Age Of Certainty (book) by Ian R Thorpe on AuthorsDen

Age of Certainty

Age of Certainty by William Freedman

Edited and introduced by William Freedman

Age of Certainty gives ten authors’ answers to the question, “What if God existed?”

Suppose the theory is true that we’re biologically hardwired to believe in God – Brandon H. Bell wonders if that’s evidence enough that He is objectively real. … Imagine the traditional, Western version of God – now imagine along with Patrick Evans if the God revealed tomorrow has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. … David J. Fielding introduces a character who wouldn’t hesitate to kill God for the evil He has brought to bear, even if the result is just another form of an absence of good. … and Nebula Award laureate James Morrow asks if God would exist in the absence of misleading proof planted by a talking, time-traveling cyborg tortoise who shoots lasers out his eyes.

Jennifer Rachel Baumer lives, writes and runs in the Northern Nevada desert. Her work has appeared in Nevada’s Danse Macabre magazine, in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, in Sky Warrior Books’ Healing Waves charity anthology, and in a variety of genre anthologies and magazines. She’s ghostwritten 14 nonfiction books for experts, and is marketing her own novels. Jennifer shares her desert life with her husband Rick and an abnormal number of cats, both indoor types and the bobcats that pass through her yard.

Brandon H. Bell is a writer of weird fiction and co-editor of The AetherAge: Helios anthology and Fantastique Unfettered magazine. His work has appeared in publications from Hadley Rille and M-Brane SF, as well as venues such as The Lovecraft eZine, Everyday Weirdness, and Eschatology Journal. He is a member of the Outer Alliance (supporting his GBLTQ counterparts in the genre community) and a Rissho Kosei-kai Buddhist. He is working on a novel about alien megalodons, Dali elephants’, and a patchwork of human religions in the Alpha Centauri system. He can be found online at nithska.blogspot.com or via Google profile +Brandon H. Bell.

Patrick Evans is a Toronto writer who has published short fiction in the James White Review, Contra/Diction: New Queer Male Fiction, and the Fresh Blood anthology for writers who are new to the horror genre. As a journalist he worked for the Toronto Star where he won the Canadian Association of Journalists Award for Investigative Journalism and covered everything from gangland slayings to shopping for a convincing toupee.

David J. Fielding is an actor and writer currently residing in the city of Pittsburgh. He has a BFA and a MFA, both in acting. Throughout his career he has worked in film, TV, radio, the stage and provided voice overs for video games. David is probably best known as the face and voice of Zordon from the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. David provided the voice for the first season, though his image continued to be the face of Zordon for many seasons. In addition to his stage and film work, David has provided voice work for a number of popular PC video games, including Empire Earth and Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna. He is currently finishing up a novel and several other short works of fiction.

William Freedman is a satirist who uses science fiction and fantasy tropes. He is author of Land That I Love and the soon-to-be-released Mighty Mighty, co-author with Ben Parris of Supernaturalz, contributor to the 2005 Spirit House chapbook to raise money for tsunami survivors, and a frequent program participant at genre conventions throughout the northeast U.S. His non-fiction bylines – covering everything from hot stocks for Investor’s Business Daily to the rise of distilled spirits for History magazine to Bram Stoker Awards weekend for Long Island’s Newsday – go back more than 20 years.

Ron S. Friedman has seen his short stories appear in Daily Science Fiction, and received an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest. He is on the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association board of directors, a When Worlds Collide festival member-at-large and a member of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association. He has appeared as a panelist at a number of genre conventions. Ron is currently working on his second novel. His Age of Certainty story was partially inspired by Ron’s experiences during his service in the Israeli Air Force in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

James Hartley is a former computer programmer. Originally from northern New Jersey, he now lives in sunny central Florida. He has published six fantasy novels, The Ghost of Grover’s Ridge, Magic Is Faster Than Light, Teen Angel, Cop with a Wand, Magic to the Rescue and This Wand for Hire, and has one more, Fortunatus, due out soon. He has had short stories published as e-books, in the collections Five from the Future, Five from the Faerie, and Worlds Away and Worlds Aweird, in anthologies, and in various e-zines and print magazines. He is currently working on a new novel, Magic versus the Empire. He is a member of IWOFA and the Dark Fiction Guild. His website is http://teenangel.netfirms.com.

