Oops, and The Year of the Flood

OK, next time I should do my research before posting! :-( After looking more closely at the Blogger settings, I've realized that having "Followers" and having a restricted group of people "follow" your blog are two different things. That is to say, if I do restrict access, I'd have to send e-mail invitations to each reader individually - just being a Follower is not enough. And to me that seems a bit too complicated and invasive of my readers' right not to have to give out their e-mail addresses. So I think I'll just leave the blog unrestricted. Sorry about that - this was not intended as a sneaky campaign to get more Followers (though I did gain 6 - thanks, folks!)

To deal with the concerns I had in the first place, I may look at the archives and prune out some personal stuff that I feel uncomfortable about having out in public. And one of my Internet-whiz followers has kindly given me some suggestions on managing my web presence - that is, managing what the average person finds when they try to Google me.*

In other news, earlier this year I mentioned Margaret Atwood's recent novel The Year of the Flood. This summer I got a chance to read it, and I really liked it. It's the companion piece to her earlier Oryx & Crake. Both employ theological symbolism and wrestle with hard philosophical questions. I asked Gabriel McKee's opinion and he felt that O&C was the better book. From a literary standpoint I think he may be right. I enjoyed The Year of the Flood more, however, because it was (relatively speaking) more upbeat, and it focused more closely on issues in which I have a special interest. For example, much of it concerns the pros and cons of growing up in a small counter-cultural sect whose beliefs seem fanatical and ridiculous to the world around it. (Not unlike my own upbringing.) In that sense it reminded me of Anne Tyler's novel Saint Maybe. In places the two books share a sly but not unkind sense of humour in the way they view the foibles and quirks of tiny religious groups.

The concerns of Atwood's imagined sect, God's Gardeners, have to do with environmental degradation, reckless bio-engineering, the mass extinction of species and humanity's self-destructive tendencies. Their beliefs bring together a particular reading of the Bible, apocalyptic ideas, radical environmentalism, evolutionary thought and survivalism in a system that would likely seem heretical to many Christians, radical environmentalists, evolutionary biologists and survivalists! But I think their ideology shows a kind of internal logic and that Atwood is simply selecting and exaggerating some existing patterns, a bit like she did with the radically anti-feminist theocracy imagined in The Handmaid's Tale. A close reading of the Bible certainly can lead and has led people to take up radical positions on environmental protection/creation care. The original founders of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals included clergymen and evangelical activists (such as William Wilberforce) who were seen as fanatical nutcases by contemporaries. Harsh modern realities like mountaintop removal or large-scale industrial farming have led to the formation of religious groups such as Restoring Eden.**

The Year of the Flood isn't a cheerful book. It's about the collapse of society as we know it, and it looks squarely at despair, violence, oppression and, above all, human selfishness. Atwood is rarely sentimental and views human nature in a rather pessimistic light (almost Augustinian, one might say). At the same time YotF is about an endearingly flawed community of people who are trying to find a better way to live, and there are some (relatively) happy endings to be found. It casts a different light on its bleaker companion, Oryx & Crake. It's entered my canon of must-read science fiction books and it's one of the most thought-provoking portrayals of religion in sf that I've read to date. Not only that, but it's helped me make some changes in my eating habits and the way I view the natural world. So I highly recommend it and I plan on re-reading it at some point.

On a related note, another post-apocalyptic book I read this summer was Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery. It wasn't as memorable as The Year of the Flood but it was highly enjoyable. It didn't have too much to do with religion, though it did feature an entity/process called The Vibe (if I remember correctly) which was something like a cross between Providence and the Tao. The book features the adventures of six super-criminals during and after the complete economic collapse of the United States. It's about capitalism, money, the 1960s, slavery, the American Dream and American history more generally. It touches on abolitionism, which is a topic I've been reading a lot about this past year.

And that's it for today!

PS: Check out this new masterpiece about Superheroes In The Bible.


*Any Hawksley Workman fans out there? He has an amusingly bizarre ten minute "I Googled you, didya Google me? No?" schtick that he uses at concerts.
** FYI, I find that Lee over at A Thinking Reed blog frequently puts up interesting posts on the connections between traditional Christian theology/ ethics and environmental issues such as animal rights and vegetarianism.

