A fabulous interview with Maurice Broaddus
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On the Amazon.com blog, Omnivoracious, writer, editor and all-round good egg Jeff Vandermeer interviews Maurice Broaddus, talking about faith, and the ways in which it informs his writing.
It’s a fascinating interview, and well worth 10 minutes of your time.
Amazon.com: Are there forms of fantastical or horror fiction that lend themselves more readily than others to religious issues?
Maurice Broaddus: I think horror naturally lends itself to religious issues. The first question I get asked is how I can be a Christian and write horror. The total depravity of man (if you want a Calvinistic loaded phrase), the nature of good and evil, the mystery of the afterlife, unseen spiritual forces (like angels or demons), or the meditation on mortality/our fear of death. So it was not hard to get thoughtful works of horror from the likes of Brian Keene or Kelli Dunlap.
Fantasy works just as well. It’s the world of Tolkien, Lewis, L’Engle, and MacDonald. Though, it seemingly is the form that more readily lends itself to allegory, which, when not done well, is little more than thinly veiled propaganda. That being said, we used a lot of contemporary and urban fantasy in the anthology, from Mary Robinette Kowal and Ekaterina Sedia to Jay Lake and Jennifer Pelland.
One might think that science fiction would seem to be the one least likely to lend itself to religious themes, with the (false) opposition between science and religion. Yet Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow was an amazing book. And Gary Braunbeck goes dark science fiction in his tale for the anthology.
Maurice’s King Maker is out now in the UK, and his Dark Faith anthology (co-edited with Jerry Gordon) is available from Apex Publications in May.
