In my series of blog posts for AML about Latter-day Saints and speculative fiction, I coined the idea of the “Mormon hat tip.” This idea is based on a complaint that Michael Collings made about Orson Scott Card’s science fiction in a Dialogue article: he claimed that Card included throwaway references to LDS ideas and culture because they were demanded by the audience but that he didn’t develop them into any interesting. I have relabeled these references as hat tip to reframe them in a slightly more positive way. A hat tip is a reference that the Latter-day Saint audience will instantly recognize, but that remains undiscovered to a general audience. It’s a wink or nod from the author to our shared culture.
I’ve obviously been delayed in my plans to post about these references in Brandon Sanderson’s first batch of secret projects. I still intend to come back to those. But I came across a hat tip yesterday in my re-reading of Wind and Truth that struck me so profoundly that I was compelled to come and post about it.
It seems to be almost universally agreed by fans that perhaps the best plot line in the otherwise flawed fifth Stormlight book is Adolin Kholin’s defense of a city against an overwhelming siege. It’s grimy, depressing, and stunningly hopeful in ways that are reminiscent of Kaladin’s original Bridge Four plotline. What makes the plotline work is Adolin’s internal wrestle with his own sense of inadequacy, which relates strongly to his lack of magical powers in a world full of near demigods and his father’s own journey from warlord to noble, nearly divine leader.
Adolin rages against the idolization of his father and of radiant oaths in general, a nice contrast to the importance of oaths in the rest of the magic ecosystem of the books. He tries to draw a distinction between the idea of oaths as unbreakable and inflexible vows and promises as intentions that can flex with changing circumstances.
Whether this distinction works or not is up for debate (Shardcast wasn’t a fan of it), but one of the examples that Adolin uses to draw the distinction will be familiar to anyone who has attended BYU:
“Too many people,” Adolin said as his armorers began to put on his Plate, “think the oath, and not what it means, is the important part. I heard something in one of my lessons once, from an ardent. About a man who took an oath to sit in a chair until told he could stand–and he stayed there for ten years.”
“Wow,” Yawnagawn said. “That’s impressive.”
“It’s idiocy,” Adolin said. “Pardon, Yanagawn–everyone celebrated him, but it’s pure idiocy. You know what I’d admire? A man who gave an oath, then realized it was storming stupid and broke it–apologized–and moved on with his life, determined not the make that kind of mistake again.” (Wind and Truth 500)
To me, this is a clear reference to a famous quote from Karl G. Maeser, the first principal of Brigham Young Academy (which would eventually evolve into BYU):
Karl G. Maeser was known not only for his intelligence and teaching skills but also for his humility and integrity. He said: “Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I may be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No, never! I’d die first!” (quoted in Ernest L. Wilkinson, The President Speaks, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year [5 October 1960], 15).
There’s a statue of Maeser near the Honors building on BYU campus that is named after him. It’s pretty typical for some BYU students to have drawn a chalk circle around the statue because the quote is so well known. Or at least it used to be, when I did my undergrad in the early 2000s and presumably when Sanderson was here in the 90s as well. Lately, I feel like there’s been a bit of a reversal on Brother Maeser’s commitment to integrity in the same direction as Adolin’s criticism–that fanatical commitment to your word can be dangerous and even contrary to a commitment to doing what’s right. You can find criticisms of this story online in more progressive LDS spaces, like this 2016 post from Blair Hodges on By Common Consent.
I’ll try to continue to post these Mormon hat tips in smaller chunks as I come across them, though I’m pretty busy. I’m not sure what to do with these references yet, but I think they’re interesting to observe. Post a comment below if you noticed other LDS references in Sanderson’s recent works.
