Edifying the Faith via Rocketry and Rayguns
In this space of late we have been discussing what constitutes science fiction as opposed to fantasy, and what Christian fiction might be as opposed to pagan fiction, and finally what is Christian Science Fiction.
Let us look at a misleading answer, a better answer, and also ask why answer the question at all?
As befits a discussion of Christianity, the last question shall be first. Why bother debating which genre and subgenre tales might fit in? Most readers have eclectic tastes, and do not care if a unicorn or a raygun or a vampire is on the cover, provided the book is good. Who, beside from the marketing departments nor the art department and the clerks shelving books in the bookstore, cares what labels we paste on genres, or where we draw the boundary lines?
The answer, dear reader, is that you, dear reader, care about where the metes and bounds of genres fall.
If you did not care, neither the marketing departments nor the clerks shelving books in different sections of the store nor the art department trying to decide whether to paint a bathing beauty riding a unicorn on the cover or a bathing beauty shooting a raygun or a bathing beauty in black leather staking and/or kissing a brooding vampire would trouble themselves to make it easier for you, the book buying public, to find works to your taste.
You care because of the way the human mind works, including the minds of science fiction readers: the human mind works by association.
Suppose you have just finished reading a book you like, and you are in the mood to read another like it. “Like it” does not necessarily mean having the same outlook, theme, characters, or writing style.
STARSHIP TROOPERS by Heinlein is “like” FOREVER WAR by Haldeman even though the theme is different: both are military science fiction.
THE LAST UNICORN by Peter S. Beagle is “like” THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison even though the writing styles and theme of the two works could not be farther apart: both are high fantasy.
Tolkien’s LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is “like” Jordon’s WHEEL OF TIME unendingilogy even though one is immortal literature that will live forever, and the other is craptastic junk food – I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which is which.
Genre definitions do not define theme, style or quality. They define an imponderable, and association, a “alike-ness” hard to define. And because they are hard to define, we have discussions like this one, trying to define them.
So what is Christian Science Fiction?
The flippant answer is that any story where Mary Baker Eddy, by means of faith healing, or her system of curing the sick through spiritual understanding, defeats invaders from Mars while curing them of disease brought on by HG Wells coughing an Earthly bacteria on them is Christian Science Fiction.
A less flippant answer (but one which I now think is a misleading answer) is this:
There is a difference between (1) “Christian fiction” defined as any fiction where there are Christian characters or Christian societies on stage, and (2) “Christian fiction” defined as any fiction taking place in a world where the specifics of the Christian world view are confirmed as correct and the specifics of the alternate world views, Gnostic or Mohammedan, or of a pagan, an Oriental, or tribal religion or philosophy, are refuted (if only by implication) as incorrect. Call this the difference between Christian existence and Christian truth.
To use a non-SFF example of this distinction, SPARTICUS takes place in a world where the Christian religion exists, (because Christianity among the slaves is persecuted) whereas BEN HUR takes place in a world where the Christian religion is true (because Ben Hur’s mother is cured of leprosy during the Passion and Crucifixion).
If we accept this distinction, Christian “Science Fiction” would be defined as a scientific romance, with all the normal tropes and artistic conventions of science fiction, but taking place in a story-world where the Christian religion happens to be true.
Ah, but there is a rub. If only way to show that the story-cosmos is one where the Christian world view is true is to set a scene in an unambiguously Christian afterworld, or to have unambiguously Christian angels or saints or Deity come on stage as characters, or have unambiguously Christian signs and wonders come on stage as events, then “Christian fiction” means a wonder tale, a miracle story.
By this definition, a “Christian fiction” story is one, and only one, where Christian signs and wonders appear. A “Christian Science Fiction” story then is a scientific romance involving the conventions of science fiction, such as time travel or voyages to other planets, taking place in a story-world where Christianity is true, as evidenced by signs and wonders or visitations of angels in the tale.
Let us call this the “Proof by Wonder” definition
But the following question from one Earl Wajenberg causes me to rethink this definition. He writes:
I am trying to think of other ways to mark a story as specifically Christian, if specifically Christian main characters don’t do it, besides introducing miracles.
One way that occurs to me is used (as pure fluff) in “The Brandons” by Angela Thirkell, a domestic comedy written around 1940. There, the characters’ guardian angels show up to observe and comment on the characters’ behavior. They appear to be completely real. On the other hand, they have nothing to do BUT comment. Even with the guardian angels and with almost all the characters being firmly Anglican, in a run-of-the-mill way, I’d hardly class it as Christian fiction.
However, it suggests a mechanism. Even if nothing miraculous happens, there can still be supernatural characters (angels, saints, souls) and forces (grace, prayer) in action, vouched for as real by the narrator. If Thirkell’s angels had been more active, or if a character had prayed and the narrator commented about how it was received, then would that qualify as Christian fiction?
