I've been browsing over Contact, which is one of the most evocative movies for me. For some reason.
In this and quite a number of other movies I continually wonder why divinity intersects the plot as strongly, without ever making itself known. I mean, in the fully extraphysical, miraculous sense. Sure, they talk about miraculous "voices from the sky"...but then those have been detected by purpose built radio telescopes. In earlier lore the same thing often takes the form of other means of communication through...stuff that was physically well-known, but not popularly well-understood at the time.
Even the stuff that *really* stretches even the functioning scientist's mind is always left out. We never see the kinds of mental gymnastics exemplia gratis Greg Egan imposes upon us. And that's just self-limiting although experimental, hard scifi, then. It reaches nowhere *near* the kind of awe divinity is supposed to inspire in us'll.
I find just about all descriptions of the preternatural in fictional wanting. They fail to awe. And I don't just about talk about the Bible -- the lousy piece of pseudo-history that tome is -- I mean real pieces of God's honest, meant-to-be awesome pieces of hardcore fiction. The kinds which make me both laugh and cry, possibly at the same time.
Even they fail to carry any sense of divinity. As much as they perhaps try.
