News of all sorts

The good news: Starting last Saturday, I suddenly had a couple extra unclaimed hours in the day.

The bad news: I have extra hours because my home internet went out. Doesn't appear to be fixed anytime soon.

Upside: more time to read, reflect, watch Alias re-runs and work out.

Downside: I was just getting back into the blogging thing.

I've got a work-around figured out (local internet cafe and a thumbdrive) but haven't ironned out all the bugs. Plus, there is all this extra time...

***

Daniel Drezner posted a list of Top Ten Books to Read about International Economic History. Given the Pope's recent teaching on Charity (which I am still working through) some background might be helpful.

(I whole heartedly second the recomendation of Guns, Germs and Steel as a noteworthy arguement for why the world looks like it does now. And I find it interesting that Thomas Friedman ("Lexus and the Olive Tree" is not listed. (Perhaps the book is less about economics than I thought.)

CSFFBT Roundup

So.

My first Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour is done.

That was fun! Also, tiring. My crit toolbox had been getting dusty, and it took longer than I thought to put my thoughts in order. Adding to the crunch, I didn't get the book (bought on my own, not through the tour, not their fault) until the week before. So instead of having the posts atleast well outlined before hand, I was frantically typing on the day of posting. Which means that I forgot at least one thing on the third day that I had made a note of, on the first day, to follow up on later.

And on top of that, a last-minute work trip came up, so I was away from my usual haunts overnight. ("No, boss, can't go to the other location overnight, I have this non-work related post to finish drafting!" Right. I like my job.)

And I still don't know why that computer was only spellchecking in French.

It all worked out. I had fun. Very nice and SMART people - including the author, OMG - dropped by, I read a few other posts, and I did post all three days.

Next time, I really want to have what I want to say already drafted before the tour starts, so that I can spend that time reading other people's posts and commenting there. I really feel like I missed out on half the blog tour experience by only checking out a few posts.

(My intent is to try to catch up on that over the next week. I hope.)

(Had a former boss who told me that 'hope is not a method! hope is not a plan! you better have some other way of getting that accomplished!'Never asked him, at the time, what he thought of prayer as a method.)

Anyway.

Had fun, want to do it again. This time with double checking the spelling of character names!

***

Thunk for the day, from Ron Rolheiser:

Daniel Berrigan once quipped: Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider carefully how good you are going to look on wood.

Yeah. 'Never promised you a rose garden.'

July CSFFBT: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (III)

This is the third of three posts on Karen Hancock's The Enclave, this month's CSFFBT's selection.

Previously, I talked about the book in general and the science and science fiction parts of the book.

Today I'm going to look at the Christian elements of the book.

In a way, this is more difficult than the first two posts: each of us interacts differently with God. I feel much more comfortable making definitive statements about elements of style and treatments of science in a book than I do about how I see the Christian elements, and what impact those elements had on me.

However, I think that one of the valuable aspects of Christian science fiction is the ability to use the genre to both examine and spread the Word.

So here it goes:

Christianity as practiced by Characters

- The first page isn't over yet, and already Our Heroine is stepping back from condemning a co-worker (Our Hero, but we don't know that yet) because it isn't right to be angry at other people. That's one of the things that sold me on this book. The theme of forgiveness was something I could follow throughout.

- Lacey's struggle between reaching for shiny things - including the fulfillment of her professional dreams - vs reaching for God seemed real and was something else I could relate to. I also appreciated the candor of her doubt - she wasn't even sure that she did believe [in the Bible] anymore.

- It was somewhat disappointing to me that Lacey's reaching for God didn't seem to include reaching out to other people. Nor does the charity expressed in the first page really get applied to people who are not Cam. I'm not sure how much weight I want to give this, because it would be really beyond reasonable for me to expect Lacey to develop - over the course of even a 500-page novel - into a person who tries to express Christ-level love for everyone, including people who kidnap her and try to use her as an incubator for human-monster hybrids.

- Lacey looked up stuff in the Bible. This is probably a small thing, but I love it. When in doubt, read the citation yourself.

- Cam was actually the character whom I found most accessible, and I greatly appreciated his attempts to live his faith. The combination of "I'm here to try to bring the Good News to these people" with "What am I thinking? I'm such an arrogant idiot for trying to take this on" seemed spot-on.

- I also loved that Cam was shown to be as much a research geek in his faith as he was in his work. I think that was about perfect, that Cam would try to dig very deep into Biblical scholarship, and would read weighty books with lots of footnotes in Latin about the Bible and Christian thinkers. (Note: This might not have been exactly what the author intended me to think.)

- That both Cam and Rudy accepted the orders given to them - and the roles set out for them by God - echoed for me the centurion's response: I am a man under orders; give the word and I know it shall be done.

- Cam's willingness to accept that Gen might yet come to believe in God, too (at the very end of the book) was another appealing part of his character.

- Cam's Creationism: ehh. I'm...disquieted, here. In the 'public stoning' - where Cam is dragged in front of a group of his peers and forced to defend his faith - Cam is asked why he became a geneticist if he believed that the modern diversity of life had not developed along evolutionary lines. (Heavily paraphrased.) Cam's answer is "Maybe I wanted to prove it false." On the one hand, that's not really an answer. On the other hand, it's an indication of lack of integrity - going at something (and working for someone) under false pretenses. On a third hand, it's not as though Cam was hiding his bias.

- Cam got up in front of that crowd to defend his faith.

- One of the interesting and very close to awesome parts of the book was Zoan's interactions with God. That Zoan was looking for God before even knowing what God was, that was really kewl. That sequence - Zoan's questioning of the world around him, and his quest for answers - that also hit home.

