The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/19/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The History of Christianity (Part 3)” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/18/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The History of Christianity (Part 2)” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/17/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The History of Christianity (Part 1)” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

Round 3: Match 1: Spike Versus River Tam!

versus

Who Will Win?

Round 3: Match 2: Teal’c versus The Doctor!

versus

Who Will Win?

This is one job you won’t want to miss.

Yep, Carrot Top should definitely play Lion-O in a live-action adaptation of Thundercats.

AT-AT Walker – Helps you walk all over things.

K9 Cake for all of you Doctor Who lovers out there!

Rockwell Spiderman

Party Time – Even Storm Troopers like a good old fashioned game of Twister.

I think we can all agree that Joss Whedon is the real Captain America.

Superheroes don’t always get it right.

The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/13/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: An Explanation For The History of Christianity” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

On May 8, 2012, the Disney Parks Blog announced an opportunity for Star Wars fans to recreate themselves in a classic moment from Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back.  For $99.95 plus shipping guests of Disney’s Hollywood Studios can have themselves scanned and recreated as an eight inch figurine, carbon frozen just like Han Solo.  This experience is available for this summer’s Star Wars Weekends.

Would you drop $100 to have yourself reproduced as a frozen action figure?  Would you hang it on the wall?  Disney fans on twitter have been discussing their excitement for this experience and are reporting long waits on the reservation line.     

Full information is available on the Disney Parks Blog.

As a parent and with a history degree or two, Noah Wyle’s character Tom Mason resonates with me.  Of course military history majors would make the best scouts!  Actually many viewers will enjoy Mason’s common sense and appeals to fairness in the extreme conditions of an alien invasion.  Additionally, parents will find themselves mulling over how they would work to keep their families together in the face of a global extermination event.  And this includes the question of how old should one be to fight for their own survival as part of a militarized unit. 

An added bonus was two characters debate the purpose of faith in their world.  Will Patton’s Captain Dave Weaver is a man who has lost his faith.  In the alien invasion his ex-wife and daughters have gone missing.  He now leads the 2^ndMassachusetts Militia Regiment and a group of civilians including Tom Mason.  He is a man who has thrown himself into his job with no family or faith to fall back onto.  But Seychelle Gabriel’s Lourdes has held to her faith throughout the invasion.  In fact, it is her faith that gives her the strength to serve others within their refugee band as a doctor’s assistant after being a medical school student.  The conversations between these two often sound like Lourdes may have listened to the early Sci-Fi Christian podcast episodes. 

Season one ended with Tom Mason entering an alien spaceship?  Didn’t Admiral Ackbar teach us something about traps?  Will this be Falling Skies jump the shark moment?  Or was that when they brought down an alien spaceship with a shot that would make Luke Skywalker proud!  Season two will premier on June 17^th.

To catch yourself up if you have not yet seen an episode of Falling Skies there are a number of trailers available for season two. 

And they have released the first few minutes of this season’s first episode.

Additionally, TNT has prepared a short video that provides you an overview of the alien invaders that the survivors of the 2^nd Massachusetts Regiment must survive. 

Remember to make every shot count if you plan to survive Summer 2012!

AT-ST Costume.

Wait…what?

Iron Man lamp! Avenge the night!

Ride through space.

I’ve never wanted to play in a bathroom until now!

Fun Mash-Up.

Does anyone else remember this bizarre episode of Power Rangers?

Daniel Butcher, this one is for you! Although, you’ve probably seen it before at Disney.

The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/5/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The Avengers – Instant Reaction” featuring Matt Anderson, Daniel Butcher, and Koby Radcliffe

The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/3/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: DC vs. Marvel Movies” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

The Sci-Fi Christian – 5/1/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: Joss Whedon Talk” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters July 20th, 2012. Starring Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon), Michael Caine (Alfred), Morgan Freeman (Luscious Fox), Tom Hardy (Bane), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (John Blake), Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle/Catwoman), Liam Neeson (Ra’s Al Ghul), and Marion Cotillard (Miranda Tate).

I thought that with The Avengers coming out on May 4th, it would be a great idea to focus this week’s Geek Grab Bag on the super powered team that we are all anxiously awaiting to see on film. Enjoy!

They tried going the solo route…

Iron Man!

The Incredible Hulk!

Thor!

Captain America!

…they decided it would be better to create a team…

Avengers Assemble?

Lego Avengers Assemble? Wait…what?

Avengers Assemble for America’s Got Talent!

Avengers Assemble!

Avengers Assemble circa 1970!

Needless to say, when Samuel L. Jackson made his first appearance at the end of Iron Man in 2008 and casually mentioned this thing called the Avengers Initiative, well, he had my attention.  I am an X-Men guy, but there were a lot of things that could be done with an Avengers property.  The daydreams of where this could go, not knowing yet what movies were to come, were fantastic.

From Iron Man to Captain America: The First Avenger, we have been introduced to our heroes.  We have met men and women that stand strongly to defend the innocent against evil.  And in five movies they have pushed that evil back into the darkness; but we have also met flawed characters.  Tony Stark, Thor, Bruce Banner and even Steve Rogers have all had to overcome their demons, primarily their egos, in order to find success on the battlefield and win the day for the light.  Tony Stark is a great example: on his own, the man is self destructive, unlikable and as much of a threat to others as a help.  It’s true, boys and girls, Iron Man is not perfect.

Of course, the wisdom books of the Old Testament have a lot to say about this.  We are advised that “God helps those that help themselves!”  Clearly, Tony Stark could overcome his flaws and personality on his own.  He does not need mentors or comrades since God expects us to overcome our problems on our own.  Sadly for me, this line questions the whole reason for us needing an Avengers film.  Maybe Marvel shouldn’t have bothered!  But wait: that’s not in the Bible!  It may be a phrase we have heard thrown around and at time attributed to the Bible, but that’s not Biblical truth.

So what is true?  What do the Wisdom books have to say about man and the need to overcome alone?

The book of Ecclesiastes paints a very different picture.  The author advises,

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecc. 4:9-12, ESV).

It appears to me that the Bible advocates The Avengers formula.  Together heroes are greater than one.  Trials that would break one person can be overcome by two.  Together, a team is unstoppable.  No, the Bible does not advocate the one man band—instead, God is recommending the super hero team-up.  Stan Lee was onto something spiritually true in 1964 when he realized one hero was better than one.

Along with added strength, togetherness fosters self improvement.  We find in Proverbs an often quoted passage, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17, ESV).  One believer can strengthen another.  Through debate, conversations and just doing life together, we can and do make each other better.  Tony Stark is a truly flawed man, but the fact that he can spend time with Steve Rogers and his Boy Scout personality can challenge Tony to be a better man.  Likewise, Tony can encourage Steve to better integrate into the society he finds himself living in.  Even great men can make each other greater!

From the beginning of human existence we were never meant to be alone.  In Genesis we find, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18, ESV).  It’s been a spiritual truth since Adam that we have needed to be part of a team.  Man was not meant to be alone!  Believers were not meant to struggle alone!  And even for those of us who are not meant for marriage, we are not whole unless we have others on our team.

If I could give some practical advice rolling down from The Avengers, I suggest getting yourself around people.  You need a tribe, entourage, posse, circle, tribe, community, family or whatever you may call it to do life with.  If you are alone, you will be weaker than you need to be.  You need to share your life with others so you can be strengthened and you can strengthen others.  Captain America makes Iron Man better; why shouldn’t that formula work for you?  For me, I have a global network, because one guy is currently deployed overseas.  In this group, I can send out a message and quickly get advice on spiritual and earthly matters.  These guys are available for me and I am there for them.  A few go to church with me, but others follow different traditions than me within our faith!  But, they all believe in Jesus and believe in me.  If you don’t have this, go get it.  If you need a place to start, go get involved in your local church and let others share in your service.  You cannot save the world alone, so join a team!

