8 - Les Stiene de la Castafiore

I must have been around 8 when I first became a fan of Tintin. Within a couple of years, I had managed to read every one of Hergé's albums featuring the character - or rather, the 21 of the original 24 that are freely available in English - thanks to a local library. The adventures of the young reporter provided an ideal combination of fun and excitement, not to mention the brilliant scope of Hergé's artwork. Although how Tintin managed to keep his job while doing so little actual reporting will remain a mystery.

As my interest in languages grew, I began to collect Tintin albums in French and German as easy reading for practice, which allowed me to cross Tintin in the Congo off my list - a book widely restricted in the English-speaking world due to its broadly racist portrayal of Africans. And since I was on a beginner's Dutch course for the last six months, my parents thought it would be a good idea to add to my collection with a new title in Dutch. There was just one problem - the book I received was actually in Bruxellois.

Bruxellois, as you might expect, is the language spoken by the residents of Brussels; however, as stated in the explanatory notes at the back of the book, the term actually covers five distinct slang dialects. Principal among these are French, Flemish and mixed Bruxellois - the latter providing the basis for this Tintin translation. The Brabantian-based Marollien dialect and Bargoentsh are much more obscure, and barely spoken today.

Unfortunately for my Dutch development, Bruxellois is grounded mainly in French, with the occasional interjection of Dutch, plus some Spanish and a few words with no obvious background. Still, I would probably have struggled with French alone - words such as 'astableeft' ('alstubleeft') meaning 'please' and 'band' in the context of 'tyre' are, to my knowledge exclusive to Dutch. Mainly, though, Bruxellois is used for the character's exclamatory interjections - Tintin's English catchphrase 'great snakes!' becomes 'potverdèkke!' while the creative cursing of Captain Haddock is rendered as an impenetrable lists of nouns and adjectives with no obvious basis in anything.

Ultimately I found myself skimming over the dialect words because the intended meaning was nearly always clear. The translator's note clarifies that Bruxellois is nowhere near a complete language, being limited to only a couple of hundred words used to embellish conversation with irony and self-deprecation, and as such I thought it was actually a very good fit for the dynamic dialogue of the characters and in particular the captain. While a glossary is provided I referred to it increasingly little as the book went on, preferring to follow the plot at its intended pace.

As for the book itself - well, it falls firmly in the middle of the late-era Tintin albums. Not as grand in its scope as Tintin in Tibet or The Calculus Affair, but mercifully lacking the half-baked weirdness of Flight 714 to Sydney and Tintin and the Picaros, it is the opinion of the majority of Tintin academics (yes, that's a real thing) that this would have been a suitable end to the series. I have to agree: the majority of the recurring characters play a role and still more are referred to in passing, a sort of final reunion. The opera singer Castafiore and her entourage seem finally to be moving on to bigger things, and the Thompson twins leave as they first arrived, in a state of chaos. As the work concludes, Tintin, Snowy, Haddock and Calculus seem ready to retire in the peaceful surroundings of Marlinspike Hall, their adventures at an end.

The plot is a meandering detective story, revolving around the disappearance of Castafiore's jewels and Tintin's attempts to solve the mystery. It unravels in a farcical manner as time and again Tintin follows a clue to a dead end, before finally coming good in working out the twist ending. The only work to be set entirely at the characters' "base camp" of Marlinspike Hall, it showcases Hergé's talent for humour in dialogue, and ability to tell a story without relying on adventure to exotic settings. No coincidence that it was written at the time in his life immediately following a period of depression due to his divorce.

5/5

Reading this was undoubtedly a rather hipster undertaking. So here's some Belgian hipster music which is also actually good:

7 - A Brief History of Time

Around two and a half years ago, I went to the cinema to watch The Theory of Everything, James Marsh's biopic detailing the life and career of Stephen Hawking. It left me inspired to learn more about the scientist's research into physics and cosmology, and I decided the place to start would be to read his hugely popular and successful book for the layman, A Brief History of Time. Fortunately my parents already had a copy, so I borrowed it and then proceeded not to read it. But now I felt it might be a good time to break up all the science fiction on my list with some science fact.

A Brief History of Time was published in 1988 and collates all of the existing theories surrounding the relationship between time and space and the connection of forces within the universe that had been developed up to that point. Hawking then discusses the possible directions this research could take, with the overarching theme of whether mankind will ever be able to comprehend the nature of the universe.

I suspect that, if such an answer is ever found, I will not be the one to do it. Hawking states in his introduction that he had been advised to include as few equations as possible; that for each one that appeared in print, the readership of his book would halve. The problem that results from this is that he must then describe a number of highly abstract concepts by way of roundabout explanation - and often I found that words were probably not the best way of going about it. The use of diagrams helps in some cases, but I actually found myself wishing that he had simply used an equation and then elaborated upon it to aid visualisation.

