Thumbnails of the Fantastic

Introduction

H.P. Lovecraft famously wrote, The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. He is right in pointing out the primal influence of the unknown has upon us. He is also right in saying that one of the reactions we have to it is fear. We don’t know what to expect from it. Will it offer us some sort of help, or will it pose to us some sort of danger? But what this does not mention is the fascination the unknown has for us. We are drawn to it. We want to explore it. We want to know it, if we can – though we want to explore it and penetrate it in as safe a way as possible. This combination of fear and awe should tell us something about this unknown, this primary experience of humanity: the unknown is united to another concept, that is, to the holy (which is described by many religious scholars as being the mysterium tremendum et fascinans – the fearful and fascinating mystery).

The more we explore the world, the more we secularize it. This apparently leaves less room for the sacred, because there should be less that is unknown before us. What is familiar is easily discounted and ignored. God, who in some sense is the greatest unknown, appears to disappear the more we understand the universe we live in. The concept of the God of the gaps, where God exists only in the gaps of our knowledge, says that God is disappearing as our scientific progress continues.

But this God of the gaps assumes that the more we understand the universe, the less we feel there is for us to understand and explore. In reality, the more we explore the world, the more we understand it, the more we realize there is for to explore. The more we know, the more we know how much we do not know. Likewise, with our progress, we have come to understand the fundamental limitations of human reason. We now know that the universe will contain paradoxes which transcend our ability to understand by ordinary rational means. Thus, through our progression, God has become something greater, not less, the more we look out into the world, because we see far more room for God and his mysterious ways within it. This is true, however, only if we are willing to forego former, imperfect representations of God. We must be willing to let our understanding of him grow along with our understanding of the cosmos.

But God is not the only unknown – he is the ultimate unknown, and the source of every other unknown. The realm of the holy is not limited with God: it is founded by him, but exists separate from him as well, radiating from him; it is capable of including us if we are willing to take it on upon ourselves. God, being the source of holiness, is the greatest of all that is holy, and so produces the ultimate in fear and fascination from us. But to get to him, to experience him, we often experience him through others, through everything else which is holy. We experience God in part through these mediators because if we experienced God in full, without preparation, the living flame of love would overtake us and consume us. We do not know what we will be once we emerge from that encounter (if we emerge). So we go forth and explore all other forms of the unknown, the lesser forms of holiness, hoping that we can prepare ourselves for that great and final encounter with the great unknown, hoping beyond hope they will help us emerge from that final trial which we all must one day face.

What exactly will happen to us when we make this journey into the unknown? Will we come out on top? That, it seems, is behind many of the great stories of humanity. It is also the kind of question which lies behind most, if not all, of my own literary creations. I am attracted to three genres of literature: horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Each of them has in common some great unknown being explored and dealt with by the protagonists of the tale. Each of them is, in this sense, religious, despite whatever intentions the authors of such tales might have.

In horror, the notion of fear is primary. But there is even here an attraction to that unknown; one of the reasons why there remains a story is that the characters are drawn to the horror itself, and are fascinated by it, even if they want to get away and save their lives. Perhaps this is why people do stupid things in horror stories. They feel that attraction, and this keeps them near the horror. While we might think we would act differently, we must remember the reason why we are reading a horror story (or watching a horror movie) is that we are drawn to that horror ourselves. While physically it might be easy to get away from many kinds of horrors, spiritually, that is a different question. We are shown something else about the unknown in the horror genre: while fear can be and is often included in the holy, it is also found and included in that which is evil. It is not difficult to understand why: evil tries to imitate the good, and so it tries to imitate the holy by itself being an unknown.

In fantasy, horror remains. But it becomes something more. It is often a challenge to overcome, and the heroes of the tale have the ability to overcome it. As one reads through the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, for example, there are many elements of horror found within them. Often the horror is so powerful that the heroes can only run away from it. And yet they might not be able to do so. As we see with the Nazgul and their influence on Frodo, horrible evil often possesses a siren-like ability to control others and stop them from their flight. But there is more. The power of the holy is also shown in these works. Evil, which remains fundamental to horror, is shown to have a counterpart in the good, and the good is capable (at least at times) of overcoming the evil and putting things to right. In fantasy, we are often shown how both good and evil can be terrors, capable of producing awe. This is a fundamental point made by C.S. Lewis in his Narnia tales: Aslan is a terrible lion.

Science fiction also deals with the unknown. Sometimes it seeks the awe of the unknown, though good science fiction, because it seeks to make us think, also offers us prophetic warnings of the dangers which we might as a society have to face. Good science fiction contains, as with all good literature of the unknown, an attractive element to it which makes us want to engage the story. But they also possess aspects which are disturbing, elements which cause us to pause and ponder whether or not we really want to continue with the vision we have been given.