Avengers Assemble!

Jedi Squirrels. This explains why squirrels are so agile.

A long day of crime fighting.

The Enterprise Pizza Cutter!

A Tardis Entertainment System – I want it.

Sweet Terminator Guitar.

I knew it!

Fan-made Avengers poster.

The new Brave trailer.

The Sci-Fi Christian – 4/22/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: Sci-Fi Feedback” featuring Matt Anderson, Daniel Butcher, and Koby Radcliffe

NES Coffee Table: Don’t spill your coffee on it.

Oh no! (T-shirt design at Teefury.com)

Haha!

Where’s Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Star Trek? Can you find them all?

Personalize your superhero! (Check out your options here)

“Voltron Dans Les Coquelicots” (Claude Monet’s “Les Coquelicots a Argenteuil”)

A nice day for a walk with the dog.

Avengers promo with Robert Downey Jr. and Nathan Fillion!

The Sci-Fi Christian – 4/15/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: Superhero Talk” featuring Matt Anderson, Daniel Butcher, and Koby Radcliffe

“Luke, I am Your Father!” is one of the most iconic and misquoted movie lines of all time. Everyone, well except for the one guy at my work who has never seen a Star Wars movie, instantly knows the significance of this quote.  In this one moment we find out that Lord Vader has a back-story more complicated than we initially believe.  Yes friends Darth Vader is a daddy!  But what kind of dad would the Dark Lord of the Sith been if he was not serving the Emperor and took his fatherly responsibilities seriously?

Jeffrey Brown’s Darth Vader and Son provides a humorous window to what growing up with Darth Vader as a dad might have been like.  Brown illustrates episodes from the parental career of Darth Vader, episodes that may likely feel familiar to many a father.

What parent has not been asked if we have arrived at our destination yet?

Image Provided by Chronicle Books

And taking a son to the baseball diamond is a sacred right for all baseball loving dads.

Image Provided by Chronicle Books

Personally, I think Darth Vader and Son looks hilarious and would not be shocked if it made its way to my bookshelf at Father’s Day!  It looks like a volume that many a sci-fi Christian dad would enjoy and share with his children.

I was first introduced to Mr. Weeks through an interview by Paeter Frandsen over at Spiritblade.net. I was thoroughly impressed by his sincerity and humor, and ultimately intrigued by the concepts behind his first trilogy. I immediately purchased The Night Angel Trilogy and within a short amount of time, I had become engulfed in the land of Midcyru and the life of an orphan turned Wetboy (way cooler than your average assassin).

I feel that it is my duty to introduce others to the works of Brent Weeks, so that they, too, may enjoy what has easily become my favorite fantasy series. I am now pleased to present to you my interview with Brent Weeks!

Interviewee: Brent Weeks

Interviewer: Max

M: Hi Brent, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions. I know that the Sci-fi Christian audience will be thrilled!

BW: Well, thanks for having me, Max. I’m excited to get a chance to virtually chat with your readers.

M: So, before we get into your work, could you tell us a little about yourself? When did you first realize that you would like to be a writer, and how did that passion grow over time?

BW: I started writing my first novel when I was 13 years old, and actually got a couple hundred pages in before I realized just how incredibly bad it was and gave up. Ira Glass talks about the gap all artists have between having good taste and being able to produce good work. And when I was in college, I decided to try to close that gap by writing a novel or two and seeing if I was any good. I figured that if it turned out I had no talent, I could then still get a real job and do something productive for society.

M: When you first started seriously writing, was there another particular genre that you were interested in, or dabbled with before delving into the realm of fantasy?

BW: Fantasy was always my first love. And then as I went through my education, I got infected with that idea that you have to “write what you know,” and I realized I didn’t know anything; so I might as well just make stuff up! (A truer and less demotivating maxim would be to know what you write, because you can always learn new things.) I do read other genres. I like mysteries and police procedurals, and thrillers, and especially love nonfiction these days because of the amount of crazy but true, things that have happened in real human history. However, learning to write in a new genre is much more difficult. You might come up with an idea that you think is the most brilliant thing ever that actually is old hat within a genre’s conventions. Orson Scott Card talks about doing this with one of his science fiction books, where he envisioned a planet where people with ESP powers had inbred and become much, much more powerful. He thought this was a totally new idea, and only found out later that it was very, very old. It would be very easy to do the same thing when writing in another genre with which I don’t have deep, lifelong familiarity.

M: Do you have any favorite authors or favorite books that helped draw you into the fantasy genre?

BW: I read all of Tolkien five times growing up, and always seemed to go back there after trying others who were vastly inferior. But I also enjoyed some lighter fare, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, and even Piers Anthony, and Louis L’Amour. One early favorite, whom I have not credited enough in other interviews that have asked this, was Stephen Lawhead. He now writes more historical novels with just a pinch of magic in them. They’re meticulously researched, and very good, but they’re just not my style as much as some of his early work that I loved, like In the Hall of the Dragon King, and even Taliesin and Merlin.

M: What’s a typical working day like for you? When and where do you write? Do you set a daily writing goal?

BW: A dirty secret hidden among ashamed writers everywhere is that it’s hard to do creative work for more than 4-6 hours a day. (Though some outliers can certainly do more.) I sit down at my desk every morning like I have a normal job, and try to wrestle 500-2,000 words out of the muse before I give up. Early on in a project, I set a goal of 500 words, because beginnings are more challenging for me. And then I up my goal as I go along. Usually I just write in my office, but every once in a while, I’ll get sick of it for whatever reason and write in the kitchen or go to a coffee shop. Truthfully, though, I have preternaturally keen powers of distraction, so I don’t usually get very much done when I try to write in public.

M: Can you tell us about your first trilogy, The Night Angel series? What is the over-arching theme or concept? How did you come up with the idea for the story? Were there personal elements that translated to the page? I read through the series within a couple of months, beginning about a year ago, and I was blown away.

BW: The Night Angel Trilogy is centered on a question: can a good man do bad things? Can a good man be a killer, or even an assassin? I kind of wanted to look at the iconic good guy assassin character that doesn’t make very much sense for me when I see it in literature or when I see it in movies, and see if I could do a better, more psychologically real job of it while writing a really fun story. One of the overarching themes is redemption. I think that any book that’s written passionately has a lot of its author in it. And for all of its flaws, of which there are more than a few, The Night Angel Trilogy is very much passionately written.

That said, trying to find one-to-one representations from my life is tricky. The clearest might be that my wife was working with sexually abused children at the time that I was writing Way of Shadows. Seeing just how profound of an effect that even isolated incidents of evil could have on a person’s life was pretty hard to work through, even second- or third-hand. My wife was very careful not to violate confidentiality and so forth, but she’d tell me things here and there that were just heart-wrenching. Not solely because of that, but partly because of that, I wanted to show evil and its consequences in a more realistic way than I felt I had seen portrayed in the fantasy I’d read.

M: What kind of research did you do for the trilogy?

BW: I did research as I needed to. But part of the great thing about The Night Angel Trilogy being my first work is that I just brought to it everything I was already passionate about. Medieval weapons are cool! I’d already studied them. Martial arts are fun! I’d already taken martial arts training. Figuring out the potentiation effect when applied to poisons… ok, that took a little bit of research. But that was fun too! So forl Night Angel I was much more able to take stuff I already knew, versus with The Lightbringer, I’ve had to do a lot more work to get a firm grip on color theory and the physics of light (and the historical understandings of light from which I could draw).

M: I was enticed by the contrast between, what I would call very dark and adult themed elements in the novels along with the intertwining of Christian themes. How did your personal faith affect the darkness, and many times, tragedy of the story?

BW: I’ve always been interested in the cracks in things, and the uncomfortable questions. Take the 400 years between Malachi and Jesus. If you believe in a God who wants to talk to his people, and have communion with them, what was he doing during that time? Why so long? Or I think about the nephilim in the Old Testament: what happened to them? Could they come again? Or I think about the Christians in the Coliseum being devoured by lions. God could have saved them, but he didn’t. Their stories ended horrifically, even though they were doing everything right. That sense that if you’re a good person, or a good Christian, that everything in your life is going to be rosy, seems woefully historically ignorant to me. If Jesus came to save us, the truth is, without darkness and evil, there is nothing that we need to be saved from. And I think that’s something that the Christian fiction that I read growing up completely ignored. It was too safe, too happy, too fake. Maybe it’s changed since I gave up reading it 20 some years ago now, but it seemed like no matter how bad a guy was, once he became a Christian in the story, he would be perfectly good from then on out. And that, to me, just seems like a lie. A comforting lie, but maybe the worse therefore. So I wanted to write a world where the darkness was very, very dark so that the light could be very, very bright. I also spent some of my formative years in college as an atheist, and so I have a really good sense of how two people can look at a coincidence and one see a miracle, and the other see a happy accident with neither being dishonest. And I feel like the Christian fiction I’ve read isn’t fair to nonbelievers and the secular fiction I’ve read isn’t fair to believers. That irritated me. So I wrote my own book, and knew quite well that it might please neither camp! Let me be clear, though: I think that our own beliefs inescapably infiltrate our work. Our beliefs affect even how we set up problems—even what we consider to actually be problems—and of course, what we consider to be a satisfactory answer to those problems, or to a story. But. I don’t want my fiction to be propaganda. I want the coincidences to be interpretable as coincidences. I don’t want to stack the deck. After all, if God gave us free will in our personal stories, why should I not give readers the same courtesy in mine?

M: Can you tell us about your newest series, The Lightbringer? How does this series differ from The Night Angel Trilogy? What new elements are you bringing to the table this time around? How long do you expect the series to run for?

BW: I believe that I’ve wrestled The Lightbringer series down to a trilogy. I’ve been fighting with it from the very beginning, trying to make it be shorter, and although so far it looks like I’m winning, each of the books has been longer and longer than any of my other works, so it might be a bit of a Pyrrhic victory, at least from my publisher’s standpoint. (Who would, of course, like more books and shorter ones!) Where The Night Angel Trilogy starts with and tells the story of killers, thieves, and prostitutes, and thus necessitates a darker tone and cruder language, The Lightbringer Trilogy is, perhaps not surprisingly, all about light. Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the Seven Satrapies. He’s something between a pope and a shogun. What Gavin doesn’t know is that he has an illegitimate son, now 15 years old, whose rural village is about to be wiped out. On top of a story of civil war and familial betrayal are layers of questions of what a good man will do when confronted with a secret shame. The Lightbringer is probably an easier book to read than the Night Angel books in some ways, and harder in others. Easier in that there’s not nearly the dark content of sexual abuse and people doing everything they can to survive in a corrupt underworld, but harder in that the magic is more fundamental to this world. Everything depends on the magic and how it works, and there’s a complexity to that that makes for a bit of a steep learning curve early on.

M: I know that you briefly revisited the Night Angel world in your novella, “Perfect Shadow.” Do you have any plans to return to the world of Kylar Stern again, say, once you are finished with The Lightbringer series?

BW: That has always been my plan! I didn’t feel like I was quite ready immediately after finishing Beyond the Shadows to tell the story that I had in mind for that world. So I decided to take a break and write something different, then come back, hopefully as a more mature writer with more tools in my toolbox. When I finish up book three of The Lightbringer Trilogy, which I’ve already started, I’m ready and eager to head back to Midcyru.

M: What is the hardest part of writing for you?

BW: The blank page. It’s an odd thing, but sometimes even when I know what I need to write, and the scene I have in my head is really cool, sometimes just getting started is so hard.

M: What’s the best thing about being an author?

BW: I’m not gonna lie: I work really hard, but I love tons of stuff about my job. I knew when I set out that there was no guarantee that even if I wrote the best books in the world that they would ever get published, much less that I would be able to make a living doing what I love. So I see blessings all over the place. It’s all a gift. Getting letters from fans: amazing. Getting letters from fans in Venezuela, who are using my books to teach themselves English: amazing. Seeing fan art of my characters: amazing. Getting incredibly snarky criticism from anonymous people on the internet: not so amazing! But hey. I think one of the best things is when I’ve done something really subtle in my book that I don’t think anybody will notice, but that I’m proud of, and then someone gets it. That’s just awesome.

M: What advice would you give aspiring writers?

BW: As you might imagine, I get asked this a lot. And in a spirit of trying to help out others as I certainly needed help, I post a continuing column on my website of writing advice, answering the most popular questions. It’s probably over 50 pages long by this point.  (www.brentweeks.com/extras-writing-advice) One of the most important things, though, can be summed up in one word: finish. Writing a story is harder and takes longer than you think. But you are in complete control of it. If it’s boring, you can make it more interesting. But you can’t polish what isn’t there. There are some things you only learn by finishing.

M: Finally, what question have you always wanted to be asked in an interview? How would you answer that question?

BW: Mr. Weeks, would you like us to mail this check for $1,000,000 or deposit it directly into your account?

Me: Direct deposit, and it’s been unusually pleasant working with you, Miss IRS Agent!

M: Thanks again, Brent, for your time and willingness.

BW: Thank you, Max! Appreciate the opportunity!

If you enjoyed the interview, check out Brent’s website and see what he’s all about!

We should actually be seeing this as a comic pretty soon!

These Easter Eggs not only taste good, but have saved the world numerous times.

Two handsome fellows.

Nintendo 64 Coffee Table! Cool.

I wish I had read this one when I was a kid.

Boba Fett has no fear (Thanks to Daniel Butcher for sharing this one).

Learn to dance with Optimus Prime.

The Sci-Fi Christian – 4/8/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: Easter” featuring Matt Anderson, Ben De Bono, and Skip Crust

Round 2: Match 1: The Tenth Doctor versus Angel!

versus

Who Will Win?

Round 2: Match 2: The Black Smoke Monster Versus Teal’c!

versus

Who Will Win?

Round 2: Match 3: Darth Vader versus River Tam!

versus

Who Will Win?

Round 2: Match 4: Data versus Spike!

versus

Who Will Win?

Pac-Man Bookshelf!

The Captain’s Inflatable Chair: Command the Enterprise from your own living room!

I’ll be betting on the blue team.

Even Trolls love a nice tea party.

Feel protected at night with the Triforce Lamp!

The joy of fatherhood.

Why?

The Sci-Fi Christian – 4/1/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The Time Traveler Strife” featuring Matt Anderson, Daniel Butcher, and Koby Radcliffe

I wasn’t familiar with this project until I saw the trailer, but I have high hopes. My entire family loved How to Train Your Dragon (I thought it’s probably the best thing Dreamworks Animation has produced since the original Shrek), and it’s good to know many of the same talents responsible for that film are involved in this one. Plus, look at that voice cast: Chris “Captain Kirk ’09″ Pine, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman… And, of course, you’d be hard pressed to pitch a more kid-friendly premise than “Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy head up an epic mission to save the world.” (I mean, Santa’s already conquered the Martians. How hard could a wicked sprite be?)

