Metacentricities

I just finished Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. I won’t post any spoilers here. It was a good book, a fun and engaging read, full of the standard JK Rowling mysteries and puzzles and twists and turns. But it was, in the end incredibly predictable. Which is OK, I guess. But I haven’t understood all of the hype around it, and the spoiler warnings, etc. The ending is rather predictable, as most fantasy stories are.

If you want to borrow my copy, it’s available.

Here’s a new SF books meme, which, I think, is better than the last meme, which had no women authors. This is a longer list, and has some women in it.

I got this from Lou Anders. This is the Science Fiction Book Club’s list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.

The Key:

Bold the ones you’ve read.

Strike-out the ones you hated.

Italicize those you started but never finished.

Put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*

2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov

3. Dune, Frank Herbert*

4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein*

5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin*

6. Neuromancer, William Gibson

7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke

8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley*

10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe

12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov

14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras

15. Cities in Flight, James Blish*

16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett

17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison

19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester

20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany*

21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey*

22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*

23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson

24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl

26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling*

27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*

28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

31. Little, Big, John Crowley

32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick

34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement

35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon

36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith

37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute

38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*

40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys

41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut

43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner*

45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein

47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock

48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks

49. Timescape, Gregory Benford

50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I’ve read 31 of the 50. Not too bad.

Technorati Tags: books, scifi

One of the things I look at, on occasion, is the search terms people use to find my blog. They can be entertaining, or sometimes just plain wierd. So here are a few:

• The obvious, and interesting: “barak obama *” (where * is “faith”, “religious views” or “speech”), “audre lorde”, “oj simpson interview”,“seminary”, “overfarming”
• The humorous: “barak obama antichrist”, “nazarene weekly torah lesson”, “christmas wrong”, “bezerk leisure northampton”, “seminary lesbians undergoing theological stress”
• The puzzling: “1950s panties”, “wikipedia are poinsettas poisonious”, “women leaders of ancient egypt”
• The embarrasing: “guerro negro” (I misspelled it on a post - it’s really Guerrero Negro)

Technorati Tags: search

I finished book one on my long list of summer reading.  It was A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren. First thing that told me that I’d probably like the book: his favorite musician is Bruce Cockburn (he actually even looks a little like Bruce.) Anybody whose favorite musician is Bruce Cockburn is OK!

Brian McLaren is considered one of the big lights in the "Emergent Church" movement. I’ve talked a bit about it before. These are postmodern folks working on the post-denominational (even post-Protestant) future of the Christian church. He, like many in the Emergent church movement, started out on the conservative side of the spectrum. So his perspectives are very colored by those origins. He comes to some very different conclusions than I would in some instances, and in others, we’d very much agree.

This book, in certain circles has generated a lot of flak for him. Particulary among fundamentalists. I can certainly understand that - it is a book that, instead of affirming the fundamentals as they see it, affirms the fundamentals that are quite a bit more biblical: love of God and neighbor. This is an important underlying principle in the book, one, as you all know, is something I can get behind.
 

This book is an interesting combination of personal perspective and didactic description of the different strains of Christianity, and, in particular, the parts of these different strains that he likes, and has problems with. After a couple of chapters of apologies and warnings (which, although I apreciate his humility and self-deprecation, is a bit much,) is a great chapter on "The Seven Jesuses I’ve Known" and describes, as he understands them, what parts of Jesus are emphasized in each of seven traditions (conservative protestant, Catholic, charismatic/pentacostal,liberal protestant, liberation theology, anabatist, and Eastern Orthodox.) For me, it was helpful to hear his perspective on the differences (for instance, conservative Protestants focus more on the death of Jesus, whereas liberal Protestants, Anabaptists and Liberation Theologists focus on his life and work.)  And his reason for doing this, which is a theme that he carries throughout the book, is that each tradition has its particualr gift to give, and a "generous orthodoxy" would embrace all of these.

He then goes into his perspective on God. He defines a "God A" as "a single, solitary, dominant Power, Mind or Will" and "God B" as "a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational, community/family/society/entity of saving Love." He is finding himself very much in the universe of God B.

He then asks the question "Would Jesus Be a Christian".  He answers this with the comment, "Often I don’t think Jesus would be caught dead as a Christian, were he physically here today."  And another comment is that he doesn’t think that most Christians would like Jesus if he arrived today. He says, "In fact, I think we’d call him a heretic and plot to kill him too." I tend to agree with him here.

He has a chapter on what it is that Jesus is supposed to be saving us from, anyway. He’s pretty clear that a focus on hell has been problematic at best. He says "In the Bible, save means ‘rescue’ or ‘heal.’ It emphatically does not automatically mean ’save from hell’ or ‘give eternal life after death’ … Rather its meaning varies from passage to passage, but in general, in any context, ’save’ means ‘gets out of trouble.’ The trouble could be sickness, war, political intrigue, oppression, poverty, imprisonment, or any kind of danger or evil."

He then spends the rest of the book going through different strains of Christianity, and explaining what he likes about each - what he’d like to take from each, and where he sees each has failed. I think that this is a really interesting exploration of the strengths of different traditions within Christianity, and what has worked, what has miserably failed, and what might be worth rescuing.

There are two aspects of his discussions that were of particular interest to me. One that caused me some difficulty was his perspectives on mission.  He says that he is "missional" - and he describes it this way: "Those who want to become Christian (whether through our proclimation or demonstration,) we welcome. Those who don’t, we love and serve, joining God in seeking thier good, their blessing, their shalom." He does have a good discussion of the issues relating to how Christians should relate to those of other faiths, one that is likely quite radical given his conservative background, but from my perspective, it doesn’t quite go far enough. I question the whole enterprise of the evangelism part of missions (he actually tries to deconstruct the ‘evangelism’ and ’service’ dichotomy of mission work, but I’m not sure it’s so successful.) He understands the problem with the whole missionary enterprise in the past, and the wholesale export of European and American culture with missionary work in the past. I just think it needs more consideration than he’s given it.

The second part of the discussion that I found interesting (of course) was his focus on spiritual practice and piety, and the ways in which some traditions (like Methodism, and charismatic and contemplative traditions) have had that as a focus, and that is something he would like to rescue, and become part of this "generous orthodoxy." He talks a bit about orthodoxy (right thinking) and orthopraxy (right practice), and I think his perspective is that orthopraxy is in need of rescuing, and orthodoxy has been used too much as a club with which to beat other people. He has a great discussion of baptism, and the significance of baptism in different traditions, and the ways in which that has changed over time. He also has a great discussion about Anabaptists, and the way they have rejected modernity is something that is a very good thing.

Unfortunately, he completely sidesteps questions of patriarchy (except for a couple of mentions of the problem with the complete focus on the masculine aspects of the divine in Protestantism) and homophobia, although he does deal with culture and issues of ethnic and racial oppression. He explains, and I agree, that until Christians and Christianity repents from the atrocities of its past, and practices deep humility, there isn’t really a way to move forward. He does seem to have some kind of hope that all Christians can begin to appreciate the gifts that all traditions hold, and begin somehow together to create this "generous orthodoxy."

On the whole, this was an enjoyable book to read, particularly before I knew enough theology and Christian history to argue with him on those counts. I think it’s worth a read if you are a seminarian of any stripe, or concerned with the present state of Christianity, or even at all curious about it, or about the Emergent church movement.  I think that the whole enterprise that he is working on, that is, looking back at the most important parts of the message of Jesus, and looking at what has worked, and what hasn’t worked, and deeply understanding our present context, and building from there, is, I think, a good enterprise, even though he and I would likely erect different buildings. And I think that, for him, that would be OK.

technorati tags: emergent, church, christianity, orthodoxy

A somewhat serendipitous occurance (two mentions of the same essay, "Uses of the Erotic" by Audre Lorde in a 24 hour span of time, one of which was in my Christian Worship class, in discussions of the history of Queer Theory and Theology - a whole different topic to write on sometime) sent me back to her collection of essays, called Sister Outsider which was published more than 20 years ago. My copy of it (it was, of course, one of the books I kept) is a bit creased, yellowed, and familiar. I hadn’t looked at it in quite a while, though. My most salient memory of the book was when I moved to Colorado in 1987, it was in the hands of someone who would later become my housemate and good friend, the first time we met. I remembered that, because I had just finished reading it only a week before.

I stole an hour or so from my studying over a quiet dinner this evening to re-read a few of the essays. One of the first things that struck me was that she was writing a lot of these things at about the same age as I am now - in her late 40s. And somehow, each time I return to her work, I’m reminded of how she was such an amazing observer and critic of our society. And, ultimately, how timeless her writing is.

