Guest Post: This Is The Advanced Class.
Jeremy McNabb, Sep 21, 2011
Good morning! I caught up with my friend Jeremy again. He’s graciously filled in for me this morning. Jeremy McNabb is a steampunk author, youth director, and speaker. His latest e-novella, Gravesight, is available on Amazon Kindle. Hope you enjoy […]
Speculative Love, Part 2: Seeing The World Through New Eyes
Fred Warren, Sep 20, 2011
Last week, we talked about the nature of love, offering a couple of examples from speculative fiction. Self-sacrifice figured prominently in that discussion, and I argued that love in its most refined form is fundamentally other-focused. Love seeks the best […]
Mythopoeia Or … It’s Opposite
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Sep 19, 2011
Mythopoeia, according to Wikipedia, is “a narrative genre … where a fictional mythology is created … The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction.” When I first heard the term, I was confounded. Which is it, I wondered, the creation of a myth or the integration of traditional myth into a new story?
Renewing Our Wonder
L.B. Graham, Sep 16, 2011
Renewing our wonder is perhaps the real gift of all speculative fiction, which points to the ultimate source of all wonder: God Himself.
Stories For Christians 4: Treasures For Churchian Dragons
E. Stephen Burnett, Sep 15, 2011
How to train your Churchian Dragon, who reflexively rejects fiction that doesn’t fulfill wrongly defined “practical†needs: be strongly Biblical, praise true pragmatism, encouraging existing enjoyments, earn trust by telling, and reach hearts with stories.
The Encouragement Of Story
E. Stephen Burnett, Sep 14, 2011
The superhero film “Thor†encouraged me, a friend of mine said. How should great stories encourage us? What stories have encouraged you by echoing to you God, or our nature and response to Him, or the beauty of God’s world, or all three?
Speculative Love, Part 1: No Greater Love
Fred Warren, Sep 13, 2011
When I introduced this series last week, Galadriel made what I thought was a rather perceptive comment: “I don’t understand the point of a ‘speculative love ‘ story…” Indeed. What’s speculative about love? Nothing.
The “It” Factor
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Sep 12, 2011
What is the “It” factor that makes people sit up and take notice? What makes them buy a book, review it, talk about it, give it as a gift? More so, what causes them to tweet and re-tweet, to write their own articles and link to someone else’s discussion of the book, to share it on Facebook or Google Plus?
Stories For Christians 3: Stealing Past Churchian Dragons
E. Stephen Burnett, Sep 8, 2011
Contrary to Churchian Dragons’ wrong notions of what is useful, Story’s true “usefulness†must be defined not by whether it makes people convert or behave better, but by whether it drives us toward man’s chief end — to glorify and enjoy our Creator forever.
Speculative Love: An Introduction
Fred Warren, Sep 6, 2011
No, this is not a manual for exobiological reproduction, alien mating rituals, or human-vampire hybridization. My apologies if that is what you expected when you arrived here. Given that the name of this blog is Speculative Faith, on which topic we spend […]
The Place Of Hope In Speculative Fiction
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Sep 5, 2011
I find Chesterton’s perception of “modern fiction†— stories written in a realistic style nearly a hundred years ago — eerily similar to stories written in a realistic style today. When the imagination is separated from spiritual reality, it seems to stall on the bleak and the horrible.
Randy Alcorn on Story, Courage, and The New Earth, Part 2
Randy Alcorn, Sep 2, 2011
Author Randy Alcorn explores how he wrote the contemporary novel “Courageous” (adapted from the new film), and how anticipating the physical New Heavens and New Earth can change a Christian’s life forever, starting now.
Stories For Christians 2: Tossing Meat To Churchian Dragons
E. Stephen Burnett, Sep 1, 2011
With many Christian readers ignoring the intrinsic God-honoring nature of true and beautiful stories, are some visionary Christian novelists not necessarily stealing past the Churchian Dragons as much as accidentally fulfilling their “practical†needs?
The Narnia Secret
E. Stephen Burnett, Aug 31, 2011
If the title Planet Narnia makes you cringe, you’re not alone. And if the title The Narnia Code makes you think “Lewis would have hated this,” well, me too (although upon reflection, I realized it was Tolkien who would have […]
Googling
Fred Warren, Aug 30, 2011
We do it so much the word has entered the official lexicon–type a word or phrase (or if you’re paranoid narcissistic prying nosy curious, try your name or a friend’s name) into the Google search engine, and click “Google search.” You’re googling! […]
What’s In Yours?
