Mishmash

Space-Quakers: Why Quakers and Quakerism Can Find a Home in Science Fiction

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Jo Walton has a nice 2009 review of Molly Gloss’s The Dazzle of Day over on Tor.com.  This is another book to add to your reading list if you like faith represented in science fiction/fantasy, and want to present faith reasonably well–without being preachy, or limiting a faith.  Certainly this book caught my attention.  I went to a seminar once on Quakers in Science Fiction which rattled off quite a few of those books.  I no longer have that list with me, but there is an annotated list of Quaker references in science fiction at adherents.com site.  Let me hit some highlights for you, and then give you the link to Jo Walton’s essay on Molly Gloss’s The Dazzle of Day.

Some of the books with major Quaker themes/ characters/ plot lines include:

Nancy Kress  CROSSFIRE

David E. Morse  THE IRON BRIDGE

Judith Moffett  PENNTERRA

Joan Slonsczewski  A DOOR INTO OCEAN, STILL FORMS ON FOXFIELD, THE WALL AROUND EDEN

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A Flood of Great Writing Techniques in Noah: (Re)-Writing/Expanding Sacred Stories

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Russell Crowe as NoahLet me praise Aronofsky’s Noah for its fleshing out of an iconic thin narrative of Noah in the Bible and making it a story.

The story of Noah in the Bible is relatively sparse.  Noah never says anything.  God does all the talking.  In the movie, well, God may be doing some communicating, but since the narrative is told more from the ground, from Noah and his family’s perspective, Noah is the main character, making choices.

Making choices.  I think that’s an important thing to highlight.  One of the strange ironies of religious life, it seems, is that the closer we get to our God, whomever that may be, the seemingly fewer choices we get–until we are the Hand of God, the Feet of God, the Puppet of God.  I don’t think this is really the case.  But depiction in movies and books sometimes have us think characters who are devoted to their god cease to think and act based completely on the commands of God.  One should add “the interpretation of what they believe to be” between “on” and “the” in that last sentence. Because in many cases, believers have to do a lot of interpreting.

The movie holds out that question to answer.  Certainly Noah has to decide HOW he is hearing God.  He gets parts right—there is going to be a flood.  God wants him to build an ark.  The animals are going to come and get on board the boat.  After that, though, Noah is subject to some speculation and extrapolation when he can’t really hear a clear answer from God.

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Bajorans and the Evolving Trek View of Faith

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I have to admire Star Trek for the way they evolved on matters of faith, by showing the complexity and the cultural aspects of faith, and how religion impacted society, at least in one series.

Star Trek hasn’t always been like this. Faith and Religion seem to be the target of early Gene Roddenberry design. In TOS and STNG, faith and spirituality were often shown to be merely a way to manipulate the masses (hello, Karl Marx). Both Kirk and Picard showed the natives that their gods were machines (“The Return of the Archons”) and (“The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”), usually, or fickle higher powers prone to jealousy (“Who Mourns for Adonis”, and “The Apple” come to mind from TOS), or merely keeping people young and stupid for the whim of the gods (STNG “Who Watches the Watchers?” ) or (VOY: “The Caretaker”). Worse was when a believer realized that his/her faith was empty (VOY: “This Mortal Coil”, or VOY: “Emanations”).

In STNG, Q also represented the gods at their most amoral and irresponsible. A whole slew of gods that were bored but fascinated with humans (HUMANS are the object of everyone’s curiosity… what, no god wanted to explore Betazoid culture? ) What a scary concept for a higher power.

But Deep Space Nine seemed to want to explore religion and faith a bit more deeply. True, the requisite aliens were present in the Wormhole next to Bajor, but Roddenberry wasn’t beyond saying that gods could be higher forms of life that we don’t understand. Certainly I agree.  My concept of God is that he is a much higher form of life—an alien, yes, but still God. But unlike Q, the gods of Bajor, the Prophets, care for the people of Bajor. They are higher life inside the wormhole and emotionally attached to a humanoid species.

