A new book of mine has just been released with the
same title as this post. It was published in Spanish by CEU Ediciones, and in
English by Amazon.
There is a fairly widespread idea that we shouldn’t
speak about Christian literature as a literary genre, except perhaps in
fantasy, where the Christian character of such famous literary works as J.R.R.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia cannot be denied. In science fiction, the matter
is not so clear. However, no one doubts that atheist literature does exist.
My book starts from the premise that an evident Christian
literature exists in both genres, and demonstrates this by analyzing a series
of authors and literary works, without neglecting anti-Christian literature, to
which almost a third of the work is dedicated.
My predilection for fantasy and science fiction has
been clear in this blog, given that over almost 12 years I've dedicated 34 posts
to those two genres in literature and film; in other words, more than 6% of the
posts.
The book consists of four chapters, preceded by an
introduction and followed by a conclusion. The chapters are further divided
into 69 sections, with the following structure:
1.
Christian
Fantasy (20
sections).
2.
Generalities
about Science Fiction
(6 sections).
3.
Christian
Science Fiction
(23 sections).
4.
Non-Christian
and Anti-Christian Authors (20 sections).
 |
| Walter M. Miller Jr. |
In the book, I discuss many novels and a number of
short stories from the two genres considered. Among them, there are some that I
liked very much, others that I liked somewhat, and a third group that I didn't
like at all. In every case, I explain why. My tastes intersect with the
chapters, since I describe some Christian works I didn't like, together with
some non-Christian books I did. Thus, of my two all-time favorite science
fiction novels, one can be considered Christian (A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.) and the other not (Orbit
Unlimited by Poul
Anderson).
Of course, the work is not exhaustive. There are
many books that are not mentioned, for several reasons:
n
I
haven't read them. This applies to a great many books, because their number is
so huge that it's impossible to read them all. One of my fundamental principles
in literary criticism is that you shouldn't judge or criticize a book without
having read it. This principle is applied strictly here. I only consider books
that I have read throughout my life, even if it's been many years ago.
n
I
don't know if the authors were Christian or not. There are quite a few authors
who refuse to define themselves, and their beliefs are also unclear in their
works. In these cases, which are also many, I decided to leave them out rather
than try to guess what I couldn't find out, even though I looked for
information in various sources. That's why works like Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and
the Sun don't
appear in the book, even though I've read it and its author received the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 2017 and has written other science fiction works.
n
I
know that the author followed other religions. An example would be Kenji
Miyazawa, a devout Buddhist, who introduced some Christian ideas in his book Night on
the Milky Way Railway,
but on the whole, he cannot be considered either Christian or anti-Christian.
As a sample of a few of the 69 sections of the book,
I'll include here the titles of a few, chosen among those less well-known by
the general public:
 |
| C.S. Lewis |
14. Meriol Trevor: Sun Slower, Sun Faster
27. Edward Bellamy: Philosophical Sci- Fi
40. Zenna Henderson: Food to All Flesh
45. Michael Flynn: Eiffelheim
46. Corinna Turner: I am Margaret
47. C.D. Verhoff: Comet Dust
48. Andrew Gillsmith: Our Lady of
the Artilects
52. H.G. Wells: The World set Free
67. Ted Chiang: The Story of your Life
Since I am an author in both genres, two of the sections discuss my works, one about my nine fantasy novels, the other about my eleven science fiction novels.
Thematic Thread on Literature and Cinema: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
