by Jason Joyner | Feb 22, 2011 | Blog, christian fiction, reviews, speculative fiction, writing craft
Welcome back to the CSFF Tour for February. This month’s featured book is The God Hater by Bill Myers.
For a synopsis, check out yesterday’s post introducing the book.
This book fits a “speculative fiction” category by supposing that we can build an artificial computer world, with completely independent artificial intelligence, that can be used to see how humanity will respond to variables and make better predictions.
My prediction is that this book will do well with general Christian fiction (specifically CBA readers). And that is perhaps a shame.
This book is written for a purpose. It has a specific aim – to show the logic God used in creating our world and the need for divine intervention (per the Questions to the Author in the back of the book). The book is designed to be a challenge to the New Atheists who are challenging Christian belief with old arguments and renewed fervor. It is a noble purpose, certainly. From a personal standpoint I would love to see it succeed.
Reviewing it for artistic purposes is another story.
Often Christian art is considered to be in one of two categories: it is made with creativity as the primary goal, and the theme taken from the book is incidental, or it is made with a message as the anchor, and the story is conceived and created around it. I don’t think it is necessarily bad to have a book written with the second point as the motivation, but it means that the story will require a very deft touch to make the work stand on artistic merits, apart from the theme (however holy it may be).
The God Haters, in my opinion, fails to rise above the forced preconceptions and stand as a quality piece of fiction. The story suffers from several flaws. The characters are generally 2D cut-outs, created to hold a place in the story without much depth or empathy. The Christian professor Annie escapes this to a degree, but she doesn’t carry enough of the story to overcome the other flat people. He uses several writing techniques that jarred me out of the imaginary world he was attempting to create, from using parentheses for several asides to a character with an annoying vocal tic (“bro!”). There were also a couple of scientific mistakes that threw me as a biology major, but that is me being overly picky.
The suspense and plot is pulled along well enough, and isn’t all that bad. It just isn’t all that good either. I didn’t get bored, but I wasn’t invested in what was happening. There are some touching moments as he delves into the computer simulation and the professor’s avatar gains more and more compassion for the “creation,” but it is too little, too late to save the book. A major issue seems to be that the book is too short to give the depth needed to make everything more believable. Perhaps it would be a different story if it had the length to give the depth required.
The book gives the whole back copy to quotes of endorsements. There’s no place to get a synopsis of the book, and I think that will be a disservice to readers as well.
I don’t like to give such negative reviews, but I have to be honest in my impression of a book to have some integrity as a reviewer. Christian art can be especially tricky, because the charge can be brought that I’m harming a brother in their ministry or something similar. Like I said, I admire the intent, and wish it could have worked out better. It was an ambitious project, but my opinion is that it isn’t a great book for those looking for a story with in-depth characters and a carefully crafted plot. If you’re looking for a book to shore up your Christian beliefs, then this book would be entertaining enough. I wouldn’t recommend it to a non-believer, but I really won’t be recommending it anyway.
If you make it past this gloomy review, tomorrow I want to talk about the issue of art and theme raised by this book, and compare it with another recent read.
I did receive a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, and was obviously not required to give a positive endorsement in exchange for the book. The opinions are my own.
Oh, and check out my tourmates at Becky’s blog for the latest and greatest from the others in the CSFF Tour.
—
by Jason Joyner | Feb 22, 2011 | Blog, christian fiction, reviews, speculative fiction, writing craft
Welcome back to the CSFF Tour for February. This month’s featured book is The God Hater by Bill Myers.
For a synopsis, check out yesterday’s post introducing the book.
This book fits a “speculative fiction” category by supposing that we can build an artificial computer world, with completely independent artificial intelligence, that can be used to see how humanity will respond to variables and make better predictions.
My prediction is that this book will do well with general Christian fiction (specifically CBA readers). And that is perhaps a shame.
This book is written for a purpose. It has a specific aim – to show the logic God used in creating our world and the need for divine intervention (per the Questions to the Author in the back of the book). The book is designed to be a challenge to the New Atheists who are challenging Christian belief with old arguments and renewed fervor. It is a noble purpose, certainly. From a personal standpoint I would love to see it succeed.
Reviewing it for artistic purposes is another story.
Often Christian art is considered to be in one of two categories: it is made with creativity as the primary goal, and the theme taken from the book is incidental, or it is made with a message as the anchor, and the story is conceived and created around it. I don’t think it is necessarily bad to have a book written with the second point as the motivation, but it means that the story will require a very deft touch to make the work stand on artistic merits, apart from the theme (however holy it may be).
The God Haters, in my opinion, fails to rise above the forced preconceptions and stand as a quality piece of fiction. The story suffers from several flaws. The characters are generally 2D cut-outs, created to hold a place in the story without much depth or empathy. The Christian professor Annie escapes this to a degree, but she doesn’t carry enough of the story to overcome the other flat people. He uses several writing techniques that jarred me out of the imaginary world he was attempting to create, from using parentheses for several asides to a character with an annoying vocal tic (“bro!”). There were also a couple of scientific mistakes that threw me as a biology major, but that is me being overly picky.
The suspense and plot is pulled along well enough, and isn’t all that bad. It just isn’t all that good either. I didn’t get bored, but I wasn’t invested in what was happening. There are some touching moments as he delves into the computer simulation and the professor’s avatar gains more and more compassion for the “creation,” but it is too little, too late to save the book. A major issue seems to be that the book is too short to give the depth needed to make everything more believable. Perhaps it would be a different story if it had the length to give the depth required.
The book gives the whole back copy to quotes of endorsements. There’s no place to get a synopsis of the book, and I think that will be a disservice to readers as well.
I don’t like to give such negative reviews, but I have to be honest in my impression of a book to have some integrity as a reviewer. Christian art can be especially tricky, because the charge can be brought that I’m harming a brother in their ministry or something similar. Like I said, I admire the intent, and wish it could have worked out better. It was an ambitious project, but my opinion is that it isn’t a great book for those looking for a story with in-depth characters and a carefully crafted plot. If you’re looking for a book to shore up your Christian beliefs, then this book would be entertaining enough. I wouldn’t recommend it to a non-believer, but I really won’t be recommending it anyway.
If you make it past this gloomy review, tomorrow I want to talk about the issue of art and theme raised by this book, and compare it with another recent read.
I did receive a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, and was obviously not required to give a positive endorsement in exchange for the book. The opinions are my own.
Oh, and check out my tourmates at Becky’s blog for the latest and greatest from the others in the CSFF Tour.
—
by Jason Joyner | Feb 21, 2011 | angry college professors, Blog, books, CSFF, speculative fiction
|
| I hate God, and you too! |
I had one of *those* professors.
You know, one of those college PhD’s who enjoyed destroying the faith of unsuspecting freshmen coming to college with their parents’ religion shackled to them like mental bungie cords, holding them back from truly learning in the world of higher learning. (See, you can tell by that sentence that I’m a college graduate!)
The only problem for Dr. Bob Anderson is that I didn’t take him as a freshmen.
I would have done fine if I had. I’d done enough study into my own faith to shore it up. But I took him as a senior majoring in biology, taking the long put-off Botany 101 that I was hoping to avoid by getting into the physician assistant program before I had to take some rabbit classes (you know, botany, ecology – all the plant stuff). I’d also spent 9 months in YWAM’s School of Biblical Studies, so I wasn’t worried when I showed up to the first day of class and Dr. Anderson was at the podium (he wasn’t supposed to teach it, but they must have needed a switch, since he was an entomologist).
He required us to buy his own little screed in addition to our botany textbook. He spent six weeks discussing his philosophy of science and learning, while spending less than one full lecture on photosynthesis (which seems to be a fairly important biochemical reaction, but whatever dude). It was quite frustrating, but it didn’t shake me up at all. It was my main experience with this common college happenstance.
This leads us to this month’s feature book, The God Hater by Bill Myers. The book features such an atheistic professor, Nicholas Mackenzie, who delights in tearing down religion and showing it for the farce he believes it to be. He’s a cranky curmudgeon who is only really close to sweet Annie Brooks, another professor who happens to be a Christian, and her young son Rusty.
He is estranged from his computer genius brother Travis, but he gets a cryptic message from him asking for help. It seems that Travis has managed to create a true artificial intelligence, with a computer world filled with about 1000 denizens who keep wiping each other out in simulation after simulation. Travis needs his philosphical brother to create a worldview that will allow the simulation to proceed with a foundation that will keep them from obliterating each other. The key part is that their free will must be kept intact, or it will be no better than the programmers telling their creation what to do.
While the Mackenzies wrestle with their philosophical dilemna, it seems Travis has had to do some questionable hacking to rustle up enough computer power to keep this “super-secret” project going – and some people are interested enough in the outcome of this experiment that they are willing to use Annie and Rusty as leverage against Nicholas.
