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Helping

From August to October this year my family was in a bad way. Our baby started at childcare, and he brought home very nasty short-term illnesses week after week after week. (Even people familiar with this phenomenon thought we had an unusually unlucky run of it, it was something like seven respiratory illness and three rounds of gastro.) There were weeks that none of us were out of bed for long. There were weeks we didn’t sleep. There were many times when we were all sick simultaneously and had trouble feeding ourselves.

Various people have said they wished they could help, or is there anything that could help next time, so I thought I’d toss some ideas out there.

Important note: I am not asking for these things now. We’ve been well for a couple of months and are doing OK! I’m providing them for reference in case you need to help another friend who is caught in a mess of family illness or severe stress or similar. I realise that almost all of these require money: if you don’t have money or time to help someone a card or note is appreciated, I think!

I think the main problems were decisions and planning, frankly. If in order to accept an offer of help, I needed to look at a calendar and cross-match with someone else’s calendar, plan a menu, write up the baby’s feeding and care needs, it was too much work. At times I was literally cognitively incapable of that kind of reasoning due to utter exhaustion.

Finally, you do have to ask if your help would be appreciated, but I think the thing to do is to present a pretty concrete plan. Eg, “I want to help by ordering you some ready-made meals from the supermarket for delivery tomorrow. Any allergies, diets or food preferences I should keep in mind? Also let me know if it’s a totally bad idea, or if there’s another way to help.”

Stuff that might have been helpful, given that:

  1. ordering groceries to be home-delivered to us, especially if we didn’t have to plan the menu! Just simple meal staples that could be boiled or stuck in an oven or toasted. Since we don’t have many geographically local friends, this was probably more practical than cooking food and dropping it off. You can order groceries online around here, good stuff.
  2. likewise ordering takeaway meals, except harder if anything to order online.
  3. perhaps paying for extra childcare for a day or two (although almost all of them don’t take sick kids, so it would have had to be during an interlude). For a child in existing daycare like Vincent, their existing centre can often take them for extra days if paid for. For reference this would have cost about $70 a day I think (we get some government benefits towards it) and we can’t afford it ourselves.
  4. paying for a two-hour house clean.
  5. simple treats, like wine or chocolates.

Stuff we didn’t find very useful, with reasons. Not to make anyone feel guilty, but to perhaps help decide whether to offer these things:

  • “We’ll look after him!” For various reasons we were often unable to take advantage of this. We generally didn’t want to give someone else what we had. Or it involved a lot of careful calendar planning and comparison in return for half an hour of babysitting. If I need to spend an hour planning the babysitting for an hour of babysitting, it isn’t as helpful. This might work better if you have long periods of time available. And, sadly, if you are not an experienced child carer, a sick baby with sick parents is probably not the place to start.
  • “Come and stay with us! We’ll do all the work while you relax!” Firstly, we were too sick to drive for other than a very short period of time, and the people making this offer were some hours away. Secondly, when we did take it up, Vincent got very sick away from good medical care and was distraught at the destruction of his routine. He also wanted me to do most of his care. Obviously that was partly bad luck. But travelling with a sick baby is a pain in the neck, so this could be hard to arrange unless you live conveniently to each other.
  • General offers of visits: we were worried about getting people sick, or having to cancel because we were, our house was a mess, we didn’t have any food to offer them, and all the hours I had free from sickness and sick-baby-ness I was spending catching up on work commitments that people were screaming for. I suspect this varies a lot, many people are badly in need of contact with the outside world in this situation.

On that last, maybe keep an eye out for a drop in Chicken Little-ness from your friends, and visit, or invite them to a low-key local outing when the immediate pressure is off. One can emerge from these things with distinctly fewer social contacts, if they’ve gone on for long enough.

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Reverb 10: Wonder, Let Go, Make

Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

Largely by attempting to understand the perspective of my baby son. Again with the baby!

