Alan Loewen's Blog, page 27
October 16, 2016
Halloween Gift #2 - Kill Your Darlings
Sitting in the window of my favorite coffee shop, I watched Reggie coax his battered Dodge Van into a parking slot. I glanced at my watch and knew something was wrong. Not only was my eccentric friend on time, he was actually a few minutes early. When he eased his bulk out of the van and started looking about, I assumed he forgot that I told him I would meet him inside the cafe.
He finally saw me waving through the window, and he waved back, yet as he walked to the entrance, he still looked about with a look that bordered on fear.
Inside, he shed his coat, and squeezed himself into the seat across from me.
“Skittish, aren’t you?” I asked as he motioned for the waitress.
“Fred, you are not going to believe what I think is happening to me. It’s … it’s incredible and I want you to tell me I’m just losing my mind.”
“Okay. You’re just losing your mind.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said, anger flashing in his eyes.“I think I’m in some serious kim chi.”
“Okay,” I said. “Spill.”
“First let me order something. I’m starved.”
He called the waitress over and ordered breakfast suitable for three men.
“Eating light today,” I said.
“Stress puts me off my feed,” he replied. “This has me all worked up.”
I boded my time as the waitress put a little coffee in Reggie’s cup of milk and sugar and wandered away. After taking a large gulp and a good amount of it joining the other stains on his shirt, he wiped his chin on the back of his hand and sighed. “Well, Fred,” he said, “remember that pile of stories I wrote for my humor anthology?”
I nodded.
“Did you read the one I wrote about the three girls attaining magical powers?”
I rolled my eyes. “Unfortunately. That was—how can I put this kindly?—sophomoric.”
“Well. Here’s the killer. Do you remember the last line of the story?”
I shook my head in the negative.
“Well, I do. I got the blasted thing memorized. I quote: ‘And when I get my hands on the clown who plotted this,’ Priscilla said through clenched teeth, ‘he'll wish he had never been born.’”
“Oh, yeah. I remember something like that.”
Reggie looked around nervously. “Fred, I didn’t write that. The last line I wrote was one of the girls making a crack about their new cheerleading routine.”
“Well … maybe you don’t remember writing that last line or maybe the editor thought she could improve on the story. I don’t know.”
Reggie shook his head. “Neither of them are true. And last night, I got an e-mail.” He reached into his pocket and unfolded a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was a computer printout and other than the typical header which said it was from a Priscilla Waverley, the message itself contained only on line. ‘A good writer kills his darlings. Maybe it’s time for the tables to be turned.’
“It’s a tasteless practical joke,” I said.
Reggie laughed, a high pitched nervous cackle. “Oh, but you see, I’m not a noob when it comes to computers. I know how to find the source of an email from its header.” He blinked at me owlishly through his thick glasses. “Fred, it comes from no known domain.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Reggie, Reggie, Reggie, do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you are saying? You’re trying to get me to believe this e-mail came from a character in one of those silly stories you wrote!”
Reggie leaned in closer. “Fred, you gotta listen to me. Do you remember the super power I gave Priscilla Waverly in the story? I gave her the power to manipulate earth. Now you can ask my wife, but last night Emilia and I woke up to what felt like an earthquake.”
“It was an overloaded eighteen-wheeler driving by your house,” I said in growing impatience.
Then the waitress brought Reggie’s breakfast and our conversation was interrupted by my friend’s frontal assault on three Breakfast Specials. I nursed my coffee and kept silent while he ate. I learned early that getting Reggie to eat and talk at the same time was a guaranteed path to post-traumatic stress disorder.
In ten minutes he shoved his plates aside and hugged his refilled coffee cup like a beloved pet.
“So,” I asked, “what do you want me to do.”
Reggie shook his head. “I think I’m going to need some real help. If I find more evidence like this, you’ll help me right?”
I nodded. “Of course, but I’m telling you that you’re letting your imagination run away with you.. You need to relax. Go write a romance or something.” Reggie sneered and left. Three minutes later I realized he had stiffed me with the bill and the tip.
The next day was Sunday and that afternoon, I had just sat down to watch the latest Dr. Who bootlegs when the phone rang.
“I don’t know who this is and I’m not happy,” I said into the mouthpiece, when I was interrupted by Reggie’s high-pitched wheedle.
“Fred! Fred!” came the tinny voice over the phone, “You gotta help me! Please! Turn on the TV. Go to Channel 8!”
“Hold on,” I said. I found the remote I was sitting on and flipped the channels. A smartly dressed woman stood informing the viewers an unexpected earthquake measuring three on the Richter scale had struck south-central with its epicenter just two miles south of Dillsburg.
Where my friend lived.
“Fred, please. You gotta come. I don’t know what to do.”
“Reggie,” I said into the phone. “You have got to calm down. Literary characters do not come to life. It doesn’t happen.”
I heard my friend sob on the far side of the phone. “Fred. I’m calling from inside my writer’s shed. Priscilla Waverley is standing on top of the hill right across the road. Please come and get me out of here. I don’t think she’ll kill me if there are witnesses.”
Suddenly, I heard my friend shriek and his scream was drowned out by a low growl as if some gigantic beast had reared its head. The line went dead.
In two minutes I was in my car heading to my friend’s home.
