subversive

John C. Wright has a good post on what subversiveness really means in speculative fiction. Key quote:

My comment: when the so called freethinking rebels win, they impose a politically correct uniformity of thought far less free and far less interesting to read and far more preposterously hypocritical than the old established pieties, which at least had experience, common sense, and authentic human emotion on their side, not to mention divine revelation. At such at time the only manly response to the bold nonconformists (all strangely in perfect lockstep with each other!) is to become superversive, and write books upholding not just Motherhood and Apple Pie, but the Virgin Mary and Eucharist.

That’s one of the reasons I decided not to make a religion for the secondary world in FROSTBORN, but rather have the main characters be, essentially, 6th century Catholic Romans transplanted to a secondary world. It made the book much more interesting to write.

-JM