But really, this was brought home by a visiting midwife in my postnatal checks who said that a newborn is experiencing hunger, thirst, temperature, touch, many sounds and many positions all at once in the same few days. So I began by talking to him, and agreeing that it was a strange strange world he’d found himself in. And later, it became a game of trying to understand what it’s like to never be bored because everything is new. And later again, to have to infer rules from first principles. Why can you chew on food, and on many brightly coloured plastic things (toys), but not most other things? How can you explain the “what you can’t chew on” rules succinctly.

Plus, for example, babies doesn’t know about nudity and clothing, they don’t know that your nose is shaped just like food but is not meant to be bitten, they don’t know not to touch faeces, they don’t recognise a difference between food and dirt.

So, it’s been rather easy to keep in mind that the world is a strange place, this year.

Let go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

I was anticipating these things, but I can’t do any of the following now:

  • propose a spontaneous late night wander with my husband, and execute it a minute later
  • have a conversation with my husband in a normal tone of voice while we’re both occupying the same room
  • sleep all night (I’ve slept through about ten nights since V was born)
  • leave the house within two minutes of the idea occurring

It’s got to the point where it’s going to be strange to have some of that return.

Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

Sticking to physical things, what I tend to make is food. The last food I made for pleasure rather than necessity was, I think, burnt butter biscuits for the picnic in memory of my grandmother. And I’m failing to execute a plan to make rum balls right now.

That said, “clear time for it”? This set of prompts seems to be rather in the “empower yourself” mold. I’m not making rum balls right now because I need downtime after deaths and illnesses in the last week, not because I’m failing to organise my life sufficiently well. This year, my life has organised itself around disasters and stressors. Making time for things was a recipe for disappointment in 2010.

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Reverb 10: One Word, Writing, Moment

One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

“Vincent”, of course.

Vincent’s birth was interestingly timed in terms of the way I divide my life; slightly more than ten years after my relationship with Andrew started. So, 2000–2009 were relationship years, and very early in 2010 I had Vincent.

I thought about “mother” as well, but it seems too general to say that. Perhaps the word of 2010–2019 might be “mother”, but this year has been specifically about Vincent. 2009 was generalities about parenting and babies: what was it like, were we ready, would we make it? And this year has been more about answers. The answers are Vincent.

Next year’s word, I hope, will be “Doctorate”.

Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

You know, I think right now, each day, I do exactly as much writing as I want to be doing.

What I need to be doing is more sitting around in the evenings in pyjamas snarking at the television with Andrew. What’s stopping me doing that? Earning money. Can I eliminate earning money? No. I need to finish my PhD though and move earning money to daylight hours.

Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

The hospital where I had Vincent discouraged fathers from staying all night, unless the baby had been born very late. Vincent was born at about 4pm, and after I had been stabilised and finally transferred to the ward with Vincent, Andrew went home at 11pm or midnight.

Vincent had had several good breastfeeds in the delivery room, but newborn babies sometimes do not feed much for the first 12 hours or so after birth. And indeed, in the ward he initially didn’t feed much. I lay half-dozing in my hospital bed, bathed in the light of a green LED attached to my otherwise dark television set. Vincent slept, wrapped up tight, in a plastic cot to my left within arm’s reach. I smelled sweat, mostly, and looked at him.

Every few hours he would call softly, like a peep or a mew and I would pick him up and put him to the breast, which he would sort of explore for a moment and then go peacefully back to sleep. At some points, I left him to sleep on my tummy.

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The blog is dead, long live the blog

I’ve decided that at long last, I wouldn’t mind actual discussions occurring on some of my noodling, and so I am moving to a WordPress blog. This is the last entry under puzzling.org/logs/thoughts.

The new blog is up at Lecta.

Note that the WordPress blog will not be syndicated in its entirety to any Planets. Individual tags might or might not be at some point in the future, but I’ve decided that I am more comfortable with a readership which is specifically seeking me out.

Eventually the history from puzzling.org/logs/thoughts will be imported there, or at least mostly so, and redirected.

