Category: Uncategorized

For the Revival To Succeed, Christian Nationalism Must Fail

This may be a hot take for some of you, but I think we are reaching a point where the greatest obstacle to the Christian revival in the United States is the politicization of Christianity, or what many call “Christian Nationalism.”

Jesus Christ taught that His kingdom is not of this world, much to the chagrin of many of his disciples (including Judas Iscariot, who probably betrayed Him in order to force His hand and make Him come out in His power and glory). They were looking for a political messiah, and when He died on the cross, even His most ardent apostles like Peter were totally lost. But He didn’t come to save the world from the Romans, or the Sadducees, (or the Democrats, or the left)… He came to save the world from sin and death.

But that’s not the message you hear if you go to some of these conservative evangelical churches that have draped themselves in the flag. To many of these Christians (a surprising number of whom are less Bible-literate than some atheists), voting the wrong way might as well be a greater sin than Trump’s adultery. This is hypocrisy, plain and simple—and I say that as someone who voted for Trump.

If Christian Nationalism wins, the revival will fail, because its reach will be limited to conservatives. In order for Christian revival to sweep this country, our Christianity needs to become separated from our politics. Salvation doesn’t come from Congress or the White House. Christ never promised that He would save us from the tribulation of this world. Instead, He told us to take cheer, because He had overcome it.

I do believe that God’s hand is moving this country. I believe that it was divine intervention that saved President Trump from the assassin’s bullet back in Butler Pennsylvania. But I’m not so sure that He saved Trump in order to make America great again. I think His plans run much deeper than that.

Will the Republicans lose the midterms? Will the MAGA movement end with Trump’s presidency? Will the economy collapse, or the Iran war turn into a quagmire? Will the left come back to power and do all the terrible things that the conservative right fears? If so, I can see how all of these things will ultimately serve to humble us and turn us to Christ. Indeed, I suspect that a major humbling is becoming increasingly necessary.

Registration for Writers Cantina 2026 is open

I’m really looking forward to Writers Cantina this year! It’s a local SF&F writing convention up near Salt Lake City. For the last couple of years, I’ve been a panelist, and it’s been really fun. But the panels are really just an excuse to get together and meet with other writers, because the thing that makes Writers Cantina unique is that the barcon has basically taken over the convention (kind of like how the dealer’s room has taken over conventions like FanX and Comic Con).

The panels aren’t scheduled yet, but they probably will be in the next month or two. I’ll be lobbying for another AI writing panel, like we’ve had the last couple of years. Looking forward to sharing my insights on that, as well as talking about it with some of the other panelists. Or you can just find me in the cantina if you want to chat.

Register for Writers Cantina 2026 (July 17-18)

The most realistic AI worst-case scenario

When it comes to AI, there are a lot of crazy doomsday scenarios floating around out there—just like there are a lot of pie-in-the-sky, utopian visions of an AI-dominated future. But while nobody knows exactly what the future will bring, I think most of these projections are totally wrong. Instead, I think that AI will neither save us nor doom us—but it will completely change us.

With that in mind, I thought I would share this discussion of AI, which is one of the most grounded and realistic discussions of the subject that I’ve heard. It’s also one of the most insightful. We’ve created a technology that we barely understand, but it’s still just a new technology, not a savior or an antichrist. In a hundred years, when our great-grandchildren understand this technology and take it for granted, they will probably laugh at how we thought of it (assuming, of course, that Yudkowsky and Soares are wrong, and we aren’t all exterminated by a superintelligent AI).

February Reading Recap

Books I Finished

How the West Was Won by Louis L’Amour

Mustang Man by Louis L’Amour

Establishing Zion by Lawrence C. Walters

Writing Archetypal Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland

The History of Money by David McWilliams

Dismantling America by Thomas Sowell

(Why are you so racist, Amazon? Why is this book excluded from your Amazon Associates program??)

The Little Book of Exoplanets by Joshua Winn

Galloway by Louis L’Amour

The Quick and the Dead by Louis L’Amour

Storm Gold by Lee Nelson

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout

Treasure Mountain by Louis L’Amour

Charter Schools and Their Enemies by Thomas Sowell

Books I DNFed

  • Fateful Hours by Volker Ulrich
  • The Path to Singularity by J. Craig Wheeler
  • That Book Is Dangerous! by Adam Szetzla
  • Story Genius by Lisa Cron
  • Every Day I Read by Hwang Bo-Reum
  • The Last Book Written By a Human by Jeff Burningham
  • Before the Second Coming by Richard Brunson

How I Would Vote Now: 1983 Hugo Awards (Best Novel)

The Nominees

Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov

The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh

2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke

Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury

The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

The Actual Results

  1. Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov
  2. The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh
  3. 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke
  4. Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
  5. Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury
  6. The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

How I Would Have Voted

  1. Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov

Explanation

I haven’t read all of Asimov’s Foundation novels yet, but I’ve loved all of the ones that I’ve read, including Foundation’s Edge. Really fun. Lots of interesting ideas. Classic sci-fi. A must-read for sure.

I’ve written before about my love-hate relationship with Heinlein. The long and short of it is that I’ve learned to avoid any of his books where he explores his free love ideas about sex and women. I’ve really enjoyed his juveniles, and books like Farnham’s Freehold and Starship Troopers. But if it’s got a partially (or fully) unclothed woman on the cover, it’s probably not for me.

