Orly Ruaimi

Definitions of Holy Fire

Reading the book Holy Fire has challenged me to familiarize myself with possible human futures by realizing discursive policy issues related to the nature of a technologically advanced humanity. The story presents a critique and comment of the present through the lens of a possible future. This includes descriptions of the contemporary world, including: body, age, economy, gender changes, stereotypes, biological and ethical issues, medical research, elder care, drug addiction, psychology, and religion. This paper highlights several instances where the author mentions the term Holy Fire toward the purpose of analyzing its strategic placement and its connection to the question of policy.

The first instance the narrator uses the term Holy Fire is in this following quotation from chapter 1:

“Human lives, her human life. A night not really different from a thousand other nights, but there had been a profound joy in that one moment, an emotion like holy fire. She had known without speaking that her husband felt it, too, and she had slipped her arm around him. It had been a moment beyond speech and out of time.” (Holy Fire, chapter 1, 56)

The narrator places the term associated with vulnerability in the main character Mia. This is where the narrator brings into view the delicate human characteristics of Mia, supporting it through specific words: human life, joy, husband. In this chapter, Mia experiences a midlife crisis through a retrospective glance, recalling a time when these words manifested in her life. Considering the fact that the book contemplates advanced technology, this particular observation lends itself to the contrary. Holy Fire here translates to love, a distant concept according to the time where the story takes place – it is ephemeral in nature and non-materialistic, something that humans highly desired and rarely attained. 

A second time where the term is used is in the same chapter:

“And now she was looking at a drugged and naked stranger on her carpet and that sacred moment had come back to her, still exactly what it was, what it had been, what it would always be.This stranger was not her daughter, and this moment of the century was not that other ticking moment, but none of that mattered. The holy fire was more real than time, more real than any such circumstance. She wasn’t merely having a happy memory. She was having happiness. She had become happiness.” (Holy Fire, chapter 1, 56)

This scene involves a look on the family unit forward by a queering and a reinvention of the family. The author chooses to insert the term Holy Fire again but as a physical attribute: the question of treatment of people with drug addiction and the performative aspect of sex/gender through the viewing of the “naked” body. Here the term refers to the human physical condition involving desire and addiction, whether that means sex or drugs. Both of these have profound biological effects on humans. Mia views Brett’s young naked body, the instigative draw to its sexuality, coupled with Brett’s strong drug addiction, at the same time consulting her own lack of control of her biomedically modified old body. This is the turning point in the book where the book transitions from the genre of cyberpunk to biopunk. Cyberpunk is typified by the mimesis of high tech and low life or the diminishing of raw human condition aspects of society, in this case Mia’s civil support/social worker/house keeper/health inspector/police spy, as well as all her life extension treatments. Services and conditions make Mia’s life technologically advanced while also entertaining a low quality as to human relationships of trust and compassion. And the transition to biopunk, where the implications of technological bio enhancements creates  a society or “order”  where these miserable outcomes perpetually maintain.

Another place where the term Holy Fire is used is in relations to religion in chapter 4, quote bellow:

“But those who had directly experienced the descent of holy fire had no doubt of its sacred origin. The Church had always survived the uncharitable speculations of skeptics.” (Holy Fire, chapter 4, 226)

This passage references the current acting Pope in 2065 who undergoes life extension, thereby becoming ‘post human’. This chapter also tells a story of a hero’s journey, dealing with elder care and abuse, cyborgazation of humans (Novack’s arm) and tensions in religious institutions – these themes compare the concept of god with the advancements of biology and science. A Pope who enhances himself technologically, adopting super human abilities, can see the future and heal the sick. The Church, as a supporter of advanced technology, contradicts itself through violating canons of religion. Science slowly absorbs God, degrading His greatness. Here, holy fire means the manifestation or power of the omnipotent, or ‘God’. Looking at these three instances where the term appears supports the continuity of the main idea of the book: the miserable human condition will exist as a concept in the future through the contortion of economical, medical and social aspects of society. The theme of the book at the same time addresses issues of policy in each chapter.