Other places you can find me include:

  1. my diary-style blog, at puzzling.org/logs/diary without comments or puzzlement.dreamwidth.org with comments (this probably will change form somewhat too, but not in the immediate future);
  2. as puzzlement on identi.ca and Twitter; and
  3. on the group blogs Geek Feminism and Hoyden About Town.
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Your women's networking event; mothers need to plan

This post is inspired by a specific event, but I have contacted the organisers privately with a specific complaint/suggestion, so I’m not posting this publicly to slam them, or naming them here. But I think the ideas are more generally useful.

If you run career networking events for women (or anyone! but it’s more obvious if they’re targeted at women) you need to make it possible for mothers to attend them. Not all women are mothers, but a substantial fraction are.

How can you do this? Well, childcare for children from 0 to 12 or so would be awesome, but I realise it’s expensive and logistically difficult (certified safe space, insurance, qualified carers in the right ratios…). Here’s something that isn’t: specific advance publicity. That is, publicity that announces date, time (start and finish, or at least finish of the formal bit, eg “6pm to 8pm with socialising until whenever!”) and location. Because here’s what a mother will have to do:

  • there’s good odds a mother needs to be sure someone else will care for her child during your event. That someone else might be a co-parent who has a life of their own to plan, or it might be a non-household member (same) or a paid carer who needs to be booked (and budgeted for!) in advance
  • if your event is on a day when she does care, she will probably need to dress especially for your event
  • if your event is on a day when she does care, she will probably have to travel especially for your event

The appropriate minimum notice period is at least a week.

As a bonus, this is also helpful to part-time workers, unemployed people and students, all of whom all have to dress especially and travel in order to attend most networking events, and busy people, for that matter, and people who work in casual-dress jobs.

A slight tangent, but something else I wish networking events did: be more specific about the catering. So many go from, say, 6pm to 9pm and specify something about a “light meal”, which in the extreme can constitute a couple of spring rolls per person. I’m a long-term breastfeeder, at the height of production I’ve had to eat something like five substantial meals in a day. Even before I was pregnant, I ate good sized dinners. I understand that your event likely won’t have a full sit-down meal, but I’d much rather get info like “light snacks will be provided, there’s a food court at $address if you want to eat beforehand” than “our sponsors are catering a meal! awesome $sponsor!” when it turns out I will need to leave early (in tears, because noise and hunger overwhelm me) and buy a whole second meal at 9pm.

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Harassment and bullying

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Warning: discussion of harassment and bullying. There is mention of self-harm and links to real-life bullying accounts at the end.

The substantive part of Corey’s comment which was not published on my “Why don’t you just hit him?” post was the following:

It’s like if you’re a parent of a bullying victim, and you find yourself repeating ignore it
So I’m supposed to treat women like they’re my children. Isn’t that extremely sexist and patronizing?

I didn’t reply to it initially because I think it’s a misreading: here’s the full paragraph of mine that Corey excerpted (emphasis as per the original post):

This is the kind of advice given by people who don’t actually want to help. Or perhaps don’t know how they can. It’s like if you’re a parent of a bullying victim, and you find yourself repeating “ignore it”, “fight back with fists” or whatever fairly useless advice you yourself were once on the receiving end of. It’s expressing at best helplessness, and at worst victim-blaming. It’s personalising a cultural problem.

I am, of course, saying that if one advises that women should or must hit back at harassers/attackers, then it resembles giving a bullying victim the same advice. Since the entire post is discussing why that advice is often bad advice, I’m fairly clearly not making the argument there that people should treat women as if those women are their children; I’m making the argument that they do, and they shouldn’t.

So much for that.

Except… that’s not quite right is it? Of course you should not treat unrelated adult women who complain of harassment at geek conferences like they are your children, because Corey and I would both tell you that’s sexist and patronising.

But the way we treat harassment victims and the way we treat child bullying victims have many parallels:

  • we tell harassment victims it’s the price of admission to the awesome community; we tell bullying victims that it’s character building, the price of admission to adulthood
  • we tell harassment victims they asked for it by wearing certain clothes or being a certain gender or not being a certain gender enough among many other things; we tell bullying victims that they’re so satisfying to tease, because of the way they react, that they are different from their bullies in some way and hiding that difference is the way to go
  • we tell harassment victims that he’s basically a nice guy and he’s just a bit inexperienced with women, or with alcohol, or with both, and that his social skills need gentle nurturing; we tell bullying victims that their bullies are actually fine kids with good qualities that we don’t want to crush by labelling and punishing them as bullies
  • we tell harassment victims that it’s a private matter that they could solve by ignoring it, or fighting back; we tell bullying victims that it’s… a private matter that they could solve by ignoring it, or fighting back

When they do report it, we also often leave them both with such failures that bullying victims and harassment victims both come to internalise the lesson that their persecution is a private matter, or at least that better keep it a private matter than tell anyone with power about it, because people with power will just back each other up.

(Should be obvious: I don’t support required reporting, or shaming people into reporting. I do support solving the problem when they do report.)

So harassment and bullying are the same class of problem, in fact they blur into each other very strongly: bullying of children and adults often includes harassment and assault (among the other forms of bullying, like sudden unexplained ostracism and you’re-our-friend-today-no-you’re-not yoyos and so on), an individual incident of harassment or assault might be the beginning of or part of a bullying relationship.

And neither can or should be solved by the victim, whether by ignoring, or by fighting back, or by changing themself into someone or something that the bully or harasser will approve of.

While, yes, adult harassment victims are not the same as child bullying victims, and they shouldn’t be treated exactly the same, here’s what I would argue: we should be treating them both a lot better. If you think that it would be extremely patronising if your chosen approaches to dealing with bullying in a child community resemble approaches to dealing with harassment in an adult community, then perhaps your understanding of the rights of children who are bullied isn’t bloody good enough.

It also really puzzles me, frankly, that geeks, who I think are a population that has disproportionate experience of being bullied at some point in their life, are so unwilling to recognise the dynamic and similar ones when it occurs in their culture.
Continue reading “Harassment and bullying”

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“Why don’t you just hit him?”

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Warning: this post and links from it discuss both harassment and violence, imagined and real.

Valerie has had a lot of comments and private email in response to her conference anti-harassment policy suggesting that a great deal of the problem would be solved if women were encouraged to hit their harassers: usually people suggest an open handed slap, a knee to groin, or even tasers and mace (no suggestions for tear gas or rubber bullets yet). I sent her such a lengthy email about it that we agreed that I clearly at some level wanted to post about it. What can I do but obey my muse?

OK. Folks…

This is not one of those entries I am thrilled in my soul to have to write, but here’s why “hit him!” is not a solution for everyone and definitely does not replace the need for people with authority to take a stand against harassment.

And I know some people were joking. But not everyone was, you’ll need to trust me on this. Your “jeez, guys like that are lucky they don’t get a knee in the groin more often… hey wait, maybe you should just have a Knee In Groin Policy!” joke was appearing in inboxes right alongside material seriously saying that all of this policy nonsense wouldn’t be necessary if women were just brave and defended themselves properly, if they’d just for once get it right.

Here are some samples:

  • Duncan on LWN: What I kept thinking while reading the original article, especially about the physical assaults, is that it was too bad the victims in question weren’t carrying Mace, pepper-spray, etc, and wasn’t afraid to use it. A couple incidents of that and one would think the problem would disappear…
  • NAR on LWN: I’ve read the blog about the assault – it’s absolutely [appalling] and in my opinion the guy deserved a knee to his groin and some time behind bars. (NAR then goes on to note that women should also wear skirts below the knee; which is very much making it about the victim. Dress right! Fight back!)
  • A comment on Geek Feminism that was not published: …you also need to make it known to women that they need to immediately retaliate (preferably in the form of a slap loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear)… Women -must- stand up for themselves and report the guy, preferably after a loud humiliating slap immediately following the incident.
  • crusoe on reddit: You need to end right then and there. Its one thing to make blog posts, its another to call a jerk out for it on the conference floor, including stomping a toe, or poking them hard in the belly… Do not stew about it, do not run home and write a blog post about it. Just call them on it right then and there. (As long as crusoe doesn’t have to hear about it…)

First up, one key thing about this and many similar responses (“just ignore him”, “just spread the word”, “just yell at him”):

Harassment is not a private matter between harasser and victim, and it’s not the victim’s job to put a stop to it.

