Science fiction has predicted many times that human beings will leave Earth to settle on the various planets of the Solar System. This dream may not be far away–certainly the technology to move humans into space has existed for roughly 50 years now but with SpaceX opening up seats to “civilians,” it may happen relatively soon. Perhaps in only a few decades the human race will become a multi-world species. This post begins a series looking at the prospects of living on the planets of our Solar System, both what living there would really be like according to current science and also what science fiction has speculated concerning each planet. Starting with Mercury.

Since it is possible that future generations really might leave Planet Earth, what science fiction has said about living in space might help us imagine what it would be like to live on another worlds–even though at times, past science fiction has been completely wrong about the planets of our Solar System. Some basic topics worth addressing in comparing science fiction with science fact include, “What is it that human beings need to survive?” Which will lead eventually to, “What is and is not the best real estate in the Solar System?”

Human Survival Needs

I remember my Fifth Grade teacher, Mrs. Ten Ham, Dutch accent and all, explaining that all humans need three basic things, food, shelter, and clothing, and that much of human history can be explained by people seeking these three things. Well, on Earth those three things are enough. Though they point out the three basic types of things people need. More broadly than food, humans need life-sustaining conditions, let’s call them “Nutrients” or “necessities of survival.” Broader than shelter, humans need protection from elements that can harm us. And covering a wider topic that clothing does, humans need resources to build things we want and need. So these are the three basic needs, with sub-needs below each of these: Nutrients, Protection, and Resources.

Nutrients–Necessities of Survival

1. Oxygen–yeah it may be a bit sloppy to call O2 a nutrient, but I’m sure you follow my point. We’re talking about substances a human body needs to take in if it’s going to survive and of those, the first on the list is oxygen. Listed first because while a human may survive days without water and weeks without food, without oxygen you’ve gone in minutes. O2 carries with in a condition that in order to process the gas, human lungs can only operate within a range of air pressures–from about 1/3 atmospheric pressure on Earth if using pure oxygen, to about 100 times Earth atmospheric pressure, if we mix the O2 with a lot of helium and take other precautions. Ideally humans would want to live on a planet with free oxygen in its atmosphere–but on that account, none of the planets of the Solar System qualify, other than Earth.
2. Water–while the human preference for water would be to have it in liquid bodies we can tap into easily, humans can easily melt ice for water and can even combine hydrogen and oxygen in minerals to create water. Oxygen itself we already covered in its own category, but places without a source of frozen water or at least access to hydrogen are going to create a problem with obtaining water.
3. Energy (for food production)–while you might expect me to list food by itself, in fact energy pretty much equates to food in space. A hydroponic garden needs solar energy for plants to grow, or else electrically-powered lamps to replace the sun (you also need space for that, but we are going to assume up front that space has plenty of “space”). Harvested plants would feed any animals humans might choose to bring with them as food, if humans do that in the future. Or, alternatively, food could be shipped in from elsewhere, like the Apollo moon missions taking all their food from Earth–but that also takes energy, though in that case the higher energy cost of transportation by rocket fuel rather than the lower cost of local production.

Protection

1. Warmth (energy for heating)–as is also true of atmospheric pressure, a human being can only survive within a range of temperatures. Given sufficient protective clothing and ample access to water for body cooling, that range is actually fairly large, from roughly minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 F) to plus 50 (122 F)…though humans are only comfortable within a much narrower range, at most a dozen degrees above or below about 22 degrees Celsius (72 F). But of course there are ranges of temperatures a human cannot survive at all, not even for a fraction of a second.
2. Radiation Shielding–the biggest heat engine in the Solar System, the sun itself, essential for providing enough energy to keep us from freezing to death and cranking out light that plants convert to food, has a negative side effect of producing a lot of ionizing radiation that kills human cells and causes cancers. Humans, while we can survive a robust range of temperatures, are much more sensitive to radiation damage than many other creatures living on Earth. Note though that true radiation shielding isn’t easy to come by. Earth provides it through both a magnetic field and also a relatively dense atmosphere. When talking about other planets of the Solar System, we have to account for the amount of radiation shielding they have.
3. Meteor Shielding–Not only can radiation cook you or give you cancer, outer space is full of small bodies flying around at relative speeds much higher than a bullet. Even a very small bit of matter can ruin your day if it’s going fast enough and you’re in a pressurized chamber. Note that a planet with a dense atmosphere does much to protect from meteors.
4. Gravity–in spite of decades of fiddling around in low Earth orbit, science has established quite well that a human body needs at least some gravity in order to properly function. Without it, bones atrophy, fluid builds up in the upper body, normal formation of embryos simply won’t happen, and so human life is in jeopardy. Which means any planet humans settle on has to be of a minimal size to provide enough gravity. How little is enough is actually unknown–but there definitely is a minimal amount humans require.
5. Toxin and Waste Removal–some planets are full of chemicals that could kill humans. And, even in places where that isn’t a problem, humans in the very act of living produce carbon dioxide and solid and liquid wastes that threaten our survival. Without a means to remove or process wastes and toxins, humans will not survive. Soil that can absorb wastes is a good start on that and some planets have soils outside of Earth, though many don’t.
6. Safety from Attack–since none of the planets of the Solar System are known to be inhabited, this seems a low-order priority. Though in general, humans have attacked one another often enough that the need to defend oneself could not be entirely ignored in the future.

Resources

1. Survival Resources–I’ve already named these above, but let’s summarize them here: oxygen, hydrogen, energy for food production and warmth, a body of minimal size for protection provided by gravity and protection from radiation, with a means to clean toxins and wastes.
2. Resources Beyond Survival–humans are going to want to have more than the bare minimum of resources. They are going to want to be able to cover themselves (back to the clothing thing Mrs. Ten Boom talked about) and create art and build new tech and have personal possessions of a wide variety of types. That means any place humans settle will have to have building materials of some kind.

Why Space Stations and Space Ships Suck For Human Survival

Reading through the list I generated above, it should be pretty obvious that the types of space stations humans build now or any time in the foreseeable future are not very good at providing for human survival.

First off, there are no resources in empty space itself other than what you take with you, other than solar radiation that you can harness with solar panels if you’re close enough to the sun. But that one resource comes with a danger of high-energy radiation zipping through a human body so fast that over time, a human suffers irreparable damage.

Second, if you lift everything you use from the surface of a planet, everything goes through a high energy cost just to get there. And, what you will be able to fly there will be insufficient to protect a person from high radiation, doesn’t supply gravity automatically, needs heating and cooling, and will vent into vacuum if a bit of space rock blasts into you at high speed. No bueno.

Yeah, careful designs can help with some of these problems, but this is an issue that’s often downplayed in science fiction, especially the issue of exposure to radiation. There are no energy shields that block radiation in the real world. You can block radiation with physical matter, but it would take about 1 meter’s worth (3 feet)(as this Space.com article mentions) of solid lead to roughly equal the amount of protection that Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere provides. Obviously a spacecraft can’t realistically move around with that much lead. Too much fuel would be needed. So a person who spent decades in outer space, as is often imagined in science fiction, would in fact die of radiation poisoning, barring some major genetic engineering of the human race in the future.

The known solution to this problem is moving through space as quickly as possible, then settling on a planet that can provide some protection.

What’s Mercury Got For Survival?

Mercury with enhanced color to show composition differences. Image source: NASA

Near as the sun as it is, Mercury has a massive potential for solar energy. It also has oxygen bound up in its rocks and many scientists believe that deep caters near Mercury’s north and south poles have water ice (though there’s no absolute proof of this as of now).

As far as protection goes, every patch of ground on the surface of Mercury (except right at the poles) faces intense solar radiation for about 29 days, then faces the blackness of space for about the same time, 29 days (Mercury has a full day that’s 58 Earth days long). It’s estimated Mercury gets up to 427 degrees Celsius (800 F) during the hottest part of the day and down to minus 180 C (-290 F) during the coldest part of the night. That’s a massive temperature swing that obviously no human being can survive. However, going underground deep enough would allow a person to find a level where the temps are pretty much the same night and day, within the range humans can handle.

Another bonus of going underground is doing so would provide radiation protection and meteor shielding. And Mercury has about 38 percent the gravity of Earth, which is probably enough to allow humans to survive and thrive (note Mercury and Mars have practically the same amount of gravity).

Toxin and waste removal probably would not be helped by doing everything underground and Mercury doesn’t have any soil, but there are ways to solve these issues. But security from attack would be better underground than on the surface.

And Mercury, with the largest metallic core in proportion to its interior of any planet in the Solar System, would have quite a lot of metal for building, especially iron and steel, but other metals, too. Not much carbon though–in fact, to do things like make good soils or fabricate plastics, Mercury would have to import carbon. And would benefit from importing hydrogen or hydrocarbons as well, but still, has most of the things humans need to survive and prosper.

How Has Science Fiction Seen Mercury?

Let’s note up front that a lot of old science fiction imagined much of the Solar System to be friendly to life or to contain alien life. Relative to Mars or Venus, it was relatively uncommon in science fiction to imagine anyone could live on Mercury. Sci fi writers commonly saw it as just too close to the sun, too hot.

Tidally Locked?

However, “Relative to Mars or Venus” still allowed for quite a lot of speculation that perhaps there are places a person could live on Mercury. Most of the speculation was based on the theory that the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli came up with in 1889–that Mercury is “tidally locked” so that one face is always pointed at the sun and the other is always pointed towards the cold darkness of outer space. Once that concept became popular, some people believed that perhaps there might be a literal twilight zone between the hot and cold sides that would be temperate. Perhaps a canyon system in this temperate zone could hold an atmosphere, creating a place where humans or human-like creatures could live and breathe. Ray Cummings wrote a trilogy that imagined this very thing: Tama of the Light Country (1930), Tama, Princess of Mercury (1931) and Aerita of the Light Country (1941).

There are other examples of these kinds of stories, detailed in a “Mercury in Fiction” Wikipedia article I’ve linked. Though in fact not all stories set on Mercury imagined anyone could live on the surface of Mercury. Some saw it as a place of exploration or for a solar observatory or a place silicon-based aliens would set up a base, or, on the dark side, the coldest place in the Solar System.

An old “If” magazine cover showing astronauts exploring molten Mercury. Image now in the public domain.

New Mercury

In 1965 scientists discovered that Mercury is not in fact tidally locked, but rather has an odd rotation in which its day is two thirds the length of its year, meaning that at certain locations in its orbit, Mercury always shows the same face to the sun–but in fact the whole planet, other than the poles, gets hot and cold. So, many concepts of an inhabited Mercury went away, though a few remained.

Arthur C. Clarke in Rendezvous With Rama imagined Mercury metal miners inhabiting Mercury (as did the tongue-in-cheek Captain Proton series-within-a-series in Star Trek Voyager), while Kim Stanley Robinson imagined Mercury hosted a city named “Terminator” mounted on rails which allowed it to always remain in the twilight on Mercury’s surface, though it would need to be under a dome due to Mercury’s lack of atmosphere. Note Robinson imagined Mercury would be the abode of musicians and artists rather than the miners many other authors thought would inhabit Mercury (note also the word “terminator” in his city refers to a technical term in astronomy for the point where day meets night–not where cybernetic “terminators” seek to assassinate specific targets 🙂 ).

Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson in their transhumanist cyberpunk comic series Transmetropolitan imagined Mercury completely covered in solar panels, with energy beamed back to Earth, while Karl Schroeder’s novel Lockstep imagined a future in which Mercury would no longer exist, being broken up into pieces in order to create a “Dyson bubble” around the Solar System. Which would also harvest solar energy. (These and other concepts of Mercury are detailed, again, via the Wikipedia article on Mercury in fiction.)

Summary

So in essence there have been three basic science fiction ideas about living on Mercury:

1. Living on the surface somehow, in the twilight zone or at the poles or on some kind of movable city. This idea has the disadvantage that even in twilight quite a lot of harmful solar radiation would come through. But still, the idea isn’t impossible, even though Mercury isn’t tidally locked, as Kim Stanley Robinson’s fiction shows.
2. Underground settlement of Mercury, which would mostly mine metals. I think this idea is quite realistic.
3. No settlement but use of Mercury for energy production: This idea is possible, but in fact Mercury is good real estate for human underground settlement, providing most of the things humans would need to survive–if underground far enough. But it could be that Mercury is never settled.

What’s Unique About Mercury

Transportation Hub Potential

Mecury in true color. Image source: NASA

It’s counterintuitive, but did you know that Mercury is on average closer to any other planet in the Solar System? Or to put that in a slightly different way, did you know that on average, Mercury is closer to all the other planets than any one planet is to any other planet? How can that be?

It’s because planets usually spend only a relatively small amount of time in the position of the closest approach to one another. Planets spend a great deal of time on the opposite side of the sun from each other or in otherwise unfavorable positions relative to one another. Whereas Mercury, with a year 88 days long, comes to its closest approach relative to every single other planet at least once during its short year. Meaning that even though, for example, Mars and Earth get very close to each other once in a while (when in the same place in their orbits at the same time), they spend most of their orbits far from each other.

Mercury gets as close as it will get to either of them on average much more often than they make their closest approach to one another. Meaning the average distance between either of them and Mercury is less than the average distance between Earth and Mars.

This is a bit of a mind-blower but it’s completely true and even applies to the outer Solar System. On average, Mercury is closer to Pluto than Neptune is, even though for part of Pluto’s orbit it crosses inside Neptune’s orbit. Again, that’s because for much of the orbits of Pluto and Neptune they are on completely opposite sides of the Solar System–whereas at some point every 88 days, Mercury is not only on the same side as either of them, it’s at the closet approach to them.

If Mercury had some kind of launch system for shooting goods to other worlds–say a giant electromagnetic railgun, then Mercury would be the idea place for a warehouse to supply and distribute goods to other places in the Solar System (without the railgun you’d have to bring in fuel to Mercury or perhaps make fission-powered rockets from radioactive metals in Mercury’s core to ship goods out). This idea is awesome in theory, except for one little problem…

Landing on Mercury is Hard, Though Some Solutions Are Possible

Because Mercury is relatively close to the sun, a vessel from the outer Solar System will pick up velocity heading Mercury’s way. Velocity that the craft will have to carefully balance or get rid of once arriving at Mercury itself in order to safely land. Mercury doesn’t have an atmosphere substantial enough to use for air braking or parachuting in, so all things considered, moving things to Mercury and touching down there for a landing is relatively difficult. Which could mean that Mercury as a hub for moving things to other planets would only work if the goods Mercury sent to other worlds carried the tag, “Made In Mercury.”

Or perhaps that would mean the one thing a colony on Mercury could really use is some kind of electromagnetic system that would capture vessels flying in at high speeds and slow them down enough to land safely without using a lot of fuel. If Mercury had such a system, it could both send and receive products produced elsewhere in the Solar System and distribute them out efficiently.

Also note that flying towards the sun to get to Mercury would expose a spacecraft to a much higher level of solar radiation than staying further from the sun. Yes, this is a real problem–though one made better if designers used automated ships to go to and from Mercury.

Conclusion

Have you ever read a story set on Mercury? Thought about writing one set there? Considered the potential of living there? Would it bother you to live underground all the time? Or would you need to be on the surface, in a city like “Terminator”?

It’s interesting perhaps that the science fiction series “the Expanse” sees a future Mars being a powerful player in Solar System politics, but in fact, Mercury could be every bit as powerful as Mars, if not more so. Humans have just been imagining living on Mars a lot longer…

What do you think about these issues? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Memory is the bridge of connection. It builds relationships, community, and a societal framework that encompass every person on the planet. Without this bridge, every man is alone on a deserted island.

Alzheimer’s is a disease that destroys that bridge between family members and loved ones. Along with it is the erosion of familial bonds. The death of bonding from a mental illness such as dementia can be a horror story.

Horror has a unique way of subverting the tragedy of mental illness and using it as a plot device that propels the story along and uses it in a metaphorical way. For simply creative purposes, the protagonist with dementia or Alzheimer’s is not an merely object of pity, or sadness, or tragedy. They are usually a forceful part of story, taking hold of your attention and carrying you along for the ride. Not the other way around.

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

In The Taking of Deborah Logan, we follow a medical student film crew who follow an Alzheimer’s patient, Deborah Logan and her daughter Sarah and the effects of the disease on both.  Deborah, when we first meet her, seems to be doing all right. She’s well put together, a woman of great tastes, impeccable style and seemingly coherent. Yet, the daughter explains that her mother can have good days and bad ones. Throughout the story, Deborah’s signs of Alzheimer’s increase. Her daughter’s stress in evident by her smoking and outbursts.

Had this been any other genre film, the tragedy of this declining relationship would be on display. Yet, with the horror element, Alzheimer’s and its effects doesn’t become the focus of the film but the plot device that brings about something more sinister to the forefront.

Deborah begins to exhibit behavior that shows something more than Alzheimer’s is afoot. There’s a scene where she goes into a room and is found staring out into the space at a dark corner.  Another scene, she’s seen walking into a room naked and closing the door, found later hurting herself for no apparent reason.

I won’t tell the gruesome parts of the film, but we discover that because of her condition, a dark entity begins to take over her to use it for its own hellish reason, mainly to commit a child sacrifice so it can live again. Basically, it’s a spirit that acts as a parasite on the weak, the old, and the young. This entity and Deborah have a connected past.

As her condition deteriorates, her acts of violence and self-harm increase, turning her into a vessel for the dark entity.  To save her and the child, the rest of the people involved figure out to burn the bones of the dark entity left behind. This causes the entity to leave Deborah and the child is saved. However, Deborah is fingered as the culprit of the crimes, but her mental state is so bad, that she can’t stand trial.

Yet, as the viewer, in a very odd way, you’re almost glad for her because it would destroy her if she knew what she had done.

In this scenario the disease sort of protects  the sufferer from reality. I don’t mean to say that we should jump up and down and clap if a loved one who has Alzheimer’s is living in another reality. It’s heartbreaking. But, I think if they knew they couldn’t remember their children, or grandchildren, or spouse, or whoever it was that had once held a special place in their heart, it would be destructive to them.

Relic (2020)

In Relic, this film takes a more metaphorical approach. The family home is inhabited by Edna, the one suffering from dementia. Her daughter Kay, and her granddaughter Sam come to see her when they receive a message that she’s gone missing. When you see the home, it’s crammed with stacks of mementos, lots of post-it notes, and other things that show Edna’s declining cognition.

Kay has a hard time accepting her mother’s condition. Sam, the granddaughter, has a closer relationship with her grandmother. While they wait for Edna to show back up after a failed search with the local police, it’s revealed there’s a strange rot in the house that grows through the movie and on Edna’s body. The arc of Kay is being able to accept her mother is changing and being supportive.

What becomes apparent is the use of the family house. The family house holds memories and is an anchor to keep Edna in the present. It also reflects Edna’s mental condition. Along with the spreading rot is a shadowy figure that frightens Edna and the others, manifesting itself as the condition grows.

Toward the end, the houses changes and morphs, reflecting Edna’s fractured mental state.  The rot on the walls of the house spread. And Edna completely succumbs to her condition by becoming the shadowy figure she saw. Her skin peels away, and this gaunt-like monster version of herself is revealed, showing that the Edna they knew no longer exists. Yet, at the end of the movie, the once Edna creature, Kay, and Sam all lay side by side, showing love and support for Edna even though she is physically and literally unrecognizable anymore.

The chilling factor at the very end shows Sam, looking at Kaye’s back, seeing a small spot of the dark rot that took over her grandmother, indicating that Sam may one day be holding a woman that no longer resembles her mother as her mother is doing, too.

The movie dealt with more of how our response should be to our loved ones who are suffering with Alzheimer’s. And granted, although turning Edna into a gaunt-like monster isn’t likely to happen in the real world, the point is that the family NEEDS to show support for their loved one. Don’t abandon them. One thing that Edna asked her daughter before her transformation was if she was going to leave her alone.

No Tears in Heaven

A much brighter future awaits for those of us who love the Lord and suffer with dementia and we, the caregivers who love them.

As the movies depicted, the bonds are severed. Imagine that being it – your loved ones die having never remembered who you are, who was important to them, etc.

Thanks be to God, that is NOT the end for those that love Him.

The following verse is often used for eschatological discussion but allow me a little license as I say this:

^{1 Corinthians 15:53-55}

⁵³ For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

⁵⁴ So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

⁵⁵ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Sin and disease corrupts these bodies.  The cure is found in Christ. Romans 6:23 makes that abundantly that these corrupted bodies will one day no longer be affected by a sinful nature. We will be given new bodies that will live eternally with God. The bonds we once had with our loved ones will be renewed but in a far greater, richer capacity. Nothing will ever break those connections again.

In Eric Clapton’s song, “Tears in Heaven,” he mournfully sings:

Would you know my name?
If I saw you in heaven
Would it be the same?
If I saw you in heaven

This song, written after he experienced the death of his four-year-old son, hauntingly asks if the relationship he had with son would be any better in heaven.

A question that a lot of people ask is, ‘Will I recognize my loved ones in Heaven?”

The answer is yes. No Alzheimer’s or dementia there.

As Mahalia Jackson sang, it’ll be always, “It’ll be always howdy, howdy and never goodbye.”

What do you think? Share your thoughts below.

Previously I’ve written reviews for anime series, and even a couple of comic book stories, but here’s something different: I’m reviewing the manga series Gunslinger Girl. This may also be the densest story I’ve reviewed, or at least up there with FMA: Brotherhood. That’s because Gunslinger Girl is filled with well-developed characters as well as intriguing moral and ethical difficulties. I hope I can do it justice—apparently unlike the anime series.¹

Enter the world of Gunslinger Girl

Italy: a place filled with rich culture, great art, and phenomenal food. It’s also a land of great unrest. Political and economic conflicts aren’t just confined to words and debates. They’re also expressed in violent terrorist attacks.

From the outside, the Social Welfare Agency (SWA) looks like a government charity, designed to help children who had experienced severe mental and physical traumas. On the inside, the SWA is taking many of these children, mostly young girls, and creating soldiers to fight the terrorists. The agency enhances these children’s bodies with cybernetics, and reshapes their minds with a conditioning process involving drugs and hypnotherapy.

