It also serves as a hub, a place to learn more about our books and their authors.
The Friends and Favorites page is dedicated to the writers, artists, and dreamers who have inspired us, encouraged us, and otherwise enriched our lives. Fans of Christian speculative fiction will also want to visit the Inspirations Cafe for news of the newest Chrsitian science fiction and fantasy authors.
Author: Timothy D. Wise
In an age of bionics, genetic engineering, and interplanetary travel, trillionaire industrialist Lancing DeFalco assembles the Intrepid Force, a state-of-the-art team of explorers, investigators, and fighters. College student Pirate Eisman finds himself fighting a mysterious cult in the swamps of South Louisiana, battling men and machines on Venus, and wrestling with his own inner demons.
Genre: Superheroes, Science Fiction, Christian
Price: $12.95
Author: Timothy D. Wise
It began with a signal from an ancient wreck on Titan, Saturn's large moon. The Arthur Conan Doyle, a survey ship, went to investigate and vanished. Two years later, Earth is invaded by an armada of ships led by a myterious warlord who calls himself Gogue and claims to be the Antichrist. Aided by Neema, a young woman who claims to have come from a dark and terrible future, the battle weary Intrepid Force races to unravel the mystery and free their world before Neema's future becomes their own reality.
Genre: Superhero, Science Fiction, Christian
Price: $14.95
THE SIGN OF THE SWORD
Author: Timothy D. Wise
Arthur, Lance, Angie, and Chris can scarcely believe the things they have seen. On an icy November night, they took a carriage rideinto the forest, passed through a fog bank, and found themselves in another world entirely. Within an hour of their arrival, they are chased through the forest by silver-eyed cybernetic zombies, attacked by a werewolf, and rescued by a ragged stranger who claims to be the heir to King Arthur's throne. Their only chance of returning home is to join Ambrose Pendragon in his crusade to rebuild Camelot and defeat the cybernetic armies of Samhain the daemon-king. Can they triump over seemingly impossible odds and find the doorway home or are they doomed to die in the forests ofan alien world?
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Price: $12.95
Author: Timothy D. Wise
On the night of June 4, 1977, an unidentified craft crash-landed on a mountain outside of Miracle Springs, Arkansas. One of the craft's occupants led police on a high speed chase. Jaime Mitchell, age 12, blundered into their path and died. James "Jim" Koslow, struggling to unravel the circumstances surrounding his friend's death, discovered a mysterious object at the scene of the crash: a CD ROM from twenty years in the future. Twenty years later, thirty-two year old James Koslow finds himself transported back through time. Can he prevent the accident this time or will he be forced to relive it?
Genre: Mainstream young adult fiction
Price: $7.95
CHINCHUBA
Author: K. Michael Casey
Less than 500 years ago, the Biloxi tribe vanished from the shores of coastal Mississippi. The mystery of their disappearance has never been completely explained. Now the scared grounds of the Biloxi have been disturbed by unwary treasure hunters and a brooding presence has returned to the dark waters of coastal Mississippi. Who or what is the Chinchuba? Scientist Nathan Young and his estranged wife Kat are drawn into the mystery by Kat's Native American heritage and a dark secret from her past. Doctor John, a terrifying voodoo priest, covets the Chinchuba's power and seeks a way to control it. Kevin Croix, an unorthodox street evangelist, is drawn by prophecy to confront the dark kingdom it represents. Who or what is the Chinchuba? Can it be stopped or are all of those who venture into its path destined to share the fate of the Biloxi tribe?
Genre: Supernatural Thriller
Price: $14.95
Clifford Simak
When I first heard of Simak in the early 1980s, I was not aware that he was a Nebula Grandmaster Award Winner. I didn't know his novel Way Station had won a Hugo Award or that City, another novel, had won the International Fantasy Award. All of these things took place before I was aware of such goings-on. City had been written in the 1950s. Many of Simak's stories deal with spiritual themes.
