A bit more about our departed colleague Stephen Robinson:
From BYU Studies: “Remembering Stephen E. Robinson”
From a former student of his: “In memoriam: Stephen E. Robinson, 1947-2018”
Here are the two pieces that he published with FARMS:
“Nephi’s ‘Great and Abominable Church'”
This first one is, in my judgment, a very important contribution.
The second one began with an opening line that was, for a time, famous if not altogether notorious: “Korihor’s back, and this time he’s got a printing press.”
I was the editor who published that essay, and I was immediately threatened with a lawsuit over it. (That was my first experience with an attempt by a critic of the Church to silence me via legal intimidation. Alas, it was not to be my last.) Anybody who might be interested in the astonishing and sometimes amusing story behind the threat is welcome to tackle the lengthy account that I gave of it not too long thereafter, in which I chronicled a small but extraordinarily weird episode in the history of Latter-day Saint scholarship:
“Editor’s Introduction: Questions to Legal Answers,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon4/1 (1992)
***
Some of you may have missed the opportunity to read an autobiographical account of the origins of my wickedness. It appears in an interview that I gave just after the beginning of 2018:
***
I close with some thoughts (which I’ve censored slightly for my family-friendly Mormon blog) from the Hugo-Award-winning American science fiction author John Scalzi, formerly president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the things they read (or watch, or listen to, or taste, or whatever). They’re also entitled to express them online.
2. Sometimes those opinions will be ones you don’t like.
3. Sometimes those opinions won’t be very nice.
4. The people expressing those may be (but are not always) [@#$%&%$#@ expletive deleted].
5. However, if your solution to this “problem” is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are almost certainly a bigger [@#$%&%$#@ expletive deleted]
6. You may also be twelve.
7. You are not responsible for anyone else’s actions or karma, but you are responsible for your own.
8. So leave them alone and go about your own life.
[Bad Reviews: I Can Handle Them, and So Should You (Blog post, July 17, 2012)]”
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