L.B.: A billion Samanthas

Left Behind, pp. 353-355

Sometimes when you're reading an otherwise effective book, or watching an otherwise engaging movie or TV show, one of the characters will suddenly say something that just doesn't fit -- something so out of character that it takes you out of the story, reminding you that these characters aren't real, that they're just reciting words placed in their mouths by some writer who hasn't bothered to get to know these people all that well.

Everything in Left Behind is like that, only worse. And it's more than just the occasional off-key sentence -- there are whole conversations like this, whole passages in which everything that is said goes way beyond "out-of-character" and into the realm of inhuman. The reader doesn't just think, "Buck Williams would never say that," but that "Buck Williams is supposed to be a human, and no human would ever say that." Or think that. Or listen to someone else saying and thinking such things without fearing for that person's sanity and shouting in protest.

We're in the middle of one of those conversations here. Buck Williams, Steve Plank and Stanton Bailey are talking in Bailey's office. If you don't pay attention to what they're saying, and you don't look out the window, then the scene seems almost normal. But if you do listen to them you'll think you've wandered into some absurdist play set in a madhouse.

Steve has just informed his friends that the president of Romania has a multi-point plan for world domination. They smile, nod and ask about the details. Steve explains that the president of Romania intends to ask everyone on earth to give him their weapons, making him an unchallenged superpower and leaving them all defenseless. Sounds reasonable, Buck and Bailey say. And then the president of Romania intends to sign a peace treaty with an invincible nation that no one is at war with, to turn ancient Babylon into the east side of Manhattan and to turn Botswana into Iowa. That'll take some persuasion, his friends say, but an appearance with Jay Leno should do the trick. Anything else? Yes, finally, the president of Romania intends to start a worldwide cult, replacing and outlawing all other religions. "Brilliant," Stanton Bailey says. "Revolutionary."

To have one character sitting there spouting these non-sequitur absurdities is bad enough, but to have two others -- including the protagonist with whom we're supposed to identify -- just nodding along as nonchalantly as though he were discussing the weather makes the whole effect almost dazzlingly surreal. If you were sitting in that room you would have to interrupt -- "Say, you guys didn't happen to do a whole bunch of drugs, did you?" You'd point out that no one in their right mind would ever propose doing such things, and no one in their right mind would ever go along with it. That the president of Romania is making David Koresh and Sun Myung Moon seem comparably balanced and sane.

But here's all Buck comes up with by way of protest:

"Aren't either of you the least bit shaky about the guy?" Buck said. "It looks to me like people who get too close wind up eliminated."

This is a valid concern. In just the past week, Nicolae Carpathia has been linked to the suspicious death of a whistleblower, a police officer and a journalist. (Something in Buck's gut -- call it instinct or a nose for news -- tells him that car bombing was no accident!) But Buck's timid objection -- "the least bit shaky" -- is still weirdly conditional. Like his friends, he has no objection in principle to voluntarily ceding all military and ecclesiastical authority to one person. In this particular case, however, due to that one man's ongoing history of murder, intimidation and extortion, he has some minor qualms he feels should be discussed.

Stanton Bailey doesn't share even these half-hearted concerns:

"Shaky?" Bailey said. "Well, I think he's a little naive, and I'll be very surprised if he gets everything he's asking for. But then he's a politician. ... Shaky? No. I'm as impressed with the guy as you two are. He's what we need right now. Nothing wrong with unity and togetherness at a time of crisis."

Oh that's right, it's a time of crisis. Nice of Bailey to finally notice that. His estimation of this crisis is somewhat odd, though. It's severe enough, apparently, that he thinks a global Caesar -- man and god, pope and king, his power unchecked save by his own benevolence -- is "what we need right now." Yet the crisis is not so severe that he thinks it deserves regular, ongoing coverage in his news magazine, or that there's any hurry to do a story on it for a couple of weeks or so.

Bailey dismisses the deaths of Burton, Tompkins and Miller as "only coincidental." No need to make "too much of that," sticking our noses where they don't belong, he says. After all, we're journalists.

Marge buzzed in on the intercom. "Cameron has an urgent message from a Hattie Durham. Says she can't wait any longer."

"Oh, no," Buck said. "Marge, apologize all over the place for me. Tell her it was unavoidable and that I'll either call her or catch up with her later."

