I just received an email from my friends at “silentlambs” reminding me of how the tyranny of religion continues here in America as well as in places like Iran and Iraq: “This message was sent to us last night through silentlambs. We are passing it on. When a person is at stake of losing everything and everyone they know they need our support in every way. It’s terrifying! So please pass this on if you will to any who will be willing to pray for all those who feel trapped and afraid to get out of the JW cult as there are thousands!”

You can read the message for yourself at silentlambs and it cannot but tug at anyone’s heart when facing the fact there are religious organizations like that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that so tyrannize with threats, even threats of litigation when anyone attempts to cut themselves free of such organizations. It isn’t only the Muslim religion that treats women and children as of lesser value than men, even as the chattel of men that holds so many in bondage to various religious superstitions.

It is hard to write of the evil men do, and like many of you I often resort to TV to try to find some means of escaping so much evil at least for a time. While TV remains largely a wasteland for many I very much appreciate the Turner Classic Movie Channel together with the productions of the novels of Jane Austen and the old mystery whodunits of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Nero Wolfe. Often lavish with marvelous scenery and good acting, the periods of the times involved faithfully reproduced are truly of real entertainment and escape into the stories told. I still enjoy watching the old Thin Man movies with all their improbabilities. Movies of that era were just plain fun and helped many of us forget the worries of a work-a-day world, they even helped us get through WWII and some continue to be of benefit today, one could say even therapeutic, especially the great musicals, as an alternative to drowning in so much bad news being repeatedly endlessly.

Though I appreciate the great old films and have a good collection of them I also have many of the old SciFi films on tape, among them the classic “THEM!” to mention but one of many, but for true SciFi reading the prophecies of Ezekiel and other prophets of both old and new testaments concerning Israel read like SciFi. Being a Biblical scholar himself Isaac Asimov took full advantage of the stories found in the Bible for his prolific writing of science fiction stories, as did Ray Bradbury and others. I continue to find Asimov’s commentary on the Bible of great interest and recommend it to others.

Most of the great writers including SciFi writers have been very knowledgeable of the Bible. And when you consider the fact no one can be truly educated without having read the Bible and know somewhat of its history and tremendous influence throughout history as the single most influential book throughout the world this is understandable. That the Bible continues to exert such a powerful influence in an age of science and technological marvels speaks of its enduring qualities as a study in human history, behavior, and literature. And while versions and translations of the Bible have proliferated in recent years the King James Version reigns supreme as a book in the English language.

It is most regrettable the Bible is no longer welcome in the schools of America, having once been the basic textbook of America, Congress even ordering it be disseminated throughout the schools early in our history as a nation. But the difficulties of taking the Bible simply on its merits of historical importance and as literature without falling into various interpretations of religious sentiment are there and not to be discounted. To be sure there are fabulous stories to be found in the Bible as there are to be found in most ancient literature. Some of the stories of the Bible are metaphorical and to be understood as such, but there are also stories beyond credulity and though interesting are not to be taken seriously.

Still, there are large portions of the Bible that read like foretelling rather than simply preaching or “forth-telling” of events difficult to understand unless you do take them seriously; which of course lends these to the genre of SciFi. How better to capture the end of America for example than a film depicting our nation as that Great City Babylon of Revelation? Sinclair Lewis was no SciFi writer, but in his books like Main Street, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry he in many ways described that Great City Babylon of Revelation, the business of America being business and the destruction of that “Great City” causing great lamentation by the merchants of the world crying out: “Who will now buy our goods?”

And why should such a minuscule number of people like the Jews, hardly enough to be a blip on the total population of the world, figure not only so prominently in the Bible but throughout recent history? Certainly no one would have thought there was any chance whatsoever of there ever being another “Nation of Israel” after the Babylonian Captivity, after the Diaspora notwithstanding the “Israel” of the time of Jesus. But there it is, and how to account for so many nations now calling the geographically microscopic modern State of Israel the greatest threat to world peace? But this “threat” would not be considered such were it not for Israel’s “Big Brother America.” How that came about reads like science fiction. And how is it that a Jewish dominated ACLU figures so prominently in the affairs of America as a nation? Now that, folks, makes for real science fiction!

Among the anomalies of history I consider how Jews, how tiny little Israel can figure so prominently in America, so prominently in world affairs and there is no reasonable answer to the question. How could a man like Hitler figure so prominently in being the cause of Israel “resurrecting?” No one disputes this being the reason, the “guilt factor” motivating the UN voting in favor of creating the State of Israel. But this does not prevent me being a supporter and member of The Israel Project dedicated to that tiny nation’s right to exist and defend itself.

Then there is so much to support the view the earth is Satan’s domain as the Bible has it and Jesus not disputing this claim in The Temptation, the world lying in wickedness, violence throughout, evil ever in the ascendancy the good seeming never able to overcome the evil and the entire creation “groaning for its redemption.”

When I consider so many mysteries like those of ancient civilizations that seem to have disappeared, so many twists and turns in the way humankind has been represented throughout our history as a species, the ancient structures like the pyramids and Sphinx, various structures and carvings in stone, the anomalies and paradoxes to be found not only in our universe but right here on earth it boggles the mind!

And what if science eventually discovers there are in fact “monsters” among us as the Bible declares; a distinct species apart from Homo sapiens or children of God, children of the Devil that prey on women and children? Perhaps Greek mythology is closer to the truth of this than science allows? But if this should prove to be the case would it fall into the category of UFOs, kept from us for the sake of “national security?”

Ah, there’s the rub. When we have been lied to so often by our leaders over the years, by those wealthy having the rule over us what’s to believe? But I consider the monsters without conscience, those creatures that torture and murder women and children and I have to wonder. How can such creatures be “human?” I think they must be something other than human; that they must surely be of another species.

Certainly it invites criticism to even write of such things, but I tell myself that if I wonder about such things others must also. And if SciFi is an outlet for the artistic expression of such questions, such wonderings, perhaps it comes closer to the truth of the matter in many instances than what our leaders and those of other nations are telling us.

There are those moments like Thoreau going to fetch a pail of water wondering “if that be not a dream” when the sheer magnitude of the threats to our planet and the growing violence in America and the rest of the world seem so overwhelming we are quite beside ourselves with the wondering. Were it not for the ordinary tasks demanded of us to just get on with living, were we left to ourselves to only wonder and speculation we might all go quite mad.

So, it is my good fortune to have a friend calling and we find ourselves talking about Punxsutawney Phil, and we share our delight with a local TV weatherman who had a hamster playing the role of groundhog here in Kern County. I’ve often said we need more critters on TV to take the bad taste of so much bad news out of our mouths. Show me more pictures of people rescuing baby ducks rather than killing each other.

There are friends that send me delightful pictures of bunnies and duckies, even one of a momma cat nursing six baby skunks, the cute little stinkers making themselves quite at home. But if you saw that picture of the bobcat in Kansas that was trapped, the feathers of its latest victim like that of Sylvester with Tweety proving its guilt you are made aware of Nature red in tooth and claw.

Ok, so even nature does not always accommodate itself to baby ducks, but with so many things we humans have done to mess up our planet and each other I still want the baby ducks and even the baby skunks. The world seems led of lunatics and “significant others” may fail us, but it is the baby ducks, a momma cat nursing baby skunks that help us maintain our sanity in a world that too often seems to be quite mad.