Paper Ideas? I Thought You’d Never Ask!

logo-3Every now and then for fun, I spend time coming up with ideas for academic papers that I will probably never write. (Which will tell you something about what I consider “fun,” but let that pass…) More specifically, in light of the recent call for papers on intersections of sf&f and Mormonism at LTUE 2017, I spent a few minutes the other day generating ideas for the kinds of papers I could imagine being delivered at such a session.

I’ll start with some general fill-in-the-blank recipes for paper topics, and then continue with a few specific examples. Please feel free to chime in with ideas of your own!

First, the general ideas:

  • Future Mormons/Future Mormonism in [works by various Mormon authors showing the Church in the future]
  • Themes of [free will, human divinity, family ties, etc.] in [one or more sf&f works by Mormon authors]
  • Mormon elements in [random, apparently meanstream work of sf&f by a Mormon author]
  • Depictions of Mormons/Mormonism in [work by random non-Mormon sf&f author featuring Mormon characters and/or the Mormon church]
  • [Description/analysis] of [some little-known historical Mormon work that can reasonably be classified as sf&f]
  • Mormon historical consciousness in [various alternate history works]

And now some specifics — both fitting within the previous frames and falling outside those frames:

  • Book of Mormon narrative patterns in the work of Mormon sf&f authors
  • Future Mormonism in a socially disrupted world [focus on various post-apocalyptic works: could include Card’s Folk of the Fringe stories, Lund’s The Alliance, etc.]
  • Underground Mormonism in the works of William Morris
  • Building Zion in the universe of Alvin Maker
  • Dave Farland’s “endowment” system: A Mormon magical critique of zero-sum capitalism
  • Mormons in the work of Robert Heinlein
  • Saved by grace, after all he could do: A Mormon reading of Frodo’s fall and redemption
  • Book of Mormon fanfiction
  • “Only upon the principles of righteousness”: Magic, the priesthood, and the Force

So, what paper topics (serious or otherwise) would you want to see someone write about related to the intersection of sf&f and Mormonism?

3 thoughts

  1. Oooh. You know who else you could highlight? Mark Penny. He’s done a lot of exploration on futuristic LDS congregations, playing specifically with the concept of gender. Also some LDS themed dark-folky-fantasy.

    I would gladly attend any of these presentations.

  2. I’ve wondered for some time about the plausibility of a paper examining the seeming non-existence of God in the works of Orson Scott Card in instances where one would logically expect there to be at least a God analog.

    For instance, in Stone Tables, Card’s novelization of the Moses story, which he declares comes from an unapoligetically LDS point of view, Satan appears with ILM FX — windblown hair and flowing robes, flashing lights, etc. — but God winds up being nothing more than a fiery facelike afterimage.

    In the Homecoming series, the Oversoul is a broken computer and the Keeper of Earth is … I still don’t know. I’ve read the book twice and within days of reading it each time my brain went into a stupor of thought whenever I tried (and continue to try) to remember how it ends.

    In the Alvin Maker series, while there is a capital U Unmaker who takes physical form at times (preacher, overseer), there is no capital M Maker.

    I don’t know as I find it particularly troubling, but it does raise an eyebrow (well, two, ’cause I can’t do that Spock thing with the one eyebrow). I know another LDS author who once declared that God (and all things associated with the spirit — prayers, blessings, testimonies, and such) should be off limits in fiction because they could not be real manifestations of the spirit and would therefore be lies and so the author would be mocking God.

    Don’t know if there’s enough there to write a paper on, but maybe a smart person could make something of it.

    1. There are some interestingly ambiguous Satanic figures in Scott Card’s fiction. I’m thinking particularly of Abner Doon from the Worthing universe, who destroys in order to make way for someone else to create.

      There’s one place in the Alvin Maker books where there’s a reference to God (when the kid who does mimicking voices says something in a voice that he says sounds just like God’s), and probably others as well. But I don’t think God ever enters the story as an active character.

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