What follows is a loose transcript of my presentation at the Center for Millennial Studies Conference in 2002:
TIME FOR PREMILLENNIALIST APOCALYPTIC FICTION. Thomas M. Doyle
For my third and apparently final presentation on premillennialist apocalyptic fiction, its easy for me to speak to the theme of this conference — disappointment. I’ll miss these gatherings.
As before, my definition of premillennialist apocalyptic fiction is books and movies that, like the bestselling “Left Behind” series, follow the modern premillennialist “rooster” script as first popularized in The Late Great Planet Earth. Fortunately, we’ve had a discussion of the Left Behind books in one of the morning sessions by Heath Carter, but just to make sure, does everybody understand the type of fiction I mean? Good. Then on to the disappointing stuff.
As posed to us in the call for papers, apocalyptic disappointment is a function of time. Time is a central element of apocalyptic discourse generally, as elaborated by Stephen O’Leary. With disappointment, time is still more important. A typical scenario is that a millennial movement sets a date or time with more or less precision, anticipation builds, the date passes, disappointment sets in. Without a predictive time frame, both great anticipation and great disappointment are less likely.
Disappointment is a function of time, but time is different in fiction. A fiction author has more flexibility than a non-fiction author in controlling and constructing time differently than it is socially perceived. How does apocalyptic fiction create (or fail to create) disappointment with its distinct relationships to time? And what are the disappointments peculiar to fiction?
I’m going to discuss three kinds of time that relate to disappointment in fiction. First, external time, meaning the time when the work is written and published. External time relates to my second category, predictive time, meaning the end time dates set within the book (explicitly or implicitly). Finally, and most distinctive of fiction, is internal time, the flow and “feel” of time within the books.
In terms of external time, premillennialist apocalyptic fiction emerged into mainstream culture only within the last decade. This is puzzling, as The Late Great Planet Earth script was published in 1970, and was quickly a huge crossover hit. Tim LaHaye, one of the Left Behind authors, published his own Late Great Planet Earth style book in 1972, and he claims that he thought of the idea for the Left Behind books in the 80s (or even possibly the 70s), but the first Left Behind book comes out in 1995, and only after other such novels had already been on the market Why then did it take so long to put LaHaye’s idea into execution?
As I’ve noted in previous presentations, there were serious inhibitions against publishing premillennialist apocalyptic fiction, particularly the perception that fiction was a less serious medium and compromised the claims to truth and underlying biblical certainty in the prophetic argument. As we approached the years 2000-2001, however, reasons arose for overcoming such inhibitions. One important reason was the inevitable apocalyptic disappointment that would accompany nonfictional writings focused on those years, accompanied by a desire to maintain and guide end times enthusiasm.
From this emergence, one might have predicted that the genre would peter out after 2000-2001. My own prediction was that the genre would endure, though sales might be weaker. The events of September 11, however, have given unforeseen energy to the genre (particularly the Left Behind series) and to apocalyptic speculation generally. This boost came even though the no book in the genre predicted those specific events. The end has not yet come for premillennialist apocalyptic fiction.
So, the emergence of the genre in external time is related to the genre’s ability to finesse predictive time, in which it has a clear advantage over non-fiction biblical interpretation. As noted by Stephen O’Leary regarding non-fictional discourse, Hal Lindsey had already improved on Millerite-style apocalyptic rhetoric by strategic ambiguity regarding the timing of the end. This allowed him to “maintain the sense of apocolyptic anticipation without resorting to falsifiable predictions” which could lead to disappointment. But there are limits on such as strategy — eventually, even ambiguous time periods such as a “generation” run up against the limits of their range.
Fiction can take the Lindsey strategy further. A novel can set fictional dates for the end without standing behind them, and that became more important as we approached 2000-2001. Thus, Pat Robertson could set a year 2000 date for the beginning of the Tribulation in his 1996 book, The End of the Age, and yet not face questions regarding that date now that we are past it.