Brian K. Lowe works as a legal assistant in Los Angeles by day, and writes at night in a candlelit garret with only a small fire to ward off the chill of the frigid Southern California nights. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Buzzy Mag, White Cat and a number of other publications. You can learn more at his blog at brianklowe.wordpress.com.

James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since, at age seven, he dictated “The Story of the Dog Family” to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. Upon reaching adulthood, Morrow wrote such satiric novels as Towing Jehovah (World Fantasy Award), Blameless in Abaddon (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), The Last Witchfinder (called “an inventive feat” by critic Janet Maslin), and The Philosopher’s Apprentice (“an ingenious riff on Frankenstein” according to NPR). His short fiction has won the Nebula Award (twice), the Rickie Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Élena Nazzaro is an illustrator and watercolorist. Her work has been featured in Artist’s Sketchbook magazine, Kiwi and Building Letters, a design magazine which raises money for charity projects. She most recently was able to combine her love of cooking with illustrated full-color spreads in a Craft: Magazine feature “The Art of Cooking.” By day she is the art director at Publishing Resources, Inc. She is illustrating a series of piano books with her husband Paul. Their finest collaborations are named Sophia, Peter and Angela.

Ian R. Thorpe’s earliest ambition, after he gave up on being a train driver, was to write. Life plays strange tricks and, despite some early successes including his work being performed on national radio and television and minor prizes for poetry and short fiction, he pursued a lucrative career in information technology. This pushed other interests aside for many years and only when illness forced a change of lifestyle did he start writing again. Ian lives in Lancashire, U.K.

Jeffrey Witthauer has seen his work appear in Paradigm Concepts’ Arcanis and Witch Hunter: The Invisible World series of tabletop roleplaying games, the latter of which takes place in an alternate seventeenth century where there is divine certainty.

When Age of Certainty’s call for submissions went out, we asked for stories about how the world would be different if we knew for a fact that God exists, or that He doesn’t. Considering how speculative fiction writers of my acquaintance are overwhelmingly atheist, I assumed they’d take this as an invitation to put paid to the whole concept of divinity. Other non-deists might have a character named “God” who mucks about, and we would draw from a smaller but more fervent cadre of authors who’d make their case in favor of the Lord of All. Age of Certainty was to be an evenhanded collection of stories postulating both the existence and non-existence of God.

That’s not what happened.

The first thing that became apparent once the reading period opened is that genre writers – as much as they consider theology to be complete hokum – love their speculative elements, and the ones who submitted the best work all took the position that God is among us. Without making a blanket statement, my further correspondences with the selected authors suggests that they, as a general rule, have little to no religion in their lives – but that doesn’t make God any less a fascinating character to them.

The next thing that I noticed is that there are quite a number of devout Christians who write speculative fiction. I was really rooting for one of them to break out of the slush pile with a story worthy of inclusion here. Sadly, all I got from that choir was Jesus Christ fanfic devoid of any social commentary, but replete with wish fulfillment.

I confess I’m disappointed by the paucity of good stories submitted which posited that it’s unlikely that God exists. Certainly, nobody can prove a negative thesis, but you can prove that there’s a simpler, more elegant explanation for phenomena up to and including the existence of the universe. Stanley Schmidt has no trouble filling up Analog with such tales every month, but Age of Certainty got few takers. Sadly, that handful of hard science fiction authors who did submit all misinterpreted the submission guidelines. They spent so much time on theory that they made the same mistake as the Bible thumpers and missed the whole point of the book: What would be the effect on society?

Still, I’m happy with how this collection ended up, whether through Divine intervention or happenstance. It’s my privilege to present to you tales from ten talented authors who answer the question, “What if God existed?”