List of religious ideas in science fiction

Science fiction will sometimes address the topic of religion.

Usage

Some stories use religious themes to convey a broader message, but others confront the subject head-on—contemplating, for example, how attitudes towards faith might shift in the wake of ever-advancing technological progress, or offering creative scientific explanations for the apparently mystical events related in religious texts (gods as aliens, prophets as time travelers, etc.). As an exploratory medium, science fiction rarely takes religion at face value by simply accepting or rejecting it; when religious themes are presented, they tend to be investigated deeply.

Some science fiction works portray invented religions, either placed into a contemporary Earth society (such as the Earthseed religion in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower), or in the far future (as seen in Dune by Frank Herbert, with its Orange Catholic Bible). Other works examine the role of existing religions in a futuristic or alternate society. The classic Canticle for Leibowitz explores a world in which Catholicism is one of the few institutions to survive an apocalypse, and chronicles its slow re-achievement of prominence as civilisation returns.

Christian science fiction also exists,^[1] sometimes written as allegory for inspirational purposes.^[2]

Orson Scott Card, has criticised the genre for oversimplifying religion, which he claims is always shown as "ridiculous and false".^[3]

Afterlife

• The Palace of Eternity (1969) by Bob Shaw
• The Riverworld series, by Philip José Farmer

Angels

• In Out of the Silent Planet (part of the Space Trilogy), by C. S. Lewis, the protagonist meets "eldila", mysterious beings of light native to the void of interplanetary space (who are actually what Christianity defines as "angels", and who are also identified as Mars, Venus and other deities of Greek and Roman mythology), and are completely loyal and obedient to God, and have never wanted to be worshiped as gods themselves (although the ancient Greeks and Romans mistakenly did so)

Creation myths

• "Prometheus (2012 film)" explores the myth that human life was did not arise spontaneously by chance, but that a humanoid species, the "Engineers", created life on earth. They also taught humans how to use technology and visited the earth sporadically. Some elements are similar to the Ancient Aliens myths. The story develops when a scientific expedition travels to confront their creators.
• In the film Blade Runner, Roy Batty is an artificial person looking to confront his creator, while Rick Deckard searches for lost humanity despite his job: hunting and "retiring" drapetomaniac replicants
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
• Tolkien's The Silmarillion begins with a depiction of Creation, clearly influenced by the account given by Christianity but including many features unique to Tolkien's writing

Demons

• In the Doom series, demons from Hell have come into the universe through an inter-dimensional portal which is located on Mars
• In Princess of Wands, by John Ringo, a Christian housewife and soccer mom gets involved in an organization which co-operates with the FBI in dealing with demons
• In That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis, the villains of the story are guided by beings they call "macrobes" which are clearly meant to be demons

Devil

• The TV series, Futurama, features a recurring character called the Robot Devil
• In the 1975 Doctor Who episode "Pyramids of Mars", the Doctor states that Satan is one of the names the last of the Osirians, Sutekh (who considers all life his enemy), is known by.^[4]
• In the "The Magicks of Megas-tu" episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, the friendly alien Lucien is revealed to be Lucifer.
• The 2006 Doctor Who episodes "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" feature an ancient being known as the Beast, which claims to be the basis of the Devil figure in all religions and mythologies; earlier in The Dæmons, it is shown a race resembling the typical image of the Devil had visited Earth and become the basis for both Gods and Demons
• In Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis, the protagonist must fight against a man possessed by a demon, hinted to be the devil himself

Eschatology and the ultimate fate of the universe

• The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
• The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion
• Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
• City at the End of Time by Greg Bear
• That Extraordinary Day by Predrag Vukadinović

Evangelism

• In S. M. Stirling's Nantucket series, the entire island of Nantucket is suddenly transported into the past, to about 1300 B.C, and the modern Americans marooned in the past must make the best of the Bronze Age world in which they find themselves; the Christians among them face the dilemma of whether or not to embark on missionary activity and spread their religion - even though Jesus Christ had not yet been born, and the very act of their spreading Christianity might so fundamentally change the world that Jesus might never be born at all
• In The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, most of the Jesuit missionaries sent to investigate a radio transmission from an unknown planet (believing that they have been chosen by God to be the first to set foot on an alien world) are killed by the planet's inhabitants; and the sole survivor is enslaved but eventually escapes and returns to Earth with his faith in tatters

