Review: The Book of Feasts and Seasons by John C. Wright

A love letter to speculative fiction, and the Catholic Liturgical Calendar

What’s the sign of a “great” book? Or, if not a “great” book, what makes a “meaningful” book? I’m not going to answer that, but I do think one of the characteristics of such a book is that you return to it more than once.

For me, this brief 2014 collection of short stories by John C. Wright is one of those books. I’ve read it twice, and I just completed listening to the audiobook version. Calling it a “science fiction book” or a “fantasy book” would be accurate, but accurate in the way that describing a lion as a “big cat” is accurate but insufficient. This is a deep one, steeped in philosophy, theology, and canon, both Western Literature canon, and Canon, as in Catholicism.

Hard copies are difficult to find. This review is specific to the ebook edition.

The Story

The collection’s unifying concept is a chronological walk through the Catholic liturgical calendar. This links the stories thematically, but the individual stories are not linked to each other directly, although given the significant role of time travel throughout the collection, they may be more connected than it seems. Some of them were previously published via John C. Wright’s website.

So, we’ll go down the list, and the specific date (Gregorian calendar) or season of the liturgical calendar they represent and let that tell the tale of the book.

(January 1st) New Year’s Day / The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: “The Meaning of Life as Told Me by an Inebriated Science Fiction Writer in New Jersey.” (Originally published 2010).

Whew. While the title gives the Texas band …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead (no kidding) a run for its money in the name department, the story is exactly what it says on the tin.

Except the story is told in first person by John C. Wright himself, talking to a very drunk Harlan Ellison at “the Science Fiction Writers of America mansion in New Jersey,” who tells him that time travel is real, the machine described by H.G. Wells and depicted on film by George Pal is real, and many earlier science fiction writers have broken the barriers of time, much to their own detriment. Earth is a quarantined planet, and dark forces are constantly at work to keep humans from mucking with the time streams that lead to those dark forces’ preferred futures.

This story is Wright’s shout out and exposition on many of the greats of the SF&F field and their work, told in such a way that it makes you think….nah, couldn’t be.

(January 6th traditionally) Epiphany: “Queen of the Tyrant Lizards.” (2014).

You might have read this one before, or at least heard of it. Or, at least heard of the dubious Hugo Award winning story it was written in response to. I will not name that story. I will say this. Wright takes the same concept, same starting conditions, and shows us how it’s done. This is vastly superior to its “inspiration” in every way, much as Nick Cole’s Soda Pop Soldier is a certain similarly themed novel, except done right.

(March 25th) Annunciation: “A Random World of Delta Capricorni Aa, Called Scheddi.” (2010).

This flash-fiction sized story is a “Contact” story, and an alien abduction story. It includes the classic “grays” of Ufology. To say any more would spoil it.

Good Friday: “Sheathed Paw of the Lion.” (2012).

This is quite an allegorical story. In the future ruled by a tyrannical, decadent, globally hegemonic Middle Kingdom, Earth is visited by extraterrestrials responding to a great “disturbance” that took place on Earth a long time ago. This disturbance, taken as a great distress signal, drove the aliens to respond with all their powers and means to help heal Earth and its people. They send an emissary. Meanwhile, a rebellious team of cold-sleep watchers holds on to hope that the power of the Middle Kingdom and its emperor will be broken forever. I think there’s some call backs to the original 1929 Buck Rogers novella, for those familiar with it.

Easter Sunday: “Pale Realms of Shade.” (2014).

The story begins (and ends) with a selection from the poem “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant. Hard-boiled war veteran private eye Matthias (Matt) is visiting his wife. Nothing wrong with that, right? Except Matt is dead. This story is a noir detective story, and an “urban fantasy,” with magic, the supernatural, and travel through time and space. Matt haunts his (former) wife Lorelei, his former partner and friend Slyvester “Sly” Steel, determined to learn the identity of his killer and solve his murder. Did they do it for the insurance money? And what of his fate in the afterlife?

