The Official Home Page for "Soulsaver" by James Stevens-Arce

I wrote Soulsaver because I am afraid.

Not of junkies, or carjackers, or proctologists. Not of Jason, or Freddie, or Judge Judy. Not of the Dark Lord, or demons, or Dr. Dre. It's those clean-cut folks who claim to speak for the Man Upstairs who make me nervous.

I must have missed something in freshman theology class, because apparently the Almighty can't be trusted to speak for Himself anymore. He needs a big old, big-haired, Bible-thumping doctor of divinity to put the proper spin on what He's trying to communicate. You can catch them on early morning Sunday television announcing:

"God said --"

"God told me --"

"God wants you to --"

How many sins have been committed in the Name of the Father?

The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, fatwahs, jihads, Northern Ireland, Iran-Iraq, the Taliban, record-burnings, book-burnings, witch-burnings. The list goes on.

I think that's scary.

Because it's really all about control, isn't it?

It's about telling you how you'll live your life, what books you'll be allowed to read, what movies and television shows you may watch, how you will dress, what you'll be permitted to believe, with whom you may associate, whom you can love, whom you must hate.

I think that's really scary.

So I decided to write a funny book about it.

Soulsaver started out as a short story about a young true believer who begins to question things. Asimov's Science Fiction published it in September 1983, despite a theme that then-editor Shawna McCarthy characterized as "controversial." At that time, I had no idea I would ever want to develop the topic further.

Jump ahead to 1988. Pat Robertson is making a run for the Republican presidential nomination. Around this time, too, Assemblies of God minister Jim Bakker's sexual shenanigans with then-teenager Jessica Hahn got plastered across the front pages of publications as lurid as The National Enquirer and as staid as The New York Times.

Rival preacher Jimmy Swaggart condemned Bakker -- and then got his own picture in the paper for getting arrested while being "ministered to" by a member of the oldest profession.

Even Oral Roberts popped his venerable silver-maned head up on television to plead for large cash donations, tearfully confiding that the Lord had threatened to take him to His Bosom (apparently churchspeak for "Jehovah gone whack you, sucka") if Oral's flock didn't pony up $8 million pronto. (The good minister failed to specify whether the Lord required that the collection plate be filled with small, unmarked bills only.)

And on CNN, a disenchanted former manager of Pat Robertson's television station revealed the existence of a very special production manual. Station personnel were training to follow its step-by-step instructions for the upcoming live broadcast of the Second Coming, the End of the World and the Rapture. This triple blockbuster mother of all sweeps was scheduled, according to some celestial TV Guide, to kick off at the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999.

I was aghast. Life imitating satire?! Would there be nothing left for this humble scribe to make gentle mock of?

Wondering if my imagination would be up to the task of outstripping real life, I took keyboard in hand.

To make the long leap from short story to novel-length less daunting, I decided to turn the original piece into a screenplay first. Typically, these run no more than 20-25,000 words. That done, I could more easily shoot for the 50-80,000 words that make up a novel.

I discovered a couple of interesting things along the way.

Writing for the screen focused me primarily on plot, visuals and dialogue, very little on description or internal feelings. By contrast, when I began adapting and expanding the completed script into a novel a year later, my focus switched to the interior life of the characters. That was also my chance to "direct" the movie I'd written, since now I could describe the settings in detail and provide the characters with appropriate facial expressions and reactions, along with revelatory bits of business.

In 1991, the novel got me my current literary agent. He sent the book out to five editors. There must have been some freakish misalignment of the planets right around then, because they all passed, though one admired my writing enough to request to see future work, and another liked the book, but inquired if I'd be willing to make changes.

Taking this last as an if-you're-willing-to-revise-I'm-willing-to-buy offer, I got my hopes up. But no. It turned out to be an if-you're-willing-to-revise-I'm-willing-to-take-another-look proposal. The editor and I were, however, of one mind that I shouldn't rewrite on the basis of suggestions with which I disagreed, so I bid euphoria adieu.

In 1994, I created a novella version of the book by excerpting slightly less than 40,000 words, the maximum length allowable to enter a literary competition sponsored by Barcelona's Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC).

Hopes high again, I sent it off...

...and nothing happened. Zilch, nada, bupkis.

Disappointed, I took a break by returning to a spec screenplay for a romantic comedy about a college senior who can't lose his virginity, no matter how cleverly he schemes, even though he's living smack dab in the middle of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. (This is not, incidentally, an autobiographical tale).

Three years passed. On a whim, I decided to enter my book in the UPC competition again -- same manuscript, with only minor cosmetic changes. I figured that they would be fielding a fresh jury, whose members wouldn't have seen my previous entry. My bad. Turned out to be the same five fine fellows who had been judging since the competition began in 1990.

Scratch that effort.

December 3, 1997. The phone rings. "Is this James Stevens-Arce?" asks a woman in Spanish. I plead guilty, suspecting what this is about, but no longer daring to hope. Ho-o-o-oly cow. My book has tied for first place at the UPC competition, and she wants to know can I make the awards ceremony the following week to pick up my half of the million-peseta prize?

Oh, I don't know. Can the pope speak Polish?

My right arm was immobilized because of major reconstructive surgery on my rotator cuff only a week earlier. No matter. My wife and I practically floated across the Atlantic and spent an unforgettable week in beautiful Barcelona.

The competition's director told me he'd remembered my novella from 1994 and had been delighted that I'd resubmitted it. So many worthy entries had come in that year that they hadn't been able to include mine among the prize winners and he was pleased to have the chance to, as he put it, "rectify a wrong."

Back home, I contacted the if-you're-willing-to-revise-I'm-willing-to-take-another-look editor with news of the prize, confessing that even though I still hadn't incorporated any of his suggestions, I had tightened the book. He agreed to take a second look, and I rocketed off the novel version (not the novella).

He loved the revised version and recommended it to Harcourt, which bought it.

The novel's winning a prestigious international literary competition also persuaded a screen agent to look at the script and, subsequently, to represent me. Now I'm hopeful that the novel's publication and favorable reviews may help sell the screenplay. Then, should the script sell, that "Soon To Be a Major Motion Picture" cachet could goose sales of the book.

The screenplay is currently under consideration by several filmmakers.

Okay, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. In December 1997, a million pesetas were worth about $7,500, which I split with Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer.

Since a million pesetas were then worth about $10,000 Canadian, I think I'm entitled to complain that his half was bigger than mine.

So what's my book about?

Soulsaver unfolds in a future America whose government has been taken over by religious extremists and explores what might happen in such a society if the Second Coming actually occurred. Along the way, it depicts the effects of religious fervor gone mad and the struggles of its initially innocent young protagonist to decide who and what to believe in.

In her blurb for the book, Connie Willis calls it "a frightening, funny future full of religion, politics, TV, and even the occasional miracle."

Frightening and funny, huh?

There's just no stopping a satirist with a dream.


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