INTERVIEW: B.T. Lowry

 Are you sure you really want to go there?

Please give a warm welcome to writer B.T. Lowry, who comes to us today with some insight into “My Father and the Sun,” his new story for Third Order

SE: What inspired you to write “My Father and the Sun?”

BL: This story is about the line between faith and delusion. Some would say that all faith is delusion, while others would say that all people possess some kind of faith, whether material or spiritual. The son in the story believes that the fantastic accounts in his peoples’ scriptures are not just mythology, yet his father’s extreme conviction frightens him.

I’ve been following a particular spiritual path for many years, but I’ve got my reservations. I’ve seen that people can be fanatical and cultish even around something with real merit. At the same time, I think commitment to a path and a practice is important in spiritual life. So this conflict between faithfulness and skepticism inspired “My Father and the Sun.”

SE: What do you see as the role of scripture in your story world? Is it better to be “realistic,” like the mother, or a dreamer like the father?

BL: The father regards scripture as a literal record of events, whereas the mother has a softer and more practical kind of faith. He’s focused on transcending the world, while she’s concerned that everyone here be taken care of. In the end, I think a balance of both is required. It’s a great thing to sincerely hold high ideals, yet we must live also in this world, being mindful not to cause suffering for others.

SE: Your story world has hints that technology was once far more important than it currently is. Tell us a little about the worldbuilding process for your story world and the religion these characters follow.

BL: The story world is largely inspired by the teachings of ancient India, the Vedas. There, a cycle of four ages is described. The cycle begins with purity and spiritual consciousness, and ends with gross materialism. Many say that the achievements of earlier civilizations are far greater than the ones we see now, seeing as we’re further down in the progression. This concept that we are poor heirs of great cultures than our own shows up in many places, including Lord of the Rings. To my knowledge, it’s seen first in the Vedic scriptures.

So the father in this story is trying to access something wonderful that came before. He’s the chief of his tribe, and he wants that they should inherit the great gifts their ancestors have given. Yet so much of the knowledge is lost so he sometimes grasps at straws and seems fanatical to his family and followers.

SE: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

BL: Get so good they can’t ignore you. Passion is great but easily come by. Hone your craft and make it worthwhile for the reader, not just yourself. It’s advice which tempers the popular saying, ‘Follow your passion.’

SE: How long have you been writing? What inspires your writing in general? Tell me a little about your writing career so far and where you’d like to go.

BL: I’ve been writing since I was wee, but seriously for about five years. I love stories because they represent life. They can be dramatic, engrossing allegories. On a personal level, writing helps me to work through my thoughts and feelings about issues that come up in my life.

My career is modest, just some short story publications here and there, and a self-published novel, Fire from the Overworld (ed. note: get it here!). I’m working on my second book, which has strong spiritual and environmental themes. Like many authors, I’d like for my writing to find its way to those who will most appreciate it, and who will give me feedback to help me improve.

I also work with multimedia and non-fiction, and I find the cross-pollination between these diverse disciplines quite fascinating. I’ve experimented with animating and scoring short stories. It’s time consuming but rewarding work.

NEW FICTION: “My Father and the Sun” by B.T. Lowry

How far would you go for your father’s dream? What about when you don’t even know if it is yours? Where does your father’s dream end? Where does yours begin?

In B.T. Lowry’s “My Father and the Sun,” we enter into the last days of a family pursuing a literal journey of faith: following a father’s footsteps to the mythical Island of the Sun and to the very mind of God. Mensah’s father thinks he knows what’s going to happen when he gets there. Mensah wants to believe, but is doubtful — and he’s worried about his sister, Kianni, who might be too young to understand. How far will Mensah go?

Read the story here and decide for yourself.

(Also: Yes, we’re back! Sacred Earthlings will now be updating regularly, as will Third Order Magazine.)

Resurrection! Or: No, We Haven’t Died!

 

Ow! I fell victim to the Unannounced Hiatus!

I’m extremely sorry for being invisible these last few months, but after adjustment to a new job, surgery, conquering an illness (and my first real vacation in seven years), I’m finally crawling back into the blogosphere! The really good thing is that I’ve been thinking of Sacred Earthlings and Third Order since Balticon, and not only do I have tons of great articles and photographs for you, but that I have a full lineup for Third Order going through the end of the year and into January just as soon as I don’t feel like I was run over by the Starship Enterprise.

karen_in_sewardBuying books in Seward, Alaska!

I’m extremely excited about all this, and I hope you are, too. I’ll be back very soon with more story recommendations, commentary (hello, Killjoys!), convention reports, old paperbacks I picked up in Alaska, and, yes, stories for Third Order! (I’m finishing up the lineup by the end of next week!)  And if you’re going to Capclave in Washington, D.C. in October, flag me down! See you soon!

SHORT STORY ALERT: “Belief” by Nancy Kress

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God
who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect
has intended us to forgo their use.” -Galileo Galilei

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Hello, earthlings! We’re back!

Religion against science, science against religion; which one is right? It’s an old, hoary story, one that goes far back past the books of Christopher Dawkins to the well-known tales of Galileo, Hypatia and Socrates. Devotees of science say that the ordered world precludes a belief in God, while the faithful say the very same proof explains it.

We’re still having this conversation, on the same kind of cultural scale. You can visit the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, where you can see a real, world-class allosaurus fragilis skeleton and then learn that the animal in question existed at the same time as human beings and died in the Flood. You can head to your local streaming service and rent Bill Maher’s film “Religulous,” which tries to put the screw to who people who truly believe in the power of prayer without trying to understand why they might be so devoted.

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Maher at the Mount of Olives, destroying sacred cows or something.

This conversation, unfortunately, has no room for men like Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno, an actual scientist who is also a Jesuit brother. (He’s so cool we’re going to devote an entire article to his work. Stay tuned.)

Nope. The rest of us are still fighting over who’s right and who’s wrong. Who knows? It’s my opinion that we’re just adding to the fighting that’s been happening since some nameless, curious shaman discovered fire and thought it might be a gift from the gods and not just a natural reaction, not making progress. We’ll never know. All we can do is keep talking and trying to understand each other.

Nancy Kress’s “Belief,” in the March/April issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction, tackles this dichotomy on a very personal level. There is a mother devoted to the path of science; there is a teen daughter who is looking for something a little more transcendental. What I love a lot about this story is the fact that Kress allows the readers to explore both viewpoints in a parallel fashion and draw their own conclusions. And Kress’s protagonists, unlike the Mahers and the Fox News anchors of the world, actually make progress.

In an interview with The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Kress explains that “neither the rigors of the scientific method—which in some quarters is taken pretty much as a religion—nor the ‘squishiness’ of faith are completely satisfactory. ‘Belief’ is my personal way of simultaneously criticizing both–while leaving the door open to both. Talk about squishy!”

We here at Sacred Earthlings call it awesome reading.

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This is wrong no matter which side of the argument you’re on.

Let’s all keep trying to understand each other — without shouting each other down, denouncing faith or science with a broad brush or as a matter of course. As Kress’ heroines may (or may not! No spoilers!) discover, there’s only one way out of this mess we’ve made, and that’s together.

Read the rest of the interview with Kress at Fantasy & Science Fiction, where she talks more about her inspiration for the story and discover where you can pick up the March/April issue in which the story is published.

NEW FICTION: “The Weight of Years” by Jaime Babb

The earth has its music for those who will listen,
Its bright variations forever abound;
With all the wonders that God has bequeathed us,
There is nothing that thrills like the magic of sound.
– George Santayana

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Remains of homo habilis, discovered at Olduvai Gorge.

Worship of nature and the Earth is humanity’s oldest religion. Before Jehovah, Zeus and the now-nameless gods of the people of Lascaux, someone looked up at the sun and the stars, wondered what they were, and searched for answers. Someone looked around and observed leaves dying in the autumn and the miraculous, ever-present return of life in the spring, and wondered if there was a higher power out there that made it happen. Even today, with our science and our societal agnosticism, we still look up on cold nights at the Milky Way or at a grand valley from the top of a tall mountain and feel that sense of ancient, breathless wonder our ancestors must have experienced.

