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| Wednesday, 16 January 2008 |
| Here's a first |
... I'm sending two books back to Amazon. I've never, ever returned a book to a store before (which explains why my house is overrun with dozens of boxes which *still* need to be unpacked), but The Didymus Contingency is just so appalling, I can't bear to have it in the house any longer, nor Antarktos Rising by the same author, which I bought at the same time. Didymus reminds me of nothing so much as Left Behind: the moment I read in the opening paragraph that 'he was a nuclear physicist with an IQ of 167', my heart sank. It's LaJenkins' tell-not-show method all over again. Then we have the bitchy woman-boss who, having granted our brilliant scientists doubled funding for their time travel machine, manages to smile as one of them gropes her hand. Pass me a bucket. And just like LaJenkins, one feels that the author's attention isn't on his story: sacrifice and science alike are jumped over because he's rushing to get to the main part of his story which is that JESUS IS REAL!!!1!
Honestly, born-again atheist though I am, I really wanted to see what someone other than Garry Kilworth would make of this idea. Wasn't it C.S.Lewis who said that, to be a good Christian novelist, one has an obligation not only to be a good Christian, but a good novelist too? And yet even Lewis, the more overt his religion becomes, the less good his novels are: how preachy does That Hideous Strength feel in comparison to Out of the Silent Planet? If anyone's found any religious fiction that's good as fiction, rather than as a validation of one's own beliefs, I'd be very interested to hear about it. |
| posted @ 15:08 |
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I bet there isnt any..