Speaker for the Dead

"Dom Cristao, the abbot of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo - he says that they must lack the moral sense. He says this may mean they are beasts. Or it may mean that they are unfallen, having not yet eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree." She smiled tightly. "But that's theology, and so it means nothing to you."

He did not answer. He was used to the way religious people assumed that their sacred stories must sound absurd to unbelievers. But Ender did not consider himself an unbeliever, and he had a keen sense of the sacredness of many tales. But he could not explain this to Bosquinha. She would have to change her assumptions about him over time. She was suspicious of him, but he believed she could be won; to be a good Mayor, she had to be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem.

He turned the subject. "The Filhos da Mente de Cristo-- my Portuguese isn't strong, but does that mean 'Sons of the Mind of Christ'?"

"They're a new order, relatively speaking, formed only four hundred years ago under a special dispensation of the Pope--"

"Oh, I know the Children of the Mind of Christ, Mayor. I Spoke the death of San Angelo on Moctezuma, in the city of Cordoba."

Speaker For the Dead, by Orson Scott Card.

I'd forgotten how many religious references there were in this book. I'd also forgotten that it won (and deserved!) both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards.

This and that

I haven't been blogging here very much lately, at least compared to years gone by. My classes have been over for a few months but now it's summertime and it's finally beautiful outside. And my reading is more diverse these days.

I am still fascinated by religion & spirituality & myth in science fiction and fantasy, no doubt about that. So there'll be a steady drip-drip-drip of little posts coming through. I get the sense that my regulars have me on their RSS feed lists (or whatever it's called). No problems there. If you're like me and prefer to check the actual sites, just check in every two weeks or so.

SF Gospel has been blogging up a (very interesting) storm lately. I imagine most of my readers are also his readers and if you're not, you should be. Sci-fi Catholic was blogging heavily in the first half of June though he's taking a bit of a break. And don't forget all the other interesting people linked to under "SF/F/F Sites" over on the right.

A few tidbits:

I read Anne Rice's new Christ the Lord: The Road to Canada. Err, I meant, The Road to Cana. (It's hard not to add that final 'da,' just like I can hardly type "Wolf" without making it "Wolfe.") It's well written and had some insights that are going to stay with me, but I didn't feel it had the same power as her Out of Egypt. It has a lot to do with family/clan/small town dynamics that I didn't quite grasp at first. It's concerned partly with Jesus' life before his baptism, and partly with events that we hear about in the Gospels. I think there was more room for Rice's historically-grounded creativity in the (relatively) blank spaces, than when she's writing between the lines of the already-received story. I don't think it was a failure; it just didn't move me like the first one did. But check out some other reviews.

I started to read Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell. I got a little bogged down and put it aside for the time being. The narrative style seemed different than in her previous books, and I felt that Russell was drawing my attention a little too insistently to the parallels between the era of the Great War and our own time. I think the parallels exist and are indeed relevant, just that they came across too obviously. That might just be because I'd already been reading about contemporary foreign affairs & politics.

I bought a copy of Queen City Jazz, by Katherine Ann Goonan a few weeks ago and browsed through it. This is a book I read in my teenage years and which I reminisced about here. Apparently I forgot that the protagonist was a girl, not a boy. At the beginning she lives with a community of New Shakers, in an America that has been radically transfigured. Goonan makes good use of older American folkways (like snatches of old hymns) and locales to communicate a pre-industrial world which exists alongside a very high-tech one.

I have been (re)-reading other relevant books in these (somewhat) lazy days of summer, but just bits here and there, just enjoying them. The Man in the High Castle, Peace, Pirate Freedom, Exodus from the Long Sun, Neuromancer, Speaker for the Dead, etc.

Losing your head

I'm a bit behind the game on this one, but Fallen Sparrow has an interesting post about severed heads and their bodies which touches on science fiction, Catholic theology, zombie movies and many other things:

Dualism, Zombies, and Persistently Conscious Heads

I was particularly struck by the fifteenth-century painting of St. Denis holding his severed head, because as Fallow Sparrow points out, both the head and the bloody stump of his neck have haloes around them!!

The Robert Olen Butler book he discusses sounds very interesting indeed. And I was reminded of Land of the Headless.

