Fantastic literature as a preferred medium for presenting Christian truth?

In a previous post, I considered aspects of Christianity in fantastic literature. I said that I did not think that fantastic literature was any more suitable than any other kind of literature for presenting fiction with a Christian world-view. However, in this post, I muse on the possibility that some Christian truths may be better presented in fantastic literature than in any other kind of fiction, and ask you, the reader, to respond, with other examples.

I believe that fantastic literature is an excellent place to portray an unfallen planet, inhabited by one or more unfallen rational, sentient species. C. S. Lewis did this superbly, in my opinion, in his Out of the Silent Planet (Malacandra had three such species). James Blish also considered this, from a different standpoint, in his A Case of Conscience.

Lilith, by George MacDonald, considers submission in ways that I am not sure would be possible in more realistic fiction.

Susan Palwick considers the matter of seeing Christ in other people in her The Necessary Beggar. The fantastic nature of the story makes this possible in a unique way -- the ghost of an alien speaks to a fundamentalist preacher and his faith is renewed.

I have discussed the question of vengeance in the works of Jack Vance, not because Vance writes from a Christian world-view -- he doesn't -- but because Vance uses fantasy to portray vengeance in many different ways.

Are there Christian truths that would lend themselves especially to portrayal in fantastic fiction? Are there authors who have used fantastic fiction especially well to consider some Christian truth? Let me know what you think, please.

Thanks for reading.

Susan Palwick on giving to "beggars"

Susan Palwick has written a great post on giving to individuals you don't know who ask you for money. Sometimes you should, she says, sometimes you shouldn't. She does give some guidelines.

One aspect of her post that particularly gripped me (and her) is that a former drug addict told her that he wouldn't be alive if people hadn't given him money without asking what he was going to do with it.

Thanks for reading.

Flying in Place, by Susan Palwick

Flying in Place (New York, Tor, 1992) was the Crawford Award-winning first novel by Susan Palwick (to her blog). Palwick is a Christian novelist, writing fantastic literature, but her work is not overtly evangelical, as some such fiction is. (Which is fine, but not likely to appeal to non-believers -- authors such as Palwick can and do.)

As is my habit when blogging about a story I like, I will try to avoid giving away essential plot details. I'll just consider a few aspects of this novel about a terribly dysfunctional family.

One aspect is that there is a second, functional family in the story. They are messy, loud, and a little overwhelming, but they are good. They help each other, and they help other people who need help. Myrna Halloran, the mother of this family, and also a school counselor, is a good person. Not a goody-goody person, a good person. The book doesn't say so in so many words, but she seems to exemplify Matthew 7:12 (the Golden Rule) as well as most any character in literature.

Another aspect of this short novel (179 pages) is that part of Psalm 139 is used in an unusual way. One of the members of the dysfunctional family uses part of this Psalm as a way of communicating and describing wicked behavior by another member of the family. That disturbed me. Is this a legitimate use of the Bible? Well, it isn't reasonable to expect a character in a work of fiction to be confined to using the Bible in a usual way. Satan used the Bible in an illegitimate way, namely to tempt Christ, so there is certainly precedent. Besides, in the case in Palwick's book, I finally decided, the use was toward a good end, namely getting the wickedness to stop.

Finally, I was a little surprised that the book won a fantasy award. Except for two related aspects, the book could be straightforward narrative, based on a true story. That aspect is that one of the characters can leave her body, taking up a ghost-like existence temporarily, and, while she is doing so, can apparently communicate with the ghost of a dead person. I guess that's fantasy enough, though.

A gripping story, deserving of a prize, and an excellent first novel.

I have posted about Palwick's The Fate of Mice, and The Necessary Beggar. I have also discussed her writing here. Palwick has published another book, which I haven't seen yet. I look forward to it.

Thanks for reading.

