Orson Scott Card hits the nail on the head as usual with his take on the J.K. Rowling suit of Steven Vander Ark.

[EDIT: In the interest of accuracy, J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. have only filed suit against RDR Books, small press publisher of The Harry Potter Lexicon.]

It’s true that we writers borrow words from each other, but we’re supposed to admit it and not pretend we’re original when we’re not. I took the word ansible from Ursula K. LeGuin, and have always said so. Rowling, however, denies everything.

This reminds me of something that has bugged me for a long time about Rowling. There are certain books (The Chronicles of Narnia for instance) that in the early days of her fame she would express affection for, but which she would later sneer at when her books became too often compared to them. She is often quoted as saying there are seven books in the Harry Potter series because there are seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia, and in 1998 Helena de Bertanado of the Electronic Telegraph writes:

She loved C. S. Lewis and E. Nesbit, but was not such a fan of Roald Dahl. As for the Enid Blyton books, Rowling says she read them all, but was never tempted to go back to them, whereas she would read and re-read Lewis. “Even now, if I was in a room with one of the Narnia books I would pick it up like a shot and re-read it.”

But in 2005, Time reports:

She hasn’t even read all of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia novels, which her books get compared to a lot. There’s something about Lewis’ sentimentality about children that gets on her nerves. “There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She’s become irreligious basically because she found sex,” Rowling says. “I have a big problem with that.”

(Totally beside my point at present is that this is a very weak interpretation of the text: It’s not that Susan “found sex”; it’s that she became a materialist. Jill Pole is the only character who mentions lipstick, nylons etc. It’s clear from what other characters say that she stopped believing in Narnia.)

So Rowling is either a liar or has memory loss. It seems to me that once the comparisons made her uncomfortable, she changed her story. It’s telling, I think, that any time it’s implied that she may have been influenced by some book or another, she conveniently has never read it. She’s never finished The Lord of the Rings, apparently, or read Diana Wynne Jones, or very many other authors who get brought up in her interviews. Seems a bit odd that someone who makes a living writing has read so little.

I’m not accusing J.K. Rowling of plagiarism here. What I think is happening is that in her drive to appear “original”, she’s misleading the public. Even more hypocritical, she then turns around and sues Steve Vander Ark, to whom she once gave an award for a webpage that is essentially the same work she’s suing him over, for merely creating a reference companion to her novels, a normal literary practice.

I still love Harry Potter and will continue to enjoy re-reading the books, but I’ve certainly lost a lot of respect for Rowling since this fiasco began, though I’ve always been willing to go to bat for her in the past. It’s sad, and I wonder how many others of her fans feel the same.

Locus has published their 2007 Recommended Reading list online as well as in their February issue. It’s a consensus by Locus reviewers and editors, with input from outside reviewers and others.

Hmm . . . I didn’t realize Connie Willis had released a short story collection last year, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories. Worlds Apart: A Russian Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy looks mighty interesting too.

Well, this is handy. Locus Magazine’s Index of Science Fiction Awards has just been brought up-to-date, including lists for 2008 so far. There are also FAQs and articles that make the site fun to explore.

Award and nominee lists are a great way to discover new books and authors. Find the award most suited to your tastes and interests, and use it as inspiration for your own reading list!

Tor Books is giving away free ebooks as part of its “Watch the Skies” promotion. Not sure what exactly the promotion is for (the page just says, “Something new is coming.”) Each week you get a new ebook: this week’s was Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson; next week’s is John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.

The new project, Luxury Planets. Who are we? What do we want?

That would be telling.

SFWA has released it’s preliminary ballot for the 2007 Nebula Awards. I haven’t read anything on this list other than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I’m ashamed to say! Fortunately, many of the stories are linked to full versions.

According to TheOneRing.Net, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will be Executive Producing The Hobbit. The book will be adapted into two feature films, filmed simultaneously and slated for release in 2010 and 2011.

Said Peter Jackson, “I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a legacy we proudly share with Bob and Michael, and together, we share that legacy with millions of loyal fans all over the world. We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth. I also want to thank Harry Sloan and our new friends at MGM for helping us find the common ground necessary to continue that journey.”

(Hmm, I wonder if Saul Zaentz’s recent lawsuit against New Line helped speed things along?)

When everybody was doubting Peter Jackson would ever helm The Hobbit because of his lawsuit against New Line Cinema, MGM–holders of the distribution rights–essentially said, “This ain’t over,” and true to their word it looks like they helped smooth things out between the two parties. Note that nothing so far has been said about who will direct; the release states that PJ and Fran will be Executive Producers. I don’t know if that means PJ will or won’t direct. Surely Fran and Philippa Boyens will co-write the script, one of the main reasons, in my opinion, that it was so important for Peter Jackson to be running the show.

