Today’s post is going to be a departure from my “Last Son of Earth” series in order to bring you some highlights from the ICRS (International Christian Retail Show) in St. Louis. For the uninitiated, ICRS has been the primary conference for booksellers, authors and publishers to meet and engage in business for the Christian Book Industry. Bookstore buyers meet with publishers to place orders for this next year’s products today, authors meet with the publisher’s acquisition editors to pitch new ideas, and a whole lot of networking happens in between.

In light of my being here, I thought it would be advantageous to share with you a little about some of the upcoming Speculative Fiction titles that are heading our way in the months to come. In past years, Speculative fiction has had a fairly visible role in the marketplace as it has continually been a growth category for both Christian and Secular publishers. I imagined, perhaps foolishly, that this year the trend upward in fantasy fiction and speculative fiction would only continue to grow in exposure at ICRS.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Finding speculative fiction titles on the show floor has been far from easy. End times novels aside (for there are always a few of those) finding a fantasy fiction was a hero’s quest in and of itself. At times I wandered for hours scouring the shelves of major and minor publishers in search of anything that remotely resembled a fantasy title and could not find much at all.

I was horrified.

It makes me wonder – where are all the speculative titles going? Is the Christian marketplace really over speculative adventures?

Perhaps the only oasis in the desert of this marketplace (as far as our category goes) was the newly launched “Blink” imprint from Zondervan which is purportedly will focus on YA titles within the speculative faith genre. But this soon to come imprint was certainly not in the forefront of their booth display. In fact, I only spotted it and heard about it because I had to ask the booth attendee if they had any fantasy fiction titles being released this year.

Granted, the lineup looks intriguing (some of them familiar titles newly moved into Blink line) and I feel silly that I might have missed it on first glance.

Nevertheless, the exposure of Christian fantasy & speculative fiction was significantly down and I am baffled.

What follows is the results of my “Where’s Waldo” search. As you will see, the list is not long.

NEW ENTRIES TO THE MARKET 

I did not include “End Times” novels or sequels to already existing series. I did include futuristic novels, alternate history and dystopian worlds in my search.

Aquifer by Jonathan Friesen – Coming August 2013

In the year 2250, water is scarce, and those who control it control everything. Sixteen-year-old Luca has struggled with this truth, and what it means, his entire life. As the son of the Deliverer, he will one day have to descend to the underground Aquifer each year and negotiate with the reportedly ratlike miners who harvest the world’s fresh water.

Doon by Cary Corp & Lorie Langdon – Coming September 2013

A re-imagining of the “Brigadoon” story. Veronica doesn’t think she’s going crazy. But why can’t anyone else see the mysterious blond boy who keeps calling her name? Not only has the imaginary kilted boy followed her to Scotland, she and her friend Mackenna uncover a strage set of rings and a very unnerving letter from Mackenna’s great aunt. When the girls test the instructions Aunt Gracie left behind, they find themselves transported to a land that defies explanation.

Dark Reflection by Daniel Clarence Cobb 

This is a self-published title at Xulon press. When Princess Angela finds a mirror in a haunted castle, her alter ego awakens. Her simple life shatters. Unless she finds all the missing pieces and puts it back together in time, she’ll fade away forever – replaced by a reflection.

One of the things I found intriguing with the book (having forced myself to look past the uninspiring cover) was the humor Daniel used on his back copy which claims “Knight in shining armor not included.” and “No dragons were slain in the making of this book. (Well, ok… Maybe one…)”

SEQUELS NEW TO THE MARKET

Equally short and difficult to find are speculative novels that continue or conclude a series already in the public eye.

A Draw of Kings (The Staff & The Sword series) by Patrick Carr – Coming February 2014

Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood) by Anne Elisabeth Stengl – Coming February 2014

Exodus Rising (Tales of Starlight Series) by Bryan Davis – Coming July 2013

Merlin’s Shadow by Robert Treskillard – Coming October 2013

Remnants: Season of Wonder by Lisa T. Bergren – Coming October 2013

Guardian (A Halflings Novel) by Heather Burch – Coming September 2013

And that, folks, is all that fits our category this upcoming year. It could be there are many more that simply were not being promoted or presented to buyers in any visible way yet. However, nearly half of the titles I’ve shown above were not even physically presented or shown in any way at the show (I had to dig through the publisher’s catalog to find them). This does not bode well for our genre. After all, if bookstore buyers can’t find them to buy them, how will the public find them and buy them.

I’ll keep looking for the rest of the day, but the trend is surprising to say the least and has left me pondering the state of the industry even more than before.

In a Writer’s Digest interview about how to write fantasy, author Steven Harper Piziks named five books he would recommend to fantasy writers and why. One thing jumped out at me from his list–he repeatedly mention “character.”

First he referred to “an entirely empathetic, hugely likeable main character.” Later he identifies one of the books as “The best character novel I’ve ever read. It made me laugh and cry and ache and want to go into the book to live with these people” (emphasis mine). While I might or might not agree with Piziks about the characters in the particular books he mentioned, I think the point is clear: an engaging character is one readers are willing to spend time with.

One of the things I’ve noticed lately about a lot of the Christian speculative fiction I read, is that the main character isn’t all that likable. In an effort to show the reality of sin in a person’s life, a good number of authors are depicting flawed characters who aren’t very nice. Some are whiny, others are too caught up with their own interests to care about other people. Some are lazy or disinterested or foolish.

In other words, it’s hard to imagine readers saying, I want to live with these people.

I’m wondering if we might be looking at a theological problem. Christians understand that sin mars human beings: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). What we tend to forget is that human beings are nonetheless the image bearers of our Creator: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our Image, according to Our likeness’ ” (Gen. 1:26a).

Consequently, what we see in Christian novel after Christian novel is a flawed character in need of a Savior. The impression this gives is that people without Christ aren’t likable, that their flawed character means they won’t do heroic deeds or stand up for right.

As I see it, we are turning our fiction characters into a “their side and our side” duality, and the goal is to win over as many as possible to our side. Perhaps this is the view a number of people have of the real world as well.

The problem with this approach is that Scripture is clear when it teaches the believer who our enemy is: “your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8b).

Our approach, then, ought to be that of rescuers, not that of conquerors, when we approach people without Christ. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves–Christians or not. When our neighbors are being stalked by a lion, we ought to be heading up the rescue team.

I’m wondering if the the characters in our novels ought not reflect these same truths. The character without Christ doesn’t have to come across as a hopeless case–the guy who has ruined his marriage, abandoned his kids, who lives one step this side of the gutter. The Christian character, on the other hand, doesn’t need to have all of life figured out, but shouldn’t he be on a rescue mission more than engaged in hand-to-hand combat against vile sinners?

So I’m wondering, what Christian speculative novels have you read in which a person on the wrong side of faith is portrayed in a positive light? Are too many of us Christian writers stereotyping non-Christians?

What’s right with the Reformation?

With all the imagery saturating the Scriptures, I had to ask myself, why is there such lack of aesthetic understanding and development in the Evangelical Church? I found a partial answer in the iconoclasm of the historical period called the Reformation (16^th century). The Reformation simultaneously freed art from its captivity to the religious dogma of immanence, but also constrained it to a new dogma of transcendence that would influence Protestant theories of art and beauty until the present day.

By the time of the late Middle Ages (1300-1500), the Roman Catholic Church was the dominant religious force of the Western world. Around it’s heart and soul of worship had developed a very immanent visual culture. That is, spiritual relationship with God was mediated through physical objects and the senses of the worshipper. This immanence stressed God within the created order, not in a pantheistic sense, but certainly in a sense of imparting grace or redemption through visible objects. Relics of alleged pieces of saint’s bodies or fragments of the holy cross were housed in shrines with altars which the faithful would make pilgrimages to see because, as William Dyrness notes, “these objects not only reminded worshipers of supernatural reality but actually became a detached fragment of God’s power.”¹ Images of Christ and the saints, called “icons,” became important theological tools of teaching the illiterate as well as objects of veneration.²

Medieval mystery plays, passion plays and miracle plays were also commonly used to instruct the peasants and celebrate feasts, festivals, and holy days through liturgical drama. Churches were huge, glorious edifices full of wood and stone statues of the Virgin, saints, prophets and martyrs; paintings of everything from the birth of Christ to his resurrection adorned the walls; stained glass windows depicted the “stations of the cross.” Dyrness concludes, “The medieval believer before 1500 took it for granted that the human relationship to God and the supernatural world was visually reflected and mediated through this visible order of things.”³

