L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 16

Political Correctness vs. The Search for Happiness

A debate broke out recently about political correctness between myself and some of my fellow SF fans. (You can read Matthew M. Foster’s response here.)

I am very fond of Mr. Foster, but I must respectfully disagree.

Once, many years ago, I spent a week at a Rensi Zen monastery. It was housed in a beautiful estate in the Catskill Mountains in New York. The estate had once belonged to Harriet Beecher Stowe, (who happens to be, I am told, a distant relative of mine. ) The entire week was spent in quiet meditation and contemplation.

I had a lot of time to pray and think.

I was young, just out of college. I spent the week delving into the heart of my personal life philosophy. By the end of the week, I had come to a realization:

We all want to be happy.

To be happy, we must be wise.

To be wise, we must be free to make mistakes

or we cannot find our way to wisdom.

Because of this, I am a strong supporter of the great dialogue that is civilization. Were it up to me, nothing would ever interfere with it.

Political correctness quenches this conversation. Here are some of the reasons I say that:

 

* It replaces discussion and debate with Puritan-style disapproval.

You don’t explain to someone why you disagree with them. You speak so as to shut them down as quickly as possible.

 

* It keeps people from sharing politically correct views in a way that might convince.

Because of this, if the person who favors the politically correct position has a good reason for their opinions, the other person will know, because debate has been silenced.

 

*It keeps people from sharing any other view.

If the person who does not favor the politically correct position has a good reasons for supporting their position—the person favoring the politically correct reason will never hear it, because he shut down the debate before he had a chance to hear the reasons.

 

*Rude people are rude anyway.

Most people who really want to be rude don’t care about political correctness, and they are still rude and mean—this means it is the nice people, the people who really don’t want to hurt others feelings—who get attacked and squelched.

 

*It gives a false sense of consensus.

Because people stop voicing views that are not on the accepted list, people who support the politically correct view are left with a false sense of the general public agreeing with them.

 

*It creates backlash.

If you have an opinion and your friend has a different opinion, you can have a conversation.

If you have an opinion, perhaps a mild or moderate one, and every time you voice it, you get slammed for being evil—by people who refuse to even consider your point of view, because they have already labeled anything that doesn’t agree with them as blasphemy…

After a while, you get annoyed.

Some people really believe their position, and they stick to it.

But many people…when their moderate position isn’t accepted, their response is to go the other way. To go rabid, so to speak.

And that is what creates people like Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Vox Day.

People get so tired of being shut down that they find it tremendously refreshing to hear anyone, even someone far extreme of their position, speak openly about whatever it is that is bothering them.

 

* It hides facts.

Once political correctness moves into science—and a few people lose their position for not voicing the party line (which has happened in both the scientific and educational fields)—people stop wanting to publish the truth.

I am sure there are scientists who support the global climate ideas, for instant, but I have yet to meet one. But I keep hearing reports of scientists in the climate field who are keeping their head down, unwilling to publish their results until they either have inconclusive proof of what they have found or the political climate changes.

That means the rest of us are being robbed of honest scientific debate.

One should never be afraid of debate…it’s a good thing, even if you were right all along.

It is a very good thing, if you were wrong.

 

*It encourages rudeness.

People who favor political correctness say it is about politeness. But the same people, so often, also favor shouting down anyone who disagrees with them. They pick a handful of opinions that they declare to be rude, then they shout and scream at people who don’t agree with those opinions.

But they are perfectly willing to be rude themselves on any other topic.

 

*It encourages intolerance.

Any time we decide that anyone who disagrees with an idea is automatically wrong, that is intolerance.

People who favor political correctness often defend themselves by claiming that their opponents are motivated by hatred. But, people can have hour long debates on topics as frivolous at pie vs. cake. It stands to reason that they might have reasonable but differing views on such important subjects as: abortion, race, gay marriage, etc.

Reasons that have nothing to do with hatred.

To automatically assume that any contrary opinion is wrong, without giving it a hearing, is intolerance.

Tolerance means listening to views we disagree with—not merely supporting ideas we think someone else (i.e. Christians, the establishment, the previous generation etc) doesn’t like.

Tolerance is hard.

But it is worth it.

Especially when, as often happens, the tables turn and, suddenly, our particular group is not the one in the ascendant.