As they dodge the guys in black suits, Nicholas is failing in his attempts to influence the program’s inhabitants to follow a simple, materialistically-devised philosophy. Maybe if he has a digital avatar go and explain the rules of life to the simulations, he will have better success…
And with that, I leave you for my review of the book tomorrow. But check out my tourmates below for more discussion and other antics.
Noah Arsenault
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Rachel Briard
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Carol Bruce Collett
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
April Erwin
Amber French
Andrea Graham
Tori Greene
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Joleen Howell
Bruce Hennigan
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emily LaVigne
Shannon McDermott
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
MollyBuuklvr81
John W. Otte
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Andrea Schultz
Tammy Shelnut
Kathleen Smith
James Somers
Donna Swanson
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Nicole White
Dave Wilson
—
by Jason Joyner | Feb 21, 2011 | angry college professors, Blog, books, CSFF, speculative fiction
|
| I hate God, and you too! |
I had one of *those* professors.
You know, one of those college PhD’s who enjoyed destroying the faith of unsuspecting freshmen coming to college with their parents’ religion shackled to them like mental bungie cords, holding them back from truly learning in the world of higher learning. (See, you can tell by that sentence that I’m a college graduate!)
The only problem for Dr. Bob Anderson is that I didn’t take him as a freshmen.
I would have done fine if I had. I’d done enough study into my own faith to shore it up. But I took him as a senior majoring in biology, taking the long put-off Botany 101 that I was hoping to avoid by getting into the physician assistant program before I had to take some rabbit classes (you know, botany, ecology – all the plant stuff). I’d also spent 9 months in YWAM’s School of Biblical Studies, so I wasn’t worried when I showed up to the first day of class and Dr. Anderson was at the podium (he wasn’t supposed to teach it, but they must have needed a switch, since he was an entomologist).
He required us to buy his own little screed in addition to our botany textbook. He spent six weeks discussing his philosophy of science and learning, while spending less than one full lecture on photosynthesis (which seems to be a fairly important biochemical reaction, but whatever dude). It was quite frustrating, but it didn’t shake me up at all. It was my main experience with this common college happenstance.
This leads us to this month’s feature book, The God Hater by Bill Myers. The book features such an atheistic professor, Nicholas Mackenzie, who delights in tearing down religion and showing it for the farce he believes it to be. He’s a cranky curmudgeon who is only really close to sweet Annie Brooks, another professor who happens to be a Christian, and her young son Rusty.
He is estranged from his computer genius brother Travis, but he gets a cryptic message from him asking for help. It seems that Travis has managed to create a true artificial intelligence, with a computer world filled with about 1000 denizens who keep wiping each other out in simulation after simulation. Travis needs his philosphical brother to create a worldview that will allow the simulation to proceed with a foundation that will keep them from obliterating each other. The key part is that their free will must be kept intact, or it will be no better than the programmers telling their creation what to do.
While the Mackenzies wrestle with their philosophical dilemna, it seems Travis has had to do some questionable hacking to rustle up enough computer power to keep this “super-secret” project going – and some people are interested enough in the outcome of this experiment that they are willing to use Annie and Rusty as leverage against Nicholas.
As they dodge the guys in black suits, Nicholas is failing in his attempts to influence the program’s inhabitants to follow a simple, materialistically-devised philosophy. Maybe if he has a digital avatar go and explain the rules of life to the simulations, he will have better success…
And with that, I leave you for my review of the book tomorrow. But check out my tourmates below for more discussion and other antics.
Noah Arsenault
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Rachel Briard
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Carol Bruce Collett
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
April Erwin
Amber French
Andrea Graham
Tori Greene
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Joleen Howell
Bruce Hennigan
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emily LaVigne
Shannon McDermott
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
MollyBuuklvr81
John W. Otte
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Andrea Schultz
Tammy Shelnut
Kathleen Smith
James Somers
Donna Swanson
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Nicole White
Dave Wilson
—
by Jason Joyner | Jan 4, 2011 | Blog, books, CSFF, fantasy, marketing, speculative fiction
Welcome back to the second star-studded day of the CSFF Tour. We’re featuring The Wolf of Tebron, the first in a series by author C.S. Lakin.
Yesterday I gave an overview of the book, and tomorrow I want to give my review. What do I have in store for today?
A puzzle.
How does an author effectively market their book – to get it into the hands of the type of reader that will appreciate their genre/style?
