Hello, is somebody going to answer my question?:
> What is Orson Scott Card famous for in the Mormon church
> other than his novels and short stories?
Well, it could be his musical
It could be that:
This information taken from his website.
Or it could be something else that the Church holds to be important.
I don’t know - what is it?
Two novels which spring to mind are Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and Whit by Iain Banks. In both, the particular religious sect (evangelism in Oranges and a weird cult in Whit ) is shown in a bad light, but the faith of the characters is not. I believe Oranges is strongly autobiographical. Both excellent reads, IMHO.
Louise.
Another note on Orson Scott Card, his book of short stories (which tell a big story) called “The Folk of the Fringe” deals with a post-apocalypse society where Mormons migrate to Salt Lake City, the new capital of the world. Mormons and christianity don’t usually interest me, but this was really really good
A Canticle for Liebowitz, a science fiction novel by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
To Play The Fool by Laurie King also has a religious fool as a sympathetic main character. He’s unorthodox, but good, in other words, my kind of person. The detective in this book is a lesbian who lives with her partner in San Francisco, and she has appeared in other detective novels by Laurie King. I’d recommend any of them, but this one is probably my favorite.
CJ
Orson Scott Card also wrote the script for the annual pageant in New York, but I’ve never been to it. As far as I know, he’s mainly known as an SF author to LDS people, too. LDS bookstores carry his novels Stone tables (about Moses) and the “Women of Genesis” books. Every once in a while, he writes an interesting essay or commentary.
So, Wendell, as a lifelong Mormon and big OSC fan, my answer to your question is “um, I’m not sure.” If it helps, his dad was my MIL’s seminary teacher in high school, and she remembers little Scotty as a fast-moving toddler and trial to his mother… 
Paulo Coelho’s The Valkyries is about a Catholic mystic and his wife, who is a more conventional Catholic; both of their faiths are presented very positively. (The book is pseudo-autobiographical.)
I know Katherine Kurtz has already been mentioned; one of her early books, Lammas Night, is about a Wiccan coven and a semi-secular Anglican during WWII, and presents both faiths in a positive light, although it’s somewhat more sympatheic to the Wiccans.
King published the original in 1978, then an expanded edition containing all the stuff he liked but had to leave out the first time to make the book commercial in 1990/1.
Since nobody’s mentioned them, David Gemmell has written three novels about Jon Shannow, a deeply religious pilgrim-cum-bounty hunter who wanders a post-apocalyptic world in search of Jerusalem.
Christopher Stasheff has a whole pile of sci-fi/fantasy books with a heavy Roman Catholic bias (although, having read them, I’m not convinced he’s done the Church any favors).
Well, it’s probably not the religion you people are thinking of, but many dragonlance characters, for example Goldmoon(Appearing in Chronicles, War of Souls, and a few others I can’t remember) who is a very devout priestess of Mishkahal, and Paladine is blessed with Revered daughter Crysania(Legends, a bit role in Summer Flame, quite a few short stories), Elistan(Chronicles, Legends) and almost all of the knights of Solamnia as followers.
For EXTREMELY conservative Catholic fiction, you can’t beat Michael O’Brien’s novels published by Ignatius Press… I really enjoyed most of them. And then there’s Malachi Martin, of course… Windswept House… but for both O’Brien and Martin you may need to BE Catholic or be aware of the “AmChurch Conspiracy”…
O’Brien’s are the best reads of the two, however - very well written and filled with piety (although the piety is a bit self-conscious at times). They’re kind of a more well-written, more engaging Left Behind series…
As an on-the-fence Catholic, I enjoyed the O’Brien books because I know both sides of the controversy - if you’re not Catholic, you may just not get it, however.
-bbb-
Limiting my choices to the OP’s request for post-1980 books, I thought of the Sufi Muslim characters in Kim Stanley Robinson’s SF novels Red Mars and The Years of Rice and Salt. They came across as sympathetic characters.