But like the brazen serpent, this mediatorial art became more than engaging, it became enslaving in the eyes of a new breed of Christian, the Reformer. Men like Martin Luther, Huldreich Zwingli and John Calvin saw this visual culture as distractive at best, and idolatry at worst. Zwingli described the slavish devotion that parishioners would engage in before these images:

Men kneel, bow, and remove their hats before them; candles and incense are burned before them; men name them after the saints whom they represent; men kiss them; men adorn them with gold and jewels; men designate them with the appellation merciful or gracious; men seek consolation merely from touching them, or even hope to acquire remission of their sins thereby.⁴

The cult of relics and images was vehemently preached against by the Reformers, and the people repented – with acts of vandalism and destruction of these images in churches throughout the land. Even though the Reformation leaders condemned this vigilante iconoclasm as illegal and immoral they could not control it as it got out of hand.⁵ But iconoclasm, rather than being an elimination of visual culture, was really more of a replacement of one visual culture of immanence with another visual culture of transcendence.⁶

If immanence stresses God within the created order, transcendence stresses God’s otherness or separation from the created order. If immanence is more physical or sensate, transcendence is more abstract or mental. So it was transcendence that was the new focus of Reformers like Calvin, who “privileged the ear over the eye” by elevating the written and preached word over the visual image as God’s superior means of communication.⁷

In all this logocentric zeal, leaders like Zwingli and Calvin never disparaged visual art used for “secular” purposes. Their focus was on images used in worship, not all art whatsoever.⁸ In fact, what occurred was a liberation of the arts from the religious stranglehold it had on people. As Michalski puts it, until the Reformation, “art had been imprisoned in grand ideological and religious systems.”⁹ Because of the Reformed belief in the priesthood of believers rather than a priesthood of elite religious authorities, all of life, not merely church life, became sacred. And that included the arts. The distinction between secular life (family, work, leisure) and sacred life (Church, prayer, Scripture) dissolved.

Martin Luther was strong in his denunciation of the secular/sacred dichotomy:

The idea that the service to God should have only to do with a church altar, singing, reading, sacrifice, and the like is without doubt but the worst trick of the devil…The whole world could abound with the services to the Lord, not only in churches but also in the home, kitchen, workshop, field.¹⁰

Excerpted from Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story and Imagination.

The Reformed concept of nature being God’s “second book of truth” through which his glory is reflected led to the origin and development of the famous 17^th century landscape art of the Dutch Netherlands.¹¹ Reformed artists like Albrecht Dürer are credited with being major influences on the origin of landscape painting, something that was considered without much merit until this paradigm change.¹² After all, creation itself glorifies God as his handiwork of beauty, so why wouldn’t a simple landscape do so as well as an altar piece of the Last Supper?

In a sense, Protestant iconoclasm gave sacred significance to “secular” subjects and experience. It made the whole of life religious, not merely church life. Conversely, it also “secularized” art, that is, it brought art out of the parameters of religious cult objects and transferred it into the domain of aesthetic beauty apart from ecclesiastical use. It was the theological foundation of the liberation of the arts.

(Next Friday, part 2: The Bible is full of fantastic imagery; how do Reformation-minded Christians often ignore this?)

Last week¹ I made what I thought was a joke. In a Speculative Faith News piece, I wrote a satirical evangelical reaction to the film Man of Steel:

Fantastic, now I have the perfect topic for my 14-part megachurch Savior of Steel “sermon” series.

Oh, why did I say anything?

Because after I do, articles like this one come out:

Warner Bros. Studios is aggressively marketing “Man of Steel” to Christian pastors, inviting them to early screenings, creating Father’s Day discussion guides and producing special film trailers that focus on the faith-friendly angles of the movie.

The movie studio even asked a theologian to provide sermon notes for pastors who want to preach about Superman on Sunday. Titled “Jesus: The Original Superhero,” the notes run nine pages.

