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.