pedanther

I've been playing around with the reading list/challenge feature on The StoryGraph, and I've just published my first: The Haycraft List of Detective Story Cornerstones

In his 1941 book Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, Howard Haycraft included a list offering "a suggestive selection of the 'high spots'" of the first century of modern detective fiction, from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" to The Patience of Maigret, by way of Holmes, Wimsey, and many others.

For the most part, he limited himself to one book per author, except in a few cases where he felt that the author's range or impact justified the making of an exception. Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr, to name two, were awarded a second spot on the list. Arthur Conan Doyle is the sole author to be awarded a third (in fact he gets nine, because Haycraft refused to play favourites and included the entire Canon).


(My first thought for a reading list was actually the book club from Jo Walton's Among Others, but I put it off long enough that someone else got there first.)

alias_sqbr has posted some links to Info about parties in the upcoming Australian Federal Election, including several I'd been meaning to include in this post if I'd gotten around to it sooner.

Cluey Voter, Donkey Votie, and Build a Ballot all offer tools for rearranging a list of senate candidates to produce a personalised how-to-vote card to help you get the right numbers in the right boxes. Cluey Voter is the only one of the three that offers the full below-the-line service; the other two only cover the above-the-line list for each ballot. Build a Ballot offers a service where you can fill out a questionnaire about your opinions on key issues, and it will attempt to sort the candidates for you into what it thinks might be your preferred order, before presenting the list to you for tweaking. (I found that it predicted me pretty well on the lower house ballot, but my upper house ballot required more tweaking because that involved a bunch of minor parties and independents that it lacked relevant information on.)

Vote Compass has a chart illustrating the political positions of the main parties, on a scatter plot with axes for left-right and progressive-conservative, so you can see which ones are similar to each other, and if you fill in a questionnaire on your opinions about the main issues of the day it will add a dot for you and offer a selection of additional charts showing which parties have expressed opinions most similar to yours. (I always find that my results are about what I expected, but I don't mind having external validation that I've got a good grasp of the situation.)

This page on how to effectively vote for the Senate, including both the basics of how to make a valid vote and the more philosophical areas of which half of the ballot to opt for, seems useful but I admit I've only skimmed it so far.

I had a bit of shock yesterday when I saw a cluster of stalls handing out election pamphlets and thought for a moment it was a polling place and I'd misremembered the date of the state election.

The election's not until next weekend, but it reminded me that I hadn't got around yet to researching the minor parties that will be contesting.

The problem as usual is the upper house ballot. There have been a few reforms since the last go-around, one of which made it so that everybody in the state votes for all the upper house seats instead of just the ones allocated to their electorate; as a result, the ballot has nearly 150 candidates representing a dozen parties. On the plus side, other reforms have made it so you don't have to number every single box to express a preference: if you choose to vote "below the line", preferencing each individual candidate, you only have to mark your 1st through 20th preferences, and can lump anybody after that in last place if you want to (and you may well want to). There's also been an overhaul of "above the line" voting - previously, you could put your mark against the name of only one party, and then they would get to dictate your preferences on your behalf, not only for their own candidates but for the rest of the ballot as well; now, it's been made into a straightforward preferential vote, where you number the parties in order of preference.

None of the online tools I've used in past years for constructing a below-the-line preference list seems to be operating this year, and I'm actually considering voting above the line for the first time. The main downside is that I wouldn't be able to give a vote to any of the ungrouped independent candidates, but none of them look especially appealing in any case. (And the one set of grouped candidates - those who have banded together in order to gain a shared box above the line - is not getting my vote in any case: it's headed by an avowed anti-vaxxer and includes a guy who changed his name by deed poll so that he can run as "Aussie Trump", as well as some other people whose candidate statements consist of the kind of vague appeal to "traditional values" that I've learned to regard as a red flag.)

None of the major news sources seem to have done a round-up of the minor parties this year, but fortunately many of them have a tendency toward expository names: for instance, one party is officially registered as "Stop the Pedophiles! Save the Kiddies!", which I reckon tells me everything I need to know about not only their policy stance but also their level of professionalism.

I've also found a blog series called "Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews", which is doing a detailed profile of all the minor parties and independent candidates, starting with an introductory post. The blatantly partisan viewpoint from which the author is operating has a lot of overlap with my own, and where it doesn't the inclinations are clear enough to be accounted for.

. The Rep Club has begun rehearsals for our annual Christmas show, which this year will be a version of Sleeping Beauty. (The coronavirus is pretty much under control in this part of the world, and theatres are allowed to have audiences although there are still requirements in place for socially distanced seating.) I'm playing the butler/chamberlain/dogsbody, who I would describe as the comic relief except that this is the kind of show where everybody is the comic relief at some point. It's more that most of the other characters are also necessary to the plot in some way, while my character is only there for comic relief and the occasional bit of exposition. I'm enjoying it immensely.


