religion and SF/F

[rm]

Okay, as I finish up the Valentine's Day column, I think I want to look at religion in SF/F. This is probably my personal favourite obsession in SF, so Ia m also largely asking for a reading list here. Dune, the Kushiel books, those creepy out-of-print Edith Friesner books (Psalms of Herod/Sword of Mary), and Mists of Avalon (again), HDM (again), Narnia (duh), Aestival Tide (how could I forget The Chruch of Jesus Christ Cadillac?), The Country of Last Things (ah, suicide cults) all spring to mind in pretty radically different ways.

There's also something I keep meaning to read that I just forgot the title of, about a space mission gone horribly wrong and the only survivor is a surly priest who had been sexually tortured and won't talk -- what the hell is that book again? I really need to read it like this week.

So what have you got for me with intense use of religion from our world or not?

Comments

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

I don't know if they count as intense, but Katherine Kurtz' Deryni novels have religion as a very central theme, and her Templar books (which I haven't read) are, as you might guess, rather religion-focused.

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

Maybe Dan Simmons' Hyperion? Though it's been awhile since I read the series, I do seem to remember a lot of religion of one sort or another.

And of course Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series...

[lllvis.livejournal.com]

Seems I remember Steve Perry's trilogy of "The Man Who Never Missed", "Matadora" and "The Machiavelli Interface" had at least one figure who was a strong religious representation, and factored well into the story.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

surly priest who had been sexually tortured and won't talk

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of The Sparrow. I can barely remember anything about it, but I remember disliking it intensely.

Right now I'm reading the Many-Coloured Land books (which I got from Kate via Kali, so ask them for a hook-up), and they feature the interaction of a number of religions, from a "battle religion" of warring pseudo-fairy tribes to some kind of washed-out Catholicism to a sort of psyonicists' "world mind" religion. It's all used mostly to further the plot rather than explored for anything deeper, but there you are. The books themselves are damn fun reading.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The Sparrow is certainly it. Thanks!

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Oh my god and A Canticle for Liebowitz oh my god.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Love those Friesner books. Religious horror is something I majorly geek out over, so let me give it some thought and I can probably come up with some good ones that qualify in the SF/F field.

Also, um, I don't know if you're avoiding some of the obvious ones, but: Canticle for Liebowitz and Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun books.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Wolf ones, actually, and I just spaced on Liebowitz.

And I've never, ever met anyone who had read those Friesner books before. I was really obsessed for a while.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

With the Friesner books, it helped that I was paying close attention to White Wolf's fic publishing for a while there. If you look at my LibraryThing catalogue you'll see some of the books are tagged by publisher's imprint. Because I'm strange like that.

But yes, oh so incredible. As much as I've enjoyed the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies, I wish Esther Friesner would write more serious fiction.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've never read anything else by her, because none of it has looked like my sort of thing. I'm really drawn to dark, post-apocalyptic stuff, to the point that it can be hard to get me to read anything else.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

That new book The Road sounds like it qualifies and then some. I really want to read it. Didn't your roommate read it a little while ago?

[rm.livejournal.com]

OH yeah. We had a weird conversation about it.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Worth reading?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I can't remember. I remember that she found it gruelling, and I think it came up in the context of my feelings about Notes on a Scandal, but I don't know if it was in a compare or constrast way.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

I'd agree and say that the priest one sounds like The Sparrow as well. I couldn't get more than 50 pages into that one.

There's Philip K. Dick's A Maze of Death and The Divine Invasion.

Also Gene Wolfe's Book Of The Long Sun series.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive had some religious themes with the appearance of "loa" entities on the net. Plus the orbital rastas in Neuromancer.

There's also Michael Moorcock's Behold The Man.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm even writing about Neuromancer this week, and I totally forgot about all that.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Oh, Naomi Kritzer's first or second book. Alternative history with "paganism" being the mainstream religion and Christianity being taboo.

KS Robinson'sThe Years of Rice and Salt with Buddhism being the main religious and cultural force in the world.

Also, it's probably worth noting how often religion in SF/F crops up in post-apocalyptic settings. But you're not looking for commentary, you're looking for books. Eep.

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Russell M. Griffin's novels all have religious elements.

What about PKD's Valis?

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow. In fact, a lot of Morrow's work has weird religious themes.

The Canticles of Leibowitz also has some weird religious tones to it.

