To be forward, I am not a Christian myself nor am I here to proselytize or anything.
This book was an interesting take on Cyberpunk. It IS very much a dystopia, but rather than End Stage Capitalism, it is a faithless world. Also, the moral comes out the other end as inherently anti-technology.
I was curious if anybody else read this or had any takes. It IS a bit preachy, a bit white savior-y, but it was still an intereting read as a cyberpunk fan.
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Also, I am NOT here to get a hate-on for Christianity. It’s not my thing, but I am not here to shit on anybody. I just wanna talk about this book.
This sounds like garbage. I hate when Christian authors try to find sci-fi concepts and try to use them to essentially talk about their religion. I saw this stuff a lot growing up and honestly it’s kind of just awful. These authors often don’t really understand the topics that are being discussed nor do they care about the ethical or philosophical problems in these genres, and instead would rather talk about how god or christ or some bullshit is involved instead of having actual meaningful, conversations it becomes a literal propaganda piece.
There’s no way that isn’t terrible
I would have to read it, but I assume ham-fisted Christian allegory.
I have read one Christian themed book and that was The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. I don’t care what anyone says, it was a terrible book. I just think modern Christians just can’t write
What dystopian elements it brings to the table. Cyberpunk has a very clear motto: “high tech low life”. Does the book expand on that or is it more “what do we do now that we accomplished everything” type of scenario?
So this book is essentially The Wanderer by U2.
I dislike the idea that without religion humanity would go into decline. Like Christianity is the only thing that allows us to have morality and decency.
Would not read. I can feel the themes and preaching beating me over the head from the title alone.
Also, from what you described, this doesn’t seem like cyberpunk, but rather another type of dystopian scifi. Could be wrong, but I really don’t forsee much “punk” in something like this.
All cyberpunk is future dystopian sci-fi, but not all dystopian future sci-fi is cyberpunk.
Raised by Wolves touches on some Christian themes and I thought was a fun show. The Mithraic were def the Christians in this show. Sad it was cancelled 🥲
Totally gay
Anything with Christian tacked onto it is horrible. Christian cyberpunk, horrible, Christian rock, horrible.
Christianity is in decline. Assuming that god doesn’t rock up on a chat show in the intervening years, no way is christianity going to be anything more than a niche cult for loonies in the future.
Garbage
Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity any better, you’re just making dystopic fiction worse?
Christian anything is propaganda for a non existent carpenter
No way redditors aren’t gonna hate on this lol
Sounds extremely cringe, like I would not even read it if it was free and I was stranded on a deserted island type cringe
Yikes
Thinly veiled religious propaganda? No thanks. If the author wasn’t an egomaniacal zealot pushing a message, this would just be a scifi book without the inflammatory title and no need to be a “Christian” novel. Replace Christian with any other faith and it’s just as cringey:
The Last Scientologist
The Last Buddhist
The Last Muslim
The Last Hindu
Prefer transmetropolitan’s take on religion
Think you can find it at the end of volume 2
Are utopian stories cyberpunk now?
somehow, cringy and preachy at the same time
https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/W1QaoYt95M
I think this pretty much sums it up
“Christian” and “Cyberpunk” are two words I didn’t think would ever go together since Cyberpunk culture is listed as a thing that leads to “satanic” influence.
Personally though I’m not against the idea of exploring the role of faith in a cyberpunk setting. One can make the argument that Jesus him self was an anti authority figure back in his day. So there are some things there that can be molded into a Cyberpunk themed story; but I think we already kinda have that explored in the Matrix movies.
In the context of modern day Christianity though. Organized religion is more often a tool used by authoritarians for control in much the same way that people use to have divine rights for kings to justify their role. Now days the prosperity gospel does the same thing for corporations, preaching that money = blessing from God. So for a story to have a main character in a cyberpunk setting where religion hasn’t been subverted by authoritarians to be used as another mode of control would have to come up with a damn good explination for why that is so.
To add an anecdote, I have a co worker that released a sci fantasy novel that is basically just Starwars but super dupper ultra Christian. I got 50 pages in before I nearly died of cringe… It was written by a right wing anti-vaxer… It hurts just thinking about it.
As a Christian myself, no. Abosulutely not. Nothing good comes from haphazardly slapping religious themes/messages onto a genre, especially when said religion has a history of going about it with all the subtlety and nuance of a stick of dynamite.
Hail satin.
Feels like another extension of the persecution fetish. Turn everything around, turn the majority into the minority, because the underdog can’t be the abuser
I can see a non-christian pulling such a thing off successfully. An honestly portrayed christian character in an overwhelmingly godless world; one among multiple characters, conflict of values, could be a badass too, like a street samurai version of Solomon Kane; but descriptive, without the author taking a stance. This smells preachy as hell (I may have lower tolerance).
Richard K. Morgan’s “Thirteen”/“Black Man” (US vs UK titles) has a great “Christian” subplot element. (Some may not agree this book is Cyberpunk. Let’s agree to disagree.)
The religious element may not be accurate according to many Christians though. It caricatures a pretty reactionary sort of Christianity. Very fundamentalist hellfire-and-brimstone “Christ the Redeemer with a 12-gauge and machete”.
This is not the focus of the book, just a part of the setting. But he does take a good poke at the ‘Murica red-state vibe. New England and Pacific Coast states secede and the remaining states are negatively referred to as “Jesus-Land”. It’s funny and painful if you are living it.
And a great novel by the creator of Altered Carbon.
Wow an especially euphoric crowd we’re working with today huh? Hope everyone has their tetanus shots
The idea that without Christianity the world would be a dystopia rubs me the wrong way. Like one religion is the only thing keeping the world from falling into decline.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is almost explicitly Christian and considered one of the foundations of cyberpunk
Christian-focused media tends to fall into a few different categories. It’s either allegorical (no matter how subtly), a sermon, or pretending that Christianity is the minority so they can demonize atheists or other theists.
Since we’re literally judging a book by its cover, I assume it’s gone the Christian minority route.
Given that theocrats of particularly this sort seem to be invested in destroying the planet ecologically and economically, I suppose it’s a plausible premise for why we slide (deeper) into corporate dystopia.
This thread sucks cause it’s a bunch of people that know nothing about the book just hating on christianity and OP is a trans furry which makes no sense.
The problem here is that religion and late stage capitalism have always been combined. So why would you separate them in the first place.
This book is separating cereal and milk, yeah they’re two things but…
The only piece of media that I’ve found that actually handles this kind of premise tastefully without projecting a persecution fetish is the Book of Eli.
That’s largely because the Book of Eli focuses on the dangers of people who want to use religious dogma as a cudgel to control people, rather than demonizing other religions and secular thought.
I’ve never read anything like that, but I feel paraphrasing Hank Hill’s take on Christian rock would be appropriate:
“Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity cooler, you’re just making [cyberpunk] worse?”
I think it’s an interesting idea.
Like, the contrast between Christian hope and Cyberpunk cynicism might be an interesting avenue to explore.
Better than just continually repeating the same thing over and over again.
There’s nothing wrong with being religious, but this smells like self indulgent resisting oppression fantasy. People who write Christian fiction are generally the kind of people who remind of that Bible quote about the hypocrites who love to pray standing on the street corners to be seen by men.
The last one? Finally.
I would hateread the shit outta that, unfortunately. Bet it would be better than the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.