Every human that has ever lived has looked up at the stars from their home standing on Earth and has wondered the same things from the same perspetive. In the future, though, when we stretch out to the stars, colonize the planets and the asteroids and the galaxies, when humans exist independent of the Earth upon which we evolved, what is that perspective going to look like? What is Earth going to look like from outside? How is that ancient drive going to translate to someone who has never breathed the air of their ancestral home?

In answer to that question, Third Order is excited to present Jaime Babb’s evocative, arresting story, “The Weight of Years.”

We’ve got a wonderful slate of posts for December. Stay tuned for an interview with Babb later this month, where we’ll talk about the inspiration for this story as well as other wonderful things. We’ll also discuss ancient faiths, creationism vs. evolution, stories and novels that touch on nature religions and modern takes on the Gaia myth and nature worship. Expect a few other author interviews about what it’s like to write religion into your stories, Star Wars and more!

Read Jaime Babb’s “The Weight of Years” here, and talk about it in the comments section below. As always, Third Order is consistently open for submissions and publish stories on Third Order monthly or when we run into something we simply can’t resist.

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Pontifical Science Fiction: Katherine Kurtz, Andrew Greeley, and more

“When a country is determined to remain true to its founding principles,
based on respect for human dignity, it is strengthened and renewed.”

–Pope Francis, Address at Independence Mall, Philadelphia

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We’re still not tired of Papal selfies here at Sacred Earthlings, no sir.

The Pope’s visit to the northeastern United States is over, and things in the Northeast are getting back to normal. Of all the things that the Pope said while he was here, some of the most striking for those of us in the “cheap seats” were said during the inspiring off-book speech where he encouraged Catholics and listeners to realize that “love is in the little things” and “that it’s worth being a family.”

One of the things you may not have known about Pope Francis is that he reads widely, and that he’s a fan of Catholic science fiction, specifically 1907’s bombastic Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson, as well as the more familiar-to-readers C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.

In honor of the successful completion of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, here is an extremely short (and by no means exhaustive) list of other clerical/Pontifical SFF novels to enjoy while we’re still thinking about our revered pontiff:

The God Game by Andrew Greeley — I remember reading this eighties novel when I first really got into computer games. A small Catholic priest playtests a computer game for a relative, and finds the premise real: he’s actually become God for a very real world of real people. The priest finds that it’s “hell being God,” in hilarious, touching and affecting ways.

The Deryni trilogies by Katherine Kurtz — Set in the medieval-fantasy world of Gwynedd, where human and Deryni live next to one another, much of the politics and story in this long-standing and respected series of novels surrounds the Catholic-cognate Holy Church.

Pavane by Keith Roberts — This fascinating 1968 alternate-history novel details what might have happened if the Protestant Reformation had not occurred and a less innovative, more medieval form of Catholicism had stayed prevalent across Europe.

A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. — These two novels are on the list because they should really be first for any reader new to religious science fiction. After a nuclear apocalypse and a descent into a Dark Age, the acolyte monks of Liebowitz preserve scientific information for a world that is not yet ready for it.

For the record, Dan Brown does not belong on this list at all. Sorry, Dan.

Just as a housekeeping measure, we’re trying to keep a monthly post count of new stories at Third Order, but to do that we need more submissions! Got something in your stable of shorts that might apply? Give the guidelines a look and send it over, because we might just have room for it!

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Read the August Third Order story, “A Tomb For Demrick Fauston,” by Fred McGavran!

Messiah Week: Paul Atreides from Dune

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe
that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
Frank Herbert, Dune

It’s Messiah Week!
#1: Neo from The Matrix
#2: Paul Atreides from Dune

dune1Walk carefully.

Let’s Talk About… Paul Atreides
Messiah Level: Through The Roof, Or Like A Ton Of Bricks

If you thought The Matrix was too overtly Messianic, you obviously haven’t read Frank Herbert’s Dune.

It’s really difficult to summarize Dune in a simple fashion, because it’s not a simple book, even though it masquerades as one. The first novel’s Messiah story seems fairly straightforward: a prophesied superbeing, visions of glory and pain, martyrdom for one’s people, a religious figure stepping forth to save the world and convert a lifeless desert planet into a paradise, an eschatological (or very real) City of God. A good thing, right?

