Expect no new posts this week. My dayjob has a looming deadline this month, and my next manuscript is due at the editor’s in January, so I have not had as much time to post editorial, rants, screeds, jests and drollery here.
I have been rereading CS Lewis’ PERELANDRA — and I can tell you it certainly reads differently sees as a grownup Christian than as a atheist teen, which was the last time I read it. The parallels between Perelandra and Milton’s PARADISE LOST are clear to all, but there are also parallels between this book and THE TIME TRAVELER by HG Wells, and A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsay. Time permitting, I’d like to write a post on this next week.
No doubt readers expect me in such a situation to post yet another picture of the Catwoman in her evil skintight leather evilsuit. Not so! Am I as shallow as that? No, instead, I will post a picture of Rogue from the X-Men.
This is a picture of a statue taken from a Japanime-version of a Chris Claremont character. Our world is odd, Earthlings, no matter to what other world we compare it.
I have a particular fondness for Rogue, despite her Evil Mutant origins, because one of the characters in my long-running ‘Eternal Champion of Amber invades Narnia’ game is a knight of Prince Julian in Arden (which is also the Wood Between the Worlds and the forest Lady Eboshi of Irontown is logging to build a factory crewed by harlots and lepers), a Storm King named ‘Hell’ Tanner (from Zelazny’s DAMNATION ALLEY) the son of ‘Mad Max’ Tanner, was married to her. Recently she died tragically.
I hoping one of my player characters from Amber or Cumae or Gallifrey, Tanelorn or Trantor, Roke or Rebma, Gormenghast or Galt’s Gulch (these are the prime worlds of which all other worlds in the multiverse are shadows or reflections) will find a way to steal the floating pyramid of Ra from Stargate, and use the resurrection machine on her.
Well, this is also a game I have not run in years. Time does not permit. We may never know the fate of fair young Anna Marie.
Isn’t she sweet? Wouldn’t you love to just kiss her and have all your vital essence ripped out of the cells of your body?
Or do you prefer the version portrayed by Anna Paquin? As a Catwoman fan, I, of course, approve of any supervillainesses dressed in tight black leather evilsuits to commit evil in. Or when they do an about face and become a good guy girl.
Dear Mr. Wright:
I have noticed your “absence” from the blog. But I knew that was because you have so many demands on your time: family, work, your latest book, etc. So, take your time!
And I did appreciate the cute pictures of Anna Paquin! (Smiles)
Sean M. Brooks
I HIGHLY approve of more pictures of Rogue. (and any redhead from comics, especially Barbara Gordon) Catwoman’s overrated.
Your game sounds pretty epic. But then, anything that combines Amber and Gormenghast would have to be.
I just reread Perelandra earlier this year, I think? I reread the whole trilogy; I think it’s definitely the high point of the series in terms of both theology and narrative. The Un-man is probably one of the most quietly chilling depictions of evil I’ve ever seen.
Perelandra is definitely my favorite of the three, although That Hideous Strength shines in the end with the disintegration of coherence in the university staff….and the plot to blow up the moon. All this….for that. Sounds like the future is now.
Anyone wanting to be a better descriptive writer ought to read Perelandra just to have all his senses excited. Lewis does some masterful writing.
Agreed. It surprises me that many of my fellos SF fans do not seem to consider this “real” SF. But that is a discussion for another day.
Dear Mr. Wright:
My view is the reason why so many SF fans don’t seem to consider CS Lewis’ “Space Trilogy” to be SF is because Lewis was a convinced and devout Christian. IOW, some fans fell for the false line that Christianity is opposed to science. Let me define my terms, by “Christianity” I mean, frankly, Catholic Christianity (altho Lewis himself was an Anglican). It seems to me that Protestantism, with exceptions, of course, has gone in either of two directions: liberal disbelief and de facto atheism and “fundamentalist” ignorance when it comes to science.
As for blowing up the Moon, that reminded me of something OPPOSITE to destroying the Moon: Poul Anderson’s short story “Strange Bedfellows” (1964). The story is about TERRAFORMING the Moon. I could tell Anderson put a good deal of thought in working out how that might actually be done. I even quoted some relevant parts to technically informed persons who both said it might actually be doable.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
I put it to you that if this is indeed the reasoning of my science fiction friends who dismiss CS Lewis as “not a science fiction writer”, that they merely betray a bigotry against Christianity, and an uninformed bigotry at that. Jules Verne, the founder of the genre, was a Roman Catholic; HG Wells was a committed atheist and socialist, and delighted in penning desolate visions of a godless world drifting as a speck through an indifferent universe; but on the other hand Olaf Stapledon (the forgotten third of the trio of founders) put a monotheistic Creator-god of the Gnostic sort on stage as a character in STARMAKER, and made spiritual development one of the central themes of man’s future evolution (along with, risibly enough, communism) in his majestic LAST AND FIRST MEN.
If “science fiction” is defined as that which must take place in a philosophically naturalist type universe, then, by that definition, the book version of WAR OF THE WORLDS is science fiction, but the movie version is not, for the microbes which destroy the Martian invaders in the movie version are explicitly credited to the benevolent providence of God.
If “science fiction” is defined as that which must take place in a philosophically naturalist type universe, then, by that definition, any book which has supernatural powers, psychics, psionics, witches, or ghosts is not real science fiction. This eliminates Arthur C Clarke’s CHILDHOOD’s END, Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION, and Robert Heinlein’s STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND as well as his STARSHIP TROOPERS.
I submit that any definition of Science Fiction that eliminates the most famous works of most famous writers in SF is a very bad definition indeed.
