Back, and Mainspring

Sorry for the quiet around here. I've been in sunnier climes. I just got back and still have a sunburn and sand in my hair. The next four or five weeks will be fairly quiet as I will be quite busy indeed with schoolwork.

I did manage to read Mainspring, by Jay Lake. It was recommended to me by Aka. It's an exotic adventure-romp/salvation-history. Natural philosophers and theologians used variations on the God-as-clockmaker metaphor for centuries, until, of course, Darwin threw a spanner in the works. Mainspring is an entertaining science fantasy set in a clockwork universe, as Lake takes the metaphor literally to see where it winds up. (Pun intended.)

I was rather surprised to discover that it doesn't just stick with that natural-theology backdrop but actually has a lot to say about the redemptive power of faith, love and Christ-like self-sacrifice. I was even more surprised that it didn't take a predictably "subversive" tack either. It's unorthodox and probably post-Christian, but it doesn't follow all the usual modern orthodoxies either. I suppose you could say it's both post-modern and post-secular.

I think it was definitely influenced by Gene Wolfe - the main character is named Hethor, which could conceivably be a coincidence, but I'm pretty sure I caught echoes of events in The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the New Sun. There's also some Ringworld in there, mixed into an alt-universe, steampunk, high-seas boy's adventure. And don't forget the theology. Overall, it's a lot of fun. I'll try to do a proper review at some point, but my track record on proper reviews has not been great lately. You may just want to go ahead and read the book.

I see Lake has a short story available online that has religious elements, but I haven't read it yet. And apparently a new novel set in the same universe, entitled Stemwinder, is on its way.

Practical Mystic

Matthew Stanley writes:

"The secular scientists engaged in the debate could not conceive of a religious scientist; conversely, their religious colleagues could see no barrier between their faith and their work. During the debate, the first group was startled to see a significant strength of religion within their ranks when religion had been so successfully driven from the content of science. How had this fifth column penetrated the fortress of science?

The answer is that it had never left."

That's in reference to a 1988 debate on religion & science that broke out in the pages of a scientific journal. It's a quote from the introduction to a new book by a historian of science:

Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A.S. Eddington, by Matthew Stanley. University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Eddington was a famous astrophysicist, science popularizer and devout Quaker. Stanley argues that there really is no such abstract entities as "religion and science." Thus he takes a fairly nuanced approach that stresses the importance of context, in looking at the relationship between a specific field of science and a unique, individual scientist representing a particular religious tradition.

In a related note, remember that article I posted on awhile back about the relationship between religious views and genetic engineering? The molecular biologist in question argued that North American resistance arose from Judeo-Christian beliefs, while European resistance came from airy-fairy New Age beliefs. I came across an interview with Michael Pollan today in which he touched on European resistance to GMOs and gave a few secular reasons why some Europeans are understandably leery of the whole thing. Based on that and a few other arguments I've seen, I get the impression that this particular biologist likes to dismiss any and all resistance to his field of science as stupid, rank superstition, regardless of the arguments the people are actually making.

Gamer prophet

Maybe this is old news, but I just learned that Ezekiel is the patron saint of gamers! Click to find out why.

Now I'm imagining Ezekiel moving plastic trays full of Warhammer models around a table covered with a green tablecloth and miniature terrain. He'd probably be playing against Jeremiah, or possibly Isaiah. The minor prophets would be off at another table playing Magic: The Gathering and getting into heated debates about rules.

Habbakuk: Look, obviously my Tetragrammaton card trumps your Admantine Colossus card.
Malachi: Yeah, well, I have a Tetragrammaton too.
Assorted Minor Prophets in Unison: Me too!!
Zephaniah: That's it, I'm going home to eat pizza and play Warcraft.

I remember a line in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, in which the programmer character speculates about a heavy-duty card gamer friend of his, who he sees is eyed with respect by other card gamers. The programmer imagines that his friend probably has super-powerful cards in his breast pocket, like "The Nuclear Arsenal of the USSR" or "YHWH."

