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/
January 4, 2016
A Wacky Tale About Crosses In Way - Outer - Space
A Review of This Stellar Guild Series Book:
Mike Resnick with Tina Gower INCI (Arc Manor, 2015
175 pp $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-61242-266-4
Reviewer: Forrest W. Schultz
This book is set in way-outer-space and so far out into the future that the people there are unaware of any religious sacrifices other than Christ's on the Cross, i.e. they know nothing about pagan religions conducting animal and human sacrifices, nor of Norse mythology in which the god Odin sacrifices himself on a tree. In the Christianity we know today it is a heresy to believe that any sacrifice other than Christ's is salvifically efficacious, but in the Christianity in the far out future of the book under review heresy is to believe that there even WERE any other sacrifices (!!), so that missionary Joshua Barker is called a heretic when he claims to have evidence that extraterrestrials sacrificed one of their own on a cross, a picture of which is displayed on the front cover, which needs to be seen to really appreciate the humor of this !! (It is also good for ridiculing the notion of intelligent extraterrestrial life!)
There is also humor in the other main character of the story, the iconoclastic journalist Gar Matthews, who among other things, talks to the computer on his space ship as though it were human, and who provides a dramatic climax to the tale when he is crucified as a martyr, which, by the way, pokes fun at one thing Christianity does regard as a heresy, namely the martyr theory of Christ's crucifixion!
Information on the Stellar Guild series concept is found in Mike Resnick's introduction and also at http://www.phoenixpick.com/
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