Alister McGrath: C S Lewis

I wanted to write a detached, cool-headed evaluation of this book and even had thought of some suitably ironic ways of describing it: 'ostrich prose', for example (covering a lot of ground with great enthusiasm but never quite taking off). 

Unfortunately, I can't do it. I shamelessly and unapologetically absolutely loved this book. I have to confess some shared interests. Alister McGrath is a professor at my old college. He's a scientist and atheist who turned to Christ. In some of his other writings, he has discovered the loveable pinata-like qualities of Professor Dawkins. So I was predisposed to like this book and therefore quite determined not to.

I don't know if it's a masterpiece or not but I found it an entirely satisfying retelling and re-evaluation of the man that I will treasure for a long time. They even got A N Wilson, big-beast among Lewis biographers and newly -returned-to-the-faith-Christian, to say something mildly pleasant about McGrath's work. So, perhaps, it must be good. It's not just me. Generally I prefer reading Lewis to reading books about Lewis but this is the business.

Mary Doria Russell: Children of God

The sequel to 'The Sparrow' continues the plot with the same luxuriant story-telling qualities. It's engrossing, beautiful, thought-provoking. First (or second) contact, an alien world, cultural disruption, God.

If most SF is made of cotton, this is silk. I got the feeling she used her best characters in the first book, and it's a matter of taste probably whether or not you feel after two books you'd have liked the issues resolved or like in the Sparrow,  left open. (I won't say which happens). A great book, like its predecessor sitting easily near the top of the pile of best SF books I've ever read. A pity (for SF) that a writer of such talent went onto other things...

Deep Jungle by Fred Pearce: beautiful science writing about a big issue of our time

This book manages to be both a beautiful coffee-table book and an insightful, well-written exploration of the rainforest, taking a machete to the simplistic diagnoses we find in the popular press. Fred Pearce, environment correspondent for New Scientist, has done some proper science writing here. 

So the book is full of surprises. 

1. Wind back the clock a thousand years, and jungles were the home of sophisticated civilisations. This is not just true of modern-day tourist honeypots like Ankor Wat or the Mayans. Nigeria's jungles hosted cities and empires; so did the Amazon. Fred Pearce cites linguistic studies, the beginnings of jungle archeology, and the nature of the soil and the  trees planted, to show that people were working this land, despite the Western world not knowing about them. 

2. These civilisations  collapsed, perhaps because of the encounter with Europeans and their diseases. Remnants went off into the forest. So the standard Western model of the jungle -- 'pristine' rainforest and 'stone-age tribes untouched since the dawn of civilisation' -- is wrong. People have gardened, or farmed, or still better, stewarded, the jungle for centuries, and with rather more success than we managed in the 20th century.

3. Much of what is going on today thanks to the chain-saw and the hunt for ever-more-scarce bush-meat is economically rational for the people doing it.

4. Many of the suggested solutions to deforestation haven't worked. Selling traditional remedies to drug corporations is good, even vital for the future of humanity, but has tended not to benefit indigenous people, or stop rainforest destruction. National parks are hard to enforce. Even when jungle products are found that can only be produced on site, they have been victims to sudden boom and bust: everyone starts growing them, the price drops, everyone loses. 

5. Fred Pearce does find some case studies that encourage optimism. He reports on Cameroonian cocoa farmers who plant their trees in the jungle, rather than clearing it. They also plant other fruit trees. In another model, a Central African government, I forget which, supports agriculture on the edges of a national park, to relieve the economic pressures. He even suggests that under some circumstances, drilling for oil in the rainforest can save the rainforest by improving the economy for everyone. 

All these case studies point to a somewhat heretical conclusion, which Pearce doesn't quite enforce in the book. One way of saying it is that you have to consider people as well as chainsaws or bushmeat. Concentrate on a single issue, bushmeat for example, and you're doomed, as many well-meaning charities have discovered.  The other way of saying it is this: rainforests need people to manage them. Remember the old joke of the vicar talking to a gardener: 'What a wonderful thing you and God have created,' says the vicar. The gardener thinks for a moment and then replies, 'Yes, and you should see what a mess it was when God had it to himself.' Humans are destroying the rainforest, bad people and good people together, but in the end we are also its only hope. 

This book is slightly dated, published 2006, and a little too affected by the economic crash in Indonesia in the early 2000s: you wonder what has happened since. It's also repetitious in places; you will be often told there are only 15,000 Orang Utangs in the wild, living in Borneo and Sumatra. But you can pick it up for a penny on Amazon and it will adorn any naked coffee-tables you have about the place and help us all think through this major issue of our times. Super book.

Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow

This is a gem.

