(urth) Other SF writers? (Was: How list works and questions to mailers)

[Andy Robertson]

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes writes: 

 

> I would recommend, with slight hesitation, James Blish, and especially his
> four-volume trilogy (and that's not a paradox) "After Such Knowledge." The
> first book (_Doctor Mirabilis_) is a historical novel retelling the
> life of friar
> Roger Bacon; the second, in two volumes (_Black Easter_ and _The Day
> After Judgment_) a contemporary fantasy/horror novel, and the third (_A
> Case of Conscience_) a SF novel. Together they are an inquiry into the
> question whether the quest for secular knowledge for its own sake is a
> valid goal, or indeed permissible at all, from a Christian (sc. Catholic) point
> of view.

In earlier days here I mooted the concept of "Catholic fantabulation" - a 
type of fantastic fiction that descended from the Christianised paganism of 
the Catholic church's worldview, rather than via Wells from the secular 
protestantism-dying-into-atheism  of mainstream Western society. 

Other members of this group of writers (apart from Wolfe) would include the 
Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, etc), Chesterton,  Lafferty, and also their 
ideological opponents like Pullman and Blish (because opposition is a 
tribute: it's parodic deconstruction that kills, something that those who 
puffed THE GOLDEN COMPASS as a counterweight to the Narnia films signally 
failed to understand). 

Crowley would make the cut since his best work is based on modernized takes 
of the medaeval/Catholic cosmology. 


One other possibility is John C Wright, who has just noisily become a 
Catholic after ages dithering around.   His novels like THE GOLDEN AGE are 
based on classical paganism and therefore fit in the stream of CF. 

((His upcoming NULL-A CONTINUUM is not Catholic fantabulation but it is the 
one thing that is set to break up my current tack of sciffy reading (all 
Warhammer 40K gaming fiction while I wait for the next Wolfe,  he said 
shamelessly)). 

 - hartshorn 


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