- It bothered me, how easily the main characters dismissed the Wives and the K-J technicians and security guards and all the others killed in the Nephilium attack. One of the things that makes me twitchy in books and movies is a callous attitude towards collateral damage. Spear carriers are children of God as well. If I have to pick my main issue with Christianity as depicted in this book, it would be that - the relative self-focus of our two main characters.

Christianity as shown in the book

- A couple things seemed a little off, like the attention paid to the fact that Cam's church community advocated 'daily bible study.' (I wonder what the executives at K-J would have made of a Catholic who wanted to attend daily Mass!)

- As I said previously, it has not been my experience that a whole group of scientists would have been either vocally hostile or silent while others were hostile towards people of different religions. Particularly because there are so many different levels of 'living your faith out loud' - someone might be very committed to demonstrating the gospel at all times, just not in words.

- It's been suggested that the strong anti-religion feeling among the scientists happened because Swain & co all picked anti-religious scientists for the Institute. This seems reasonable.

- Jade's dismissal of the Bible as "an old book that ought to be dead by now" seemed...extraordinarily ham-handed, for a person who hadn't shown a great deal of capacity for thoughtlessness up until then.

- On one hand, it was a relief to see an Evangelically-toned book with a negative portrayal of a separatist cult. On the other hand, part of the Enclave's activities seemed to mirror Catholic (or High Church) rites. On one hand, it might be difficult to create a rite that didn't seem to reflect Roman Catholic tradition. On the other hand, I might just be overly sensitive here.

- I would have liked to have seen more discussion of Swain's pov on the Bible and God - his true, real thoughts - given the proven existence of the Nephilium. I think it was telling that he referenced Genesis in his presentation.

- When God said, "You think I can't handle that?" to Cam, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. God is capable of extraordinary mercy and beauty, but I really appreciate that this book took the opportunity to show God's power as well. Plus, thunderbolts!

- I liked the depiction of the clones (Zoan and his friends, at least) as perfectly normal people. This contrasted with the feeling of abomination I read into the descriptions of the Wives and the clone/hybrids. I can see a number of reasons for not going into details of the lives of the Wives, but part of me thinks this was an opportunity for more examination of the meaning of humanity. Surely a child with golden skin or a third eye or neck quills is no more an abomination than is a leper or an AIDS patient.

***

Well, I think I've come to the end of my notes. I really appreciate anyone who's taken the time to read all this.

Time for the fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

July Blog Tour: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (II)

This is the second of three (intended) posts on The Enclave, the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour selection for the month of July.

[My deep apologies for spelling errors throughout - I am away from my usual computer and this one's word processor's spell check is set for French. (And not for any interesting reason, either.) I hope to correct this tomorrow.] Fixed now!

Thanks to everyone who commented so far - I haven't had a chance to read other people's posts yet and it's making me nuts.

First post is here, and covers my general likes and don'ts, packaging, writing strengths, etc. Today I want to focus more on the science and the science fiction in The Enclave.

Short version: there wasn't enough of either in the book.

That doesn't mean I didn't get wrapt up in the last 200 pages and that I didn't enjoy reading the book. (And the book does get a partial pass because it is billed as 'science fiction/fantasy'.) Just that I didn't think the book I was reading was science fiction. And I think that - especially for a book dealing with cutting-edge biotechnology - there wasn't much science in it.

(And here's where I think I have to say what SF is - aside from 'what I'm thinking about when I mean SF'. So I will turn to wikipedia, that last refuge of the despairing, and say look here.)

Science Fiction

As I said in my first post, the book had less science fiction than I would have preferred. While just what kind and to what extent any particular book is going to be science fiction rather than mystery or action or military adventure or even literature (to use a wildly non-specific word to describe a work centered on beauty and use of words in the act of story-telling) will vary from book to book, I feel comfortable in saying that The Enclave doesn't fit the genre well.

In The Enclave, there were several avenues that I think could have been pursued to increase the "sci-fi" feel of the book, and still told essentially the same story.

1) Lost World/Secret Society - With the character of Zoan and 'the enclave' itself, there existed the opportunity to dig deeper into the culture and mannerisms of the people living there. (Sci-fi is really pretty good at sociology thought experiments.) While the society itself was quite young - the oldest were no more than their early twenties - I think there was plenty of time for language drift and for the development of traditions and rituals, especially among the children. Some of the culture and daily life of the Enclave was shown, but most of it was top-driven, not organic, and not 'new'. A bit of punching up - especially of the post-apop feel of the enclave - could have helped. So could have more details about the lives of the Wives.

2) Inventions of (- and applications of -) New Things - Swain's stated goal was to "change the world and make everything new". Yet there was very little made new in the story. When new things were shown, as when Swain showed Cam the 'failed' clones through the doors as they passed, it was as end results and not as a process. Swain's presentation, as well, made very little mention of present day genetic advances and listed nothing that his institute had done, except for the not-yet released fast-healing technique. Cam was introduced as a brilliant geneticist, but I can't find where any of his accomplishments were noted. (If anyone reading this knows where I missed this information, I'd appreciate it.) The only kwel new stuff shown were the clones themselves - and all without discussions of any other sort of cloning - plant or animal.

(It's possible this was part of a deliberate choice on the part of the author - perhaps the message was only God can create new things. Which would be fine, if we didn't already have wheat with salmon anti-freeze genes, off-the-shelf insulin made from GM bacteria with human insulin genes, and cloned sheep, cats, and dogs.)