It's a novel first, a science-fiction novel second: in other words, it has rich characters, a compelling plot, and leaves you with much to think about. The SF element is done seamlessly well with good hard science and coherent thinking about another world and how it might work.

The plot is all about a Jesuit mission to another culture, what happened there, and how it affected the hero, a Jesuit priest and translator. I suspect Mary Doria Russell gave her story an SF context only because on earth, most of the strange tribes have already been encountered, if not by Jesuits then by their Protestant missionary cousins, or by Western pagan neo-colonialists (aka loggers and drillers).

Underlying the whole tale all are deep questions about God, about faith, redemption, surrender and devotion.
It really is a wonderful book, and shows perhaps how hollow much of the rest of the SF universe really is. (Not that that stops me enjoying it: it's just that this book is so much richer.)

It rightly won prizes. This is the only SF book I would recommend my wife should ever read. It's a wonderful novel, not to be missed.

Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow

This is a gem.

It's a novel first, a science-fiction novel second: in other words, it has rich characters, a compelling plot, and leaves you with much to think about. The SF element is done seamlessly well with good hard science and coherent thinking about another world and how it might work.

The plot is all about a Jesuit mission to another culture, what happened there, and how it affected the hero, a Jesuit priest and translator. I suspect Mary Doria Russell gave her story an SF context only because on earth, most of the strange tribes have already been encountered, if not by Jesuits then by their Protestant missionary cousins, or by Western pagan neo-colonialists (aka loggers and drillers).

Underlying the whole tale all are deep questions about God, about faith, redemption, surrender and devotion.
It really is a wonderful book, and shows perhaps how hollow much of the rest of the SF universe really is. (Not that that stops me enjoying it: it's just that this book is so much richer.)

It rightly won prizes. This is the only SF book I would recommend my wife should ever read. It's a wonderful novel, not to be missed.

The Story of Christianity by David Bentley-Hart

The Story of Christianity: An Illustrated History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith by David Bentley Hart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A happy mix between the church histories that overdo the lavish at the expense of the comprehensive, and those that overdo the comprehensive at the expense of your eyesight. David Bentley Hart appears to have read everyone, from all the Gnostics, through Nietzsche, to the Russian devotional mystics, and that, and his own Eastern Orthodox faith means that his church history isn't skewed just to the Western (heard of St Herman of Alaska? Me neither). I found hardly a misstep in the book. His hobby of unravelling the myths and fairy tales that New Atheists tell to their children at bedtime (for a fuller account of which, see his 'Atheist Delusions') informs some of his chapters, notably those about the early modern period. My favourite of all the church histories I have read. Get someone to give you this book for Christmas.

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Anthony Flew: there is (now) a God

There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Antony Flew
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Enjoyable, brief ramble from the former to the probably final state of philosopher Antony Flew's thinking, particularly about God, and including how he changed his mind from atheism to Deism. It is bookended by a lengthy introduction and an appendix by the actual writer of the book, Roy Abraham Varghese, and another by the biblical scholar of the hour, Tom, or NT, Wright. Flew took care to write, and personally sign, his own introduction.

Here's a quote, cue unreasoned, buttock-clenching joy from theists and wailing and gnashing of teeth from his former atheist pals:

I must stress that my discovery of the Divine has proceeded on a purely natural level, without any reference to supernatural phenomena. It has been an exercise in what is traditionally called natural theology. It has no connection with any of the revealed religions. Nor do I claim to have had any personal experience that may be called supernatural or miraculous. In short, my discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith. (p93)

The 'pilgrimage of reason' soundbite could not be more perfectly chosen to delight and infuriate in equal measure.

The book is a good read. The Internet is also a good read, seeing some atheists build a case against the book using the same kind of tactics usually employed by cigarette companies, traffic lawyers, climate-change deniers or creationists, on the lines of 'the old boy lost it, very sad, and was bundled into the back of a van by evangelicals and forced to sign a script someone else had written for him.'

Actually, the book is clear that Flew became a Deist, and never stopped personally rejecting all the received religions. He didn't believe in an afterlife. He thought Christianity was the best available religion, but he didn't claim to embrace it, despite the admittedly gorgeous scholarship of N T Wright. All this is in the book. It's nice to find good and honest atheist commentators who recognize this, and who agree with the broadsheet obituaries of Flew, not least in the New York Times which put some journalistic resource into investigating the circumstances of the book. Flew had his marbles and after a lifetime of brilliant atheist philosophical discourse, took to believing that the universe was created by an infinite, immutable, omnipotent, First Cause. Flew's widow agreed that that was his position. The jeers and hoots coming from the Theist side may be in bad taste, but perhaps we should be allowed our little moment of fun. Remember, we also have to put up with Creationists and Republicans, and sometimes even have to call them 'brother'.

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