My second favorite story in the collection.

(The Fortieth Day After Easter Sunday) Feast of the Ascension: “The Ideal Machine.” (2014, originally in Sci Phi Journal #1)

One the plus side, this story feels reminiscent of The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits. On the downside, it’s also more of a political treatise dressed up in an interesting alien visitation story. Similar in idea to “The Sheathed Paw of the Lion,” an alien race journeys to Earth, and offers up a gift intended to aid humanity to solve its problems and better itself. Humans manage to screw up, badly, but there’s still hope.

Honestly, it’s my least favorite in the collection. While Wright is eager to show the high stakes of the conflict at the center of the story, it slides too much into lecture. I don’t dislike the story; I just think it’s the weakest of the bunch.

(The Fiftieth Day After Easter Sunday) Feast of Pentecost: “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds.” (2014). Nominated for a 2015 Hugo Award.

This fantasy is my favorite story in the collection. My absolute favorite. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve cried tears after reading it. It’s an “after the End” story, but not in the way you might expect. This is the HIGHEST of high fantasy, and I agree with this reviewer, Wright hits heights not often seen since Lord Dunsany.

What looks like a simple animal fable, isn’t. What DO the animals do once Man has faced his final destiny, and the Earth is left to them? It also strikes me as a perfect story to adapt as a one-act play. It reads like something ready for the stage, like a medieval morality play with echoes of ancient Greek mythological plays.

(October 31st) Halloween: “Eve of All Saints’ Day.” (2011).

I love old timey weird fiction, and this story is in the spirit and form of old timey weird fiction, a 'la Arthur Machen and William Hope Hodgson.

Here, Wright gives us the story of an amateur mad scientist in the weird fiction tradition. He’s about to embark on an experiment based on the old popular pseudoscientific theory that man is capable of an “awareness” far beyond his normal natural senses. Naturally, this entails a special combination of training in meditation known only to Eastern mystics, drugs, injections, electrical currents, and machines designed to tap into the Aether’s different wavelengths and vibrations. What the narrator encounters on that Halloween night excursion into the unknown will change him forever.

(Always begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, always falls between November 27th and December 3rd) Advent: “Nativity.” (2012).

A widower named “Mr. Went” wants to see his wife one more time. In Rome, he encounters a man who claims to be a relative of Nikola Tesla, who was the unnamed Time Traveler described by H.G. Wells. This man shows Mr. Went the Time Machine built by Tesla and Edison in Menlo Park. Instead of traveling to see his wife, there is someone he wants to see even more, to try and get an answer to the hardest question of all: Why? However, he discovers he’s not the only traveler seeking that answer, and the trip turns out to be more dangerous than he expects.

(December 24th) Christmas Eve: “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.” (2013).

Full disclosure: this story was a major source of inspiration for my own “Tracking Santa.” (2021).

Wright’s story shares a title, and some thematic connections to the time-honored story of eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, who, in 1897 wrote a letter to the editor of the New York paper The Sun, asking the question “Is there a Santa Claus?”

In Wright’s story, it’s Christmas Eve, and a six-year-old girl named Ginny lies dying of cancer in a hospital bed. Her father is deployed overseas with the Army, and unable to return home. Her mother, also named Virginia, is with her at her bedside as Ginny dies, still praying and waiting for a visit from Saint Nicholas.

This is a hard, but hopeful, story to read.

The Characters

I’ll only highlight a few characters who stood out most to me, the most memorable.

Well, the first story features John C. Wright “in high spirits,” and a very drunk Harlan Ellison. I mean, what more do you want?

The main character of “Queen of the Tyrant Lizards,” well, there’s many of her, but the one narrating the story has something the others do not. She’s a powerful representation of the sacrificial nature of genuine love, the real thing.

The main character of “Pale Realms of Shade,” Matt, is a hard-boiled supernatural detective, like a Mickey Spillane character crossed with John Constantine and Harry Dresden. Except he’s a ghost. A poltergeist. A bitter one at that. He is the strongest and ironically the most fleshed out viewpoint character in the entire book, and the easiest to relate to. He is akin to the narrator detective character of Wright’s City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis.

“The Ideal Machine” shows a classic conflict between two military men and a Catholic priest. While archetypes, the three have distinct personalities, as I guarantee you’ve met all three of these men before, or remarkably like them.

Fox is the touchpoint character in “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds.” He’s blessed with an incredible ending monologue to the story, it’s the speech that sold me on the idea that this story could make a great short play.

The Santa Claus of “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” isn’t the one you’re thinking of. He’s the inspiration of the character you know as Santa Claus: Saint Nicholas of Myra. This Santa is regal, a bit severe, wise, and yet full of love. Some people need tough love. His characterization also contains a little of the Ghost of Christmas Present, and just a little bit of Kris Kringle from Miracle on 34th Street.

The World

Except for “A Random World…” all stories are set on our Earth or some close variant of it, at vastly different points in time. The worldbuilding draws across the entire spectrum of classic science fiction and can sometimes be a game of “spot the reference.”

While most stories begin in or close to the present day of the early twenty-first century, the scope encompasses the dawn of creation all the way to a time after the biblical Book of Revelation. There are forays into the supernatural world. Wright’s work often includes themes of “deep time,” understanding the true vastness of space and how long journeys through space would take. The worldbuilding is thematically connected to other works of his, such as Superluminary, Somewhither, Count to a Trillion, or the aforementioned Metachronopolis.

Politics

Wright doesn’t hide his politics, as a quick perusal of his website will demonstrate.

While all have either a political undercurrent or an overtly political moment, the stories “Sheathed Paw of the Lion” and “The Ideal Machine” are the most openly political and polemical.

Well, I must qualify that, because the political elements are never about politics for its own sake. These are stories about morality, ethics, values, and virtues. The problem of evil. What constitutes the greatest of all goods? Human politics is never divorced from these things, nor operates in a vacuum.

In that sense, Wright resembles G.K. Chesterton. He makes no bones about his Catholicism, and applies all the tools of reason, classical philosophy, metaphysics, Thomism, the works to layer a lot of depth into these short pieces.

Content Warning

One thing about Wright’s work is that he’s never shied away from death, violence, gore, or frank discussions of the facts of life. None of this is done for the sake of gratuitous shock value, but to demonstrate quite clearly the depravity of evil, and how much of that originates in the human heart.

There are elements of horror inherent to many of these stories, and that horror is built on the claim of Christian theology that evil, sin, has both temporal and spiritual, supernatural aspects to it. It’s the horror of demons seeking the ruin of souls, but also the horror of what humans can willingly do to each other.

This means, however, that certain stories are very much for older readers. I would say PG-13 suffices, but with parental discretion. However, be prepared to answer some uncomfortable questions, especially about documented torture techniques including execution by sawing, scaphism, napalm, and torture by pitchcapping. And crucifixion.

A word again on “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.” While it deals with a very tragic and heartbreaking event in a very hopeful and respectful way, the subject of the death of a child might be too much for some readers to bear.

Who is it for?

Fans of John C. Wright owe it to themselves to pick up a copy, especially for the outstanding performance of the audio version. For those new to John C. Wright, I don’t recommend this as your first foray.

Overall, anyone who likes their fiction deep, intellectual, philosophical, and metaphysical will appreciate this book.

For Catholics skeptical of whether speculative fiction holds anything for them.

Why buy it?

1. You’ll be challenged. Wright forces readers to confront their own assumptions about the world, and most importantly, why they assume them.

2. Emotional impact. I don’t expect everyone to have the same reactions that I have to the stories in this volume, but I don’t see how anyone could come away unaffected.

3. Easter Eggs. References galore! Connected in ways that just make sense.