Let me preface this by saying that I don’t like telling writers what they “can” or “can’t” do. But I’d be interested in your opinions about what they DO do.

This week I’ve had the pleasure of reading two recent releases in the Christian spec-fic world, both of them sent to me by their generous authors: Konig’s Fire by Marc Schooley and The Resurrection by Mike Duran.

Both of these books deal with the clash between good and evil (what stories don’t?) and both are set in this world, not in some fantasy realm or far-off planet: The Resurrection takes place in a vividly depicted coastal town in California; Konig’s Fire takes place in a Nazi torture camp deep in the forests of Romania.

Now, I’m somewhat ambivalent about speculative fiction that takes place in this world (I articulated my thoughts most clearly in a review, posted some time ago, of Tom Pawlik’s Vanish). I mean, when we’re making up an entire world from scratch, then I think we’ve got fair license to make it work however we want. But if we set a story in this world, don’t we have some responsibility to play by the rules of this world? If we don’t–if we blur the lines between reality and fantasy–do we risk causing confusion to our readers, especially as pertains to spiritual realities?

Here, Schooley and Duran differ. In Konig’s Fire, any semblance of realism quickly vanishes. The stuff going on in the Nachthaus (“Night House,” the death camp) is WEIRD, no resemblance to anything that has likely happened to any of us. It is very obvious that we are not dealing with a “this could really happen” story. The book is ultimately allegorical, a thought-provoking, chilling look at sin’s presence and affect on the world. It’s using this world as its trappings and ultimately making a point about it, but it’s not a real-world story. No confusion.

The Resurrection, on the other hand, includes miracles and spiritual warfare, but it’s firmly anchored here. It could happen in your town. Except that it couldn’t–I don’t think. Mike speculates freely about spiritual warfare and the various spiritual denizens that inhabit our world, and while that speculation is at times chilling and at other times just plain fun, I came away a little confused on a few points, and feeling that it wouldn’t be too hard to interpret God as just another deity vying for control of the planet, rather than as the King of Kings thundering His authority over every inch of it. This is reality, but it’s not; the lines are blurry.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. These books differ in style, but both are riveting, intelligent, edifying reads. If you don’t get confused.

What are your thoughts? How much license can a fiction writer take when writing about THIS WORLD without crossing the line? Or is there a line at all? Is speculation really what fiction is all about?

Scary book is scary.

In a related note to yesterday’s post from Becky on dystopian fiction, a heated discussion arose the other day in response to an article by Wall Street Journal columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon on the prevailing dark tone in modern young-adult (YA) fiction, which includes a lot of speculative stories.

Many people who commented on the article  seemed to think Ms. Gurdon was broad-brushing all YA fiction as violent, nasty, and brutal, inappropriate for young readers, and in need of censorship. Cue torches and pitchforks. Someone even sponsored a Twitter protest, gathering testimonials in support of YA fiction, dark or otherwise.

You can read the article and judge its merits and balance for yourself. It echoes some recent discussions on Christian fiction blogs, including this one, regarding “realistic” language and content, though the intensity is kicked up a few notches. It’s nice to know we’re not the only ones talking about this.

For my impression of the debate, click this link. >> Real Life Story

One of the hottest trends right now is dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. I was reminded of this recently when author friend John Otte reviewed Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, a collection of dystopian short stories by such authors as Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, and George R. R. Martin.

The latest in a long list of dystopian YA novels

Young adult fiction is teeming with dystopian novels. At the crest of the mountain are books like Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron series, James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, M. T. Anderson’s Feed, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and most recently, Veronica Roth’s Divergent.

Interestingly, there are also a few Christian novels — for adults, however — that fall into this category: Sigmund Brouwer’s Broken Angel and Flight of Shadows, David Gregory’s The Last Christian, The Mayan Apocalypse by Alton Gansky and Mark Hitchcock, and Bryan Litfin’s Chiveis Trilogy.

The fact that there are Christian novels on-trend is news in itself, I suppose, but I’m more interested in why the culture has taken to this bent toward the downward spiral that might lead to The End.

In some ways, I think an argument could be made that the Left Behind books (Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye) opened the door. Certainly the popularity of those books across religious lines was a clue that the time was ripe for authors to explore the dystopian results of current directions, whether political, technological, social, or religious.

Why this genre has taken hold with young adults is perhaps a different question. In “Fresh Hell: What’s behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers?” (The New Yorker, 2010) Laura Miller posits that there’s a different raison d’être. The adult books explore the logical conclusion of the way things are going. The youth novels, however, deal with the now.

It’s not about persuading the reader to stop something terrible from happening—it’s about what’s happening, right this minute, in the stormy psyche of the adolescent reader.

Later, Ms Miller says

The typical arc of the dystopian narrative mirrors the course of adolescent disaffection.

Joseph John Adams (Tor.com) compiled the thoughts of an array of authors in an interesting article (“Dystopian Round Table: The Appeal of Dystopian Fiction“) addressing the reasons why darkly futuristic novels are popular.

Some of the writers who expressed an opinion on the subject said dystopian stories serve as a mirror for us to look at what our world, our society, is and where it is headed. Others said the genre looks at our fears and offers a caution. Joseph Paul Haines said, “I write dystopian fiction to find the balance between my hopes and fears.”

Another author believes the genre is popular because it is cathartic — offering an experience without subjecting us to the horror of actually living it.

Several other authors mentioned the look within which dystopian fiction affords. The good versus evil struggle is inside each person.

One writer mentioned man’s propensity to love tragedy. The idea of reading about people who are worse off is the appeal, with the added bonus that many of the dystopians end with a note of hope.

Some believe the appeal is in the individual-versus-the-system theme that runs through so many.

I have to say, I’ve wondered why this intrigue with a dark future. I’m wondering if this trend might reflect the natural way people see the world when God is not in the picture. But why Christian dystopians, then? Perhaps for the same reason. Through story, the effect of the absence of God or of the Bible on society is clearer and the desires of Man’s heart are laid bare.

What are your ideas? Do you think the “anti-God” trend in western culture has helped create this thirst for dystopian fiction, and if so, in what way?

And by the way, what are your favorite dystopian novels?

Back at the tail end of 1998, my buddy John Olson and I began thinking about writing a novel about Mars. Why Mars?

Because it looked to us like humans might finally be on the road to the Red Planet again after decades of mucking around in low earth orbit doing not much of anything.

In 1998, it was clear, of course, that no new space initiatives would happen while Bill Clinton was still in office. Clinton had other fish to fry, and with only two years left in his term, there was no way he’d try to sponsor a grand mission to Mars.

But we knew there would be a new president elected in 2000. Democrat or Republican, the new guy would want to make a splash, and with the economy humming, that splash might actually involve something big and bold and expensive.

Like going to Mars.

So John and I began doing research and laying out a vision for our book. We focused on the ideas of Dr. Robert Zubrin, the feisty and iconoclastic leader of the Mars Society. Zubrin had some very innovative plans for going to Mars.

“Travel light” was Zubrin’s motto. If you can use the natural resources on Mars to help you get home, then you don’t need to take as much stuff with you. The lighter you can travel, the cheaper you can go, and the less risk you’ll run.

What natural resources? Carbon dioxide, for one. The Martian atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. If you took a bit of hydrogen with you, along with a small nuclear reactor, you could use the nuke to drive a small chemical factory to combine your hydrogen with the native carbon dioxide to produce methane and oxygen — the fuel you’d need to get yourself off the planet and to take you home to earth.

That was a brilliant idea, and Zubrin spelled out the details in his book THE CASE FOR MARS. John and I thought it could work, and we planned the mission for our novel around Zubrin’s ideas.

Within months, we pitched the idea to Steve Laube, then an editor at Bethany House who was interested in starting a line of science fiction and fantasy. Steve had already signed our friend Kathy Tyers to a series of novels, and he told us that he’d be interested in signing us too, IF our writing was good enough.

That was enough for us. John and I spent much of 1999 researching our book. We went to the Mars Society conference in Boulder, Colorado, where we met Robert Zubrin himself, and literally rubbed shoulders with another space nut who was then working on an idea for a Mars movie — director James Cameron.

Knowing that we were competing with Cameron gave us an underdog status that ignited our efforts. We worked furiously through the fall, writing and rewriting our proposal and sample chapters. Finally, a week before Christmas, we sent in our proposal to Steve.

Less than seven weeks later, we had an offer for our novel, OXYGEN, a novel about the first mission to Mars. We worked through most of the year 2000, eventually writing about fifteen drafts. In May of 2001, the book was published.

By that time, there was a shiny new president in the White House, George Bush. There was also a bit of a recession going on, so it was already clear that the road to Mars would be rockier than we had hoped during the prosperous final years of the Clinton administration.

Even so, we thought there was a decent chance that humans could go to Mars on our timetable, which called for a first unmanned mission in late 2011 and a manned mission in 2014. (Flights to Mars require a lot of fuel, and the transit is easiest roughly every two years when the orbits of the two planets are just right.)

But the Mars mission never happened.

In September of 2011, terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers and George Bush found himself in a war on terror. A massively expensive war on terror. A war that dragged on for years and years, sucking all oxygen out of the economy and consuming the attention of politicians.

Near the end of the Bush era, the economy fell off a cliff. There simply isn’t any money for a mission to Mars right now. There may not be for a long time.

The road to Mars remains the road not taken.

That raises the question of whether humans will ever go to Mars. There is never going to be a convenient time. The war on terror may drag on for years or decades, like the Cold War, sapping our money and defocusing our efforts.

The crazy thing is that the main problem in going to Mars is not the money. NASA’s current budget is less than 20 billion dollars,
roughly what the US government spends every 48 hours.

If NASA committed itself to a Mars program, we could probably put humans on Mars in ten to fifteen years, without spending anything extra. We’d have to travel light, which is not the usual NASA way, but we could do it.

The main problem in going to Mars is that nobody is willing or able to commit ten or fifteen years of focused effort to going there. Going to Mars is not a decision NASA is allowed to make. That’s a political decision, and politicians are generally looking to the next election. Depending on the politician, that’s two, four, or six years away, at most.

There’s a risk in going to Mars, of course. When you send humans on a trip to another planet, you run the very real risk that they might not come back alive. Heck, if you send somebody on a trip to Safeway, they might not come back alive. In 2010, more than 32,000 people were killed in America in traffic accidents. In the last thirty years, two space shuttle missions have ended in disaster, killing fourteen astronauts.

As yet, nobody has died on the road to Mars, because nobody has ever set foot on the road to Mars.

In our book OXYGEN, we made the mission dangerous because we think it will be dangerous. But we also think it’s worth going.

Why go to Mars?

Nobody can answer that question completely, because we don’t know what we’ll find there.

It’s extremely likely that planetary scientists will learn a lot more about the geological history of Mars, which will tell us something about the development of the solar system over the last 4.5 billion years. And that will very likely tell us new things about our own planet.

It’s also very likely that we’ll be able to figure out whether Mars might make a suitable second home for humans. It’s not a very hospitable place right now, but with some terraforming, it’s plausible that Mars could be a second home for humanity. There’s no way to know unless we go there and see what it’s like.

It’s also quite possible that Mars might teach us something about life. Is there life now on Mars? Probably not. Was there ever life on Mars? That’s hard to say.

Mars is cold and dry and geologically dead now, with a very thin atmosphere. But it wasn’t always that way, and it’s possible that a few billion years ago, Mars might have been home to life.

What kind of life? That’s anybody’s guess.

It’s possible that it’s the same kind of life that flourished in the past on earth. About 500 pounds of Martian rocks fall onto earth every year, as a result of meteorites that smash into Mars occasionally. Some of these rocks could bring life from Mars to earth. And it’s possible that rocks (with life) could go the other direction, from earth to Mars. So the Martian tree of life might be part of earth’s tree of life.

But not necessarily. The trip to or from Mars is long, and anything that made the trip alive trapped in rocks would need to be incredibly tough. So that’s a long shot.

If you believe that life evolved on earth, then you presumably believe that life might also have evolved on Mars, and so it makes sense to look for it there to test that idea. If you believe that the odds of life evolving on earth are astronomically low, then you presumably also believe that the odds are astronomically low that life might also have evolved on Mars, and so it makes sense to look for it there to test that idea.

Either way, the search for life on Mars would throw some light on the origin-of-life question.

So should we go to Mars? I think we should. It’s a whole new world, waiting to be explored. We have no more idea what value Mars will be to us than Columbus had of the value of the New World when he stumbled across it in 1492. The only way to know is to go.

The main question is how to get there, when no government seems willing to make a commitment to a ten or fifteen year program.

Dr. Robert Zubrin recently published an article in the Washington Times that spells out an idea on how the government might foster private enterprise to open up space in a way that could eventually take mankind to Mars.

I have no idea if any government is going to act on Zubrin’s idea. Mars sounds so far away and so impossible that most people in government just aren’t interested. The road to Mars may remain the road not taken for a very long time.

In the meantime, we can dream.

Final note: Our book OXYGEN won a Christy award in 2002. It was also named to the New York Public Library’s list of “Books for the Teen Age” — a list of books considered by the library to be excellent reading for teens. We’ll be republishing OXYGEN soon as an e-book, and it will also be republished on paper this fall through Marcher Lord Press.

– – – –

Randy Ingermanson is the award-winning author of six novels. He is a computational physicist with a Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley.

Randy writes about life at “the intersection of Science Avenue and Faith Boulevard” — a poorly lit section of town where there are plenty of fights and accidents. Randy is best known around the world as “the Snowflake Guy” for his widely used “Snowflake method” of designing a novel. His most recent book is WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. You can find Randy online at his personal site or Advanced Fiction Writing.

The Tabernacle: made with man's imagination, used for God's glory.

Otherwise entitled: an Open Letter to Fiction Critics replying to Dr. Russell Moore’s column about Christian romance novels.

A seminary professor’s recent column put to death a certain fiction I had wrongly believed.

That untruth went like this: that notion that novels and stories are evil because they are “untruth” isn’t around much anymore. Instead that’s a relic from Christianity’s legalistic past. Now Christians are better-informed about imagination, or else they’ve overcorrected too far into worldly flippancy, and either way, think differently about fiction.

I was wrong. Several reactions to Moore’s column helped me see that. Maybe you posted a reaction like that, or maybe you would have, if you’d seen the column. Here’s one of them:

It bothers me that “Christian” bookstores have a large section (larger than many other categories) dedicated to “fiction”. Doesn’t “fiction” mean “untrue”?

How is it that a “Christian” bookstore dedicate so much shelf space to books based in untruth? Just sayin’.

Sigh. Yes, based on blog-commentator Craig and others, it seems this notion is still around. I wrongly believed it was at least dying. Maybe you’re glad it’s still around? Well, as you may have guessed, most Speculative Faith readers share my view in opposing it, though not for the reasons you may think. No, we’re not holiness-compromiser types seeking to excuse some sin. Instead your friendly neighborhood fiction-fans may be strong believers, in love with Christ and honoring His Word and Gospel, who want to honor Him in their stories.

Of course, I really wish I had more time to build up a personal relationship with you folks so that you would, up close and perhaps in a local-church context, know yourselves who we are. Without this optimal scenario, though, I’m limited to words, so let’s see how I do.

And if you would prefer discussing professing Christians who do take fiction too far, you’ll perhaps find part 1 helpful. Sure, I know one could also become legalistic in favor of fiction, or forget the risks of abusing imagination. But there also exists an opposite danger, risked by Christians who even secretly assume that any good God-given Thing, including storytelling or even sex, is itself bad, instead of being a Thing we can use for His glory and others’ good.

2. Imagination ignored or rejected

Yes, many people abuse their imaginations for their own self-pleasure, just as all people will, by their sinful nature, want to abuse all God’s gifts. We all know about those who abuse sex, God’s wonderful gift intended to honor Him in our marriages, for their own lesser pleasures instead. (And if we’re honest, we’ll also admit our own participation.)

Thus, compared with that danger, many may assume that Anything Else would be better to believe. Too many others abuse imagination/sex. So let’s just pretend we don’t have these.

But that’s an overcorrection. It’s equally as dangerous. And it’s nowhere near the truth that saturates Scripture, based in the Gospel, that God still means His people to use His gift of imagination for good, just as He intends for us to use the gift of romance and sex for good.

Yes, all His good gifts now risk abuse in a fallen world, because of fallen humans. But let’s not forget that along with reconciling His redeemed people to Himself, God has a mission of reconciling things: His creation, His good gifts. Don’t let universalists who wrongly assume that “all things” must mean all people will be saved, steal this passage:

For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

— Colossians 1: 19-20 (bold emphasis added)

Once I would have automatically ascribed some spiritual-only meaning to this. Maybe that is why Paul, guided by the Spirit, made sure to say that “all things” includes Things “on earth or in heaven.” We shouldn’t read that as a truth about spiritual Things only; it means spiritual and physical Things. Other Biblical teachings confirm this, including this prophecy about the physical future new Earth (Rev. 21) from Haggai 2:

For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.

— Haggai 2: 6-7

Lest someone think that for the After-world, God will nuke all Things on the old Earth, here He makes clear otherwise. Yes, He “will shake” the spiritual and physical realms, yet some Things will remain: “the treasures of all nations.” God then describes a nation’s most precious possessions, which are really His own: “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts” (verse 8). Yet why could these not also include a nation’s stories, so long as they have given glory to God through storytellers’ imaginations that honor Him?

A brief theology of Things

Nothing in Scripture says a story is morally equivalent to an untruth or a lie. Yet even deeper than that, nowhere does Scripture say that a Thing can become a source of evil. Instead from the beginning we find the opposite: man, because of his sinful heart, abuses Things.

• Genesis 3 — from the account of the first sin, what might we have, subconsciously, assumed about Adam’s and Eve’s rebellion? Did they choose to eat the forbidden fruit and therefore bring its sin into themselves? If so, God misspoke when, several times, He proclaimed all His creation “very good.” Or did the first humans make a sinful choice in their hearts, and therefore break God’s Law, abusing the fruit?
• Daniel 1 — was it sinful for Daniel to study, over three years, Babylonian myths and literature and even sorcery techniques? We even find that at the end of three years, standing before the king, Daniel and his three friends, with God’s gifting (Daniel 1:17), had studied the information so well that they outclassed all their pagan peers. Daniel was not only a studied scholar of the Harry Potter books of his day, but of actual pagan religion. With God’s help. Knowing that was not a sin.
• 

  I'm not calling anyone a Pharisee. Yet do recall: they also assumed sin came from Things, not from their own hearts.

  
  Mark 7 — was Christ misguided when He sternly informed the Pharisees that their treatment of the Law, as if it would protect them from sinful Things, was of no use because they missed the point that sin came from within them, not from outside?
• All the Gospels — was it sinful for Christ to tell parables? He often, though not always, taught in that way to His disciples, and even to the crowds, though he would often obscure their meanings for them (Mark 4: 10-12). Moreover, Christ taught with many different kinds of stories, from simple metaphor, to allegory, to fuller fictitious tales meant to illustrate old truths in new ways. (But I would hasten to point out that not all His stories were allegory, especially those that begin with “the kingdom of Heaven is like …” and then compare the Kingdom to the whole story, not only a symbolic object in the story.) Perhaps this above all other reasons specifically establishes story as a God-honoring way to speak old truths in new ways.
• Rev. 21 (cf. Isaiah 65: 17-25, 2 Peter 3: 8-13) — if God’s mission is to create a physical New Heavens and New Earth, after exposing the old Earth’s works (2 Peter 3:10), would storytelling be evil there? If not, why assume it’s evil today — given Scripture’s emphasis on how we abuse Things, not vice-versa, and especially the fact that Christ Himself used stories to speak old truths in new ways?

Scripture does not ban Godly storytelling from the New Earth. So why ban it now?

Hey, I don’t mean only to preach at those brothers and sisters of mine who’ve been led to believe that Imagination or stories, rather than being abused for evil, are themselves wrong. As I said before, I wish I had more time to show and not just tell why this is so, but these are my limitations. Far better would be, if not to spend time growing in the same local church, to reassure you with reminders that we, like you, have a heart for truth and holiness as God defines it. We don’t see all “rules” as legalistic. We’re as aware of the world’s garbage as you.

But we don’t want to ignore or reject God’s good gifts along with the garbage.

Would you disregard other uses of imagination just because others abuse that gift for evil? What about physical pleasure in marriage? Music? Writing? The internet and technology? Stained-glass windows and organs? The Bible itself? All these Things have been abused for evil. So if you don’t reject them, why would you reject stories, fiction and imagination?

Finally, for Dr. Russell Moore himself, in case he ever finds this: I heard your views in the great Southern Baptist Theological Seminary panel discussion about the blue-people-CGI Avatar movie, so I know you can enjoy great stories, even written by pagans. Perhaps next time you write a column about the risks of abusing romance genres for our own evil goals, you might be aware that some readers will overreact and dismiss fiction altogether?

Moreover, it might help, perhaps in a sequel, to explore how to use fiction and storytelling rightly, not just pointing out who uses it wrongly. However, that leaves an opening for us here to discuss truth and imagination with a more-positive view. More on that, next week.

But the LORD is the true God;

He is the living God and the everlasting King.

At His wrath the earth will tremble,

And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation.

 

Thus you shall say to them: “The gods that have not made the heavens

and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.”

He has made the earth by His power,

He has established the world by His wisdom,

And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion.

~Jeremiah 10.10-12

God and Humanity

Once upon a time, the earth was void and formless, and the Spirit of God hovered over the deep. He spoke, and the universe appeared, a perfect, magnificent place with worlds, stars, meteors, moons, and suns. A place with countless galaxies–all of which he named to the last speck of dust and declared good. He barred off the ocean and scooped up the mountains. He grew animals from the bottom of the ocean, the clay of the earth, and the clouds in the sky. He planted a garden never duplicated and made a clay figurine, then breathed into its nostrils and gave it breath. He took a rib from his clay man and made a woman out of bone, and she too breathed.

Once upon a time God, angel, man, and beast walked together, fearless and full of joy and vitality.

Once upon a time, the Great Cosmic Tragedy came, and the entire Universe screamed as the throes of Death began. Thus began the Great Rift, thus began the day first blood ever spilled. Something else happened, though, the day the worlds writhed in pain. The first hand of mercy reached down, picked up the creature that hated it, and covered its shame in robes. Thus began the middling part, where Man and God and Beast made war, all the Cosmos  in a fright because their kings  brought sin and death, shuddering  and weeping, appalled and gasping.

But be not dismayed, desperate universe: His servants enough he’s sent; now your king sends another, the great prince who above all rules.  The final act’s begun. Life fought with Death; and Death delivered his most wicked stroke. For a moment’s breadth the Cosmos thought that all was now a loss.

But then came a new song.

“Where, O Death, is your victory?
Where, O Sin, is your sting?

The Firstborn has come from among the dead;

He’s dragging you in chains;

Adam’s curse fell to the Holy One;

The Great King has a victory won;

Where, O Death, is your victory?

Where, O Sin, is your sting?

Hear the song of those back from your maw, O Death;

Know  that he has crushed your head;

Abram’s sons  sing the song;

Sarah’s  daughters, sing along;

Where, O Death, is your victory?
Where, O Sin, is your sting?”

The song grew in height, width, and breadth, and Death’s blows only strengthened the sound. Louder and louder, sweet victory went  out; and all Creation learned the sound. The Dread Champion has gone to war against the Dark. He’s confident of the final piece, enough to display his battle plans and offer a peak at the epilogue; he’s written a glorious ending, and he has but one thing left to say–

“Come.”

” Remember the former things of old,

For I am God, and there is no other;

I am God, and there is none like Me,

Declaring the end from the beginning,

And from ancient times things that are not yet done,

Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,

And I will do all My pleasure,’

Calling a bird of prey from the east,

The man who executes My counsel, from a far country.

Indeed I have spoken it;

I will also bring it to pass.

I have purposed it;

I will also do it. “

~Isaiah 46.9-11

Time Lord

Once upon a time there was a man from another world.   The Earth was one small, helpless planet, a childlike bright spot in the midst of a dark, dangerous universe. They called the man many things: godlike, an angel–for better or worse–the cosmic ‘fix-it’ man and janitor. He never turned down a cry for help, and he preferred to preserve life rather than destroy it.

He’s a terrible god: all-powerful, overly-intelligent, vain, and selfish as often as he is selfless. He’s beaten and broken, betrayed and abandoned by his own people, in desperate need of redemption…and offered only endless rebirths.  He’d love to save everyone, this intelligent, powerful king of time and space. But as he looks down at the worlds, he knows he can’t save everyone, can’t undo fixed points or rearrange the flux of time.  The cosmos keeps creaking, cracking, breaking, leaking, and warping, and sometimes all he can do is look on in horror.

Sometimes, he tries to fight against Time itself, a pointless effort, tries to go against the natural course of things and can’t. He has his dark moments and sometimes becomes childishly angry. He’s flawed and often contradicts his own principles, usually when he’s blinded to a more palatable option. His way might not be the only way, but he thinks it the best.

“He’s like fire and ice and rage.

He’s like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun.

He’s ancient and forever.

He burns at the center of time and can see the turn of the universe.

And — and he’s wonderful.”

~ A Boy,  Family of Blood

The Doctor may well be king of the universe, but he’s certainly not its Emperor, Creator, and Sustainer.  He is himself servant to Time, stolen away and kept a willing captive by the vortex of time that serves as the heart of the TARDIS, a creature who doesn’t always take him where he wants to go, but always where he needs to be.

How oddly…human.

“Very old…and very kind.”

~Amy Pond,  “The Beast Below”

 

“That’s just what they’re called. It doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing.”

~ Amy Pond,  “The Doctor’s Wife”

Blessed are the…

For whatever reason, I get the impression the Doctor both sees humans as better than Time Lords and as something he’d like to be. It’s never outright said, but it pretty well culminated for me in the Human Nature/Family of Blood episodes.  In his mind, humans are a bizarre combination of emotion and intelligence, beauty and ugliness, good and evil.  Perhaps in a weird way he sees humans as the next Time Lords: similar to them, but without the things that caused their downfall.

TARDIS  Code:

• Strive for peace – You don’t kill unless there’s not an alternative.  (I’m doing a separate piece on violence, pacifism, and non-violence next time.) Don’t go looking for a fight.
• Trust each other.
• Strive for hope. Life is hope.
• Don’t be foolish. Be calm, be brave, and be fast on your feet.
• Don’t subject yourselves to tyranny.
• Oppose oppression, violence, and disregard for life are evil.
• Mourn the loss of life.
• Prefer mercy.

For  him, moral discrepancies are oppression, exploitation, foolishness,  and violence are immoral; whereas just about everything else seems to be acceptable. Because he lies, he needs his friends’ trust. Because he’s lonely and/or can “go dark,” he needs friends. So they can’t always trust him, often have to deal with the emotional and/or physical trauma he creates, and occasionally have to remind him he’s not a Dalek.

Who humans are to the Time Lord

• They’re his responsibility.  He protects them, not the other way around.
• He’s in charge. Always.  Unless the companions mutiny…which tends to happen, because he doesn’t ever pick submissive types for friends.
• Humanity’s  overall principles should be embraced. (It makes you wonder: If the Time Lords “went bad,” then  what was their crime? Oppression? Tyranny? Failure to protect life?)
• One episode (the one with the Dream Lord, who I still think might come back) suggests he knows he’s a conniving, manipulative old man who runs around time and space with very young friends, and in a weird way he worries he simply uses and disposes of them for his own selfish game…like stray pets to keep the loneliness at bay.  Oddly, Donna embraced the idea and Martha rejected it. Amy told him to shut up; but that’s Amy for you.
• To put it in the Doctor’s words, “You can spend the rest of your life with me; but I can’t spend mine with you.”
• To him, humans (or rather, anyone not a Time Lord) are small, finite creatures in constant need of help whether we like it or not, but he seems hopeful of the day when humans don’t need saving anymore.

The best humans have to offer**

Now, he tells Rory and Amy in season five that he chooses his friends well, “only the best,” so to speak.  He sees himself as old and full of darkness, but his “children” as young and full of light. But if that’s the case, let’s do a quick, Spark Notes version of the Doctor’s “children”:

• Rose–One thing I really miss is how everything in her seasons was an adventure, a game, down to wearing costumes for each episode. I never thought of the Doctor and Rose as a couple, so in that I evidently differ from most fans. Just never bought it. She liked him, and she’s openly affectionate like her mother, but  to me Rose, Mickey, and Jackie were family. She was sweet, she was fun, but in the end I just saw her as a friend, and I felt like she saw him the same way. Someone pointed out she’s the strong one between the two of them, and they’re probably right in some respects. She’s an odd mix of tough and gentleness, and that itself is appealing. In her words:  “If I leave him, well, then, he’ll be alone.”

• Martha– I liked Martha, but, again, wasn’t buying what felt like a forced “love interest” yet again.  Martha just never stood a chance, really. It wasn’t her fault (save her initial infatuation, maybe). Just the timing.  He was never going to let anyone back in that soon. Probably what defines Martha is her resilience:  She forces him to open up to her in Gridlock; she won’t take his nonsense; she’ll stick with him to the bitter end…and it’s a very bitter end. Even her refusal to stay with him says more about her unwillingness to enter a codependent relationship than anything else.  She can’t save him. He doesn’t want her to, because he’s too busy pushing  everyone away. In her words: “I can’t stay with you. But you better answer your phone when I call.”

• Donna–I didn’t like Donna in Runaway Bride (nor did I ever fully comprehend her freak-out over killing the Racnoss), but she redeemed herself in season four immediately. Thankfully, there was no forced love interest with Donna. She’s also a little older than the other two, and I think that helps.  She’s brassy and impulsive, almost a composite of the previous two. In her words:   “I’m going to stay with you forever.”

• Wilfred – Donna’s grandfather, who provides a ‘fatherly’ figure for the Doctor, especially at the end.  He’s not officially a companion, but he’s there when the Doctor is in some severe need of a friend, so I’m adding him. He’s a sweet old man…and someone the Doctor respected and admired. He doesn’t realize until the end how much older than him the Doctor is, which is likely why he jumped so easily into that role. He doesn’t say much, but I think in the end he’s the only thing that prevents the Doctor from refusing to regenerate.

Edit: Galadriel gave me some great Wilfred quotes. She says:

A good pair of quotes for Wilf comes from End of Time

The Master: (to the Doctor) Oh, your dad’s still kicking up a fuss.
Wilfred: Yeah, well, I’d be proud if I was

and later, on the spaceship,

The Doctor: I’d be proud.
Wilfred: Of what?
The Doctor: If you were my dad

Now that’s a huge compliment for the Doctor to make of anybody.

