From the Mickey Mouse HOUSE OF MOUSE show, an episode where the Disney Villains combine against the forces of Mouseness.
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A reader with the somewhat angelic name of Manwe, Lord of the Valar, writes in with some questions.
Concerning my current writing projects, COUNT TO A TRILLION (sold) and SOMEWHITHER, he asks:
1) I take it this will be the first saga you have written since becoming Christian, correct?
ANSWER: Usually, I avoid this question, since it gives me a dark and bitter amusement to overhear critics bemoan as Christian apologetic work I wrote as an atheist, while work written as a faithful Christian gets their secular seal of approval.
But the answer is no.
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I admit that I was looking forward to a live action version of LAST AIRBENDER because it was and is my favorite anime, certainly my favorite anime made in America. I was very pleasantly surprised when M Night Shyamalan found a young actor who looked so exactly like Aang.
I was even more surprised, nay, I was emotionally scarred for life when the Race Police erupted in a surprise raid, and protested that certain characters were of the wrong races to play the made-up make-believe races of pretend magicninjaland. They demanded that the blue-eyed Eskimos of the Water Tribe be portrayed only by blue-eyed Eskimos, of which, as we all know, there is abundance of blue-eyed young actors and actresses who are good thespians and can do convincing martial arts stunts flooding Hollywood.
The cast of the movie looked like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise docking with the UN building in New York: this was not good enough for the Race Police, however, since the specific races of specific cast members did not match the eugenic profile and pedigree that the rule of Limpieza de sangre or ‘Clearness of the Blood’ that the Race Cultists demanded.
Shaun Toub born in Manchester, of Persian racial stock, was criticized both for being Caucasian, on the grounds that it was racially insensitive to have a Caucasian portraying a Non-Caucasian, as well as for being non-Caucasian, on the grounds that it was racially insensitive to cast a Non-Caucasian guy in the role of one of the most depraved villains in the story, the evil Uncle Iroh. This proved three things: (1) the critics had no idea who Uncle Iroh was, nor anything about the story or the background (2) the critics flunked Elementary School geography (Persians are Caucasian. There is where the Caucasus mountains are!) and (3) the critics were yammering dunderheads.
The movie was mediocre, even bad, and my emotional scarring became all the more traumatic, because to take my family to watch it in 3D cost me more than a years wages. There was a remarkably stupid scene in the movie where the Earthbenders, instead of being locked up on a steel rick in the middle of the ocean, where there is no earth to bend, are imprisoned, well, in a field of rocks. This is like locking up a Marine sniper, with rifle and pistol intact, in a fully stocked arsenal along with a five-man gunnery crew, mortars, howitzers, and bombards. I still have flashbacks due to post-cinematic stress disorder.
Instead of seeking therapy, I decided to become a lifelong enemy of the Race Police.
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I reprint a line item from Jay Nordlinger’s column, along with the link:
You may have been wondering: “Where are Chinese men going to get wives, what with female infanticide leaving such an imbalance between men and women?” One answer, as this article tells us, is Burma: Burmese girls are sold into slavery, or “marriage,” or whatever you wish to call how they end up.
Bear in mind that the U.S. vice president recently extolled the one-child policy on his visit to China. The White House’s backtracking cannot really efface that.
Here is the lede paragraphs from the linked article:
Aba was just 12-years-old when she left her hometown of Muse in Burma to visit Yunnan Province in China’s far southwest. When she crossed the border, she was expecting to spend only a few hours away from home.
But it would be three long years before Aba saw her family again. Like thousands of other young girls and women from Burma, she had been duped into coming to China so she could be sold into a forced marriage to one of the growing number of Chinese men who – because there are not enough girl babies born in China – cannot find wives any other way.
During her time in China, Aba endured routine beatings, while never being able to communicate with her family or even go outside on her own. Above all, she lived with the knowledge that she was destined to be married to the son of the family that had bought her – as if she was one of the pigs or chickens that ran around their farm.
“I was sold for 20,000 Yuan (£1,880),” said Aba.
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I felt I had to share this. I once wrote an essay for one of Glen Yeffeth’s ‘Smart Pop’ series of books which asked the same question there that Batman in this clip asks at the end.