Bajorans themselves are almost all religious, having to deal with the reality of gods who live in the wormhole. The gods intervene in history; they send little Orbs that light up and give you prophecies, and Bajoran faith has completely mixed with politics in a way that is eerily similar and yet very different than American culture today. The US may not have preachers as politicians, but they have politicians who think they are preachers, and who create laws as if God himself were speaking to them. At least Bajor is up front: it’s the Pope in charge of the world, thank you very much.

I give DS9 a lot of stones for making this faith and religion complex.

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Writing Courageously Through the Lenten Season

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abstract trees grass sacred skyscapes photomanipulations 2560x1600 wallpaper_www.wallpaperhi.com_54Writing is a Sacred tradition in many cultures.  We revere the books that come from these cultures.  It’s also a very sacrificial act, one that takes a lot of courage, honesty, and time.  I’d like to talk about writing during Lent.

Traditionally, Lent gives some 46 days to prepare for Easter, a time of preparation for Christians for the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross (and the subsequent cool resurrection part).  The idea was that you were not just shocked, surprised, pleased, and quickly through Easter, but that you could think –over 46 days– about the impact this one act of self-sacrifice did for your faith.  It’s mirrored in some ways by Advent.

But whereas Advent is about preparing for joy–a baby, a baby! Lent is about preparing for death and transition.

Christians often give up something for Lent–so that whenever they crave it, they will think of what Christ gave up for them.  Chocolate and Life are not comparable; however, the idea is to be aware of the season through this sacrifice.  Call it the best mindfulness exercise the Christians have come up with yet.

That said, whether you are Christian or not, we can take the Lenten Season to think about Faith, and perhaps, write about it.  Or at least ask ourselves to write with more courage, more honesty, and more faith than we have in the past.

Writers are plagued with insecurity and negative thoughts.  Let’s put those on the altar of Lent and say, hey, no more of these.  We are afraid sometimes of writing our Truth and giving it to others.  And we often have a lack of faith in our own abilities and ideas.

Lent leads us up to celebrating Life from Death.  I don’t want to co-opt Jesus’s very big moment, but he too had a very big mission, and it got harder and harder to be honest, to be courageous and to follow through on what his mission was.

What I want to do is to ask writers to write for 46 days– science fiction, fantasy, memoir, essay, poetry–and write with more courage, more honesty and more faith than you ever have before.  I also challenge you to write a little about faith.

It’s important for us as writers to believe in ourselves and our writing, to give up negative thoughts and insecurities, preparing our hearts to more honestly talk about Life.  There is a lot of struggling that goes on in writing if we are to be honest–and struggling with being honest–and so, for 46 days, let the honesty flow.  Be yourself.  Be creative.  Be courageous. Be honest.  GIVE UP negative thoughts that question YOUR mission, and Create and GIVE something honest and courageous to the World.

MONDAY, FEB 2 Wrestling With Gods ToC Reveal, Author Chat Facebook Party, and 99cent “Special Edition”

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T-18-Cover-270x417-100dpi-C8Hey Folks,

Wanted to let you know that on February 2 we’re going to unveil the Table of Contents (ToC) for the anthology Wrestling With Gods: Tesseracts 18.  On that day, on a special Facebook page, you can chat with authors and party with us as we celebrate all things Wrestling with Gods.  You can also purchase on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca the Kindle “Special Edition” for 99 cents–get the link at the party.  So if you’ve been dying to read the stories and want to get the anthology for less than a buck, come on over on FEB 2 to this special event.

Please go on over to the Facebook page and join this amazing event!  We’ll see you there on February 2nd!  Join us at 12pm (MST) and there should be authors there till 9pm…but they will catch your questions whenever they drop by too.  You can drop by as you like!  Drive-By Author Chat.

It’s our little Groundhog Day fun….

Tesseracts 18: Wrestling With Gods Cover Reveal

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T-18-Cover-270x417-100dpi-C8Happy Bodhi Day!  Tesseracts 18 has a COVER!  I’m very excited to show you the new cover for Tesseracts 18: Wrestling With Gods, the new anthology of science fiction and fantasy from Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, latest in the long running, award-winning Tesseracts anthology series.

The Tesseracts Eighteen anthology is filled with speculative offerings that give readers a chance to see faith from both the believer and the skeptic point-of-view in worlds where what you believe is a matter of life, death, and afterlife.