Once again, I’ve fallen behind in blogging, and I have no doubt it’s going to get worse as I work on my thesis over the next few months. But to catch up you up on the event most relevant to this blog, I attended Dragonsteel at the beginning of December with my two teenagers, who are also huge Sanderson fans. We didn’t cosplay ourselves but had to take photos with some of the amazing cosplayers we saw there. Also pictured is my son’s soul caster: immediately after putting it on, his first instinct was to do the Thanos snap, so I guess that puts “the Lesson” into an interesting perspective.
And of course, we have some of the cool merchandise pictured like the collectible card game that absolutely broke the convention. My boys have always loved the con games at Dragonsteel, but this one really went over the top. Through some hard work, we managed to collect all the story cards and even a good number of the more rare cards (even Heralds 7 and 9!). There was a really interesting panel on philosophy and religion in the series–I still definitely need to get in touch with the panelists about some of their ideas. As always, I enjoyed Brandon’s book launch speech, and the excerpt from the new non-Cosmere short story to be released. I’m finding it interesting that Sanderson keeps returning to write in the police/detective work genre (see also Snapshot, Legion), but I suppose it makes sense when you consider how many of his fantasy plots are also information-based. Definitely planning to come back next year, when hopefully things will be a little more chill since it won’t be a Stormlight year. (One can dream, right?)
Besides the convention, the end of the semester went well. I wrote an interesting paper on the uses of imagination for learning about God, as well as the dangers thereof, which I’ve already submitted to a conference. I finished my internship teaching persuasive writing and made a first pass at a teaching portfolio, which makes me feel like the end of grad school is in sight. There’s just one semester left, during which I’m writing my thesis, teaching two classes, and taking one class on women in Arthurian legend. I am savoring my graduate experience but also kind of ready for a short break. Orchestrating Christmas for a family while trying to write papers and grade was not very enjoyable.
As if that wasn’t enough to do, my conference schedule for this next semester is also packed. Here’s a summary of where you’ll find me this winter:
Feb 13-15: LTUE Symposium (Provo, UT) – I’ll be presenting my paper on LDS premortal theology in The Maze Runner and Matched, as well as a paper on The Mandalorian and religious clothing with my coauthor and podcast cohost Carl Cranney. I’ll also be on two panels discussing Dune and the work of Hayao Miyazaki.
Mar 19-22: ICFA (Orlando, FL) – I’m presenting the first half of my master’s thesis on the postsecular portrayal of religion in the Stormlight Archive.
April 4-5: Eaton Conference on Speculative Fiction (Riverside, CA) – I’ll be presenting the second half of my master’s thesis on secular and religious ways of knowing in the Stormlight Archive.
I’ve got a few more presentations lined up for spring at the MHA and MSH/AML conferences, but we’ll save those for another time.
As for my reading, I was forced to declare bankruptcy on actually writing full reviews for most of my reading for the past few months, so I’ve instead ordered them by my star rating on Goodreads, with a few sporadic notes below.
Speculative Fiction
5-star
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis – Still my favorite of the Narnia books.
4-star
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis – A necessary step to get my kids to Dawn Treader and Silver Chair. There are points in this book that are more pointedly allegorical than Lion, but also points that are more neo-medieval-classical than the other books as well. I didn’t remember nearly so much dancing!
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson – Re-listened to this in prep for Wind and Truth. It’s the only one in the series that I never went back to since first reading it. The technical details felt a bit more organic this time around, but I still find the Kaladin plotline to be a bit dull and stretched out (though the final scenes are excellent). I would rather have Sanderson drop a few of the characters and actually focus on the ones who are the nominally stars of the book. (This problem gets even more intense in Wind and Truth.) However, it wasn’t as much of a trainwreck as I remember, so that’s something.
The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke – Really liked this except that it was too short. I would read a whole novel about this.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini – Overall, a fun SF book with some interesting remixes of ideas that have been done before. One thing that made the book tough for me to get through was the way that it keeps changing the entire conception of the plot every couple of chapters. You think you are reading one type of SF, then it becomes another, and just as you get used to it, it changes again. I got rather annoyed and resisted caring about our third set of characters, thinking the author would soon dump them. But this third set of characters turns out to stay put for the rest of the book, so not caring about them made it hard for me to want to keep reading. Something about the structure of the novel is just a bit off for me. The ending “standalone with series potential” ending kind of annoyed me after all the other switches the book pulled on me, but once I was done with it, I realized it made sense. Still, I don’t know that I’ll follow up with future books.
