Saturday 23 January 2010

Behold The Man II

My notional sequel to this famous novel: a time traveller (an American) returns to the Holy Land c.AD33 with the following macabre mission: to shoot Jesus with a high-power, 21st-century rifle, after he has been crucified and resurrected but before he ascends to heaven. The early stages of the novel would make narrative play with the questions of who and why, teasing the reader with possible motivations -- is he a radical atheist? An agent of Satan? Or does he intend to prove that post-resurrection Jesus is unkillable (that, let us say, he has not simply spent three days in his tomb recovering from serious but not fatal wounds inflicted upon the cross). The later stages would pay off these questions, and reveal what happens when the ressurected Christ is shot at. Hint: it is nothing at all like the last scenes of the first Matrix movie.

3 comments:

Tom said...

There was a SciFi short film (whose name escapes me) that had a similar premise. It was set in courtroom and the case concerned the sabotage of a UN funded time machine project, the machine had been destroyed with timed explosives directly after one of the scientists had used it to travel back to 30AD, with an M16, to prevent Jesus dying on the cross. I really wish I knew it's name as I'd love to see it again, I think it may have been on The Shooting Gallery.

Your premise sounds a lot more interesting however.

Mahendra Singh said...

Sounds pretty neat … quite honestly, I would work it up into a movie pitch, with one change to make it more palatable for the unwashed masses: the gunman would have to be a terrorist from an unspecified country whose name ends in stan and who is motivated by fundamentalist rages, etc etc etc

since the gunman is of an unspecified abrahamic faith whose historical success is predicated on its conflict with Christianity, he will vanish in a puff of smoke after the deed is done … the prefect crime, eh watson?

Adam Roberts Project said...

Tom: it was originally a short story, that: but I'm blanking on the name.

Mahendra: brilliant!