Sunday, October 26, 2008

Single-issue voting

Some people act as though it's horrible to vote based on a single issue, especially if it's abortion. But let's consider that idea carefully.

Suppose there is a candidate whose views and policies you agree with almost 100%. On practically every issue, this candidate is perfect. However, the candidate believes that all Jews (Blacks, Asians, handicapped people, whatever) should be deported or shot. Do you still vote for that candidate?

If you would, then you're like a lot of people, even self-proclaimed Christians, who will vote for someone they supposedly disagree with on a major issue because they believe that the good outweights the bad. But in some cases, a single evil can--must--outweight any amount of good.

I expect some will cry foul, however. After all, how likely is it that a candidate will agree with you on every issue but still have one extremely odious view?

But that's my point--at least partly. You see, if someone is able to justify killing an unborn child, he can justify a lot of other things. Ideas do not exist in a vacuum; one evil will lead to another. So while abortion is a single issue, it touches on other fundamental issues.

You may say, as double-minded voters often do, that the pro-abortion candidate is anti-war and probably anti-capital punishment. But war and capital punishment do not take nearly as many lives in any given year as abortion does--and the lives taken by abortion are easily the most innocent and deserving of protection. Is it reasonable to save a hundred thousand hypothetical lives--those who may be killed in a war--at the cost of a million actual lives?

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Beyond the Reflection’s Edge 3: Weak Points

Bryan Davis’s Beyond the Reflection’s Edge does have a weak point or two. I'll consider a few I doubt anyone else will have, except for my opener, which is downright obvious.

Confusion. Everyone's a triplet, and they aren't properly tagged:
"Bwa-ha-ha! I am Gordon Blue!"
"I'm Simon Red!"
"I'm Kelly Green!"
"Leave me alone, man--I'm colorblind."

Theology. As a rule, the theology is good, but there's at least one exception: the story idea itself. My late grandmother, a former Pentecostal minister, liked sci-fi. We discussed the idea of parallel worlds, and she considered them unworkable based on Heb 9:27 ("Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment"). In other words, you only go around once, not several times, once per universe. I'm not sure about that precise point, but the overall question is worthwhile: if there are people out there who are effectively clones, what's the point? In the story, it's possible (within limits, apparently) for counterparts to differ: Gordon Red observes that his Blue version has "a profiteering mindset" (p. 342) and says, "This troubled me greatly, because I had theorized that genetic duplicates would make identical decisions when presented with identical information" (ibid.). This has the amusing wrinkle that they are only materially, not spiritually, identical. So while they may have similar predispositions, they are individuals.

Okay, that's one in the eye for materialists: apparently there's more to people than their physical composition, suggesting a spiritual component. But if some people vary, given a few billion people over a few thousand years, anyway, how can the worlds remain so similar? While most of the divergences will be minor, they can't all be unimportant. So these should be like probability worlds: generally similar, but not identical. In fact, they wouldn't quite be probability worlds, even: most of those differ on some major point, such as who won some war. These three worlds should differ by an accretion of minor discrepancies.

But if that's so, what's the point? An atheist can have things happen by chance, but not a Christian--especially at this level. If there are three nearly identical worlds, it's because God created them that way. But why? It's not like God would hit the three button instead of the one button during creation. I won't call this issue insurmountable, but it does need to be addressed. Perhaps it will come up in a sequel.

Limited options. I think one reason I don't handle thrillers well is the same problem I have with interactive fiction--the text-based adventures that were popular back in the late seventies and early eighties. It wasn't enough to find a solution; you had to find one the author thought of, or it wouldn't work. There are sometimes solutions that seem obvious, but the character doesn't try them. This is a genre problem, not a flaw in this particular book.

But as a case in point, early in the story, Nathan clocks Mictar with a bat. Now, I think if I were in Nathan's place, I'd take an extra couple of seconds to finish the job.

I can practically hear the screams: it would be murder! Not at all: Mictar had already shown himself to be a homicidal loony, and worse yet, one with superhuman powers. So I'll follow up my shocking suggestion with another: this is the humbler alternative.

You see, there's a certain arrogance, even hubris, to the idea that you can keep on slapping the villain around without an innocent bystander paying for it. It's like realizing that someone's determined to shoot up a public facility and refusing to do more than play tag.

Now, I'll admit that my own characters rarely run into homicidal maniacs, so they generally avoid lethal force. Here, I don't see the option. Mictar is going to kill innocent people, and the only way to stop him is to remove him from the game permanently. Similarly with Gordon Blue, though incapacitation my be possible there. You can't expect to hold them off indefinitely. This is called recognizing your limitations.

[Addendum: Mr. Davis pointed out that Nathan attacked Mictar with a violin, while Nathan's tutor Clara appropriately wielded the bat. Another problem with writing a post after an eighteen-plus hour day, but sometimes I've no choice.

