Marcher Lord Press 3: Nobody expects the Elvish Disquisition!

Have you noticed that hardly anyone really writes about vampires these days?

I know, I know: "Hey, I was expecting some kind of Elvish Disquisition, here."

That's the point, friend: Nobody expects the Elvish Disquisition--or the Vampiric Inquisition (run, of course, by Cardinal Fang).

So there.

Anyway--I'll be dealing with horror again this Halloween season, just as I did last year. But yesterday I mentioned that The Personifid Invasion from Jeff Gerke's new print-on-demand publishing house, Marcher Lord Press (hereafter MLP), deals with the nature of humanity and other matters of life and death. But these days we (Christians included) often like to be fuzzy about when biological life begins and ends. Is it any wonder that we embrace the idea of "undead "beings while denying the classical theology back of them--that they're demonically animated corpses?

We dislike the idea that they're demonic (in the proper, not Hollywood, sense) because it makes them less human and sexy, which is as it should be. But we also dislike the idea that they're damned. Nobody's really damned anymore; it's old-fashioned. So we keep trying to give these corpses redeemable souls. And it is this that leads unexpectedly to a kind of Elvish Disquisition.

Nobody expects the Elvish Disquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and enchanted blades. Our three weapons are fear and surprise and enchanted blades...and nice pointy ears. Our four...no... Amongst our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry are such elements as fear.... I'll come in again.

While we're waiting, MLP's Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Theodore Beale also deals with the topic of redeemable souls: specifically, whether Elves and other such creatures have them.

You see, Summa Elvetica actually bothers to put the most important medieval institution (the Catholic church, or something like it, anyway) in a standard quasi-medieval fantasy setting to see how well they get along. There are some oddities: apparently this is a world where the Roman Empire hasn't fallen. The main city is called "Amorr," which, for the terminally thick, is "Roma" (Rome) more or less backward, as well as the Latin word for "love" with an extra r.

A young scholar is called in to join a pair of geezers--uh, established scholars--to figure out whether elves actually have souls in the sense that they are proper targets for door-to-door evangelism. This is important for several reasons, because it will let the scholars publish a vital essay on the whole thing, and "Publish or be damned" takes on a whole new meaning when you're working for the Church. Also, if the average elf does have soul and tests positive for rhythm, R&B could take a whole new direction.

But to return to the earlier point, it matters whether any given being can be saved, but we tend to trivialize the question, even in speculative fiction. Much of the Christian speculative fiction either assumes that another world would work exactly like our own (boring, perhaps, but both safe and reasonable) or allows oddball variations on standard soteriology (exciting, perhaps, but both unsafe and unreasonable). How would salvation work for a multiple-species scenario? Would elves have their own Incarnation, or would they somehow use ours? These are weighty questions, and I'll return to them when I do a full review of Summa Elvetica in the near future.

But for now I'll conclude. I apologize for the length of the post. Despite the title, I'm sure nobody expected the Elvish Disquisition.

Nobody expects... Oh, Baggins!

Well, let's see what everyone else on the CSFF tour has to say...
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Tina Kulesa
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Ashley Rutherford
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Marcher Lord Press 2: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I mentioned last time that Jeff Gerke's nascent print-on-demand publishing house, Marcher Lord Press (hereafter MLP), has some impressive titles. They deal with important, timely issues such as transhumanism.

A friend of mine asked me a while back what the next step was, since gay rights hasn't had much true resistance lately. I said the transgendered movement was next, but the ultimate goal was transhumanism.

Then I got to explain what that was.

I would have been easier to simply loan him a copy of The Personifid Invasion by R. E. Bartlett, a novel that explores the ultimate triumph or tragedy of transhumanism: people uploading their consciousness to a kind of android, thereby shedding their human weaknesses, including mortality. That's a pretty Faustian deal, and the price is going to be steep.

Now, at the risk of spoiling my own plots, since I pursue the same topic in the "League of Superheroes" origin series, I don't think this is possible. To transfer one's consciousness would mean that it was nothing more than a collection of physical phenomena--electrical patterns, for example. That's the atheist worldview, where everything is ultimately just physics, no spiritual phenomena allowed. One of the fundamental concepts of Christianity is that there are phenomena from outside the physical realm, and our consciousness is among them.

However, we may view this as a mere plot device so that the transhumanist idea may be explored in some detail.

Bartlett also provides a spiritual phenomenon as counterpoint: "interterrestrials," also known to us superstitious types as demons. Apparently their existence is accepted by the people who push personifids as the secular version of the Resurrection. That sounds about right: Screwtape's "materialist magician" has arrived.

In any case, the question of what humanity really is has become a very practical, vital question today, and some people are too quick to ignore the fact that God gave us our bodies as the proper interface with his creation. I doubt we can improve on his design: all attempts to overcome design limitations (and those brought about by the Fall) will surely just move us further out of touch with both Creation and Creator. If The Personifid Invasion helps get that point across, it will have served us well.

Well, let's see what everyone else on the CSFF tour has to say...
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Tina Kulesa
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Ashley Rutherford
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Marcher Lord Press 1: Press On!

Jeff Gerke's latest contribution to Christian speculative fiction is Marcher Lord Press (hereafter MLP), a print-on-demand publishing house dedicated to Christian sci-fi and fantasy. It will officially open its doors October 1: “Atomic batteries to power; turbines to speed,” as the philosopher said.

MLP has various unusual aspects, among them the fact that its graphic mascot is almost certainly Shemp Howard with a dye job. But for those less interested in cultural allusions, the most striking feature is the initial list of novels. Even a quick look will reveal something important.

Okay, yes, the prices are very competitive. But I mean something even more important than that: MLP isn't afraid to pitch to readers with functioning brains. Summa Elvetica clearly doesn't target the hardcore dolt demographic. But even Hero, Second Class by Mitchell Bonds, which may at first seem a lightweight, offers intellectual humor and a bit of a learning experience.

Hero, Second Class is a modern fantasy, roughly along the lines of the Shrek mini-franchise. It's fantasy seen through a sci-fi lens, so fans of Tolkien, Lewis, etc. won't be too annoyed. The humor is fairly universal, however, and even people who don't care for fantasy of any kind will probably find it amusing, unless they don't care for humor of any kind either.

What about the Christian content, if any? I don't know, not having read the whole thing. However, since I've occasionally been barked at for the supposed lack of a Christian basis for "At the Mountains of Lunacy" in Light at the Edge of Darkness, I'm willing to give Bonds the benefit of the doubt. As I usually point out, "At the Mountains of Lunacy" was only a chapter from a larger story, and the next chapter, "A Paladin Called Shecky," gives a brief overview of a theological justification for the setting. (Curiously, the fact that I can justify it seems to annoy critics more than the supposed lack of justification does.) So it may well be that Bonds has some kind of explanation later on. Or perhaps he's just content to incorporate generally Christian themes into the work.

In such cases we should remember what Nicodemus asked the chief priests and Pharisees: "Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?" (John 7:51) This author and his book seem worth a hearing.

Tomorrow we'll look at R. E. Bartlett's The Personifid Invasion, among other things. You might want to bring a peashooter.

Well, let's see what everyone else on the CSFF tour has to say...
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Tina Kulesa
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Ashley Rutherford
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise