I spent quite a bit of today (when I wasn’t shoveling snow) working on finalizing the syllabus for my religion and science fiction course. The main thing that had to be done was filling in some of the readings (and making some tough choices about what, as interesting as it might be, will have to be omitted).
As it happens, just today IO9 posted links to two sites that discuss the subject – but from radically different viewpoints.
The first, by Teresa Jusino at Tor.com, surveys a range of examples of science fiction that explores religious questions – and the article suggests that the key to interacting with science fiction and religion is precisely in asking the right questions.
The second I had already had drawn to my attention via Pharyngula. A fundamentalist blog called Way Of Life Literature offers a warning: “beware of science fiction.” The blog notes a number of atheists who are famous figures in the history of science fiction, labels evolution as “science fiction” (even though young-earth creationism in fact offers a better fit to the label) and thinks these are reasons enough to dismiss the entire genre.
Personally, I’m pretty sure that religion, just because it was a private matter in the original Star Trek series, wasn’t actually gone. Can anyone doubt that there were Enterprise crew members in red shirts who attributed it to divine providence if they returned from a landing party alive?
On a more serious note, it is striking to note the difference between the two web pages just mentioned. One offers detailed interaction with a range of content, and tries to interact with it in a thoughtful way. The other offers a denunciation of a whole genre through an ad hominem focus – all that we learn is that the author of that web page advises people not to read views that disagree with his own.
I hope that the sort of interaction my students engage in this semester will resemble the former more than the latter.
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