James Joyce favorable to religion? Oh, come on now. You haven’t read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it’s obvious. :rolleyes:
FriarTed—YES! Charles Williams is an excellent call. I wish there were more Charles Williamses in the world. But he was one of a kind. Nowhere else will you find such deeply spiritual, and at the same time, intensely bizarre Christianity. Williams lived in a time and place where original thinkers could strike out on their own and and conduct original explorations wherever they led. Christianity in America nowadays has become so much more formulaic, unimaginative, and straightjacketed, what with creeps like Pat Robinson and Jerry Fallwell and their ilk. Charles Williams was not afraid to pursue mystical occult Christianity into the farthest realms of his imagination. His understanding of Dante’s religion vis-à-vis Beatrice was something like Tantric yoga. Imagine what Christianity today could be like if Charles Williams had been more widely read and understood instead of a largely forgotten lonesome voice in the wilderness.
And he has shown some science-fiction readers a side of Mormonism that they may never have seen before. I am a longtime science-fiction fan and a Presbyterian. I also think that Orson Scott Card is the best living writer still actively publishing science fiction. One of my favorite works by Card is The Folk of the Fringe, which paints the Mormon religion and culture in a very favorable light. I am not buying into Mormonism at all, but I especially “enjoy the spiritual aspects of Card’s writings” because they have helped me learn about an interesting culture that I had not understood before.
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned Sinclair Lewis’ masterwork Elmer Gantry. It deals with both sincere religious belief, religious self-deception and religious hucksterism. It is a brilliant novel, wonderfully written about a fascinating subject…Granted, it’s not science fiction, but what can I say? It is one of the best novels I have ever read.
TV
Jomo Mojo writes:
> Williams lived in a time and place where original thinkers could
> strike out on their own and and conduct original explorations
> wherever they led. Christianity in America nowadays has
> become so much more formulaic, unimaginative, and
> straightjacketed, what with creeps like Pat Robinson and Jerry
> Fallwell and their ilk.
Are Robertson and Falwell actually that popular today, or do they just have better PR agents? They both strike me as having become famous mostly because some TV producer said, “Hey, we need to have some religious figure interviewed on our show about this hot topic. Who do we have?”, and then a beleagured researcher with no real interest or knowledge about religion said, “Well, here’s a PR flyer from some organization headed by some preacher who likes to froth at the mouth with his opinions on this subject. Let’s put him on the show and have him go through his rant.”
Charles Williams isn’t unknown these days. I’ve been reading his books for the past thirty years. If you get into C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien seriously enough, at some point you will be told to try Williams too, since he was a friend of theirs. Furthermore, Williams was hardly a particularly popular writer back in 1930’s and 1940’s England either. He has always been somewhat of a cult item.
After reading Humphrey Carpenter’s group biography The Inklings*, I had to check out Charles Williams. I think the section on Williams in The Inklings is probably the best introduction to his religious/occultist thought and how he put it into his novels. Carpenter has a deep understanding of what Williams was trying to say and presents it fascinatingly.
Wendell Wagner, I just named Fallwell and Robertson as the poster boys, as shorthand for what is going wrong with Christianity these days—not only Christianity, but just about all religions these days, in which fundamentalism is turning people cruder, coarser, more hateful and intolerant. This tendency is trying to enforce a stultifying conformity on the faithful, eliminate the asking of questions, and keep the sheep herded into their narrow little pens. Look at the fundies Bush and Usamah trying to divide the world between them and mutually squeeze out all the non-fundies who have no place in their schemes. People who cannot accept that are being driven out of religion altogether and wind up atheists or agnostics. (Like Tariq Ali, author of The Clash of Fundamentalisms.) Personally, I am now struggling to maintain my faith in the face of all this ugliness posing as religion.
The world is becoming inhospitable for religious people who want to keep open minds and explore further dimensions of the unknown. People like William Blake and Charles Williams, two English originals. I didn’t say that Williams was a big hit at any time or place; I know he has always been a specialized taste for a discriminating few. But at least a boldly original thinker like him could exist in England in the 1930s and '40s. Conditions today seem unfavorable for that sort of thinker to arise. Please prove me wrong. Is there anyone today comparable to Charles Williams? I hope I am wrong.
all of a kind family, a set of books about a jewish family in turn-of-the-century new york city.
william x kienzle’s series about a catholic priest in detroit.
harry kemelman’s rabbi small series.
FriarTed -
May I ask where you found the Charles Williams books? I cannot locate them anywhere, and I have wanted to read one since I first heard them described.
Regards,
Shodan
Here’s a bibliography of the works of the Inklings:
http://www.mythsoc.org/inklings.html
Williams’s books have been in print pretty much continuously. You can order them from any of the large online bookstores.