Religion and Science Fiction
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James Blish , tempted to try to explain this remarkable phenomenon by his own involvement with it, wrote the notable essay "Cathedrals in Space" Autumn Skyhook as by William Atheling Jr; exp rev in The Issue at Hand , coll , citing the stories as "instruments of a chiliastic crisis, of a magnitude we have not seen since the chiliastic panic of A. The supposed panics of CE were in fact a myth invented by much later apocalyptic writers, but the argument holds good.
The advent of the atom bomb in was a revelation of sorts, and the invention of the H-bomb gave to each of two ideologically opposed nations the power to annihilate the entire human race. The interest in theological issues, and in metaphysical issues in general, prompted by the acute sense of existential insecurity to which this awareness gave birth became gradually more powerful, though often less explicit.
The s also saw a remarkable proliferation of images obviously allied to religious notions but shorn of their association with actual religious doctrine. However, Childhood's End also refers incidentally to the fading of existing Earth religions in the light of factual information from Alien -supplied Time Viewers. Clifford D Simak's Time and Again October-December Galaxy as "Time Quarry"; ; vt First He Died is similarly free of formal doctrine, although the Alien symbionts which infest all living things are obviously analogous to souls see Eschatology.
Religion in Science Fiction
In later works by Simak — particularly A Choice of Gods and Project Pope , the latter featuring a Computer Pope — religious ideas do become explicit, and here again there are strong echoes of a Teilhardian schema. The syncretic approach of these stories, which blends the religious and scientific imaginations, contrasts with uncompromising stories using Time Travel and other facilitating devices directly to confront the central symbol of the Christian faith: The heroes of Brian Earnshaw 's Planet in the Eye of Time go there to protect faith from subversion.
The protagonists of Michael Moorcock 's Behold the Man!
I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. Many of the early UK writers of scientific romance-notably George Griffith , M P Shiel , William Hope Hodgson and J D Beresford — were the sons of clergymen who converted to free thought and used their fiction to justify and explore the consequences of their decision. You think you can do that, David? More interestingly, religion offered both gaudy backdrops for stories and interesting ideas from which stories could grow. In James Blish 's classic A Case of Conscience September If ; exp a Jesuit interprets the axioms of his faith to infer, heretically in the Manichaean style, that an alien world is the creation of the Devil, and that it must be exorcized. Threads collapsed expanded unthreaded.
September New Worlds ; exp and Barry N Malzberg 's Cross of Fire must become Christ and suffer crucifixion in search of redemption for themselves. There was a very noticeable change, too, in the attitude of sf writers to Alien religion. Before World War Two, it was taken for granted that all such religions were misguided, ripe for Satire and open mockery; after World War Two sf writers were prepared to treat Alien beliefs reverently, and frequently to credit them with a truthful dimension which Earthly religion lacked.
In Katherine MacLean 's "Unhuman Sacrifice" November Astounding missionaries to an alien world find that the "superstitions" they set out to subvert are not as absurd as they assumed.
Category:Religion in science fiction - Wikipedia
In Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land ; text restored religious ideas imported from Mars become important on Earth. In Robert Silverberg 's Nightwings September Galaxy ; fixup and Downward to the Earth humans seek their own salvation via the transcendental experiences associated with alien religion, although his Tom O'Bedlam is more ambiguous in its treatment of a cult based on visionary experience of an alien world, and "The Pope of the Chimps" in Perpetual Light , anth , ed Alan Ryan is highly and ironically ambivalent.
In D G Compton 's The Missionaries alien missionaries bring an enigmatic offer of salvation to mankind. In the first part of Gregory Benford 's and Gordon Eklund 's If the Stars are Gods in Universe 4 , anth , ed Terry Carr ; fixup alien visitors seeking a new sun-god allow a man to share their enigmatic communion with our Sun. The first section of Dan Simmons 's Hyperion deals with an alien religion based in the effects of alien Parasitism or perhaps symbiosis.
Members of the faux-Egyptian pantheon in Roger Zelazny 's Creatures of Light and Darkness also devote much effort to the attempted destruction of what seems to be a surviving remnant of the Old Testament God. Sf also became increasingly eager to look at religious experience from the "other side", exploring the experience of being a or even the God. The last presents gods as major foci human or otherwise of Psi Powers , and religious ritual as both training exercises and tests of worthiness for such gods.
The sf writer who has dealt most prolifically with issues in speculative theology is Philip K Dick , whose long-standing fascination was brought to a head by a series of unusual and possibly religious experiences which he underwent in the early months of Dick's vast nonfiction "Exegesis" of his experience has appeared only as excerpts, the most comprehensible but still very selective being The Exegesis of Philip K Dick edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem.
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Artificial religions and cults see also Cultural Engineering still crop up regularly in sf, sometimes deployed for satirical purposes, as by Kurt Vonnegut Jr in The Sirens of Titan , Cat's Cradle and Slapstick , sometimes in the cause of thoughtful extrapolations in the sociology of religion, as in This Star Shall Abide ; vt Heritage of the Star by Sylvia Louise Engdahl.
Keith Roberts 's Pavane coll of linked stories and Kingsley Amis 's The Alteration are both Alternate-History stories endorsing the thesis of Max Weber regarding the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism by displaying an unreformed Catholic Church dominating a Europe where the Industrial Revolution is only just getting under way in the twentieth century. Roberts's Kiteworld fixup is one of the more memorable sf images of oppressive theocracy.
A number of books excoriate future theocracies, particularly fundamentalist ones, such as The Stone that Never Came Down by John Brunner , recent examples of the assault on fundamentalism being Parke Godwin 's Snake Oil series, beginning with Waiting for the Galactic Bus , and several books by Sheri S Tepper , notably Raising the Stones Conversely, in several of Orson Scott Card 's novels a thinly disguised version of Mormonism is depicted with a utopian glow.
In contemporary sf, however, perhaps the most sophisticated and detailed treatment of a future religion is The Starbridge Chronicles by Paul Park , beginning with Soldiers of Paradise , in which the seasons of a generations-long Great Year encourage contrasting faiths. A more recent treatment of note, depicting the sufferings of yet another human missionary to aliens, is Michel Faber 's The Book of Strange New Things Several writers depict religion as a pernicious Meme or mind virus. In Neal Stephenson 's Snow Crash the eponymous infection is both a Computer virus and a biological one.
The mind-controlling meme One True in John Barnes 's Kaleidoscope Century — and other books in his sequence The Century Next Door — emerges from a religious war fought with mind-altering software: Of real-world religions with their roots in sf, the best known is the Church of Scientology which see , whose "secret" texts written by L Ron Hubbard draw heavily on Pulp sf tropes.
Introduction Part I 1. The Raw Materials of Science Fiction 3. Uncertain Paternity Part II 4. Gernsback and the Pulps 5. Campbell's "Social Science Fiction" 6. The Rise of the Novel 7.
- Category:Religion in science fiction.
- Previous versions of this entry.
- The Kitty Hawker.
- Science fiction reflects the extremes of human belief.
- A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction [with Biographical Introduction];
The Need to Believe 9. The Humanity of God and Vice Versa Acceptance Part IV It is a must-read for those doing research on the subject,but it also provides highly relevant insights for all those interested in the possible ways of reconciling science and religion in our modern societies.
Hrotic takes us on a lovely ride through a wide variety of imagined futures. Hrotic's study is a learned, intelligent, often original, and highly readable contribution to research; in short: This book would be a fascinating read for a non-academic audience of science fiction fans. Steve Hrotic has constructed a persuasive narrative about the different ways in which genre SF writers have approached religion, considered primarily as a special type of social system.
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