The Gospel from Outer Space

Kurt Vonnegut's classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse 5 is a humorously bleak look at, amongst other things, the firebombing of Dresden and alien abduction. Both are experienced by the text's mentally and temporally unstable protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, and both are equally shocking and inexplicable. The novel's title refers to the building in which Billy, an American POW in Nazi Germany, survived the Allied bombing raid in February 1945 that killed tens of thousands of civilians. Vonnegut was also a US POW who survived the Dresden firestorm in Schlachthaus fünf, though he is not Billy Pilgrim.

Within the novel is a minor character called Kilgore Trout, an undiscovered science-fiction writer, whose ideas are usually better than his prose. Brief plot outlines of his works are scattered throughout Slaughterhouse 5, providing ironic commentary on the characters:

     So Rosewater told [Billy Pilgrim what he was reading]. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way [the alien species who abduct Billy once he has returned from the war]. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels, was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
     But the Gospels actually taught this:
     Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:
     Oh boy – they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
     And that thought had a brother: 'There are right people to lynch.' Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
     So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
     And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

Twenty novels that made me cry

After top twenty theology influences and going to see Moby Dick by John Bell, thought I'd do another top twenty.
Rules: Must be novels. Ranked by recommendation, not amount of crying. One per author. Sometimes the crying was from laughter.

1. Ulysses by James Joyce
2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
3. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
6. The Outsider by Albert Camus
7. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
8. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
9. Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell
10. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
11. Bliss by Peter Carey
12. Catch-22 by Jospeh Heller
13. The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis
14. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin
15. The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemmingway
16. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
17. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
18. Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
19. Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson
20. Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

What about you?

UPDATE: Check out Aaron's Top 20 theological experiences.
Ten points available in comments.

Moby Dick

For those who bother to check profiles, you'd realise that Moby Dick by Herman Melville is high on my list of all-time favourite novels. So much more than an adventure story (indeed, it is easily condensed into less than hundred pages if you just want the guts of the action), it is both an encyclopaedia of everything about whales and whaling (Did you realise that in the mid-19thC whaling contributed something like 1/4 of US GDP? Or that 19thC American whaling vessels killed around 15,000 right whales each year?), as well as a philosophical reflection upon many of today's issues: American identity in an age of agressive expansion (the US had recently annexed more land from Mexico when Melville sat down to write), battles over (whale) oil, racism, conflicts over truth and meaning, and more and more. I could write essays on it (and did).

Anyway, last night I saw a one man performance/interpretation of Moby Dick on stage by John Bell. Bell is Australia's leading Shakespearean actor and director and has been obsessed with this project for years. It was magnificent. Unfortunately, it's only on for a very short time (might have now already finished), but if this production pops up anywhere near you (it ran in Tasmania a year or two ago), don't miss it. Or better yet, read the book. You'll be surprised, but not disappointed.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 104.

For fifteen points, name the (ex-)whaling station from which this picture was taken. Hint: Australian.