Questions Too Like the Lightning raised for me, part 1

[asakiyume]

Since finishing Too Like the Lightning, my mind has been burning up thinking about it. There are elements of the story that made me wonder if I wanted to read further in the series, but after a few days, I can say yes, I do, in part because I want to see what the author’s going to do with those elements.

I thought I could talk here about three things the book brought up for me. Maybe parcel them out over a few entries. Those three things are (1) Flavors of Divinity; Or, What Makes a God? (2) Will a Powerful Enough Computer Result in Unerring Predictions? And (3) Asking the Wrong Questions: Yet Another Asakiyume Rant on the Trolley Problem.

So this entry is for (1). In lots of stories, a god is basically a being who’s much more powerful than your ordinary human. Gods often also rule over and/or protect some collection of ordinary humans—and sometimes menace others. They’re like people, only with higher stats. As the witch says in The Silver Chair, “You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You’ve seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it’s to be called a lion.”—same with gods.

Sometimes a deity’s motivations and thought processes are inscrutable, but usually, when we’re talking about these stat-enhanced creatures, they’re very, very easy to scrute.

But in some fiction, the gods are ineffable, mystical. The story may not specify how powerful they are, because that’s not where the interest is; the gods are there for wisdom and communion. This type of god may be intimate with humans or may be remote, but whatever the nature of the relationship, they’re definitely not simply more-better mortals.

I can enjoy stories with either type of god in it but what I don’t think I like very much is mixing the two; I guess I have an instinct I’m not going to like the two flavors together, so to speak? ETA--maybe because it represents two different kinds of worldbuilding? Or two different types of thinking on divinity?

But I’m also thinking maybe I’ve got too restrictive a taxonomy here. Maybe there are other, different ways of depicting gods in stories that are neither of these two and not just a mixing of them, either.

So… that’s one thing I’m curious about, going forward in the Terra Ignota series.

Comments

[amaebi]

1. I'm even gladder that I bought Too Like the Lightning, and wish I thought I'd get started on it, leet alone finish reading it, any time soon.

2. I've been thinking for weeks now about posting on the natures of god-representation in Diana Wynne Jones, and I had a conversation about god-belief yesterday that would go well with this.

[sartorias]

I tend to avoid books with gods because they are usually thinly disguised humans with powers, with adolescent emotions. Especially YA novels in which gods like Death or Evil come in the form of cute young men who then fall desperately in love with our heroine, who thinks she's ugly. (I also avoid books that claim characters are thousands of years old for the same reason, unless they are WuXia or XianXia)

Sometimes the definition of the word seems ill thought out, or slippery.

However, if I get a glance of the numinous, I'm okay with it. Like in Lois McMaster Bujold's Five Gods series. She does that so very well.

In this series, the god part (I keep typing dog because of dyslexia and because I talk more online about dogs than about gods) seems the weakest part of an otherwise fascinating series, because I don't get any sense of ineffable resonance or numinosity, but I'm so willing to go along for the ride because of other aspects of worldbuilding, and the clever writing that only sometimes stumbles.

[sovay]

Maybe there are other, different ways of depicting gods in stories that are neither of these two and not just a mixing of them, either.

I think of the anthropomorphic nature of the Greek or Norse gods as a third option: they superficially resemble humans, and certainly in retelling it's easy (and all too common) to flatten them into humanity, but they're really not just bigger and better humans; they are not what you would get if you amped a human's stats. Just because they sometimes show recognizable emotions or motives doesn't mean they don't show a lot of other things as well.

[randomdreams]

I've always figured the gods are ineffable but the humans telling the stories try to make them effable, hence the mixture. It depends on how aware the person is of artistic license and accuracy, whether you get the more or less ineffable god.

And, secondarily, some stories about gods are just metaphors for human behavior, while others are trying to explain the difficult or impossible to explain.

[amaebi]

I really, really enjoy your characterization of The Divinity as Stat-Enhanced Human. :)