To order this book, please select one:
Use Paypal andget free freight.
-Humanist in Canada
"Endlessly thought-provoking. Tremendous fun. Conceptually challenging. Moving. Impassioned. Richly written. Deliciously imaginative. Willing to speak the unspeakable. Unafraid to accept and explore new ideas." - John Grant, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
"It's about . . . a whole bunch of wondrous things. . . . The twining yarns of the multiple plots weave seductively and the reader cares about the characters and their conditions, hopes for relief for the weary and comeuppance to the plotters."
- San Diego Union-Tribune
If Thomas Pynchon wrote science fiction, Galactic Rapture might be the result. Earth in the year 2344 is a small player in a galaxy of some highly advanced planets - and some incredibly backward ones. A breathtakingly wealthy and sophisticated people, the Galactics keep 40,000 of their 42,000 planets in permanent quarantine, or "Enclave," so their primitive inhabitants can serve as sources of entertainment.
Now called "Terra," Earth has two lucrative exports: a perversely engaging mass entertainment medium known as "senso" and Earth religions, of which the jaded Galactics can't get enough. Terra's greatest success story, the Universal (Roman) Catholic Church, has left its birth planet to thrive on one of its own, fittingly called Vatican, where priestly sex abuse and imperial corruption take on astonishing new forms. A theology called "serial incarnation" teaches that God incarnates his son over and over, sending him to planet after planet. The Church has grown rich from this doctrine by charging huge fees to reveal to individual planets who their Messiah is and whether or not their historic religious leaders are genuine.
All is well until celebrated mathematician and recent convert Fram Galbior is overheard telling the pope that his new formula can predict where God will send his son next - an Enclave planet where most Galactics, even those in power, are forbidden. Attention centers on the rumored new Christ, named Arn Parek, a con man who becomes hotly sought by the Galactics.
This novel is an iconoclastic, darkly hilarious epic, packed with hypocritical cardinals, scheming Mormons, religious bunco artists, and cynical media manipulators. Called a landmark in the new alternative science fiction, Galactic Rapture is an engaging satire on the power of religion, worship, and "infotainment" in the future.
Tom Flynn (Buffalo, NY) is senior editor of Free Inquiry, cofounder of the Secular Humanist Bulletin, and director of the Center for Inquiry International. He is also the author of the nonfiction book The Trouble with Christmas and Nothing Sacred, the sequel to Galactic Rapture.