This story is a Noah’s ark retelling set in an ancient futuristic setting. My main character Gabriel is an old prophet and he has prophetic dreams. I want him to have a symbolic dream that reveals his mission to him. Here’s what I want the dream to mean: The world is one continent, but despite the youth of the earth, its people have rejected their god the Allfather within ten generations, because of their trust in science and technology. There are no atheists; the people know their creator and willingly reject him. They have their conveniences, their medicines, their atmospheric manipulators. They don’t need his help and they can circumvent his punishments. Medicine can completely cure STDs and the ill effects of drug abuse. It can also lengthen their lives, a natural gift that was taken from them for their defiance. Omni spheres can provide information at the click and twist of a dial and a swipe over the glass touch interface, eliminating the need for scripture. And should the Allfather think to send a storm to tear it all down, the government can alter the weather and make the storm disappear. This is the belief of the people. The righteous know this to be folly and continue to serve the Allfather diligently. They are mocked for it. Some are even killed for it. But yet they serve. But still, the majority of the world is wicked and the Allfather wants it wiped clean. He’s giving over half the team the red card. To protect he righteous, he commands them to build boats from wood, by hand, that can house their family and animals. Some build ships with metal using machines, and some of them build with the intention of inviting the undeserving on board. This will not do. The Allfather encourages all to change, but if they do not they cannot be saved. And he does not want the people’s technology to go with them into the new world. He wants humanity to start fresh, abandoning their worldly lifestyles. Some listen and begin again, this time building boats as instructed and preaching repentance to the wicked rather than harboring them. Finally, the day of the flood comes and the rotation of the planet is reversed, rendering their weather manipulators useless. The rains cover the world unimpeded, and the wicked and those who heeded their own counsel perish. When the rains recede, a new age begins, one full of promises blessings, including a covenant that such measures as a flood will never again be used to chastise the people. I don’t know what I want the dream to be, only what it should signify. I’m looking to Lehi’s dream and Zenos’ allegory of the olive trees for inspiration as to the feel of the dream.
Do you have to go in depth? Can you just have the character summarize it? "The Allfather has told me in a dream that we must..."
You don't want a straightforward vision telling the faithful exactly what to do? Because in the Bible, God's like, "Noah, build a boat because I'm gonna flood the earth." Pretty straightforward.
This dream is meant to teach a lesson to future generations, not simply warn of the flood. It’s supposed to be a parable.
Perhaps your deity portrays it as a sort of fairy tale when he sends the message to your character. "Three little pigs lived on a creek, the creek began to flood, one piggy had the idea to build a raft, but his brothers believed the raft would sink in the water, and stayed behind, only to drown in the rising flood" or something like that.
It seems like the problem would be to find an allegory to explain why having technology and ignoring God is folly when it doesn't sound like God is doing anything for the people aside from withholding genocide. In Noah's time gods performed a role in the harvest and the like, while your Allfather doesn't do anything. The modern argument would involve earning the afterlife, but that isn't an element in Noah's time.
That's not quite true. For example, Enoch. I think a good reason for not ignoring the Allfather in this world would be that he will smite the earth if it grows too wicked, which seems to be his intent in this scenario.
You want to retell that entire story in a dream using symbolism? I wouldn't try that. He knows the situation. We do too now, so start with a summery of just the part you want him to learn from the dream, and maybe we can help.
Well, the people think they’re immune to consequences because of their technology and science. So that gives them free rein, in their minds, to have inappropriate sex, get addicted to drugs, basically do everything the Allfather tells them not to do. The people don’t realize they haven’t eliminated most of the consequences at all; one of my characters develops such a severe addiction that he resorts to violent theft, for example. And all the sex outside of marriage is resulting in unplanned pregnancies, and the people are just aborting wily-nily, robbing thousands of souls the opportunity of a mortal experience. And those that do choose to have children are raising them to be messed-up kids in messed-up homes. Another reason the Allfather isn’t happy is because they’re crediting their own genius rather than him for their prosperity, which they are misusing. The entire world is full of hubris, so the people need a reminder that they are not gods themselves. So the Allfather’s plan is to reverse the planet’s rotation so their escape godly wrath machine doesn’t work, then he will flood the world, putting thousands of people in timeout (the afterlife) to think about what they’ve done. There’s also the spiritual side of it; the Allfather plans to reward the people with godhood when the world has ended, and mortality is the test of worthiness. Well, the people are almost gods because of their advancements, and they’re squandering and misusing their power. Gods should not be slothful, selfish, or callous. The Allfather has told them repeatedly that their wickedness is contrary to his plan, but they won’t listen, so he confiscates their bodies the way a parent confiscates a car from their teenager who drives recklessly.
Hm. Actually, I think what I’m looking for is an allegory of the human experience as posited by the book’s plot and themes, that also serves as a warning of impending cleansing the righteous must prepare for.