“How might the story of Superman awaken our passion for the greatest hero who ever lived and died and rose again?” the sermon notes ask.

Just please, no un-Biblical sermons with titles like this.

In response I wrote this, slightly edited here, after of course having my “called it” moment:

Do understand: I completely agree about the parallels [between Superman’s story and Christ’s true Story].

My objection, if any, is to Christians and pastors:

1. Needing Hollywood PR firms — no blame on them; they are simply doing their jobs — to sell them on a fantastic Christ-reflecting film (assuming it is).
2. Deciding to Use the story for silly sermon references or over-the-top “wow, we’re getting recognized in culture!” rhetoric.

Stories should not work like that, as Tools to be used for self-promotion or solely to push for others’ conversion. Stories are means of worship, of exploring God’s beauty and goodness and truths and delights (and only secondly to draw connections for possible conversion help, etc.).

I suppose my objection, then, isn’t to the Warner Brothers marketing effort, but to how some Christians with good intentions will inevitably apply it  for wrongly pragmatic ends.

At least that’s not the reason outlined by Craig Detweiler. Yesterday he “outed” himself as the author of the infamous stock sermon-notes, and shares why he participated.

I wrote the Sermon Notes for the recent Man of Steel blockbuster film. Thousands of pastors took the time to visit a website, enter their address, and download the notes. I am glad that many have found the parallels (and distinctions) drawn between the life of Jesus and the myth of Superman helpful. Countless moviegoers from different faith traditions (or lack thereof) noticed the rather obvious connections between Jesus of Nazareth and Kal-El of Krypton. Hopefully, such comparisons do not detract from either story. My sermon notes were designed to connect (and separate) the superhero film from the enduring testimony regarding Jesus.

Nevertheless, some see the structuring of a sermon around a blockbuster movie as everything that’s wrong with church in the 21st century. It is compromised and compromising. Why would we surrender a sacred service to a secular movie?

I would say this: because, after Christ’s victory, the entire world is becoming a “sacred space.”

When I find a filmmaker asking all the right questions, I make an effort to come alongside that spiritual search. As Philip came alongside the Ethiopian Eunuch, we can ask people, “Do you understand what you’re reading (or creating)?”Our attention (and ticket buying) encourages studios to create even more spiritually informed sagas.

Yet how does this inform our actions? Can Christians, for God’s glory, work with “the world” and even directly with film studios to remind others of Biblical reflections in “secular” stories?

If not, perhaps we at Speculative Faith have some soul-searching to do.

Two weeks ago, I griped about how Enterprise, the last Star Trek TV show to be aired on television, resorted to using a tired old trope called deus ex machina in their plots.

But deus ex machina is not a recent phenomenon, nor am I the first person to complain about it. The origins of deus ex machina come to us from ancient Greece, more specifically from their theatre productions (and yes, I’m enough of a snob that I spell live theatre with an r-e as opposed to an e-r).

To understand what a deus ex machina was back then, we have to understand how a Greek stage was set up.

Greek Theatre at Epidauros (from Wikipedia)

In the picture, we’re looking down at the main stage, which was a big circle. Behind the circle would be a large building that slightly overhang the stage. Within the upper floors of said building would be a series of cranes that could be used to lower scenery or even actors onto the stage.

It became a convention in Greek theatre to lower an actor portraying a god from a crane at the end of every play to set things right again. A good example of this is found in a trilogy of plays called the Oresteia by Aeschylus (and I’m going largely from 20 year old memory here, so I might get some of the details wrong).

In Part I, King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War and figures that he’ll just slip back into his civilian life. No such luck. His wife, Clytemnestra, is upset for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that she’s been having a lengthy affair with another man and didn’t want that to end with her husband’s return. So Clytemnestra and her lover murder Agamemnon and figure that they’ll get away with it.

In Part II, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s son, Orestes, comes home and discovers that Mom murdered Dad and her lover is now ruling as king. Orestes decides to avenge his dad and murders Clytemnestra and her lover.

In Part III, the gods are upset at Orestes because of the whole matricide business. They unleash a group of monsters called the Furies who are threatening to destroy pretty much everything. Orestes flees to the temple of Apollo for sanctuary.

