religions in SF/F. discuss.
15 Mar 2006 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouI recall ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
limyaael has had a number of good posts on religion & SF/F; here are a few I found after a few minutes of looking:
Religious Questionnaire I
Religious Questionnaire II
Rant on Gods
On beliefs and prejudices
Rant on Religion
Creating convincing religious characters
Recommend reading through if you're interested.
When it comes to SF/F, my experience has been that it's pretty much a paint-by-numbers, at least in terms of the major trends. (There are exceptions to this, of course; Majipoor Chronicles being possibly the biggest I can think of, but hey.) You picks yer characters, and you rolls yer die:
1. Good guy goes up against bad church, revealing good guy's (older) religion/god is stronger/purer. New upstart religion squished.
2. Good guy goes up against bad church, revealing good guy's (newer) religion/god is stronger/purer. Old stick-in-the-mud squished.
3. Good guy goes up against (controlling) god, reveals god is One Big Stinkin' Computer. SF anti-godism glorified, with heavy dose of anti-AI-ism.
In the worlds with religion, in fantasy, it's nine-times-out-of-ten a monolithic culture. (Kay's Last Light of the Sun may have frustrated me at times, but it was hardly monolithic, and I did appreciate that aspect.) Everyone in the story-world worships God A; if there's cross-God conflict, either A is bad and needs to be pushed aside to make way for the new, or A is an upstart and the One True God(s) need to slap A down. I've read this boring paradigm in plenty of "female goddess sweet and good" vs. "male god dark and bad" quasi-wiccan crap, but I have run across "old poly-god system is bad" vs. "one true god is bestest", though that seems to be rarer. But either way, most fantasy worlds seem to be pretty monolithic in terms of religion.
In SF, religion just doesn't even seem to be there, the majority of the time. (This also appears to be true in urban fantasy, unless vampires are involved, in which case the Judeo-Xtian god gets dragged into the picture because vampires, bad, devil, all that jazz.) I've read my share of SF (and watched a good dose) where there just doesn't seem to be any religion at all. The Star Wars series seemed to be a mild exception, in that the Jedi appear to be something of a quasi-Buddhist sort (including a pseudo-Shaolin 'fighting school' adjunct), but I never got the impression that your average Joe followed Jedi precepts. It seemed all rather esoteric compared to the little, everyday guys, for whom no religion was ever mentioned.
I'm curious what other people have come across, when reading SF/F.
Anyway, although I don't like the idea of writing a 'message' story (you must believe in theOTP OTG! you must give up your backwards notions of a god!), I do like the notion of raising the biggest damn questions possible for the two halves. For someone whose entire life has been predicated on the idea that a god exists, that this god is looking out for him/her, that god is In Charge, what does it mean to have it confirmed that this isn't true? And what does it mean to live one's life as an atheist and find out there is a god?
Dune and Majipoor Chronicles are the only ones I can think of in which the religions are not completely monolithic, in which there's inter- and extra-religious conflict, and in which characters range from highly devout to downright skeptical. Anyone know of any others?
limyaael has had a number of good posts on religion & SF/F; here are a few I found after a few minutes of looking:Recommend reading through if you're interested.
When it comes to SF/F, my experience has been that it's pretty much a paint-by-numbers, at least in terms of the major trends. (There are exceptions to this, of course; Majipoor Chronicles being possibly the biggest I can think of, but hey.) You picks yer characters, and you rolls yer die:
1. Good guy goes up against bad church, revealing good guy's (older) religion/god is stronger/purer. New upstart religion squished.
2. Good guy goes up against bad church, revealing good guy's (newer) religion/god is stronger/purer. Old stick-in-the-mud squished.
3. Good guy goes up against (controlling) god, reveals god is One Big Stinkin' Computer. SF anti-godism glorified, with heavy dose of anti-AI-ism.
In the worlds with religion, in fantasy, it's nine-times-out-of-ten a monolithic culture. (Kay's Last Light of the Sun may have frustrated me at times, but it was hardly monolithic, and I did appreciate that aspect.) Everyone in the story-world worships God A; if there's cross-God conflict, either A is bad and needs to be pushed aside to make way for the new, or A is an upstart and the One True God(s) need to slap A down. I've read this boring paradigm in plenty of "female goddess sweet and good" vs. "male god dark and bad" quasi-wiccan crap, but I have run across "old poly-god system is bad" vs. "one true god is bestest", though that seems to be rarer. But either way, most fantasy worlds seem to be pretty monolithic in terms of religion.
In SF, religion just doesn't even seem to be there, the majority of the time. (This also appears to be true in urban fantasy, unless vampires are involved, in which case the Judeo-Xtian god gets dragged into the picture because vampires, bad, devil, all that jazz.) I've read my share of SF (and watched a good dose) where there just doesn't seem to be any religion at all. The Star Wars series seemed to be a mild exception, in that the Jedi appear to be something of a quasi-Buddhist sort (including a pseudo-Shaolin 'fighting school' adjunct), but I never got the impression that your average Joe followed Jedi precepts. It seemed all rather esoteric compared to the little, everyday guys, for whom no religion was ever mentioned.
I'm curious what other people have come across, when reading SF/F.
Anyway, although I don't like the idea of writing a 'message' story (you must believe in the
Dune and Majipoor Chronicles are the only ones I can think of in which the religions are not completely monolithic, in which there's inter- and extra-religious conflict, and in which characters range from highly devout to downright skeptical. Anyone know of any others?