Fourth ‘Doctor’ season brings new alien agendas — part 2

Last week’s column (my first in a long time on Speculative Faith) focused on not-so-hidden intellectual invasions inherent in Doctor Who, courtesy of the British sci-fi programme’s head writer/producer, Russell T. Davies.

His goals were made more explicit in a British newspaper’s article early last month, as the series’ fourth season was underway: Davies gushes, for example, over a guest appearance by angry Atheist Richard Dawkins in a forthcoming episode, and claims directly that he hopes young boys will imitate one series character’s example and declare their own homosexuality.

However, I’m actually not going to undertake another one of those anti-culture Christian rants, like the kind you read about in email forwards. To be sure, Christendom often needs those sorts of rants (even in email forwards), to oppose truly harmful movies, television programs or other art forms, politicians, organizations or whatever. This column, continued from last week, just isn’t going to be one of them.

Instead, the Doctor practices such heroism and wages true battle against evil influences, resembling Christ like other famous fictitious Christlike-figures, that it’s well worth seeing.

This meat may have indeed been sacrificed to idols by its makers (a la 1 Corinthians 10: 23-33), in the hope of furthering anti-Christian agendas. But Biblical truths are there in these epic stories anyway — like the time-traveling TARDIS ship itself, surrounded by a perception filter, it seems the writers may just not be able to see such “spiritually discerned” elements.

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Posted by E Stephen Burnett at
Thursday, May 08. 2008 | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Spec Fic Online

Christian speculative fiction is catching on, and as it does, it seems more and more people are adding their voices to the promotion/marketing/instruction mix. Good! There's lots to talk about, lots to learn. But it seems to me it would be helpful to catalogue all these sites.

Jeff Gerke, publisher of Marcher Lord Press, heads up WhereTheMapEnds, a site touting itself as the home of Christian Speculative Fiction. One of the Writer's Tools on the site is a listing of books available. In addition, he has a list of "Fantastic Visions," speculative artists, followed by a list of online magazines, manga, gaming sites. It's a good stab at the catalogue I mentioned.

Problem is, it needs to be updated.

So I'm thinking, why not a supplemental list? ... Why not a CONTEST? We could have a Commenters' Choice—best Christian Speculative Fiction site online. What do you think? From the nominations, we could create the catalogue—most loved sites, or something.

We won't start the contest just yet. I need to get your input though, on how to work this.

Here are my thoughts. Just like the Clive Staples Award, we take nominations from ... you.

Then we set a vote day, which we publish well in advance, giving those interested in participating a chance to visit the sites that are nominated. Then on vote day, a person leaves a comment here at Spec Faith, with the name of the site they're voting ...

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Posted by Rebecca LuElla Miller at
Monday, May 05. 2008 | View Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Fourth ‘Doctor’ season brings new alien agendas — part 1

The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his fantastic time-ship, the TARDISMore hideously scary monsters are coming to the new season 4 of the smashing British sci-fi series Doctor Who. Like the Cybermen, a race of metallic soulless humanoids who want to “upgrade” all humans to be like them, this threat arises from a surprising source and threatens the existence of planet Earth, by compelling people to be subject to certain extraterrestrial modes of thought.

And it’s courtesy of none other than Doctor Who’s very executive producer and head writer, Russell T. Davies.

“Wait wait wait wait!”

While I say that, please imagine me holding up my hands in a faux-panicked manner, reminiscent of the Tenth Doctor, right before I whip out a clever solution to avoid being killed. This is because, unlike some Christian writers and culture pundits, I seem to find myself unafraid of Davies’ own ideological invasions.

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Posted by E Stephen Burnett at
Thursday, May 01. 2008 | View Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Cllive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction – 2007

Nominations are now open for the first ever Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction. The works that are eligible are Christian worldview science fiction/ fantasy/allegory/furturistic/supernatural novels published in English by a royalty paying press between January 2007 and December 2007.