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

There's Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Star" which might be the best thing he's ever written.

maybe...?

[trifles.livejournal.com]

The Chalion series

Small Gods

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

The universe in Tamora Pierce's Alanna series had its own gods and religions.

They even featured pretty heavily, especially in the second series, "The Immortals."

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Try S.M. Stirling's Emberverse books, "Dies the Fire", "The Protector's War", and "A Meeting at Corvalis". It's a post-apocalyptic account of life in the Pacific N.W. and how society settles out, complete with pagans, neo-tolkien rangers, anti-popes, and various other zealots.

I'll second the earlier comment on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books.

Also take a look at Christopher Stasheff's The Warlock of Gramarye series.

[phaenix-ash.livejournal.com]

neil gaiman's american gods. heck, if you haven't read them, get your hands on the whole sandman series as it's completely dependent on the heaven/hell mythos. and what's the cs lewis scifi series? paralandria or something like that? stephen king's dark tower, but that would take you ages and lead you to all kinds of tangental places...oh. and the preacher by alan moore. really. it's wonderfully blasphemous.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. NOt to be missed.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I like the gods' interaction with people in the Curse of Chalion and sequels, from Lois McMasters Bujold.

[raaven.livejournal.com]

I'll second that (or third it or whatever). There's a good, out-of-print multi-writer series (edited, I think, by Mercedes Lackey) called Merovingen Nights that is about a sort of post-apocalyptic planet that is divided into 3 or 4 major religious groups, and the social/political maneuvering thereof. Steven Brust has a book called To Reign in Hell, which is a great retelling of the Christian myth of Lucifer's fall from heaven. His Dragaera books also have a strong religious element (thought not even remotely Christian). Like the Bujold, in Brust's world, gods actually interact with their worshippers.

Probably there are more that aren't popping immediately into my brain, but I'll check my shelves later & see if I come up with anything good.

Also, and I don't know if this falls under your request, as it's not religion per se -- but there are a number of books that concern various sorts of ghost-in-the-machine AI which address an assortment of religious themes without being specific about any particular religion (Neuromancer,the later books from the Ender's Game series, some John Varley, Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, several PKD stories - I'm sure I can think of more, if you need them).

That might be a whole 'nother topic, though.

[affreca.livejournal.com]

Merovingen Nights started with and was edited by C.J. Cherryh.

[raaven.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes! Thank you! :)

[justpat.livejournal.com]

Would Stranger in a Strange Land count?

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Absolutely crucial: James Blish's novella (expanded to a novel) "A Case of Conscience", about a Jesuit priest encountering aliens without original sin.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

John Kessel's satire on charismatic Christianity, Good News from Outer Space, one of the few science fiction satirical takes on religion that isn't hamhanded.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

John Christopher, famous for the tripods trilogy, wrote another children's trilogy about a post-disaster future in which science is quietly re-establishing itself as religion. (The Prince in Waiting, Beyond the Burning Lands, and The Sword of the Spirits.)

Fritz Leiber's 1943 novel Gather, Darkness!, probably the first genre sf novel of importance about religion, is built upon similar material.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

*giggle* Harlan Ellison's "Chatting With Anubis". *snicker*

Actually, Harlan Ellison's collection Deathbird Stories is chock full of good speculative fiction about religion, including the title story and "Paingod".

[threewalls]

Terry Pratchett (Small Gods?)

Ursula Le Guin (Telling? Tombs of Atuan?)-- who writes things rich with culture, including religion, so I'm at a loss to pick only one. You could hold her for discussing race as she might be more useful for that than religion, per se.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 'Good Omens' is all about the Christian version of Amaregeddon, and has a ton of stuff about God and angels and demons and the Bible and so on.

Sharon Shinn's Archangel and its sequels are all about, well, archangels apparently. I haven't read them, but one of my friends adores them.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm actually going to do an entire piece just on stuff about fallen angels. There's so bloody much of it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Dude, there really is. It's an entire genre. Which I get, because it's a very neat concept, but it's still surprising how much there is.

Oh, for otherworld religions, there's Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker/Godslayer duo, which is a terribly written (and I quite liked the Kushiel trilogy) rip-off of Tolkien's Similarrion. But all sorts of stuff about gods and mythology. Though actually that might count as 'fallen angels' too, since it's all about the one god who goes evil and gets cast out.