The January Dancer by Michael Flynn

I recently read The January Dancer, by Michael Flynn (New York: Tor, 2008). It was a good read, but it's not as ground-breaking as Flynn's Eifelheim, in which non-humanoid aliens get stranded on earth in the 1300s, and some of them are converted to Christianity. One symptom that the book is less important is that there is no Wikipedia article about it.

The book is set in the far future, thousands of years from now. There is a chart of part of the galaxy, with a dozen or more star systems, all inhabited, shown, before the story begins. (Terra isn't one of them, although there are Terrans in the book.) The action takes place on more than one of these planets, and in space. Flynn supposes that it is possible to travel faster than light, in a method not fully explained, but involving following certain "highways" in space. The January Dancer of the title is a artifact, apparently roughly the size of a bottle of water, that was discovered on a site of a previous civilization. (In the book, this civilization is "pre-human," and doesn't seem to have been ancestral to humans.) The captain of the boat that found it was named January, and the object changes shape unobtrusively, hence "dancer."

There are two aspects of the book that I'd like to mention. One of them is its structure. The book is mostly a story, told by a scarred man to a harpist. Occasionally we get back to the interaction between the two, and that interaction, and who these two are, are part of the plot, but the book could have been written, I guess, as just a narrative of the story that the scarred man tells.

If you are interested in knowing more about the plot, you can find reviews of the book, for instance here,  here, here and here.

The second thing I wish to write about is the treatment of religion, which is not a major theme of this book, but which I always find interesting.

Even though it's the far future, there is some recollection of Christianity. Here's part of a conversation between the scarred man and the harpist:
". . . If there is another side of death, none have come back to tell us of it."
"There is are ancient legends that once, someone did." (p. 178)

and from another conversation: ". . . She had a god who was supposed to be three without being more than one. . . " (321)

On page 392, a group of Terrans, working, are said to be singing a song about bringing in sheaves, which song must be "Bringing in the Sheaves," a gospel song written in the 19th century which has been, I believe, almost forgotten in our own day.

But there are new gods, also mostly forgotten. Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein among them. Newton, for example, is said to control the motion of astronomical objects. (p. 384) An interesting idea!

Thanks for reading.

Firestar, by Michael Flynn

Yesterday's post was on Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn. I enjoyed the book a lot, so decided to read another by Flynn. The only other book he has written, available through our local library, is Firestar (Tor Books, 1996). So I checked it out, and started to read.

The book lacks some of the most appealing features of Eifelheim. There are no aliens, it's set in the present, and there didn't seem to be any major theological issues.

Reading on, I found theological issues, all right, but not cosmic questions -- more important ones. Some of the characters struggled with ambition, and its consequences. As Matthew 16:26 puts it: For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (ESV)

The book is about a program to put humans on asteroids. The guiding force behind this program is Mariesa van Huyten, a young heiress who is also intelligent, and, usually, wise. She does not use government funding, but does work with various other corporations to accomplish her goal, usually without letting their CEOs know what the ultimate goal really is. During the course of the book, she gradually sells her soul -- her idealism, her concern for others -- for a corporate and technological goal. And she knows that she has done so:

A sense that among the gains there had been losses. Hidden losses. Things she had sacrificed precisely to make those gains. Had that been what Keith had meant when he had warned her -- very nearly his last words -- that "the best things are lost in victory"? (p. 403)

It took every bit of strength in her to remind herself that Styx did not matter in the long-term scheme of things. That even she herself did not matter. Only the Goal. Always the Goal. Asteroid. Comet. It was only a matter of time. Next millennium. Next century. Next year. It did not matter. "You shall know neither the day nor the hour." Earth had to be ready. Don't let the Goal eat you up, Belinda had warned her. (p. 410)

Toward the end of the book, another warning from Belinda: ". . . Too many megawatt lasers or impulse engines . . . or asteroids . . . can distract you from the important things. . . ." (p. 520, ellipses in original)

Since the book appears to be the first of four related novels, perhaps she will re-gain her soul later. Keith is her CFO, until his death by heart attack, and the only person in the book who is unambiguously good.

Mariesa doesn't really perform any overt evil acts, or order anyone else to do so, and some rather nasty acts are done by others to her, or to her companies. But the goal consumes her so much that she uses others merely as a means to an end. As one of Ursula K. Le Guin's characters put it, in an honored science fiction work:

". . . However, the mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties."
"If so," said the stranger with fierce certainty, "it is an immoral mission." The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 104.

One aspect of Firestar that I didn't expect is that one of Mariesa's corporations is educational -- it makes money, or at least keeps even, by taking over failing school systems. The book includes some understanding of what teaching is about, and its problems, hardly standard science fiction fare. Some of the students from one of these schools have various important roles later in the book. One of these is the Styx mentioned in the second quote above. Belinda, mentioned in two of the quotes, is director of the educational corporation. She may be good through and through, but we don't see enough of her to know.

Another important character seems, in a way, to regain his soul. He apparently gives up a cherished ambition out of love for his wife.