My worry increased when the traffic report on the radio told drivers to steer away from the area that contained Reggie’s address.
Twenty minutes later, after lying through my teeth to get through the roadblocks, I came around the corner and brought my car to a halt alongside the road. My jaw hung open in shock.
Reggie’s home still stood intact, but a short distance away in an old field gone to weeds and shrub, an old shack served as his writing office. Or, better to say, had served.
Surrounded by rescue vehicles with their blinking lights, the place where Reggie’s shed should have been was nothing more than a huge gaping sink hole.
I put on the four ways and stepped out of my car. It didn't take any imagination to know my friend could not have survived the earth giving way under his very feet.
Slowly, I turned around to look at the grassy hill my friend had mentioned, the one that would have been clearly visible outside of his office window.
And there she was.
After gingerly climbing over a barbed wire fence, I slowly made my way up the hill to her, carefully picking my way around the occasional cow patty.
She didn’t run. She just stared at the destruction below with a sickly grin on her face.
“Priscilla Waverley?” I asked when I got close.
She turned and looked at me in alarm. “You know me? How do you know me?”
“Reggie told me that you were threatening him.”
She laughed. A little teenage girl giggle. “I think I did more than threaten.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Mind if I ask you a question? I really have to know.”
She shrugged. “Ask away. If I don’t like the question, I’ll just have the earth open up and swallow you. Nobody’ll ever know.”
“Do you have any memories of your life say, about a year or so ago?”
She snorted in contempt. “That’s stupid, of course I …” Suddenly she paused. Her brow furrowed in intense thought and a look of worry came to her face.
“In fact,” I asked, “other than the events in the story Reggie wrote and what you’ve done to scare him, do you have any memories of any life at all?”
She looked at me then. Scared. “I know if I think hard enough …”
“You know,” I interrupted, “I find it ironic that Reggie and his wife always wanted a child and in a unique sense of the word, he actually was your father.”
“Go … go away.”
“You’re guilty of patricide. And because of a perceived slight to your pride, you killed the man that brought you into existence.”
I had her full attention now.
“Now that Reggie’s dead,” I asked, “what’ll happen to you?”
She looked back down the hill at the ruin she caused. “I don’t know. I’ll get by.”
“No,” I said. "Not so. The man who brought you to life and could have sustained you is now dead.”
She looked at me, genuine panic in her face. “But you’re talking to me! You see me!”
I smiled at her. “Who, me? I don’t believe in you.” I turned on my heel and walked back down the hill.
When I got to my car, a policeman stopped me. “Excuse me, sir. But I have to find witnesses. Did you see what happened?”
“No,” I said. “It was well over and done when I arrived.”
“Didn’t I see you up that hill there talking to somebody? Could they have been a witness?”
I looked up at the empty hillside.“My apologies, officer, but you must be mistaken. I haven’t spoken to a living soul since I got here."
(Title graphic is labeled for noncommercial use with modification. Original artwork can be found here.)
October 15, 2016
Halloween Gift #1 - Timely Revenge
Security Interview Transcript
Date: Monday, August 12, 2019
Time: 14:25
Subject: Dean Tevis, Engineer
"You say I killed Drew Carlson and my wife, Lisette, but I'd like to see you prove it. As far as we both know, they probably died peacefully in their sleep ... together. Exactly the way they wanted it.
"And what is Zeus Corporation going to do about it? There can't be a public trial, you know. The miniverse is a military secret, all hush-hush. Can't let that get out now can we with all our government contracts and everything, right?
"So, since none of us can get about our real work until you have the story, here it is.
"Can I have a cigarette? Thanks.
"You fellows brought me into the Genesis Project two years ago. By that time, you already had created a miniverse in that magnetic jar. Man, I wish I had been part of that. To rip a tear in our space/time continuum and create a tiny universe of our very own and all of it contained in a space that to our perspective is the size of a pea. Quantum physics rocks, doesn’t it? And then not only to have power over it all, but create a portal where we can go anywhere you want inside a universe of your own creation? To control its time flow and make it zip ahead twenty thousand years in less than a millisecond.
"I love how it makes me feel like God.
"By the way, how many universes has the Corporation created and destroyed before this one? I can see you either don't know or you can't tell me. No sweat, but I’d love to know. Does it ever make you wonder if our own universe is somebody's experiment? Gives me the willies to think about it, but let's not go there.
"Anyway, I came into the project with my wife, Lisette. I can't believe that I spent all that cash helping her get a doctorate in exobiology and here you guys actually gave her an opportunity to use that worthless degree. Knowing Lisette, I thought the money would have been better spent on basket weaving classes.
"But, Lisette and me? We were happy, emphasis of course on the past tense. I helped control your private little cosmos and she got to go inside and study all those weird little aliens you all evolved in there.
"But I couldn't go in with her. I had to stay out here with the engineering staff and help baby-sit an entire universe while she's in there looking at who-knows-what.
"And she's in there with Drew Carlson. Mister I-Got-Muscles-Instead-Of-Brains and he's in there with my wife and I find out he's doing a lot more than just studying your pets. He's in there making moves on my wife and they think I'm stupid and don't know.
"For pity's sake, man, I'm a freaking engineer! I hack computers in my sleep. Did she really think I wouldn't see the e-mails they were sending each other on their office computers?
