Time and Again by Jack Finney

After three disappointing novels (sadly, all of them Christian fiction), what a treasure to find Finney's Time and Again.

It's 1970. "It was an ordinary day, a Friday, twenty minutes till lunchtime, five hours till quitting time and the weekend, tine months till vacation, thirty-seven years till retirement. Then the phone rang."

Si Morley, an artist for an advertising agency, receives a visit from a man who enlists his help with an experiment in time travel. Si's girlfriend has a mysterious family letter that was mailed in 1882 and Si asks permission to be sent back to that time to discover what the letter could mean.

It's not really clear how he succeeds, but when he reaches the late 19th century, he meets a vicious blackmailer, a corrupt detective and a beautiful woman. He has been carefully trained not to do anything that would jeopardize future events, but throws caution to the winds when someone he cares about is put in danger. It's a roller coaster ride from then on and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Finney's painstaking attention to historical detail is delightful. Instead of idealizing the past he shows both the good and the bad. Morley is struck by how carefree and "alive" people seem to be in the 1880's compared to present day New Yorkers. Yet he also is appalled by the number of people who are lame and pock-marked since vaccines for small pox and polio had not been discovered yet.

One of the important themes of the book is the ease with which scientists and world leaders play God, without much thought to consequences. In spite of the repeated use of God's name as a swear word, this novel was terrific. A rollicking good story!

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

I think I first saw this book on the 100 Writers of Faith list. Although I struggle to enjoy science fiction, I decided to give it a try because it grapples with theological issues. Locus magazine has voted A Canticle for Leibowitz the best all-time science fiction novel THREE times and I thought that ought to count for something.

The story opens in the desert of the Western United States 600 years after a nuclear holocaust. The survivors decide to save the world from another “Flame Deluge” by killing all scientists who could create further nuclear weapons. This led to the eradication of all educated people (and books) through a movement called “The Great Simplification”. A small order of monks (the Albertian Order of Leibowitz) took it upon themselves to preserve the few remaining printed documents.

I was not sure if I liked this book at first. Its three sections did not flow together very well. (Later I read that Miller joined three separate novellas by re-writing some parts to make them more cohesive.) Frequent use of Latin phrases also added to its choppiness and one scene at the end of the book was downright weird.

BUT as I began writing my post and reviewing the quotes that I’d copied down, I realized why people love this book. Miller’s insights into the themes of suffering, euthanasia, original sin, and the purpose of knowledge will take your breath away. None of the three sections end happily; yet somehow you retain a wisp of hope. Of course, I liked the fact that the Church played a part in the possibility of redemption, but this is not a “preachy” book. The religious folks are divided between the God-fearing and the power hungry – just as they are in real life.

Here is a sample of Miller’s impressive writing style:

The sun blazed its midday heat upon the parched land, laying its anathema on all moist things. (p.16)

On death: There was tedium of repeated days and repeated seasons; then there were aches and pains, finally, Extreme Unction, and a moment of blackness at the end – or at the beginning, rather. (p.84)

A world smug in its illiteracy (p.96)

Euthanasia: The false god of expedient mercy (p.302)

“If I thought I had such a thing as a soul…I might agree with you.” Abbot Zerchi smiled thinly. “You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily. (p.281)

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

The closest I ever get to science fiction is listening to Tony Bennett sing, “Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars…” Recently my husband read me a fabulous quote from C.S. Lewis’ first novel, Out of the Silent Planet. Later when I asked him to find it again, he couldn’t and I decided to read the book myself. I won’t say I loved this book because Sci-Fi just isn’t “me”. But it fit my criteria for a worthwhile book: good writing, important ideas to mull over, and great words (bellicose, philologist, empyrean, vermiculate, coprologies, to name a few.)

The book begins with the protagonist, Ransom, being kidnapped and taken to the planet Malacandra. He describes his varying emotions as he speeds through space, the main one being that it is not as “empty” as he’d thought. Instead it seems to be pulsating and vibrating with life. “He could not feel that they were an island of life journeying through an abyss of death. He felt almost the opposite – that life was waiting outside the little iron egg-shell in which they rode, ready at any moment to break in, and that, if it killed them, it would kill them by excess of its vitality.” (p. 146)

One of the book’s themes is the misuse of science. Weston and Devine (the two villains) are planning to use Ransom as a human offering (to placate the “gods” of Malacandra) so that they can take over the planet for their own “scientific” purposes. They tell Ransom he should be inspired by the role he is being asked to play, “that even a worm, if it could understand, would rise to the sacrifice” of prolonging humanity. (p. 27) Ransom questions their autonomy by saying, “You think your are justified in doing anything – absolutely anything – here and now, on the off chance that man may crawl around a few centuries longer in some part of the universe.”

“Yes, anything whatever,” responds Weston. “And all educated opinion – for I do not call classics and history and such trash education – is entirely on my side.” (Don’t you love that jab at scientific snobbery?!)

There is much more I could tell you, but I don’t want to give the whole story away. Lewis is a genius at subtly weaving in spiritual themes and chapter 18 on the origin of evil on Thulcandra (earth) was mind blowing. The references to evil (called “bentness”) and to spiritual beings (called “eldila”) will make you think about these subjects in new ways.

You may be familiar with C.S. Lewis apologetic works or his Narnia series, but not with his space trilogy. If you like science fiction you’ll appreciate his incredibly imaginative descriptions of life on another planet. (By the way, I never did find that initial quote, but I’m glad I let my tastes in reading branch out a little.)