I re-read her classic essay "Poetry Is Not a Luxury." Here is one of my favorite quotes from that essay:

For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.

 I know that Audre’s brand of Black lesbian feminist thought of the 1980s has, in it’s time, given way to postmodernism and queer theory on one hand, and womanist theory on the other. But I think there is still so much to learn from her insights.

technorati tags: poetry, writing, feminism, queertheory

Bruce Wilson, on Talk to Action, has an interesting, and I think quite useful discussion of the issues relating to the ways in which the secular left and religious left talk to each other, and the broader community, and the language that gets used. He’s mostly discussing Michael Lerner’s new book, "The Left Hand of God," which is for sure on my list of books to read when I have the time. He says:

As the religious left arises to flex, perhaps, newfound political muscles it would do well to remember that many of the great social justice battles of the last century in America were advanced by a coalition between religious and secular forces. And, the secular left has fewer bearings in the new landscape. So, it may be incumbent upon Michael Lerner’s spiritual progressives to reach out - difficult or perplexing though it may seem - to those on the secular left for whom the religious left might now appear to be in a position of relative power.

There are quibbles with his perspective, and I’d say it’s incumbent on both sides to reach out, but I think it’s quite interesting that he feels that religious progressives now have the upper hand. Worth a read.

technorati tags: religion, progressive, left, secular

Octavia Butler, one of my favorite Science Fiction writers, and one of a tiny number of African-American Science Fiction writers, died this weekend.

She wrote a number of books that were really important to me. The first book of hers that I read was called Kindred,  which was an amazing story of a black woman who is yanked backwards in time to help her slave-owning ancestor. I read the books of the Patternist series, including Mind of My Mind, and Wild Seed.

Her two-book series, Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents, were, I think, two of the best science fiction books to deal with the near future, ever published. I haven’t yet read her newest book, Fledgeling, but I think it will be on my summer reading list.

There is a nice tribute on Blog Critics. Here’s an obit.

She is a voice in Science Fiction that will not be easily replaced.

technorati tags: sciencefiction, octaviabutler, writer, obituary

OK, we have a new meme running now, a list of Science Fiction books by women. Yay!

Bold the ones you read and liked, strike out the ones you didn’t like, and italicize the ones you haven’t read yet but want to.

1. Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents — Octavia Butler
2. Lathe of Heaven — Ursula K. LeGuin
3. The Visitor — Sherri Tepper
4. Vorkosigan Series — Lois McMaster Bujold
5. Cyteen — C.J. Cherryh
6. Pilgrimage: The Book of the People — Zenna Henderson
7. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang — Kate Wilhelm
8. The Left Hand of Darkness — Ursula K. Leguin
9. The Snow Queen — Joan Vinge
10. Extra(ordinary) People — Joanna Russ
11. Doomsday Book — Connie Willis
12. Downbelow Station — C.J. Cherryh
13. Freedom’s Landing — Anne McCaffrey
14. Forerunner Foray – Andre Norton
15. Don’t Bite The Sun — Tanith Lee
16. Up The Walls of The World — James Tiptree, Jr.
17. Star Songs – James Tiptree, Jr./Raccoona Sheldon
18. Fire Watch — Connie Willis
19. Holding Wonder — Zenna Henderson
20. Dreamsnake — Vonda McIntyre

Given my status as a long time science fiction fan, I couldn’t resist this. It’s a meme going around in the Linuxchix Live community. Bold what you’ve read, strike out what you don’t like, italicize what you’d like to read but haven’t yet…

1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
3. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson
6. Dune — Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland — is this science fiction?
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

There’s one big problem with this meme: the above list doesn’t have any books by women. So I’ve added some:

21. Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents — Octavia Butler
22. Lathe of Heaven – Ursala LeGuin
23. The Visitor — Sherri Tepper
24. Vorkosigan Series — Lois McMaster Bujold
25. Cyteen – C.J. Cherryh

OK, my very quick, and spoiler free, review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was great. It was the best yet. The last one (Order of the Phoenix) had way, way too much teenage angst. This one was largely free of it (although there was plenty of "snogging" - I’ll let you read to figure out what that means.)

It set up the next (and last) book really well. There are some surprises, one very unpleasant. But it’s really worth a read. If you read the last one, and were worried about a downhill slide, not to worry. You’ll enjoy this one totally. And I can’t wait for the next one.

Not convinced? Here are some other reviews:

New York Times
Kirkus Reviews
AP