Courtship Rite was an easy skip, based on ChatGPT’s preview of the book. Here is what it said:

Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury is one of the most morally challenging and controversial works in classic science fiction. The most immediate concern is the sexual content: Kingsbury depicts a harsh, survival-driven society on the planet Geta where sexual practices are ritualized, non-monogamous, and culturally compulsory. Several scenes contain explicit adult sexual behavior—never pornographic in tone, but described in enough detail to be unmistakably explicit. These sexual rites are integral to the worldbuilding and cannot be skipped without losing the thread of the story.

Violence is also central to the novel, particularly the culture’s reliance on cannibalism as both a sacrament and a pragmatic necessity in a resource-scarce ecosystem. Cannibalism is discussed repeatedly and explicitly, sometimes in unsettling biological detail, and ritual combat, ordeal, poisoning, and execution also appear. Although the novel does not dwell on scenes of graphic torture or sadistic harm, the society it portrays practices ritual child sacrifice and cannibalism, and this is presented as a normalized element of Getan culture.

From the book description: Jo Walton remarked that Courtship Rite “is about a distant generation of colonists on a planet with no usable animals. This is the book with everything, where everything includes cannibalism, polyamory, evolution and getting tattoos so your skin will make more interesting leather when you’re dead.”

There are too many good books in the world for me to waste any of my life reading that.

I know a lot of people love Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series, but I tried the first book and just couldn’t get into it. The fantasy world was just too macabre for me, and the story never hooked me. I’ve also heard that his writing is an acquired taste, so maybe I should give it another chance. But if I were to cast my ballot now, I wouldn’t vote for it.

As for 2010: Odyssey Two and The Pride of Chanur, I DNFed both of those for basically the same reason: I got bored. The story and characters didn’t really hook me, the world building was interesting but not enough to keep me reading, and over time I just lost interest and gave up. They weren’t terrible books, just not particularly interesting or compelling. I might enjoy them in audio, though, so maybe I’ll give that a try.

If that seems a little harsh, I’d like to point out that No Award doesn’t appear anywhere on this ballot. For the Hugo Awards, that’s saying something. In general, the 80s was a pretty good decade for the Hugo Awards, so even though this particular year wasn’t a bullseye for me, I’d still rather read any of these books (even Courtship Rite) over most of the woke crap that gets nominated these days.

How I Would Vote Now: All Years

Great Classical Writing Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music lately, especially while writing. One of my favorite pieces so far is Scheherezade by Rimski-Korsakov. I especially like this version, for how the conductor and players start shouting like pirates in the buildup toward the end. My kids and I call it the “pirate music” when we’re listening in the car. Good stuff!

A chilling solution to the Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox is a classic problem in both science and science fiction. Put briefly, the paradox is this: if the natural conditions that led to the development of our human civilization are not unique, and it is reasonable to assume that alien civilizations more advanced than our own have developed elsewhere, then why haven’t they tried to contact us? In other words, if we aren’t alone in this universe, than where have all the aliens gone?

A number of possible solutions to this paradox have been proposed. Perhaps the aliens just don’t find us interesting enough to reach out. Perhaps we just don’t have the technology to contact them. Or perhaps there’s some sort of “great filter” that prevents alien civilizations from becoming spacefaring, or from becoming more advanced than our own. For example, perhaps when alien civilizations discover nuclear weapons, they destroy themselves in a spectacularly suicidal war.

All of these are interesting… but they’re also very naive. They assume that if aliens did try to contact us, everyone on Earth would know about it. But is that really the case?

If an alien civilization made contact with our own, who would be the first humans to learn about it, and who would be the last? Or in other words, if aliens made limited contact with a few humans, how likely would those humans be to share that information with the rest of us, and how likely would we believe them?

If aliens did make contact with us, it would almost certainly be limited in scope. To illustrate this, let’s break down their contact strategy based on hostile vs. peaceful intent, and whether or not they want to stay hidden:

Hostile IntentPeaceful Intent
Stay HiddenInfiltration mission: choose human targets selectivelyObservation mission: gather data from distance
Come OutInvasion mission: reduce human ability to organize and resistDiplomatic mission: prioritize contact with human leadership

In each of these strategies, the aliens gain nothing by doing a massive flyby and showing themselves to all of us at once. Even in the case of an invasion mission, they’d probably only want to do that if 1) they had overwhelming force, and 2) they decided to run some sort of shock-and-awe campaign, like Independence Day. But what exactly would they gain from that? Even if they did have overwhelming force, why would they want to present a clear target when they already have the element of surprise?

Point is, in most of these scenarios, the aliens would either want to limit their activities to the fringes of human society, or to establish contact with the human leadership first. Therefore, the first humans to learn about these aliens are either going to be the kind of people the rest of us can easily dismiss, or our leaders, who have every incentive to keep the knowledge of these aliens hidden, as the disruption it would cause would threaten their own power.

Put simply, the solution to the Fermi Paradox may have less to do with the aliens and more to do with us. After all, if aliens really had made contact with humanity, what makes you think you would know?

Kandahar Giants? Fascinating Interview

Tim Alberino is a really fascinating guy. It’s like he watched Indiana Jones as a kid, and decided “that’s who I want to be when I grow up.” And then he did!

In this interview, he discusses Biblical giants that the US military may or may not have encountered in Afghanistan (it’s highly classified), Peruvian face peelers, and some other freaky stuff. Really interesting.