(That’s science fiction, to you, Mr. Smith…)

Ignatius Insight has a great interview with Tim Powers.

IgnatiusInsight.com: Is there, do you think, a difference between a "Catholic novel" and a novel written by a Catholic? Do some readers, in your experience, prefer edifying, didactic fiction to works that don’t provide easy answers and depict an untidy and morally complex reality?

Powers: I’d say – simplistically – that a Catholic novel is a novel that is based on the assumption that Catholicism is true, and is about Catholicism. I don’t know if my Declare would qualify, just because it’s about a whole lot of other things in addition to Catholicism.

I suppose there are readers who prefer edifying, didactic fiction – though I imagine they’d like it to agree with their beliefs! I can’t picture a Marxist atheist relishing a Christian allegory – but I’ve never met any such readers. Trying to make fiction that will illustrate a pre-determined message is (it seems to me) like trying to make wine by adding grape-juice to ethanol. Joan Didion said once that art is hostile to ideology, which I take to mean that if you force the ideology in, the art goes away.

Of course any work of fiction will have a theme – maybe even a message! But I think these are more effective, and more truly represent the writer’s actual convictions, when they manifest themselves without the writer’s conscious assistance. I generally see a theme manifesting itself in whatever I’m writing, but I’d never presume to summarize it or attach a conclusion to it. I concern myself with my plots, but I let my subconscious worry about my themes