Surviving the blog tour

Well the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour on The Shadow and Night is coming to an end and I seem to have had a vast number of reviews. First things first; I would like to thank all of you who read the book, particularly those of you who seem to have found it, as we Brits would say, ‘not my cup of tea’. Had I time I would individually answer some of these reviews, particularly those that have raised helpful or challenging points. But you can’t do everything.

I will try to compile some of what I consider to be the more insightful reviews and post them on my blog. Yes, there were some negative ones but the general tone was surprisingly positive. One or two people – apparently sane too – praised my books with adjectives that went beyond those I would personally have used. I loved being a ‘fabulous Welsh author’; the word fabulous of course has a double meaning: ‘excellent’ and ‘mythical’. Anyway I need to go over all these reviews and think about them. I actually find reading reviews difficult: bad ones nag me and good ones make me feel vaguely guilty of pride. But I am very grateful to all who have been involved; it’s been a very helpful exercise.

Let me make a few comments. Some people consider the books have been misclassified and one or two clearly felt disappointed that the books didn’t fit in their definition of ‘fantasy’. Well, I have secular colleagues who plainly felt that the books are fantasy simply by dint of their invoking a God who acts. Perhaps we had better call them ‘genre-breaking’ or ‘speculative fiction’. (I have discussed this more at length on my monthly speculative faith blog). A few others felt that the tagline, ‘a fantasy in the tradition of C. S. Lewis and Tolkien’ was misleading because (surprise, surprise) I don’t write as well as they did. I am surprised anybody thought that such a phrase was a claim to quality.

One of two people frankly found the books rather hard going. Fair enough. Are there any books that everybody likes? Well, to this day I agonise over as to whether I should have speeded things up in Book 1. Yet, on balance, I think I made the right decision. Tall buildings need deep foundations and what I was doing in the first hundred pages was laying the foundation for the remaining 1,600. One theme which recurs on almost every page of the books is that of innocent men and women grappling with the novelty of evil. I do not see how this could have been remotely effective had I not, perhaps clumsily, tried to draw something of the world of innocence first.

One slightly curious point was that I expected two objections, but failed to get either. The first was that, unless I am mistaken, no one was terribly upset that I had deviated from standard North American imminent pre-millennialism. I also don’t recollect anyone getting terribly upset that I seemed to be happy with an old age of the universe. I suspect they made allowances for me being a Brit. and therefore de facto theologically suspect. Incidentally, a number of people were clearly struck by the accompanying letter I wrote, which talked about what I felt it meant to be a Welsh author. At some point, I really ought to post this on my website.

And now I better get back to my college work! With every blessing.

Blog Tour

Yes, I know it isn't Friday, but The Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour, as I've already mentioned in a few blogs, is on now until Wednesday.

Check the links to find reviews and see what people are saying. Thanks to all who are participating!

Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Grace Bridges
Jackie Castle
Carol Bruce Collett
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Marcus Goodyear
Rebecca Grabill
Jill Hart
Katie Hart
Michael Heald
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Heather R. Hunt
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika or Mir’s Here
Pamela Morrisson
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Donna Swanson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Two ways of writing a book

Some news first. I am away in the Midlands at the moment at the end of half-term and so am somewhat technologically isolated. Let's hope then that this blog makes it out into cyberspace. Secondly, next week, there is a concerted series of reviews on Shadow and Night by various reviewers associated with the Christian Science Fiction and fantasy group. So all sorts of people will be visiting my blog and hopefully saying nice things. So regulars, please be on your best behaviour!

Anyway I am busy with an editing project at the moment which, in addition to my normal job (the one that pays the salary) is keeping me pretty busy. I'm also finding myself preaching fairly regularly and am standing in for someone this Sunday; your prayers would be welcome. Nevertheless in my spare moments my thoughts are turning to the next sequence of books: provisionally entitled the Seventh Ship trilogy. At this stage, all I'm doing is putting thoughts and ideas together. Yet as I do this I have noticed that I am proceeding along a double track and think it worth sharing this.

One of the things I'm doing is factual. I am creating a world. What is the geography? What is the climate? What is the economic system? Who speaks what language? What is the level of technology? I am writing all those things that would be included if the CIA factbook or Wikipedia had articles on my imagined world (and know I don't have a name for it yet). This sort of thing is very intellectual, very logical and in one sense a long way removed from writing narrative. It is also frankly very dull; if you don't know how dull such things can be you have never read Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Much, perhaps most, of the information will never make it into print but will hopefully lurk in the background giving some sense of depth and reality.

Yet the second thing I'm doing is much more disorganised. It is, as it were, seeing pictures. I am imagining, or perhaps being, given images – snapshots – clips, if you like, of people, places and events. So for instance the other day I came up with a long line of steep-sided volcanoes rising up out of the sea and the fading away into the cloudy distance. I have pictures of a dispute in a dusty library, of a warm and sweaty night in reedbeds with something nameless lurking in the rippling waters nearby, I have seen people looking up to a distant range of mountains with fear in their eyes. These images are all largely disconnected. I had no idea how they fit together, if they do fit. Frankly, I do not really know whether I will use them all.

What is interesting is how contrasted these two strands are. The first is clearly much more cerebral and surely factual; it comes from the head. The second is much more intuitive and it emotional, sometimes it defies rationality. It clearly come from the heart or whatever organ it is that is genuinely creative. Both however are essential. I presume that readers want lively events in a living world and it is hard to see how one could write a long series of novels without doing both the creating the background situation and the dreaming up of the tale. Even in fantasy worlds, facts must be matched with experiences.

Normally I try and end my blog with some sort of meaningful theological observation. I'm not sure I have one here. But it does seem to me to demonstrate the intricacy both of writing and what we are as human beings. There's a complexity to us, my friends, which speaks to me more of us being made in the Master’s image than being the product of blind chance over however many million years you want.

The Archbishop makes people think

Well, the winter’s monsoon seems to have ended and we've finally had some dry weather. Yet it remains very mild and today as I drove back from College in sunlight, spring didn't seem far away. Hurrah! Increasingly winters seem to pass us by in the UK. Oh yes, every so often a cold flurry will blast down out of what is left of the Arctic and rampage across Britain, depositing a few inches of snow, but within hours it's all gone. Down here in the moist southwest of Great Britain we have had nothing remotely approaching snow all winter.

But enough of the weather: there were lots of things I was thinking of talking about this week but then yesterday the sort of the big story blew up that I cannot really resist commenting on. I'm not sure whether it has made it over to where some of you dwell, but it's not the sort of purely local news that you good citizens of Tallahassee, Des Moines or even Brisbane can dismiss with a shrug of the shoulders. On the contrary, here we may just be a few steps ahead of the rest of the world.

Basically, in case you missed it, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said, in as many words, that he felt that some form of Sharia law in Britain was probably inevitable. The result has been an enormous row, and for the first time that anyone can remember, people are seriously asking for the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Now as someone who has lived abroad in the more or less Muslim world of West Beirut for eight years I have some interest – and experience – in this matter. I have also, frankly, an interest in the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not just that he is a Swansea man and a poet of some repute, (we Welsh writers need to stick together) it is because about seven years ago, before he was promoted to being head of the entire Anglican Church, I actually had quite a long chat with him. In his capacity as Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Wales he had been speaking at a Swansea Christian leaders meeting and at the meal that followed I found myself, quite inadvertently, sitting opposite him. We chatted about all sorts of things, the longer ending of Mark, Christianity and the environment, N. T. Wright and various other things. I remember asking him what he was reading at the moment. He then waxed lyrical about an obscure (and, I gathered, not just to me) Eastern European theologian from the Orthodox church. I came away with the impression of a man with a brilliant mind (he had held a distinguished post at Oxford) but one who was only questionably Anglican. I felt that, given half a chance, he’d quite happily have defected to the Orthodox.

Anyway, shortly afterwards, he got promoted to the big job. Several things have marked out his primacy, and both the sympathies with the Eastern Church and the intelligence I had been struck with have been a dominant feature. But as yesterday showed intelligence and wisdom are actually separate things and as innumerable commentators pointed out, he showed a great lack of wisdom in suggesting that some form of Sharia might be inevitable in the UK. One of the problems with Dr Williams is that he doesn't do clear, concise sentences. His language is rich, wordy, multi-layered and nuanced. Even people with a high level of English have to reread his articles to be sure of what he is saying. Try this for an example: "The rule of law is thus not the enshrining of priority for the universal/abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which it is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such, independent of membership in any specific human community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and understanding, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity - and that the only way of doing this is to acknowledge the category of 'human dignity as such' - a non-negotiable assumption that each agent (with his or her historical and social affiliations) could be expected to have a voice in the shaping of some common project for the well-being and order of a human group." Welcome back!

Anyway he seems to have meant that Sharia was, in some way inevitable. There is a lot I could say about this. After all, we have a large, diverse and troubled Muslim community, and how Muslims relate to traditional UK values is unclear. It's not of course helped by the fact that, notoriously, we British have no constitution and suffer from a mindset which could be summed up as ‘we’re sure it will work out somehow’. Anyway, as many people have rushed to comment, this opens up all manner of problems. For one, Sharia varies across differing Islamic communities and in some cases seems to be little more than a formalised way of preserving traditional culture. No one really seems to know exactly what it means and what are its limits. For another, if Islam is allowed exemptions from the law why should not Judaism, Rastafarianism (with its dedication to hashish) or even Chris-ianity – my own personal form of hedonistic religion – also be granted exemption?

