Christian Speculative Fiction in the Publishing Industry

In 2006, a spring issue of Writers Digest magazine predicted that religious fiction would be one of the biggest growth areas over the next five years. In spite of this welcome news, the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA), an organization of Christian bookstores, remains slow to embrace some genres, such as speculative fiction's three subgenres: fantasy, science fiction and horror. Thanks to the Lord for Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia films' successes in the general market. Major Christian publishing houses have experimented with trials in the young adult fantasy market and signed a handful of authors. (Unfortunately, the major houses have yet to venture further-the adult fantasy market remains largely untapped.) The independent houses are taking the lead, and the risks, to get good Christian speculative fiction to readers but their efforts are blocked in several ways.

Horror, disguised on Christian bookshelves with spiritual thriller or chiller labels, has been accepted since the late 1980s with Frank Peretti's first novels. T.L. Hines and Ted Dekker carry on today with their supernatural thrillers.

That leaves science fiction. Thought Probes: Philosophy Through Science Fiction Literature, a college textbook, describes sci-fi as "the handmaiden of worldviews." For over a decade, Christian sci-fi authors have seized this opportunity as the perfect vehicle for the Christian worldview. The genre, alas, remains virtually nonexistent in Christian bookstores.

Christendom has always been suspicious of and slow to accept new things. Science fiction, horror and fantasy stories of faith have long been marginalized by believers. Not just believers who once said that rock music was of the Devil and could never glorify God, but even by actual genre fans. There are three main ways in which Christian speculative fiction artists have felt the brunt of discrimination.