Changes

I see it's been about five months since I last posted something... That was partly because I was doing school work and graduating from university. And partly because I was making big life decisions and moving to a new town (which is where I am now). But it was also because I've just gotten out of the habit of blogging. University (which monopolizes my reading and writing time) and Facebook (which fulfills my strange need to tell the Internet what I'm up to) are the two main culprits there. Over the summer I guiltily thought about blogging many times, but just never did.

Furthermore, I've begun to feel a bit more paranoid about posting my life's story out in the open on the Internet. Anyone who Googles my full name will quickly come across this blog, even though I don't use my full name, and in the past I've posted some fairly personal stuff, as well as expressed some opinions I probably don't even agree with any more. On the other hand, I do have a soft spot for this blog, as well as my little network of blogquaintances. I do still have ideas about religion in science fiction and fantasy when I read books, watch movies, and so forth. And apparently some people (11!) have cared enough to add me as followers. So here's what I'm going to do: In two or three weeks, I'm going to switch the blog over to the setting that only allows "followers" to see it. If you happen to actually read this, and you would like to read more in the future, and you're not already a 'follower,' please sign up. Or if you don't like signing up for things, post a comment to this post and I'll see what I can do. In return, I'll promise to be a bit more proactive about posting sf/f-related thoughts and recommendations instead of just thinking "Hey, I should post about that" and then forgetting.

In more topically relevant news... I finally got around to watching the original Tron and was mildly amazed. I watched it because there's a sequel coming out. Now, I remember being a kid and finding Tron toys in my cereal, but I somehow never watched the movie until this year (when it first came out my parents weren't big on letting me watch that sort of thing - just like Star Wars). It's aged pretty well - yes, the technology and hairstyles are dated, but the stylized graphics of Tron-world are still cool. And I'm sure this is old hat, but why did no one ever tell me how darned theological this movie was? I mean, they play the computer-user-as-incarnate-God-who-is-saving-the-world angle so hard it almost becomes annoying (but not quite). It'll be interesting to see what the new movie, Tron Legacy, does with the concept. The trailer features the line "He said he was going to change everything: science, medicine, religion!" So I'm expecting at least a nod to those themes. Speaking of computer-user-as-God, you should all go and watch the final episode of ReBoot season three. Heck, just watch the whole season.

I also watched The Book of Eli. [Spoiler warning] I don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal that the book in question is a King James Bible. Eli (Denzel Washington) wanders a post-apocalyptic world on a mission which he believes is from God, trying to find a safe haven for his book, which is possibly the last surviving copy. I agree with Mike Perschon's assessment that it wasn't a great movie, or even a very good movie, but that it was somewhat better than the bad reviews might lead you to believe. The twist ending is mostly ridiculous, it's all more gory than it has to be, and Eli is rather unbelievably good at dealing out death (not to mention avoiding it). But the visuals and atmosphere are quite striking, and the clash between differing uses of the Bible is very interesting. The villain (emaciated old man Gary Oldman) really wants a copy, so that he can use it to rule and manipulate his people. Eli wants it preserved, but for other reasons. In the end, though (or maybe because) Eli has total faith that his mission is God's will, he's content to pass the Bible on to a kind of militant librarian/curator society that is gathering and preserving knowledge and culture of all sorts. (Like in A Canticle for Leibowitz, but pluralist or secular.) At the end we see the Bible placed on a library shelf among other books. Eli's faith is such that he is confident that the sacred text can speak for itself. Oldman, by contrast, cares nothing for other books and has them burnt when he finds them; he prizes the Bible alone, but for the wrong reasons. Oh, and also Tom Waits has a role and there's a great scene where he and Gary Oldman appear together and try to out-haggard each other. I kind of imagine them saying "I look like a homeless alcoholic!" "Oh yeah? Well, I look like a dying heroin addict!" So it's worth watching, if you can stomach the outlandish violence. For martial arts enthusiasts: Washington was apparently trained for the role by Dan Inosanto and Jeff Imada. The fight choreography features eskrima.

OK, I'm going to sign off for the time being. I seem to remember there were some books I wanted to mention but I'll save that for another post.

PS: If you like video games, comics, or humour, go see Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. I thoroughly enjoyed it.