Atheist and agnostics postulate that all religions are based upon the premise that people create a god or gods to explain events they can’t comprehend.

Rain falls, so people say God did it to bless their crops. Then knowledge is gained, and it is explained in terms of meteorological conditions. The mystery is gone, and a god is no longer needed to explain how it happened.

Of course, such a belief is incomplete, if a belief in God is understood in those terms. While it is true some Christians do hold a “God of the gaps” belief system, the atheist and agnostics have a critical hole in their proposition. Actually, more than one.

They assume God is not real and only adopt theories/beliefs based upon that premise.

While it is plausible that religions arose in response to explaining the unknown, it is also just as plausible that they arose because they reflect a reality that exists.

Case in point: the classic evolution vs. creation debate. In adopting evolution as the engine of creation, atheist and agnostics believe it shows a creator wasn’t required. If true, then knowing how an electric drill works means it didn’t have a creator. The logic does not follow.

They assume by explaining the how, that they have also explained the why or who.

Science is equally guilty of filling in gaps where it doesn’t belong. Religion is accused of filling in the gaps of how an event occurred. Science is also guilty of filling in the gaps of why an event occurred.

By explaining creation via evolution, the atheist and agnostic postulate that a who or why is not there. Yet, there is no way they could know this for sure. They cannot exclude the possibility that a god did create us and our world using evolution if that is how he did it.

Science can help explain the how of things, it cannot theorize about why or who that is responsible. Yet people continue to use science to fill in the gaps of atheism and agnosticism.

Consequently, you hear from secularist that Christian science fiction is a contradiction of terms. The two cannot be compatible.

That is a science of the gaps view. If science stays within its boundaries of understanding the how, Christianity explaining the why and who shouldn’t conflict with science anymore than knowing how electricity works exclude the possibility that someone turned on a light and had a reason to do so. Science should be agnostic when it comes to God, or it risks being a science of the gaps.

What gaps in science or religion have you seen or used?

We started off 2013 with a Winter Writing Challenge, so it seems fitting if we close out the year in the same way.

Here’s the way this particular challenge works:

I’ll give a first line, and those who wish to accept the challenge will write what comes next–in 100 to 200 words–putting the entries in the comments section of this post. We’re not looking for a completed story, but rather for an intriguing opening of a novel or short story, though it is possible to write a piece of flash fiction within the word count, and any such entries will be accepted.

Visitors who read the entries will give thumbs up to the ones they like the most (no limit on the number of thumbs-up a person can give), and, if they wish, give a reply to the various entries, telling what particularly grabbed their attention. (Participants are expected to comment on at least three other entries).

After the designated time, I’ll re-post the top three (based on the number of thumbs up they receive) and visitors will have a chance to vote on which they believe is the best.

Once again I’m offering a $25 gift card (from either Amazon or Barnes and Noble) for the entry that receives the most votes (as opposed to the most thumbs-up). In the event of a tie, a drawing will be held between the top vote-getters to determine the winner.

Finally, those silly little details we all need to know:

* Your word count does not include the first line.

* You will have between now and midnight (Pacific time) next Monday to post your challenge entries in the comments section.

* You may reply to entries, giving thumbs up, this week and next. To have your thumb-up counted to determine the top three entries, it must be included before Monday, December 16.

* Voting for the winner from the top three begins in two weeks.

Feel free to invite any of your friends to participate, either as writers or readers. The more entries and the more feedback, the better the challenge.

[Edited: I’ve changed the font of contest entries to blue so readers/critiquers/thumb-givers can more easily find them.]

And now, the first line:

All Gem wanted was a quiet night at home, but she’d been warned that upper-level sages would have to make sacrifices.

C. S. Lewis is known for his Christian apologetic writings as much as for his speculative fiction.

Today’s guest, former atheist Alister McGrath, comes to us via YouTube. He is a Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education, and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King’s College, London, and an apologist in his own right but also a C. S. Lewis scholar (see his biography of Lewis, C.S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet). Consequently, he brings his unique blend of expertise to a study of Lewis’s apologetic works.

