#8
August 8, 2007
Change of topic
My comments today refer to a recent article published in The New Republic:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070806&s=espenson080706
The author is no stranger to SF/F -- and publishing in general -- either: "Jane Espenson is a former writer for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and has written episodes for shows including "Angel," "Firefly," "Gilmore Girls," and others. She's currently under a development deal with NBC Universal television while working as Co-Executive Producer on "Battlestar Galactica." She blogs at janeespenson.com. "
In an on-line writer's group I frequent, one of the writers posited that this kind of SF/F might be called "Chosen One" fiction. I agree, and it plays into my belief about SF/F or what some people call "spec-fic". [Short for "speculative fiction", this genre title can cover everything from Robert L. Forward's DRAGON'S EGG to Terry Brook's first book, THE SWORD OF SHANARA to Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake vampire mysteries as well as anything else that spends time speculating on the "not-of-this-mundane-world".]
So, here's my possibly irritating suggestion: being that most people have rejected traditional Christianity, [DEFINED by the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds (and more extensively, the Athanasian Creed. To refresh your memory -- or for a succinct presentation of Christian beliefs, see: http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html ) If a person does not agree with ANY part of these Creeds, then they are not, by definition, a Christian.] they need to believe in SOMETHING. Most people have rejected Jesus Christ as the Chosen One because they: a) don't believe in sin, b) don't believe THEY'VE sinned, or c) they believe that sin is relative and whatever a person believes is sinful can be taken care of by enough good works to balance the sin.
I believe that the human psyche is evolved/made to have some portion of it hope outside of itself -- we have a "god-shaped hole in our hearts" if you will. If God doesn't fill it, it seeks to be filled with something besides God. It hopes that the next subway platform we step onto will be numbered 9 3/4 or that the next glowing light we see in the sky will be saucer-shaped. It desperately seeks to be taken out of this mundane life and be declared SPECIAL.
Science Fiction and Fantasy allows people to fill their "god shaped holes" with magic or aliens, so that we can believe that WE are a Chosen One and are, by definition, SPECIAL (because we have magic); or we believe that the Chosen Ones are coming and that they will choose us as their First Contact because we are in some way ready which also makes us SPECIAL.
The thing is, is that God made us to be Chosen People -- Special -- already: Romans 8:29-30 "For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory."
We don't have to look to Hogwarts or Trantor to find out if we are chosen or not. We have been chosen, by God, for Himself.
I just pray that those who fill their "god shaped holes" with the promises of Rowling and Herbert will come to fill their "god shaped holes" with the one true Son of God...
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You've found the website of husband, father and SF writer GUY STEWART! I'm a weird combination of science fiction writer and Serious Christian -- not that I don't laugh, but I am serious about who I am in Jesus Christ -- and I'm serious about my science fiction. Check out my SF at http://www.sfwa.org/members/gstewart/ .I've been a science teacher for 26 years teaching everything from (actually literally) Astronomy to Zoology.
FOR A SHAMELESS PLUG OF MY WEBSITE (Friday April 6, 2007) AND (UNEXPECTEDLY, ME!) VISIT THE RANTING ROOM OF AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR (AND DISSEMBLING INVENTOR OF THE WORD, "CYBERPUNK") BRUCE BETHKE. BRUCE AND PHILIP JENNINGS INVITED ME TO JOIN A WRITER'S GROUP IN THE MID-80'S. I WAS FULL OF AMBITION BUT HADN'T PRACTICED MY CRAFT ENOUGH TO GET ANYTHING PUBLISHED. I HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED NOW AND BRUCE AND I HAVE BEEN FRIENDS FOR ABOUT 25 YEARS. HIS BLOG IS OFTEN POWERFUL, FREQUENTLY FUNNY -- AND ALWAYS HAS A RANT OR TWO! VISIT IT! I DO!
http://rantingroom.blogspot.com/
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NEXT
On this page, I'd like to talk about what might be happening at that Crossroads with occasional essays that pose questions and offer opinion -- mine and yours if you give me permission! The questions I'm going to rant a bit about in the future are listed below.