I don't wish to give away any more of the plot.

Thanks for reading.

Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn

Eifelheim, (New York, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006) by Michael Flynn, was a nominee for the Hugo Award in 2007. I try to keep up at least a nodding acquaintance with some of the Hugo and Nebula Award books, so I read Eifelheim, and I'm glad I did.

The Wikipedia article on the book is here. I confess -- I wrote a little of the article.

I didn't really expect to run into two important theological questions in Eifelheim, but I did. Flynn sets much of the book in Germany of the 1300s. That seems like a strange setting for a science fiction novel, but the reason so much of the book is set there is because it's about aliens crashing to earth at that time and place.

Flynn hangs two interesting theological questions on the encounter between aliens and medieval Germany. The first is, "Where is God when things go badly?" (The plague is one thing that goes badly, in this book. See here for another post, quoting Eifelheim, and also quoting an even more celebrated science fiction work, on this question.) The second question is, "Can aliens be converted to Christianity?" Flynn's answer is "yes." Some of the aliens become believers. Some of the humans think that this is monstrous, and some think that these conversions are miracles of God.

There are some more typical science fiction matters in the book. One of these is communication between species. The aliens don't look much like humans, and they don't speak as humans do. So Flynn considers communication from both technical and cultural angles. There are twenty-first century scientists in the book, and there are considerations of cosmology, and of historical research, and they are interesting. (In case you are wondering how the 1300s and the twenty-first century get together, there is time travel. Actually, I think that the story could have been told in just the 1300s, with no significant loss.)

To me, the real meat of the book is Flynn's portrayal of a German village, set in the Black Forest, in the 1300s. He seems to have done his homework. The various characters, peasants, soldiers, Lord, and priests, ring true. Especially, their religion rings true. As Flynn put it:
I have tried to depict the milieu of the mid-fourteenth century Rhineland as accurately as possible, but that is difficult enough to do for early twenty first-century America, let alone a time and place where the worldview was so different from our own categories of thought.
For one thing, they took Christianity seriously; in many ways, more seriously than modern Bible-thumpers. At the same time, they took it more matter-of-factly. (p. 315, "Historical Notes.") Flynn certainly took Christianity seriously in this book.

It was a good read, and, as I have said, it considered two deep, and interesting, theological questions. I'm sorry that it didn't win the Hugo.

See here for a post on extraterrestrial religion.

Thanks for reading.

Where is God when things hurt us badly?

Theresia hugged her knees. "It hurts," she said again.
"Why has God abandoned us?" Gregor asked.
Dietrich tried to pry Theresia's arm loose so he could lance the last pustule. He did not think that it mattered. "God will never abandon us," he insisted, "but we may abandon God."
The mason swept his arm wide, relinquishing his grip on Theresia's shoulder. "Then where is He in all this?" he shouted. Theresia flinched at the bellow and he immediately took a more tender note and stroked her hair with his great stubby fingers.
Dietrich thought of all the reasoned arguments, of Aquinas and the other philosophers. He wondered how Joachim would have answered. Then he thought that Gregor did not need an answer, did not want an answer, or that the only answer was hope. Michael Flynn, Eifelheim. New York: Tor, p. 297.

"Katherine," Roche called.
. . . "What is it?" she demanded.
He looked at her solemnly. "We must not give up hope," he said.
"Why not?" she burst out. "We're up to eighty-five percent, and we haven't even got started. The clerk is dying, Rosemund's dying, you've all been exposed. Why shouldn't I give up hope?"
"God has not abandoned us utterly," he said. "Agnes is safe in His arms."
Safe, she thought bitterly. In the ground. In the cold. In the dark. She put her hands up to her face.
"She is in heaven, where the plague cannot reach her. And God's love is ever with us," he said, "and naught can separate us from it, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor things present -- "
"Nor things to come," Kivrin said.
"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," he said. He put his hand on her shoulder, gently, as if he were anointing her. "It was his love that sent you to help us."
She put her hand up to his where it rested on her shoulder and held it tightly. "We must help each other," she said. Connie Willis, Doomsday Book. New York: Bantam, 1992, p. 381.

These were, and are, important science-fiction novels. Eifelheim was a nominee for the Hugo Award in 2007. Doomsday Book won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Although both are clearly legitimate science fiction works, the crisis of faith posed by the title of this post is a central part of each book, and, in both cases, one of the things that hurts badly is the black plague in Europe of the 1300s. They both present answers. In Eifelheim, it is God's love, expressed through the unselfish love of fellow creatures, hope of heaven, and hope of ultimate redemption. In Doomsday Book, it is God's love, and that love expressed through the unselfish love of fellow creatures.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * * *

January 8: I have received some comments, for which I am grateful. I have responded to one of those comments in this subsequent post (which includes the entire comment), and to another.

* * * * *

Added Jan 21, 2008: I have come to see that there is a serious omission in my musing on this subject, which I have attempted to repair with a fourth post on the subject.