film (and, I now learn, an adaptation of a 1992 novel, which takes a rather different perspective on some of the key events). There is a surreal steampunk-ish air to the world it is set in, and plenty of echos of Frankenstein, particularly in the idea that one can transplant a brain (and thus a personality) into another body. It's visually and musically striking.

Emma Stone's performance as Bella is the engine around which the film runs, and she is really good. Aside from the cringe moments, there are some laugh-out-loud funny moments; the other thing that stands out is the significant quantity of sex. It feels rather like Bella is discovering about herself and the world by having a lot of sex. And yet we mostly hear men talking about Bella and her behaviour and the sex she's having, and I worry that the liberation Bella finds is in no longer caring that she's being exploited by men. Also, pretty much everyone in the film is more or less terrible.

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Hugo Novelettes

2024-06-24T09:23:21Z

In order-of-reading:

The Year Without Sunshine, Naomi Kritzer. A story of a neighbourhood coming together to deal with the eponymous calamity; more optimistic than a lot of the things I've read recently, almost too much so.

One Man’s Treasure, Sarah Pinsker. Another story about exploitation; I liked the world-building and the plot.

On the Fox Roads, Nghi Vo. The Fox Roads may appear for you if you really need to run away from something. Here we have people running away from home, and maybe finding new ones.

Ivy, Angelica, Bay, C. L. Polk. Witchcraft, and other ways to protect your neighbourhood. A twisty tale, with plenty of heart. I think my favourite of these.

Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition, Gu Shi (tr. Emily Jin). A slightly confusingly-told story about the societal impact of being able to "cryosleep" for a few decades. I'm not sure the framing story actually helped here, and I found the writing a bit clunky, but there are interesting ideas.

I AM AI, Ai Jiang. Another corporate dystopia; unfortunately, I didn't really find the point of view character particularly compelling, so this fell rather flat for me.

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More Hugo Novellas

2024-06-11T13:17:31Z

In reading order:

Seeds of Mercury, Wang Jinkang (tr. Alex Woodend). This is a very human tragedy, and pretty depressing. I was struggling to maintain my suspension of disbelief at some of the tech, as well.

The Mimicking of Known Successes, Malka Older. I liked the steampunk setting of this, with humanity exiled to habitats ringing a gas giant. The characters were relatable and well described (though the early switch of narrator was a bit jarring), and the plot was nicely twisty.

Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet, He Xi (tr. Alex Woodend). This was let down for my by a really clunky translation (and poor layout); some interesting ideas, an at times slightly confusing plot (I lost the ordering of events a couple of times), and another rather bleak reflection on humanity.

Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo. Another book in the Singing Hills Cycle, which is a setting I've come to very much enjoy. This is a story about grief, about stories, and about the very different ways people are remembered. It's very moving at times, and also has some lovely funny moments. I realise I've not read When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and should probably fix that :)

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Two Hugo Novellas

2024-05-26T17:07:33Z

Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher. A telling of Sleeping Beauty that wonders if there was good reason for the sleeper to be enchanted thus. I enjoyed the narrative voice (and unusual choice of narrator), and the sense of the otherness of fairy; and the shape of the story and its twists.

Rose/House, Arkady Martine. A nice mash-up of locked-room, haunted house, and noir, even if a little too self-referential in calling out its own genre clichés. I loved the setting and the growing sense of menace, but what is going to keep it off the top spot for me is the ending, which felt a little too ill-defined. Rather like this week's Dr Who episode, if you're going to build up a great mystery, then just leaving the viewer/reader guessing at the end can feel very unsatisfactory.

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Wandering Earth ; Wandering Earth II

2024-05-26T15:41:29Z

Wandering Earth II is on the Hugo shortlist this year. We'd not seen Wandering Earth, so decided to watch that first. Whilst this was probably necessary to get a chunk of what goes on in Wandering Earth II (which is in fact a prequel), I think it did cause us to start Wandering Earth II expecting the worst.

I didn't think much of Wandering Earth - it was visually very impressive, and tugged at the heart-strings, but key aspects of the plot just didn't make sense and were too implausible even for sci-fi.

Without getting into spoilers, the same can be said of the prequel; too much of the plot was based on engineering/science so bad as to disengage my suspension of disbelief. Again, it's visually stunning, and the emotional set-pieces hit home, but the plot just didn't work for me. I found the device of announcing "[time period] to [next crisis/key plot event]" a bit jarring, too. I'm afraid the final plot twist/reveal felt hollow too, although it is presumably the setup for the third film.

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2024 Hugo Award: Best Novel

2024-05-15T14:01:34Z

I've now read all of these (although I didn't write a review of Some Desperate Glory when I read it some time back), so time to vote.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty
Witch King, Martha Wells
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
Translation State, Ann Leckie
The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
Starter Villain, John Scalzi

I'm hoping the voter packet will be out soon, as otherwise tracking down all the short fiction will become tedious...

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Starter Villain, John Scalzi

2024-05-15T13:46:17Z

Sometimes, when I have an evening off and nothing more pressing to do, I open a beer, turn off my brain, and watch an action movie. Starter Villain is that experience in book form. It's silly and fun, but I don't think deserves to be on a Hugo Award shortlist (any more than a James Bond film would).