At the end of the play, an actor portraying Apollo is lowered on a crane and declares that Orestes has done all the proper sacrifices, thus freeing him from his guilt. The Furies are sent packing and Orestes is free to go.

This convention of using gods to miraculously resolve all of the conflict in a story fell into disfavor. Even Aristotle, in his seminal Poetics, “argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play.” This criticism didn’t kill the convention, obviously. It continued to be used and is still used to this day.

But here’s what I find interesting: in Greek theatre, the deus ex machina wasn’t considered a bad thing. As a matter of fact, it was the expected ending of a dramatic story.

So where am I going with this? I’m not entirely sure myself. Come back in two weeks to find out.

It’s almost like courtship, this process of readers finding the books they like, or finding the writers whose careers they want to follow.

I learned at an early age that because I liked one Sugar Creek Gang book, I’d probably like others, that since I was captured by one Nancy Drew mystery, I’d probably find the others equally interesting. But how did I stumble upon that first Sugar Creek Gang book, that first Nancy Drew mystery?

In reverse, writers are faced with this dilemma–how do they make it possible for readers to find them?

Readers, as a general rule, are loyal to the writers they like. In the same way that as a young person I read all the Nancy Drew books I could get my hands on (not knowing that Carolyn Keen wasn’t a real person, but was rather many writers hired to produce a formulaic story), I later read all the Louisa May Alcott books I could find because I loved Little Women. Still later I read multiple James Michener books because I love Hawaii. Then it was John Grisham and Dick Francis. More currently it’s Shannon Dittemore and Jill Williamson.

Perhaps other readers are more adventurous than I, and I’ll admit, free Kindle books have helped me do a little more exploring, but just a little.

For me, reading is similar to going to a nice restaurant. Once a year I take a friend out for her birthday, and the last few years she’s requested the same restaurant–a place I only visit on that one, yearly, occasion. So when I order my meal, do I get the item on the menu that I know I really like, or do I experiment, try something new?

Here are the issues. This is a once a year experience. I’m paying good money for this meal. I know there’s something on the menu I like.

But . . .

There are a couple other dishes that sound good.

Do I venture out and try something new? And risk being disappointed that I spent the money for my once-a-year visit on something bad when I could have had what I know I like?

Book buying is like that, at least for me.

When it comes to free or less expensive ebooks, the issue becomes time. Do I spend the time reading a book by an author I’ve never heard of when I can read this other book by an author whose books I like?

A friend of mine has done something I never saw as valuable when trying to decide what to order in a restaurant–she asks the server which of the dishes in question she would recommend. It’s taken me a while to realize that’s a great idea. I discounted the server’s opinion, I guess, because I figured there was no way to know whether their taste was the same as mine. Now if a friend made a recommendation, that held considerable weight. But a stranger?

Well, rarely did the server say, I recommend B, not A. Almost always they give reasons for their choice, especially something like, B seems to be popular with a lot of customers or, I’ve had B and it’s one of my favorite meals we serve.

Suddenly the server, still a stranger, has given me more of a reason to venture out and try something new.

All that to say, recommendations might be the best way for readers to find the books they want to read and the writers they want to follow.

I know that a lot of readers don’t take the time to tell others about the books they read. Some feel as if they aren’t qualified to write a review. Others say they’re simply too busy.

The truth is, recommendations, at least here at the Spec Faith library, don’t have to be reviews. If you’ve read a book and would like to voice your opinion about it, you can pull it up from the Spec Faith library and leave your recommendation as a comment.

A recommendation is nothing more than you acting like the restaurant server, saying whether or not you think people would like that particular book.

There are some books you realize aren’t for you. I’m not a big fan of science fiction, but I have a friend who writes space opera, so when I come across a book set in a galaxy far, far away, I have no trouble recommending it to readers like him. But that would not be a book I would recommend to “everyone.”

I personally like books that Spec Faith contributor and webmaster Stephen Burnett calls “Narnia knockoffs.” Clearly, his reaction tells me a book about children finding a door to another world would not be one I could recommend to “everyone,” either. But I certainly could say, people like me would enjoy that book.

All this to say, with the radical changes in the book industry, even more than ever, we need a place where readers can find the books that are worth buying. Otherwise, despite the freedom technology has created for books to be published apart from the traditional gatekeepers, no one is going to know those books exist. Or few people will.

