Gabriel Mckee's Blog: SF Gospel, page 5

Asimov's and Analog 2009 reader's polls

It's the end of the year-- and that means it's time to share my votes in the annual Asimov's readers poll and Analog's Anlab. Links are to my reviews where applicable; excerpts from many of the stories are available on Asimov's and Analog's respective websites.

ASIMOV'S

Novella

1. The Spires of Denon by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (April/May)
2. Broken Windchimes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (September)
3. Act One by Nancy Kress

Kristine
Kathryn Rusch has had a busy year, it seems, writing one amazing...

SF Magazine Roundup!

The SF magazines are piling up next to my desk... has it really been
four months since I last reviewed them? Let's get caught up, then:

Robert Reed's "Before My Last Breath" in the October/November 2009
issue of Asimov's looks at the origins of a tradition. In this story, a
coal-mining operation discovers evidence of an ancient alien
civilization, and a team of archeologists comes to some intriguing
conclusions about the aliens' history. They crash-landed millennia ago,
the humans theorize...

Atheism, misotheism, multitheism: The religious landscape of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is a nice coda to the series. It's not, as the creators would have us believe, a comprehensive overview of the story from the Cylons' point of view, nor does it explain every aspect of the eponymous plan. (For instance, there's not a word about the search for a human-Cylon hybrid.) The Plan isn't really about the Cylons collectively at all—rather, it's Cavil's story. Or, rather, it's a tale of two Cavils: one hidden in the fleet and another infiltrating a...

Doctor Who wrestles with fate in "The Waters of Mars"

[Here there be spoilers. You have been warned.:]

I have to be honest: I've generally been a bit underwhelmed by the between-seasons Doctor Who specials. They're always fun, but they've generally felt a bit lackluster compared to the full seasons. I'm happy to report that "The Waters of Mars" is easily the best of the specials yet. It's also quite possibly the bleakest Doctor Who story ever produced. And both of those qualities are directly linked to the way in which the story tackles...

Will conservative Christians flock to The Road?

Get Religion and Beliefnet report that Dimension Films has hired a PR firm known for marketing to conservative Christians to help push The Road. The adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's relentlessly bleak postapocalyptic narrative might seem a tough product to sell to the notoriously-picky Christian market; the story involves lots of violence and cannibalism and not a single cute penguin. Still, Beliefnet thinks the effort to get Christians into the theater is a good thing, arguing that...

Joseph Laycock on The Exorcist

There's a great interview on Theofantastique with Joseph Laycock, author of Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampirism, about the religious background of The Exorcist. Drawing on his recent article in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, Joe shares some fascinating thoughts on folk piety, secularism, and supernaturalism. For instance:

One thing I noticed was resistance to the idea that this could
actually be a story about religion.  Numerous theorists (including...

How V drags religion down

I want to like V ; I really do. I have fond memories of the original
series from the '80s, and when I heard that Kenneth Johnson-- also
responsible for one of my favorite SF shows ever, Alien Nation-- was
bringing it back, and that the update would feature not one but two
Firefly actors, I was more than a little thrilled. Imagine my
disappointment, then, to discover that the first episode of the show is
a ham-handed smear of the American left in general and Barack Obama in
particular. V

Bad month for Scientology

It's been a rough month for Scientology-- between unfavorable court decisions, high-profile defections, and the ever-present irritations of Anonymous, October 2009 will certainly not go down in history as their most favorite month. Read more about it in my recent post for Religion Dispatches here.

The post-apocalyptic optimism of The Postman

In my review of the post-apocalyptic anthology Wastelands, I described
the ironically optimistic nature of stories about the end of the world
as we know it:

The fact that there are any stories to tell means that something has
survived. In a way, these aren't end-of-the-world stories at all,
because the world doesn't really end—or rather, the world ends, but
humanity carries on. These are post-apocalyptic stories, and
their focus is not on destruction, but rebuilding. That hopefulness...

The Weird Testament: Crumb's Genesis and the Wolverton Bible

R. Crumb's Book of Genesis Illustrated is now out, and my review is up at Religion Dispatches, in a dual review with the Wolverton Bible.

There is nothing sacred to underground and alternative comics
creators. Irreverence has been a defining characteristic of the
movement since the 1960s, when creators like R. Crumb and Gilbert
Shelton began using the words-and-pictures medium to create scathing,
sex-and-drug-filled satires of square culture. No subject was safe from
the savage pens of these...