Our narrator, Charlie, inherits his Uncle's business, only to discover that his uncle was a Bond-style villain complete with island lair. Of course, his life is currently in a bit of a state, yet he will turn out to be smart and perceptive at just the necessary moments to do much better in his new role than anyone expected.

The plot rattles along, and the narrator is amusingly snarky, and as long as you're happy to take it on its own terms, this is a fun diversion.

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The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera

2024-05-13T17:54:24Z

There's a lot of interesting ideas in this book, some plot twists that sneak up on you, and a strange yet believable setting. But somehow it didn't quite work for me. I like that it's not a typical hero's journey sort of book, but the effect of this is that it feels like the point of view character has very little agency; things happen to them for reasons which are often unclear (and for reasons that often don't even become clear later on). And I'm afraid that left me feeling rather disengaged from the narrative, too.

That's a shame, because the start is arresting, there are a number of nicely-drawn characters, and a very twisty plot that doesn't feel contrived. And there is a lot being said about violence, racism, empire, and trying to grow up as yourself rather than what your parents want you to be; I can see why this book has had a lot of rave reviews.

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Translation State, Ann Leckie

2024-04-30T16:04:45Z

I really loved the Ancillary trilogy, so was very much looking forward to reading this. I did enjoy it, and there are some interesting ideas, but I felt the plot was a bit uneven particularly near the end.

I think a lot of the ideas in this book are about identity, and how people with power try to impose their ideas of peoples' identities onto them (like the Radchaai habit of imposing she pronouns onto everyone they encounter), and the violence inherent in denying someone their identity. Including, in this case, whether someone counts as human or not. All of this is caught up in events that could have wide-ranging impact on the galaxy. I liked all three of the point of view characters, and they all develop interestingly during the book.

( Major plot spoilers )I did like this enough to remember that I should get hold of Provenance, which I've not read :)

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Witch King, Martha Wells

2024-04-22T17:53:25Z

I think this is the first non-Murderbot book by Martha Wells that I've read. Kai, the main character, wakes up in a sticky situation, and there are two narratives through the book: one in the present where he tries to work out how and why he ended up in that sticky situation, and one in The Past where we find out about Kai's back-story and the recent history of the world.

I found this really hard to put down; granted some of that was because the book tends to shift between the two narratives at cliff-hangers, but also because I wanted to learn more about the world and to see what would happen next. I've seen criticism online that few of the characters other than Kai are particularly fleshed out, and I think that's fair, but then Kai is a very interesting character. It's not a book that holds your hand in terms of the world-building, but I didn't find that a problem.

There is quite a bit of violence (and the sort of large-scale death attendant on warfare), and I think some of what Wells wants to talk about is the impact of that sort of large-scale trauma on people and societies, but I think there is also hope here, and examples of people trying hard to do better and work together.

It feels like space has been left for a sequel (though one is not currently planned, I gather), which I would very much enjoy reading, but this is a good stand-alone story.

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Barbie

2024-04-11T20:39:31Z

Barbie lives a perfect life in Barbie world, which is ever so pink, and where the Kens exist to be decorative. Until she starts to experience interference from the Real World, and must go to investigate. The trailer has more spoilers than that...

This is an odd movie; it has some laugh-out-loud funny moments, too much cringe for me, and a plot that begs you not to look to hard at it. And what happened to the narrator for the middle two-thirds? I think it can't work out if it's a satire of Barbie, a homage to Barbie as a feminist icon, marketing for Barbie, or nostalgia for adults who remember when they played with Barbie; given some of its content and its 12 rating in the UK, it's really not aimed at kids who currently love Barbie.

The streaming platform I watched it on offered me Grave of the Fireflies as "watch next", which would have been quite a tonal shift...

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

2024-04-06T19:20:16Z

This is a sequel to Into the Spider-Verse, which I rather enjoyed. I'm afraid I was less happy with this film. Part of it is the lack of adequate ending; this just sort of stops (with some cliff-hangers) ready for the next film in the series. Partly it's that the multiverse thing is less new than it was in the previous film, and the whole musing-on-canon-thing feels too much like a plot device than something that really makes sense.

The action sequences are really good, though, and there's plenty of nice details that go flying past. And maybe the sequel will make it all worthwhile...

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Nimona

2024-04-05T16:50:19Z

Nimona is set in a scifi-faux-medieval walled city (with cell phones, a metro system, flying cars, and armoured knights); we are told that in the distant past Gloreth defeated a giant black monster and enclosed the city with a wall to keep the citizens safe. In the present, the anarchic Nimona turns up in the lair of the fugitive Ballister and declares that she's going to be his sidekick.

I enjoyed this - it's fast-paced and funny (without being cringey!), and keeps teasing you that it's going to lapse into fairy-story tropes only to swerve at the last moment. There's some nice queer representation, and the characters are pretty believable. It has things to say about being different and being the outcast, and how hard it can be to try and be normal enough to fit in. ( Spoilers )

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