For two brothers, Jean and Jose Croce, the SWA offers an avenue toward a more personal goal. Years before, their parents had been targeted and killed in a massive car bombing, an attack that also killed their beloved little sister and Jean’s fiance. They now want to find the man who planned and carried out the attack, and when the do, they intend to use the cyborg soldiers as tools to get their revenge on him.

The name Gunslinger Girl actually doesn’t fit well

Unfortunately, the series’ English name doesn’t work in the series’ favor. It’s a rather cartoonish name for a story that has very few cartoonish elements.

The word “gunslinger” usually connotes the American Old West, where two men face each other on the dusty street of a small town of clapboard buildings, their hands hovering over their holstered six-shooters, while townsfolk hide behind doorways and windows whilst peeking out to see which gunfighter will outdraw the other. It’s awkward to apply that word to this story.

Even the singular word “girl” is not very accurate. Six of the cyborg girls take turns in the story’s main focus, and three of them could be considered the story’s main character. If I understand it right, the Japanese language does not have plural nouns in the same way that English does, so maybe the problem was with someone not understanding the story all that well before they had to come up with a translation of the name.

Who are the good guys in Gunslinger Girl?

It’s easy, and not unjustified, to paint the Social Welfare Agency as bad guys. At least it’s beyond questionable that no one should use children as assassins and murderers. But while the story does critique the SWA, it even more sharply critiques the “real world” through the SWA.

Two of the girls came to SWA after being brutalized and tortured almost to death. Another girl has been paralyzed from birth and abandoned by her family. A fourth girl’s own parents tried to stage an accident so they could collect life insurance money from her death. Only one main character has a more normal backstory. She’s a Russian/Ukrainian girl who is close to fulfilling her dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Then she learns her bone cancer (linked to the events of Chernobyl) means she’ll need to have one of her legs amputated, and tries to take her own life.

Otherwise in the SWA, outside of paramilitary training and killing bad guys, their lives are almost disturbingly normal. One girl grows a garden. Another owns a teddy bear collection. One night they go out to see a meteor shower and end up singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Even most of their handlers try to treat them well. Earlier I mentioned Jose, one of the Croce brothers. For most of the story, he seems to see his cyborg trainee, Henrietta, almost as if she were his little sister, perhaps as a replacement for the sister killed in the car bombing. He takes her stargazing, encourages her interest in photography, and even takes her to a performance of The Nutcracker. When Henrietta is not in take-down-bad-guys mode, he seems to want her to have as normal a life as possible. Yet her real value to him is revealed when the SWA learns information about the man who killed his family, and he must decide whether he wants to go into battle with a reliable weapon or an increasingly unreliable person.

Then there’s Hilshire and Triela. Their story goes back to even before they joined the SWA. They show humanity at its worst and most fallen. Hilshire helped rescue a young girl who began as a victim of child trafficking, and then was nearly murdered in a form of vile and depraved entertainment—but not before she had greatly suffered in mind and body. The SWA saved her life and restored her body with their cybernetics, but at the cost of dragging this girl into their crusade. Hilshire is the one handler most dedicated to his cyborg’s well-being.

Tell, don’t show

In fall 2020, the internet caught fire over the movie Cuties. Some articles explained how the movie set out with a good goal: to explore how our culture exploits young girls. But the movie failed in its message because the film ended up engaging in the same kinds of exploitation it sought to condemn, by exploiting its own child actors.

Gunslinger Girl looks at some very dark corners of humanity, but we can learn from how this story looks into these corners. As a manga, the story is told in visual format, but artist Yu Aida still doesn’t try to shock us with explicit details. For example, when Hilshire—as a Europol officer before he joins the SWA—wants to hunt down people involved in child trafficking, he is shown exactly what terrible things happen to these children and what he may encounter. The reader, however, is only told what he sees, and that is quite disturbing enough.

Aida usually shows just enough hints of evil, and does not revel or even wallow in the details like some shock-fest horror movie.

Gunslinger Girl’s tragic ending

Early on, Gunslinger Girl implies to readers that this story will not end well for the main characters. Perhaps it’s the references to Italian tragic opera, or the story’s jarring combination of childhood innocence with ruthless violence. Maybe readers just know that man cannot play God with people like this, reprogramming their minds and removing their memories, without such experiments coming back to harm them. At the risk of spoilers, that’s largely how Gunslinger Girl plays out, either loudly and discordantly, or with quieter and bittersweet tones.

We could explore more about Gunslinger Girl, such as the gut-wrenching storyline involving the Prince of Pasta. I could describe Pinocchio, who provides a kind of mirror image or photo negative of the cyborgs. We might find noteworthy the fact that an action/drama story set in Italy doesn’t focus much on that country’s two most famous (or infamous) institutions: the Catholic Church and the Mafia.

This is not a light, fun read, as is typical in some comic or manga fare. Instead, Gunslinger Girl shows that this graphic story form is capable of far more than another round of caped heroes bashing dastardly villains. This medium can add a pinch of sci-fi and give us a story that may rival classical literature by looking at the good and the bad in humanity. It’s not an easy read, but it’s a good read.

My previous post on the Stargate TV franchise I wrote after finishing season one of Stargate SG-1. It was already evident to me then that the mood of Stargate is anti-religion in general, portraying gods of the past as either malevolent Goa’uld or benevolent Asgardian aliens, demonstrating in essence that past beliefs in deities and the supernatural were very much mistaken, because the “gods” were actually aliens. Plus, the first season featured a character searching for God who lost his mind (“The First Commandment”) and a penny-pinching Senator who wanted to cut the stargate budget, who said God would defend Earth from any alien invaders (whom I referenced in my previous post; the episode was “Chain Reaction”). Now, I’ve finally run into an episode that addresses Christianity directly: Season 3, Episode 8, “Demons”–and this post will show the general anti-religion trend in Stargate SG-1 unfortunately continues in “Demons.”

Before I get into my main topic, let me mention the idea Stargate expresses that the gods of Asgard treated humans as equals as opposed to the Goa’uld of Egypt, who were aliens who used religion as tool to deceive and enslave the masses, is rather ridiculous to me. Sure, Norse society was more egalitarian than Egyptian as general rule, but there are archaeological digs that show top Vikings buried with slaves who were, all evidence indicates, killed so they could serve their Norse master in the afterlife. Which is a practice much more similar to Egyptian burials than it is dissimilar. That is, if we see Norse society, including slavery and human sacrifice, as a reflection of the “Asgardians,” then there is no reason to see the residents of Asgard as any better than the Goa’uld. But anyway.

A Mixed Portrayal of Christianity

What distinguishes the episode “Demons” is a number of other episodes show ancient people who were deposited on various planets by the Goa’uld thousands of years ago, but all of them pre-Christian prior to the episode “Demons.” In this episode, this time medieval Catholic Christians have been moved to an alien world and are met by the SG-1 team. By the way, some spoilers of the episode are in this post, even though I don’t go over the plot in detail.

Early in the episode the main characters notice a Christian church and the display of crosses, even before they meet anyone from the world. Before the discussion can kick off as to whether Christianity itself can be considered a Goa’uld imposition like Egyptian religion, Teal’c says the following: “I know of no Goa’uld capable of showing the necessary compassion or benevolence that I have read of in your Bible.” Which inspires the “You read the Bible, Teal’c?” question, to which he answers that understanding the Bible is important to understanding Western culture.

So Teal’c’s interest in the Bible is mainly academic, though he is portrayed as having respect for the Bible and the benevolence of the Christian God. Which is obviously a positive portrayal, though it’s noteworthy that no member of the SG-1 team is stated to be a Christian, though Col. O’Neill seems to reference God as if he might possibly believe in God. He also says he’s listening to the Bible “on tape” in reply to Tealc’s question if he has read the Bible, though the answer seems aimed at humor.

Other than Teal’c’s quote about the Bible, another positive portrayal comes in the character Simon, who lives in the medieval village the SG-1 team discovers. He helps release the team after they are captured and shows courage in the face of danger and is portrayed as a man of Christian faith. Which is also a positive portrayal.

But most of the rest of the episode can fairly be seen as taking a negative view of Christianity, though that portrayal isn’t as negative as the view of Egyptian religion to be sure.

The Demon in “Demons”

The basic idea of the story in “Demons” is the Goa’uld don’t appear as God in the world of medieval Catholic villagers–instead, a member of an alien race subservient to the Goa’uld openly states he is a demon and demands the villagers provide five human beings for his master Satan. This is something the “demon” routinely does, and the villagers as a result are inclined to see anyone who comes through the stargate as being in league with the Devil.

The “demon” Unas–copyright MGM.

Which wouldn’t be such a bad portrayal, except most of the villagers on a regular basis, out of a sense of terror and self-preservation, support offering up their fellow humans to the Goa’uld who they think is Satan. The leader of the villagers, who carries the interesting title “the Canon” (as in Church law or the books of the Bible accepted as authentic), the latest in a long series of such rulers, has a ring given to him by the “demon” and uses the power it provides him to enforce the power of “Satan.” Yes, in the name of God, the Canon rules the village for the benefit of “Satan.”

The reason the Goa’uld would do this makes sense in the story world. The Goa’uld implant alien symbiotes in their human hosts which forces the human host to do the will of the alien inside them–a physical process remarkably similar to how many Christians think of demonic possession. The Goa’uld are always looking for new hosts–and the medieval-Catholic-world supplies these hosts out of a sense of fear.

No Fear Like Medieval Fear

Of course the medieval folk immediately see Teal’c as a minion of Satan, based on the seal in his forehead he has as a former servant of the Goa’uld (a Jaffa). Which could be interpreted as racism, since the actor portraying Teal’c is black and the villagers are white, though that may not be an intentional story element.

Teal’c gets subjected to both a trial by fire and a trial by water to determine if he really is on Satan’s side. Both these procedures were used in medieval and Renaissance Europe during witch trials–though the concept of “trial by ordeal,” along with “trial by combat,” came from pre-Christian Northern European culture and not the Bible or Roman culture (thanks, Norse barbarians and related Germanic peoples!). However, the episode simply looks at what medieval Christians did and doesn’t explain these nutty ideas came from Pagan culture. So yeah, the medieval village looks like a pretty horrible place.

Teal’c, with a hood over his head, just before “the Canon” to his right pushes him in the water.
Copyright MGM.

If the giving-people-over-to-Satan bit were not enough, the village engages in other barbaric practices. The villagers see a woman with chicken pox as possibly demon-possessed, so they were preparing to put a hole in her head–trepanning. Which is something ancient and medieval people really performed to treat a variety of ailments. But I think a medieval person would shrug off chicken pox without even hardly noticing something was wrong–the average person then was more used to disease and physical hardship than people today.

Note the trial by water seems to drown Teal’c, but he recovers, allowing Col. O’Neill to joke that obviously nobody around there has ever seen a resurrection. The line is played as for laughs, but may contain the opinion of the writer of the episode about whether any Christian ever saw any resurrection…

Overall the people are portrayed as terrified to the point they are easily manipulated into doing evil by a self-serving alien. It’s hard not to feel in the context of other anti-religion expressions in Stargate SG-1 that the writer of this episode believes Christianity can be at least as bad at its worst, if not worse, as any religion of a highly structured and partially-unfree society like ancient Egypt. Out of fear of demons and the Devil, Christianity, like other religions Stargate criticizes, can be a means to manipulate people into doing evil, a form of mind control. Or so this episode seems to say.

