LETTERS FROM CHRISTIANS
CHRISTIAN NOVELIST THEODORE BEALE
Theodore
Beale is the author of a couple of popular "Christian fantasy" novels,
The War in Heaven and The World in Shadow. I would have completely
ignored these books had review copies not been sent to me (I review science
fiction and fantasy novels for SF
Reviews.Net). After reading the first book, and deciding it just wasn't
the kind of book apropos of the other site, I nevertheless went ahead and posted
the following review to amazon.com. This wasn't so much a review of the story
(which I found too silly and comic-booky to merit serious critical attention)
but one in response to remarks Beale makes in the afterword, pertaining to theological
matters. Here is the text of what I posted on amazon in full:
"Although the events in The War in Heaven are fictional, the invisible world of spirits it describes is not." This sentence, from the author's note at the end of this novel, illuminates the difference between Theodore Beale and other writers of fantasy. Mainstream fantasy authors like George R. R. Martin, Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, Piers Anthony and the like all understand that the mythical concepts they create for their novels are just that, mythical. Beale does not. If religion constitutes the ultimate confusion of fantasy and reality, then that confusion sees its purest expression in religious entertainment.
I'll admit right off the bat I'm an atheist. So why, you may ask, am I reviewing this book at all? I was sent free promotional copies of The War in Heaven and its sequel The World in Shadow by publisher Pocket Books so that I might review them for a different website I write for. After determining that site wouldn't be the appropriate venue for reviews of these books, I couldn't help wanting to post some kind of commentary after reading things in The War in Heaven that profoundly offended both my sensibilities and intellect.
The War in Heaven, for the most part, reads like a poor episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer written by a Christian fundamentalist. Sure, there are some entertaining passages, but it is sheer folly to claim, as one other reader did in his review, that the book isn't preachy. The book preaches throughout its length. Characters pray everywhere. Now it's not as though that sort of thing would be unexpected in a Christian novel; Beale is dutifully giving his audience what they want. But unlike mainstream fiction, Christian fiction is of course meant to evangelize. Otherwise, what's the point? You might as well write a secular novel.
But what really irked me were passages in the aforementioned "author's note" that I found so wrong-headed that they deserved comment. They indicate the difference in perspective between rationalists and the religious with crystal clarity.
Beale writes that "a rational, post-Enlightenment world has a difficult time admitting evil's reality." On the contrary, rationalists simply reject the notion that evil has a supernatural source. To claim that someone who does bad things does so out of demonic influence is not merely irrational but irresponsible. People who do bad things should be held accountable for their actions. "The devil made them do it" unjustly absolves those people of being held accountable and clouds the real reasons behind why someone might do a bad thing. Blaming imaginary beings for real problems solves nothing.
Beale then gives us a brief bit of autobiography where he describes his pre-Christian life as, apparently, a hotbed of "sin" and debauchery. "I could feel my mind slipping away with the shards of my morality," Beale writes of himself, "as I became less and less interested in anything but sin." Well, how nice for him, but I can say that as an atheist, my own life looks nothing like this, nor am I headed "straight for self-destruction." Nor does Beale's past reflect the lives of any of my other atheist friends either, all of whom are hard-working, upstanding, family-oriented people. If Beale's past really was as irrational and self-absorbed as he claims it was, it's no surprise religion was able to hook him when he was at his most vulnerable.
Beale also makes an attempt to defend the Christian doctrine of Hell by claiming that "in my experience, it is not God who sends us [to Hell]." I don't know if, by referring to his "experience," Beale is implying he has personally checked out Hell, but I can say that the scriptures do indeed make it clear that it is God's wrath that determines who suffers eternal torment. Every Christian loves John 3:16, but try reading John 3:18 or 3:36 sometime. A God who says, in effect, "I love you, but if you don't love me back, you'll be tortured for eternity!" cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called good or loving. To do so strips the very word "love" of any meaning it could possibly have. As long as Christianity holds to the doctrine of eternal punishment for simply not being Christian, it will never be able to lay any legitimate claim to being a moral belief system. If you want a good example of evil, I say "belief in Hell."
