Friday's Funky List

LDS Historical Fiction series on war.

Revolutionary War:
Prelude to Glory Series By Ron Carter
The Buchanan Saga By Anita Stansfield

War of 1812:
Freemen and Dreamers Series by L.C. Lewis

Civil War:
Faith of Our Father's by Nancy Campbell Allen
Heroes of Glorieta Pass and Revenge and Redemption by Brad E. Hainsworth

WWI:
Autumn Sky, Until the Dawn, Upon the Mountains by Gale Sears
'Til the Boys Come Home Jerry Borrowman

WWII:
Children of the Promise Dean Hughes
I’ll Be Seeing You, As Time Goes By, Home Again At Last By Jerry Borrowman

Vietnam War:
Hearts of the Children Series by Dean Hughes

It seems that we have all the wars covered! I was pretty surprised to see the War of 1812 up there, book two of that series was just recently released. There is a book by Robert Moss on the Utah War, but I kept the list to series or at least books that had sequels. Anyone written series on the Mexican American, Spanish -American war, Philippine-American wars yet? Not to mention the numberous undeclared wars. Looks like there is room for growth! Go read and write that historical fiction people.

Please comment to reccommend other books to readers! I'm sure there is more great war fiction out there.

Friday's Funky List

Note: This post is for Joe. :)

I hear it all the time: LDS publishers don’t publish Science Fiction. Guess What? That’s not true. I’ll prove it to you. Here is Friday’s List.

The Alliance by Gerald Lund (The Freedom Factor and Leverage Point are similar in nature.) Deseret Book
Eddie Fantastic by Chris Heimerdinger Covenant Communications
Ben Franklin and the Chamber of Time by Chris Heimerdinger Deseret Book
The Prodigal Journey By Linda Adams (sequel published by LDSstorymakers Refiner’s Fire)
Time Riders by Sierra St. James Cedar Fort
The Believer by Stephanie Black. Covenant Communications
Hunting Gideon by Jessica Draper (Cyber Punk) Zarahemla books

That’s right, there they are. Count them. 10 Sci-fi books(including those in parenthesis) that I know of and I’m sure that there are more. I’ll concede that the first two authors are big names that the publishers probably would sell just because of who wrote them. Linda Adams got a bad break on the publisher route and who knows what will happen with her trilogy. Then there is Sierra St. James who isn’t hugely known in the LDS market but is a reputable and talented writer in the national market. Then there is the new Stephanie Black, and I don’t know all that much about Jessica Draper on account of the fact that I read the back of her book on the bookstore shelf and knew that cyberpunk is Sci-fi.
So, the lesson is if you want to write Sci-fi in the LDS market….get really famous! No, just kidding though it isn’t a bad idea. I think a lot if LDS sci-fi is “Zion” fiction also. Many have a connection to Zion being founded in Missouri, and have dysfunctional U.S. governments, and etc. That’s fine and entertaining, but it gets old after a while. Eddie Fantastic and Ben Franklin and the Chamber of Time have no Zion element. I think Time Riders could have a non Zion element and still be a good book.
There are people who say that Sci-Fi doesn’t work in LDS fiction, at least not traditional space Sci-Fi. I don’t know why that would be true because well, we are the only people that definitely believe there are other planets with life on them out there. It is part of our theology. So, why would that be conflicting with our religious views? In fact it is generally known that the LDS population has an irregular amount of speculative fiction authors among them. I think we just haven’t done it well enough yet. I think it will happen one day. Someone will stumble upon the right character, the right balance, the right mix and it will happen. There will probably be a genre opener book that others will try to imitate, and there will be LDS market Sci-fi.

*Disclaimer: I don’t read a bunch of Sci-fi I’m more of a Fantasy girl. So, I’m not an expert by any means on the whole genre, which gets pretty complicated when you get down to it. So, if you have additional insights, comment!

Feel welcome to add to the list! If you know of any Sci-Fi books that have been published by LDS outlets comment. Make readers aware of what is out there. By all means support your own book if need be.

P.S. I just found this awesome website:http://www.mormonsf.org/

Friday's Funky List!

So, I am a strange soul and decided that on Fridays I’m going to post interesting lists. Hopefully, they will be useful to people wanting to find books that they like to read. So Friday’s first funky list is about Underworld Fiction. That’s right I said underworld and fiction. Basically, I’m sort of obsessed about the Underworld—as in dead people realms. I’ve written two papers on the topic for my Latin classes and hence this Friday’s funky (or in the case perhaps freaky) list. The list has to start with classical examples to illustrate how the fascination with the underworld has continued for centuries. This certainly is not meant to be a comprehensive list, and good thing too, because then you would all fail to win a book! In fact, I’m leaving some out….and a few are preeettty obvious.

In this case, I’m going to define underworld fiction as a work which has a character that descends into Hell/an Underworld/Realm where dead are kept, and while there gathers information, or meets people, or learns a lesson that the character then takes back to the living world to accomplish his goals or significantly changes his outlook.

Classical Examples:
1. Odysseus in the Odyssey by Homer
2. Aeneas in the Aenied by Virgil
3. Claudius in the Apocolocyntosis by Seneca ( I guess Claudius never does return to the living world, but he sure has “fun” being there!)

Medieval Examples:*
1. St. Paul Apocalypse
2. Gregory the Greats Dialogues
3. Vision of Drythemlm by Bede
4. The Visio Wettini by Walahfrid Strabo
5. The Inferno by Dante

* Contrary to intuitive connections a lot of Medieval Visionary literature did not heavily rely on Virgil’s and Homer’s influence, though some obviously were (Dante in particular). Much Medieval visonary literature was based off of St. Paul’s Apocalypse, and similar works. Though, I’m sure some scholar could argue otherwise and probably make a good argument doing such.

Modern Examples:
1.The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix
2. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
3. The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin