Five kinds of atheistic characters I won't read about

1. Atheist is morally bankrupt

Sometimes the authors aren’t even trying to make a sheep-vs-goats statement here. They just think it would be dramatic to write:

“He arrived at the harbor late, but his cargo of uncut heroin and underaged prostitutes was nowhere in sight. Had something happened? Vladimir Khorupt was an atheist, but he found himself praying.”

I’ve never seen it the other way around, though : “Because she was an atheist and didn’t believe in an afterlife, Jacey Summers did her best to help people in this one.” So if the book isn’t intended to make any kind of moral judgment, either play fair or leave off the mentions of religion/lack thereof.

2. Atheist is bitter or miserable

There’s a Graham Masterton book I put down because one of the characters, Dean, is an unpleasant misanthrope described as an atheist. The others call him Mean Dean, just to drive home what a nasty piece of work he is.

IMO, if such a character went down on his knees and embraced Islam this minute, he’d still be as pleasant as fingernails on a chalkboard. Except then he’d also think women should cover up. It has nothing to do with whether or not he’s religious, in other words. Unbelievers can enjoy life too.

3. Atheist became that way after a tragedy

The stereotype of an atheist is someone who believed in God until he lost a loved one. At this point he fell to his knees, screamed “NOOOOO!” at the uncaring sky, and became Darth Vader.

How popular is this stereotype? Well, after my mother died, an (extremely religious) friend of hers called up to ask me to go to church with her. No thank you, I said, because I’m an atheist. Shocked, she told me I shouldn’t allow my mother’s death to harden my heart. That was 2004, and I’d deconverted in 1999.

It was hardly a dramatic event, either, because I just read a lot before it happened. No screaming involved, at the sky or at anything else.

4. Atheist is the subject of a punish-the-protagonist story

I genuinely hate these, and although I might try the occasional inspirational novel, I stay away from any that might have this plot. Unfortunately it can crop up stealthily elsewhere.

In Dean Koontz’s short story “Twilight of the Dawn”, an early hint of the author’s detour into conservative preaching, the main character is so hardcore he tells his son there’s no Santa Claus. For this, he must be made to pay, so both his wife and son die, with the son praying for him until the end. And the main character keeps suffering until he repents of his evil ways and decides there’s a loving God after all.

I might not mind a well-written conversion story where the atheist researches a religion he’s curious about, and we see why this religion works for him and is a rewarding addition to his life. But I’m not interested in conversion-through-misery, which rings about as true as deconversion-through-tragedy.

5. Atheist is superior to everyone else

This is the rarest of the subspecies, but I thought Darwin Minor, the hero of Dan Simmons’ Darwin's Blade, fitted it. As well as having a physics degree and a background as a sniper in Vietnam, he’s a brilliant chess player and an incredibly well-read investigator, so he can outfight, outshoot and outthink anyone. It’s like the Terminator and Sheldon Cooper had a baby together.

I don’t find this kind of character offensive, unless the story turns into a tract, but at the same time I’d much prefer even-handed treatment. In real life, religious beliefs are no guarantee of morality any more than atheism is an sign of genius. If these are used in fiction as shortcuts, there are much better ways to show personality.

And if these are ways readers can predict what will happen to the characters, all I can say is, I’m avoiding those stories.

Message stories that I like

One message novel I enjoyed is Orson Scott Card’s novel Saints. It was originally published under the title A Woman of Destiny, but that sounds flowery, whereas Saints is a crisp neat title that sums up the book accurately. The book is about the life of a fictional woman who becomes one of the plural wives of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and who is instrumental in the growth of the Church of Latter-day Saints.

The book is obviously positive about the Mormon faith, but Card takes it one step further by presenting polygamy in a very favorable light. No one is underage, it’s all consensual, and in the best case scenario, the wives become good friends. Although I think Carolyn Jessop’s Escape is more realistic in this regard, I still enjoyed the book.

Why was this? Several reasons, but the first and foremost is that the characters came before the religion did. Card begins by describing a family whose father has just deserted them, plunging them into appalling poverty. Dinah and her brothers struggle to keep themselves fed and housed, and it’s impossible not to feel sympathetic towards them. Therefore, by the time they were converted by a Mormon missionary, I was on their side and continued to be interested in what happened to them, even though I’m not uplifted by descriptions of beliefs or baptism. The effective message stories leave the reader saying, “I may not believe that, but I can see why the characters would.”

Another reason I like Saints is because there’s never a sense of, “Now that the heroine has converted to the author’s religion, she is Special and things will go her way”. Oh my, no. Card goes in the opposite direction and makes life as brutal as possible for Dinah. When she tries to leave for the Mormon city Nauvoo, her husband takes her children away from her. When she falls in love with Joseph Smith and marries him, his wife isn’t aware of it and so they have to keep it a secret – which backfires badly. When she gets pregnant, she loses that child as well. Very often, the protagonists are depicted as beautiful, popular and happy thanks to their espousing the author’s principles. Not so here. Card never describes Dinah, and she earns the friendship and love of the people around her – it’s never given to her only because she’s the heroine or only because she’s a convert.

Probably the only issue that I have with the book is that nonbelievers such as Dinah’s older brother and the town doctor are painted in an unflattering light, but it’s relatively minor compared to the book’s good points. It also helps that this is set in the past, where it was normal for women to take a secondary role to men. I stopped reading the Ender series partly because Petra, who led her own army in Ender’s Game, became focused on marriage to Bean and talked about decorating their bedroom in pink ruffles. Thankfully Dinah, even when she’s deeply in love, is more dignified.