*

So, to review: We all want happiness. To get it, we need to be wise. To learn wisdom, we need the freedom to fail, to be stupid, to walk the wrong way, and, yes, even to think wrong thoughts.

Lake at the Zendo

Freedom, particularly, Freedom of Speech, is absolutely necessarily to happiness. How about we all stop shouting and go back to the days of:

“I may disagree with what you say,

but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”

 

Iron Chamber of Memories

Once upon a time, my husband was an atheist. Then he had a heart attack, and was healed by prayer. He both converted and went to the hospital to find out what happen. They told him, his heart itself was healthy, but he needed a quintuple bipass.

When he came home from the hospital, he had a dream. He dragged himself out of bed to the office and wrote down, from the dream, an outline for an entire novel. Almost twelve years later, he wrote the entire novel in five weeks. (Normally writing a novel takes him six months at least.)

Today, that novel is now available: Iron Chamber of Memories.

Comments

 

 

Superversive Blog: Interview with Frank Luke

An interview with author Frank Luke, who gives one of the best arguments for why it is not immoral for Christians to read and write fantasy I've ever seen.

How did you come to write your book?

Rebirths started as a short story called “New Life.” I'd written several of those, and had an idea while feeding my youngest about a new character. I'd been wondering about a necromancer who appeared in my-unreleased-starter novel. How did she come to be? “New Life” explored that. She's the antagonist even though she's working with the main character. I sent the story to an editor. He wrote back that it needed a sequel. That sequel novella, “This Body of Death,” came back from him that with another piece that length, the three together could go in a single-author collection. “New Life,” “This Body of Death,” and “Once Called” were that collection. That publishing house folded, and I've taken the book indie since.

Have you always wanted to write? Or did it suddenly come upon you?

I've wanted to write for as long as I can remember. I first started writing Star Trek: The Next Generation fanfics in junior high and high school. I stopped writing any fiction of length during college and seminary, but that creative itch just was not satisfied. The last year of seminary, an idea started forming, and I went with it. I've been writing ever since. Someday I may pull that novel out and give it some attention.

Some people feel Christians should not write fantasy. What is your take on this issue?

I've read some of those arguments. They never held water for me. I can't see anything inherently sinful about writing fantasy. If it was, then Christians shouldn't even read fantasy, but there is no argument you can make against reading fantasy that doesn't cut out all fiction (read those, too). Granted, there are types of fiction that Christians should stay away from. I'll just name two obvious ones: torture porn and erotica. But we aren't talking about anything like that.

I write fantasy because it touches the spirit in ways that other genres don't. One reader of Rebirths, a widower, said Derke's grief over his wife's death mirrored his own path through grief. I believe the breath of life that God gave our first parents is that human beings create art for art's sake. We don't paint to mark our territory. The primary purpose of song and dance is not to attract a mate. We do those things because we are creative, as God intended us to be. If you eliminate all forms of art, you eliminate life. God wants us to live life abundantly. Why would we even think of saying that the art of story telling is off limits to Christians? Instead, we should be writing the very best fantasy.

Two of the foundational fantasy authors were devout Christians, George MacDonald and Tolkein. Christians writing fantasy today aren't entering Satan's territory. We're staking our place on the front lines of a war to keep what our predecessors started. Yeah, there's a lot of junk out there in fantasy writing, but name one genre that doesn't have junk. Those who say Christians shouldn't write fantasy say we should be focusing on writing Bible studies. One reason they give is that there are a lot of junk Bible studies out there, so we need good Bible studies to combat the bad. That applies to fantasy and sci fi. The bad needs to be countered with the good.

Some would also have a problem with Rebirths being a dark fantasy–people have said they read it in full light because some scenes are downright scary. It's the same thing. There is nothing inherently sinful about horror. Writing to showcase gore, death, and debauchery is wrong, but spine tinglers are not the same category. I couldn't do a slasher story.

You mentioned that someone complained that the book was “too Catholic” but you, yourself, are not Catholic. Could you explain how this came to be?