And yet…

I realize this movie is likely aiming to be nothing more than feel-good family fare for the holiday season. I’m not expecting any deep philosophical or theological insights. And I’m no hater when it comes to secular appropriations of Christian holy days (or, at least, I try not to be as hard-nosed a hater as I have been; otherwise, would I have bothered to bring you five fabulous sci-fi and fantasy Santa sightings last December?). It’s not as though either Christmas or Easter have ever been completely free from non-Christian elements (the Puritans considered Christmas such a lost cause they skipped it altogether, and Easter’s very name derives from a pagan fertility goddess–that’s why the Orthodox still call it “Pascha” and other Christians prefer to call it “Resurrection Sunday”). In an odd way, the fact that so many people who don’t share the Christian faith can still celebrate around its highest and holiest festivals testifies to the ongoing, secret work of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God that goes before all of us. Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t the point, of course, but neither are they the enemies. I confess, though, that something within me still rankles to see them starring as the heroes of a big-budget animated blockbuster. (Tooth Fairy, we’re good; I’ve got nothing against you.)

I can’t fault what seems to be the movie’s moral center: the truth that hope trumps fear every time. But real hope isn’t found in make-believe characters, no matter how benign. Santa’s voiceover above notwithstanding, the one who really guards us with his life–the one who in fact gave his life “to liberate many people” (Mark 10.45, CEB)–is Jesus Christ.

The sixteenth-century Heidelberg Catechism puts it so well, in an opening question and answer that have justly etched themselves into the minds and hearts of generations of believers:

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

We worship and serve a strong and mighty Savior, who has promised, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10.28, NRSV). While our response of faith is critically important, our Guardian’s protection doesn’t extend only as far as we believe in him. When we are his, we are his forever.

Perhaps Rise of the Guardians will give those who minister with children and youth–as well as their grown-ups!–not only a fun night at the cineplex but also a chance to talk about the real “reasons for the seasons” of Christmas and Easter, discovering and delighting again in the incarnate, crucified, risen, and reigning Guardian, “our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep… to whom be the glory forever and ever” (Heb. 13.21, NRSV).

But now we live in the vampire rennaisance. And as we know the more emotionally damaged the vampire may be, the better right now. So, 1991 may have been a bad time to resurrect Dark Shadows but some think now is the right time to bring back this cult favorite. Here is the trailer for this big screen take at the franchise coming to your local theater in May.

I have to admit, I’ll a little optimistic! Burton has brought back his frequent partner Johnny Depp who has made a career off “odd” characters. Danny Elfman composed the soundtrack, as we would expect from a Burton film. But adding to my optimism is that the screenplay was written by Seth Grahame-Smith of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. This could just be the right mix of camp and art that may keep me from asking why Barnabas is not sparkly! What do you think?

Here is a quick look for yourself.

What are your thoughts?  Is it just another version of Escape From New York?

Personally I know so little about this movie, I have little hope it will find a U.S audience? With Hunger Games already in the theater and The Avengers coming soon after Lockout‘s April release do you have time for this action sci-fi adventure?

The Sci-Fi Christian – 3/26/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: It’s Time For Sci-Fi News” featuring Matt Anderson and Daniel Butcher

The Darth Knight

Don’t be afraid of the dark, be afraid of the light.

hahaha.

This is one sweet Terminator tattoo.

For all of your legal cyber-battles.

The Doctor Who Season 7 Teaser Trailer!

The Sci-Fi Christian – 3/21/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The SFC Battle Royale 2012” featuring Matt Anderson and Daniel Butcher

I have been really critical of Disney and science fiction offerings in the past.  So I have been watching reports and rumors for John Carter with both hope and fear.  I have said several times that Andrew Stanton’s involvement convinced me that the film would be solid.  And I read the original John Carter book Princess of Mars and loved it.  I could see how it would be the great foundation of a movie.  But reports that are predicting that John Carter will be a flop have worried me.  And I have had my own fears because the initial trailers did not do justice to the movie I hoped for.  I was finally able to form my own opinion of John Carter at the D23 nationwide previews held before the movie release.

The bare basics of the story are that John Carter is a Civil War veteran and cavalry officer attempting to find his fortune and maybe himself in the western frontier.  In the search for his cave of gold he is transported to Mars, or Barsoom.  On Barsoom he finds himself meeting new peoples and cultures such as the Tharks, a green Martian race, and getting caught up in a struggle for control of Barsoom.  Once it is discovered that Carter has super strength and jumping ability due to his Earthly birth, he is urged to enter this struggle by Princess Dejah Thoris, who of course serves as a love interest.  Here are my initial thoughts on John Carter:

• Beauty:  This film is wonderfully framed with vast and intriguing landscapes.  Mars may not be red, but it is a desert world with sweeping views and interesting geological features.  Let’s be honest this is kind of a weird place to start, but those of us raised on Star Wars learned to look to the background because it sets the mood of the movie.  I honestly believed that the story was occurring in an interesting and alien world, not on a Utah set.  Because of these great shots I would skip the 3D personally. I find 3D to be distracting at time, maybe the technology is just not there yet.  And it gave depth to the scenery, but I also felt like the glasses, weird flickers, and the dimness that comes with the glasses at times kept me from fully entering the frame.        
• Story Changes:  The source material Princess of Mars is a century old and never envisioned as a movie.  And having read the book and seeing the trailer I could not always determine how they paralleled.  For example I knew that the Therns a villain group from the second John Carter book The Gods of Mars were added to the movie.  So I was a little confused if the movie adapted one or two books.  First, I now understand why the Therns were added, as the seemed to lack connective material and seemed like thinly connected adventures to me.  The Therns now provide the story a consistent villain.  Second, I still found the movie to honor the original Princess of Mars very well.  Scenes are repurposed.  So Dejah, John and the Thark Sola still take a river voyage but now it is for a different purpose.  And key elements are retained though abbreviated for the delivery of a movie.  So the movie still explains the relationship between Sola and Thark Jeddak, chief, Tars Tarkas, but it is explained in seconds not a chapter. 
• Tars Tarkas:  If John Carter had one character that I would have critical expectations of it is Thark Jeddak Tars Tarkas.  Tars Tarkas needed to be big, green, fierce, compassionate, loyal and loving all at the same time.  Visually, I was impressed with the green Martian.  Story wise, Tars Tarkas delivered for me. And actor William Defoe delivers in voicing the Jeddak, giving him wisdom, maybe Martian Yoda, mixed with experience.  If I was going to be lost with a character it was Tarkas and I was pleased. 
  

  Tars Tarkas Meets John Carter

   

• Is Something Weird Here:  Many of the scenes in this movie include live action and computer generated animated characters in the same frame.  Most of the time this works very successfully.  There is only one scene I can remember where I felt like I could tell that there was a mix of real and animated actors.  But for me most scenes are like the scenes with John, Dejah and Sola canoeing down the river, nothing strange here.  Humans interact with green Martians all the time!  It all seems to blend. 
• Woola: Woola is a hairless Martian dog, one who loves John Carter.  Now in line I had a conversation with another dad a few years older than me.  The discussion started with Star Wars, led to Jar Jar Binks and climaxed with his hatred of Ewoks.  Now I live on the other side of the Ewok Line as described on How I Met Your Mother.  I’m very okay with Ewoks.  The key is the Ewoks were written to satisfy my young self, where older viewers just found them campy.  Woola is the Ewoks of John Carter.  Older viewers are going to question Woola’s extraordinary abilities, but the Between Kid with me loved it.  Woola is going to make the kids happy.  Now if the movie wasn’t rated PG-13!
• Of Mars?:  When I originally read Princess of Mars, John Carter did not always resonate with me.  Sometimes he seemed unfamiliar.  He was a veteran of the civil war, he had extraordinary abilities on Mars, and sometimes he did not seem nice.  He did not connect with me in the same way as a character like farm boy Luke Skywalker.  Originally the title of this film was John Carter of Mars.  There has been a lot of debate about why they shortened the title artistically and marketing wise.  Now I understand more, John Carter really is John Carter of Earth for most of this film.  They have added to the story to ground him on earth, give him a back story that I can better relate to and in many ways I am more sympathetic to the character in the movie than in the book.  In short, John Carter the man is better fleshed out in the movie and I understand him better now thanks to a few screenwriting additions.
• Sequel: I want a sequel.  I have seen interviews with Stanton where he points out the movie can stand alone, though he would like a trilogy to be completed.  Yes John Carter could stand alone.  But they have left it open for a second offering.  And knowing the content of the Gods of Mars which they would work from for a sequel they have done an excellent job preparing us for a follow-up.  I’m crossing my fingers this is not a Disney financial write off and hoping for a box office that forces Disney to make a sequel.*     

I have not been a fan of Disney sci-fi.  Everyone debates how to fix Tomorrowland.  Tron is a cult classic.  And that is not even addressing animated films like Mars Needs Moms and the critical reaction.  But I won’t complain about John Carter.  Instead I am excited for more adventures on Barsoom.  And I hope enough of us vote by visiting the theater to give Stanton the green light to jump into the next production.      

