Fantasy = religion?

Yeah, I got the Mormon thing. I'm not sure what to think. I confess that it bugs me a little bit. Not sure why. If I hadn't noticed it in his writing, I'd probably be okay with it. I have the same problem with Goodkind and Objectivism. Once I started noticing ... For me, Orson Scott Card is the worst. I can't read his stuff at all anymore.

Who cares if The Wheel of Time is ever finished? I gave up on it around book eight, despairing of any hope that Robert Jordan even knew where the story was going any more. In actuality, the series had been running on fumes since around the fifth book.

that was the last book i read (book 5).

Several years ago Harold Bloom wrote in his "The American Religion" that Mormonism should be considered a variety of Christian Gnosticism.

I honestly don't have a problem with series that rely on religious inspiration for story elements, plot points or magical happenings. I don't see it as much different that using mythological motifs. My problem is that many authors who are using religion as a basis for a fantasy book are often pushing their religious values as themes or morals that are to be applied in real life, at which point it breaks my suspension of disbelief, and I start arguing in my head with the author's assertions. Authors attempting to push a political agenda run into the same problem.

If a book tries to apply it's fantasy-grounded themes as applicable to my real life, then it'll either need to match my own conceptions of reality, or it'll have to convince me that it's interpretation of reality is correct.

left_wing_fox, i agree. sanderson doesn't cross the line IMO. stephen r. lawhead obviously does, and so he has become a christian fantasy writer.... (ursula k le guin does it for politics i think)

The problem with Lawhead is that he is just so damned heavy-handed. Good writer, though. That's why I ate up one of his Pendragon Cycle books until the end when it was started outright preaching. I nearly threw across the room, and I'm not adverse to Christian Theology.

Other writer's (Card for example) can fool the reader by not being so blatant about their preaching.

all writers draw upon their worldviews. so i'm OK with them being influenced by their background & beliefs. OTOH, something like the left behind series is an extreme case where common outlooks are assumed. some fantasy & sf has these tendencies; e.g., the pro-feminist messages in island in a sea of time<?i> by s. m. stirling for example is pretty ayn randian in its subtly. or the anti-christian angle in bernard cornwell's warlord chronicles.

Steve Stirling's feminism has strong overtones of "I like to imagine lesbians getting it on, sometimes with added BSDM goodness." Squick.

'Steve Stirling's feminism has strong overtones of "I like to imagine lesbians getting it on, sometimes with added BSDM goodness." Squick.'

Same with Robert Jordan.

I'm finishing the WOT series just to see how it ends, but after book five, good God... what happened?

RE: WoT. The first three were excellent. After that. Wow.

RE: Card. Card is definitely a mixed bag as a writer. He has a lot of failed books. But with a few exceptions he's more about exploring the ideas. A lot of his ideas come from Mormon thinking but I'm not sure he's pushing those ideas. Rather he's kind of working out his own religious ideas in his fiction. Sometimes it works while sometimes it doesn't. Interestingly his most explicitly Mormon books (like Folk of the Fringe) are also his least Mormon like. Of course he also has a lot of "Mormon-like history" done alt-history like. (Alvin Maker, Homecoming, Worthing Chronicle) Some of those, like the first couple of Alvin Maker books are excellent. Others are far less so.

I don't mind folks doing that though. I kind of enjoy some of the atheist or Catholic books I've read that do this. Although the ones where someone denies something and then reinvents it are a bit annoying. (Like Arthur C. Clarke who purports to be an atheist and keeps reinventing God in his books)