3) Sense of Wonder - For this reader, in science fiction and fantasy both, this is big. I want the story to amaze me, to make me want to see in person what is on the pages, to actually be there. Except for the scene where the Nephilium hatch (and a few of Cam's flash back scenes) the sense of wonder was mostly absent. Part of this, I think, is that, except under the influence of either Swain or God, the main characters weren't awed or amazed.

Science

Okay. I am not a research scientist. I am absolutely not a geneticist. But I have conducted (and written up) more than one post-graduate experiment (all in life sciences, mostly in animal medicine) and visited institutes of higher learning as well as commercial research labs. I saw that Our Heroine (Lacey) AND Our Hero (Cam) were researchers - geneticists, even - and I was anticipating a book that dug into their lives and used their work - their professions - as integral parts of the plot.

For me, The Enclave didn't deliver on this. Now, there's possible reasons for this - the author wanted to focus on the faith parts of the story, and weave in the might of God through the Nephilium, and for that purpose, Lacey and Cam could have been computer network administrators or energy plant technicians or public relations experts instead of researchers, and they could have found the same shady goings-on of Swain and co. The story didn't have to be about research scientists. (Note: It's partly my fault for setting up expectations about what the story should be instead of letting the author tell the story.)

Here are some of the things that jumped out at me that seemed to be significant shortfalls in the science story telling or just didn't seem right:

- The loose frogs all over should have seriously wrecked someone's experiment - either by mixing up batches of different frogs, messing with their environment to the point of invalidating any findings, or just altering their growth/aging time line by the different light and heat. Lacey should have made some note of this - even if only thinking "thank goodness that it's not the experimental tank that got left open, just the new incoming frogs".

- As mentioned above - just what did Cam do, to make himself such a hiring coup? Maybe he had excellent benchside technique (not likely, given the Frog Tank Incident) but possible. Maybe he had taken some previously over-looked genetic code and, in sequencing it, established a new sequencing protocol. Maybe he'd cloned some knock-out frogs with a really useful set of characteristics.

- What, besides freezing people, did the health spa do? Was it feeding some extra-enriched food? Sun filters?

- Lacey as Frog Girl is the care-taker for the animal rooms. What does this entail? Does she feed the frogs? If so, what? What sorts of things are being done, experimentally wise? What kind of animal care schedule does she have to keep to? Does she get attached to different frogs?

- Cam as flightly but brilliant scientist - what was he doing with his frogs and gels? He kept checking them, but I missed the part where even an outline of the purpose of his experiment was given. Don't remember what the other scientists were going after, either. Some researchers I met were very quiet people. Others, you couldn't get them to shut up about their latest project.

- While I agree that reading abstracts and writing up journal articles takes about a zillion more hours out of a scientists year than the general public realizes, I was disappointed that this was about all the science 'work' shown in the book.

- I wanted more details about the general maintainence in the Enclave - water pipes, animal health, what they grew for the animals to eat.

- Cam, who in the book was already established as an overly-thinky sort of guy - what did he think about as he watched frogs metamorphosing from swimmers into hoppers? This would have been a great place to merge his thoughts on science, and the influence of genes as we know them to work now, and the wonder of the cosmos God made, and the transformation of fallen humans into saved. (More on this when I talk about the Christian aspects.)

- The clones, the Nephilium and the Nephilium/clone hybrids: I didn't really buy this. Partly because I'm a hard sell on "rediscovered secrets of the Ancients" and "amazing off-world technology that we miraculously learned how to reverse engineer without killing ourselves" -

- although, you could argue that in this case, Swain failed to manage to not kill himself -

- and partly it's because there wasn't enough buildup. I could have bought the magic third eyes that killed helicopters if I'd seen, say, frogs with third eyes, or golden skin, or something similar. Starting small, building up. Get me past the "there ain't no such critter" and then bring out a human with a third eye. As for the clones - there wasn't any hint (that I caught) that the experimental animals (frogs) were cloned, so the human clones came out of left field. Further more, even though the book is placed about a decade into the future, Zoan's age meant that basic cloning would have to have been started well before Dolly the sheep. Again,that's a step too far, too fast for me to buy in this story.

***
This part of my review has come out rather negative, I'm afraid. The up side is that I was really more pleased with the faith/Christian aspects of the book. That, and the over-all positive things I talked about last post, mean that I think the book was still a good read, even if it wasn't told how I would have told it, or written to specifically please me.

If there are other life-sciences oriented people out there, I'd be interested in hearing if they were bothered by the same things - or if they weren't! Karen Hancock is described in the back blurb as having a degree in biology. Jason commented yesterday that he had done an interview with her - I hope to get over there tomorrow and check that out. Perhaps there were comments on the science/SF parts of the story.

Again, fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Technorati claim post

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...this really feels like some sort of internet hoax...

July Book Tour: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (I)

This is the first of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about this book. This one will focus on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; in following posts, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

What you need to know about The Enclave: near-future action-adventure centered around mysterious goings-on in a cutting-edge genetics lab. Post-apocalyptic elements. Set in southwest USA. Mild romance. Threat of sexual assault. Lots of gunplay and explosions. Military characters shown in sympathetic manner.

Packaging: Professionally presented trade paperback, with attractive cover (more on that in a sec) and larger-than-usual print face, making it a very thick book (500 pages.) Cover successfully combines suspense (two out of focus figures running down a tunnel) and characterization (pretty lady with rumpled hair, flawless skin, groomed eyebrows and expensive-looking complex earrings.) Back cover is much more subdued, includes a chain-link fence in a desert setting. All in all, I think the cover sells the book and does so accurately.

