culture wars – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Thoughts on the Mormon church shooting

Over the weekend, there was a horrific mass shooting at a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Michigan. The shooter apparently rammed his truck through the front wall of the chapel while the congregation was taking the sacrament, and as people were coming up to help him and make sure that he wasn’t hurt, he pulled out a semi-automatic rifle and began shooting them. He then proceeded to set up several IEDs to hinder the search and rescue efforts while he lit the building on fire, using gasoline.

I’ve heard different reports about what happened next. The police arrived on the scene quite rapidly, engaging in a firefight with the shooter and ultimately killing him. However, I have also seen reports circulating from eyewitnesses that members of the congregation also engaged in the firefight, and that at least one of the police who responded may have been an off-duty law enforcement officer attending the church services.

In any case, the shooter was killed, but not before he had killed or wounded nearly a dozen people and set a fire that burned the structure to the ground. The fire and IEDs prevented the first responders from going into the burning building and searching for survivors, until after the structure had collapsed. Thankfully (and miraculously), everyone got out in time, so there weren’t any people who died because they were trapped in the burning building while the first responders couldn’t get to them.

Needless to say, this is an unthinkable tragedy that has all of us members of the church in shock. Many of us are wondering what could possibly motivate someone to attack us like this, and in the last 48 hours, the picture that we’re starting to get of the man is very disturbing. He apparently was an Iraqi veteran who was suffering from PTSD and mental illness, which means he almost certainly didn’t get the help he needed from the VA. And while it seems he was a conservative, the motivation probably has less to do with his politics and more to do with religious hatred.

Ever since the church was formally organized in 1830, there has been a concerted effort by anti-Mormons to destroy it. If you search for anything about Mormonism online, you will also find some extremely vicious anti-Mormon literature. As with other forms of religious bigotry, such as anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, it comes at us from all directions, but in recent decades most of it seems to have come from the evangelical Christian right. There are pastors on YouTube right now who are monetizing their channels and building engagement by calling us “demonic” and claiming we are led by the devil himself. Others seek to ridicule our most sacred practices by posting videos of our temple garments or our temple services, which are not open to the general public. It’s always been something we’ve had to deal with, especially at events like our semi-annual General Conference where you can often find protestors waving placards that say things like “Jesus Saves, Joseph Enslaves!”

When I was following this story on Sunday afternoon, trying to piece together what had happened, I was shocked to find people posting these anti-Mormon talking points on conservative news sites like The Daily Wire. The vast majority of the response from our Catholic and Protestant friends, including our Evangelical friends, was genuinely sympathetic and full of condolences. But there was still a minority of Christian commenters who thought it entirely appropriate to use this story as an opportunity to tell us that “Mormons aren’t Christian.”

Do you realize that this anti-Mormon rhetoric is likely what radicalized the shooter to kill us? Yes, he was a disturbed and troubled man, but there’s a reason why he felt justified to take up arms against us. My guess is that he heard that Mormons are “demonic” and “not Christian” one too many times, and drew his own conclusions. And while he alone is responsible for his own actions, the public rhetoric matters too.

It’s the same exact thing we saw with the Charlie Kirk assassination. For years, Charlie Kirk’s political enemies called him a racist, fascist, white supremacist, etc, escalating their rhetoric to the point where a disturbed individual felt he was justified in killinghim. And just as it’s disgusting for people to say “Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to be shot, but he really was a racist and a fascist,” it is also disgusting to say “The Mormons didn’t deserve to be killed, but they really aren’t Christians.” Especially while the church was still on fire, and the victims of the attack were succumbing to their wounds.

Up until now in the culture wars, religious conservatives of all stripes (including Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Latter-day Saint, Jewish Orthodox, and some other small minorities like Hindu (represented by Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy)) have been united by a common enemy: the woke left. And for the last two decades, the woke left has been the dominant cultural force. But all of that is beginning to change, as the culture swings back from the excesses of peak wokism and the Great American Revival begins to enter the mainstream. And as the Christian revival sweeps our country, I think we’re about to enter a very dangerous period, where we no longer have a common enemy to unite us.

So here is the question: as religious conservatives take back the culture and the woke left is forced into the political wilderness, are we going to remember our American creed of “E Pluribus Unum” as we work to make our country great again? Or are we going to fall into a modern ideological rematch of the 30 years war, with Catholics and Protestants sniping at each other, various branches of the Evangelical Right vying for dominance, and everyone turning on the Jews and the Mormons? Because the seeds of that conflict are definitely in the ground.

