Two-years ago, a certain ex-boyfriend of mine, who shall remain nameless, needed a favor one day. We had spent the entire weekend doing, well, what boyfriends do. Sex? No, sillies. I'm a fun boyfriend. I don't have sex, I have fun! When you date me, you get to do a whole number of fun activities like drinking Carlo Rossi and playing Clue, or a rousing game of Hide-and-go-Twink, or better yet, baking dutch ovens in other people's beds!
Basically, this specific weekend was filled with the aforementioned activities. Unfortunately, none of his work was completed. He was a senior at Harvard at the time we dated. That said, he had a paper due the next morning, and being the nice boyfriend that I was, I was more than abliged to write his paper for him. If I remember correctly, the paper had to be an interview with a Sci-Fi fan. Seeing as no such interviews had taken place that weekend, I had to make one up. We were still buzzing from the Carlo Rossi we drank earlier, so I figured it would be fun. No shitting you, this is what I came up with. I wrote it in literally 25 minutes. How do I know this? Because my lazy-ass ex was in bed watching an episode of Will & Grace. Typical. But, enjoy the bullshitting that goes on in the mock-paper.
Disclaimer: He didn't actually turn in the paper. why? The professor would have known he didn't write it. He doesn't know the big words often used throughout the paper. Hazaa! And, I will admit, after looking at this, I'm kind of impressed with myself. It took a lot of Carlo Rossi induced creativity to come up with this fake paper. Maybe I should write papers for smart rich kids for a living! And, without further adieu, here is the fake paper, titled appropriately enough: Citigazze!




Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while
Pondering his voyage…
-John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II




“For me, His Dark Materials represented a spiritual awakening. A chance to delve deeper into taboo subject matter. Pullman’s writing, on some level, asked the questions I was always too afraid to ask.” he said to me with a quiet ease.

Seth has always considered himself to be a level-headed thinker. Growing up near Cleveland in a suburb called Shaker Heights, his interest in science fiction started at a young age.

“To be honest, my earliest memories of science fiction, or fantasy began with images of a talking lion named Aslan, a white witch and a magical wardrobe.” Seth noted, reminiscing contemplatively.
“It was never a question of whether or not it was weird or outrageous or not cool. For me, it was always just a part of me. I liked to look up at the sky and think about the possibilities. Aliens? God? Angels? Any child naturally asks whether or not these things really exist. On a philosophical level, I always had a hard time buying into institutionalized religion; this concept of an all-powerful super-entity, when aliens were seen as ridiculous or implausible.”

“My foray into science fiction really spoke of a deeper need of mine to explore the dimensions of reality, religion and philosophy. Yet, this deeper need to learn, think, or even question was in direct conflict with my parents religious beliefs, thereby stifling any actual study into the subject matter. That’s how I fell into the Chronicles [of Narnia]. Lewis’ s ability to confront both the natural imagination of a child while also dissecting the many intricacies of religious thought attracted me to him as a writer. Its funny that in my attempt to escape dogmatic propaganda, I would ultimately find myself reading one of organized religions’ biggest proponents.

The Lewis Seth is referring to is of course the famed Oxford professor Clive Staples Lewis. He is best known for his many works defending the existence of God through logical reasoning.

“Lewis, for me was a man for whom the world was an unending canvas. He opened my eyes to the fact that reality, though complex and theoretical, is still a place where the mind doesn’t necessarily have to strung together logic in a neat row, nor is it a concept that will ever be wholeheartedly understood. It is unfathomable, and in some odd way, I found comfort in this fact. It’s rather ironic that his attempt to prove the existence of God, I would instead find the motivation to question God. Yet, on some level, I think that was his ultimate goal.

At this point, I thought I was in for a religious fanatic illustrating, through C.S. Lewis books, that God, at least in the Judeo-Christian model, was real, and the savior of my sins. Interestingly enough, I realized that C.S. Lewis was nothing more than a light push into a philosophical firestorm of atheism and nihilism.

Seth claims that his journey into sci-fi began initially with Narnia and ultimately lead him to heaven, in a secular way of course.

Heaven, as I like to think of it, is more of a human construction, institutional foundation for after-life activities. The way [Phillip] Pullman draws together the whole conceptualization of an afterlife in terms of an actual destination, physical in sense that we can activity journey there and leave at will, blowing away any previous sense of heaven as a theoretical concept, but as a location.

This heaven, Seth speaks of is in reference to the Phillip Pullman Trilogy …