A Secret of the Universe, by Stephen Gibson, begins on Sunday, October 11th, 2009, with the destruction of downtown Chicago. It's a skeptic's well reasoned response to the fire and brimstone of popular Christian End of Days fiction. I'm only two thirds through the book, so hopefully I'll still be able to finish it tomorrow. I've been reading A Secret... and the right wing-Christian apocalyptic best seller Left Behind for over 2 years now. I'm sad to give my opinion that Left Behind is better written, but A Secret of the Universe is a better book. Gibson writes non-fiction beautifully and sincerely- just check out his blog at: http://truthdriven.wordpress.com/When Gibson writes fiction however, he provides far too much explicit information, rather than letting the prose itself give insight into the characters and situations. The worst example of this comes when the main character begins to muse about marriage. Suddenly the narrative diverges for 2 paragraphs with a book summary: "As the controversial Dr. Laura Schlessinger aptly described in her later book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands..." The passage is even footnoted. It's a shame that there was no merciless editor with a blue pencil on this project. Even the evangelist Tim LaHaye had a co-author to whip his Pre-Millenial-Dispensationalist visions into best selling literary form.
So another deadline has come to pass. I now hope to have read both Left Behind and A Secret of the Universe by December 21st, 2012, the day the Mayan (or is it Aztec?) calendar comes to an end.
No comments:
Post a Comment