I’m not saying that Evangelicals shouldn’t be allowed to say that “Mormons aren’t Christian.” I understand how that’s a core belief of some people, who are deeply troubled by our rejection of the Trinitarian creed. And I understand that there are many Christians who still love us even though they believe we are going to hell, and want to do everything they can to help us be saved. But dude… if you really love us, why are you saying all that stuff while the bodies are still warm? I’m not calling for you to be silenced, but I am calling for a de-escalation of the rhetoric, before some other deranged madman watches one too many Mark Driscoll videos and decides to take up arms.

That’s a lot of heavy stuff to consider, so I want to end with what is probably the best response I’ve seen to the Michigan church shooting, from the Babylon Bee:

Mormons Respond To Attack By Continuing To Be Amazingly Kind To Everyone

[9/30 UPDATE:] …aaand once again, the Babylon Bee gets major points for predicting the actual news, because members of the church have set up a GiveSendGo for the family of the shooter. It has already surpassed $125,000 in donations.

I just gotta fisk this

There have been a lot of incredible online reactions to the Charlie Kirk assassination, ranging from the tear-jerking, restore-your-faith-in-humanity type, to some of the most vile, evil, and disgusting displays of inhumanity that one can see. But when I saw this one, I just had to react to it, because… we’ll, you’ll see.

I made some stupid comments about Charlie Kirk on the day that he was shot.

In other words, you took off the mask and revealed who you really are.

I said some things on Blue Sky and on threads that I I’m sorry, not sorry for,

Making a cute face while committing a minor social taboo might earn you a few chuckles when you’re four. But when you are a grown man in his forties? fifties? with facial hair (and a nose ring? seriously, dude, WTF?) it just makes you a creeper—and when the taboo is NORMALIZING MURDER, it launches you into psychopath territory. Especially when you make that creepy cutesy face.

but I said them and I deleted them when it was requested that I do so by my employer.

And you think that made it okay? That you could just put the mask back on, and everything would go back to the way it was? No way, dude. If I were your coworker and I saw your post, I would go straight to HR and tell them that you make me feel unsafe. And then I would go to law enforcement and say the same thing.

And then today on a weekend, on a weekend,

Oh, poor baby. Did your weekend get ruined? That must have really sucked. After all, it was only a Wednesday when Erika Kirk became a widow, and her children lost their father. But hey, at least it wasn’t a weekend for her.

I’m told that I am no longer employed at Microsoft.

Thank God. I’m sure your coworkers are all grateful too.

After six years building the diversity, equity, and inclusion department from scratch,

Why am I not surprised?

I lose my job because one of you, some random person reports my posts to my employer, goes out of their way to find out where I work

No, you didn’t lose your job because of what THEY said, you lost your job because of what YOU said. It’s called consequences. Actions have them. How are you a grown man and only learning this now?

and takes my job, takes my security away from me

What makes you think that having a job is a human right? That the world—nay, the universe itself—owes you anything? You should be losing a lot more than your job, dude.

for a thought, for an opinion

You were not fired for having an “opinion.” You were fired for SUPPORTING AND ENCOURAGING MURDER.

and you talk about freedom speech like you care about it

You are absolutely free to say what is in your heart. And your employer is absolutely free to fire you for it. Isn’t it a great country?

and you’re just going to take my my money, my life, my food off my plate

You don’t exactly seem to be hurting for food, buddy. Also, food stamps are a thing. So are mental institutions. I hear they still feed the people in those.

because I don’t like Charlie Kirk.

Is that seriously what you think this is about? Because right now, I’m seeing lots of people—including the leftist activist who was debating Charlie Kirk at the moment he was shot—who had no love or liking for the man, but who can still say that it wasn’t right that he was murdered.

But frankly, I think you know that. I think you know exactly how evil your heart has become. I think you’re just trying to hide it from us, with all of your equivocations, and understatements, and cutesy voices and faces and all.

And sadly, I think the person you’re trying the most to hide it from is yourself. Is it working?

That’s not okay. It is not okay to target me because I felt joy that day.

In a country without law, I would absolutely target you. With death. Not out of anger or outrage, but because psychopaths like you are dangerous—especially psychopaths who genuinely feel joy at the murder of another human being.

Fortunately, we have laws in this country, and authorities who enforce those laws from psychopaths like you. Which is why people like me don’t need to resort to violence to make sure that our children grow up safe. Pray that never changes.

I can’t help how I feel.

Let me tell you something I told my five year-old the other night. You can’t always choose the way you feel, but you can always choose what you do about the way you feel.

With consequences, it’s the opposite: you can choose your actions, but you can’t choose the consequences of your actions.

How are you a grown man and you don’t know these things?

More importantly, how can someone like you, who has less emotional maturity than my five year-old daughter, land a job at a company like Microsoft?

Oh, yeah. You worked in the DEI department. Explains a lot.

I felt joy. That’s me.

For Charlie’s sake, I will pray that isn’t the case. Because if Charlie Kirk could respond to your video, he would tell you that that isn’t you, but the demonic spirit within you. So for Charlie’s sake, I will pray for you.

That’s what I believe. That’s what I think of of him. I can’t help that. So, I don’t deserve a job?

No, you do not deserve a job. Not at Microsoft, and not anywhere else.

And frankly, if you ever became my coworker, I would go straight to HR and tell them that your presence makes me fear for my physical safety. Because people who take joy in the murder of someone who believes the things that I believe and values the things that I value—that really does make me feel unsafe. Especially when that person was murdered because of those values and beliefs.

So even though I will pray for you, I sincerely hope that every prospective employer sees your original action video, as well as this one, and uses that to guide their hiring decision. @cassiesmith2788 said it best:

You lost a job for what you said. Charlie lost his life for what he said. Consider yourself lucky.

Fantasy from A to Z: Z is for Zeitgeist

What is the future of fantasy literature? Where is the genre headed, based on current cultural trends?

For a long time, epic fantasy was basically Tolkien-light. There were exceptions, of course, but most readers wanted something that felt a lot like Lord of the Rings, and the most successful writers were the ones who gave it to them. There was a little bit of innovation, probably culminating in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, but if you picked up a random epic fantasy off the shelf, you could have a pretty good idea of what you were getting into.

Then, in the 90s and 00s, fantasy started to get dark and gritty, with writers like Joe Abercrombie and George R.R. Martin setting the tone. This new subgenre or flavor of fantasy, called grimdark, really came to dominate during this time, to the point where some were calling Martin an “American Tolkien” (though all that talk more or less died with the terrible finale of the show). Grimdark is still quite dominant, though an increasing number of readers are turning to “cozy” fantasy or slice-of-life in subgenres like litRPG. And of course, romantasy is taking off like crazy, though as we’ve already discussed, most romantasy is basically just porn.

So where are we going from here?

Our culture tends to pass through a cycle of seasonal turnings, where each season is the length of a generation, and the cycle itself is the length of a long human life. Reduced to its simplest form, the cycle follows a pattern like this:

Strong men create good times (first turning).

Good times create weak men (second turning).

Weak men create hard times (third turning).

Hard times create strong men (fourth turning).

We are currently living in a fourth turning, which is the period when all of the major wars and catastrophes tend to happen. In other words, the fourth turning is basically a grimdark world—or rather, when the full consequences of a grimdark world become manifest. But the grimdark subgenre really took off in the third turning, when dark and grim fantasy worlds resonated with the “hard times” that we all were starting to live through. This is also why dystopian YA became so popular in the 90s and 00s.

(As a side note, I have to say that I find it both perplexing and hilarious how so many zoomers think of the 90s as a simple and wholesome time, to the point where they think they experience nostalgia for it. Those of us who lived through the 90s remember it very differently, as an era of school shootings, political scandals, collapsing churches, teenage pregnancies, and ever-escalating culture wars. There’s a reason why Smells Like Teen Spirit was the decade’s anthem. Though in all fairness, I suppose that if someone from the middle ages were to visit our own time, they would find the nostalgic yearning on which the whole fantasy genre is based to be just as perplexing and hilarious.)

I believe we are on the cusp of a major cultural wave that is going to change everything, to the point of making our world almost unrecognizable to those who lived through the 90s and 00s. And just as the grimdark authors like Martin and Abercrombie rose to prominence by riding the wave in their part of the generational cycle, there are a lot of noblebright authors who stand to benefit from riding this next wave, which is only now beginning to break.

After all, there is another way to formulate the generational cycles. It looks something like this:

Complacent men create a spiritually dead culture (first turning).

A spiritually dead culture creates awakened men (second turning).

Awakened men create a spiritually vibrant culture (third turning).

A spiritually vibrant culture creates complacent men (fourth turning).

In the summer of 2024, I think we passed through a critical fork in the current timeline. If the generational cycle had followed its usual course, then our current crisis period would have ended with a period of unification under a new order, based upon the spiritual foundations that were laid during the 60s and 70s. In other words, the woke left would have won, and we’d be living under the sort of regime that would enforce woke values. Dissent would not be tolerated, because dissent is never tolerated in a first-turning world.