The harasser is responsible for their actions. The surrounding culture is responsible for condemning them and making it clear those actions and expressions of attitudes that underlie them are not acceptable. (See Rape Culture 101.) The victim may choose to go to the police, yell, hit, scream, confront, go to a counsellor, tell their mother, tell their father, tell their friends, warn people. They may choose not to. Whether they do or not, we are all responsible for making harassment unacceptable where we are. Harassment, and stopping it, is not the victim’s responsibility. (See But You Have to Report It!)

Am I against hitting a harasser in all situations? No. Am I advocating against it in all situations? No.

However, here’s a lengthy and incomplete list of reasons why victims may not be able or may choose not to hit a harasser and why it is definitely not a general solution for the problem of harassment. I even have a special buzzer on hand that will sound when the reasons are related to gender discrimination. Listen for it, it goes like this: BZZZT! Got it? BZZZT!
Continue reading ““Why don’t you just hit him?””

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Ethics classes to be offered in SRE time in NSW

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

the logo for the NSW Government Dept of Education and Training over a picture of a highway sign that reads "Ethics"Ethics classes in special religious education time (SRE) are almost certainly going ahead in NSW, in 2011 at least.

Background: Special Religious Education (SRE) is a period of time, up to an average of one hour per week, during which students at public (government) schools receive instruction in religion from volunteer representatives of that religion. The parents of the child nominate which religion of those offered locally (in some but not all schools, this will be limited to Christian denominations, here’s the full list of approved providers). They can also opt to withdraw their child from SRE entirely, but if they do so the school can provide supervision but not alternative lessons:

3. Schools are to support SRE by ensuring that no formal lessons or scheduled school activities occur during time set aside for SRE. Such activities may create conflict of choice for some parents and for some students attending SRE.
…
10. In times set aside for SRE, students not attending are to be separated from SRE classes.

11. Schools are to provide appropriate care and supervision at school for students not attending SRE. This may involve students in other activities such as completing homework, reading and private study. These activities should neither compete with SRE nor be alternative lessons in the subjects within the curriculum or other areas, such as, ethics, values, civics or general religious education. When insufficient teachers or accommodation are available, the school’s policy on minimal supervision will operate.
…
14. The principal retains an overall supervision responsibility for the conduct of SRE. Class teachers are not required to attend SRE classes, but may, with the agreement of the SRE teacher, assist or remain in the classroom.

An ethics alternative in SRE time was developed by the St James Ethics Centre. Their FAQs may be useful in understanding more about their classes and the background.

The report (PDF, 0.8MB) into the trial classes is available, and here’s some material from its introduction:

The findings of the evaluation demonstrate the effectiveness of the course in relation to improving students’ understanding and skills in ethical decision making, and the overall appropriateness of the course content, activities and resources and of the associated training. The evaluation also points to the success of the organisational model employed by the St James Ethics Centre, and considers the viability of this model for wider implementation of the course in NSW government schools…

The call for a secular ethics-based complement to SRE in NSW schools is not without precedent, and there is evidence here that secular ethics and SRE can exist respectfully side by side. In this evaluation an attempt has been made to assess the extent to which the ten week ethics pilot provides an appropriate model for an ethics-based complement to scripture, and to do so on the basis of rational argument and empirical evidence. Further decisions rest with the Minister.

There’s been some back and forth since:

  1. The NSW ALP government announced that rollout to schools would commence from 2011, starting with classes offered to Years 5 and 6;
  2. The Liberal opposition, which will almost certainly be elected to government in March 2011, announced that they would reverse this and withdraw classes if elected.
  3. The government announced that the ethics offering would be put in legislation, which will be difficult for the post-March government to reverse without support of minor parties in the state upper house.