Via Eve Tushnet

PS: Sorry about the title. Couldn't resist.

Jah love

His gloved hand slapped a panel and the bass-heavy rocksteady of Zion dub came pulsing from the tug's speakers. "Maelcum not runnin', no. I talk wi' Aerol, he certain t' see it in similar light."

Case stared. "I don't understand you guys at all." he said.

"Don' stan' you, mon," the Zionite said, nodding to the beat, "but we mus' move by Jah love, each one."

Neuromancer, by William Gibson.

(I found out recently that at least one reader of Neuromancer thought 'dub music' was just a science fictional idea that William Gibson made up. Nope. It's real. You can check out some of these collections if you need an introduction.)

Cornell, Lewis and a crash

Over at The House of Awkwardness, Paul Cornell writes:

So, we were heading home from Oxford on Tuesday night, on the way back from me addressing the C.S. Lewis Society. They were a lovely bunch, and a number of the university’s Doctor Who Society came along as well, and I managed to vamp around my theme to reasonable effect until I ran out of words and became possibly the only speaker in the Society’s history to confess to not much liking Lewis’ work. Hmm. That ambassadorial career may never come to pass.

Telling a gathered Society that you don't really like the work of their hero?! That's really taking your life into your own hands. He's a brave man!

Most of the rest of the post is a carefully described account of a dangerous head-on collision that occurred on the trip back from Oxford. If this were a thriller novel the crash would have been caused by a vengeful Lewis fanatic driving a stolen garbage truck and ranting against the heretic. But it's real life, so the crash was caused by another driver displaying reckless impatience. And I'm very glad to hear that their Ford Focus crumpled the way it was designed to, letting Cornell and his wife survive reasonably intact.

Golden Age sf

SF Gospel has posted a short review of Space Vulture. (He liked it.) It's an homage to the old-school pulp sf novels, written by Gary K. Wolf and Archbishop John J. Myers.

His review got me thinking about old-school sf. Lately I've been reading The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964. I wanted to further my science fictional education and read more of the classic Golden Age stories which are often referenced by critics and fans. And many of the stories in this collection, voted on by the membership of the SFWA, are new to me.

I didn't expect the book to be at all relevant to this blog. My general impression has been that religious imagery or spirituality only became a major topic in the New Wave of science fiction, sometime in the 1960s. There were a handful of exceptions, of course (like Walter Miller or Anthony Boucher) but for the most part the Golden Age was apathetic to religion.

But I'm beginning to think I was mistaken, at least partially. There are twenty-six stories in the collection. At least six of them deal significantly with religious themes: Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon; Nightfall, by Asimov; Mars is Heaven!, by Bradbury; Quest for Saint Aquin, by Anthony Boucher; Nine Billion Names of God, by Clarke; and A Rose for Ecclesiastes, by Roger Zelazny. Two of the other authors included had written or would go on to write classics of religious sf: Cordwainer Smith and James Blish. And another two may not have used such symbolism in their stories, but did identify themselves as Roman Catholics: Murray Leinster & Clifford D. Simak.

The editor, Robert Silverberg (who's written some great fiction on spiritual themes) notes that one more story was voted into the Hall of Fame (as fifteenth favourite) but had to be excluded because the author was already represented: Arthur C. Clarke's The Star. Which is, of course, about a Jesuit agonizing over a hard theological problem. Silverberg also commends the first secretary-treasurer of the SFWA for his efforts in forming that organization: Lloyd Biggle, Jr., who was apparently also a Catholic.

So perhaps my impressions should be amended. Much Golden Age sf did avoid religion, and many of the classic authors were determined secularists. But among the very best, a significant minority explored religious ideas in their work, in their lives, or both.

[PS: I'd mis-remembered what Silverberg said about Lloyd Biggle, so I've corrected that sentence.]

Terry Pratchett

I'm not entirely sure what to think of this news item. But it seems that Discworld author Terry Pratchett's views on the gods or God have mellowed somewhat:

"...in an interview with a Sunday newspaper, he said: "It is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that, on the other side of physics, they just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows. That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless - it doesn't take you anywhere. But it fills a hole."