3-star
The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks
Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson – I am working on a longer review, plus writing my thesis on the series thus far, but here are a few initial thoughts:
The book doesn’t justify its length. At a panel with the editors at Dragonsteel Nexus 2025, they said they were proud of how they used typography tricks to avoid having to cut anything to fit the maximum page restrictions. I think this was a mistake; the book should have received more developmental editing. Perhaps this is a hazard of all authors that get too famous to delay publication in order to get the book right. I hope in the future, Dragonsteel avoids assigning launch dates before the book is finished (probably impossible).
The book is also marred by the heavy influence of current therapy culture. Mental health has always been a focus of the series, but it’s been done in a universal timeless way until Rhythm of War. Even the Rhythm of War version looks subtle compared to the therapy-worldview statements in this book, and not just in the Kaladin, Therapist to the Gods, plotline. I worry that this book will read as extremely dated in a decade.
On the positive side, this is Sanderson’s most fascinating book from a theological perspective. More elaborations to come, but at minimum, we have a real Paradise-Lost-ish explication of the Mormon Satan and an interesting argument for the need for an atonement. Also lots of interesting implications about the importance of belief in character’s lives, especially those who aren’t traditional believers. And Jasnah’s development in this book makes me extremely interested in where Sanderson intends to go with the character from here.
I am about to embark on a re-read to prepare for all the writing I need to do about this book, so I’ll report back with more considered opinions eventually
Fiction
5-star
Silence by Shūsaku Endō – Read this book again for the graduate class on divine silence. I’m pretty sure this is my fourth time reading it, some assigned and some by choice. This time around, I saw a lot of more of Endo’s intentionality in setting up Rodrigues’s conflict with God’s seeming silence in the face of suffering. I also read the ending as a lot more hopeful than I did as a college freshman. This time, I assumed that Rodrigues maintained his faith even though he was forced to remain silent about it, a reflection of God’s own silence towards the Japanese martyrs. I saw more hints in the strange economic log of the last chapter that Rodrigues kept secretly practicing his faith, especially with regards to Kiichijiro. Perhaps this is just contamination from watching the (amazing) film, but it just seemed so obviously intended to be read this way, which would surprise my college freshman self who read it as absolutely atheist in its ending.
Nonfiction
5-star
The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ– Finishing this week with the kids for our family scripture study. On to church history next year!
4-star
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis – Still very readable even after all these years. Whereas in the past I’ve really focused on the educational implications, with the recent rise of AI language bots, the last chapter reads as very prophetic and important.
Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair by Christian Wiman
Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil
Cup My Days Like Water by Abigail Carroll
All Manner of Things: Meditations on Suffering, Death, and Eternal Life by Jeffrey A. Vogel
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days: Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand: 1846–1893 – The release of volume 4 finally inspired to make my way through all the volumes of Saints. This one does an excellent job of exploring the early days of Deseret and Utah, and doesn’t shy away from the tricky stories of polygamy.
3-star
Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis by Sarah Bachelard
The World of Silence by Max Picard
Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross – Read bits and pieces of this in three different translations, none of which were easier than others.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach – Fun read for Halloween season. I liked this better than my previous Mary Roach readings, though she’s still not my favorite writer. Some chapters were more interesting than others, but some were more nauseating than I could handle. Still, I have brought up some of the interesting facts I learned here in conversation, so I suppose the book worked well enough.
I’ve been hard at work on school things and some extra projects, so this blog is continually neglected. But I thought that this reflection, composed for my class on divine silence, might be interesting to you even though it’s not connected to speculative fiction aside from Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which comes in at the end.
I am fascinated by the way that Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone describes humanity’s strange attachment to its pains and limitations. In the introduction, he exactly nails the feelings of many young writers: “When you’re young, if you’re at all ‘artistic,’ despair has an alluring quality. You affect it, deploy it, stroke it gently like a sedated leopard” (3). He speaks of a young writer “attached to” his “toy despair” (57). This description makes me worried that he has seen the emotional, self-absorbed poetry I scratched into a small notebook in my lonely high school years. But Wiman generalizes this beyond just the romantic poets: he claims, “We are our wounds, it seems, and without them will not exist” (29). Quoting Emily Dickinson, he says that “A prison gets to be a friend” (59).
This seems like a strange idea: why would we be attached to something that limits us, that causes us pain? Yet it’s so clearly the way our current culture works. Many young people self-diagnose various mental health issues to find a sense of belonging to an online community of people that is both misunderstood and marginalized. (I myself have been tempted by various videos explaining how female autistics are different and rarely correctly diagnosed, wondering if this could explain why I found it difficult to sustain friendships. I always ultimately decide that I understand people too well for this to be the case.) We seek to excuse our current behavior as something conditioned by past traumas inflicted upon us. The other week, I watched in mild fascination a woman in a YouTube short series who explained all the future behaviors of an adult based on the role they fulfilled in their family of origin. Were you (like me) the oldest child, the one who was responsible and never needed parental support, who became a third parent to the younger children? Then you would inevitably be someone who had trouble being emotionally intimate, who finds partners who need caring for, who never lets yourself have a bad day. Honestly, guilty on all counts, which is why this stuff is so insidious. By finding a prison we can hide within or a wound we can define ourselves by, we absent ourselves from responsibility for our present actions. We negate the ability or need to change. (Is this that different from blaming the devil (or God?) for our actions?)
From this perspective it’s easy to worry that the idea of Christian peace, “the notion that one could make a clean break with the furies of one’s time and mind,” (58-59) is a false optimism, a toxic positivity in the modern vernacular. How can we simply decide not to be affected by all these contexts that clearly affect us? Yet I’m reminded of something someone told me as a young adult which changed how I thought about my own wounds, my own prison: “As soon as we realize that all our problems come from the way we were raised, we become accountable for those problems and can no longer blame them on our parents.” Weren’t Laman and Lemuel raised by the same parents who raised Nephi and Jacob? All of them were dragged away from their home and suffered the privations of eating raw meat in the wilderness. Our experiences affect us, but they are far from being deterministic. Wasn’t Mormon raised in a godless society that seemed to know no accountability for its own actions? His parents certainly don’t make an appearance when he’s taken aside as a ten-year-old by Ammaron and entrusted with the future guardianship of the spiritual records. Were Mormon’s parents absorbed in the spirit of their times? Did they also feel the “sorrowing of the damned, because the Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin?” (Mormon 2:13) How did Mormon choose such a different path from the prevailing circumstances of his time?
an illustration of the dwarf and the tragedian in The Great Divorce, found here, artist unknown
Wiman finds some answers to this dilemma in the same place that I also found them: in the writings of CS Lewis. In Wiman’s poem “The Eft,” he references Lewis’s The Great Divorce. He specifically looks at the characters of “the dwarf and the tragedian,” who are actually one character split into two people. The tragedian insists that all of his troubles are caused by a lack of love and acceptance from his wife, while the dwarf becomes emotionally stunted by this refusal to accept responsibility. Wiman calls their state “the pleasure pain becomes when it becomes a thing to wield/a means of extracting meaning from someone else’s heart/when your own has run dry” (258). He resolves the poem by quoting Lewis again, who is in turn relating the words of his own mentor George McDonald in his fictional Virgil-guide form: “Hell is a state of mind—/ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind,/left to itself, every shutting up of the creature/within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell” (259). The only way to escape the prison we create of our own circumstances is to seek a connection with God, for “Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself./All that is fully real is Heavenly” (259). I had much the same realization reading Lewis as a college student: the unique suffering that the artistic youth becomes attached to is an illusion. All sinners are the same. But all saints become more and more themselves by letting go of their small obsessions, their little hurts, and coming fully into relation with God.