The Left Behind books take this strategy further still — they avoid specific date setting altogether. It is hard to imagine similar non-fictional interpretations being so restrained while still fulfilling the goal of maintaining apocalyptic anticipation. To maintain such anticipation, the Left Behind series relies mostly on its descriptions of available technologies and the global situation to convey the sense of “always now.” Appropriately written fiction can also to some extent rely on the reader’s imagination to continually update certain ephemeral details (clothing styles, etc.) to avoid becoming quickly out-of-date. In this context, the use of the political or techno-thriller form is appropriate: unlike science fiction, the date for such stories could usually be today.
Why then did the Left Behind authors, LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, insist last summer at the National Press Club that their descriptions of technology place their books in the future? The authors’ idea that mere incremental improvements in existing technologies (particularly information technologies) make the books futuristic shows very little sci-fi reading/exposure or even common sense. But the Left Behind authors may have particularly good reasons for this inconsistency. The authors have expressed their concerned about an undue association of the Left Behind series with the events of 9/11 in the same manner that they expressed their concern about an undue association with the years 2000/2001. The authors refuse to be caught date setting, and take deliberate care to avoid it, thereby avoiding disappointment and any link to extreme behavior before, during and after such dates. But the technology and geopolitics of the Left Behind books still gives them away — the time is now.
Some other books in the genre took the opposite approach and dared to explicitly set dates close at hand — for instance, the Robertson book I mentioned and the novel Flee the Darkness, which was contingent on the Y2K crisis being much worse than it was. It would seem, however, in terms of book sales, that most readers prefer the vague approach to time, perhaps because they can place the time themselves at some mildly exciting point while avoiding any serious anxiety of anticipation or disappointment.
As a final way of dealing with predictive time, an author may set a fictional date artificially late, yet fully intend that the reader perceive the events as more immediate. For instance, the Omega Trilogy is set at a more distant future date (2050), yet clearly describes a society and a Y2K like crisis that belong in 2000. This approach creates a strange sense of time that is both “always now” and “to come,” and avoids setting a closer date that could create disappointment.
So, emerging into popular culture in the last decade, premillennialist apocalyptic fiction avoids creating disappointment while still creating anticipation by effectively finessing the issue of date setting. Another way that the genre avoids creating disappointment is through its internal representation of time as jumping or collapsing from biblical times to the present. The time in between is extremely compressed and largely irrelevant, and biblical writers are always writing for now even when they are also writing about their own time.
Although apocalyptic nonfiction similarly collaspses time, fiction does it even more thoroughly. Most non-fictional interpretation has to delve into recent history to make its case, while fiction is capable of ignoring even this much history. For instance, in Hal Lindsey’s own novel, Blood Moon, each near future event finds a parallel in biblical history. Blood Moon has no sense of the weight of years in which the end has not happened. Time skips directly from prophecy to fulfillment, erasing generation after generation of disappointment
Even books where the premise requires some history, the history intrudes only sketchily. In the Fourth Reich, we have a clone of Hitler, but we are never given any historical perspective on his character. In book The Illuminati and similar works, we have powerful ancient conspiracies, but their activities in the modern era are painted broad and vague (for example, propagation of the theory of evolution), with few details that would make them appear historically real. Again, I think the reason for this is that the temporal priorities are the biblical past and the immediate present. Such thinking has real political implications; for example, the Arab-Israeli conflict can be rendered as continuous for 3000 years, rather than discontinuous for most of that period.
In the Rift in Time books, about a born-again Christian archeologist, the biblical past literally erupts into the present — Mt. Sinai starts turning into the Garden of Eden, the Ark of the Covenant is retrieved. This fictional present re-affirms a particular vision of the past which in turn reaffirms the end times vision. Such an excavation of the past is particularly appropriate where the fictional apocalyptic chronology has been played out or has risks. So it is perhaps no surpised that the Left Behind team may go on to another series about a Christian archeologist much like the “Rift in Time” books.
