Religion and Science Fiction

I would like to read good science fiction novels that makes a serious discussion of religious ideas. I don't mean rubbish such as "God appears, fixes everything, and disappears, because I am a lazy writer who couldn't think of a better ending" but more serious attempts to examine religion and religious ideas through the medium of SF.

Some good examples, in my opinion, are A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. and Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny.

Would appreciate some more suggestions from the posters on here.

Both are excellent examples. Another favourite of mine is A Case of Conscience by James Blish.

Blish's A Case of Conscience comes to mind, as does The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell; the latter is much more recent, and clearly influenced by the former, so I'd read the older one first.

Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness may qualify, if Lord of Light does, but it's been long enough that I don't remember much about it.

Almost anything by James Morrow, especially the so-called Godhead trilogy (starting with Towing Jehovah) and Only Begotten Daughter, deals with religious issues. Be warned that the final book in the Godhead trilogy (The Eternal Footman) is incredibly dark.

Sadly, probably due to the fact that most of what I've read is written by English-speaking authors from the US, UK, or Australia, the religious framework in most of these is Christianity.

I realize that there may not be a lot of agreement, but personally, I would put the first couple of Dune books in this category and rate them highly for their examination of how religious movements can change over time and be changed by events. Frank Herbert did a good job of showing a religion transition from being something marginalized on the fringe of society to then become the very backbone of that society, and finally onward to its decline and rebirth.

Robert A. Mosher

#2
Didn't like A Case of Conscience myself, found the characters to make far too simplistic assumptions about the race they studied. The best bit was the prolog, where the author stated that the Catholic Church actually has guidelines on how they will talk about religion with extraterrestrials. Spent hours trying to find this on the internet, no luck.

#3
Thanks for the tip on James Morrow, and will also have to find more Zelazny books.

Lord of Light was reimagined traditional Hindu mythology for the future, so I do think that it deals with religion.

#4
I have read Dune, and it's sequels, and they do presents a lot of religious ideas, about religion and godhood.

EDIT: There are a lot of allusions to Islam in Dune - it uses a lot of words that have roots from Islam, as well as some of the legends. There was a website that discussed this, forget what it was.

5>

Creatures of Light and Darkness sort of does the same thing to Egyptian mythology that Lord of Light does to Hinduism. (I'm not comfortable using "mythology" to refer to a living religion -- or, rather, if I use it to refer to Hinduism I'm going to use it for Christianity too, which will get me flamed.)

Willam Barton's The Transmigration of Souls probably contains the most accurately rendered Gulf Arab character I've come across in sf, although the story itself is not religious in nature.

Tom Hollands' The Sleeper in the Sand is another good novel that plays on Ancient Egyptian mythology and religion.

Also have a look at:
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/thisthat.html#theo

http://sfgospel.typepad.com/sf_gospel/2007/12/the-10-best-sf.html

The Way of the Cross and Dragon is a superb short SF story by George Martin examining religion and faith. I found it in Sandkings but it's probably in other collections too.

The Tagmash page for Religion, science fiction lists the following as the top 15:

Stranger in a strange land by Robert A. Heinlein
Dune messiah by Frank Herbert
A canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
Snow crash by Neal Stephenson
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood
Out of the silent planet by C. S. Lewis
The sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
A wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle
That hideous strength : a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups by C. S. Lewis
Speaker for the dead by Orson Scott Card
Perelandra : a novel by C. S. Lewis
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Lord of light by Roger Zelazny

Surely most of those books are informed by religion rather than being about religion? Religion features heavily in the Dune books, but chiefly as an operating system for a messiah and a discussion of a monolithic controlling institution- i.e., it's more about the church than the creed.

I agree with Creatures of Light and Darkness. I particularly enjoyed the last rites that began, “To Whom it may or may not concern….”

I would also add J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion to the list for its alternate take on the Christian creation story. Earth by David Brin explores the evolution of a planetary deity.

How about some short stories?

'The Star' and 'The Nine Billion Names of God' both by Arthur C. Clarke

The first deals with Christianity the second Buddhism.

Charles Williams, an Inkling along with Lewis and Tolkien, wrote several fantasies that address religious themes, including War in Heaven.

Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun portrays a priest in a corrupt religion who must gradually recognize the falsity of the gods he's been worshipping and deal with the implications of it. Great stuff, with Wolfe's usual excellent style, hints at things unseen, etc.

I want to say Childhood's End had a religious component insofar as the nature of the relationship of the humans and aliens was concerned.

Calculating God
Behold the Man

the burning land by victoria strauss is straight fantasy rather than sci-fi, but has a subtle, thought-provoking portrayal of a religion.

One that comes to mind from a writer most would not think of in a sci fi since is The Old Man and Mr. Smith: A Fable by Peter Ustinov.

God is 'The Old Man' come to vist the Earth, and has asked Mr. Smith (e.g. the Devil) to meet him for an examination of the the world and its peaple.

