CSFF Blog Tour: Day Three

inside_0001

(Crew quarters inside Biosphere 2)

Day Three of the Christian SFF Blog tour for The Enclave.  Some of my favorite posts so far:

Becky Miller’s opening intro post from Monday and her Tuesday musings on on some of the elements of Enclave that got her thinking. 

Fred Warren ‘s reviews are really a hoot

Rachel Starr Thomson

Beth Goddard

Dawn King

Keanan Brand

Heather R. Hunt

  Dona Watson

Yes, they’re all positive, but hey, I’m the author. Of COURSE  the positive ones would be my favorites! There are others that are also good, some positive and some not, but interesting in the own right. I got tired of trying to transfer the html from Becky’s site to mine — she set it up so that each check represents a different post and clicking on it will take you straight to that particular post. In any case if you want the full list, including entries for Wednesday, which I don’t have yet, head on over to Becky’s Christian Worldview of Fiction for the full list.   (Thanks, Becky!)

Now for today’s question, which isn’t quite a question that Bethany House actually posed me. In addition to the questions they posed, they asked me to come up with seven or so questons — and answers —  to put in a document the Media could access. (The Nephilim question yesterday was also from this document, but the answer contained material from the other group of questions BHP had asked directly) You can see the actual Media Questions file here.  As I just downloaded it myself (it’s a PDF file), I noticed that they left off both this question and the one about the Nephilim, plus another, and substituted one of the questions they had posed… Interesting. Okay, on with today’s question:

I hated science when I was in high school so why would I want to read a novel about it?  (Seriously, people have either said this to me directly, or to others who’ve told me about it)

Science is really nothing more than looking at God’s creation and seeing what is there and how it fits together. All the so-called scientific laws, are actually God’s laws, and evidence of His faithfulness and power. His hand in it all is screamingly obvious to any who are willing to see it.

Unfortunately many have taken the discipline of science and corrupted it into an almost religion these days, replacing God with “Science,” and God’s ministers with its own high priests and priestesses, the expert “oracles” we are all expected to listen to and obey. “They” say such-and-such is true and most of us have little recourse but to believe what they say.  It seemed a good environment in which to set my story, even though The Enclave is more about people, deception and belief than any particular scientific discipline.

inside_0002 Dining area inside Biosphere 2

  That’s the end of my answer, but I will admit the question has always surprised me. I’ve had so many people turn up their noses at science and at any kind of speculative ficiton. Can’t get into it, they say. So I’ve started telling some who seem to be truly interested in reading my books that most people who love science fiction or fantasy don’t let the weirdness or the fact they don’t immediately know what’s going on get them down. They start such books expecting not to know what’s going on, what the setting situation is — it’s part of the fun.

Non fans, from what I’m told get all confused and bothered because they don’t know what a trog is, and there isn’t an explanation in the text to tell them. So they stop reading and go looking for a glossary.

Which really interferes with the fun of reading. I told one friend I never stop reading just to go look up a word and I pretty much always ignore glossaries until I’m finished. You can usually pick up enough from context to get the gist of what’s going on.

It surprised me to learn of this apparent difference in readers, though, so I thought I’d share it.  At least one of my friends who perservered through her initial discomfort in Arena ended up not being able to put the book down and really enjoying the story.

0 thoughts on “CSFF Blog Tour: Day Three

  1. Keanan Brand

    I’m SO with you on the surprise: I like being taken on an adventure by a skilled writer, one I trust will tell a great story, and I don’t always have to know immediately all the answers.

    However, I belong to a writers group in which most of the writers tell me that fantasy or science fiction is not “their thing”. I don’t get it!

    I enjoyed The Enclave, and it inspires me as a writer to reach for the difficult stuff.

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      Thanks for the comment, Keanan. I’m glad The Enclave could serve as inspiration!

      I was in one of those writer’s groups where no one “got” spec fic once. After I read a few chapters of Arena, some of them started to come around, at least to the point of saying they were intrigued. But it’s very possible they were just being nice…

      On the other hand, there’s a lot of stuff out there that some people just love that I have absolutely no interest in reading and can’t get into at all, so it’s probably as Becky says in her comment below (I answered these from my email client, unaware of the order they’d show up online)… different strokes for different folks and that does make the world interesting.

      Reply
  2. Rachel Starr Thomson

    Thanks so much for the link, Karen — and for your kind words on my posts. Someday I really hope to be successful at what you’re doing, so comments like yours mean a lot to me. I realized recently that “encouragement” literally means to impart courage, which in this industry is needed ;). Thank you.

    I’m also really enjoying your posts. I’m often baffled by people who just can’t get into fantasy because it’s so “unrealistic” — that’s the fun of it! Just like half the fun of science is speculation.

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      You’re welcome, Rachel. And you’re right: courage is definitely needed in this industry along with a good dose of faith! Glad you’re enjoing the posts

      Reply
  3. Rebecca LuElla Miller

    I was convinced that the anti-fantasy people just hadn’t given it a chance—all they needed to do was persevere and read a good fantasy. So I got a good friend of mine to read The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Believe it or not, she HATED them both! 😮

    So now I reluctantly subscribe to the idea that not every reader can be won over to fantasy (or sci fi) because our brains are each wired differently.

    Becky

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      You’re probably right, Becky. Some people just don’t like cats, will never like cats, refuse to even try to like cats, so don’t seek to change their minds. And that’s the end of that. 🙂 Some have told me they just don’t want to work that hard to read a story. And apparently trying to envision an environment they’ve never seen before is work. In teaching my son to read I learned that for some people reading isn’t as easy or rewarding as it is for others.

      On the other hand, fantasy’s gotten to be a big field in terms of the different types of … shall I call them sub-genres? And shall I admit that I was never terribly enthralled with LWW, myself? In fact, I haven’t yet been able to make myself move on to the rest of the stories in the Narnia series and so have never read them. I did enjoy The Hobbit, but it’s got a lot of what some would call “draggy” passages of description in it. So maybe you just didn’t find the right type for your friend.

      Or maybe your friend just doesn’t like “cats” and isn’t going to and that’s the end of it.

      Reply
  4. Pingback: The Enclave – A Review « A Christian Worldview of Fiction

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