While Christian apocalyptic fiction may thus have a mitigating effect on any sense of disappointment vis a vis the external world, there are other forms of disappointment intrinsic to such fiction, particularly the finiteness of apocalyptic stories. Within the limitations of the genre, there are only so many ways to tell the apocalyptic story, and these stories must all come to a similar end. It does not help that most apocalyptic authors have derived their story structure from the political thriller genre, tired and cliche ridden as it is.
The finiteness of the apocalyptic story is related the finiteness of apocalyptic time. Premillennial dispensationalism has a fairly rigid orthodox chronology which presents problems for authors of fiction. Writing about the end times, an author must cover the Rapture, then move through a seven year Tribulation in which each event procedes according to schedule (for example, the Beast rules as such for precisely 3 1/2 years) and then cap things off with the Glorious Appearing of Jesus. How may authors tell an original story within this strict time frame?
One answer is that they no longer can, at least when we’re talking the standard Tribulation scenario. The Left Behind books have, in effect, pushed out the numerous competitors in telling a standard fictional version of The Late Great Planet Earth script. This situation may continue for a while (what is a “generation” in book terms?); it is difficult to imagine something of similar scope (12 volumes!) anytime soon.
The most direct way to escape the constraints of the standard apocalyptic chronology (and its dominance by the Left Behind books) is to play with time in ways that only fiction can. One of the best examples of how apocalyptic chronology was changed in fiction in response to the success of the Left Behind books is the Left Behind books themselves. Their best seller status led the authors to telescope the internal sense of time, devoting more and more pages to fewer apocalyptic happenings. To be fair, some telescoping was already in evidence when Jenkins sat down to write the first book and realised that the story he wanted to tell would have require several volumes. But a comparison of the concentration of significant apocalyptic incidents in the first volumes to the most recent ones clearly shows an effort to milk the apocalyptic judgments. Indeed, the reader is now bombarded more with endless chase sequences than with God’s wrath.
As the Left Behind authors attempt to extend the series, they give events more detail the closer they get to the end. This is the exact opposite of most books in the genre, where events in the last part of the Tribulation are compressed, though we may be seeing some compression now in the Left Behind story as it fast forwards to Armageddon. The reason for the compression is that closer the plots of these books are to the end, the more the plots become stereotyped by the strictness of the apocalyptic script and its inevitable conclusion. For instance, by the point in the script when the Beast insists on his Mark, everybody must choose salvation or damnation — and so subsequent further character development becomes difficult.
In response to the growing success of the genre, one series of books, The Millennium Trilogy, took its story all the way to the post-millennial period, then cycled back to tell the premillennium story again from a different, spiritual warfare point of view. This cyclical telling would almost seem incompatible with the fatalistic linear time of apocalyptic chronology, but its quite compatible with market imperatives.
Another related way to milk the same basic plot parameters is to tell another story in parallel. The Left Behind authors have been telling a parallel serial story for children, which like the Harry Potter books are regarded as a guilty pleasure for adults while they wait for the next book in the adult series. These efforts are further evidence that for Left Behind fans, finiteness of story is the real disappointment.
Film has been equally if not more successful in milking the maximum number of stories from the limited apocalyptic chronology. The Lalonde brothers have managed to create several movies by telling different incidents of the Tribulation from different perspectives, jumping about from film to film with no particular regard to time. For example, an amusing narrative trick in one Lalonde video was to take a normal unbelieving person pre-Rapture and put him in a coma to awaken during the Tribulation, skipping over the incidents already covered in another film.
