When News Intersects With Fiction

Yesterday I finished reading S.M. Stirling's The Sword of the Lady, the most recent of his novels set in North America after "the Change." The first three novels--Dies The Fire, The Protector's War, and Meeting at Corvalis form a trilogy that follow five communities that come into being and survive during the ten years after the Change eliminated technology (electricity, gunpowder, and even steam power above a certain pressure) from the world. This latest volume is the third in a series that follows Rudi Mackenzie, son of leaders of two of the communities, and his friends in a quest across the North American continent.

In some ways I was frustrated by the fact that the story line did not reach an end with this book. In addition, because of the mythic elements that are clearly becoming the shape of the story, there is no way to avoid what part of the conclusion will be. And since it took three books to get Rudi and his friends from the former Pacific Northwest to the former New England, it will probably take at least one to get them back. And then at least one more to take this particular tale to its inevitable conclusion.

I suppose it gives me something to look forward to.

One of the "bad guy" groups in this changed world is the Church Universal and Triumphant, which holds sway post-change Montana. It totally escaped me that this particular theocracy had its roots in a real cult of the same name. Until I saw an obituary in yesterday's New York Times online. The headline read, "Elizabeth Prophet, 70, Church Founder, Is Dead." Her name rang a bell. Something about survivalists in the West somewhere. And there it was in the first line:

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the retired leader of the Summit Lighthouse and the Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age religion, who called on her followers in the late 1980s to prepare for nuclear Armageddon, died Thursday at her home in Bozeman, Mont. She was 70. (Emphasis mine.)

Stirling also made Cardinal Ratzinger Pope before Ratzinger was actually elected in 2006.

Cue the Twilight Zone theme!

Religion plays a large role in these books. Stirling, a former Episcopalian, talked a bit about the role of religion in his post-Change world in a conversation held in the comments of this blog. It makes for interesting reading for those of us interested in the Change novels, speculative fiction, and science fiction.

Just some musings and ramblings on a chilly Saturday night.

Peace,
Jeff