Post by Wolfie on Aug 7, 2009 10:28:01 GMT -5
I went to Books-A-Million this passed Sunday after lunch with some church friends and after a good lesson at church. I looked around at the Christian fiction, Inspiration (Christian Living), and Philosophy section, then I walked around to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section to see what was on the shelves. Of all the novels I saw, I didn't know which met my sci-fi interest except for the Starcraft novels. I picked up the Science Fiction: The Best of The Year, 2008 Edition and looked at the table of contents. To my surprise, I saw the short story title "Jesus Christ, Reanimator." I thought, why is Jesus in a sci-fi story? My curiosity drove me to read it.
I flipped over to the page of the story and started reading it. Well, in the first two pages I found out that this is definitely not Jesus at least the not Jesus we know; he's more like a sci-fied Jesus.
MacLeod's Jesus was talking to a reporter, the main character, and said some uncharacteristic and unbiblical things. He said most of the reports of his miracles were exaggerations, says he's only human when asked if he's omniscient (I so want to quote it but I will respect the copyright law), doesn't know how he can heal people and thinks there's some mysterious scientific reason behind it, says he can levitate and that the Catholic Church knows he can, says that out medical advances are doing a better job at healing people than he can, says that heaven is literally in the sky and is the mind of God, says a book about the physics of immortality helped him understand some concepts of immortality, cusses, didn't come to teach new morals but to make people take hold of the morals people already have....and a lot more.
Later on in the story, a bishop said that it isn't the real Jesus instead it's a robot. Another theory of who Jesus is was that he's an alien and his orbiting ship caused him to levitate.
It's a really odd speculative fiction story that I couldn't help but write about.
I know that it is a speculative story and that it is fiction, but it made me wonder why Ken MacLeod wrote the story and what he hoped accomplish by writing it. I was surprised because I've been excitedly writing Christian sci-fi stories and researching the genre. It used to not phase me when I heard about stuff like this, but because of the Christian sci-fi interest it did surprise me.
I flipped over to the page of the story and started reading it. Well, in the first two pages I found out that this is definitely not Jesus at least the not Jesus we know; he's more like a sci-fied Jesus.
MacLeod's Jesus was talking to a reporter, the main character, and said some uncharacteristic and unbiblical things. He said most of the reports of his miracles were exaggerations, says he's only human when asked if he's omniscient (I so want to quote it but I will respect the copyright law), doesn't know how he can heal people and thinks there's some mysterious scientific reason behind it, says he can levitate and that the Catholic Church knows he can, says that out medical advances are doing a better job at healing people than he can, says that heaven is literally in the sky and is the mind of God, says a book about the physics of immortality helped him understand some concepts of immortality, cusses, didn't come to teach new morals but to make people take hold of the morals people already have....and a lot more.
Later on in the story, a bishop said that it isn't the real Jesus instead it's a robot. Another theory of who Jesus is was that he's an alien and his orbiting ship caused him to levitate.
It's a really odd speculative fiction story that I couldn't help but write about.
I know that it is a speculative story and that it is fiction, but it made me wonder why Ken MacLeod wrote the story and what he hoped accomplish by writing it. I was surprised because I've been excitedly writing Christian sci-fi stories and researching the genre. It used to not phase me when I heard about stuff like this, but because of the Christian sci-fi interest it did surprise me.