Marge, like Chloe, uses the indirect indefinite article -- "a Hattie Durham" -- making me wonder if they both spent time as servants in some upper-class British household. But at least, after eight pages and about a half an hour of story time, the authors finally remembered poor Hattie sitting in the cab outside.

Bailey looked disgusted. "Is this what I can expect from you on work time, Cameron?"

Bailey has no problem with Buck spending half his day in off-the-record meetings for stories the magazine promises never to report, but meeting some woman at lunchtime -- that's just irresponsible. A lot of things that people say in LB just don't make sense unless you share the authors' gynophobia.

Jenkins suddenly seems to realize that this setting -- the publisher, editor and former editor sitting in Global Weekly's office -- provides the opportunity for a bit of retroactive correction. GW is, as the name suggests, a weekly publication. Yet we've had no indication thus far that they've published anything since The Event. We can account for every moment of Buck's time, so we know he hasn't filed a story. Steve hasn't said a word about deadlines, or about the current issue. We've seen reports from CNN and ABC News and from newspapers and Seaboard Monthly, but no evidence that anyone has written or read a single word for or from Global Weekly in the past eight days.

Oops.

That's the sort of first-draft mistake most authors would correct in subsequent revisions, but Jerry Jenkins doesn't do revisions. He cranks these novels out with more haste and urgency than any of his fictional reporters have thus far displayed. So instead, we get these little retroactive corrections. The effect is a bit like hearing someone stumble through a joke they can't quite remember: "No, wait, not nails, not yet. Grapes. The monkey asks the priest if he's got any grapes. Oh, wait, actually he's a bartender. The priest is, not the monkey. ..."

"I'll make no bones about it, Cameron," Bailey says, clearing his throat with a cliche he doesn't understand the meaning of:

"Let's do the big Carpathia story next issue then follow up with the theories behind the vanishings after that. If you ask me, that could be the most talked about story we've ever done. I thought we beat Time and everybody else on our coverage of the event itself. I liked your stuff, by the way. ..."

See? Not only did GW publish an issue, but it was even better than all those other reports that Rayford, the authors and even Buck himself seemed to find so much more quotable at the time. Plus Buck did file a story and it was so good that his boss complimented him on it because Buck is like a super-good reporter and stuff. Retroactive correction accomplished.

"... I don't know that we'll have anything terribly fresh or different about Carpathia, but we have to give it all we've got."

Well let's see, there's Buck's exclusive interview revealing Nicolae's ties to a global criminal conspiracy, but they've already agreed that was off-the-record. And there's Steve's insider-scoop about Nicolae's agenda for global domination, except they've promised not to go public with any of that either. I guess they really don't have anything fresh or different to report.

"... Frankly, I love the idea of you running the point on this coverage of all the theories. You must have one of your own."

"I wish I did," Buck said. "I'm as in the dark as anybody."

Remember when I mentioned that this book is full of characters saying impossible things -- things no human being could ever say, or think, or agree with? This is what I mean.

About a month after the Boxing Day tidal wave, I heard an interview with a counselor who was working with survivors in Sri Lanka. She described one man who had been riding a coastal train that had been swept off the rails. He was traumatized, she said, still in shock because he could no longer rely on the fundamental boundaries and assumptions that shape our lives without our ever having to think about them. The ocean is there and the land is here; they can be relied upon not to suddenly switch places. Take away that assumption, put those fundamental boundaries in doubt, and it becomes impossible to function. You become crippled by fear.

The characters in LB have seen just such an assumption, just such a fundamental boundary, disappear -- vanishing into thin air along with their children and two billion other people. Without some explanation, some theory at least, they would not be able to go on without fearing that they, too, could vanish at any moment without cause.

In the following pages, Bailey derisively dismisses "the space alien stuff," even though, under the circumstances, it's as plausible as any other guess as to what caused the disappearances. LaHaye and Jenkins seem to think that this alien-abduction theory would be comforting to those who settled on it. As though the idea that some alien species had, without warning and without explanation, whisked away two billion people, and might do so again at any moment for all we know, would somehow settle things. As though it would simply make people say, "OK, then, that explains that" and go on with their daily lives.

