Lois M Bujold interviewed

Lois M Bujold is interviewed by Mike Houlahan, a New Zealand-based journalist, and in the process compels me to add The Curse of Chalion to my wish list.

MH> In The Curse Of Chalion religion is a principal theme. What drew you to create your own pantheon and theology? Particularly, the choice of the theme of sainthood interested me — your definition seems to be deliberately at odds with a 21st century Western view.

LMB> Although Chalion has some roots in 15th century Spanish history, I wanted the book to be set in its own world. I wanted Chalion’s Temple to carry out many of the vital social functions performed by real religions in our history, but I also wanted to come up with a theology that was non-dualistic, as I think dualism is a mistake. Although we can imagine good and evil as pure extracts as a thought experiment, they are never actually found that way in reality. So the five gods of Chalion were selected as a number that could not be divided evenly, because the moment you give human beings more than one of anything, they immediately try to set things in some hierarchy of value and position themselves on the “best” side, whether that actually makes any sense or not. Best for what? Of course, this immediately suggested a Chalionese heresy, where people re-invent dualism by selecting the most ambiguous of the gods to be the “evil” one, and they’re off and running again. I play quite a bit in the novel with human nature versus reality, best two falls out of three. Also, in Chalion, I reverse the standard dualism of matter and spirit; their theologians are very clear that matter comes first and spirit grows from it.

As if I didn’t have enough to read!

[Via Anita’s LOL]