The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier by Gabriel Mckee
Available now! "This fascinating hybrid of theology and sci-fi is creative, lucid and contains impressive scholarship."—Publishers Weekly
Adam Roberts: The History of Science Fiction
"What SF does better than other forms of literature is mediate the scientific and mystical perspectives of the cosmos: rationality and the unnameable."
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Add John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids to the list, just below Starship Troopers and Old Man's War, of books I liked quite a bit even though I found them a little morally repugnant. I was impressed with the power with which Wyndham portrays a collapsing world, and the ingenuity of his monsters, but a bit repulsed by his protagonist's inhumanity.
In the aftermath of a bizarre lightshow of unknown origin—suggested causes are a strange comet and an insidious Cold War weapon—most of the population of Britain, and possibly the entire world, goes blind. The few who have maintained their sight must fight for survival against both other people and the triffids, the deadly bio-engineered plants of the book's title. There is much struggling for survival here—but not too much struggling for other people's survival. What bothered me is the utter lack of compassion that protagnoist Bill Masen and his fellow sighted survivors show for their blinded countrymen. Early in the book Masen encounters a single sighted man leading a large group of the blind in a search for food, and the passage instills the odd feeling that somehow this leader is exploiting his followers. Later, when Masen is pressed into service as a guide for a large group of the blind, he escapes, giving a brief speech to one of his charges on the futility of his help: "I'm not doing any good, I tell you. I've been like the drugs they inject to keep the patient going a litte longer—no curative value, just putting it off."
The book makes the argument that times of crisis require tough decisions, and selfishness may be the only route to survival. But I think the contrary is true: it's in this kind of crisis that we must focus most strongly on holding onto our compassion and our humanity. I admire Wyndham's storytelling, but I can't help but have serious doubts about his abilities as a moral guide.
There's been a slowly-growing pile of books next to my desk: books I've read that haven't warranted full reviews, but that are worth mentioning here. And that pile will never go away until I actually write about them. So, in the interest of reducing desk-area clutter and finally completing long put-off tasks, here are a few scattered thoughts on three books I've read in the last year or so.
Cryptozoic! (a.k.a. An Age), by Brian W. Aldiss.
This is a book that reminded me of the better works of Robert Silverberg: it's a time-travel story that becomes a psycho-parable for an individual's search for religious meaning. Like much '60s and '70s SF, there's more than a little mysticism at play in the story, and indeed at one point the book states that any scientific explanation for life's mysteries "fetche[s] up against the blank wall of God." Added bonus: in discussing theories of time, Aldiss cites Augustine's all-too-often-overlooked final books of the Confessions, which ponder the nature and meaning of time and memory.
The Forge of God, by Greg Bear.
[Mild spoiler alert.] The setup to this book is a classic Clarkeian one: Mysterious Alien Artifacts appear in remote regions of the Earth, and it's up to a few investigators to find out what the heck they are and what they're doing. In this case, they're alien engines of destruction, set to destroy the planet. We find that out because a survivor from an alien world destroyed by the same uncaring force has hitched a ride to warn us—not to help us, mind you, just to give us some notice of our impending doom. The Guest, as the alien hitchhiker is called, presents this warning in dark theological terms. One of the alien's interrogators is curious about otherworldly spirituality, but his queries get a chilling response: "I asked it, 'Do you believe in God,' and it replied, 'I believe in punishment.'" That's probably the kind of pessimistic theology one develops after seeing one's entire planet destroyed, I guess. This is an apocalyptic book that has the courage of its convictions: the threat of worldwide destruction is made good, as the last few chapters describe in vivid detail the end of the Earth as a planet. In most SF stories of this type, human heroism would defeat the plot to destroy the world at the last possible moment; here, human ingenuity loses out to human frailty. Bleak, but good.
Alex and Me: How a scientist and a parrot uncovered a hidden world of animal intelligence—and formed a deep bond in the process, by Irene M. Pepperberg.
(Now there's a long subtitle.) When I was an undergrad, I did a science project on Dr. Pepperberg's work with African grey parrots, voice mimicry, and intelligence. Pepperberg research has covered a broad range of topics, but the basic gist of everything comes down to this: African greys don't just imitate sounds; they learn language, and they're a lot smarter than you might think. One of the things that drew me to this research is the extent to which Alex, Pepperberg's main research animal, shines through as a personality, even in drily straightforward scientific articles. Here, where the author is more concerned with telling her story than with proving anything to an expert audience, that personality is even more clear. At the risk of sounding extremely unscientific, I'll say this (in language, I should note, that Pepperberg does not use): however you define the word "soul," the research that led to this book could give a pretty strong argument that parrots have them.