God or deities

• Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds
• In the film Avatar, the Na'vi, an alien race, worship a goddess named Eywa
• In "For I Am a Jealous People", by Lester del Rey, Jehovah abandons humanity and sponsors an alien race in an invasion of Earth
• The video game Homeworld features a single god called Sajuuk
• In Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny, a nobleman re-creates a rival religious movement to dethrone a false pantheon of Hindu-inspired "Gods" on a world where magic and science coexist
• The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton
• Neverness, by David Zindell
• Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, features a religion called Earthseed, where "God is change"
• In the TV series Stargate SG-1, and the 1994 Stargate film, the supposed ancient gods are revealed to be powerful, parasitic aliens posing as supernatural beings to exploit mankind
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Who Watches the Watchers", a serious accident with a hidden scientific observation post starts a chain of events that leads to a primitive civilization becoming convinced that the Starfleet personnel are divine beings with Capt. Jean-Luc Picard being the supreme one; and the crew of the Enterprise struggle to prevent the reestablishment of religion in the civilization
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?", the Enterprise crew encounters an alien figure who is the ancient Greek god, Apollo
• In Philip K. Dick's novel, "VALIS", the protagonist faces an all-powerful God who subtly manipulates the actions and thoughts of humans in an effort to redeem humanity
• The protagonist of "The Worthing Saga", by Orson Scott Card, keeps himself in hidden stasis over the years, and becomes the target of worship by the descendants of the very settlers that he delivered to a new world
• James K. Morrow's Godhead trilogy considers the literal death of God, when the two mile long corpse of God is found floating at sea. In the first volume, "Towing Jehovah" (Harcourt Brace, 1994) the angel Raphael calls on supertanker captain Anthony Van Horne to tow the body to an icy tomb in the north, while the faithful and unbelieving alike seek to deal with the fallout of the death of God...

Heaven

• "The Reformers"( Weird Science #20)—When three space men dressed in scifi versions of religious garb land on a planet to "free it of evil;" they are greeted by a man named Peter who informs them they are not needed (for there is no crime, no immorality, nor any of the evils seen in other societies); so they create evil for which they blame literature, clothing, and alcohol (as they have done on previous worlds)—including Earth—and we learn that their leader is the Devil and the planet they are on is called Heaven.

Hell

• In the cult science fiction/horror movie Event Horizon, the titular ship passes through an extra-dimensional realm, and the crew—possessed by an entity from Hell—are driven murderously insane
• A Nice Place to Visit, an 1960 episode of "The Twilight Zone"
• The short story, A Planet Named Shayol (by Cordwainer Smith), was inspired by Dante's Inferno