I should also mention that Mictar is a special case, both for me and for the book. He comes across as not particularly human for one thing. Indeed, after Mictar's self-described "brother" turned up, I began to doubt that Mictar could be killed by normal means. Also, while I do think there are places where Nathan should've incapacitated Gordon Blue, I don't think killing would be justified there. GB is merely a pawn; Mictar is the actual villain.]

Conclusion. I'll admit that these are rather esoteric points. So for the reasons I mentioned in my post yesterday, I do recommend this book highly. It's the beginning of a series, after all; there's plenty of time to resolve some of these matters.

Check out the other members of the CSFF tour:
Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Mike Lynch
Magma
Terri Main
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Beyond the Reflection’s Edge 2: Good Points

Let's look at the stengths of Bryan Davis’s Beyond the Reflection’s Edge. There are a lot of them, but a few seemed to stand out:

Faith. I mean this in a broad sense. This really is Christian speculative fiction: the story wouldn't make sense at various points without the Christian outlook and just the relationship with God held by various characters. Also, the theology involved is generally accurate, though I'll ding him on a theological point tomorrow. At a time when discouragement is all around me, especially in the form of Christians who have conformed to worldly views, I am delighted to say that some writers bother to push hard against the current.

In fact, the result is what I have sometimes called "Literary Lifestyle Evangelism": instead of thinly disguising a sermon or evangelistic tract as a story, Davis puts a Christian in an unusual situation and shows how he lives out his faith. You can blow off a sermon, but you'll pay attention to a well-written example. Such things can capture not just the intellectual imagination but the moral imagination, and there's too little of that these days.

Thus, the fact that Nathan is sexually pure is presented as a good thing, and I think a reader will gain a biblical view of the matter. There are reasons for God's rules, and the way Nathan acts should put them on even a very neglected moral radar.

Ease. Purely for want of a better term, I use this for ease of reading and for the fluency of writing that allows Davis to introduce various topics without boring the reader. He doesn't always pursue them quite as far as I might like, but he at least suggests answers on some theological points. For example, since the different versions of Earth aren't synchronized, a trip to the one that's furthest behind amounts to a trip back in time, so in one case Nathan is given a chance to prevent a fatal accident. Are the people involved predestined to die? What is Nathan's duty--to try to save the people or bow to the will of God, if indeed it is his will? The question is more complex than most people would imagine, and Davis does not trivialize it.

Culture. Not to be elitist, but the feel of the story is intelligent and refined. It's good to be reminded occasionally that until recently, Western culture was Christian culture. When God moved among the lower classes, especially in America, the usual suspicion of the elite led to rejection of culture. It wasn't really a religious thing, though some paint Evangelicals as hostile to culture. Rather, it was sociological, and unfortunately we didn't resist the current. Again, the story helps set that straight. Perhaps we can reclaim what is actually part of our Christian heritage.

Tomorrow I'll have a post that will probably cause some readers' heads to explode, as I'll not only explore a theological issue but give an alternative that will probably tick off a lot of people.

In the meantime, check out the other members of the CSFF tour:
Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Mike Lynch
Magma
Terri Main
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Monday, October 20, 2008

Beyond the Reflection’s Edge 1: Intro

Bryan Davis’s book Beyond the Reflection’s Edge is the first installment in his "Echoes from the Edge" series.

What's it about?

1. It's about 390 pages.

2. It's about Nathan Shepherd, a young karate violinist whose parents are brutally murdered by minions of a guy named Mictar (hobby: killing people by burning the eyeballs out of their heads with his bare hand). Mictar's ticked off because he thinks he's a pharmaceutical, but no one's buying. It's probably the eyeball-burning side effect.

3. It's about interfinity, which involves parallel earths and confused readers. There's a Blue Earth, where everyone's depressed, a Yellow Earth, where everyone's cowardly, and a Red Earth, where everyone's embarrassed (and I'm ashamed to say why). No, really, they're separate Earths that haven't synchronized their watches. Why they're color-coded like that is an open question. I suspect that there's another Earth that's purple, thus matching the whole setup to Oz. (This is further supported by a tornado scene in the book.)

4. It's about music, light, and mirrors. Specifically, there are Quattro mirrors, "quattro" being Italian for four--and if you're a lousy speller with no ear for consonant length, as one character is, it's also Spanish for four. In any case, if you combine music, light, and not-so-happy thoughts, a Quattro mirror can bounce you into an Earth of another color.

Sound confusing? Actually, it's not that bad most of the time, though on a few rare occasions it's worse. The problem is that there are three sets of practically everybody, and sometimes that makes for an evil triplet. Worse, nobody's actually color-coded, so it's hard to follow orders such as "Trust Gordon Red, not Gordon Blue. Trust Simon Red. Unsure of Simon Blue." (p. 245) Some indelible paint would come in handy. (Actually, I have another strategy for simplifying matters that I'll mention in a later post.)

Anyway--tomorrow, as usual, I'll cover the good points of the story. (There are several. Really.) Then I'll have some really unusual items for the final post, even invoking my late grandmother's theological wisdom.

In the meantime, check out the other members of the CSFF tour:
Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Mike Lynch
Magma
Terri Main
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise
 
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