CSFF Blog Tour – Residential Aliens, Day 2

Illustration from Fred Warren's story "Beatitude"

Science fiction seems to be in short supply if we’re talking about stories written from a Christian worldview. Fantasy isn’t plentiful either, though supernatural suspense and supernatural thriller seems to have a bit stronger representation, thanks in large part to what Realms Fiction, a division of Strang Communications, has produced.

Because of the scarcity of speculative fiction, any number of enterprising authors set out to bring to the Christian market the stories so many desired. Bill Snodgrass founded Double Edge Publishing with its accompanying ezines: Sword Review; Dragons, Knights, and Angels; Ray Gun Revival; Haruah; and eventually MindFlights. Frank Creed started the Lost Genre Guild and the Writers Cafe Press. A handful of authors launched this CSFF Blog Tour and the team blog, Speculative Faith. T.W. Ambrose initiated the zine Digital Dragon; Grace Bridges founded Splashdown Books; and Jeff Gerke established Marcher Lord Press.

Undoubtedly there are a number of other endeavors which I’m not familiar with, and sadly some are no longer in existence. However, Lyn Perry’s zine Residential Aliens which CSFF is featuring this month, is going strong. Launched on July 1, 2007, ResAliens has published speculative stories written by over thirty authors, eight of which happen to be members of CSFF.

It is my privilege to point you to those stories in the hope that you’ll take some time this week (perhaps starting now? 🙂 ) to read at least one of each of our members’ stories put out by ResAliens: Brandon Barr, Fred Warren, Grace Bridges, Jeff Chapman, Jessica Thomas, John Ottinger, Mike Lynch, R. L. Copple.

I trust you’ll also visit the other bloggers who are buzzing about ResAliens. Bruce Hennigan has an excellent introductory post. D. G. Davidson (welcome back!) gave a thumbnail review of four of the stories from the archives. Brandon Barr, Jeff Chapman, and Fred Warren all unashamedly pointed readers to their stories (that’s a good thing — if they didn’t like their stories well enough to tell people about them, what would that say? 🙄 )

Tomorrow I’ll give you my review of … well, you’ll just have to come back and see. 😉

Published in: on August 23, 2011 at 11:42 am  Comments (6)  
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6 Comments

  1. On August 23, 2011 at 12:58 pm Fred Warren said:

    …and if I wasn’t proud to have my stories published in Lyn Perry’s fine magazines and anthologies, in the company of many other wonderful tales by some talented authors, I certainly wouldn’t make a point of mentioning it. 🙂

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  2. On August 23, 2011 at 5:29 pm Nissa Annakindt said:

    It’s problematic that there are so few Christian sci-fi writers. I think all too many of us got the impression from our schooling that science and Christianity aren’t compatible. Yet the scientific method and the university system are Christian inventions (I got that from a Catholics-coming-home commercial on EWTN, but I also read a book to that effect once.)

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  3. On August 23, 2011 at 6:01 pm Sarah Sawyer said:

    What a great idea to highlight tour members’ stories! I didn’t realize there were so many.

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  4. On August 23, 2011 at 8:40 pm Jeff Chapman said:

    Thanks for the plug, Rebecca. It’s an honor to be in that list. Was I being that obvious about it in my blog post? : )

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  5. On August 23, 2011 at 10:22 pm Grace Bridges said:

    Hey, many thanks for the shout outs! Much appreciated. Isn’t it so cool that all these things are springing up! It’s an exciting time for our genre.

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  6. On August 24, 2011 at 10:15 am Rebecca LuElla Miller said:

    Thanks, Sarah. Sooooo happy to find so many CSFF’ers to highlight!

    Thanks to each of you for writing well.

    And yes, Fred, my point exactly. It’s a good sign when an author feels happy to tell others where to find his work, I think. If the author doesn’t believe in it, then who else will?

    Nissa, I wonder about the dearth of sci fi writers. I’ve not taken a poll or anything, but I’m under the impression that there are a good number of writers who would love to find a publisher willing to produce science fiction written from a Christian worldview.

    Even Austin Boyd’s impressive near future science fiction, the Mars Hills Classified series, was called adventure or some such tag that distanced it from the fans who would have LOVED it.

    One of the reasons I think a tour like this is so important is to give a voice to those who want science fiction that is not contrary to Christianity. It also points readers to places where they can find stories they want to read and to authors who are laboring to write them.

    Grace, I think the changing times definitely give Christian speculative fiction a chance it didn’t have before. It’s up to us authors now, to write well, and up to all of us who love the genre to get the buzz going.

    Becky

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