Warning: Very Nerdy Post Ahead

This past week The Guardian published a list of the best scifi/fantasy novels of all time. I love these sorts of lists and my inner nerd compels me to comment. There's a bunch of stuff on the list I've never heard of so I'm only going to comment on the ones I've actually read and then rant about some of the HUGE omissions from the list.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy - This is an amusing enough book but way, way overrated. Still, it has a big enough following that it's place here is probably deserved.

Isaac Asimov: Foundation - The first volume of the series is pretty good but the rest get a little tedious. Definitely a classic very much worth reading.

Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio - An OK book but one of the best ever? No way.

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - if you've only ever seen the Disney cartoon you have no idea how weird these books are. Great reads.

Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Cut 500 or so pages off this book and it would be great. But at it's actual length of nearly 1,000 pages it's long, boring and way overrated. It also has no business being on this list.

Philip K. Dick: Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep and The Man in the High Castle - High Castle's place here is well deserved but Electric Sheep is only here because it was the source material for Blade Runner, one of the few movies to be way, way better than the book.

Neil Gaiman: American Gods - I would have chosen Neverwhere instead but I'm glad Gaiman has a book on the list. American Gods is a great read but it gets a little slow in the middle and has too much sex.

Joe Haldeman: The Forever War - I have a strange relationship with this book. I hate and completely disagree with it's ultra left wing politics and stance on war but I still love the novel. It's extremely well written and deeply moving (even though I disagree with where it wants me to move towards!)

Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land - The first half is great. The second is weird and disgusting. Starship Troopers is not only better science fiction but a better novel.

Frank Herbert: Dune - A great, great book. If you haven't read it you should.

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House - The best and scariest haunted house novel ever. Every page of this novel is unbelievably good.

Stepehn King: The Shining - Probably King's best work. I love how the tension slowly builds and then completely explodes in the final act. If you've only seen the movie you need to read the book.

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris - This is a great book and one of the first to show that science fiction can be deeply emotional, passionate and human.

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend - I don't care what Skip says, this book rocks!

China Mieville: The Scar - This one's pretty good. I don't know if it deserves a place on this sort of list but it's entertaining enough. Unfortunately, Mieville followed it up with the putrid Iron Council, which reads like The Communist Manifesto with monsters (even though that sounds kind of cool, it's really not)

Walter M. Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz - Yawn. I have no idea what people see in this one.

Larry Niven: Ringworld - Overrated. Niven has written much better.

Chuch Palahniuk: Fight Club - I don't and never would support banning books but if I did this would be at the top of my list. A disgusting, despicable, filthy and worthless novel. If you watched The Dark Knight and found yourself agreeing with everything the Joker said and did, then this is the book for you. For the rest of us who aren't nihilistic anarchists: keep as far away from this one as possible.

Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space - I'm so happy this book made the list. I'm a huge Alastair Reynolds fan and Revelation Space is my favorite.

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - I love Harry Potter as much as the next guy but this is not one of the best fantasy novels of all time. The series as a whole, maybe. But not any of the individual volumes and especially not the first couple.

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein - A great monster story even 200 years later.

Dan Simmons: Hyperion - Dan Simmons is my favorite living fiction writer and Hyperion is one of his best. A great, great book.

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Not nearly as good as you'd think.

Bram Stoker: Dracula - You've probably seen some sort of adaptation of this at some point. Do yourself a favor and read the original. It's well worth it.

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine and War of the Worlds - These are not really that wonderful. Influential: yes. Well written: nope.

T.H. White: The Sword in the Stone - This is the best volume of The Once and Future King. The rest are a little tedious but this one is definitely worth a read.

Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun - I never have finished this one. I found it good but something didn't quite click when I tried to read it. I'll have to give it another try sometime.




Omissions

Lord of the Rings? Narnia? What possible excuse is there for leaving those off this list? None whatsoever. It's too bad, because this is actually a really great list overall. Unfortunately, leaving off Tolkien and Lewis effectively turns it into a big joke. Completely inexcusable.

Roger Zelazny should have had an entry on here. Lord of Light is one of my favorite novels ever. It's not just good scifi, it's a great and very deep literary work.

I also think it's pretty outrageous that Lord of Light, Ender's Game, Fahrenheit 451, A Wrinkle in Time, 1984 and Earthsea were left off. Those aren't as big of omissions as LOTR, Lord of Light and Narnia but each has been extremely influential not to mention they're all great novels.

I also think it would have been nice to see something from Vernor Vinge, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett and Peter Straub. It's memory has been tainted by the horrible movie made out of it but Battlefield Earth is a actually a pretty good book that I would have included.


Overall, I like the list a lot. I can't imagine what possessed them to leave off Tolkien and Lewis. But putting that aside, there a lot of great reads here.

36 Years Later

Yesterday marked the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. I've been spending some time this week thinking about the pro life movement. In some ways it's a depressing time. Less than a week into the Obama administration we're already feeling the affects of his extreme pro-choice views. One of his first acts has been to issue an executive order overturning a ban on federal funding for international abortion groups.

The evil freedom of choice act also is looming on the horizon and if it passes virtually every pro life gain that's been made, including the partial birth abortion ban, will be overturned. (side note: please, please, please visit fightfoca.com and do what you can to help stop this legislation.)

But I also think this can be an exciting time. Let's face it, with a Democratic president and congress we're not going to get a lot done in Washington over the next couple years. That will force pro lifers to look beyond the political arena and that is a very good thing. Don't get me wrong, I think the political side of the life battle is extremely important. I'm terrified of FOCA passing and I believe President Obama's view on abortion is depressing and tragic. But we need to remember that abortion existed long before Roe vs. Wade and it will be around when that decision is eventually overturned.

The pro life movement didn't begin in politics and even if we win every political battle we cannot let it end there. For as much as I wish we had pro life leaders in Washington, the current situation will force us to look beyond politics and focus on saving lives in our own communities. It will remind us that our primary focus isn't politics but saving babies and caring for hurting mothers who feel trapped.

Finally, we need to pray. Pray for a culture of life to come over our nation. Pray for comfort for scared mothers and life for their unborn children. Pray against FOCA and pray that God will open the eyes of our President on this issue. Pray works. It changes things. And it's a far more powerful weapon than any political victory.

Gran Torino

Yesterday afternoon Annie and I went to see Clint Eastwood's new movie Gran Torino. We both agreed it was the best movie we've seen in a long, long time. In case you haven't heard of it, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired autoworker and widower who spends his days sitting on the front porch with his dog drinking beer and glaring at the Hmong family that just moved in next door. Walt isn't too big on his new neighbors, mostly because of their race, but through several occurrences he gets drawn into their lives and becomes their protector against the inner city gangs that roam the neighborhood.

There's a lot to like about the movies. Most of it's described in other reviews so I won't bother echoing them here. But one part I haven't seen discussed much, the part that struck me the most is the film's brilliant portrayal of masculine initiation.

The Hmong family has a teenage boy named Thao. At the beginning of the movie he walks around with no self confidence, scared of his own shadow. The only chance he sees at actually becoming a man is to join the local Hmong gang. Walt very reluctantly begins to let Thao into his life and their relationship becomes the center of the movie.

Thao is in what John Eldredge describes in The Way of the Wild Heart as the Cowboy/Ranger stage. A stage in life where a boy moves towards manhood through hard work, adventure and testing. Walt teaches him exactly what a boy needs to learn at that stage. He learns about tools, how to work, how to act responsibly. In the midst of his grumpy, crass demeanor Walt answers for Thao the central question every boy and man is asking (do I have what it takes?) with a resounding "yes!"

Thao is initiated into the Cowboy stage but it doesn't stop there. Walt teaches him how to talk to women showing him the beginning of the Lover stage. I won't spoil the ending but the film ends with Walt initiating Thao as a warrior in a way that is both subtle and brilliant. In the closing scenes the scared boy is gone, replaced by a man prepared for life.

Every man needs initiation and it is exactly what God is offering to us. The source of a man's initiation might be obvious or God might use someone as unlikely as Walt Kowalski. But what is portrayed in the movie is available to every man if only we'll let God begin to work in our lives.

