Monday, August 19, 2013

Sci-Fi/Fantasy writers with Christian Background or sensibilities


Sci-Fi/Fantasy writers with Christian Background or sensibilities

Jo Clayton (February 15, 1939 – February 13, 1998) Official Webpage
 Books at Open Library
Jo Clayton is author of 35 works of science fiction and fantasy, as well as countless short storiesIn 1969 she had a religious conversion and moved to New Orleans to join the Sisters of Mount Carmel, a Roman Catholic order of instructors.[2] She left the order after three years, just before she would have taken her vows to become a nun. While in New Orleans she wrote heavily and also worked as an artist, painting people's pets

Selected Bibliography
First Story A Bait of Dreams (1979) found in A Bait of Dreams, (Feb 1985)

Roger Elwood (January 13, 1943 – February 2, 2007)
Books at Open Library

He was an American science fiction writer and editor, perhaps best known for having edited a large number of anthologies and collections for a variety of publishers in the early 1970s.

Angelwalk:
Angelwalk (1988)
Fallen Angel (1990)
Stedfast Guardian Angel (1992)
Darien: Guardian Angel of Jesus (1994)
Darien's Angelwalk for Children (1995)

Angels in Atlantic City (1998)
Wendy's Phoenix (1999)
Where Angels Dare (1999)
On Holy Ground (2001)

Other Novels
Wise One (1991)

Anthologies
Flame Tree Planet: An Anthology of Religious Science-Fantasy (1973)
Chronicles of a Comer and Other Religious Science Fiction Stories (1974)

The Pleistocene Redemption by Dan Gallagher, Ed Stackler and Gene King(Oct 15, 1998)
Cloning sheep, cattle, and chimps is only the beginning.

Using Fossil Gene Redemption (FGR), geneticist Kevin G. Harrigan experiments with genes from a frozen “Ice Man.” His work prompts Iraqi leader Ismail Mon to provide resources for exciting new research that enables Harrigan’s team to regenerate extinct animals and human sub-species from the Ice Ages. But when it is discovered that FGR is also the basis for genetic weapons of mass destruction, United States intelligence and defense leaders must act.

The Pleistocene Redemption, radically different from Jurassic Park, deals with two new methods of species regeneration. Will FGR trigger the Resurrection of the Dead? The major religions’ prophecies portend the regeneration of humankind as both physical and spiritual. What physical mechanisms could manifest this new dawn? Might they instead herald the terrifying sunset of humanity?


Mark E. Rogers  (born 1952) Official Website
Japan's greatest warrior Tomokato is out for revenge, after his master Nobunaga is killed. The group that leads the attack on Nobunaga's castle is made up of characters from throughout time and space, so Tomokato must travel all over the Earth and beyond to seek his vengeance (from Japan to Camelot to Valhalla to Mars, to name just a few) in the most violent ways possible, involving the deaths of hundreds of beings.

Each chapter is a bizarre parody of some historical or pop culture event, but the event is always treated as an entirely serious one. For example, no one finds it at all unusual that Tomokato is an upright, talking, sword-wielding cat.

First Story The Bridge of Catzad-Dûm (1980) found in
Samurai Cat
1. Adventures of Samurai Cat (1986)
2. More Adventures of Samurai Cat (1989)
4. Samurai Cat in the Real World (1989)
5. Samurai Cat Goes to the Movies (1994)
6. Samurai Cat Goes to Hell (1998)
The Sword of Samurai Cat (1991)

Zorachus
1. Zorachus (1986)
2. The Nightmare of God (1988)
The Dead (1989) Blood of the Lamb
1. The Expected One (1991)
2. The Devouring Void (1991)
3. The Riddled Man (1992)

Zancharthus
1. Blood and Pearls (1998)
2. Jagutai and Lilitu (2000)
3. Night of the Long Knives (2002)

The Dead  (2000)

Mary Doria Russell  At  Open Library       Official website
She was raised as a Catholic but left the church at age fifteen, and her struggles to figure out how much of that culture to pass on to her children fueled the prominence of religion in her work

Sparrow
It was predictable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research. During what Europeans were pleased to call the Age of Discovery, Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with previously unknown peoples; indeed, Jesuits were often the vanguard of exploration. The United Nations required years to come to a decision that the Society of Jesus reached in ten days. In New York, diplomats debated long and hard, with many recesses and tablings of the issue, whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to contact the world that would become known as Rakhat when there were so many pressing needs on Earth. In Rome, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send. The Society asked leave of no temporal government. It acted on its own principles, with its own assets, on Papal authority. The mission to Rakhat was undertaken not so much secretly as privately–a fine distinction but one that the Society felt no compulsion to explain or justify when the news broke several years later. The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God’s other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the furthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God. They meant no harm. 

