Have you ever found a fascinating-looking book, at least judging from its cover, on a shelf — picked it up, admired, then flipped it over — then read something like this?

PRAISE FOR JAMES P. SWANMINGLER

“Incredible . . . Swanmingler does it again . . . lace up your boots and unlace other garments, because it’s going to be a steamy ride.”

^{— The Library Foundlings Society}

“Wow. Just wow. I couldn’t put it down . . . the delicate romance of a Clancy thriller, the jovial simplicity of a Tolkien legendarium.”

^{— The Minnesota Statesman-Inquisition, Featured Book Review}

“The autumn blockbuster is back, and you’ll feel the chills and make the autumn wind yourself by how fast you’ll be turning these colorful pages. Swanmingler is once again at the top of his seasonal game.”

^{— The New Jersey Port Authority Herald}

“A first-class shiner.”

^{— Eddie Bowtruckle, author of Blood Omenship, Swoon of the Moon, and Sunken Decks of the Dead}

In a bookstore not long ago, I found such a book, and was struck by a total lack of what I had wanted to find: something about the story. The author’s name was new to me. Already the publisher, graphic designer, and/or cover artist had made the “sale.” I wanted to know some about the imagination behind that fantastic cover.

So what was the novel’s actual story? A dark secret to be sought within, I guess. Now look at me. I can’t even recall what on the cover was so impressive. It’s gone.

Naturally, I had to write my own endorsement, inside 119 characters:

When I pick up a novel to read its back cover, don’t give me Endorsements about the Product. Tell me about the *story*.

'That Hideous' back cover.

Some back covers, of course, get the story very wrong. I suppose I would prefer reading no plot description, over an inaccurate plot description. For example, an edition of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis says: “Finding himself in a world of superior alien beings and scientific experiments run amok, Dr. Ransom struggles with questions of ethics and morality, applying age-old wisdom to a brave new universe dominated by science.” I have no idea what that’s talking about. The only accuracies were “Dr. Ransom” and “scientific experiments.” I suppose you could say that summary is spoiler-free.

Other back covers flagrantly reveal real spoilers. Readers, and I’m sure authors, may get frustrated by this. Back-cover spoilers have ruined more than a few books for me. Still, come to think of it, they may keep someone reading. When’s the part when X occurs?

But presenting only vague endorsements doesn’t work for me. I can’t recall any time when they did. Perhaps I have read too many books, endorsed by authors whose works I loved, that ended up not being as good as those novels. More likely, I simply don’t know that author or care for the publication that is named. And I have to wonder:

1. Without reading the newspaper review, what does its excerpted opinion matter to me? Especially when it’s not the newspaper, but one reviewer, who said that?
2. If the story is good, does the author really need “propping” from another, more-popular author who got there first? This practice may come across as humble, and I don’t want to oppose that! Yet I wonder whether statistics or anecdotes would support the concept of one author’s fans “transferring” to another author.
3. Any new author is not C.S. Lewis, or anyone else. Please, cut out this comparison.
4. Endorsements aside, why not at least tell me something about the novel’s story?

Really, I keep coming back to that last question.

Maybe you do, too. Or perhaps you find a lot more attractive about the endorsements, at least those from other fiction authors, than I do.

Perhaps I have something to learn here, from other readers who can share what they like, or from authors or editors stopping by who know more about the reasons for publishers preferring back-cover endorsements over story summaries.

Or perhaps you only want to reply with something specific and helpful, like this:

“Wonderful column. Burnett does it again. I couldn’t put it down. You have done excellent explorations to the topic.”

I said two weeks ago that I wanted to talk about a trope that pops up from time to time in not just Christian speculative fiction, but every genre of Christian fiction. I don’t think it’s as prevalent nowadays as it used to be, but every now and then, when I’m at a conference, I’ll hear a newer writer fall into a particular trope, one that strikes us all at one time or another. it’s not necessarily a single factor in the story, such as characters or plots or anything like that. Instead, it’s an attitude that develops in these certain authors that then spills over into their books.

What attitude is that? Simply this: I’ll write this book and, as a result, hundreds if not thousands of people will come to Christ!

Now sharing the Good News of the Gospel with the unsaved, unchurched, dechurched, lost, seeking, or what-have-you is a worthy and laudable goal. As a matter of fact, it’s something that I think more Christians have to take seriously. Just last night, I found just that message in a YouTube video from a most unlikely source:

My problem with that attitude creeping into Christian fiction is this: writing Christian fiction to help save the lost and fallen sinners out there simply doesn’t work. There’s a fundamental flaw with that plan, and it has to do with who we’re trying to reach.