Faced with the overwhelming dominance of the Left Behind books, however, the solution that most authors seem to be adopting is to set their stories in a period that is end times yet pre-Rapture, allowing them to break with the strict chronology yet convey the sense of temporal immediacy. What, then, makes something “end times” when the Rapture hasn’t happened yet? In the context of Christian fiction generally, it seems that merely setting a work in the present makes it end times, so long as the author enhances the present with some behind the scenes political intrigue, the secret designs of hubristic science and the hidden spiritual agendas of evil. For example, Perretti’s spiritual warfare books are often described as end times fiction, though there may be no indication that we’re in the Tribulation per se. A generic end times setting seems also to allow for an easier use of sci-fi tropes, which have become increasingly common in response to Left Behind’s market dominance. The generic end times, particularly the fictional end times, can continue indefinitely.
Changing to a generic end times also changes the need to be orthodox in non-temporal ways. In this pre-Rapture, pre-Tribulation loosely defined end times, debates about who the two witnesses are, the timing of the judgments, or even the very existence of a Rapture or a Tribulation become less relevant. Such works can potentially appeal to a broader segment of the Christian audience than simply premillennialists in the Dallas Theological Seminary mold. (Though crossover appeal has apparently been no problem for Left Behind.) A work such as Rift in Time, set in a pre-Trib world, can thus take on what the author calls the “prophets of literalness” without much stir. (p. 480)
Of course, an author may successful survive in this Left Behind story simply by telling a more original if still orthodox version of the story. For example, of we look at the other books that have survived on the shelves, The Christ Clone Trilogy has shown remarkable resilience. It has more of a sci-fi premise, and more of an active philosophical engagement with New Age ideals. Indeed, as I discussed last year, the use of sci-fi tropes in this genre (such as aliens who are really demons) has become more common and a somewhat crowded area in its own right. Another highly original work, We All Fall Down, tells its story from the perspective of a damned soul. Its approach is character driven, focused on particular events in the life of the indivdual, and apocalyptic events are just window dressing. Such a literary approach is the most thorough liberation from the orthodox chronology, but it is also most difficult for the authors in this political thriller derived genre.
To sum up: Although it may still be early in the career of premillennialist apocalyptic fiction, I think it is safe to say that a strong conventional disappointment related to such fiction is unlikely, both because of the place of such fiction in time and the place of time in such fiction. The genre may have arisen as a response to potential disappointment in the first place. To the extent it sets dates, premillennialist apocalyptic fiction gives fictional dates that do not disappoint most reader’s expectations and for which authors cannot be held accountable. The weight of history and previous disappointments is thoroughly absent in these books.
Some might look for evidence of real world apocalyptic disappointment in the genre’s plots, but this is a tricky area. For example, the Left Behind series books published since the year 2000 have grown more permissive regarding violence by the good guys against the evil doers. But the growing permissiveness also occurs at the same point in the plots of books written prior to 2000; that is, the point in the plot when all of humanity has chosen sides in the struggle. This also indicates the importance of not reading the Left Behind series in isolation, which has been the temptation of many other commentators (and which is understandable, given the poor quality of the genre).
Instead, apocalyptic fiction’s disappointments are mostly those of the fanatic reader in Stephen King’s “Misery” — eventually all the books and series have to come to an end. To counter such disappointment, apocalyptic fiction actively alters the flow of time to meet audience expectations and extend the story possibilities. The setting of books in the less strictly scheduled pre-Rapture end times will help to extend the range of plots and the potential length of any series. But even in this expanded area, we already see duplication — Christian archeologists and alien Nephilim seem to be everywhere. Eventually the worlds described in such fiction and their literal ideological conservatism will begin to seem stale even to the fans of the genre. Everything has to end sometime, including the end times fiction story.
So, how do audiences ultimately respond to the disappointment of story’s end? I think the answer may be found in previous examples from other genres. What do people do after reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? They literally try to recreate Middle Earth, delve into further details, create their own fan music, stories, etc. We can see this happening in Christian apocalyptic fiction. For example, there’s a Left Behind website, which features discussion groups, music and other kitsch. Perhaps this is analagous to real world apocalyptic disappointment — both may unlease mass creative energy, of a sort. Fiction allows the end times to be like Middle Earth, and the true fan’s disappointment is that she will never get there (God willing).
Thank you.