Pick your elements you want to symbolize. You didn't really summarize the parts you want in the dream, so I'm going to guess: the god, the people who defy with faith in technology, the people who obey verbatim, the people who follow directions with plans to break the rules and save "the wicked", the people who listen but use technology. (If you want to leave out the people who partially obey, and have them learn their lesson later, that's fine too.) Choose one character to represent each group of people. In the parables, God is usually the father of a family or a rich guy with servants or employees of one kind or another. In others, God is nature, and various attitudes are represented by a specific behavior from otherwise identical characters, as in three guys who plant seeds in or build houses on different terrain. If you don't want to draw straight from the parables, you could go with something more Aesop and make them animals, or the Brothers Grimm and make them a family who lives in the woods and learns their lesson through all but one of their children being eaten or otherwise murdered by a giant or a witch or something. I know those aren't examples of dream interpretation, but dreams and visions in the bible are just a free-for-all. Nobody would need Joseph to interpret their dream if the message were clear. Without him, the dreams are utter nonsense. If you want to stay true to these themes, then you can write whatever fantastical insanity you want, as long as someone explains it, be it the dreamer or someone else with a talent for such things. The danger here is that in a sci-fi book, the reader might wonder, "How the hell did he get that message from the dream I just read?" It might feel like a cheat. You would just have to establish Joseph status for the character in some way, like have him correctly interpret another nonsense dream prior to the big one. If you decide to go this route, shoot for the moon. I mean go nuts with multi-headed dragons and animals that turn into other animals and eat things ten times their size. That's how John did it in Revelations. It does not have to make sense, except for the part where some characters do something bad and get killed. I hope that helps. I know I haven't been very specific, but you'll be so much more proud of the end product if you come up the analogs yourself. I'd be glad to brainstorm with you more if you have specifics in mind though. Come up with an idea or two and we'll help you flesh it out if you want.
How about something like a dream where a man with a gun, symbolizing the Allfather, kills everyone who works in an abortion clinic? Or the Allfather's angels fly planes into the largest building in the heart of this world's Gomorrah, destroying them and killing thousands? Or, in the dream, the Allfather commands all sinners to sew a special mark upon their breasts, then packs them into ghettos to starve, gassing any survivors until only the righteous remain?
This would suggest to a lot of people that the Holocaust was a punishment from god. ETA: Oh, I guess that's where you were going with all three examples. Wow. @rktho, don't do any of these things. Please.
Um, yeah, no duh I'm not going to do those things. @Fallow clearly doesn't understand the point here. The Allfather has blessed the people with great gifts and prosperity and they're using them for selfishness, debauchery and cheating. God's punishments are not comparable to the Holocaust, which was of men, not God, and enacted against the innocent. Don't ever make such a disrespectful comparison again. You're lucky there aren't any Jewish people in this thread. As far as I know. Absolutely disgusting the things atheists say to paint God as evil.
There's people in these forums who live under bridges and fear billy goats. It's best to just report their posts and otherwise ignore them.
I was not disrespecting your faith or the Holocaust. I was pointing out that the problem you're going to have is to present, in a contemporary piece of fiction, a reasonable rationale for mass murder. We take it for granted when we read the Old Testament, but trying to write a story like that in modern words and values is extremely problematic and ends up sounding like something I doubt you intend. I thought it would work better to illustrate that problem than talk about it. I'm sorry if I offended you, but I have worked with another author writing religious based science fiction and he had a similar problem with presenting Old Testament values in a modern story. It is very hard to make those stories not sound monstrous when you rewrite them.
See, I agree with this. From your post though, I couldn't be sure you weren't one of those people who believes 9/11 was god's wrath for gay rights or something. Conversely, he assumed you were an angry atheist. It was just one of those statements. It's true though. Those stories are hard to reconcile, especially with what Jesus said about God. Pharaoh refused to release his slaves, so every Egyptian baby has to die? Pharaoh lives, not the babies. People are so bad that only eight humans and two of every land animal are aloud to live? Every other human, bunny rabbit and naked mole rat on the planet has to die. These things are worse than anything Zeus ever did to mortals. Gods in modern fiction are portrayed as evil gods for doing less. It's hard to sci-fi up the Old Testament without dealing with these things.
The waters you're stepping in here are very violent. Many of the things you mention in this post (abortion, sex outside of marriage, and drugs) are not what most people in modern culture think of as evil. In fact, there are many in our culture who believe that fighting against abortion and the right to have sex outside of marriage is evil. I'm not saying don't write this book; I just want to make sure you're fully aware of the flaming you'll get when it's completed and public. That said, keep in mind that when God wiped out entire nations He tended to do so because they were doing way worse than just abortion and drugs. They worshiped other, evil gods that required human sacrifices, which was often done by putting babies on hot coals until they died, screaming and writhing in pain. They raped, brutalized, and murdered children, women, and other innocence. They had sex with animals, not just people. All of these things were culturally accepted and even encouraged by the ones He killed off. Other nations that his people wiped out were wiped out because it prevented massive problems later, which we see when they didn't do what they were told and were later enslaved and killed by the ones they spared (they also tended to be led astray by the hundreds of gods the other nations worshiped, making them useless to God and bringing in the problems I mentioned above).
Like I said, I thought it would be more effective to illustrate it and let everyone work it out like adults. Had I just said so, you would have almost certainly asked for an example. I just didn't expect someone who has been following me around and trolling me to pop up in the thread to influence the discussion.
