Mike Carey's Lucifer, now Machiavellian rather than malevolent, advises a British schoolgirl, Elaine Belloc, when she succeeds her grandfather as God;
when James Blish's Satan succeeds the previous incumbent as God, the theological revolution affects even the text which changes from punctuated prose to indented prose to Miltonic verse to a drama script.
For once, Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, in which the Adversary is routinely defeated, seems almost tame by comparison! But, as this blog shows, Anderson excels in most aspects of imaginative fiction, e.g., time travel, future histories, cosmological sf and historical fantasies.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would say, rather, that Anderson's conception of Satan seemed "tame" because the view he took of the Adversary was that of orthodox Christianity: the impenitent, implacable enemy of God and man. A view I agree with. I find the idea of a merely Machiavellian or weary Satan to be far more tame!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Testing, recopying my comment above. When I go to the "front page" of the blog, it did not say "1 comment."
I would say, rather, that Anderson's conception of Satan seemed "tame" because the view he took of the Adversary was that of orthodox Christianity: the impenitent, implacable enemy of God and man. A view I agree with. I find the idea of merely Machiavellian or weary Satan to be far more tame!
Ad astra! Sean
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