These comments are apparently linked to a recent experience which Pratchett describes. However, last year he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, so I'm sure many people will dismiss any new opinion because of that.

Gary Gygax

There's a new piece in Wired on the late Gary Gygax. For you non-gamer folk, Gygax was the creator of Dungeons & Dragons. Mark Stricherz of GetReligion comments on the end of the article, which mentions Gygax's religious beliefs. Apparently towards the end of his life he came to believe in some sort of Creator, as well as in prayer.

In the GetReligion comments section, a person says that Gygax was actually one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and that the religious turn wasn't anything new. Perhaps the Wired article is wrong, or perhaps Gygax at some point left the J-dubs and then later adopted revised religious beliefs.

Personally, I'd find it hard to believe that Gygax was a JW in good standing when he was working on D&D. My impression is that the wave of apprehension and outright hysteria about devil-worship and D&D in conservative evangelical circles quickly jumped social barriers to affect many JWs. (Except they called it "demonism." The same thing happened with Smurfs: there was a frantic purge of all Smurf-related objects. Later it happened with Harry Potter.) When I was growing up as a JW (in the '80s and '90s) there was still a lot of suspicion surrounding role-playing games and, to a lesser extent, fantasy stories that included magic. I managed to evade these prohibitions, and I knew at least one adult JW who was into fantasy and gaming. But I never did play D&D proper, and I remember tensing up when friend and I were questioned by a circuit overseer (something like a travelling bishop) about role-playing games. We managed to make them sound like harmless fun. I think.

Spiritual characters in science fiction

In movies and TV, that is. Beliefnet's got a top ten list. I'm not all that familiar with the TV characters, but that's because I don't watch TV.

I am, however, going to get caught up with this new Doctor Who series everyone's been talking about. Soon.

Jews and Judaism in science fiction

There's a site devoted to the topic here. Also, in this article Jeff Berkwits of the San Diego Jewish Journal talks with some Jewish sf authors and discusses some Jewish themes.

Tidbits

1. Rose, over at Refracted Light, has reviewed Jay Lake's Mainspring. She objects to the crazy monkey sex section (take that, search engines!), which did strike me as one of the weaker parts of the book, because it was somewhat gratuitous. And yes, you should take "monkey" literally - there is an intelligent apewoman involved. It reminded me of the interspecies stuff in one of the Ringworld books.

2. I finally got around to watching Sunshine. I didn't like it as much as Gabriel did. It had many striking visual moments, some interesting ideas, and I generally liked the actors.* But it couldn't seem to make up its mind: should it be a thoughtful, innovative sf film, with an indie vibe? You know, something off the beaten track. Or should it aim to be the stereotypical, nonsensical Hollywood blockbuster action movie featuring the painfully hackneyed villain who just won't die? The first half chose the first option, but the second half devolved into a clash between the indie vibe and the blockbuster. The blockbuster kept winning out until finally I reached the heckling, eye-rolling stage. I wished the sun would die, just so the movie would be over. But check out the well-written SF Gospel review, which points out some of the intriguing aspects of the film.

*Nice to see some real ethnic diversity, including the psychologist played by Cliff Curtis. Though (as usual) the white characters survived longer than the non-white ones. Sigh. It's like non-white characters are redshirts.

Planet Narnia

I've been hearing about this book for awhile, but didn't know if it was worth mentioning. Today, however, after coming across yet another favourable reaction I thought I should post about it. It is:

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, by Michael Ward. Published by Oxford University Press, in 2008.

Basically, Ward thinks that Lewis' seven Narnia books match up to the seven planets (in the medieval schema) and the symbols associated with them. He argues that Lewis did this on purpose, drawing on his deep knowledge of medieval and Renaissance literature.

At first I thought this was just another highly speculative literary-conspiracy-theory book, but, as I said, it's been getting good reviews - such as this one by Tom Shippey. It sounds like Ward's theory brings out all sorts of interesting details and associations in the Narnia books. And even if the theory is ultimately faulty, it sounds like his book is still a rewarding read.