McGrath has produced a short series of videos on Lewis’s apologetic works. In the one featured today he “considers Lewis’s rich weaving together of reason and imagination in his apologetics, and how this appeals to both modern and postmodern people.”

Hope you enjoy.

Surely this would have been the halfway point of the original two-part film version of The Hobbit. (Pause for fiends to grumble about Peter Jackson only wanting to make money, etc.) Now that that’s done, let’s consider the story’s shift from a road-trip quest, from The Shire to the Lonely Mountain, to a fixed-place structure — Lake-town and the lost Mountain.

Starting in chapter 9’s last section, Tolkien himself notes the change: “Now we are drawing near the end of the eastward journey and coming to the last and greatest adventure, so we must hurry on.” To me it feels like the narrator himself was quite done with the road-trip portion and was ready to tackle some more-advanced material. And here, I believe, Tolkien purists may expect more-faithful adaptation in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

“Why didn’t they just keep it a children’s story like the book?” Stop saying that.

Why do I say that? Because those who refer to The Hobbit as only a children’s story, or even as intentionally less mature than The Lord of the Rings, need to read a bit more carefully. In the book’s final chapters, Tolkien tests the limits of his modified fairy-tale even more.

Here in chapter 10 alone we have small-town characters and crowds, conflicting interests of different groups that later develop into very modern-feeling political standoffs, a slick and disreputable leader who wants to preserve the status quo but also feign to endorse old legends, and even Tolkien’s own satirical send-up of the returning-king archetype!

Unlike chapter 9, all this is very visible, very familiar and yet fantastical, and well worth more-faithful adaptation for the film. I’m sure I’ll put up fine with the added character of Tauriel, frivolous elf-and/or-dwarf-and/or-goblin battles, etc. But don’t change Lake-town.

Even if they do, of course, the book’s chapter remains for our enjoyment, so let’s discuss!

Chapter 10: A Warm Welcome

1. Read chapter 10 in its entirety.
2. When the dwarves finally emerge from their barrels, starting with Thorin, whose “side” does the author take — Bilbo’s or theirs in their cooped-up (ha! get it?) misery? Perhaps [Bilbo] had forgotten that he had had at least one good meal more than the dwarves, and also the use of his arms and legs, not to speak of a greater allowance of air (page 180).
3. “Well! Here we are!” said Thorin. “And I suppose we ought to thank our stars and Mr Baggins. I am sure he has a right to expect it, though I wish he could have arranged a more comfortable journey.” (page 181) How has Thorin’s view of Bilbo changed?
4. 

   Bard: introduced late in the book, and as expected, much earlier in the film adaptation.

   In this chapter Tolkien makes several mentions of generational differences: the old people who still remember the legends of dwarves living under the mountain; the young people to whom the legends are more vague and who even doubt a dragon lives under the mountain. Some of the more foolish ran out of the hut as if they expected the Mountain to go golden in the night and all the waters of the lake turn yellow right away (page 182). What do you think of these differences? How do they reflect in reality?

5. The “return of a king from ancient times” theme runs strong in many fairy tales. How does Tolkien treat it here — seriously or otherwise? Why do you think this theme is so prevalent? How do the people of Laketown react to the possibility that a king returned?
6. Thorin looked and walked as if his kingdom was already regained and Smaug chopped up into little pieces. (page 187) Is there some moral implicit in this attitude of Thorin’s and the dwarves? Or (my thought) might Tolkien be having a little fun with how the return of an ancient king might look in a very human culture if things were more “realistic”?
7. … He was a wise elf and wiser than the men of the town, though not quite right, as we shall see in the end. (page 187) Thranduil, the Elf-king: is he a “good guy,” or “bad guy,” or somewhere in between? How do you feel about “ambiguous” characters in stories? How do Christians typically react to such figures, in our preferences and stories? How does Scripture treat people, whether heroes or villains: good, bad, or in many ways mixed?

What about the Master of Laketown and his reaction to Thorin’s return? If he is bad guy, do we at least see his point; do his motives make sense apart from pure evil? How does the fact that he is less of an overt villain in effect add even more tension to the story?