Surf Vader: A new kind of Sith Lord.

Stargate Wedding Cake. Destination: Love.

How does Megaman choose? (Shirt design at Teefury.com)

I think it’s time we found some new super heroes.

Homemade Colonial Viper. Fighting the Cylons on the street!

Love can happen anywhere.

If not, don’t worry. You probably have some time to make peace with this future master of all he surveys. Right now, Flint is still just a fourth-grader in Austin, Texas; but were you to ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, he wouldn’t tell you something safe and predictable like “a firefighter” or “a teacher” or “an astronaut.” No, Flint’s apparently plotting to rule pan-galactic civilization with an iron fist.

He let his master plan slip in an admiring letter to a local TV meterologist, Albert Ramon, that has gone just as viral as any YouTube video. In case you haven’t yet read this epistle of awesomeness, here it is:

And now, said drawing:

Doughnut-proffering cyborg unicorns? Man, how do I get on young Master Flint’s good side?

Some skeptics wonder whether Flint’s letter is for real, but I find no reason to doubt its authenticity. Flint’s fantastic fantasy sounds like the marvelous mash-ups I used to concoct at  that age, let alone the sometimes jarring but always enjoyable scenarios my four-year-old daughter plays out on a regular basis. (If I had a dollar for every time General Grievous had invaded Seasme Street with Baker Smurf as his right-hand man…!)

And, incorrigible sci-fi Christian that I am, I can’t help but think that Jesus would enjoy reading Flint’s letter, too. He did, after all, say to his disciples, “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18.3, NRSV). Granted, in its immediate context, Jesus’ saying encourages a level of humility that the Ulta-Lord of the Universe might not appreciate. But I think we can safely infer that Jesus also values children’s imagination and excitement–qualities on which the more “mature” among us don’t always draw when sharing and living out our faith. And don’t forget that Flint’s letter is a thank-you note. Gratitude for Ramon’s visit to the school motivated this monumental missive. Such wholehearted thanksgiving is, in Flint’s words, “pretty dang sweet,” and may just model the quality of gratitude we are called to give to others, and most of all to God.

In the meantime, everyone treat Flint really, really nicely, so that we, too, may be granted to sit on jewel-encrusted thrones on his right and his left, wearing our baxon tuxedoes as we watch Mars burn, laughing and popping doughnuts into our mouths all the while…

Pictures of Flint’s letter from René A. Guzman, “Kid’s letter to Austin meteorologist thanks him with unicorn servants, jewel encrusted throne and more sci-fi awesomeness,” http://blog.mysanantonio.com/geekspeak/2012/03/kids-letter-to-austin-meteorologist-thanks-him-with-unicorn-servants-jewel-encrusted-throne-and-more-sci-fi-awesomeness/.

Well, the opening weekend’s domestic receipts didn’t budge, let alone break, any records (although the movie is dominating business abroad). The film is, sadly, going up against that family-friendly but excessively commercialized cartoon masquerading as The Lorax. But I say Disney has no reason whatsoever to be ashamed of John Carter. Visually stunning and emotionally stirring, John Carter is a fast-paced and fun adventure that stoked my sense of wonder like no movie has since The Fellowship of the Ring.

“A Genius for the Literalization of the Dream”

Now, that’s not to say John Carter is, in fact, another Lord of the Rings. How could it be? Edgar Rice Burroughs—whose debut novel A Princess of Mars (1912, serialized in All-Story Magazine; 1917, first book edition) is the film’s basis—was not a literary craftsman on the order of Tolkien. He was a pulp writer, paid by the word, needing to produce prose speedily and steadily.

But he did so exceptionally well. Some elite literati dismiss his books as having “enjoyed a remarkable shelf life not so much in libraries or classrooms as in the cluttered, dreamy, overheated minds of teenage boys and certain grown-ups.” (Ouch!) But such genre authorities as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (eds. John Clute and Peter Nicholls, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995) state, more accurately:

It has often been said that Burroughs’ works have small literary or intellectual merit. Nevertheless, because their lack of realistic referents frees them from time, because their efficient narrative style helps to compensate for their prudery and racism, and because Burroughs had a genius for the literalization of the dream, they have endured… Burroughs has probably had more imitators than any other sf writer… [including such “serious sf writers” as] Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Michael Moorcock… and, above all, Philip José Farmer (p. 178).

I’ve just started reading A Princess of Mars. If the first half of the first book is any indication, then, it’s true: no fair-minded reader could argue that Burroughs’ Mars books (he eventually wrote nine) exhibit the stylistic eloquence, fully realized characterizations, philological insight, or artistic elegance of Tolkien’s tomes. Yes, both “prudery” and “racism” appear (as, arguably, they do in Tolkien’s works, as well). Nevertheless, Barsoom (what Burroughs’ Martians call their planet) is a richly realized “sub-creation”—Tolkien’s term, explains John Timmerman, for “an alluring secondary world which we believe in so long as we are in it”—not altogether unworthy of comparison with Middle-earth. Barsoom, too, boasts fantastic vistas and awe-inspiring cities populated by a variety of exotic creatures and fascinating peoples, each with their own language and lore, clashing in epic battles to decide the fate of worlds.

That’s the dream Burroughs “literalizes.” Sometimes he does so awkwardly; the first several chapters of A Princess of Mars lack any dialogue and consist largely of “info dumps.” On the other hand, Burroughs’ style evokes 18^th- and 19^th-century travel narratives. Instead of taking readers to Arabia or China, Burroughs takes us to Mars: not a scientifically plausible Mars, but no more or less laughable than H.G. Wells’ tripod-riding invaders or Ray Bradbury’s nostalgia-soaked rendering of the Red Planet. Barsoom is more fantasy than science fiction, but however you classify it, it’s a whole lot of fun.

No Place Like Barsoom

The John Carter creative team brilliantly brings Barsoom to the silver screen. The movie has many specific positives—among them, a surprisingly literate screenplay written, in part, by Michael Chabon (of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man), complete with several well-placed biblical allusions; a rich motion-capture performance from Willem Defoe; and a driving, dramatic score by Michael Giacchino that echoes and excels his music for Star Trek (2009)—and, it must be said, a few noticeable faults. A handful of flashbacks giving glimpses of Carter’s pre-Barsoom backstory, for example—in themselves, well-placed and finely executed—fall a little emotionally flat because they are so brief.