"So they want to be together? No sweat. I waited two months until it was just them and them alone on an exploration trip. They go through the Portal to some backwater planet you guys had already seeded with Earth life and when nobody was looking, I aged the entire miniverse ninety thousand years in just a few seconds.
"With Drew and Lisette trapped inside it.
"I already heard the Corporation found the planet filled with little furry imbeciles with hints of Drew's and Lisette's DNA. I guess inbreeding does do in the old sentience genes eventually, but hey, Warren and my wife got to be together, right? They even got the opportunity to raise a little family.
"Anyway, look at the bright side. If I hadn't showed you Security guys a dangerous loophole in the system, you wouldn't have those new safeguards in place. You should thank me.
"Anyway, a planet full of furry little freaks is pretty evident to me that Drew and Lisette lived a long time, so technically, I didn't kill 'em and you can't put me on trial and I'm too valuable for the project, so I'll just head back to work, okay?"
Concluding Report:
The Zeus Corporation has judged Engineer Dean Tevis unfit for further employment. He has been summarily fired and exiled alone to Earth VII, Shallivarden System in the Cathuria Sector and the entire miniverse time flow accelerated by two hundred years.
This case is considered closed.
(Title graphic is in the public domain and is labeled for noncommercial use with modification)
October 12, 2016
Question for Numismatists with Experience in Chinese Coins
Last weekend I was delighted to pick up a beautiful coin from the Western Han Dynasty. Called a whu zhu or 5 zhu coin, the above is quite a nice specimen.
Notice the crescent mark below the open square. Also, called a half moon or fingernail mark, according to my research, the symbol marks the coin as one of the earlier minted coins, but I could be wrong. If anybody reading this has any knowledge of ancient Chinese coins or could forward this entry to somebody who might know, I would be grateful for any insight as to its approximate age and what purpose, if any, the crescent symbol may have represented as not all whu zhu coins are marked.
Please respond in the comments section or you may email me at magic.by.alan AT gmail DOT com.
Thanks!
Shrine War Has Been Accepted For Publication!
This morning I received some of the best news an author could receive:
I especially want to thank Emily Parke Chase, Kathy McQuaig, John Walker, and Eric Hinkle for their editing help.
Dear Alan;
Congratulations! Your story, "The Shrine War," has been chosen for publication in FurPlanet Productions' The Dogs of War.The Shrine War took 116 days to research, write and revise and it was a labor of love. I'm delighted beyond words that Fred accepted my work and that it will be shared with the world. Thanks to everybody who walked this path of creation with me on this blog.
Actually, FurPlanet's goal was 120,000 to 150,000 words. We got almost 40 stories and 300,000 words. So FurPlanet has decided to accept all the stories and to publish two anthologies, one in January and one later in the year. Your story will be published now.
Best wishes;
Fred Patten
I especially want to thank Emily Parke Chase, Kathy McQuaig, John Walker, and Eric Hinkle for their editing help.
October 9, 2016
Discussing Cthulhu At Capclave 2016
From LEFT to RIGHT: Darrell Schweitzer, Tim Powers, A.C. Wise, and some other dude Capclave 2016 is now a pleasant memory and I had the pleasure of moderating two panels this year:
An Animal World discussed the roles of animals, both normal and anthropomorphic, in genre literature and included such luminaries as Mike McPhail, Bernie Mojzes (pronounced "Moses"), Michelle D. Sonnier, and Lawrence M. Schoen (pronounced "Shown"). All of them have impressive publishing credentials.
However, the highlight for me was moderating Sunday morning's panel Cthulhu Wants You! For Breakfast! with some of the biggest names in the field:
Darrell Schweitzer churns out novels and anthologies in the field of Lovecraftian horror and other Mythos work like you and I sneeze. And when he drops the big names known in Lovecraftia, he isn't being grandiose. He knows them all. His Facebook account is here.
If you don't know Tim Powers, you are missing one of the best writers in the fantasy genre of secret histories. A true gentleman, he is erudite and knowledgeable and the amount of research he puts into his books before he puts hand to keyboard is astounding. His best known work in the field of Lovecraftian horror is Descent, a Cold War espionage thriller involving Kim Philby, djinn, and the Ark on Mount Ararat.
A. C. Wise is a prolific author and her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Apex, Shimmer, and the Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015. Her latest journey into Mythos territory is her short story, When the Stitches Come Undone in Ellen Datlow's anthology, Children of Lovecraft.
So how does a hack like me best known for dark fantasy romances with a body count get to moderate a panel with such notable masters of the craft?
Well, let me tell you. Listen carefully 'cause I'll only tell you once:
You get on your hands and knees and you beg and weep and plead and sob and wail until they let you have the gig simply because you're being an embarrassment.But, hey! It works!
PS: My own foray into experimenting with Lovecraftian horror is my collection, Dark Dreams and Darker Visions. It is presently available as an eBook, but a reedited Kindle version will be coming out soon.
Dark Dreams and Darker Visions paperback (Amazon US)
Dark Dreams and Darker Visions paperback (Amazon UK)
Dark Dreams and Darker Visions paperback (Amazon Canada)
Dark Dreams and Darker Visions eBook (Amazon Australia)
Also, of interest, might be my chapbook Come Into My Cellar: Darker Tales From A Cerebral Vault, only available for the Kindle Reader also available from Amazon. October 6, 2016
Books Arrived For Capclave!