As a Christian writer, I have to be true to God and to the story. The story wouldn't work any other way. I didn't sit down and say, “ah how subversive would it be for a Pentecostal pastor to write a book with a Catholic character.” I like tradition and don't do things just to stick it to the man. The scene pointed to is where the main character asks the priest to shrive him. It takes place in the thirteenth century, there are no indications anywhere of Derke doubting any of the sacraments, Derke has had his issues with the Father in the early parts of the book, but he has repented and returned to faith. In that final scene, with an Orthodox baptism and communion already taking place, for Derke to not confess would be out of character.

Who are some of the authors/books that inspire you and your work?

Rebirths has been described as “imagine if CS Lewis wrote an Elder Scrolls novel.” I can see that, though I've never played Elder Scrolls or even know if they have novel tie-ins. Also in Rebirths is a dwarven priest named Father Phaeus. I was reading a lot of GK Chesterton when Phaeus came to be. The next writer didn't inspire Rebirths because I only found him a year ago, but I have to list John C. Wright. There's more than one shout out to him in Seven Deadly Tales, a book of mineexploring the seven deadly sins that is not related to Rebirths. For example, the demoness refers to Satan as “Fixer,” and in another story, a character makes the comment about how the Hugos used to mean something.

How has writing surprised you?

Two things surprise me the most about writing. What amazes me the most is how the characters and stories take on a life of their own. If you try to force the story in the wrong direction or take the character out of character, the whole thing suffers. I'm working on a companion set of stories to Seven Deadly Tales right now. I expected the stories at Joshua's Pawn Shop to be sweet, whimsical tales or short adventures highlighting the cardinal virtues and heavenly graces. Nope. “Fun and Games” clocked in at 14,500 words, and “Legacies” is 33,000 and still growing.

The second thing that surprised me is how much fun it is! If I'm not having fun writing it, you're not going to have fun reading it. Even my dark writing was fun to write.

Are there plans for a sequel to Rebirths?

Weavings is in the works. More people have asked me about the Joshua's Pawn Shop stories, so I'm giving it priority. But Rebirths and Weavings are planned to be part of an open-ended series. Rebirths was three connected novellas. Weavingsis a set of three vignettes, highlighting an event in Derke's past, each followed by a novella showing how those events are still impacting the present. It also features the greatest adventure of all—romance. Derke and his love interest marry and begin the adventure of family while still serving in their ministry. At this point, those stories will feature the Wild Hunt, lycanthropes, and the king of nightmares.

What do you do when you are not writing?

It's either family or church besides writing. I make sure to spend time with my wife and our sons. Also, I'm an associate pastor, and so I'm usually working on my Wednesday night series. I can also be found preparing stuff for the church's Royal Rangers outpost. I'm the Ranger Coordinator for our relaunched outpost.

Rebirths will be on sale for 0.99 from Wed the 16th of March until the 23rd.

Rebirths: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013CDEI7M

To read more:

Franks blog: http://frankluke.com/

Where he answers Bible questions: http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/users/363/frank-luke

Seven Deadly Tales: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019BJAS3Y

 

Overheard AT The Wright Household

Juss: "And that is the character I made up."

Orville" "Sad backstory?"

Juss: "Haven't made it up yet."

 

And now they are trying to combine Batman and Wolverine. Bat-erine?

SuperversiveSF Podcast Now

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http://superversivesf.com/2016/02/20/...

Superversive Blog: Interview with Author Marina Fontain

Finally, a distopia by someone who has actually lived in one!

Today, we have an interview with Marina Fontaine of Liberty Island, author of the new book, Chasing Freedom.

How did you come to write this book?

It all began with a flash fiction contest at Liberty Island, an online fiction magazine. A New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had written a fictional piece sometime in late 2013 that had future U.S. over-run by zombies because the politicians defunded CDC (or something like that, anyway). Liberty Island challenged its members to “write better.” I had a good chuckle, wished my writer friends good luck and went to bed.

Overnight, I had a “vision,” if you will, of an American family packing up to move to Canada. Also, they would be transported by a horse-and-buggy arrangement. That was all I knew. Mind you, before this happened, I had never written fiction in my life, but I got curious as to how this setup might happen. Why are they leaving? Why Canada? Why horse and buggy and not a car or bus or plane?

You can probably tell where this is going. I wrote out the full flash fiction piece, and Liberty Island published it along with other entries. But I kept wanting to know more about the world. I started getting more characters, more stories, and it just kept growing until at some point I realized this could be a full novel. And so here I am, much to my surprise, being told I can no longer call myself an “aspiring” author because my book is actually out there.  

