To exist and to interact with the world around it, computer code needs to be “embodied” in (of course) computers, and, despite its virtually infinite extensibility (at least in theory), the nature of code’s embodiment has a limiting and determinative effect that we need to understand if we are going to fully grasp the impact of computer code on the world around us.
What value can we find in video-games? My talk at Doxacon Seattle 2025 mines my experience as a gamer, focussing on Starflight, and as a Minecraft Server Administrator for theological and experiential insights.
In this introductory episode, we begin a second “season” of the Geek Orthodox podcast, “The World of Code”, with two new summaries of the first season: one generated by AI, the other by yours truly.
This guest-lecture at Simon Fraser University on Biblical intertextuality in fantasy and science fiction focuses on three excerpts from the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings), C.S. Lewis (Chapter 20 of Out of the Silent Planet), and John Wyndham (an excerpt from The Day of the Triffids). For those interested, the relevant excerpts are collected in this PDF.
The lecture, along with the subsequent Q&A, can also be seen on YouTube.
The keynote address I gave at Doxacon Seattle in 2019 on the trope of transformation in fantasy literature and its importance, alongside the importance of our embodiment, for our identity.
So, Season 1 of Geek Orthodox, “The Deaths of Arthur”, is finally finished! It was definitely, as I say in my concluding episode, an adventure: my first fully-produced podcast, a greatly expanded version of my Doxacon Seattle talk, and my first long-form expository non-fiction work in years. Here, for handy reference, is a listing of “The Deaths of Arthur” podcast episodes in order:
The primary reason the conclusion took so long to come out was simply that I was ambushed by report card season (my least favourite time as a teacher!), but a secondary reason was that the experience of putting together the podcast as podcast, as an extended reflection on the subjects I touched on (or, in Tennyson’s case, had to skip over) in my Doxacon talk, got me thinking a lot about the podcast as a medium, how I might be able to use the medium more effectively in the future, some of the obvious shortcomings of how I ended up using it over this first “season”, and what extended conclusions I might now draw from these extended reflections. In the end, I decided to keep it simple and to stick fairly closely to my original vision for both the podcast and my conclusion, despite the obvious shortcomings, in the hopes that the work will still be somewhat worth listening to on its own and that, rather than getting too “meta” by including my reflections on podcasting in the podcast, I may be able to simply apply some of the lessons learned in future episodes of the podcast.
My hope for the next “season” of the podcast is that the episodes will be more episodic, more experimental, shorter, and better planned and produced – but we’ll have to wait and see whether any of that actually comes to pass! “The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men… an’ a’ that!” In the meantime, if anyone who actually listens to the podcast has any feedback they’d like to give me, positive or negative, privately or publicly, I’d love to hear from you via the comment section below. (If you don’t want your feedback to be published, just let me know!)
In which I reflect on some of the echoes of Arthurian legend in Lewis and Tolkien, and on some of the influence and significance of the death of Arthur for me
Show Notes:
Tolkien:
“The Fall of Arthur”
The Return of the King
Tolkien states in a letter that he had given Frodo and Bilbo an “Arthurian ending”. “The Elves were summond to return into the West, and such as obeyed dwelt again in Eressëa, the Lonely Island, which was renamed Avallon: for it is hard by Valinor.”
Lewis:
“When the Pevensie children had returned to Narnia last time for their second visit, it was (for the Narnians) as if King Arthur came back to Britain, as some people say he will. And I say the sooner the better.” –C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“The association of Arthur’s grave with Glasontbury can therefore be described briefly. The earliest written record is found in a work of the Welsh antiquary Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Wales, written near the end of the twelfth century. After observing that fantastical tales were told of Arthur’s body, as that it had been borne to a region far away by spirits and was not subject to death, he said that ‘in our days’ Arthur’s body had in fact been found, by the monks of the abbey of Glastonbury, buried deep in the ground in a hollowed oak in the graveyard. A leaden cross was fixed to the underside of a stone beneath the coffin, in such a way that an inscription on the cross was conceled. The inscription, which Giraldus himself had seen, declared that buried there was the renowned King Arthur together with Wennevaria in insula Avallonia [in the island Avallonia]. (He records also the curious detail that beside the bones of Arthur (which were of hugest size) and of Guinevere was a perfectly preserved tress of her golden hair, but that when it was touched by one of the monks it fell instantly to dust.) The date of this event is recorded as 1191.
In the same passage Giraldus said that what was now called Glastonia was anciently called Insula Avallonia. This name, he explained, arose because the place was virtually an island, entirely surrounded by marshes, whence it was called Britannice (in the British [i.e., Celtic] language) Inis Avallon, meaning, he said, insula pomifera ‘island of apples’, aval being the British word for ‘apple’, for apple-trees were once abundant there. He adds also that Morganis, who was a noble lady, akin to King Arthur, and ruler of that region, took him after the battle of Kemelen (Camlan) to the island which is now called Glastonia for the healing of his wounds.” –Christopher Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur
“‘Don’t you remember planting the orchard outside the north gate of Cair Paravel? The greatest of all the wood-people, Pomona herself, came to put good spells on it.’ … ‘[But] Cair Paravel wasn’t on an island.’ ‘Yes, … but it was a what-do-you-call-it, a peninusla. Jolly nearly an island. Couldn’t it have been made an island since our time? Somebody has dug a channel.'” –Peter and Edmund in Prince Caspian
Steinbeck:
“The western world and its so called culture have invented very few things,” he wrote in 1953. “But there is one thing that we invented and for which there is no counterpart in the east and that is gallantry. . . . It means that a person, all alone, will take on odds that by their very natures are insurmountable, will attack enemies which are unbeatable. And the crazy thing is that we win often enough to make it a workable thing. And also this same gallantry gives a dignity to the individual that nothing else ever has. . . .”
Influence on Me
Shakespeare, Hamlet: “Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, when our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will… Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come, if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.” –Act V, Scene II