SF Mass

Usually 'mass' in science fiction is used as a scientific term. But here's the other kind. [via Sci-Fi Catholic]

I'm trying to think of other examples of sf Masses, but all that's coming to mind are the ones in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Short Sun. They're not technically Masses (nary a Catholic priest in sight), either, but they are definitely Eucharistic celebrations with bread and wine (or water), and even words that come close to the Earth version. Horn (or Silk? hard to say) performs them twice. Once out in a wilderness on the planet Blue, on a stone altar left by departed aliens, with only his horse to participate. (Though during it Someone Else makes his presence known.) The other time it's with a young female robot (no, really) in an obscure room in a fancy hotel in the city of Viron, inside of the giant generational starship the Whorl.

I suppose there are Masses in Eifelheim and Doomsday Book. But those aren't futuristic.

World of Warcraft pacifist

What a brilliant idea!

Here's an interview with a World of Warcraft pacifist. He's trying to level up his characters without killing anything.

Q. Tell us about the concept behind Reinisch, your first pacifist character.

A. I started him from a roleplaying point of view, based very loosely on a real German priest, Franz Reinisch, who refused to serve in Hitler's army and was executed. My undead priest's back story is basically the same, and he still refuses to kill.

He even keeps his two pacifist characters equipped with fishing rods, so that if they accidentally hit something it won't do much (or any?) damage. And he doesn't seem to join groups that are killing things, either.

OK, so it's probably not all that much fun to play WoW without killing anything, at least for the conventionally minded gamer. But I have to admit the idea had (briefly) crossed my mind too. I started getting interested in WoW around the same time I got interested in Quakerism. The irony was not lost on me.

I recall reading an article where someone pointed out that many video games are designed so that your main (or only!) interaction with the world is a violent one. Particularly in first-person shooters, where your chief control and point of view is basically just a floating gun, mowing down your enemies. Ever since I read that I've been thinking about it, and the way video game design dictates your options. Now, video games are not going to automatically turn you into a bloodthirsty monster in real life,* but I believe they do have an effect on the way you think. Thank goodness for people like Rand Miller, and the WoW pacifist, who deviate from the norm and get people thinking about what we do for fun.

PS: A quick Google didn't reveal much about the historical priest, but this article on another martyred conscientious-objector-priest mentions in passing that Reinisch was an Austrian.

*Some people do seem to go completely insane. The Ufa Russian murder case sounds like the Stanford prison experiment or "When I Was Ming the Merciless." There are others, such as the infamous Chinese incident.

Winter term

The recent lack of posts is because of winter-term assignment hell. My mind is too full of history to think about science fiction: the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1930s, second wave feminism, pre-Columbian art and architecture, Nixon and Mao, the Canadian Left, the Emperor Justinian... and so forth. I'll be back someday...

L'Engle remembered

Writer Luci Shaw eulogizes her friend Madeleine L'Engle. Well worth reading.

Next time, don't let medievalists anywhere near your terrible "medieval" movies

Got Medieval, (a medievalist), reviews Kingdom of Heaven. And it is funny:

"Orlando does get knighted, and he acquires a rival in the person of Guy of somewhere-or-other, a snooty French Templar who's in line for the throne of Jerusalem. We know Guy is a bad person, because he's rude and French and talks about God a lot. In fact, anytime anyone talks about God a lot in the movie, they're bad. Orlando, who is struggling with religious doubt brought on by the death of his wife and child, is good, but not really very good at making you understand that he's struggling with religious doubt unless he says outright, "I'm struggling with religious doubt," but he does say it, so don't worry. Then his dad dies, and they all decide to go see his lands in Jerusalem.

...it only gets worse when the Archbishop of Jerusalem instructs people, fearing they're all about to be captured, to 'covert to the heathen faith and repent later'. This is supposed to show that he's a craven fake, but not five minutes ago when Orlando was telling us, 'all religions are bunk,' we were supposed to see him as a champion of "the people" and a crack theological thinker."

Read the whole thing! His remarks on Orlando Bloom's macho-speech-giving abilities are priceless. He somehow found the time to also review Beowulf, and even the Footwear in Beowulf. I particularly liked this part:

"I put the blame mostly on Neil Gaiman, because he has a solid track record for taking well-worn cliche's, stock characters, and stale plots, adding some black-eyeliner, and calling it Deep, Dark, and Meaningful. He thinks that he's some sort of revolutionary for making a movie where the evil woman is a slinky seductress and the virtuous woman is an ice queen."