* * * *

Addendum: Palwick has kindly commented, and, for convenience, I'm adding her comment to the post:


A lot of readers don't interpret the story as fantasy, but to my mind, it has to be -- Ginny's a real ghost, telling Emma things she couldn't know otherwise, and not merely a figment of Emma's imagination.

Re Psalm 139: I first encountered it years before I began attending church, at a memorial service for deceased alumnae of my university. I was there representing a friend and roommate who'd committed suicide, so my mood was even darker than such an event would ordinarily make it. When I read the Psalm in the program, my first thought was, "That's not about a loving God -- it's about an oppressive, abusive father!"

Even now, when I go to church and preach there, I still have trouble reading that Psalm as comforting, rather than as a chilling description of an inescapable stalker.

The Fate of Mice, by Susan Palwick

Susan Palwick (her blog is here) is an excellent writer, and leads an interesting life. I recently read her short story collection, The Fate of Mice (San Francisco: Tachyon, 2007). (See here for my post on her The Necessary Beggar.) All but three stories, original to this volume, were published in normal science fiction/fantasy outlets, such as Asimov's. I'll try to give away as little of the plots as possible. (For a review in one of the standard science fiction outlets, go here.)

One story illustrates the last part of Luke 16 --especially verse 31, which says, "He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" (ESV) -- perfectly, although there is no scripture in the story. The setting is some undetermined time in the future.

Another is about a fictional communion, and its effect. As it had a religious theme (although the communion isn't a "standard" one) I was pleased that it had been published by a secular publisher. Why not?

The story I liked best, I guess, was "Going After Bobo." I am going to give away some plot here -- I don't think knowing this much would stop anyone from getting as much pleasure as I did about the story. Bobo is a cat who belongs to a teenager who is living with his mother and brother in Nevada. Bobo has disappeared, during a snowstorm, but has a chip embedded in him, so that he can be found. The chip says he is in a mine up on a mountain, and the chip doesn't move over enough time that it seems that Bobo is dead. The story is really about two important themes that are beyond the title, beyond a search for a cat that probably has died. One of them is the boxes we are in, or we put ourselves in -- behavioral boxes, how we act, what we do and don't do. The protagonist realizes that he is in one, and so are others. He steps out once, and this leads to the second theme, which is family reconciliation. This was a moving story, well told. I'm not sure that it's really fantastic at all. Most any of it could have happened, I think, unless those chips can't be tracked by the ordinary pet owner yet.

"Elephant" is only six pages long, but it's powerful. It's about giving birth, and re-starting.

There is an extension of Little Women, and a fantastic version of "Cinderella." Palwick likes to use the stories that should be part of our cultural heritage. She does it again in the title story, which is about a laboratory mouse. It's also about mice in fairy tales, and about experimenting on animals. Fairy tales, Little Women, finding lost cats -- Palwick knows some of our stories. She has written some that should be part of them.

Thanks for reading. Read Palwick.

* * * * *

Addendum, July 31, 2007. I have now posted on Palwick's Flying in Place.

Sunspots 108

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science:
Astronomers have discovered a very hot planet. They have examined weather patterns on it.

Some enormous crystals have been found in a mine in Mexico. They are up to 50 feet long. The web page includes photos.

Politics:
Why $4 gas (per gallon) is good for the US.

Music:
The title says it: "Music at the Theological Roundtable: What it teaches us about God and the universe," a "classic" article from Christianity Today .


Literature:
There are probably a lot of these, but this is the first one I've seen, and it's pretty good -- a Christian's view of the Harry Potter series, in advance of the publication of the last book.

Mirtika, quoting someone who quoted Ray Bradbury on the dichotomy between science fiction and fantasy.

Great post on the notion that reading fantasy may harm a weaker Christian brother (or sister).

Susan Palwick, Christian, fantasy writer, hospital volunteer, etc., turns out to be a poet, too, and a very good one, writing about her experiences in the hospital. There are links from her post to previous poetry on the same subjects. (A review of Palwick's The Fate of Mice, a short story collection, in Sci Fi weekly, is here.)