Three points, I think can be made. The first is that quite simply, the Archbishop could have been much clearer. There are constant claims by his office that he is being misquoted, but given his style of language it's hard not to misunderstand what is happening. Words and phrasing that would work very well in an Oxford common room are inappropriate for today's world. It is clear the man needs the discipline of writing a blog every week.

Secondly, Archbishop seems to have the sort of rosy view of Islam and Sharia that is commonly found amongst academics who deal only with highly educated representatives of other faiths who are on their best behaviour. The reality on the ground is, as many have pointed out, very different. So for instance, for all the fine words about the rights of women under Islam, their lot is not a happy one. Equally, the fact is that the blasphemy laws within Sharia can clearly be used to take down any critic of the system. Islam is not really a religion in the sense that Christianity is. I recall an interesting conversation with a very bright, ex-Muslim-but-not-yet-Christian, who said to me “Chris, you know, I don't see Islam as a religion.” “You’d better explain that,” I replied, nonplussed. The answer was memorable: “Chris, I see it as a social structure, a system of organising society. It is that much more than a religion.” It’s a fair point. In short, the Archbishop needs to paid more attention to the harsh reality rather than the benign dream. To make a literary point; maybe he should have read less philosophy and theology and more tales of genuine experience.

The third point is that he has, at least, raised the matter to the level where it must be discussed. Presumably by accident – he seems genuinely surprised at being either understood (or misunderstood) – he has made the point that multiculturalism does not work. After all, if we are going to let different communities go their own separate way then it is surely inevitable that the most legalistic of those religions will demand that its legalism is enforceable. That is probably a ray of silver in the cloud of the dispute.

Another and brighter gleam of silver is this. Atheists and their kind may not like Christianity, but it is now plainer than it ever was that to remove Christianity from Western society creates a vacuum. That vacuum is clearly unsustainable and there is one obvious major contender to fill its void. Today, my atheist friends were only too happy to agree that the Christian faith might perhaps have something in its favour. You could tell from the way they phrased things that they clearly felt that there were far worse possible systems to live under. Indeed, there are.

On badges

About 18 months ago, suddenly, without any warning, the college where I work issued us all with name badges, complete with barcode and not terribly good picture. We hang them around our necks with a ribbon with a special easy snap link so that, should students wish to do us harm, we cannot be throttled by our own name badges. I hasten to add this is an extremely rare and even unlikely occurrence; we count ourselves fortunate (I hope we do) because it is very rare indeed for students even to shout at members of staff.

I have decided that I am distinctly ambiguous about my badge. On the one hand, it gives me a sense of belonging. We dress very informally so this is the only thing we have that’s like a uniform. It says to anyone who comes in that I am a member of the college and not a parent, a tradesman or workman. In troubled times it is also a useful security measure and I suppose, in a small way, it gives us some sort of esprit de corps. It is also useful with a number of new teachers who frankly look so young that I might otherwise be tempted to mistake them for students.

And yet, I am also uneasy about my name badge. This was brought home to me this evening when coming in, laden with marking, at a quarter to five I found that almost the first thing I did was go upstairs and take my badge off. I found this interesting: Monday to Thursday evenings, I don't seem to have too much of a problem with a badge and sometimes my wife has to remind me to take it off before a Bible study. But on Friday nights, even if I have to work in the evening, I feel it is essential to get rid of the badge. I have no doubt there have been deep and penetrating studies done on badges and their significance but my feeling is that we see such a badge as a mark of ownership branded on us by someone else. The weekends I see as my own, and so here I reject any subliminal claims that I belong to my employer during this time. I would imagine those people who wear uniforms must feel something similar; the need to get out of them. There is something proprietorial about wearing the badge of one's employer.

My difficulty is that I cannot decide whether, spiritually (and surely this is the key point) my unease about the badge is a good thing or a bad thing. Is my wish to separate myself from my employer a good thing (a measure of the freedom I have in Christ? an unease about anything hinting at the Mark of the Beast?) or a bad one (my selfish and sinful desire for independence rearing its ugly head?)? How can I tell the difference?

Quickly, some other news. During February, a Christian fiction site is running me as the blog author of the month and we are hoping that this is the little push that will start the snowball rolling on the slope of fame. Mind you, things are already moving, my Facebook Lamb among the Stars fan group now has 96 names on it (and most look sane! :-) ). This week alone, I have had a request for a website interview and a separately blog site asking for review copies of the books. Well, we will see: I have been in the writing game too long to build my hopes up too much. Indeed, the measure of fame and following that I currently enjoy is probably more than I might have expected.

Blessings one and all.

A worrying vista

Curiously enough for a blog, I don’t often talk about technology. After all, rumour has it that we blog writers are technology freaks: at best geeks, if not nerds. Anyway, in addition to many good things this week (the next generation down for a wet weekend, generally keeping ahead of work and students and even a few hours of sun), I have been also trying to make the most of my new Vista-equipped Dell computer.

In theory, it is a bit of a beast: 3Gb of RAM, fast Core2Duo 2.66 GHz chip, pretty reasonable graphics card and 22 inch monitor. All ought to be sweetness and light after my rather elderly machine running Windows XP. And don’t get me wrong: most of the time it looks wonderful, and acts wonderful. But I worry about what I see.

The main thing is that operating system has become so vast as to become almost incomprehensible. When I first started using PCs 22 years ago, I used to worry that there were files in MS-DOS that I didn’t know what they did. Then with Windows 95 I was concerned about the subdirectories that I didn’t know what they did. Now, with Vista, I worry about entire directories (occupying tens of megabytes) that I have not the slightest idea what they do.

Here Mr Gates might say, ‘Chris, that’s the price you pay for full stability. Ignorance is the price of bliss.’ Well, I might believe that if I felt I knew what Microsoft is doing. But clearly, it doesn’t. So, for instance, I have cancelled the automatic download of security updates because every day Vista downloads a 5.4 Mb Security Update (KB927978 for those who are interested) and then tries to install it when I try and shut down. But it never fully manages to do this, and so repeats the procedure. Every day. At this rate, my hard disk will be filled with useless security updates. The only way round seems to be to switch off the automatic download so that I get a little red cross in the corner to nag me that my security system is deficient.

As someone who has an environmental commitment I am also irritated by the fact that Vista seems to prefer that you put it in sleep mode rather than switch off mode. The naughty thought comes to me that this is to make the machine appear faster than it really is; it is pretty slow to start up (yes, I have removed most of the superfluous programs that it came installed with). The machine is also prone to long periods of doing nothing. I gather I am not alone in experiencing these things.

This is the point at which I expect the great army of Mac lovers to leap in and say ‘Yes! You should have bought a Mac.’ Well, I have a Macbook, and it’s good but it’s not perfect. Leopard shouldn’t have been released in the buggy form that it was and I also think that the Mac operating system seems to be heading very much to the state that Windows has already reached, of ever greater complexity and ever greater incomprehensibility. Anyway there are so many programs that I need Windows for. (Except of course that I have had to reinstall – and in some cases repurchase – programs in order to get them to work on Vista.)

The whole trend towards bloated and inscrutable software troubles me. It is probably not an original thought that operating systems are like religions. They are there to lead you to God and not get in the way. Vista reminds me of the worst sort of high church ritual; glorious to behold, completely incomprehensible, encrusted with all sorts of completely over-the-top additions, and ultimately, largely unnecessary. I have a determined Protestant desire not to be fobbed off with the pompous, the irrelevant and the bloated. I just want the job done quickly and securely. Let’s have a computer Reformation!

The problem of blessing

A number of years ago I had a slightly unpleasant experience. We had just come back to Swansea from Lebanon and I was at a church meeting where one of the current evangelical gurus from London, a suave, smart-suited fellow with not a hair out of place, was holding forth on the subject of workplace evangelism. In the best tradition of not lecturing at people without a break he made us do some exercise on, I think, what our work colleagues liked. I stared at the blank sheet of paper for some time. The suited man strolled over and stared at me. “Are you finding it a bit too easy?” he asked. “No,” I said. “I’m unemployed.”

I was reminded of this salutary tale last night, when feeling like some dynastic Victorian father, I gazed over the table at not just my wife but Son I and wife, and Son 2 and fiancée, just arrived for the weekend through rain and wind, all discussing the Puritans. I felt blessed and want to share it but, mindful of my readership, feel uneasy. For there are those who are not so blessed.

I know I am not alone in being made uneasy by blessings. In our church, for example, we have taken a decision not to mark Mothering Sunday. We have too many failed marriages, single women and infertile couples. (If your church is different, please don’t tell me.) In a city where unemployment has never really gone away, we try, unlike the besuited speaker, not to assume that everyone has a job and a pension. In writing this blog to a largely unknown readership I must assume that not all out there are as blessed as I am. This raises a problem: what am I to do with my blessing? How am I to express my pleasure at friends, family, health, a measure of wealth (at least by the standards of most of the world) and yes, blog readers and fans? And all entirely undeserved.

