Fundies should be thankful, for we are Merciful.

I have this dream, you know. I understand that one of the premises of Ayn Rand's famous book, Atlas Shrugged, is that the "productive" people of the world all take themselves away to some desert colony and let the rest of the world, bereft of leadership and vision, waste away.

I dream of a Darwin Shrugged. That someday, all of the gifts of evolutionary biology be withheld from those who claim not to believe in its efficacy. That we deny them all access to antiobiotics, vaccines, cancer angiogenetic antagonist drugs, anti-obesity medicines, modafinil. That we withdraw from their markets (and their markets only) inexpensive fibers and bright colorful dyes.

That we make food as dear to them as it ever was in the depth of a Lamarkian winter.

I think I subject myself too much to the utter stupidity of the anti- evolutionists. The "We're fighting Darwinism" has now fallen over into smug "We've beaten Darwinism" in the fundie churches, who congregants still vaccinate their kids and use antibiotics, all produced by scientists who scratch their heads and say, "Uh, what... ?"

Sigh I guess I'm just too bloody minded today. Damn allergies kept me up all night, I got maybe four hours of sleep. My car's gonna cost me a kilobuck, probably, to keep running for another two or three years, and all that stressy crud.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Paladin of Souls

If I tried to sum up my experience of reading Lois's second Chalion book, Paladin of Souls, I could do it in a single word: paltry.

There is a stunning richness to her science fiction that is altogether missing from Paladin of Souls. A sense of detail, of surroundings, of environment. Paladin of Souls reminds me of the joke about the difference between Star Trek and Blake's Seven: in the latter, it is the sets that are made of cardboard. Paladin is like that: there is a fabulous story here made weak by a failure of descriptiveness: poor naming choices, a dearth of adjectives, an inattention to detail. Lois sees with the eye of, well, of a geek, and that doesn't serve her well enough among the serving wenches and princesses of Chalion.

Comparing Paladin of Souls to Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Justice, the last fantasy novel I read, might seem a little unfair, but it's the best comparison I have, and it tells me a lot. The lands of Terre D'Ange, Alba, and especially Vralia, are so exsquisitely vivid compared to the oddly unmemorable territories of Chalion. And that's not because so much of Carey's world is borrowed from real life: the territories of Moorcock's Melinbone, or Lynn Flewelling's Rhiminee will stay with me far longer than the Zangre or Porifors. Chalion is a colorless land furnished with routine extruded fantasy product furniture, more in the shade of Trudi Canavan's Black Magic Trilogy than anything significant.

If I were her editor, I would have sent this back with a note saying, "Lois, you can do better than this." But then, if I were her publisher, I'd know there was a ready audience for Anything Lois Writes, so I'd say, "Well, it's better than Trudi Canavan, and she sold, and Lois will sell anyway, so ship it."

First they laugh at you...

Okay, it's Brad DeLong, but you have to be really amused that he's released the class notes for his February 6th Lecture in Econ 101, and it's entitled From Malthus to the Singularity.