God Pulp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
God Pulp is a short story written by off-beat Pakistani journalist and writer, Nadeem F. Paracha. It appeared in January 2005 on famous South Asian website, www.chowk.com. It is part of a series of science fiction short stories written by Paracha for chowk.com. Starting with his novelette Acidity (Novelette) these stories which also include Gabriel's Bike, Graffiti Christ and The Aftergod, were all written for chowk.com and are part of his on-going series of social science fiction satirizing organized religion, dogma and capitalism, especially the sort plaguing modern politics and societies of India and Pakistan.
[edit] Plot summary
The story takes place hundreds of years in the future when the world is run by a world government. It is hinted that it is a dystopia but where hunger, poverty, crime and disease have been eliminated. The ideology with which the system is being run is called "Astro-Marxism." Religion is banned and treated as a useless and violent thing of the past. In a twist and a satarical look at religious belief, Paracha in a tongue-in-cheek manner places the matters of belief (in a God), upon the robot population. At reaching a primary state of consciousness, these robots have started to rebel and they use God and a return to the age of religious belief to express their confusion and dissatisfaction. They also claim to know where God resides. The authorities agree to send the most troublesome robots on a pilgrimage (on the far away planet where the robots claim God resides). The ships taking them there are however programmed to blow up once they have landed. The robots roam the planet looking for God, but only find the skeleton of a dog. The skeleton also has a dog tag that has the insignia of the world government's Cosmology department. The humans that first turned earth into a future Marxist Utopia/dystopia had already been here. Finding nothing, they returned to Earth and abolished religion.