New Year's Resolutions

Here we are once again at the end of one year and the start of another. Over the past couple of days I've been reflecting on New Year's resolutions. You know the drill, you sit down and write out some personal goals you'd like to see happen over the next year.

The idea of spending some time reflecting on your life and thinking towards the future is good and important. But if you take an honest look at the results of annual resolutions in your life and the lives of those around you it's obvious there's a problem. For starters, most of us hardly make it to the end of the month, let alone the year, before we've given up on or forgotten what we wrote down New Year's Eve.

I was looking online today at some of the most common resolutions people make. It was about what you'd expect: work out more, achieve some life milestone, quit smoking, and the ever popular lose weight. Now those are all fine goals but I think they're also very revealing as to why it's so tough to get the results we hope for when we start the new year.

Most of our resolutions are external. Important and good, sure, but still external. What if instead of starting from the outside, we start with the heart, what the Bible in Proverbs describes as the "wellspring of life"?

God's desire is that we live from the heart and we can't afford to abandon that when it comes to something as important as life goals. Jesus's constant conflicts with the Pharisees are so revealing here. They knew the letter of the law very well. They knew all the external stuff but somehow they missed the spirit of the law. They missed the heart

In Matthew 23:25-26 Jesus says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

It's not that Jesus doesn't care about the external. He does. But He also knows that if we start there we'll more than likely end there and what God is really after is our hearts. If He can get a hold of our hearts, transform us at the core of our beings, then all that good and important external stuff will follow. That's the promise of the Gospel.

With that in mind I'd like to offer a few ideas when it comes to making resolutions. First, ask God what He has for you this year.

I've been thinking a lot lately about Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future"

We don't get to know everything God has planned for us but there are things He does want to reveal to us. If we don't ask, we'll miss out on that part of our relationship with Him. He knows us better than we know ourselves and His plans for us our good. Don't miss out on that.

Second, search our own heart and God given desires and bring what you find there before God.

This is the other half of step one. Just as God wants us to ask Him what He has, He also wants us to look at the desires He's laid on our hearts and then include Him in them.

Third, ask God how these goals and desires will be attacked then be vigilant to fight for your heart.

I can't tell you how important this is. Your heart, your God given desires, will be opposed. I 100% guarantee it. You'll have to fight and fight hard for the life God is trying to give you. But it's worth it. It's incredibly worth it.

Finally, be willing to do this more than just once a year

It's great to have New Year's as an annual milestone and reminder to have this conversation with God but over the course of a year of walking with God your faith will grow and you will find more life. When that happens new desires will be revealed to you. Don't let this conversation end on New Year's. God is constantly pouring out life and we can have it if only we're willing to constantly receive it.

Incredible Piano Music

A few days ago I came across Lennon Aldort. I'd never heard of him before but after a couple days of listening to his music I'd say he's by far one of the most talented pianists I've ever heard.

The video below is a great example of what I'm talking about. It's 100% improvised with no prethought, sheet music or any other type of preplanning and it's one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever heard. Oh, and did I mention that Lennon Aldort is only 17?!

His youtube channel has videos of him playing Bach and Mozart by ear at age 3! Listen to just one minute and I'll guarantee you'll be hooked.

The Heart of God

I was revisiting today the parable of the talents that Jesus tells in Matthew 25. As you know if you've read the passage, the basic idea of the story is a master, representing God, gives money to three of his servants. Two of his servants spend it wisely and use it to make more money, earning them praise. The third does nothing earning him his master's anger.

The typical interpretation of this passage is that it is instructing us to use wisely what God has given us. But what struck me today was what the third servant, the unfaithful one, says when questioned by the master. Starting in verse 24:

Then the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, "Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back."

"I knew you were a harsh man." This line more than anything else shows what went wrong with the third servant. If the master in the story truly represents God then what the third servant says about him is completely untrue. God is not cruel and unkind, but loving and generous. Yes, He certainly is fierce and has every capacity to act harsh when He needs to but those are not the truest things about Him, especially not to those, like the servant, who He calls His own.