As with The Lord of the Rings, the movies will be filmed simultaneously, one of the things that I think was key in making the former seem like a cohesive whole.

Apparently the gunman in the recent Colorado shootings was homeschooled. Naturally, people who resent the fact that parents can teach their children at home will be looking to point fingers. Author Tamora Pierce has a nice post on her blog about it.

The idea that homeschooled children are socially less well-adjusted than public-schooled children is a myth. While children in public school spend seven to eight hours in the company of people only one year apart from them in age difference, forming weird social cliques and hierarchies that have nothing to do with reality, learning to discriminate based on the minutest of deviation from the norm, homeschooled children are usually interacting in one-on-one fashion with children their own age, younger and older children, adults and other members of their communities.

(Before I start ranting, I’d like to point out that I don’t think teachers themselves are to blame for the problems with public school. They too are the victims of the “government mass monopoly school system”.)

I was homeschooled during high school, and I don’t regret it. Not that long ago, my mother and I were sitting on the bleachers at a high school football game and she asked, “Do you ever regret that we took you out of school?” and I almost laughed. I’m so satisfied with my present course, difficult (read: artistic) road though it may sometimes be, that I never even thought about “missing out” on high school. I homeschooled not for religious reasons, but emotional; I was incapable of dealing with the constant pressure school exerts on students to conform. To learn in a certain way, to perform on tests at a certain level (okay, I actually had a knack for that, but it was still stupid), to spend hours of my evenings—after spending all day doing essentially nothing in a classroom—completing pointless busy-work that taught me what I could have learned in a few minutes. My very sensible unwillingness to “play along” in what was clearly such a silly game, my refusal to cooperate in the calculated numbing of my mind, the resistance any sane person would feel in such a situation, were rewarded by teachers singling me out and casually humiliating me in front of my peers. Fortunately, my year happened to be a friendly one at my school, and everybody liked each other for the most part; not everyone is so lucky.

So in a way, homeschool is common sense. Not everyone learns the same way, and most people through history have learned at home. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking public school is the normal and best way to learn, but when you break it down it is extremely weird and unnatural . . . children segregated by age (rarely more than a year apart) into groups of thirty or so who are then instructed in drills by a well-meaning adult in what is essentially a hopeless situation, under conditions in which distraction and inattention are almost guaranteed. Who can really relax enough to think properly in a chair that hard, surrounded by wiggling, bored children, listening to someone who is not talking to them directly or making eye contact with them except at rare intervals? Most adults would consider this a challenge, but we expect children to learn under these conditions? (Conditions on the “Institutional Transportation”, ie the School Bus, is a whole other rant.)

If you think I’m just full of crap and you’re interested in what someone else has to say about public school, check out Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, a New York Teacher of the Year (and New York State Teacher of the Year). If you want to read something that’s free (and even more disturbing), check out his Underground History of American Education, the entire contents available at his site.

You better believe it. And I’ve been informed by one of my dear nephews that the Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) character is going to be an action movie hero next year.

According to the Weird Tales blog:

“An earlier [than Conan] WEIRD TALES series starred Solomon Kane, a Puritan warrior who traveled the globe battling the evils of the 16th century with sword, knife, and pistol. In 2008, Kane will get his own Hollywood blockbuster starring James Purefoy (Rome, A Knight’s Tale) — and director Michael J. Bassett has just released the first look at the movie’s teaser poster.”

Here are the (as far as I’m aware) unbowdlerized* original stories, collected in The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. I like the cover copy:

“Collected in this volume, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Gary Gianni, are all of the stories and poems that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. Together they constitute a sprawling epic of weird fantasy adventure that stretches from sixteenth-century England to remote African jungles where no white man has set foot. Here are shudder-inducing tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, of dark sorceries wielded by evil men and women, all opposed by a grim avenger armed with a fanatic’s faith and a warrior’s savage heart.”

And here is James Purefoy’s IMDb page.

Now, I’m off to bed a bit early to start reading Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel (my first time reading Sherwood!)

*bowdlerize
tr.v. bowd·ler·ized, bowd·ler·iz·ing, bowd·ler·iz·es
1. To expurgate (a book, for example) prudishly.
2. To modify, as by shortening or simplifying or by skewing the content in a certain manner.

(from The Free Dictionary.)