I do appreciate the creative team’s efforts to make Dejah Thoris, titular princess of Burroughs’ first book, something more than a damsel in distress (Lynn Collins’ Dejah is an accomplished scientist and independent spirit). Apparently, long-time fans of Burroughs’ books know that she is much more, and Collins’ portrayal has been winning some of their affections. Her Dejah Thoris does her fair share of fighting, and her romance with Carter seems a match of equals. Still, even though she is more modestly clothed than in such cheesecake (if not, indeed, soft porn) depictions of her by Frank Frazetta or in the Dynamite ongoing Dejah Thoris comic book, moments occur that undercut this more modern approach to the character. Having Dejah comment that the wedding dress foisted upon her by an unwanted suitor is “a bit garish for [her] tastes” doesn’t negate its revealing nature any more than the fact that Princess Leia wears her (in)famous “metal bikini” against her will in Return of the Jedi makes it a modest get-up; and one overhead view of Dejah in the wedding procession seems unnecessary except to indulge the male gaze.

The movie as a whole, however, makes Barsoom the star. From the incredibly detailed, mechanical marching cities, to the several stark but serene landscapes (I forgot quite quickly that I was looking at a digitally altered Utah), to the roaring waters of the mighty river Iss, Barsoom simply looks real—as do its non-human inhabitants. The Tharks are towering, slender, green-skinned, four-armed bipeds, all taken straight from Burroughs’ description of them. But the care taken in animating their faces really “sells” them. Unlike many CGI characters, the Tharks seem substantial, both physically and, in the case of the three main Tharks, as distinct personalities. And Woola, the super-massive but super-speedy Martian “dog,” is a faithful companion who tugs at the heartstrings in the best Disney tradition. It’s been a while since I was disappointed when a movie ended, but I was honestly not ready for John Carter’s credits to roll. Like our hero himself, I felt as though I’d been at home.

That may be because, as that commercial I mentioned acknowledges, much about the story, its setting, and its characters seem familiar (but only because Burroughs proved so influential). But it may also be because John Carter speaks to that yearning we all have for home: not simply the place we’re from, but the place where we are who we were meant to be. Carter is a former Confederate soldier who, in the aftermath of the Civil War, finds himself without a country and without a cause; but on Barsoom, he finds what he lacks. It’s no accident, I think, that he lands on Mars in a nursery full of Thark hatchlings, or that his victory over a White Ape in the Tharks’ arena resembles a bloody birth. On Barsoom, John Carter is born again. The mechanism by which he arrives on Barsoom, left unexplained by Burroughs, receives a nifty justification by quantum physics in the film, but the real reason he goes to Barsoom is because Barsoom is where he was supposed to be all along. He is, as he eventually calls himself, “John Carter of Mars.”

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us of forebears in faith who “confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth… seeking a homeland… a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11.13-16). By taking its hero to his “heavenly” home, John Carter reminded me that we are all looking for our heavenly home. And as wonderful as Barsoom is, the city the God who is unashamed of us has prepared will be more so (Heb. 11.16). The good news is we can experience something of that fantastic homecoming today through Jesus Christ. We “have died, and [our] life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3.3). Through him, even now, we begin to become who were meant to be. In him, even now, we find ourselves where we were supposed to be all along.

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

Related Articles at The Sci-Fi Christian:

• John Carter Trailer
• New John Carter Trailer
• An Introduction to John Carter
  

In lieu of the current Battle Royale, I thought it would be fun to do a GGB special edition that focuses on our contestants. Enjoy:

Homer Ibn-La’Ahad. Don’t steel his donuts or he will assassinate you.

Bioshock Cosplay: Creepy.

Indiana Jones cake: Yum.

What? You didn’t know that the Doctor is also musically inclined?

Garrus Vakarian would like it if you were to eat healthy and only use this as a salad plate.

Have Link fight off the frigid, cold winter for you.

It’s Predator hunting season!

Leeloo will always protect your money.

You can find this t-shirt design in the archives over at teefury.com

The Black Smoke Monster makes a red carpet appearance.

Spike and Angel go to Hawaii!

Data would like to know if you have chosen your cell phone plan yet?

If Teal’c is sellin’, I’m buyin’

Tough on the Enterprise, tough on a bike.

If Darth Vader doesn’t win based solely on this video, I quit.

Round 1: Match 1: The 10th Doctor versus Worf!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 2: Angel versus Jack (Bioshock)!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 3: Black Smoke Monster versus Leeloo!

versus

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Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 4: Teal’c versus Indiana Jones!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 5: Darth Vader versus Altair Ibn-La’Ahad!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 6: River Tam versus Link!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 7: Data versus Predator!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

Round 1: Match 8: Garrus Vakarian versus Spike!

versus

Click the link below to vote for a winner!

Who Will Win?

The 10th Doctor (Doctor Who), Angel (Angel), The Black Smoke Monster (Lost), Teal’c (Stargate SG1), Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Worf (Star Trek Next Generation), Darth Vader (Star Wars), Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect), Jack (Bioshock), Indiana Jones, Predator, Link (Zelda), Leeloo (The 5th Element), Data (Star Trek Next Generation), Altair Ibn-La’Ahad (Assassin’s Creed), and River Tam (Firefly).

Below you will find the bracket for the SFC’s First Annual Battle Royale! The matches were chosen randomly. Once you look over the matches, think about who should win each battle. New posts will be up later today with images for each battle and a poll where you can then vote for your pick.  You can also vote by leaving a comment below the regular post or on the SFC Facebook page. You will have Two Weeks to vote for the first round winners. Let the battles begin!



Coming soon: The SFC’s Battle Royale. You will bear witness to a ‘What If’ sort of event in which heroes and villains from some of your favorite movies, television shows, and video games will be pitted against one another in battle.

The SFC team is currently at work on choosing the characters for this fantastic event. Once chosen, we will place the fighters into a bracket and the games will begin. You, our loyal fans, will be able to vote for the winner of each match throughout each round. Once the votes are tallied, one of our SFC contributors will write a short story to be featured on the website, depicting the battle’s outcome. This process will continue until a victor has been crowned champion over all.

Stay tuned.

(Thanks to suvudu.com’s Cage Match for the inspiration)

The Sci-Fi Christian – 3/8/12 “The Sci-Fi Christian: The SFC Time Loop – Interview with C.K. Kubasik” featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

Imagine the relentless pain and stress of having to cope with the grief of losing a loved and the need to move on in one’s own life in not one world, but two. Now imagine the shock that would set in if those two worlds started to overlap, as they begin to for Britten. By the end of its second act, Awake’s pilot episode has effectively immersed viewers in just this mind-bending, heart-rending dilemma.

I knew Jason Isaacs only from his portrayal of Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. (Another fun factoid: he’s the voice of Lucifel in the video game El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, covered by The Sci-Fi Christian last fall.) Isaacs’ performance as Britten is a marvelous piece of acting. He is capable of far more than the sneers and jeers his turn as Draco’s dad afforded him. He makes viewers feel Britten’s emotional and psychological turmoil in moments both subtle (the way, for example, he briefly shakes as he holds his wife in bed, as though he is repressing a spasm of tears in the nick of time) and dramatic (look no further than the morning after that scene, as Britten awakens without the color-changing wristband he uses to tell the realities apart: Isaacs escalates his character’s panic and terror at just the right tempo). Other cast members turn in fine jobs, as well—most notably Steve Harris as Britten’s police work partner in one reality, and BD Wong as Dr. Lee, the psychiatrist Britten is mandated to see in the same reality (Cherry Jones plays the mandated psychiatrist in the other, Dr. Evans; much of the pilot unfolds as conversations between Britten and these two doctors)—but the show’s success will likely rest on Isaacs’ performance. His work in Awake’s pilot reminds me of Mel Gibson’s in the movie Signs (2002), honoring both the strange, “Twilight Zone”-like nature of the material’s premise and the honest human emotions it creates, feelings to which any viewer can relate. Isaacs’ delivery of the last speech in the pilot offers a perfect example of how he attends to both sides of the equation: Britten tells Dr. Lee, “If the price of having them [i.e., both Hannah and Rex] in my life is my sanity, that’s a price I will happily pay. Now I’ll keep seeing you as long as they make me, but when it comes to letting one of them go, I have no desire to make any progress.”

