Well, I see that the Philip K Dick award went to Spin Control by Chris Moriarty, which I thought a respectable enough nominee, though at least they gave a special commendation to Elizabeth Bear’s Carnival which was the book I would have voted for.
(Anyone want to see how the First Doctor met Henry VIII? Movin’ swiftly on…)
Hmmm. I don’t think either is quite the same; the Albigensian crusade was surely more of a military operation against a civilian population than a judicial system, and while Savonarola is a much closer equivalent in terms of method, he was only in power for four years.
But you remind me that one other point I should have made in the original post – and I might go back and add it in now that I’ve thought of it – is that the totalitarian methods of the Inquisition (and indeed Savonarola) are pretty close to those used by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Nothing is new under the sun…