"'Your God.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708 AT p. 700.
Maybe people should stop using that word in public discourse? They appeal to a transcendent and ultimate authority, then express contradictory personal opinions as to the nature of that authority. "God says..." means "I think...," "No, I think..." I have heard the word used aggressively, judgementally - in vain?
There is one Christian sf writer who I think contributes to this debate. HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon wrote anthropocentric future histories. CS Lewis presented a theocentric response. James Blish and Poul Anderson were Welsian-Stapledonian sf authors who took theology seriously, Blish explicitly referring to Lewis.
Wells and Stapledon: man remakes himself with science.
Lewis: such a project is literally diabolical.
Blish: After Such Knowledge.
Anderson: "The Problem of Pain"; The Game of Empire.
Quoting from memory because a copy of Lewis' collection, The Dark Tower and other stories, is not to hand, when the fictional Lewis inadvertently enters the mind of a former student's fiancee, he walks through her dreary inner landscape, the "Shoddy Lands" of the story's title, then hears a knocking and a voice that says, "'Child, child, child, let me in before the night comes.'" In this sentence, reality, personified and focused through the author's faith and imagination, directly addresses the reader. It, or He if you prefer, speaks to me.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I would have included "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "The Season of Forgiveness" as well. We see Anderson treating religion and theology seriously in those stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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