Too often, Hawking describes a concept using an analogy only to refer to it in passing later on under the assumption that the reader has absorbed and understood all that it entails. While this might be possible with more serious study of each idea, that wasn't the book's intended purpose and the result is that, towards the end, nearly every sentence becomes a dense fog of technical terminology that does more to create confusion than to clarify.

But I suspect a lot of this will relate more to me as an arts student than anyone with a more in-depth knowledge of maths and physics. While the ideas he describes can be dense and abstract at times, Hawking's writing style as a whole is largely the opposite - as you would expect from a scientist he is methodical and precise in his work. I found the chapter on elementary particles to be quite engaging, and in fairness he does stress that a lot of the theories discussed are, by definition, theoretical. I am not sure what advances have been made in cosmology since 1988 but at the time there seemed to be a general lack of concrete evidence for pretty much everything. Otherwise he does manage to slip the occasional joke in, the anecdotes about the lives of scientists of the past are fun, and the underlying philosophical discussion of the nature of our existence, the possibility of God as creator and which direction the human race will take next is one that any reader should ponder.

Almost 30 years on from this book's publication, I am not sure we are any closer to finding the Grand Unified Theory that Hawking suggests could provide all the answers - but if we do, it will be in no small part due to his work. Just not necessarily this book.

3/5

Remember this?

6 - Stories of Your Life and Others

It will become clear over the course of this year that I am a fan of science fiction. So it was with some regret that I did not make it as far as seeing Denis Villeneuve's much-praised Arrival when it was in cinemas at the end of last year. I could, however, read the story on which it was based.

Stories of Your Life and Others brings together the short(ish) stories that make up the first half of the career of American author Ted Chiang. While there are elements of science fiction in the stories, they could perhaps best be described as speculative science fact. In short, Chiang asks the question "what would happen if..." and then sets up a world in which that is reality. At the same time, he manages to establish a cast of characters and begin, develop and conclude their story arcs. This is an achievement in itself given that most of the stories are under 50 pages. But it's really only half of the whole.

Chiang is clearly a very intelligent man. While Wikipedia states that his academic endeavours concluded with a bachelor's degree in computer science, I find it hard to believe that he is anything short of PhD level in pretty much every discipline. In fact, the story Understand follows the path of a man who is endowed with a superhuman intelligence that allows him to collate and then transcend all existing human thought, and I imagine Chiang's mind to be on the same plane.

The collection starts in a relatively straightforward manner with Tower of Babylon, an account of the biblical tale of a tower constructed with the aim of reaching God. Once you can get past the physical differences to our world, the story builds nicely to a surprising conclusion and you find yourself immersed in the setting. But that's about as easy as it gets.

It's probably no coincidence that I found Story of Your Life, the inspiration for Arrival, to be the next-most accessible story. During my MA course I was forced to attend a module on research methodologies in applied linguistics. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the lectures were held at 9am on Monday mornings, but I found it hard to see any significant application beyond that study of the vocabulary sizes of various rappers and the recent article breaking down Donald Trump's speech patterns. But Story of Your Life provides another possible use - when aliens first make contact with Earth, a linguistics researcher is sent in with the seemingly impossible task of deciphering what the aliens are saying, and then replying to them. The zen-like approach to language that Chiang invents for the aliens is truly inventive, as is the way in which the story develops and then concludes once the main character begins to understand how to speak and read it herself. It's an abstract story in a lot of ways, but I felt that my knowledge of the area helped keep me grounded.

Consequently, I think there was probably a lot I didn't catch in the other stories. GCSEs in maths and biology only got me so far with Division by Zero and Seventy-Two Letters, while my knowledge of theology (Hell is the Absence of God), sociology (Liking What You See: A Documentary) and genetics (The Evolution of Human Science) is even less developed. And as stated above, to fully understand Understand would require multiple lifetimes of study in a multitude of subject areas. Which is actually the point of the story.

But none of this matters too much, because Chiang can write. While in less capable hands these stories might be frustrating, falling into either textbook-like descriptions of the worlds they describe or focusing too much on the characters and leaving the setting underdeveloped, Chiang balances the two perfectly, meaning that while the concepts require a lot of additional thought, the stories themselves are surprisingly easy reading.

4.5/5 for making me feel stupid.

If The Life & Death of Scenery was the 2nd-best sci-fi hip hop album of 2016, then clipping.'s Splendour and Misery was the best. Producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson work on a high level of theory - the latter may have completed a PhD in experimental music, but the concise and entertaining flow of rapper Daveed Diggs means you don't need one yourself to enjoy it.