 

How did you pick the genre?

Dystopia is a natural fit for me as it happens to be a combination of writing “what you know” and “what you read.” Having grown up in the former Soviet Union, I know first hand how an oppressive society operates—what it does to people, how the system sustains itself, but also the potential weaknesses and cracks that are invisible to the outsiders. I have brought a lot of this understanding into my writing, and it helped make it more grounded and realistic.

I have also read many dystopian novels, both classics and the more recent offerings. There were themes that I have loved, but also points of disagreement with some of the visions out there. I have tried to address some of what I thought were the pitfalls of the genre and create something that was fresh and—hopefully—exciting, even to the readers who might have been over-saturated with the dystopian literature as a whole.

 

Can you tell us (without too many spoilers) a little about the characters and their journey?

In short, my heroes are ordinary people who rise to the occasion, and my villains are those who do not. A big theme in my novel is individual choices, and how anyone can end up either making the world better or being led into doing evil. Thus, none of the characters are over-the-top cartoons. They are all recognizable and easy to understand.

For example, the main protagonists of my novel start out simply as teenagers posting subversive information on the Internet and end up leading the country-wide Rebellion movement. It comes at a terrible cost, but they chose that path and paid the price even though most in their position would not. There are several other protagonists as well, who mostly just wanted to live their lives, but get forced into picking a side—again, at a price.

On the flip side, the villains are more or less regular people who for various reasons become trapped in positions where they either act in despicable ways or enable others in doing so. The true villain in my novel is the system that destroys people’s souls. It is one of the themes not often addressed when talking of totalitarian societies. We tend to focus on the obvious victims, who get jailed or tortured or killed. But what of the many more who die not in body, but in soul, little by little, and often by their own choice to simply “get along”? That’s a bit of a soapbox for me, and I tried to work it quite a bit into the novel.

 

What do you do when you are not writing?

Here’s where it gets awkward. I have the least creative day job in the world—an accountant for a real estate company (OK, I can get pretty creative with those expense classifications, but nevertheless…) Aside from that, I am a mother of three and a pet parent to four guinea pigs. In my copious spare time, I read and review books, blog and hang out with my friends on the Internet. And before you ask, shockingly enough, my wonderful husband puts up with all of this. I have been very blessed indeed.

 

Is this your first book? Do you have others planned?

Chasing Freedom is my first. It is self-contained, although I might over time write a few short stories set in the same world. There is an anthology in the works called (tentatively) Right Turn Only that has accepted my submission of a short story based on the background of one of the characters in the novel.

As for completely new material, I am currently working on an idea that might become a short story or a novelette, depending on how fleshed out it becomes. One thing I’m finding out is that once inspiration strikes, you as a writer have no choice but follow, and I’m excited to discover where it ends up.

 

 

Chasing Freedom:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019KRCJL6/

Personal Blog: Marina's Musings

http://marinafontaine.blogspot.com/

LIberty Island Creator Forum:

https://www.libertyislandmag.com/creator/mafontaine/home.html

 

 

Superversive Blog: Guest Post by S. Dorman

Guest poster S. Dorman returns with another powerful essay:

 

My Hero, Lost On A Mountain In Maine

One of my heroes was lost on a mountain in Maine. Not on just any mountain, but The Greatest Mountain—Katahdin, it was named of the Abenaki. Highest mountain in the state and sharing with downeast coastal Quoddy Head first light each day in the continental U.S.. The mountain has a distinctive profile, standing lone and long. Its two often cloud-swathed peaks are connected by a narrow path of eroding stone called the Knife Edge, some places 2-3 ft. wide, some places dropping off almost sheer to the valley below. Below the summit of Baxter is a plateau where my hero spent part of his first day wandering in clouds, once dropping through krumholtz. Thoreau, one of the first to write about Katahdin, was guided partway by a native Abenaki and, going on from there, he may have taken the Abol Slide for his climb. We don’t think he made it to the top. The slide has been a well-known hazardous trail for generations. Abol is recently closed to hikers for its accident prone unstable debris, in most places solely an abrupt fall of talus, the unending eating away of rock in numberless pieces by frost-wedging — action begun by the glaciers. That glacial debris is in the Gulf of Maine an eon after these giants left us with nothing but rocks. Rocks.