The genres, as already suggested my descriptions above, are often not pure, but rather, contain elements from each other. Fantasy and science fiction are often seen to be opposites, though in good science fiction and good fantasy, the two can be indistinguishable. Gene Wolfe’s vision of the future is one in which the mechanic is like a mage, and the machine is indecipherable from magic. It is really one and the same pursuit found in each, the pursuit of the unknown and the awe it produces, that leads the author and the reader forward. And horror, while it does not have to be either science fiction or fantasy, usually contains one or the either as a foundation to explain the entity which creates the horror. The supernatural makes vampires, science produces aliens, but both seek their own will over humanity.

The stories included in this collection reflect the underlying connection between all three genres with the holy. As one who is trained in theology, I find many of my own ideas best established through story instead of through academic prose. I am able to create various kinds of situations, with various levels of plausibility, in which to study and present humanity at its best and its worst. I hope seeing humanity in this fashion can help improve the human condition, even if only by a little.

The first story in this collection, "How Peter Lombard’s Sentences Saved the World," is a whimsical, light-hearted story, with only the smallest hint of it being a science fiction tale. It is meant to be enjoyed as it stands, and yet, the text is written to be an allegory: can the reader decipher its hidden meaning?

The idea for the second story, Fermi’s Pair of Ducks came to me as I was walked around Madison, Wisconsin the summer I was there studying Sanskrit. I would get up in the morning and walk up to the lake and watch ducks as they awakened and started out their day. I do not remember what led me to think of a pair of ducks, but once those words were put together, I immediately thought of it as being a play on words for paradox. I had wanted to do a story based upon Fermi’s Paradox, and so I decided I would have to find a way to do so with a pair of ducks. Fermi’s Paradox raises the question of why we have not had any solid evidence for intelligent life with a universe as vast and as old as our own; theoretically, there should have been many alien civilizations and we should see remnants of them, and yet here we are, wondering if such life exists. I had long thought of a possible answer to this question, and I decided to try it out here in a semi-serious but also semi-playful manner. Of course, the story is told in such a way that the reader needs to take the clues I gave to figure out what was left unsaid. How exactly were the ducks able to be so special?

Next is The Innkeeper’s Secret. I wanted to write something within the fantasy genre. I tried to use some of the general motifs in the genre, but to use them for a new kind of story. The idea for it came to me while I was listening to one of my favorite Doctor Who audio stories, The Kingmaker. I borrowed an element of that story, but developed it in my own way. It is a political tale, but, unlike so many, it is one which presents a classical understanding of politics, one far different from what we find in modern democratic states.

What St. Jerome Did Not Know is based, at least in part, upon St Jerome’s Life of St Paul the Hermit. The less I say here, the more effective the story should be. So I will leave it as that. But if you want to know the other side of the story, read St Jerome. He provides us one of the most interesting tidbits of early Christian history, and one which I don’t know how to interpret. I took one possible way to read it and saw what could be made from it if one followed through with that interpretation. There is also an allusion to Pluratch, if one knows what to look for, as well as so many other sources.

Death Awaits Him is not one of my best stories. It is, in fact, one of my earlier stories which I began to write in 2003. Looking through my works on my computer, I found it, and saw it had been left unfinished. I did not remember writing it, though I saw the cues I had put into it for what the ending was going to be like. It is not that highly original a tale, but then again, when I began to write it, I suspect I wasn’t desiring originality as much as practice writing horror stories. There are elements of the story left unanswered, with the hope that the reader can fill in the blanks for themselves. Despite being a relic of my past, there are aspects of it I thought worthwhile, elements which I have not yet used again since.

The short, He and She, was written with a specific style of text in mind. It is, in its own way, a horror story, but one of an unusual kind. The only monster here is an abusive boyfriend. But the horror is there, and it is real. It is the horror of failure.

The Test Subject is theologically following a tradition I do not entirely accept, but one which I think can be used to tell a great science fiction based horror story. Some of my favorite writers like C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Vladimir Solovyov have tackled elements of this theme before, as have several popular horror films. I tried to add my own twist to it, adding some original themes and issues into the mix. I think I have been at least somewhat successful in that goal.

Philip K. Dick’s The Pre-Persons was the inspiration for my The Zombies. I liked the story a great deal; it ended on a note making me want to read more. But Dick didn’t write more. He had said what he wanted to say, even if it got some of his readers angry. So I thought I would pick up the theme and reverse it; instead of dealing with abortion and when life began, I would deal with the aged and when life ended. In both stories, the pro-life message should be seen very easily. I just hope the theme doesn’t detract from the entertainment value of the story itself.

Next, we have three Montague Chillingham stories. The first Montague tale I wrote, Hallowpah, is not included here. It is his introductory story, where he explains how he went from being an atheist into a believer in the supernatural. It was my first Montague story, and it was written as a