The servant in the parable no doubt has reasons for why he believes what he believes but he's missed the larger truth. More importantly, he's missed his master's heart for him. The master wants to make him more than a servant. He wants to give him more responsibility so that he can one day be a partner and a friend, just as does for the two faithful servants. But the servant cannot or will not see this. He's been sold on a lie and has missed the heart of his master.

I believe that more than anything the enemy is trying every day to sell us on the same lie. He may not be trying to convince you that God is harsh and angry. Maybe he's trying to tell you God is indifferent and never becomes angry. Maybe he's convincing you that God's love is entirely conditional. Whatever the lie is, the goal is the same: to get us to miss the heart of God.

God's heart is for us. As David reminds us in the Psalms, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. As Paul says in Ephesians, God had us in mind before the creation of the world. Our sin has caused to fall far from that wonderful creation, from who God had in mind since before time began. God's heart is all about getting us back to who we were always meant to be. Anytime He is harsh or disciplines us, it is towards this goal. Every blessing, every showing of love, is to bring us back to a deeper intimacy with Him. God's heart is about restoring us to be His children, His friends, the Bride of Christ.

Keep that central in your heart and the enemy's lies won't have a chance.

Strike One Match In The Dark

This being the Christmas season I've been listening a lot to my favorite Christmas music group, The Trans Siberian Orchestra. As I've been listening, one song in particular has stood out. It's called Dream Child off of The Christmas Attic album.

The song is about a man who in a vision sees a child representing Christ. The child leads him into a forest full of evergreens. On every tree is a candle but none of them are lit. Many were, but they're dead now, melted and tarnished by life. The only lit candle, the only light at all, in the whole darkness of the forest is in the child's hands and with it he begins to light the candles creating life where before only death ruled. And then, in the song, we get th

And there to that light
That young Child showed to me
All the things that he dreamt
All the things that might be
How for everything given
That something was gained
Strike one match in the dark
And all the world's not the same

Strike one match in the dark and all the world's not the same. That's it. That's the message of Christmas, of the Gospel, of the story God has been telling from the beginning of time. The Christ child comes into a world full of darkness and death and He alone is blazing with life. From His life He creates more life and the world has never been the same.

Let's remember this year that the offer of Christmas is Life and Life to the full.

Changing How We Look At Christmas

I love Christmas and this time of year. This year is shaping up to be especially fun. Not only is it Ellie's first Christmas, but it's our first year in our house. This afternoon we bought our first live Christmas tree and decorated it.

But for as much as I love Christmas, I think there's something missing in the way we look at it. I'm not talking about any type of secularization of the holiday, but about the way Christians look at Christmas. I'd say that the typical Christian view of Christmas involves the nativity, the Christmas story as found in Luke and Matthew, songs like Away in the Manger, Silent Night, etc.

Now, all of those things are wonderful and true and I don't want to diminish them at all. But they're also incomplete. For as wonderful and beautiful as songs like Away in the Manger are, their message doesn't come close to capturing what Christmas is all about.

At it's center, Christ's birth was an act of war.

We need to look at the story as part of the Larger Story and to do that we need to go all the way back to Creation. When God created the world He gave authority over it to mankind through Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, as we all know, that didn't last for long. Adam and Eve sinned but their sin wasn't only about their personal fall or even the fall of the human race. In their sin, they gave away all the authority God had given to them and Satan became the prince of this earth.

But God promised that wouldn't be the end. He promised that He would win that authority back.

Christmas was the beginning of God's crusade against the kingdom of darkness the enemy had spent the last few thousand years building on Earth. Christmas was an invasion, the start of a war that's been going on ever since.

The enemy knew what was happening. We need to remember that the Christmas story doesn't end with the shepherds and wise men stopping by. Satan used Herod, his pawn, to murder every baby boy around Bethlehem. There was far more going on there than an arrogant ruler with wounded pride. It was a counterstrike by the forces of hell against the birth of Christ.

And, of course, the story doesn't end there. This battle is the context of all of Jesus's life and ministry. When He is tempted in the wilderness, Satan tempts Him with all the kingdoms of the world, all the authority Jesus came to win back, but with one condition. Satan stays on top and Jesus bows to Him. He refused but in His death, resurrection and ascension He won back once and for all the authority, power and rule Adam gave away at the beginning of the world.