My hero was lost on this mountain, terminus of the Appalachian Trail, in 1939. How can someone be lost on a mountain, you say? There’s only one direction to go — down. After reaching the summit with his companion, he descended to wander through cloud on the plateau below the summit over rocks and stunted mountain trees called krumholtz. But the surrounding wilderness below Katahdin is where my hero was truly lost, while searchers refused to look anywhere but on the mountain itself. They did not come within ten miles of him afterward, believing him perhaps fallen into a crevice of rock. He had fallen so, in the krumholtz, but managed to climb up and out. Altogether he was lost nine days, and covered perhaps 75 erratic miles. Coming from the suburbs of New York City, he nonetheless had had some youthful training in Boy Scouts, and tried to follow what he had learned with them: follow streams down. He needed fresh water more than anything and thought this plan would keep him from thirst and bring him out to civilization. He was dressed as a day hiker on getting separated from his party in clouds at the summit.

To tell you why Donn is my hero would take a catalog of physical, mental, and spiritual difficulties. At the head of the physical list is weakness from hunger. Next, for me, would be biting bugs: relentless blackflies, deer flies, mosquitoes, and another category of blood eaters, leeches, a.k.a. bloodsuckers. Partial nakedness was a difficulty: Before his separation in the clouds he’d kept his jacket but given his sweatshirt to a companion. Donn also lost his dungarees to miscalculation in a leap over one of the numerous gaps caused by glacial erratics in a stream he was following. After slashing his sneakers on talus, he lost them and suffered embedded thorns, deep cuts and swollen feet, stiff toes, and the loss of part of his big toe. I don’t need to add wild animals to the list because these turned out to be a source of comfort to him, even the bears. I think this would not be so today because coyotes now roam in packs through the state, but add rainstorms, fierce sunburn, sickness and vomiting.

A catalog of my hero’s difficulties would not be complete without acknowledgement of both psychic and spiritual sufferings. And this is where the real heroic harrowing comes in. He had punctuated the first day with prayer, and ended it with more. (Later he discovered that people across the USA had been praying for him.) On the second day, Donn was afflicted with images of delusion so strong that he was instantly convinced of their reality. He could not understand why people and mechanisms would not respond to him when he tried to communicate or confront them. It wasn’t until his knees, on trying to stand, appeared as metallic mechanisms that his prayers took on a strong character and were no longer simply a matter of habit. His prayers became a potent necessity.

Praying worked miracles in his ordeal, but always he felt God encouraging him to get up and keep walking. He had to make choices regarding his route that were beyond his ken. There was the time he decided to forsake an old tote road and telephone line tacked to trees in order to follow the water. Things of human make he came across in this wilderness were moldering and decrepit, camps, bedding, empty tin cans. Sometimes he was forced just to put one foot before the other. Sometimes he was unable to do so and had to crawl. Once he felt strong gentle hands lifting him by the shoulders, setting him on uncertain trembling legs, moving him along just a bit.

Sometimes it seemed Someone else was talking to me. They wanted me out of the woods, going home. They would keep me sane if I listened.

 Another time, near the end, he felt empty blackness come up into his head and mind. To me this blackness seems spiritual in nature but may have been caused by near starvation. Or perhaps it was simply incapacity of a body that could not follow on forever.

As noted, the book was first written and published in 1939 after the ordeal, but has since become iconic, and read in the Maine schools. The same first person narrative in other editions of print and audio have followed, with plans to dramatize.

The riveting audio book performance is by actor Amon Purinton. He portrayed the experience of Donn’s receiving a bowl of soup, after near starvation in the wilderness as though he were being given a chalice of shed blood just then turned into wine.

One thing to add to this catalog of heroic ordeal. My hero, Donn Fendler, was 12 years old when he was lost on Katahdin in Maine.

Donn Fendler,

Lost on a Mountain in Maine.

The riveting audio book performance is by child actor Amon Purinton. He made the experience of Donn’s seeing a bowl of soup miraculous.

And here is a connection to science fiction: http://thegreenandbluehouse.com/2016/01/18/lost-on-a-mountain-in-malacandra/

The Hunt Trail Donn climbed to reach the summit:

Comments

Superversive Blog: Guest Post — Where Religion and Fantasy Meet

This essay began as a post on another blog. I commented on it and said that I'd love to post something on this subject for the Superversive Blog. And, here it is!

