On Religion in SF and Fantasy:
An Interview with Orson Scott Card

by Moira Allen

In your view, how well (or poorly) is religion portrayed in current fantasy and science fiction?

There is little difference on this point between speculative fiction and literary fiction — or any other genre except that of religious fiction itself.

In our culture, intellectuals have become so uniformly a-religious or anti-religious that our fiction, with few exceptions, depicts religious people in only two ways: the followers are ignorant and stupid and easily fooled, and the leaders are exploitative and cynical, manipulating others’ faith for their private benefit.

I know some people who fit those descriptions. But they are in a tiny minority. Most religious people I know are smart, well-educated, independent-minded, stubborn, honest, and generous — at least as much so as the average intellectual, and usually more.

The hostility toward religion among American intellectuals arises, I think, from a clear awareness that it was against a publicly religious culture that their own culture rebelled. Now that rebellion is completely successful in terms of capturing control of all the public instruments of transmission of culture — the universities, the media, and the literature and art — but it has become such a shibboleth of intellectual life to snipe at religion that, like the aging “revolutionaries” of the old Soviet Union, they mindlessly continue to “rebel” in order to defend their tight grip on the establishment. Indeed, those intellectuals are the establishment. And what was once a daring and rebellious stance is now just another example of lockstep conformists mindlessly echoing ideas that they haven’t examined.

More…

Catholic Exchange is running a good review of Ben Stein’s new documentary Expelled:

An excerpt:

I confess that when the producers of Ben Stein’s new documentary Expelled called, offering me a private screening, I was less than excited.

It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay “rights.” Abortion “rights.” On these and so many other issues there is enlightenment, and then there is the Idiotic Other Side. PC liberalism’s power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension.

Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates. We know the concept of Intelligent Design is stifled in academic circles. An entire documentary to state the obvious? You can see my reluctance to view it.

I went into the screening bored. I came out of it stunned.

Full article here: Ben Stein vs. Sputtering Atheists

I did a Google search for “Doctor Who Catholic” and was directed to Catholic Blogs (www.catholicblogs.com), where these articles were listed.

At Vox Nova:
Vox Nova At the Tele: Doctor Who, Partners In Crime

At Veritas nunquam perit:
It’s bigger on the inside than on the outside. (A reference to the Doctor’s mode of travel, the TARDIS). He’s a Catholic seminarian and on his sidebar he lists as one of his current reads a novelization of based on the new Doctor Who episodes.

There’s got to more out there than this, so I’ll keep looking.

Yesterday I mentioned that I thought the intermittently long-running British television series Doctor Who was no longer suitable for children.

I received as gifts the 1st and 2nd seasons of the brand new version of the show that they’re doing now, and after watching the 1st season episodes I’ve banned it from my house due to unacceptable sexual references. Too bad. When I was a kid watching the Doctor there was no hanky-panky in the Tardis: no mention of people waking up in bed with their executioners (Capt. Jack Harkness), no allusions to the female companion and her boyfriend getting a hotel room and spending the night (Rose and her boyfriend–Micky, I think his name is…), no long, lingering kisses between the Doctor and his female companion (the Doctor and Rose), and certainly no kisses between the Doctor and his male companion (the Doctor and Capt. Jack Harkness).

I was bummed, but oh well. It is a high quality show: the production values (special effects, cinematography, locations, sets, sound, music, costuming, and so on) are much better than when I was watching the show in the 70s and 80s, the stories are as imaginative and vast in scope as they ever were (nothing but the fate of the entire universe is regularly at stake…), and that inimitable British humor is refreshing and enjoyable, but…sigh. Why do they always have to ruin things by the “sophistication” of sexual innuendo and subplot, especially the homosexual references?

I haven’t even removed the shrink wrap from my season 2 episodes…I cringe to imagine what I may find.

I’ll look around the blogosphere a bit to see if other SF-Catholics concur. Comments welcome on this subject. (And all other subjects.)

Number Two Daughter is 10. I’m told that 8-11 year-olds love book series. My 10 y.o. is pretty extreme in this regard:

the Harry Potter series
the new Peter Pan series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
the Redwall series by Brian Jacques
the Series of Unfortunate Events series
the Artemis Fowl series
the Magic Treehouse series
the 26 Fairmount Avenue series by Tomie DePaola
the Warriors series
the Nancy Drew series (she seems to enjoy the old editions better)

I’m sure there are more that are not coming to mind at the moment…

Interestingly, even thought there is an American Girl doll, which she loves, in the picture, Number Two Daughter has never gotten into the American Girl book series.

When I was a child the series I devoured were:

Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators
(another good link about that series here)
Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time books
Hardy Boys
Doctor Who (Note: in my opinion Dr. Who is no longer suitable for children or teens. More on this tomorrow.)

Today I drove to my alma mater with the children for a day visiting Mom’s old stomping grounds. We stopped by the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, which was excellent 20 years ago when I was going there and is still excellent, by all appearances. According to their website, 27 candidates from the Newman Center’s RCIA program were received into the Church this Easter. I consider it the place where I grew up in the Faith. Check it out online or if you ever visit Champaign, Illinois.