The second most likely outcome would have been a complete shattering of the generational cycles. In other words, we would have fallen into some sort of national divorce or hot civil war, with the United States splitting apart and the Western world completing its cultural suicide, which has been ongoing for several decades now. There has never been a time when such a major cultural rift has been accomplished by peaceful means. It is always accompanied by a terrible, bloody war.

But when President Trump survived the assassin’s bullet at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that’s the point where I think our timeline diverged—and it followed the least likely path, which has only ever happened once in the history of modern generational cycles. We skipped from a fourth-turning straight into a second-turning, skipping straight from crisis to revival.

The last time this happened was with the US civil war. Usually, after a culture survives an existential crisis, you get a period of national unity, which often results in a brief golden age (or at least, an age that is remembered as such, often by those who did not live through it). But after the civil war, there was no national unity. Instead, we skipped right to the second turning, which is typically characterized by a major spiritual awakening.

Whatever your opinions of President Trump, the fact that he survived the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and went on to win the 2024 election in a landslide means that we have (for the moment) avoided the first two scenarios. At this point, it’s difficult to imagine the woke left taking back the culture and leading us into a first-turning world in their own image. And though the US may yet fall into a hot civil war, from where I’m standing in flyover country that no longer seems quite so imminent.

Don’t get me wrong, though. We are not about to enter a period of national unity anytime soon. Certainly not a period of national unity whose foundations were laid by the previous spiritual awakening, which is what the generational cycle requires. At the same time, because President Trump survived the Butler assassination attempt (thank God), I think we avoided a hot civil war.

Because of all this, I think that we are about to experience a major cultural upheaval, the likes of which have never been seen in living memory. We will not get a period of unification. We will not experience a golden age period of material prosperity (though there may be a few years of plenty before the years of famine begin in earnest). But we will experience a cultural and spiritual revival that will burn through our culture until it has utterly demolished the woke worldview and values laid down during the 60s and 70s, and built something entirely new in its place.

What will that look like? And how will it affect the trajectory of fantasy literature?

Culturally, it will be a period of incredible dynamism. We will see an explosion of creative expression in every field, including in literature. Books and movies and games that are cultural mainstays now will be totally forgotten within a couple of decades, and everything that is popular now will feel dated and out of touch in the space of just a few years.

The authors and artists who will do the most to shape this new culture are today almost completely unknown, but they will become household names in surprisingly short order. Others will take decades to become known, but they will write their most important works in just the next few years.

The country will hold together. There will be no civil war, though there may be a global one. And there will almost certainly be an economic collapse, like the Great Depression, except much deeper and much longer. But all of this will only serve to fuel the spiritual revival, and the revival in turn will fuel the cultural dynamism, until the country and ultimately the world have been entirely transformed.

In more practical terms, I think we are going to see a lot of publishing houses fold, and a lot of popular authors fall out of favor. Many of them will keep their core group of fans, but they won’t be nearly as culturally relevant moving forward. New authors will rise from unexpected places to replace them, especially as the old institutions (publishers, conventions, magazines, review sites) collapse.

Romantasy will ultimately be recognized as the pornography that it is, though not until after it’s done great damage to the fantasy genre as a whole. The damage will be healed by a return to the genre’s spiritual roots. Grimdark will fade, and noblebright will rise, though it will ultimately take a different name and be recognized for other characteristics. It all depends on which of the thousand blooming flowers get picked.

LitRPG will mature into a long-term stable subgenre, and capture most of the innovation in the field. It may spin off into multiple long-term stable subgenres. Meanwhile, epic fantasy will return to its roots and grow as the spiritual revival takes hold. But instead of getting Tolkien clones, we’re going to see a lot of original and innovative work.

That’s the zeitgeist as I see it. The next few years are going to be a wild ride. Are you up for it? I hope that I am.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Fantasy from A to Z: X is for eXpectations

What sort of books are fantasy readers looking for today? What are the expectations that readers have for the genre?

Overall, the fantasy genre is growing. Sales are up, both in traditional and indie publishing, and the big names in the field (like Brandon Sanderson) are doing quite well. It’s clear that the fantasy genre as a whole is robust and healthy.

When you break it down by publishers and subgenres, however, things start to look a little different. Romantasy is dominating the traditional publishing world, but most of it is little more than pornography for women, dressed up with fantasy trappings. And because of how traditional publishing now relies on a few big blockbusters to make most of their earnings, romantasy is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room, making it much more difficult for debut and midlist authors in the other fantasy subgenres.

In the world of indie publishing, litRPG has begun to demonstrate some staying power. It was the new hot thing back in the early 2020s, but it’s attracted enough attention and developed enough of a following that it has become a major subgenre that is likely to endure for some time. I could be wrong about that, but from what I see, that’s where most of the innovative authors and whale readers (ie >1 book per week) are focusing their attention these days.