August 20, 2007: Part I: Classic Christianity is 2000 years old -- why do some SF writers believe it will simply disappear once we leave Earth?
August 25, 2007: Part II: Classic Christianity is 2000 years old -- which parts have changed and which parts are likely to change in the future?
September 4, 2007: How much of Christianity is anthropocentric and how much might be UNIVERSAL in an SF sense?
September 19, 2007: What might "alien religions" be like?
October 4, 2007: Part I: What if Jesus died on OUR world for all of sinful Creation -- both Human and non-Human?
October 9, 2007: Part II: Why Earth?
October 13, 2007: Part III: Why then?
October 31, 2007: Part I: In the 1956 version of WAR OF THE WORLDS, before he approaches the Martian landing craft, the pastor says, "If they are that technologically advanced, then they must be just as spiritually advanced." Is that statement logical?
November 2007: Part II: So, if aliens are technologically far superior to us, then what WILL their superior religion look like? (Most SF writers assume that atheism is religiously superior -- but what if it was Buddhism? Most SF writers wouldn't have any trouble with that. But if it were some form of Christianity, Judaism or Islam? WHEW! The fur, feathers, fins and ectoplasm would fly! Why?
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#7
July 20, 2007: Can SF with an overtly Christian world view make it in the same market as DUNE, BARRAYAR, PERN,
the UPLIFT UNIVERSE and among such aliens as the ATEVI?
This is a tough one. While I would LOVE to say “sure”, I’m disturbingly certain that the answer is “no way”. And that answer has nothing to do with quality storytelling, it has to do with the rigidity of the science fictional mindset. The Christian worldview is as unwelcome among the fictional stars as it is at a science fiction convention. Were I to stand up and suggest we talk about faith in Christ or the Christian roots of DUNE, I would be shouted down at worst and ignored at best. And there is no one out there who can deny or support my claim because it hasn’t happened before. There ARE no SF novels out and about that have normal, evangelical Christian characters. PLEASE do not point to James Blish’s A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. The characters in it are Catholic priests NOT for their belief but for their Jesuit militancy. Don’t note Mary Doria Russell’s THE SPARROW – again, she created Catholic characters as a plot device, not because they were simply Christian as a part of everything else they were.
What I am talking about is having characters who are Christians the same way that they are male, female, come from
As well, Christianity, while far from perfect and very far from blameless, is often viewed as the “dominating belief” system in America. It automatically becomes unwelcome in a genre that thrives on overturning tables and upsetting apple carts (I have LESS trouble with that excuse than I do with the following). When beliefs ARE named, they are watered down and so namby pamby that they are revolting to someone like me who takes his Christianity seriously (for example, while I read and re-read the Vorkosigan novels because I love them, I utterly detest Cordelia’s insipid deism.) Of the others named above, Pern has no religion because Anne McCaffrey has no desire to “inflict religion on an unsuspecting planet”; and the Atevi have no obvious belief system other than the belief in themselves (which may infer that that makes them superior to Humans, which they ARE). Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek Universe is populated by both atheists and believers – but the atheists (= Humans) are inherently superior to those who HAVE beliefs (Bajorans, Vulcans, Ferengi and Klingons) because it is quite clearly Humans who lead the Federation and Humans who have never really been subjugated by any other alien race.) HOWEVER, the “religions” of both DUNE and the UPLIFT universe are essentially predicated on a belief in the natural rather than the supernatural. DUNE revolves around Paul Atreides/Muad’Dib.Usul and his ascension into godhood through the spice and a sense that all Humans are meant to evolve into some sort of superior being. In the UPLIFT universe, all belief is predicated on the return of the Progenitors, who are (merely) aliens who started the whole Uplift chain then evolved to a higher plane of existence. Neither deals with a supernatural God of the universe…
And I think I've run out of room here, so I'll end for now and then pick up the same theme in a few days to finish my thoughts. As always, feel free to disagree and let me know about it at my email below. (PS: Regarding the request to set up a message board/response thing: it was never my intent to foster a general discussion. I've also heard that doing so burns up an inordinate amount of time. I choose, at this time, to hold single-person discussion with the people who write to me me (thanks to those of you who do!) and to work on writing novels and short stories instead! But thanks for the compliment/suggestions!)