I met the Lord the summer I was sixteen. A November or two later, I visited a local Baptist church for a Thanksgiving Eve service.

That was forty years ago, and I no longer remember how I came to be there. Perhaps someone invited me (though I don’t know who), or maybe I saw something in the paper about the service and wanted to attend badly enough to go alone. In any case, at one point in the service we were asked to tell the person beside us one thing we were thankful for.

The lady beside me was a stranger, and I hadn’t come prepared to give a response to that question. However, when it was time for me to share, I knew what I wanted to say: “I’m thankful that God is the God of love.”

It was a knee-jerk reaction, but as the years pass, I’m all the more thankful for this. Can you imagine a scenario in which the Creator did not found the universe in love?

Other than speculations about Hell itself, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a world portrayed in fiction. Nor would I want to. The Great Physician graciously drew me out of the black hole of a godless existence when I first met him, and I have no desire to set foot on that path again.

Rather than wander through a world untouched by love, let’s look at some of the things love has wrought in the real world.

Some things are obvious, such as romantic love, which often bears the fruit of parental love. How many classic plots have arisen from the former and horror stories spring from lack of the latter? Friendship likewise brings joy to life, as does love of one’s work, or one’s people and society.

But love runs deeper. Because of God’s love, the world knows justice. Mercy pops up all over the planet. Kindness is valued in every culture. Even the strictest totalitarian rule shows restraint in some aspects.

Without a loving Creator, physical ugliness would reign, for nature’s beauty serves no practical purpose beyond giving us pleasure. We would not know joy, save perhaps the momentary delight of a burning need met. But then our hunger would return, and the joy would be forgotten.

Though no individual or culture lives love perfectly, all mankind recognizes its superiority and responds to its power. A smile, a sympathetic touch, a gracious nod, are not bound by language or culture. In every nation, self-sacrifice is revered as the highest tribute anyone can offer, and it’s an offering that can only be made in love (whatever the object of that love may be).

The world is filled with love because its designer is the embodiment of it. Though the scars of sin obscure it in one degree or another, his identifying stamp is branded upon every heart.

And I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful for many things, but they all have their source in the love of God, who is the God of love.

In the US, tomorrow is designated Thanksgiving Day. But in a nation in which secularism is god, to whom do we give our thanks? The waitress who serves us in the restaurant? The family members who host the celebration? The TV networks that broadcast the parades and football games and the utility companies that send the signal into our homes? Or maybe the wage-earner who brings home the check that pays for it all?

How many Americans thank the God who has made it possible not only to partake of these things, but to enjoy them?

I recommend we thank the people in our lives who honor us with their labors, for sure. But first and last, I thank God, not merely for the innumerable blessings He’s given us, but for who He is.

And if you write a story in which love doesn’t figure, please warn me before I buy it, because—and I hope you’re not offend—I don’t want to read it.

I recently received an answer to a question I’ve had most of my life. The stock answers had never satisfied me.

When I was a teen, I watched my parents go through a predictable routine. Get up, go to work, come home, eat, watch TV, go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. Only punctuated by rare vacations or trips to visit relatives. It felt so pointless. I wanted my life to mean something.

We tend to derive meaning from our accomplishments and/or our relationships. While those fulfill a practical sense of self-worth, they are fleeting. My fulfillment becomes its own circular purpose.

Like Solomon discovered in Ecclesiastes, all is vanity. They don’t give us a real purpose and fulfillment. I’d spent my life moving toward a goal that I felt was important, but when I arrived, it didn’t quell the feeling of “there’s got to be more” ringing in my heart.

Solomon’s conclusion?

This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. (Ecc 12:13 ASV)

Honestly, I never liked that answer. Maybe because it sounded so “works based.” Maybe because it felt like he said, “After all my seeking, this is what’s left. I can’t come up with anything better.”

I didn’t realize then how accurate Solomon’s words were.

For the Christian, however, he did highlight the source of what would ultimately give life meaning: God. For me it boiled down to one seemingly unanswerable question:

God, why did you create me and this world?

