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AR Horvath's Fidelis Book 1 One of Birth Pangs Series AR Horvath's Birth Pangs Spero book 2 tolkien potter lewis Role Playing Game RPG Stage of Game After the Desolations

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"Spero is an imaginative fantasy that subtly instructs, entertains, and intellectually provokes the reader. It is fascinating reading. I'm definitely hooked on this series." Jean Heimann at Catholic Fire.

"...intelligent as well as inspiring..." Terry Barga at whattodoabout.com.

The first book in the Birth Pangs series, Fidelis, is Latin for faithfulness. The second book, Spero, is Latin for hope. Spero is an exploration, in fiction, of what hope is and why we need it. It is an exploration of what things are good to put our hope in and what things aren't. In the America of the future portrayed in the Birth Pangs series, all of the things that people have traditionally put their hope in have been brought low. There are no government agencies, no schools, and not even churches. In the face of daily perils, people have to figure out how where they are going to place their hope in dealing with them.

In the end, there is one daily peril that surpasses them all: death.

Spero is about people- even good people- putting their hope in lesser means to tackle lesser problems and being confronted with the consequences. Spero is a 'discussion' about our chief problems and what solutions, if any, are available to resolve them.

Interview Questions: Birth Pangs and Politics Q6. Re: Are the politics important or just superficial?

June 5, 2008 in commentary, interviews by ARH

Is politics an important part of your world?  Should I be searching for hints about the way you feel about capitalism or democracy, or should I be looking past these things as the ’superficial’ layer of relationships, looking for a deeper reflection on civilization in general?

Political systems really represent individual beliefs, in particular how one’s beliefs impact how one should behave in the wider world and how you believe others ought to behave.  Ultimately, one cannot separate one’s politics from their worldview.  Since the Birth Pangs series is an exploration of worldviews, it follows that political musings will come, too.  A person who derives no political implications from their world view probably doesn’t even understand their world view or doesn’t really believe their world view.

Part of the problem in today’s culture is that many people have a worldview but then political beliefs that are inconsistent with planks in their worldview.  The latent idea is that one’s beliefs are private matters whereas how one feels about the government or governance is in a separate category.  Of course, one’s feelings about politics is in fact a belief, so even the attempt to compartmentalize fails in the end.  Somewhere, somehow, people’s politics relate back to a belief or two that they have.  Much of the heated discourse today arises because people from different political bents cannot trace their political ideas back to their core beliefs and then they present their political assertions as matters of self-evidently true, which of course they are not if you come from a different starting point. Read the rest of this entry »

Christian Author Challenges Readers’ Perceptions, Explores True Nature of Humanity in Book, ‘Fidelis’

July 13, 2007 in Fidelis, announcements, reviews by ARH

This release can be downloaded in pdf and printed by clicking here.

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 CONTACT: A.R. (Anthony) Horvath (author)
PHONE: 608-385-2629
EMAIL: author@birthpangs.com

 

Christian Author Challenges Readers’ Perceptions, Explores True Nature of Humanity in Book, Fidelis La Crosse, WI Few fiction authors seek to challenge their readers with their literature these days. That’s a trend Anthony Horvath would like to see changed. His new novel, Fidelis, is the first of a seven-book story arc that grapples with humanity’s struggle through pain and suffering, and Horvath is not afraid to explore deep issues and topics with his readers.

Fidelis takes place in a not-too-distant or unlikely future, and tells the story of a man crossing the new landscape of an America that has been crippled by disease and ravaged by nuclear strikes, struggling to find his way home. As his journey reveals the horrors and wonders of the altered world, he awakens to realizations about his own soul.

Horvath, a church worker who became a trucker for a short time, said the series sprang into his mind during his last month on the road when he, like the main character, was separated from his family for long periods of time.

The intangible characteristics that make the human race indomitable are expressed as the book wrestles with truth and propaganda, manhood and bravery, fact and religion in an adventure story packed with action and suspense, as well as a deep examination of our own existence.

Christians might identify some parallel of Horvath’s novel with the Epistles of Paul, particularly 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 and 2 Corinthians 6:3-10, but Horvath points out that his writing is not geared exclusively, or even targeted, for Christian readers.

It is an exploration of what it means to be human, and an inquiry into what worldview best explains both man’s goodness as well as man’s badness, says Horvath. You would think after this last century, we would not need to be reminded of man’s badness, but it seems we do. In the Birth Pangs series, no reminder is necessary, just as after the holocaust no reminder was necessary.

An excerpt from the first chapter is available for free online at http://www.birthpangs.com/download-part-of-chapter-1/. The website hosts a spin-off role-playing game and a discussion board frequented by the author.

Fidelis (ISBN 0979127610) is the first book in the seven-book Birth Pangs series. It is available for purchase from http://www.birthpangs.com, as well as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.