Before taking yesterday off to work at the polls, I interviewed Karen Fabian about her book Firestorm of Dragons. Today we will get to know Karen a little better by talking about Leaps of Faith.

Believe in a future where science and faith live side-by-side? Leaps of Faith contains 15 stories exploring space, time and faith. Can an ancient religion bring hope to first-line explorers for whom each trip is potential suicide? What does it mean when a physicist finds God's face in the stars? Is there a "saint gene" and can it be reproduced to create miracles? What happens to your soul when your body is shattered into quantum elements and reassembled on another world? How will the Christian faith transform alien thoughts and traditions?

Read as time travelers seeking to change Biblical history and space travelers harvesting "angels" are brought to faith by their experiences. Experience tender romance and heart-pounding adventure. Laugh at the foilables of man.

A 2002 EPPIE finalist for Best Electronic Anthology, Leaps of Faith promises the best in Christian sci-fi.

Welcome, Karen. Can you tell us what you most enjoyed about compiling this book?

Discovering the many angles at which people examine their relationship with god in the future--and reading some great stories.

Was it hard to select stories for Leaps of Faith?

Actually, no. We had about 100 stories submitted, I think (It was sooo long ago, it seems), but many of them missed one of the three core values of the anthology:
1. make the Christianity real and positive
2. make the science plausible and believable
3. show us how science and religion can interact positively together.

The stories in this anthology didn't just meet these three requirements, but also made us laugh out loud, shed a tear, or sit back and think. The authors made the choices easy for us.

What do you want people to get out of your book?

Hope for our future. An understanding that affirming God's role in our life doesn't mean rejecting the value of science or progress. Finally, a pleasant few hours of faith-filled escapism.

Do you write a lot of Christian science fiction yourself, and if so, why?

I actually did not set out to be a Christian sci-fi writer. However, faith and sci-fi are both integral parts of who I am, so that has come out in my writing. On a literary standpoint, I think religion makes an interesting point of conflict, adds to a character and feeds a part of the reader's mind and soul that other genres don't.

I've written and sold a few stories about the Rescue Sisters--nuns who live and work in space doing rescue operations. In addition to Leaps of Faith, I've edited the anthology, Infinite Space, Infinite God and its coming sequel. (From Twilight Times Books, www.isigsf.com). In the fantasy realm, I've got a Catholic dragon detective and his nun partner. That's been an interesting universe to play in, since I have a magical parallel universe interacting with ours. It's been interesting to imagine how the reality of magic changes the development of Christianity. I've several stories and two novels out or coming out so far. www.dragoneyepi.net
Finally, I'm working on my first Rescue Sisters novel, Discovery. I'm already talking with a publisher about it, but there are no promises.

What's the challenge of writing in this genre?

Placing it. If you want to really be open and frank about religion--not preachy, just prevalent--then you can get a story that's too "Christian" for sci-fi and too "sci-fi" for Christian. Fantasy and Horror share the same dilemma. In fact, there's a group of writers of speculative fiction called the Lost Genre Guild who are working to break these literary barriers.