Or, to put the question another way, who is our audience?

That’s a question that I was taught to ask myself when I was in the Seminary. My Homiletics 101 (not the actual title or number, but you get the idea) professor taught us that a necessary step in preparing a sermon is to consider who it is you’ll be delivering it to. Is your congregation made up of older folks? Younger folks? New marrieds? Veteran Christians? Beginners? While God’s Word doesn’t change, the message we craft to speak about it must depending on who it is we’re trying to reach. The example that he used is that you wouldn’t deliver a scathing sermon about the need for sexual purity before marriage to a group of senior citizens in a nursing home, just as you wouldn’t preach about how to deal with the fears of impending death to a group of high school students. Two different audiences in two different places in life, and thus, you would tailor what you’re saying to each group.

We have to ask ourselves a similar question when we’re writing our stories. Who is the target audience for our stories? For example, while working on Failstate, I had to remind myself that I was writing my story for older teens, most likely boys, who enjoyed superheroes. The situations, emotions, and challenges that my characters faced had to ring true for that target audience or my story wouldn’t work.

I think we need to keep a more basic question in mind when we’re writing our fiction: who is it that actually reads Christian fiction? I’ll give you a hint by re-asking the question: Who is it that actually reads CHRISTIAN fiction?

I know, it’s a stumper.

That’s why, while it’s admirable to want to reach the lost and unsaved with our stories, it may not be a reasonable goal. They aren’t reading our stories and, truth be told, we’re wasting our time and, not only that, some great opportunities to minister to the folks who are reading our stories.

But that’s enough of that for today. In the next few weeks, I’ll come back to this topic and discuss who it is we’re trying to reach and what we can and should be saying to them. Until then, I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Have I completely lost it?

Book 1 of the Seventh World Trilogy

I wasted my childhood. Also the first half of my teenage years. At least, I thought I did. After all, practically all I did for all those years was read fiction. Devour almost everything of interest (for children and adults) in my father’s four-room collection of books. Scour library shelves and read all kinds of things, some of them excellent, some of them still giving me momentary attacks of depression and fatalism. (Forget monsters. Read S.E. Hinton’s That Was Then, This Is Now if you want scary.)

I had time to do this because I was homeschooled. More specifically, I was unschooled. (More so than many of my siblings. I actually dislike the term “unschooling,” but I don’t have a better one for the moment.) Furthermore, we moved a great deal and so I did not have much of a long-term social life.

Add to that the ability to read very fast, and I suspect I read multiple thousands of books as a kid. The transition to writing my own was actually pretty seamless; in my late teens, I used to joke that I’d written more books than some folks in my life ever finished reading.

One of my favourite nonfiction authors, Tim Ferriss, recently blogged on “The Top 10 Fiction Books for Non-Fiction Addicts.” After describing the years he spent refusing to read fiction, Tim wrote, “My time of reckoning came when I needed to fix insomnia, and non-fiction business books before bed just compounded the problem. I began reading fiction to ‘turn off’ and instead saw breakthroughs in creativity and quality of life as a side-effect. Now, if people ask me, for instance, ‘Which books should I read on leadership?’ I might reply: ‘Dune and Ender’s Game.’ I’ve come to look for practical solutions in both fiction and non-fiction.”

So it turns out I didn’t waste my youth after all. Actually, I’m beginning to suspect I made excellent use of it. Not only did all that reading translate into an education and teach me how to write and edit practically in my sleep, it also affected my understanding of the world, its people, and my place in it in ways I’m only beginning to appreciate. We only get to live one life, but reading has the power to expand that life and bring into it the thoughts, experiences, and imaginations of others in profoundly personal and life-shaping ways.

In the process it can also bring forth qualities in our lives that cross out of the intangible world of reading and start to impact what some people call “real life.” Qualities like wisdom, compassion, leadership, and creativity.

Reading—especially reading fiction—is not a waste of time. At least, it does not have to be. It can be a soul-shaping, mind-expanding way we can choose to use our time.

Writing, it turns out, has some of the same qualities. I wrote my Seventh World Trilogy—Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day—when I was going through some tough stuff spiritually and wanted to capture some of what I felt, and some of what I saw friends going through. Of course, that was just a launching point, and the eventual story went far afield from it.

But as the years have gone by and I’ve occasionally reread or thought about those stories again, I’ve found they have more to say than I thought they did. Themes I didn’t purposely put in there have started to call attention to themselves as the same themes have grown more important in my life. Themes like knowing where we come from, and how much that impacts where we’re going. Themes like being orphaned in a hostile world and needing a Savior who is father and husband as much as king.

