There’s a book idea somewhere…
I miss writing.
Yes, I know, I know…why not just sit down and write something, then? I think I’m going to have to, even if I do so only by means of various text and document editors currently installed on my iPod Touch (one has precious little time for hammering out ideas when one gets home). Until just recently, I’ve found that there hasn’t been much in the way of inspiration; I’ve had only a single “good” (I use the term loosely) story framework to work from since…high school, basically…and even it seems somewhat threadbare and inadequate to me now.
Still, I can’t help but think (and I may have remarked on this elsewhere) that there’s some inspiration to be found in the recent writings of a pair of fellows I read, both of whom (suspiciously!) share the name John. First, there’s this bit from the always-enjoyable John C. Wright:
In a nearby parallel universe, one where the Middle East and North Africa remained Christian, those places are the seat of the latest industrial and high-tech revolutions in biotechnology and computer AI and Space travel.
The Archbishop of Mars, a colony settled by Jesuits, in this timeline is returning to Earth to attend the baptism of Heke Kohola, the first cetacean raised to sapience by uplift procedures: albeit some theologians question the validity of immersing a sea creature in water to wash away original sin.
Meanwhile, the newly-Christened Orion drive interstellar vessel, LANTERN OF BETHLEHEM, begins her main acceleration burn for 36 Ophiuchus, where intelligent extraterrestrial life has been discovered. The mission is funded by the Vatican Observatory and various ecumenical missionary groups, since no worldly reason exists to bear the expense of an expedition not to be culminated until our greatgrandchildren’s time. However, the monks and eremites of the voyage are not motivated by any worldly concerns.
Only in our timeline, where the southern half of Christendom was raped by the an obscurantist and legalistic heresy called Mohammedanism, the resources of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment was wasted in wars, resources that otherwise would have been used for civilization and progress. The amounts absorbed and lost in the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire cannot be calculated. As a hint, for those of you who forget, during the administration of Thomas Jefferson, some twenty percent of the federal budget was spent on payola to Tripoli. Who knows what would have happened had trade routes to India and China been kept open?
The names of all the inventors (a word that natively only exists in Latin languages), scholars and thinkers from that timeline, who, in our timeline, were harassed and killed in Spain and Carthage and Persia, and never studied in universities, and never published their results, are memorialized in the special wing of the Museum of Lost Eternities maintained by the Time Custodians, as an homage to opportunities for progress aborted here.
Naturally, knowledge of this timeline is a closely-guarded secret of the joint KGB-CIA project investigating the Marconi-Tesla moebius-coil alternative continuum engine, Project Timegate, since it would be an embarrassment to the Islamic world to discover that Christianity is the only mainspring of progress history has known, and an embarrassment to the secular powers to have it publicly known that attempts to engender progress on secular grounds merely end in holocaust, as in Germany, Russia and the Far East during the Bloodshed Century (as what we call the Twentieth Century is known in by comparative historians from our neighboring timelines), or in bankruptcy and supine indifference to one’s own self-destruction, as socialist Eurotopia is currently discovering.
The discovery of alternative realities is the biggest blow to the current secular powers ever known, since it invalidates and humiliates the popular theories of the forces driving history. The chronochosm seems to be unfairly Euro-centric, even racist, in a fashion that is not merely politically incorrect, but even insensitive. Historians are not merely shocked, they are angered, to discover that Christ exists in every timeline, including the Narnia-like world where lions rather than human beings are the dominant form of life.
The Museum of Lost Eternities, is, meanwhile, asking for an apology for the crusades, but in different terms. They are demanding we apologize to the Crusaders, who shed such blood and made such sacrifices in Outremere, only to have their dreams abandoned by Christian princes too concerned with local bloodshed to face the general enemies of the faith.
…which, coupled with this exploration of an idea from John Zmirak:
While our records are scant of human society before the Fall (St. Thomas Aquinas speculated that it happened in a matter of hours, even before Adam and Eve had the chance to consummate their marriage), authoritative tradition teaches that included in God’s gift bag were:
- Immortality. We wouldn’t have tramped from golden youth through crapulous middle age to decrepitude, then dust. No wrinkles, sagging, sore joints, or colostomy bags. Had Eve showed more humility, and Adam more moral courage, man’s world would have been a vast but pious nudist colony that didn’t make you cringe, look away, and wish for “quality control.” No one knows how long we would have dwelt on Earth, but medieval theologians speculated that after a time, each embodied soul might have been assumed as Mary was — our only “test case” of a sinless human being who wasn’t also the incarnate Son of God. That’s why she was the only candidate considered for the Vatican Space Program.
- Impassibility. We wouldn’t have been subjected to mental or moral suffering, and our bodies would have been preserved from any serious pain — although one assumes that kids who stuck their hands into the fire would still have felt some urgency to pull them out eventually. Unless, of course, our bodies would have been immune from any destructive force — a viable reading of the doctrine. If so, then an unfallen Olympics might have included Volcano Diving, Alp Jumping, and Chainsaw Swallowing.
- Freedom from concupiscence. Our desires would never have exceeded what was appropriate for our needs, or goaded us into sin. No one would take “all you can eat” as a personal challenge, hog both lanes of a two-way country road, look longingly at someone else’s spouse, or gasp at the results of a pregnancy test. Each child would be a wanted child.
- Freedom from ignorance. Everything would be on a strictly need-to-know basis, and we’d know everything we needed. Our private theological opinions and the “common sense” that was prevalent in the culture would match up with the actual state of affairs in Heaven. Following our conscience would never entail heresy or dissent, and there’d be no call for papers like the National Catholic Reporter.
- Freedom from sin. We wouldn’t carry around inside our heads a tiny Miltonic Lucifer, ready to scream “Non serviam“ at the drop of a hat or one’s pants. While sin would be possible, it would seem to people strange — a deviation from the norm, like a dog walking on its hind legs, instead of going back to its vomit. Our wills would match our consciences, and when we did what we thought was right . . . it would be.
- Lordship over the earth. One hopes man would not have remained a naked, rural vegetarian but would have built wondrous cities. Imagine New York without the attitude, New Orleans without the crime, Vienna without the socialists. Our use of natural resources would never outstrip what was prudent or fair, so innocent third parties wouldn’t have to suffer from the waste we dumped in rivers, the filth we pumped into the air, or the nonsense we wrote on twitter. We would just know better than to do such things, and our mastery of the earth would be seamless and eco-friendly.
…leads me to think “hey, there’s a story idea here somewhere.”
Not that I’d be the man to write it, in all probability. But lately, I’ve been feeling that familiar tingle again, and I’m half of a mind to make the attempt anyhow.
I wonder if I can salvage any of my old ideas in the process? They weren’t all worn-out clichés, after all. At least, I don’t think…
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