My interest in this is long term: I have one child, and he’s a baby. But I am an atheist, and likely under the current system I would opt him out of SRE unless he specifically asked otherwise, and under the new system I would place him in the ethics classes unless he specifically asked otherwise.

I would, in fact, like him to be familiar with the history and teachings of the major religions in Australia. My own schooling was quite indifferent on that front. I attended Catholic primary and high schools, which do not have the SRE system: all students participate in scheduled classroom lessons on Roman Catholic beliefs. (In my experiences, not very robustly taught itself: the doctrinal positions opposing use of contraception came as a considerable surprise to my fifteen year old peers. “Bullshit, Miss.”) The secular state curriculum also seemed to lack much insight into religion or religious influences on culture and politics (and vice versa). The major exception was the Studies of Religion unit in Stage 6 (Years 11 and 12, the final two years); at my school we were offered a choice between a school developed religion course which would not count for university entrance, or the Studies of Religion course, which did. (Stage 6 has been considerably revised since, but this course is still available and you can see the present syllabus.) I attended Catholic schools for thirteen years without hearing about the split of the Democratic Labor Party from the ALP in 1955, for example. The ethics classes aren’t a cure-all for that hole in the curriculum, but they are not intended to be, nor should they be: that kind of material should be offered in the standard curriculum.

What do you think? If you have a child will you or would you have them attend the ethics option in SRE time? Will you or would you volunteer to be an instructor? (The website that is being built at primaryethics.org.au has contact details for would-be volunteers.) I am considering volunteering in 2012 assuming that the classes remain in place and that work and parenting commitments don’t make it impossible (as they likely will.)

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Ask Auntie Hoyden: get your dog outlines here, and other search engine queries

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

an on-set photo of Katharine Hepburn, with overlaid text reading "Ask A Hoyden?"auntie hoyden

Why, I enjoyed those posts (1, 2, 3) in which Lauredhel tried to answer search queries as questions too! So much so that I show up in this site’s logs looking for them. So today, I too become Auntie Hoyden.

Frankly, it appears to me that most people stop here on their way to I Can Haz Cheezburger (funny cat pictures, captioned cat pictures, supernatural macros funny, funny pics), but they also appear looking for soylent green simpsons, any medicine for truth speak and, in considerable numbers, anal sex diagram. (Which is a bit odd, Google finds plenty of considerably more helpful sites for me on that term.)

But let’s see what I can do for you all today, although my specialities are more in the computer line than the sexual health and breastfeeding line that is traditional for this.

pluralising names

Lauredhel observed in 2008 that there’s a construction in Australian English (among others) that allows you to use things like “the Marys of the world” to mean “people like one particular Mary” rather than necessary literally multiple people named Mary.

But if you’re simply interested in how to add a suffix to a proper noun in order to indicate multiple things with that name, here’s a style guide’s answer.

dog outline png

[Update 2019: freesvg.org or publicdomainvectors.org are currently more searchable than openclipart.org.]

I like openclipart.org for this sort of thing: it’s public domain clipart, take it, use it and modify it without credit. (Not that I don’t also love various Creative Commons licences that do require credit, but dropping that requirement makes using many pieces a lot easier. I’ve seen people who use CC images from Flickr need to put a credits roll at the end of slide presentations.)

Plus! openclipart.org provides SVG as well as PNG. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a free image format which allows pictures to be scaled up in size without loss of quality, as well as down in size. This is accomplished by describing an image in terms of lines or curves (hence, vectors) rather than in terms of individual coloured dots. It’s not very useful for photos, but it’s great for clipart (and fonts, which are generally described in vectors and thus can be scaled up).

openclipart.org has hundreds of drawings of dogs. I’m not sure if this person was looking for a silhouette of a dog, which I couldn’t find on a very brief look, or simply a line drawing of a dog, of which there are many. Here’s a cute one.

snuggle otter

Don’t. We love ’em but that doesn’t make them domesticated pets.

mother sprays milk

Does she ever. I breastfeed a ten month old baby. When he was little I had a supply suitable for twins, or perhaps sextuplets, and milk was everywhere. Then things balanced out and we had a nice interlude of not spraying. Then he got a bit more distractible, which resulted on the weekend in him getting a letdown, pulling off and slipping so that he headbutted me in the breast and milk shot out for the best part of a metre.