Finally, I was disgusted by Beale's remark that "Hell is our natural destination. Each of us is drowning in a sea of self-destruction." Such a profoundly misanthropic statement reveals that, at its core, Christianity has a deep loathing of humanity and life itself. It is diametrically opposed to the positive, humanistic outlook most atheists subscribe to. I ask you, honestly, which is the heathier, happier outlook? You know, there just might be something to a rational, post-Enlightenment worldview after all!
Okay, so needless to say I never entertained any illusions that Christians would be made happy by my little critique, but hey, I'm just the kind of guy who speaks his doggone mind. Still, the last thing I was expecting was a missive from the author himself, barely 24 hours after amazon finally posted my review. What follows is the text of his letter in full with my responses appearing in dark red italics. Notice that at no point does he actually address any of the critical points I made in the book review, resorting instead to a couple of ad hominem remarks about my professional ethics (as he sees them) and "delicacy."
Dear Mr. Wagner,
While I am not in the least bit offended at either your dislike of my book or your decision not to review a fantasy book on a site devoted to science fiction and fantasy, I am a little puzzled by your apparent desire to go out of your way to slam the book on Amazon, which appears, at the very least, rather unprofessional. I believe I know whereof I speak, having been a nationally syndicated game reviewer published weekly in the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, the Cox News Wire and the Chronicle Features syndicate from 1994 to 2000.
I’m not sure in what way it is unprofessional. My web site is owned by myself. I am not under any sort of contract to any syndicate or news service disallowing me the right to print reviews elsewhere. I am a free agent.
Is not the purpose of your site to provide reviews, both positive and negative? Furthermore, your review is one of Christianity and the author's note far more than of the book itself. I also find it somewhat ironic that someone hailing from a literary genre which prides itself on "Dangerous Visions" conceived to challenge and provoke the less-sophisticated sensibilities of the mainstream should prove to have such delicate sensibilities himself.
The fact that I had more to say about the author’s note than the book itself was precisely the reason I decided to keep the reviews off my own website. I use my website to review SF and fantasy stories, not critique an individual writer’s belief systems or philosophies. When it became clear that what I wanted to respond to the most were the personal statements you made in your author’s note, I thought a more general review forum would be the best place for it.
I have reviewed two Christian SF novels on my site, as well as several others that deal with religious themes, both times focusing on the story in my critiques. In my opinion, your novel was so heavily evangelical it would have had little appeal to a secular audience in the first place, and I had more to say about your author’s note. I don’t know if it takes a “delicate” sensibility to respond to points of view one thinks are just plain wrong; I would say it involves something called “conviction.” (And for the record, I’ve slammed Harlan Ellison good and hard.)
I have known the best the secular humanist world has to offer. Elite education, Porsches, models, record contracts... pretty much the works.
Wow. Good for you.
Nevertheless, I reject it,
You rejected elite education? Whatever floats your boat.
and I use the Christian worldview as a base from which to write my fantasy. This is wholly legitimate, by any creative standard. Should Christians not write fantasy? George MacDonald, the Scottish pastor, pretty much invented the modern genre with "Phantastes", published ten year's [sic] before Jules Verne saw print and before H.G. Wells was even born!
Christians can write whatever the heck they want. And one thing any creator has to face when he puts his work out for public consumption is that it is going to be subject to criticism.
Poor writing, boring storylines, unbelievable characters and logic-defying solutions are all good reasons to dismiss a book.
I think any of the editorial content printed in a book is fair game for criticism. See below.If "The War in Heaven" is genuinely a 1-star book in your honest opinion, well and good. But if there is nothing more to your opinion than "I hate Christianity because I think it's evil" then you are as guilty of blind and unreasoning prejudice as the religious fundamentalist who dismisses Robert Anton Wilson because there is gay sex in the Illuminatus trilogy or the black activist who seeks to ban Mark Twain for using the word "nigger".