It seems to me that Protestantism, with exceptions, of course, has gone in either of two directions: liberal disbelief and de facto atheism and “fundamentalist” ignorance when it comes to science.
No, those are just the ones that open their mouths and yell the loudest. They annoy the crap out of me and are one of the reasons why I’m going to seminary– to help correct the problem– so I guess I shouldn’t glare too intensely at you. But I will still glare a little.
Hi, Kokoro:
I’m pressed for time, so this will be brief. I DID allow for “exceptions” to the two extremes I mentioned. I agree there are Protestants who are neither de facto disbelievers or bone headed science hating “fundamentalists.”
Wilting just a bit under your glare! (Smiles)
Sean M. Brooks
Having never met a “science hating fundamentalist” in my life, I assume that accounts of them are grossly exaggerated. A close friend of mine does not believe in the Theory of Darwin, but he is handier with tools and cars and computers than I am, so I am not sure he can be rightly called a hater of science as opposed to, say, a hater of liberal secularism and the nightmarish modern world it has created.
Considering the disrepute earned by that Hegelianism, Communism, Nazism, and Margaret Singer and her race-eugenicists and the various other versions, variations, heresies and pseudoscientific cults that claim to follow evolutionary ideas (apparently without ever once reading a syllable for Darwin), I am surprised that there is anyone, Christian or not, is scientifically minded enough to hold Darwin’s theory as still the best explanation of the origin of species.
Monstrous evil has been done in the name of this harmless biological theory. I am reluctant to call those who dismiss it “anti-science” as opposed to, say, “anti-pseudo-Darwin” or, more correctly, “anti-evolution” since that word has taken on many grotesque and absurd meanings which Darwin had no part of.
“anti-evolution” since that word has taken on many grotesque and absurd meanings which Darwin had no part of.
This is about the scope of it on my part. I’m not a huge proponent of theistic evolution, but neither am I horrified by the concept. And science in general? Is there a better way to appreciate creation than to learn how amazingly complex it is?
I’m still figuring out the mesh between science and theology, but ya know, it dawned on me a while ago that the homogenous quark soup of the moments after the big bang sounds a lot like the formless matter the earth was crafted out of. (Not to mention the division of light and dark, etc.) I’m sure there’s a mesh between the two and, I mean, hey. Figuring it out is half the fun.
I can tell you the mesh, as best my poor philosophy can puzzle it out. I read the writings of the greatest scientists of the West from the times of the ancient Greeks through Einstein. Science the handmaiden of Religion. It only makes logical sense within the context of Christian thought, or Jewish thought mixed with Greek concepts. Islam could have been a scientific religion, but rejected it.
Protestantism is tempted by anti-Darwinism, and some few (far fewer than the engines of depcetion, the press and the popular media, the schools and the courts, might claim) Protestants give into the temptation.
I speculate this weakness in these few Protestants is because the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in effect makes every man his own Magisterium and his own biblical scholar. Well, the simplest and safest bet for a biblical scholar is to be a crass literalist. And crass Literalists take the poem about the Garden of Eden as being a scientifically literal account of the Fall of Man.
However, no matter how “anti-science” any fundamentalist Christian is claimed to be, you will not see true hatred of science, of the conclusions of science, and of the methods and skepticism of science, until you hear a bunch of Leftists talking about say, Global Warming, Eugenics, studies made of the differences in IQ levels between races, studies made of homosexuality, studies of the differences between brain chemistry between the sexes, and on and on. Those who produce scientifically sound challenges to the fashionable Lefty dogmas in any of these areas are merely savaged as “deniers” or “racists” or “sexists.”
(Indeed, the one and only time I was called a racist, was when I mentioned the Leftist antipathy to arguments about differences in IQ levels between the races. I did not say I agreed with these arguments, and I did not say that the US Constitution says that all men are endowed by their intelligence with certain inalienable rights, therefore we should trample the Jews and Wogs. Indeed, I was not asked my opinion at all: merely the act of NOTING that Leftists do not argue the merits of the case but instead call those who study racial differences racists, ironically, got me called a racist. Fortunately, this debate was over the Internet, so I could not answer the accusation as it deserved. The filth who make the accusation, of course, was of too limited a mental capacity to notice the irony.)
In short, there are some very few Christian literalists who reject Darwin’s theory as contradicting a literal reading of Genesis. And there are hordes and hordes of Leftists who are as superstitious and unscientific as Karl Marx, and believe in boogieman and make purely symbolic ritual gestures to ward off the evil spirits. They just call their evil spirits global warming or racial disharmony or inequality and so on — none of these words actually having even the slightest relationship with reality, scientific or otherwise.
But one of the idols to which the Leftys bow down is called “SCIENCE!” and on that altar they sacrifice babies in the name of infant stem cell research. And one of their irrational dogmas of their cult is that they are scientific and futuristic, whereas all their foes and opponents are evil and backward and obscurantists. Leftist have been worshippers of SCIENCE! and committing atrocities in its name since the time of Marx and Hitler. They believe in SCIENCE! the way the Christian believes in the mystery of the Trinity or the miracle of the Resurrection, except with less proof and less ability to defend the belief in a rational debate.
What they do not believe in, is real science, that is, skeptical inquiry into physics and related disciplines based on objective facts, observed or inferred. You know, science, that thing the Church invented in the so called Middle Ages, once the clammy chains of mystical Greek thinking were shaken off; that thing the Church fostered and supported and forwarded by inventing the university system.
Dear Mr. Wright and Kokoro:
I am again rebuked for speaking too broadly about “fundamentalists.” I should not have let exasperation with Protestants who deny evolution might be true or that the Earth is more than 7000 years old, make me paint on all of them the slogan SCIENCE HATER. For which I now apologize.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks