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New, Strange Properties
The Last Missioner follows humanity’s surviving Remnant a thousand years after a catastrophic event as distinct cultures struggle to preserve civilization in a world shaped by technology, theology, and biblical prophecy. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The story evolved rather slowly. It all started when Salvador Dali’s The Last Supper came to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL in 2005 or 2006. I was living in Tampa at the time and already knew the painting well. When I saw the original at the museum, something in me clicked on, and I had stuck in my mind the “flavor” of an exotic far-future world. I had already completed 2 feature film screenplays and wanted to think about another project. That painting got me going. Around the same time, I saw something about a city … I can’t remember which city (this was 18 years ago!) and how its name evolved over time. And I got caught up with that notion. I remember cutting grass on the church property where I lived and imagining how American city names might evolve over the next 100, 200 years. One was Atlanta, Seattle, New Orleans, St. Louis, etc. Eventually, all this came together. The far-future look (in my mind) of the Dali Last Supper made me think of Revelation 20:1-3 … the Christ reigning one-thousand years passage, which always fascinated me. For a long time, I had indulged in my meditations how that might look and how the Devil might be let out for a short time upon the completion of that utopian period. This spurred me into thoughts in terms of story. I immediately imagined a child being raised in the conventions of this age and being “pulled out” of it, instigated by the Devil. I jotted notes down as details emerged. Eventually, by 2009, I had enough ideas and direction to begin drafting my third feature film script. I completed it, got some reaction in Hollywood (the script placed in the top 20% in the Nicholl Fellowship of the Academy of Motion Pictures- but didn’t place). I did have a major Hollywood director’s attention, but his final verdict was that it was good, but too religious for the budget size in Hollywood. Finally, I came to “novelize” it and completed the novel in 2017. Over the years since—over the Covid lockdowns, especially—I rewrote and tweaked and spruced up, and added stuff on here and there, etc. while at the same time completing and rewriting its prequel. So, THE LAST MISSIONER is the first of two novels I have ready for the publication process. The second, waiting in the wings, is AWAKEN ELECT! … which takes place at the beginning of the thousand years, where the Eclecti (elect) awaken and come to know this changed Earth with its new, strange properties.
How did you develop the three charisms of the Jurans, Lewans, and Noochi, and what do their different abilities reveal about their cultures?
These three “nations” came about as my geography of a far future USA evolved. It was something that I was just fixated on and toying with in my head at the time (2006/2007) as I did manual work like cutting grass, mopping the parish center floor, walking on the treadmill, etc. Some cities I thought about were Atlanta, Georgia (Atalan Jur… Jurans), St. Louis (Lews.. Lewans), Chattanooga (Nooga… Noochi), New Orleans (Orlen’s Gate… Orlen), Seattle (Sydyl… Sydylis XII) a thousand years in the future. It was a silly, inane game, but it fired my imagination. The names become different, but the cities are in the same locations as in pre-tribulation times (our time). So, the charisms of the citizens in the three nations developed as I tried to grow a story concerning these three of these locations. So, that imagined far-future geography I conjured up was the springboard. The three charisms (reflecting the persons of the Trinity) followed gradually as I created the story. Then, while I was writing the screenplay and even more so while fleshing out the novel in 2016/17, details about the individual cultures and distinctive features began to take shape. I had LOTS of time and no pressure at all, and I was constantly thinking things out …. so, lots of ideas brewed and matured. I should mention that I was the vocation director for my province of Capuchins at the time. So, I had to make long drives for candidate interviews a couple times a year. 15-18 hours alone in a car, going from NJ to Louisiana to Florida and everywhere in between. I carried with me a digital recorder and brainstormed for long hours on those trips. This alone generated a wealth of detail regarding worldbuilding, plot and character development.
How did you balance the novel’s detailed theological and philosophical ideas with the demands of adventure and storytelling?
Much of the theological details, philosophical and scriptural references come from my background as a religious brother who is engaged daily in community prayer and private prayer and had a thorough formation during my initial years within the community. As a semi-contemplative, much of this is in the air I breathe. The adventure and storytelling are very much the result of me trying to make a great feature film! As a screenwriter writing spec scripts, I adhered faithfully to the screenwriting three-act structure: 1 minute per page, 120 pages complete with inciting incident, plot points, the Act II Curtain (low point in the protagonist’s journey), final drive and resolution in Act III, denouement, etc. So, when I made the novel, I kept that structure intact and expanded on it to make a larger, more detailed read of the same proportions, which was a lot of fun!
Ultimately, what do you hope readers take away from John Micah’s journey and The Last Missioner as a whole? I aimed to portray familiar tenets of faith (those familiar tropes that we are so accustomed to that we might take them for granted) and apply a fresh angle or shine a different light, bringing new relief to the established truths. The exotic quality of THE LAST MISSIONER’s world should inspire and engage readers who are looking for an experience of fantasy, but in the end realize that THIS fantasy is really a metaphor for what exists in reality, now in our present time! How many high school kids, for instance, read Dune or Lord of the Rings, and afterwards say, “Wow, I wish Middle Earth or Arrakis actually were real. I wish I could live in that world.” Well in my book, I offer a far-future, exotic place and story and the reader could conclude, “Wow, that was a fun excursion and it’s a reflection of what is really here among us now! I can live in this world by embracing the Church or the synagogue or the mosque. There is an intentional blend of Christian (particularly Catholic), Jewish and some Muslim elements in my world-building. This is to demonstrate that we are all children of Abraham living under the same loving God—like under the constant sunrays falling upon the Grat-hemis in my story. I hope this comes through for every reader.