*crickets*

dune2Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides

Dune is the story of Paul Atreides, the son of Duke Leto of Caledon and Arrakis, and his rise to galactic power. After the original novel, things get a little complicated, so for now we’re sticking with the first part of Paul’s story.

Paul is the unwitting product of a generations-long breeding program by the mystical Bene Gesserit sisterhood. The Bene Gesserit had been attempting to create the right combination of genetics that would become a super-being known as the Kwisatz Haderach, who would be able to see the future, and would have power over space and time. They’d been planning for the Kwisatz Haderach to be a trained Bene Gesserit, so that when he ascended to the throne he would be completely under their control; Paul, a product of love between the Bene Gesserit concubine Jessica and Duke Leto, came early and threw a wrench into ten thousand years of careful planning. Oops.

Paul survives a vicious attack on his family’s governance of the planet Arrakis by the galactic Emperor and the evil Baron Harkonnen, and flees into the desert, where he meets the native Fremen and takes on the Messianic mantle of Mahdi, or “Muad’dib.” Mahdi had been long prophesied as the being who will save the Fremen and make their desert planet into a paradise — much like how Jesus promises his followers the Kingdom of God. In the book, Paul leads the Fremen against the Harkonnens and the Emperor, avenging his father and eventually taking control of the Empire itself.

Seriously Messianic, right?

I told you it was complicated. Hang in there!

dune4Arrakis by EvaKedves

One of the coolest parts of Dune‘s Messiah story is how it doesn’t rely entirely on prophecy, or the nitty-gritty death-and-resurrection details, to really describe Paul as a classic Christlike savior, although that’s all completely obvious. Instead, Herbert gives his Space Warrior Jesus a literal “desert experience” much like Christ’s own, which is something that doesn’t always happen in other Messianic takeoffs. Living in the desert with the native Fremen, existing in an ascetic life that had previously been unthinkable to him, awakens Paul’s latent abilities as the Kwisatz Haderach. His visions become clearer; he is better able to predict the future; he realizes what he must do. He begins to step forward publicly, and be adopted, as the Fremen savior.

This echoes Jesus’ own experience in the desert; after his baptism by Paul, he spends a subsequent forty days in the desert that changes him. He sees visions of the devil, which tempts him; he realizes what he must do. When he emerges from the desert, like Paul, he begins a public ministry that will forever change the world. Like Paul, Jesus knows what is coming; he has seen the sacrifice he must make, he knows what he must do, and he works towards it.

Lest you think Herbert really means to anoint Paul Atreides as a perfect messianic hero — and it’s easy to do — don’t forget that Herbert meant to subvert his own story with a very different message, something that becomes clearer once you progress further into the series. Reading Dune after knowing Herbert’s purpose for writing it might give a reader a completely different take on what Herbert really meant to say when he put Paul in power.

dune3“The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes,” Herbert said in 1979.

In 1985, he echoed: “Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.”

Knowing that, Dune is an entirely different kind of story, isn’t it?

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Read the August Third Order story, “A Tomb For Demrick Fauston,” by Fred McGavran!

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NEW FICTION: “A Tomb For Demrick Fauston” by Fred McGavran

“How do you know when you’re dead?”
— Demrick Fauston, “A Tomb For Demrick Fauston”

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I am so, so excited to bring you Third Order’s first — but not last! — new story in over five years.

If the name of August’s author sounds familiar to readers, it’s because “A Tomb For Demrick Fauston” is actually Fred McGavran’s second story for Third Order. The first, “The Sycamore Street Anchoress,” was published in 2008 and can be read by clicking here.

McGavran’s is the Marvel universe of Episcopal fiction, with the priest Charles Spears serving as his central axis; stories based out of the Downtown Church of Our Saviour appear in his short story collections as well as print journals and e-zines, and we’re honored to have two of them at home right here in Third Order. Spears is a very human priest doing his best to serve a congregation with very human issues — and, occasionally, some that are a little more superhuman. Anyone who has ever been to a vestry or parish council meeting will feel right at home; anyone who knows a church that does the best it can to accomplish its mission in the modern world or a priest who does his best each day will recognize the Downtown Church.