Britten’s words, and the resolve underlying them, raise, in my mind, the question of whether Awake might not prove to be a parable of the life of faith. I don’t know whether the series plans to address any explicitly religious questions (although it would be fascinating to see it do so), and my guess is series creator Kyle Killen didn’t set out to craft any kind of religious allegory. But Britten’s meetings with his therapists, especially with confrontational Dr. Lee, show he is fully committed to living in both realities. He does not want to prove that one reality is only a dream; he has little patience for attempts to reduce his “mental Mobius strip” (Dr. Lee’s cutting phrase) to psychologically explicable circumstances.

Doesn’t Jesus Christ call us to live in two worlds, two alternate and even competing realities, at once? The New Testament frequently pictures  faith as a liminal life, a life lived on the threshold between what most people accept as “the real world” and the coming kingdom of God, which Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection demonstrates to be the truth. The apostle Paul writes that “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior” (Phil. 3.20). The letter to the Hebrews praises forebears in faith who “confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth… seeking a homeland” (Heb. 11.13, 14). Yet our conviction that Christ has claimed us for the reality to come, and that we can begin experiencing that reality today, does not allow us to abandon completely the reality in which we now find ourselves. As Jesus prayed to his Father for us, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17.18)—the same world that God loved (John 3.16), fallen far from God’s good will though it is.

Like Michael Britten, Christians must be committed to living in two realities at the same time. I wonder if this challenge may even be some part of what Jesus meant when he commanded his disciples to “keep awake” (Matt. 24.42; 25.13; Mark 13.37). We must attend to both sides of a spiritual “Mobius strip,” watching for the ways the world as it is and the new world God will bring overlap and intersect, even if the “Dr. Lees” doubt our sanity. When it comes to letting our faith go, we should have no desire to make any “progress.”

Theologian Paul Tillich described Christian witness with these words: “We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard… that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation” (quoted by Frederick Buechner, Now and Then, HarperCollins, 1983). In order to see and share that New Creation, we can’t fall asleep. We must stay awake.

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

Here is a little something extra from the same creator:

http://youtu.be/-DRUHdg6lCw

To boldly go where no dog has gone before!

Light up your night with Godzilla.

Master Chief’s Mountain Dew Helmet: He’ll never be thirsty again.

Own a smart phone? Charge it in the Tardis!

Steampunk Nerf Rifle: The ingenuity of the Victorian Era.

For those of you who watch Game of Thrones, you’ll probably get a kick out of this.

The only time that it is safe to call someone in the library. Who ya gonna call?

Mass Effect was a great game with a deeply involving story, but it had tragic gameplay flaws that made replays a chore. Its sequel overcomes those pitfalls, making it one of the greatest Electronic Role Playing experiences ever made. The story (kind of) picks up where Mass Effect left off, with Commander Shepard pursuing the remaining Geth across the galaxy. This is short lived, however, as the intro sequence sees the death of a character that, if you played the first game, you’ve already invested 20 plus hours with.

Thankfully, the developer Bioware doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to story, and soon the player is faced with a character generation screen with which to remake Shepard again, resurrected by a pro-human organization known as Cerberus. The mission: stop a mysterious race known as “Collectors” from abducting entire human colonies. Creating a new Shepard is a breeze whether you import your save from the previous title or not. If you did, you are treated the integration of many decisions you made during the Geth adventure. If not, a standard story is played out, and you miss some of the satisfaction of seeing your influence on the galaxy.

The revamp of character classes add much to the game; instead of just intermixing a stock set of powers between each class, specific abilities are granted based on your choice. From slowing down time for more accurate shots, or engaging a temporary cloaking field, to transporting across the room to fire at an enemy point-blank, a gamer needs to play through Mass Effect 2 multiple times to experience it all.

The story suffers a bit; the core storyline is a little slim and if no side quests are undertaken, it could take relatively little time to complete. It mainly feels like a set-up for Mass Effect 3, which makes is bit of a reminder of The Empire Strikes Back: you have a really good time and need to play again, but still can’t wait for the finale.

PC versus console is a non-issue, as again mods are not a big part of the Mass Effect universe. If I had purchased my PS3 earlier, I may have gotten Mass Effect 1 and 2 for that instead of my computer.

Ratings:

Graphics = 4

Still not the best, but better than the first title, and the color palette is a vast improvement.

Sound = 5

Voice acting is top notch (they even got Michael Dorn, aka Lt. Worf!), and the score is beyond belief. There are major themes for each character, and they are very hardly reused.

Gameplay = 5

Incredible controls and excellent leveling make this title much better than the original. New powers and an easy-to-use menu system increase replay value tenfold. And selective vehicle missions!

Morality = 4

Paragon and renegade options make a return, as do relationships. With the former, you still are saving the galaxy as a goody-goody or a jerk, and the latter can be skipped (but are PG-13 instead of the prior’s PG rating).

Story = 5

Not as involved as Mass Effect, but even with a less-than-enticing main story, side quests (and Loyalty Missions where you gain the trust of your squad) make up for its lack of depth.

Overall Score = 5 “No Library is Complete Without It”

I love this game. I’ve played through about six times already, and I don’t get a lot of time to mess around anymore. It’s truly something to be experienced, even if you don’t want to play the first. I think you could get them both for about $40 total now, though, so you really have no excuse not to have fun anymore.

I’m talking to you, Max.

If you’re a sci-fi Christian who isn’t also reading Scott Higa’s excellent blog The Christian Nerd, you really should be. Scott started his musings on “nerd culture from a Christian perspective and vice versa” around the same time our own Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono launched the SFC podcast. God was busy raising up geeks for His glory last year!

In a recent post, Scott pointed to Commander Adama’s rousing speech near the end of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries (2003), in which Adama inspires his ragtag fleet to search for the fabled planet Earth, as a model worthy of preachers’ consideration: “Adama’s speech does everything a sermon should.”

Scott’s suggestion got me wondering: What science fiction speech would I want preachers to look at, listen to, and learn from?

I don’t exempt myself, by the way, from the need to learn about preaching. I no longer preach on a weekly basis, but I did so for seven years, and still occasionally do. While I’ve always enjoyed preaching, I’ve no illusions that I’m a master of it. So, as I thought about Scott’s post, I knew that whatever speech I ended up “assigning” preachers, I’d be assigning it to myself, as well.

Unsurprisingly, my thoughts turned to Star Trek.

Now, not much preaching goes on in Gene Roddenberry’s wonderful but thoroughly secular humanist vision of the future. Federation starships’ crews don’t include chaplains (although the original Enterprise did have a chapel, and I don’t just mean Nurse Christine). Even so, inspiring and challenging oratory seems a prerequisite for Starfleet captains. Picard (especially Picard), Sisko, Janeway, Archer—they all make many fine speeches out there on the final frontier. For my quatloos, however, not one comes close to the speech Captain James T. Kirk makes in “Return to Tomorrow,” an otherwise ho-hum episode from the original series’ second season (first broadcast February 9, 1968).

Let me set the scene. The Enterprise crew has discovered three survivors of an incredibly ancient alien race who are by now nothing more than disembodied minds. The aliens have, therefore, requested the temporary use of three crew members’ bodies—Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Ann Mulhall (played by guest star and future Next Generation second season regular Diana Muldaur)—in order to build permanent, robotic shells for themselves. In exchange, the aliens will share their advanced technology and knowledge with humanity.

