Robert J. Sawyer on FlashForward

- Joseph Fiennes as an FBI agent ... I'd like Agent Mulder back! :(

The latest Question at Cif belief is What can science fiction teach us about God? ... Speculative fiction ought to be a wonderful way to think about philosophical questions .... Science fiction can be powerfully atheistic, as in the work of Ken MacLeod. It can illuminate a faith in progress across geological time, as in Olaf Stapledon; it can write about religion, as Ursula Le Guin does often. Sometimes, as in James Blish, Philip Pullman, or CS Lewis, it can attack specifically Christian questions about atonement and sinfulness.

Coincidentally, my DVD rental for this week is from the genre of science fiction -- a past tv series, FlashForward, adapted from a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, and starring Joseph Fiennes, Courtney B. Vance, and John Cho. The storyline raises questions about God, destiny, providence and free will -- is our future determined and immutable or is it within our power to change what will happen?

I've just seen the first few episodes, but so far it seems ok, though sadly it's no X-Files. Here's the basic plot from Wikipedia ...

[A] mysterious event has caused nearly everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds, during which time people see what appears to be a vision of their own life approximately six months in the future: a global "flashforward". A team of Los Angeles FBI agents, led by Stanford Wedeck (Vance) and spearheaded by Mark Benford (Fiennes) and his partner Demetri Noh (Cho), begin the process of determining what happened, why, and whether it will happen again.

Here's a video interview with science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer on the set of FlashForward ....