Leave your nominations in the comments to this post here at Spec Faith, or in the comments to the Clive Staples page over at A Christian Worldview of Fiction.
...
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Posted by Rebecca LuElla Miller at
Monday, April 28. 2008 | View Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Beyond Genre Borders - CSFF Tour, The Begotten

For the first time in almost two years, I am not personally participating in the CSFF Blog Tour. Meaning, I have not read this month’s selection and will not be posting my opinions or feedback or response to the book.



And yet, I want readers here at Spec Faith to know what’s happening in the publishing realm. Christian publishers (or the Christian arm of secular publishers) are slowly making room for speculative fiction, though they may not always admit it.



A case in point is the CSFF Blog Tour feature, The Begotten (Berkley Publishing Group), first in The Gifted series by Lisa. T. Bergren. On her web site, Lisa herself describes the books as historical, but clearly there is a supernatural component to the story.



Publisher’s Weekly calls The Begotten a spiritual thriller but then says:



Disregard Da Vinci Code comparisons and think Lord of the Rings, but without Hobbits and the allegorical trappings.






From talking with Beth Goddard who reviewed the book for the Tour committee, I labeled The Begotten supernatural suspense. However, I understand there is also a romance element too, so I guess The Gifted is one of those series that defies precise genre labeling.



Good for Lisa, I say. In my opinion, books should be read because they are intriguing, well-written, captivating, not because they fall into a certain class. Which is one reason we hold the CSFF Blog Tour. How will readers know what books are ...
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Posted by Rebecca LuElla Miller at
Monday, April 21. 2008 | View Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
On the freedom of fantasy
I am a scientist, and for the last thirty years, have earned my living from science. There are certain procedures in science which are interesting and perhaps unfamiliar to those who are not part of the discipline. One of those procedures is what we might call ‘what-if experiments’. In these you take some result or conclusion and then say to yourself ‘what if’? What if gravity was that bit more severe? What if global temperatures were 5°C higher? What if the earth had no moon? You sit there and think about the effect, doodle on a bit of paper, or these days, plug it in to the computer and model the results. The virtue of doing such mental experiments is that you often come up with novel insights into how things work which you can feed back to the real world. 

Doing something similar in the spiritual realm is actually rather tricky. Let us consider two potential plots for a novel. In the first a minister of the church reneges on his beliefs, runs off with another man’s wife and commits all manner of evil only to come back to a living faith and be restored to his church fellowship. In the second, we take an extremist of another faith (I name no names) who kills himself in a suicide attack but whose defective faith is accepted by God in his graciousness so that he is allowed into heaven. (As a matter of fact, ...
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Posted by Chris Walley at
Saturday, April 19. 2008 | View Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Promotion the Easy Way
For a number of writers, promoting our work is hard. It feels self-serving and actually contrary to what God has called us to be and to do.

But what I've noticed is this: I have no problem telling people about my friends' books ... or books I love ... or books I think my friends will love ... or books I think my friends might be interested in ... or ... you get the idea.
The point is, I find it far easier to "brag" about someone else's work.

Quite frankly, I think this is a good way to operate. Not only does it remove the temptation to shamelessly boast, but it has a practical side—it's more effective.

I've said before, if I want to promote my work by telling as many people as I can, and if I'm very aggressive, I might get the word out to several hundred people, maybe as many as a thousand, depending on how big my circle of acquaintences is.

But what if I have a group of friends willing to promote my [hypothetical] book along side me? What if they were willing to tell their closest friends, even encouraging them to buy and read my book and then turn around and tell their other close friends the same thing? How many more people would hear about my work?

This seems like a simple concept, a mathematical one actually, in which the number of people aware of my book grows geometrically. And yet ... it seems like not ...
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Posted by Rebecca LuElla Miller at
Monday, April 14. 2008 | View Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
The King of Prince Caspian Says Fantasy Helps Us See Reality
Prince Caspian is coming, and I'm pretty darned excited about it. A few days ago I posted the first part of my interview with Micheal Flaherty, the President of Walden Media.