In fact, I suspect that this last phrase is the key. It is a grace gift: it is all undeserved. (By the way isn’t it the unfortunate and probably inadvertent implication that blessing has been merited, one of the things that makes the prosperity gospel so unappealing?) So friends far and wide, I am blessed: I give thanks and I wish there was some way of sharing it around.

On various other matters, I apologise for the delay in writing the blog; it’s been a busy week. It’s that time of the month when I write a blog for Speculative Faith and I have had a lot of other things to do. And now, back to the family.

Answers please

Well, back to teaching this week. The way the UK system works is that there are now major exams at the end of the year 12 when the kids are aged 16 or 17. These are actually extremely significant exams as any university application largely depends on the results. So, my students have come back from Christmas and you can see it dawning on them that very weighty matters which will affect the rest of their lives are just a few months away. It concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Anyway I want to throw out two questions to you today. I have been asked about both and I have no answer to either.

The first was a serious inquiry as to whether or not I had ever considered turning the books into a graphic novel. Frankly, I used to be rather scathing about such things until we went to France, the land of culture, and noticed that in the bookshops they always have a big section of graphic novels which they call bandes dessinée. (As an aside it is worth noting that whereas on British holidays visiting bookshops is pretty much inevitable due to our weather, we have been weeks in France and never considered visiting a bookshop.) It turns out that the French (as with the Japanese but not the British) are big on these things. I actually know very little about them, but I am now much less cynical. At best, they clearly are a distinctive and attractive art form of their own. In fact, I am reminded as I write that we once had a graphic story book of the Bible, which was so impressive that we lent it to someone and have never had it back. Given that many of my students, some of whom are otherwise very bright, do not read traditional books it seems to me that these are an interesting genre. Anybody out there know anything more about them? Anybody write them? Draw them? Know anybody to contact?

The second question, which occurred on the Lamb among the Stars Facebook page was on how appropriately to celebrate the release of the Infinite Day in June. Incidentally, if you have not visited that page and joined the fan club please do. I take a small – and possibly pathetic – pleasure in the fact that the number of people who are subscribed to the fan club has now just edged up over 70. Anyway there was the suggestion that we might try to have a virtual launch party. It is complicated, because in some parts of the world the books will not yet have arrived or been released. And I really don’t want plot spoilers occurring. But it would be fun to come up with an idea to celebrate what is a small, but clearly global association of fans. Something new that would be good publicity might be a good idea. Anyway over to you again: any ideas?

On suicide bombers and cultural suicide

Over the last year or so, I have found myself wondering about my hearing. Conversation in crowded places and restaurants has seemed difficult and I have, on odd occasions, misheard students in class. Anyway I got my ears tested this morning and was pleasantly surprised to discover that my hearing was perfectly normal. The sensitivity of the left ear was very slightly down but it was still within normal parameters.

As I thought about the results, two related (trust me) thoughts came together. The first was sitting at my desk, eating lunch in Beirut one Monday in April 1983. In a paroxysm of sound somehow incarnated as brute force, I was picked up off my chair and thrown to the floor. As I staggered to my feet I could see through the door to left of where I had been sitting, shattered windows. Beyond them, a billowing black and grey cloud was angrily boiling rising up from the American Embassy, barely a hundred yards away. It soon transpired that a truck had driven in with what was later determined to be nearly 1,000 kg of high explosive. As stood amid the broken glass, my ears ringing, I heard the surprise in the voices of my Lebanese colleagues as they passed on the rumour that it had been a suicide bomber. Despite nine years of civil war it was an novel concept; it is now generally held that this was first suicide bombing of its kind.

I also remember going up to the American University Hospital shortly afterwards for some reason I cannot now remember. As walked up I saw a young couple – evidently Americans – walking away from the hospital, holding each other for comfort, their once smart clothes, their hair and their grief-stricken faces covered in a fine pale dust that made them look like as if they had returned from the grave. When I saw their kind again on 9/11, I shuddered. So I do wonder whether my slightly weaker left ear is a tiny scar of that blast. In which case I got off lightly: sixty-three people died.

The second thought was this: if it isn’t my hearing, is it my students? Actually I think there is something in this. My students – bless them – as a whole no longer read and they no longer read to people. Many of them have lost the art of clear speaking or any sort of verbal clarity. Their music shouts at them and they mutter at each other and mumble back. With exceptions, they do not express themselves with either clarity or coherence. I’m probably oversimplifying and I’m not blaming them. But I do think we have lost the art of speaking properly and what that portends seems to me far more worrying than any number of suicide bombers.

On a more cheery note; our younger son, Mark has just announced his engagement to a splendid lass, Alice. We heartily approve and the wedding is set for 15 November in the rather tasteful (and more importantly) very evangelical London church of St James Clerkenwell. Hurrah!

Christmas and "The Children of Men"

Well, I hope you all had a good Christmas. Ours was pretty uneventful. For the first time for 26 years we had just the two of us for Christmas Day lunch, and I’m almost afraid to confess that we thoroughly enjoyed the break. Mind you, I made up for it on Boxing Day, where I spent literally twelve hours at church, helping manage Swansea’s Chinese Christian Fellowship in their big Christmas celebration. It was very impressive: I think in the end, they had over 200 people there. Well done guys!

What else to report? My article on Pullman on the Speculative Faith website aroused the attention of a very earnest atheist who wrote a long response. Unfortunately, this sort of site is not ideally suited for this sort of thing and actually, I don’t think most of the readership are terribly interested in apologetics. Equally, as someone pointed out to me, I believe we haven’t really worked out a proper way of doing debates on the Internet. Certainly not on blogs. Anyway, this thing got more and more sprawling as every time I answered the point he would retaliate with a response of greater length. As I have a life to lead, I curtailed it rather hoping that someone else would weigh in. It was a pity actually as he came up with the usual rather feeble comments about Jesus at the end. You know the sort of thing: if anything in the Gospels is challenging and striking it’s borrowed from Judaism or made up by the early church. The problem with this sort of thing is that it fails to explain how the church got started in the first place, least of all on that pretty improbable claim that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead.

Anyway, we got the DVD of the film Children of Men and watched it last night. If you haven’t seen it it’s worth borrowing, although the language is pretty strong. I suppose you could describe it as the curious offspring of the high Anglican English novelist P. D. James and the Mexican ex-catholic Alfonso Cuarón, but actually it’s more a loose meditation by Cuarón on themes from James’s novel than an adaptation. It’s an compelling dystopic tale of a near future where childlessness prevails, although a very major (and added) theme in the film is immigration. There’s a lot of catholic imagery too. Perhaps the most impressive thing is the compelling look and feel of an England that has fallen very much to nasty pieces. The urban fighting scenes seemed to me to be excellently done; there was an authentic and visceral (in every sense of the word) feel of places like Civil War Beirut. The interesting thing is although the film ends on a positive note, it is very open ended. From the relevant Wikipedia article this seems to be deliberate. In other words, it is the sort of typical post-modern offering in which it is the viewer's task to make sense of what is happening.

I would dearly like to know what P. D. James thought of it all. I think I shall have to insert a clause in my will that I do not allow my books to be creatively reinterpreted in this fashion. I’m afraid I am old-fashioned; I feel that in writing the text the way I did, I imposed my meaning on it at birth. I feel almost inclined to say 'dear reader, if you want another version that tells another story, then go away and write a tale of your own'. I hope that doesn’t sound grumpy!

Happy New Year to one and all. And Alfonso Cuarón, don't call me; I'll call you.

Chris

A Christmas story

I thought I would tell you a true story of the most memorable Christmas I ever had. Twenty five years ago exactly, we were living in Beirut in a very fine apartment overlooking the Mediterranean on the campus of the American University. Now, by way of background, you need to know that 1982 was the year the Israelis invaded Lebanon, pounded their way up to Beirut, besieged it and drove the PLO out. I was a helpless and rather scared bystander of the first part of that episode; it was horrendous (it is now generally admitted to have resulted in 17,000 plus deaths). It was also ultimately futile; the war was planned and a success, the subsequent peace unplanned and a failure. (Sound familiar?) Towards the end of the fighting, a thousand plus Palestinian civilians were massacred at Sabra and Chatila by “Christian” militiamen: to what extent the supervising Israeli army knew – or even approved of it – is debated. The upshot was that a horrified West sent in a peacekeeping force, a large component of which were US marines. By the end of ‘82 the peace was still holding, although fighting in the mountains was beginning as various parties tried to settle old scores. But that December, a quarter of century ago, US troops were still driving around the city without body armour and weapons.

Through the Southern Baptist church that we attended, we invited three US marines for Christmas lunch. They arrived at church in their battledress, took part in the service and then walked down with us through the protected greenery of the campus to where we lived. They were polite and reserved but glad to be away from barracks; we ate good food and talked of all sorts of things. In the afternoon, we walked around the campus; it was a dry, cool day and the sun shone on the snows of the mountains above Beirut. We came back for more food and we have a photo of our eldest, John – just eight months at the time – sitting on a Marine’s lap, all smiles, his head almost buried by a forage cap. At some point, we would have made the inevitable observation that if there wasn't a heavily defended border in the way, we could have driven down to Bethlehem in a couple of hours. As night fell I prepared to take them back to their barracks and before they left they signed our visitor’s book. I have it before me now and their names were: Walter T. Kennedy of Duxbury, Mass, William H. Bowman of Marlow Heights, Maryland and Hector Colon of Vieqeus, Puerto Rico.

