{"id":2651,"date":"2005-09-07T22:59:17","date_gmt":"2005-09-07T22:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/even-more-catholicism-and-sf.html"},"modified":"2005-09-07T22:59:17","modified_gmt":"2005-09-07T22:59:17","slug":"even-more-catholicism-and-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/even-more-catholicism-and-sf.html","title":{"rendered":"Even more Catholicism and SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

(That’s science fiction<\/em>, to you, Mr. Smith…)<\/p>\n

Ignatius Insight has a great interview with Tim Powers.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

IgnatiusInsight.com: Is there, do you think, a difference between a "Catholic novel" and a novel written by a Catholic? Do some readers, in your experience, prefer edifying, didactic fiction to works that don\u2019t provide easy answers and depict an untidy and morally complex reality?<\/p>\n

Powers:<\/strong> I\u2019d say \u2013 simplistically \u2013 that a Catholic novel is a novel that is based on the assumption that Catholicism is true, and is about Catholicism. I don\u2019t know if my Declare<\/em> would qualify, just because it\u2019s about a whole lot of other things in addition to Catholicism.<\/p>\n

I suppose there are readers who prefer edifying, didactic fiction \u2013 though I imagine they\u2019d like it to agree with their beliefs! I can\u2019t picture a Marxist atheist relishing a Christian allegory \u2013 but I\u2019ve never met any such readers. Trying to make fiction that will illustrate a pre-determined message is (it seems to me) like trying to make wine by adding grape-juice to ethanol. Joan Didion said once that art is hostile to ideology, which I take to mean that if you force the ideology in, the art goes away.<\/p>\n

Of course any work of fiction will have a theme \u2013 maybe even a message! But I think these are more effective, and more truly represent the writer\u2019s actual convictions, when they manifest themselves without the writer\u2019s conscious assistance. I generally see a theme manifesting itself in whatever I\u2019m writing, but I\u2019d never presume to summarize it or attach a conclusion to it. I concern myself with my plots, but I let my subconscious worry about my themes<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(That’s science fiction, to you, Mr. Smith…) Ignatius Insight has a great interview with Tim Powers. IgnatiusInsight.com: Is there, do you think, a difference between a "Catholic novel" and a novel written by a Catholic? Do some readers, in your experience, prefer edifying, didactic fiction to works that don\u2019t provide easy answers and depict an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEven more Catholicism and SF - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/even-more-catholicism-and-sf.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Even more Catholicism and SF - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(That’s science fiction, to you, Mr. Smith…) Ignatius Insight has a great interview with Tim Powers. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}