Softening the Blow

Several elements in the episode soften the drumbeat of anti-Christian criticism. One is the quote from Teal’c about the Bible, which I already mentioned. Also there’s the already-mentioned character of Simon, the one villager willing to believe the Stargate team are not demons, and who risks his life helping them and shows courage portrayed as inspired by faith–though he also, early on, is frightened that the team seems demonic.

Simon, the “good Christian” character in “Demons.”
Copyright, MGM.

A third element that softens the blow of criticism is the fact the “Canon” is not a priest or bishop or pastor or any title we would easily recognize as directly relating to Christian leadership (though I’ve found out that it’s an uncommon alternate to “priest”). So any counter-criticism of what the episode seems to say about Christianity could be met with, “Well, this is just what Christianity is here, on this one world, not everywhere.”

Though in fact it seems likely to me that maintaining a bit of plausible deniability is the very reason “the Canon” carries that title and not another. It seems to me that the producers of Stargate SG-1 had to know a segment of their audience included Christians and they didn’t want to rock the boat with their audience too much. It seems they wanted to criticize and also avoid any potential negative backlash for their criticism.

Having said that, while Star Trek has a few positive allusions to the Bible, most notably in the original series episode “Bread and Circuses,” never does Star Trek make a statement as positive about the Bible as the one Teal’c made–even though the statement came in the context of an episode generally negative about Christianity.

So overall, in spite of an overall negative view of Christianity in the episode “Demons,” there are also positive elements. I think I know what the producers meant to say, but there is room to see the episode in other ways.

So Other Than That, How’s Stargate SG-1 Beyond Season One?

Now that I’m mid-way through season 3, yes, I’d say the show improved from season one. The characters were well-written, the settings became less redundant, and the series continued to carry forward consequences of previous episodes in a way that Star Trek often fails to do.

I still think the series is playing from a weak basic idea, but the Goa’uld became less cheesy over time and the elements emphasizing that the Earth is at risk from even having a Stargate at all are well-played. So in spite of redundancy and special effects weaknesses, seasons two through where I am in three are clearly better than one. (And I thought season one itself improved throughout its episodes.)

Conclusion

After watching “Demons” I did a Google search to see if Stargate ever directly addressed Christianity again. It doesn’t seem that it does, not from what I was able to find. I mean, there isn’t another planet of Christians, anyway. Which is in itself a kind of statement–“We already said all we have to say on this topic.”

Though people who have seen more episodes of Stargate than I have will be able to better comment than I can. Does the Stargate franchise take an approach to Christianity other than what I observed in the episode “Demons?” If so, is it more positive or more negative? Or the same?

Also, do you think I’ve seen “Demons” fairly? Do you agree or disagree that the episode seems to show Christianity in an overall negative light, even though it allows for a few positive elements? Does that concern you–or do you find this aspect of this story universe insignificant overall?

If you had a chance to do a similar story differently, what would you do different?

We live in a world in which many of us feel evil is on the rise. Not everyone feels that way, which is interesting enough, but more interestingly, readers of Speculative Faith who are convinced rising evil is a problem likely don’t even agree on what the evil we are facing actually is. Do we face a dangerous rise in socialism, communism, fascism, cancel culture, racism, Critical Race Theory, too much herd mentality, too much individualism, neo-paganism, fundamentalism, feminism, or patriarchy? Or do we face a puzzling and disturbing mixture of all of the above?–just to name a few things people are often concerned about. Please note though that what we should care about most isn’t addressed by this post (though I’ll mention a particular reason some people are concerned). What this post does do is look at the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, in the Lord of the Rings in particular, and extracts what this wise author of the past had to say about how we should be fighting evil. What should our methods be in our epic real-world struggle between good and evil? Does such a struggle even exist?

Is Fighting Evil Actually a Thing for Christians?

When you read the Bible from cover to cover, you can’t help but notice the Scriptures list both a good power–God (also Jehovah, etc.) and an evil power, Satan (the Devil, etc.). There are also epic struggles between human armies recorded at times. King Hezekiah and the Judeans surrounded by sinister Assyrians, who were struck down by the angel of God. Moses with arms upraised and the Israelites fighting the Amalekites. The Ammonite king Nahash (whose name meant “snake”) came up against Jabesh-Gilead, saying he would put out an eye of each man of the city and make them his slaves, only to be foiled by King Saul. The armies of heaven destroying the armies of the “Beast” at the end of Revelation. All direct examples of fighting evil.

So we do see evil and good in toe-to-toe battle on multiple occasions in the Bible, in a style as clear as the obviously-evil orcs besieging Helm’s Deep or Gondor.

An objection some Christians could raise to the idea of fighting evil is that Jesus called on us to love our enemies, not to fight them. We are not to overcome evil with evil, but rather overcome evil with good. But the simple answer to that objection is that the Bible clearly shows Christians fighting Evil, even if we refuse to kill enemies we perceive to be evil.

That’s because Bible has quite another story to tell about evil, other than fighting evil in physical combat: Moses losing his temper, Noah’s loss of self-control when drunk, Miriam’s arrogance against Moses, David’s adultery, Saul’s jealous rage, Solomon giving in to idol worship, Peter’s fearful denial, Thomas’s doubt. Evil not facing Good on a battlefield, where swinging swords will vanquish the enemy, but where Evil is in the heart of human beings and where it must be fought by choosing to submit to God. Perhaps the clearest example of this kind of struggle shows Jesus in the wilderness, not fighting the Devil with angelic or miraculous power, but rather fighting evil as in the temptation that Satan offered, the battle being over what Jesus would do and would say rather than physical combat.

Of course the Bible also includes some morally muddy figures like Sampson, who was good at killing Philistines but basically worthless otherwise. Or Lot, living in a wicked place, trying to protect angels, but willing to subject his daughters to abuse. Or Eli, who both tenderly cared for young Samuel, but also allowed his sons to profane serving God with sexual conquests and robbing from sacrifices. Or Pilate, discussing truth with Jesus, unwilling to condemn him, but for the sake of political expediency orders him put to death. Yet, in spite such figures, it’s clear the Bible overall shows a struggle between Good and Evil, even though that struggle doesn’t always involve physical combat, even though it’s sometimes hard to say with some people what side they are on.

Yet there are people, including some Christians, who deny that fighting evil represents a basic human reality.

Substituting Fighting Evil For a Model of Illness

The chief competitor to the idea that life includes Good and Evil and part of a good person’s duty is to fight evil is not Christian pacifism. Rather it’s a model of mental health. There is no Good or Evil in the ultimate sense in this view. There’s only sickness and wellness. Some people are mentally ill and need treatment. Others are functional but not necessarily “Good” with a capital G.

Such a worldview should produce a type of fuzzy moderation that’s unwilling to absolutely condemn anything. All can be good, all is morally relative. There are no actual villains or heroes in any absolute sense–there’s only people who are well or sick. Fighting evil is not necessary.

Note this type of attitude was very common in the Modernism of the Twentieth Century and still is with us, especially in stories in which no one is really good or bad, or better said, all have their own motivations and all justify themselves but nobody is actually truly moral or immoral, since morality is entirely subjective. J. R. R. Tolkien was quite concerned with this type of “morality,” all the rage in his day, as was C. S. Lewis.

Note though that this type of non-morality does carry with it some ideas we easily could call “moral” that holders of this view “fight” for, metaphorically speaking. Such as a strong belief in treatment for the mentally ill. A desire to cure rather than punish negative behavior. A feeling that science expressed in medicine will be able to make things better, if only we give science the opportunity. Science and medicine becomes de facto Good (yes, with a  de facto capital G) and not providing treatment or seeing science as our “salvation” is Evil. Fighting evil amounts to fighting old ways of thinking, including the worldview of the Bible–though the term “Evil” mostly wouldn’t be used.

A third thing to notice about the mental health view of morality that tried but failed to eliminate the concept of ultimate good and evil was that it pretty much wiped itself out. Modernism led to post-modernism (though some Modernists are still lingering around), and Postmodernists, while they wholly embrace the notion of subjective truth, do not in fact embrace subjective morality. Critical Race Theory, and the Social Justice movement in general, is linked to postmodern thought and yet has very clear concepts about what is good and evil, leading people to fight with a fervor for what they believe as if there really is such a thing as fighting Evil with a capital E, even if they avoid that term (though Postmodernists sometimes actually use the word “Evil”).

So in spite of some people objecting to moralistic terminology, pretty much everyone believes in fighting evil. Even if we don’t agree what Evil is. So let’s return to what Tolkien said on this topic.

How Tolkien Showed Fighting Evil

Lesser Evil

You don’t have to be a scholar of English literature like my friend Anthony Cirilla to notice that with a few exceptions such as the balrog in Moria, the least dangerous villains in Tolkien’s fiction are those merely trying to kill the heroes. Orcs and trolls who smash and stab represent a real danger, a real evil that has to be fought, but the orcs and trolls are lesser-order baddies. They are not calling the shots from Mount Doom or Saruman’s tower. They are not the masterminds capable of destroying all of Middle Earth.

Greater Evil

The greatest evil in Lord of the Rings is the Ring itself. Its power to pull a person towards corruption is its greatest asset. Yet Sauron has the power to corrupt minions into his service without the one Ring, as he did with the nine riders, the Ringwraiths. The power to corrupt is part of what makes Sauron terrifying.

And the Ringwraiths call on Frodo to come with them to Mordor as well as try to slash him with swords. Yes, they are willing to kill him, but are also eager to turn him to their side.

The struggle between Gandalf and Saruman isn’t just a duel of magical power, it includes Gandalf’s appeal to the soul of Saruman, a protest of his decision to follow evil. Though that part of the struggle doesn’t last long, because Saruman is already committed to Evil.

Likewise the struggle Galadriel has within herself about whether to take the Ring doesn’t last long. She is too committed to Good. However, even though brief, this struggle is very important to the story.

Theoden and Boromir are in different ways captured by Evil–but they come back to help Good, both giving their lives to save others. Gollum is also called back from evil–but can’t quite return, though his fall back into wickedness served the purposes of those aligned against the powers of Evil.

Frodo as the ring-bearer is of course the clearest example of how fighting Evil really is more about fighting evil in yourself in Tolkien’s writings than smashing an enemy with a club or impaling him with a sword. Frodo’s struggle is the essential part of the Lord of the Rings quest. Unlike the film adaptation by Peter Jackson, the battles fought against orcs and other enemies in no way helps Frodo on his quest. He and he alone held the key to victory–and his struggle, apart from a few exceptional bits like the fight with Shelob, was internal. It was much more about whether or not Evil would control Frodo in the end than if he’d be killed.

Note that while Frodo did very briefly fall to the power of Evil, if he had done so any time sooner, the quest would have been over. Evil would have won.

If Boromir had not repented, if Theoden hadn’t come back, Evil might have won. There’s an important lesson here–good people turning bad does much harm. Winning them back does much good.