Jesus

• H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia, takes place in an alternate timeline in which "Jesus Christ had been born into a liberal and progressive Roman Empire that spread from the Arctic Ocean to the Bight of Benin, and was to know no Decline and Fall" ^[5] - with profound implications for Jesus' religious teachings, and later on those of Muhammad
• In Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock, twentieth-century Karl Glogauer (a Jew obsessed with the figures of Jesus and Carl Jung), travels in time to the year 28 A.D. where he meets various New Testament figures (such as John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary), and discovers that Mary and Joseph's child, Jesus, is a mentally retarded hunchback, who could never become the Jesus as is portrayed in the Scriptures, and after having a mental breakdown, steps into the role of Jesus, eventually dying on the cross (having specifically asked Judas to betray him)
• In The Didymus Contingency, by Jeremy Robinson, a scientist's time-travel to see Jesus' death and resurrection—only to witness several scenes not recorded in the New Testament (while realizing Jesus was a fraud)—faces the dilemma of whether or not to make a revelation in the present which would shake the foundations of Christianity is complicated further with the appearance of an assassin from a different future...^[6]
• The Last Starship from Earth, by John Boyd, is set in a dystopian society in the very near future (in an alternate timeline) where Jesus Christ became a revolutionary agitator and was never subjected to crucifixion; and who overthrew the Roman Empire by force of arms, and established a theocracy that has lasted until the twentieth century
• In Garry Kilworth's story "Let's Go to Golgotha!", tourists from the future can book a time-traveling "Crucifixion Tour", but before setting out, they are strictly told that, when the crowd is asked whether Jesus or Barabbas should be spared, they must all join the call: "Give us Barabbas!"—however, when the moment comes, the protagonist suddenly realizes that the crowd condemning Jesus to the cross is composed entirely of tourists from the future, and that no actual Jewish Israelites of 33 A.D. are present at all
• When the protagonists of Clifford Simak's Mastodonia make trips to the past commercially available, American church groups band together and seek to purchase an exclusive franchise for Jesus' time on Earth—not because they want to go there but because they do not want anyone at all to go there (the clergymen state quite forthrightly their apprehension that time travel would disprove some of the accounts given in the Gospels and thus undermine Christianity)—when refused, the church groups turn aggressive and energetically lobby Congress to ban time travel altogether; opening an enormous theological debate unresolved by the end of the book
• In The Rescuer, by Arthur Porges, future scientists destroy a three-billion dollar time-travel project because a religious fanatic had taken over the machine, heading for Golgotha with a rifle and five thousand rounds in an attempt to save Jesus and the affair must be kept from the public, since some might identify with "The Rescuer"
• "Resurrection Day", by Thomas Wycoff, is about a man sent back into time to steal Jesus' body to disprove Christianity
• In There Will Be Time, by Poul Anderson, a young twentieth-century American (who has discovered that he has the ability to travel through time without any need of a machine) reasons that there must be others like him and that Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion is a good place to try locating them, goes there and walks through the street singing the Greek mass (which is meaningless to people of the time), but get himself located by agents of a time-travel policing organization, who take him to their headquarters in the far future—without getting to see Jesus at all
• In the TimeWars series by Simon Hawke, set in 2461, Cardinal Lodovico Consorti proposes to use the recently discovered time-travel technology to obtain empirical proof that Christ indeed rose from the dead after being crucified, causing the Catholic Church to excommunicate him (the Church hierarchy preferring to continue relying on faith alone and not seeking factual confirmation)
• Times Without Number, by John Brunner, depicts an alternate reality in which the Spanish Armada had conquered England; and when time travel is discovered—controlled by the Catholic Church—it is decreed that every new pope would be privileged to travel to Palestine in the time of Christ's ministry, while everyone else is strictly forbidden to go there
• In The Traveller, by Richard Matheson, a confirmed skeptic is chosen to be the first to travel in time to see the crucifixion (in a kind of traveling cage which makes him invisible to the people of the past) and he witnesses the actual event, causing him to feel empathy for Jesus; and is hauled back to the present after attempting to save him; and, although he had seen no miracles, he is a changed man, having seen "a man giving up his life for the things he believed" and stating, "that should be miracle enough for everybody"
• The plot of Jesus Video, a German novel by Andreas Eschbach, revolves around the search for a hidden video camera that is believed to hold digital footage of Jesus recorded by a time traveler^[7]
• In Robert Silverberg's, Up the Line, featuring a company organizing tours into the past, a character notes that "the crowd at the Sermon on the Mount grows bigger and bigger, every time I go there again"

Judaism

• "I, Gezheh" by Clifford Meth, presents a futuristic universe where the proselytizing Hasidic sect Chabad-Lubavitch have gained influence over many alien worlds

Philip Jose Farmer's 1979 novel Jesus on Mars has terran marsnauts discover a civilization on Mars composed of the technologically superior Krsh and a population of human beings descended from people picked up from earth centuries before. The Krsh and humans now form one community who practice a form of Judaism, having been converted by Matthias, the disciple who replaced Judas as one of the original Twelve. They acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah, God's adopted Son, but not as Deity, causing all sorts of issues for the terran crew (which comprises a nominal Baptist, a liberal Jew and Muslim, and an atheist) who come face to face with a figure claiming to be Christ himself...

Logos

• Valis (1981) by Philip K. Dick

Messianism

• In Frank Herbert's Dune, Paul Muad'dib becomes a prophetic messiah to the Fremen when his mental training and the drug/spice melange allow him to directly perceive time and space
• In Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, Valentine Michael Smith becomes a messiah figure to some of the general population of the earth, when having been raised by Martians, he turns their philosophy into a human religion
• When the Sleeper Wakes, by H. G. Wells
• Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars
• C. S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy series of novels
• Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun
• John Barnes's The Sky So Big and Black
• "He Walked Among Us", Weird Science #13—A spaceman on a four-year expedition uses his technology to help the locals—curing a boy with antibiotics, using dehydrated pills to turn water into milk, creating food—and defying the local priests, after his ship is destroyed by an asteroid; 2,000 years later another ship finds out the spaceman was executed on a rack—becoming the planet's religious symbol—and the spaceman the "son" of their god

Millennialism and Millenarianism

• Childhood's End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke
• Lord of the World (1907) by Robert Hugh Benson

Original sin

• A Case of Conscience, by James Blish, is the story of a Jesuit who investigates an alien race which evolves through several forms through the course of its life cycle and which has no religion, any concept of God, an afterlife, or the idea of sin
• In Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis, the protagonist must stop a second Fall of Man from happening on another planet
• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, revolves around the idea of original sin through the mention of Dust