I drove them the five miles or so back along unlit, ruined roads and between wrecked buildings. On the way we passed Sabra and Chatila and the mass graves: we fell silent. Evil was about us and you could believe that in the dense shadows by the roadside, ghosts lurked. At the barracks – an ugly, four-storey building on the edge of the airport – we said farewell.

Yet if there were the ghosts of the past that day, there were also ghosts of the future. Almost exactly ten months later, on 23 0ctober, 1983, just after six on a quiet Sunday morning, a driver with a truck full of explosives drove into those Marine barracks and detonated a massive amount of explosives (5,400 kg of TNT; “the largest non-nuclear blast ever detonated on the face of the earth” ). 240 Marines were killed as the building was instantly turned to rubble. The blast woke me; a second blast, minutes later, that hit the French contingent, kept me awake. Looking at the list of the killed years later on the web I found that none of our guests had been slain; presumably their tour of duty was long over and they had been rotated out.

Now this point I hear the protests. Chris, you promised us a Christmas story. This is not one. It is awkward, it is troubling and doesn't have the happy glow, the chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire factor that we like. No, it doesn't. But let me turn this round: who said that this sort of Christmas – the one promoted by Dickens, Hollywood and a billion Christmas cards – is authentic? Haven't we created – and connived in – (for all for the best reasons, of course) something that goes against the Christmas story? Read the biblical narrative again; isn't it all set in dark times? Do you see much cosiness in the stable? Much seasonal joy In Herod? (He would have understood Sabra and Chatila!). Have we erased the greedy brutality of the Roman occupation? What has happened to the warning of Simeon in Luke 2: 35 “And a sword will pierce your own soul too”?

Isn't Christmas all about God intervening in a thoroughly messed up and horrid world? Isn’t celebrating Christmas itself a declaration of faith – sometimes proclaimed in darkness – that despite the reign of evil, good wins in the end. In fact, and here’s a theologically worded thought: have we gutted Christmas by taking eschatology out of it? Doesn’t the mess that is this sad world only make sense in the light, not just of the first coming of Christ, but the Second?

Anyway, whether at peace or war, have the best of Christmases.

Chris

Philip Pullman: an odd letter

Using similar methods to those alluded to by C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters I have recovered the following recent letter from a senior devil to his nephew.

My dear Sneerpate,

Rumour has reached me that you are delighted that your patient’s son has started to read Philip Pullman and is going to see the film the Golden Compass. I am appalled at your enthusiasm. I see this as yet another indicator of the declining standards of the Tempters College. I suppose it is inevitable that, after generations of persuading humans that idiocy is a desirable state of mind – with some startling results – junior tempters are stupid themselves.

Do you really believe that these books or this film will ensure this child stays out of the Enemy’s hands? Oh, I can hear your pathetic answer, “Please Uncle Gnawbone, in the last book God is killed off.” And so he is. But do you really think that even the most naïve human child would recognise in that feeble caricature the dreadful reality about whom we can barely think without terror?

However, that is not the real issue. That is simply this; what is the price we pay for them to be tempted by such works? Oh yes, ’god’ is cast down, but those who read these books are expected to put their faith in all manner of things that human scepticism or what is called ‘rationality’ denies: magic, daemons, witches, wizards! You see what you are encouraging? Far from leading this child into the barren deserts of atheism with its insistence that the only things that exist are those that can be seen and felt, you are running the risk that this boy will develop a hunger for fantasy. Do you really not understand the danger? He may acquire a hunger for the supernatural, a longing for that which his everyday world will never provide. Fantasie is a perilous land for us. In those realms, it is all too easy for the Enemy to appear. Weren’t you strictly instructed that the safest route to the flames of our Father’s house is that wide, well populated path that shuns any hint of magic? Indeed so perilous is fantasy even when it is marketed as ‘atheistic’ that there are those amongst us who suggest that under all his many words (how these humans talk!) this Pullman is in fact an agent of the Enemy.

No, Sneerpate, keep the child from all fantasy. Indeed, better still, from reading. The Internet, with its encouragement of disorganised and incoherent knowledge and its promise of instant gratification of every whim is far, far safer. If the child must read, then let it be magazines or catalogues. A healthy taste in materialism can’t be started too early.

Your affectionate uncle

Gnawbone

The teddy bear affair

I said I would comment on the case of the lady teacher in Sudan who unfortunately let her pupils call a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’. Although the affair has apparently now blown over some points seem worth making. While there was a lot about it in the British press, it seemed to me that most comments missed the mark.

Anyway, as someone who has taught in this sort of culture for eight years (some time l must tell you about the unfortunate incident to do with Thomas Aquinas) let me give you my take on it. Obviously, there was a lot of politics involved, no doubt related to the appalling business of Darfur where the government of Khartoum must take the lot of the blame. But then politicking is pretty much standard in this region. I think there are three things that are worth considering.

Firstly there is the issue of shame and honour. As in almost every part of the Islamic world, life in Sudan revolves around honour. From my experience in Lebanon and elsewhere, most people spend most of their time trying to gain honour and avoid shame. Honour ranks above fortune and pleasure and to bring honour on one's family is perhaps the greatest good that you can do. Shame must be avoided at all costs. There is a famous story from the Lebanese Civil War of a journalist interviewing a sniper who was being paid to kill people from another community on a per-body basis. The journalist asked him, ‘How does your boss know that you have really killed the number of people that you claim you have?’ The sniper turned furiously on the journalist. ‘Are you saying that I might not be an honourable man?’ Incidentally if you think this is bizarre, you need to read the gospels again. So many of the issues there revolve around matters of honour: the ‘shame of the cross’ is a real matter. Anyway, my first point is that the issue was not really that of blasphemy but bringing dishonour on the name of Mohammed.

A second issue is that animals have a much lower value in this part of the world. It is a pretty deadly thing to suggest in the Arab world that anybody is like an animal: they don’t do the cuddly creature thing. So to say that he is ‘a mule’ or she is ‘a kitten’ is asking for trouble. Here incidentally, it may be us rather than them that are odd; the British in particular, seem to rate animals above humans.

The third issue – and here I have to choose my words delicately – is that there is a real concern over the status of Mohammed. Islam prides itself on being a later – and better – revelation than Christianity. Linked with that but rarely expressed is the need that their prophet be on at least equal terms with the Christian’s Jesus. And here there is a problem. It has been pointed out by many people that if all that had to be done was to rate Mohammed against many of the Old Testament’s kings of Israel then he could indeed be accorded a place of honour. But he must be rated against the character, teaching and works of Jesus of Nazareth and compared to him, who can stand? The result is, I think, that there is almost a collective inferiority complex. And that makes matters sensitive.

So my take on the whole matter is that putting aside the evident politicking involved this was something of a perfect storm. Three things came together: the failure to recognize the high value of honour; the assumption that everybody thinks bears are cuddly; and the perpetual unease about the status of Mohammed.

Finally, there is a relevant comment to be made here about the role of fantasy. One of the key points of fantasy is that it forces us to engage with very different cultures and the values. As such it is an excellent preparation for being able to put ourselves in other people's shoes; something that didn’t happen here. Don't believe me about fantasy? Well, if you try and explain the concept of living by honour to people of a particular age and background you all too frequently hear them say, ‘So it's a little bit like the Klingons?’ I suppose so.

Have a good week.

On pride

This week I was going to write something about teddy bears and the need to understand the mindset of very different cultures. Having taught for eight years in a culture which was at least partially Islamic I think I have something to offer in the current dispute. However these are sensitive times and I think it will probably wait. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind having my books publicly burnt in Khartoum, particularly if a) they had paid for them and b) I had good press coverage.

The real reason for the shift of topic is that I had a nice surprise this morning which has made me consider an old concern: the topic of pride. I was in early at college this morning but really was not feeling very excited about life; the weather was grey, the sky thick with clouds full of rain and I felt certain I was about to come down with ‘flu. Then I was suddenly summoned to the Principal’s office. I should explain that we don’t see an awful lot of the Principal, largely because he spends a lot of his time dealing with the impenetrable Welsh educational bureaucracy 60 miles away in Cardiff; so it was not a trivial summons. I won’t say my entire life flashed before me but it did cross my mind that December was not a good time to be made redundant.

I had no need to be concerned. On the contrary, it soon emerged that a student I had taught for the last two years had got the highest mark nationally at A-level in Geology. He got a book prize, and as his teacher, I got a Fellowship of the Geological Society for a year. Anyway, Chris Jones, currently at Emanuel College Cambridge reading Natural Sciences, is a great lad who probably could have got it just by reading the syllabus and teaching himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he occasionally reads this blog (he was very nice about the Lamb Among the Stars books even if he doesn’t share the Christian viewpoint) and he utterly deserves the award.

