The other day my fellow blogger, Ajoobacats–she has a whale of a blog, totally dwarfing mine: just tons and tons of readers; I recommend her book reviews to all–honored me with a review of my Bell Mountain, which I am happy to say she liked very much ( http://leeduigon.com/2015/06/12/book-review-bell-mountain-by-lee-duigon/). I don’t think I’ve ever seen her review a fantasy before: but she admits that my book was about as far off her beaten track as she’s ever gone.
I must draw attention to one remark she made: “The underlying spiritual theme may not be in fashion…”
Well, that’s putting it mildly!
In fact, I know I’m out of fashion: it’s what I intended. The whole point of the Bell Mountain series is to “renormalize religion” by showing it to be a basic and indispensable component of the characters’ daily life, culture, and psychology: and more, to proclaim that God is a Person, the Supreme Being, who interacts with individuals, families, and whole nations.
My books have struck a few readers as odd because they have come to expect no trace of religion in any work of fiction, be it a novel, a movie or TV script, or anything else. But the total absence of God or gods in our fiction depicts an extremely weird kind of civilization that has never actually existed except in faculty lounges and some of the least wholesome, darkest corners of politics and business.
But how, asks the ninny, do you manage to fit God or religion into Zombie Apocalypse or Superheroes vs. Climate Change Deniers?
That’s the wrong question. If God is in your life, you may not have a yen to spend much time in Zombie Apocalypse. Not that you can never just veg out and relax by watching some nonsense or other. I love silly old monster movies. It’s only a problem when the nonsense takes over your life.
I believe it has done us harm, as a nation, to spend such vast amounts of time consuming “entertainment” from which the very concept of God has been excluded.
Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.
Hollywood has created its own mythology about the resurrection of the dead; they are very bad (zombies, vampires, ghosts).
But as is the case with almost of of Hollywood’s creations, God has nothing to do with it. Hollywood presents, overall, a civilization (if I may use the word loosely) which includes no religious element–something which has never existed outside of faculty lounges.