Writing Forum

To whom it may concern, and achieving that, perhaps elicite a response,

I have been thinking about religion. My inputs have been many and varied. I have my own, of course, but that's not what I am choosing to talk about here. I am interested in belief and how it is manifested in fiction. We all grapple with the transcendent, burying it beneath the immediate or the material or boldly trying to encapsulate and control what by definition is beyond our power.

For the strict materialist there is the ever expanding body of what is known divided by the proportionally shrinking amount of what can be known. For the spiritualist there is a desperate attempt to connect to a wider world, or rather worlds, that can be glimpsed but, considering our limitations, impossible to know. And of course we must all speculate about what lies beyond and if our conclusions will survive our... ...conclusion.

I have been consuming fiction at a rate that I haven't for some time. In my daily travels there has been time to listen to books on CD and I've even done some reading that I normally can't find time to do. As a result I've been exposed to how some authors have addressed this subject.

First I have both listened to the last three books of the Song of Fire and Ice, and indulged in many many video posts on the subject of George RR Martin's work. If we have conversed, I'm sure I've prattled on, to one degree or other, about the Game of Thrones. George has invented more than one religion that are held to, to greater or lesser degrees, by his characters. They definitely provide a cultural base that creates variations in the people of his story that would be difficult to account for otherwise. To me certain elements of his religions ring true and at other times they sting of mockery.

I listened to a rather strange story by Orson Scott Card, "Hart's Hope," that was drowned in religion, and poetry, and blood magic. Often religion is viewed as the beliefs of the intangible, but in Hart's Hope they are brutally impactful on the world the author has created. Here the religions of the Sisters and the Hart and of God collide and all bathed in blood. Have you read this book? It is not Ender's Game, but if you can tollerate seeing Card's skill in a very different light you might enjoy being disturbed by this book.

Oddly, I've listened to two of Jean Auel's books. I believe I tried to start Clan of the Cave Bear and could no endure it. I enjoyed listening to "The Mammoth Hunters" and "Plains of Passage" where Auel promligates Mother worship at every opportunity that she is not vividly describing stone-age technology. I have to say that she drops into a sort of lecture mode that is not athstetically pleasing, but I forgive for the amazing information. Then too, In both these stories Auel ventures into stone-age erotica, all in the service of the Mother. "OH DONI" I skipped the naughty bits after the first few.

And then I actually read Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. I doubt I would have finished this book if it were not for it being the topic of a proposed discussion that has ground to a halt. Well I finished it, and having paid the price I confess that it was worth it. I do, after all, have this interest about religion in fiction and Elantris is all up in that.

So what do you all think? Have you read any of these works and how did they strike you? In particular how did the religion portrayed strike you?

Interested,

LSO