Glenda Larke

Weird first.
A Malaysian supposed-to-be-Muslim woman has been send to jail for apostasy. For two years.

I am mystified why religious idiots think one has a choice about belief. One believes, or one doesn’t. You can’t suddenly force yourself to believe, for example, that the moon is made of green cheese, simply because someone says you must; any more than a devout person will suddenly disbelieve in God because he has been told he must.

The only thing you can do – which thousands upon thousands of so-called Muslims do across the world – is lie about your lack of belief so you don’t get punished. (And from what I can see, in the US, if you are standing for an elected government position and you are an atheist, you’d better lie or you can say goodbye to winning. After all, we all know that atheists cannot possibly be upright, decent, honest citizens…)

I may think the Malaysian lady is a bit daft (her beliefs border on the bizarre – the cult she belonged to had links to a giant teapot sculpture…), but I admire her principles. Would I go to jail for a belief? I doubt it. I’d just lie like mad.

Disastrous second.
My computer keeps on slooooooooooooooooooowing down. And I mean SLOW. Press one key and wait up to a minute for it to react. Only cure is to close down (which takes approximately half an hour) and reboot. During one of these annoying episodes, it failed to save my work properly – and I lost a huge chunk of Rogue Rainlord. I didn’t notice and blithely OVERWROTE my good backup copies with the corrupted one. Clever, clever, Glenda. Fortunately I did have a print out. Now I am having to retype.

Encouraging third.
The Shadow of Tyr (Orbit UK) has gone to reprint. Nice.