Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during my first feeble attempts at writing science fiction, I sometimes encountered members of the Church who objected to science fiction about the future because “the Millennium will have come by then.” In their view, for me to write about something happening a hundred years from now was essentially a denial of faith — unless, of course, the story took place during the Millennium.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s because we managed to get past April 6 of A.D. 2000, but I haven’t heard that objection recently. (Back in about 1994, I was ward Sunday School president when the Gospel Doctrine teacher explained to the class that, according to the Doctrine & Covenants, the Second Coming would occur on April 6, 2000. He did not, however, specify the hour.) Still, at that time I wasn’t sure how to respond to such criticism.<\/p>\n
So, early in the spring of 1991, I emailed Orson Scott Card to ask how he would respond. (Yes, there was email back in 1991, even though I hadn’t yet heard of the Internet. OSC and I were both members of the Prodigy online service.) He was gracious enough to answer me. And while the particular issue of imminent millennialism as an objection to science fiction seems to have faded, the general points he made are still relevant.<\/p>\n
Therefore, with his permission, I am reprinting his response here:<\/p>\n
From: ORSON SCOTT CARD
\nSubject: SF & Mormonism
\nSent on: 04\/07 [1991] at 4:32 PM<\/p>\nI regard such criticism as deep silliness, but the polite answer you
\ngive to people like that is, “But I’m not writing prophecy. I’m
\nwriting fiction. That means that the reader knows from the beginning
\nthat I’m just making it up. It’s like a game, and nobody expects it to
\ncome true. At the same time, I try to show the truth about the way
\nhuman beings are, no matter what era or location my stories take place
\nin.” Kind of a long answer, but it should help them understand that
\nyou’re quite serious about your fiction, but not at all serious about
\n“predicting the future.”<\/p>\nThis is one of the worst misunderstandings of science fiction that
\npeople have – even some sci-fi writers who should know better seem to
\nthink that science fiction has proven its value if we happen to get a
\nprediction right. How silly. Ray Bradbury’s Mars stories have great
\nvalue, even though they have always been dead wrong about the nature
\nof the red planet. Likewise, your stories aren’t being set up in
\ncompetition with Joseph Smith’s prophecies: rather you are trying to
\nenlighten your readers about life.<\/p>\nIn the meantime, just between you and me, I’d be just FASCINATED to
\nknow how your LDS friends know that “the millenium will have come by
\nthen.” After all, Christ said that NO MAN knows the day and the hour
\nof his return. So what’s their source? The same source that had so
\nmany people SURE that blacks wouldn’t receive the priesthood till
\nafter the millennium? I always worry about Mormons who think they know
\nwhat’s on God’s desk calendar!
\n-best,
\nosc<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during my first feeble attempts at writing science fiction, I sometimes encountered members of the Church who objected to science fiction about the future because “the Millennium will have come by then.” In their view, for me to write about something happening a hundred years from now was essentially a denial of faith — unless, of course, the story took place during the Millennium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,55],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-1909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn","category-news-politics","tag-popular-culture-and-media"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5663,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909\/revisions\/5663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}