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#6
July 5, 2007: From one evangelical Christian's point-of-view: is there AnyOne Out There?
"Hellooooooo?"
"Knock, knock, knock?"
Even from a non-Evangelical, non-Christian's point-of-view, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that there's AnyOne Out There.
Carl Sagan's Hope notwithstanding, Fermi's Principle seems to hold sway at present. Discussions about the possibiliy of AnyOne being Out There are speculative, lively and participants draw from tens-of-thousands of reams of printed work and hundreds of websites...but when all is said and done and the janitor cleans up after the party, one thing is painfully and obviously clear: there's no one in the universe but us.
Christians and other religious people have some sense that there is SomeOne Out There -- God or gods or Life Forces or what have you. Certainly the knowledge that there is SomeOne Out There gives us hope that there might other intelligent life in the universe besides us. But materialists have nothing to bolster flagging hope. We've been staring at the stars for 3000 years and except for a few "abduction" stories, there's absolutely no evidence that intelligent life exists anywhere but on Earth. Right now we have no clear evidence that LIFE exists anywhere but here.
Oh, I've heard all of the arguments. I teach a class to gifted and talented young people called Alien Worlds and Advanced Alien Worlds. The first question I ask is if anyone in the class REALLY believes there is intelligent alien life in the universe. As with all intelligent people, they hie to the party line, eloquently expressed by Jody Foster/Ellie Arroway/Carl Sagan (in the movie CONTACT): "I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?"
Unfortunately, Carl Sagan's "argument" stands in direct opposition to Enrico Fermi's "argument": The story goes that, one day back on the 1940's, a group of atomic scientists, including the famous Enrico Fermi, were sitting around talking, when the subject turned to extraterrestrial life. Fermi is supposed to have then asked, "So? Where is everybody?" What he meant was: If there are all these billions of planets in the universe that are capable of supporting life, and millions of intelligent species out there, then how come none has visited earth? This has come to be known as The Fermi Paradox.
So, back to my question: is there AnyOne Out There? I answer simply: yes. Why? Because I believe in an infinite Father God who loves to create. Not only is He the source of creativity (whether you are a Christian or not, He's STILL the source of creativity. Satan is the father of destruction and will pervert God's creativity if we give him a chance), He is infinitely creative. Aliens wouldn't pose any great problem for Him. And while some will be "humanoid", we're talking about the same God who made the life around deep sea black smokers and created icefish with "antifreeze" for blood! There will be aliens so strange that David Brin's Jophur and G'kek will seem folksy familiar by comparison! In the 1930s, JBS Haldane said, "Life is not only stranger than we imagine; life is stranger than we can imagine."
I believe that God would agree.
Deuteronomy 10:19 says that we must "show your love for the alien". Why? Because God made the alien. (I KNOW that this isn't what Scripture "meant", but it IS what it SAYS...) I happen to agree with Sagan, but I also agree that Fermi has a point. We need to keep looking and while I believe the aliens are there, they are not going to be crawling all over the galaxy. The civilizations are few and far between and breaking the light barrier is not going to be Star Trek easy. It will require long-term committment and a level of societal maturity that we haven't reached yet. Of course, I think that that maturity will come only when individuals come to Christ and accept Him as their personal Lord and Savior -- but I don't see that happening anytime soon. On the other hand, if that was the only way to First Contact, how many hardened atheist/agnostic SF materialists would convert? Hmmmmm...
I'm pretty sure Carl Sagan would shrink from me using the Bible to agree with him, but tough. There's obviously more that I could say and I don't have the space here.
Thoughts? Let me know. (Also, if you are interested, read C. S. Lewis in THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS. He talks about life on other worlds in it).