• River–River comes first because, technically, we meet her first.  I  just like her, probably because she is such a foil for him. She’s got the whole ‘female Indiana Jones’ thing going on, and breaks just about every one of the Doctor’s principles.  She makes Daleks beg for mercy and gives the Doctor the jitters.  (And half the time she’s doing what I *wish* the Doctor would do and just shoots the bad guy already.) Her words are, of course:

Doctor: “You graffitied the oldest cliff-face in the universe!

River: “You wouldn’t answer your phone!”

• Amy–Amy’s a  character I like without actually being able to say why.  She’s tough and sassy like Donna, but not as overbearing. She’s childlike and too experienced all at the same time. And she usually sees straight through the Doctor’s mask and reduces a complex person down to something simple. My only real wish is that she’d stop treating Rory so horribly. I’m not sure if Amy’s should be “He’s very old and very kind” or “You’re late for my wedding!”

There’s also:

River: The Doctor’s a complicated man. You really think it could be something that simple?

Amy: Yes.

River: Oh, you’re good.

Actually, I think my current favorite is:

Amy: Cool aliens?

Doctor: What do you call me?

Amy: An alien.

Maybe we can take votes on Amy’s line. 0=)

• Rory–Rory is the ‘anti-Doctor,’ which is probably why I like him so much.   While the Doctor is tall and loud and all over the place, Rory’s smallish, quiet, and still. It isn’t weakness. It isn’t fear.  And with all the Type A insanity going on in the TARDIS, he serves  as a much-needed anchor forcing everyone back into reality. He’s another tricky one to come up with a one-liner for. I think maybe this one works, as it very much tells you that, despite their differences, Rory respects him:

Rory: He wants revenge?

River: Not his style.

Amy:  To save him?

Rory: Also not his style.

And really, it’s mutual, I think, as Rory’s the one the Doctor leaves at the helm in The Hungry Earth. (If  that episode did nothing else, it created a situation for the Doctor  to give Rory that.)

So  there they are, in all their flawed glory.  A heavy mix of strength and weakness, flawed heroes to the last: all following the king of the flawed heroes.

“The human race: such an intelligent lot you are, and also so sensible; *

give anyone a chance to take control and you submit.

Sometimes I think you like it.  Easy life.”

~ The Doctor, Rise of the Cybermen

Human Nature

Covenant Code:

• be poor in spirit
• be meek
• mourn
• be hungry and thirsty for righteousness
• be  merciful
• be pure in heart
• be peacemakers
• those persecuted for righteousness’ sake
• love mercy
• do justly
• walk humbly with their God
• fear the Lord
• love the Lord with everything they’ve got
• love their neighbors

Who we are to the Lord of Time and Space

• created in his image, perfect and beautiful, with his emotions and creative spirit (marred though they be now)
• fallen and broken, in need of redemption
• finite and small
• made “a little lower than the angels”
• proud and in rebellion
• kings and queens of the earth, even if we’ve lost our own dominion
• made to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over it
• his creatures, whom he loves
• prodigals
• fall into either the category of wicked or righteous
• fail to acknowledge God as God and give him thanks
• tend to serve the creature rather than the created
• wicked in the heart (“You, being evil, know how to give your children good gifts”)

Of whom the world is not worthy

The God of the universe says the best we have to offer amounts to nothing. Human glory is but the moon reflecting the sun: the greater light is the glory of God himself. Human goodness is laughable in the face of the Most Holy.  He made our brains, but he certainly doesn’t expect our  wisdom to even compare with his. Human intelligence is impressive only to other humans–largely because there is so much we can’t see or fathom.  Human beauty is dross before his magnificence; human strength is nothing before his might. We cannot grasp the total Otherness of the God of the Universe.

Scripture has its own ‘short list’ of God’s companions. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it finishes up by calling the saints of God “men of whom the world was not worthy.” In fact, it’s everyone who fits under this label that Hebrews calls “so great a cloud of witnesses.”  I don’t know that God would call them “the best” because he doesn’t think about us that way.  He calls us salt and light, he calls us thick, strong oak trees planted by an everlasting stream, always producing fruit, always a place of rest for anyone coming by.  He calls us saints, co-heirs with Christ, Christ’s brothers, friends, servants, slaves of righteousness, a holy nation, chosen generation, royal priesthood, called out, set apart ambassadors, his children. He knows who we were; he knows what we are.

And really, he only has one thing left to say about it: “You are mine.”

*I tried three or four times to get this phrase right.  I’m mostly sure that he said “and also so sensible,” but if someone knows otherwise I’ll correct this. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand that part.

**I omitted Jackie, Mickey, and Jack, and anyone else because they aren’t companions. Wilfred got included because he did actually serve a companion’s role, sort of in the same way Samwise was also a Ring-bearer.

The summer sun beats down savagely on the little village of Speculation, somewhere south of the Borders and north of the Amazon. A hawk cries in the distance as a tall man in a white hat, his face obscured by a narrow black mask, pushes through the swinging doors of Cantina Biblioteca, spurs jingling on the wooden floorboards.

The bartender is polishing glasses. In the far corner of the room, a thin man sits at a battered piano, playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” Several patrons sit at tables, talking and drinking. As the tall man in the white hat enters the room, all eyes turn to him, and the music and conversation cease.

Bartender: Ah, the Lawful Stranger! Amigo, it has been far too long. Welcome back.

Stranger: Thanks, Juan. I’ll take the usual. Powerful hot today.

Juan: When is it not? One iced milk coming up.

The piano player strikes up “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and the patrons resume their socializing.

Juan (sliding a tall glass of milk down the bar): So, what brings you to Speculation on such a miserable day?

Stranger: Same as always. Setting the example, drawing folks back to the straight and narrow, providing a haven of peace and security for the faithful. Showing the world how life ought to be lived.

Voice from Outside: Now, hold on just a consarned minute there!

The talking and music stop again as a short young man clad in black, sporting an impressive waxed mustache, bursts through the swinging doors.

Man in Black: Lawful Stranger, I’m-a callin’ you out! I’ve had my fill of yer beepity-beeping, sanctimonious, self-righteous beepity-beep!