Pope

• In "In partibus infidelium" ("In the Land of the Unbelievers") by Polish writer Jacek Dukaj, humanity makes contact with other space-faring civilizations, and Christianity—specifically, the Catholic Church—spreads far and wide until eventually humans become a minority among believers and an alien is elected as Pope
• In Project Pope, by Clifford Simak, robots on the planet End of Nowhere have labored a thousand years to build a computerized, infallible pope to eke out the ultimate truth, have their work preempted when a human Listener discovers what might be the planet Heaven

Star of Bethlehem

• In "The Star", by Arthur C. Clarke, a Jesuit serving as the astrophysicist of an interstellar exploration ship suffers a deep crisis of faith upon discovering that the star seen on Earth at 4 BC was actually a supernova which destroyed an entire sentient and highly developed race—in Christian religious perspective, God had utterly destroyed these peaceful and virtuous beings in order to announce to humanity the birth of his son

Penance

• A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
• Patterns of Chaos, by Colin Kapp
• Redemption Ark, by Alastair Reynolds

Reincarnation

• Altered Carbon, and Broken Angels, by Richard K. Morgan
• Born with the Dead, (1974) by Robert Silverberg
• Lumen, (1864) by Camille Flammarion
• The Helliconia Trilogy, by Brian W. Aldiss
• Immortality, Inc., (1959) by Robert Sheckley
• Life, the Universe, and Everything, by Douglas Adams, features an unfortunate creature named Agrajag who has reincarnated hundreds—maybe thousands—of times over, each time being accidentally killed by Arthur Dent
• Lord of Light, (1967) by Roger Zelazny
• Neon Lotus, (1988) by Marc Laidlaw
• Ubik, (1969) by Philip K. Dick
• "Groundhog Day (film)", (1993) by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis

Theocracy

Depictions of a fictional society dominated by a theocracy are a recurring theme in science fiction. Such depictions are mostly dystopian, and in some cases humorous or satirical.

• The Accidental Time Machine (2007) by Joe Haldeman
• Candle (2000) by John Barnes
• Gather, Darkness (1943) by Fritz Leiber
• The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
• If This Goes On—/Revolt in 2100 (1940) by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Last Starship from Earth (1968) by John Boyd
• Lord of Light (1967) by Roger Zelazny
• Run, Come See Jerusalem! (1976) by Richard C. Meredith
• The Stork Factor (1975) by Zach Hughes
• The Sky So Big and Black (2003) by John Barnes

See also

• List of religious ideas in fantasy fiction
• List of Catholic science fiction and fantasy authors
• List of Protestant science fiction and fantasy authors

Notes

Further reading

• Clark, S (2005), Science Fiction and Religion, Blackwell Publishing.
• McKee, G (2007), The Gospel According to Science Fiction-From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
• Riley, R., (1985), The Transcendent Adventure: Studies of Religion in Science Fiction Fantasy, Westport, CT., Greenwood Press.

External links

• Science Fiction featuring various specific religions at adherents.com.
• Jewish Chassidic Sci-Fi chabad.org
• Annotated Bibliography covering Catholicism in Science Fiction
• Sci-fi and God - An enhanced episode guide covering and discussing science fiction from a Christian perspective.

Science fiction Outline Definitions Future history History Hard Soft Scientific romance The Golden Age New Wave Subgenres Adventure Alternate history Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic Climate fiction Comic / comedy Sitcoms Cyberpunk Dying Earth Gothic Military Mundane Planetary romance Scientific romance Social Space opera Space Western Steampunk Culture Conventions EMP Museum Fandom Fanzines Hugo Awards Internet Speculative Fiction Database Nebula Awards Studies Women in SF Worldcon By region Australian Bengali Canadian Chinese Croatian Czech French Japanese Norwegian Polish Romanian Russian Serbian Spanish Media Literature Comics Magazines Novels Opera Publishers Short stories Theatre and drama Film Film history Films India Television TV shows British TV United States TV Themes AI takeover Alien invasion Ancient astronauts Artificial intelligence Astroengineering Black Bootstrap paradox Evil corporation Extraterrestrials List Feminist First contact Gender Grandfather paradox Hyperspace LGBT Libertarian Mind uploading Parallel universes Planets Terraforming Political ideas Religious ideas Sex and sexuality Sci horror Terraforming Time travel Transhumanism Uplifting Related topics Fantasy Fictional technology The future Gothic fiction Horror fiction Magic realism Mecha The multiverse Robots Rubber science Speculative fiction Science fantasy Superhero fiction Supernatural fiction Techno-thriller Time travel in fiction Utopian and dystopian fiction Weird fiction World government in fiction Category Portal WikiProject