The question is: As a reader, can you enjoy a story that is pushing an opposed viewpoint from one that you hold (religion/politics)? If the author is prone to holding, and writing about, views opposed to yours, can you enjoy their works or do you stop reading them?
Check out mine and several other answers here:MIND MELD: SF with an Opposing Viewpoint and way in with your opinion!
3 thoughts on “Over at SFSignal Again Today”
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A writer suffers if he/she only presents one viewpoint. That is the classic criticism levied against Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” Science fiction and fantasy isn’t immune to this. So I would be turned off by writers who are one sided regardless if I shared their view or not. The best stories give both sides of a position and lets the reader decide. Otherwise the story devolves into good guys wearing white hats and bad guys wearing black hats, which unfortunately is more the norm than exception.
As far as your comment about authors getting all religiousy or political on their blogs or musings, that’s fair from a reader’s perspective, but as far as the writer goes, a writer has to push him/herself and explore these areas as well as others in order to understand him/herself. We don’t know what we think until we write about it. Yet here too, they need to explore all sides of any issue. A writer that falls into the trap of picking sides and losing objectivity, is in danger of this leaking into their fiction and writing one-sided prose.
Life is about belief and society so I cannot understand people that avoid talking about religion and politics even at the cost of offending some people. This creates a closed-minded society. Everything we do is based on what we believe and how we interact with each other. Fiction is all about belief and its suspension and its manipulation.
Mark Twain famously said that the tongue is the only tool that sharpens with repeated use.
I would say it depends on how they’re ‘pushing’ it. If it’s at the expense of my beliefs, including rants about my beliefs, then I would have a great deal of trouble. If, however, it’s a belief other than my own that is presented in a way that’s an important part of the story, minus the rants, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
cjh
It does depend on how it’s presented. The final two seasons of Stargate SG1 were all about how religion warps your mind and demands total obedience and was just ridiculous to anyone who actually attends a church and not say, a cult. (Yes, there’s a difference).