No one is going to know which of the millions (yes, Amazon rankings are now in the millions) are well written and worth reading. No one is going to find the one book out of thousands and thousands that has been professionally edited, and vetted by a group of beta readers. No one is going to realize that the book by Josephina Anonymous is high quality and very entertaining.

Instead, the dollars will still go to Mr. Name Author because he produces a known quantity.

Unless we start talking about the books we’re reading and liking.

So how about you? Have you done an Amazon review in the last month or so? Have you left a comment here at the Spec Faith library about the books you like? Or a review? Where else do you talk about books and with whom?

Yesterday Stephen offered three criticisms — let’s call them cautions — of self-publishing.

I’m grateful he asked me to rebut his article, but I’m also not sure how much rebuttal is actually needed. His cautions are well taken:

1. That self-publishing not be done for selfish or prideful reasons
2. That it shouldn’t be done totally alone, and
3. Christian self-publishers ought to strive to out-quality the big guys.

Amen to that, says I.

All I will say is that Stephen seems to assume that self-publishing must be done by oneself. There are plenty of people in the Body of Christ who could offer their editing and design talents to Christian self-publishers and improve the whole field by doing so.

What I will offer are three reasons why Christians ought to support self-publishing, both as writers but also as readers. And since readers are not the primary addressees of this column, my suggestion to you is to support your brothers and sisters in the Body. Buy their books, electronic or otherwise. Read them. If they are good, spread the word. If not, be charitable but honest.

1. The Abuses of Industry

This first and most important reason goes like this: Before 1970, book publishers were fairly small affairs, interested in writers and in publishing work that would challenge. Work that was slightly different, or that would contribute to culture even if they wouldn’t sell a ton of copies. The industry was focused on finding new and interesting work, and it understood the importance of writers.

Then major corporations began buying up publishers and consolidating them. Today, all publishers (as with all media outlets) are owned by five multinational corporations.

This is not to rail against the evils of corporations. It is rather to note the historical changes in the book industry of the last forty years. Once upon a time (before 1970), publishers and agents existed to facilitate an exchange between readers and writers. The writer was the focus, the reader the goal.

Now more and more it seems that editors and agents are getting in the way of this process instead of helping it along. Forced to comply with a corporate bottom line, publishers are not picking up new and unique stories; instead, they tend to publish what they think are most likely to sell. They focus on books they think will be blockbusters; the rest get little promotion or attention. (Sometimes cover and copy designers haven’t even read the book when they work on it. Sometimes your editor is the only person at the publisher who will ever read more than a few pages.)

2. Indie Publishing is Thriving

Dean Wesley Smith ran the fifth largest publisher of science fiction and fantasy for several years and has been a published author for over 20 years, with over a hundred novels published. In his book Think Like a Publisher, he points out that “before 1950 or so, self-publishing was an accepted form of publishing. Only from 1950 to 2008 was it looked down upon.”

James Patterson is convinced the publishing sky is falling, but a look at the numbers shows quite the opposite. 2012 was called the “Year of the Bookstore,” and it was so named because independent bookstores (those local stores not owned by Barnes and Noble, etc.) have been growing and expanding, a number of new ones opening their doors last year alone.

Just this year the major catalog from which bookstores order their books changed their catalog organization so that self-published books are eligible for the same discounts as, and appear side-by-side with, industry publishers. Before this, self-published books were segregated in their own catalog. That is, the last major obstacle to getting indie books into bookstores has just been removed.

Unless your book covers and blurbs look particularly amaturish to raise red flags, bookstores can no longer tell the difference. They will simply order what looks interesting, and what is selling well, regardless of where it came from.

3. Self-Publishing Gets Around the Gatekeepers

Assuming a novel is good enough to be published (a good rule of thumb is that you are not ready to produce professional-level fiction before you have written a million words), assuming that you have a small amount of business sense and can get professional-looking covers done, self-publishing is a tremendous opportunity for the rebirth of fiction — Christian and otherwise.

