(cartoon by and (c) Alex Matthews)

“Wickedly humorous, brutally direct, effectively and simply rendered. A stinging indictment of the Catholic Church’s pedophilic priest scandal that allows absolutely no room for the predictable apologetic defense. Left me laughing and wincing at the same time!” was the verdict of Pulitzer winning judge Steve Benson, reports Bloghorn. According to the article when Alex (who won $2, 500 for the award)  sold the cartoon to Private Eye magazine (still home to some of Britain’s best cartoons, I think) it caused a couple of angry letters, which to be honest I would take as a mark of honour and proof he was on the ball with this cartoon.

“The idea of calling the events following September 11th and what were living through now and no doubt will live through more of in the future, is that in sometime twenty odd years hence this might be looked back on as the ‘Faith Wars’. It was part of the set up of the book, the idea being that both the United Kingdom and the United States might come out of these wars having lost them essentially to the other rising powers- China and Russia.”

“It doesn’t however come to an all nuclear exchange but they do lose the war and could blame it on religious lobbying in one kind or another. And that is one of the factors of the events that some of the characters call the Second Enlightenment whilst others call it the Great Rejection. That being just as the First Enlightenment put forward the separation of the church from the state, constitutionally established in the US but doesn’t quite exist in the UK .”

The paperback edition of Night Sessions came out just recently from the good folks at Orbit and I chose the hardback as one of my books of the year in 2008, its a highly compelling piece of mature science fiction and, as with all of Ken’s books, deals with themes of morality and politics in an interesting way; if you’re looking for a good novel to slip into your carry-on luggage to read on holiday I highly recommend it.