We know, from reading the back of the book, that space aliens aren't involved, but that doesn't change the fact that in this story every person on earth has just been turned into a young Fox Mulder, traumatized by the sudden, inexplicable disappearance of billions of Samanthas. Post-Event, there would be millions of Mulders -- damaged and driven by guilt over their impotence to prevent the disappearances, they would refuse to rest, unable and unwilling to stop at anything until they could prove to themselves and to the world what really happened. The other option -- the only other option -- would be to curl up in the fetal position, sobbing. There is no room for Scully or Skinner in the world of Left Behind. The Event cannot be dismissed, or denied, or debunked with some hokum about "Electromagnetism, nothing to see here, move along."

But instead we're presented with the ludicrous idea that Buck -- and Steve, Bailey, Hattie, Chloe, Rosenzweig, Dan Bennett, Wallace Theodore and everyone else outside of New Hope church -- is simply going on with daily life, feeling no need to pursue or demand an explanation, untroubled that the boundary between existence and nonexistence has been irreparably shattered. Instead, The Event is presented as fodder for water-cooler speculation and leisurely chatter.

That could work if it were intended as over-the-top satire ("Mayhem caused, monsters certainly not involved, officials say") but that satire would have to be front-and-center as the dominant theme. It would have to be a story about the human capacity for epic denial -- a story about the way people can be so profoundly narcissistic that they could literally stroll past the burning wreckage of an airplane, side-stepping charred bodies without the slightest hesitation and tuning out the cries of the injured as though they didn't even exist.

In a sense, of course, that is what the authors have written, but they did so by accident, unintentionally rendering themselves as meta-characters, two-dimensional clownish representations of the worst kind of solipsistic self-absorbtion.

Comments

[cjmr]

That the president of Romania is making David Koresh and Sun Myung Moon seem comparably balanced and sane.

Best line evah.

(Okay, I'll go back up and finish reading the post now.)

[damnedyankee]

I work as a bookmobile librarian, and at least once a week someone comes up to me eager to check out a LaJenkins magnum opus. I swear, after reading LB Friday religiously (no pun intended) for these past few months, I have to muster every bit of professionalism I can to keep from screaming at these people: "WHAT IN THE BLUE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? THESE BOOKS ARE CRAP! GO BACK TO THE SHELVES AND COME BACK WITH SOME C. S. LEWIS OR SOMETHING!"

Then again, I have the same reaction to people who want to check out stuff by Kevin Trudeau or Glenn Beck. Utter hackery just brings it out in me, I guess.

[ako]

This is the most persuasive evidence of the robot theory yet.

I mean if the books were populated by people, finding out why the kids vanished would be Step One. A desperate, urgent, screamingly frantic step one. Because all the functional humans on the planet would need, more than anything, a hope of moving onto steps two and three; get the kids (and select few adults) back, and stop it happening again. The newly-created Fox Mulders would be by far the sanest ones left.

I mean if you could get through something like that without utterly breaking down, what else could you do other than try to fix it?

[aunursa]

To have one character sitting there spouting these non-sequitur absurdities is bad enough, but to have two others -- including the protagonist with whom we're supposed to identify -- just nodding along as nonchalantly as though he were discussing the weather makes the whole effect almost dazzlingly surreal. If you were sitting in that room you would have to interrupt -- "Say, you guys didn't happen to do a whole bunch of drugs, did you?" You'd point out that no one in their right mind would ever propose doing such things, and no one in their right mind would ever go along with it.

It's part of the End Times checklist. It has to happen. L&J don't question it -- why should their characters?

/sarcasm

[Abelardus]

The best part about these posts, aside from reading them, of course, is the references Fred puts in there. A healthy sprinkling of pop culture here and there to make his complaint all the more enjoyable; all the more important as values go. I will prolly be re-reading this post as I've done the others, for something I might've missed. Good work, Fred!

[patter]

(Something in Buck's gut -- call it instinct or a nose for news -- tells him that car bombing was no accident!)

It was the space aliens, trying to get his attention. That or spontaneous combustion.

urgent message from a Hattie Durham. Says she can't wait any longer."

Let the GIRAT pay the $113 cab bill.

[cjmr]

You'd point out that no one in their right mind would ever propose doing such things, and no one in their right mind would ever go along with it.

Even (especially) the weapons part. I mean it can't be possible that 100% of the 'you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands' types were raptured, can it?

[Ursula L]

I thought we beat Time and everybody else on our coverage of the event itself. I liked your stuff, by the way. ..."

