Episode Details

Christian fans want to build bigger audiences for fantastical stories. Yet how might we help our Christian family and friends share in this happiness? How can we help transform Christian deserts into thriving lands that love excellent fantastical fiction? Here’s a hint: we can’t wait for “the chosen ones” to come along and defeat the darkness and save the land. Instead, we actually need to skip the fantasies and borrow from sci-fi, and commit to the multi-generational project of “terraforming” our churches, families, and Christian subcultures.

Prelude: assumptions

• This material is inspired by Lorehaven’s last cover story, “Only the Beginning of the Adventure.”
• Some people think we “really could use” more fantastic stories.
• Whether these come from Christians or not is immaterial, right?
• We think differently: to cultivate imaginations better, we need fantastic stories.
• We need them outside the Church yet we need them inside the Church.
• They get great results (versus political obsessions). Better: they glorify Jesus.
• That’s our mission at Lorehaven. It’s why we’re upgrading. New writers, etc.
• Authors and writer groups supply the what. Much of what we do is the why.

Read the original article in Lorehaven‘s last issue: “Only the Beginning of the Adventure.”

Trope 1: ‘The Chosen One’ saves the land

• For a new year, and success of Christian-made fantasy, I see two big tropes.
• This one is The Chosen One. We await special authors who’ll save the land.
• By “the land” we mean either “Christian lands,” or general popular culture.
• We say, “If Only we had Chosen One Christians in mainstream popular culture.”
• If we do get another Chosen One, that person will likely get all the attention.
• Our more recent Chosen Ones were basically Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, and the Left Behind series authors.
• Peretti’s novels explored spiritual warfare; readers considered this an Important Topic
• Note our podcast episode about This Present Darkness, and Peretti’s own 1997 interview
• The Left Behind authors explored the end times; readers ranked this also an Important Topic
• Ted Dekker seems to be an outlier, yet his first books were coauthored started with an Important Leader (Bill Bright)
• They all created fantastic stories, yet got more attention due to their perceived Importance.
• Yes, we like authors who seem like “chosen ones,” such as