Why was it unanswerable? Because by definition God has no need of anything. He is complete within Himself. What possible motivation could God have to create the universe and mankind if He didn’t in some form or fashion need us? If there is no need within God to create us, then there is no purpose to our existence.

The question of why God created us felt as unanswerable as “Can God make a rock so big He can’t lift it?”

For example, some would suggest God created us so He could be loved. That assumes He has a need to be loved. That He’s lonely. It assumes that the shared love of the Trinity isn’t enough for Him.

Another popular answer is we were created to glorify Him. We see this when someone says their purpose in writing Christian fiction is to glorify God. There again this would imply that God created us because He needs to have someone singing His praises.

Am I saying that loving God and giving Him glory are pointless? No. Yet, if He has no real need, then there can be no real purpose to my life. All is vanity. Obeying God is still vanity if there is no point to it.

On a whim recently, I did an internet search for “Why did God create man?” I didn’t expect much. I figured I’d get the above answers, which the first two links did give me. Or I’d get the answer “42”. But then I stumbled across an article that turned on a light.

In the great love chapter, the Apostle Paul says that true love “does not seek its own.” This means that love is not selfish or self-centered. God did not keep His life and love to Himself, but He shared it. He breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God created humanity because “He is love,” not for what humanity could do for Him.
http://www.cftministry.org/resources/articles/article_why.html

I know nothing about the organization who wrote that article. They could be flaming heretics for all I know. But on this point, they helped me connect the dots.

God, being perfect love, wanted to share that love because He is not selfish. He didn’t need to create us to be fulfilled or complete within Himself. However, because He is perfect love, He desired to share that love.

Meaning for my life is gained by participating in His love.

That is why the greatest commandment is to love God with all our being. For that and the second related to it sum up the whole point of the Law. Then we’re back to Solomon’s conclusion. Our meaning and purpose is to obey God.

As Jesus pointed out, if we love Him, we’ll obey Him. If we obey Him, it shows that we love Him. (John 14:15; 15:10) Solomon’s point is that we find meaning in loving God by obeying Him.

We don’t do the commandments to save ourselves, but to participate in and share His love.

That is what we are created to do. That is why I write fiction and non-fiction. Sure, it should glorify God. But that isn’t the foundational reason I write it. Or read it. Or have children. Or—fill in the blank. I do it all to share in His love.

I have something great to be thankful for this coming Thursday: for God so loved us that He gave us life, then when we threw it away, He gave of His life to give it to us again through Christ.

What truths have you discovered about meaning in your life?

As Thanksgiving Day approaches here in the US, I’m mindful of the basis of our holiday. Primarily it was instituted in various settlements in the 1600s as a day to remember the ways in which God provided. Secondarily, it (or they, since there was no one set date in those early years) was a day of celebration for the harvest.

In 1621 in the settlement at Plymouth, 58 colonists hosted 90 members of the Wampanoag tribe because, by teaching them food growing and gathering skills and by donating food supplies for the winter, these native Americans were instrumental in helping the colony survive. Consequently, many see Thanksgiving as a day to express gratitude to significant friends, family, and neighbors.

The thing that impresses me about these early celebrations is the fact that they took place even though the overall picture of these colonies was quite bleak. Many people died because of disease. Supplies through the winter were meager, at best, and more people died of starvation. In addition, an attack by the Powhatan Confederacy in 1622 wiped out a number of smaller settlements and killed twenty-five percent of the Jamestown population.

Nevertheless, the colonists, in what would later become the Commonwealth of Virginia, held any number of Thanksgiving observances. Yes, despite privation, death, dangers, and the concerns for the future, they found reason to rejoice. They exhibited a degree of contentment, a gratitude for what they had rather than resentment for what they had lost.

When I think of stories, however, no matter what the genre, I think of a main character who is not content. He is missing something he wants, something he needs, in order to fix a problem that has cropped up in his world. Consequently, I don’t often think of fictitious characters as being content or thankful.