. Our roleplaying campaign has brought us to a town where there's currently an election campaign going on. One of the candidates is a big-spending jerk who's whipping up prejudice against non-humans. (I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure all of this was actually in the campaign sourcebook.) Despite this, he's been friendly to our adventuring team the couple of times we've encountered him, and even offered us work, even though none of us are human: the cleric is a tabaxi (cat-person), the ranger is a verdan (a goblinoid race specific to this campaign setting), the rogue is a halfling (like a hobbit, but less trademarked), and the fighter is a warforged (a kind of magic-powered robot). During our second conversation with this guy, we figured out why: he's apparently never heard of warforged, and is under the impression that our team is led by a human warrior in an unusually elaborate set of armor.


. I've given up on the discipline of wearing work clothes on work days: I decided to make an exception one time because I was behind on the laundry and didn't have any work clothes to wear, and my everyday clothes were so much more comfortable that I extended the exception indefinitely.


. One of the things I've been doing to pass time this month has been working through back episodes of the Youtube channel Marie Clare's World, where a fan of 21st-century Doctor Who is watching and posting reaction videos to the original series. Part of what makes it interesting to me is that she's managed to go into it not knowing anything except what she's picked up from references in newWho, so she knows roughly how many Doctors and what they look like, but not when or how they enter and leave the series, and that the Daleks and the Cybermen and the Master and Sarah Jane are in there somewhere, but again not exactly when, and basically nothing else. So she's going in knowing that this is the kind of thing she likes, but as unprepared for the plot twists and such as the original audience would have been (or even less, in some cases where the original audience would have seen it splashed over the papers beforehand). She's enjoying it a lot, too; she's appreciating the old special effects on their own merits and finding something good to say about nearly every story, even the ones at which Received Fan Wisdom tends to turn up its nose. And she's been devastated by some of the companion and Doctor departures.


. A little while ago I made toad-in-the-hole for a family gathering, using the old recipe we used to make it all the time when we were children. I think this is the first time I've baked something from scratch basically on my own; the sibling whose house we were gathering in kept an eye on me but didn't intervene except to tell me which cupboard things were in, and the one time when the batter went weird. The trouble was that the recipe starts "For batter, use the pancake recipe with half the milk and twice the eggs", and then the pancake recipe requires the milk to be added in two stages, half before beating and half after -- and then on top of that we were doubling all the quantities to make enough for the whole family -- and I lost track of how many halves that made and ended up with too much milk in the mixture so we had to improvise to get the proportions vaguely right again. In turned out pretty good, and I'm open to the idea of trying this baking thing again at some point.

So, how about that coronavirus, huh?

This weekend was going to be a very busy one for the band, with a performance at the monthly markets this morning and the rest of the weekend devoted to a series of workshops with a visiting conductor to get us into shape for the Nationals next month. Then the Nationals got cancelled because coronavirus, and then the markets got cancelled because coronavirus. So it's been a much more relaxed weekend than I was anticipating.

Swancon has also been cancelled because coronavirus. This has brought me to a realisation: for years, I've spent every Easter weekend at either Swancon or the Nationals, and now they're both off the table. Unless I come up with a plan quickly, I may be obliged to (dramatic musical sting) spend Easter with my family.

In more cheerful coronavirus cancellation related news, Broadway's Laura Benanti has created a Twitter thread for students whose school musicals have been cancelled to post bits of their performances. The performances themselves are great, and many of the stories are charming, and the thread itself is generating a few interesting moments of its own (like somebody posting a video of their school production of Matilda and getting an encouraging comment from someone who's played Matilda professionally). (via rthstewart)

1. Our season of short plays has opened and closed, with positive responses from the people who came to see it. We got a good write-up in the local paper, both in the sense that the reviewer liked it and in the sense that everyone's names were spelled right and it didn't give away too many of the good surprises. (If I'd been directing one of the other plays, I'd have been annoyed about some of the moments chosen for the accompanying photo spread, but fortunately my own play was immune to being spoiled in that manner.) The reviewer said that of the three plays the one I directed was his favourite, which I'm inclined to attribute to the quality of the script, and showed the best acting, which I'm prepared to take some credit for.

After it was over, I spent about a week not stirring from home except to go to work and band practice, and I'm not letting myself get roped into any more theatrical productions until June.


2. We've had the second round of the Toastmasters speech evaluation contest, with winners from three club contests competing against each other. This year, for the first time, I was competing as a winner of a club contest. I didn't win the area contest, but I'm not too bothered; just getting there was an achievement, and anyway I wouldn't have been able to make it to the third round, the division contest, this weekend, so I wouldn't have advanced any further regardless. The winner of the division contest will go on to compete in the final round at the District Convention in early June. (Which I'm on the organising committee for, and that's another reason I'm not committing to any more theatre before then.)