Books arrived for sale at Capclave!
And don't forget my public reading of The Shrine War at 4 PM in the Bethesda Room!
September 30, 2016
GUEST EDITORIAL: Why is Christian Science Fiction Generally Such Rubbish?
Why is Christian Science Fiction Generally Such Rubbish?, by Randall Schanze. Originally published on November 9, 2011 on a now defunct host.
Why is Christian SF such junk? Seriously? Ask anybody if they can even think of any Christian SF, and they'll probably only be able to come up with the Left Behind books and maybe CS Lewis' Space Trilogy. But then again, they may not. It's actually comparatively obscure among my fellow Christians. Many of my friends at church have never heard of it, and brother, they love the Chronicles of Narnia.
Understand that I, myself, am a Christian, so I'm not asking this question to be insulting or hurt anyone. I just legitimately want to explore the question of why everyone else in the world does it better than us. I ask some of my fellow Christians this, and I frequently get the reply, "Well, SF is just an atheist thing, anyway."
I bristle at that. I'm a Christian. I write SF (though I don't write Christian Science Fiction. Subtle distinction.) Ergo: it's not exclusively the other team's purview. So how did it get that reputation?
It's such a big genre, you know? Hard to quantify, especially since the level of secularism tends to go back and forth over time. In the 30s it was rigidly secular, but refrained from discussing religion generally in deference to the social norms. In the 50s/60s it suddenly became acceptable to discuss religion, but generally it was avoided except among the trippier authors. Hard SF tended to ignore it, or oppose it. In the 70s/80s, it became pretty anti-Theistic. In the 90s/now, it's mellowed down again.
Just the same, there's not much Christian SF, and what is is generally either pretty old or pretty dreadful. There was a good deal from the 40s/50s that I used to read as a kid, but I haven't seen any of that stuff in decades, and I wouldn't even know where to look for it. From what I recall, it was all geared towards the Hardy Boys level reader. Current Christian SF is by and large just flat-out embarrassingly awful.
I think it's based around fear.
You get these *EXTREMELY* fundamentalist groups (I'm a fundamentalist myself, but these guys are waaaaaaaaaaaaay to the right of me) who get all obsessed with things being "Lawful." For instance, there was this "Christian Science Fiction Writer's Symposium" in Texas about 4 or 5 years back where they gave instructions to aspiring Christian SF writers, and made it clear in no uncertain terms that if you varied from their suggestions in the slightest, you were just basically encouraging evil.
Their rules:
No aliens. Because they don't exist. No distant-future stories. Because Jesus is coming really soon, and there won't be a distant future. No space colonization stories. Because then all the nations wouldn't be able to be gathered on earth for the final judgement. (what?! You're saying God can't arrange for people to have a convention? You're saying having a bus ticket is going to confound God? Wow.) No time travel. Because it's impossible. No stories about genetic engineering, unless it's portrayed as an evil. No stories about artificial intelligence, unless it's portrayed as an evil. No stories about other religions, unless they're portrayed as bad. No stories about fake made up science fiction religions, as that'll put bad thoughts into people's heads No stories about irradiated foods, or genetically engineered foods, unless it's portrayed as evil. No, really. No alternate histories. Because the future is ordained, so how could there be a different past? (That's a little too Calvinistic for me, but, whatever) No steampunk, because it's trendy, and we don't know what it is. Well what the heck is left after all that stuff is ruled out? I'm going on memory here, I may have erred on a point or two, but that's the gist.
Attendees were told that they should limit themselves - "Limit" themselves! - to stories about near-future dystopias where Christians are persecuted by an emerging Satanic world government. Now, were this just a boldfaced attempt to knockoff the success of the Left Behind books, well, I don't respect that, but I can at least understand it. Cash is nice. But, no, the speaker seemed pretty clear to me that this was all SF should be allowed to do, and anything else was "Unlawful," and hence evil.
Add to this the standard Christian publishing bans on naturalistic writing, and on principle characters who are or were divorced, drug addicts, promiscuous, believe in evolution, have a seamy past, or are otherwise not ideal, frequently even if they end up getting redeemed as part of the story.
Basically you put all this together, and what you end up with is not fiction, it's propaganda. I'm not interested in that, and I'm going to assume that most of you reading this aren't interested in it either. Presumably this is why, even among Christians, Christian SF remains a very small niche. If you're gonna' preach, don't preach to the choir. It's boring.
My own SF deals with religion quite a lot, but I hesitate to call it "Christian" or "Religious" simply because I find it unseemly to treat God like a fictional character in my stories. It seems disrespectful to me. Despite my restraint, I'm regularly told that my stories are borderline-blasphemous. I don't think they are. I've never said anything bad about God or Jesus or Christianity in any of them. Yeah, I've taken a few potshots at the Pope and Baptist Ministers, but I've also taken potshots at the Dali Lama and Gene Roddenberry. I'm not a huge respecter of institutions or offices or pop culture icons. I'm an equal-opportunity offender there. It's not blasphemous, I'm just kind of a jerk.
