As I prepare to teach my class on Religion and Science Fiction again, I\u2019ve been thinking about a way to include some engagement with novel series by Octavia Butler and by Margaret Atwood that I\u2019ve avoided having students read in their entirety lately, since there is so much other material and so many other topics that would have to be dropped in order to do so. Depth vs. breadth remains a perennial problem. But I have an idea and I\u2019m interested in feedback on it. The last time I included Atwood, I just had students read\u00a0The Year of the Flood<\/em><\/a> from the Oryx and Crake trilogy<\/a>, and it worked okay, for all the strangeness of dropping students into the middle of a trilogy.\u00a0 That second of the three novels has the hymns of the God\u2019s Gardeners<\/a>, a fictional religious group featured in the novels. I blogged about them<\/a> previously. I am thinking of perhaps providing excerpts from the fictional scripture of Earthseed, the Books of the Living, and from the hymns of the God\u2019s Gardeners, as reading. These could be among the assigned readings when the class focuses on the topic of fictional religions in the real world.<\/p>\n What do you think of this idea? I\u2019m in two minds, to be honest. It is rather like trying to teach about Jediism without requiring viewing of at least some part of the Star Wars movies. But even there, however confusing it might be, one could just use an episode of Clone Wars. What can one do to provide a small but sufficient glimpse of Butler\u2019s and Atwood\u2019s fictional religions within their narrated fiction? Or is it better to not cover this topic than to try this and fail to do justice to the brilliance and achievement of these two authors?<\/p>\n Now that I think about it, I\u2019ll have to revisit this topic soon and in the process also ask related questions about Dune. In the meantime, here are some other links related to this post:<\/p>\n David Gowler recently highlighted the relevance of Butler\u2019s message<\/a> viewed through the lens of his ongoing project about the reception of the Bible.\u00a0On Butler\u2019s own religious views, see the article from a few years ago \u201cHer Eyes Weren\u2019t Watching God.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Here\u2019s a taste:<\/p>\n Butler\u2019s atheism was never a rabid middle finger flipped at organized religion. She critiqued fundamentalism in\u00a0Parable of the Talents<\/em>\u00a0by dramatizing the rise of a neo-fascist Christian movement that attacks Lauren\u2019s community. But she never demonized faith. Instead, her empathetic brand of secularism calls for tolerance, long-term collaboration, and the embrace of multiculturalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From a recent article in\u00a0Detroit News<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Alys Eve Weinbaum, a professor of English at the University of Washington, says Butler broke open a genre \u201cdominated by white men and white readers.\u201d She is now praised as a visionary who anticipated many of the issues in the news today, from the coronavirus to climate change to the election of President Donald Trump. In her 1998 novel \u201cParable of the Talents,\u201d the right-wing Andrew Steele Jarret runs for president in 2032 with a message familiar to current readers.<\/p>\n \u201cJarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, \u2018simpler\u2019 time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him,\u201d Butler wrote. \u201cThere was never such a time in this country. But these days when more half the people in the country can\u2019t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Jarret\u2019s campaign theme: \u201cHelp us to make America great again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe (Butler) seems to have seen the real future coming in a way few other writers did,\u201d says Gerry Caravan, an associate professor at Marquette University who is co-editing Butler\u2019s work for the Library of America. \u201cIt\u2019s hard not to read the books and think \u2018How did she know?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Octavia Butler\u2019s Prescient Sci-Fi<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n