Overall Reaction (short version, light on spoilers): An engaging story (although slow to start) illustrating Christian principles and Creationist themes. Multiple storylines end up gelling nicely. Multiple POVs that sometimes switch in the middle of chapters, but are generally clearly delineated. Writing is competent throughout and frequently engaging. Sympathetic characters are vividly drawn, if somewhat more thought-driven than skin-driven. I was particularly struck with how the main characters were given to indecision and second-guessing - as well as fumbling through their plans in a fairly realistic manner. Opposing characters (ie 'the bad guys') were less completely handled. The author appeared to engage in anti-scientist stereotyping. Even though the setup is somewhat lengthy, the action, once it gets going, is engaging. There was far less science than I would have liked. Most of the science present was of the X-Philes variety (depending on intervention by aliens/ancient technology rather than the application of the scientific method.) The story was set in the universe of an actively interventionist God, but this due ex machina was believably presented.

More complete reaction, complete with SPOILERS:

What I liked:

The Enclave, while presented at CSFFBT as 'science fiction', to me seemed to be more along the lines of the present-day/near future techno-thrillers (or suspense-thrillers) of Tom Clancy, Micheal Crichton, Dean Koontz, etc. However, it worked better than many of that genre, in that the characterization was decent throughout and (esp) the multiple storylines came together well.

I have a particular weakness for stories in which the author speaks through a character vividly enough that the dual vision (character that has never seen a horse sees a creature that I the reader recognize as a particular breed of horse) is nearly seamless. Hancock is not stellar at this, but she is more than competent, and I enjoyed learning about Zoan's underground world through his eyes. There were parts that worked less well (sometimes having Zoan or his friends bring up something entirely new about the Enclave was interesting and refreshing, other times it seemed more of a cheat.)

The Enclave portions of the story also gave the book a bit of a post-apocalypse feel, which is another thing I tend to like in SFF. And it had goats! Goats always make a story better. (No, not kidding.) (Yes, I am punny sometimes.)

Our Heroine, Lacey McHenry, is a scientist! Woot! Well, not actually, but she is a female trained in life sciences.

Action, explosions and people creeping their way into dark tunnels: this book had it in spades, especially as the end got rolling. I'd love to see parts of this filmed.

Our Hero - Dr Cameron Reinhardt - that's Dr Reinhardt to you and me - is a likable guy, (although I have mixed feelings about his Tragic Past). I did like how the military part of his background was used to elevate his competence without making him into G.I. Joe, Super Special Forces Ninja Ranger. (I do believe that there are a couple science-minded guys out there who could rise to high levels in their branch of research AND still be deadly ninja rangers after a 10 year break...but no more than a couple. Cameron was much more realistically portrayed.

Connected to this: The camaraderie between Cam and Rudy worked well for me.

The writing itself was well-crafted - while there weren't any parts that I re-read for the joy of the language itself, nor were there passages that I had to go through twice, scratching my head and muttering what did that mean? (Suspense and misdirecting the reader as part of the plot is okay. Confusing the reader because of poor sentence or paragraph structure is not okay.) While I would have liked language that was a bit less prosaic, less work-man, that's an individual taste thing, and it would have pushed the book out of its genre.

Aliens (the awakened Nephilim) were cool. Okay, in my head, they looked a great deal like Giger's Aliens, but still, they were cool.

Things that worked less well for me:

Despite the relatively active beginning (the first line, paragraph, and page were all solid as far as 'hook' went) it seemed to take forever for the story to get rolling. The introduction of the scientists and their work wasn't presented in a terribly interesting fashion and was made worse, I think, by the quick establishment of the 'bad guy' Swain. Perhaps some hesitation before he started threatening Cam would have helped.

Connected to this, I would have liked to have seen more of the other scientists and their personalities. I think that if the characters could have been divided into 'good guys' (or 'pov characters') and 'bad guys' AND 'other people whose part hasn't been established yet and might be good or bad but we don't know yet' that it would have helped draw me more into the book early on.

Which brings me to one of my major beefs with the characterization in the book - the relatively flat, simplistic and somewhat hostile depiction of nearly all the 'extras' among the scientists. The caricature of the scientists as being bitterly anti-Scriptural and bigoted towards Christians has not been my experience. (Yes, there are those individuals out there. And scientists have their share of egotists, and egotists tend to run their mouths and run people down.) The failure to make mention of any sort of spiritual leaning among any of the other scientists was a fault in the book, I think.

Connected to that, I'm not really crazy about the 'Christian as Lone Gunslinger' (meaning Shane, not X-File's Lone Gunmen) motif. (I'll go more into this when I talk about my take on the Christian elements of the story in a future post.)

Which brings me to the characterization of Cameron - I had mixed feelings about his Tragic Special Ops PTSD-Inducing Past. Especially with the child that died wrapt up into it. On the one hand, it worked because it helped justify Cameron's intellectual, overly-thinky decision processes. On the other hand, it made this reader aware that the author was female, writing a male character. Not so good.

A lot of the story focused on the glamorous nature of the bad guys - how pretty/handsome/well preserved they were, the cost of their clothes, the six-inch heels on the head bad gal. It gave me two impressions - firstly, it made all the characters seem overly concerned about surface appearances, and secondly, it was another form of stereotyping - rich beautiful people are evil.

In fact, to me, the main characters, even the 'good guys' seemed to be overly self-focused in their struggles and especially during the final sequences - bystanders, innocent or not, fall mangled and dead and are ignored in a manner more typical of the most mindless Hollywood violence. Even when our heroes are shown trying to save people, the attempted rescue happens 'off-screen' and then the story goes back, 'in real time', as our heroes run away.