Now, 2,000 years later, the war that began on Christmas between the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of Heaven is still going on. The story of Christmas is not over.

Again, I don't want to come across as negative on the traditional Christian view of Christmas. In fact, I don't want to criticize it at all. I simply want to point out that it is insufficient and add in what's missing. So this Christmas season, let's remember that Christ's birth is part of a larger story, a bloody clash of kingdoms. It's a story we are a part of and we are called to join in the fight, to defeat the enemy and to rescue others from the kingdom of darkness.

True Repentance, Relentless Grace

About a week ago I came across the true and truly awesome story of Stojan Adasevic. He was the top abortion doctor in Communist Yugoslavia during the 80's, performing 48,000 abortions over the course of his career.

Then, one night, something changed. He started to have dreams where he saw children laughing and playing but when he came near, they'd run away from him and become afraid. In the dream, St. Thomas Aquinas came to him and explained that these were the children he'd killed through abortion.

Stojan Adasevic is no longer an abortionist. He is the foremost champion of the pro-life movement in Serbia and has dedicated his life to championing the cause of the unborn.

This story brings tears to my eyes. There's so much about it that's just amazing. So often we catch ourselves offering up half hearted confessions to God and even if we do manage to avoid that same sin again we're doing it because we feel we should not because there's been any real change of heart. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly better to avoid sin half heartedly than to continue doing what we know is wrong. But what God is really after isn't a resigned sense of duty but a complete, miraculous turn around. He's after the type of repentance Stojan Adasevic found and has lived out ever since.

It reminds of the scene in Braveheart where Robert The Bruce has just been manipulated by his father into betraying William Wallace and the cause of Scottish freedom. Standing in the battlefield, surrounded by the bodies of those killed by his betrayl he realizes what he's done. In the next scene he goes to his father and says with all his heart, "I will never be on the wrong side again." That's what God is after.

But to me there's an even more amazing part of Adasevic's story and that's the relentless tenderness of God. If you look in the Bible, it doesn't take long to figure out that God takes the lives of innocents and children very seriously. And here is a man who has single handedly killed 48,000 children. That number is horrifying and heartbreaking.

But God did not give up on him.

That's the type of God we serve. He'll keep pursuing us, doing whatever it takes to get ahold of our hearts. If there was ever a man who it would have made sense to write off as a lost cause it was this man. 48,000 dead and God didn't give up on Him. That's incredible. That type of grace isn't just amazing, it's relentless, it's awesome and it's available.

Challenged Ballots

Ok, I know I promised no more political posts for a while, but this is simply too good to not comment on. Here in Minnesota, we're still in the middle of figuring out who won the senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

I'm on Coleman's e-mail list and tonight he sent out a mailing with images of some of the ballots Franken is challenging. After looking at these it's obvious the Franken campaign has ever (a) lost its mind, (b) become very desperate or (c) lost all respect for the voters of Minnesota. My money's on (d) all of the above.

You can click on any of these images to see at full resolution

This first one has Coleman clearly marked as the vote. However, there's a miniscule dot next the Libertarian candidate, which according to Franken means the voter's intent is unclear. Don't feel bad if you don't see it at first, the dot really is that small.



The second one's the same story. There's a line that's kinda, sorta, not really by Dean Barkley but Coleman's bubble is clearly filled in. You'd have to be on hard drugs to think voter intent isn't clear here.



The last one I'll print here (there are several others like the two above) shows Franken's extreme double standard. On this ballot both the Dean Barkely and Al Franken circles are completely filled in. However, Franken claims the voter intent is obviously for him. So let me get this straight, a small dot next to Charles Aldrich's name is enough to cancel out a vote for Coleman but an entirely filled in Dean Barkely circle means nothing so long as Franken's circle is filled in as well. Despicable.



I'm all for having a recount when the vote is this close but what Franken is doing here is an abuse of the democratic process and insult to voters. It's shameful and an embarrassment to Minnesota. If this is what we can expect from Franken during the recount he ought to concede right now and spare the rest of us this pathetic and petty behavior. Shame on you Al Franken; you have no business representing my state.