Theologic License

 by Matthew Schmidt.

An apologia before I begin. Being Christian, and more particularly Catholic, I am writing this from the perspective of a writer considering Catholic theology while writing. However, I believe the same issue will occur to anyone who is attempting to write but also is concerned about their theological accuracy, whatever their theology may be.

The problem of mixing speculative fiction with actual religion has existed since the first time Og told a ghost story around the cave's fire, and, having returned to hunting the next day, wondered what ghosts meant for the Great Spirit. Whatever Og's conclusion was has been lost to time, but we see it again more recently (relatively speaking) in The Divine Comedy. In the depths of Hell, Dante comes across Odysseus, who is eternally punished for attempting to reach Purgatory by the sole effort of humans. What exactly the presence of Odysseus implied for the panoply of feuding Greek divinities of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the further reality of the True Divine, is not considered.

But while Og needed only entertain his tribesmen for a few minutes, and Dante used Odysseus as a symbol of the inadequacy of mortal powers, the modern speculative fiction author does not get off so easily.

The questions for the fantasy author have plagued the genre since Tolkien. They arrive like rubberneckers at the world's construction site, incessantly pestering the author. If there is a fictional pantheon, are those gods “real?” Are they angelic like the Valar of Valinor, or noble beings like the Overcyns of Skai? Or are they mere frauds as Tash—a safe choice, but then Tash actually appears at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia and the issues are immediately raised. Add magic and ethical issues enter immediately, and whole essays have been written on the topic (see the excellent one by Tom Simon.)

The science fiction author can only avoid the same questions with sufficiently hard science and sufficient planning ahead. (Be sure to put three or so bishops on your generation ship to avoid issues of apostolic succession.) Reach for any other ingredient—time travel, artificial intelligence, or worse yet, extraterrestrial life—and now you have some irritating theological question, one that will devour your creative energies like a black hole.

And avoiding that singularity is the key. In my experience as a writer, attempting to write any kind of speculative fiction while staying behind every jot and tittle of established theology is futile. Fear of writing heretical ideas will do more damage to your writing than actually writing something theologically inaccurate.

After all, by the very definition of fiction, we write of things which God did not do. For Divine Wisdom did not see fit to make Mars habitable to life, allow steam to be able to power giant battle mechs, give information the ability to travel faster than light, or open doors to adjacent dimensions on a convenient schedule. Even “literary” fiction cannot escape this, as whenever it invents an character or happening that does not exist, it tells of an option that the Creator did not take. This leaves only fiction which describes events exactly as they happened, i.e. nonfiction.

But suppose you are willing to stretch the bounds of theology. Should you create a new theology to encompass your alterations? It depends. I’ve found that attempting to construct a sound theology for an idea before using it, unless this is actually relevant to the story, is also pointless, and also hamstringing. There was no point in Lewis breaking off onto a discourse on what Tash actually was in the middle of The Last Battle. At the same time, had he never considered what Jesus would be like in a world like Narnia, we would never have Aslan.

But let us return to Dante for a moment. The Divine Comedy is inaccurate in multiple ways, even setting aside the unexplained existence of various figures of Greek myth. The Catholic Church does not teach anyone specific is in Hell, let alone their location and specific punishment, and Dante must have been well aware of this. But the point of the Inferno is not to map judgments to sinners, or a soapbox for Dante to place his adversaries in eternal damnation. The Inferno depicts the soul of the unjust, and whatever liberties it takes to do this are to show poetic truths, not theological ones. Odyesseus is placed where he is to show the inadequacy of natural powers to reach the supernatural.

But could Dante had succeeded if he had stayed within the boundaries of theology? No. There was no one more suited to attempt Purgatory than Odysseus, and fail. Had Dante even invented another figure, that figure would require his own odyssey, which, to have the same power, would require yet more theological inaccuracies to create dangers against which mortal strength could prevail. Only then could this new Odysseus fail against the supernatural.

In that sense, even the Odyssey must contain poetic truths, no matter its pantheon. So, too, can we bring a great many works into the realm of the holy things.

But how far can we stretch this?

