This is the BSFA Award and World Fantasy Award shortlisted management textbook you never knew you wanted, but now you know you have to have it. The hardback has a scary academic price tag, but the paperback has a nice friendly RRP of £20/$30 or equivalent.
This tale is another one inspired by ephemera from my grandparents’ trip to the Far East in the 1980s. In the postcard collection, I found cards from the Grand Hotel Taipei (below), and from the Presidents’ Hotel Taipei (above).
The Grand Hotel is a legendary place. Started in the 1950s and designed by Soong Mei-Ling, better known outside of Asia as Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, it was intended to be a showpiece for putting up foreign diplomats and showcasing Taiwan as a repository of traditional Chinese culture, hence the traditional Chinese look of the building. It’s even got a famous escape route in case of emergencies, which you can’t use (though you can go on tours of some of the secret tunnels, according to reviews on Tripadvisor).
I’ve never stayed there, but I did visit once, out of curiosity, on my first trip to Taipei. My research assistant suggested it as an entertaining leisure activity, so off we went. We tiptoed around admiring all the art, including a temporary exhibition of Lunar Zodiac-themed salt sculptures; wishing we could afford the jewellery in the shop; having cups of tea (we definitely couldn’t afford the restaurant); and photographing each other in front of the flower arrangements.
Exhibit A: flowers and frizzy hair
The presence of the postcard made me wonder, excitedly, if my grandparents had stayed there. After all, there wasn’t a lot of tourism in Taipei in the 1980s, so it’s plausible. And it’s the sort of place you might like to take visiting Canadians to. However, the presence of the other postcard made me think they were probably in the much more practical and solid Presidents’ Hotel.
A while later I found their itinerary, and yeah. They were staying in the Presidents’ Hotel. But one of the day-trip options was a visit to the Grand Hotel, and the fact that there’s a postcard to it is a strong steer that they did go there. I expect it was much the same back in the 1980s, with maybe less in the way of shopping and eating options and definitely much more cigarette smoke (my overwhelming memory of 1980s hotels is the pervasive odor of burnt tobacco and the faint brown miasma on everything). It’s nice to think that my grandparents and I saw the same piece of modern Taiwanese history and culture, thirty years apart.
Would be interesting to know what they made of it.
Another plot-lite one, but one which frustratingly hints at the better series this could have been. Fulvia and Octavia with their two hostages Liz and Rudi land back on Medusa. Rudi is bundled off to the men’s quarters while Liz gets the honoured-visitor treatment and Octavia attempts to negotiate the return of Shem and Adam. Fulvia is so distressed by the fact that Adam refuses to come back unless he gets to leave her employ and never see her again, that she takes off in the Nemesis despite the fact that there’s a proton storm (stick with me on this, it’s not the most bizarre science that British/German space series have thrown up) that could destroy it. In the end she’s saved when Professor Evans and Shem succeed in getting a signal to her.
One of the hints at the better series underneath is that I think Fulvia’s obsessive and abusive relationship with Adam is interesting and disturbing, particularly when you factor in the hints that Adam is a little confused about his sexuality, and one could build a fascinating storyline out of it, along the lines of Leoben and Kara in reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Sadly it never gets the exploration it deserves.
Another interesting bit of wasted potential is that the women of Medusa all seem a bit on edge about how good they are as rulers: they have a chess-analogue game where one rule is that the queen can never be taken, for instance, suggesting either that they’re laying on the propaganda really thick, or that they feel vulnerable and anxious about it. Which, again, seems like a hint that there’s more to why women rule on Medusa than just a simple gender-flip.
After a single day on Medusa Rudi complains that the men’s lives are “boring” and he doesn’t want to do this any more, and I just kept waiting for Liz to laugh bitterly and say “try being a housewife on Earth, matey,” but she doesn’t.
Do chores, fix spaceships, play chess– it’s a man’s life on Medusa!
Meanwhile, both Evans and Shem seem like genuinely nice people: Evans really wants to study Medusan civilisation and accepts it without judgment, and Shem is clearly not about to let anyone die, even if they’re his enemy. I can also really see how Gareth Thomas subsequently got the lead in Blake’s 7, because he really sells the technobabble, talking matter-of-factly about proton storms and micro communicators and so on as if he were talking about car parts.
One of the less good things is that the Medusan men all seem completely lacking in curiosity about what life is like on a male-dominated planet. Even if they are genuinely happy with their lot (and indications are that not everyone is), you’d think they’d be asking Rudi a bunch of questions.
Will the penny drop for Rudi? Why are the Medusan women so neurotic about keeping power when the men are so happy to let them have it? Or is it just Octavia? Will Fulvia seek help from a mental health professional before it’s too late? Find out!