Until I considered minor characters. Those who are a part of the story but who are not the central figures, may indeed exhibit thankful hearts.

Think, for example, of Gimli, the dwarf in The Fellowship of the Ring who was one of the company traveling with Frodo Baggins. He stands out in contrast to the stereotype of dwarfs as greedy and disgruntled.

First he was grateful for the opportunity of traveling into the mines of Moria and learning what happened to his kin who had sought to reestablish a community there. Second, he was ever afterward thankful for having met Galadriel, the elfin queen of Lothlórien. Later he expressed sincere happiness as a result of his friendship with Legolas.

Sam Gamgee is another Tolkien character who is a good example of one who is gratefulr. In the Shire he was thankful to be Mr. Frodo’s gardener. On the way to Rivendell, he was content to see elves, and could have died happy after that first encounter. Most of all, however, he was satisfied to walk into danger beside Frodo, to carry his burden, and in the end, to carry his friend, no matter how bleak the circumstances.

In the third volume of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis also created a notable character who demonstrated gratefulness: Reepicheep. He was happy to be a Talking Mouse, and became content even without his tail. Mostly he was content with his lot–being the one who would go on a quest to the end of the world, though it meant he would leave all he loved.

In the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling created perhaps the best grateful character of all: the house elf, Dobby. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter ends up freeing Dobby from his servitude to the Malfoy family. From that point on, Dobby is so grateful to Harry Potter that he will do whatever he can to help or protect Harry Potter, even put his own life at risk.

What are some other notable characters who exhibit thankfulness? What do you think fuels these characters to be so grateful, even when their outer circumstances may not seem to warrant that attitude? For writers, do you have a grateful character in your story? For what is he or she so thankful and why? In the end, how do we as real people stack up against Reepicheep or Sam Gamgee or Dobby? Is it possible to be as sold-out grateful as these characters were?

Utopian speculative fiction is uncommon today, but there has been an artistic movement toward the dystopian. It is now a common fiction setting. Works of fantasy or horror may tend to reflect the observations of their authors living here on an Earth that holds dim prospects for most citizens. Our modern world shows disturbing trends. Science fiction seems particularly obsessed with the dystopian–to the point that the word cliché is being used in literary circles. This artistic preference actually endangers some speculative fiction artists who need to create a realistic setting.

Authors of terrestrial science fiction face a criticism that others do not: time’s passage. If a world is set a long time ago on a planet far, far away, the sci-fi artist can be as creative in world-building as any other speculative fiction writer. If, though, the tale includes Earth, the reader has an expectation of realism. It is a science fiction writer’s job to connect a reader’s perception of what is, to their own artistic vision of what will be.

If a futuristic story is set next Wednesday, culture, art, and technology are simple to predict. Likewise, if a piece is set hundreds of years from now, time’s judgment won’t fall on the living author. Gene Roddenberry will be gone long before the future reveals the possible rise of a benevolent global government like the Federation. NASA is, however, working on a warp drive for interstellar travel, so Roddenberry may be judged for setting the technology too far in the future.

Technology is advancing quickly, and near-future science fiction stands in the cross hairs of time’s judgment. Orwell’s 1984 has been widely criticized for its use of pneumatic tubes and slips of paper to move information rather than accurately predicting the computer age. Conversely, the streets of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep (Blade Runner), feature flat-screen billboards and voice-recognition software; critics praise his accuracy.

Cyberpunk is science fiction’s popular near-future sub-genre. Wikipedia once defined cyberpunk as punk hackers and misfits (who had fallen or been pushed into society’s cracks), using bionic technologies against an unjust monolithic greed-based system of huge multinational corporations that bribed whole governments, and boasted security forces stronger than most armies.

Since dystopian fiction has been called cliché, cyberpunk’s Wikipedia definition has changed, and works no longer need to be dystopian. The challenge for the artist creating such an optimistic near-future piece is connecting most readers’ perceptions of the world around them to a positive vision of the world their children and grandchildren will inherit. Feel free to Google the following claims . . .