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You may be wondering, dear reader, of the source of my admiration for Aishwarya Rai, formerly Miss World, now Mrs Bachchan.
It is one of those things that is better seen than described. Below the cut is the film clip of the first scene I ever saw of a Bollywood movie.
Now, to put yourself in the state of mind I was in, go watch all the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies ever made, romantic, fair to the eye, graceful, musical, lyrical. Then wait ten years, meanwhile watching the ugliest and loudest MTV style quick-cut videos ever made, preferably starring Madonna flaunting her unimpressive bosom, so that you are convinced that grace and beauty have disappeared from the Earth forever.
Then come across the following by accident.
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A reader I hope is young and not being serious asks:
Let me get this straight: you, a presumably rational individual who writes science fiction stories for a living, sincerely believes that the creator of our 13.7 billion year-old universe of 70 sextillion stars magically impregnated a human female about 2000 years ago – a woman who then gave birth to a son named Jesus who performed miracles, rose from the dead and served as the creator’s messenger to humanity?
This might make for a mildly interesting, if outlandish, science fiction story, but the source of your belief system? If you’re going to base your life philosophy on absurd myths, why not choose something a bit more interesting? Why not master the Dark Side of the Force or the Golden Path, becoming a Sith Lord or a God-Emperor and strive to rule a Galaxy? Why choose something as ridiculous and wretched as Christianity? I must admit I am rather perplexed…
My answer:
I am more than a presumably rational individual, I am a champion of atheism who gave arguments in favor of atheism so convincing that three of my friends gave up their religious belief due to my persuasive reasoning powers, and my father stopped going to church.
Upon concluding through a torturous and decades-long and remorseless process of logic that all my fellow atheists were horribly comically wrong about every basic point of philosophy, ethics and logic, and my hated enemies the Christians were right, I wondered how this could be. The data did not match the model.
Being a philosopher and not a poseur, I put the matter to an empirical test.
For the first time in my life, I prayed, and said. “Dear God. There is no logical way you could possibly exist, and even if you appeared before me in the flesh, I would call it an hallucination. So I can think of no possible way, no matter what the evidence and no matter how clear it was, that you could prove your existence to me. But the Christians claim you are benevolent, and that my failure to believe in you inevitably will damn me. If, as they claim, you care whether or not I am damned, and if, as they claim, you are all wise and all powerful, you can prove to me that you exist even though I am confident such a thing is logically impossible. Thanking you in advance for your cooperation in this matter, John C. Wright.” — and then my mind was at rest. I had done all I needed to do honestly to maintain my stature as someone, not who claimed to be logical, objective and openminded, but who was logical, objective, and openminded.
Three days later, with no warning, I had a heart attack, and was lying on the floor, screaming and dying.
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Is science fiction innately and naturally inclined to be hostile to religion?
After all, in FOUNDATION, the church of the Galactic Spirit turns out to be a hoax, likewise the messiahship of Muad-Dib in DUNE, likewise the Church of Foster in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, likewise the evil church of evil on GATHER, DARKNESS or RISE OF ENDYMION, likewise the church of the rebels in SIXTH COLUMN. On the other hand, Christians as a whole are pretty hostile to false prophets and heretics, and Americans, like all good Protestant nations, are pretty hostile to organized Churches. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, would like our church to get organized, and we will get around to that real soon. So are these portrayals of false religions innate to science fiction, or are they merely the dramatic inventions of stories who are not necessarily condemning religion as much as condemning falseness?
I would say this question breaks into three questions: (1) is there anything innately hostile in SFF to religion portrayed as a man-made institution? (2) is there anything innately hostile in SFF to religion portrayed as supernaturally-made institution? (3) is there anything innately hostile in SFF to supernaturalism in general?
All of these are difficult and subtle questions, and I am in the middle of writing a Christian Science Fiction book right now, where Mary Baker Eddy teams up with Nikolai Tesla to repel an invasion of the lepers of Mars with the help of a mind-reading lion, called ASLAN IS A SLAN, so I can deal with these difficult and subtle questions in only the most shallow and trivial way.
Let us start with a definition: science fiction is the mythology of a scientific age.
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