By definition, science fiction and fantasy are unique among literary genres because of the presence of a wide range of diverse characters and people groups.

Certainly, many groups are fictional (as far as we know), such as Vulcans, Calormenes, and sentient droids.

Certainly, many portrayals, such as that of female characters and Native Americans, have been fetishized and over-troped.

But, like much of the world, science fiction and fantasy are growing up, growing wiser, and embracing the stories of traditionally marginalized people groups. Some might say science fiction and fantasy (SFF) are ahead of the curve.

The ever-widening tent of modern science fiction and fantasy was evidenced at this year’s Hugo Awards, where female writers and artists swept the prize in all major categories.

N. K. Jemisin, the African-American author of the Broken Earth series, had already made history in 2016 by becoming the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. This year she made history again by becoming the first person ever to take the top prize three years in a row.

Many of the other winners were also reflective of the growing diversity in SFF publishing:

• Rebecca Roanhorse won Best Short Story for Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience.
• Suzanne Palmer’s The Secret Life of Bots won Best Novelette.
• Martha Wells won Best Novella for All Systems Red.
• The late Ursula K. Le Guin won Best Related Work for her book of essays, No Time to Spare.

We could go on.

This trend—although I hope it’s more than a trend—makes sense, especially since, in my opinion (and in the opinion of V.E. Schwab), the best speculative stories grow from trees planted with seeds from the real world.

It’s often uncomfortable talking about the marginalization experienced by women and various races and ethnic groups. There still is (and probably always will be) a small but loud strain of individuals who don’t like black actresses playing traditionally white comic book characters on TV, or the growing recognition that women writers and people of color are receiving in SFF publishing, or minority characters being introduced to Star Wars.

But the embrace of diversity in speculative genres ought to remind us that, one day, people of every nation, ethnicity, and language will live, work, and love together in the New Heaven and New Earth. John, the apostle and end times seer, wrote:

“I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”¹

The arc of the universe bends toward diversity. It bends toward a re-imagined Eden where the things that have divided for so long—the differences of race, gender, ethnicity, culture, and economic standing—become the elements God uses to paint a new mosaic. In this mosaic, the beauty comes not just from unity despite our differences, but unity made more glorious because it embraces our differences. To paraphrase from Helen Lee’s article at Christ and Pop Culture, God is the ultimate diversity activist.

Jesus’s example shows us that we should cheer the growing diversity in SFF genres. Although he came to bring the good news of the kingdom first to the Jews, he often went out of his way to minister to those who were marginalized. He took time out to hear from Greeks who were seen as outsiders (John 12: 20–22). He ministered to the hated, half-breed Samaritans (John 4: 1–42), and, in one of his most famous stories, he made a Samaritan the main character and the hero.

Jesus grabbed people who stood on the margins of His society—tax collectors, prostitutes, the poor, the lepers, the African—and thrust them into the main narrative of the Great Story of God’s Love. You belong here, he told them. There is room for you.

And then, he told his disciples, and us, to do the same. The glorious climax of every people, every nation, every tongue gathered around the throne at the end of time only comes about because the plot can be summed up in the Great Commission where Jesus commands us to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28: 16–20).

We have a hand in the making of God’s diverse kingdom—in Heaven and here on Earth. And we should rejoice when any arena, like modern science fiction and fantasy publishing, moves closer to that divine ideal.

Travis P here. In contrast to the layout of other weeks, I’m going to first introduce and later illustrate a post initiated by my fellow Travis (Chapman). In this post, he focuses on the training for “high-end capabilities,” which is the term used for highly expensive weapons systems that constitute the most advanced means of fighting that modern nations have. Note that even though the terminology of high-end capabilities has a very 21st Century feel to it, the concept can be applied to speculative stories that mirror the legendary past as well as those set in highly technological futures.

Note also that the type of training this post explores is highly technical. Instead of focusing on training warriors to endure the hardships of up close combat, this kind of training requires mastering the highly advanced weapons systems of high-end capabilities. Whatever those high-end capabilities may be.

Travis C here. I’d like to introduce a few terms of art. In a modern parlance, high-end warfighting is becoming a buzz term to describe warfighting that is peer-against-peer utilizing advanced technology and tactics. In their time, World War I and II both demonstrated high-end warfighting concepts: incorporation of air combat power, battles for naval supremacy using submarines, convoys, battleships, and aircraft carriers, long-range bombing and artillery strikes, communications advances, etc. Not that we didn’t have those things prior to the world wars, but we saw them institutionalized into military structures and a very deliberate application of those powers by the nations involved against rival military forces and to achieve military ends.

WW2 USS Enterprise’s final voyage. Credit: CNN.com

A military capability is intuitive: a capability to conduct a certain kind or set of activities for any number of purposes. My personal background is in submarines, which represent a range of capabilities. We can conduct anti-shipping, anti-surface warfare, submarine-on-submarine warfare, launch missiles ashore, sit off the coast and collect intelligence, transfer goods clandestinely, and create a great deal of uncertainty for a nation. Some of those capabilities are clearly for military purposes (launching torpedoes). Some, however, also serve political purposes (deterrence: we may or may not have a submarine operating in the vicinity of a nation, causing them to consider whether to put a fleet to sea). They also showcase a nation’s military strength as a capital asset.

A “capital asset” (we could use other terms, but this one will suffice) is something a nation would have to invest a significant amount of resources into acquiring but demonstrates that nation’s capacity and resolve to have that asset and the potential to utilize it. Let’s consider a non-military example that gets us closer to our science fiction purpose: the United States’ space shuttle program. It cost a lot of money to design, build, and operate our shuttles. It takes a lot of engineering and science research and development, worker training, intellectual know-how, political resolve and budgeting, good management, and material resources to get a space shuttle. Once you get a shuttle, it takes highly-skilled, highly-capable and adaptable, best-of-the-best operators to execute the missions we desired the shuttle for. Not everyone can have a space shuttle. The same is true for capital assets in the military. Not every nation can operate submarines, or long-range bombers, or missiles, or fighter jets, or close-combat-supporting helicopters, or satellite networks.