Every fan of Game of Thrones and/or A Song of Ice and Fire knows: Sansa Stark loves lemon cakes. So of course A Feast of Ice And Fire, the official cookbook, has two recipes for them (one historic, one modern), and of course I have to bake them.
I went for the historic recipe: in this cookbook, which recipe I go for generally depends on which one is easier. It’s usually the modern one but not this time.
Recipe:
To Make Lemon Cakes. ½ lb flour, ½ lb fine sugar, the peel of two lemons, or one large one; 3 0z. butter; 3 eggs; ½ the whites. Break the butter into the flour and stir them with a knife. Make them the bigness of a gingerbread button. Grate the peel with a piece of the sugar. Butter the tins. Take them of the tins whilst warm. Place them upon the tins about 2 inches distance because they spread in the oven. Two minutes will bake them. -LUCAYOS COOKBOOK, 1690
Lemon zest going in
2½ cups flour, plus more as needed
2 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
Grated zest from 2 lemons
1 egg
2 egg yolks
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
1½ teaspoons milk
Cakes cooling on the rack
Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a large baking sheet.
In a large bowl, combine the flour and granulated sugar. Cut in the butter, then add the zest and the whole egg and yolks. Mix thoroughly, adding more flour as needed, until the dough is no longer sticky and can be easily shaped by hand.” Roll the dough into balls about 1 inch across and place them on the prepared baking sheet at least 2 inches apart, giving them room to spread as they bake.
Bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are just slightly golden. Allow the cakes to cool for a minute before moving them to a cooling rack.
Mix the confectioners sugar and milk to a smooth consistency. Once the cakes have cooled, use a spoon to drizzle the icing over the cookies.
*If the mixture seems too dry, add a little water or lemon juice until the dough comes together.
Finished cakes packed for transport to a party
The recipe was pretty simple to follow. Instead of 1 egg and 2 egg yolks I wound up using 3 eggs, because it soon became very apparent that there was too little fluid in the recipe even with the suggested addition of lemon juice. I suspect the author was using bigger eggs than I am. I also accidentally put too much milk in the glaze, but that was easily fixed by adding more icing sugar.
The end result is sort of a halfway point between a cake and a cookie, rising higher than a cookie but being more solid than a cake. They held together well on transport.
And the taste? Pretty sure Sansa would approve. Sweet and slightly lemony, with a bit of crunch. I took them to a nerd party and everyone who ate them, liked them. Definitely a recommended recipe: it’s easy, makes a lot of nice cakes and feeds a crowd.
If you’ve tried this recipe or have suggestions for what I should do next, please comment on this post or flag me down on social media.
What would happen if Morag encountered the Foundation? And, if it meant saving the life of one of Zeb and Dai’s orphans… could she give them Seamus? Find out!
This is a picture from my last visit to Portmeirion
Happy International Labour Day, and/or Doctor Who: The Daemons Day, everyone! Sorry about this, but there’s a lot of things going on at the moment that need PR, and won’t wait, so here’s a post about upcoming appearances. Tie-in cookbook recipes resume next week.
First: I’m going to be appearing at the Birmingham SF Group on 10 May, mostly promoting Human Resourcesbut talking about any and all things that people are interested in, including management lessons from many different unexpected sources! If you’re in the area, please come along. You can book tickets at this link.
Second: I’m giving a webinar in the International Human Resource Management series on 6 June, entitled “Dragon Ladies and Women Who Run with Wolves: Three Cases of Female Leadership in Game of Thrones.” This is based on the research that went into Management Lessons from Game of Thrones, but it’s a new paper focusing on the academic side of what we can learn from the way in which Daenerys Targaryen, Catelyn Stark and Sansa Stark are portrayed. Tickets are available now: go here to sign up and to take part in a pre-session poll.
Finally: just to confirm, but yes, I will definitely be going to the World SF Convention in Glasgow in August! I’ll be bringing along copies of Management Lessons from Game of Thrones and a lot of opinions, so do please flag me down at the con and say hello!
From “Can you Make an Appetizing Meal in Your Cellar?” by Marie Adams (Charlotte News, September 1961)
Ingredients
1 can (4.5 ounces) deviled ham [FM Note: you can substitute ordinary tinned ham/meat/jackfruit and add 1 tablespoon mustard, 1 tablespoon horseradish, and 1 teaspoon chilli sauce)
1 can (4 ounces) canned mushrooms, drained
¼ cup mayonnaise
¼ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
¼ cup dried parsley flakes
Saltine crackers for serving
Tomato juice for serving
Behold my survival bunker! With its surprisingly gourmet mustard options.