Now I mention this here because it raises a question that a member of church raised with me the other week: when if ever is it right to be proud? Frankly, I found this a difficult question then and I find it difficult now. When I first became a Christian I imbibed greatly of the truth that I was a miserable worm and that pride was the greatest of all sins. I developed remarkable skills at understating natural abilities and perfecting what I now think is probably a superficial humility. But ought we treat all awards as worthless baubles, as empty and vain gestures in this brief life? I have no doubt the Puritans would have said so. I don’t need them to know that there is a great deal of pride that is clearly wrong. Any sort of superiority that tries to demonstrate you are better than someone else is sinful. But is it totally wrong for instance for a parent to take pleasure in a son’s musical achievement or a daughter’s sporting triumph? Is it utterly appalling to take pleasure in some event that vindicates a tough or painful decision you have made?

It seems to me that these are difficult areas. Obviously, all that we have is by grace and we need to realise that in one sense we have nothing to be proud of. But beyond this isn't there a sense in which we can take pride in an achievement? I wonder whether part of the problem is that the English word pride is very broad and covers a range of things extending all the way from innocent pleasure in a football team’s performance to wholesale and unacceptable boasting. I have to say I was jolly pleased about this morning’s news but my main pleasure lay in the regions of relief and possibly vindication. In the three years that I have been teaching, I have not found it very easy and have frequently felt I was something of a fraud. I guess this morning I finally felt that actually I might be doing a decent job.

Anyway I’m sure I’m not alone with the problem of pride. What I’d love is a simple memorable and permanently usable rule to distinguish ‘good pride’ from ‘bad pride’. Any ideas? In the meantime, I shall with, thanks to God, quietly stick FGS after my name!

Have a good week,
Chris

On youth fiction

In a blog response last week, someone mentioned that my books were still being marketed as children’s books and asked for comment. Let me give an explanation here, and then pass along to briefly discuss the whole issue of children’s fiction.

My books were originally written for adults, and still are written for adults. I don’t get a lot of criticism, but certainly no one has said that they are too simplistic or shallow to be considered as adult fiction. On the contrary, many comments have been on the lines that, by the standards of Christian fiction, these are actually deep and thoughtful books. (I fear that this reflects much more on the parlous state of Christian writing than on my writing skills.) Quite simply, the issues I grapple with in the books are those that interest me. I am an adult (albeit with a stubborn streak of adolescence), therefore, the books are adult.

The problem arose when what is now the first volume ended up on Tyndale’s desk: they wanted it but didn’t do fantasy fiction. (You may feel this to be a slightly curious statement given that their biggest seller has been the Left Behind series but I couldn’t possibly comment.) They did however have a youth imprint that they were about to launch and threw me in it. I didn’t object: I was glad to get published in the States. (Of course, in those days the dollar was actually worth something :-)). Since then I have been relocated to the adult category as Tyndale’s first fantasy author. However, there is a bit of a lag time and some people evidently still think of me as a youth author. So if you get the chance please do promote me as adult author.

All this has made me think about what actually makes up youth/children’s fiction. I have no easy answer and I found it easier to define children’s fiction, not by what it is, but by what it isn’t. I decided, in the traditional manner of a Welsh preacher, that there are three things that mark writing for children: a constraint on style, substance and sophistication. By a constrained style, I mean that the writer shuns a heavy and complex prose style full of long words and sentences. By a constrained substance I mean that certain topics are not touched on, or only alluded to in passing. I think these would not simply be the obvious ones of sex and extreme violence, but also include the cynicism, bitterness and despair that characterise much adult fiction. By a constrained sophistication, I mean that we shun the cleverness of allusions, quotes, word games and the like that would go over the head of a young person. Let me give you a non-literary example. The other day, one of our papers had a wordless and well done cartoon of Sarkozy, dressed as Napoleon, riding a donkey alone along a wintery vastness of railway lines. The cartoon required both a knowledge of the present French industrial strife and awareness of Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia. The verbal equivalents of this are best avoided in youth writing.

But is there anything else? Is there any particular positive feature that marks out youth fiction? A youthful hero perhaps? Maybe, but that is not essential. An optimistic view of the future? I think that is naiveté. A sense of innocence? No way! But I am open to comments. For what it is worth, I have no intention of trying to write youth fiction as such. What I do intend writing is accessible adult fiction, and it seems to me that that will do.

Villains and covers

This is one of those Friday evenings when I am not going to cover anything momentous. I have just posted an article on Speculative Faith about villains in Christian fiction and that has drained a few of the creative juices.

Actually, it’s been a tiring week. I was back teaching on Monday morning, still full of cold, and kept going well into our open evening where we recruited for next year. I left at five to nine in the evening, after what amounted to 12 hours of solid bouncing around and trying to be enthusiastic. Anyway, thank you those who showed concern, the cold is now more or less gone.

On the book front, there have been some little bits of news. I popped over to the Lamb Among the Stars wall on Facebook and was delighted to find that it is alive and well and that there are some very interesting comments. I also perused Amazon.com to find that The Shadow and Night has managed to now accumulate 10 reviews, every single one of which is five stars. It's just a pity that the sales rank is so low. The main news though was that I received the covers for The Infinite Day – you’ll find the picture on my website.

I have to say I like it. Those desperate to know what is about to happen will I’m afraid derive little enlightenment from it as it was deliberately chosen not to give anything away. I still do not have a publication date, but presume will get one very soon.

Have a good week.

The blessing of blogs

It’s a Friday evening after a busy week and a long day’s teaching and I’m getting my first cold of winter. Reader, I do not feel like writing a blog. Not at all. Yet, I’m going to do it. The reason is not simply out of a sense of duty to the probably very small number of people who actually read this regularly. The fact is, I have actually found it to be quite a blessing. Quite simply, it forces me at the end of a long week to write something vaguely sensible and vaguely coherent. It is the verbal equivalent of making yourself go to the gym. You do reap benefits. So for instance, this week I had to rewrite a statement a student had made about himself for university. His comment about the result was effectively unprintable in its gratitude for how I utterly rewritten his statement. So it is worthwhile.

Anyway what’s new? Well, I have been truly outed as a writer in a couple of my classes and the kids want to talk a lot about the books. The trouble is, you can never be quite sure whether they are genuinely interested or whether anything is preferable to geology, geography, or environmental science. I tend to answer one or two quick questions and then move back to where we were. I’m not paid to promote myself. However, I do sometimes wonder if my reluctance to be drawn on the books is taken as an indication that I am embarrassed about them. If I ever was, I am not now. I have had enough fan mail to realise that most people actually enjoy them to some degree and some people enjoy them a lot. And no one has publicly said they are garbage. (If you think that they are, please don’t ruin my otherwise perfect record and move along quickly to someone else’s website. Please!)

But there are still questions I find difficult. For instance making the right response to ‘I hear you write books!’ For one thing, there is the question of humility; if you shrug your shoulders, look embarrassed and make some comment like ‘we all have our secret vice’, they tend to assume that what you write is utter garbage and you are ashamed of it. When they ask ‘what sort of thing do you write?’ and you answer ‘Christian fiction’ that, of course, seems to confirm the matter. Christian seems to be taken as code for ‘so poorly written that no one except someone with a preoccupation with the faith would want to buy it’. As a result I’m afraid I often leave the reference to Christianity to some sort of supplementary follow up.

‘Do you make a lot of money out of it?’ is another question, which often (too often) produces the tart retort from me “Do you really think I would be teaching you, if I did?” You have to point out that well although the sales are reasonable what writers actually earn after all the deductions is not that wonderful. The trouble is they do the equation: 10,000 books or whatever times say eight pounds and come up with £80,000 and assume that you have pocketed the lot. Chance would be a fine thing, particularly these days, when most of my sales are in the green and sickly dollar. Then they say ‘what are the books about?’ There is no easy answer to that, or none that I have found. I’m tempted to reply ‘these are profound meditations on the problem of evil in the world’ but that may not be a vote winner with 16-year-olds. ‘What’s your best selling book?’ is actually quite easy and quite a good question, because I am able to say it’s The Life, a book about Jesus, and I have sold around 70,000 copies. 70,000 copies gets people interested. But as I said, I’m not paid to talk about myself or to do evangelism and actually there is the student-pupil relationship which you don’t really want to breach. But they do borrow the books from the library and some actually seem to enjoy them. Who knows, perhaps I am doing some good after all.

Cough, sneeze etc.

Segues, spaceships and Suzuki

This is an early blog this week as I am away over the weekend. For new readers and others, I try to post weekly, Friday evening, UK time. And those interested in commenting on the books may wish to know that there is a rather fun Lamb among the Stars Facebook group.

I have always been a fan of the segue: the art of seamlessly moving from one section or theme to another. (Mind you, it took me a long time before I realised it was pronounced seg-way.) Anyway, there are a couple of instances below.