I will now take an example from the world of videogames. Of all the games I have ever played, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor: Overclocked is by far the most blasphemous. Aside from the game-enforced necessity of summoning demons (in the post-apocalyptic Tokyo of the game's dark plot), and the consequentialism which drenches every “choice”, its greatest offense against sound theology is its “God.” The theology of “God” (as identified by the direct use of the Divine Name) is bizarre and contradictory, both shown as an omnipotent Judeo-Christian Deity and also only a most powerful being that overpowered the previous most powerful being. Said “God” is as if from the Old Testament filtered through a pagan lens: no mercy for sins, no remorse over doing evil to do good, and no ability to raise the dead. (Not even the Messiah can raise the dead, one character says to another in one scene.) 

But even despite that theology, and the extreme liberties which the game takes with biblical stories, even then there is a kind of poetic truth that would have been lost with a more accurate theology. Only if resorting to the use of demons, and only if demons are powerful, can it speak of the desire of power and its abuse. Only with the pagan need to justify blood with blood can it offer the choices it does, which sacrifice a few for the many. And only if God would create a paradise on Earth through violence would there be any reason against joining Him, and only if God could possibly be defeated would there by any reason for attempting to oppose Him. By a bad theology, it makes that final real choice: paradise of ruthless order, or hellscape of freedom. And even with all its darkness, at the very end of one of the last battles comes one of the most moving scenes I have ever seen in a game, a true eucatastrophy.

Do I recommend anyone go as far as DSO? No. I think there are ways to tell a similar story with much less darkness, and far less blasphemy. But such a different story would only be able to tell different truths. Yet, while different, possibly better.

And that is my final advice. What matters not is if a work fiction bends the truth. What matters is the truth it tells. A story can be utterly, and knowingly, inaccurate, yet still show a beauty it could not otherwise. Or, I believe, a story can stay within the boundaries of theology, and show nothing but evil. (For even demons believe there is a God.) And that is determined not by studying theology, or ignoring it, but hearing the call of Beauty in the wild.

 

For more about our author: http://oandhbooks.theinspiredinstruct...

 

Live Chat with the Fabulous Milo!

We are chatting live tonight at Superversive SF. Rumor has it we will be joined by the Fabulous Milo Yiannnoupolis.

Live chat here!

 

Interview with Jessica Benya, author of Electronica

Jessica Benya and I have in common that we are both authors who attended St. John's College in Annapolis. The difference between us, however, is that I attened in the 80s, and she's still a student! 

When I was visiting the college in September, the book store manager brought her book to my attention. I read it and enjoyed it. It was rough at parts, but the character and the story drew me along. 

Impressed that a college student could also publish an enjoyable book, I asked Miss Benya some questions about Electronica, her novel about a futuristic distopia based on…dance.

Q: It’s quite unusual for someone to publish a novel while still in college. What led to the publication of Electronica?

           Electronica started around my senior year of high school. By being in the Humanities program, I was required to write either a twenty-paged essay or a ten-paged essay and a creative project. I had been writing stories for at least nine years prior, so writing was a very big part of my life. This helped me decide that this would be the year to finally write my novel. By the project being assigned by the school, I had very strict deadlines, which I needed to start my writing career.

            Thus, the first two drafts were finished before I graduated high school. Then it took two years until I finally completed it. I’m sure everyone who writes knows that feeling when they are editing that they can always make their work better and, by consequence, the said work never comes out. That was what I struggled with for a couple years. Then after a few beta readers and fearing I’d never have my novel released, and changing different scenes and so on, my novel happened to come out before my junior year of college.

 

Q:How did you come up with the idea of using dance as the distinguishing characteristic for the different factions?

           Around the time I started to think of what to write about, I noticed many people in high school who preferred one general genre as opposed to multiple. That concept intrigued me since I wasn’t like that at all. I enjoy a multitude of genres. But since there were so many people who enjoyed only one type of genre, and those people split up into friend groups of the same music type, different factions of genres were set before me. And since I love multiple genres, that’s how I came up with the idea of people switching genres and living near the city since the city has all genres that anyone can walk to despite where they were sorted.

