Christian Apocalyptic Fiction, Science Fiction, and Technology

Summary

Premillennialist Christian apocalyptic fiction is hotter than burning brimstone. The leaders of this newly popular genre, the 12 Left Behind books, have sold over 62 million copies. Such books follow the outlines of the modern premillennialist ‘end times’ biblical interpretation first popularized by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970. This end times speculation has benefited from the recent anxieties regarding Y2K and 9/11, and many other examples of the genre have sprung up contemporaneously with the Left Behind books, including novels by Lindsey (Blood Moon) and Pat Robertson (The End of the Age).

Bookstores or web sites often identify such works as ‘Christian science fiction’. Does Christian apocalyptic fiction belong on the science fiction shelves, or are there important distinctions between these genres? The Christian apocalyptic genre is generally poorly written, but that doesn't mean much; as Theodore Sturgeon told us, 90% of science fiction as well as everything else is crap. The authors of Christian apocalyptic fiction have a strong and definite religious viewpoint, but again, so do many science fiction authors. What else distinguishes these genres?

To address this question, it is helpful to draw some distinctions between the more familiar genres of science fiction and the techno-thriller. Science fiction is the self-understood literature of new ideas and things, in particular new scientific ideas and new technologies. Change is a central part of science fiction. When we think of science fiction, we often think of the future.