Guest post by Charles Ott

Boy, I am some kind of writer! The last of the beatnik iconoclasts, an untrammeled free spirit who cares nothing for the approval of Pecksniffian society! A true literary Cong guerrilla, that’s me, subverting the worldview of the squares and metaphorically tweaking their noses!

I wrote a novel with a Christian character in it. Am I dancing an intoxicated saraband on the edge of the cultural volcano or what, eh?

What’s that? You’re not impressed? How about if I said it was a science fiction novel?
Still not impressed? Perhaps you are not a science fiction fan.

The thing is, it’s darn hard to pull off a Christian character in a book that will appeal to science fiction fans. My book not only has a Christian character, a young black scientist named Brian Covington who is a devout church goer, but it opens in a black church with the choir rockin’ out gospel music (with Covington whapping the tambourine and bellowing it out like a natural man). I’ve had a couple of friends, people who are close enough that I can lean on them to read the book, tell me they would never have finished even the first chapter if they didn’t know it was written by me. The whole church thing just puts them off that much.

Some SF fans are Christians or have an open-minded view about religion, but as a group, they tend toward rationalism, secularism, and skepticism of all religion. I set myself the challenge of writing an SF book with a Christian character who is neither a boob nor a villain, and making it still palatable to the science fiction fans. I’m not sure I’ve succeeded.

I need to acknowledge that out here in reality-land, the Church has a lot to answer for. Christians are often judgmental, puritanical and insensitive. If they’re not taking a nosy interest in women’s sex lives, they’re denying evolution or complaining about same-sex marriage or getting ready for the Rapture. Don’t even get me started on the Westboro Unpleasant Baptist jerks, or the fools canoodling around with rattlesnakes. Moreover, a lot of us these days don’t see a basic difference between Christian fundamentalists and ISIS, or haven’t forgotten the Crusades or Jim Jones (the guy whose followers drank that poisoned Kool-Aid). When we think of organized religion, that’s often what comes to mind.

In science fiction, religion rarely plays any positive role. There are exceptions, of course: Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is, to my taste, the best and most lovable novel about the Catholic Church ever written. James Blish’s A Case of Conscience is an excellent science-fiction novel that turns on abstruse points of theology, perfect for nerds like me, and there are others. But in general, religions in SF are dismal theocracies, or silly congregations of know-nothings who obstruct honest research, or archaeological relics from a forgotten age or primitive cults.

But the main thing that religions are in science fiction is absent. The exemplar for this is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – Tolkien was a devout Christian but Christianity had no logical place in Middle Earth. He couldn’t make his characters Christians and couldn’t bear to let them be anything else, so in all the brilliantly rendered world of Middle Earth, nobody has any religion at all. Other SF books are full of future societies that span galaxies, without a church to be seen in anywhere in the landscape.

This is just plain false-to-fact. No human society has ever existed without at least a portion of the population devoted to some religion.

So here are some things I think I know about how to insert a character with a Christian or other faith into a science-fiction story:

• First, there are really only two ways to play a character with faith. He can be a hypocrite or at least somebody who goes to church but has never thought too deeply about it. America and Western Europe are full of Christians like this. But otherwise, if his faith is important to him, your character’s religion must be an integral part of his life, not just a “funny hat” for him to wear. His faith has to show up in his daily actions, most of his thoughts and all of his reflective moments.
• It is sudden death for a Christian character to attempt any proselytization of the other characters. Seriously, don’t even get near this: it will instantly stigmatize your story as “Christian Fiction” which is a very bad thing to be called unless that’s the market you’re going for.
• A character who is Christian must speak for himself and say what he actually thinks. Relating someone else’s doctrine gets tedious. Also, even a devout Christian isn’t going to remember or say more than a couple of verses from the Bible. The same thing applies to an invented religion: your character must believe in himself and be willing to explain it.
• You, as the author, should be able to articulate why every speech made by a religious character is there. Who is he talking to, how much would they already know about church doctrine, why is he saying what he’s saying? Make sure every line of dialog has a story purpose and is not put in just to get in your two-cents worth of opinion on religion. (I may have violated this one myself.)
• If you are inventing a religion, it should have consequences. That is, a realistic religion should provide for something bad to happen to non-believers, and something good to happen to believers.
• Above all, a character with religion works only if he’s a well-developed character without it. Religious faith is part of the whole man, not the man himself.

So if you do all of these good things, will your story or novel be accepted by the SF fans? I’m not making any guarantee. I do say, though, that the effort’s well worth trying.

About the Author

Charles Ott is the author of Hard Science Fiction like The Floor of the World (2013). The Chicago area resident is a regular NaNoWriMo participant and leads W.H.I.R.L.Y., a local novel workshopping group.