Post 9/11, or during the Boxing Day tsunami, were news organizations actually thinking of who "beat" whom with their coverage? My impression was that there was so much stuff going on that everyone was trying to cover as much as possible with little concern beyond getting what they could. It was a situation where everyone had the main story, and there were so many side stories that there was little concern for overlap, redundancy, or fear that one group's set of stories would be better or worse than the rest, because all the stuff was so compelling.

And with this story, even more so - there would be a new story on every block and street-corner, and people would be desperate for every scrap of news, so that "beating" would be even less of an issue, beyond perhaps avoiding overlap. It might even be a reason for greater cooperation between news organizations. Try to get as many reporters organized as possible to create a good record of what is happening, getting lone reporters everywhere rather than all of them looking at one bit of the picture.

Days or weeks later, they may go back and compare - but when the news is this fresh, and with so much stuff going on, who would have the time to seriously sit down and compare coverage?

[aunursa]

Even (especially) the weapons part. I mean it can't be possible that 100% of the 'you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands' types were raptured, can it?

I think there are a few references sprinkled throughout the books to militia-types that refuse to get with the program.

[Multispork]

Is any coherent explanation given for the UN upping sticks and moving to Babylon? I mean, imagine how many thousands of personnel files and archived reports they're going to have to box up and ship.

This is like a soap opera - not so much in the storylines, but they seem to share the convention that if something happens off-screen, then as far as the audience is concerned it didn't happen. Except in LB the writer shares the amnesia. The disappearance of the children doesn't register, even with Jenkins, because the only real disappearance scene was in the plane, and that concentrated on adults.

[cjmr]

but when the news is this fresh, and with so much stuff going on, who would have the time to seriously sit down and compare coverage?

The kind of soulless bastards that LH&J are assuming all the non-RTCs are, of course!

[twig]

Marge, like Chloe, uses the indirect article -- "a Hattie Durham" -- making me wonder if they both spent time as servants in some upper-class British household

I've used it before, and I've never been a servant in an upper-class British household. I don't mind the big stuff - this book is a literary disaster - but some of the smaller nitpicks just aren't true.

[aunursa]

Is any coherent explanation given for the UN upping sticks and moving to Babylon?

No. Just Nicky being sentimental.

[Illuminatus!]

Plus Buck did file a story and it was so good that his boss complimented him on it because Buck is like a super-good reporter and stuff. Retroactive correction accomplished.

Perhaps Buck is such an awesome GIRAT that he pre-wrote the story about the Rapture apocalypse? You know, the way major news organizations pre-write obituaries for famous people? I imagine Buck has a file drawer full of pre-written stories from A-Ant attack to Z-Zombie menace.

Or LaJenkins screwed the pooch. again.

[aunursa]

The kind of soulless bastards that LH&J are assuming all the non-RTCs are, of course!

You're giving Jerry Jenkins too much credit as if he actually thinks these things through.

[cjmr]

Marge, like Chloe, uses the indirect article -- "a Hattie Durham" -- making me wonder if they both spent time as servants in some upper-class British household

I think that terminology would be out of character for Chloe, as young adult college student type, but not for Marge, who's surely been a secretary an administrative assistant since well before top-level executives were expected to collect their own phone messages in their own voicemail box just like everyone else.

[ako]

Marge, like Chloe, uses the indirect article -- "a Hattie Durham" -- making me wonder if they both spent time as servants in some upper-class British household

See, it made me think of some sort of cloning experiment. Multiple Hatties.

Hattie who really did flirt back with Rayford all those times.
Hattie who didn't, but accepted some apparently non-sexual attention.
Hattie who as a bit of a doormat from the beginning of the book.
Hattie who was gracious at Rayford.
Hattie who wound up telling Buck off (she's my favorite).
Hattie the pro-choice strawman.
Hattie the Whore-of-Babylon.
And Taxi Hattie, because the cloning facility made too many and they didn't know where to put her.

[Jim]

Is any coherent explanation given for the UN upping sticks and moving to Babylon?

All of the owners/employees of the midtown Manhattan restaurants were raptured RTCs and the diplomats' expense accounts became meaningless?

[Elmo]

You mean this isn't some absurdist play set in a madhouse?

[Tonio]

"Nothing wrong with unity and togetherness at a time of crisis."

This seems to reflect the influence of LaHaye's Bircher ideology. He probably sees the danger presented by one-world government as blindingly obvious. Buck and Stanton are probably meant to appear idealistically naive or utterly clueless, or both.

[Chris Archer]

Hate to tell you all, but Tim has a NEW, BRAND SPANKING NEW series out. I believe the title has something to do with Babylon, but I'm not sure. This book has to do more about the making of monies more than anything else. "What are we going to do tonight, Nicky?" "The same thing we do every night, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!" Nicky, on top of every bad quality he possesses, is also eucumenical. Honestly, RTCs are absolutely gnostic. I have no idea what Babylon has would mean to anybody in our post-modern world. Can some start thinking of Tim and Jerry's first series as 'Pinky and the Brain' with several sequels?

[SueW]

Instead, The Event is presented as fodder for water-cooler speculation and leisurely chatter.

Except that no one is talking about it anymore. They are much too excited about the amazing, inexplicable, mind-boggling spectacle of the trip and die guys to worry about last week's news.

[Bugmaster]

Honestly, RTCs are absolutely gnostic.

No, they're not. Gnosticism was actually cool. The world is run by the Demiurge, an evil, spiritually crippled godling, who has trapped your soul in the shackles of your material being, and knowledge is the only escape... You have to admit, this makes much more sense than whatever deity LH&J believe in.

[Tonio]

"You're giving Jerry Jenkins too much credit as if he actually thinks these things through."

He doesn't, and neither does LaHaye. Their zealotry is so strong that they're incapable of creating truly human characters. They cannot help but portray their non-RTC characters as soulless. Just like P.J. O'Rourke cannot help but include a jingoistic God-bless-the-free-market reference in each of his articles, except O'Rourke is a far better writer.

[Ursula L]

Nothing wrong with unity and togetherness at a time of crisis."

This actually is the beginning of a reasonable response to such a crisis - remember all of the "United We Stand" bumper stickers post 9/11, or the great effort at international charity after the tsunami? Or even the way in which people sometimes refrain from criticizing a war because they feel they have to "stand by" the troops.

But it lacks the desperate urgency which should be behind it. It should be "this is horrible and we need to be united and work together to try and get through this unimaginable crisis." Or "we have to be united, and we can't let petty divisions distract us from trying to find and bring back our children." Strangers clinging together in a storm. Or throwing a rope to someone you've never seen before, as they float by, even though your nearest and dearest was just swept away themself. Not an offhand comment.

[Spalanzani]

ako: "See, it made me think of some sort of cloning experiment. Multiple Hatties."

Could this maybe be true of other characters as well? For instance, are there two Buck Williams: the one who is the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time, and the other one, the one who we've been following throughout the book? That would explain how Buck managed to right a story about the disappearances while simultaneously... not writing a story about them.

For that matter, this might also explain why nobody is too upset about the missing children: "If they don't come back, we can just grow some more!"

[Salamanda]

Marge, like Chloe, uses the indirect article -- "a Hattie Durham" -- making me wonder if they both spent time as servants in some upper-class British household

Speaking a receptionist/admin assistant/whatever, it's not at all out of character for me to do this, though I never really noticed it until you said something. Usually, it indicates: "I don't recognize this person calling. Do you? Do you even want to talk to this person?"

[Keith]

Some of these tropes are understandable with the checklist theory; the unified cult of Nick, universal money system and all that has a decidedly first century flavor. Many scholars think that Saint John was making veiled (and hallucinatory) criticisms of Nero. But if you reject this interpretation and shoehorn a 1st century mystical-political screed into the role of Prophecy, there will be a number of archaic tropes left over that strike us Moderns as absurd. From the view of the 1st century, it would be horrible if the Lord of the Empire and head of the cult of state outlawed Christianity and disarmed the colonies. Here in the 21st century, it's utter nonsense.

Kim Jong Il is the head of a cult of state and if he demanded the world unilaterally disarm and join his religion, everyone would scratch their heads, go, "WTF?" and then ignore him. But it's in Revelations, therefore it must happen, reason and logic be damned!

Which of course relates to Fred's post earlier this week about The Exegetical Panic Defense. Without a cult of Nick, there could be no Antichrist. A cult of Nick is impossible in today's world but it has to exist in order for Revelations to continue to mean what they think it means, so, viola! There is a Cult of Nick! Just as like the Homosexual Agenda.