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#5
June 15, 2007: Will belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior survive First Contact with aliens?
In a word: absolutely.
An irritating "thing" about most of the SF community is many assume that as soon as aliens land, all Christians will immediately collapse into quivering piles of protplasm because any alien will "obviously" have a totally different belief system based entirely on their biology/psychology/evolution. That religion will completely knock the whole Humanly fabricated "philosophy" of Christianity on its collective butt, and then we can move out of that antiquated philosophy into a more enlightened realm of the true belief that Humanity is quite simply and inevitably perfectable.
What about a different scenario? What if our "advanced alien brethren" land and have a "philosophy" that in many ways parallels Christianity? Is this scenario any less likely than the ones in which advanced aliens take us under their benevolent wings (or other appendages)? Is it any less likely than the ones in which aliens enslave us (for some ridiculous reason like our water, our land, our resources or out of simple biological imperative)?
In four words: I don't think so.
Among the evidence I present that Christianity will easily survive First Contact (did I say anywhere here that it would survive unchanged? I think not!):
1) Christianity has survived some 2000 years worth of First Contacts. It has survived contact with Hindu beliefs, Islam, Confucism, Communism, Atheism, Buddhism, Materialism as well as several defunct -isms. It has changed. It has flexed. It has argued within itself. But the essential tenets of Christianity have remained the same (please don't bother arguing that "Christianity today is totally different from Christianity in the past"...I am sorry, but I must disagree. Feel free to disagree with me. It's a free world.) I must also say here that Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and various other subgroups are, by definition, NOT Christians because they do not hold to the tenets of Christianity which were established clearly at the First Council of Nicea in 325 AD (oops. Didn't mean to offend: 325 CE) (For those of you familiar with Christianity, these tenets were consolidated in the Nicene Creed. If a belief group does NOT confess the Nicene Creed, then they are not, by definition, Christian.)
2) Christians read SF and are ready to meet aliens. At least one of us is.
3) Christians as a group (there are, after all, over 1 billion who claim to be Followers of Christ) are NOT well represented by the flotsam and jetsam that pops up on FoxNews Tonight. Neither are all teachers well represented by teachers who have sexual relations with 14 year old students or are all fathers well represented by fathers who dip their 10-year-old daughters into scalding water. Christians as a group are normal, everyday people. They are your neighbors. They are, possibly even, YOU. (Sounds like a plot for an alien invasion story!) Some of us will be prepared to meet aliens and share our faith with aliens WITHOUT using red-hot pokers.
4) This last isn't direct evidence but rather a tangent rant. I find the belief that Christian missionaries "destroy cultures" insulting. Not to me -- to the culture that was supposedly suborned by Christians. For example, I have heard it said that Christian missionaries destroyed unique cultures, religions, practices and ways-of-life by bringing in their "westernized religion". What monumental arrogance! The accusers make the assumption that the primitive/alternate people are idiots and desperately in need of protection. Native Americans, Mayans, subcontinental Indians, Africans, Japanese, Australian aboriginals -- were not stupid people. They heard the Gospel of Christ and became Christians not because missionaries threatened them or coerced them with trinkets or because they wanted technology (there were plenty of people ofering technology WITHOUT religious trappings) but because a relationship with Christ made sense to them. These individuals don't need to be protected -- they are perfectly capable of making choices on their own based on data that they hear, consider and believe. To assume that "primitive" people became Christians under coercion is offensively arrogant. The same group of people will doubtless seek to keep Christians away from First Contact so as to "not offend" our interstellar brethren (or sistern). But intelligent life will be just that: intelligent. They can make the choice for themselves.
And if the aliens reidicule Christians? Well, we've been ridiculed before. It hasn't stopped the spread of the love of Christ yet. We'll keep on sharing the Good News. Of course, your average alien-believing atheist/agnostic will figure it's just pure stubborness and that we'll come around to the right way of thinking someday.
'Course, I'll be thinking the same thing of them...
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#4
May 21, 2007: Why aren't young people reading SF -- or have they ever?