Take for instance, one story I wrote where the Rapture happened, and nobody noticed. Turns out there really were only a half dozen or so "Real" Christians, so nobody missed 'em, and the Tribulation - which seemed so awful to John 2000 years ago - was pretty much just a normal day in the life for us. The purpose of the story was basically just an expansion of Jesus' repeated warnings for us to be vigilant. So how is this borderline-blasphemous? Clearly it isn't. So why is it interpreted thus? (See Footnote)
Well, it could be that I wrote it badly, and they didn't get the joke. (Possible. I'm not that good a writer), or more likely it could be that I expressed a fairly common idea in uncommon terms. I made it personal, less arcane, which makes it threatening, and therefore some people assumed I must have been saying something bad. Fear.
I'm not a real science fiction writer, I'm just a hack giving it away for free, but I'm friends with a couple real SF writers, and I'm cordial with several more. I've asked them the question "Why no Christian SF?" They all say the same thing: SF is about exploring what might be, about making allegories, about asking questions, about admitting you don't know everything, and maybe trying to learn a bit. How can you write that for/by people who insist they already know everything worth knowing?
They're right. The "Lawful" movement seems to me to betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what "Fiction" is in the first place. There's a real "suspension of disbelief" problem here. I find that very disturbing. Is Gilligan's Island inherently sinful because it had a brain-transfer episode? Why should I be concerned about an episode of Star Trek that has a brain transfer if I'm not concerned about Gilligan's Island? I mean, they're both fictional, right? They're both equally terrible episodes, though one of them has Vito Scoti in it, which makes it slightly better in my estimation. Isn't it a little silly to be worried about one untrue story and not be worried about another identical untrue story in a different venue?
I think this whole "Lawful" thing misses the point on two levels. Firstly: In Galatians 5:1, Paul says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." The New Testament actually gives us very few hard-and-fast rules ("Don't drink blood"). Most of it is more along the lines of guiding principles ("Be nice to people, do more than you have to, show mercy, take care of people who need it, etc.") From where I sit, this is deliberate: Christians aren't supposed to operate from legalism, we're supposed to operate from the concept of justice and love and grace that laws are based on. We run on the base code of law, but not Law itself. Thus this whole "Lawful" obsession is an attempt to do just what Paul warned us against. That seems fundamentally misguided to me. (To be fair, Paul is specifically talking about Jewish law here, so what he says may not be applicable equally to my goofy opinions on the whole "Lawful" Christian Science Fiction industry. But I honestly believe it is.)
Secondly: I think this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what SF is all about. It has ALWAYS been about speculating about what might be. It has only rarely been about attempting to prognosticate the future in any accurate sense. It is a means for playing out allegories, asking "What if?" or "If this goes on..." or "If we stop this, then what happens?" "War of the Worlds" was not a serious attempt to warn people about an alien invasion that was going to happen in 1897, it was an allegory about British colonialism. It was basically saying "How would you like it if someone did to you what you're doing to Asia?"
Science Fiction is about developing a better sense of who we are, where we come from, where we're going. It's about entertainment. It's about questions. It is, above all, first and foremost, about developing a sense of wonder about God's creation (whether or not one is an Atheist or Christian or a Buddhist writer here is immaterial, it's the wonder that matters), and about engendering a child-like sense of gee-gosh-wow! It's about showing us cool stuff simply because it's cool, and that's justification enough. It's about inspiring us to dare mighty things and learn, and maybe fail, but come back a bit wiser. It's about killing sacred cows, but it's also about discovering which cows really are sacred, and shouldn't be messed with. It is, ultimately, about the greatest of God's creations, the human mind, and how we try to use it to better appreciate all that God has wrought.
Fear shuts all that out, and you just get boring propagandist crap that, frankly, hurts us in the public eye. People who genuinely like SF point at us and laugh, and they're right to do it: We're mostly writing crap. If, however, we wrote good stuff and just trusted our audience to understand the difference between reality and fiction, if we wrote with less of an agenda, we may make inroads with nonbelievers. And even if we don't, we'll end up with some cool art. Which is better than the crap we've got now.
The Bible tells us, however, that the love of Christ, Perfect love, however, drives out all fear.
So: Choose love or fear? For me, my faith in Christ is such that I know I have nothing to fear from imaginary things. I, therefore, choose love.
How 'bout it? You wanna' hide in the cave, jumping at shadows, or you wanna' come out and play with my cool friends and me?
(Footnote - If you'd like to check out my Rapture story and decide for yourself if it's evil or not, you can find it here.)
Links:
Randall Schanze on Facebook Randall Schanze on Amazon U.S. Randall Schanze on Amazon U.K. Randall Schanze on Smashwords
Why is Christian SF such junk? Seriously? Ask anybody if they can even think of any Christian SF, and they'll probably only be able to come up with the Left Behind books and maybe CS Lewis' Space Trilogy. But then again, they may not. It's actually comparatively obscure among my fellow Christians. Many of my friends at church have never heard of it, and brother, they love the Chronicles of Narnia.
Understand that I, myself, am a Christian, so I'm not asking this question to be insulting or hurt anyone. I just legitimately want to explore the question of why everyone else in the world does it better than us. I ask some of my fellow Christians this, and I frequently get the reply, "Well, SF is just an atheist thing, anyway."
