The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

The 2006 Hugo nominees have been released:

Novels
Eifelheim, Michael Flynn (Tor)
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Ace)
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)
Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor)

Other categories can be found here.

It is interesting to note that three Dr Who episodes have been nominated again, along with an ep of Battlestar Galactica and one from Stargate SG-1 (my god! Is that still running!). I might try to read more than one of the novel nominees this year…

Judging at Worldcon on 1st September.

Update: In the interests of balance, here are the Nebula novel nominees, which this year—unusually—share no overlap with the Hugos:

The Privilege of the Sword, by Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra
Seeker, by Jack McDevitt (Ace)
The Girl in the Glass, by Jeffrey Ford (Dark Alley)
Farthing, by Jo Walton (Tor)
From the Files of the Time Rangers, by Richard Bowes (Golden Gryphon Press)
To Crush the Moon, by Wil McCarthy (Bantam Spectra)

Winners announced 11-13 May 2007 in New York.

• An entertaining discussion is brewing at Crooked Timber: Was Foucault a closet Habermasian?
• A gallery of British title-sequence design
• A collection of Doctor Who spoofs
• A news article from 2004, announcing the then-new Doctor Who logo
• K-9 and Company’s title sequence

Three guesses as to what I’ve been researching today.

I’ve really been enjoying the new series of Dr Who (many thanks to Nick here).

One of the things that I’ve noticed different to the classic series is the seemingly messianic themes. Yes, the Doctor has always swanned in, saved the day, and taken off again, but in the new series he seems to be much more conscious of the power that he holds and the some of the implications of this.

The interrelationship between Doctor Who and cultural studies grows more complex and tangly, with the news that Richard Hoggart, founder of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, is being played, in a dramatisation of the Lady Chatterly’s Lover obscenity trial, by a certain side-burned actor:

Dad is played by the wonderful David Tennant (Blackpool, Casanova) who has carefully prepared his appearance by watching old interviews, even studying newspaper pictures of the time and having a picture of Dad on his mobile phone. He’s extremely convincing – the suit, the hair, the Yorkshire accent, and trickiest of all, the speech rhythms. The only thing wrong is his sideburns. To do this film he had to take 24 hours off from making Doctor Who in Cardiff and, as he explained, the sideburns wouldn’t grow back in a day.

There, I thought, was a kind of fame – to have researchers and costume directors pore over every detail of your appearance, then be seen in the witness box wearing Doctor Who’s face furniture.

OK, I know that Nick is supposed to the Doctor Who expert, but I couldn’t help noticing how different the writing and design were in the final seasons, compared to those when the show was at its peak…

Yes, I’ve missed a decade. And by “missed”, I mean “totally ignored”.

One of the most striking things I’ve noticed about the triumphant return of Doctor Who to television has been how smoothly it has slipped back into the—sometimes rather twee—traditions of British popular culture.

The Sixties were a good time to be silvery.

The BBC recently—presumably to avoid a leak by the tabloid press—released the first publicity picture of the newly redesigned Cybermen, who will be menacing our screens in the second season of the new Doctor Who. It’s a good opportunity to ruminate on the shifting aesthetics of cyber-design over the last 40 years.