Science fiction & God
This article at First Things by Robert R. Chase is a fascinating look at religious themes in science fiction. I’ve always felt that science-fiction was far less amenable to religion than fantasy, but thinking about much of the science fiction canon I’m not so sure this is true. Chase mentions both Lewis’s Space Trilogy and the excellent post-apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., both excellent examples of religion’s – and specifically Christianity’s – role in science fiction.
Two science fiction books I’ve read recently have been Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin and Joe Halderman’s The Accidental Time Machine. Both these novels touch on religious themes – though not in terribly positive ways. Spin has dueling theologies, in a sense, playing the hyper-technological benevolence of an advanced robotic entity against the radicalism of a new wave of Christians obsessed with the Rapture and what they perceive to be the end times. That being said, in the rather more blatant libertarianism of science fiction, the real villains of Wilson’s story are not the religious at all but the government.
Halderman’s Time Machine is a bit more light-hearted, and contrasts future America’s against one another. In one time we are witness to an east coast in the thrall of a theocratic totalitarianism; in another we experience the vapidity of a super-prosperous and super-lazy future capitalistic society. In the theocratic future we travel to M.I.T. which has become the Massachusettes Institute of Theophony. In the prosperous suburbs of a state-spanning Los Angeles, we encounter a populace that never has to work, whose citizens gain degrees in shopping and have, for lack of a better term, become incredibly stupid.
In any case, you should read Chase’s article as he goes into much greater depth on the matter.
I’d recommend checking out Clifford D. Simak. He was the third SFWA Grand Master, and often wrote science fiction with religious themes. He’s a mid-century sci-fi author, though, so go in expecting that and not a contemporary style.Report
As a diehard Dick fan, I appreciated this for taking his religious themes somewhat seriously – not many critics know what do with them, to be honest. I was a bit disappointed that it brushed passed him rather quickly though, nonetheless, but I understand it in this context. (I was more surprised by the lack of mention of Orson Scott Card, but nevermind.)
What I think bears noting – and this is something I got from Dick and his fellow late great New Wave sci-fi author, Thomas Disch – is that science fiction writers, and fantasy writers as well, are world builders. They’re creatives, and more than that, creatives dealing with wholly fantastic concepts. So I would posit that what drives science fiction and religion together is in fact that creating fantastic stories is perhaps the most godlike act that humans are capable of, as well as one of the most central. And once you start creating worlds from whole cloth it’s hard not to have to grapple with the responsibility of trying to build universes that don’t fall apart two days later. If writing supernormal fiction (to say nothing of supranormal or supernatural fiction) is in some sense playing god, then the appearance of religious implications and themes is only natural.Report
Somewhere in my library is “Earth Abides,” whose author I’ve unfortunately forgotten. It is post-apocalyptic and a delightful read written back in 1946. Interestingly, the hero ‘marries’ a black woman and she is the mother of all or most of those who follow. Her husband, the storyteller and the head of the clan is immortalized in a statute his grand or great grandchildren erect detailing him holding a hammer…so it is and so it shall be in the search for order.
We need something on mysticism, “the cloud of unknowing,” the clash with the ideological gnostics.Report
Bob, here’s a question for you, it’s something I’m not clear on.
What if any is the difference between what you call “ideological gnostics” and well, regular theological gnostics?
Please don’t just answer “read Vogelin”, I’m looking for a plainer and shorter explanation.Report
JosephFM, well I just happen to be working on a little thesis related to an analysis that’ll identify contemporary Gnosticism. As you know gnosticism is like pornography; you know when you see it.
The Theo-gnostics (I’m looking at my Gnostic Bible!) in my opinion (and therefore subject to error) probably rose in the Axial Age (800-500 BCE) at the same time a number of civilizations participated in what Voegelin described as the “leap of being,” the identification of a base tension between the mundane orders of existence and transcendence.
Interestingly, we still exist in that epoch.
While there is no accepted definition of (Theological) “Gnosticism” it is assumed by many, to be that period in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD that gave rise of systems taught by Basilides, Valentinus and Mani.
Re: “ideological” Gnosticism I’d point to the ideological disorders of the 19th and 20th centuries and our own period under Obama, as adequate illustrations. The line-of-meaning that would be Marx, Hegel, Hans Jonas (Jacob Boehme) inaugurates the contemporary gnostic movement. We might keep in mind that in Hegel we are dealing with a mystic seeking self-salvation and in Marx, a man who imagined communism as the solution to the struggle “between existence and essence….”
Marx did not understand Hegel, in much the same way Obama does not understand Marx, thus he is the epigonic Marxist.
The contemporary gnostic seeks that knowledge which will result in the “new” or “super” man who will of his own volition rise above the mundane in a hypostatized (or sometimes not) tension of existence. And, this activity is always, I think, a function of the state, but can also be a product of dogmatomachy (a philodoxical conflict of “opinions”).
