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GOD’S ARMY by Geoffrey Card 2001, Excel Entertainment Publishing Trade paperback, 200 pages $14.98 Click here to order.

Pod People from a Spacetime Nexus
by D. Michael Martindale

The film God’s Army was a groundbreaking work: a film made by an LDS filmmaker for an LDS audience, distributed and exhibited in the regular Hollywood venues. A film that didn’t want to convert or inspire--not that writer/director/ producer/star Richard Dutcher would have complained if it did-- but a film that would simply tell an interesting, honest story about the people he loves and is a part of: Mormons.

It was a milestone for LDS art, something that had never been done before. And now something else new has been done, something that must surely be the baptism of fire of LDS commercial entertainment into the real world: a novelization of the film. By this we must surely acknowledge that we have arrived.

But I’m just getting started. This must be some kind of nexus in the spacetime continuum, one of those things that causes clocks to run backwards and cosmic geodesics to contort into Moebius strips. Not only was an "it-can't-be-done" mainstream LDS film made, exhibited, and reasonably successful, not only did that instantly result in a novelization of the film (where’s the novelization of Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd?), but the author chosen for the novelization is an author who has never been published, an author who’s main interest is also filmmaking, and an author whose father is the inestimable Orson Scott Card, vastly successful science fiction author, who blazed a few LDS trails of his own in the world of storytelling.

But it doesn’t stop there. Orson Scott also wrote a film novelization--something he swore he’d never do--of James Cameron’s Abyss. This book was a groundbreaker in its own right: a novelization that both author and filmmaker wanted to be in a class by itself. This novelization would actually follow the final version of the film--not an earlier draft of the script, complete with egg for the face of the poor author whose good- faith efforts to reproduce the movie get betrayed on the editor’s cutting room floor. And this novelization would strive for quality--a science fiction novel that could stand on its own. How could it not succeed, with Orson Scott Card writing it?

The book Abyss filled in the background and motivations of both the human characters and the fascinating aliens, information missing from the film. As father Card did in his novelization, so did son Card do in his, revealing to us thoughts and off-screen activities of God’s Army characters lacking in the film.

If that isn’t enough, Orson Scott Card is also deep into finagling a project which is the reverse of God’s Army--getting his groundbreaking science fiction book Ender’s Game made into a movie. A “filmization,” if you will.

Which such a Gordian tangle of parallels, contrasts, and coincidences, I fully expect an alternate universe Enterprise D to slip through the spacetime nexus and save Earth from some bizarre planet-busting threat, perhaps Bill Gates’ Microborg. (Resistance is futile.)

Now that I’ve had some fun, maybe I ought to tell you what I think of the book. I can answer that in one sentence: It’s a novelization.

The movie plot is faithfully presented, the characters are all there doing the things you saw them do in the film. It’s all very familiar.

And yet not. The Elder Dalton in the book is not the same Elder Dalton in the film. He’s author Geoff Card’s interpretation of Elder Dalton. The same with apostate Elder Kinegar, black Elder Banks, cute and intimidating Sister Fronk--they’re all there, and not quite there.

Having seen the film first, I inevitably preferred the film characters. To me, they are the real ones, where Card’s incarnations are interesting pod people who look like the real thing, but somehow don’t feel like them. Card necessarily ascribed motives, thoughts, and attitudes that weren’t in the film, because this is a film novelization, and film novelizations must do that.

Not that his interpretations weren’t interesting; not that Card didn’t do a fine job crafting and writing the book. It’s just that it’s a novelization, no more--but also no less. Card gets the job done as any good journeyman writer would do. If you like the God’s Army film and you like novelizations, you will assuredly like Geoff Card’s book.

I don’t care for novelizations. I found it difficult to get into the book, because it had the whiff of novelization all over it. But eventually Card overcame these odds, at least enough to make the book interesting to read. Even touching in spots.

One cannot fault Card for the weaknesses of the book. They are inherent in the format. He was an author-for-hire. The title page of the book says “Copyright Richard Dutcher,” not “Copyright Geoffrey Card.” In the words of Papagallo in the Mad Max movie Road Warrior, “He fulfilled his contract. He’s an honorable man.” But I for one would have preferred spending my time picking up the latest book by father Card and diving into that with relish.

All this begs the question, what would a Geoff Card book be like that he designed and wrote himself from the ground up? To me this is the most interesting part of the whole experience. Card now has his name out there, he has credentials; he’s a published author, and we know he can write well. I look forward to finding out what he can do on his own.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen. After all, Card is really a filmmaker, not an author. He attends the Chapman University School of Film and Television. We may have to wait for his first feature film to find out what he can do on his own.

And wouldn’t that be icing on the cake of our spacetime nexus. A groundbreaking LDS film by Geoffrey Card--novelization by Richard Dutcher.

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