The other novel – which is second only to Gone with the Wind on my favorites list – is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I didn’t know much about Objectivism before reading the book, so perhaps that helped; I became involved in the story before I could be introduced to some aspects of Rand’s philosophy with which I disagreed. And one reason I kept reading was to see what the antagonists would do.

The primary antagonists in Atlas Shrugged - James Taggart and Lillian Rearden – are evil for the sake of being evil, and they always have been evil. They’re difficult if not impossible to fear. They’re completely defeated in the end.

The antagonists of The Fountainhead are quite different. First, there’s Peter Keating, who I found easy to relate to. He’s constantly pressured to live up to other people’s expectations, with the result that he sacrifices his own needs and hopes. To paraphrase Rand, he gets everything that society can give a man – money, accolades, a beautiful wife – and nothing that a man can give himself – choosing to be with someone who loves him, a sense of accomplishment and the joy of following his own dreams.

Peter Keating is a sympathetic antagonist at times, but Ellsworth Toohey is a superb antagonist always. He’s clever, polite, charming and popular. He makes a public show of forgiving someone who tries to shoot him. He’s also coldly manipulative, plotting very successfully against his enemies and ruining the lives of anyone who trusts him or depends on him. And he does all this with a plan in mind – though being Toohey, he’s smart enough only to confide this plan to someone who is no threat at all to him. He’s physically unattractive, but then Roark, the protagonist, is no Mr Universe either.

So I never got the impression that the antagonists of The Fountainhead were the black background against which the jewel-like heroes could sparkle even more brightly. Instead, they’re people with their own dreams and goals and weaknesses. They may spout the sentiments Rand disapproves of (and wants the reader to dislike as well), but they’re not automatically foolish or condemned to destruction because of that. And because Toohey is so effective as a villain, pulling the strings of people far richer and more powerful than he is, there was plenty of conflict. I never felt that Roark was facing someone whom he could easily defeat because the author was on his side.

I’m sure there are other message novels out there which are just as enjoyable, though after struggling through Rand’s We the Living, I’m not eager to seek them out. A little of this goes a long way – but perhaps it goes so far because, when it’s done well, it’s a good read and an interesting glimpse into an ideology that I might not share, but which I can understand in the end.

Message stories

I recently came across an amusing dissection of a message fantasy, and that inspired this post.

A “message novel” is one where the author’s political or social or religious stance takes precedence over the story. At worst, the characters can become mere mouthpieces for the author’s views, with the good guys preaching whatever ideology the author favors. The antagonists are therefore saddled with the opposing viewpoints, and are further handicapped by being foolish, ugly or cruel, so that the readers know that the opposing viewpoint is wrong wrong wrong. This is seldom pleasant to read, and even more seldom does it convert anyone to the author’s cause.

In some cases, writing a message story is expected. If a writer decides to submit to publishers of Christian inspirational fiction, for instance, the story would have to feature Christian themes and protagonists who uphold Christian ideals. There is most likely going to be a message here, and as long as the story is labelled accordingly, that’s fine. It will appeal to a certain audience, and readers who want something different will look elsewhere.

What I’m not so keen on are works of speculative fiction – science fiction, fantasy or horror – which are not so labelled but which are still message stories. If a novel is supposedly set in another world, but the good characters all talk about the equality of women while the villains are all misogynists, I’m not going to buy it. It’s going to be too evident that this world was constructed primarily to make an ideological point. And I’m a staunch feminist, which goes to show that even message stories which preach to the choir may end up losing choirgirls who want an interesting plot rather than a thinly disguised polemic. Many writers who try to send such a message often pick issues that readers are well aware of, and where the readers have usually made their minds up already.

Readers who don’t already start off with the same views as the author may be even less interested. That’s one reason I gave up on Dean Koontz’s newer books. I love his earlier work, but I lost interest when the villains became atheists and nihilists while the good guys were believers in the spiritual. Writers often have good intentions when they write message stories – they want to introduce readers to what they see as an admirable position or ideology – but readers rarely pick up novels in the hopes of being educated. They want to be entertained instead.

It’s possible to slip messages in under the radar, if an author is skilful and subtle and puts the story first, but the more removed from current reality the story is, the more difficult it is to insert a message. If a story is set fifty thousand years into the past, but the good people respect the environment and believe in marrying for love, it’s going to come off as a Disney film rather than a believable story. Modern issues don’t have much of a place in a fantasy land.

If an author absolutely wants to discuss these in a fantasy context, while not turning the readers off, the issues have to be geared to the context. No modern terms and no long speeches about equality or tolerance. The people on both sides need to be fully developed and to have good reasons for holding the views they do. Readers can tell when the author is trying to manipulate them (trying, because there’s rarely success in these situations).

One reason why authors might not want to present both sides of the issue equally is because this might lead to sympathy for the other side. I saw this for myself when I was writing Dracolytes. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, the story is set in a land where fanatical religious fundamentalists worship dragons – but since the heroine was a Dracolyte, I had to treat her religion as fairly and attractively as I could. There had to be a good reason for her to uphold this religion when the hero (an atheist) took a crack at it.

It wasn’t easy, but it was surprisingly fun. The religion turned out to be appealing in some ways, and I enjoyed writing scenes where the heroine prayed when she needed guidance or where she defended her beliefs. There’s no pleasure in constructing a straw man and then knocking it down. But there’s a lot to be said for presenting both sides of the issue and showing how each side just might have something to learn from the other.

My next post will deal with some books which were blatant message novels - but which I enjoyed a great deal.

To be continued…