I bristle at that. I'm a Christian. I write SF (though I don't write Christian Science Fiction. Subtle distinction.) Ergo: it's not exclusively the other team's purview. So how did it get that reputation?
It's such a big genre, you know? Hard to quantify, especially since the level of secularism tends to go back and forth over time. In the 30s it was rigidly secular, but refrained from discussing religion generally in deference to the social norms. In the 50s/60s it suddenly became acceptable to discuss religion, but generally it was avoided except among the trippier authors. Hard SF tended to ignore it, or oppose it. In the 70s/80s, it became pretty anti-Theistic. In the 90s/now, it's mellowed down again.
Just the same, there's not much Christian SF, and what is is generally either pretty old or pretty dreadful. There was a good deal from the 40s/50s that I used to read as a kid, but I haven't seen any of that stuff in decades, and I wouldn't even know where to look for it. From what I recall, it was all geared towards the Hardy Boys level reader. Current Christian SF is by and large just flat-out embarrassingly awful.
I think it's based around fear.
You get these *EXTREMELY* fundamentalist groups (I'm a fundamentalist myself, but these guys are waaaaaaaaaaaaay to the right of me) who get all obsessed with things being "Lawful." For instance, there was this "Christian Science Fiction Writer's Symposium" in Texas about 4 or 5 years back where they gave instructions to aspiring Christian SF writers, and made it clear in no uncertain terms that if you varied from their suggestions in the slightest, you were just basically encouraging evil.
Their rules:
No aliens. Because they don't exist. No distant-future stories. Because Jesus is coming really soon, and there won't be a distant future. No space colonization stories. Because then all the nations wouldn't be able to be gathered on earth for the final judgement. (what?! You're saying God can't arrange for people to have a convention? You're saying having a bus ticket is going to confound God? Wow.) No time travel. Because it's impossible. No stories about genetic engineering, unless it's portrayed as an evil. No stories about artificial intelligence, unless it's portrayed as an evil. No stories about other religions, unless they're portrayed as bad. No stories about fake made up science fiction religions, as that'll put bad thoughts into people's heads No stories about irradiated foods, or genetically engineered foods, unless it's portrayed as evil. No, really. No alternate histories. Because the future is ordained, so how could there be a different past? (That's a little too Calvinistic for me, but, whatever) No steampunk, because it's trendy, and we don't know what it is. Well what the heck is left after all that stuff is ruled out? I'm going on memory here, I may have erred on a point or two, but that's the gist.
Attendees were told that they should limit themselves - "Limit" themselves! - to stories about near-future dystopias where Christians are persecuted by an emerging Satanic world government. Now, were this just a boldfaced attempt to knockoff the success of the Left Behind books, well, I don't respect that, but I can at least understand it. Cash is nice. But, no, the speaker seemed pretty clear to me that this was all SF should be allowed to do, and anything else was "Unlawful," and hence evil.
Add to this the standard Christian publishing bans on naturalistic writing, and on principle characters who are or were divorced, drug addicts, promiscuous, believe in evolution, have a seamy past, or are otherwise not ideal, frequently even if they end up getting redeemed as part of the story.
Basically you put all this together, and what you end up with is not fiction, it's propaganda. I'm not interested in that, and I'm going to assume that most of you reading this aren't interested in it either. Presumably this is why, even among Christians, Christian SF remains a very small niche. If you're gonna' preach, don't preach to the choir. It's boring.
My own SF deals with religion quite a lot, but I hesitate to call it "Christian" or "Religious" simply because I find it unseemly to treat God like a fictional character in my stories. It seems disrespectful to me. Despite my restraint, I'm regularly told that my stories are borderline-blasphemous. I don't think they are. I've never said anything bad about God or Jesus or Christianity in any of them. Yeah, I've taken a few potshots at the Pope and Baptist Ministers, but I've also taken potshots at the Dali Lama and Gene Roddenberry. I'm not a huge respecter of institutions or offices or pop culture icons. I'm an equal-opportunity offender there. It's not blasphemous, I'm just kind of a jerk.
Take for instance, one story I wrote where the Rapture happened, and nobody noticed. Turns out there really were only a half dozen or so "Real" Christians, so nobody missed 'em, and the Tribulation - which seemed so awful to John 2000 years ago - was pretty much just a normal day in the life for us. The purpose of the story was basically just an expansion of Jesus' repeated warnings for us to be vigilant. So how is this borderline-blasphemous? Clearly it isn't. So why is it interpreted thus? (See Footnote)
Well, it could be that I wrote it badly, and they didn't get the joke. (Possible. I'm not that good a writer), or more likely it could be that I expressed a fairly common idea in uncommon terms. I made it personal, less arcane, which makes it threatening, and therefore some people assumed I must have been saying something bad. Fear.
I'm not a real science fiction writer, I'm just a hack giving it away for free, but I'm friends with a couple real SF writers, and I'm cordial with several more. I've asked them the question "Why no Christian SF?" They all say the same thing: SF is about exploring what might be, about making allegories, about asking questions, about admitting you don't know everything, and maybe trying to learn a bit. How can you write that for/by people who insist they already know everything worth knowing?
