religions in SF/F. discuss.

[kaigou]

I recall 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 the OTP 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?

Comments

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

It sounded good until you got to the point about making a character a Woobie. Do, please tell, what is this highly esoteric writing terminology? It seems familiar--as if the concepts of dripping italics isn't enough to make me want to back away slowly...

SF has been playing with god-concepts for a long time, but often the SF god(s) turn out to be Big Machines In The Sky, and humans are just another experiment, complete with alien-anal probes. Boring! Heh.

(Although I keep thinking of the discussion during S5 of BtVS, when Glory showed up, and I mentioned "the big bad this year is a god!", and CP said, "just what is a god in that world, anyway? an undefeatable demon? and why is one person's god always everyone else's demon?")

[branchandroot]

*snickering* A woobie, as far as I can tell from the term's use in anime fandoms, is the Noble Punchingbag of Angst. Someone who's horribly trodden on by fate, but bears up under it with unspeakable nobility and, possibly, innocent purity.

*checks to see if you're gagging yet*

Anyway. Wurts has a bad habit of epic purple prose, but when she can control herself she does get into the issues of how and why people follow a religion, or deify someone/something. You might check out the trilogy that starts with Stormwarden. She keeps a decent grip on herself there, though the factions aren't nearly as complex as the Wars of Light and Shadow series. (Which shows no signs of stopping any time soon.)

The whole question of gods and religion in the Buffy-verse is an interesting one, though more for what Joss didn't deal with or answer than for what he did.

I have this sneaking feeling that Mary Gentle might have written some things that complicate the nature of gods or religion, but I can't name a specific example. Jo Clayton, too.

You know, the common thread in all the writers I'm coming up with are that they mix SF and F in their stories--they do world-mashing. And then they use the 'incongruities' as levers to open up the assumptions and world views of their characters. That tends to result in a complex treatment of politics, religion, culture... everything, really.