I'm reading Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb right now, and I have to say I really like the world Hobb has created with the ships of magic and the Rain Wilds and the dragons.  I was talking to a friend about writers who have created unforgettable worlds.  

For me there's Middle Earth and Darkover.  Hogwarts is a favorite.  George has, of course, created a massive world.  I notice that most of these apart from Darkover are fantasies, and you could read Darkover as fantasy -- mediaval trappings, psionic powers that seem like magic, etc.  

Are there equivalent worlds in science fiction?  I admit I'm drawing a blank right now which is odd since I generally prefer S.F. over fantasy.  I can think of individual favorite S.F. novels, but not a whole world.  Maybe that sense of place as a character is unique to fantasy?

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The latest Gallup tracking poll indicates that Catholics who attend regularly, and those who attend church rarely have the same opinion and support for the President they had before the great Pill Kerfuffle.  My favorite blogger, Andrew Sullivan summed it up far better than I ever could.  He said:

"If you really oppose abortion, you should back contraception, especially for those women least likely to afford it outside health insurance plans. But the new rigid fundamentalism of the John Paul II and Benedict XVI hierarchy cannot allow such moral trade-offs. But trading off the rape of children for the reputation of the church? Suddenly they get pragmatic.

I'm sorry but I find the protectors of child rapists preaching to women about contraception to be a moral obscenity. When all the implicated bishops and the Pope resign, their replacements will have standing to preach."

Sullivan is a practicing and fairly devout Catholic, and here's another little factoid about the stance of the church on a different issue from several decades ago.

"Full employment is the foundation of a just economy. The most urgent priority for domestic economic policy is the creation of new jobs with adequate pay and decent working conditions. We must make it possible as a nation for everyone who is seeking a job to find employment within a reasonable amount of time. Our emphasis on this goal is based on the conviction that human work has a special dignity and is a key to achieving justice in society," - United States Catholic Bishops [pdf], Economic Justice for All, 1986.

Sullivan goes on to add:

"Now all they obsess about is the pill. How pathetic. How tragic. They are setting back the image of Christianity even further."

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