But because of the way that the algorithms tend to govern the indie publishing cycle (and the way that indie publishing has unfortunately turned into a zero-sum, pay-to-play game with online advertising), the rise of litRPG in the indie publishing world may very well be sucking all of the oxygen out of the room in the same way that romantasy is sucking it out of the traditional publishing world.

Both subgenres are also very gender-biased, with women gravitating toward romantasy and men gravitating toward litRPG. This reflects the broader social and political trend of men and women going separate ways, across a whole host of different metrics. So as the gender divide continues to widen in society generally, that will probably reinforce the divide between romantasy and litRPG, creating a positive feedback loop (or death spiral, depending on how you look at it).

Sword and sorcery continues to do okay, and has probably been given a boost by the recent release of Conan the Barbarian into the public domain. But most of sword and sorcery got siphoned off into grimdark back in the 00s—in fact, you could say that sword and sorcery reinvented itself as grimdark. And while grimdark has resisted the feminization of literature, standing as one of the few remaining bastions where male readers continue to feel at home, I think grimdark has already passed its peak. In a post-pandemic, post-Trump world, I think most readers are hungry for books that are less nihilistic and more uplifting.

Which brings us to epic fantasy. While Brandon Sanderson continues to dominate this subgenre, with his massive kickstarters and huge book releases, it’s debatable whether his readers are hungry for more epic fantasy, or just for more Brandon Sanderson. He’s kind of a subgenre all to himself. Recent streaming adaptations like Wheel of Time and Rings of Power have failed miserably, and Game of Thrones has fallen almost totally out of cultural significance, with George R.R. Martin’s failure to finish the last book (and Patrick Rothfuss’s failure to finish his own series) becoming something of a meme.

In fact, the failure of these two big-name authors to finish writing their books may have struck epic fantasy a mortal wound. Because of how they have been burned, a large number of epic fantasy readers are now unwilling to commit to a series until after it is complete. But very few authors can afford to write a truly epic series and release the whole thing at once. It takes several years to write a series like that—and what are authors supposed to do if the first one flops?

In other words, debut epic fantasy authors are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. If they release the first book by itself, it will probably sink into obscurity before they can write and release the next book. And if by some measure of hard work and tenacity they manage to write a whole series and hold back from publishing until they’re ready to release it all at once, if the first book still fails to sell, they’re SOL and all that hard work was for nothing.

This is also why traditional publishers are so unwilling to publish a new epic fantasy series from a debut or a midlist author. A bestseller like Larry Correia might be able to dip his feet in that pond (and do quite well—I highly recommend his Sons of the Black Sword series), they won’t do that for anyone else. Which is fine, except that indie publishing epic fantasy is just as hard—arguably more so.

For these reasons, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Patrick Rothfuss and George R.R. Martin have done more to kill epic fantasy than they have to grow it.

But this may actually have created an opportunity for those authors who are willing to drive into the smoke. After all, there’s much less competition if you can manage to break in and build a decent following. But how much hunger is there for epic fantasy, compared to other fantasy subgenres? And how can a newer/midlist author reach them, without a big push from a publisher or the algorithms?

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Fantasy from A to Z: P is for Prayer

What would fantasy be without religion? Probably much the same as us, when we don’t have religion: aimless, drifting, and lost.

Religion is more than just a useful aspect of worldbuilding. It’s something that lies at the very core of what makes us human—and thus, it’s something that any story needs to at least touch on if it is to be meaningful or important. Most likely, it won’t be meaningful at all unless the religious aspect is incorporated deeply within its bones.

But what is religion? For our purposes, religion is how we, as humans, relate to the powers that are higher than ourselves. It’s not about painting a cross on your cover, or a star of David, or a crescent, or an omh, or whatever else. It’s about how we act in regards to the cosmic and the transcendent. It’s about how we understand how to orient ourselves in this vast and terrifying universe, and find our own place within it.

I grew up in a time when religion was one of those taboo subjects that you never brought up in polite society. Politics, religion, and sex were all taboo like that. Granted, those taboos were already beginning to fray by the time I was old enough to hold an uninformed opinion on any of that, but even in the 90s, the post-war liberal consensus still held.

What was the post-war liberal consensus? It was the set of rules and norms that we all (or those of us in polite society, at least) agreed to live by, after the tumultuous catastrophe of the World Wars. From 1914 to 1945, more than a hundred Europeans died from political causes—and that was just in Europe. For thirty long years, the whole world was drowned in blood.