Jeff Long's Year Zero and Decent have strong religious overtones. One deals with a world wide plague and the other about the underworld and evil.

I enjoy Job: A Comedy of Justice. Heinlein's idea of religion is somewhat different than others, but it's good food for thought.

One certainly to be avoided is Ken Russell's Mike and Gaby's Space Gospel. It's rubbish.

The battle between good, in the form of God, and evil, in the form of Satan, is the foundation of Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series. On A Pale Horse, the first book in the series, deals with beliefs, including atheism, and the afterlife, among other issues.

Ian: I'm surprised you're praising the Tom Holland book. I always got the impression he was somewhat hack-like, a la Brian Lumley. Am I unfairly denigrating the man? (Who? Me?)

Are we talking about the same Tom Holland? This one is a Brit who has written a pair of historical non-fiction books and a handful of genre novels - The Sleeper in the Sands, The Vampyre, Deliver Us From Evil and Supping with Panthers. I'll admit I've only read The Sleeper in the Sands, but I did enjoy it. Are the others rubbish?

I've never read a Brian Lumley novel. He always struck me as a cross between Clive Barker and Shaun Hutson- the imagination of one, the prose style of the other (I'll leave up to you which is which...). I saw him the other weekend at alt.fiction, though.

We are indeed talking about the same guy. I've got SLEEPER in my collection but wayyy down near the bottom of the "to read" heap. Are you saying it's well written or just an entertaining read?

I would absolutely agree with your depiction of Lumley. You sum up his body of work very well (as usual)...

It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember it as an entertaining read. He reminded me a bit of Philip Kerr - who churns out what appears to be hackwork (and some, in fact, is - like Gridiron or Esau), but can also write some exceedingly clever stuff like The Second Angel and Dark Matter...

I like Kerr as well, particularly the two novels you cite. If you're comparing Holland to him, I might be willing to give the lad a shot.

Here's what I wrote about The Sleeper in the Sands back in 2001 after reading it:

An odd novel this. It opens as the diary of Howard Carter, discoverer of Tutankhamen’s tomb, then swiftly segues into a Caliphate-era manuscript about the adventures and discoveries of a learned explorer, which itself contains a number of oral tales set during the reign of Ankh-An-Aten, last ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. There is a beastie, you see, hiding in Tutankhamen’s tomb—or rather, there was a beastie in one of the tombs from the same era, and Tut’s might contain one too. And this beastie is actually an undead pharoah. It sounds completely fanciful, and is not made any more credible by a thinly-veiled suggestion that life in Ancient Egypt was seeded by aliens, whose descendants became the ruling dynasty. But Holland manages to keep the cheeky grin from his face as he drags you deeper into the past and into an increasingly implausible rewrite of history… before wrapping it up neatly so there’s nothing you can point to that flatly contradicts what we know of Carter’s life and discovery. But then, the history of Ancient Egypt is mostly supposition, and The Sleeper In The Sands is almost entirely science fiction…

I've read the vampire novels and they are a much higher standard than the average pulp work - Holland is obviously an intelligent man (he got a double first at Oxford) and isn't writing for an adolescent audience. It appears that he has given up on fiction, concentrating instead on histories of the classical world - which have been very well received.

No mention of Stanislaw Lem and perhaps the quintessential example Solaris? or his 'The Twenty-first Voyage' (of Ijon Tichy) in Star Diaries or perhaps his The Investigation? All less concerned with 'religion' per se but with the Knowable, UnKnowable and limits of belief systems.

As I mentioned to Gene, portions of Phil Dick's FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID, were based on of BOOK OF ACTS. Phil's approach to religion veers into mysticism but it was certainly as important aspect of FLOW, COSMIC PUPPETS, UBIK, THREE STIGMATA etc. etc.

#8
Thank you for that list, I didn't even think of that. I've read about a third of those books.

I seen the suggestion for the C. S. Lewis trilogy, and frankly, was unimpressed by the first book. However, I will try it again, since it is such a short book.

#12
I didn't know that, and I have two of the four books in the quadrilogy in my collection which I have not read yet. Two more to go...

#27
Solaris? I was planning to read that this weekend, but it has now been moved forward. Thank you.

#28
I saw some religious parallels in Dick's work The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but Ubik?

I wish I could find the three books by Dick about his religious views, have wanted to read them for years.

The portions of Dick's Exegesis published in THE SHIFTING REALITIES OF PHILIP K. DICK: SELECTED LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS are interesting in small bites but it can be hard sledding at times.

I thought UBIK dealt with kind of a hellish netherworld and frozen corpses kept in half-life storage but I might be mixing it up with another. It's been years since I read it. I have a couple of editions including the lovely First Dell paperback printing from 1970. One of Phil's "peeling eyeball" covers...

The mention of Job: A Comedy of Justice in 17 brings to mind some of Heinlein’s other works. Stranger in a Strange Land definitely had a religious theme. And then there’s the book (of course the title eludes me) about escaping the colony ship whose inhabitants worship it as the creator (Universe?) I have it in my head to call it Ship. Somebody help me with the title, please.

