Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Sculpting God: Bedtime Stories for Adults
    Sculpting God: Bedtime Stories for Adults
    Sculpting God: Bedtime Stories for Adults
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    Sculpting God: Bedtime Stories for Adults

    By J. Daniel Sawyer

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “Let us make man in our own image.” -God 
    “...man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” -Voltaire 

    The Award-nominated author of The Antithesis Progression and Down From Ten brings you a genre-spanning collection in the American Gothic tradition of Flannery O'Connor, Ray Bradbury, and Ambrose Bierce. Stories of creativity, hubris, sacrifice, and longing, these tales put you to bed with visions of eternity sharp in your head. Bedtime stories aren't just for children anymore. 

    Contains:
    Lilith
    Angels Unawares
    The Coffee Service
    Control Room
    The Man in the Rain
    Train Time
    Six original poems
    as well as a new essay and introductory material by the author.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAWP Fantasy
    Release dateApr 22, 2016
    ISBN9781533774101
    Sculpting God: Bedtime Stories for Adults
    Author

    J. Daniel Sawyer

    WHILE STAR WARS and STAR TREK seeded J. Daniel Sawyer's passion for the unknown, his childhood in academia gave him a deep love of history and an obsession with how the future emerges from the past. This obsession led him through adventures in the film industry, the music industry, venture capital firms in the startup culture of Silicon Valley, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the worlds that assemble themselves in his head. His travels with bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, and inventors led him eventually to a rural exile where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a pair of production companies that bring innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world. For stories, contact info, podcasts, and more, visit his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

    Read more from J. Daniel Sawyer

    Related to Sculpting God

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Page One

      Oct 12, 2022

      “My cousin Galaxy’s baby fell out of a two-story window and survived.” A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continents (Ecco, November 2022) by Mary-Alice Daniel. First book, memoir. Agent: Jin Auh. Editor: Gabriella Doob. Publ

      2 min read

    • Article

      Poetic Asides

      Aug 16, 2021

      The awdl gywydd (pronounced “ow-dull gee-youth”) is a Welsh quatrain form with the following guidelines: • Quatrain (or four-line stanza) form• Seven syllables per line• The final syllable of the first and third lines rhymes with the third to fifth s

      1 min read

    • Article

      Our World, Ourselves

      Oct 15, 2021

      First, there was light—sparking, forking human consciousness. Then, an itch. Bears in Chauvet Cave, Japan’s Jōmon owls, a twenty-foot stone Kalahari python slithering from 68,000 BCE. We’ve always story-told the more-than-human universe. Even now. “A

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Path Through the Woods

      May 30, 2023

      A Path Through the Woods
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 12, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Aug 28, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      May 1, 2022

      —after Gerrit van Honthorst’s “Samson and Delilah,” c. 1621 They’ve made a monster of me, marring my namefor eternity. I’m not Delilah,but Laila. I loved him. Each night, in bed, after our bodies became one body, he would succumb to sleep, resting hi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Knausgaard, Doerr, and More

      Sep 28, 2021

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Karl Ove Knausgaard, Anthony Doerr, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Knausgaard, Doerr, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 10, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Final Destination

      Jul 9, 2023

      Final Destination
      4 min read

    • Article

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • Article

      10 Literary Witches To Hex Trump

      Mar 24, 2017

      In case you hadn’t heard, witches across America—including Lana Del Rey—are uniting to take down Trump via a binding spell, which calls on the spirits to keep the President from doing harm (it already seems to be working). Covens, communities, and so

      5 min read

    • Article

      The 25 best Australian books of 2022: Chloe Hooper, Alex Miller, Jessica Au and more

      Dec 19, 2022

      Simon & Schuster Chloe Hooper’s talent for piercing the beating heart of a story is turned inwards in this beautifully rendered and very personal book about how to talk about death with her young children, after discovering their father had an aggres

      9 min read

    • Article

      The 10 Strangest Dystopias

      Oct 7, 2021

      With the daily news seeming apocalyptic and standard dystopias feeling a little tame, Lincoln Michel breaks down some of the strangest dystopian novels. The post The 10 Strangest Dystopias appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Lady In The Water

      Jun 17, 2020

      Lady In The Water
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Myths We Wear

      Mar 20, 2019

      The Myths We Wear
      11 min read

    • Article

      Animal Planet

      May 3, 2020

      Animal Planet
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Sculpting God

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Sculpting God - J. Daniel Sawyer

      Sculpting God

      Bedtime Stories For Adults

      J. Daniel Sawyer

      AWP Fantasy

      A division of ArtisticWhispers Productions, Inc.