I have a criticism of atheism coming out and I’m talking with friend that edits a mag over in Great Britain about a contemporary gnostic piece for him. And, I’m doing a paper on ‘contemporary’ gnosticism for Kritique, a journal for Santo Thomas Univ. in the Philippines and I hope to analize the necessary criteria to ascertain a gnostic component in a political movement. Sorry this is a bit discombobulated. Any questions just fire away.Report
Well, I actually asked because Phil Dick always seemed to quite clearly be a Theo-gnostic, despite in some ways also being a postmodernist, whereas what you call contemporary gnostics are what I would call historicists.Report
JosephFM, would you define “historicist” for me (no-snark!)?Report
I mean it as someone who believes that history has direction, a path that can be predicted and controlled, with an idealized, Utopian end state (regardless of whether said end state is a classless egalitarian society, the worldwide dominance of liberal capitalism, the Rapture, the restoration of the Galactic Empire, or something else entirely.)
And yes, that second-to-last was a reference to Asimov’s “psychohistory”. (Which actually makes me want to write a piece on the conflicting philosophies of Foundation and Dune…)Report
Asimov reference! Plus ten points for Griffendor. Well done Joseph, I tip my monocle to you.Report
This is in contrast to Dick – of all the people you cite as modern gnostics, only Boehme seems to have been an influence, and there moreso in formulating an explaination to his own experiences of divine revelation and/or drug-induced psychosis.Report
BTW, which Dick book would you recommend for me to read…and I don’t have the time?
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), kind of an old dude..not a modern gnostic, just in the line-of-meaning!
I would think most SF writers would be just bloated with gnosticism, in that the spiritual denouement centers on an overview (absolute knowledge/apodictical) that makes the human being a “liquidator” of a state in collapse and not a participant of the disorder, who happens to know the total history of the cosmos as opposed to St. Augustine’s view that Christian baptism began the journey defined as “endurance” in the tensions of existence, within the community (Plato) and a situation that was very uncertain!Report
Rent “A Scanner Darkly”.
If, afterwards, you say “well, that was a freakin’ insane waste of time” then don’t bother.
Otherwise, you’ll probably start devouring him.Report
My picks would be Ubik, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, and VALIS.
But Jay’s probably right.Report
I read Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson and thought that was one of the better SF religion books I’d read. It’s about a dystopian alternate history in which a different form of historical Christianity takes hold.
In case you haven’t heard of them, the Libertarian Futurist Society gives out the Prometheus Award yearly. Their taste in SF is better than their identification of libertarian themes (Ken MacLeod being a big old commie), but it might interest you. Anyone who awards Charlie Stross, Neal Stephenson, Ken MacLeod, F. Paul Wilson and Vernor Vinge is doing something right.Report
Good job, Ian. We must always be alert for the derailed communists!Report
He’s not derailed, but he wrote a SF book about a successful socialist revolution and was given a prize by libertarians.Report
Really interesting article, thanks for linking to it!Report
For a really amazing libertarian novel that has even more intentional and explicit libertarian themes, try “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert HeinleinReport
*I meant Sci-Fi novel with libertarian themes.Report
Mike Flynn “Eifelhein” about aliens crash-landing in 13th century Germany and encountering the local community.Report
What about Frank Herbert’s Dune series? Religion was a major theme in them.Report
They’re mentioned in the piece – IMO they come down pretty hard on the side of religion being, at its core, a method of enforcing and manipulating culture -thus the dominance of what seem to us to be bizarre syncratic religions (and especially hybrids of Buddhism and Islam), as well as the role of the Bene Gesserit.
To the extent that they acknowledge actual divinity, it is only through power and “the spice” – thus Leto becomes a tyrannical “god” in order to change mankind, taking upon himself the burden that his father denied, which in turn was only possible because the Bene Gesserit lost control of their messiah-breeding project immediately before its fruition.Report
In my novel DARC AGES (available for free reading online), the protagonist is frozen for 900 years, and then revived on a future Earth where Elvis has become the new God — and Christians are a persecuted minority.Report
In the prosperous suburbs of a state-spanning Los Angeles, we encounter a populace that never has to work, whose citizens gain degrees in shopping and have, for lack of a better term, become incredibly stupid.
That sounds an awful lot like Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons”. Given Haldeman’s knowledge of and respect for the classics, I’d guess it’s intended as a tribute.Report
Addressed to A.R.Yngve-
There is a book by an interesting SF writer named, Jack Womack, that you may find interesting. I’ve read Random Acts of Senseless Violence by him, and came away depressed and impressed. Anyway, though I’ve not read it, he has another book in a series (of which Random Acts … is but 1 of 3) which includes a book called, Elivessey. Set in a near future, it features–through an SF trick–a young Elvis as a new godhead to lead the dystopian-ravaged denizens of a society on the brink of collapse…
http://www.amazon.ca/Elvissey-Jack-Womack/dp/0802134955/ref=pd_sim_b_2Report
For an interesting blending of science fantasy and spiritual insights, the reader might want to take a look at a new novel, 2034, by Robert Renfield. Cast in a cloak of boy’s adventure-fantasy in a post-apocalyptic future, it weaves in spiritual matters without being too blunt or obtrusive about it. I enjoyed it pretty much just for the story itself.
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