Flying Nazgul. Credit: Figwit via councilofeldrond.com

Clearly many capabilities we know from the world of science fiction will fall into the category of a capital asset. Spacecraft, space stations, and the propulsion systems that power them will likely be a unique class of capability. Think also of those near-future capabilities we know are just over the horizon: artificial intelligence, machine learning, near-instantaneous information availability and communication/connectedness. In the realm of fantasy, many applications of magic might be considered this way. Truly, Gandalf and Saruman represented unique capabilities within their respective forces, and the Ringwraiths represent a whole set of capabilities for Mordor. The oliphants at Pelenor Fields and rock-dropping griffins of King Edmund’s Narnian army may also fall under that heading.  

While the training of a warrior for close combat will involve physical conditioning, weapons proficiency, and preparation for the psychological and physiological impacts of the battlefield, the operators of these high-end capabilities require something different. While all members of the military receive a basic level of training, those services supporting high-end capabilities will divert the practitioners of those communities into specialized training schools and follow that up with routine integrated training to ensure all the pieces work together.

Let’s again use some examples close to home: Sailors and Airmen. All members of the U.S. military go through some form of basic training, learning the institutions of their respective service, military courtesies, and by and large spending a great amount of effort in breaking down individualism and growing a team-oriented attitude among recruits. This will have important consequences later.

The majority of Sailors and Airmen who enter service do so knowing the field of work they will participate in. After basic training they will depart for a series of training activities to learn those specialized skills. It might be many months before they are ready to join an operating platform or unit and begin to apply those skills as an apprentice-level practitioner. You would expect an aircraft maintainer, nuclear power plant operator, missilier, combat system technician and operator, etc., so need to learn the basics of the systems before they head to a vessel or aircraft squadron that will deploy.

US Air Force missileers in training. Credit: AF.mil

Once basic and specialized training is complete they will report to an operating unit where they will apply those skills in a graded manner, maturing from apprentice operators under the guidance of more senior and experienced folks and gaining real-world expertise. It’s here that integration occurs, since the numerous specialties come together to form a single operating unit. A warship is not only the sum of its parts (propulsion plant, sensors, weapon systems, living quarters for the crew, etc.), but the true impact of that platform is in the synergy of a well-trained, trusting, and focused crew. The same can be said for a squadron of aircraft, a cadre of missileers, the crew of a submarine, or any other capital asset that requires multiple skills to effectively operate.

Lastly, those capital assets must be exercised in simulated environments to ensure the crews know what to do, when to do it, and ensure that routines become second nature so that actions occur without fail in times of confusion and duress like combat. During the period leading up to a deployment, and with some degree of regularity at all times, teams will practice routines and drill themselves on the breadth of their capabilities. Emergency action drills, equipment and system casualty drills, battle stations, launch procedures, and simulated wargames to test the ability of the team to execute their missions in the midst of anticipated challenges will ensure operators are ready for as many expected situations as possible. More importantly, it prepares them for the unknown things that might happen by building a level of readiness and preparedness that will be adaptable to circumstances that arise.

That might seem like a ironic combination, but high-end warfighting is based on a balance between rote mechanical routines that reduce the operator’s need to think (don’t think, just act) with a demand for creativity, adaptability, and ingenuity to bring those skills to bear depending on the situation.

Travis P again. I hope readers are grasping the impact of what Travis C said and how that affects speculative fiction stories. We may tend to think of the military capacities of a nation as being even–but in fact the difference between the minimum technology a nation may have and its most advanced weapons can be extreme.

Egyptian-style chariot. Credit: Joe Alblas © Lightworkers Media / Hearst Productions Inc.

These contrasts have always existed–for example, in the world of the Hebrew Scriptures, the chariot was the most elite and highly technical weapon of its era. Israelites, who especially at first fought mostly with untrained levies of troops, could not afford to create a permanent warrior caste or to pay professional warriors with the skills to operate chariots. Nor did they have the specialized skills involved in building chariots. So it wasn’t until after the time of David the King that the Israelites had any chariots at all, and they never had many in relation to other nations.

Soviet Union Typhoon submarine. Credit: Wikipedia

But the larger a nation is and the more technologically developed its world is, the bigger the potential difference is between high-end capacities and the minimum abilities to fight that a nation has. The Soviet Union had poorly trained draftees it could barely manage to house and feed at the low end of its abilities and also ballistic nuclear submarines worth the equivalent of billions of US dollars on the high end. A united world in a futuristic science fiction universe could mostly be at a medieval level of technology–but might be able to pool enough resources as a planet to buy a starship or two and might manage (with the help of more advanced races) to provide the training required to run it or them. And that one or two starship(s) might easily have more military capacity than all of the rest of the world combined.

Credit: starwars.com

The classic example of a high-end capability in familiar speculative fiction would be the Death Star. While Tie Fighters and Imperial Star Destroyers require plenty of specialized training, the Death Star by itself exceeded the capacity of the entire Rebel fleet (even though it was vulnerable to them due to an accidentally-on-purpose flaw as seen in Rogue One). Some of the uniforms a moviegoer will see on the Death Star are nowhere else in Star Wars–clearly these were specialists trained to operate the Death Star and the Death Star alone. Operating the Death Star obviously would require a great deal of highly technical training that would have very little in common with the battle hardening required of elite warriors that our previous posts have discussed. Yet the Death Star far exceeds the destructive capacity of all the elite hereditary warriors of that story universe combined, the Jedi Knights (not even working together could all the Jedi blow up a planet).

Death Star crew at work. Credit: Flickriver.com

Writers of epic fantasy, don’t think this article doesn’t apply to you! When we start talking about magical capabilities, clearly the training of an elf or wizard that requires thousands of years to master represents high-end capabilities that are in a way every bit as advanced as those found in a technological society. Though wizards are generally portrayed as being more generalized than technologically advanced warriors, there’s no particular reason wizards couldn’t be portrayed as highly specialized instead.

UK Ministry of Magic Logo (Harry Potter).
Credit: http://harrypotter.wikia.com

Harry Potter represents an interesting case. Magic is clearly an integral part of the wizarding world and training of wizards is expected. Students actually learn basic skills in schools (Defense Against the Dark Arts) and a class of specialized warrior-constables exists in the Aurors. Do we see that level of sophistication when the war opens up in the last few books? Or is it every wizard for himself or herself?

Jaeger “Striker Eureka.” Credit: scifi.stackexchange.com

Another example of high-end capabilities and the training used to support them can be found in Pacific Rim with the Jaegers. Clearly these are complex devices (even if not wholly realistic), requiring significant investment and lots of support structure. Even though the storyline focused on characters who were their pilots, these were obviously not the only personnel required to develop Jaegers.

Naussicaä and the Valley of the Wind poster by Yoshiyuki Takani

We also see some crossovers into the realm of steampunk-ish worlds. Mortal Engines, David Webers’ Off Armageddon Reef (a low-tech world featuring an advanced navy and a cybernetic protagonist), Studio Ghibli’s Naussicaä and the Valley of the Wind (featuring a few high-end weapons), etc.

What are your thoughts on the topic of military high-end capabilities and the training required to support them?

Last time I came by this way, I talked about Coco’s demoralizing portrait of the afterlife and how it casts a pall over the movie. Today, I want to move that discussion to a more general question of how the afterlife ought to be portrayed in fiction. My concern is not the gate to heaven or the road to hell, the broad and the narrow way; I am thinking of the much slighter question of what glimpses should be given of the afterlife, including the secondhand glimpses that come through ghosts or other denizens of the spiritual world.

The first thing to say is that we don’t really know what the next world looks like (which complicates creating glimpses of it!). We know what truly matters – eternal good or eternal bad, reward or punishment, God or the devil. Yet these abstractions are not translated into the concrete, except in the visions of Revelation. To what extent the fire and harps and gold are symbols of final destiny, or actual components of it, is a point of theological debate. Even the literal interpretation would leave us mostly with images of the New Jerusalem, which is not quite synonymous with Heaven. By any interpretation, the next world is mostly unknown – and unimaginable.

And fiction rushes in where theologians would fear to tread. It is easier for storytellers, you know: No portrait of the afterlife can truly be the way it is, but such literal truth is not their game anyway. Writers take two different avenues to spinning out visions of the afterlife. The first is that of symbolism; the concrete pictures represent abstract truths. In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis painted Hell as a city of empty streets sprawling out for thousands of miles in order to express the idea that the willful self-isolation of sin is consummated in Hell. Twilight Zone’s “Nothing in the Dark” personifies Death as a handsome young man to convey the idea that death is not a monster in the dark. In works like these, the presentation of the unknowable is true in the only way it can be – as a symbol.

Not all writers have such elevated aims. Those interested in a good story, and not transcendent spiritual truths, take the second avenue. Putting aside the quest to tell the truth about the next life, some writers take happy license to invent whatever is most expedient to plot twists, world-building, or thrills. Coco is an unusually elaborate example of this. Ghost stories provide a broad array of more simple instances. Consider the popular trope of ghosts who linger to finish some item of business, or say goodbye, or even to simply realize that they’re dead. The tellers of such stories don’t necessarily believe that dead people remain on earth seeking closure. In fact, I would wager that most of them don’t, and some don’t believe in the immortality of the soul at all. There is no actual attempt, in many stories of the afterlife, to express any truth of whatever lies on the other side of death.

Yet there is, implicit in most of these stories, a sense of journey and a sense of mystery. We don’t know where the ghosts are going when they are finally ready to leave, but they are going somewhere; we don’t know what happens when the twilight over the city of empty streets ends, or where Death is leading the old woman. Many stories affect to peer through the great veil of death, but few pretend to tear it down. We are ignorant even in our stories, and in that ignorance is mystery, and in that mystery is hope.

That is the mistake that Coco makes: It doesn’t have the saving sense of mystery, the sense of journey that could have redeemed the dreariness of the Land of the Dead. This, then, is the cardinal rule for writers who wish to tread into the next world: Leave the mystery. Never pretend to tell all.

‘Tis the season to update you about our spinoff publication, Lorehaven Magazine.

We’re now three issues into this free, quarterly resource. Lorehaven finds truth in fantastic stories, thanks to creative and useful book reviews, great articles for Christian geeks and parents, and in-depth explorations of story truths and themes.

Anyone can subscribe for free. Each season you get a new magazine to download free (as a PDF). Or, as of the fall 2018 issue, you can read each article on the site.

Now, it’s beginning to look a lot like our winter 2018 issue.

Edits are wrapping this week,¹ and Lorehaven Magazine’s fourth issue will hit cyber-stands weeks before Christmas.

EDIT: the issue released Dec. 12! Download your PDF copy, or read it online, with a free subscription.

That’s plenty of time to discover what Christian fantasy books our review team² loved, and see which of these tales your family and friends might enjoy finding in the mail or under the tree this holiday season.

We’ll keep those book titles secret for now. But why not sneak over to the tree, pick up the wrapped box, and shake it a bit, just to guess at what’s inside?

Novelist Thomas Locke (courtesy Thomas Locke)

Cover story: ‘I Came to Faith, and Two Weeks Later I Started Writing’

For this story, I interviewed Thomas Locke from his home in Oxford, England. Locke has spent decades crafting fantasy and science fiction for Christian and general markets. What a fantastic conversation! We explored his testimony of faith and creative excellence. Locke also shared much about where he sees Christian creative fantasy is going (spoiler: into frontiers beyond the church stores of yesteryear).

Featured review: Enclave

Of course, we got our hands on Thomas Locke’s new novel, Enclave (Nov. 2018). We’ll have the full review exclusively in the magazine. Here on SpecFaith, watch for more behind-the-scenes trivia from Locke about the secret themes of Enclave.

Captain’s Log

This month, I discovered I haven’t been associating Christmas first with biblical images such as Nativity scenes, shepherds, and stars. …

So what images reach my imagination first? Read more of my biblical rationalizations on page 3 of the magazine.

Fanservants: Are We ‘Introverted’ Toward God?

Paeter Frandsen, Fanservants columnist, Lorehaven Magazine

To this day, I’m still unsure if I’m an “introvert.” Probably 55 percent of the time I feel like one, so Paeter Frandsen’s challenge for Christian geeks gently convicted me. In a very good way. I love how Paeter speaks as “one of us,” with a fanman’s enthusiasm yet a pastoral soul. Here’s how he starts his article:

I wonder if we as Christian geeks are sometimes more comfortable with God as an idea than as a person.

Granted, God is so unfathomable in so many ways that it’s easy for us to slip into thinking of him more conceptually than personally. But it can also easily become our preference to keep him at a distance. …

Fanservants: The Biblical Source of Super-Strength

Marian Jacobs, Fanservants columnist, Lorehaven Magazine

Shortly before Lorehaven’s spring 2018 issue released, we recruited Marian Jacobs. She had written this fantastic article about fantasy for parents here on SpecFaith. Since then, she has articulated her hands-on ideas in Lorehaven. Also, my wife and I have since met her, and her husband Timothy, and their three super children.

Are superheroes real?

Our children would love to think so. …

Idolatry is never a good thing, but is there a way to teach our children to enjoy superheroes in a healthy, biblical way? …

Support from storytellers

Amidst this great content, the winter 2018 issue is overflowing with advertisements. These come from publishers and authors with stories you’ll love to explore.

They don’t pop up, buzz with viruses, or blare seventeen tips for XYZ and what happened next left them speechless. They don’t sneak dubious tracking cookies into your browser—the kind that fetch pseudo-relevant ads for that toothpaste whose name you casually mentioned yesterday within earshot of your phone.

Nope. We’ve only carefully chosen ads of specific interest to the Christian fantasy fan.³

Meanwhile, back at SpecFaith …

After each Lorehaven issue releases, we approach authors whose books we’ve reviewed. We invite them to spend a week or so at the Lorehaven Book Clubs group on Facebook.⁴ We also invite these authors to pitch a guest article here at SpecFaith. Lately we’ve spotted these star creatives:

• Disability, Superpower, or Just Life?, Nov. 27, 2018, Bridgett Powers, author of Keeper of Shadows
• The Hidden Message of Salvation, Nov. 16, 2018, Aviya Carmen, author of The White Forest
• Superheroes and Superpowers: A Glimpse into the Supernatural?, Oct. 27, 2018, Dianne J. Wilson, author of Affinity

2019 and beyond

Finally, we ask you to put several requests on your prayer-wish list for next year. Please pray for:

• Even better and more beautiful books to review in new issues.
• Amazing authors whose tales we can share with new fans.
• Ways to take Lorehaven into churches, classes, cons, and beyond.
• Divine protection from temptation, false teaching, and other ills.
• Our hard-working staff, their families, and all their creative works!
• Us to meet this unspoken need for great stories among Christians.

Finally, pray Lorehaven will even help to resurrect all Christian-made stories—not just in churches or niche stores, but in the hearts of Jesus’s people.

Recently I read an article at Tor.com, “The World is a Weird, Dark Place — Fantasy Helps Us Make Sense of It,” by Jonathan Robb, that sparked my thinking about truth and reality in fantasy. In the article Robb praised the works of George R. R. Martin, first by giving his own history with fantasy. He was introduced at a young age to C. S. Lewis and the world of Narnia, then went on to J. R. R. Tolkien and other established fantasy writers. The thread he saw which these books all shared was their good versus evil trope.

However, as he grew older, he realized that the world around him did not fall into the neat camps of good and evil. “Good people” could let someone down and “evil people” could do heroic things.

As shades of grey entered my real world, my fantasy worlds started to suffer for it. I continued to digest authors of similar ilk to Eddings—David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist, and Robert Jordan—those writers who adhered to the familiar rules of fantasy. In their universes there was always a dark lord, or dark army, to pit oneself against. It was pretty clear—the heroes usually just needed to attack the evil-looking creatures of the night attempting to kill the innocent villages in order to win the day.

But this no longer squared with what I was exposed to in the real world. Those identifiable attributes that marked someone as Good or Evil simply didn’t hold up. No one could live up to the title of hero—so that either meant there were no heroes, or it was far more complicated than I’d been led to believe.

Along came George R. R. Martin and his world in Game of Thrones that seemed to reflect the Tor writer’s own understanding of the world: good and evil aren’t actually cut and dried.

Fantasy has always helped me understand the world, from the metaphors it employs, to the parallels with our own world, to the thoughtful exploration of its themes—one of the most important being the struggle between good and evil. . . I’m thankful, too, to the worlds of George R.R. Martin for helping me understand the profound depths and messiness of the same concepts, and that being a hero or a villain is never that straightforward—a realization that’s surprisingly reassuring, in the end.

Writers often hear instruction that characters in fiction, even the villains, need some redeeming qualities, because reality shows us there aren’t characters of pure evil or pure good.

Even in Christian fiction, the cry seems to be for fiction that reflects reality, even when the story is supernatural or science fiction or fantasy. The reality factor is the idea that the story reflects the world as we know it in some way. And certainly what we know is something of an odd mixture of good and evil, as Jonathan Robb noted in his article. There are no Mordors run by evil-eye rulers that hold the world under its control by making war on Gondor There are no Rangers who roam the world to fight for the right and protect the hapless hobbits who are clueless of the conflict raging around them.

Or are there?

In truth, the fantasies that show the fight between good and evil are less apt to depict reality as we see it, and more apt to depict truth as we know it from Scripture—the truth of the spiritual world.

From this perspective, George R. R. Martin may be writing the reality we are familiar with, but is he neglecting the truth that defines the world? Why does this matter?

For one thing, fantasy readers—Jonathan Robb included—resonate with the truth that there is good and evil and that there is a war between these opposing factors. Young readers may not know or care that the “black and white” of the world they are seeing represents a world inside their hearts, and a war raging in the spiritual realm. They just know they “get it,” that they want to be on the side of the good, that they understand what’s at stake for the world if the evil should win.

I believe that’s no less than the eternity God has set in our hearts or as others have phrased it, the God-shaped vacuum in each of us. We are drawn to the truth, to the clear explanation that there is a good ruler, a right way, a guardian-king, and we can side with him.

But writing fantasy and supernatural that cares more about reality than truth, changes the paradigm and brings up a series of questions. Does fantasy always reflect the spiritual world? Should supernatural suspense always reflect the truth presented in the Bible? How does an emphasis on reality affect our view of the truth?

For instance I read a book this past year in which a character found a portal into hell which she entered to bring a character she didn’t think belonged there back to this world, even at the risk of being trapped there herself. Was there truth in this story? Was there even reality? Or was this simply a story about pretend people in pretend places doing pretend things?

If the latter, has that type of fiction lost a grip on both reality and on truth?

I find it interesting that in a world in which most people believe humans are good, the books (and TV programs) that have become so popular are the ones that show good people doing rotten things or evil people doing noble deeds. Instead of ascribing to the Bible’s explanation, that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, however, we simply excuse or dismiss or blame others for the evil that we see in all of us. We like the anti-hero because he gets the job done. We chastise the good guy for his failure—he should have stayed the course, but in the end, he let us down. Not because he’s evil. Clearly he wasn’t or we would not have believed him to be a good guy at first.

In short, the lines have become blurred between evil and good, and the public seems to like it so.

How are Christians to respond? Some people would suggest that we should stop consuming fantasy and supernatural fiction. Some say fiction is nothing but entertainment and a discussion about reality and truth has no place when talking about any type of speculative fiction. Others might conclude that Christians have an opportunity to make a statement by our viewing or reading habits and by our writing, to hold the line for truth: actual good and actual evil exist.

In the great fantasies, truth and reality merge. Perhaps today we have learned to settle for one or the other instead of looking for stories, or writing stories, that accomplish both.

Travis P here. Our last post on this topic looked at the military training for the very best warriors in both fiction in reality–and please note when we say “best” we mean the most capable, especially able to fight no matter the circumstances, and the most able to resist the psychological pressures of war that cause soldiers to fail to perform when they need to do so. (“Best” in this context is definitely not directly equivalent to “most moral.”)

It’s never been true that every warrior has been elite–historically, a great many nations have lacked the time, money, or knowledge to train any soldier to the highest possible level. And among those nations able to train elite troops, it simply hasn’t been normal to train every last warrior to the highest level. Even the Romans, who hold the record of any historic civilization in terms of the percentage of its population it put in arms, who also adopted a great deal of standardized training in an attempt to make every member of its legions elite relative to other militaries of its time, had its Praetorian Guard. Even the Romans had elite troops who were better than all the rest.

Further posts will build from our base of discussing training to talk about how nations form and supply armies, and how the “supply side” of producing warriors affects how a nation, or a demi-human race, or even an alien species fights battles. We will also talk about types of warriors by weapon and the battle formations they use in more detail, as well as differences between land-centric military forces and those oriented toward naval, aerial, and other domain combat. But for now, let’s stick with observations about types of warriors based on their training. I’d say there are 3 different kinds of warriors by training type with a couple of subtypes each (speaking as generally as I can):

A. Cultural Warriors: Everything they know about fighting they learn from infancy.

Hereditary Warriors. Credit: Travis Perry

1. Hereditary warrior castes–paid (professional) cultural warriors: Formal military training is passed down from father to son or is arranged by paid professionals or skilled slaves. Note that unlike barbarians, these warriors require other social classes/castes in their same society to provide them with food and material goods. Samurai, medieval knights, and Spartans were all hereditary warriors–though the Spartans have the distinction of requiring every free male to be a hereditary warrior (Spartan helots–slaves–provided labor to grow the food and produce the goods Spartans needed to survive). Note that being a hereditary warrior has often been tied to land ownership in the historic past. A certain parcel of land sufficient to supply the food and equipment needs of the warriors was under the stewardship and control of the same warriors (payment was rarely in currency). A special type of warrior caste were various slave warriors, like the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. These slaves would be raised from childhood to fight, but would lack the status in their society that samurai or medieval knights were privileged with (and would not control the land used to meet their supply needs).
   

   Barbarian warriors. Credit: Travis Perry

2. Barbarians (or tribal)–unpaid (non-professional) cultural warriors: Nobody in the society receives any formal military training per se, but everyone lives in a harsh environment, where survival is difficult. Everyday life constitutes a type of training–whereas samurai and knights went hunting largely to practice weapon skills that are useful in combat, barbarians hunt to stay alive. And while Spartans and Starship Troopers might spend time in a wilderness area to pass survival skills training, barbarians live in harsh areas every day. Barbarians do engage in various contests of strength and types of play combat with one another, but their training lacks scientific principles of formal study. Think of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, our cultural representation of the sea-going Danes and Vikings of Scandinavia, and many Germanic tribes of the Roman era.

B. Paid Professionals: Fighting is a profession they learn and improve after joining the military. They serve for a pre-designated period of time and are usually paid in currency.

Roman volunteer professional soldiers. Credit: about-history.com

1. Volunteer professionals who may or may not see military service as a lifelong career: Formal military training is usually involved and generally happens in adulthood or late teen years. Training is generally well-designed, so paid professional soldiers are usually quite capable–though in fact the quality of these soldiers vary greatly from nation to nation, with poor nations generally unable to give any but a tiny minority of their force quality training. The Roman Empire is well-known for employing this technique, using tax revenues to pay the salaries of its legionnaires. (Note that at one time, roughly 1/8th of all men in the Roman Empire were in the military–which is the highest percentage of paid professional warriors of any historic society). Starship Troopers also portrays a volunteer military made of paid professionals, though they were motivated more by patriotism than pay. Voluntary professionals exist across a spectrum of motivations ranging from pure altruism/patriotism with little concern for rewards all the way to the base mercenary fighting, voluntarily, for pay with no care for the specific cause.
2. Conscripts (draftees): Like volunteer professionals, conscripts
   

   US Army draftees at Fort Dix during the 1960s. (Photo by Leif Skoogfors/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

   usually receive formal training after joining the military, even though they don’t volunteer. At times conscript training has been very basic, but at other times is identical to the training the volunteers get. Conscripts are forced to serve spend time in the military as paid professionals for a limited period of time, often 1-2 years, but sometimes more (or less even). Conscripts have always been known to be less motivated and generally less well-trained that paid volunteer professional soldiers. But at the very least, all of them receive some formal training.

C. Part-time Soldiers: Generally only enter active service during a war or national crisis. May or may not be paid.

US Colonial Militia Reenactors. Credit: US National Parks Service

1. Militias/Reserves: Militias at times have usually consisted of volunteers, but at times have consisted of every able-bodied person who can fight (usually men). Militias/Reserves may not receive any formal military training, though usually they do receive some, but their training is generally less thorough than full-time professionals, who essentially are paid to prepare themselves for war. Militia units at times have consisted of aged veterans or other persons disqualified from service in a professional military due to age or disability. Called up during emergencies or war, militia or reserve members usually are paid while they are serving.
2. Medieval (and other) Levies: Levies were required to fight by obligation, such as duties to a medieval lord, and usually fought only for the duration of a war or for a fixed period each year, and generally served without pay (though their food and other sustenance might be supplied during wartime). They usually received informal military training that was usually not very good or no training at all. (But on occasion levies were quite well-trained.) Often were responsible for supplying their own weapons.
   

   Medieval warriors at the Battle of Crecy, including hereditary knights, levies of bowmen, and mercenary crossbowmen. Public domain image by Jean Froissart.

Note some of the differences in the types of training these soldiers undergo relate to issues that themselves don’t directly relate to training. It’s tough to have a paid professional force in a society in which wealth is tied to land ownership or ownership of other property and taxes over goods and services are not the primary source of government funding. While medieval societies at times were able to hire professional warriors (usually mercenaries hired for short-term needs), the organization of the society made it easier to have the warriors occupy a permanent class, where participation in warfare was expected of them from childhood to death. And of course, barbarians, like the Mongolians Genghis Khan united under his command, did not have a wide base of social classes to support warriors–instead, every Mongolian knew at least a little about war.

If we ask where the Klingons of Star Trek fall in this set of warriors, they share the most traits in common with A2. For them, war is part of their culture, something they celebrate full-time, and is not reserved only for one social class. However, from time to time Star Trek introduces a Klingon who is not a full-time warrior, such as ones who are scientists or lawyers (yet these Klingons still have a warlike mentality). So in some ways, their warriors do form a caste. So Klingons falls somewhere between A1 and A2.

In contrast, the values of individual determination that the Federation cherishes causes it to be a B1 society. But note that the Cardassians of Star Trek have a very pro-military society, yet those who serve are still volunteers who become paid professionals–so their training is type B1, just like the Federation, even though their society is much more militaristic.

Note that ancient Israel mostly fought with levies, especially at first (C2). But the kings of Israel (and Judah) eventually became a permanent warrior caste (A1)–though at times, these kings hired mercenaries from outside Israel (B1). Many other societies have also had complex mixes of warriors the way ancient Israel did.

Societies have layers of ways they drill warriors that relate not just to training philosophies, but stem from their economics and their cultural attitudes about warfare.

Travis C here with some considerations for authors as you map out your story world as well as some illustrations for this topic. Westerners in the 20th and 21st century are familiar with the concept of paid professional soldiers as our modern militaries have evolved into stable organizations. Many of us come from nations where service is a respected profession, with sufficient tax structures and national desire to have standing military forces, and the cultural expectations of how our armies are organized, trained, and utilized have become stable. Soldiering is both art and science, with significant effort spent to ensure a robust, capable, versatile force exists to defend national interests and respond in times of crisis (through use of force and other non-combative means too).

The ingredients to get here were not always present and authors need to evaluate the credibility of their worldbuilding in that light. It’s not that well-trained forces can’t exist in levied/conscript environments, but it would be an exceptional case and in need of justification to make such a story plausible. Let’s look at two examples from the current media, in two very different genres, that highlight some of these challenges.

The Last Kingdom portraying battle. Photo credit: www.gq.com

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited for season 3 of The Last Kingdom as it gets ready to launch. The series follows a Saxon-turned-Dane-turned-back-to-Saxon man, Uhtred, as England comes into being as a unified nation in the late 800’s. King Alfred the Great sits on the throne, not without controversy and with plenty of enemies. We witness the friction between Uhtred trying to reclaim his Saxon birthright while honoring his Danish upbringing and King Alfred trying to unite a fractured people whilst dealing with an invading force of Danes.

Season 1 shows us the complex arrangement of nobles, King, and arrayed foes. Alfred desires to unite the kingdoms of England through his own kingship in Wessex. A man who studies history and thinks logically, he organizes Wessex into individual burhs under the leadership of an ealdorman (earl) who is charged with martial obligations to Alfred. On command, each earlman is required to produce a fyrd, or levy, of soldiers to defend against invading forces. The ealdormen are also responsible for the repair of fortresses, bridges, and other military service. If any refuse, they must pay the king a tax and, for landowners, forfeiture of their lands.

King Alfred must contend with the men like Odda the Elder (a real-life person) who controls the largest fyrd in Wessex and must be convinced to assemble his men against the Danish foe while his younger son desires to reach a peace with the same Danes. In order for the fyrd to assemble, political maneuvering and mutual alignment of interests are needed.

The fyrd itself has limited training and is clearly not ready to engage in combat with the barbarian culture of the sea-going Danes (something like the A1/A2 culture Travis P described earlier). Uhtred’s unique knowledge of Danish tactics and strategy come into the story as he trains the Wessex soldiers to use similar practices against their foes. We see the ealdormen resist him, but ultimately the value of this dedicated training is seen in future Wessex victories on the battlefield.

Author Bernard Cornwell and the television producers do an excellent job of mixing fact and fiction to show us the consequences of a fledgling nation trying to organize military forces against a compelling foe and dealing with limited resources. The distinction between Danish culture, warrior traditions and preparedness, is in stark contrast to the Anglo-Saxon people and the beginnings of feudal society.

Fast forward to the future and interstellar travel via the Skip Drive and we have the setting for John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I picked this example because of the unique take on how an army is formed and trained. Instead of the typical young recruit getting drawn into the military and trained from an early age, the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) are drawn only from the elderly. Those age 65 have DNA samples drawn and sign away two years of their lives to serve in the CDF in exchange for the opportunity to enjoy a life homesteading on one of our colonized planets. Why? Because the CDF needs people who have gained decades of experience to transfer into genetically-engineered, combat-enhanced bodies to fight against the aliens who also desire the same resources we are seeking on those colonized planets.

Image credit: Amazon.com

Scalzi was nominated for a Hugo Award for Old Man’s War and received praise for upending some of the genre’s tropes when it comes to military fiction in a sci-fi setting. In speculative fiction we have the ability to create environments that take what we know, like our historical understanding of how armies are formed and trained, and potentially rearrange the pieces to logically fit into our stories with reasonable justification. In fantasy settings, it may be common for only the youngest magic-users to enter military service due to their strength, stamina, and freshness. Maybe it’s the opposite, where only the seasoned thaumaturge is valued since they have a long list of experiences. In a futuristic setting with different resources and societal demands, maybe patriotism and good pay aren’t enough to ensure a steady supply of soldiers and other motivations need to be considered.