Also, people who should be good, who foolishly work against Good, such as Denethor, Steward of Gondor, or who work against Good because of being corrupted by Evil, such as Saruman, do much harm. It is vitally, vitally important to the quest to keep Evil from conquering everyone that good people don’t surrender themselves to personal darkness.

Tolkien made it clear that the greatest, most important way to fight evil is to make sure you don’t give yourself over to Evil.

Guard your own heart, as the Bible says in Philippians 2:12: “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.” Don’t be arrogant about yourself and presume you are right. Check your own heart–guard yourself from Evil–resist temptation, as Jesus did. That’s the most important way to be fighting evil. Inside, not out.

Why I’m Bringing This Up–Conclusion

While the issue of what we can learn from Tolkien about fighting evil could be brought up at any time and applies to every person on the planet, it is true that I know Christian people in dismay over the current political situation in the United States. There’s a thought that political opponents will use their power to suppress dissent–that just as the former president of the United States lost access to a platform of communication, so could anyone who disagrees. Many have a sense that hard times are coming, beyond just the suppression of dissent.

So I’m writing this bit to remind everyone that your most important duty is not to remold the culture in your image or triumph in politics. Your most important duty is to resist Evil yourself. To be the Aragorn wandering in the wilderness if need be, separated from the halls of power but doing good nonetheless, waiting for the due time when providential circumstances will call you out of the forest (metaphorically speaking, of course–you don’t have to go live in a forest 🙂 ).

If you are allowed a Shire, enjoy it. But if not, you are not justified in setting up your own tower like Saruman, forcing others to follow your will through malicious power. Tolkien did show a need to fight those trying to do immediate physical harm to others. But that isn’t the greatest struggle between Good and Evil (nor did he show Shire people decide to execute a pre-emptive strike on Mordor).

Image copyright: New Line Cinema

One of the worst things you can do is to try to seize power for the supposed purpose of obtaining a good goal. The most important thing is to keep yourself from Evil and to work to win back the Theodens of the world–those under the control of the power of Evil. That’s the fight we need to be fighting. Not physical combat–the physical battle will ultimately be resolved by the armies of heaven, not you and I.

So, having said all of that, I don’t feel I’m in any danger of being mistaken for a scholar of Tolkien’s works. I think my observations were simple and straightforward and this was not the first time someone on Speculative Faith addressed the issue of evil in relation to Tolkien (Rebecca Miller did, more than once, and Anthony Cirilla had some very interesting observations about the Hobbit, though not specifically about Evil).

What do you think, reader, about what Tolkien’s fiction showed about fighting evil? Do you agree or disagree with my take on the Lord of the Rings? What other thoughts come to mind?

In past horror films, people of color and other ethnicities were often expendable, compared with the story’s mainstream white character. Everyone knew the black guy would die first.

The 1970s: Blacksploitation and beyond

In the classic zombie film that spawned all others, Night of the Living Dead (1968), it was surprising to see the black guy survive the night fighting off our slow-moving zombies, only to get mistaken for one, killed, and burned up. I hated that ending because, on a social level, it spoke to the futility of the black fight.

Who can forget the campy Blacula, a tale in which an African prince gets bit by Dracula himself and wakes up in 1970s L. A.?

The era of the seventies is known for its Blaxploitation¹ With the advent of horror in the ‘70s, the black character takes something other than a subservient role to the white mainstream character. He becomes the villain to be feared but is also the anti-hero. A film of the era I remember is a movie called The Spook Who Sat by the Door. In that film, the U.S. government trains this black guy in espionage, and he uses that knowledge to fight against the government that oppresses the people.

From the 1990s–2010s: deeper themes

In the 1990s, the anthology film, Tales from the Hood, directed by Spike Lee, had an underlying message about black-on-black crime and discrimination. Spike Lee rarely produces a movie that doesn’t have a message within it. In one memorable scene, Lee uses the comparison of gangs wearing bandanas and masks with the white sheet–wearing members of the Ku Klux Klan (the KKK at the time).

An honorable mention is the movie, Bones (2001), starring hip-hop superstar Snoop Dogg. When people heard Snoop Dogg was playing this type of character, anticipation rippled among moviegoers. Plus, the outfit! I mean, if revenge looked like Snoop Dogg, then it was sweet!

More recently, Octavia Spencer, who plays the titular character in the film Ma (2019), said she wanted to play a role that was non-traditional. In this film, however, Spencer is actually playing the traditional character. She’s a full-figured black woman, with a kindly exterior, taking in a bunch of kids so they can have fun—but they don’t know that she has plans of revenge because what their parents did to her in high school.

I didn’t enjoy the film Sweetheart that aired on Netflix. Which was a shame because the movie’s atmosphere showed a perfect blend of chilling suspense and beautiful scenery. The whole idea is perfect: you’re trapped on a deserted island, surrounded by the ocean, and plagued by a monster. But the monster concept ruined the film’s execution. All this buildup—ending with an amphibian Big Bird. Yeah. Terrifying. As Mushu says in Mulan, “I think my bunny slippers just ran for cover.”

Author Carole McDonnell pointed out to me that beneath the movie’s surface lay the message that black women often suffer in silence. We see this in the film’s execution. For much of the movie, our main character is silent. She’s trying to survive with no help at all. She looks for food the best way she can. She fights the monster with what little tools she has. In the middle of the film, others from her shipwrecked party show up, including her boyfriend. They downplay her warnings about the monster and flat-out don’t believe her. Even the film’s name, Sweetheart, shows this dynamic. When she’s trying to warn them about the monster, her boyfriend dismissively calls her “sweetheart”—before he gets eaten.

Near the movie’s end, she decides she must take down this monster herself. She writes a note to whomever will find her record, telling them her history of not being believed. This is a nod to black women who struggle with society believing their stories.

In highlighting some of these films, I hope I’ve shown their dual purpose.

I must also mention two of my favorite vampire films that I adored watching as a child: A Vampire in Brooklyn and Blade. I loved these two films because they simply told stories about fighting evil.

In A Vampire in Brooklyn, Eddie Murphy plays a vampire—he stepped out of his traditional roles as a comedian and became a villain. I found it odd to see him in that light, but looking back, that film showed me he wanted to take on a different role.

In Blade, Wesley Snipes plays a vampire slayer who kicks vampire tail. That’s all the movie was about.

What a concept! A horror movie that simply tells a story.

Horror films can explore evils worse than injustice.

I hope that in the future, we won’t need distinctions between black horror and mainstream horror because we’d all realize there’s a greater horror out there than injustice.

See, the worst horror story isn’t the one told in books or movies. It’s the story we’re living in now—a reality of monstrous proportions. That story has an immortal and powerful Enemy that stalks the Earth. This Enemy will use any means to destroy us. Like a violinist uses a violin, this Enemy uses the human condition as the basis for his instrument. It takes all our vices, both internal and external, and plucks them. This Enemy does not care about you. He will use anything—let me repeat: anything—as a weapon to destroy us.

This horror lies inside all of us: sin.

Here’s another reality: we can do nothing to save ourselves from him. Our pleasures, pains, hopes and dreams as well as our good and bad intentions can all be corrupted by the Enemy. Even if you think evil doesn’t exist, he uses that. Even if you think that good and evil aren’t real, he uses that. Even if you think you aren’t real, he uses that. Every idea, every thought, and every part of the human condition can be used by the Enemy to destroy you.

How can we resist this enemy? I’m reminded of another horror movie, Birdbox, in which Sandra Bullock plays a woman trying to escape—some invisible creatures, or spirits? (I don’t know, I hated that movie too.) She must row down a river blindfolded. I will spoil the movie for you because at the end, when she arrives at the place of refuge, the entities are not destroyed; they’re only held at bay.

In our reality, this is all we can do by ourselves to resist our Enemy: hold him at bay. But eventually he will gain a foothold on us because we are too weak to fight against him by ourselves.

Black horror films can sometimes end on a dismal note. Their prevailing assumption is that the struggle will continue because the system won’t allow it to end. They present this struggle as part of the system. We can only hold it at bay.

How much more then do we fail to overcome our worst enemy with our own merits and strengths? We will fail. This Enemy, Satan, is determined that you live in separation from God.

If reality stayed that way, we would truly be living in a horror film with an enemy that no one can escape or defeat.

Thanks be to God that the horror story doesn’t end on that note. Instead, Jesus Christ breaks through all the darkness with His light. He shatters the encroaching walls with the truth, slays the adversary and his minions with his sword, and ends the horror story. As Isaiah 9:2 says, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”

Horror films often show one person who lives to tell the tale.

In our reality, where this current horror story takes place, will that survivor be you?

What are some other black horror films I neglected to mention? What do you think about horror used as a conduit to explore social issues? How can Christians capitalize on horror as effective storytelling? Share your thoughts!

For several years now I’ve heard of Dr. Robert Lanza’s “Biocentrism” but didn’t quite get what it was about from snippets I’d heard. I decided to purchase a copy of his book, Beyond Biocentrism, and see what he had to say for himself, since I’m always curious about new ways of conceiving of the universe. What I found in his worldview directly relates to concepts in certain stories, most famously the Star Wars franchise. Biocentrism has much in common with Hinduism and imagines the entire universe is connected as a single being, pretty much like “the Force” of Star Wars, but more developed.

Even though I felt there were truck-sized holes in Dr. Lanza’s logic (he’s an MD by the way), I think he’s offering some genuine competition to Intelligent Design as a means to explain the universe. Which concerns me, so is worth talking about. But his ideas also have implications concerning the worldview behind stories.

A Brief De-Confliction vis-a-vis Ethical Biocentrism

In ethics, “Biocentrism” means believing the needs of human beings are not greater than any other form of life. That’s in contrast to the view that human needs matter most–which we can fairly said has been a belief held by every literate civilization on Earth to one degree or other. But in particular Western civilization has maintained that human life matters more than animal life–and this view of course finds support in the Biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve as the final piece of God’s creative work on Planet Earth.

“Ethical Biocentrism” is a broader idea than animal rights activism, so that not all ethical biocentrists are animal rights activists, but all animal rights activists are biocentrists. Biocentrism has a weird self-contradiction running down its center in my estimation–every other species reproduces as much as it naturally can and eats what it can eat and takes what environmental space it can take, limited basically by their ability to travel and adapt to other environments. So in effect, Ethical Biocentrism calls on human beings and human beings alone to restrict their domination of other life. Because we are not any more important than any other life, we need to restrict ourselves–us humans beings the only species to do so, as if we really were the most important.

I think God setting up humans as the managers of nature, the gardener of Eden, is more straightforward. We are more important than other life, but have an obligation from God not to wantonly destroy species God created with a purpose.

But anyway, Ethical Biocentrism is not Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism, which is a quasi-scientific take on the nature of the universe. (Though I can easily imagine a Lanza-style biocentrist being an ethical biocentrist…)

Biocentrism in a Nutshell

The Brain

Beyond Biocentrism didn’t begin talking about the brain (it started with phenomena science doesn’t understand well, especially the beginning of the universe and the concept of time) but I think its concept of the brain is key to what it offers as a worldview that hasn’t been said before. In essence it states what you experience every day isn’t the real world, it is a reality generated entirely in your brain. You take information into your brain through your senses, not so much learning about the world but the world you perceive is actually the same as your brain activity. Lanza literally said if you see a tree, you are seeing it in your brain. When you reach out a hand to touch a tree, your hand isn’t outside you, either. It also is a projection of the brain. When your hand runs across a tree, the sensation is in your brain, not outside it.