I seem to have survived last week’s posting on JKR and the outing of Dumbledore. I was worried I would either get damned or praised for being anti-gay. One comment I made last week did though come back to haunt me: my criticism of her ladyship for tinkering with the plot post-publication. The reason was that I have been finishing the final edits on the Infinite Day (it is half-term: I get to work at home and drink my own coffee) and I realised that if I was to make any changes, now is my last chance. One change I would like to make but alas, it is in the first book and beyond recall, is where I mention a spacecraft named after Shih Li-Chen, someone who Merral recollects “was poet, church leader and unsurprisingly for early twenty-first century China, martyr.” In hindsight, I think it would have been more daring (and conceivably more prophetic) to hint that the martyrdoms for the faith had been in the West rather than the East.

The fact is that Christianity is alive and well in the East. If you wanted proof of that it was very audible this week with the long-awaited (and not just by me) release of J. S. Bach’s B Minor Mass under the conductor Maasaki Suzuki. For those outside the blessed elect of Bach fandom, let me explain. Although elements of the B Minor mass were written earlier, Bach compiled the whole work in in his final years. Two hours long and in Latin, it was quite unperformable in any church context, least of all in Bach’s own Lutheranism and seems to have been intended as a monument for posterity, summing up all that he could do. Anyway, it is one of the most perfect masterpieces of Western music and Maasaki Suzuki does it proud.

Suzuki, a Japanese Christian, and a very considerable musician, has been working his way for years through the vast canon of Bach cantatas (36 CDs so far and about 24 to go) to growing acclaim. What distinguishes his work is a polished musicianship plus – and here is the key – a sensitivity to what the text is saying. Apparently, he makes sure that his singers fully understand the meaning of Scripture. (There is a fascinating article on him and the growing Japanese interest in Bach here.) Anyway, they’ve just released his version of the B Minor and I downloaded it off eMusic for a very reasonable cost. It seems to me that he gets it wonderfully right; reverent without being slow; dramatic without being too theatrical and everywhere beautifully played and sung. It's an awesome piece of music, and in his hands you can happily believe that no one has written anything finer. Even if it seems imperilled in the West, Christianity is alive and well in the East

And now ladies and gentlemen (roll of drums) for that rarity: the return segue. When the Voyager spacecraft was launched in 1977 – by now it’s about 9.5 billion miles away – it bore a golden disc with sounds and musical items on it. Bach was the most represented composer with three tracks. In discussing the choice of music, the biologist Lewis Thomas said: “I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach . . . but that would be boasting.”

Just so.

I wish she hadn’t done it! On the outing of Dumbledore

It seems impossible this week not to make some sort of comment on the fact that She-Who-Need-Not-Be-Named has outed Dumbldore as gay. This is one of those events, relatively minor in itself, which I fear will no doubt have major repercussions, some of which are as yet unsuspected.

I have some difficulty in writing about homosexuality. I have very little empathy for it, which makes treating the subject with sympathy difficult. I am also aware it is a subject of enormously strong feelings. Being gay is such a core feature of homosexual people that to be negative about it is seen as a personal attack. It is also a subject of such complexity that it needs careful unpacking; for example are we to endorse even the most promiscuous sort of homosexuality? A blog is hardly an appropriate location for a discussion. Nevertheless I feel that some comment must be made, so here goes.

I wish she hadn’t done it for many reasons. Let me begin with the literary problem. She has effectively added an amendment to the books which now, for better or worse, require their re-evaluation. The pivotal Dumbledore-Harry relationship must surely be now be reconsidered. It is a wise rule that once a book is written, authors leave their finished work to the readers. This has an unfortunate air of ‘Harry Potter: The Author’s Cut.’

Secondly, she has chosen to throw her considerable weight on one side of what is perhaps the biggest and most painful cultural battle of our time: whether homosexual relationships are as equally valid as heterosexual ones. I remind you that this is no light issue: to accept such a legitimisation is basically to reject the Bible’s authority in matters of sexuality. And if the Bible is kicked out of the bedroom, then it will soon be kicked out of the boardroom and the schoolroom. Its authority will be utterly undermined, and all we will have left is some edifying stories and some pious promises. I feel that she has done this because she is a modern Western woman and it’s the thing to do.

Thirdly, and most worryingly of all, she has bought this pained and complex battle into children’s literature. When I taught in Beirut in the early 1980s there was a universal (and generally held) agreement amongst the trigger-happy thugs of the warring militias that the campus of the American University of Beirut was off-limits. In the same way, I think there has been something of an unspoken consensus that it was not right to wage this battle in the presence of children. But at a stroke JKR has brought the war into the school library. I regret this, not because I think the gay rights issue cannot be countered at this level, but because I believe in an endangered thing called childhood in which such matters remain over the horizon. The all too vulnerable area of childhood, long eroded by commercialism, is now threatened by warfare over sexual orientation. (Incidentally, had it been the evil Voldemort who had been outed, then I trust I would have been just as irritated.)

Finally, I regret it for a selfish reason. It makes our lives difficult as writers. Do we now have to declare some sort of affidavit that ‘no character of ours will be subsequently outed’? Let me pre-empt that. Let me say here, for the benefit of my readers and for posterity that no character good or evil I have written of in the Lamb among the Stars books is gay. But I wish I hadn’t had to say it.

A question without an easy answer

This would have been a nice normal teaching week, except that I was summoned for jury service. It is the first time I have been part of a court procedure and I don’t wish to say anything specific, but let me offer an observation.

I was struck by the enormous sense of respect – bordering on awe – that the court seemed to invoke in all of us gathered for the jury service. Particularly when we were assembled in an anteroom next to the court chamber, you could almost feel the mutual unease. Voices were hushed, jokes ebbed away, people seem to look at each other as if seeking reassurance that we were part of the process of judgment and not its object. Oddly enough, it reminded me of a funeral. There are similarities, of course: for those sentenced to prison, lives are shattered and families torn apart in a way that only death exceeds. Anyway, I think we all felt we were in the presence of something of solemn power.

The sense of being in the presence of judgment, perhaps even justice, raised a question. Should we not, at least some time, and in some measure, feel this in church? Of course, we are forgiven in Christ; of course, we come before God not as judge, but as heavenly Father. But have we forgotten the wrath that would have been ours outside Christ? Have we totally forgotten that we have been spared the justice of God?

The question, which inevitably follows is, if that is the case (and I feel that there must be the time and place for such emotions), how do we try and it invoke them? An older generation would have had sermons on God's wrath and judgment. We however, being 21st-century Christians, merely allude to such things in passing, and then, aided and abetted by a worship team, move swiftly on into the happy sunlight of blessings, promise and hope. Something to think about surely?

Incidentally, I have posted a long discussion of allegory on the Speculative Faith website. Have a good weekend,

Chris

Technology, Tools and Traps

I have been busy this week, partly with getting hold of the new car. (Very nice, thank you.) But doesn’t everything take so much of an effort these days? The Octavia manual runs to 200 pages and that’s only the English; you are aware how far computers have made inroads into the world of the car.

One other thing that has occupied me this week has been trying to find an online calendar and To Do program that I can access from any computer at home or work and also from my Windows Mobile phone. As you may or may not be aware, there are some very fine products, such as Yahoo Calendar, Google Calendar and a few other things that are great for managing dates and appointments. There are also some very good pieces of task management software, and the one I have got the most mileage out of so far is the splendidly named Remember The Milk. Hitherto I have used Microsoft’s Outlook, but find that it has all sorts of limitations. Currently Google Calendar and Remember The Milk seemed to be the best combination, but transferring dates and times from Outlook into the online Google calendar is far from easy.

Why have I been so anxious to do this? It’s actually a very good question. The first answer is that I want to be able to organise my life, wherever I am. I want to be able to know what I have to do and when I have to do it. I want to be able to click on any computer and be told I have this marking, and this preparation to do. And, I would add, because I am not the most organised of people, this is vital. The reality is, I suspect something far deeper. It is a forlorn, doomed hope that I will find some wonderful piece of software that will actually do the work for me. I live in hope that there will be something that, with a few mouse clicks, will write those references on students, mark those papers and prepare those lectures. I acknowledge the full force of the curse on Adam in Genesis chapter 3, paraphrased from memory thus: ‘from now on, you will only earn a living by the sweat of your brow’. But I live in hope that somehow, somewhere I will find an exception to this rule. Incidentally, this is not why I write books. I write books for the same reason that I scratch my body; it’s an itch that needs attention. But yes, I’d love to write full-time.

This leads me to an intensely valuable piece of advice that I read over 20 years ago, which I share with you gladly in the hope that someone else might find it equally helpful. It was so striking that I can still remember where I read it: it was in an imported computer magazine (yes, they did have them in those days) in Antananarivo, Madagascar. It was a summary of some early work on two sets of managers: one IT literate, and the other IT illiterate. They had followed them for a couple of years to see how they progressed. To everyone’s surprise, the IT illiterates actually advanced faster up the corporate ladder than their colleagues. The reason, the writer concluded, was that the computer literates spent far too much of their time tweaking the software, learning tricks and helping other people sort out computer problems. The IT illiterates simply got on with their job.

Two decades and three or four jobs later, I can only say that this strikes me as being a very profound observation for writers, educators and everybody else. What technology gives with the one hand, it takes away with the other. Somewhere Stephen King talks about he calls ‘the world’s finest word processor: the Waterman fountain pen’. In an age when cars come with 200 page manuals, I know exactly where he is coming from.