How about a few small facts here to start things off?
Fact: in 2005, there were 30,000,000 American people between the ages of 13 and 19. Thirty million teenagers. Cool.
Fact: in 2005, the American Library Association through its Young Adult Library Services Association, invited teens to vote for their favorite book of those published between January 2005 and April 2006. There were "Over 5000 online ballots" cast. Well...that seems nice.
Fact: Simple division says: 5500 (I'm giving that as the "over 5000 number) / 30,000,000 x 100 = .018%. That's 2 HUNDREDTHS of a percent of all American teens voted in this effort to engage young adults in reading.
Conclusion: Not only do teenagers not read Science Fiction, they don't read anything else, either.
All right, let's try and look at the bright side of things...
"At least kids are reading!" Some of them anyway...
So, of the books they picked in 2005 and part of 2006, the breakdown is as follows:
Fantasy: 7
Realistic: 1
Science Fiction: 1
Fairy Tale Retelling: 1
(If you want to know the books, go to the ALA's Teen Reading site)
The results for 2006-2007 haven't been tabulated yet, but the current most popular breakdown is:
Fantasy: 5
Realistic: 8
Science Fiction: 1
Mystery: 5
Historical: 3
Adventure: 1
Short Story: 1
There's no data in how many young adults nominated the books.
So: my explanation? Couple of things, actually. First reason is illustrated by my daughter who is sitting in front of me -- doing homework. She's also discovering classics as well. She just finished and loved THE GREAT GATSBY. Also this past year, she read THE BELL JAR, INVISIBLE MAN, and HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES. Young adults are busy doing homework and studying and spending time with friends.
Second reason is illustrated by my son -- he's at work right now. YA's are WORKING for the first time and get involved in their jobs. At least their jobs take up a new amount of time and they can't quite figure out how to balance work and leisure. Books take a WAYYYYYY back seat to phone talking, texting, IMing, watching DVDs, playing video games and catching up on their favorite subject in magazines.
Third reason is the one likely to irritate you: science fiction writers today aren't writing anything young adults want to read. They write what old white men want to read. People like me. And most SF writers. Who's the YOUNGEST SF writer you can name? Shane Tourtellotte's name springs to mind. How about the youngest FEMALE SF writer? Any names leap to mind? Julie Czerneda? Sarah Zettel (OOPS! She left SF for Fantasy...) Anyone else? None? Perhaps the young adults of today are being shut out by the OLD MEN (and I include myself with them) who do 85% of the writing of SF and nearly 90% of the judging and voting on SF awards...how many women go to the Hugos? I don't know, I've never had the joy of going. Anyone tell me? PLEASE tell me my numbers are wrong.
I think this is why YA's aren't READING SF. There's no one writing today who can speak to THEIR world. And those of us who grew up with Heinlein, Norton and the rest of the crew grew up in a VERY different world. I work with teens every day. I have for the past 26 years. Kids today ARE different than they were when "you" were a kid. They're even different than kids were TEN years ago. They live in a world that not only sells violence as a drug of choice, it's also a world that has removed ANY kind of societal morality in favor of "whatever" morality that they see fit to be moral with. This leaves kids wihout any kind of moral compass...and THOSE are the kids who wouldn't be caught dead reading ROCKETSHIP GALILEO or BOUNCING TO THE MOON or any of the other disconnected SF that is periodically floated in their direction in the hopes that they'll read it and become voracious SF adult readers.
The upshot of this is that unless someone out there can connect with today's young adults, SF will disappear as first its practitioners die off and finally its fan base dies off.
Is there anyone out there who'd like to knock me on my butt and prove me wrong? (Please...)
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#3
May 6, 2007: Why is FANTASY all the rage right now?
Easy Answer: technology scares people, science bores them and they'd rather not think about the technological ramifications of science -- no matter HOW entertaining.
Easy Answer: people got tired of STAR WARS and wanted to watch LORD OF THE RINGS instead. They liked the movies, read the books, then moved into the rest of the genre (oh, add to that the unexpected arrival of Harry Potter).