[ako]

Could this maybe be true of other characters as well? For instance, are there two Buck Williams: the one who is the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time, and the other one, the one who we've been following throughout the book?

Definitely. And I suspect there are at least three Chloes (although I think they run sequentially; they seem to kill their predecessors).

[Keith]

For that matter, this might also explain why nobody is too upset about the missing children: "If they don't come back, we can just grow some more!"

Like Doctor Venture. Which would explain things a lot better. Does Rosenzwig have a homicidal blond bodyguard who loves Led Zeppelin?

[Mad Latinist]

That the president of Romania is making David Koresh and Sun Myung Moon seem comparably balanced and sane.

I can't believe you didn't do a word play on Ban Ki-moon and Sun Myun Moon!

[Tonio]

"This actually is the beginning of a reasonable response to such a crisis."

I agree in principle. My point was that the comment sounded Birchian in context, which is the voluntary ceding all military and ecclesiastical authority to one person. (I suppose one could choose to read LB as an allegory for post-9/11 Bush and the Patriot Act.)

[Jon]

Does Rosenzwig have a homicidal blond bodyguard who loves Led Zeppelin?

If he does, that would be freakin' awesome.
However, Dr. Rosenzweig is actually successful at what he does, so you can't really compare him to that Dr. Venture. He'd be more comparable to the elder Dr. Venture (or perhaps Jonas Jr.), and would therefore have a diverse group of operatives working for him, such as Colonel Gentleman and The Action Man.

[Ken]

That could work if it were intended as over-the-top satire ("Mayhem caused, monsters certainly not involved, officials say") but that satire would have to be front-and-center as the dominant theme. It would have to be a story about the human capacity for epic denial -- a story about the way people can be so profoundly narcissistic that they could literally stroll past the burning wreckage of an airplane, side-stepping charred bodies without the slightest hesitation and tuning out the cries of the injured as though they didn't even exist.

In a sense, of course, that is what the authors have written, but they did so by accident, unintentionally rendering themselves as meta-characters, two-dimensional clownish representations of the worst kind of solipsistic self-absorbtion. -- Slacktivist

Are you sure it was by accident, Slack? People DO get that "solipsistically self-absorbed" (fanboy-encounter experiences cut for length), and some of them put a "God Saith" justification spin on it. (Though I think displacement behavior from shock would be a much more solid explanation.) I remember reading a third-hand anecdote of some RTC (implied to be some sort of televangelist) who survived some sort of disaster; plane crash, I think. His response when he found out he was unharmed, with all the dead and dying and wreckage around him, was to raise his hands (RTC Praise Chorus worship position), Praise God, and leave the scene. (Almost an exact following of your comment.)

(At least he didn't pull the other RTC disaster displacement-behavior reaction, which was to start to high-pressure the dying into Saying the Magic Words instead of trying to save their lives; I used to hear that one used by radio preacher after radio preacher to the point it became a classic False Dilemma trope.)

Everything you've put up on this blog has been one more example of bad writing after another. (Depressing that not only has it sold 60 Megacopies and counting, but some of its fanboys believe it's literally true, the 67th-88th Books of the Bible.) Though part of me wonders whether it's not just bad writing or bad characterization, but whether Rayford LaHaye & Buck Jenkins have spent so much time at the pinnacle of Christian celebrity culture without a reality check that they have actually become like the self-insertion "meta-characters" they (badly) write about.

[Ken]

I have no idea what Babylon has would mean to anybody in our post-modern world. Can some start thinking of Tim and Jerry's first series as 'Pinky and the Brain' with several sequels? -- Chris Archer

"NARF!"

[Keith]

However, Dr. Rosenzweig is actually successful at what he does, so you can't really compare him to that Dr. Venture.

Which would of course make him about a thousand times more interesting than any of the other characters in LB. It's sort of a merry-go-round of suck. "Wouldn't it be cool of Buck were like X?" leaves us ultimately pining for a half dozen variants of these books, which would be fun and exciting stories. But in order to write those fun and exciting stories they wouldn't be anything like LB.

It almost makes me want to use the ideas in these threads to write a Rapture Novel that is good but then, what'd be the point? A novel about a planet of AIs who simulate religion in order to have meaning; a satirical political farce after Doctor Strangelove but with the Rapture; An SNL style slapstick about the Greatest Investigative Reporter in the World (who is actually a clueless boob)and his plucky daughter solving the mystery of the rise of the Antichrist; these would all be fun novels/movies but would invariably owe some sort of debt to LB and how do you rationalize that?