Having written through some of those things makes me more able to grasp them, somehow. Fiction, far from being a waste of time, has become an essential part of how I deal with life, discern priorities, find courage to do what is right. It has become an important part of how I seek God.

My novel Taerith was originally blogged on my website as I wrote it. Some months after I had finished the book, a woman I had never met left a comment telling me that the book had given her hope and encouragement in the face of a broken relationship. And I decided to leave my old guilt complex over spending so much time reading far behind.

Fiction is not a waste of time.

– – – – –

Rachel Starr Thomson is an author, editor, indie publisher, and writing coach whose writing runs the gamut from walking with God to fantasy fiction to articles on nature and writing. In her other life she’s a poet/storyteller/narrator/singer for Soli Deo Gloria Ballet, a Christian ballet group she co-directs. Browse her books and articles at RachelStarrThomson.com, or check out her Free Stuff page for downloads and lots of online reading.

I planned to culminate my series on the topic of death in speculative fiction this week with a discussion of the various approaches to life after death, but for a variety of reasons, I don’t have it in me to write that piece right now.

Instead, I’ll refer you to an excellent article by science fiction writer John C. Wright on the mechanics of writing fiction, within which is embedded the beginning of what could be a rather amusing story involving the Inklings, the Nazis, and the contents of a small, oblong box…if the author ever gets around to finishing it.

My apologies,

Fred

(Editor’s note: This guest column blends two columns, this one and this one, from our archives. Both featured Blood of Kings series author Jill Williamson. The “weird” novel Jill mentions near this column’s end was published as Replication in December 2011.)

Hi. I’m Jill. My family moved to rural Alaska when I was five. We went from house to house those first few years. My dad was a carpenter and he’d get free rent as long as he was fixing up the places. When I was nine, Dad bought his own land. Our first house was a combination of a turquoise bullet trailer and what Dad called “the hooch,” which was an almost see-through addition to the trailer made from a spindly pine tree frame that was covered in Visqueen — the stuff construction workers use to hold insulation in walls. Dad took more sappy pine trees and built a triple bunk bed in the hooch. Being the oldest, I got the top bunk. I’d stay up until the middle of the night reading under that never-darkening Alaskan summer sky. I usually woke up from mosquitoes buzzing around my head or a twitching dragonfly that had somehow managed to get trapped between the Visqueen layers of the ceiling three feet from my face.

We didn’t have electricity. Town was twenty-five miles away. So when I ran out of library books, I daydreamed. I came up with all kinds of characters, most of which had electricity and running water and didn’t have to use the two-seater outhouse my dad was so proud of. (“You don’t have to wait,” he’d said when he first unveiled it to mom and us kids.) So that’s where I came from.

I’ve always love reading, especially teen fantasy. When the first Harry Potter movie came out, a huge debate started in our church as to whether or not the books were evil. I decided to write a book Christians wouldn’t complain about. (I know. Naïve, huh?) But once I started writing that novel I was hooked. I’ve been writing ever since.

Some of my all-time favorites? The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia, Harry Potter, Blink, This Present Darkness, anything Randy Ingermanson wrote, LOTR, Timeline, the Narnia books, Ender’s Game, and The Giver.

My first book was sort of a Christian Agent Cody Banks. I got stumped when I tried to write the marketing proposal. I had no genre. At first I thought it was suspense. But it was also action/adventure. Or maybe an urban fantasy. Urban or contemporary fantasy? Was there a difference?

Since my spy kids story was driving me nuts, I wrote a book called Jason Farms. The same problem cropped up when it came to genre. Jason Farms is about a girl who discovers her father is working at a cloning lab. I was pretty sure this one had to be suspense. But wasn’t it also science fiction? What were Double Helix by Sigmund Brouwer or Blood of Heaven by Bill Myer considered?

My next book was a medieval fantasy. Finally, something I could stick in a category without difficulty! But what kind of a random author was I trying to be, anyway? I kept stumbling onto these discussion on the ACFW loop about author branding and how important it was to write the same genre, at least at first.

At Mount Hermon 2007, I sat in on a workshop by Jeff Gerke who talked about “weird” fiction. My eyes got wide. Oh, yes. I liked the sound of this “weird” thing. It made a lot of sense. Turns out I wasn’t as random as I feared. I was, and am, a speculative fiction writer.

Aren’t you glad there is a genre that encompasses such variety? I sure am.

Black Widow may win over me yet.

Sure, the gal in tight black from The Avengers is still riling some geeks, who don’t see how a lady-fighter with a very small gun could help powerful superheroes. In part 1 of this series, I also wondered if the addition of Black Widow was self-contradictory. By putting a heroine in a male-dominated film to show Girls Can Fight Too, yet also in a black catsuit, doesn’t it defeat the progressive point?