They're right. The "Lawful" movement seems to me to betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what "Fiction" is in the first place. There's a real "suspension of disbelief" problem here. I find that very disturbing. Is Gilligan's Island inherently sinful because it had a brain-transfer episode? Why should I be concerned about an episode of Star Trek that has a brain transfer if I'm not concerned about Gilligan's Island? I mean, they're both fictional, right? They're both equally terrible episodes, though one of them has Vito Scoti in it, which makes it slightly better in my estimation. Isn't it a little silly to be worried about one untrue story and not be worried about another identical untrue story in a different venue?
I think this whole "Lawful" thing misses the point on two levels. Firstly: In Galatians 5:1, Paul says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." The New Testament actually gives us very few hard-and-fast rules ("Don't drink blood"). Most of it is more along the lines of guiding principles ("Be nice to people, do more than you have to, show mercy, take care of people who need it, etc.") From where I sit, this is deliberate: Christians aren't supposed to operate from legalism, we're supposed to operate from the concept of justice and love and grace that laws are based on. We run on the base code of law, but not Law itself. Thus this whole "Lawful" obsession is an attempt to do just what Paul warned us against. That seems fundamentally misguided to me. (To be fair, Paul is specifically talking about Jewish law here, so what he says may not be applicable equally to my goofy opinions on the whole "Lawful" Christian Science Fiction industry. But I honestly believe it is.)
Secondly: I think this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what SF is all about. It has ALWAYS been about speculating about what might be. It has only rarely been about attempting to prognosticate the future in any accurate sense. It is a means for playing out allegories, asking "What if?" or "If this goes on..." or "If we stop this, then what happens?" "War of the Worlds" was not a serious attempt to warn people about an alien invasion that was going to happen in 1897, it was an allegory about British colonialism. It was basically saying "How would you like it if someone did to you what you're doing to Asia?"
Science Fiction is about developing a better sense of who we are, where we come from, where we're going. It's about entertainment. It's about questions. It is, above all, first and foremost, about developing a sense of wonder about God's creation (whether or not one is an Atheist or Christian or a Buddhist writer here is immaterial, it's the wonder that matters), and about engendering a child-like sense of gee-gosh-wow! It's about showing us cool stuff simply because it's cool, and that's justification enough. It's about inspiring us to dare mighty things and learn, and maybe fail, but come back a bit wiser. It's about killing sacred cows, but it's also about discovering which cows really are sacred, and shouldn't be messed with. It is, ultimately, about the greatest of God's creations, the human mind, and how we try to use it to better appreciate all that God has wrought.
Fear shuts all that out, and you just get boring propagandist crap that, frankly, hurts us in the public eye. People who genuinely like SF point at us and laugh, and they're right to do it: We're mostly writing crap. If, however, we wrote good stuff and just trusted our audience to understand the difference between reality and fiction, if we wrote with less of an agenda, we may make inroads with nonbelievers. And even if we don't, we'll end up with some cool art. Which is better than the crap we've got now.
The Bible tells us, however, that the love of Christ, Perfect love, however, drives out all fear.
So: Choose love or fear? For me, my faith in Christ is such that I know I have nothing to fear from imaginary things. I, therefore, choose love.
How 'bout it? You wanna' hide in the cave, jumping at shadows, or you wanna' come out and play with my cool friends and me?
(Footnote - If you'd like to check out my Rapture story and decide for yourself if it's evil or not, you can find it here.)
Links:
Randall Schanze on Facebook Randall Schanze on Amazon U.S. Randall Schanze on Amazon U.K. Randall Schanze on Smashwords
September 28, 2016
Capclave Schedule Is Now Final
Capclave 2016 will be held October 7th through the 9th at Hilton Washington DC North/Gaithersburg, 620 Perry Parkway, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20877.
Here is my official schedule:
Friday, October 7I will be doing a public reading of The Shrine War at 4:00 PM in the Bethesda room. I will only have 25 minutes to read and it will be unlikely I will finish the entire work. However, I am a professional speaker and a former stage actor and radio personality. I promise not to bore you.
At 4:30, I will be selling paperback editions of my books at the author's hallway table (location presently unknown).
At 8:00 PM, I will be moderating a panel entitled An Animal World with the description: Animal protagonists need to be a mix of animal nature and human level intelligence, not just people in animal suits. The panel will discuss the joys and pitfalls of working with these characters. Participating authors are: Mike McPhail, Bernie Mojzes, Lawrence M. Schoen, Michelle D. Sonnier
Sunday, October 9At 10:00 AM, I will be moderating a panel entitled, Cthulhu Wants You! For Breakfast! with the description: Love it or hate it, the Cthulhu Mythos and its related arcs are a literary phenomenon here to stay. Whether it be the Dreamlands, the Carcosa Cycle, the related King in Yellow, as well as other sub-genres, many a writer has cut their teeth on cosmic alienation and horror. Discuss the best and the worst of the lot as well as its future. The authors are some of the best in the field: Tim Powers, Darrell Schweitzer, A.C. Wise
I truly hope to see some friends and fans there. Drive carefully!
Here is my official schedule:
Friday, October 7I will be doing a public reading of The Shrine War at 4:00 PM in the Bethesda room. I will only have 25 minutes to read and it will be unlikely I will finish the entire work. However, I am a professional speaker and a former stage actor and radio personality. I promise not to bore you.