This view meshes pretty well with the postmodern view that observers or speakers are 100% part of any statement they make. It is not even possible to be objective if your very being is created by your mind function–which is not something Lanza said, but an idea that follows from what he said. Though Lanza also threw out appeals to objective truth when it suited his line of reasoning, Biocentrism as a philosophy doesn’t embrace the idea of an independent universe outside of an observer.

Here’s the cover of the book I read. Copyright: Dr. Robert Lanza.

Consciousness

The book I read was overly simplistic in its style for my taste, by the way, but it did point out some truths about what scientists actually believe. One is that the problem of consciousness, while ignored by some people as unimportant, is a major question that science has a hard time dealing with. Why is anyone conscious? Why do we perceive we have choices and experiences of life if we are nothing more than biological machines?

Some atheists like Sam Harris basically say consciousness is nothing special and the sense that we have choices is an illusion. We are just machines, people like Harris say, and so when we assemble in one place enough electronic circuits (in building computers), we should expect consciousness to develop in them–computers will eventually become conscious because that’s all our consciousness is, the assemblage of sufficient processing power. Note this basic idea has undergirded a lot of science fiction, from Hal 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey to Star Trek‘s Data, to many, many other fictional AIs.

Christian thinkers in general would say that processing power isn’t enough to explain being conscious and there’s something special about the ability to perceive the world as we do. Something beyond the physical, we would say in most cases–a soul or a spirit, which either directly or indirectly came from God.

Lanza’s view is neither Christian nor atheist. He says that the entire universe is actually a single conscious being–which is yes, Pantheism, though I didn’t notice him using that word. Consciousness isn’t a puzzle to solve about the universe, he would say, it is a feature of the universe. In which all is alive. Our own consciousness is merely a reflection of the whole–but we are able to “get it” (Lanza’s words) and realize we are just a piece of the whole. So consciousness is eternal and doesn’t require explanation as a thing that arises from processing power. All things, processing power or not, are part of a conscious whole.

Lanza openly admits this idea parallels Hinduism and other Eastern religions, but doesn’t embrace reincarnation or other specifically Hindu ideas. But he does, no kidding, think the universe is one entity, one source of life, one consciousness, of which we all are part.

Let’s call his concept “the Force”–even though he doesn’t say it gives Jedi their power…

Time

Time, there is no time in the Force. Time is a construct of our brains, competitively evolved to survive, not understand our universe. Yes, Lanza embraces evolution when it suits him, but casts it off when it doesn’t, as I will bring up a bit later.

By the way, I’ve read a number of books by physicists for lay people in which the subject of time has come up. Time is a real puzzler for a lot of scientists because most equations are time-neutral. Only a few things in nature really seem to require time. One of those is thermodynamics, which Lanza dismissed in a way I did not find satisfying. But I’m pointing out that Lanza may sound crazy to some Speculative Faith readers, but in fact isn’t too far off from how a number of top scientists think about time. A lot of physicists find our experience of time to be odd and hard to explain.

Eternity

There is no beginning of the universe in Lanza’s view. The universe has always existed and always will exist. Time is an illusion produced by human brains and the limits baked into them by evolution–wait, I thought the brain was all part of one consciousness which wouldn’t have to have any supposed evolutionary restrictions (SHSH! Travis, you’re thinking again). But anyway, since Lanza thinks time isn’t really a thing, then death isn’t really real, either. We live in an eternal now, without beginning or end, perceived as a beginning or end only by the limitations of our brains.

This may sound wacky to most people reading this post and I’m not saying it isn’t–but logically the strongest competitor to the idea that God created the universe isn’t a randomly-self generating universe (an idea I poked holes in a previous Speculative Faith series), but the idea that the universe has always been around and thus doesn’t require an explanation for its existence. Aristotle believed in an eternal universe, which Lanza quotes (though Aristotle also believed in a “first mover” which many Christian theologians equated with God, which Lanza didn’t mention). Einstein also believed time was an illusion in that all moments of time should have a real existence at any moment (because of space-time and time being a dimension like space)–so why do we experience going from moment to moment? Einstein couldn’t explain that. Lanza tries to by saying, “Brain function.”

Paralleling Intelligent Design Thinking

Lanza doesn’t hesitate to pull out intelligent design arguments against the universe self-generating randomly and offers a cool thought exercise of a million imaginary monkeys randomly typing on a modern 58 key computer keyboard, assuming they typed 45 words a minute without rest of any kind, would take 36 trillion years (2,600 times the age of the universe) for it to be probable that one of them would type the exact words, “Call me Ishmael.” Let alone the exact combination of events leading to the Big Bang–or generation of life.

However, his answer isn’t that there is a single Being outside of time and space that conceived of the universe and created it (the Christian view) but rather that the universe has innate intelligence, and while evolution happened, it was guided by this unseen hand of the universe itself. All is one–the Force made us–and itself.

Of course, for evolution to happen, time has to happen, but I think Lanza would say no, that all stages of evolution are in essence simultaneous like all moments are simultaneous. This is clearly stuff that doesn’t line up with a Biblical worldview (a self-evolving but timeless universe), but I’m just reporting what I’ve read here and conclusions I’ve drawn from it

I found it mildly disturbing that logical reasoning launched versus a random self-generating universe can so easily be bent into arguments for a conscious self-generating universe. Though there’s ways to respond to Lanza’s point of view.

Ducking Cause and Effect

Lanza takes on the riddle of time and consciousness with unusual solutions, which are topics many physicists acknowledge are real puzzlers but then they more or less duck the question. So maybe we can think of Lanza as courageous for making controversial stances on these subjects.

However, when it comes to cause and effect, Lanza ducks what I see as a massive problem with his worldview. That is, he takes potshots at standard ways of looking at the universe as insufficient to explain it, including lobbing a few remarks versus the Christian worldview that holds on to a traditional interpretation of the Bible (for example, mocking the idea of Noah’s Ark based on 8 million known modern species). Though mostly he tears into the materialist worldview that ignores certain problems I’ve already mentioned.

But, all reasoning is tied to cause and effect–you are asserting something was caused by something else when reasoning why it happened and asking what possible option best explains what caused it. How can that process be reconciled with the idea of a timeless universe? Cause and effect either is time, or it is an inevitable component of time. We know time has passed because something has happened. What happened was caused by something else over a period of time–how can anyone reason about anything, ever, without recognizing time is required to even discuss concepts of cause and effect? Or to discuss proof and evidence, for that matter?

I imagine Lanza would say something about an illusion of cause and effect to my criticism and maybe say something about only using logical proof to point out its own fallacies, as the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno did (Lanza quotes Zeno). In contrast, I would say any kind of reasoning that nullifies reason itself, rather than teaching us to abandon reason, can be fairly criticized as inherently faulty. But that’s because I believe in an orderly God who created an orderly universe–who is capable of blowing our minds with the facts of how things work. But who does not cancel out reasoning itself–on the contrary, God is pro-rationality (which isn’t the same as being pro-what the majority of humans think).

Anti-science?

Lanza does sing the praises of intuition, though he also appeals to reason. He downplays conventional scientific approaches but tries to overcome what he sees as their deficiencies (such as believing time is real) with heavy reliance on neuroscience, drawing from his experiences as a physician no doubt.

So overall this philosophy is pro-science and anti-scientific realism–“scientific realism” being the idea there is an independent universe outside of the observer of the universe. So Lanza is in effect trying to “square the circle” of getting people to accept the benefits of modern science by saying it has observed real things (especially about the brain), while also embracing subjectivity in a way wholly compatible with postmodernist thought.

The Force

Lanza doesn’t go into the idea that the universe could supply a person with power like a Jedi has or the unity of the universe could provide a rational explanation for what would be de facto magic, other than saying intuition has a genuine basis via connecting with the universe in a mysterious way. I’m not sure he would buy that Jedi power greater than intuition would be possible.

However, if I didn’t know the timeline of ideas, I might think that Lanza’s Biocentrism inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars. But Lanza came out with his theory in 2007 and Star Wars came out in 1977.  So maybe the inspiration flowed the other way around. Or maybe both were inspired by Hinduism. (Hey, am I talking about the pesky subject of time again? 😉 )

Certainly ideas of what the Force is or how it works could be clarified by Lanza’s notions. Note also that just as Hinduism could say all-is-one yet embrace specific gods like Krishna, Lanza’s Biocentrism I think would be essentially compatible with modern Paganism.

These ideas could inform the types of stories Christians read and write. We don’t want to reproduce what Lanza is thinking, to be sure. But we should be aware that such ideas exist. Perhaps we can either write or focus our reading on stories that reveal the downsides of such a philosophy…

Conclusion

Overall, while I felt that Biocentrism suffers from some massive logical contradictions, the philosophy itself downplays the value of focusing on such contradictions. As such it is able to blend elements of scientific materialism with Hinduism, throwing a whopping dose of neuroscience justification in there in a way compatible with postmodernism, with room for modern Paganism to boot. And would also fit in with ethical biocentrism quite well, though Lanza didn’t talk about that.

I see this philosophy as if someone crossed Ebola with COVID 19 with small pox. Ugh. (Though, good thing is it doesn’t seem to be very contagious.)

Have any of you read Dr. Robert Lanza? Do you have any thoughts on Biocentrism, either his brand or the “ethical” kind? What are your thoughts on the Force and how Lucas’s vision does or does not contradict a Christian worldview? Am I off base in comparing the Force to Lanza’s views? Any other thoughts?

In M. I. McAllister’s fantasy Urchin of the Riding Stars, Urchin’s world is the island of Mistmantle, eternally surrounded by fog no islander can cross and return, unless they return by another way. Visitors are few, but welcome.

In the peaceful and industrious island kingdom of Mistmantle, Urchin yearns to be a tower squirrel, to work near the king and his family. At last he is chosen, but then the king’s son is killed, and the traitor threatens the peace of Mistmantle, the safety of every loyal animal, and the love of the Heartstone that binds the king and the kingdom together.

Urchin didn’t often use tunnels. Trying to remember what Padra had taught him about them he found an entrance in a corner of the wall. The frightened hedgehog voice was closer, and so was cruel laughter, and then, to his horror, the rasp of a sword being drawn. Urchin tore toward it.

The tunnel opened out so suddenly that Urchin wasn’t ready for what he saw, and had to pull himself together. He was in some sort of guard room, where a platter lay on a small table, a lamp glowed on a wall, and two moles, who neither looked nor sounded like Mistmantle moles, had their backs to him. They were pointing their swords toward a hedgehog so small, so scruffy, and so brave in its terror that fury fired Urchin.

“I’ll fight you . . .” the hedgehog was saying, though his voice was thin and his mouth trembled. “I’ll fight you. One at a time. But you’ll have to lend me a sword, or it’s not fair.”

Soundlessly, Urchin sprang onto the table and picked up the platter for a shield. If the hedgehog had seen him, it was wise enough to keep quiet. The entrance was free, so the moles would probably escape rather than fight.