The wars ended with the invention of the world’s most devastating superweapon, which for the first time in the history of this planet gave us the power to literally annihilate our own species. So at the end of all that, our grandparents felt a very strong need to keep those weapons from ever being used again. Hence, they developed the post-war liberal consensus.

The greatest value of the post-war liberal consensus was tolerance—but they didn’t think of that as a value in itself. The idea was that instead of elevating the values of any one group over another, they would create a world where everyone tolerated each other. Everyone could keep their own culture and religion, along with their own unique (and often contradictory) cultural and religious values, so long as they didn’t try to impose those values on anyone else.

The trouble with that, of course, is that tolerance itself is a value. Which means that in order to maintain the post-war consensus, they had to be intolerant toward any culture or religion that threatened it. Which meant that they had to push their globalism and multiculturalism on everyone, superseding all of their own cultural and religious values. This gave rise to the global urban monoculture, which ultimately gave us the clown world we now live in. Which is currently falling apart.

Religion should not be off-limits, especially for good storytelling. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that stories should bash you over the head and try to convert you to whatever church the author happens to belong to. Indeed, some of the most religious stories aren’t about any particular church or creed at all.

An example of this is Epic: The Musical. Beyond the old Greek mythology that runs through the story, the religious view is that the universe is utterly unpredictable, the gods (or higher powers) are arbitrary and capricious, and that the ends (getting home to Penelope) always justify the means. Indeed, any means that aren’t justified by the ends are immoral and wrong. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. How do we sleep? Next to our wives.

Those aren’t the religious views that I subscribe to, but those are deeply religious views. How? Because they show us how we stand in relation to powers that are higher than ourselves. In the 19th century, it became fashionable to throw out religion, and reverence man himself as the highest power in the universe. Where did that get us? It gave us the 31 years that killed 100 million Europeans and drowned the whole world in blood.

G.K. Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Now, more than ever, the world needs religion.

Of course, one of the nice things about writing fiction is that you can explore all sorts of religious ideas that may or may not have a direct counterpart in our world. Indeed, that’s part of what makes fantasy so rich. Tolkien created a whole race (the elves) that is bound by magic and immortality to this earth, contrasting with us humans, who are “strangers in a strange land.” In fact, Tolkien’s entire oeuvre is rich with religious elements, not just in the worldbuilding and the mythology, but in the Christian symbology—and he does it so subtly and so deeply that it draws you into his world, rather than kicking you out. It’s all in service to the story.

There’s a reason why the best stories in the world are in the Bible (and most of those are in the Book of Genesis). Which is one of the reasons why I’m drawing on the life of King David for the fantasy epic that I’m currently writing (The Soulbound King). But I’m also drawing on symbology and mythology as well, to make sure the religious elements aren’t just skin-deep. There is so much fascinating tree-related symbolism within the Jewish/Christian tradition. So much rich and wonderful stuff to draw on for creating a fantasy world.

Don’t be afraid to play with religion in your own fantasy stories. After all, on the deepest level, creativity itself is something of a religious act.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Fantasy from A to Z: F is for Female

We live in a time of deepening division—not just between political parties or social classes, but between the sexes as well. Of course, men and women have always been different, but those differences have grown increasingly stark in recent years, even as it becomes more politically incorrect to say so.

Across the Western world, men are drifting one way, women another. In politics, men are turning more conservative, while women—especially young, unmarried women—are growing more liberal. We can see this gap not only in US voting patterns, but in voting patterns across the world. In matters of faith, men are turning toward traditional, even ancient forms of religious expression: high liturgy, orthodoxy, duty, and structure. Meanwhile, women are leaving organized religion altogether in record numbers. Some are embracing a kind of therapeutic spirituality—mindfulness, astrology, crystals—but many are simply checking out.

It’s not hard to see this growing rift playing out in other areas of life: marriage, dating, education, employment. But it’s also playing out in fantasy literature, not just among readers, but also among writers and publishers.

Instead of sharing a common ground, men and women are building parallel worlds. Many male readers are flocking to grimdark, with its blood-soaked realism and morally gray protagonists, or to litRPG, which merges game mechanics with fantasy worldbuilding in a system-focused power fantasy. Meanwhile, women are turning increasingly to romantasy, a subgenre that often verges on outright pornography and has virtually no appeal to men.

A lot of this is downstream from the gender divide in publishing. Traditional publishing—especially in the U.S.—has become overwhelmingly female, especially in the editorial departments. Some of that is demographic; some of it is cultural. But the result is that the gatekeepers of traditional fantasy publishing are mostly women. Their tastes, sensibilities, and values shape what gets acquired, marketed, and celebrated.