However, at least, based on the most recent trailer, Black Widow may not be that way. Several excerpts show her just as vulnerable as the male characters, if not more so.

In one clip, damage is going on and she’s lying on some floor or platform, with shock and helplessness clear on her face. Later, Black Widow runs through an exploding hall, with the Hulk behind her (shielding her?). She grimaces and struggles, as debris and sparks rain down on them both.

Try and tell me this is sexist: suddenly I, as a man, see this character differently. In my perception, she’s not some warrior-princess icon; she could instead be a human hero, well-trained but out of her league. Instead of being only skeptical — ho-hum, another shooting-up heroine who can do anything guys can do, only better — I am sympathetic. And what changed my mind? Seeing her pained expressions. Reflections of humanity.

Surely that, and not artificial attempts to avoid sex caricatures, is how storytellers craft male and female characters who are different, yet equal; balanced, but not boring.

And for Christians, who see men and women created in God’s image to be equal, yet also different in how they reflect His glory or rebel against Him, we can be grateful for those who craft such great characters. Amidst all the belching sitcom dads, raging feminists, over-angsty teen-boy “chosen ones,” or inhuman “warrior princesses,” we find in many stories representations of God-glorifying humanity, male and female, naturally diverse.

How about we wrap up this series — for now — by considering a few?

Sokka

This teen boy, a warrior from the Southern Water Tribe, is introduced in the pilot episode of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, and remains a lead figure throughout the series. When I first viewed the first few Avatar episodes, I was ready to give up Sokka as a hapless cliché: older brother, nagging, silly, and ridiculously male.

Then I saw the fourth episode, “The Warriors of Kyoshi.” Sokka meets a group of female warriors and makes fun of them. Naturally he must be taught a lesson, which involves him donning their female-warrior dress and getting beat up by girls. Ha ha! That silly chauvinist Sokka! Those girls showed him! And with that, I was convinced I was right: he’s always going to be only a dumb-young-man laughingstock.

However, at that end of that episode, Sokka had already apologized to the lady warriors’ leader, Suki, and was suddenly mature about it. Really? That never happens …

That could be why I held out hope. And I wasn’t disappointed. For the rest of the series, Sokka, though always very much comic relief, was an absolute hero. He led the group in their quests, gave them perspective, defended his sister, invented machines, and charged with troops into battle.

By the show’s end, he and Suki are an item, with matching talents. And by then, we’ve also seen even more solid male characters, like Uncle Iroh, and Sokka’s father, Hakoda.

This, by the way, is why I hold out hope for next Avatar series. The Legend of Korra will debut on April 14, featuring a new Avatar, Korra, a hotheaded teen girl who enjoys fighting. Ordinarily I’d think, Aw, brother, here we go again (perhaps supported by this). Clearly Avatar’s creators do think themselves “progressive” about female characters. But oddly enough, they don’t think they need to bring male characters down — such as Sokka, Aang, or Uncle Iroh — to make women stronger. That’s encouraging.

Hermione Granger

Harry Potter fans will instantly recognize the seven-book (and eight-film) series’s most popular female lead. Hermione is a brainy girl gifted with magical abilities, and quickly becomes the friend of Harry Potter, the series’s orphaned hero, and Ron Weasley.

Shallow readings or viewings might result in seeing Hermione as just another clichéd “I can do anything better than you” girl. At Hogwarts school, she patronizes Harry and Ron, tries to follow school rules to the letter, does library research while they are lazy or even try to cheat the system, and even writes their homework for them.

But as the series progresses, more becomes apparent. Hermione’s skills don’t overrule Harry’s or even Ron’s. They complement them. Moreover, especially as the characters grow into young men and women, author J.K. Rowling makes it very clear that she sees natural differences between the genders — differences that help each person. In the final novel, especially, Hermione’s role is integral to the final quest. Yes, it is Harry who leads the group, trying to destroy the wizarding world’s final enemy. But “we wouldn’t last two days without her!” Ron says in the film version. Hermione’s knowledge and medical skills keeps them safe. At times she is almost — dare I say it! — secretarial.

Finally, Hermione is realistically shown falling in love with another of the series’ main characters, not the titular protagonist! And her natural bent toward strength yet also femininity is not the only one in the Harry Potter world. Ron’s mother, Molly Weasley, is another. Though active in wizarding espionage against the villains, and able to hold her own in a wand duel, Molly is unabashedly domestic, and the mother of seven children.

