call it), is essentially a fusion of horror, suspense, science fiction,
cyberpunk and related elements written not only by fundamentalist
Bible-believing Christians but crafted with a fundamentalist Christian
evangelical agenda. Every tale promises and delivers a light (in the
form of a message or sublime insight centered in biblical morality or
salvation) at the edge of a darkness rooted in often terrifying conflict and
bleak circumstance, where characters are pushed onward through trials and
tribulations and mishap which challenges or shapes their religious
convictions and is meant to do the same for us readers.
Off and
on and for the longest time of my pre-professional writing life, my
Christian religious convictions often drove me to saturate this tale and
that story with biblical ideology and ultimately it rarely worked well with
the sort of horror I'm heartfeltedly inclined to write. I
received all forms of hell from the finger-pointing judgmental types that
condemned me for my stories’ violent content and dark and supernatural
nature, and most other readers outside the church circle took my stories as
too sugarcoated and preachy. On the other hand, my experience with this
always makes my radar shoot up and zero in on the works of others who
attempt this sort of writing. After all, I’m still a Christian. So
typically you’d think I would be an ideal candidate to give a bright and
sparkling review for such an anthology.
I’ll
tell you, the writing itself contained within this book is, overall,
first-rate, the storytelling does its job and entertains with crisp
characters and situations which are refreshingly original. Some of the
content is outright straight science fiction, notably such as V.B. Tenery’s
court drama Adino, Frank Creed’s satisfying Miracle Micro and
True Freedom, Andrea Graham’s cyber-punkish Frozen Generation,
Joseph Ficor’s amusingly comic Your Average Ordinary Alien. There’s
the C.S. Lewis-esque Fumbleblot’s Task by Deborah Cullins-Smith which
plays on the number 13 and which I at first assumed I wouldn’t like, but I
found the simple fable delightful. Elements of good horror shine
particularly in Daniel Weaver’s truly psychedelic Guilty. A.P.
Fuch’s Undeniable is well-told (see my review of his other works
here),
but alas, I was constantly questioning the believability of the graphic
torture imposed on a Canadian citizen in China simply for carrying a Bible
off the plane and being a Christian. I’m well aware of persecution of
Christians in foreign countries for political and religious reasons in
contemporary times, and there has to be a more deeply-rooted set of
circumstances established early within the story for it to seem plausible to
me.
But
minor shortcomings here and there in the anthology did not lessen the
overall enjoyment of my read, and I praise each author for their uniqueness
and voice and superior storytelling skills. The only real problem I have
with Light at the Edge of Darkness is it drips with a Christian
message that oftentimes seems forced and preachy…..criticism which sounds
all too familiar to me in yesteryear days…..but I usually hunger for
something raw in my reading life, with no predetermined guidelines of how a
writer should write with or without religious conviction, where some stories
are spawned out of pure primal release with no need to convey any particular
message. The same message in every story of a 384-page anthology can become
so redundant it takes away from its true potential as an enjoyable read
marketable to the reading masses. On the other hand, the consistency in its
common themes makes for a uniformed anthology presentation when it comes
down to it all, and to this business of biblical speculative fiction.
