The Sci Fi Catholic: A Late, Tired Miscellany

Monday, July 28, 2008

A Late, Tired Miscellany

1. I am still in the field, but again have access to the Internet. So we'll try to gear back up with a few odds and ends.

2. A reader sends us a news item: Newsarama reports that the Top Cow limited-run comic book series The Magdalena is to be made into a movie. I admit I've had little contact with Top Cow comics (they produce Witchblade, if you didn't know), so I haven't read this title; however, it does sound vaguely like Ben Dunn's Warrior Nun Areala (see my review here), which I was thinking some time ago should be made into a movie. So it seems my movie prophecy abilities were a little off-target this time. Basically, The Magdalena is about a line of scantily clad female warriors descended from Mary Magdalene and dedicated to protecting the Catholic Church. This site has an interesting overview and a hodge-podge of rumor and information.

3. In other news, somebody thinks the kid in this picture looks like me.

4. On my list of books to read in the near future is James A. Herrick's Scientific Mythologies. If you can't wait, you can read a negative review at Exploring Our Matrix, where James F. McGrath gives a very thorough and decidedly negative review. Here's a money quote:

The reference to those other views as “alternative”, and the Christian one Herrick takes for granted as “traditional”, warns the attentive reader of a problematic slant the author has from the outset. For Herrick will rightly point out that some of the views that are coming back into favor are in fact rather ancient. Indeed, the author delights in sticking the warning label “pagan” on numerous other viewpoints. Yet this point ought to lead naturally to an acknowledgment that at one time those ideas were traditional, just as Christianity was once alternative (see p.41 as just one place where this issue ought to have been addressed but is not). And so, although the book’s back cover makes reference to “our post-Christian West”, in fact, the book demonstrates clearly the author’s inability to understand, and thus adequately address, that very situation. [more...]

It's a great review, and I highly recommend it. I look forward to evaluating the book myself.

5. The blog Spoiled for the Ordinary has an interesting little post on the question of whether or not it's okay for Christian authors to use dragons in their fiction. This is worth reading, especially since around here we're fond of poking fun at Michael D. O'Brien's Landscape With Dragons.

6. The blog Sci-Fi / Journalist has posted an evaluation video for the Anime Jesus Project (dare I ask?). (Hat tip to Dark Parables.)

The reference to those other views as “alternative”, and the Christian one Herrick takes for granted as “traditional”, warns the attentive reader of a problematic slant the author has from the outset. For Herrick will rightly point out that some of the views that are coming back into favor are in fact rather ancient. Indeed, the author delights in sticking the warning label “pagan” on numerous other viewpoints. Yet this point ought to lead naturally to an acknowledgment that at one time those ideas were traditional, just as Christianity was once alternative (see p.41 as just one place where this issue ought to have been addressed but is not). And so, although the book’s back cover makes reference to “our post-Christian West”, in fact, the book demonstrates clearly the author’s inability to understand, and thus adequately address, that very situation. [more...]