Rory and Amy Pond

You have to hand it to Doctor Who. The revived British sci-fi series tries so hard to be all edgy and subversive. They really do. Occasionally you’ll get the wink-wink, oh-so-cute reference to homosexual notions. In the last season, Craig, an “everyman” character whom audiences last saw nervously revealing his feelings to a female friend, is shown “married” to her, except not really, because after all, Marriage is Just a Piece of Paper.

But it’s all revealed to be just so much table scraps tossed to anti-family activists, when one considers these main characters. The Ponds, who debuted in the first episode of Doctor Who series 5 (2010), not only contradicted several recent conventions of the franchise, but just can’t help refuting dumb conceptions of male and female characters.

First, there was this convention: the Doctor’s female companion is supposed to form a killer crush on the time-traveling Time Lord. To be sure, one of the Doctor’s recent companions, Donna, made it clear she would not repeat that nonsense. But then Amy Pond directly came onto the Doctor in a cringe-worthy scene that at first made me sure the series had jumped the flying shark. But not so fast! In the next episode, the Doctor takes action. He will have none of that again, thank you very much. Instead he picks up Rory Williams, Amy’s boyfriend, and whisks them both away to 1580 Venice. By the season’s end, the two are married. They honeymoon, stay in love, and have a child. And in later stories, threats that Amy will resume her crush on the Doctor come to nothing.

Don’t let Rory’s mostly-joking adoption of Amy’s last name fool you. Much like Sokka, this at-first-silly-seeming man is proved to be an absolute hero. Sure, he dies and comes back to life a lot, and Amy may sometimes save him. But really, who gets honored in the intentionally fairy-tale-like chivalrous subplot of series 5’s climax? Rory, all the way.

As for Amy, her character arc has proven equally interesting. At first she was little more than eye candy. They almost completely Seven-of-Nined her. Then Amy’s clothing grew more modest and her character more evident. She is truly devoted to her husband as her lover, and the Doctor as her childhood hero. Amy is strong and yet feminine. What do you know, a female character can be both — and without slamming men.

Sex Object or nothing?

Still, recently I’ve come to this conclusion: no truly balanced, realistic, strong-yet-flawed character, male or female, will seem that way to all people.

Blind attitudes arise in response to Amy Pond, and River Song from Who, and others.

Just this week, a British toy company announced it was making a new poseable Amy Pond figure. I scrolled down this page, and found the predictable Pond-scumming:

The real Amy Pond looks more vacant than that…

… Followed by comments that I won’t repeat here, not just because they’re obscene but because they’re too stupid for discerning readers.

Amy is a fine character. She is balanced, mature, and grows as a person. Karen Gillan, who plays her, is obviously talented, and like the other cast members, throws herself into the role — makes it real. Why nitpick on her like that?

Oh. Light bulb. Here’s why.

If a female character is not a Sex Object, she just doesn’t show. She’s invisible. “Vacant.”

Thus, in this view, there is no middle option — balanced, realistic and human woman with strengths and failings — between Sex Object and Nothing There.

Men who think this way have emasculated their own brains. And as long as they exist, I doubt only encouragements to fight chauvinism or feminism in stories will help much.

Still, that’s no reason not to encourage stories with characters like these.

What are your favorite male or female characters in speculative stories? How do their strengths reflect our Creator, and their weaknesses our humanity?

Two weeks ago, I brought up tropes and overused ideas, things that we’ve seen far too often in Christian speculative fiction. And a lot of you had ideas for things that had been “done to death” in your opinions. I brought up the Nephilim. Others of you brought up being transported to new realms through a portal, hidden royal children, and other plot points and devices that people keep coming back to.

One of the comments that stood out to me the most, though, was what Rebecca LuElla Miller had to say about tropes:

As to overdone tropes — none. I don’t think there are any. All of them can work if they’re done well. By that I mean they feel fresh, have an original spin. As you said, John, it’s ALL been done before, so we aren’t going to come up with that new trope that no one’s thought of before. And if we tackle one that hasn’t been done for a while, it doesn’t guarantee it will seem new.

I think that’s a fair point and one worth considering. As a wise person once observed, there’s nothing new under the sun. The same is true for tropes. It’s very difficult to find a truly unique and original idea that hasn’t been done in some way before. The key, it would seem, is to find a new way to present that trope.