At 4:30, I will be selling paperback editions of my books at the author's hallway table (location presently unknown).
At 8:00 PM, I will be moderating a panel entitled An Animal World with the description: Animal protagonists need to be a mix of animal nature and human level intelligence, not just people in animal suits. The panel will discuss the joys and pitfalls of working with these characters. Participating authors are: Mike McPhail, Bernie Mojzes, Lawrence M. Schoen, Michelle D. Sonnier
Sunday, October 9At 10:00 AM, I will be moderating a panel entitled, Cthulhu Wants You! For Breakfast! with the description: Love it or hate it, the Cthulhu Mythos and its related arcs are a literary phenomenon here to stay. Whether it be the Dreamlands, the Carcosa Cycle, the related King in Yellow, as well as other sub-genres, many a writer has cut their teeth on cosmic alienation and horror. Discuss the best and the worst of the lot as well as its future. The authors are some of the best in the field: Tim Powers, Darrell Schweitzer, A.C. Wise
I truly hope to see some friends and fans there. Drive carefully!
September 20, 2016
Too Many Works In Progress!
Having ADD, I find it impossible to work on one story at a time and many times I'll be working on a tale when another one will come to mind and I have to start work on it as well. What follows is a comprehensive list of my WIPs followed by a short description.
The ones that are bolded (there are ten of them) are the ones I am genuinely committed to complete. The others will be put on a Maybe Someday pile:
Chaos carolinensis (Monster horror pulp) Dinker (Children’s fantasy) Doc John Foster (Space opera) Doll Wars (Braided novel of dark fantasy romance) Elysia House (Magical house fantasy) Fandom Weirdness (Horror satire) Greengate (Novelization of Greengate short story: Dark fantasy) Healing For the Damaged Soul (nonfiction-self help) Home Invasion (Cthulhu mythos horror) In Search of the Creators (Anthropomorphic SF) Jill Noir (Braided novel of anthropomorphic SF) Lady Of Obivion (Dreamlands dark fantasy) Leida and the Swan (fantasy romance) Llanganati (Pulp adventure) Lord Of All Futures (Post-apocalyptic dystopia) Lynx Syndrome (Anthropomorphic SF) Mirthstone Hall (Magical house fantasy) One Man (SF) ORCS (Adventure horror) Paladin (Super hero) Proteus (Anthropomorphic SF) Rabbits In Space (Anthropomorphic SF) Shattered Horn (Anthropomorphic SF) Silvanus House (Magical house fantasy) Sister Unicorn (Anthropomorphic fantasy) Slenderman (Horror) Spiegelhaus (Magical house fantasy) Steampunk Fragment (Steampunk) Sump Hole (Horror) The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (rewrite of Lovecraft's masterpiece: Dark fantasy) The Fractured World (Anthropomorphic SF) The Tree (SF) Universal Girl (SF) William Glacken (Cthulhu mythos horror) Yew Manor (Novelization of Yew Manor short story: Magical house fantasy) Yggdrasil (Anthropomorphic SF)
The ones that are bolded (there are ten of them) are the ones I am genuinely committed to complete. The others will be put on a Maybe Someday pile:
Chaos carolinensis (Monster horror pulp) Dinker (Children’s fantasy) Doc John Foster (Space opera) Doll Wars (Braided novel of dark fantasy romance) Elysia House (Magical house fantasy) Fandom Weirdness (Horror satire) Greengate (Novelization of Greengate short story: Dark fantasy) Healing For the Damaged Soul (nonfiction-self help) Home Invasion (Cthulhu mythos horror) In Search of the Creators (Anthropomorphic SF) Jill Noir (Braided novel of anthropomorphic SF) Lady Of Obivion (Dreamlands dark fantasy) Leida and the Swan (fantasy romance) Llanganati (Pulp adventure) Lord Of All Futures (Post-apocalyptic dystopia) Lynx Syndrome (Anthropomorphic SF) Mirthstone Hall (Magical house fantasy) One Man (SF) ORCS (Adventure horror) Paladin (Super hero) Proteus (Anthropomorphic SF) Rabbits In Space (Anthropomorphic SF) Shattered Horn (Anthropomorphic SF) Silvanus House (Magical house fantasy) Sister Unicorn (Anthropomorphic fantasy) Slenderman (Horror) Spiegelhaus (Magical house fantasy) Steampunk Fragment (Steampunk) Sump Hole (Horror) The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (rewrite of Lovecraft's masterpiece: Dark fantasy) The Fractured World (Anthropomorphic SF) The Tree (SF) Universal Girl (SF) William Glacken (Cthulhu mythos horror) Yew Manor (Novelization of Yew Manor short story: Magical house fantasy) Yggdrasil (Anthropomorphic SF)
September 19, 2016
Want to Hear a Public Reading of the Shrine War?
(I was too premature in posting my schedule for Capclave 2016 so the post has been removed. However, the following is fairly certain.)On Friday, October 7th, 2016 at Capclave 2016 (Hilton Washington DC North/Gaithersburg,
620 Perry Parkway, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20877) I will be reading as much of The Shrine War as 25 minutes will allow. Being a professional public speaker and former stage actor, I promise a good reading. The reading will start at 5:00 PM.
Admission to Capclave is mandatory and you can get all the pertinent information at their website here.
