WRITING ADVICE: Writing the Alien – God, Jesus, Earth, and Intelligences “Out There”

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right”.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome! (This essay first appeared in December of 2020.)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/eb/83/3aeb8303cd61baaaff46a45fe45b7847.jpg

As a Christian since I was seventeen and a science fiction fan and writer since I was thirteen, I understand the SF community’s objection to Earth-based religions. Mostly the arguments grant that religion is fine, but it’s a totally local phenomenon, that is, the only Christians in the universe exist on Earth. Any kind of universal religion would be impossible.

I can appreciate the argument. It seems obvious that Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama, Moses, Brahma, Laozi, and others, being Human, and creating their religions at various times; are in their essence no different from the Pastafarianism of Bobby Henderson. I think the majority of SF readers and writers probably fall in somewhere on the spectrum of “I’d rather wait and see” and thinking there will be a plurality of religions along the same lines as the Prophets in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (and of course, they aren’t really prophets, just manipulative aliens); the religion of DUNE (a mishmash of Human religions with bits of Roman Catholicism, Islam, possibly a bit of Buddhism with sprinklings of various other Human faiths) – and the idea that matter is all there is; there isn’t anything invisible, and “spirituality” is an aspect of Human consciousness alone.

The Wikipedia entry gives (probably) a fairly complete list of SF religions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_ideas_in_science_fiction

CS Lewis had a very different point of view regarding aliens. In an essay called, “Religion and Rockets” (see THE WORLD’S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS) it was Lewis who asked the question, “How can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to have been uniquely favored?” and “...if we discovered that no form of redemption had reached them, then the human task might be to evangelize them…redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us [to the extraterrestrial beings].” He continues, “Those who are, or can become His sons, are our real brothers even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts.”

Of course the belief of Lewis (and me) is that there is one God who made the universe – and every intelligence is given a “Garden of Eden Test”. We failed; Venusians passed. His idea about the salvation of Earth (and any other fallen intelligences) is actually best illustrated in his answer to a young person regarding the fantasy world of Narnia: “I’m not really representing the (Christian) story in symbols. I’m more saying, ‘Suppose there was a world like Narnia and it needed rescuing and the Son of God…went to redeem it, as He came to redeem ours, what might it, in that world, have been like?’”

I wrote a story some time ago that looked at a sort of map that intelligences who develop interstellar travel eventually discover. It shows stars where fallen and unfallen civilizations exist. I revised it recently and sent it out, and got a “that was close, but no thank you” from the editors.

The image above sparked these thoughts and while I’m certainly no Lewis, I’ll keep exploring the possibility that there are fallen and unfallen intelligences…I don’t THINK anyone is doing that right now. So we’ll see. As the holiday season rolls in, I might be sharing some other thoughts about this as well – and probably testing our a few more stories.

Me, writing on a different aspect of this: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-slice-of-pie-is-there-perfect-alien.html
References: https://instituteforfaithandculture.org/blogarticles/is-christianity-compatible-the-existence-of-aliens, https://scientificgems.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/lewis-aliens-and-the-fermi-paradox/, https://www.christiantoday.com/article/c.s.lewis.letter.testifies.narnia.lion.as.christ/4724.htm I tried to use this article as a reference, but it’s literally RIDDLED with inaccuracies, beginning with the date Lewis wrote the response – 8 June 1960 (THE ESSENTIAL C.S. Lewis, Ed. Lyle W. Dorsett)
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg