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]

Well, what about the tropes? Were the religions just like Star Trek's form of "how to identify culture" where it's monolithic to a culture--like the Star Trek episodes where you meet people from "a planet" and they're all basicallly in variations of the same jumpsuit, or the same skirt/shirt combination, or the same basic colors...y'know what I mean? Religion seems to fit that bill as well: everyone wears the same necklaces, uses the same greetings, etc.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Now, now. Occasionally there would be two cultures on a planet, and inevitably, they'd be fighting each other over something, and it would be the Enterprise's job to mediate and make them all buddy buddy again.

[flamesword.livejournal.com]

*amused* Hey, someone beat me to it. I was going to say, there is somewhat of a religion based around the force that goes beyond the Jedi themselves and force users. It's not very organized or ritualized, seems to vary from world to world and of course there are people like Han Solo that don't believe in it at all.

The force being a guiding and unifying life essence, it functions as something of a Higher Power in and of itself, shaping lives and events by giving them purpose and meaning and direction, 'destiny' or fate being seen as the will of the force. There are examples of this in the original trilogy, although they are pretty subtle. Han is the most obvious. He refuses to believe in anything having a hand in his actions other than himself, until he runs into Luke and is confronted with incontrovertible evidence. When he later says to Luke as he's leaving, 'May the Force be with you', he's at least acknowledging that whatever it is is there for Luke.

That phrase has been picked up and run with in several forms by other authors, and some of the short stories in particular do a great job of showing the galaxy from a non-Jedi point of view. It's more of a general blessing/farewell, something like the old English 'Godspeed'. It doesn't seem to indicate interaction or knowledge on a personal level for the majority of the galaxy, but merely an acknowledgement that a supernatural guiding force/presence exists and is generally beneficent, if not self-aware.

And um. There's a lot more I could say about that, but there are also culture specific religions in many places that may or may not be related to the force at all. Naturally, most authors preach tolerance and inclusion of any and all personal beliefs, coexistent. And. Hmm there's a lot more, but I dunno how much any of it would apply. Religion is something that definitely interests me in the SW universe, and it's surprising how often it's incorporated into plotlines and events, but there's a lot of subtle scattered things and especially with certain authors, they get liberally mixed into the SF/F aspect of the force as magical energy, which in my opinion it actually is not.

I have a lot more opinions about this, but this comment is long already, so. ;D If you want to know more, I'll probably be on AIM later.