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February 19, 2009

Victory Gal

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Glen Angus brings pin-up nose art to life (hat tip to Cpt H).

Not even vaguely related if I'm honest: Catholicism and Protestantism and fantasy and science fiction. Scratching my head at this and wondering what Flea-readers make of it.

The main SF line is ‘Protestant’ in its imaginings, with Catholic impulses providing important counterpoint. Roughly, Protestantism is all about the ‘disenchantment of the world’ and Catholicism is about magic and sacralization. So SF is Protestant and fantasy is Catholic, and the fact that SF is often hard to distinguish from fantasy just goes to show that Protestant and Catholic imaginative impulses can intertwine and do complicated stuff.

If I was grading this the words "complicated stuff" would be circled, connected to the margins with a line and an arrow pointing to the words "need to unpack this". As to the rest, are we meant to believe SF emerges from the "work ethic" as Venus on a half-shell? Though - and fair dues - modern fantasy was defined by Tolkien's Catholic morality and sensibility. If Heinlein was raised Baptist we could be on to something.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at February 19, 2009 04:08 AM

Comments

Nonsense. Sci-fi ain't Protestant. You don't have to look any further than the common thread that runs through much of it, (Mr. Heinlein excepted of course) of the perfectibility of Man. That's pure Secular Humanism.

This finally explains to me why I have always been annoyed to some extent by ST:TNG. Captain Picard was a New Soviet Man.

Posted by: dpatten [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 19, 2009 05:43 PM

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