John Wilson writes:

We can imagine the reaction of the sort of Christians who have gone into a frenzy over Harry Potter. Astrology! But what Ward has discovered is entirely consistent with Lewis' Christian humanism. The imaginative worldview embodied in the medieval lore of the planets speaks to something fundamental in our experience; it is not to be rejected but rather baptized, made harmonious with the underlying Christian vision that governs Narnia.

The Mars Hill Audio Journal has done an hour-long interview with Ward, which is available here.

Sounds like science fiction?

N. T. Wright, the biblical scholar and Anglican bishop, has put a new book out (by my estimates Wright publishes a new book every single day). Wright has long argued that, in the biblical view, resurrection and "afterlife" are very material affairs, and that otherworldly ideas about spirits or "The Rapture" are misguided. This idea isn't particularly new, of course, but Wright's background as a scholar enables him to read and discuss the relevant texts very closely. Apparently this book consists of lectures on this topic.

I happened to come across a review and I noticed this paragraph:

Reflecting on the notion of “reigning” in texts like Rom 5:17 and 1 Cor 6:2, Wright says that the renewal of the cosmos will leave “plenty to be done, entire new projects to undertake...the garden will need to be tended once more and the animals renamed.” He admits that these are “only images”; yet they serve as “true signposts to a future reality—a reality to which most Christians give little or no thought.” Still, tending gardens in a transformed universe comes close to sounding like science fiction.

Of course it does! And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's a compliment! Particularly in light of this later snippet:

Origen, the great 3rd-century thinker and Scripture scholar, let his imagination roam when he thought about what might await human beings after death. For him, it would involve ongoing seminars where he could learn more about cosmology and the nature of the stars.

Heaven should include ongoing astronomy and cosmology seminars? Not everybody's cup of tea, perhaps, but it sounds good to me.

Islam & Science Fiction

Here's a site that collects information about Islam & science fiction. It discusses Islam's portrayal in sf books and movies, sf written by Muslims, and related topics. I think it was put together by Mohammad Aurangzeb Ahmad.

Moderate views

I just wanted to share a few links that I found encouraging, because they display a moderate thoughtfulness on the topic of science & religion:

Matthew C. Nisbet's area of expertise seems to be the way science is communicated to the general public, and the ways in which a supportive public environment can be created for the pursuit and funding of science. He's an atheist, but he thinks that the promotion of the "eternal warfare of science & religion" mythos will be harmful to the flourishing of science. Here he adds some of his own thoughts to those of Frances Collins, and over here he posts about a new study which examined the religious affiliations of professors in the natural and social scientists.

The study itself is interesting. It indicates that such professors are less likely to be religious than the average population (52% reported no religious affiliation) but the reasons for this were quite complex and had less to do with abstract beliefs that you might expect - well, actually, that won't surprise anyone who has studied the sociology of religion. Among other things, the scholars argue that people from religious backgrounds tend to retain some sort of religious identity when they become scientists. It turns out the scientists studied are a little different from the general population, where older people are more likely to be (traditionally) religious than young people:

"RAAS data reveal that younger scientists are more likely to believe in God than older scientists, and more likely to report attending religious services over the past year. "If this holds throughout the career life-course for this cohort of academic scientists," Ecklund says, "it could indicate an overall shift in attitudes toward religion among those in the academy."

Another finding is that students from non-religious households tend to 'self-select' for advanced scientific training. This may indeed reflect a conflict between religious and scientific ways of thinking, but it should be remembered that this also has to do with intellectual (or anti-intellectual!) traditions and economic class. Different religious backgrounds are usually linked to different educational outcomes - some groups strongly encourage university training, have a highly educated constituency, and also tend to be more wealthy. If I remember correctly Jews, Episcopalians, Quakers, and Unitarian Universalists tend to be statistically over-represented in academia. And I can say that my own Jehovah's Witness upbringing (insular, working class/lower-middle class and creationist) very strongly discouraged advanced training in the natural or social sciences.*

Anyways, back to the links. Physicist Chad Orzel is an "apathetic agnostic" but he doesn't much like the eternal warfare model either. He's got a list of recent news links on science and religion here (which is where I got the Nisbet links from), and here he posts about the views of his thesis advisor, William Phillips.

Phillips is an interesting figure: a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a Methodist. He's got an autobiography here. He's also one of the founding members of the International Society for Science & Religion.