My comment:
The Wajenberg definition merely defines “Christian fiction” as fiction taking place in a story-world where the Christian world-view as portrayed by the narrative is true.
My Wonder definition unnecessarily, and to its detriment, demands not just that the Christian world view be true in the story-world, but also that it prove itself true by evidence of miracles and visitations and signs and wonders taking place on stage.
This element of demanding proof is useless, extraneous, and misleading.
Useless, because no such proof really proves anything. The movie RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ends with a scene of signs and wonders, but it does not “prove” the specific elements of the Christian world view are correct, as opposed to, say, the Jewish, Mohammedan, or Deist world view, or even a more vague New Age or Theosophical world view where strange and dangerous miracles accompany any meddling in the supernatural.
Indeed, I dare say that most portrayals of signs in wonders in fiction, whether scientific or not, are meant to be ambiguous, because the ambiguity increases the wonder. Recall the ending of MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, where the walking stick that might belong to a benevolent but senile old man, or might belong to Saint Nicholas, is found in the final shot of the film. The wonder would be less if instead the film’s final scene showed the old man cured of his delusions by a new drug, or showed him flying away on a miniature sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.
Another example is the movie, but not the book version, of WAR OF THE WORLDS (the older movie, not the remake). The narrator explicitly says of the Martian invaders “They were undone, destroyed, after all of man’s weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth.” Well, if we believe the omniscient narrator (and who dares doubt omniscience?) then this story takes place in a Christian background, one where the Christian teachings are true, and the death of the Martians is by divine intervention, albeit by germ-warfare hence scientifically explicable intermediaries.
Extraneous, because anything within the Wajenberg definition is (by definition) included in the Proof by Wonder definition. If the story is established to the reader by the narrative to take place in the Christian world, there is no need also establish that fact to the characters by having them observe a miracle.
Misleading, because the definition concentrates on a non-essential factor. By the Proof by Wonder definition, for example, C.S. Lewis’ Planet Trilogy (OUT FROM THE SILENT PLANET, PERELANDRA, THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH) qualify as Christian Science Fiction because and only because space angels called eldil destroy Weston’s space-traveling sphere, devils (or the “un-man”) possess Weston, and the divine curse of the confusion of tongues falls upon the materialistic magicians of the NICE.
Removing just the scenes where signs and wonders occur, or retelling the wonder scenes so that the cause and source was more ambiguous, (for example, leaving the eldil merely as space energy-beings and not space-angels) and leaving the rest of the narrative intact, would by this definition cause this trilogy to be classified as “science fiction” but not as “Christian fiction” – even if the narrator proposed, and the author intended, and the reader understood, that the background world was one where the Christian worldview was true. And that would be absurd.
Having said that Wajenberg definition is better than mine, let me argue that both his and mine are misleading definitions.
Genre bounds, as said above, are defined by an imponderable similarity to each other. If you are in the mood to read a book like one you’ve just finished, your best bet is to find another book in the same genre. But what makes two books alike?
In theory, books in the same genre are alike because they produce (or try to produce) the same effect in the mind and soul of the reader. They have the same mood: comedy, when you are in the mood to laugh; horror, when you are in the mood to shudder; love stories, when you are in the mood for being in the mood.
In practice, genres are often defined by a setting, a set of characters, or a plot type, because nothing else will produce the mood but the particular. When you are in the mood for a Western, nothing but a Western will do, and the setting must be the Old West, or else the mood is not satisfied. When you are in the mood for a pirate story, it must have in it characters who are pirates. When you are in the mood for a detective story, the plot must concern the commission and solution of a crime, preferably by detective work rather than dumb luck.
No one would mistake A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a Western, even though it takes place during the required dates defining the Western American frontier, and even has, in the first chapter, prospectors, Indians, and the other props of Westerns. No one in the mood for a pirate story would be satisfied by reading GALACTIC PATROL by E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, even thought there seem to be pirates in it: the space-pirates serving Helmuth of Boskone.
Further to complicate matters, the degree of alikeness varies. In my little corner of fandom, for example, there is no one who has read LORD OF THE RINGS by Tolkien, who has not also read STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Heinlein, even though the books are as different in setting as past is from future, as different in tone as Christ from Antichrist. But both books share the mood that makes them share the same shelf in the bookstore: the sense of wonder, the glimpse of things ‘beyond the fields we know.’ Whether in elfland or Mars, what these two books have in common, the reason why Science Fiction and Fantasy appeal to mostly the same audience, is that sense of things beyond mundane, either otherworldly or extraterrestrial.
