Bittercon: Faith in Speculatve Fiction
Sep. 7th, 2012 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attackfishFaith -- 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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
3/3
Date: 2012-09-08 05:47 pm (UTC)That's easy. Warhammer 40K.
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Yes, a tabletop war game with endless tie-in novels, many of them shoddy pulp. Yet there are some really good novels that explore the setting, where the state religion plays a key role in everyone's lives. The Imperium worships the God-Emperor of Mankind, an immortal human psychic who himself was, before he became a living corpse on life-support, a militant atheist who did his best to annihilate religion and replace it with scientific humanism in the hope that it would allow humanity to peacefully unify. In that, he Epic Failed. Now the Imperium is a strident theocracy that punishes heresy of any sort with torture and execution. (How are these nutjobs the heroes, you ask? By comparison.)
So a couple of the novels really delve into the religious faith of certain characters -- Gaunt of the Gaunt's Ghosts series gets this in particular -- and the funny thing is, we know that not only is their religion fake, but that their deity hated the concept of religion, and had a special loathing for being worshipped as a god. They know none of that. Yet that faith still allows characters to accomplish amazing feats, and helps them resist the allure and corruption of the dark gods filling the setting. (There actually are gods, you see. They're just horrific monstrosities.)
The Last Church (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Last_Church) by Graham McNeill is the single best exploration of religion in the 40K context. It's about the last priest in the last church on Earth, having a long conversation with the Emperor when he comes to burn down the church. And you can read it online for free! Although the formatting is a little wonky.
Re: 3/3
Date: 2012-09-08 07:25 pm (UTC)So the gods are real, they're just Eldritch Abominations? Joy.
Must... Not... Aquire... a new fandom...
Re: 3/3
Date: 2012-09-08 09:30 pm (UTC)* As much as it can be said to have any nice aspect, 40K is one of the few SF works that actually gets the staggering scale of a galactic empire right. Given that it's 40K, it uses that scale to add to the hopelessness of the setting.
If you do want to acquire it, I'd recommend either Eisenhorn (http://www.amazon.com/Eisenhorn-Warhammer-40-000-Omnibus/dp/1844161560) or Gaunt's Ghosts (http://www.amazon.com/Gaunts-Ghosts-Founding-Dan-Abnett/dp/1844163695/ref=pd_sim_b_2) as a starting point. They come in cheap, handy omnibuses. Three books each for ten bucks. If you want to do it for free, you can lose hours just in the massive TV Tropes entry (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Warhammer40000?from=Main.Warhammer40000).
Re: 3/3
Date: 2012-09-08 10:18 pm (UTC)The nineties show, Brimstone, uses the consent of gods that only exist as long as people believe in them, and applies it to the Abrahamic god, and the main villain's goal is to end that faith globally. It's an unusual take on the Christian mythos, that's for sure. Shame it ended after three episode.
Re: 3/3
Date: 2012-09-09 08:37 pm (UTC)Re: 3/3
Date: 2012-09-09 09:10 pm (UTC)