Tough Answer: SF eliminates the spiritual in favor of the material and humans have an intrinsic spiritual dimension.
To be truthful, I don't much care for easy answers. One of the reasons for that is that it encourages finger pointing. I've been a middle school and high school science teacher for 26 years and the level of scientific literacy among my parents and students has gone DOWN as the level of scientific discovery has gone UP and we've moved into the 21st Century. It would be very easy for me to blame people's boredom with science on some sort of intangible "attitude" against it.
But that would ignore the fact that young people -- and people in general -- have changed very little in 10,000 years. As much as we'd like to think that we're "all that" or that one political party is "more aggressive" than another or that "we're evolving to a higher plane", the evidence does not bear those conclusions. Quite the opposite. Evidence would suggest that we are NOT "all that", that political affiliating isn't the "way" to manage populations once they've grown beyond a certain limit and we appear to be evolving to a lower plane -- at least it seems so when I watch the evening news.
Secularists -- backed by scientific research -- have steadily pushed any elements of spirituality from the public arena. With the banning of prayer and all other forms of religious expression from schools, governments buildings and public places, the behavior of the human race should have gotten better. After all, the stated intent was that religion causes division and once religion was removed, we could all just get along. But has this dream been realized now that we've chased virtally all religion out of public sight? We still talk about eliminating "In God We Trust" from our money. And that would accomplish greater peace among people and less greed? Hmmm...
Science Fiction has done its part to promote worlds unencumbered by religious dogma through STAR TREK and the works of writers like Anne McCaffery, Lois McMaster Bujold and Arthur C. Clarke. Ridiculing religion by appearing to plumb its depths to discover the mechanistic roots (and by implication the mechanistic roots of all religion) has also been popular in the worlds of Frank Herbert, David Weber, STAR TREK, Tobias Buckell and Sharon Shinn.
And so people shy away from the secularization of their fiction. Fantasy is by its very nature SPIRITUAL. What could be more spiritual than magic -- black or white? Fantasy speaks to the soul while SF speaks to the head. Elves and witches and goblins and hobbits and Aslan and The Golden Compass and Perdido Street Station and Hogwarts Academy are permeated with spiritual beings and by implication, spiritual messages.
We don't need any more secularizing. We've had enough. And so to feed our souls, we head for the groaning racks of fantasy: good or bad, new or old.
All we want is food for our souls. Our heads are about ready to explode...
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#2
April 21, 2007: Where are the evangelical Christians in SF today?
Hiding, probably.
Most of the discussions I've seen on websites imply or baldly state that having a Christian world-view is a one-way ticket to writer's oblvion.
A general sense in the Christian evangelical world is that if you want to be published, you DON'T talk about the faith of your characters -- unless they are polytheistic Mayan human sacrificing priests, in which case, you can base your entire story on the gods they worship, why they're important and what they mean to your character's personal life -- as long as they're aliens.
The SF world's perception is often that Christians don't believe in the future (unless it's apocalyptic) or aliens (and in that case, C.S. Lewis was OK with what HE wrote -- but that era is past and "obviously" he was being allegorical -- wasn't he? (Check his essays in THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT if you think he was using aliens allegorically.))
So, an evangelical Christian writing SF is going to get hurt whether she's coming or going: coming INTO the SF community with a Christ-centered world view or GOING OUT OF the evangelical community looking to a future on other worlds and the possibility of intelligent life Out There.
Seems like nobody likes an evangelical Christian SF writer.
I have two real words of response to that: so what?
The halls of SF are replete with wannabes who gave up after their first, second, tenth, thirtieth, fitieth, hundredth or thousandth rejection. Getting published in top-quality markets is hard. BUT if you tell a good story; make people think; entertain them; and have a thick enough hide to withstand editorial indifference or commentary, then you can make it. As Donald Maass says in his book, WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL, "Storytelling matters above all other considerations..."
