attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2012-09-07 11:32 pm
attackfish) wrote2012-09-07 11:32 pm
Bittercon: Faith in Speculatve Fiction
Faith -- or even the considered rejection of faith -- is an area often overlooked in world-building for speculative fiction in spite of the impact it's had on our world (for good and bad). How does faith affect the world view and formation of a fictional world?
The first thing you find out about writing a novel is that you know the way you thought you had everything planned out? Not so much. the world that feels so detailed and vivid in your head is full of holes. As you start writing, a few thousand facets of your world get filled in and polished, and these things you didn’t think about before become important enough to ride around in the back of your mind all the time. For me, the consequence to this is that I keep finding potential![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bittercon panel ideas and saying to myself, yes, I have to write this post, because I’m doing things with this in the Novel. Bear with me.
In my novel, the main character is deeply religious. Her religiosity is important, though never central, to the story both politically, because she belongs to a faith that is a somewhat oppressed minority in the country she’s just beginning to rule, but she comes from a nation of people who had only just recently conquered the country she rules, and in that nation, her religion is the dominant group, and also emotionally, to her as a character. Her beliefs also don’t line up perfectly with the standard doctrine of her faith. She’s no radical heretic, but like may of us, she’s a little heterodox. Other characters in the story have their own religious perspectives, either as fervent believers, or as people whose belief is a small part of their lives, or as people who just haven’t thought much about it (actual disbelief being much more difficult in a pre scientific revolution society). And as I’ve been writing, and comparing other books to mine, I’ve noticed that all of those things I just mentioned are rare in the genre.
Which isn’t to say that religion is thin on the ground in the genre, not at all. An author’s religious beliefs, or passionate lack of belief, and a wish to inspire others to share those beliefs has even been the foundation of some of Speculative Fiction’s most popular works. C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass series are allegories for Christianity, and against religion entirely, respectively.
Gods and Goddesses frequently populate fantasy worlds, real, substantial, and willing to grant their followers power. Fantasy reflects its connections to mythology in this way. Mythologies, by their very nature have divine forces acting on the world. The followers of these gods and goddesses have ample proof of their existence, which changes the importance of belief, and makes the gods, for the purposes of the story, another form of functional magic.
In Science Fiction settings, there is a tendency for religion to have fallen by the wayside as science has progressed further. A character in such a setting need never consider a rejection of faith, because society has already done that for him. A lack of a religious belief is as taken for granted as belief in the local gods was in early societies. Or religion doesn’t show up at all. It is just absent all consideration.
The most perplexing treatment religion in Speculative Fiction can receive, at least to me, is the one most often found in Urban Fantasy. The traditional remedies against vampires, and many other evil monsters are religious in origin, and in stories where religion is not otherwise even mentioned, those remedies show up, crosses and holy water for vampires, baptism for fairies, hallowed ground for the risen dead, can all be invoked against the supernatural without anyone seeing this as evidence for Christianity. Characters in on the hunting, even using these symbols may themselves belong to other religions, and no one seems to see a conflict. Even when other gods appear, no one notices a contradiction.
Religion in Speculative Fiction is dealt with in many, many ways, but strangely, enough, just as religion, as an expression of culture and unprovable belief. This is what I’m trying to do, in my novel, and the lack of it in the rest of the genre makes me wonder if I’m just the one odd duck who likes that kind of thing, and if I should scrap it. And this lack makes me wonder, and not just because of my perpetual case of authorial insecurity, why?
What do you think of religion in Speculative Fiction? Any specific examples you like? Dislike? Think it shouldn’t be in the genre at all? Think it should be in the genre more? Do tell.
Written forbittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic adapted from a panel at the 2012 Chicon, the text of which is quoted at the beginning of this post.
The first thing you find out about writing a novel is that you know the way you thought you had everything planned out? Not so much. the world that feels so detailed and vivid in your head is full of holes. As you start writing, a few thousand facets of your world get filled in and polished, and these things you didn’t think about before become important enough to ride around in the back of your mind all the time. For me, the consequence to this is that I keep finding potential
bittercon panel ideas and saying to myself, yes, I have to write this post, because I’m doing things with this in the Novel. Bear with me.In my novel, the main character is deeply religious. Her religiosity is important, though never central, to the story both politically, because she belongs to a faith that is a somewhat oppressed minority in the country she’s just beginning to rule, but she comes from a nation of people who had only just recently conquered the country she rules, and in that nation, her religion is the dominant group, and also emotionally, to her as a character. Her beliefs also don’t line up perfectly with the standard doctrine of her faith. She’s no radical heretic, but like may of us, she’s a little heterodox. Other characters in the story have their own religious perspectives, either as fervent believers, or as people whose belief is a small part of their lives, or as people who just haven’t thought much about it (actual disbelief being much more difficult in a pre scientific revolution society). And as I’ve been writing, and comparing other books to mine, I’ve noticed that all of those things I just mentioned are rare in the genre.