Female Patron: Aaaieee! (faints)

Old Prospector: Holy frijoles, it’s the Potty Mouth Kid!

Kid (throwing hat to the ground in disgust): No, no, no! Just “The Kid!” Nothin’ more, nothin’ less. You yokels have been so sheltered by this so-called Lawful Stranger that you plumb forgot what regular folk talk like. Hang fire, I’m a model of restraint!

Stranger: Young man, we don’t cotton to such unrefined language in these parts. You see the effect it has on our more delicate citizenry. Somebody start fanning that lady! Prospector, put something soft under her head. Juan, we’ll need some cold water.

Prospector: Yessir.

Juan: Coming up.

Kid: This is exactally the sort of flippity dippin’ hogwash I’m talkin’ about. There’s a whole planet full of people y’all can’t even communicate with ’cause he’s convinced you to always mind your p’s and q’s, and look down yer noses at plain speech, less’n you singe yer fragile consciences. Yer livin’ in a dadblamed fantasy world!

Another patron: Aaaieee! (faints)

Kid: Oh, for the love of pete. Stop that!

Prospector: Stranger’s right, Sonny. Our womenfolk in particular are pale flowers what wilt clean away when scorched by salty language.

Kid: That last one was a man.

Prospector: Oh, so he was. Can’t rightly account for that.

Kid: Enough of this falder-dee-rall. Stranger, it’s time you and me stepped outside and settled this once and for all.

Stranger: I’ve got nothing to prove to you, Kid. I stand for all that’s good and true. You’re a disruptive influence.

Kid: I’m fighting for the good and true, same as you. Difference is, I’m not preaching to the choir using the vocabulary of a ding-busted kiddygarden Sunday Schoolmarm. I go out into all the world and meet the broken and confused where they live.

Stranger: Potty mouth.

Kid: Milksop.

Just as the two men are about to come to blows, a shot rings out, and a fine mist of plaster drifts down from the ceiling.

Woman with Gun: I heard tell there was trouble brewin’ in the Cantina. Lo and behold, what do I find here? A pair of lawless vigilantes.

Stranger: Now hold on a minute, my good woman. I am not lawless.

Kid: Who the blinkety dinky dink are you, anyhow?

Patron: Aaiiee! (faints)

Stranger & Kid: Juan, get that man some cold water.

Juan: Coming up.

Woman: I am the Sheriff of this here town, Carlene Booker Armstrong, and this here is a gen-you-ine Matthew Henry rifle, with which I will perforate both your sorry hides if ever you show your little black masks around here again.

Kid: I ain’t broken no blad-ratted law.

Carlene: You’re a blasphemer. That’s all I need to know.

Stranger: Sheriff, I stand for everything you value. I don’t see why I should be lumped together with this juvenile delinquent.

Carlene: Oh, I know you, Mister High and Mighty. You talk the talk all right, but you’re always dabblin’ in imagination and metaphor and fantasy to make a point. You think you know what my townsfolk need better than I do. The citizens of this here town are simple souls who need simple, unvarnished goodness, told straight and direct. I’ll have no confusion runnin’ amuck here whilst I’m Sheriff. Now, scram. I’ve a quilting bee to preside over this afternoon, and I won’t be late on account of the likes of you two. (cocks rifle)

Stranger & Kid: Yes, ma’am.

They exit the cantina, and the sounds of conversation resume from within, accompanied by “Marching to Zion” on the piano.

Kid: Tarnation. Now what do we do?

Stranger: Find a more hospitable town, I expect. Maybe somewhere further south of the Borders and closer to the Amazon.

Kid: Mind if I join you?

Stranger: They do say misery loves company. Can you keep your mouth shut?

Kid: Nope.

Stranger: Fair enough. Neither can I.

Recently former Writer’s Digest columnist Nancy Kress wrote a review of the movie Thor. In it she referred to the production as a “comic-book movie.” Whether or not you agree or disagree is beside the point (I haven’t see it, so can’t offer an opinion one way or the other). What I’m interested in is the idea that comic books, movies, and novels seem to be converging.

Take, for example, Christian speculative author Robin Parrish’s Dominion Trilogy featuring modern day superheroes. Robin capitalized on the comic book nature of his story by creating comic-book type promotional materials which he turned into a graphic novel. We have yet to see if his books will make it to the big screen, but the potential is there.

What I’m wondering is this: has the comic-book crowd affected the nature of movies and books forever?

Once I would have identified distinct differences (besides the obvious) between the three media.

Comic books are snippets — of conversation, scenes, characters’ personalities. The result of this brevity is a loss of reality. Action seems overly dramatic, dialogue truncated, and characters flat (pun not intended). Uncle Scrooge McDuck, for instance, is a skinflint, Donald is a bumbling schemer and naive, and his three nephews — Huey, Dewey, and Louie — are rowdy but resourceful. What do readers know, however, of their doubts and fears? What are their internal struggles?

Movies, in contrast, excel in showing a story. The action is intense and very present. Consequently the emotions it generates in the viewers are tangible.

Then there are novels. These made the most of a more leisurely pace to flesh out characters. Without the limits of the camera-eye view required by (most) movies or the brevity of comic books, novels were free to explore internal conflicts and resulting heart changes.

With the amalgamation of the three media — or at least the borrowing of comic-book aspects by movies and novels — I wonder if readers and film buffs have gained or lost.

Some might argue that the Spiderman movie, for example, did for that superhero what the comic book could not — bring the story to life. Apparently the novelization by author Peter David, did what the movie could not — flesh out the character’s motivations. From one Amazon review:

What might not be translated on screen is the motivations and the incredibly well-written and fleshed out thoughts provided by the clever Mr. Peter David in this novel (A Customer, March 23, 2002).

The contemporary trend in writing, at least by some writers, makes me wonder if novels aren’t moving in the direction of comic books. I’ve read books in which the scenes are short and shorter, where the dialogue resembles sound bites, and the characters are as plastic as action figures.

Is this what the average reader wants? Are fully developed characters a thing of the past? Is “a quick read” to become the highest praise we can give a novel?

Just wondering, as summer reading season fast approaches.