If anyone else wants to grace the Internet with a milk spray story, feel free.

australia’s prime minister 2010 smiling

On the 25th June 2010, one day after becoming leader of the government and being sworn in as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard smiled in the presence of the US ambassor to Australia, Jeff Bleich. This is important, because it was photographed by embassy staff, and as a work of the US Federal Government, it is thus in the public domain and you can get it from Wikimedia Commons.

anti filter

That’s us!

Can you help out with these?
squirrel give thanks
the worst shoe eveeeer
placenta accreta deathrate
crivens!

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30 Day book meme, 5: a book you hate

Day 5 of the 30 day book meme: a book or series you hate.

What? I’m supposed to choose just one?

Hi, I’m Mary and I hate books and movies like other people breathe. (That is, loudly, endlessly and especially so on public transport.)

I could, for example, tell you about Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver in which it turns out that the interesting enough characters of Cryptonomicon are actually projections of their exceedingly similar distant male line ancestors into the present. Plus beautiful women cryptographer something something something OH GODS IT’S A MIRACLE THE SPINE OF THE BOOK IS STILL INTACT. Or much of Isaac Asimov’s Elijah Bailey/Gladia Delmarre series. (I don’t like R. Daneel that much either, by the way.) Or, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For starters, that sounds like a ghost answering the phone. Sort of The Ring with phones. Hello, now you’re going to die! Secondly, Roger Ebert has just seen Part 1 of the movie, and he writes: … and key actions seem to be alarmingly taking place off-screen. They do indeed Roger, they do indeed.

But, I do have a favourite hated book of all time. It’s Colony, by Rob Grant. Andrew loves Red Dwarf and found the novels quite reasonable, so picked up this solo effort set in a different universe.

I’m just going to go ahead and spoil this. You don’t want to read it.

Here’s the setup. There’s a guy who owes people some money, people who are “repossess your soul for the salt mines” kind of people that you don’t want to owe money to. This bit is irritating already, as frankly Our Hero is pretty bland, cowardly and self-pitying, and there’s no sign that we’re supposed to do anything other than wholly identify with him. Then, there’s a brief spark of false interestingness. Our hero is in desperate straits and is approached by someone clearly shady who would like to swap identities with him, and allow our hero to depart the entire planet on a settler colony ship. Safe as houses. Our hero pulls this off and boards the ship, finding people and conditions there greatly to his liking, only to discover that the shady one is a political eugenicist, opposed by nearly everyone else selected for the mission, particularly the decent ones.

What will our hero do? Why was Mr Shady so keen to swap places? Should he confess to the swap, which would appear to be the safer path if he can truly convince the other colonists? Or is there something going on here that he doesn’t know about? That sounds likely doesn’t it! Perhaps he will discover just enough to learn that it’s safer to play along, but continue to alienate everyone else with every moment they continue to believe he is Shady. Gosh, what a predicament!

But never fear! Rob Grant knows how to extricate our hero! There is a disaster aboard ship, and our hero wakes up seven generations later, when there are considerably more pressing problems, like the fact that the people who distrusted him have been replaced by disordered descendants of themselves, reduced to caricatures by inbreeding. Hilarity ensues, or does if you are Rob Grant, who clearly finds “average person at sea among humorous caricatures” hilarious. (His later book Incompetence is marginally better, but more or less on the same theme there. Why did I read that? I think curiosity to see if he could repeat this feat of coming up with a mildly interesting scenario and then sabotaging it so completely.) As best I recall, Mr Shady and whatever his reasons were for swapping identities are never so much as mentioned again. I actually can’t remember if I finished this though.

If you see this book, burn it.