# Digest urth.v030.n099 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 28 Apr 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Alice Turner *28 Apr 2001, 18:43* > Dan'l wrote: > Au contraire: I am in fact too sophisticated _not_ to be offended > by religious bigotry, whether it favors or disfavors mine own > belief-system. I find, e.g., books like "This Present Darkness" > quite as intolerable as, I suspect, I should find the Pullmans. You might not find them so intolerable. He's not drum-beating, he's just presenting the Gnostic PoV. Considering the millions of reams of printed paper that have shored the other side, I think that's fair enough. Interesting, too. And, man, does he do suspense well! That's the real reason for reading these. Though not the only reason--he's not bad with character. His villainess, Mrs. Coulter, starts out, you think, as a fairly standard Morgan la Fay-type heavy, but she gets a lot more complex as she goes along. And his boy and girl heroes are not quite standard-issue either, especially the boy. That boy, you think at several points, could grow up to be a thoroughly vicious man. Or not. What is "This Present Darkness?" Is that one of those "Christian best-sellers?" Did you read it? I'm gonna read one a them thangs one a these days just outa curiosity. -alga ---