1. The Sparrow (1996)
2. Children of God (1998)
A Thread of Grace (2005)
Dreamers of the Day (2008)

Doc (2011)


Christopher Stasheff at Open Library  Official Website
Attempting to blend in with prehistoric humans was not an easy task for Christopher, and so he spent the next two million years or more hibernating in the Swiss Alps (they had great chocolate, even back then).  Eventually, he emerged from seclusion around the time of the ancient Sumerian civilization, and often went out drinking with Gilgamesh and Enkidu.  It was then that Christopher Stasheff wrote his first novel, The Epic of Gilgamesh, on some clay tablets—not all of which have survived, unfortunately.  If you meet Chris at a con, ask him to fill in the missing bits for you. It's really quite amusing.

Also, you really need to read it in the original cuneiform.  In English, all of Chris's horrible puns get lost in translation... and that breaks his heart.  It really does.

Anyway, over the millennia, Christopher Stasheff has adjusted to each society he has lived in.  He has inspired individuals from Shakespeare to Ben Franklin, and even influenced whole empires from the Romans to the Aztecs.  (He deeply regrets the whole human sacrifice thing, by the way.  He maintains to this day that he honestly never thought the Aztecs would have that strong a reaction to a few bad puns.)

Perhaps Stasheff's most famous influence on modern society comes in the form of his superhero alter ego that he dons once a year on Christmas Eve.  He uses his super Venusian powers to deliver gifts as he flies around the world in a red and black Ford Windstar (it used to be a sleigh with reindeer, but they weren't Y2K compatible).  The best part of his generosity is that it's all tax deductible.

His current identity is as a science fantasy writer living in two places at once with a wife and four children and several costumes and cats (not his, of course, but they amuse the wife and kids).  His fondest goal is to someday journey into outer space to see his beloved home planet Venus one last time, and to mourn once again the loss of his security deposit on the condo he had there.  Did I mention global warming sucks?

 Stasheff's greatest success is, of course, his four children.  One in particular—the one blessed with natural beauty, a fantastic imagination, and is writing this bio—would only like to add that if you want to read a truthful biography of Chris Stasheff, ask him to write his own bio next time.
— Eleanore Stasheff, 2002

 

Selected Bibliography
1.       Her Majesty's Wizard (1986)
1.       A Company of Stars (1991)
1. A Wizard in Absentia (1993)
Mind Out of Time: Stories (2003)

Saint Vidicon to the Rescue (2005)

Soulsaver (2000)

Why do I write science fiction? And why do people read SF?

It seems to be a rule of thumb that most people come to the genre young. I believe it may have been the late science fiction writer and editor Terry Carr who first said that the golden age of science fiction is twelve.

By that he meant that most readers and writers-to-be discover the genre in early adolescence. That was true of me and, comparing notes, I’ve found it to be true of many other genre readers and writers.

Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell. In each of their books I’ve mentioned, the author has something important to say about life, about society, about who we are and where we may be headed.

Each of these books presents us with ideas and events so wild and wonderful and unexpected and yet so right that the reader sits there and thinks, "Wow. That is so cool."

The Wow Factor.

 But there’s something even more important. The best science fiction gives us not only the Wow Factor, it makes us think. And that is so cool.

 Sideshow (1987) W R Thompson
From the book by W.R. Thompson, commissioned and published by Baen Books, 1987

Set in a dysopian future (13 years ago today) in 2000, the world has collapsed, and radical groups emerge from the chaos.

A Neo-Nazi group, that wants an American Fuehrer...

The "New Redeemers", who want religion as the law, and the law is Reverend Fountain...

The "Sere", an extremest environmental group that believe that the human population must be reduced for the Earth to heal and be clean again.

And, the Telepaths, who hold the key to Earth's survival, that is, if the rest of humanity can stop hunting them down..."Witch-Hunting" is one of the new cool trends.

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