Pastor John Piper, in this podcast, proffers a brief “Theology of Art.” His conclusion is that “Christians have deeper and better foundations for serious art than anybody.” While I agree with Piper, most of the evangelical artists (musicians, novelists, poets, craftspeople, etc.) I run into do not appear to have a well-developed “Theology of Art.” For [...]
That was the question posed by Dan Balow, President of Enclave Publishing, the premiere press for Christian speculative fiction. In his recent post, Theological Accountability Partners, Balow writes: Just because an author is a mature Christian, doesn’t mean they are immune from writing something containing shaky theology. In an effort to craft compelling phrases and [...]
In his interview with professor and apologist Holly Ordway, Brandon Vogt asks about her conversion from atheism to Catholicism, as recounted in her latest book Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms. Interestingly enough, it started with “Christian literature.” …classic Christian literature planted seeds in my imagination as a young girl, something I [...]
Authors understandably have mixed feelings about fan fiction. For example, in How authors feel about fan fiction, George R.R. Martin is quoted as saying, “Every writer needs to learn to create his own characters, worlds, and settings. Using someone else’s world is the lazy way out.” Martin is joined by others like Anne Rice, Orson Scott Card, and [...]
I’m fortunate to be part of a great writing group. There’s five of us, and we’ve been blessed with moderate success, being published across a fairly wide spectrum of genres and markets, traditionally and independently, fiction and non-fiction. Our members have experience in numerous areas, including editing (copy and content), marketing, cover design, formatting, etc., [...]
Even with the publishing industry in major flux, Mysterious Galaxy has run a thriving brick-and-mortar store, becoming one of the premiere independent booksellers in SoCal. The store hosts hundreds of authors a year for signings, discussions, launch parties, and other events. Mysterious Galaxy also hosts a monthly Writers Coffeehouse workshop led by local author and five-time Bram Stoker award [...]
The last half of my “writing life” has involved unlearning much of what I learned in the first half. Perhaps it’s necessary to teach beginning writers the “writing rules.” Some of those rules are: Show Don’t Tell — Use action and dialog rather than exposition POV — Maintain a consistent, realistic narrative point-of-view; don’t “head hop” from [...]
One of the common arguments against a Materialistic, Naturalistic worldview is its inability to define or present a compelling Moral universe. And as much contemporary sci-fi is tethered to such a worldview, it could be asked whether science fiction (at least, of the Materialistic cloth) is a fitting vehicle to address issues of morality. The [...]
Evangelical readers’ objection to fictional magic — i.e., Harry Potter-like spells and witchery — is far less evil than the actual incantations and “spiritual formulas” wielded by many believers. At least, that’s the going thesis in E. Stephen Burnett’s article, Six Christian White Magic Spells Worse Than Fantasy Magic. What are those “magic spells” evangelicals naively [...]
Tim Ward is a Hugo Nominee, former Producer / Editor at Adventures in SciFi Publishing, and the author of several popular futuristic thrillers. His latest novel Godsknife: Revolt, is an apocalyptic fantasy set in the rift between Iowa and the Abyss. Tim joins us today to contribute to our ongoing discussion about integrating a biblical worldview into [...]