“Captain Padra will be very cross,” Said the hedgehog, trying very hard not to cry.

“Aah! Poor ickle hedgehog!” Said a mole.

“Aah!” said the other, and was turning away as Urchin sprang from the table. “Aaaarh!”

There was no need to fight. The moles had seen, not a young squirrel, but a raging armed warrior. The first fled, and the other followed as the flat of Urchin’s sword skimmed across his flank.

–Urchin of the Riding Stars, pg. 263, by M. I. McAllister

Urchin was young at heart but not small at heart. To become a true creature, be he a captain, a prince, a king, or merely a squirrel like no other, one must learn many things.

Bravery alone can sometimes defeat an enemy. At other times it takes perseverance and hard fighting. And the thing worth fighting for, kept clear in our mind’s eye, is vital to winning the battle. Hold high before your heart the shield of faith in the goodness of the one who made the world, wield your sword for the downtrodden you defend, and in the end right will be done.

If we do not know what we risk our lives for, giving up seems a logical option when the fight grows long. For family, for friends, for law and order, for the apple pie on the table—in a word—we fight for the freedom of goodness. For justice, for love, for mercy, for knowledge and for truth itself.

And how does a young squirrel learn to do these things? By serving first among the lowest ranks, growing in knowledge and skill, and rescuing those he loves. As Urchin moves upward in sword-wielding and people-watching, he comes to know what he needs by feeling it, touching it, doing it. Making mistakes, of course, but fewer and fewer.

Until at last the time comes and a young squirrel and a king are ready. They contend for merry feasts of gathering under the oaks, for the right of an otter to swim in the sea about a tower, for a disturber of the peace to be brought to justice, and for a king to come into his own, one who cares for all creatures under the Creator’s uplifting hand. Urchin sees a true king who is the first to go hungry when necessary, the first into a just fight, the last to retreat from enemies, and the last to sit down at a feast of plenty.

Here is an adventure of a lifetime, filled with triumph, tears, and trust. We journey with wise words gained from the pages of those who have traveled the sea of life before us, who watch us with unseen eyes full of glad expectation.

And how to join this journey to such places where heart-knowledge is written, with more revealed every day?

Cracking on full sail, speed across the waves, the wind fresh in our face, and dream of lasting change, terrific inventions, fantastic beasts, and killer adventure on the ocean of fantasy. Dream of true greatness young at heart but great in spirit, while your deeds send ripples ahead of you.

This post is a completely re-worked version of a post I put on my personal blog back in 2014. It’s a think piece about the nature of magic, because there are multiple ways to do magic in fiction. Often magic falls along certain tropes in fantasy, but what would happen if magic had to follow scientific rules? What if magic were simply extra power supplied from the universe somewhere–or perhaps another universe–and by “power” I mean energy convertible into types we recognize in science. If magic were in fact extra power, then spells that used less power would be more feasible and “easier” than spells that required more power. Allowing the creation of magical systems that are internally consistent, but unlike most tropes of fantasy magic. Offered here for creative minds thinking about creating stories of their own–or people simply interested in comparing the magic they read in stories with what I’m offering here.

Energy Source and Application

A previous post of mine discussed that idea that Christian writers may have problems dealing with magic that secular writers do not and I suggested six ways around the problem. This post in effect looks at some of the implications of the approach I listed at number four. A number of writers have thought along the same lines, but what if there is a type of energy unknown to modern science which responds to concentrated thought or other acts directed from a person, such as speaking out loud, which would wind up resembling the magical spells of fantasy lore? If the energy is out there, the “wizard” in effect learns to study how to use that energy in a way that parallels a scientist studying the natural world–except with means that resemble fantasy tropes of how magic is used.

Part of what inspired the idea of energy flow stems from an understanding I gained of electrical circuits when studying medical equipment repair for the military. An electrical device with a power source has to have a flow of current both to and from the place where electricity is used. But the return line for current has almost no voltage in it. So a person normally will only be electrocuted by the “hot” power line, one that’s going out to an electrical device. So…what if magical power flows through universes (assuming a multiverse), but is mostly depleted as it flows through ours? So there’s very little usable magical power for us–but alternate universes might have plenty…

Note this kind of magic in effect would not be supernatural power technically speaking–magic would be a natural power, like electricity or atomic energy. To be used, this magical energy would have to be converted into a form of energy we recognize from physics. Something people could use for either good or evil. It would only seem supernatural in contrast to the world we actually live in.

Note also I did a previous post for speculative faith in which I talked about how a blend of magic and technology could be the basis of an original story idea. I’m not talking about that directly here, but a few of the implications of magic having to follow scientific rules would mean that using technology alongside magic could make a lot of sense.

Ordinary Physics Applies Alongside Magic

Gravity and Kinetic Energy

Or perhaps levitation could involve creating an additional gravitational pull from above, or magnifying the pull of an orbiting moon. If so, the position of the moon could effect levitation. Or delicate objects might prove difficult to lift without fracturing them between stresses from gravity above and gravity below.

Water droplets resisting gravity due to surface tension, scientific “magic.” Credit: Anurag Das / EyeEm / Getty Images

Heat

Since many reactions in the known natural world produce heat (chemical reactions, friction, absorption of radiation, etc), it would make sense that one of the simplest spells in this hypothetical magical system would be heat generation. Lighting a fire would be simple and using heat in a beam to attack enemies would also be simple but obviously would require more power. Making an enemy burn from afar without any visible means of attack would be much easier than making a fireball for reasons I’m going to explain in a bit. Also, magical welding would be a thing.

Making something cold is actually removing heat, so it’s harder. Cold spells and heat spells, treated as opposites in most fantasy tales, would not be opposites in the system I’m thinking of. Generating cold would be significantly harder and would require the use of magical energy to move heat from one place to another, generating cold the way an air conditioning system does.

Light and Electricity

Since light is a common form of energy from electromagnetism, a spell generating light should be easy-peasy for our imagined masters of this kind of scientific magic. But making light that’s amplified by sharing a common phase is a type of modification of light that may be relatively simple. If so, a laser spell ought to be common, simpler in fact that many other types of spells–definitely easier than a fireball. Electrical-based spells should also be prevalent, not just the lightning bolts that are common enough in fantasy, but taser-like paralyzing effects, and continuously-running electric arcs for lighting, and more.

Alchemy

Since transmuting elements involves moving the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons in atoms around, which is something the type of energy I’m imagining could effect, Alchemy should be possible in the sense that Alchemists would still attempt to transmute lead into gold. Under this type of magic, transmuting elements might be simpler than a number of other imaginable spells. But alteration of atomic nuclei by magic (the magic user does not have realize that’s what he or she is doing to be doing it), perhaps could come with the risk of setting off a nuclear blast, even if a small one. Because messing with atomic nuclei could run the risk of some matter converting directly to energy. Though a much more likely effect would be the generation of hazardous ionizing radiation. Nuclear magic could therefore be a branch of magical arts in this type of story world.

Energy to Matter

Spells that would be hard would be any that involve the creation of matter from nothing. That’s because these would have to gather a great deal of ambient energy first in accordance with E=mc2, where it takes a huge amount of energy to make a tiny amount of matter. That’s why a fireball would be much more complex that a heat beam–a fireball is burning matter generated by magic, as opposed to pure heat. (So lasers and heat rays would be a thing much more easily that a burning fireball–though magic could easily enough be used to manipulate matter that was already burning and throw it at someone…)

Especially those spells that create life would be massively complex. In fact spells involving significant alterations to living creatures might be virtually impossible–life is just so complex. Though a plant’s growth might be accelerated by altering time for the plant (again, the sorcerer may perceive her or his spell makes the roots grow instantly, but what they actually would do is accelerate time for the plant in question, allowing it to produce what it would normally do, only much faster). Restoring someone from the dead may never work, but even if it did, it would almost surely produce a zombie instead of a normal person.

Healing spells in general would be hard, other than simple wound cauterization. Healing spells could perhaps work most effectively by accelerating natural healing–though it would have the inherent limitation of eventually aging the patient to the point of death if used too often.

Time

Time based effects, as mentioned in the section above, which are not common in fantasy stories I know, perhaps should be extremely common, especially slowing time for a particular object, since that only requires an intense gravity field to increase local acceleration (with effects coming from Relativity). Note though that going backward in time would require the generation of a wormhole, which would neither be safe nor easy. Accelerating time might also be possible, though it might be hard on a large scale.

Conclusion

Levitations by magnetism or the implications of heat, lasers, atomic blasts, the difficulty of making life, levitation, electricity, and time are only examples of what this type of thinking about magic could produce. They are not by any means the only subjects this discussion could have covered. What other examples can you think of? And can you recall stories in which magic was used like this? Magic with an eye to what is scientifically plausible? If so, how did the magic in that story or stories differ from what I’ve suggested?

The series Stargate SG-1 was new back in 1997, so you’d think I would have watched it back then. I didn’t, mostly because the series stemmed from a 1994 movie that didn’t appeal to me very much. The movie saddled the series with some weak story ideas (yes, in my opinion) that I’m going to detail in this article in just a bit. But as I gave the series a chance (yes, watching it on Netflix), it grew on me. The arc of the story made good use of the material it had, improving through the twenty-one episodes of the first season. To use a card playing analogy, the series was dealt a bad hand which it played well.

Note that Stargate SG-1 lasted ten seasons and spawned multiple sequels, especially Stargate Atlantis, which lasted five seasons. I’m not vouching for any of the other seasons beyond the first and the episodes I’ve seen in the second season and of course I’m not commenting on Atlantis. TV series sometimes find a fanbase devoted enough to keep cranking out episodes even if their content isn’t very good and I think that it’s at least possible that happened to Stargate SG-1 as it went on. But I looked on some fan forums and the consensus seems to be that season one is not Stargate SG-1 at its best. We’ll see if I agree with that as I continue watching.

No doubt a forum like this directed towards fans of speculative fiction will include some die-hard Stargate SG-1 loyalists, who might object to me saying the ideas behind Stargate were weak. I’m not trying to be offensive–certainly the things that bother me don’t always concern other people, which is fine. I’m not saying you don’t have the right to like what you like, but that for me, the basic ideas behind Stargate SG-1 were faulty.

This post will contain some mild spoilers, by the way. But I won’t give away any plots in detail.

Weak Ideas in Setting and Character From the Movie

Ancient aliens

The US military crew in the Stargate movie. Image copyright: MGM

For the uninitiated, the movie Stargate stemmed from the idea that the Egyptian gods were in fact real. They were aliens who visited Earth in ancient times and enslaved humans. They came to Earth through a gate that through a series of codes connects to other inhabited worlds, using wormholes. The US military, the US Air Force in particular, get its hands on a gate that had been buried and contacts a brilliant but controversial linguist who cracks the code of the gate and travels to a world that looks pretty much like ancient Egypt, where a battle between modern men and ancient “gods” takes place. Humans kill the “god” Ra and save the planet.

The whole finding an ancient stargate by the US military thing I would say is a strength of the Stargate SG-1 series. It’s an intriguing notion to think of modern military having access to other star systems and having a motivation to explore them directly related to the defense of Planet Earth.