And here's the interview with Frances Collins, which Nisbet mentions above. One thing I noticed is the role history plays in Collins' understanding of science and religion- knowing what Augustine, and Galileo, and B.B. Warfield (and maybe Ramanujan!) actually said about these questions helps put them in perspective. Much of the furor is driven by events in our current political and cultural milieu, so regardless of our personal opinions, it helps to take a step back.

(Thanks to Aka for pointing out the Orzel links.)

*This probably has something to do with my own post-JW attraction to Quaker and Anglican/Episcopalian communities.

Something More by Paul Cornell

Check out this review of Paul Cornell's Something More. Of particular interest are these tidbits about the plot:

The Reverend Jane Bruce is a chaplain of the Reformed Church of England - reformed in the sense that shortly before the GEC a rogue vicar discovered that electromagnetic fields directly stimulate a certain area of the brain, one of which at least is partly responsible for religious visions and sensations; so the RCoE uses voltmeters and evocative neurochemicals called 'greens' in its daily rituals.
...
But Cornell has much bigger plans than simply scaring us, because then Something More turns (as the title of chapter 44 says) into 'A Mad Sort of C.S. Lewis Thing'. There isn't much more that can be said about the final quarter of the book without spoiling much of the first three-quarters.

I'm pretty sure "A Mad Sort of C.S. Lewis Thing" implies some sort of theological twist. Unless it simply involves a talking lion, or a discourse on Renaissance literature.

Cornell is best known for his work on Doctor Who (he's even been nominated for a Hugo), but he's a prolific guy. I've mentioned his British Summertime before: it's a strange book that puts some intriguing spins on certain New Testament symbols. (The longer I think about them the more intriguing and relevant they seem.)

His Wikipedia entry has recently been edited to read:

In an interview on the Doctor Who: DWO Whocast, Cornell stated that this entry in Wikipedia described him as "both a Christian and a pagan," which he has chosen not to correct as it illustrates his sympathies for the pagan world. He then goes on to state that he is an Anglican but is very "Low Church, almost a Calvinist," and this is partly because he doesn't enjoy hymns.

Dark Space, etc.

Aka recently pointed out this book review, written by R. J. Burgess. It begins thusly:

It's surprising how rarely a true God shows up in science fiction. For a genre so fascinated by the mysteries of the universe, SF often seems reluctant to speculate about the existence of a great almighty. Classic novels such as C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy or Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker aside, God-like entities seem, more often than not, to be viewed as bad Star Trek clichés, as though the genre insists on denigrating such beings to the status of highly advanced aliens or artificial intelligences.

It's good then to see that Dark Space, the fourth novel by Australian writer Marianne de Pierres, is one of those rare examples of SF that sits firmly in the "taking God seriously" camp. The Sole entity at the heart of this galaxy-spanning series is a great big MacGuffin of a deity that is thrust at us from the very first page as being something so utterly unique and alien that it can only be classified as a god.

That first paragraph reminds me a bit of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun. It introduces a pantheon of active gods and goddesses and reveals that they are artificial intelligences. But the pantheon also includes a "minor" god, the Outsider, who turns out to be a whole lot "bigger" and more mysterious. (And there are alien deities in the following Short Sun trilogy.)

God is generally not very easy to incorporate into a work of fiction, not as a character in any usual sense. Once you start to delineate and explain and provide motives, it's no longer God at all, at least not in a transcendant capital-G sense.

Anyways, in other (vaguely related) news, here's an interesting quote I came across today from Karen Armstrong:

Yes, once I'd stopped prancing and posturing around on TV, where I was expected to have an inflammatory opinion and to let people have it. All this was pure egotism. I did some early television programs and expressed my secularism very cleverly. I'm slightly down on cleverness, which can be fun and witty at a dinner party and I enjoy that as much as anybody else. But it can be superficial. Once my television career had folded, I was left on my own with these texts. There was nobody to exclaim derisively about the irrationality of a Greek Orthodox text or the stupidity of a certain Jewish mysticism. I began to read them like poetry, which is what theology is. It's poetry. It's an attempt to express the inexpressible. It needs quiet. You can't read a Rilke sonnet at a party. Sometimes a poem can live in your head for a long time until its meaning is finally revealed. And if you try and grasp that meaning prematurely, you can distort the poem for yourself. And because I'd been cast out from the media world, and was living in a world of silence and solitude, the texts and I started to have a different relationship.

Book & author index

There's a link on the sidebar, under "Books" entitled Science fiction, fantasy and faith. That'll take you to an Amazon.com website where I've indexed books relevant to this blog. I don't expect anyone to necessarily buy these books through Amazon - it's just a useful way of gathering information about them, plus Amazon supplies brief descriptions. I up-date it periodically.

Currently the list of authors contains:
Michael Bishop - James Blish - G.K. Chesterton - Paul Cornell - D.M. Cornish - Philip K. Dick - Michael Flynn - Zenna Henderson - Robert Jordan - Jay Lake - Madeleine L'Engle - C.S. Lewis - Louise Marley - Walter M. Miller, Jr. - Elizabeth Moon - Susan Palwick - Katherine Paterson - Tim Powers - J.K. Rowling - Mary Doria Russell - Cordwainer Smith - J.R.R. Tolkien - Kathy Tyers - Charles Williams - Connie Willis - Gene Wolfe - John C. Wright.

There are other category pages, like Little-known Worthies, Quakers, and Literary SF/F.

Not every book is strictly science fiction or fantasy. There's a lot of variety. Some of the books have been included because the author is a religious person; in other cases the books contain religious imagery while the authors themselves does not practice any particular religion. And so forth.

Shea on sf

Indefatigable Catholic blogger Mark Shea has written a new column about Catholicism and science fiction, mentioning Gene Wolfe, Michael Flynn, John C. Wright, and others.

Bishop on sf

Michael Bishop talks about science fiction and The Sparrow:

Even so, my experience has been that readers who dislike science fiction, who would never willingly challenge themselves with the best that the field has to offer, will devour a fine sf work by accident and then baldly declare that it could not possibly be science fiction because they don’t like science fiction. Fairly recently, in fact, a young woman I know, a fellow resident of Pine Mountain, read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and proclaimed it a life-altering masterwork. But she vigorously denied my claim that she had read an excellent example of what a science-fiction novelist can do when she brings the full arsenal of her thought and literary skill to bear.

It just can’t be science fiction, my acquaintance said; it deals with religious issues, theological matters, matters that matter. Yes, I said, it’s about a Jesuit priest who travels to another planet. There, two sentient species, one alarmingly akin to kangaroos, have a weird codependency that the priest fails to fathom until the stronger species mutilates him for his egocentric obtuseness, and he spirals off into madness and a heart-rending loss of faith. Clearly, I told my friend, this novel is a simple but exotic variation on the Mitford series by Jan Karon. She didn’t find this amusing, but I found her denial of the science-fictionality of The Sparrow not only off-putting but as obtuse as the cluelessness of the novel’s priest, with the added black mark that she insistently willed her obtuseness. An additional irony: This woman claimed that The Sparrow had deepened and enriched her nascent Catholicism, and it had done so, she felt sure, because Mary Doria Russell’s own Catholicism pervaded every character and plot twist. But, as I know from a brief meeting with Ms. Russell, she is an ardent convert to Judaism.

from a self-interview at his website.

One does still run into this alarmed rejection of the science fiction label. It has become a fairly meaningless label, to be sure, but I'm not entirely sure why it generates hostility. As Bishop says in that self-interview, for some people it does seem to contain "the subtextual editorial comment, 'Science fiction is spaced-out kiddy lit for losers and nerds.'" So you get literati insisting surprisingly vehemently that The Road, or Oryx & Crake, or The Time-Traveller's Wife are NOT science fiction, because that would of course mean they were thinly-disguised science reporting/loserish wish-fulfillment, written poorly by science nerds for other science nerds. And when a literary author does put out a book like Oryx & Crake, sf authors huff and puff about how it's just rehashing material that science fiction did thirty years ago, and did better. I think it's just dumb tribalism and wish everyone could get over it, though I don't think they will. As Bishop points out, the way your books are presented and received does have important implications for how much money and/or prestige you earn.