But, as the title of a powerful new comic book declares, Bullying Is No Laughing Matter. NEW YORK – Millions of readers love Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Dennis the Menace and other comic-strip characters, laughing at their adventures and their failures. The slim volume under review (there are only 92 pages of text, with the first and last pages of each chapter filling only a half-page or less-not counting a short preface and three concluding, very short fictions) is full.Seven King Features Comics Featured in New Book, Bullying Is No Laughing Matter James McGrath is a New Testament scholar and science fiction enthusiast who previously edited a wonderful collection of scholarly essays, Religion and Science Fiction (2011), as well as Religion and Doctor Who (2013).
I have long used my training in biblical exegesis in the analysis and interpretation of science fiction (and scientific) texts this is but one reason why I found the background of the author of this brief but stimulating discussion so appropriate. When science fiction writers wrestle with moral questions, with the search for "forbidden knowledge" or the powerful possibilities and pitfalls of "playing God," with utopias or dystopias, with vivid apocalypses or epic, multigenerational journeys, with demons or messiahs from the heavens, they signal a deep debt to the Bible as an ancient and continuing source of images, characters, plots, tropes, and themes for storytelling. Both address our hopes and fears, anxieties and dreams. Both address changes and continuities in ideas, beliefs, values, and practices. Both are curious about life and death, origins and endings, the deep past and far future. Both are fascinated with the Other and the New, with intimations of the sacred, the transcendent, the divine-with the Mystery beyond human knowing and imagining. Both seek self-understanding and awareness of our place in the cosmos. Both often express a sense of wonder, and even awe. That science fiction and theology intersect in many ways may surprise, but it shouldn't. Is there a Creator God who made all that exists out of nothing? Has God evolved along with the cosmos? Are godlike beings actually advanced aliens whose science and technology appear supernatural? Will humans develop godlike power? Will we be superseded by artificial super-intelligences? Will robots develop souls? Will Christianity survive encounters with extraterrestrial cultures in the spacefaring future? How will earthly religions change in centuries to come? What if some alien worlds never fell from grace? Such big questions have long been raised by philosophers and scientists, as well as by theologians and science fiction writers.
viii + 113 pages, bibliography, no index.
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