[Ken]

Alert to all the Right Behinders et al:

There's this informal Wiki called TV Tropes which describes and categorizes all these literary/comic/anime/movie/TV conventions. Is anyone here interested in contributing a Left Behind entry to the site (or expanding one if one already exists) and/or cross-referencing LB into the trope-example entries?

[mmack]

"Let's do the big Carpathia story next issue then follow up with the theories behind the vanishings after that."

I can see the Global Weekly cover now: Under the title banner a suave, nattily attired Nicky Sierra Nevada looking something like this greets the reader with a block headline like Carpathia: The Story Behind the World's Most Compelling Leader by his portrait. Or perhaps, Nicholae Carpathia, the Anti-Christ You Never Knew

I'd buy that for a dollar.

[bulbul]

the indirect article
Surely you mean "the indefinite article". Objects can be direct or indirect. Articles, not so much.

Sorry, couldn't help it.

[zzyzx]

Already exists:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.LeftBehind

[Muse of Ire]

mmack, it'd have to be this.

[Tonio]

Ken,

Your suggestion scares me, only because Kirk Cameron might take you seriously and propose a Left Behind series for cable.

[jamoche]

An SNL style slapstick about the Greatest Investigative Reporter in the World (who is actually a clueless boob)and his plucky daughter solving the mystery of the rise of the Antichrist

Like Inspector Gadget and Penny? "Go go gadget cellphone!"

[Geds]

And for some reason all of his super-cool gadgets are stored in the men's bathroom at various hotels and airports...

[Chris M]

I have no idea what Babylon has would mean to anybody in our post-modern world. Can some start thinking of Tim and Jerry's first series as 'Pinky and the Brain' with several sequels?

I giggle at the notion of Fortunato as Pinky ... but I get ahead of myself.

[Mouse]

Let's not compare Left Behind to Pinky and the Brain. Pinky and the Brain were funny.

[Kenneth R. Morefield]

QUOTE: This is the most persuasive evidence of the robot theory yet.
********************************************************************
I think this is the place where Buck first begins to suspect that he might actually be a replicant.

[mmack]

Like Inspector Gadget and Penny? "Go go gadget cellphone!"

With Nicolae Carpathia as Dr. Claw: "I'll get you next time, Buck ... NEXT TIME!".

[Jacob Davies]

My response to all the children and many of the adults in the world simply vanishing would be to assume that I had had a psychotic break and was hallucinating or delusional. Reality does not work that way, and Occam's Razor would say that it was far more likely to be a hallucination than to be real. I guess in the end - after weeks or months of argument with mental health professionals and my most trusted friends (all of whom of course would be suffering similar fears and uncertainties and probably not in a position to give too many useful reassurances) - I could be persuaded that it was truly, honestly real and that I was not sitting catatonic in some psychiatric hospital. But that would be an ongoing process; every time I was alone and panicked I'm sure I would decide again that it was all a nightmare that I somehow couldn't wake up from.

If aliens landed tomorrow I'd probably have the same reaction. Human beings do that. Sharp breaks from the accepted prior behaviour of reality very rarely happen, and so we are evolved to be extremely skeptical of that sort of thing appearing in our perception. And we're especially aware of it now that most people understand that mental health problems and not the paranormal are responsible for most bizarre manifestations or behaviour.

[Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Goat]

[i]Could this maybe be true of other characters as well? For instance, are there two Buck Williams: the one who is the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time, and the other one, the one who we've been following throughout the book?

Definitely. And I suspect there are at least three Chloes (although I [/i]think they run sequentially; they seem to kill their predecessors).

Um, yeah, then there's Galactica Boomer, Caprica Boomer, Cylon Base Star Boomer...

See, they're not clones, you idiots. They're Cylons. All of the characters in the LB series are Cylons, programmed to look and (mostly) behave like humans, but all linked into the central computer hive-mind thingy.

I've never posted before, but I've just been catching up with the analysis, and, drat you, you're making me want to re-read the blasted train wreck.

Not to spoil the series for those who haven't read it yet, but it gets worse. If you took a black marker and redacted all the unnecessary exposition and the rehashing of stuff that happens in the previous books, you could probably comfortably distill the whole thing down into a fat trilogy.