Finally, I would have liked to have seen more actual science being performed. Testing, perhaps. Experimental design discussion. Heck, even feeding parameters of the frogs. (More on this when I talk about the book and science fiction.)

So. That's about all I had to say on the book structure, plot, etc. In my next two posts I intend to talk about science/science-fiction aspects, and then about the Christian aspects of the work.

The fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Recent (and not recent) Links: Religion

An important part of being Catholic, for me, is the international nature of the Church. This came home to me again when I visited Norway - most of my fellow co-religious were non-European. (Including the lovely daughter of a weary and harrassed looking mother in the pew in front of me in Oslo - a restless little nymph in a shining white dress and sneakers with red LED lights that lit up when she stamped her feet. She reminded me so much of my little brothers (years back, you understand) that I hardly kept from laughing outloud during the readings.)

Anyway. Being Catholic is one of the ways I am definitely a part of the whole human race.

From Brazil: Two stories (here and here) concerning an abortion case. The mother in this case was a 9 year-old girl, impregnated by her foster-father. The local Bishop, in accordance with doctrine, excommunicated the 9-year-old's parents and the doctor who performed the proceedure.

What a horrific situation. Hard cases make bad laws. On some levels, it makes me nuts that this is an abortion news story about the Catholic Church, and not a child abuse story about the case of the rape of the girl.

It's hard to live with either solution - a child, already victimized by an adult she trusted, dealing with the physical and social reprecussions of carrying the baby to term. (The Catholic option suggested was cesearian section, not the (likely lethal)option of letting the girl go through labor.) Or, a child, already victimized by an adult she trusted, dealing with having been forced into an abortion. (IMO, if a child can't legally agree to sex, they can't agree to abortion, either.)

The idea that it would be better to go ahead with the abortion, and just let the child and her family get on with their lives hinges, I think, on the supposition that it's not an actual person that is killed during abortion. Which is...hard.

***

Vactican statement may put pressure on Catholic judges. Interesting. One of the not fun parts about being an American and being a Catholic is the inherent conflict between the two. It appears that the Church may have just upped the ante.

***

Top 10 Religion Stories of 2008; according to Time magazine.

As a bit of a counter point - an older article about Top 25 Evangelicals in America. I didn't focus too much on the personalities of the religious leaders in previous administrations. (To some extent, I was more concerned with people living principles, not preaching them. To other extents, I didn't care.) I will have to look further into the Catholic personalities mentioned. (Richard John Neuhaus)

***

Drug Dealers for Jesus In Mexico - As presented in the article, it's less a religous movement and more a "red-neck" outfit - where religion is part of what makes up "La Familia Michoacana" into a self-contained community. Narcotics smuggling is not on my list of "things to do for the glory of the kingdom of God." My sympathy is not with people who kill cops.

But. It's beyond the scope of this post to go into the righteousness of doing an ugly job with compassion and integrity. I'm not sure that applies here, but it bears considering.

***

Barbara Hagerty Interview: An NPR journalist talks about looking for God. My faith is the prism through which I look at the world and make moral decisions.

***

And a last one, not exactly religious, but keeping it SFF - Muggle Activists - Harry Potter fans unite to change the world. I'm not a Potter fan, but I'll say about this what I said about the books - anything that gets huge numbers of non-reading kids to read multiple lengthy novels is not all bad.

A Writer on Star Trek

I picked up a May issue of Newsweek at the gym because of the cover - "To Boldly Go ... How 'Star Trek' taught us to dream big" - and found a handful of interesting articles.

(It's fun to read short-cycle media multiple cycles after it's been posted/published - much of what consituted 'news' ends up forgotten. My father used to say that one should always read the back pages first - the short bits on 'obscure' happenings end up being relevent longer than what ever is on the front page.)

I was most enthralled with Leonard Mlodinow's "Vulcans Never, Ever Smile" - a recollection of his time as a scriptwriter for(post-Original Series) Star Trek. A physicist, Mlodinow thought that he was responsible for 'putting science into science fiction.' Instead, Mlodinow relates, he learned:

The fun in Star Trek didn't come from copying science, but from having science copy it. My job wasn't to put real science into Star Trek, but to imagine new ideas that hadn't yet been thought of.

I pretty much agree. A fellow geek friend of mine from university days reminded me that the sliding doors common in hospitals and most public areas (and which show up in sci-fi-ish movies such as Sliding Doors) that respond to approaching masses and not a button were invented because a guy saw them on the original ST and took the concept as a challenge. That, said my friend, was what SFF is about.

(It's arguable that one of the big differences between fangirls and gameboys is this: gameboys want to know about the sliding doors, fangirls want to know about the people who walk through the doors. Generalizing and sterotyping, of course.)

The article has a number of insights, including interactions with Gene Roddenberry and his perspective on the evolution of human nature. (In a sort of point/counter point, another article in that issue of Newsweek discusses altruism and charity, while the concept of the role of science in SF gets a different look in Biology in Science Fiction's recent post Hollywood Science and Unscientific America.)

Something not covered in any recent discussion of ST (that I've seen so far) has been the role of religion in ST, and how, after being dismissed as superior tech in ST:TOS, faith gradually made a comeback in later renditions.

***

One of the movies I saw on vacation was the new Star Trek, which I greatly enjoyed - more than I expected to, in fact. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in front of Star Trek product. (This despite the fact that Eric Bana and Karl Urban were the only actors even remotely in my age demographic.)

