Catch-up, and odds and ends

with cameos from Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sir Keir Starmer

Here follows a catch-up on publications over the last few months, plus odds and ends on politics, Substack, and also a recommendation for those itching for a bit of fiction.

Since the last catch-up:

1. A post-apocalyptic war-torn-future science-fiction comedy-satire-parody thing:
   Where do you see yourself in ten years? (8 parts)
   Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. +postscript

2. Some musings on academia, three-quarters of which are semi-serious.
   Summary: academia is fine, its critics are predominantly aggrieved misanthropes, and you’re better off taking academic advice from people who are academics.

   1. The dream of academia (from 2014)

   2. Is academia broken? (My response to those muppets who think it is)

   3. How to survive academia, Part 1 — How academia works

   4. How to survive academia, Part 2 — Actual survival tips

3. A musical interlude on the power and joy of songs you hear your entire life (in my case Crowded House and the wider Finn musical universe).

There is also now a handy Table of Contents, for those of us who are unimpressed by Substack’s reverse-chronological layout. (It just occurred to me to pin that to the homepage…)

Now for the odds and ends.

Politics (again)

I can’t resist noting how happy I am about the outcome of the UK election. There is much noise about voter turn-out and mandates and protest votes and so on; the only important story is that the clown-show Conservative government is gone, and we have a new government of people who show every indication of being serious and competent. As Joe Biden might have put it in better days, that’s a big fucking deal.

I arrived in the UK just after the Conservatives took power in 2010. I have not lived here under any other government. In the beginning they were just merely bad. Then came Brexit, and a position at the top was conditional on being a delusional ideologue. Then came Boris Johnson, and the condition was downgraded to dimwitted borderline-criminal toady or bully. The assumption, since at least 2016 and in many cases earlier, has been that every government statement is a lie and every policy goal will fail. Even an honest attempt to fix something (anything!) explodes on first contact. This is the world we have grown accustomed to living in.

Now we dare to hope for better. Not only have Sir Keir Starmer and his new ministers shown every sign of sober thinking and diligent preparation before entering government, they have also presumably known that they will be the next government since the brief reign of the preposterous Liz Truss in late 2022. I have learned not to have high expectations, but I am eager to have my subconscious re-trained.

That’s enough on politics. If you want more, my go-to for political rants and analysis is Ian Dunt; he sums up my reaction to the election outcome better than I can.

Substack fiction

In my last catch-up I complained that I was having a hard time finding fiction on Substack. That has changed. Now I’ve found too much. People are writing fiction everywhere! Plus, there are all manner of efforts to promote or collate fiction, for example Suspension of this Belief (great name!), or The Library.

I find it a bit overwhelming. It’s taking a while to find what I like. It doesn’t help that I’m not generally interested in fantasy or science fiction (“speculative fiction” appears to be the current term). It also doesn’t help that I’m ridiculously picky.

For example: I recently re-read some bits of Hemingway’s posthumous memoir, “A Moveable Feast”. There are wonderfully comic scenes of a trip he takes with F. Scott Fitzgerald, where Fitzgerald is mercilessly mocked. (Fitzgerald was dead by the time Hemingway wrote this, so I suspect some of this is a kind of twisted bitterness at how Fitzgerald failed to stay in control of his life.) Anyway. At some point Hemingway reads the new novel Fitzgerald is about to publish, which is The Great Gatsby. Hemingway goes bananas over it. After all the jokes about what a cheap drunk and a hypochondriac Fitzgerald is, he now lets loose a wild torrent of affection and praise for this new masterpiece.

And I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh, come on! It’s not that great!”

That’s how picky I am.

That said, one recent serial I did enjoy was Down in the Holler. It shouldn’t be my kind of thing — it’s about a “psychic detective”. But as a mystery serial, it was done well, and worked exactly as you hope a serial would, in that each week I was eagerly waiting for the next instalment. Among many clever aspects, the psychic powers were possessed by someone who would otherwise be the world’s greatest sceptic, which worked perfectly to ground the story, and also provide comic moments. I can’t vouch for how this story works if consumed all in one sitting, but taken bit by bit as a serial, I thought it was a lot of fun.

A serial that I’m following that isn’t yet complete is Ship of Fools. It’s all about conspiracy theories — or maybe I should say, what it’s about is all conspiracy theories. I don’t know where it’s going, but I appreciate an attempt to tackle the vast world of anti-science nonsense in fiction.

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That’s all for now. I promise some real “content” of my own is coming soon. Stay tuned!