• The US economy has yet to recover from the 2008 collapse. Good jobs were lost, a huge number of unemployed are no longer counted as unemployed and the jobs that have been added since 2008 are low-paying, part-time, and offering no, or poor, benefits. Factories that employed parents and grandparents are still moving overseas, where workers don’t enjoy 40-hour work weeks, overtime, or a Labor Day paid vacation. Saving labor cost is profitable for shareholders. The stock market is robust as the rich get richer. The US national debt boggles the mind, and the effects of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy have polluted the bond market with the same bad debt that caused the 2008 bailout. Meanwhile, China seeks to replace the US Dollar with the Yuan as the international currency.

• Insider trading is legal in congress, and most who serve are worth seven figures before they leave by putting lobbyists’ needs over we-the-people’s. Ninety-five percent of political races are won by the candidate who raised the most money: the candidate who is bought. That is usually the incumbent, who has experience rubbing the elbows that lobbyists need rubbed. Is it any surprise Forbes featured an article titled: “The Four Companies That Control the 147 Companies That Own Everything”? With wealth comes power. Karen Hudes, a Yale Law School graduate and whistleblower who worked for twenty years at the World Bank, claims these mega-corporations of global elites control not just presidents, but governments.

• Globally, the oceans are dying. Life in coastal waters has been rapidly declining for decades, and coral reef habitats have drastically shrunk. Coastal waters respond well when clean-up measures are taken, but governments are not taking them. Creatures that eat jellyfish are found with stomachs clogged by plastic shopping bags, which look like jellyfish in the water. In the mighty Pacific Ocean, the Fukishima disaster is poisoning life. People crossing the Pacific in sailboats report a near loss of surface life, a recently active habitat. The University of Alaska detected the arrival of Fukishima’s radiation in coastal waters, and it measured at Cold War levels. The radiation, which has been leaking in over 300 tons of seawater a day since the disaster occurred, may not disperse evenly in water. A patch riding the northern Pacific current could be a massive health hazard, not just in Japan, but along the entire North American coast.

• Since the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, corporations are now considered persons under the law. The Supremes also say money is free speech. Some corporations, like Goldman Sachs and Monsanto, have revolving doors between their own executives and government appointee positions—that oversee the industry in which their company competes. The golden rule says those with the gold make the rules. Greed, one of the seven deadly sins, is called profit, is idolized, and drives the global market; what could possibly go wrong?

• At the current rate of deforestation, old growth rainforest will be gone by 2050. At current rates of poaching, the elephant will become extinct in twelve years. Current rates are important, because they’ve not changed in recent history. Everyone assumes that government, or someone else, will be proper stewards of Eden. Meanwhile, nothing changes. Business-as-usual is tolerated. History shows that humanity doesn’t change unless it must. We have to consider the words of Albert Einstein when considering current rates of decline: “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

It is easy to see how so many have a dark view of the near future, and why artists are drawn to the dystopian. Could it be that the price we have paid for our technology is upon us, we don’t realize it, and the arts are warning us? The rest of cyberpunk is reality; will a twisted fate for society also be shown by time’s passage?

Cyberpunk happens in laboratories every day. One can buy brain-wave computer input devices. Science fiction now has a post-cyberpunk sub-genre. Even cyberpunk’s predicted punks are now reality: Anonymous. The resistance to Big Brother is thankfully here. In 2012, Anon was named as one of Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential people of the year.

It is no surprise that the most creative genre, speculative fiction, has gone dystopian. In striving to paint a realistic picture, artists use colors from the world they know. In trying to create a believable universe, writers of near-future sci-fi are trapped by literary flaw: the cliché. Perhaps time’s passage will doom near-future sub-genres, as optimism eludes artists in the fallen world.

– – – – –

Frank Creed is a housecatter, end-times cyberpunk novelist, and founder of the Lost Genre Guild for the promotion of Christian speculative fiction.

Read Frank’s full bio at Splashdown Books. Learn more about his work at his website and blog. Friend him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter

If you happen to have any empty wine barrel lying about, pry off its lid, squeeze inside, and ask a handy hobbit to seal the lid on after you. Take a good look around. What do you see? I must admit, your sight is more faithful to this Tolkien chapter than Peter Jackson will be in the forthcoming The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (releasing Friday, Dec. 13 in the U.S.).