I love space opera and sci-fi, which means I love Joss Whedon’s short-lived space western series Firefly, and I especially love Malcolm Reynolds. The Mal Reynolds character is what you get if you made a TV series about the adventures of a renegade Han Solo before his character’s redemption (and subsequent gentrification) at the end of the original Star Wars movie. In the subsequent Special Edition of the film, George Lucas famously retconned the iconic scene introducing Han Solo so he didn’t fire first, thus making him safer but less interesting. Joss fixed that with Mal, who was forever firing first (and last, and…).

As a smuggler / tramp freighter captain, Mal thought of himself as a kind of Confederate Robin Hood against the Union-like Alliance. Of the captain, savant River Tam sagely observed “Mal. Means ‘bad.’ In the Latin.” Mal didn’t even know he needs redemption, or if he did, he ran from that awareness. He might be an uncomfortable character for many Christian authors, and yet he is precisely the kind of character that readers identify with, and thus valuable to try to write. During the course of Firefly, Mal remained largely unrepentant, and thus fascinating. If you can, lead up to your character’s redemption through the course of the work and make that a climax element late in the story. Pull that out too soon and you remove much of the moral tension.

And another thing — mistreat your characters. Often, many Christian writers are afraid to be dark, or they rescue their characters too quickly. It’s an old but venerable expression: kill your darlings. The more conflicted and mistreated our protagonists are, the more compelling they are. Conflict drives the engine of Story, and clever dialogue is always better than exposition. Therefore, here are some tips (and accompanying examples from various Firefly episodes) on how we can improve our writing by shaking it up a little, space western-style:

• Get Religion – Don’t be afraid to embrace or be critical of religion. Either tactic creates lots of opportunity for conflict and discussion. Faith is more interesting when it is demonstrated than when it is preached. I love stories that display the cause-and-effect of one righteous man in the midst of a gang of ruffians.
Mal: Well, what about you, Shepherd (a kind of cleric)? How come you’re flying about with us brigands? I mean, shouldn’t you be off bringing religiosity to the fuzzy-wuzzies or some such?
Book: Oh, I got heathens aplenty right here.
Mal: If I’m your mission, Shepherd, best give it up. You’re welcome on my boat. God ain’t.

• Cuss ingeniously – Don’t be afraid of allowing your characters to swear (as long as it’s in a language the majority of your readers don’t understand). Carole McDonnell, author of the Christian speculative multicultural novel, Wind Follower, has noted that whether it is culturally correct or not, it is not uncommon for people of all religions and temperaments to reach a point where they need to vent. How you handle this can resonate with and entertain your readers.

Mal: Confronted by a bar full of Alliance sympathizers. “Oh, zhe zhen shi ge kuaile de jinzhan [this is a happy development]…”
Mal: Da-shiong bao-jah-shr duh la doo-tze … [the explosive diarrhea of an elephant]

• Hit something – In many Christian novels, violence is considered bad, but in Speculative Fiction, violence has a purpose and a place. Don’t be afraid of a little violence, as long as it serves the character(s), is comic, or happens off-screen. (Or, best yet, all three.) You can do a great deal by suggesting violence without graphically depicting it. While watching The Dark Knight, itself a very dark film, I noted just how little actual violence was shown on-screen. A great deal was suggested but not actually shown. Use that in your fiction, and then show the cause-and-effect of resorting to violence and the consequences of doing so.

In the ship’s infirmary after fighting in a bar on the anniversary of the end of war that the Independents lost.
Simon: Need a weave on that?
Mal: It’s nothing.
Simon: I expect there’s someone’s face feels differently.
Mal: You know they tell ya, never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious.

• Explore the difference between laws and morals – Feel free to allow your characters to break “the law of the land” but always keep an eye on your character’s personal moral code. This is not to say that the character’s personal code is like that of the Christian author, but broken moral codes (if the character breaks his own code) is a great opportunity for self-reflection. And when a character breaks the code of the land, there is the conflict of the good man against the evil in the world, which is a venerable Christian theme.

Sheriff Bourne: You were truthful back in town. A man can get a job, he might not look too close at what that job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours, well, then he has a choice.
Mal: I don’t believe he does.
Seeking to return prepayment money for the train job to the henchmen of a vicious mob boss.
Mal: Now this is all the money Niska gave us in advance. You take it back to him, tell him the job didn’t work out. We’re not thieves. (Beat) Well we are thieves. Point is, we’re not taking what’s his. Now, we’ll stay out of his way best we can from here on in. You explain that’s best for everyone, okay?
Crow, Niska’s 1st henchman: Keep the money! Use it to by a funeral! It doesn’t matter where you go or how far you fly! I will hunt you down and the last thing you see will be my blade!
Mal: Darn. [kicks Crow into the intake engine]
Turns to 2nd henchman.
Mal: Now this is all the money Niska gave us in advance…
Niska’s 2nd henchman: Oh yeah, I’m good! Best thing for everyone! I’m right there with you!

Here are some other thoughts from Mal and Firefly.

• There’s a difference between banter and bickering. The former is hilarious, the latter is tedious. Firefly did banter very well. Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow resorted to bickering between the main characters. There’s a reason why Firefly is so quotable and Sky Captain, sadly, isn’t.
• Don’t be afraid to be dark, and be willing to relieve that darkness with sporadic comic moments.
• Always leave room for mystery or long-running unresolved plot points. (I’m thinking here of the example of Inara’s hinted immortality “I don’t want to die at all!”)
• Work from an outline if you can (Joss is a self-described ‘outline nazi,’) but don’t be afraid to fly by the seat of your pants to break out of a rut or a slump.
• Don’t skimp on fleshing out a wide variety of colorful, believable villains.
• Don’t be afraid to listen to the inane ramblings of your cast or crew. And don’t be afraid to ignore them.

Feel free to add your own Firefly-for-writers tips in the comments, and thanks for reading!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Johne Cook is a technical writer by day and creative writer / editor at night. His interests include prog rock, film noir, space opera, and racquetball. Johne is older than he looks but acts younger than he is.

His short fiction has appeared at Deep Magic, The Sword Review, Wayfarer’s Journal, and Digital Dragon magazine.

In 2006, with L. S. King and Paul Christian Glenn, Johne founded Ray Gun Revival magazine, devoted to space opera and golden age sci-fi. They refer to themselves collectively as the Overlords, and are often vaporizing someone’s puny planet for various arbitrary infractions.