arcos Donnelly published his first novel, Prophets for the End of Time, in 1998. His second novel, Letters from the Flesh, also derives its inspiration from the interplay between science and theology.
An immaterial being of wavelengths, one of the Asarkos, is searching for others of his kind known as The Ten Who Are Missing, and becomes trapped inside the body of a being made of matter. Temporarily blinded, the alien gradually grows used to the unaccustomed senses of hearing, taste, smell and finally sight when the vision of the body that surrounds him is restored. Among the Sarkate, the name this being gives to these creatures of matter, he learns that he is inside the body of a man called Saul of Tarsus, who will soon be given the name of Paul. As the people around him seek out other followers of their faith while trying to avoid persecution by their enemies, Paul discovers evidence that The Ten Who Are Missing may be among the followers of the one called Jesus Christ.
Interwoven with this story is that of Lillian Uberland, a 21st-century biology professor and genetics researcher, and her cousin Michael, a high-school science teacher who risks running afoul of the fundamentalist religious fanatics in his community when he decides to hold a debate about evolution versus creationism in his classroom. Lillian offers Michael advice on how to handle the situation and put the fundamentalists in their place, advice he ignores, and the two eventually find themselves confronting demonstrators at Michael's school. In the wake of this controversy and its damaging publicity, Lillian struggles to continue her research, Michael is suspended by his school, and the two cousins engage in both theological and personal sniping, with unhappy results.
Letters from the Flesh, as the title indicates, is an epistolary novel, told entirely through letters written or dictated by Paul and e-mails from Lillian to Michael. The two stories, though widely separated in time, follow parallel courses as the characters engage in their personal and philosophical debates.
A biting, entertaining intellectual delight
Science fiction may be regarded in some circles as an agnostic's (or skeptic's) literature, but in fact it has a history of exploring the interface between science and religion, two areas many have come to see as mutually exclusive. Among the classic works of theologically inspired science fiction novels are C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet and its two sequels, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, James Blish's A Case of Conscience, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz, Philip K. Dick's Valis and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and several novels by James Morrow, including Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah.
Marcos Donnelly succeeds in measuring up to the high standard set by these authors in this always intelligent and engrossing novel. Using the device of letters to tell his story is not only appropriate, given the historical Paul's epistles to various Christian communities, but also allows Donnelly to give full play to his ideas without watering them down; he never falls into the trap of oversimplifying or caricaturing the religious or scientific views with which his characters wrestle. The distress, disorientation and adaptation of his alien to the world of matter and the body of Saint Paul are vividly portrayed, and the witty, gifted and flawed Lillian is extremely well characterized, as revealing of herself in her e-mails as many people are in real life. Donnelly pulls the threads of his narrative together at the end in a way that is startling but logical in retrospect, offering readers a possible scientific explanation for religious beliefs. Letters from the Flesh is the kind of novel that science fiction promises yet often fails to deliver; it is a novel of ideas that's likely to make readers see their world and its controversies among the spiritually inclined and the secular in a very different light.