An announcement: I've been invited to speak at this year's Cornerstone Festival (in Bushnell, Illinois, from July 1-3)!
"But I thought that was a Christian music festival, and as far as I know you're not a musician!", you say? Well, you're correct. But part of the festival is the Imaginarium, which houses seminars on a variety of topics. This year's title is "Make. Believe. Heroes"—in other words, the religious aspects of superheroes. I'll be giving three one-hour sessions on the morality and ontology of superhero universes under the title "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility." The full summary:
Despite the deconstructed superness of Watchmen et al., the original point of superheroes wasn't to make us wish we had superpowers -- though that certainly would be fun! -- but rather to make us wish for the clear moral discernment that allows superheroes to do the right thing. The creators of the most influential superheroes -- immigrants or children of immigrants like Siegel and Schuster or Jack Kirby -- used their creations to imagine a better world where the powerless had a stronger voice. This seminar explores superheroes as champions of the downtrodden, and notions of superhero morality.
Other sessions in the Imaginarium will cover Watchmen, moral grey zones in postmodern superheroics, and saints as superheroes. Check out the full schedule here, and perhaps I'll see you there!
In tangentially-related news, at Comics Should Be Good, Brian Cronin shares his favorite Mid-90s Badass Jesus Comic (to wit: Glory/Avengelyne II: The Godyssey #1).
A Mosque Among the Stars, a new short story collection edited by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad (founder of the Islam and Science Fiction website) and Canadian SF author Ahmed A. Khan, is an anthology with a message. Tired of the narrow representation of Islam on display in most Western media (including much SF), the editors wanted "to present Islam and Muslims in a different light."
It's tough to aim for an anthology with a unified message, especially in SF, which prizes diversity of opinion. But these editors have done it—in some cases, the editorial notes suggest, by nudging the writers toward revisions. In many cases that might seem problematic, but here—where the editors are Muslim and most of the authors are not—it makes sense. And any fear for lack of diversity among the stories is quickly assuaged by the variety of the stories on display, which include several kinds of both SF and fantasy.
The anthology's best story is without a doubt Tom Ligon's closing novella, "For a Little Price," which details a fundamentalist plot to hijack a potentially world-destroying spaceship. The story was originally written in 1986, but the story was repeatedly rejected—reading between the lines in the author's note, it seems that its too-sympathetic, too-complex picture of one of the hijackers was one of the main reasons for its rejection. It fits in perfectly here, and its closing passage, in which the now-repentant terrorist meditates on his motivations, has definite impact.
Similarly strong is the opening story, Lucius Shepard's "A Walk Through the Garden," a piece of military SF about a group of American soldiers investigating the aftermath of an experimental bomb blast in the Middle East. The reality-bending bomb has opened what seems to be a gateway into the Muslim afterlife, and the soldiers' exploration of the surreal landscape beyond makes for a truly unique tale.
Of the fantasy stories, the most impressive is Pamela Kenza Taylor's "Recompense," in which the ghosts of Muslim slaves take revenge on the crew of a slave ship. The story is a great illustration of the concept of jaza’—a word that means both reward (for the good) and recompense (for the wicked). There are an awful lot more of the latter on board the slave ship—hence the negative meaning getting the title.
There's a thread running through the anthology, and it's tough to tell how problematic it is. Many of the stories deal with terrorism, war, and the clash of civilizations. Given the events of the last decade or two, one could hardly expect a group of mostly-Western authors to come up with an anthology that didn't include stories on these themes. The important thing, and what the editors have striven for, is that these stories address the questions of terrorism and war without demonizing the innocent along with the guilty. It's an important message, and this anthology delivers it well.
For more about A Mosque Among the Stars, see the Islam and Science Fiction website.
Over at our comics-and-religion-themed cousin blog Holy Heroes!!, I've just posted a big ol' roundup of ten recent and forthcoming comics about religion. Reverent? Irreverent? Irrelevant? We've got 'em all!
Featured: Oeming's Rapture, the Wolverton Bible, and butt-kicking Jesus!
Check out the full list here.