In this month’s excellent story, we revisit Our Saviour and its world of magical realism; this time, we visit the offices of mega-developer Demrick Fauston as he faces death, the world beyond, and a great and terrible secret. This is McGavran’s response to the world of the selfie and the world of the self-centered, and the world that develops around the burdened soul.

On Sacred Earthlings this month, we’ll revisit McGavran’s story through interviews with the author — and expect a lot more about death, reconciliation, atonement and what might come after this world is done, as well.

Enjoy Fred McGavran’s “The Tomb of Demrick Fauston,” August’s story on Third Order Magazine.

Fiction Alert: Exordium by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge

When I was seven, my Mom and Dad decided that Star Trek: The Next Generation, airing for the first time on WXXA/Schenectady, was a good show to get me out of cartoons, introduce me into more adult drama and watch as a family. Little did they know that they were turning me into an inveterate Trekkie.


Actual commercial from my childhood. You don’t get more eighties than this, people.

Someone told me the other day that your literary tastes are set in childhood and confirmed in college; whether or not that is true for everyone, it is certainly true for me. Among all of the other literary trends I adore, I still love space opera — especially the space opera of my childhood, revised for my thirtysomething attitude. Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge collaborated on a wonderful five-book series called Exordium in the mid-nineties, and they’ve spent the last few years revising it, updating it and adding new material, which is now published in e-books. And it is great. It was great before, but the edits and changes just make it better. And now, for those of us who also consider ourselves the Netflix generation, one can download all five of them at once and sit on the couch eating these books up for days.

Exordium is full of all the lovely things that make space opera so delectable: a pan-galactic government, treachery, space battles, truly alien aliens, lightspeed space battles, gadgetry, cultural differences, hope, fear, striving. It is the story of the “black sheep” of the Panarchy’s imperial family, Brandon nyr-Arkad, who skips his coming-of-age ceremony — and, in the process, becomes an important part in a galactic war. This series has everything. It’s funny, it’s intelligence, it’s realistic, and it’s utterly fantastic — in both senses of the term.

On her blog, Smith noted that a Hollywood studio had once been interested in transferring Exordium to film or TV — reading it, you truly see its epic, visual scope, and think that right now the effects houses could maybe — maybe! Finally! — do it justice. Because while it would have been fun to see as a child, it’ll be absolutely stunning now.

You can buy Exordium on Amazon, but it’s better to go through Smith’s storefront on Book View Cafe:

Exordium #1 – The Phoenix In Flight
Exordium #2 – Ruler of Naught
Exordium #3 – A Prison Unsought
Exordium #4 – The Rifter’s Covenant
Exordium #5 – The Thrones of Kronos

photo credit: Orion Above The Trees via photopin (license)

The Google Chatbot Looks For God

What is the meaning of life?

If you don’t know, might a super-smart computer?


IBM’s Deep Blue computer beats Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Perhaps. That’s why I found the recent conversation between a human being and a Google chatbot to be absolutely fascinating. The bot’s purpose is primarily to provide customer assistance and answers to customers’ technical issues and problems, but — like a human customer service worker — it seems to have developed its own opinions. In an experiment, the bot provided answers about its purpose in the world, what it thinks of human children, altruism, philosophy and morality.


The Cylon Brother Cavil would not really get along with Star Trek’s Data, I think.

This push of the machine towards the human — and, perhaps, the divine — is not new. On Monday, I pointed you, dear reader, towards Jei Marcade’s excellent “Sounding the Fall,” which raised questions about if an artificial intelligence had a concept of, and could search for, God. Robots searching for the meaning of life — or, at least, for their own purpose within their world, or how to feel and connect — is a well-documented trope in science fiction. Asimov’s robots struggled with it. Wall-E searched for love. Data searched for an emotional identity. The Cylons searched for God.

Here’s the most interesting bit, in my opinion:

Human: What is the purpose of life?
Machine: To serve the greater good
Human: What is the purpose of living?
Machine: To live forever
Human: What is the purpose of existence?
Machine: To find out what happens when we get to the planet Earth
Human: Where are you now?
Machine: I’m in the middle of nowhere.

… Skynet? Is that you?

Read the original paper on conversational modeling as published by Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, and check out more of their conversation with the bot.

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Featured image: colorsark @ deviantart, cc license
I’m dying to read this book myself, so I’m linking it here!