I've put off posting about the movie because I wanted to have some deeper thoughts about it...but no such luck. I enjoyed the movie. Thoughts have been entirely shallow, affectionate, but without much passion. (Okay, I have exactly one deep thought, and that relates to the potientally different role of the Vulcans in this (new) ST cosmos - going from, say, representing France to being Israel.)

***

On a less-happy-about-the-future note - and one which doesn't support Rodenberry's theory of change in human nature - the Newsweek issue also covered an internet privacy/censorship legal case - in which a family was fighting to restrict the spread of photos of their daughter's fatal car accident.

The grisy photos have been passed from person to person - and even have been emailed back to the family. One could ask, what kind of person does that?!?!

One of the answers postulated by the article was 'the kind of person who feels empowered by the anonymity of the internet'. Which I can readily agree with.

If, on the internet, only God knows it was you doing hateful things...

***

One last thing to close the post on a better note: I could have sworn that John Hannah, who was in the above mentioned 1998 Sliding Doors, played Scotty in the new ST movie. Which would have made a great 'close the loop' for this post. Alas, it was Simon Pegg - of Hot Fuzz - who ALSO did the voice of "Buck" in Ice Age III. So.

You learn something new every day.

Book Review: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, by Anne Rice

I did not think that I would like this book.

Back in the day, I read Rice's Interview with a Vampire slowly and painfully - the writing was hyper-Tolkienesque in density, the characters were not easily liked, and the action seemed excessively slow. I never saw an reason to pick up another book in the series. In addition, I heard enough third and fourth-hand about Rice's attitude towards fan-fic writers and towards editors ("I write and rewrite every page until it is how I want it to be, and I don't need editors to give me their feedback") to harbor a low level of hostility to the woman and how she conducted her craft.

And when word came out that Anne Rice had (re)found God, and was only going to write Christian fiction, I joined with other people in mocking and sneering at her pretension. (I regretted this since.)

It was a bit of that regret that drove, in part, my picking up the paperback from the rack in the department store. What the rest of my motivation was, I can't say. I will say that I bought the book practically without opening it, which is not usual for me. (Reading the first page is a decent litmus test to see if I will like the book at all.)

Starting on vacation, I pulled it out when I got to the airport. And by the end of the third page, I was hooked on the language and the voice Rice used for Christ.

If it were not for the name on the cover, I would not have know the book was written by the same person who wrote Interview - this book was written lightly, in spare language that was no less carefully chosen, but also infused with a joy and appreciation for the world that had been lacking in the vampire book.

Road to Cana is the second book in Rice's series, and covers a season in Christ's life just before and after he meets his cousin John at the Jordan.

Rice does some remarkable things in this book - she recreates the feel and rhythms of turn-of-the-age Palestine, she unravels what is known and guessed and proclaimed about the Holy Family and reweaves it into a cloth that is at once familiar and brand new, and she presents a Christ that is both God and human, and struggling with His role - and yet never ceases to be either.

This Yeshua can be seen as perfect, but he does not live in a perfect world. The faults and follies and festering anger of the people of Nazareth are drawn clearly, if sympathetically. (There are no hopeless evil things here - only humans who have done wrong.) The politics of the larger world still go on, and the ripples reach out to Palestine. The society of the time is closed in, dependent on manual labor, and tightly segregated by gender, family, and class, but the people who live in that society are not presented as caricatures. I was well satisfied not only by the world-building and the plot (which I did not guess all the details of before hand, even though most of the world knows how the story goes) but also by the care given to crafting all the secondary characters.

One of the things I appreciated best about the book was the way the rest of Nazareth treated Yeshua - they called him 'the sinless', but it was as much a weary confusion and a mockery as it was a praise-name. Yeshua confuses and disquiets these people - as, I think, he would those who knew him in any age.

In flaws I have only three major items: one, that the first two paragraphs were not the best hook, and I didn't start getting intrigued until the second page; two, that the repetition of names (while not the fault of the author) was confusing throughout (too many names starting with 'J'!) and finally, that the book lost some steam in the last couple of chapters, as Yeshua started gathering disciples. But these are minor things.

I have ordered the first book (Out of Egypt) and am looking forward to the third in the series.

Roads Less Traveled

Ulvik is a small town in Norway, located on Hardangerfjord. It is a lovely place in early summer (heck, most of Norway is) with the quiet atmosphere of an out-of-the-way place.

Ulvik was our second walk, and our only 'walk to get there' trip. We got off the bus at Granvin and turned uphill. (This part - "turning uphill" - was a constant part of our trip. Really constant.)

The path began as a single-lane asphalt road, became a narrow unmarked asphalt road, twisted and turned, became gravel, and then we turned left off the road, and were on the trail.

It was called "the post road" because, until Ulvik got its own post office, the people used to walk over the mountian to check their mail (which came twice a week.) One way, the trip took three hours.

***

A few months back, a storm of protest arose on the internets in the space of 24 hours, because Amazon.com mis-labeled a whole stack of books, making them difficult to find on the webpages, and then (most horribly) failed to swiftly correct the problem. This storm arose on Easter Sunday.

***

As a long time reader of The Tightwad Gazette, I have found the recent spate of articles on 'living on a budget' interesting, and even occasionally helpful. Most of them echo the age old advice of "don't buy it if you don't need it' and 'pay your bills on time'.

Some articles go a bit further.

CNN linked earlier today to an article on 'disconnecting' - electronically, at least - and 'living simplier'. The thoughts shared in this article share a thread that keeps re-appearing in much of my recent reading on monks and other religious - that the distractions of modern life can help make us unhappy. You don't need stuff to make you happy.

