Friday 28 April 2017

"Lions"

When we read a fictional account of a very remote future, e.g.:

The Time Machine by HG Wells;
Last And First Men by Olaf Stapledon;
Genesis by Poul Anderson -

- we do not expect any modern religions to have survived into that future. Indeed, in each of these three cases, our human species no longer exists. In CS Lewis' uniquely theological science fictional reply to Wellsian-Stapledonian sf, divine rule still exists elsewhere in the Solar System and there will be a version of the Second Coming in a prophesied future.

Could a sufficiently large catastrophe wipe out a minority religion at an earlier date? After SM Stirling's Change, a woman called Kaur has a brother called Singh. This tells us that they are Sikhs, which the text immediately confirms, and they are the last Sikhs as far as they know.

They consider it funny every time they say that they will fight like lions and she adds "lioness." The reason for their humor has already been explained on the blog. See here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I don't know if the Change exterminated the Sikhs. Perhaps in North America. But while the Change must have been at least as nightmarish in India as the rest of the world, enough Sikhs might have survived there to preserve their community.

Sean