I need your help #bookstodon. One of the classes I'm taking at the graduate level this semester is Religion & Science Fiction. I read more fantasy, and would like to do my research paper on something that's not obvious (like ST/BS5/Matrix/etc.) & I'd love to use more modern sf rather than the golden age classics.
Anyone have any interesting ideas for my research paper on regarding the intersection of religion and science fiction?
@KitMuse@bookstodon that will be a great project! Some recent sci-fi I can think of with religious undertones include Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, there's a religious aspect woven through the story. The Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi has a religious/feudalism theme. Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather is about a group of nuns aboard a living AI spaceship.
@KitMuse@bookstodon Highly recommend checking out "The Sparrow" and "Children of God" by Mary Doria Russell
I haven't read them, but Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos have religious aspects to them
Frank Herbert's 'Destination Void' and 'The Jesus Incident' are probably too old for what you're looking for, but they might help provide a foundation. Same with Le Guin's 'Left Hand of Darkness'
Neal Stephenson's 'Anathem' is based around a quasi-religious order of mathematician-philosophers
""At the heart of religion, and at the heart of anthropology, and at the heart of science fiction, there are similar concerns, though there are differences in the kinds of stories we tell and the conclusions that we reach." (Russell on The Sparrow)
@Liesvanrompaey@KitMuse@bookstodon I would also recommend The Sparrow. It’s perfect for what you’re looking for. Maybe In Ascension that came out last year as well by Martin McInnes.
@KitMuse@bookstodon It's not an exact match on either count, but particularly given the Hugo drama this year, R.F. Kuang's Babel is worth thinking about.
@KitMuse@bookstodon Charles Stross
the Laundry Files Books. It mixes computer science with demonology and in a later book the true one religion is introduced which is the only real one.
@KitMuse@bookstodon Not so much religion, but an interesting philosophy, Earthseed, from Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.
@KitMuse@bookstodon NK Jemisin's The Killing Moon comes to mind: a society where the dominant religion mandates no locks on house or bedroom doors, to make it easier for sacred assassins to come in and kill you if it's determined you should be sacrificed.
There are some technoshamanist things (powerful AI entities loose in the network, taking the guise of voodoo Loa) in the William Gibson books Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero (sequels to Neuromancer) - seconding the recommendation of Canticle for Leibowitz.
There are some interesting things going on in games as well - there are a number of religions in the Fallout universe lore and in Cyberpunk 2077 too. There are a lot of other Sci-Fi games that explore religion, too many to list!
@KitMuse@bookstodon It is a Golden Age classic but an understudied one: James Blish's After Such Knowledge quartet, a series of novels on the theme of religion, the best one being Black Easter, a story of arms manufacturers who decide to turn to the dark arts because it's the only way to raise the level of destruction after the atomic bomb
In Richard Morgan's "Woken Furies", the third of the Takeshi Kovacs stories, there's a chapter-size vignette of Kovacs visiting a data-storage-facility for uploaded humans that is based on a Buddhist monastery run by a sect known as "The Renouncers".
And in the "Altered Carbon" book, there's the Roman Catholic Church's attitude towards uploading.
@KitMuse@bookstodon Dan Simmons' Hyperion series has an interesting take on the evolution of the Catholic Church embedded in it IIRC, particularly in the later novels.
@KitMuse@bookstodon You seem to have plenty of suggestions already, but David Weber's Safehold series speaks directly about religion as a tool for control while also praising people for whom it becomes a moral basis. Jane Lindskjold, Diana Paxson, and Lisa Goldstein all have stories of old faiths adapting to modern-ish settings as well, although those three are more urban fantasy than SF.
Good luck with the paper!
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