Instructions
Chop or blend together the ham, mushrooms, mayo, hot sauce, and parsley.
Spread on crackers.
Garnish with more parsley flakes and Tabasco if desired.
Serve with glasses of tomato juice.
I faced two challenges in making this, both related to the fact that I live in London, UK, and British supermarkets have neither devilled ham nor Saltines. Fortunately there are recipes for devilled ham online, so I made my own by adding two tablespoons of horseradish mustard and a teaspoon of chilli sauce to the tinned ham before adding the other ingredients.
The ingredients in my magi-mix prior to whizzing.
The Saltines were a tougher challenge, but in the end I decided to be thoroughly British and serve the ham spread On Toast. Pretty sure British chemical-sponge toast bread could survive a nuclear apocalypse.
The result? Actually pretty tasty, and super easy to make: five minutes in the magi-mix and you’re done. It would also make a nice sandwich spread, or something to top fancy crackers with at parties. If you don’t want to use ham, too, I could see this working okay with any other sort of light-flavoured tinned meat or meat substitute, for instance chicken or turkey.
You could also add vodka to the tomato juice of course.
It also seems that Fallout does have a tie-in cookbook, so I’ve added it to my Amazon wish-list. In the meantime, this is something you could serve at your Vault Dweller Official Breeder wedding as a hors d’oevre, or pack to take along on your mission to track down your kidnapped father on the Surface.
One unexpected challenge is that the recipe makes a lot of spread. I was eating devilled ham sandwiches and salads for a week after trying the recipe, though the good news is that it showed no signs of going off, probably because of all the spices and preservatives.
If you’ve tried this, or have other recipes you’d like me to try out on here, let me know in the comments or flag me down on social media!
Just a quick note to let people not on my social media know that ParSec Magazine is doing a huge promotion in advance of their 10th issue, with a blog tour and a 25% discount on back issues. They’ve published me, and a lot of writers I really like, so if you don’t know about them yet now is a good time to check them out.
A small interruption in the usual stream of posts to tell you all that my short story collection, Human Resources, is now officially in release as #8 in NewCon Press’ Polestars series! You can buy it at this link.
The cover is gorgeous:
Gorgeous cover of “Human Resources” by Fiona Moore
And here’s a teaser from the first story in the collection, “Terms And Conditions”:
I am a camera, its shutter open, quite passive, uploading, transmitting. The data analytics are someone else’s responsibility.
No.
Start again.
I want to break free.
Instead, I must make the dreadful trip downtown: the crowded bus, the ageing subway, the death-march along slushy streets. Picking up a lost earring only to throw it away again, because what’s the point of only one earring. Another data analytics moment for someone.
And, too soon, the restaurant.
The squealed greeting, the hug (close but not too close), the smacked kisses on each cheek, the sloughing-off of jackets and scarves. All routine data, to be coded perhaps by intimacy of hug and speed of kiss and colour of scarf.
I take a sip of tea, enjoy it like a last meal, take a short sweet breath and say:
“Where did you get those shoes? Really? Wow. You know, I just happened to notice there’s a sale at The Cove, you could get a new jacket that would match them perfectly.”
I’ve tried to work around it. But it’s a strange feeling when you try to suggest having coffee at the Espresso Roast and your treacherous mouth is recommending Melville’s instead.
She sips her tea too, smiling, and countering: “Oh, yes, I saw that jacket, but I just got a new winter coat at Fairclough’s and I love it.”
As I make my admiring noises, it occurs to me that I don’t know if she’s another one of us, or if this is just the way she normally talks.
Certainly no one ever suggests I’m acting strangely, as I tell her all about the new SF relationship drama on ‘my favourite’ streaming service, or about the new phone app that makes navigating public transport so much easier, or how a mutual friend from school is taking a holiday in Cancun right now (airline mentioned, resort mentioned). I describe my own upcoming holiday, certain, for the moment at least, that this is what I’ll be doing in July. She reciprocates with stories about her kids and how they’re bankrupting her with demands for the latest action figures, toy swords, new football gear in the colours of their favourite teams.
I could keep a diary. See if those are still her kids’ favourite teams next time we lunch.
Then again, it might get me arrested for data theft. Wasn’t there something in the terms and conditions…?
Interested? There’s plenty more! Go to the link and buy a copy in your preferred format– they’re all beautiful. And please review it on your favourite sites!
