A Case of Consilience

Check out Ken MacLeod's wonderful sf story "A Case of Consilience."

It's about a Presbyterian minister who struggles to evangelize sentient mycoids, with unexpected results.

"The Reformation. The racialist heresy. The age of the Earth. Biblical criticism. Darwin. The twentieth century had brought the expanding universe, the gene, the unconscious—how quaint the controversies over these now seemed! Genetic engineering, human-animal chimerae, artificial intelligence: in Donald's own lifetime he'd seen Synods, Assemblies and Curia debate them and come to a Christian near-consensus acceptable to all but the lunatic—no, he must be charitable— the fundamentalist fringe.

And then, once more, just when the dust had settled, along had come—predictable as a planet, unpredicted like a comet—another orb in God's great orrery of education, or shell in the Adversary's arsenal of error-mongery, the greatest challenge of all—alien intelligent life."

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by this story- not only does it have cool scientific ideas, it has humour, and best of all it includes some thoughtful insights into the nature of missions work and incarnational theology. MacLeod references C.S. Lewis, James Blish, Harry Harrison, Larry Niven and, obliquely, Ray Bradbury. I think he's commenting on the way Luke 8:5-8 fits in with John 12:24. And there are, no doubt, references that went over my head.

Here I had ordered the appropriate anthology from the library so I could read it, and then today I discovered it available online. D'oh! Oh well.

Here's some information on Ken MacLeod. From what I've gleaned from various places, including his blog, he's a strongly committed atheist & secular humanist. One of his greatest passions seems to be socialist politics. Why would someone of his persuasion write a story like this? I don't know,* but I'm glad he did.

*He does seem to prefer moderate religious people to the wild-eyed enthusiastic kind. Perhaps in his ideal world there would be no religion at all, but, given the stubborn endurance of religious belief, he'd rather imagine a future where Christians are mostly quiet moderates.