What’s funny is that shortly after I posted my article on tropes two weeks ago, I found myself coming face to face with a “been there, done that” trope, one that one of you mentioned in the comments. I won’t say which trope it is, but I will say where I found it. I found it in the ABA YA book Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

If you’re unfamiliar with this book, it’s basically a retelling of the Cinderella fairytale set in the distant future. World War IV has been fought, uniting the world under a Commonwealth. Living in what was once China is a girl named Cinder. Cinder is a cyborg mechanic (as in, she’s a cyborg who is also a mechanic, not a mechanic who works on cyborgs). One day, she meets Prince Kai, the crown prince for the Commonwealth. Kai has a stressful life, believe it or not. There is a plague that is ravaging the population (including his father, the Emperor). Worse, the inhabitants of the moon are acting up, their queen making loud overtures about marrying Kai to “unite” their people.

It is very much the Cinderella story retold with cyborgs, a killer plague, and “moon magic” (don’t laugh, it works really well). I thoroughly enjoyed this story.

Except for the part where I hit a trope. As a matter of fact, it was a fairly obvious trope, one that one of you mentioned in the comments two weeks ago. I won’t say which one. Spoilers and what-not. But I had most of the plot figured out after that point.

The thing is, I really didn’t care.

The reason why is because Meyer’s story and characters were so engaging that even though part of the plot had a “been there, done that” vibe to it, I still had a lot of fun reading it. Actually, I devoured this book, polishing it off in just two or three days, and I’m ready for the sequel, whenever that may come out.

This taught me a valuable lesson about tropes. Do we have to avoid them? Well, we really can’t. Nothing new under the sun, right? The key is to find ways to use them in a fresh and new way if at all possible. Or, barring that, compensate for the trope by making the rest of the story shine. Then, while your readers may get frustrated with that one small trope, they’ll be willing to forgive because the rest is so very good.

But I’m not done with this topic just yet. In two weeks, I’m going to bring up another trope that we often see, a flaw that I think infects far too much of Christian fiction in general, not just speculative fiction. Until then, dear readers, let me leave you with a question: in what books or movies have you seen a trope used in a unique and surprising way?

Who wants to live forever?

Who doesn’t?

Immortality would be paradise, right? The Bible is chock-full of the joys and wonders that await those who achieve eternal life. No more aging, suffering, illness, or death, though it seems like it’s cheating a little because all that comes after death, and You Only Live Twice, Mr. Bond.

What about eternal life minus the whole death thing? Wouldn’t that be cool? (I’m not getting into the Rapture question here, pre-, mid-, post-, or whatever—that may come up next time, but not today) Can it happen? Hmm. It could have. There’s this odd little passage in Genesis:

And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” – Gen 3:22

Doesn’t sound very sporting. First, we’re not allowed to possess the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then, to add insult to injury, immortality is off-limits. Seems like that would fix a lot of our most vexing difficulties with life on Earth. Too bad we can’t rewind history and create a world where immortality isn’t just a pipe dream.

But wait! We can! Speculative fiction to the rescue!

Last week, I talked about some of the different ways our desire to cheat death plays out in spec fic. So, what happens to those fortunate few who manage to outwit, outplay, outlast, or otherwise thumb their noses at the Grim Reaper and gain immortality?

Let’s spend some time among the immortals and find out.

Starting once again with classic literature, some of you helpfully pointed out last week that Tolkien’s Elves were essentially immortal, save from death in war or other violent mishap. They were also subject to a sort of fading away, whether through grief or fatigue of their long lives, and they all eventually set sail from the Grey Havens for a journey into the unknown West, beyond the knowledge of Middle Earth.

And as I noted last week, that immortal rake, Dorian Gray, despaired of his debauched existence and ended up destroying the portrait that sustained his youth and vigor, killing himself in the process.

No, I still won’t spoil the end of Tuck Everlasting for you, but I will note that the good-hearted Tucks find their immortality a kind of stasis, in which they remain fixed in time, despite the changes in the world around them.

A similar theme plays out among the immortal vampires of Twilight and Anne Rice’s novels. Life is change and growth. Un-death is a sterile existence without development or progress, where the immortals parasitize the mortals and inexorably lose touch with whatever humanity remains to them.

How are we doing so far? Don’t lose heart…literature is always so grim and pessimistic. Maybe some more modern examples from the world of popular culture, springing from our social enlightenment and advanced scientific knowledge. Yes, that must paint a rosier picture.

In the bizarre 1974 motion picture, Zardoz, Sean Connery portrays a barbarian transported…in a flying stone head…to a land of immortals. Their eternal life has become a torture to them, and their most profound hope is to somehow rediscover death.

Did I mention there’s a flying stone head?

Mr. Connery makes another appearance in the movie Highlander, about a race of immortals locked into a never-ending tournament. Behead your opponent, gain his power and abilities, and live to fight the next challenger until only one remains. The victor wins the ability to guide the course of human history, for better or worse, but eventually, the whole thing starts all over again. On television.

