Poul Anderson's Peter Berg;
CS Lewis' Elwin Ransom;
James Blish's Fr. Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez.
Each of these men struggles with a theological problem generated by his experience on another planet. However, all Christians must struggle with theological problems generated by their experience. In fact, "Israel" means "one who struggles with God."
Something else is true of Ransom but also of Berg and Ruiz-Sanchez and no doubt of other Christians. The Oyarsa of Malacandra, i.e., the planetary angel of Mars, says of Ransom:
"'He is indeed but breathing dust and a careless touch would unmake him. And in his best thoughts there are such things mingled as, if we thought them, our light would perish. But he is in the body of Maleldil and his sins are forgiven.'"
-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT p. 322.
Breathing dust: Adam and us! Christian belief: sinful but saved - or at least approaching salvation. But Buddhists are in essentially the same position, allowing for a completely different conceptual framework, referring not to sin and salvation but to karma (action) and its consequences and enlightenment. Even if we always act rightly from now on - highly unlikely - we will still encounter, and have to accept, inner and outer consequences of past wrong actions. There is still darkness within.
Although Berg, Ransom and Ruiz-Sanchez walk on other planets, their condition is ours.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Very interesting blog piece! Not many SF writers and commentators, aside from yourself and the authors you cited, would have treated Christianity (or Buddhism) with that much interest and respect.
I wondered why you overlooked Nicholas van Rijn, another human Christian who visited planets, but realized that was because we don't see him struggling with a problem the way Peter Berg did. The problems Old Nick faced were largely what I would call "this world" conundrums.
The Oyarsa's comment that if he or one of his fellow angels had "mixed" thoughts combining both good and bad as human do then the light they had would be extinguished points out the very different natures angels have. They are so configured that once they made a choice for or against Maleldil they could never be anything but wholly good or bad. They would not want, for all eternity, to change their decisions. Humans, while they live, still have choices open to them.
Poul Anderson and James Blish were or are among the few science fiction writers willing to treat religion and Christianity seriously in their works. Despite them being both being at least agnostics (altho I think Anderson was less agnostic in his later years). This lack of a serious interest in treating religion seriously among many SF writers is rather odd, considering how most human beings DO believe in some kind of religion. Do agnostic or atheist writers of SF merely not realizing, given past and likely experience, that most people will continue to believe in a faith? Or actively hoping, from hostility to such beliefs, that everyone will be atheists in the future?
It's interesting to partially list how, in many of his stories and novels, we see Poul Anderson taking Christianity seriously, agnostic tho he mostly was. The following list is taken off the top of my head.
THE BROKEN SWORD
THE ENEMY STARS
THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS
ROGUE SWORD
THE HIGH CRUSADE
"Journeys End"
"The Word to Space"
"The Three Cornered Wheel"
SATAN'S WORLD
"The Problem of Pain"
"Kyrie"
THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN
THE MERMAN'S CHILDREN
THE GAME OE EMPIRE
GENESIS
FOR LOVE AND GLORY
I'm sure others could be listed, but this is enough. Also, I omitted works where religion or the faith of a character was mentioned sympathetically, it was not central to the plot of the story. Or merely mentioned in passing. An example being ENSIGN FLANDRY.
Sean
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