Science fiction and religion

Science and religion often conflict, so science fiction and religion either has been avoided as a topic, or has produced some highly creative science fiction. Themes include conflict between traditional religious ideas and situations created by technology, the role of religion as a multigenerational means of conserving or banning ideas, and the adaptation of religion to speculative situations.

A listing of the ten best science fiction and religion stories, on the SF Gospel blog, condemns "stories that include religion for purposes of stereotype rather than exploration and extrapolation.: It excluded novellas that are better-known for their adaptation into full novel... There are some excellent stories that include religious ideas tangentially but aren't really about religion ("The Measure of All Things"), or are very much about religion but aren't SF properly speaking ("Hell is the Absence of God"); these have been relegated to the "Honorable Mention" list but are very much worth reading.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. 

Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear, Dune series, Frank Herbert

Destiny of Man

One humorous but thoughtful example is Arthur C. Clarke's short story, "The Nine Billion Names of God", in which a group of monks believe they are carrying out the deity's specific purpose for man, using a laborious technique. What happens when their task is accelerated with computer assistance?

Perhaps not having as strictly religious a theme, but still dealing with the ultimate destiny of man, is Clarke's much more somber novel, Childhood's End. Clarke also explores the evolution of man in the movie and book adaptation of "2000: A Space Odyssey", the inspiration for which was his short story, "The Sentinel".

Searching for a Creator

Among the classics of short-short stories is Fredric Brown's "The Answer". In one page, a scientist seeks the means to answer the question, "Is there a God?"

A machine itself proposes a Graphic Omniscient Device (GOD Machine) in David Gerrold's novel, When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One. HARLIE, physically, was a fixed computer reminiscent of a mainframe; Isaac Asimov deals with the theology formed by intelligent robots in "Reason".

Preservation of knowledge

The role of religious groups in conserving knowledge, and how humanity deals with a second chance, is the theme of Walter Miller, Jr.'s novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. In the Dark Ages of our own time, Catholic monks preserved classical knowledge. After a future nuclear apocalypse, the founder of the Order of St. Leibowitz saved books and other knowledge before his martyrdom. His successors did not always understand the significance of the relics they preserved, but they knew their duty, especially with artifaces of the Founder, be it an schematic drawing of an electronic circuit, or a Writing of "Dozen bagels, pound kraut."

In Frank Herbert's Dune universe, the Missionaria Protectiva of the Bene Gesserit order travels the galaxy, imparting suggestions to primitive people, which will become welcoming legends when the Bene Gesserit come to the society.

The development of belief

Robert Silverberg, in "The Pope of the Chimps", examines how chimpanzees would form theology. Before this is dismissed as anthropomorphic, consider the cargo cult, and the wide range of way that primitive man explains the unexplicable. Remember Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- and magic may be another name for "miracle".

Contrived miracles for the public are a prominent part of several works dealing with false religions, such as Heinlein's "If This Goes On—"; science, as taught in the military academies, is called "Applied Miracles".

Unexpected challenges to dogma

Several intense works have presented the collision of fundamental ideas of good with utterly new situations, such as James Blish's A Case of Conscience, or with radically different ways of looking at holy events, as in Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Star." Blish examined aspects of Manichaeism in a society without original sin, told by a Jesuit scientist. Clarke's story looked at the challenge to faith that could be caused by insights into a fundamental miracle.

Fake and exploitative religions

In science fiction, religions have been formed, sometimes deliberately and sometimes as a byproduct of other activity, for an assortment of reasons. Robert A. Heinlein created a fake religion to cover an underground rebellion in Sixth Column against Asian occupiers of the United States. The 1949 novel, derived from a 1941 magazine publication. uses racial stereotypes that might be found objectionable today. Its title contrasts the Fifth Column of traitors in the Spanish Civil War with a "sixth column" of patriots taking back their country.

Several informal reviewers have suggested that Sixth Column, also titled The Day After Tomorrow, may have been influenced by Heinlein's editor, John D. Campbell, and another novel by Heinlein was closer to his own style. The latter work revolved around the attempt to overthrow a cynical and corrupt priesthood of Fundamentalist Christians in the relatively obscure "If This Goes On—", a part of his Future History series.. It is set in a future United States. He wrote that he had considered, as part of the Future History, stories about how the religious dictatorship came to be, in a list of "stories never written", "The Sound of his Wings" and "The Stone Pillow" simply being too depressing to write.

