OMG. I have survived the busy season at work. *die*
My thoughts on faith in speculative fiction:
I am not a person of faith. I refer to myself as either a "practicing agnostic" or just a "heathen" (in that I come from the hills and lack any kind of religious book-learning). I enjoy the perspective of many spec-fic protagonists because they seem to share that sort of view, usually because the author doesn't bring up faith and so we assign our own views to the character. That works well -- for me, at least.
The problem starts -- for me -- in the world around the character. One of the things that draws me into a story is reading about a world with as much depth and detail as the world around us (us being the readers who live in the real world). For better or for worse, faith is a large part of the real world. Leaving aside militant atheists and reactionary cultists, a collection of "average" people will have people of faith in it from across a wide spectrum. These different beliefs give the real world color. Sometimes it's irritating, conflicting color, but definitely color.
The point I'm trying to make is that speculative fiction that ignores or deliberately doesn't include faith can fall flat. I find this especially in sci-fi, where all the protagonists are atheist and the only people of faith are backwater colonists -- that doesn't ring true to me, in my observations of the world around me. It also seems heavy-handed and preachy and even outdated, authors implying that science disproves religion and therefore in teh futar everyone will be either atheist or wrong.
I imagine there are also books and worlds out there on the opposite end of the spectrum -- Christian fiction where everyone in teh futar realizes they're wrong and embraces the love of blah blah blah. Same problem -- that world does not ring true to my own experience of a mix of color and faith.
The best speculative fiction worlds for me are ones where faith and religion are present, but not a central focus of the narrative. I'm also -- notoriously -- a sucker for reading about characters from different cultures meeting and interacting.
The stories that stick out for me as excellent examples of how to do faith in speculative fiction are anything written by Kate Elliott (omgomgomg the world building), and the books I've read by Barbara Hambly, especially Dragonsbane and The Ladies of Mandigryn. In these books, faith and religion is a part of the background culture; it's not really positive or negative, but it's there.
A different kind of example is the Hunger Games books, which I have not read. I'm sure I'll get around to reading them at some point, but I heard that the world in which they're set -- a dystopian post-collapse North America -- completely lacks religion. I don't know how this is handled (or even if it's true, I guess), but the idea of a dystopian post-collapse North America that lacks religion is just not interesting to me. Dystopian post-collapse worlds are an interesting premise to me, but ones that I rarely seen "done right" (for me), because what I find interesting about those premises is the conjecture of what the world would look like after a collapse. I see a dystopian post-collapse US as splintering into urban centers where religion is not a big part of life -- where maybe even atheism becomes a state religion -- but where pockets in the countryside keep their own traditions, or regress, or adapt new ones.
I would particularly love a story where the countryside fractures into enclaves that reflect the current makeup of the US. A story about the People's Free Democratic Republic of California, neighboring enclaves of Mormon farmers and non-denominational ranchers, with semi-nomadic groups of Hmong people doing what they've done for four thousand years (endure), would be very interesting to me, because I can so easily see it happening, given the current makeup of the world as I know it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-10-06 03:29 pm (UTC)My thoughts on faith in speculative fiction:
I am not a person of faith. I refer to myself as either a "practicing agnostic" or just a "heathen" (in that I come from the hills and lack any kind of religious book-learning). I enjoy the perspective of many spec-fic protagonists because they seem to share that sort of view, usually because the author doesn't bring up faith and so we assign our own views to the character. That works well -- for me, at least.
The problem starts -- for me -- in the world around the character. One of the things that draws me into a story is reading about a world with as much depth and detail as the world around us (us being the readers who live in the real world). For better or for worse, faith is a large part of the real world. Leaving aside militant atheists and reactionary cultists, a collection of "average" people will have people of faith in it from across a wide spectrum. These different beliefs give the real world color. Sometimes it's irritating, conflicting color, but definitely color.
The point I'm trying to make is that speculative fiction that ignores or deliberately doesn't include faith can fall flat. I find this especially in sci-fi, where all the protagonists are atheist and the only people of faith are backwater colonists -- that doesn't ring true to me, in my observations of the world around me. It also seems heavy-handed and preachy and even outdated, authors implying that science disproves religion and therefore in teh futar everyone will be either atheist or wrong.
I imagine there are also books and worlds out there on the opposite end of the spectrum -- Christian fiction where everyone in teh futar realizes they're wrong and embraces the love of blah blah blah. Same problem -- that world does not ring true to my own experience of a mix of color and faith.
The best speculative fiction worlds for me are ones where faith and religion are present, but not a central focus of the narrative. I'm also -- notoriously -- a sucker for reading about characters from different cultures meeting and interacting.
The stories that stick out for me as excellent examples of how to do faith in speculative fiction are anything written by Kate Elliott (omgomgomg the world building), and the books I've read by Barbara Hambly, especially Dragonsbane and The Ladies of Mandigryn. In these books, faith and religion is a part of the background culture; it's not really positive or negative, but it's there.
A different kind of example is the Hunger Games books, which I have not read. I'm sure I'll get around to reading them at some point, but I heard that the world in which they're set -- a dystopian post-collapse North America -- completely lacks religion. I don't know how this is handled (or even if it's true, I guess), but the idea of a dystopian post-collapse North America that lacks religion is just not interesting to me. Dystopian post-collapse worlds are an interesting premise to me, but ones that I rarely seen "done right" (for me), because what I find interesting about those premises is the conjecture of what the world would look like after a collapse. I see a dystopian post-collapse US as splintering into urban centers where religion is not a big part of life -- where maybe even atheism becomes a state religion -- but where pockets in the countryside keep their own traditions, or regress, or adapt new ones.
I would particularly love a story where the countryside fractures into enclaves that reflect the current makeup of the US. A story about the People's Free Democratic Republic of California, neighboring enclaves of Mormon farmers and non-denominational ranchers, with semi-nomadic groups of Hmong people doing what they've done for four thousand years (endure), would be very interesting to me, because I can so easily see it happening, given the current makeup of the world as I know it.