The pews of the church are replete with people who heard the call to the jungles of Borneo and stayed home. If God has placed His call on you to be an SF writer and your faith is deeply part of your life, then you WILL have a Christian world-view in your futuristic, alien stories. There may very well be Christian characters in those stories, too. As Donald Maass says in his book, WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL, "Storytelling matters above all other considerations..."
No amount of editorial or pewtative disdain should be able to stop you if God's call to write powerful SF is on your heart and harddrive. The upshot of this is a simple reiteration of Jesus in Matthew 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciple of all nations..."
Quit hiding!
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#1
April 7, 2007
What the heck does SF and FAITH -- CROSSROADS mean anyway?
The philosophy of faith in Christ begins on Earth and extends to Heaven.
The philosophy of science fiction, or SF, begins today and extends to tomorrow. (The philosophy of fantasy begins today and extends to yesterday; but that's another essay.)
The place SF and Faith meet is on Earth, today. I am a Christian. I'm also a SF writer and reader. For decades, I've read with glee (and sometimes with a frown) as SF writers like Herbert, McCaffery and Cherryh have disappeared my beliefs in favor of a spiritual nothingness. It may be because they just didn't want to add another layer of complication to an already complicated story. It may be that they really believe that Humans will outgrow their religions. It may also be that they don't have the faintest idea what do DO with Christians in space. It may be, as in the Star Trek Universe that everyone else can have a religion, but Humans (who are obviously the most superior form of humanoid) don't bother with all that meditation on Mount Selaya, or attempts to reach the Halls of Stovokor or follow the Prophets because they've outgrown the need. Roddenberry was a great believer in the ultimate perfectibility of Man. It's the essential philosophy Star Trek is built around when it comes to religion.
I disagree. It's a minority opinion, but I disagree anyway. I believe that Christians will carry their Bibles -- in whatever form -- into space. I believe that they will share their faith and that spacers, starship captains, colonists, xenobiologists, terraformers, and...aliens will accept in their hearts (or whatever!) Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. I believe that the love of Christ will extend to the physical Heavens as well as the metaphorical heavens. I believe there will be fellowships of Christian believers in as many places in the future as there are fellowships of Christians today from the Arctic wastes to the jungles of Borneo. I believe that Christians will hold positions of authority tomorrow as they do today. I also believe that rather than trying to establish a "kingdom of heaven on Earth" through legislation and political activism, the Christians of the future will do what the Christians of today mostly do: share the Good News of Jesus Christ at home and at work and at school.
And my SF will reflect that belief!
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If you googled my name, you probably went to my Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website, then followed the link to here. I wanted to be able to add things to my site as they came up. For example, my book SIMPLE SCIENCE SERMONS FOR BIG AND LITTLE KIDS is still available on both B&N.com and Amazon.com. It demonstrates my personal synthesis of faith in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior -- and my long-standing love of science. I'm a science fiction writer with several stories published in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact (http://www.analogsf.com/) as well as CRICKET and CICADA and a few other magazines like JUGGLER'S WORLD, HICALL and the online magazines DRAGONS, KNIGHTS AND ANGELS (http://www.dkamagazine.com/) and AOIFE'S KISS (http://samsdotpublishing.com/aoife/main.htm).
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I also believe that Humans haven't caused "global warming"...I think that's a manifestation of the science community having "dethroned humans" from the pinnacle of God's Creation and finding "just one evolved animal among billions" a depressing place to be, they've elevated us to a position of supreme power with the ability to not only cause the extinction of thousands of life forms on Earth but to change the climate in the geologically insignificant period of two hundred years. I think it penultimate hubris to ascribe god-like powers to a genus which is a minor member of a class of animals -- both less numerous than insects and whose greatest achievements are invisible from outer space. *shrug* But that's just my opinion. Maybe yours is different. I hope so!
Email me and let me know what you think at gstewart75@hotmail.com
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Visit https://www.lethalpublishing.com/christianscififantasy/index.php ! It's a website that talks about Christian SF with links to several SF authors who are working to incorporate their faith in Christ into SF and F for the Christian market!
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