The work is now available as an e-book download for Amazon Kindle, exclusively, until it’s available in print in March (Canada) and April (USA) and in other e-book formats.  Keep watching for more on Tesseracts 18 in the coming weeks!  Order your Amazon Kindle e-book today–just in time for some holiday reading.

On a personal note, I’m incredibly proud of this anthology! I have enjoyed multiple readings of the stories and poems included and I would say these represent the best of Canadian science fiction and fantasy–stories that also happen to speak on faith and religion in some way.  I think you’ll be surprised how easily science fiction and fantasy speaks on these topics–and remember classic stories and novels that have always spoken about faith.

Click on the cover to take you to Amazon’s Tess 18 site where you can purchase an Amazon Kindle download.  Again, print versions come out in the spring, as well as other ebook editions.

Featuring works by: Derwin Mak, Robert J. Sawyer, Tony Pi, S. L. Nickerson, Janet K. Nicolson, John Park, Mary-Jean Harris, David Clink, Mary Pletsch, Jennifer Rahn, Alyxandra Harvey, Halli Lilburn, John Bell, David Jón Fuller, Carla Richards, Matthew Hughes, J. M. Frey, Steve Stanton, Erling Friis-Baastad, James Bambury, Savithri Machiraju, Jen Laface and Andrew Czarnietzki, David Fraser, Suzanne M. McNabb, and Megan Fennell.

About the Editors for Tesseracts Eighteen:
Liana Kerzner is an award-winning TV producer & writer who was also in front of the camera as co-host of the late night show Ed & Red’s Night Party, and is currently the host/writer of Liana K’s Geek Download, heard weekly on the internationally syndicated radio program Canada’s Top 20.

Jerome Stueart has taught creative writing for 20 years, teaches a workshop called Writing Faith and has been published in Fantasy,
Geist, Joyland, Geez, Strange Horizons, Ice-Floe, Redivider, OnSpec, Tesseracts Nine, Tesseracts Eleven, Tesseracts Fourteen,
and Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead. His novel,One Nation Under Gods, will be published in Nov 2015 from ChiZine.

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For more on Bodhi Day–the Day Buddhists commemorate the Enlightenment of Buddha– see this link.

Greyhound Bus posts interview with me on my Sketching trip

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In April, I decided to take a Greyhound bus to see my birthmother in Indiana, go to a writing conference in Michigan, and pitch an idea to some wonderful publishers in Toronto.  I was out of work, and had been for many months.  The only affordable way to do this that I could see was to go by Greyhound Bus.  It would take almost three weeks.  I knew I would be on the bus for awhile.  But I had this idea, that I would sketch the people and the places I saw outside my window on my journey.  Just for fun.  I would tweet them as “Sketches from the Road”.  On one hand, I wanted to get my drawing hand back into practice.  I used to be a cartoonist a long time ago, and a portrait artist, but I just hadn’t done a lot of that in many years.

So I did these sketches as I went and it kept me busy and made me really look and see the new places around me.  They weren’t people and buildings passing by–I had to know their brickwork and their coats.  And that makes a difference in the experience you have while traveling.  At least it did for me.  Greyhound Bus Driver as Vitruvian Man

Greyhound liked the whole thing so much that they decided to feature me on their blog, The Hound, and I’m really happy about that.  Geist magazine saw the sketches, via my friend Lily Gontard, and wanted to publish the sketches to tell a story of my journey.  I’m really thrilled about that too.

Here’s the Greyhound Link to their interview with me on The Hound.

I will put up more of these sketches soon, as soon as I know what Geist needs.  I have more wonderful news to share from Toronto soon, and when Geist’s article comes out in the fall, I’ll link you there as well.  Look for more sketches soon.

Until then, enjoy your travels!

 

“Lemmings in the Third Year” and Women in Science

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photo by Leo Seta, Flickr, Creative Commons
photo by Leo Seta, Flickr, Creative Commons

For the first time, available now by itself: “Lemmings in the Third Year” for your Kindle, iPad, e-reader device. 

Arctic researchers stuck in a land of talking animals, comedy, runner up to the Fountain Award.  The idea started with Iron John: a Book About Men and ended up being about Women in Science instead.  How did that happen?