Yes! It's true! Thank you!

[via the Sci-Fi Catholic]

Moon on politics & religion

SF writer Elizabeth Moon has a recent post up on her blog about politics & religion in America, mainly about the importance of the division between church and state. From what I've read of her blog, she doesn't usually write about such abstract concepts in that space. It begins:

Men of faith have made excellent elected persons in this country before...let me start there, because it's true. Religious faith, in itself, is not a sign of mental instability, stupidity, ignorance, dishonesty, malice, bigotry, or any other impediment to participation in our government. Religious faith is also not a guarantee of sanity, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, fairmindedness, honesty, goodwill towards all, or any other virtue necessary for governance.

and concludes:

As for me, I'm a Christian...the other kind. The kind who thinks "feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the sick and imprisoned..." will keep me busy enough to let other people go their own way (unless they don't want to let me go mine, and others go theirs, and in that case...I'm firmly behind the Constitution.)

Gibson and the high-tech occult

Noted Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey reviews William Gibson's Spook Country.

Reading the review takes me back to the enjoyment of reading Gibson's books. I really should check out his latest two. Shippey takes issue with the failure of many of Gibson's specific predictions, but seems to me that Gibson's style, the way he evokes a cyberpunk vision, has always been far more important than specific predictions. Particularly interesting is the way he shows human beings making sense of a confusing high-tech world, creating new mythologies, new societies, new hopes, hidey-holes and homes. (Though sometimes I felt that he was putting too much undigested sociological theory into his books.)

I think the most interesting (and most relevant to this blog) part of the review is this:

"In the background, too, are thoroughly non-modern forms of occultism. This too is something which stems from and seems to fit the "cyberpunk" universe, the inhabitants of which tended to think from the start that the real world, or the significant world, was the one inside the computer, the one which did not function in physical space, which was also the world inside their minds. They had in fact become, in a way, creatures of the spirit, who frequently expressed their contempt for the brutal blundering physical world the rest of us live in—as they called it, "the meat." It's not a long way from that sentiment to belief in more traditional spiritual powers, and sure enough, in this novel (as with earlier Gibson characters) Tito thinks he gains his abilities from the voodoo-deities who protect him, whom he calls the Guerreros. Throughout the novel, too, Milgrim is reading his pilfered book about the 12th-century heresy of the Free Spirit, which he connects with modern government agencies as "a secret religion of mutually empowered sociopaths." What is a modern celebrity-figure, asks Bigend, if not a "tulpa," which he explains as a mystic Tibetan term meaning "a projected thought-form," like "cyberspace" itself a consensual mass-hallucination? That's why people keep seeing Elvis. Not very plausible, one may say. But in a world where other people's wi-fi comes through the walls and cellphone towers keep us all in an electronic net, a world where we are deluged with information, much of it wrong and most of it uncheckable, a world where celebrities are omnipresent but invisible except as pixels—well, there is a case for saying that the occult looks more and more realistic."

This has always been one of the things that fascinated me about Gibson's work. I don't think he believes occult and religious ideas refer to any objective supernatural reality. But he does a great job of illustrating the ways they can and likely will provide useful words and concepts for describing the new world human beings are creating; particularly when 'rational' 'modern' concepts fail.* This is especially true for people from the lower echelons of society, who he tends to write about.

*Here's a very limited example. Much has been made of the recent, dramatic spread of Pentecostalism around the world, which can seem counter-intuitive to modern people who think modernity equals secularization. But scholars of Pentecostalism have argued that its growth is linked to the very modern phenomena of globalization and international immigration. And if you think about it, is it any wonder that the story of Pentecost, in which the fragmented people of all races and languages come together to receive gifts of healing and spiritual power, would make a lot of sense, and be appealing to, a migrant worker? Of course it's much more complicated than that - but that's partly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

The Bible and Race

Here's a highly interesting review of a book which explores the way the Bible has often been used against racist ideas, as well as in support of them.

The book is entitled: The Forging of Racism: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000, by Colin Kidd. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006.