3. The final season of Foyle's War aired here recently - at least, they say it's the final season, but they've said that before. More than once. The war that the title theoretically refers to ended two final seasons ago, not that I'm complaining. (At least it hasn't become one of those wartime series where the war drags on longer than it did in reality so they can fit more seasons in; that trick only works if the series is set vaguely "during the war", and Foyle's War has always been tied to specific historical events, which is one of the things I like about it.) I'm actually really glad we got this final season, because it leaves us in a much better place than the last final season did; not entirely happy, but considerably more hopeful.


4. One of the things I like about reading fanfic is that it can offer new ways of looking at things that one might not have thought of before.

For instance, I recently read a Doctor Who fic that starts with a fresh look at "The End of Time", Ten's regeneration reluctance, and the extended companion farewell tour, through the lens of "The Time of the Doctor":

He doesn't want to go.

Coward, the Master called him, and maybe it's true, because he's terrified. Imagine him, of all people, frightened of change. But it's different this time. Twelve regenerations to a Time Lord, and the last one may have been non-standard, but it counts, and so does the one he tries to tell himself wasn't really him. He can feel the evidence inside him, irrefutable: some vital part of him busy using itself up.

Twelve regenerations, and he's just shoved the only people capable of giving him more back into their time lock. So this is the last time he'll ever experience this, and he's not going to go gentle. No, this last time, Death is going to have a fight on its hands.

He knows what he wants to do with the time he has left, and he has to do it now, because there's no telling how much time he'll have left, after. And no telling what kind of man he'll become.

So he visits them, one by one: the people he's loved, the people he's failed to do right by.

The fic is And at the End, a Garden by AstroGirl, and the rest of it is good too.


5. Video link of the month: John Oliver presents: Infrastructure: The Movie

"You cannot tell me that you are not interested in this, because every summer people flock to see our infrastructure threatened by terrorists or aliens, but we should care just as much when it's under threat from the inevitable passage of time. The problem is, no one has made a blockbuster movie about the importance of routine maintenance and repair. Or they hadn't - until now..."

(If you want to skip straight to the hypothetical action movie, that begins at 17:10. The preamble is worth sitting through if you have the time, though.)

1. The first episode of the new season of Sherlock has now aired in Australia, but it was scheduled against the season final of Foyle's War so I still haven't seen it. The network that aired it has watch-online service, so I expect I'll get a chance to watch it at some point in the next few days. (Although probably not tomorrow. Or the next day. These days, it seems, the world is just full of things I need to do more than I need to watch another episode of Sherlock.) That's assuming it shows up on the online service, of course; but if it doesn't, I have a feeling the world won't end.


2. Speaking of worlds ending, it's been announced that Worlds in Time, the Doctor Who online multiplayer game, will be closing down soon. Considering how much time I spent playing that at one point, I wish I could be sad, or at least surprised, but as it is I'm just kind of wistful that it couldn't have been a better game.


3. In happier news regarding beloved things with online presences, Rosemary Kirstein's novel The Steerswoman is now available in an electronic edition for Kindle, with the rest of the series hopefully to follow. I love the Steerswoman series, and I'm glad to see an opportunity for new readers to discover it. (Or old readers to re-engage; I'd buy a copy myself like a shot, if I had a Kindle to read it on.) If you do have a Kindle to read it on, it's available here.


4. Another thing I recently re-engaged with online is Akinator, the Web Genie who asks you yes-or-no questions in an attempt to guess who you're thinking of. (And then I taught it about the main characters of the Steerswoman series, but that's not why I mention it.) For some reason, one question I've been getting a lot is "Does your character have human skin?" - which always makes me wonder who somebody was thinking about that made that a useful question to ask.


5. On an entirely different note, I recently bought my first pair of sunglasses with polarized lenses. (Previously, I've had to go with tinted lenses because they didn't make polarized subscription lenses that fit spectacle frames that fit my head.) It's a bit weird - I don't know if this is usual for polarization, or if it's because they're prescription lenses, or what, but objects with shiny surfaces occasionally look like they have a sort of unreal glow about them, because one eye is seeing them as catching the light and the other eye isn't, in a way that usually doesn't happen without polarization involved. And there are certain times of day when the effect happens to the entire sky.

1. In case you haven't already heard, the BBC has announced that nine previously-lost classic Doctor Who episodes have been recovered from an archive in Nigeria, comprising most of two stories starring Patrick Troughton.

The two stories, which for the last few decades had been down to only one surviving episode each, are "The Web of Fear" (The One With Yetis in the Underground, and Nicholas Courtney's first appearance as Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart) and "The Enemy of the World" (The One Where the Doctor's Evil Twin is a Bond Villain with an elaborate underground lair in Australia). "The Enemy of the World" is now complete again; "The Web of Fear" is still missing episode 3, the episode in which the Doctor first meets then-Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart.

