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From: jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: To Reign in Hell [SPOILER]
Message-ID: <2456@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-May-85 12:07:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: randvax.2456
Posted: Thu May  2 12:07:46 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 6-May-85 00:37:00 EDT
References: <1823@topaz.ARPA> <1369@shark.UUCP>
Organization: Gillogly Software
Lines: 38

Stephen Hutchison, responding to Dave Newman's positive review of
To Reign in Hell (Stephen Brust), writes:

> If Brust wanted to offend Christians, Moslems, and Jews, he did a real good
> job of it. ... take the cheap way, make Satan the good, honorable one who
> refuses to go along with the duplicitous and rather foolish Y*hw*h.  And of
> course God is "just another angel" and Yeshua is the last created angel,
> rather than the coequal or even the first created.  Yawn.

If someone is religious and regards his religion's account of these events as
the only true and valid way to handle the subject matter, *sure* he'll be
offended.  Sorry if your religion got gored, but as far as I'm concerned the
treatment was original and extremely well crafted.  Before reading it I
doubted that it could live up to Zelazny's introduction, and was pleasantly
surprised.  Hey, what's wrong with Yeshua's creation, other than your
reading of John 1?  His creation was unique and (by his own account) the
only peaceful one.

> I would be impressed if the conflict between obedience and choice had been
> handled in a way that didn't make God into a proto-Nixon.  Or which dealt
> with a truly omnipotent God, or a truly omniscient God.  The mechanism of
> reducing Y*hw*h into a mere angel, limited and accessible, is just too easy.

Yaweh was not cast as a "mere angel", but as the first among them ... and
after he learned to tap into the illiaster of the others, he was MUCH more
powerful than the others.  But what would be so good about an omnipotent and
omniscient God as a plot element?  Where will you get conflict?  Imagine
a Superman story that doesn't involve Kryptonite or others from Superman's
planet -- if the character is too far ahead of everybody else there's nothing
for him to strive against.

I found it a moving and very well-written book - the more so because I had
thought the whole subject matter had been mined out centuries ago.  I strongly
recommend it!
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	{decvax, vortex}!randvax!jim
	jim@rand-unix.arpa