In his bestselling novel Stranger in a Strange Land, with its memorable first-chapter title of "His Maculate Conception", Heinlein's protagonist, a human "Once upon a time there was a Martian named Smith", the legitimate child of three humans) raised in an utterly different culture of Martians, brings fresh eyes to Earth customs, and a critical eye to its religious institutions—especially the more commercialized ones. Heinlein was more than willing to savage "commercial" religion, but also treated spirituality seriously.

A recurring story among science-fiction writers is that L. Ron Hubbard created Scientology on a bet as an off-shoot of his earlier Dianetics.

Jack Vance, a major name in the field for five decades particularly known for his imaginative portraits of distant worlds and strange cultures, interspersed many of his novels with sardonic depictions of bizarre, quirky rites indulged in by religious believers and, in particular, their priesthoods. Some rites are subtly drawn, others more broadly, but the goal of all of them is clearly to hold religion up to scorn and ridicule. Perhaps the most sustained example of this is his novel The Blue World, in which cynical human priests on a planet entirely covered by water have tricked its population into worshipping and paying tribute to a semi-intelligent, squid-like predator called a kragen.

Katherine Kerr wrote Reason as a direct extrapolation of current apocalyptic Christian writers such as Tim LaHaye.

Of Gods and men

Roger Zelazny dealt extensively with religious themes. One of his best-known short stories is "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" and the novel Creatures of Light and Darkness revolves largely around the doings of a quasi-Egyptian pantheon.

His novel Lord of Light deals with a future where colonists on a new planet have, through a mixture of yoga and technology, effectively become the Hindu pantheon. They reincarnate using mind transfer machines and healthy young bodies grown unconscious in tanks. With many lifetimes of training plus various gadgets, they have amazing powers. However, there is not enough high technology to go around, so most of their descendants live approximately the life of medieval India. Divine politics involve "accelerationists" who want to spread technology versus "diecrats", and the diecrats are winning. The protagonist is an accelerationist who revives Buddhism as a weapon in this struggle.

Defining humanity

Frank Herbert and his sons have created the Dune universe, in which religions and quasi-religious groups form a society that sweeps across thousands of years. As background, a revolt, the Butlerian Jihad, against intelligent machines ("Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of a man"), led to the civilization turning within and developing, as alternatives, abilities we would consider paranormal. One branch involves the creation of a female order that develops its own abilities, but also establishes a long-term effort to breed for an adept with a special insight.

When the protagonist of Stranger in a Strange Land is not mocking commercialism in religion, he explores a universal pantheism, with the mutual greeting of his Church of All Worlds being "Thou art God."

Alternate history

H. Beam Piper wrote a series of stories, beginning with "Gunpowder God", about an effective theocracy where the priests are the only people who know how to make gunpowder, and suggest that lay attempts to make it will result in damnation. An alternate-reality traveler from our universe arrives, and makes black powder in his sickroom, after being rescued by the Beautiful Princess after Winning the Battle, and changes the balance of power. His impact is even greater when he does not stop with the priestly secret, the basic gunpowder formula, and introduces improved gun design, and, above all, tactics and strategy.

Cultural motivation

Religion is not necessarily the core theme of science fiction, but may provide important cultural background. In the Honor Harrington universe created by David Weber, the Church of Humanity Unchained defines much of the culture of her second home planet, Grayson. Its sacred music, based on country and western, is described as profound.

The religion calls its deity the Tester, and believes that man will often be called upon to test his beliefs -- but the faithful will have the resources to meet their Test. It is exceptionally open to true converts who abandon a sinful past, changing from which simply is a form of the Test.

First contact

Many stories involve the impact of First Contact with an advanced culture, whose routine technology is seen as miraculous. Cargo cults are but a few of the potential cultural impacts. In yet another novel by Heinlein, Methuselah's Children, however, the protagonist, Lazarus Long expects, some day, to confront the advanced species, the Jockaira; comments in a later novel, Time Enough for Love, suggest that he did.