The range of possibilities is endless. Military functions will always exist when things are not right and something needs to be done about it, regardless of the cause of that set of circumstances. Characters may be motivated by self-determination, national conscious, a hive mind, a bag of silver, or a desire for the adventure just outside the door. In any case, the author needs to evaluate how to best align their entry into service with the degree and types of training they receive.

I’ve pretty much sworn off seeing comic book movies in theaters anymore (though I will rent them on DVD). However, my wife uncharacteristically insisted that we go see the new Venom movie, her sole reason being that it was a box office hit in her home country of China and she was curious to see what all the hubbub was about. I was hesitant at first because the reviews were hardly stellar, but I’m a big Tom Hardy fan so I decided to give it a shot.

Image copyright Sony Pictures

Overall, I’m glad I did. Tom Hardy’s performance was very entertaining, and I found it refreshing that his character wasn’t the typical bullied-in-school-and-then-gets-a-superpower-and-becomes-awesome trope. The movie isn’t anything spectacular but it made for a fun afternoon. Below are some minor spoilers so if you haven’t yet seen Venom and plan to soon, please read no further.

Venom did a great job of making a villainous character as sympathetic as possible while making it crystal clear that it is still a villain. In most superhero films, the central character has a mission – a disaster to avert or a bad guy to defeat. In Venom, Tom Hardy spends most of his time trying to work out an equilibrium with the monstrous entity that has taken over his body. Destruction ensues, good guys get killed, heads get bitten off, and Tom Hardy wants nothing more than to be rid of this “parasite” as he calls it. He doesn’t go crazy or become drunk with power and “cross over to the Dark Side.” He tries to convince Venom to tread as lightly as possible, with mixed results. Only in the last half hour does another adversary show up, a stronger alien called Riot (these creatures must get their names from punk rock bands). Riot wants to bring back a horde of hungry critters and consume the Earth, while Venom, who is admittedly a “loser” on its home planet, realizes that it can be a big shot on our planet, but that means that the human race must survive in order for it to be at the top of food chain. Thus, Venom’s and Riot’s interests clash and the battle for the human race ensues, though the motives for each side are dubious.

I’m reminded of a quote from The Chronicles of Riddick, spoken by Dame Judy Dench’s character: “In normal times, evil would be fought with good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil.” Hollywood likes pitting two evils against each other, and the “good guy” is the one with the quantifiably less evil motives. In the case of Venom and Riot, Venom just wants to eat people here and there (and only “bad guys” as Tom Hardy insists at the end of the film) while Riot wants to eat everyone. Thus, we are supposed to cheer for Venom. The lesser of two evils is the hero and the greater is the villain, because every conflict has to have a hero and a villain.

Does this notion translate into real life? Occasionally, though with hardly the same dramatic flair. During World War II, the New York Mafia took control of the ports in the interest of “national security,” though this arrangement greatly increased their illicit profits. Was national security protected? Perhaps, though it would hard to argue that the Mafia’s involvement was a good thing. There are numerous examples in history when an oppressed people or country turned to an outlaw tyrant to save them from their current tyrant, and things just go from bad to worse.

That’s the thing about evil: it’s always evil. And evil is ultimately selfish, hateful, and cruel. Evil cannot defeat evil; it can only replace it. Rom. 12:21 tells us to overcome evil with good. Nowhere in Scripture does evil supplant evil with good results. When confronted with a great evil, we should not cheer for another opposing yet still evil force, even if the promised results sound appealing. We should know that in the end, Venom is still the villain.

What makes a science fiction character stand out among the other aliens, starship captains, or brash pilots cluttering the universe? Which quality in a fantasy hero moves you to thrust a fist into the air and yell, “Yeah!” at her smallest victory? The most memorable characters in books and movies are often those who are quirky, funny, or battling the same issues we face. To grab our interest at all, a character must be flawed.

This week we feature Bridgett Powers and her novel Keeper of Shadows. Stop by the flagship book club on Facebook to learn more about this story.

Subscribe to Lorehaven Magazine for free! You can read the fall 2018 issue online, or download the free PDF copy. Our winter 2018 issue arrives next month!

Whether I’m enjoying epic fantasy, science fiction, or even children’s books, a common theme always emerges:

Light shines brightest through cracked lanterns.

While this statement applies to many areas of human brokenness, physical disability and society’s perceptions about it are subjects close to my heart. I’m overjoyed when books and movies in my favorite genres address these topics, especially if they do so in an authentic way.

How are characters with disabilities portrayed in speculative fiction? What can their stories teach us about overcoming our own limitations?

The superhero and comics genres feature many characters with disabilities (Daredevil, Professor X, and even Iron Man), while such heroes are much harder to find in science fiction and fantasy. (See the end of this article for a brief list of characters with disabilities from movies and books.)

Explore Keeper of Shadows in the Lorehaven library.

Disability can be a symptom of societal perception, rather than an actual impairment. A character might be considered disabled if he lacks a talent, gift, power, or interest that all others in his world possess. We find this in stories of fairies or angels who can’t fly. It is also portrayed in the animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, whose main character Flint Lockwood, whose intelligence, odd inventions, and complete lack of interest in the sardine canning business make him seem useless in the eyes of his father and community. Finally, this is a central theme of a novel I’m co-authoring, in which one of the main characters grows up on a planet where everyone has psionic powers—telepathy, telekinesis, etc.—while she has none.

For many of the characters I’ve researched, disability is portrayed as either the source of a superpower/heroic gift or the motivation for developing that power.

When good intentions go awry

We need to see people as more than their issues […] Fiction can foster empathy, and empathy can change the world.

—Ardi Alspach: 2017 blog interview with Borderline author Mishell Baker.

Speculative fiction characters with disabilities

This is just a taste of what’s available. Please note: I haven’t read/watched them all.

