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Firebird (Book Review)

© Christopher B. Jones

At first glance, science fiction and religion may seem strange bedfellows. This impression is in fact so prevalent that books such as Kathy Tyers’s Firebird are now residing under the monicker “Christian Science Fiction,” as if one must go out of one’s way to fit SF under the spiritual umbrella. But is it true that science fiction and religion don’t mix?

I once heard someone say that there just don’t seem to be many SF books that embrace the Christian perspective. In reality, this isn’t so. Religion—Christianity as well as Islam, Buddhism, and others—plays an important role in SF, and has for a very long time. Matters of spirituality are an important part of the societies in which we live, and thus are important sources of inspiration for SF writers. Nevertheless, the “new” subgenre of Christian SF is here.

And given what I’ve seen so far, it should be here to stay. If you don’t count the Left Behind series (which is really just straight fiction—perhaps even to be considered a thriller), Firebird is my first experience with a book from this new subgenre. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I figured that if Kathy Tyers—a known SF writer—was behind it, then there must be something to it. This particular Tyers novel is actually not new. It was originally published in 1987 by Bantam Spectra, but has been rewritten for Christian publisher Bethany House. I haven’t personally read the original, but I have learned from

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