This divide wouldn’t be so troubling if it were merely about preferences or taste. But it runs deeper than that. Increasingly it seems that men and women no longer understand each other—or worse, no longer even try to. And when even our fiction reflects that fracture, it becomes that much harder to bridge the growing divide.

That’s what makes the current state of fantasy so toxic. Not because romantasy or grimdark are inherently bad—every subgenre has its place—but because they have become echo chambers that silo the sexes off from each other.

Men and women were not made to live in separate worlds. We need each other—not just to perpetuate the species, but to challenge, balance, and refine one another. I know this from personal experience. Without my wife, I’d be a lesser man. She often drives me crazy (to be fair, I return the favor), but we have each grown so much since marrying each other that I think I would hardly recognize the man I once was. Together, we are far more than the sum of our two parts.

Our stories should reflect that truth. We don’t need more genre ghettos. We need shared myths. Stories where masculine and feminine virtues don’t clash with each other, but come together in harmony.

That’s what I’m hoping to accomplish with my epic fantasy series, The Soulbound King. When building out the fantasy world, I deliberately designed the magic system so that latent magical powers can only be unlocked through marriage—the “soulbond”—between a man and a woman. I did that largely in response to the growing gender divide, because I wanted to write a story that shows how men and women can overcome it. Hopefully it works.

Fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, gives us the space to reimagine what’s possible. It allows us to explore not just what the world is, but what it could be. And right now, what the world needs is for the young men and women of the rising generation to come together and reinvent the world.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Interesting discussion of the ideal roles and partnership of husband and wife

I’ve been watching a lot of Malcolm & Simone Collins’s videos lately. They are a pair of super odd ducks, but they are both super intelligent and have some very unexpected insights into our world. On some issues (particularly the issue of Mormon fertility) I think they are off-track, but on others I think they are spot on, and earlier than most of the rest of the culture. They also love trolling crazy leftists—in fact, it’s how they built up their channel.

This is the best one I’ve listened to so far. You should ignore the clickbaity title, because what it’s really about is the way that men and women complement each other as husbands and wives, especially in our current post-industrial world where the corporate 9-5 job is becoming a thing of the past. I particularly enjoyed how Malcolm compares the role of husband and wife to the characters in the game Shovel Knight. Very geeky, and also very insightful. Worth a listen.

Canada is SICK (and so are we)

One of the most fascinating podcast interviews I’ve seen in a long time. Throws me back to A Canticle for Leibowitz, one of the best works of science fiction to come out of the 19th century.

What is coming

I think we are in the opening phase of a massive Christian revival, the likes of which we haven’t seen for more than a hundred years. It is going to sweep the entire country and catch a lot of people by surprise. After it has completed its course two or three decades from now, the culture we had from the 1960s through the 2010s will seem as strange and as alien to us as the culture of pre-Civil War America seems to us today.

This revival is going to be the thing that ultimately holds our country together. It will not unite all Americans, though, and many will feel like they don’t have a place in it. Conservatism will dominate our politics and our culture for the next generation, but it will take a hybrid form unlike anything that it has had before. It will blend some things that feel conservative to us now and other things that don’t seem conservative at all.

We will not get a period of unity or prosperity after this crisis period. Wars will expand, economies will collapse, natural disasters will devastate millions more lives. At least one more global pandemic will bring us to our knees. But even after these crises run their course, we will not come together for a new golden age, though one will always seem to be just over the horizon.

We will not experience a first turning of the next secular cycle, but will skip right past it into the second turning, just as we did after the Civil War. It’s going to be messy—so messy, in fact, that our grandchildren won’t even consider 2020 to be a historically significant year. But the United States will hold together, even if she never experiences the same level of prosperity again. And the utter collapse of her money and her economy will only serve to fan the flames of revival that will sweep her land.

Culturally, it will be a period of incredible dynamism. After the arts are no longer enthralled to postmodernism and cultural Marxism, we will see an explosion of creative expression in every field, including in literature. It’s going to be a wild ride. Things that are cultural mainstays now will be totally forgotten within a couple of decades, and things that are popular now will feel dated and out of touch in the space of just a few years.

The country will hold together. There will be no civil war, though there may be a global one. And there will almost certainly be an economic collapse, like the Great Depression, except much deeper and much longer. But all of this will only serve to fuel the religious revival, and the revival in turn will fuel the cultural dynamism, until the country and ultimately the world have been entirely transformed.

Yes, Brandon Sanderson has gone woke

By his own admission, in his latest blog post: On Renarin and Rlain. He says the post is addressed “toward my more conservative readership.” However, he also calls himself “an ally to LGBT+ people” and boasts about writing the “first openly gay men [in] the Wheel of Time.” When discussing Christianity and his own Latter-day Saint faith, he makes repeated appeals to “empathy” and “respect,” without addressing the Bible’s clear condemnation of sexual sin. He also does not mention the Family Proclamation, which clearly lays out his own church’s position on homosexuality, transgenderism, and gay marriage.

In other words, Brandon basically told his conservative readers “I hear you, but you’re wrong.” He implies that any conservative Christian who has concerns with the gay romance in Wind and Truth is lacking in empathy and respect. He also implies that by voicing their concerns, they are dividing the world into “us” vs. “them” and betraying a key tenet of their own Christian faith.

If Brandon genuinely wanted to allay the concerns of his conservative readers, he would have acknowledged the Family Proclamation and Biblical standards of sexual morality. He would have discussed the gay romance of his latest book in the context of such standards. Then, he would have presented an argument similar to Andrew Klavan’s: that conservative art is not the same as conservative life. Good art must provide an honest and truthful representation of life. It should not glorify or promote those aspects of life that are evil. Brandon starts to make the first half of that argument, in discussing how Tracy Hickman portrayed gay characters in his books, but he fails to follow it up. He doesn’t explain how making a gay romance essential to the plot of Wind and Truth serves the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Brandon doesn’t seem to trust his conservative Christian readers to be able to separate the sin from the sinner. He also refuses to acknowledge the lived experience of his gay and lesbian readers who have chosen to live morally pure and faithful Christian lives. Like Brandon, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of the most inspiring members of the church for me are those who struggle with same-gender attraction but still live true to their testimonies. I imagine it must feel pretty lonely at times like this, when their brother in Christ has chosen to side with those who preach the false gospel of pride, equity, and self-worship, instead of the gospel of the One who declared “Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be Thine forever.”

Has Brandon denied his faith? I’m not Brandon’s bishop, nor am I his eternal judge. It’s important to remember that the church is not a place for perfect people. I do think there ought to be a place in the church for self-described LGBT+ allies, so long as they sustain the leaders—and the doctrine—of the church. But if he hasn’t crossed the line, he’s certainly standing a lot closer to it than I ever would.

My personal testimony is that the Family Proclamation is inspired of God, and that the men who wrote and signed their names to it are prophets, seers, and revelators. It teaches true principles about the family and sexual morality. We are all children of God, gays and lesbians included, and that makes us all brothers and sisters regardless of how we choose to live. At the same time, Christ didn’t suffer and die for us so that we could continue in our sins. If the Family Proclamation is true, affirming homosexuality is not an act of love, no matter how empathetic it may be. Christ had empathy for the woman caught in adultery, but because He loved her, He also commanded her to “go, and sin no more.”

On a personal level, I feel frustrated and disappointed by Brandon’s recent turn. I count Brandon as an early mentor—in fact, it was Brandon’s class that inspired me to pursue writing as a career. I haven’t spoken with Brandon in years, but I do still count him as a friend. If I could sit down with him I would ask him about the people he’s surrounded himself with. They seem to be leading him in a bad direction, since he seems to have grown out of touch.

Has he betrayed his conservative readers? Yes, I think he has, and that he’s making a big mistake by doing so. One of the things that set him apart until now was the fact that his books are very clean. His fans may argue that Renarin and Rlain’s romance is also clean, but as a conservative reader, it feels more like a camel’s nose peeking under the tent. In a world of drag queen story hour, pornographic gay pride parades, and genital mutilation of children, is it even possible to have a clean gay romance? I think not. To paraphrase Brandon, as much as we may long for the days where there was no slippery slope, maybe that world never existed. Maybe there will always be an instinct to divide the world into the “clean” and the “queer.”

So let me just say this: whatever the stories that Brandon wants to tell, I can no longer trust that they’ll be the kind I’ll want to read. He could still turn around, of course, and I genuinely hope that he does. But reading between the lines, it seems that this turn toward the woke is not a new direction from him. It seems to be something that he’s contemplated for some time. I’ll still read the rest of his secret projects and keep my signed copies of the original Mistborn trilogy. But I’m going to DNF the Stormlight Archive, and probably won’t buy his future books.

Brandon ends his blog post by saying that one of his primary goals in life is to be more empathetic. This is what motivates him to write: because it’s how he explores the world. I, too, feel compelled to explore the world through my stories, but my primary goal is to pursue the truth. Those two goals aren’t always in conflict, but when they are, I think the pursuit of truth should be higher. The pursuit of truth ultimately leads us to love one another more fully and more meaningfully than the pursuit of empathy does. It saddens me that Brandon disagrees.