Fantastical Truth

Should Christians celebrate Halloween? What if we call it a “harvest festival”? We’ve all heard the jokes, but whether we engage or escape the thing, we must take seriously how our neighbors perceive the occasion. Right down to our lawn decor, Halloween’s trappings can encourage us to celebrate good things like fall and fandom. But these things can also provoke us into flip...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors Dragons. Light. Raiders. Lightraiders! One shepherd boy with four companions, plus a talking silver wolf, begin their quest to restore the Lightraider Order, destroy a portal, and stop an invasion. So begins novelist James R. Hannibal’s Lightraider Academy series book 1, Wolf Soldier . It...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors “Christian fiction is so cringe and cheesy, so let’s ignore it.” Some critics talk like this. But today’s guest challenges this line: Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today news editor and author of the new nonfiction book Reading Evangelicals . He surveys five bestselling...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors Some years back on Twitter, a novelist shared a strange boast. “Sometimes I lose sight of why I want this whole Being an Author thing,” she said. “It’s easy to get overwhelmed … and forget the whole point of it all. Which is, of course, to wreck you, the reader.&#8...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors Charlotte Madsen has issues, all the issues, all at once, and getting worse. They include but aren’t limited to: infertility, anxiety, medical trauma, postpartum depression, judgmental friends, a beautiful yet sinful toddler, and—just in time for this spooky season—a ghost that cree...

You musn’t go outside. If the plague doesn’t get you, the toxic culture will. Let’s be serious: worldview sewage pours out from your TV screen, and new generations of parents (not just grumpy Christians!) are waking up to nasty notions about sex and self-worship in the kids’ stories. That’s dirty stuff infesting our world. Do we need “clean reads” to keep...

What if you went hunting in the woods and found a Louisiana girl who had just been dropped off by a UFO? Then you tried to help her out while reconnecting with your past, and dropped into that crazy world of conspiracies and possible preparation for the end-times? Will Satan, or perhaps his human agents, use extraterrestrial myths to warm us up for a tribulation? Darby Kern, writer and producer of...

This week marks the twentieth-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Maybe you dimly recall these terrible events, but both of us remember them quite well. We also recall the stories and other images we used while trying to understand how people could do this. We will explore not just Sept. 11, and similar events today, but the greater question of how we use fanta...

What if you hated the idea of Peter Pan, then learned that your own skin sheds the fairy dust you need for traveling to Neverland? That’s the magical start of Kara Swanson’s Heirs of Neverland series, which began last year with the fantasy novel Dust . That book won three Realm Awards last July , and today Kara Swanson flies into our window and helps guide us to fantastical truth. Episode sponsors...

Last month at Lorehaven, readers were buzzing about a two-part article series from Josiah DeGraaf, which we called Should Christians Cancel Woke Stories? In short, Josiah suggests Christians must watch our for our own propaganda , and approach stories not as “culture warriors” but as students . That raises a big question hiding behind many readers’ questions about the series. Whe...

Last month, social-media citizens criticized the Romance Writers of America for nominating a Christian-made historical romance novel for its 2021 Vivian Awards. We’re looking at a surprising plot twist, when secular readers are feeling strict about a book like this. How can readers respond when secular critics fault Christian-made fiction for being too gritty and realistic? We explore the backstor...

What if your father died and made you the emperor, and you had to use your own bloodborne power and your empire’s traditional cult of human sacrifices to keep control of your sun—that is, the sun, S-U-N? Then you learn the sun is fading away, and the gods might oppose your new marriage? That’s the story of Lani Forbes’s Mesoamerican-inspired fantasy The Seventh Sun . Lani already appeared on...

Last month the Ark Encounter attraction, by Answers in Genesis near Cincinnati, announced they would build the Tower of Babel. Of course, this won’t be a replica, lest God confuse our languages even more, but an exhibit. We’re joined by Tim Chaffey, who’s not only an expert in biblical apologetics, but one of the architects who helped build the backstory of Ark Encounter. Concession st...