I asked for all things so that I could enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

In the current economic situation - which many blame on the greed of lenders and bankers and/or the foolish materialism of those who bought things (including houses) that they couldn't pay for - not to mention the climate change debate which seems to hinge on condemning wasteful 'progress' and the pollution from industrial development - there seem to be many who agree. And yet...is it not a crisis because we don't have stuff? Because we don't have money to pay for stuff?

I think that one of the great gifts of modern civilization is all the 'stuff' we have - including the internet, post offices in our town, and paved roads. Oh, and open-heart surgeries, electric lights, and airplane travel. I think that having certain levels of 'stuff' - esp. food, shelter, physical security, and ways to learn more - makes us better people, and makes it easier to follow Christ, just as having a good night's sleep makes it easier to not scream at people who are annoying you. And let's hear it for things that make it easier to communication, like literacy, education, cheap paperback printing, telephones and the internet.

But I agree that the quest for getting more 'stuff' just to have 'stuff' is a distractor - and that it can make it hard to identify the most important 'stuff' for an individual person. And I think that individual choice is important. The publishers should go on printing tons of romance novels, even though I'll never read them, and there should be enough peas grown and harvested for people who like green peas to eat them. (I'll stick with SF and mysteries, and lima beans, thank you.) Ditto good cars for people who care what they drive, and big houses for people with big families.

We all, individually, need to pick what we need, and be willing leave lay what we don't. How learn this - and how to teach it, without denying access to things we don't think needful, but others might - that's a bit easier to say than to do.

***

Somewhat related: 100 Geek Skills. Also somewhat related: Heinlein's list of life skills.

Too Kwell: Human Genre Project; Cool Horses

huge hattip to Biology in Science Fiction - HUGE

The Human Genre Project is a (proposed) collection of fiction, flash fiction, and poetry relating to the human genome - yeah, that genome, the one they've just finished mapping. They're still taking contributions.

This is so cool.

(Related: Micheal Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction)

A different post on the Biology in Science Fiction had me scratching my head to remember the title of a book I'd read -

- read at least part of, and that twenty odd years ago -

but could remember nothing of the title or author's name - but possibly what the cover looked like.

The cover I remembered was Rowena's Project Pope. Do you have any idea what fraction of Rowena artwork sites come up as listed under 'pornography'? (Not that I disagree, but sheez. All I wanted was a perfectly clean pic of two fully dressed robots - one in bishop's robes, for crying out loud - and I kept getting hit with 'your filter blocks this site.') And those that weren't so listed (yet!) generally didn't have titles associated with the pictures.

(There's a joke about looking at art for the text in here somewhere but I can't make it come out straight.)

And that wasn't the right book (Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak). So I thought some more, and the idea of a human confronting a man (robot) on a rearing mechanical horse came into hazy focus. Back to google I went.

And I eventually found it, via TV Tropes and it's Cool Horse page. TV Tropes is a listing of plot elements used in TV, literature, movies, just about anywhere. In addition to cool horses, they also discuss Hell Horses, Mechanical Horses, and Horses of A Different Color.

This is just neat.

(The book I was looking for was James P. Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker. And yes, one of the old mass market books had a man in a space suit confronting a robot on a rearing mechanical horse. Success!)

Cats, Fat and Otherwise

I will not post cat pictures in this blog.
I will not post cat pictures in this blog.
I will not post cat pictures in this blog.

(I have no idea where my camera cord is right now, so I can't post cat pictures in this blog.)

***

I worked for quite a while for an outstanding feline practitioner, but I am not a cat person. And small animals are not my primary interest.

I still ended up with four household cats.

The story of how I ended up with four cats is too long for this space. I'll just say that it involved 9 years, Italy, a genuine crazy cat lady, two roommates, a series of vet clinics, and three couches.

***

You find all sorts of things on Amazon: Is your pet fat?

The answer, if you live in the USA, could easily be yes. And it's as damaging for our pets as it is for us humans. True malnutrition is fairly rare in the USA for pets, due to the multitude of well-balanced commercial diets that are all most pets eat. But excessive body weight due to too many calories is not uncommon, and in cats can lead to a multitude of issues, including joint problems and diabettes.

***

Are cats really domesticated? - Not really, according to the study cited in this article. The theory (which I've heard before, and think is sound) is that cats are actually niche-dwellers, and their niche is 'within the physical environment controlled by humans'.

Which reminds me of a joke:

The dog and the cat are contemplating their lives as members of a human household. The dog thinks: "The humans feed me, care for me, provide for my every need, and I sleep on their bed. The humans must be gods."
The cat thinks: "The humans feed me, care for me, provide for my every need, and I sleep on their bed. I must be God."

***

There is another difference between dogs and cats: in my travels around the world, people's reactions to dogs can vary widely. Some places (America, for instance) people readily take dogs into their house and even refer to them as 'kids' (much less 'man's best friend'.) Other places, such as large portions of the Arab Muslim Mideast, many people treat dogs as vermin, barely more tolerable than swine. In parts of Asia, dogs are a traditional food animal.

Just about everywhere, people are okay with cats in a vague, stand-offish sort of way. A moderate like or tolerance, but not the passion that dogs evoke.

Which is probably just how the cats want it.

Book Review: 'Tuck' by Stephen Lawhead

This was the Christian Science Fiction Blog Tour's book of the month for May...which I did not finish in time to post during the tour. Or during the month of May.

What you need to know about Tuck: Fantasy/Historical fiction; Medieval European setting; third in a trilogy. Basic story overtly mirrors that of the traditional 'Robin Hood' legend. Elements of warfare and spycraft, strong religious elements, including conflict between religious groups, light romance, little sex, light on foul language.

What I liked about Tuck:

- The cover is rilly cool. Same motif as the first two in the series, but with differing details. If I bought books for the cover (which I don't, except if it's a Micheal Whelan cover, and even then I've learned to think twice) I would have bought this one.

- Rather than being a generic 'European' setting, Tuck takes place in a definite era and a specific geographic location that is important to the plot. Likewise the characters, rather than being just 'European', also belong to specific ethnic groups.

- I am generally a sucker for Robin Hood stories, and this is the first one I have heard of that revolved around Friar Tuck. (At least, this volume did - previous ones (which I have not read) focused on Robin Hood and Will Scarlet.)

- There is struggle and conflict between the protagonists (the good guys) as to the proper actions to take. While it might have resolved too easily (everyone is friends at the end, and everything turns out well) but there was conflict, and people being stubborn and people having significantly different goals.

- Some sections were quite full of action - here I'm thinking of the 'man-hunt' chapters especially.

What I thought worked less well:

- For a supposed classically trained medieval Saxon monk, Tuck prays like a Baptist. "Great of Might, I'm just asking you..."

(If I'm wrong, and there is a historical tradition of prayers being offered in this sort of wording from that era, then I stand corrected. But to this Catholic's ear, it just sounds off.)

Another element of disconnect - I was taught that the reason for the screened confessionals was to prevent graft - you can't pass money through the screen - not (as Tuck thinks) to make the confessor invisible. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the impact of French Norman Christianity on the faith of the native British to really comment on Tuck's perspective.

- Despite the different ethnic groups, I thought that more could have been done to show different values amongst the different groups represented. (And here I mean different positive values, not just that the good guys fought fair and the bad guys didn't.) There were some elements of this in the Norman (French) perspective on the (so-called) barbaric Welsh, but I thought this could have been further developed.

- Not nearly enough sense detail.

- In the end, it didn't 'grab' at me. I was engaged on an intellectual sense, but not emotionally. I'm not sure why this was...it could have been coming in at the end of the series, it could have been the reserve of Tuck's character, that the female characters pretty much entirely didn't resonate with me (note: they weren't bad, I just didn't identify with *any* of them, which is pretty rare for this reader) or something else entirely.

To sum it up - I thought the book was well written (didn't expect any different from this author) but paced slower than I liked. Despite my best wishes, I didn't 'fall in love with' the pov character (Tuck), and the world building wasn't in depth enough to engage me on its own. I don't think I'll pick up the other books in this series, or another Lawhead book on the strength of this one, but I'm still left mostly positive towards this author.

Faith in Action

A short post, with two links:

First, Pope Bebeduct Benedict (sorry, can't spell today) XVI's Caritas in veritate - Charity in Truth - his most recent (and third) teaching document. It's long, it's complex, it's highly footnoted, and it reads like a German wrote it (duh.) So I'll be digesting it slowly.

(It's always better to read these things yourself rather than let the media summarize them for you. But props to BBC for linking to the whole document off their site.)

There are a few lines that jump out at me, in the first few paragraphs:

Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it.

...which is not how I typically think of justice and charity. I have thought of charity as, in some senses, denying justice, because it fails to give the recipent what they deserve. (Like most people, I think, I'm pretty big on charity (or mercy) for myself, and justice for everyone else.)

The Pope's message will be, I bet, heavy on how a Christian is to live out their faith in their own life. As in - this is a garment for the working day, not just for Sundays and feast days.

Which brings me to my next link: British Medical Association doctors have voted down a proposal calling for them to be given a right to pray for patients without facing disciplinary action. Which leaves me...uneasy. On the one hand, I strongly feel that one should be able to 'discuss religion' - particularly as part of a whole patient care system - without being afraid of being accused of harrasment. On the other hand, none of us are as smooth handed as we would like to be at all times, and I can easily see how an offer to pray for a patient could come across entirely wrong. Complicating this, the BMA members are overwhelmingly part of the British goverment, as employees of the NHS, as well as being individuals with their own souls and minds.

My gut feel is that it is generally better to try and sometimes do it wrong, than to always fail to speak about faith. For me, that the NHS does have a chaplain section tips the balance over into an unhappy acceptance of the BMA's decision, instead of a sense that they made the wrong call.

Not an easy decision.

***

On tap: movies I saw on vacation, a few books I read, and stuff about vacation.

Happy 4th of July!

The best part about being out of the country on Independence Day is that you wish you were home even more. (At least, it works that way for me.)

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"In my opinion a few pacifists are inwardly pro-Nazi, and extremist left-wing parties will inevitably contain Fascist spies. The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult. The atmosphere of hatred in which controversy is conducted blinds people to considerations of this kind. To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like. It is this habit of mind, among other things, that has made political prediction in our time so remarkably unsuccessful."

- George Orwell, quoted by Eugene Volokh As they say, read the whole thing.

***

One of the unexpected nice things about the trip (which I will say more about later) was seeing Norwegian flags flying just about *everywhere*. No matter who we talked to, they like their country quite a bit, in the healthy 'yah! we're great' way that doesn't depend on running anyone down.

Lots of great things on this trip - seeing cool movies with friends, great hiking, beautiful countryside, holy places, all that. No writing, but the sort of experiences that writing comes out of.

***

Speaking of flying the flag - i09 has an article on American Superheroes. It misses out on Martha Washington of Frank Miller's Give Me Liberty, though.

Traveling again tomorrow.