In superhero and comics

• Daredevil (blind)
• Professor X, a.k.a Charles Xavier, from X-Men (paralyzed)
• Iron Man (I’d consider his shrapnel issue a disabling heart condition.)
• Hawkeye (deaf, in some versions)
• Oracle/Batgirl (paralyzed)
• Strange (nerve damage in the hands)

In fantasy

• Toothless (broken tail) and, eventually, Hiccup (amputated leg) from How to Train Your Dragon (books by Cressida Cowell, movies by DreamWorks Animation)
• Merlin (portrayed as blind in some versions of Arthurian legends, including Robert Treskillard’s Merlin Spiral series).
• MadEye Moody from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (only has one eye).
• Millie from the urban fantasy Borderline by Mishell Baker (multiple disabilities, including mental illness)

In science fiction

• Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation (blind)
• Miles Vorkosigan from the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (dwarfism / fragile and prone to injury)

The problem is, of the few fantastical stories that contain—and even fewer that center around—characters with disabilities, many dilute their potential impact by using magic, technology, or superpowers to negate the difficult effects of the disability. To the other extreme, some make the disability the character’s main or sole trait. Still more fail to show the character realistically dealing with a disability’s effects on daily activities.

These discrepancies were part of the inspiration for the title character in my Light-Wielder Chronicles fantasy series. Like me, Lyssanne was born with limited vision. In creating her, I sought to dispel several tropes that not only create unrealistic perceptions, but also sabotage the impact heroic characters with disabilities could have on readers.

• Characters with limited vision are usually portrayed as totally blind—which is not, in fact, the most common degree of visual impairment. The majority of us have at least some usable vision.
• Blindness creates superhuman enhancement of the nonvisual senses. I wish! Other senses are heightened through consistent use of and reliance on them.
• A spinoff of this is the “blind seer” character, who can predict the future, perceive present events taking place elsewhere, or use other forms of perception beyond normal sight.
• By the end of the book or series, the character’s sight is restored. Heroic impact negated.

Disability is merely one aspect of a person’s life—not a superpower, an insurmountable barrier to her call, nor a problem that must be fixed if she is to achieve her happy ending.

Finding our superpowers

Stories that show characters coping with disability in a realistic way can empower us to do the same. Like the heroes of page and screen, we—their fans—have a choice: To accept a physical or perceived limitation as a disabling factor in our lives, or to use it as the catalyst for developing our own superpowers.

The secret ingredient for transforming disability into power is not green goo from outer space, radioactive particles, or a pile of inherited wealth that pays for a crack R&D team. It’s found in Philippians 4:13 & Romans 8:28. With Jesus, we can become the heroes of our own stories.

While authors and movie creators have a phenomenal opportunity to influence society’s perception of people with disabilities, it is the fans who make real change happen. How? We can support books and movies that portray such characters in a positive but realistic light, share our favorites with friends, and start meaningful conversations (on- and offline) about these stories. When we do so, we help the characters we love, the very real people who inspire them, and ourselves shine a bit brighter—despite our cracks.

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“. . . This gentle, imaginative fantasy has magic of its own.”
— Lorehaven Magazine

Explore more about Bridgett Powers’s novel:

• Read Lorehaven Magazine’s complete review online (with free subscription).
• Explore Keeper of Shadows in the Lorehaven Library.
• Read the complete fall 2018 issue of Lorehaven Magazine online, or download the free PDF.

Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror, and Christmas is a month away. We are officially in the buying season. Or maybe the spending season, since non-profits have claimed “Giving Tuesday” for themselves, and some are making the big push for end-of-the-year donations. In all the flurry, don’t forget books.

We here at Spec Faith discuss, explore, analyze, talk about fiction, in all its iterations. Movies and DVDs and graphic novels and video games have nudged their way into the attention of our culture, certainly. But don’t forget about books. You know, novels. The source from which many of the movies derive.

Of course, I especially think those who visit Spec Faith and understand that we discuss speculative fiction from a Christian worldview, will be interested in the books that don’t get on the NY Times bestseller lists (often) or have commercials on network TV (here’s looking at you James Patterson).

Just last week I had a Facebook friend request reading recommendations for her seven children! I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Readers who want their kids to be readers give books so that those young ones have something good to read.

But I realized something disappointing: I don’t know the field of speculative fiction as I once did. When I managed the CSSF Blog Tour and the Clive Staples Award, and before self-publishing took off, I knew the speculative novels that were coming out or ones that had most recently come out. I’ve stayed in touch with the ever growing number of books as best I can, but largely I’m limited to ones that make finalist lists in contests or ones that friends put out. And because the number of published novels is greater and greater, I can’t read all of them. Consequently, I don’t know which of those books need to be brought up to the public for recommendation.

Thankfully we have a resource: Lorehaven, the publication under the direction of Spec Faith’s E. Stephen Burnett, exists for such a time as this. Through flash reviews, the development of book clubs, and author interviews or discussion or profiles, Lorehaven shines the light on speculative books in ways that allow readers to decide for themselves.

We are, after all, in the era of review-promotion. The books at Amazon with the most reviews go to the front of the line when it comes to Amazon promotion. And the reviews that are more than cheerleading, that have some substance, that let me know what the books are about, are the ones that will likely influence my buying power.

My original intention was to start a list of books that I’d recommend. It’s pretty short since I haven’t done as much reading this year. My hope is that visitors will add their own recommendations in the comments. Above all, I want to remind us all to include books for Christmas.

So my short list:
The Button Girl by Sally Apokedak (YA)
Escape to Vindor by Emily Golus (YA)
Growing up Neighborlee by Michelle L. Levigne
The Mapmaker’s Daughter by Joanna Emerson (YA)

Authors I recommend (I’ve read past books, may even have a book of theirs in my TBR pile, may already be part way through one of theirs, and have confidence in their storytelling):

• Patrick Carr
• Jill Williamson
• K. M. Weiland
• Matt Mikalatos
• Nadine Brandes

And of course, don’t forget the classic speculative fiction novels such as Narnia and The Lord Of The Rings. Don’t forget books that have been out for a few years like Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga or Jonathan Rogers’s Wilderking Trilogy, Karen Handcock’s Arena or her Legends Of The Guardian-King trilogy.

You may have noticed that my list doesn’t include any science fiction. Sorry. My preference is showing, though I know some good sci-fi writers and want to see their books picked up, too. But because I’m not a sci fi reader, I hesitate to recommend to true sci fi readers these books simply because I’m pretty naive about the genre. For example, is the premise fresh? It might be fresh to me, but what if 25 other writers have already put out stories with the same premise? I wouldn’t know. So I’d rather leave this category and supernatural horror and the like open for you to give your recommendations.

Please add to my list of fantasies, too. I mean, the more we know about the good books, the more we have to choose from, because this year, for Christmas, we don’t want to forget about books!