Before we begin, a small culture-note update. On my way to and from Eastercon this year, I listened to Season 1 of the 1960s comedy radio series “Round the Horne”. For those not familiar with it, they have a running sketch series featuring Sandy and Julian, two resting actors who, while unemployed, try their hand at literally every possible job. And their first sketch has them working as cleaners for a temp agency that specialises in… wait for it… “male domestics”. So maybe the reason why there’s this awkward insistence on referring to Adam as a “male domestic” is in part because it was a term in British popular culture at the time for a man employed to cook and clean.
Anyway, back to the show. In this episode, Shem and Adam decide, sensibly enough given their limited knowledge of Earth culture, to hole up in a local castle and enlist the support of the nobleman who owns it. Sadly it’s not Windsor Castle, but a 17th-century fortress which is now a museum, and it’s now apparently owned not by a nobleman, but the National Trust. Shoutout to Alfie Bass, the First Jew In Space, as the hapless curator.
The police attempt to negotiate with the fugitives, and then Octavia decides to take matters into her own hands by deploying the titular Nightmare Cannon, a weapon which makes people see their greatest fears. Adam’s is apparently Fulvia inviting him to have sex with her; yet more strong hints that he’s actually gay.
Elsewhere in this episode, Professor Evans’ assistants Liz and Rudi (who are about to become very, very important indeed to the plot) decide to sneak aboard the Medusans’ spacecraft, and handsome Rudi is blinded when he tinkers with the equipment. This means we get to see the Medusans’ “Physician” and boy is she worth the price of admission. A weird sort of, I don’t know, cyborg or part-alien creature with long needle fingers and blind staring eyes. This is something that deserves much more screen time and worldbuilding. The 25-minute episode length is one of the things that really hurts this series.
See what I mean? Even Fulvia looks a little freaked out.
Other decent things this episode are Graham Crowden as a government minister trying to broker diplomatic relations with the Medusans (Octavia ironically refers to him as a “pompous little man” as he looms over her), and Octavia’s throwaway matter-of-fact comment that men invariably fear women in power, something that a better series might have had an interesting time exploring.
This is a recurring problem with Star Maidens: they keep running up to interesting thoughts about gender, power and prejudice, and then running away again.
Anyway, the story ends with Nemesis getting damaged and Octavia and Fulvia having to flee back to Medusa with the two humans still on board, though the way Octavia’s acting suggests she was planning on kidnapping them all along to use as hostages. Shem and Adam are, meanwhile, finally arrested by Surrey Police Force’s finest and Alfie Bass can get home to dinner.
Will two humans on Medusa lead to cross-cultural hijinx? Do men invariably fear women in power, or is it something more Foucauldian (or Lacanian)? What the hell is the Physician? How long can Judy Geeson hold a single facial expression? Find out!
This recipe is from Nanny Ogg’s Discworld Cookbook, which has a lot of good recipes but is also fond of going for the racier, and sillier, recipes. This one, fans of the Discworld novels may remember, features in the incident in Hogfather where the staff of a fancy restaurant suddenly find themselves with no fancy food, only a lot of old shoes and mud, and a lot of hungry customers expecting a posh meal. Pulling themselves together, they serve a variety of fancy dishes made out of shoes and mud.
You’ll be pleased to know that this recipe involves beef and gravy instead.
Recipe:
350g topside of beef, thinly sliced 4 tablespoons dark soy sauce S00g mushrooms, very finely chopped 300ml dark ale or stout 2 cloves garlic, crushed 2-3 teaspoons chopped dill 470ml beef stock salt and pepper
MARINATE THE BEEF in the soy sauce for 2-3 hours. Preheat the oven to 190°C/Gas 5-6. Put the beef in a casserole dish with the mushrooms and add the ale. Add the garlic and dill and enough stock to cover. Season to taste. Cover and cook in the oven for 1 1/2hours. Remove the lid and cook for a further 20-30 minutes to allow the ‘mud’ to reduce a little.
Cooking in progress
As you can see, it is really a sort of deconstructed steak and ale pie. I used the leftovers of a tenderloin roast of beef, and a tin of IPA. For reasons of available facilities, I cooked it on the stovetop rather than the oven, and it worked out fine, possibly better than as an oven roast.
End result. Villeroy and Bosch china is arguably not very Pratchettian but you use what you have to.
The end result was good, but perhaps a little over-salty, so I’d recommend maybe diluting with more ale or using less soy sauce than the recipe recommends. I served it with mashed potatoes in honour of Rincewind, but it would probably go well with most plain starches. It seems like a pretty good way to use up the leftovers from your Hogswatch dinner, if you’re so inclined.
As always, if you tried this, let me know the result in the comments, and also suggestions for new recipes and cookbooks are welcome.
A Doctor Of Many Things 