Maybe something higher-brow…Isaac Asimov’s Hugo Award-winning novella, The Bicentennial Man (not to be confused with its pale translation to the big screen starring Robin Williams), concerns a self-aware robot who desires to become human, and after years of modification is indistinguishable from the genuine article, with one glaring difference that prevents society from accepting him: he’s not subject to natural death. Rather than give up his dream, he surrenders his immortality and engineers a way to make his robot body age and die at a human rate. He gains legal recognition as a human being, and then he dies.

This isn’t helping, is it?

Okay, back to the movies. Ron Howard’s Cocoon brings a downhearted collection of senior citizens together with a crew of immortal aliens who are trying to recover some of their comrades marooned on Earth in hibernation vessels. Contact with the alien cocoons rejuvenates the oldsters, but unfortunately drains the life force from one of the aliens inside, killing him. The rescue team doesn’t seem to hold a grudge, and they whisk everybody off to their homeworld, where the seniors will presumably live forever and teach the aliens about the Charleston, needlepoint, and Spam. Wait, wait…there’s a sequel! Some of the immortal geriatrics return in Cocoon: The Return to visit their loved ones and must decide whether to stay on Earth and die, or go back to the alien planet and not die.

Sigh.

In summary, immortality in spec fic is most often boring, futile, dismal, empty, or all of the above.*** It has less in common with life eternal than with death everlasting. Maybe God knew what He was doing when He fenced off that Tree of Life. It appears that making a sinful, messed-up, broken human being immortal would condemn them to an eternity of sinful, messed-up, brokenness. Perhaps immortality is best experienced after death. More about that next week.

***No, I didn’t forget The Doctor, who leads a rather jolly semi-immortality, and there are some other immortal or nearly-immortal characters in his universe that aren’t totally miserable, but I would maintain he’s the exception that proves the rule. Besides, he owns a TARDIS, and that would keep almost anyone amused for several millenia. I now respectfully yield the floor to the Whovians.

Regular visitors to Spec Faith know about our library. One of our desires is to facilitate readers looking for speculative fiction written from a Christian world view, and our library has a growing number of titles, old and new, with pictures of covers and short blurbs that acquaint the curious with the story.

Our library will be most effective, however, when we get readers posting reviews, Amazon style, so that visitors will not only learn about the book but about the impressions and recommendations of other readers.

As much as I love our library and love seeing the progress we’re making, thanks to Stephen’s hard work, I think it’s helpful from time to time, to look at what books are coming out soon or have just come out. It’s in the first few months of a book’s release that buzz can influence the most. But who can buzz if they don’t even know a book exists? So here are a few books, gathered from a smattering of different resources, and with no recommendation because I have yet to read many of them. But for those of you looking for something new, you might want to start here.

Replication: The Jason Experiment by Jill Williamson (science fiction, Zondervan, released December, 2011)

When Your Life Is Not Your Own

Martyr—otherwise known as Jason 3:3—is one of hundreds of clones kept in a remote facility called Jason Farms. Told that he has been created to save humanity, Martyr has just one wish before he is scheduled to ‘expire’ in less than a month. To see the sky. Abby Goyer may have just moved to Alaska, but she has a feeling something strange is going on at the farm where her father works. But even this smart, confident girl could never have imagined what lies beneath a simple barn. Or what would happen when a mysterious boy shows up at her door, asking about the stars. As the reality of the Jason Experiment comes to light, Martyr is caught between two futures—the one for which he was produced and the one Abby believes God created him to have. Time is running out, and Martyr must decide if a life with Abby is worth leaving everything he’s ever known.

Bourne by Lisa T. Bergren, novella in The River of Time series (available only as an ebook, released February 2012)

A continuation of the story from where TORRENT left off…Find out what has happened to men returning from the battle, gravely wounded, to the Betarrinis, fighting for the men they love, and just who is hunting them next…

Beckon by Tom Pawlik (supernatural suspense, Tyndale, releasing March 16, 2012)

Some things weren’t meant to be discovered.

Three people are each drawn to the small town of Beckon, Wyoming. A young anthropologist researches a Native American legend and makes a terrifying discovery. An ex-cop investigating her cousin’s disappearance finds herself in grave peril. And an aging businessman is lured by the promise of a miracle. One by one they discover the town’s ghastly secret. The only question is . . . will any of them make it out alive?