Two Problems

Two loose ends this week, neither of which really merits full-blown blog treatment.

The first is that we are finally changing a very ancient number two car for a much more recent Skoda Octavia, which is really rather nice. The Skoda story is interesting. A famous Czech car firm before the Second World War, they became infamous under Communism for creating cars that were legendary for their appalling design and quality. They were so bad that they spawned a whole library of jokes. A sample: ‘How do you double the value of a Skoda?’ Answer: ‘Fill it with petrol.’

In 1991, after the unlamented departure of the Communist government, Skoda was taken over by the Volkswagen group and subjected to a root and branch overhaul. This was stunningly effective, so that now, 16 years later, in Britain at least, Skoda are high on the league tables for innovative, reliable and desirable vehicles. Embarrassingly Skodas have proved to be more reliable vehicles than Audis and Volkswagens.

I mention this here because it seems to me that it would make a wonderful children’s talk in church. Do we not here have a very real pattern of conversion, redemption and New Birth? The worthless delinquent, the butt of endless jokes, taken over and given a brand new life of value? It’s great. But my problem is this: how on earth do I make a talk of it that doesn’t sound like an advertisement?

I have also been thinking this week about fictional characters. Without revealing too much, the reason is that this year I have found myself with a student who genuinely does merit, without any sense of hyperbole, the word genius. His history is that he is exiled from a war-torn Middle Eastern state, passes through Pakistan and ends up in Russia where he learns to play the piano and high-level chess, and masters his fourth language. With his family he somehow ends up in a tiny flat in Swansea, where despite arriving with no English, he soon passes five A-levels with stunning grades. He is now with me cruising through geology with a polite effortlessness as he waits till he can apply to university at 17. He is rarely seen without some learned tome and spends any remaining spare time helping other immigrants. The problem is this. If he were a character in a manuscript, the editor would no doubt observe ‘tone him down, too good to be true’. We must respond: despite being ‘too good to be true’, some things (grace included) are indeed true.

Issues with committees revisited

Two weeks ago I expounded on the way that writers and readers of fiction overlook the way that major events are often made not by epic acts of heroism but by seemingly boring committee meetings. There were some suggestions that I might consider this theme further and so here we are.

It is often said that committees acquire a life of their own, as if the very process of half a dozen human beings gathering together creates a new and monstrous psychological and spiritual organisation. At one level this is true, but we need to be a little more rigorous in our analysis. Why is this the case? Let me make some observations.

The first is that committees are able to allow evil to occur because they give the participants the illusion that they are no longer personally responsible for what happens. It strikes me that when we personally are asked to take a decision then, if we are people of principle, we carefully consider the outcomes in the light of our own morality and only then do we proceed. In some shape or form we know that we as individuals will be held accountable. And whether we fear God, man or the verdict of history we tread warily.

However as a committee member all is changed: we feel absolved from all this. We are now part of a collective organism and our responsibility ends the moment we sit down round the table. The result is that men and women who would willingly shed their own blood to help someone now feel an extraordinary freedom to condemn innocents to a life of suffering. We need reminding that while there may be strength in numbers there is no exception from judgment.

A second observation is that committees are oddly open to manipulation. I’m sure a number of my readers have been in some sort of committee meeting and suddenly found themselves surprised at the way the decision was going. The theory of committees is that because everybody has a say then a committee should come to the wisest decision. The reality is that often – perhaps because people assume that it can’t happen – committees can be gently and discreetly managed by those with agendas. It’s easy to assume that such people must inevitably be the chairman or chairperson; in practice it might easily be someone else, possibly someone who merely makes a few minimal comments but who with quiet steady suggestions pushes an otherwise unpalatable decision to its conclusion.

A third observation is that because in any group of human beings there will be some sort of clash of personalities then dynamics are set up in a committee which may easily affect what happens. Consider a fairly simple case. Young Charlotte, recently appointed to the committee against the wishes of one or two of the senior gentlemen, comes up with a jolly good proposal. The senior gentlemen consider it not simply on its merits but with other factors in view. Might agreeing to this proposal encourage this young lady to go further and possibly tread on their own territory? Might it perhaps be appropriate to teach her a cautionary lesson? It may even be that they vote against the proposal just because they don’t like her. The upshot is that a decent proposal might not be approved simply because it was, in that dreadful word, politic for it to be rejected. The results of the committee’s deliberations have produced nonsense. And lest I be accused here of inverted sexism, let me suggest that when the committee meets again Charlotte deliberately vetoes one of the elderly gentlemen’s proposals on the grounds that some degree of retribution is valid. Very soon the committee becomes a battleground of egos rather than a method of resolving problems. All too often what is at stake in committee meetings is not success or failure or truth or falsehood but one’s own personal prestige.

There was much that was wrong with Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. One of the worst things was the portrayal of the Sanhedrin as exotic, woolly wild Jews alien to all that we are. It would have been far more telling (and far less anti-Semitic) to have portrayed them (as the gospels hint they were) as men who when they came together in committee, let the strange dynamics of collective decision meeting push them into the most terrible of deeds.

Dismissed, Derided and Distorted

A double apology. One, I promised to write more on committees (and I will) and two, this is largely a repeat of the monthly Speculative Faith blog which I wrote this week. I have my reasons for repeating it.

One of the greatest masterpieces of art is the St Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is an oratorio for soloists, two choirs and, for those days, a reasonably sized orchestra. It was written for what must have been a very long Good Friday church service in 1727. In length (well over two hours) and in musical style it broke new ground and is one of the towering peaks of music. It is also explicitly evangelical. Through the use of hymns and choruses listeners are deliberately drawn into the events surrounding our Lord’s trial and death. Bach clearly makes the point; it is we who crucified Christ. Even when your German is minimal (as mine is) it is still a moving experience. (Unfortunately there is only really one version in English, and that is rather old-fashioned.)

Now this summer the St Matthew was presented as an opera at the UK’s famous Glyndebourne Festival. In itself, an opera version is not a bad idea; the music is dramatic and you do wonder whether Bach did not dream of something far less static than an oratorio in which men and – just possibly – women stood up and sung. I should say here that I didn’t see the performance but followed the reviews with interest. What happened is that the director set the work in an unspecified modern community (Beslan?) that had been affected by the violent deaths of children, so that the entire work became about counselling the bereaved. Let me quote from the Guardian: “the Passion story is a project that they are led through by four therapists, who form the central quartet of soloists. Every so often, one of the participants gets spooked and makes a run for it; seeing how any genuine emotion from the chorus members is immediately damped down by the insufferably sincere therapists, you can’t blame them.” The Passion was thus interpreted as a prolonged meditation on grief, suffering and loss; presumably with the intention of making it ‘more relevant’. Readers will probably not be surprised to know that the audiences were not impressed: one headline simply read ‘Crime of Passion’. Even non-Christian reviewers sensed that this was not at all what Bach was about.

Now here, long-suffering readers, let us turn to fiction. You see, it seems to me that the unbelieving world has three possible strategies in dealing with Christian art. Firstly, it can be dismissed. So it is a genre that is ‘insignificant’ and ‘not worthy of comment’. The writing of gay and lesbian authors is worth critical comment but not that of Christians: their books go unreviewed. Secondly, it can be derided. We all know the words: ‘old-fashioned’, ‘conservative’, ‘puerile’, etc., etc. Now consider the problem faced by someone hostile to Christianity when they come across a piece of such surpassing excellence that it cannot be dismissed or derided. The St Matthew Passion (one of Richard Dawkins’ Desert Island discs, by the way; there’s hope for him yet) is such a work. Here a third strategy is opted for: distortion.

So despite everything the St Matthew Passion is presented as not being not fundamentally about Christ and the cross but about the universal experience of suffering and loss. And haven’t we seen this elsewhere? No matter how explicit we make our Christian statements, what is written is twisted into something far less spiritual and ultimately, far less significant. Of course, in an age of postmodernism, when the reader, not the writer, makes the decision on meaning, there is even a justification for this: ‘I do not really care what you meant to say; I am only interested in what it does for me.’

It seems to me that because of its use of images and the unusual, speculative fiction is very prone to this re-reading. Remember how Tolkien had to make it plain in the foreword to Lord of the Rings that the book wasn’t about European politics? The voices continue: that lion isn’t Jesus, it’s a universal symbol of hope. And so on.

So how we are to respond? One way is that somewhere, probably outside the books themselves, we need make it absolutely plain that our meaning is not negotiable. It perhaps needs to be written down somewhere for posterity that this writing is not about politics, sexual shenanigans or environmental issues, but about higher matters.

I have no idea whether my own Lamb among the Stars series (I am uneasy mentioning it in the same article as the St Matthew Passion!) will have any sort of long-term success. Equally, I have no idea whether future researchers will have access to what we now write on the Internet. But if, in the providence of God, both happen, let me say something to you who read this (and this is why I have repeated myself in two blogs). It is this. These books are only indirectly about the current political situation or anything else as ephemeral; they are ultimately about the very Christian matters of sin and redemption, hope and courage, judgement and eternity. At the end of the St Matthew Passion Bach appended three letters: S.D.G. Soli Deo Gloria. I have done the same. Readers, producers, directors: take note and please, spare me from your distortions.