Christianity:
In Christianity Today, what holiness really is.

Bonnie on sex, yet again. She considers the question of whether sexual activity should be fun or not, quite seriously.



This week's Christian Carnival is here. For information on these Carnivals, go here.

Thanks for reading! Keep clicking away.

Christian aspects of fantastic literature

Fantastic literature, let us say, is literature with settings or characters that cannot be real. Science fiction, more or less, is about events that might take place in the future, or events that could have taken place in the past, if things had been different (this type is sometimes called alternate history). Fantasy literature is about things that never could have been, at least not in this universe.

Fantastic literature is, in my opinion, no more, or no less, likely to present a Christian world-view than any other kind of fiction, except for fiction that is specifically produced for sale to Christians, mostly through Christian bookstores. (Let's call such material faith fiction.) I know little about faith fiction, even faith fiction which is fantastic literature. (Also, I know little about fiction in languages other than English.)

Prominent authors, such as John Bunyan, have chosen allegory, a type of fantasy, to make their case for Christianity. I am not dealing with such works in this post, either.

There are a number of authors of fantastic literature who have written with a Christian world-view, who have been widely read by the general public, and, therefore, made an impact on literature. The most prominent was J. R. R. Tolkien, but there have been others, including Gene Wolfe, who is still writing, George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis. It is possible that J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series will turn out to have such a world-view. Some authors (see here and here) have claimed this even before the series is finished. (Other authors have vehemently rejected even the possibility of Christianity in the Potter novels, or in fantastic literature by anyone else, for that matter. I shall ignore such nonsense here.)

Here's a list, from a few years ago, of the denominational affiliations of prominent writers of fantastic fiction. The web page has some links to other pages related to this subject. At least one author has been omitted, mistakenly, in my opinion. Although I enjoyed the work of Zenna Henderson, I believe that Patricia A. McKillip's body of work is much more substantial than Henderson's, but Henderson is listed, and McKillip is not.

What makes a novel a Christian novel? This is what I think, condensed from a previous pair of posts, here and here. In these posts, I wrote that one or more of these elements, intentionally included, must be present:
1) A Christ-figure
2) Belief, by central characters, in important Christian doctrines, such as a belief in the Trinity, or the resurrection
3) Monotheistic prayer or other worship
4) Expression of a relationship with God as Lord, by a main character
5) Consciousness of supernatural guidance
6) Explicit rejection of evil, by a main character

What makes a character a Christ-figure? I would say that redemptive sacrifice is the most important aspect of this. Gandalf, in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, might be said to be a Christ-figure, in that he died in Moria so that the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring could survive. Besides that, he also did what Christ did, namely reappear in a resurrected body. (I don't think it is reasonable to expect most fictional Christ-figures to do that!)

I have some trouble with my own list, illustrated by Susan Palwick's* The Necessary Beggar. It would take some real obtuseness to overlook the obvious, namely that Palwick is writing with a Christian world-view. Yet, I am not sure that the book really qualifies as a Christian novel, if, to do so, it must meet my criteria above. Hence, I add another item to the previous list:
7) Christian world-view

This is probably another way of saying that, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on pornography, I know Christian-oriented fantastic literature when I see it, but I really can't manufacture a good definition of it.

Juliet Marillier is an avowed pagan, but she has written some books that do include at least element 2, but not by a main character.

Claw of the Conciliator has published a good short annotated list of important writers who were/are Christians.

Mirtika has produced a longer list of what makes "speculative fiction" Christian. A helpful feature of her list is that it consists of alternatives. Here's a sample:
7. I believe it should offer hope.
8. I do not believe that it must be chipper and relentlessly optimistic in tone. Many suffer lives of endless struggle and torment, and it may not get better with time. However, there must be a sense that suffering, though normal, is not the only thing to look forward to. That there is something else, something beyond. Ecclesiastes is a dark book, a pessimistic one, that ultimately offers some hope. That might be a good guideline for those of us attracted to the darker corners of human experience.