      © 2011 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Containing

      Introduction and interstitial material © 2011 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Lilith © 2008 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Angels Unawares © 2004 J. Daniel Sawyer

      First print publication in Podthology by Dragon Moon Press, 2010

      The Coffee Service © 1999 J. Daniel Sawyer

      We Create Worlds © 2008 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Control Room © 1999, 2007 J. Daniel Sawyer

      The Man In The Rain © 2009 J. Daniel Sawyer

      First print publication in Podthology by Dragon Moon Press, 2010

      Train Time © 2007 J. Daniel Sawyer

      All poetry © 1999-2011, J. Daniel Sawyer

      Published here for the first time

      Cover art © 2011 Kitty Niciaian

      Book Design by ArtisticWhispers

      All Rights Reserved

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

      This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.

      Dedication

      For Kitty

      "Let us make man in our image..."

      -God, Genesis 1:26

      "We all create God in our own image,"

      -Harold Livingston, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

      "God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment."

      -Inherit The Wind

      Sculpting God

      Bedtime Stories for Adults

      J. Daniel Sawyer

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Poem: Andromeda Alone

      Intro to Lilith

      Lilith

      Poem: A Walk in the Evening

      Intro to Angels Unawares

      Angels Unawares

      Poem: Song of the Sirens

      Intro to The Coffee Service

      The Coffee Service

      Poem: The Old Song

      Intro to We Create Worlds

      We Create Worlds

      Poem: Cartesian Man

      Intro to Control Room

      Control Room

      Poem: The Sleeper

      Intro to The Man In The Rain

      The Man In The Rain

      Poem: Pillow Talk

      Intro to Train Time

      Train Time

      Author Bio

      Also By

      Introduction

      AN INTRODUCTION IS the customary place in a collection of stories to make apologies and justifications. Although I don't have much to offer in the way of apologies for the flights of fancy in these pages, perhaps a bit of justification is in order. It has been pointed out to me a number of times that Sculpting God is, as titles go, both immodest and impious.

      Of impiety I stand justly accused, and make no apologies for it. As far as immodesty, I can offer only the following in my defense:

      This is a book of bedtime stories. In a fortunate childhood, such stories send you to sleep with a head full of images—frightening monsters, heroic deeds, confusing forests, gorgeous vistas, strange creatures, vexing puzzles, and enigmatic temptations.

      I was fortunate in the bedtime story department. The house I grew up in I was equipped with two excellent storytellers. One moonlighted as a professor, and was an excellent interpretive reader. He did the voices in The Hobbit, recited macabre epic poems from memory, and managed even to breathe life into Greek and Hebrew tales that most five-year-olds find impenetrable and stuffy. Because of his stories Jason and the Argonauts, David and Joshua, Tom Sawyer (with whom I felt an immediate kinship), Bilbo and Thorin, and Aslan all ran rough-shod through my early dreams. I couldn't have asked for better.

      When he had the night off, my brothers and I were regaled by tales of adventure in the wilds of the Amazon jungle by the other resident storyteller, who grew up there. Between them, I never lacked for a good story to latch my imagination onto as I drifted off to sleep.

      Then there were the tales of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, showing always in re-runs, and Ray Bradbury Theater, and Amazing Stories. Here too, were bedtime stories, but these were bedtime stories for everyone. I watched them with adults—adults who found them even more chilling and enthralling than I did.

      J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay On Fairy-Stories, compared the work of a writer to the work of a god—creating a world, peopling it, laying in its history and politics and economics until the world comprised a whole and separate sub-creation. He was talking of speculative fiction—science fiction, fantasy, mythopoeic—the traditions from which all bedtime stories draw.

      Stuart Brand, in spotting humanity's effect on the environment, said We are as gods and might as well get good it. In an era where we can directly harness the energy of the sun, move mountains, walk on other planets, create new life forms to suit our purposes, and stand on the verge of medical advances that threaten to bring us face-to-face with immortality, is it any wonder that we crave storytellers who speak in terms of gods and monsters?

