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“They Denied Us the Hajj!”: Cults and Religion
in Twentieth-Century Western Science Fiction By Julian West
There’s
a conflict involved in any discussion of religion and science fiction. There are certain markers that divide science fiction and fantasy, and they aren’t necessarily logical. One of them is the presence of some kind of religion. If it’s a central element, that tends to make the work seem more like fantasy than science fiction. Nevertheless, there are works of science fiction which do indeed have religion as a theme, and I will discuss some of them here. I do not assert that the works cited present a comprehensive picture, but I’ve tried to illustrate some themes as far as my ignorance will permit. There’s a bias toward pre-1980 fiction, and towards English as the typical language. Apologies in advance for any errors. Ideally, I would have reread all these works, but time did not permit. When science fiction emerged as a distinct form of literature, due to Wells and Verne, it dealt with the impact of technology on society. The development of religion wasn’t considered a topic of interest. The likes of Machen, Lovecraft, and Cabell explored themes involving religion, but not in a science-fictional context. Conan Doyle had Professor Challenger, his hard-headed rationalist scientist, at first skeptical and then totally convinced by spiritualism, in The Land of Mist. One can only be grateful that this terrible idea wasn’t perpetrated on Sherlock Holmes. The American science-fiction magazine tradition didn’t have any great interest in religion, either in the early Gernsback days, or after the Campbell revolution or even the Galaxy more socially aware version. The future was going to be religion-free, or if there was any, it would manage itself privately. Alfred Bester made this absence explicit in The Stars My Destination, where science is the officially accepted religion and actual reli-
Falun Gong—Founder: Li Hongzhi, Founded: 1992, Membership: Possibly hundreds of thousands, Associated Act: Shen Yun.