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John Micah Leers XIV was born into a utopia of unceasing light, a boy raised within the rituals and discipline of the Juran people. But when famine and rebellion threaten his world, he is called to leave the only life he has ever known. Guided by the enigmatic Orlen and his golden eagle, John Micah must journey into the uncharted dark side of the globe, where his powers of light falter and mystery and menace reign.
Pursued by Satan himself and a team of shadowy conspirators, John Micah’s path continually tests his faith and his endurance. With the support of a ragtag crew, he ultimately comes to discover the true heart of his mission in an act borne of trustful obedience and stalwart self-denial.
The Last Missioner is a scriptural fantasy of adventure and redemption, blending theological depth, imaginative worldbuilding, and pulse-pounding suspense to explore the cost of faith and the power of grace.
The Last Missioner
John Paul Russo’s The Last Missioner is an ambitious scriptural fantasy that blends science fiction, theology, adventure, and post-apocalyptic worldbuilding into one unusually detailed story. Russo imagines Earth long after a catastrophic event called Uri-Bin, when humanity’s surviving “Remnant” has lived for a thousand years under the rule of the Primary. The world is divided into distinct cultures, including the priestly Jurans, the technologically gifted Lewans, and the nature-centered Noochi, all of whom depend on one another through the Universal Communion. Russo describes the novel himself as a fantasy inspired by Revelation 20:1-3, and that biblical foundation shapes nearly every part of the book.
At the center of the story is John Micah Leers XIV, a twelve-year-old Juran whose life is already mapped out for him. He’s supposed to train for the priestly League of the Thousand Drones, but strange voices, visions, and encounters begin pulling him toward a very different calling. His curiosity makes him a good guide through a world where almost everyone else has accepted the rules of the Constancy as permanent. Once he leaves Atalan Jur, the story opens into a much larger journey involving the Noochi rebellion, political maneuvering in Lews, Exer dissidents, dangerous expeditions through Meric, the mysterious Orlen, the White Elders, and eventually a mission into the frozen darkness of the Shol-hemis. The book has the structure of a quest story, but the quest keeps expanding until John Micah’s personal calling becomes tied to the survival and spiritual future of the entire Remnant.
The worldbuilding is probably the novel’s most distinctive feature. Russo doesn’t simply put biblical names onto a conventional science-fiction setting. He builds an entire social and physical order around sacrament, covenant, interdependence, and spiritual gifts. Quantum arts function almost like a scientific vocabulary for abilities associated with mysticism: Jurans manipulate light and practice inner locution, Lewans shape matter, and Noochi “sire” living organisms. The Universal Liturgia is both religious ritual and the mechanism through which the population receives nourishment, so a theological idea becomes part of the world’s actual economy and biology. The glossary makes clear just how extensively Russo has worked out this system, from quantum arts and the three charisms to the Remnant’s geography and institutions. That density asks for some patience, especially early on, but it also gives the novel a strong sense that its civilization existed before the reader arrived.
Russo’s approach reminded me most of C. S. Lewis, particularly the way Lewis uses speculative fiction to make theological ideas concrete. Like Lewis, Russo is comfortable letting spiritual realities become literal parts of the plot. Angels, demons, grace, temptation, sacrifice, and divine providence aren’t metaphors hovering behind the action. They’re active forces in the characters’ world. Russo, though, works on a much larger systems level than Lewis usually does. He spends more time explaining institutions, histories, technologies, genealogies, rituals, and political relationships. There’s also a stronger swashbuckling streak as the novel progresses, with pursuits, flying craft, hostile landscapes, imprisonment, demonic armies, and a final conflict that draws together threads planted hundreds of pages earlier. Readers who enjoy Lewis for the meeting of Christianity and imaginative fiction will recognize some common interests here, but Russo’s version feels more encyclopedic and more openly apocalyptic.
What stayed with me most was the way The Last Missioner gradually turns John Micah’s desire to understand his strange experiences into a story about vocation and trust. His mission requires him to move farther and farther beyond everything his society considers familiar, right up to the final sacrificial act that gives the book its title. The ending brings the imagery of sacrifice, manna, the mercy seat, darkness, and returning light together with satisfying symmetry. Even the altered world begins moving again, and the final sunrise feels earned because the book has spent so much time establishing what a motionless sun meant to this civilization. Russo has written a large-scale religious fantasy with a remarkably specific cosmology, and its strongest moments come when all that theology and invented history narrow down to one young person having to decide whether he’ll follow a calling he can’t fully explain.
Pages: 440 | ASIN : B0HBRN4QHV