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Aug 29, 2011
Summer is over, and many readers used a part of their vacation time to kick back and enjoy a good book. But every day authors announce new releases, and the fall line up seems full of a wealth of new books. Then there are the classics — the books everyone else talks about that we’ve never picked up ourselves, though we’ve been meaning to. For writers, there are also books of friends and colleagues. So, what’s in your to-be-read pile?
Randy Alcorn on Story, Courage, and The New Earth, Part 1
Randy Alcorn, Aug 26, 2011
Author Randy Alcorn shares how he came to love God-honoring sci-fi and fantasy stories, how such stories point us toward eternity, and why some Christians still tend to avoid visionary novels.
Stories For Christians 1: The New ‘watchful Dragons’
E. Stephen Burnett, Aug 25, 2011
C.S. Lewis wrote about “watchful dragons†on guard against religious trappings that seem incompatible with enjoyment. But many Christians today employ different Churchian Dragons, who tolerate fiction (if they do) mainly if it plays well on their own moralist pragmatic grounds.
Authorship: God’s Gray Side
Kaci Hill, Aug 24, 2011
Black & White A friend and I were actually talking about today’s topic without her realizing it. She’s reading through the Aeneid, a book I have serious issues with. (Okay, so I’m an oddball English Lit major who dislikes most […]
Short Story Long
Fred Warren, Aug 23, 2011
We spend a lot of time talking about novels here at Speculative Faith, but I’d like to make a quick pitch for short stories today and list a few places you can find well-written, short spec-fic written from a Christian worldview or at least non-hostile to a Christian worldview, for free or cheap.
The Good And Bad Of The Reading Experience
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Aug 22, 2011
If fiction is a model for life which readers create in collaboration with writers, then it seems to me readers are being transformed by writers into whatever writers believe to be true.
Harry Potter, Bob The Tomato, and Genre
Zach Bartels, Aug 19, 2011
At one little Baptist church in 1997, no one had heard of Harry Potter. But “VeggieTales” was all the rage, and was proposed for the church’s VBS — until Vera (not quite her real name) spoke up. “I won’t have this at my church,†she said firmly. “It’s fantasy.â€
Why We Should Write Fiction For Christians, Part 2
E. Stephen Burnett, Aug 18, 2011
Amidst the cries to emphasize only subtler Christian stories, let’s not forget that Christians also need to see themselves and their beliefs simulated as only fiction can, and that some in the Church are genuinely confused about stories and need novelists’ love.
Wings
Fred Warren, Aug 16, 2011
A hawk notices something strange on the ground as she flies over the prairie on her morning hunt…
The Psychological Study Of Creativity – Or, You Experience What You Read
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Aug 15, 2011
Stories matter. Any reader can tell you this. We cry because a beloved old yeller dog, which never actually existed, dies. We laugh at the pig’s tail applied to the imaginary greedy Dudley Dursley. We cheer when the fictitious Aslan […]
Steve Rzasa on Scripture, Story, and Space Opera
Steve Rzasa, Aug 12, 2011
Author Steve Rzasa (“The Word Reclaimed” and “The Word Unleashed”) talks his past journalism, present story efforts, and future fiction, touching also on community journalism, denominations, and sci-fi devices for interstellar travel.
Why We Should Write Fiction For Christians, Part 1
E. Stephen Burnett, Aug 11, 2011
Many voices encourage Christian novelists to aim for secular audiences, and that is surely a worthy calling. Yet less frequently do we urge storytellers to explore the Gospel more directly in fiction that is by Christians, for Christians.
Authorship: God’s Pity
Kaci Hill, Aug 10, 2011
Broken Cisterns Before I start, let me say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a purely good hero or a purely evil villain. Some people are naturally benevolent or malicious, for whatever reason. And that’s okay. I like […]
Three Reasons You Should Write Secular Fiction
Fred Warren, Aug 9, 2011
Note: This is a slightly-edited excerpt from a very fine post by last week’s guest contributor, Mike Mikalatos, entitled, “Five Reasons You Should Write Contemporary Fiction.”
The Worldview Of Science Fiction
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Aug 8, 2011
As anyone who frequents Spec Faith on a regular basis knows, I’m a fantasy writer. However, I can’t help but notice that science fiction, along with an amalgamation best termed science fantasy, is slowly on the rise. Interestingly, along with […]