Which isn’t to say that religion is thin on the ground in the genre, not at all. An author’s religious beliefs, or passionate lack of belief, and a wish to inspire others to share those beliefs has even been the foundation of some of Speculative Fiction’s most popular works. C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass series are allegories for Christianity, and against religion entirely, respectively.
Gods and Goddesses frequently populate fantasy worlds, real, substantial, and willing to grant their followers power. Fantasy reflects its connections to mythology in this way. Mythologies, by their very nature have divine forces acting on the world. The followers of these gods and goddesses have ample proof of their existence, which changes the importance of belief, and makes the gods, for the purposes of the story, another form of functional magic.
In Science Fiction settings, there is a tendency for religion to have fallen by the wayside as science has progressed further. A character in such a setting need never consider a rejection of faith, because society has already done that for him. A lack of a religious belief is as taken for granted as belief in the local gods was in early societies. Or religion doesn’t show up at all. It is just absent all consideration.
The most perplexing treatment religion in Speculative Fiction can receive, at least to me, is the one most often found in Urban Fantasy. The traditional remedies against vampires, and many other evil monsters are religious in origin, and in stories where religion is not otherwise even mentioned, those remedies show up, crosses and holy water for vampires, baptism for fairies, hallowed ground for the risen dead, can all be invoked against the supernatural without anyone seeing this as evidence for Christianity. Characters in on the hunting, even using these symbols may themselves belong to other religions, and no one seems to see a conflict. Even when other gods appear, no one notices a contradiction.
Religion in Speculative Fiction is dealt with in many, many ways, but strangely, enough, just as religion, as an expression of culture and unprovable belief. This is what I’m trying to do, in my novel, and the lack of it in the rest of the genre makes me wonder if I’m just the one odd duck who likes that kind of thing, and if I should scrap it. And this lack makes me wonder, and not just because of my perpetual case of authorial insecurity, why?
What do you think of religion in Speculative Fiction? Any specific examples you like? Dislike? Think it shouldn’t be in the genre at all? Think it should be in the genre more? Do tell.
Written for
bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic adapted from a panel at the 2012 Chicon, the text of which is quoted at the beginning of this post.
2/3
Very complicated questions. But to sketch a response...
In general, I feel that to remove religion from either a fantasy or science fiction constructed setting seems too "early 20th Century leftism" -- the idea that religious belief is a delusional substitute for hard data and technocratic solutions. There's also the anti-religious folks mixing "belief in faith" with "belief in an organization." Sometimes those two are the same thing, but sometimes they're not. Although you can also take issue with "belief in faith" and "belief in an organization" for separate reasons. I'm only a Catholic is a loosely cultural sense nowadays, but my weak disbelief in God is a distinct issue from my distaste for the Catholic Church. Even then, I have fond memories of the monks and nuns who helped teach me as a kid, even if I take issue with the hierarchy they're a part of.
While there are and will always be flavors of atheism, I feel that the majority of humanity needs some sort of grand answer to the eternal questions we have. Even if it's not an organized religion, rare is the person who doesn't have a political ideal or a philosophical system to give bedrock to their lives. I may not believe in God or the divinity of Christ, but I still find the diverse and occasionally acrimonious various Christian philosophies interesting food for thought. So in a constructed world setting (an Avatar, a Star Wars) I find it weird and unrealistic when there isn't some sort of mention of what people believe or think in terms of spiritual affairs, more unrealistic than if all people believe in one faith.
That said, there's a definite resistance to religion in mainstream SF, both in terms of content and in fandom. Star Trek is explicitly atheistic humanism. Stargate is not much better. Star Wars has the Force, but it's a Members Only sort of thing that you need to be born into. nBSG featured religion at length, and I still see critiques over the inclusion of it. (Granted, the finale's bizarre swerve into Luddism aggravated that.) Babylon 5 allows for religion to exist in the future, but it's mostly background material. Although it has one particularly nice scene, even if it plays off the trope of aliens being culturally monolithic:
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Re: 2/3
Right now there's a pretty substantial movement, especially in Latin America of people creating culturally Catholic churches, unaffiliated with Rome, ever since the Catholic Church came down on liberation theology, and bizarrely, infertile people getting married, and with each new decision out of Rome, the membership in these churches grows.
Star Wars has the Force, but it's a Members Only sort of thing that you need to be born into.
Yes. In the expanded universe, a couple of other religions show up, but they're mostly portrayed as damaging cults.
nBSG featured religion at length, and I still see critiques over the inclusion of it.
This is doubly ironic, since according to my father, who is a former Mormon, the original BSG was pretty much Mormanism in space.