      Storytellers don't just do the work of gods when worldbuilding, as Tolkien spotted—the very stories they tell create the pictures of the gods that live in the minds of other people. Homer did this, as did Shakespeare, Lew Wallace, Mark Twain, and Neil Gaiman. We storytellers create and re-create the gods as our bread and butter—their faces in every era come from our stories.

      Good storytelling also provides an escape from a drab day-to-day world filled with injustices large and small—from predatory wars to children being forced to give up bedtime stories when they leave the nursery. This slim volume is an effort to, in some small way, to correct this latter injustice.

      Tolkien said something else in On Fairy Stories. He ventured a theory as to what bedtime stories are for. Talking of children, he said Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.

      The same is true for adults.

      Andromeda Alone

      The sullen sky at eventide

      A rippled movement blowing wide

      The waters of the sundering sea

      And breaking open, wild and free

      A serpent from the cavern-time

      And there upon the rocky wall

      They chained her to the feeding-stall

      A ransom for the prideful king

      Immobile, ravished, quickening

      She waits the monster's killing fall

      No champion came up to save

      Her blood, her bone, her soul engraved

      Alone up on the rampart rock

      She, slack against the granite dock

      And dared the fates her strength to waive

      Poseidon's wind whips high and hard

      The monster now has bared his sword

      Above her stands, his beastly feying

      Revenge ancestral, savage, preying

      And poised to snap her like a cord.

      She looks up at the serpent's jaws

      And gives herself into his claws

      He snatches up, she lets him hold her

      No champion upon this boulder

      And so fulfill great Ammon's laws

      And then the serpent's stone foundation

      Betrays him in his last temptation

      In seizing tight, she slips between

      His fingers down into the green

      The solemn power now his damnation

      And sailing on upon the greening

      Waves of night, the stars a'keening

      Sing the song of woman met

      Her fate and payed its gruesome debt

      And won her freedom, life revealing

      Andromeda, the heavens' pealing.

      Introduction to Lilith 

      ALL GOOD STORIES have a beginning, and the story of our world is no different. What precisely that beginning was has been the subject of debate since humans first learned to speak aloud, and though the answers are now less murky, the stories of our ancestors can sometimes still cast their spell over us.

      One of the subjects of this great debate, in the Western world, is Eden. Who was there, and when, and why? What did they do? And what did it mean? The Talmud records a tale told to explain the differences in the way the book of Genesis describes the creation of humanity—first, it says, there was a woman, not quite a woman, whom Adam rejected before God made Eve. The Rabbis blamed her for crib death, and identified her with Aserah and other goddesses that have vexed the Rabbinical authorities throughout Jewish history—and now, with the resurgence of mythology and neopagan ideas, she's a popular icon once again.

      Night hag? Dark goddess? Disgraceful wife? She's been maligned for centuries as the source of women's misery. That is the story they told in the Talmud. But this is her story, in her own words. The story of Lilith.

      Lilith

      YOU SAY I AM the night hag, the bewitching moonlight, the child-eater who causes crib death. You say I am the woman your husbands see at the temple when they are seeking something more than you can give. It is true that I seduce, and I destroy, and am unjustly maligned for both. Your jealousy pushes me into the darkness, makes for me the role which you imagine I play. It keeps me at the edge of your firelight and behind the ghouls in the stories you tell your young men. You are the daughters of man, but I am the daughter of the earth.

      I came first.

      And that was why he hated me.

      I awoke in the ground, the mud crumbling off me in the drying Mesopotamian sun. I knew nothing at first but the sun on my skin and the breath in my lungs; a lavender fire. I heard his breath, but I did not yet know what breath was.

      The date palms above filtered the light into dozens of fractured, dancing spears, warm on my thighs, my face, my vulva, my toes. I awoke on the ground, and came out of the earth, and heard the Voice whose breath awakened me, whispering secrets in my head. I alone was given the power of creation, the dominion of immortality. I was the Voice's delight in the world wrapped up in clay, and the man on the ground beside me was the order of life, and from the intercourse of chaos and order would come the future of the universe. We were the progenitors.

      And

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1