Book #45: The Truth is Out There by Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth
Number of pages: 272
Thomas Bertonneau is an English Professor, while Kim Paffenroth is a professor of religious studies.This is a book aimed at looking at the apparent religious significance of six classic science fiction TV shows, these being Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Prisoner, The Twilight Zone, The X-Files and Babylon 5.
I was mostly interested in reading this book because of its mentioning of the X-Files, but I read the whole book anyway. Most of the time, the writers treat the shows as religious allegories, although I wasn't entirely sure if this was intentional in every case. In the case of the Prisoner, apparently Patrick McGoohan did do this deliberately, and he sees Number 6 as a superior Christian role model to James Bond.
I found this book to be quite heavy going at times, because there was a large amount of philosophy involved, and occasionally even politics. At times I felt like I was reading a precis of various events from the shows themselves, rather than a summary of their Christian significance.
I could tell this book was painstakingly researched, and I could tell both writers really knew their stuff, both in relation to the TV shows and to theology, but some of the chapters were about shows that I knew very little about, so they were of less interest for me.
Overall, something mostly for hardcore fans rather than casual readers.
Next book: Knowing God (J.I. Packer)