Not everyone is convinced this risky loan of life and limb is a good idea. Kirk, however, finds the idea compelling—and so, in this speech, he makes his case:

Make any wisecracks you want about the cheesy music or Shatner’s hallmark halting speech pattern. I stand by my assertion that this speech is not only one of the original series’ finest moments (apart from the “to boldly go” opening narration; it’s arguably the purest statement of the show’s philosophy) but also a mini-master class in homiletics.

So what should those who preach sermons—and those who listen to them—note here?

Kirk “casts a vision.” That’s Scott Higa’s phrase, and it’s a great one. Preachers must present their hearers with a vision of an alternate reality: the real but only sporadically visible, present but yet-to-come reality of God’s kingdom, God’s fully realized rule over all creation. Preachers don’t dream up this vision for themselves. Like the apostle John, they act as witnesses, declaring “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1.1). They testify to the ways they have seen Jesus Christ—in their study of the Scripture, in their lives and the lives of those to whom they preach, in the culture and in the world—and, by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, their testimony creates an opportunity for others to see Jesus for themselves. As the neighbors of that Samaritan woman at the well told her, after her testimony provoked them to seek out Jesus, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world” (John 4.42). She was one of the first Christian preachers!

Walter Brueggemann

This being Star Trek, of course, the vision Kirk casts is not of God’s kingdom—but it is a vision full of new beginnings and new possibilities, “the potential for knowledge and advancement.” Through concrete examples—the old saw about “If man had been meant to fly…,” the success of the Apollo space program, the relative barbarism of Bones’ medical forebears—Kirk redirects his crew’s vision from immediate, short-term danger to greater, long-term gain. He speaks as noted biblical scholar and preacher Walter Brueggemann calls on his fellow preachers to speak, with “shattering, evocative speech that breaks fixed conclusions and presses us always toward new, dangerous, imaginative possibilities,” all grounded in the good, ground-shaking news of God’s action in Jesus Christ (Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet, Fortress Press, 1989, p. 6). Kirk casts that kind of vision—“Risk is our business!”—and his crew catches it.

Kirk humbly speaks the truth. I know, nothing about Shatner’s performance here immediately suggests humility. (Nothing about Shatner in general suggests humility—as witnessed by his current one-man show—but that’s beside the point.) But I don’t think Kirk is merely employing manipulative rhetoric when he says, “I’m in command. I could order this. But I’m not.” Whatever their tradition, from the highest of high-church priests garbed in alb and chausable to the pastor of the storefront church in simple coat and tie, preachers carry a certain weight of authority by virtue of their role. And whether it is theologically validated or liturgically legitimated in their communities, preachers inevitably wield a certain amount of power. That’s just social dynamics. The question is, will preachers abuse that power and authority, or will they obey Jesus’ word and refuse to “lord it over” the people they serve (Mark 10.42).

Kirk exercises humility by inviting his crew to participate in this venture, rather than insisting that they do. He acknowledges Dr. McCoy’s objections—more than that, he affirms them, to a point. He doesn’t deny the reality of the situation. And so he models how preachers can exercise their authority humbly: by acknowledging the realities facing their listeners that might hinder their favorable response to the Gospel. A preacher who is so full of confidence in God’s Word—or, worse, so enamored of the pulpit’s inherent authority or power—that she or he leaves no room for other voices to be heard serves no one. The preacher does not, of course, give the same weight to those other voices, any more than Kirk concedes his argument. But the preacher can anticipate and, to some extent, affirm objections, questions, doubts, and fears, all without compromising the truth or the power of the Gospel. Isn’t this, in part, why the risen Jesus was willing to meet Thomas’ demand to see the scars of the crucifixion, even while urging him, “Do not doubt but believe” (John 20.27)? Because Jesus acknowledged and affirmed the truth of Thomas’ situation, rather than running roughshod over it in Resurrection righteousness, the doubting disciple could make the climactic confession of faith in the Fourth Gospel, “My Lord and my God!” (20.28). Jesus invited—he did not insist.

Kirk speaks with passion. Again, you may feel Shatner’s performance is over the top, and I wouldn’t advise preachers to emulate his distinctive style in the pulpit. (Trust me on this: I tried a Shatner impression mid-sermon one time, and let’s just say it wasn’t one of my finer pastoral moments). There’s no denying, however, that Kirk feels passionately about this mission. As science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer says, “Shatner is so terrific [in this scene], actually, that one forgets that the owners of the three borrowed bodies almost end up killed, one of the aliens commits murder, two die by suicide, and no scientific wonders are ever bestowed.” Oh, well. The episode’s subsequent plot negates neither Kirk’s points, nor the passion with which he makes them.

Preachers must preach with passion. They don’t have to preach in perpetually breathless tones, or with wild waving of the hands, or with numerous poundings of the pulpit. Passion can also be communicated in a softly and slowly spoken sentence, or with a broad and warm smile, or in a silent and steady gaze. Being dramatic isn’t the point. Shatner is acting; Kirk is not. Kirk expresses himself directly and authentically, and that is no small part of his speech’s power. He believes what he’s saying, and, as Sawyer also says, by the time he’s done, his crew—and we—believe it, too: we’re “left thinking that Kirk was… right to push for the advancement of science, the risks be damned. Anything less would be a betrayal of the human spirit.”

In his ministry, the apostle Paul did not worry about eloquence or theatrics. He reminds the early Christians in Corinth, “I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words of wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God” (1 Cor. 2.2-5). Paul may be referring to miracles he performed, but he may simply mean that, because he spoke out of his simple and authentic passion for the Gospel (see Rom. 1.16-17), he gained the Gospel a powerful hearing. As N.T. Wright comments, “The truth of the gospel carried its own power, and Paul was happy to keep it that way, even though he looked like a fool while he was announcing it” (Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, p. 21). (I wonder if first-century stand-up comics did Paul impressions the way comedians do Shatner impressions today?)

The preacher’s passion, of course, doesn’t guarantee God’s Word will be heard, or that listeners will respond favorably. Paul himself experienced this truth in Athens: he surely spoke with passion, yet only “some of [the Athenians] joined him and became believers” (Acts 17.34). Only God gives God’s Word success (see Isaiah 55.10-11). But preachers must passionately believe that, every time they preach, God may choose to use their words to awaken and nurture the response of faith in those who hear.

That’s a lot to wring out of less than two minutes of screen time, but I do think preachers could learn quite a bit from James T. Kirk. What sci-fi or fantasy speechmaker would you like preachers to learn from?

I should also add that all Christians, preachers or not, have been called to proclaim the Gospel. Captain Kirk’s impassioned plea for taking risks thus relates to every follower of Jesus. Speaking about Christ, acting in Christ’s name, staying true to Christ in your own life—all that can be risky business. And yet he has told us it is a risk well worth taking: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8.35).

People of God: risk – (Shatnerian pause) is our business, too!

All Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

Featured Image of Captain Kirk found at http://sfwriter.com/2008/06/risk-is-our-business.html.

Caravaggio, “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,” c. 1602; image found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpg.

The trailer for Tim Burton’s upcoming feature-length, stop-motion animation adaptation of his 1984 live-action short Frankenweenie, that is.

I first saw the original short on the Sci-Fi Channel’s Exposures anthology circa 2000 (back in the days when Sci-Fi still cared about sci-fi), and have since seen it again as an extra feature on The Nightmare Before Christmas. Of all the Tim Burton projects I’ve seen, Frankenweenie may just be my favorite–and I’m not even a dog lover! I do, however, enjoy reimaginings of the Frankenstein mythos, and this Fido-friendly one looks to be, like its precedessor, brilliant and beautiful and surprisingly touching.

If you haven’t seen the original, make sure you do before enjoying the new version this fall. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say that–as you can gather from the trailer–the dog’s new leash on life creates numerous complications. Playing God generally does, as all Frankenstein stories remind us–even when the mad scientist is just a kid who just wants his best friend back.

I think this movie will be quite fantastic.