It is a good chance to escape the fetters of story restrictions of all sorts, whether the pernicious “Christian” triad of Niceness, Niceness, and Niceness, or simply the opportunity to take a chance on a strange concept, a new plot structure, an odd story that wouldn’t fit within the narrow parameters of mainstream publishing.

The great thing about this new world of publishing is that everyone has a chance to test the market, and to know that eventually a book will sink or swim on its own qualities. And if those qualities are good (I dare not say perfect), readers will find it.

Editor General’s Warning: please note that word caution. Anything I write below is to caution, not condemn, Christians who choose to self-publish their own fiction.¹

Also note that here I risk writing for a narrower audience. Usually I hope to reach readers, because the “Christian speculative story” field is small enough without fencing out more neighbors and putting up a clubhouse For Aspiring Authors Only. Yet these cautions matter especially for those who believe we have stories not only to write, but to share with others.

1. Self-publication may draw attention to self — away from God and others.

For this one, I cannot and would not point to any particular author or self-published book and say, “There, he only self-published for selfish reasons.” I can only state that in my case, any hypothetical journey to self-publication would at this point be based on reasoning like:

1. I’ve been working on this novel for X years; it’s time people started realizing that.
2. I’ve proposed this project to Y number of agents, editors, and publishers, to no avail.
3. I’ll give up on The Industry. And I’ll just publish it myself. Then people will know.

Yes, all those start with the favorite letter of the world’s second-oldest religion, Meism.

At least for me, self-publishing my own fiction would not even be my attempts to craft and share a story that gives edification, evangelism, or entertainment. And I would not be motivated by the still-greater reason for stories’ existence: to help us explore the beauties, goodness, and truth of our Author, His people, and His world. It would be all about me and my own supposed brilliance. Yes, even the word self-publication could be a giveaway.

Ergo, if that’s a possible motivation of mine, surely it’s a risk faced by other self-publishers.

2. Christ’s Church should be a body with many members working together.

“Dear Jesus, I love You. But please, make Your wife stop writing.”

Giving Up On The Industry is trendy, thanks to the nature of the internet. Technology and inexpensive communication (such as this very site) work well to push populist views and promises of instant fame, though this is often illusory — as is the nature even of real fame.

But in the case of Christian fiction, there just might be some overlap between Giving Up On Christian Publishing, which isn’t a sin, and Giving Up on the Church, which is surely sinful.

By giving up on spiritual siblings — yes, even the annoying ones — we diss Christ’s bride.

Don’t buy the suspicion that “spiritual gifts” Scripture describes relate only to healing or tongues, or else only work in “sacred spaces” or overt-ministry contexts. Surely the apostle Paul and others in passages such as 1 Corinthians 12 never meant to give exhaustive lists. Surely the Spirit’s gift lists also include His gifts of editing, grammar, business acumen, cover design and typesetting, marketing and distributing, and other book-related works.

Versus this truth, might some aspiring authors either give up banding together with these gifted believers, or else never try? Might they in effect say, “I have no need of you”?

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” […] God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.²

No, I’m not suggesting that if Christian fiction suffers lackluster writing, we must all suffer and never attempt breaking free. But, it should be Christian self-publishers’ goal to honor the body of Christ — not just ourselves, or even God Himself, or even secular readers.

And God may have even arranged for that editor to say “this story needs work” not because she’s only able to sell books to Church Ladies, but because, well, that story needs work.

3. Worship must be done with excellence, and team-built by Church members.

Some criticism of Christian fiction is lousy, but truth lies behind it: much Christian fiction is still lousy. Why, then, do so many self-published novels (including, alas, some listed in the Speculative Faith Library!) appear even lousier than all the shallow, apparently derivative, yet-another-Narnia-knockoff fantasies offered by mainstream Christian publishers?

Reading is, or should be, worship. So is writing. And worship, at least when rendered with and partly for other believers, should be done with as much excellence as we can muster.

The divine Artist’s first direct-commissioned subcreation was a) a church building for all His people, b) built with Spirit-inspired excellence by a team.

I’m not seeing excellence in some Christian fiction. But I must say, at least the mainstream publishers have come together and made the effort. So they’re more accountable for their weaknesses, and/or they’re less guilty of trying to work this worship alone.

What then of self-publishing authors who effectively say, “I’m tired of trying to work with The System; I want recognition now”? Are they not guilty of worse excellence-rejection?