Some fans wouldn’t give any filmmaker a pass for adaptation deviation. I certainly don’t, when the adaptation is as severely bad as that of the third (but not last?) Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). But here I want to be wise about what stories work best in different forms of storytelling. That’s why I give Narnia’s second film Prince Caspian (2008) a pass when most criticize it: The book would always be difficult to film. Even the much-beloved BBC adaptation relegated Caspian to a short-film setup for the third story.

So consider chapter 9 of The Hobbit. Much of it focuses around characters whom you cannot see. First Bilbo is invisible, scampering about the Elven palace for days. Then, still sneaking about, the brave little hobbit (whom we all admire) packs the Dwarves inside Elven wine barrels — where, again, you can’t see them. Then Bilbo grabs onto a barrel and rides it out the palace’s secret entrance, still invisible and accompanied only by invisible Dwarves.

That’s why we’re seeing publicity photos of the Dwarves actually broken out of the barrel-tops to look around. Invisible folks just don’t translate well to film. We’ll need to see them.

“They fight. And bite. And fight and bite and fight.”

Of course, none of that explains why Jackson has evidently inserted even more fight scenes.

Also, you just know Bilbo won’t be alone in his all (or mostly?) invisible quest to help the Dwarves. Surely he’ll have help from the added Wood-Elf Legolas (a fair addition, as his father appears in The Hobbit and Tolkien likely hadn’t thought of his son yet) and the new-for-the-film-only shooting-up-heroine Elf Tauriel (no woman I know is at all a fan of this).

Ergo, expect plenty of revisions at this part of the film. Hope this advance warning helps you paradoxically enjoy the film even more — and enjoy exploring this chapter of the book.

Chapter 9: Barrels Out of Bond

1. Read chapter 9 in its entirety.
2. Here the Dwarves are captured by the same Elves who are described as “good people” in the previous chapter. How can “good people” function almost like bad guys? Can two groups of people have a legitimate disagreement, but neither side be evil? How may this be different from views of heroes and villains? And why then are goblins clearly bad?
3. If you were Bilbo, trapped in an overall good yet inescapable Elven palace, invisible but with a need to eat and stay out of others’ ways, how would you handle the situation?
4. For the second time in the story, it’s up to Bilbo alone to rescue all the Dwarves. Does this seem redundant? Even if it does, does that make you want to stop reading the story? (If you don’t, then even a technical story redundancy is not a real problem, is it?)
5. The Wood-elves, and especially their king, were very fond of wine. … Very soon [after drinking] the chief guard nodded his head, then he laid it on the table and feel fast asleep. (pages 165, 167) Is this a lucky coincidence? Or does it seem to say anything against the Wood-elves, or them enjoying wine, or even them drinking too much? In general, what are the views of classic fantasy authors about wine and drinking and getting drowsy?
6. … Bilbo, before they went on, stole in and kindheartedly put the keys back on [the sleeping elf guard’s] belt. “That will save him some of the trouble he is in for. … He wasn’t a bad fellow …” (page 168) What does this tell us about Bilbo and his reaction to the Elves?
7. It was just as this moment that Bilbo suddenly discovered the weak point in his plan. Most likely you saw it some time ago … (page 170) Did you? … And have been laughing at him (pages 170-171). Were you? … But I don’t suppose you would have done half as well yourselves in his place. (page 171) What do you think you could have done to escape? Is this one of those “why not just explain the whole thing to the good captors” incidents?
8. Again we find Bilbo in a miserable situation. Can you think of a similar adventure? What made all that misery worthwhile later? Perhaps the joy of laughing about it to others?
9. … Now we are drawing near the end of the eastward journey and coming to the last and greatest adventure, so we must hurry on. (page 175) Have you noticed the plot structure changing — from road-trip quest, to escape story, and now another type? What do you think about The Hobbit thus far, and (for new readers) where may the story go next?