The Witching Well

I have nothing against fanfiction. I read it on occasion. I have friends who write it. I’ve indulged once or twice myself (no, you can’t see it, it’s very happy under that rock at the back of my harddrive, thank you). But this? This is horrifyingly stupid. This person has self-published a fanfic Star Wars novel and listed it for sale on Amazon.

Her name is Lori Jareo, and she is most definitely one of the biggest twits I have ever heard of. One of the commenters has told her that George Lucas is going to eat her face. Damn straight.

Via Making Light.

The Master sinks to a new low.

A week ago, Dan Brown won the lawsuit brought against him in UK court by two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and fiction writers everywhere in the world hove a collective sigh of relief. We don’t have to worry about using facts (or supposed facts) as concepts in our fiction, if someone has already published a nonfiction book about it.

Does the legal system in the UK work differently enough from the one in the US that the judge can’t throw out a case that is obviously without the least bit of merit? Because that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why this thing went on as long as it did. A suit like this, in the US, would have been laughed out of town. An author holds the copyright on his or her words, but no one can copyright a fact (which some family historians don’t seem to be able to wrap their brains around, but that’s another story). And the fact is that there were people debating the Holy Grail equals Jesus’ descendants idea for ages before Baigent and Leigh ever drew breath. They weren’t claiming that Brown stole their words, just their facts. As far as I can see, they never had a case.

But in the UK, somehow, they did. For awhile at least. And now, instead, they have a bill for 85% of Random House’s legal costs — about £1.3m. I bet Henry Lincoln, the third author of HBHG, who declined to involve himself in this nonsense, knew this would happen. I hope he’s telling Baigent and Leigh “I told you so.”

Yup. The final ballot for the Stoker Awards is out, and Kelly is on that one, too! Yay!!

Armed guards hunt Were-rabbit of Mouldshaugh Lane.

To a certain faction of the Christian faithful, the discovery of lost gospels can be a disturbing thing. These now non-canon documents paint a picture of a religion that was still getting its act together, after all, and if it didn’t start off with one complete, overarching vision, that could shake some people’s faith, perhaps, just a little. Of course, one can always just shrug and say, well, there have always been heresies.

When I was a young seeker, still putting at least some energy into trying to understand the Catholic faith that my parents raised me in, one of the things that I had the hardest time reconciling was the portrayal of Judas as a villain. It seemed to me that, if Jesus had to be crucified, then Judas’s betrayal was absolutely necessary. So why did we vilify Judas for doing what simply had to be done?

I developed an image in my head of a dedicated Judas, who would do whatever his rabbi told him to. Maybe he was even chosen because Jesus knew that none of the others had the strength to do it. Jesus tells him that this is what he must do, that the others won’t understand, that he will be remembered by history as a villain. Judas does as he’s asked. And afterwards, he hangs himself because he can’t live with it.

For some reason, I accepted that Judas was in Hell, but not that he was a traitor. Sometimes, I fancied that his damnation was actually because of his suicide (which is, after all, a mortal sin in Catholic doctrine), and sometimes because Jesus had given the other apostles the power to condemn others. Either way, I thought it was supremely unfair.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that others had thought about this issue. That the role of Judas, so central to the great Mystery at Christianity’s heart, could have been seen from many different angles right from the beginning.

I’m glad someone else has had a bit of sympathy for the poor old bastard.

Yeah, OK, I’m a few days behind in my SF/F community news, but I just read the 2006 Hugo nominees list, and guess who’s name is right there, under the Best Novella header? Yup.

Yay for Kelly! Again. You go, girl!

Four episodes into the showing of the new Doctor Who series on SciFi, I think I can confidently say that Christopher Eccleston is the best Doctor since Tom Baker. No insult intended to Peter Davison or Jon Pertwee, whom I also adore, or to Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Patrick Troughton, or William Hartnett, whom I never got to see enough of, American television and the BBC being what they are.

Eccleston’s doctor has complexity. He has rough edges and sharp corners. He bounces from unfathomably alien to cheesily boyish and back again before you can blink. And having Billie Piper’s very feisty and very human Rose Tyler to bounce off of only makes him better. Too bad there are only 13 episodes in all before the next regeneration!