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

Why do I write science fiction? And why do people read sf?

It seems to be a rule of thumb that most people come to the genre young. I believe it was the late science fiction writer and editor Terry Carr who first said that the golden age of science fiction is twelve.

By that he meant that most readers and writers-to-be discover the genre in early adolescence. That was true of me and, comparing notes, I've found it to be true of many other genre readers and writers.

But the interesting thing is that while most of us stop reading the literature of our youth -- in my case, the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew -- there's something about science fiction that keeps us hooked for the rest of our lives.

I think it's what has been called "the sense of wonder."

How many of you have seen the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams? There's a scene in that film in which Shoeless Joe Jackson materializes out of an Iowa cornfield, has a conversation with the Costner character, who has built a baseball diamond next to the field, then melts into thin air as he walks back into the rows of corn.

The Costner character just stares and says, very softly, "That is so cool."

That's what we mean by a sense of wonder, what I call "the Wow Factor." That's what I look for when I read science fiction, whether it be a short story, a novelette, a novella, or a novel. The Wow Factor. And that's what I try to capture in my own writing -- ideas and events so wild and wonderful and unexpected and yet so right that the reader will sit there and think, "Wow. That is so cool."

Some people think of science fiction as pulp literature -- or not even literature at all. Say the words "science fiction" and they instantly picture a spacesuited hero with a raygun saving a scantily-clad bimbo from the clutches of a bug-eyed monster.

If they're a little younger, they may think of Luke Skywalker dueling Darth Vader with light sabers or of Captains Kirk and Picard rocketing "where no man has gone before."

And to a certain extent, they're right. Those are examples of one kind of science fiction -- the action-adventure kind. But, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, science fiction is large. It contains multitudes.

Visit the science fiction section of your local bookstore and you'll find sf mysteries, sf military tales, sf thrillers, sf espionage stories, alternate histories, screwball comedies, sf romance and, yes, even literary sf.

Science fiction has it all. It contains multitudes.

You may not have read it, but odds are you're probably familiar with what is generally acknowledged as the first modern science fiction novel. It was written by Mary Woolstonecraft Shelley, the wife of the 19th century romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and it's been the basis for innumerable motion pictures.

It's called Frankenstein.

A lot of people think Frankenstein is a horror story, but it's really a story of science run amok. The title character, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, isn't the creature -- he's a scientist who, seeking to create life, creates a monster instead. And Mary Shelley is sending us a warning: Be careful.

Over the years, much of the best and most enduring science fiction has done that -- shown us our present situation reflected in a futuristic metaphor and whispered: Be careful.

In The Time Machine, social and political scientist H.G. Wells gives us a rousing adventure yarn, but it's also a serious dissertation on the dangers of the British class system and what they can lead to if taken to extremes. Be careful.

The philosopher Aldous Huxley presents us with a not so Brave New World that warns about the negative impact that technology misused may have on us. Be careful.

And, in the classic 1984, the journalist and war correspondent George Orwell looks into the future and drags us screaming into the worst of all political nightmares. Be very careful.

Which brings me -- not by coincidence -- to my own first novel, Soulsaver, which has been called "a wild ambulance ride through an Orwellian Puerto Rico."

Soulsaver takes a satirical look at 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.

As it builds, 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.

I wrote Soulsaver because I was afraid.

I had seen what happened in Iraq when that government was taken over by religious extremists -- who could forget that wild and crazy guy, the Ayatollah Khomeini? -- and I asked myself: What if something like that were to happen here?

Don't be silly, I thought. This is America. We have separation of church and state. That could never happen here.

Then along came the Reverend Jerry Falwell and that nice clean-cut young man, Richard Reed, and the so-called Moral Majority, all bent on forcing the rest of us to live our lives how they thought we should.

Along came well-intentioned members of PTAs around the country trying to ban books like The Wizard of Oz and The Catcher in the Rye and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from libraries because they thought these books, and others like them, were somehow evil.

And, in 1988, along came the Reverend Pat Robertson with the intention of becoming President of the United States.

And that's when I wrote my book.

Now don't get me wrong. Soulsaver is in no way against religion. Quite the contrary, it contains, I believe, a very positive religious message. What Soulsaver warns against is the misuse of religion. What it asks is that we not confuse the messenger with the message.

Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell. In each of their books I've mentioned, the author has something important to say about life, about society, about who we are and where we may be headed.

Each of these books presents us with ideas and events so wild and wonderful and unexpected and yet so right that the reader sits there and thinks, "Wow. That is so cool."

The Wow Factor.

But there's something even more important. The best science fiction gives us not only the Wow Factor, it makes us think. And that is so cool.


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