NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS
Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books
Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258
Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com
A Teenager Goes To Heaven
Swanee Ballman Day Zero (Newnan, GA: Jawbone Publishing Co., 2008)
$13.95 160 pages ISBN-10: 1590941608 ISBN-13: 978-1590941607
Reviewer: Forrest W. Schultz
In this story the reader is constantly reminded that it is indeed a teenager who is being escorted around Heaven by his guardian angel after his death. The speech of this boy, Jason, is peppered with such contemporary teen slang as "bro", "dude", "cool', "freak out", "whacked out", which forms a stark contrast with the ultraserious matters under discussion. I am not sure whether the author is doing this for the purpose of relevance or comic relief or what, but, regardless of the reason, it provides the reader with a tour of Heaven quite different from such previous works as Dante's Paradiso and C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. After all, there is no comedy in The Divine Comedy !
Strictly speaking, though, Day Zero, unlike those stories cast as "tours" of Heaven, is NOT a tour. Jason's angel makes it clear that there are NO tours given of Heaven. The only ones escorted around Heaven, like Jason, are those who are inhabitants of Heaven. If that is so, and it probably is, then it raises interesting questions about the "tours of Heaven" genre. In a sense the reader is being given a "tour" but Jason himself is not, which is a very different thing than what Dante does when he writes of a tour he is given of Heaven (and also of Hell and Purgatory).
To return to the matter of humor in the story under review here, perhaps the funniest thing of all is that in this version of Heaven, if you have any questions about something in history, you can go to this special building where everything that has ever happened in the past is recorded on DVDs!! I am not kidding! The idea of having a completely true history available in Heaven has been noted in many treatments of Heaven both fictional and non-fictional. But having that history recorded on DVDs -- now that is a new one!
Here is another good one. When his sons ask Noah about how the animals will get to the Ark, he replies, "If we build it, they will come!".
In addition to the matter of the humor, another question the reader will have is why the author changed most of the names of the people discussed. Except for Methusaleh and Job and the archangels Gabriel and Michael, all the others have been given different names which are close enough to their real names so that we know who is being referred to, but are not identical with the real names. This is the case with God, Satan, Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Noah & his sons.
It appears that the main point of the story is to show the reader what Heaven is like, and, in so doing, communicate basic principles of Christian theology and morality. Perhaps this was most skillfully done in the account given of the Fall of Adam and Eve. In that episode it is easy for the reader to empathize with Adam and Eve, who are depicted as very real people. In that account you are not just reading about the Fall, you are actually "seeing" it happen. This, I believe, is the point of the book. To make these things more real by seeing them happen rather than just listening to someone explain them.
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