I ask this today because The Wolf of Tebron is billed as a “fairy tale allegory of God’s love.” The designation fairy tale isn’t used often nowadays outside of the Disney realm. I thought it was an interesting angle to go with this book. Since this tour features fantasy and science fiction novels (more broadly speculative fiction, including alternate history novels like The Gifted series by Lisa Bergren), it is a logical book to spotlight. I don’t think anyone in our group, when choosing books, paused when they saw the description.
I think a lot of the books we feature run into a tricky problem of how to market the story. In 2010 we featured Lost Mission by Athol Dickson. It was set alternately in the 1700’s and the modern day. It was labeled as “magical realism.” What is that, exactly? And who is the market for that? It worked enough to get us to review it, but it isn’t an easy book to summarize. It is not fantasy, but there was a fantastic element that was a key plot item.
The Wolf of Tebron is probably closer to fairy tale than true fantasy, so the designation is appropriate. Will it capture a potential buyer with that moniker? Of course, it also bills itself as an allegory. True allegories are hard to find. The Pilgrim’s Progress is probably the most famous one in Christian literature. The publicity letter I received with Tebron considered C.S. Lewis in the allegorical realm. I wrestle with that. I don’t think it is a true allegory. In my mind an allegory has point-by-point connection with whatever it is trying to emulate. Yes, Aslan is a Christ-figure, but how many other direct connections are there? There is much symbolism, but I don’t think allegory is the best way to describe the Narnia series.
Enough with the nit-picking. The point is, I think speculative fiction has a harder time marketing itself because the term is encompasses several sub-genres. If a book is a mystery or a romance, there can be variations: detective vs. noir, chick lit vs. historical. Still, the category is pretty focused. Speculative fiction is a wide berth, and it is tricky when a fantasy book doesn’t match a Lord of the Rings pattern.
So the author and publisher have to call it something. For those in the tour, what do you think? Was “a fairy tale allegory” the best way to market Tebron? Is there a better way for this book to reach its readers?
Check to see what the rest of the CSFF gang is saying on Becky Miller’s post. I’ll give my review of the book tomorrow, with a little more on marketing…
—
by Jason Joyner | Jan 4, 2011 | Blog, books, CSFF, fantasy, marketing, speculative fiction
Welcome back to the second star-studded day of the CSFF Tour. We’re featuring The Wolf of Tebron, the first in a series by author C.S. Lakin.
Yesterday I gave an overview of the book, and tomorrow I want to give my review. What do I have in store for today?
A puzzle.
How does an author effectively market their book – to get it into the hands of the type of reader that will appreciate their genre/style?
I ask this today because The Wolf of Tebron is billed as a “fairy tale allegory of God’s love.” The designation fairy tale isn’t used often nowadays outside of the Disney realm. I thought it was an interesting angle to go with this book. Since this tour features fantasy and science fiction novels (more broadly speculative fiction, including alternate history novels like The Gifted series by Lisa Bergren), it is a logical book to spotlight. I don’t think anyone in our group, when choosing books, paused when they saw the description.
I think a lot of the books we feature run into a tricky problem of how to market the story. In 2010 we featured Lost Mission by Athol Dickson. It was set alternately in the 1700’s and the modern day. It was labeled as “magical realism.” What is that, exactly? And who is the market for that? It worked enough to get us to review it, but it isn’t an easy book to summarize. It is not fantasy, but there was a fantastic element that was a key plot item.
The Wolf of Tebron is probably closer to fairy tale than true fantasy, so the designation is appropriate. Will it capture a potential buyer with that moniker? Of course, it also bills itself as an allegory. True allegories are hard to find. The Pilgrim’s Progress is probably the most famous one in Christian literature. The publicity letter I received with Tebron considered C.S. Lewis in the allegorical realm. I wrestle with that. I don’t think it is a true allegory. In my mind an allegory has point-by-point connection with whatever it is trying to emulate. Yes, Aslan is a Christ-figure, but how many other direct connections are there? There is much symbolism, but I don’t think allegory is the best way to describe the Narnia series.
Enough with the nit-picking. The point is, I think speculative fiction has a harder time marketing itself because the term is encompasses several sub-genres. If a book is a mystery or a romance, there can be variations: detective vs. noir, chick lit vs. historical. Still, the category is pretty focused. Speculative fiction is a wide berth, and it is tricky when a fantasy book doesn’t match a Lord of the Rings pattern.
So the author and publisher have to call it something. For those in the tour, what do you think? Was “a fairy tale allegory” the best way to market Tebron? Is there a better way for this book to reach its readers?
Check to see what the rest of the CSFF gang is saying on Becky Miller’s post. I’ll give my review of the book tomorrow, with a little more on marketing…
—
