I was at the British Museum today, a very special day for The Celts in fact, this evening being Samhain, the end of the Celtic summer. Edinburgh will be hosting a Fire Festival.

The ancient rituals have metamorphosed over the years into the Christian All Hallows Eve, now better known as Halloween. The museum was celebrating this through its Day of the Dead incarnation, with music and giant puppets. Quite impressive actually.

Just passing through, my destination was another visit to The Celts, which I plan on writing a bit about, having also just about finished a good book on their history. A good chance to look at the beautiful Great Torc :

I wrote about this object a while ago.

The Great Court was, perhaps, a little bright and sunny for giant walking skeletons!

The Martian
by Andy Weir

Mark Watney's the best botanist on the planet. Also the best engineer, programmer, geologist, astronomer and pretty much everything. Unfortunately, he's the only person on the planet ...

With the film publicity in sight, I bought the book on the spur of the moment and thought I'd read it before a visit to the cinema. I'm glad I did because the book's excellent: exciting and also very funny. In fact, it's laugh-out-loud funny on occasion as the marooned astronaut Mark Watney tries to figure out how to get back home.

Watney's not only very resourceful but a bit of a comedian, and early on in the book I was a little unsure about its humour and lightheartedness, not normally my cup of tea. But I persevered and am so glad I did. This is a wonderful adventure story, with great characters as well as believable science. If the math and science is not a strong point for you, let it wash over you, and it never distracts from the story.

Now I want to see the film, which I hear is good as well. Maybe this sort of book/film combination is an antidote to some of the more mindless stupidity around nowadays at the cinema.

Echopraxia
By Peter Watts

I read Peter Watts' Blindsight a few months ago (a free e-book download from his website) and recently bought and read his sequel Echopraxia. I re-read Blindsight as a refresher before starting the followup. The book Firefall contains both stories.

Blindsight is one of those books that's good to read on an e-reader because you can easily look up words you don't understand. This is a very useful feature I miss when I read dead-tree books now, and a well used feature for both Blindsight and Echopraxia. I have a science background and enjoy the extrapolation of books like these, but Echopraxia was a bit mystifying to me on some occasions.

Blindsight is a novel about first contact, and the odd crew of people sent to find out what might be lurking in the Oort cloud. So, aliens and spaceships. But this is far from a normal "alien" and "spaceship" novel, and the book is as much about us (humans) as them (the aliens). We can be quite "alien" ourselves and getting stranger all the time. Well written, good (if sometimes odd) characters and interesting discussion of evolution and consciousness: particularly about whether consciousness is actually required to function (and exhibit intelligence) and what advantages it may (or may not) have. This is not the sort of thing that comes up often. Neither do spare-faring vampires, a species brought back to life my modern homo-sapiens because they're much better than baseline people like us at a lot of things. The captain of the team on the spaceship Theseus in Blindsight is a vampire.

Echopraxia is the sequel and takes place on the Earth Blindsight's crew have left. An Earth in the late 21st Century and starting to fall apart. There are many very interesting ideas here but the big problem for me was that I just couldn't understand some of it, especially towards the end. I think I understand it a bit better now but I cheated and read Watts' "explanation" on his web site.

Maybe I need to read it again, but that's going to have to wait a while. Watts gets an A+ for a thought-provoking and interesting near-future adventure though.

Peter Watts has an interesting web site where you can read a lot of background to his stories. He's a writer that does a lot of research and includes and discusses it in the book's appendices. These are definitely worth a look, and I found them a fascinating overview of where some of the current scientific thinking is.

I joined the British Museum, which gives me free access to their shows, members' lounge and a few other things. My second visit as a member was to the exhibition Drawing in silver and gold, a look at the metalpoint drawing style (my first was to the new Celts show but more on that later).

On the north side, up the stairs, this is in the museum's print and drawing display space, a lovely big room, well set up to show off works by Leonardo, Raphael, Dürer and other masters.

Above: detail from Leonardo da Vinci,
A Bust of a Warrior, c. 1475/1480, silverpoint

Metalpoint (link to silverpoint) is a drawing technique used from medieval times, through the renaissance and even to the present day (with a 19th Century revival). It uses a metal stylus (sharp or blunt) to "draw" on a prepared surface (slightly abrasive ground): the stylus leaving a small amount of the metal on the paper, giving the drawing.

I wasn't sure why the artist would use metalpoint over a pencil (graphite) but a helpful page of information in the Cornelissen art shop window (round the corner from the museum) explained. Graphite pencils were not invented until the 16th and (properly) 17th Centuries, and artists wanted something more permanent for their drawings than charcoal.

Some beautiful, detailed and delicate drawings on display. Some favourite artists below. I was particularly struck by how good the work of Hendrick Goltzius was.

Below: Hendrick Goltzius, Young Woman Reading a Book (Portrait of Sophia Goltzius, Sister of the Artist?), Seen from Above, 1591, metalpoint (probably silverpoint) on prepared paper or parchment.

Below: Joseph Edward Southall, Head of a Girl, 1899,
 metalpoint (probably silverpoint) with scratching on prepared paper

Below: Otto Dix, Old Woman, 1932,
 metalpoint (probably silverpoint) and graphite (?) on prepared paper,

Dix is perhaps better known as a one of the Nazi's least favourite artists, someone who created some horrible depictions of war, wounds and disfigurement. This picture has a lot of charm, even wistfulness about it however, a true character.

More interesting detail can be found on the British Museum's blog.

The British Museum's Waddesdon Bequest is a new gallery showing off a lot of real treasures Baron Ferdinand Rothschild accumulated in the 19th Century. It's free and contains some beautiful things, from medieval holy reliquaries to gothic jewellery. It even has a glittering 17th Century "robot" (an automaton).

The British Museum page shows off some of these stunning objects.