For those with further interest in this subject, I recommend two blogs, The Lost Genre Guild, which covers authors less widely known -- faith fiction fantastic literature writers -- than those I listed in the fourth paragraph above, and occasionally includes posts by such authors, and Speculative Faith, which is more likely to look somewhat askance at faith fiction, even if it is fantastic, and may cover more theoretical aspects of fantastic literature written from a Christian worldview.

Thanks for reading. I welcome your criticism.

I expect to post soon about Christian themes in Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy, and also about the question of whether fantastic literature is a specially good medium for considering Christian themes.

* * * * *

*Note added March 31, 2007. Susan Palwick, herself, has made a comment on this post, and I recommend that you read it.

April 2, 2007: Made two editorial changes. I thank my wife for reading this post.

November 22, 2007: In a shameless attempt to pick up more Google search hits, I am adding these terms: novel, book, aspects, characteristics, attributes, properties, Christian, literature.

Seeing Jesus in others: The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick

The Necessary Beggar, by Susan Palwick, was published by Tor Books (2005). Tor publishes a lot of fantastic literature, including some of the best such. The book was a 2006 Alex Awards winner.

You can read reviews of The Necessary Beggar here, here, and here, and elsewhere. The first one is by Claw of the Conciliator, and I thank Eliot, its blogger, for introducing me to this book, and to Susan Palwick (who also blogs). The other two links are to sites that commonly review fantastic literature. Palwick, in other words, although writing with a Christian world-view, has made some impact on the community-at-large that is interested in fantastic literature. (Eliot begins his review with a quotation from the Bible.)

Part of the plot (by no means all, and Palwick probably didn't intend it as the main point) is what happens to Stan Buttle throughout the book. We are introduced to him as a fundamentalist preacher, full of fire and brimstone, rather too quick to consign others to eternal damnation. As the book progresses, he loses much of his fire, and, he says, his faith. Then, near the end, he regains it.

How does he regain it? From an alien, who has come to earth with his family, and committed suicide (it's a long story, and I won't tell most of it -- read the book, or the reviews may help some) and become a ghost. After a miserable existence just existing in the place where his family lives, the ghost, Darroti, decides that he needs to act. He knows that he can appear in the dreams of others, and now he decides to do it with a purpose. One of the dreamers he picks is Stan. Stan thinks he has seen a vision of Jesus, and his faith is renewed.

This is how his wife, Lisa, describes the matter to Timbor, the alien elder:
"But if Stan found out," I said, "his faith would be broken again. And we must not let that happen."
Lisa shook her head and put her hand over mine. "Timbor, you know what? If he found out, it wouldn't make any difference. It doesn't make any difference. Jesus comes to us in other people, always. That's the way it works. Stan always knew that with his head: he just couldn't wrap his heart around it. The trick is learning to see Jesus everyplace, learning to see Christ in whatever poor schlub is walking down the street. Stan can talk about that to beat the band, but he was never very good at doing it. Because he was too afraid, you know, afraid of the other people he knew it was his job to love. Afraid that he'd get hurt, or that he'd go to hell for loving somebody who'd done something wrong, even though that's the entire point, that's what we're supposed to do, because everybody does things wrong. So if Stan learned to see Jesus in a ghost, well then, that's fine. Because now he's learning to see Jesus in the checkout kids at the supermarket, too, even when they shortchange him or break the eggs or take too long loading the cart because they're gossiping with their friends." (p. 312)

Indeed! This is an amazing passage in literature sold by a secular publisher. I am reminded of Matthew 25:31-40, and I am also reminded that, although I can't redeem anyone, I need to be Jesus to other people, on-line and in the real world.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * *

Added April 1, 2007. I have been honored, in that Susan Palwick has commented on another post of mine. Part of her comment relates to this post.

* * * * *

Added July 31, 2007. I have now posted on Palwick's Flying in Place.