My friend Dandi, who has an article or two on this website (see God Intended it for Good and The Use of Parallelism in Psalm 139, for examples), has suggested I do an article on the status of fiction that is marketed as "Christian fiction." The reason for this, is to discuss some of the difficulties that I see in most of what gets published. For instance, one sort of fiction that has never done well for Christian publishers has been science fiction. There has been some puzzlement on the part of the Christian publishers as to why it hasn't worked well for them. There is a very simple reason. Though there are a large number of Christians who read science fiction and enjoy it--we joke that to be a member of the church I attend, it helps to be a Trekker--Christian readers of science fiction don't buy Christian science fiction. The Christian publishers wonder why. The answer is really simple. Given the choice between reading good science fiction and what Christian publishers publish, we will stick with good science fiction. The same can be said for fiction in general.

The sad reality is, that most of the Christian fiction that is published is really, really bad. Why? What is the difference between good fiction and bad fiction?