But the Stargate movie set this up with aliens having pyramid-shaped spaceships and wearing costumes with serpent heads, to which my gut reaction was they look ridiculous. The ancient aliens have a number of characteristics that annoy me, beyond their appearance:

1. I think the very idea of ancient aliens in Egypt covertly supports the idea that aliens were behind all ancient beliefs in gods and goddesses, including the belief in the God of the Bible. Which I don’t agree with, of course.
2. The ancient aliens have plasma weapons we are supposed to believe are superior to guns, but which shoot slower and miss plenty–it fact in some scenes they miss much more than they hit. The aliens seem kinda weak, actually, but the story maintained the fiction they are strong “because.”
3. The fact the Goa’uld (the name for the Egyptian-esque aliens) speak ancient Egyptian is what gives the brilliant linguist character (named Dr. Daniel Jackson, in the movie played by James Spader) access to them. But it messes with ancient Egyptian history and linguistics. Ancient Egyptian isn’t a language isolate–it’s related to lots of other languages, including Hebrew, and it’s just weird to me that this is supposed to be an alien language.
4. The ancient aliens are into enslaving humans not for the obvious purpose of building their pyramids, which are actually highly technological, but for “just because” reasons. Which messed with my logical brain, “Wait a minute, all the alien’s tech is something the human slaves can’t build–what exactly are the human slaves for in the first place?” (Hosting hostile aliens, sure, but you don’t need hordes of slaves for that.)
5. Religion is a tool for the aliens to subjugate their slaves. So Ra isn’t a god but has himself worshipped as a god because it helps him run his slave empire. Yeah, while this could be adapted to say this kind of religion only applies to false gods as opposed to Jehovah the Creator of all, I think the idea takes a shot at all religion, actually.

Getting the U.S. Military Wrong

So one of the key figures in this story is a US Air Force colonel, Colonel Jack O’Neil (portrayed by Kurt Russell in the movie)…who is a veteran of special forces, a lead from the front kind of guy…and wait is in the Air Force? And is a full bird colonel? (“Full bird” means not a lieutenant colonel–he wears an eagle for his rank, not a silver oak leaf.)

People know, right, that the United States Air Force, while a great institution in many ways, doesn’t have a lot in the way of special forces? They have two basic special forces jobs, one with their guys embedded in another kind of unit (Army, Navy, or Marines) in order to control attack aircraft. The other job is pararescue–parachuting back behind enemy lines to rescue US forces, especially downed pilots. Neither of those jobs are like what Col. O’Neil is supposed to have done.

And how many colonels lead from the front? Not many. Not that it couldn’t happen, but where are all the enlisted guys, the sergeants and other non-commissioned officers? Stargate has a bit of obsession with officer ranks. Too many characters who would not be officers in reality are officers in the Stargate franchise.

Also, I’ve known a number of special forces guys–not a huge number but some. And I’ve known a number of colonels. I haven’t met any real person who is a hard-charging-wise-cracking-fighter-who-is-disinterested-in-academic-details who is actually a colonel. I’m not saying such a person is impossible, sure I suppose there have been historic people like that–but the character strikes me as what someone would imagine the US military is like rather than what it is like. The US Air Force in particular is pretty brainy! (Though in fact, some fighter pilots are a bit like Col. O’Neil, but that’s a whole other can of worms to talk about why fighter pilots are not like other officers…)

Problems Stargate SG-1 Added to the Movie

Frontal Nudity

In 1997, Stargate SG-1 aired on the Showtime network. The first episode contains a scene that shows full female frontal nudity. It was not necessary to the story–she could have kept her clothes on. I skipped past the scene when it came up–but in fact I could have skipped past the entire episode. The first episode in effect re-introduces the stargate and introduces the main characters. The only parts really important to the series is that the alien Goa’uld remain a threat, though now through Apophis rather than Ra. And, a human-like but non-human servant of the Goa’uld rebels against them and decides to help the humans on their quest to explore other worlds through the stargate, the main character Teal’c.

Note the first season doesn’t do nudity again and eventually the series left Showtime. In fact, doing a bit of research, it appears the first episode is the only episode in the entire franchise to feature full nudity. If you haven’t seen this series but are interested but want to avoid the gratuitous nudity, just skip the first episode altogether. You will realize quickly enough who Teal’c and Apophis are, without that episode–other episodes cover the essential bits.

English-Speaking Aliens

Most science fiction series have believed its impractical to feature aliens speaking alien languages for more than short bits. Star Trek dealt with this by imagining there was such a thing as a “universal translator” that quickly and easily picked up alien words and translated them–with Star Trek only delving into language translation when it decided it wanted to do so.

So it’s understandable that aliens or ancient humans long ago removed from Earth would speak English. Practically, the producers of the show made that choice for reasons I get. But it creates a problem. You see, the purpose for Dr. Daniel Jackson stemmed from his abilities as a linguist. He cracked the stargate code and could communicate with the Goa’uld based on speaking their language…and the Goa’uld still speak some reconstructed ancient Egyptian to be sure, though they also speak English. But if not as a linguist, what purpose does Dr. Jackson serve?

The first season has him morph into a bit of a cultural expert and keeping him on makes sense–but the decision to eliminate foreign languages gives him less to do and at times brings up the question, “Ok, why don’t they replace this guy with someone from the military?”

Alien Worlds Look Too Much Like British Colombia

Stargate SG-1 was filmed in Canada, around Vancouver in British Colombia. Aaand, a lot of alien worlds in the first season happen to look just like the forests of B.C. Though in fact I found the producers did a bit less of that as the series went on. Still, while the issue is as understandable as using the English language–you film in the locations you have easy access to most often–one of the things about a stargate system is that it would go to all kinds of worlds, including very exotic ones. So it’s a mistake to show too many worlds looking essentially alike.

Too Much Repeating Ancient Cultures

Some people might think it’s awesome that you find ancient Mycenean culture (and other examples) reproduced around another star because people were lifted from there long ago. But the fact they never changed seems odd–though of course they did manage to learn English (ahem). But visiting ancient cultures over and over, even though I love history, wasn’t something to float a series on. I think season one went this direction for a while because of Dr. Jackson’s expertise in ancient cultures…and he needs something to do on the team, right? Fortunately Stargate didn’t stick with doing that only.

Cheesy?

Stargate SG-1 goes for a sincere approach to subjects, other than the wisecracking Col. O’Neil, who does provide needed comic relief at times. With special effects not always being the best and some particular story plots a bit weak, sometimes this series verges on campy, especially when the Goa’uld show up in serpent costumes. Or with certain other aliens. But I think the series overcomes this issue and in many ways makes the best of what it has.

How Stargate SG-1 Made the Best of What it Had

More Realistic US Military

The main cast of Stargate SG-1. Image copyright: MGM

The fictional stargate program is headed up by an Air Force commander, Major General Hammond. The character Hammond looks, talks, and acts like a general in my opinion, with only a few deviations. He talks about national defense, duty, and is willing to sacrifice people for the mission, but always cares about his people. And not just him, many other lesser military personnel seemed quite true to life. I in particular like the detail that Stargate SG-1 is just one stargate team out of many–it’s not like the military to have just one team for something like this.

I found Hammond and other changes in the military for the series convincing–and it’s important the military seem convincing. After all, that’s the good part of the basic premise of this story–what if the US military (Air Force specifically) had access to alien worlds, in a quest to prevent our planet from being invaded, seeking allies against dangerous aliens–the Goa’uld.

Loved the Alerts

Since the stargate can be a means for enemies to attack the human race, a number of defensive systems get installed around it. The fact an alarm goes off when the stargate has an unauthorized activation or when there’s an unknown incoming connection, the fact they have an iris defensive system and drop blast doors and have armed teams at the gate with weapons every single time this happens plays up the idea that the Planet Earth really is at risk, no kidding, and this time the United States military isn’t necessarily anywhere close to the toughest fighter around. Nobody knows what’s coming through the gate–that premise built dramatic tension and the writers played this card well.

Expanding the Threat

One of the obvious logical issues concerning any threat a stargate could have to Planet Earth would be, “Why don’t you just bury the thing or destroy it?” But by making it clear the Goa’uld also have starships that can directly attack Earth, the stakes were raised. It’s not if Earth will be invaded, but when, so the question of finding allies or useful technologies is vitally important. Honorable mention goes to a realistic evaluation of how incapable our planet would be in fighting off attackers from outer space…even goofy goobers like the Goa’uld.

Pentagon Politics

Not only are the threats from alien invaders raised, threats from inner-Pentagon politics arise as well. Intelligence officers and agencies with their own agendas, cost-cutting politicians, and military rivalries pop up appropriately in Stargate SG-1’s first season.

Likeable Characters

While one of my objections to the set-up for Stargate SG-1 is the Colonel O’Neil doesn’t seem real, the character is likeable, increasingly so as the first season progressed. Teal’c is also very likeable, as is Capt. Samantha Carter (an Air Force astrophysicist who is also a member of the team). Dr. Jackson I may like the least, but his character is still an empathetic figure.

Consequences

The series so far doesn’t ignore consequences from past actions. Aliens met once might be seen again. Characters encountered once can pop up again–with memories of the last time they met. Most importantly, the series deals with what it would be like to actually connect to alien worlds. The issue of plagues and diseases arises, for example. Via an alternate reality themed episode, the series shows that things could have been very much worse for humanity via combat through the stargate than it actually was–which is good. The series takes seriously the idea that there could be negative effects from running headlong into unknown worlds.

Morality

The series doesn’t hestitate to see enslavement as a bad thing–there’s no hint that “Maybe that’s okay for an alien culture.” Stargate adopts a general morality of the value of loyalty and self-sacrifice, the importance of fighting oppressors and being alert when evil comes attacking. The conscience that God put in human beings in general is reflected in these values. In fact, the morality of loyalty to one another is part of what makes the cast likeable, though that’s true for ensemble casts in general.

God missing?

So I’ve gone through the arc of talking about problems in the backstory of Stargate and how I think the series managed to produce a number of genuinely interesting stories in spite of what strikes me as a weak set up. One issue deserves re-visiting. The issue of God. Yes, the idea that all gods are aliens I already mentioned can (can, not must) imply that the same is true for the God of ancient Israel and Christianity. Yeah, that is what it is, but there’s another issue related to God.

So in the modern United States military, including the Air Force, are there any people who pray? Any chaplains? Any religious support or religious sentiments? Yes, of course there are. Does anyone pray in Stargate SG-1? Nope.

General Hammond I think on occasion says things like “we’d better hope to God that doesn’t happen” but the only reference to God other than that is a cost-cutting senator who expresses the opinion that the stargate is not needed because God will protect Earth (which actually is an argument for not having any military at all…) The senator is clearly shown to be in the wrong. So the series in effect tries to make an interesting story–while trying to ignore the issue of God…leaving the primary mention of God’s role in the universe belong to someone who is sanctimoniously wrong. FYI.

It would be interesting to have a story like this with a religious aspect included…but it is what it is.

Conclusion

I was a bit surprised in searching the Speculative Faith site to discover nobody has written an article about Stargate SG-1 previously.  I’m curious why that would be. In any case, are there any fans of Stargate among us? Any who hate it? What are your opinions of the Stargate movie and Stargate SG-1 series? Please make your thoughts known in the comments below.