"Moreover, far from this being the incidental implication of a few verses, orthodox Christians have consistently recognized the solidarity of the human race as a core theme of both the biblical narrative and formal Christian theology: the image of God in humanity, the Fall, and original sin are predicated on the understanding that all human beings are bound together in a single, common origin, lineage, and family. The Christian tradition has consistently discerned that this doctrinal teaching has substantial implications when it comes to the issue of race. To take a typical example, the 18th-century conservative biblical scholar Nathaniel Lardner averred: "all men ought to love one another as brethren. For they are all descended from the same parents, and cannot but have like powers, and weaknesses, and wants … . For notwithstanding some differences of outward condition, we have all the same nature, and are brethren."

...

The Bible, therefore, has actually been a roadblock in the way of racists—although a barrier that all too many Christians, alas, have managed to find their way around. Kidd forcefully explains how it would have been so much easier for white southerners to have defended their "peculiar institution" ideologically if they could have accepted polygenesis. A few voices made the tempting argument that blacks were closer to soulless beasts than blood brothers but, as southerners were not generally ready to throw away their Bibles, they did not win out. The truths revealed in Scripture remained present to bear witness against them: African Americans were their brothers and sisters, co-recipients of the plan of redemption in the one, human family that is made in the image of God. The Bible was even an obstacle when it came to the stand against miscegenation: for example, was it not patently clear from the scriptural narrative that Moses had married a black woman? Even the pro-apartheid Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa was forced to concede that the Bible permitted interracial marriages."

A new fan

Hmm! Barbara Nicolosi of Church of the Masses has become a huge fan of Battleweb Galaticon... oh, sorry, Battlestar Galactica:

"I choke this out as a life-long, confirmed despiser of all shows in which people have dogfights in space ships, wear vinyl clothing and do the ER style fast dialogue only about anti-matter hyper drives instead of IV pushes. I hate sci-fi. But I love this show."

Check it out. She has some interesting things to say about the series.

Fantasy of the Real

Ralph Wood has a review of Alison Milbank's Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real.

With adept recourse to an impressive (but never name-dropping) array of anthropologists and literary theorists, folklorists and linguists, philosophers and theologians, she shows that these Catholic writers engage modern and even postmodern culture by way of a revolutionary understanding of the imagination. Both writers resorted to fantasy as an escape into reality, as Tolkien liked to say. They were fascinated with fairies because Elfland, as Chesterton called it, enabled them to envision the world as wondrously magical no less than terribly contingent: as “utterly real and enchanted at one and the same time.”

The reverend & the bears

Check out this sf story by Michael Bishop: Bears Discover Smut. It's about a back-sliding minister and, uh... bears.

Michael Bishop

My obliviousness never fails to astound me. I recall reading one story by Michael Bishop that had a religious theme (it was about a computer simulation of the trial of Judas) but somehow, until recently I remained unaware of his broader interest in religious ideas, or that he considered himself a Christian.

This is from an interview in 2000 with Nick Gevers:

NG: Considering your work as a whole, your authorial philosophy seems liberal and humane, very moral in its emphasis much of the time. Is this assessment accurate? And what influences -- personal and literary -- have made you the writer that you are?

MB: "Let me confess real discomfort talking about my "authorial philosophy" because so much of what I do strikes me as intuitive and situation-directed, even though I agree with the much more dogmatic Flannery O'Connor -- long a personal icon -- that fiction should not hold up evil as good or good as evil. I part company with her, though, in seeming to suppose that the distinctions between the two are hard-edged and self-evident, or unequivocally laid out for study and acceptance in Judeo-Christian scripture. I classify myself after a lot of literal soul-searching (some, I know, would call that phrase oxymoronic) as a Christian, but a skeptical one who often picks up in prayer the whisper of the void. (John Fowles once wrote, "An answer is always a form of death," and I believe that.) In any event, it outrages me to see people treat other people as something less than human for any reason at all: race, class consciousness, religious differences, sex or sexual orientation, intellectual pride, etc. But because the human condition, along with ignorance and/or greed, continually triggers brutality, I have no shortage of outrage, and outrage often fuels my fiction.