A subtle peril of fiction

I was at a church elders meeting last night, when I was struck by a totally irrelevant thought: how rarely fiction represents committee meetings. The chief reason of course is not hard to find: they are really pretty boring. (Another reason, incidentally, is that meetings where more than three people are present are very hard to portray; you end up saying, X said this, Y said that, Z commented, and so on.) Fiction, especially the sort that I write, and I suspect most of my readers read, is about action and events. If committee meetings do occur in such works, then we are generally taken straight to some climactic moment of decision: all else is dispatched in a few sentences.

Now thinking about this further, I think this is very misleading in an artistic sense. You see it is in such quiet committee meetings where great decisions are made. The fate of individuals, organisations, and even nations, is decided in slow rounds of often undramatic argument and discussion. It is in these rather low-key exchanges of views that destinies are forged for good or ill. Fiction, because it tends to concentrate on dramatic, emotionally charged events or confrontations, misleads us. The apparently still waters of a big river in fact move far faster than the turbulent bubbling of an alpine stream. In the same way momentous events often happen quietly.

From the Christian point of view there is something very significant here. We prepare ourselves to do the right thing at a great moment of crisis. Here, we say to ourselves, we will not fail! Yet actually what happens is that the pivotal battle is conducted somewhere else, often in a far less dramatic matter. And here, unexpectant and ill-prepared, we fail. We need to be prepared for moments of crisis in life, but we also need to beware of being ambushed by some subtle danger on what we expect to be a quiet stretch. I suspect many souls have been damned in those quiet committee meetings when the chairman has said, with no great fanfare, ‘So then. I take it we are all agreed?’ And unable to resist, a man or woman agrees to something terribly wrong.

Having just written this I have remembered what C. S. Lewis has the demon Screwtape say: “The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Exactly so.

Of iPods and eels

It’s been a busy week. I went back to college to find my geology class is incredibly over subscribed (and that’s before they realise I have a Facebook fan club). As a result, they are going to give me an extra group, but it’s really rather awkward to fit it in the timetable, particularly as it will mean that I have to get taken off teaching geography and be replaced by someone else.

And on the Infinite Day front I had my first contact with my new editor and the good news is that they don’t want much in the way of major changes. One of the most useful comments I received from my previous editor was to consider broadening out the scope of the books to bring in other viewpoints. It was however, also one of the most time-consuming as it meant a major rewrite and made for much a longer, if better final volume. Anyway, I hope this means the editing process will be reasonably straightforward.

Two items of news caught my attention this week and are worth commenting on. Two days ago, Apple announced their latest line-up of iPods. I was reminded in reviews of the slick and polished presentation when in June Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone. One commentator, who I’d take to be otherwise reasonably sane, said, as he saw it revealed, how he found himself weeping.
‘For heavens sake, man, it’s only a phone,’ I wanted to shout. It came as close as anything I have seen to actually saying this technology is now my god. As my present iPod is getting rather full I am attracted by the idea of one with twice the space and three times the battery life at two-thirds the price of my old one. But please God, may I never weep over a techno-toy announcement.

The second piece of news may have slipped you by. It was that certain types of Moray eel have been shown to have a second set of jaws to help them grasp food. What was interesting about this is that almost every coverage of the story has referred to the film ‘Alien’ and its eponymous (and anonymous) double-jawed creature. It is a measure of the triumph of a film that its imagery is used as currency to explain something. When I mentioned the news to a teaching friend who has a background in fish genetics, he was gobsmacked. ‘How have they managed to evolve that?’ he exclaimed in near indignation. ‘That’s your problem, not mine,’ I replied. As someone has said, the problem with Darwinism is not the survival of the fittest; it’s the arrival of the fittest.

The failure of 'Sunshine' and why Dawkins hates us

Some time in spring I heard that there was this science-fiction film coming out called Sunshine. The plot was interesting, if far-fetched; let me quote: “In the not-too-distant future, the sun is about to smoke out. A crew is sent to re-ignite it with a nuclear bomb; when they fail, a new team sets out to finish the job. But they find that flying to the least hospitable place in the solar system and staying sane and alive is no simple matter.”

The director had a good track record, what I could pick up of early reviews sounded very promising (it got over 70 odd percent on the indispensable ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ scale and the British press mostly gave it four out of five stars). Yet somehow (rather like the real sunshine this year) it never materialised in Swansea. Well, maybe it did but it must have come and gone very quickly because until yesterday, I was still waiting for it. However, in the supermarket yesterday evening, I saw that it had already come out on DVD. I checked up on Wikipedia (careful to avoid plot spoilers), and found out that it really hadn't done very well and certainly can’t have recouped the cost of the special effects. Sad. Okay, it didn’t have alien battle fleets by all accounts, but it sounded pretty worthwhile.

Now I find the demise of Sunshine very significant. It is yet another indicator that actually we do not find science very interesting. We pay lip service to science: we give scientists awards, we let them have their breakthroughs on the news (albeit mostly slotted in at the end) and we say, ‘Isn’t science wonderful?’ Yet, on the whole, increasinglywe find science uninteresting. In my own field of geology there are only a handful of areas that will arouse general interest: dinosaurs, earthquake or volcano prevention, meteorite impact, finding more oil, and that’s about it. If you don’t believe me take a look at the science section in the average bookshop and compare it in size to the sections devoted to history, politics, travel and tourism, and even pets, and you will see how low the interest in straight science really is. (Interestingly enough, many of the science books that do sell are frankly over-the-top in their chatty popularity.)

There is, I think, an extraordinary paradox here. The scientific method has been enormously successful and for, all its problems, delivered stunning results. (The fact that this blog can be read worldwide not the least of them.) Yet increasingly, it has failed to grasp the heart and the imagination. We find almost anything, including pseudoscience, more interesting than science itself. Sometime I may go into why I think this is, but here, I simply want to note the fact that most people find science, even scary science like the Sun dying, desperately unexciting.

And here I bring in Professor Richard Dawkins, with his well established loathing of faith. The cause of his extraordinary animosity to the faith community has often been speculated on. (I prefer the view that as an infant he was dropped on the way to the font.) But I feel sure that one thing that is driving him is the knowledge that, for all its vast achievements, science is unloved. It is like some distinguished uncle in a family: respected, honoured but not liked; someone we prefer not to spend time with. As a result, Dawkins lashes out at those he thinks are responsible and Christianity gets it. Well, isn’t that simple, and if the good professor knew a little more history, he would know that Christianity provided both the seedbed and the nutrients for the blooming of science in the 17th and 18th centuries. If he is indeed driven by a fear that a dark and superstitious pre-science era is returning, I, and most other scientists who are Christians, share his concern. We just think that in trying to blast the culprits, he has woefully misaimed.

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On a separate note, for those wanting to know news about The Infinite Day, the manuscript has been well-received at Tyndale and I have been allocated someone who, is by all accounts, an excellent editor. Very soon, I ought to be able to give you a publication date.

Have a good week.

On facing death and disaster

I hope this blog doesn’t sound too intellectual, but after last week’s mean swipe at the Irish weather, perhaps a little bit of seriousness won’t hurt.

On the way back from college today I was listening to the famous American minimalist composer John Adams talking about his work commemorating 9/11, called On the Transmigration of Souls. It’s an interesting piece (it won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music), but it was evident in his comment on it that Adams was distancing himself from anything like a requiem. It was, he said, ‘a “memory space” where each listener can find a personal response to the events’. It struck me that by saying this he was actually admitting that he had very little to say. What he seemed to be expressing in the piece itself was something along the lines of: ‘This was awful but these things happen and we need to accept that fact.’

Further thought suggested that in Western civilisation a response to tragedy, whether natural or man-made, has gone through four phases.

Phase 1 was common during the Christian period. Here the response was simply, ‘Help me, O God, to understand and come to terms with this tragedy that you as an all-wise and all-loving heavenly Father have inflicted on me.’ This is firm faith.

Phase 2, which occurs later at the end of the Christian period has a very different note. ‘Why O God, are you doing this to me? What are the reasons for this action?’ (This response neglects the well known fact that God generally does not give justification for his actions.) Here faith has been replaced by questioning. This is faith mixed with doubt.

Phase 3, which I think dates from the start of the Enlightenment (around 1750), expresses a deeper question: ‘Is there anybody up there all or are these events simply random?’ This is scepticism.

Phase 4, which really comes in the latter part of the 20th century, takes the absence of God as much for granted as the first phase took his presence. The best we can hope for is a sad resignation to this tragedy that a blind and unthinking fate has inflicted on me. A non-musical illustration of this would be the epitaph on the poet W. B. Yeats’ gravestone at the church at Drumcliff, County Sligo, with its chilling lines ‘Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman ride by’. It is this sort of attitude (long the standard viewpoint in the East) that Adams and others seem to hold. This is a sort of post-Christian faith: we have returned to acceptance, but it is now without God.

For Christian writers this poses a challenge: we agree with our contemporaries that death and suffering should be accepted; but for very different reasons. Their faith and our faith are two very different things. I know which I prefer.

These are difficult matters, but they are worth thinking about. As someone wise or good probably said ‘nothing in life so concentrates our minds as death’.