            Also, that same year I was part of a dance club, which I’m sure influenced why the deciding factor became dance. Dance is a good way to observe the culture of the different genres just as much as the music itself. You could argue that Electronica music and Classical music have more similarities than you realize, as one of my former teachers did, but their dancing is extremely different. That is why Classical and Electronica are on the two opposite sides of the spectrum. So dance became the deciding factor as to where people were sorted because of how the dancing in each genre varies greater to the naked eye than the music may itself, and speaks loudly of that genres culture.

            Finally, there was a scientific reason as to why dance became the deciding factor. Dancing raises endorphins, and the adrenaline different music causes would be visible in someone’s dance. By dancing, Vesper could monitor which genre excites and motivates an individual the most as well as noticing if the individual’s dancing fits well into that certain genre.

 

Q: There are so many schools of dance, how did you pick which ones you wanted to use for your novel?

           Well, every type of school of dance is present in Vesper. They are represented as different branches of the main generalized genres. Like DJ is in the Dub Step branch of the Electronica genre. There are other branches in the Electronica genre such as: House, Trance, Trap, Disco, etc. It would be impossible to write out every type of dance in one novel so I picked where the characters would be from and focused on the schools of dance that they would be inclined to. However, I wanted to be sure to touch on the opposite sides of the spectrum the society set up, so Classical ballet or polka-type dances rivaling Techno break dancing. All the schools of dance between them are set into branches within very generalized genres.

 

Q: The main character of Electronica is DJ. As of the end of the book, DJ’s first adventure has come to an end, but one could imagine many new challenges before her. Are there additional novels planned?

           My second novel is currently in the making. Now that DJ has gotten so far, I wanted to show her personal struggles as a young adult pushed into such a high position in society. Also, DJ would be trying to repay her debt to those who helped her in the Rounds. That is a story all on its own that I am excited to finish as soon as I can.

 

Q: The story has factions (like Divergent) and a contest (like Hunger Games), were these two series an influence on your work? And what other books/movies/sources do you feel influenced your ideas?

             Actually I didn’t know of Divergent when I began writing Electronica. The factions came about because of my love for organization and seeing the people around me that loved singular genres herding together. I remember being recommended Divergent a lot though because of the different factions. Hunger Games had some influence on my decision to create a competition, so did the Olympics that were happening the year I began writing.

           Finally, Rome was a big influence since I was taking Latin at the time and was learning about the Roman culture. Originally, my world was very much based off of Roman culture because I was so enthralled by it, and the Rounds were loosely based off of the Olympics. Then I pulled away from it, seeing too many similarities with other novels, and created my own world based on music and dance.

 

Q: How did you come to be at St. John’s and are you enjoying the Great Books Program?

           I came to be at St. John’s hearing that it was a writer’s college and had a different method of teaching by discussion rather than by lectures. I love the program, and am currently going through my junior year. While being here the college has changed my perspective on math and science, and I find myself enjoying them more. Linguistics is something I enjoy as well, for I took Spanish and Latin before college and then learned Ancient Greek here, and now am learning French.

           Finally, their music program is wonderful, and inspired multiple instances in my book when the music is explained in depth during particular situations when DJ is learning how to progress in the Rounds. The program has done a lot for me with my academic writing and speech, and I am excited to advance into my next semester.

 

Q:Do you have any particular plans yet for after your graduate? Do you have plans for other series?

           After graduating the idea of teaching excites me, so I’m currently leaning towards education. I plan to continue writing regardless, and hopefully complete this series of DJ’s world. Electronica is planned to be the first book of a trilogy. After this trilogy, I do have another series in mind that’s much more fantasy based. But I’m currently trying to keep my mind focused on the second book of my current trilogy, and will look at the ideal fantasy series later if and when I get there.

 

Q: I thought you did a very clever job of portraying the plight of those who could not dance without being too heavy handed. How did you come up with the idea of the substitutes?

           The idea of substitutes for the Council Member children came to me because of how publicized their births would be. A Council Member is equivalent to a President or a King in this world. If the President had a child, then the media would be filled with news of the new baby. Since the media would be very present and the Council Member wouldn’t show their child for safety reasons, they’d switch the child with a substitute. This way, the Council Member and their child remain safe behind the presented substitute.

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I am grateful to Jessica for taking the time to answer my questions. It is quite intriguing that her faction-based story developed independently of other stories, such as Divergence. I have seen that happen many times. It is always interesting to me.

For more about Electronica, you can find the book here.