Mormon Fiction

Just finished Folk of the Fringe, a collection of five Orson Scott Card stories written a number of years ago. They are set in post-nuclear America, specifically a renascent state of Deseret struggling to re-establish civilization in the intermountain West under the umbrella of Mormon solidarity. It's my first foray into what one might call Mormon fiction. This wasn't Mormon soap opera fare of the type one sees on the shelf at Deseret Book; while some of the characters were LDS and there was a Mormon cultural background, these were not LDS-themed plots. But an LDS reader will read a richer story than one not acquainted with things Mormon. And that's what makes the book worth reading, perhaps.

At first, the Mormon setting might make some readers a bit squeamish. One the other hand, I've read stories that revolve around Christian themes (Scarlet Letter) or Jewish characters (Asher Lev) or rebellious atheists (Portrait of the Artist) without seeing those backgrounds as in any way being negative or parochial, and without thinking that my reading of the story suffered materially because I wasn't Congregationalist or Jewish or atheist. Seeing another's worldview from the inside is, after all, part of the fun of reading fiction. It expands one's mental horizons a bit. Perhaps non-LDS readers feel the same way when they read the stories grouped together in Folk of the Fringe (several of them were published independently in periodicals before being collected here).

One can't help but take some pride in the implicit prediction behind the alternate timeline seen in these stories: America could conceivably fall to pieces in the chaos of a post-nuke society, but the Mormons would still hang together. Yes, that's a virtue that Mormons have perfected, hanging together through tough times, and I really do think that the Mormon sense of community runs deeper than anyone outside the Church is likely to realize. I have attended LDS services in ten countries and a dozen states, from wards liberally dotted with academics to branches full of peasants, and I always felt welcome. More than that — I always felt like I was at home, and I think I was. I know of no other denomination that has successfully fostered this degree of worldwide community. Bottom line: OSC is not overstating plausibility in the general setting of these stories.

I don't know that I'll run out and look for other Mormon fiction anytime soon, but I'm glad I took a chance on Fringe. Sci-fi is sort of an unexpected place to find LDS characters and context; no doubt there are a few attempts in mainstream fiction as well, but I have not stumbled across them yet. I suppose there are always those short fiction pieces in Dialogue that are such a hit with Bloggernackers!

Comments

[Dallas Robbins]

Folk of the Fringe is a great collection, it is my favorite Card. Since you bring up fiction, I'll plug my favorite LDS novel, Salvador by Margaret Blair Young - if you are interested in good Mormon fiction you should give it try.

[RoastedTomatoes]

You might also take a look at Levi Peterson's "The Backslider," which at least some Mormon literature scholars call the best Mormon fiction yet written. (Or at any rate, a good book.)

[J. Stapley]

I have a weakness for religious-based science fiction. I haven't read fiction in a while, but my favorite sci-fi always blends the religious in as well, A Canticle for Lebowitz and the first Dune book being great examples. I'll check out the Fringe when I get into ficiton again, thanks.

[lyle]

I rather liked Folk of the Fringe; albeit I hope that the Evangelicals wouldn't just slaughter LDS folks. That was the most disturbing image of the entire book. A close second was that LDS belief would become a 'fiction,' and watered-down (pun intended), if the Church became the de facto civil government. I just don't buy that theory and/or that the failure of the 2nd coming to coincide with a nuclear doomsday, would seriously undermine the Saints faith.

[Ann]

I've read anti-Mormon fiction. Baptism for the Dead by Alexander Irvine is a book about a non-Mormon private eye in Salt Lake with lots of creepy anti- plot elements -- not quite accusations, though, because it's fiction.

Pretty unpleasant, all the way around, but it wouldn't have been much of a story without the creepy anti- stuff.

[William Morris]

Although I don't have the same objections that lyle has, I thought that the LDS elements in _Folk of the Fringe_ were too not-really-there.

On the other hand, the first story contains one of the most haunting, powerful, explicitly Mormon (and only, imo, could have been written by a Mormon) images ever.

------
I agree with Dallas about _Salvador_ (although it shows that it's an early effort -- I wish Margaret Young would return to the same type of novel now that she has some more experience and better writing chops). In fact, this reminds me that at some point I need to blog about it (in the context of Mormon magic realism).

[The Only True and Living Nathan]

Ugh. I read Baptism for the Dead, and was quite put off by it -- not just by his diehard anti-Mormon stance, but by simple lack of research. I mean, come on -- when you start out with a General Authority who:

a) condemns vanilla because of the alcohol content,
b) raves like a camp-meeting preacher,
c) has a non-member wife, and
d) wears a moustache...

As near as I could tell, Irvine got the street names right. That's about it.

[Susan M]

I've not read Folk of the Fringe but I'll get to it eventually. I'm still making my way through OSC's Ender's Game series. I'd have been done ages ago, but I'm reading them aloud to my husband, and we don't have much chance to do it lately.

I've read the first few books in his Alvin Maker series too. I'm not big on sci fi usually but I really enjoy his books.

[Ann]

Yeah, TOTAL Nathan, the details in that book were pretty off-base. When I moved, I tossed it. It was an interesting read, though ... not at all what I was expecting. Kind of bewildering.

[Todd]

I think even non Mormons have made the same assessment that Mormons will stick together in troubled times. I recently read a book by S.M. Stirling called “Dies the Fire” and it in this book a strange event occurs called the change and all modern technology fails. Gun powder, electricity, combustion engines, and even steam won’t work and society starts starve and then fall apart. People have to flee the cities on foot and band together to try to survive in this new more primitive world. A couple of times in the book references were made to Mormons that they would be more prepared for these changes. In the second book of this series called “The Protector’s War” it has the following quote;

"Maybe he's decided to just defend what he has?" the elder Larsson said hopefully. "After all, he's got most of western Washington, and the Columbia valley nearly to the Dalles. Going on for a couple of hundred thousand people, too. That's the biggest, well, country anyone's put together on the whole West Coast between Acapulco and Alaska, as far as we know. Biggest single political unit this side of New Deseret, probably."

So in this scenario Mormons not only survive but have the larges civilized society in the western United States. I like to read apocalyptic books and I often read ideas similar to this and I think it because if there was a government break down the Mormons have their church as another organization that could step up and fill that void. In our highly specialized world none of us have enough general skills necessary to survive, but if enough people could stick together to work out the problems they could survive. Plus it doesn’t hurt that most Mormons have food stored away for this type of emergency.