So there are at least two types of genre definitions: those that define by mood and those that define by settings, or some other particular. A Western must take place in the frontier, preferably one where they use sixguns, and Planetary Romance must take place on another planet, preferable one where they use swords; but a British Comedy can take place in the past (MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL) or the present (YES, MINISTER) or the future (RED DWARF).
With this in mind, I would like to retract my previous definition of “Christian Science Fiction” stories, because, like the Western or like the Whodunnit, I tried to define it by the setting or by the plot, proposing that a story set in a Christian universe was Christian Fiction, and a scientific romance in such a background would be Christian Science Fiction, or which contained a miracle or visitation as a plot event.
The problem is that few or none of the books so described actually fit the mood of Christian Fiction. The “Comedies of Justice” by Bob Heinlein (JOB) or James Branch Cabell (JURGEN), for example, fit the definition of being set in the Christian background, and so do vituperative fantasies about assassinating God, such as AMBER SPYGLASS by Pullman, THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT by Koman or the pusillanimous and nasty (but well written) apercu of antichristianity by Ted Chang, ‘Hell is the Absence of God.’
Again, I DREAM OF JEANNIE is not “Islamic Fiction” or anything like it, even though, technically speaking, it stars a Jinn, one of the creatures of fire described in the Koran; no more is any number of THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS or its many pastiches. The Arabic mythology is just a prop, and has nothing to do with Islamic theology or sentiment.
Likewise there are many stories set in worlds with props from the mythology of Christendom and have little or nothing to do with Christian theology. The Church in DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE, for instance, is established by the plot to be able to curse and disperse fairies and Leprechauns and other powers of darkness—but we cannot categorize this as a Christian bit of fiction in any real sense of the word.
Likewise the comedy relief but wingless angel ‘Second Class’ Clarence in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE or the incompetent bureaucrat angel in HERE COMES MISTER JORDAN (also in HEAVEN CAN WAIT) or the incompetent deputy angel toting the horn of Gabriel in THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT, or the comedy relief bull-fighting warrior angel in MICHAEL have about as much relation to the real Christian beliefs about angels as the Marvel superhero THOR has to do with the real beliefs of the pagan Norse about the Aesir, or as Hermione Grangier or Tabitha Stephens have to do with the real beliefs and practices of the Wicca.
To use a particular pointed example, the bizarre spoof movie version of CASINO ROYALE (1966) ends with the dozens of spies named James Bond, all killed by an atomic Alka Seltzer, on the clouds with wings and harps, while Jimmy Bond is dragged into the flaming pits of Hell. Practically the same scene, but not played for laughs, forms the end of Disney’s THE BLACK HOLE. (This is not the only movie where a starship goes to Hell—EVENT HORIZON comes to mind as another example).
There are literally more than I can count, and by that I mean “more than three” horror movies or adventure movies where Hell is a real place, and the demons are dark angels, not just extraterrestrial or extradimensional monsters, as in Lovecraft or as in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Indeed, it is so much more common for the Devil to be real in horror and adventure stories and God not to be real, or to be asleep, inert or preoccupied (oddly enough, even in tales where crucifixes repel vampires and holy water melts them), that to see a tale where the Powers of Heaven actually are Heavenly and actually have Power is a rarity unheard-of.
In short, none of these stories, set in a background peopled with obviously Christian supernatural beings, have any Christian sentiment or are meant to have.
A second problem with defining ‘Christian Fiction’ by its Christian setting is the ambiguity in the setting. In the example mentioned above, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ends with the Nazis suffering the fate of Uzzah in a spectacularly Old Testament style Wrath-O-God catastrophe. Yet I would not call RAIDERS ‘Jewish Fiction’ and shelve it next to FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.
Defining Christian fiction by setting is putting on shirt with one arm in the wrong sleeve: no matter how cunningly we twist the fabric or reach with the remaining arm, the shirt is going to end up backwards-frontwise.
A third problem is ambiguity. Is A WRINKLE IN TIME set in a universe where the specifically Christian teachings happen to be true, or THE DARK IS RISING; or are these universes were some more Deist-flavored or Theosophy-tinted ‘Power of Light’ happens to be in charge, and no non-Christian is necessarily excluded?
The unfairly forgotten but charming film STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (also called A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH) has major scenes taking place in the afterlife, and it is not an afterlife of reincarnation, and there is no sign of Houri—but there is not a single reference to Christ. This could just as easily be a Deist or Theosophist or Mormon afterlife as it could be the heavens to which St. Mary ascended in the flesh. Nothing would have been added to the story by making it more unambiguous. Indeed, there is a possibility that the whole episode is a dream the main character suffers while under sedation.
Most writers, and most readers, tend to prefer a more ecumenical type of fiction than one where a specific denomination is right and all the other ones are snares and deceptions of Lucifer the Great. Even famed Christian apologist CS Lewis would have lost some readers had the Great Lion Aslan, at the end of VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, stood at the magical edge of the world and roared: ‘By the way, Henry VIII was right; the Pope is the Anti-Christ! Puritans, Dissenters, and Scotsmen are all going to Tash for eternity!’ — and he would not necessarily have gained any readers.
So let us not define Christian Fiction, like a Western, as a matter of props or setting. Matters are easier if we define Christian Fiction, like a comedy, horror, or a love story, by the mood.
Christian fiction is any fiction that edifies the faith. If, when you put the book down, you are in the mood to go to confession, pray a prayer, to give alms to the poor, or just to stand and contemplate the wonder of God, this is Christian Fiction.
Like British Comedies, then, Christian Fiction can come in any setting: BEN HUR is set in the ancient past; Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY set in the medieval past; BRIDESHEAD REVISITED set in the (then) present; THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH in the (then) future; and LEFT BEHIND in rather unlikely future reached only by misreading the Book of the Apocalypse of St. John.
Are there any science fiction or fantasy stories that do this?
Well, indeed there are, and some of them perhaps not written with such edification in mind. Any tale with an admirable Christian figure, or a Christlike figure, or even a meditation on the sorrows and vanities of the world, may turn the thoughts of readers lightly to higher things, or stories that seem to be about another topic entirely might let slip as if by accident a glint of higher light.
In that sense, there is no such thing as a specifically Christian science fiction book, since Christian readers can see sermons even in such stories as E.T. or THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (the real one, not the spoof mock-up) or SUPERMAN RETURNS, or they can see the empty horror of the non-Christian universe in a book like BRAVE NEW WORLD. But then again even wonder stories written by Christians for Christians can be enjoyed by readers of any faith, to the degree that stories all appeal to something basic and universal in human nature.
I am a Catholic (large C). My reading taste as also catholic (small c). In effect, I can read a Christian message out of nearly any story that correctly portrays human nature, because I think human nature is the image and likeness of God.
For that matter, I have even been driven away from atheism and toward Christianity by boldly antichristian stories, such as the aforementioned ‘Hell is the Absence of God’ by Ted Chang. This tale made a big impression on me, but the opposite of the impression the author no doubt intended. The pro-atheist message was so awkward and so blatantly dishonest that I (at the time an avowed and proud and card-carrying atheist) was suddenly disheartened by the weakness of the evangelical efforts supporting my side: an honest man starts to doubt when the supporters on his side are not engaging what the enemy actually preaches and says. So the Christian message can reach a seeking soul even if the story is intentionally antichristian. Merely by bringing the topic up at all, Uncle Screwtape is facing an uphill battle.
But by the same token, the same logic works the other way. Many an atheist, myself included, was driven toward atheist by pro-Christian works which merely exposed to my derision the weakness (as I then saw them) the Christian case. Likewise, the modern neo-pagans or pretend-pagans, at least among my circle of friends, where drawn toward paganism by the imaginative vigor of J.R.R. Tolkien, to the exact opposite of his intent. His magical world of Middle Earth seemed to real and magical that the readers were not lured back the Church, but toward the muttering and peepings of magicians.
With this in mind, I am reluctant to call anything definitively Christian Science Fiction, with the exception of one author who is both a gifted apologist for the faith, and a gifted fiction writer: and I mean CS Lewis.
I can call to mind a few other writers who wrote science fiction that also served to evangelize or edify the faith, but so few that, at the moment, I doubt there are enough entries in the genre “Christian Science Fiction” for it to be its own genre.
ADDED LATER: Let me close this article with a comment from a reader and a question. A reader with much knowledge in his Japanese heart called KokoroGnosis writes:
“I grew up in a Christian house, and read a lot of Christian fiction in my early teens, about the time I began learning to write fiction myself. By time I was fifteen or so, I realized that the vast majority of what I was finding was hackneyed, cheesy, and poorly written garbage. It drove me away from Christian fiction…
“… I was struck by how hollow it made it all seem. Pale, thin, watery. Tepid and boring. It wasn’t until I read The Book of the Long Sun in my early twenties that I began to appreciate that there was a different way to go about it.”
Amen and amen. Here is my question for you, and for any reader: why is it so easy for a writer to evoke, for example, the emotions of love and passion we associate with Love Stories, so much so that endless streams of Harlequin Paperbacks are available anywhere, but so hard to evoke the passion of religious sentiment, charity for one’s fellow man, awe for God? Why is fiction that addresses religion uniformly so low-quality? It was not always thus: consider Dante and Milton.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