Earlier this summer, the U. S. Director of National Intelligence released a nine-page report that chronicled 144 encounters between military pilots with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP. Many of these extraordinary objects defy scientific explanation. What are the fantastical possibilities for UAP? Have pilgrims from other planets, or other dimensions, ventured to our own? And how do we as Ch...

Just this month, two wealthy business owners, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, took two different private vehicles on flights beyond Earth.[1. GPS III-5 Mission photo (June 17, 2021) courtesy SpaceX on Flickr . Licensed under Creative Commons .] Now people are saying: the age of lower-cost space flight is finally here, not only from government agencies but from private entrepreneurs! Others wonder...

We’re back from the Realm Makers conference in July 2021! Over 400 people arrived in St. Louis or watched the streaming video at this premier Christian-led conference for faith-based creators of fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. What keeps Christian fans and authors assembling at this annual event? Fanside chats at the Lorehaven booth 1. Realm Makers executive director Scott Minor RealmM...

What if you grew up learning Scripture memory and biblical virtue from a Christian-made tabletop game system? Then you discovered that game had been “cancelled” by an irritated televangelist in the 1980s? That’s a decent setup for a contemporary novel. But in fact, it’s a true story. Now suspense and fantasy novelist James R. Hannibal, owner of the role-playing game known a...

Christians talk a lot about “backsliding,” that is, doubts or struggles with our faith. Often the stories we share reflect characters who do the same. But how can Christian-made stories best explore this challenge, moving past cliches and shallow pictures of “backsliders” and showing more realistic images of people who fall back from faith but find restoration in Jesus? Concession stand We’v...

What if your father drank a vial of holy water that might have come from the Tree of Life? Then you researched his work, and found yourself waking up in the Middle Ages—just as the peasants began revolting? Novelist Jody Hedlund explores this in Come Back to Me, book 1 of her fantasy-romance-time travel series The Waters of Time, and we will explore this with her in today’s episode. Concessi...

“Fiction should not preach!” many critics say. They may even preach about it. But even if excellent Christian-made stories should not preach, does this mean the stories will have no teaching at all? Is preaching the only way we learn, or don’t we also learn through discipleship. This includes but isn’t limited to sermons! With help from Lorehaven writer and That Pale Host author L. G. McCary , we...

What if dancing could control your world, and your world was a floating island, and you had just escaped from a legalistic Order that had ruled the island? That may sound familiar, because we visited this world in one of our first episodes, about the novel Hidden Current . This time, author Sharon Hinck joins us to explore grace and true heroism versus legalism and false leadership in her recently...

Thousands of people from hundreds of families attended the Florida Parent-Educators Association conference in Orlando on Memorial Day Weekend. Our cohost E. Stephen Burnett was there as an author and Lorehaven publisher. He joined the Realm Makers Bookstore to share novels of fantasy, sci-fi, and beyond, all from Christian authors. In March, he also joined the bookstore for events in Nashville and...

“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” In Colossians 2, the apostle Paul says these regulations made up by man won’t keep you from sin’s infection! But similar rules might protect you from viral infections. So what do we think of these rules when a vaccine comes along? How do we respond to changing views on wearing masks? And how does this whole mask and vaccine situation map pre...

There is so much we don’t know about the solar system, our galaxy, and the universe. What all else is out there? Are there aliens we should be afraid of, or instead concerned for? All we can be sure of is that God has created it all, and he won’t violate his own nature. So drawing from scientific observations and Scripture, what are the Biblical possibilities about alien life? There&#8...

“Hey, did you hear about the new Christian movie or book or thing that’s coming out? Let’s all shamble together to Support this thing (even if it’s not very good). That way, we can Send a Message to our churches, or our unsaved friends, or to Big Hollywood! Support. Support. Blargh …” How can Christian fans avoid this rather undead-sounding complex, even while we share the Christian-made stories w...