He touches on his love of fantasy, and the importance of fantasy for developing a child's imagination and curiosity. In particular, he says,

It's terrifying for me to see now what's happened to
kids, particularly from kindergarten to third grade, where pretty
rigorous instructions on mathematics and all kinds of things are
largely supplanting fantasy play and storytelling. These kids are under
such tremendous pressure at such young ages!

I've not thought of fantasy as a pressure valve before. Nor had I thought of it as a critical element of cognitive development. I mean, I've always felt that stories were an essential part of my own life, but Flaherty got me thinking. Maybe stories—and speculative stories in particular—are an essential part of being human.

That seems to be what
Flaherty is talking about
in the second part of the interview (which will go live on April 19, but I'm giving you an exclusive sneak peak so go read it now here). Flaherty says, "Fantasy doesn’t detract from reality, but it actually makes us more aware of
it."

Am I just in love with favorite genre, ...
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Posted by Marcus Goodyear at
Tuesday, April 08. 2008 | View Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
An Insider's View

Yesterday I received an email from Bill Snodgrass, the brains behind the Sword Review, now MindFlights, in which he discusses the need for readers to support Christian science fiction and fantasy. His views certainly support my call for action last week.



I want to repeat that challenge. Science fiction or fantasy fans, tell ten of your friends, either through email or in person, about three (or more, for those over achievers!) of the recent Christian science fiction or fantasy books you've read and enjoyed. No restriction on who published said books. After you've done so, post a comment here at Spec Faith so we can see this grass roots movement grow.



And now, Bill's note, posted here by permission.



I find myself in what might be the making of a fairly significant rant. The topic is Christian fantasy and science fiction, and the complainers.



At Double-Edged Publishing where I volunteer as President and Director, we have been working out the details to become a book publisher. After all, for over a year, I’ve been hearing writers complain that there aren’t enough companies willing to look at works that are both speculative and from a Christian world view. Starting last November, we began to roll out our first speculative book titles to follow our two earlier anthology releases.



The reaction to our efforts—admittedly under promoted—has been underwhelming.



My imagination, as I was poised to sign off on the projects, was that the many Christians who ...
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Posted by Rebecca LuElla Miller at
Monday, April 07. 2008 | View Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)
Good News, Bad News from Mount Hermon

Good news, bad news from the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference.



The good news first. WaterBrook editor Shannon Hill was on the docket to give a seminar entitled Groundbreaking Fantasy in the first workshop slot. Bad news, Shannon became too ill to attend the conference.



The best I can do is share the points from the handout made available in our Conference Notebooks. First the complete title: "Groundbreaking Fantasy: Or how breaking ground in fantasy writing is a myth—and why we are better for it."



Well, if that doesn't intrigue you, nothing will.



The point Shannon planned to cover, in order:



Archetypes: Who needs em? You do ...


Fantastical Fore-parents: Why does everyone like these writers so much anyway? [Wouldn't I love to here an editor discuss that point!]


Contemporary Influencers: You may not love it all, but be knowledgeable about it.


Good Groundbreaking versus Bad: Friends don't let Friends write Insane Fantasy Fiction


Highly Successful Habits of Humble, Hungry Hobbits: Making a character stick with your readers [another topic I would LOVE to hear discussed by an editor]


Christian and Hopeful get to the Celestial City: Using allegory in your storytelling\


So, now I'm wondering how I can convince Shannon to pass on some of her views in another venue since conference tapes aren't available.



The real positive here must not be overlooked. An editor of a publishing house that is producing fantasy and doing so successfully planned to tell the rest of us fantasy writers what's working. And presumably why.



My guess—and my ...
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Posted by Rebecca LuElla Miller at
Monday, March 31. 2008 | View Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)