Daystar by Kathy Tyers (science fiction, Marcher Lord Press, releasing April 1, 2012 — no joke 😉 )

Times have changed for the telepathic Sentinels in the realm of the Federate Whorl. Persecution sends these genetically altered people fleeing to their sanctuary world, but a shipboard disaster exposes High Commander Brennen Caldwell to fatal radiation. Medical student Meris Cariole ends up stranded, an unwelcome outsider, at a sanctuary she never meant to invade.

On another world, wrongfully imprisoned Sentinel Jorah Caldwell receives a supernatural visitor. For generations, the Sentinel kindred has anticipated Boh-Dabar, the prophesied Word to Come. The visitor hails Jorah as Boh-Dabar. Can he believe the news?

Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger arrives at the sanctuary world, also claiming to be Boh-Dabar, Brennen and Firebird Caldwell, Meris, and Jorah are caught in a tangle of interstellar incidents that threaten the Sentinel kindred’s very existence.

And no one anywhere has anticipated the events that will shake the interstellar Federacy.

In the Firebird alternate universe, humankind has gone to the stars. The messianic bloodline has been genetically altered, and instantaneous communication links the settled worlds. Still, God’s character has not changed, nor have his promises failed. Daystar brings the saga to a conclusion that rocks the galaxies.

Daughter of Light by Morgan L. Busse (fantasy, Marcher Lord Press, releasing April 1, 2012)

As the Shadonae rise in the West and war threatens the North, a young woman discovers she is not human…

Banished from her village, Rowen Mar finds sanctuary in the White City using a leather glove to cover the strange mark on her hand. She lives in fear that if she touches another person, the power inside her will trigger again, a terrifying power that allows her to see the darkness inside the human heart…

But those called cannot hide forever. For the salvation of her people lies within her hand.

Moonblood by Anne Elisabeth Stengl, Book 3, The Tales of Gladstone series (fairy tale fantasy, Bethany House, releasing April 1, 2012)

Desperate to regain the trust of his kingdom, Prince Lionheart reluctantly banishes his faithful servant and only friend, Rose Red. Now she is lost in the hidden realm of Arpiar, held captive by her evil goblin father, King Vahe.

Vowing to redeem himself, Lionheart plunges into the mysterious Goldstone Wood, seeking Rose Red. In strange other worlds, Lionheart must face a lyrical yet lethal tiger, a fallen unicorn, and a goblin horde on his quest to rescue the girl he betrayed.

With the Night of Moonblood fast approaching, when King Vahe seeks to wake the Dragon’s sleeping children, Lionheart must discover whether or not his heart contains courage before it’s too late for Rose Red…and all those he loves.

The 13th Tribe by Robert Liparulo (supernatural thriller, Thomas Nelson, releasing April 3, 2012)

Their story didn’t start this year . . . or even this millennium.

It began when Moses was on Mt. Sinai. Tired of waiting on the One True God, the twelve tribes of Israel began worshipping a golden calf through pagan revelry. Many received immediate death for their idolatry, but 40 were handed a far worse punishment-endless life on earth with no chance to see the face of God.

This group of immortals became the 13th Tribe, and they’ve been trying to earn their way into heaven ever since-by killing sinners. Though their logic is twisted, their brilliance is undeniable. Their wrath is unstoppable. And the technology they possess is beyond anything mere humans have ever seen.

Jagger Baird knows nothing about the Tribe when he’s hired as head of security for an archaeological dig on Mt. Sinai. The former Army Ranger is still reeling from an accident that claimed the life of his best friend, his arm, and his faith in God.

The Tribe is poised to execute their most ambitious attack ever and the lives of millions hang in the balance. When Jagger’s wife and son are caught in the crossfire, he’ll stop at nothing to save them. But how can one man stand against an entire tribe of immortals?

The Telling by Mike Duran (supernatural suspense, Realms, releasing May 15, 2012)

A prophet never loses his calling… only his way.

Despite his love for words, when ZEPH WALKER sees his body lying on the gurney in the county morgue, he is speechless. Disfigured by his stepmother as a teenager, the hideous scar across Zeph’s face has forced him into a life of seclusion. Cloistered in a ramshackle bookstore on the outskirts of town, Zeph is blessed with an uncanny ability to sound souls—to intuit peoples’ deepest sins and secrets. He calls it the Telling, but has abandoned the gift to his unbelief and despair. Until two detectives escort him to the county morgue, where he learns that the bizarre look-alike of himself has been found murdered.

The Unraveling of Wentwater by C.S. Lakin (fairy tale fantasy, AMG)

Apparently those books without descriptions posted on web sites or at Amazon have secret information. Still, I’m sure their authors and those of the books whose descriptions you could read would love to have you buy, order, or pre-order their books.

Now what recent releases or upcoming ones do you know about that aren’t on this list?