Are you quite sure you read through my comments on amazon? Because I feel I was very clear in explaining precisely what my objections were to the opinions expressed in your author’s note. If I were just some obnoxious Christian-basher, there would have been no reason to take my comments seriously enough to write to me personally. But that wasn’t my motivation. Among other things, I objected to your defense of the doctrine of Hell, as well as your view that all people are up to their necks in a sea of self-destruction. These are points of view I find profoundly misanthropic and harmful, and I did my best given amazon’s 1000-word limit to explain why. I’m sure there are people out there who criticize out of blind, unreasoning prejudice but I like to think I’m not one of them.
For what it’s worth, I did dislike the story, but a lot of Christian readers didn’t, so there’s no reason for you to care what I think. It just so happened that the only part of your book substantive enough, in my opinion, to warrant in-depth commentary was the author’s note. None of it was intended as Theo-bashing; they were responses to points of view printed in your book that I objected to, pure and simple. As such they were fair game.
This is unfortunate, but perhaps anticipated by Pocket as the genre has been switched from Science Fiction in the mass-market edition to Visionary Fiction in the new paperback. They also canned the new Rowena cover in order to make "The World in Shadow" look less like a fantasy novel. As an active SFWA member, (I'm on the Nebula Short Fiction jury), I think this is tremendously bad for the SF&F genre, as removing one of the fastest-growing elements of the book-selling market from the genre will not help SF&F gain shelf space or mindshare with the major publishers.
I don’t see that Christian fiction, or nonfiction, is having any sort of problem gaining either shelf-space or mindshare with major publishers. We all know how well Left Behind has done, and it’s a common site to see bestseller lists littered with pandering nonsense about talking to the dead or having conversations with God or eating chicken soup for the soul. Try to get a major publisher to take a risk with a book called “All About Atheism,” on the other hand, and see how easy that is.
Unlike you I applaud the decision of publishers to market Christian fiction with distinctive imprints. (Though personally, I think using the word “visionary” is an insult to authors like Clarke, Heinlein, Dick, Bester, Asimov et all, whose work merits it. I don’t see anything particularly visionary about advertising a religion that is solidly entrenched in the mainstream.) Such imprints help Christian readers find exactly what they are looking for, and also help secular readers avoid spending their money on what they think will be simply an entertaining story but ends up sucker-punching them with religious evangelizing. Yes, of course one can write fiction with religious and even overtly Christian themes that doesn’t evangelize, but it would be naïve to think that evangelizing isn’t the intent of the majority of contemporary Christian entertainment. Truth in advertising, I always say.
I just don't believe this sort of divisiveness is truly necessary. For example, Charles Stross is a pan-European pagan socialist whose every expressed political, religious and economic belief is diametrically opposed to my libertarian Christian Austrian-school views, but I love his work and have even thrown in my two bits for the nomination of two of his "Accelerando" shorts. Should I slam "Toast" because, in my view, his beliefs are literally diabolical? As the Apostle Paul would say, by no means!
And I would agree that dismissing an author entirely just because you disagree with his beliefs is a bad idea. And I would be the last person to do that; both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were devoutly Christian as you know, and I recognize the brilliance of their fantasies. But I would hope you are not suggesting, when you say divisiveness is unnecessary, that people shouldn’t engage in spirited debate and criticism. As much as you respect Stross, I am sure that if he wrote something you objected to at a fundamental level you would not hesitate to critique it, particularly if Stross were evangelizing his viewpoint. Indeed, a man of integrity could hardly do otherwise.
Now, I will say that I rather liked your characterization of the book as "a poor episode of Buffy... written by a Christian fundamentalist." I've seen far too many sub-par episodes of Buffy to agree to the adjective "poor", but this is otherwise a vivid and generally accurate description of not only the first book, but the subsequent series as well, in my opinion.
And I’m quite certain your series will meet with a great deal of success with its target audience. Best of luck to you, sir.
Cordially,
Thomas Wagner
Mr. Beale did not respond to me again.
What say
you, dear readers? Was I fair? Was he?