Here's the official announcement, and here's an interview with the chap who found them.


2. Speaking of things that turn 50 this year, the brass band had its 50th anniversary celebrations recently, with other bands visiting and a big community concert ending with all the bands combining into a single mega-band. Also there was an anniversary dinner for the band members, where several people talked about their memories of the band's early years, and several presentations were made. Two new life members were announced, one of whom was, um, me. So that was a thing that happened.


5. I started doing the "five things make a post" thing because I kept putting off posts because they didn't seem big enough on their own. Now it's just turned into me putting off posts because I don't have exactly five things to put in them. I think I'd better think this out again.

Better late than never: I've been collecting useful links for voters in the upcoming Australian federal election, to be held this Saturday.

Since I procrastinated so long, leece already posted one, but I think I've got some links she didn't (and of course our readership isn't co-extensive, so some of you won't have seen hers).


In You Can't "Waste Your Vote"!, Dennis the Election Koala helpfully explains Australia's preferential voting system, and why Australian voters can and should vote 1 for the candidate they'd prefer to win even if they know that candidate has no chance of actually getting in. (hat-tip: this one's been all over my friendslist, but I first saw it via drhoz)

Vote Compass lets you compare your positions with those of the three major players (Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition, and the Greens) both in aggregate and on specific issues.

This policy scorecard from GetUp includes the three majors and five smaller parties. (hat-tip: via leece)


Then we get to Australia's infamously large and complicated Senate ballots.

Below the Line explains why you should consider tackling the difficult process of filling out a complete Senate ballot instead of taking the easier "above the line" option - and, crucially, provides a tool that makes it much less daunting to contemplate. With the Ballot Editor, you can select your electorate, rearrange the candidates in whatever order you like with an easy drag-and-drop interface, taking as long as you need, and then print out a reminder card showing how to fill out the ballot form to express that preferred order.

But how do you decide who you prefer, when there are so many minor parties who only appear on the Senate ballots?

In addition to the Vote Compass and GetUp links above, Who the hell are all these minor parties? is a brief irreverent rundown of the many minor parties, some of which are doing that thing where they seem appealing but there's something unpleasant not very deep under the surface. The Citizens Electoral Council ("Possibly fascists, definitely nuts"), who in previous years have had a lock on last position in my preferences, may have been beaten this year by the Rise Up Australia Party (who describe themselves as "for people from all ethnic backgrounds who call Australia home", but on closer investigation take it as an article of faith that people from some backgrounds are inherently incapable of becoming True Australians and can therefore be attacked with a clear conscience). (hat-tip: via sqbr; also I should note that the original is by baglieg, but the link above goes to a reblog with some useful additional commentary attached)

An experiment in visualising preferences crunches the numbers from the Senate preference tickets submitted by the various parties, and shows a set of graphs grouping together parties whose preference choices indicate they see each other as having common cause. If you're not sure what to make of a particular party, seeing who its neighbours are may help you decide.

1. Okay, let's see: That was the last Riddler puzzle, and it unlocked the last bit of backstory. Still not 100% Complete, but there's no more story left: the only things left to do are demonstrate-your-speed-and-agility tests, which I don't care about in themselves, and all they unlock are concept art, which I can live without. I think I'm done here.

*swoops out of Arkham City*


2. Also done with: This collection of Murray Leinster stories. Which is a relief, unfortunately. I wish it weren't, because there are times when Leinster is a really good writer -- but oh, the race and gender issues. I had three stories left to get through. Two of them at least managed to avoid gender unpleasantness, though only by not having any women in them at all. The third (actually the first of the three, so fortunately it wasn't left as my final impression of the collection) had some gender essentialism that I mostly just rolled my eyes at, and an enslaved alien race whose depiction (and the protagonist's reacton to whom) would be a field day for someone who enjoys picking apart depictions of racial otherness and disempowerment. The cherry on the top is that literally the first thing we're told about these aliens, and the thing that seems to be the go-to adjective whenever the author wants to emphasize their strangeness and inhumanity... is that they're black. *sigh*


3. In happier classic-sci-fi news: There's a Kickstarter running for a collection of Henry Kuttner's Hogben stories, with a foreword by Neil Gaiman and new illustrations by Steve Parkhouse. I've been wanting to get my hands on these stories ever since I first heard about them, years ago. The publishers are planning a range of editions, from an e-book through a basic paperback to a limited-edition signed leatherbound hardcover. There's about a week left on the pledge period.


4. From the "we're all living in science fiction now" department: Canadian astronaut and video blogger Chris Hadfield commemorates the end of his stint on the International Space Station with a performance of David Bowie's "A Space Oddity" (with appropriately tweaked lyrics), filmed on location in a tin can far above the world.


5. I can touch my toes!