Orthodox Christians and fantasy literature

[Steve Hayes]

An interesting discussion seems to be developing in the Orthodox
blogosphere about whether Orthodox Christians should write, or even read,
fantasy literature. They are referring to the works of writers like C.S.
Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien — Christian (though not Orthodox) authors who
wrote fantasy fiction.

Read about it here:
http://wp.me/p3gtp-PN

[RVG]

Post by Steve Hayes
An interesting discussion seems to be developing in the Orthodox
blogosphere about whether Orthodox Christians should write, or even
read, fantasy literature. They are referring to the works of writers
like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien — Christian (though not Orthodox)
authors who wrote fantasy fiction.
Read about it here: http://wp.me/p3gtp-PN

As a science-fiction avid fan, I've always found fantasy as a retarded
sub-genre for immature nerds.

I make an exception for urban fantasy à la Neil Gaiman. His Sandman
series is a masterpiece. Other than that I give all Tolkien, Lewis, etc.
for Philip K. Dick. He's a bit hard to read today for young readers
because his language and references are of course rooted in the 50s and
the 60s, but he's been the only SF writer to - since his very first
published short story "Beyond Lies a Wub" - predict the internet, and he
seems to have had at least one genuine vision of St Paul who gave him in
a dream in koine Greek (a language that Dick didn't know at all - he'd
learned only Latin and German), the herbal prescription to heal his
dying son.

[Steve Hayes]

Post by RVG

Post by Steve Hayes
An interesting discussion seems to be developing in the Orthodox
blogosphere about whether Orthodox Christians should write, or even
read, fantasy literature. They are referring to the works of writers
like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien — Christian (though not Orthodox)
authors who wrote fantasy fiction.
Read about it here: http://wp.me/p3gtp-PN

As a science-fiction avid fan, I've always found fantasy as a retarded
sub-genre for immature nerds.
I make an exception for urban fantasy à la Neil Gaiman. His Sandman
series is a masterpiece. Other than that I give all Tolkien, Lewis, etc.
for Philip K. Dick. He's a bit hard to read today for young readers
because his language and references are of course rooted in the 50s and
the 60s, but he's been the only SF writer to - since his very first
published short story "Beyond Lies a Wub" - predict the internet, and he
seems to have had at least one genuine vision of St Paul who gave him in
a dream in koine Greek (a language that Dick didn't know at all - he'd
learned only Latin and German), the herbal prescription to heal his
dying son.

I always tend to confuse Philip K. Dick with Philip J. Farmer, I'm not quite
sure why. I recently reread some of John Wyndham's short stories, and enjoiyed
them, and C.S. Lewis's space trilogy, but more recent science fiction I don't
enjoy very much.

[RVG]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by RVG

Post by Steve Hayes
An interesting discussion seems to be developing in the Orthodox
blogosphere about whether Orthodox Christians should write, or even
read, fantasy literature. They are referring to the works of writers
like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien — Christian (though not Orthodox)
authors who wrote fantasy fiction.
Read about it here: http://wp.me/p3gtp-PN

As a science-fiction avid fan, I've always found fantasy as a retarded
sub-genre for immature nerds.
I make an exception for urban fantasy à la Neil Gaiman. His Sandman
series is a masterpiece. Other than that I give all Tolkien, Lewis, etc.
for Philip K. Dick. He's a bit hard to read today for young readers
because his language and references are of course rooted in the 50s and
the 60s, but he's been the only SF writer to - since his very first
published short story "Beyond Lies a Wub" - predict the internet, and he
seems to have had at least one genuine vision of St Paul who gave him in
a dream in koine Greek (a language that Dick didn't know at all - he'd
learned only Latin and German), the herbal prescription to heal his
dying son.

I always tend to confuse Philip K. Dick with Philip J. Farmer, I'm not quite
sure why. I recently reread some of John Wyndham's short stories, and enjoiyed
them, and C.S. Lewis's space trilogy, but more recent science fiction I don't
enjoy very much.

Philip K. Dick is IMO one of the most important writers of the 20th
century with Kafka.

He invented uchrony (alternate hisrory) as well as such concepts as the
android (as an artificial person, not to be confused with robots) as
well as an extraordinary spiritual vision in which he believed that we
are living around the end of the 1st century - ie Saint Paul only died a
few years or decades ago, and all the history we are told is just a veil
of illusion created by the god of this world to turn us away from faith
and the firm belief that "this generation shall not pass till all these
things be fulfilled".
It may sound gently crazy, but when PKD had this vision, on 2/3/1974, he
also saw the world as it has become today, a world filled with
interconnected information (his "papes" are the only description of the
internet from the early 60s). In his first short-story "Beyond lies a
wub" he imagined an ET animal, a sort of giant pig, that feeds on
real-time information and processes it live. So the astronaut, in order
to sustain it, must continuously feed it with information and question
it. So the wub is a living encyclopaedia which content is continuously
updated.
At the end of the story, the astronauts decide to eat the wub, because
it's as tasty as pork. :)

In the 60s Dick wrote stories about writers who couldn't publish their
books because their typewriters where interconnected on a global
network, and their stories were read and criticized while they were
writing them.