It was a short called Universe, which was published with its sequel Common Sense as Orphans of the Sky

>#12 Of the Charles Williams novels, Many Dimensions covers some interesting SF-type ground, including time paradox and mind control.

I just finished re-reading Robert A Heinlein's Job which I had remembered as an interesting study of the nature of God and Satan and the attitudes of humans to Deity. Sadly, this time around, I found it rather shallow. Obviously the book hasn't changed...

Jim

I have a Quakers in space book by Molly Glass around here somewhere that I haven't read yet. If it isn't lost. At least that's what I think I remember it being about. I've read Catholics, Muslims, Luciferians, Buddhists, and Calvinists in space but no Quakers yet that I recall.

Some of Ted Chiang's short stories are meditations on god or its absence. On the creation of a future god, Melissa Scott's "The Shapes of their Hearts" is imaginative and very different while still being sci-fi (i'd argue that James Morrow is fantasy). WTF, Gaiman's "Endless" are about the ideas of gods as much as they are about anything and everything.

#31

Sounds like Frank Herbert's Pandora trilogy, containing The Jesus Incident, Lazarus Effect, The Ascention Factor.

Re: 32
Thanks, Musereader. It’s sometimes hard to remember these things I read way back when taxes were a new thing.

Mary Doria Russell's sequel to The Sparrow: Children of God about God's silence.

I'd have to second the following:

-Dune Series, and some of Frank Herbert's other works
-Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer

The Race for God by Brian Herbert looks interesting.

I just happened to spot Other Worlds, Other Gods: Adventures in Religious Science Fiction in a friend's library. Dunno anything about it, but it seems to be in the right ballpark...

Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Also has lots of interesting alien species.

Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler take place, oh , about 20 minutes into a dystopian future. In reaction to this terrible setting, the main character founds a religion.

I also recommend Dune, Calculating God, The Sparrow, Children of God and A Canticle for Liebowitz. I've read both the short story and novel A Case of Conscience. The short story is better. And the Russell novels are much better depictions of Jesuits. And humans and aliens and science and religion.

Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons, with the Shrike and man's religions vs. machine's religions, come to mind, as do the Endymion sequels. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, with the village priest's confession, has religious threads, as does her Passage.

I'd add Grass by Sheri Tepper, many of her books are about the questions religions ask, but this is the most overt of them.

David & Leigh Eddings' Sparhawk series, Diamond Throne etc., are a nice study in how religion mixes with politics in a medieval-ish fantasy world. The Child Goddess needs smacked, in my opinion--I have no patience for the cute, manipulative little girl that everyone adores thing--but the idea of a god needing worshipers to survive is interesting.

#43

I thought that A Case of Conscience was extremely over-rated myself, and that The Sparrow was by far a better book about the same subject.

>46 riani1:
riani1, if you like the idea of a god needing worshippers to survive, and possibly a giggle too, check out Small Gods.

I'm vague on the details, but I remember when I read Brandon Sanderson's Elantris it got me thinking a lot about religion even though it that was only a part of the story line. As a bonus, I seem to recall the Green Dragon discussed that book in their group with Brandon Sanderson himself, who had some interesting things to contribute, some in regard to religion, given the fact that he is Mormon although in the books religion is sort of negatively portrayed.

Destination: Void and The Jesus Incident both have some thoughtful insight regarding religion. I think that 'Void' is more about seat of consciousness/creationism and 'Incident' is more about morals/ethics.
(Stranger, Dune, and Solaris came to mind as well...)

There's also Frank Herbert's The Godmakers.

Ted Chiang has a couple of short stories - ie "hell is the absence of god" that deal w/ "religion." The shapes of their hearts by Melissa Scott deals w/ a god who is instantiated as an AI/virus and the theocratic society that is based around that faith.

I'm getting the title wrong, but there was a Ray Bradbury story, something like the "1 Billion Names of God", that had Buddhist monks running an mainframe program that generated all the permutations that comprised the set of the possible names of god. And then the world came to an ... I loved that story when i read it as a kid, who knows if it stands up after all these years. Now you could run that program in a few minutes on a decent pc.

#53: I'm glad you mentioned that Bradbury story. I remembered it, vaguely, from 9th grade English and I couldn't pull a title or author to save my life.

52 & 53

That's Arthur C. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God.

(edited because it got the wrong author page)

#54: You've saved me future frustration/embarrassment.

#55

Bradbury is almost the automatic first guess for author of a short story. :-) He wrote so many good ones.

I love The Nine Billions Names of God. Great last line!

Another favorite short dealing with religion is Harry Harrison's (no touchstone for him at the moment!) The Streets of Ashkelon.

Harry Harrison's novel Captive Universe has two interesting religions.

#57
I found some reviews; sounds interesting. Added to my wishlist. Thanks.

#58: myshelves
I hope you enjoy it. It's one of my favourite HH books.