I don’t know why I’m constantly behind on these book reviews, but it seems to be a fact of life, so I suppose I should stop apologizing for it. August started out with my daughter was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s a big milestone for our family since she’s the youngest child. Now they are all in. The baptism itself was a really special event where both her grandfathers gave talks about their testimony of the gospel. Thanks to all the family who came to support her.
Also in August, my mom and I also went to go see Further Up and Further In, Max McLean’s sequel play to The Most Reluctant Convert. I didn’t think it was quite as thematically unified as the first play though he does a good job of piecing together CS Lewis’s works from the period surrounding the second World War. It was really interesting to see him portray Lewis in person. I sent the info about the show to the BYU campus event coordinator; I’m really hoping to get the show (or both of them!) to campus.
September saw the start of a new semester. I’m only taking one seminar class, a theory-based course on the concept of divine silence–meaning our reaction to not receiving the answers or comfort we may desire from God. You’ll see the beginnings of the reading for that class reflected somewhat in the reviews below.
I’m also starting work on my master’s thesis, which right now is going to be an examination of the Stormlight Archive as a post-secular epic fantasy. My prospectus was approved by my committee, and I’m having an absolute blast doing the research for it so far, which I think is a good sign that I’ve found the right topic to discuss. I’m also teaching first-year writing again and training to teach advanced persuasive writing. It’s been an interesting experience so far working with juniors and seniors instead of freshmen; it’s a lot easier to fill out a discussion because they always seem to have opinions on what to say.
On the research front, Carl and I handed in the final draft of our paper on religious clothing in the Mandalorian. We’ll be presenting that work locally at LTUE in February, and I’m thinking I may submit it to ICFA this year as well (either that and my thesis research).
This weekend, I’m presenting at VICFA, delayed slightly due to the hurricanes in Florida. The theme is on “Pantheology in World-Building and Magic Systems,” so I’ll be presenting my paper about LDS premortal theology in YA dystopias. I’m excited to see lots of other research combining an interest in real-world beliefs and fantastical literature as well. Perhaps I’ll write up a report for the blog, if you’re interested.
As Michael Collings noted in his classic article on depictions of Latter-day Saints in speculative fiction, one of the science fiction common uses of the Church is as a governmental structure in post-apocalyptic fiction. Once the world has been destroyed, governments fall and alternate structures take its place. When the western United States is mentioned, that usually means a casual mention of the Church maintaining order. (Orson Scott Card did a take of this trope from an LDS perspective in Folk of the Fringe.)
What Collings didn’t note was that the same idea carries over into many books in the alternate history genre. Alternate history is an interesting part of the speculative fiction universe in that these books don’t necessarily contain the same reality-breaking tropes typical of science fiction or fantasy: no aliens, robots, or magic. (Though some do: shoutout to Lee Allred’s Clockwork Deseret universe.) Instead, they speculate by changing a key moment in history and projecting possible societal changes forward. This creates a world that feels speculative, even though it may be entirely realistic (or to be more precise, mimetic). Alternate history novels often focus on a different ending to some key moment in history like the Civil War (eg Bring the Jubilee) or WWII (eg The Man in the High Castle). if America is part of the setting, there’s often a throwaway reference to some kind of state or territory called Deseret out in the west.
This brings us to Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford, which won this year’s Sidewise Award for Alternate History. My friend Paul Williams who studies alternate history novels brought this one to my attention. He pointed out that the author is a religious guy (he’s also written a book of Christian apologetics, titled ironically Unapologetic) and that this novel had a small but significant portrayal of an alternate Deseret.
Since the audiobook was currently available through my library, I picked it up and blasted through it fairly quickly. The general premise of the book is that the initial colonizers of the Americas brought over a less virulent strain of smallpox, immunizing many of the indigenous people. The result is a lot more native peoples live through the early colonization era. They form an alliance with the Jesuits, who help them find an acceptable way to syncretize Catholicism with indigenous religions. They travel north and rehabilitate the abandoned native metropolis of Cahokia into a territory largely governed and inhabited by indigenous people (referred to by the unified name of Takata) that eventually join the union as a free state during the Civil War.
From an LDS perspective, we could see this conjecture as similar to the project of the Book of Mormon, which casts the native peoples of America as ancient Christians. There’s a long history of people looking for evidence of Book of Mormon geography to syncretize various drawings and legends with the narrative. Spufford has caught some flack for his syncretism as drawing away from authentic indigenous speculative fiction. Granted that I have no skin in the game, but Spufford’s supposition seems like a reasonable one from a historical perspective. It would hardly be the first time in history that Christianity blended in local religious practices to make itself more successful. I’m thinking about all those Catholic Saints who seem to have been syncretized with local pagan deities, like Brigit/Brigid in Ireland.
Let’s set that aside. Since my wheelhouse is portrayals of Mormons, let’s look at what amounts to a fairly fleshed-out (yet still background) description of the alternate history of the Latter-day Saints. Deseret, Brigham Young, and other Mormon items crop up in the book less than a dozen times, but the pieces still paint an interesting picture:
Apparently, there’s still a restoration of some kind. Joseph Smith doesn’t get a mention, but Brigham Young apparently leads the saints to the west, so Joseph’s presence is implied. However, the reaction to the restoration is modulated by the increased Catholic presence in America. It seems to be more of a “we’ll deal with those heretics later,” rather than “these religious ideas are dangerous now.” It’s the kind of long-term, centuries-rather-than-decades thinking that I’ve come to associate with a Catholic approach.
Polygamy makes it all the way to the 1920s. The story’s present-day newspapers contain headlines about polygamy as a sticking point for the negotiations for Deseret to enter the union.
There’s a Mormon temple that looks like a “pink wedding cake” in the heart of the midwestern city where the story is set. I’m guessing this is based on the Community of Christ temple in Independence, but it’s not really clear. Yet somehow the main body of Latter-day Saints still ended up in the west. I guess with the presence of Cahokia, Nauvoo wouldn’t have been as much of a frontier as it was in our timeline. But why go to Nauvoo? The book is silent on this; it only indicates that the Takata thought their safety was benefitted by separating the white people into warring groups, and thus they aided the Mormons on their journey westward. Presumably, Cahokia’s presence as an independent country also helped them establish Deseret as an independent state. Cahokia decides to join the union in the civil war because they are starting to being outnumbered, while it appears Deseret is still considering, right up to the story’s present.
Brigham Young seems to be much more friendly to natives. There’s a prominent scene in the “palace” of the now-symbolic monarch of Cahokia, which showcases a painting of a native council negotiating with business tycoons over the location of cross-continental railroad lines, and Brigham Young gets a seat at the table. This leads me to . . .
Questionable understanding of LDS sartorial choices. In this painting, Brigham Young is pictured in a prophetic robe embroidered with lightning. (Yes, we have robes, but not those kind, and they presumably wouldn’t have been worn to a political negotiation.) But this could be forgiven as the painting is explicitly historiography; the book draws attention to how the painting inaccurately dolls up each of the native representatives in maximum costume, when the real negotiation was much rougher. But prophetic robes as a Mormon ethnic costume? I suppose it’s better than pioneer garb.
Anyway, I highly recommend Cahokia Jazz all on its own, even if you aren’t interested in the Mormon references. It’s got a compelling detective plot and some interesting things to say about a multi-ethnic Christianity, and there may or may not be some magic going on in the end. Definitely worth your time.