__________

It was the summer of 1992 when I moved to Missouri to sit outside the gates of the University of Missouri-Columbia and hope that I got in to their Masters program.  It was foolish.  I can’t believe the belief I had, the sheer power of conviction that they would pick me if I waited right there.  To wait the year–in order to get in-state tuition too—I worked at Taco Bell, next-door, and I was just barely getting by.  I lived in a house with four roommates, but the rent was about 400 a month for a bedroom.  In the fall, I saw an ad in the Maneater (the student newspaper) for a cartoonist.  It paid 12 dollars a cartoon.  You had to produce 2 cartoons a week, but you had an open subject, any style, whatever you wanted to do.

I was not a student at the time, but maybe they made an exception for me.  I could draw.  I had imagination.  I could do this.  But what would I write about?  I remember that I was reading Iron John: A book about Men, and was very confused by it.  There was a lot I loved, and I lot I argued with.  Robert Bly brings that out in people–and that’s okay.  I had also picked up a book about polar bears from a discount shelf inside an old Hastings store.  By mashing Robert Bly and polar bears I created Captain Bly and submitted six cartoons for consideration.  I got in!  It meant that I had nearly 100 extra dollars a month!  I was thrilled.

I kept that cartoon strip going for four years.  After the year waiting outside, I did finally get into Mizzou, but I kept the Taco Bell job too.  The strip started out being about men, and about bears (I didn’t have a clue that I was a gay man who loved “bears” but drawing them made me happy).  But soon it got into science, and I created three biologists who journey north and are stuck in a north where all the animals talk to them.

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Writing the LGBT Spiritual Journey, Saturday, April 5, Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, MI

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Please join us in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the weekend before the Festival of Faith and Writing (at Calvin College), for Writing the LGBT Spiritual Journey Workshop, APRIL 5, SATURDAY, 9am–5pm.

For the LGBT person of faith, the journey has not been easy.  Many of us are refugees from mainline denominations that offer faith but only to some, or only with clauses attached.  Some of us have escaped into better, more accepting faiths or denominations–but that journey may not have been easy.  Charting our spiritual journey, though, can help bring focus and fulfillment to our lives as part of the LGBT community.  Writing our spiritual journeys also completes the missing parts of society’s spiritual journey.  In this Workshop we will read LGBT writers of faith, as well as writers of faith in general, to pick up tips and techniques that will help you write about your journey.  If you like discussing spirituality in the context of the LGBT community, with others like yourself, and exploring through writing what your journey has discovered, come join us.  Using writing exercises, games, techniques of professional writers, and your own lives, you will create writing that struggles, overcomes, even heals, as it maps the spiritual journey of your life.  All faiths are welcome.  All struggles are welcome.  Even if your spirituality doesn’t fall neatly in a box, join us.  Boxes aren’t the best places for spirituality anyway.

This class needs a minimum of five people to run.  Some reading will be sent to you via email before the workshop begins. Cost is $80 per person.  Sign up early so we can be sure that the workshop runs, and that you receive readings for the workshop.  Bring a journal, a pen, and the heart of an explorer.

For more information, and to sign up, please contact Fountain Street Church.

Saturday, April 5, 9am-5pm
Fountain Street Church
(616) 459-8386
To sign up for this class, please follow this link to EventBrite:

Writing Faith Writing Workshop starts tonight

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Jerome-WritingFaith(web)

If you’re in Ohio, there’s a new workshop of Writing Faith starting up at Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Dayton.  A collaboration with First Baptist Dayton and Temple Israel, the workshop is going to be 13 weeks, Tuesdays, 5:30-8:30.

The workshop is designed to teach you how to write about Faith–a tricky subject to begin with–but with a long history.  Come explore your faith and learn techniques found in Annie Dillard, Langston Hughes, Donald Miller, Thomas Merton, Andre Dubus, John Updike, Frederika Mathews-Green, Kathleen Norris and others.  While the core may be Jewish and Christian based, there will be readings from other faiths.  We hope to create a lasting workshop of multi-faith writers who will continue to write and workshop together.

Follow us on www.writingfaith.net where I’ll be posting short articles about “How to Write about Faith” as we go.