On the recommendation of a college classmate, I bought Special Deliverance, one of Simak's last novels, at the local Wal Mart, and I was hooked. In Special Deliverance, a professor from our own earth is transported to a forested world with lost cities and exotic dangers. He finds himself in the company of a group of people from a variety of alternate earths. There's a woman from a world where the United States is still a British colony, a robot left to care for the survivors of a burned out and abandoned earth of the future, a parson not far removed from the Salem Witch Trials, a general from a militaristic world where wars are fought by deadly machines, and a peace loving artist from the Third Renaissance. Like the traveler in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Simak's travelers encounter a variety of deadly temptations--all of them metaphorical. One is destroyed by the lust for power, another by life-draining pleasures, another by a mindless euphoria, and another by rumbling chaos. The travelers encounter a "ghetto" of people from a variety of times and places who have given up on getting home. Only a few make it through to discover the reason behind it all. Special Deliverance is out of print now, but is still available from Amazon.
Tachyon Press recently released a collection of classic Simak short stories in a volume entitled Over the River and Through the Woods. Read it and find out why Simak has been called the pastoralist of science fiction.
Ray Bradbury
When I was in the fourth grade, one of my friends discovered 'S' is for Space, a collection of Ray Bradbury short stories, in the school library, and enthusiastically told all of us about it. I checked the book out the following week and have been a Bradbury fan ever since. In 1992, I found that Bradbury had published a book about writing. It was called Zen and the Art of Writing, but it was less about Buddhism that about Bradbury's own experiences as a writer. I enjoyed the book so much that I wrote Bradbury a letter thanking him for the influence he'd had on my life as a writer. A couple of months later, he wrote me back, and I was thrilled. Less than two years after that, Bradbury spoke at Centenary College in Shreveport. Some friends and I drove up there that night, and I was able to meet him face to face. When I finally published my first novel, I sent him a copy with some words of thanks. Again, I received an encouraging letter that I will treasure. I think the thing I like the best about Bradbury's writing is the sheer creative joy that he infuses into his work. He writes because it's a thing of joy to him. It's like strapping yourself to a rocket and shooting yourself off into space. Forget about writing because it makes money or is socially significant. If it isn't exhilirating to you, go do something else. Don't ever develop that sense of snobbery that separates you from old loves like Martians, autumn carnivals, and dinosaurs. That's not growing up. It's growing boring--and it's death on visions and dreams and possibly even on that childlike faith that allows one to move mountains.
I encountered C.S. Lewis in my early teens and was immediately struck by the fresh and imaginitive approach he took to writing about spiritual matters. A literature professor and former atheist, Lewis was intellectually sharp as well as imaginative.
Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis was an author of fairy tales, space fantasies, satirical books, nonfiction books on theology, and academic books on literature. He is probably best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity. The Chronicles of Narnia is a children's fantasy series but, on a deeper level, it is a collection of metaphors about Christ and Christianity. The Screwtape Letters is a satirical series of letters written from an older demon to his young apprentice giving him advice on how to keep his "patient" from coming to faith in Christ. Mere Christianity, a collection of writings on basic Christian doctrines, played a decisive role in the conversion of former Nixon aide Chuck Colson and many others. His space trilogy, which contains Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength is somewhat less well known but is an early example of Christian science fiction written at a time when that subgenre was practically unheard of.
C.S.Lewis was a member of the Inklings, a group of writers who met to discuss their work. Lewis and Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkein were the most famous members of that group. Lewis entitled his biography "Surprised by Joy." Joy, as he described it, was a moment when a person encounters something that fills him/her with a sense of wonder and longing that is both sweet and sad. It may be inspired by a story, a dream, a religious experience, or any number of other things.
David Brin
The Postman is one of my favorite science fiction novels. It is one of a very small handful of books that I have read cover to cover twice, and I enjoyed it immensely both times. Kevin Costner's screen interpretation of the novel preserved some of its nobler elements, but cut out many of the parts that gave the novel its special kind of magic.
The villains in the novel are a group of "augments"--supersoldiers artificially enhanced to fight in a war that went bad and ultimately transformed into a band of murdering marauders. General Powhatan, the Squire of Sugarloaf Mountain, is one of the most memorable characters in the book even though he only appears twice. Powhatan is a haunted and reluctant hero who ultimately does the right thing after others hound him into following his conscience. There's also a colony of people built around the preservation of an all-knowing super computer that directs their lives. None of these elements made it into the film. Some, who prefer graphic realism to science fiction, probably think the film is better for it. I'm not one of those people.