...

"Earlier I mentioned outrage as a motivating factor for a lot of my work. The novel Stolen Faces exemplifies an early, rather bitter examination of the same theme, and yet I firmly believe -- as a Christian, as a humanist, and as a writer -- that we have it in our capacity to rectify the unjust situations and attitudes that inevitably produce outrage in the righteous. If the ground under my literary ambition has any solidity, it -- the solidity -- derives from this belief."

Praeger trilogy

I just came across a very interesting set of books published in 2006:

Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion, edited by Patrick McNamara. Volume 1 is: Evolution, Genes, and the Religious Brain. Volume 2 is: The Neurology of Religious Experience. Volume 3 is: The Psychology of Religious Experience.

It's published by Praeger, and is part of the "Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality" series.

It contains contributions by quite a number of contributors, from evolutionary psychology, neurology, and religious studies. The first volume's first contribution is based on a speech by a well-known neurologist, and is a brief popular explanation of some of the latest scientific explanations as to how religion arose among human beings; given his particular audience, and his own views, he combines this with the standard-issue anti-religion arguments. Thus it has a somewhat hackneyed "Religion is a byproduct of evolutionary forces, and the Bible advocates genocide, so obviously all religion is stupid and bad and that's all we need to know" feel to it, which to me at least seems as tedious and predictable as a devout religious believer saying "Religion is a byproduct of evolutionary forces, therefore the Creator wants you all to belong to my specific religion."

Most of the other contributions are much more technical and explore fascinating ideas such as costly signaling and cooperation in game theory. Some propose sweeping new theories, while others are considerably more cautious and open-ended. The concluding essay in the first volume, by religious studies scholar/theologian Wesley J. Wildman, considers features of the preceding articles in an interesting way. He upbraids religious studies scholars and theologians for not yet paying attention to this scientific work; but he also takes issue with evo-psych experts or neurologists who aren't aware of the complexity and variety of religious thought and behaviour (which religious studies experts have spent a lot of time examining), and who feel that having a possible scientific explanation for one particular mechanism entitles them to pronounce grandly on that monolithic creature, Religion. His cross-disciplinary viewpoint and philosophical nuance are quite interesting.

It looks like this would be a great place to start if you're curious about the current state of the scientific study of religion, minus the usual polemical or apologetic slant. (Well, mostly.)

Favourite books of 2007

Honorable Mentions: Pirate Freedom, Black Cherry, Vimanarama, We3, Evolution and Christian Faith, Born Fi' Dead, Nine Parts of Desire, British Summertime, The Necessary Beggar, The Fate of Mice.

10. Bienfait, by Stephen L. Endicott. I read this history book for a class but it's still on this list. That tells you it's pretty good. It's the story of miners in a little town in Saskatchewan, who went on strike in 1931. The mine operators and the government did various tricky and coercive things to try to break the strike. The RCMP ended up killing three of the miners during a parade that went awry, and it went awry largely because the police were out in full force to intimidate the strikers. Anyways, the author uses oral histories, previously confidential police reports and a lot of other sources to tell a very interesting and compelling story.

9. God's Continent, by Philip Jenkins. Jenkins examines the state of Christianity and Islam in contemporary Europe. Jenkins looks closely at up-to-date data and discredits politicized myths that are bandied about by the Left and the Right (he seems to enjoy doing this in most of his books.) It's a complicated story, but I don't think Europe is going to become "Eurabia" any time soon. Highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary Christianity or Islam, contemporary Europe, or foreign policy.

8. In Pharoah's Army, by Tobias Wolff. I picked this up almost at random at a used book store, and it really impressed me. It's a memoir about Wolff's service in the Vietnam War. Brilliantly written. At one point out I went out to pick up food and sat there reading it and then suddenly realized I was in a Vietnamese restaurant and that the immigrant owners probably had their own stories to tell.

7. Flight, volumes two or three, edited by Kazu Kibuishi. I can't really choose between them, or remember which stories were in which volumes. Wondrous collections of short comic-book stories, ranging from hilarious to chilling, from cute to mystical.

6. All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison. Morrison does a great job of capturing the essence of Superman & Clark Kent. He's a comic-book-genius-man, this much is plain to see.

5. Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn. A 14th century priest discusses Aristotelian cosmology with crash-landed aliens in the Black Forest... just before the Black Plague comes along. My review of this remarkable science fiction novel is here. This and Mirabilis made a great tag-team. Particularly when combined with the history of science course I had just taken.

4. Doctor Mirabilis, by James Blish. This is historical fiction about the life, travails and thought of Friar Roger Bacon, the great natural philosopher and empiricist of the thirteenth century. It's very well written (some of the images and phrases are permanently etched into my brain) and it's intellectually rigorous to boot (it seems like Blish immersed himself in the primary documents). Mirabilis came out in 1964, but even at that time Blish seemed well aware of the medieval roots of the Scientific Revolution. He shows all the complexities of contemporary political and intellectual currents. This is pretty impressive, given that this sort of scholarly reappraisal only seems to have been filtering down into public knowledge fairly recently. For example, Blish thinks that Bacon was indeed imprisoned by his order for years, but shows that this was about Bacon's sympathy for the Spiritual Franciscans, and not because of his scientific views. It's a scandal that this book is out of print. (I also wrote about the book here.)

3. The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene. What can I say? It's vintage Greene. (I'd already read the other three books in his 'Catholic quartet' - The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock, and The Heart of the Matter.) Bleak existential insights into the treacherous human heart and mysticism at the core of suffering. And when you think you've figured him out, he twists the knife a bit more.

2. Post Captain, by Patrick O'Brian. I read twelve Aubrey/Maturin novels in 2007, up to and including The Letter of Marque. I can't keep them straight in my head anymore, so this marvelous novel stands in for all of them, in all of their splendour.

1. Watership Down, by Richard Adams. Somehow I had managed to avoid this stunning and profound fantasy novel about rabbits for thirty years. Well, better late than never! If you haven't read it, you really must.

From an early age

What? Fredric Brown wrote "Arena?" I read that story in a magazine when I was just a child: my memory says it was in Readers Digest, though I don't know if that's true. I was really struck by it, particularly by the vulnerability of the protagonist. I mean, naked in an enclosed space, fighting for your life against some weird alien? (Maybe I read it in the bath.) A vivid sense of the story stayed with me, even though I forgot the details.

Another story I stumbled across back then was "The Sentinel." It made a big impact, too.

I also recall trying to read a strange sf book I found in my elementary school library, oddly enough. (Well, it was a very small town, and a very small school. The school was K-12 in two classrooms. So I guess the library was for all grades.) I was probably in grade 3 or 4.

Let's see if I can remember this correctly... The book was about a planet which had, due to some problems during colonization, developed a male-only society. They used biotechnology to produce new people. A female investigator comes from some off-planet authority, and along with the male narrator, discovers that girl children have been produced by this process, it's just that they were considered freakish and deformed and were killed. She upbraids the narrator for the intolerance and hypermasculinity of his unisexual/homosexual culture. There was a scene in which the narrator goes out for recreation and hurls himself with abandon into tangle of men that's like a cross between a bar brawl and an orgy.

I didn't really understand a lot of that at the time. It struck me as a weird book that was over my head. (I wonder what it was called or who wrote it... Delaney? Sturgeon?) And it was, considering that I was an 8 or 9 year-old JW kid, living in a tiny Prairie town. Still, when I look back, I realize I got a lot of early exposure to science fiction and fantasy, some of it pretty heavy stuff.

Sf writer as prophet?

Check out this comic strip!

Sci/tech links

Top ten scientific discoveries of 2007. [via Martin]

350 is the number to remember. [via Lee]

Clive Thompson points out that we're pushing a lot of information out of our own heads and relying on computers as "outboard brains." I quite liked his closing lines:

We've come to think of human intelligence as being like an Intel processor, able to quickly analyze data and spot patterns. Maybe there's just as much value in the ability to marinate in the seemingly trivial.

Of course, it's probably not an either/or proposition. I want both: I want my organic brain to contain vast stores of knowledge and my silicon overmind to contain a stupidly huge amount more.

At the very least, I'd like to be able to remember my own phone number.