Questions, comments, or complaints?

For those who prefer reading over attempted authoring — I hope there are more of you! — I ask: What have been your experiences with self-published Christian fantasy/sci-fi? What would you recommend to self-publishing authors?

For self-publishing authors, I ask: Will you take these cautions under advisement?

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned some older-than-dirt stuff we don’t usually think of as speculative fiction, like epic poems and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Recently I’ve been visiting with another author whose work isn’t usually mentioned in discussions of the genre but whose writings are essential blocks in its foundation: Edgar Allan Poe.

If memory serves me correctly, I was introduced to him in elementary school, or perhaps junior high, as the father of the short story. Not without reason. I don’t know what things kid read in school nowadays, but there was a time when every student  read ”The Telltale Heart” and/or other Poe works as prime examples of short fiction.

Not long ago I acquired an old paperback copy of The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe published by Random House (Vintage Books Edition) in 1975. While reading it, intermittently, from front to back (an ongoing process), I came to a realization early on: Poe was ahead of his time.

Decades before Jules Verne made a name for himself writing about space travel, half a century before H. G. Wells shocked the world with his tale about invasion by Martians, Poe contemplated the practical difficulties of flying to the moon in a hot air balloon and suggested scientific solutions in “The Adventure of Hans Pfaall.” Do you like zombies? Check out “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (which name sounds suspiciously like Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort, if you ask me). And beside merely inventing the short story, it seems Poe also created the first fan-fic  — sort of — in “The Thousand-and-Second Tale” starring Scheherazade.

That’s just what I found in the first 100 pages of a volume containing over 1000. What portents of the literary future might I find as I continue? It will be interest to see.

As you’d expect, though, despite Poe’s progressive thinking, his stories are dated. If you’ve ever read “The Gold Bug” in its original form, you know how shockingly “incorrect” the character Jupiter would be deemed by today’s cultural watchdogs. If you read the scientific explanations in “Hans Pfaall,”  the moon flight story, you just might laugh out loud.  Read the accounts of the wonders seen by Sinbad in “The Thousand-and-Second-Tale” and you might ask, “Was Poe a creationist?” He wouldn’t even understand the question; at the time the story was written, the world had not yet divided along the Evolution v. Creation line.

We read words written 150 years ago and understand the language with little difficulty. But, because we filter it through our cultural and experiential viewpoint, we don’t always interpret the old stories the way the author intended. A year or two ago I followed an online discussion of Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. One highly sensitive reader was quite verbal in his (or, more likely, her) disgust with Heinlein’s sexual typecasting. Today’s Enlightened Ones are willfully blind to the wide-angled view – and they call us Christians called narrow-minded?

Speculative fiction speculates; but to speculate about the future, it’s useful to have a grasp of the past. Not the past as we think it should have been, but as history reveals that it was. We must read what people wrote in the past, not to judge them, but to see their society as they saw it.

How did they envision their future? I daresay the far-future year 2000 in Poe’s mind didn’t look much like the historical one does in our memories.

In the early seventies, I had to read George Orwell’s 1984 for a class in high school, along with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I hated them both. (Teenaged girls either love or hate things; there’s no middle ground.) I didn’t read Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 until recently. I didn’t like it either.

Some will tell you these authors’ visions of the future were disturbingly accurate—especially now, with all the “Big Brother” activity coming to light in the news. But, in my scripturally-filtered view, the far-seeing sci-fi greats missed the point. Big Brothers have come and gone all through the ages, with the Biggest Brother Yet still waiting for his cue. But their temporary successes–and the short-lived throwing-off of their tyrannies—have been directed and empowered by spiritual forces as much as human strength and ingenuity.

We give ourselves too much credit.

I don’t believe any man (let the sensitive reader understand: I speak generically, with “man” meaning human, not specifically male) can see the future, understand the past, or correctly interpret the present unless he observes it from God’s perspective. Whether the subject is speculative fiction, philosophy, politics, chemistry, geology, mathematics, the cosmos, or any other matter in all creation, reverence for Jehovah God is the beginning of wisdom.

I read that in a Book somewhere—a Book that’s not mere speculation.