Bittercon: Religion in SFF
One last item from the Windycon lineup before we wind up this Bittercon (although I've made a list of some other interesting topics that I may use for blog posts later): religion in sf and fantasy. The early sf pretty much ignored religion, instead focusing on science and technology, as if religion were something humanity would "outgrow" as science increasingly gives us answers formerly provided by religion. At most, we might see religion as cloaking for technology when dealing with technologically regressed communities as the Foundation does with Anacreon in the early parts of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, an approach that only serves to cement the view that early sf writers viewed religion as a scam to fleece the sheep.
By the 1960's, especially with the rise of soft sf that dealt in extrapolations of psychology, sociology and other soft sciences, we start to see more treatment of religion as part of the human experience, of humans being social creatures. In Frank Herbert's Dune we still see a certain element of "religion as scam" in the Bene Gesserit's deliberate manipulation of various worlds' religions to ensure safe harbors for any member of the Sisterhood stranded there through mischance -- yet at the same time we see the very real and often profound faith of the ordinary people, and the tremendous power it can have for good or ill.
Walter Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz provided one of the most sympathetic views of religion in sf, with his vision of a post-apocalyptic America laid waste by nuclear war and the subsequent rejection of technology and reprimitivization, but held together by the Catholic Church and its communities of vowed religious, much as the monasteries had preserved the knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome in the Middle Ages. Much as the monks of the Middle Ages often copied Greek and Latin classics without any understanding of the material they handled, Brother Francis copies a blueprint left by the founder of their order, an engineer who found refuge from the bombings and the subsequent mobs in this forlorn desert oasis. In doing so, he begins the slow climb back toward industrial civilization -- but centuries later, humanity is about to repeat the mistakes that led to the original nuclear war, for humanity cannot overcome its sinful nature and live in harmony instead of hostility.
Several other notable Catholic authors have brought a strong religious underpinning to their writings, although never so explicitly as Miller's. Both JRR Tolkien and Gene Wolfe brought a rich Catholic sensibility to their writing, although one must look closely to see it, since religion is almost never explicitly mentioned in either of their best-known works. The characters of Middle-Earth in the Third Age have little in the way of formal religious observance, other than the Standing Silence the folk of Gondor observe before meals, but they are aware that the world was made by its Creator and tended by angelic beings, and was remade when humans overstepped the bounds laid upon them by the Creator. Severian the Torturer occasionally speaks of the Increate, the maker of the universe, although he makes little in the way of formal observances.
Similarly, Orson Scott Card, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), seldom writes explicitly religious works (other than Saints, a work of historical fiction about the settlement of Utah), but his work is informed throughout by his faith tradition. It bubbles nearest the surface in the Alvin Maker series, which is at its roots a retelling of the life of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church, but in an alternate frontier America in which folk magic has actual physical power. However, many of his other works have LDS themes, particularly if you look closely.
And even writers who aren't openly religious often show religion in a sympathetic light. Neal Stephenson's Anathem is about a world in which mathematicians and philosophers have formed their own monastic system in parallel to those of the religious communities. Although the focus of the story is upon the mathic world and the turmoil it goes through when a paratime-traveling spaceship arrives in their system, the protagonist has several positive encounters with members of various faith communities, including one in which the narrative of redemption posits that their world is in fact the creation of a condemned murderer trying to prove that there is good in him and he should not be executed, so its members try to do good deeds so that their world's existence will not be terminated by the execution of the condemned man in the base reality.
By the 1960's, especially with the rise of soft sf that dealt in extrapolations of psychology, sociology and other soft sciences, we start to see more treatment of religion as part of the human experience, of humans being social creatures. In Frank Herbert's Dune we still see a certain element of "religion as scam" in the Bene Gesserit's deliberate manipulation of various worlds' religions to ensure safe harbors for any member of the Sisterhood stranded there through mischance -- yet at the same time we see the very real and often profound faith of the ordinary people, and the tremendous power it can have for good or ill.
Walter Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz provided one of the most sympathetic views of religion in sf, with his vision of a post-apocalyptic America laid waste by nuclear war and the subsequent rejection of technology and reprimitivization, but held together by the Catholic Church and its communities of vowed religious, much as the monasteries had preserved the knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome in the Middle Ages. Much as the monks of the Middle Ages often copied Greek and Latin classics without any understanding of the material they handled, Brother Francis copies a blueprint left by the founder of their order, an engineer who found refuge from the bombings and the subsequent mobs in this forlorn desert oasis. In doing so, he begins the slow climb back toward industrial civilization -- but centuries later, humanity is about to repeat the mistakes that led to the original nuclear war, for humanity cannot overcome its sinful nature and live in harmony instead of hostility.
Several other notable Catholic authors have brought a strong religious underpinning to their writings, although never so explicitly as Miller's. Both JRR Tolkien and Gene Wolfe brought a rich Catholic sensibility to their writing, although one must look closely to see it, since religion is almost never explicitly mentioned in either of their best-known works. The characters of Middle-Earth in the Third Age have little in the way of formal religious observance, other than the Standing Silence the folk of Gondor observe before meals, but they are aware that the world was made by its Creator and tended by angelic beings, and was remade when humans overstepped the bounds laid upon them by the Creator. Severian the Torturer occasionally speaks of the Increate, the maker of the universe, although he makes little in the way of formal observances.
Similarly, Orson Scott Card, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), seldom writes explicitly religious works (other than Saints, a work of historical fiction about the settlement of Utah), but his work is informed throughout by his faith tradition. It bubbles nearest the surface in the Alvin Maker series, which is at its roots a retelling of the life of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church, but in an alternate frontier America in which folk magic has actual physical power. However, many of his other works have LDS themes, particularly if you look closely.
And even writers who aren't openly religious often show religion in a sympathetic light. Neal Stephenson's Anathem is about a world in which mathematicians and philosophers have formed their own monastic system in parallel to those of the religious communities. Although the focus of the story is upon the mathic world and the turmoil it goes through when a paratime-traveling spaceship arrives in their system, the protagonist has several positive encounters with members of various faith communities, including one in which the narrative of redemption posits that their world is in fact the creation of a condemned murderer trying to prove that there is good in him and he should not be executed, so its members try to do good deeds so that their world's existence will not be terminated by the execution of the condemned man in the base reality.