Come gather 'round tellies Or where signals roam And admit that the Timestream Around you has finally grown And accept it that soon You'll be laughed at on both media and phone If this fictional character to you Is worth saving Then I suppose you'll start ranting And just act like a loon For the Time Lord is a-changing With Apologies to Bob Dylan

I learnt this morning of the passing of one of my favourite writers (no, My One Favourite Writer), Tanith Lee, over the weekend. I read her obituary with a disbelieving ululation of, "No!" She was no mere writer of fantasy, but a singularly beautiful voice within genre fiction. Her prose was suffused with a dark, mercurial lyricism that made her books worth reading, and whose narratives stayed with you long after the book was closed:  humming around your brain like potent energy; or coursing through every beat of your heart like the memory of a lover who has left your side, and your bed is still warm from their being there... I have no more