Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come
Religions are eradicated.
Stapledon's Last And First Men
The Daughter of Man, the Divine Child and divine birds.
Stapledon's Star Maker
The Cosmic Mind has a vision of the Star Maker creating universes.
Heinlein's Future History
The US becomes a theocracy.
Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land
Christian and Hindu theologies are reproduced as Fosterite and Martian.
Martian Old Ones are visible, audible ghosts.
Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune
Cynical manipulations of popular religions.
In the Dune history, Israel becomes "Secret."
Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Old Ones are one with nature and do not need Christian ministry.
Lewis' Ransom Trilogy
Ransom meets the presiding angel of Malacandra (Mars).
Ransom prevents the Fall of Perelandra (Venus).
A demon manifests on Thulcandra (Earth) but Merlin returns and planetary angels descend.
Corwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind future history series
Christianity goes underground.
Blish's Cities In Flight
Believers/Witnesses proclaim imminent immortality as antithanatics are discovered.
Interstellar nomads invoke "gods of all stars!"
Jorn the Apostle leads the Warriors of God in the Greater Magellanic Cloud.
Blish's The Seedling Stars
Adapted Men believe that they were placed on an extra-solar planet by supernatural "Giants," not by the Colonization Council.
Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy
Roger Bacon might have been demonically inspired.
Demons appear and act on Earth.
A planet explodes when a priest exorcises it.
Anderson's Technic History
The Ythrian New Faith troubles a Christian.
Wodenites convert to Terrestrial religions.
Fr. Axor seeks evidence for the Universal Incarnation.
Olaf Magnusson, indoctrinated, accepts the racist monotheism of the Merseian Roidhunate.
Do some human choth members on Avalon embrace the Ythrian Old Faith?
Anderson's The Corridors Of Time
Matriarchal mysticism meets militant materialism.
Anderson's Time Patrol series
We do not know about the Danellians.
Anderson's Genesis
A far future planetary intelligence re-creates extinct human beings and guides them in the form of gods in which they would in any case have believed at an early stage of their development.
Niven's Known Space future history series
Mad Kdapt-Preacher believed that God made man in His own image because men kept winning wars against kzinti.
Kdaptists prayed wearing human masks.
Pournelle's CoDominium future history series
A dark nebula with a single bright star resembles a hooded, one-eyed face so the Church of Him is founded.
Aldiss' Helliconia Trilogy
The Helliconians are in direct contact with their hereafter.
Stirling's Emberverse
Gods manifest and human beings enter a hereafter.
SM Stirling's and David Drake's The General series
Human beings isolated on an extra-solar planet after the Fall of interstellar civilization reflect anthropocentrism and their interstellar past by calling God "Spirit of Man of the Stars."
The Spirit is believed to be served by angels and to indwell miraculous Avatars.
16 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But Anderson's Technic series shows Christianity as active and vigorous on many planets, such as Aeneas, Nyanza, Dennitza, etc. And I certainly hope not many human members of Ythrian chots adopted the barbaric Old Faith of Ythri
And I hoped you noticed how adherents of the Spirit of Man of the Stars religion used "Endfile," rather than "amen" for concluding prayers. I thought that a neat touch by Drake Stirling!
I thought Heinlein's treatment of religion in some of his books, like DOUBLE STAR and SIXTH COLUMN better than how Asimov handled it. I know a false, invented religion was used as a means of subverting foreign rule in a conquered US, but one chapter shows a sympathetic treatment of Catholicism.
Sean
I could also have mentioned the Draka attempt to revive Norse religion.
What was the religion in DOUBLE STAR?
Kaor, Paul!
I made a mistake mentioning DOUBLE STAR, when it was only SIXTH COLUMN I had in mind. I don't recall any particular mention of religion in DOUBLE, so I'm puzzled over why I mentioned DS.
Terrible tho I consider STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND to be in many ways, I do recall Heinlein writing some sympathetic comments about religion in that book.
Sean
And an Asimov robot somehow got religion.
There have been additions to this post, under Stapledon and Lewis, and other afterthoughts in the combox.
Kaor, Paul!
I noticed! And I do have a few more thoughts about Heinlein's theocratic dictatorship taking over the US, seen mostly in REVOLT IN 2100. I think it's fair to say RAH did not like what is rather vaguely called "evangelical" Protestantism over here. But I simply DON'T see anyone like Nehemiah Scudder arising from within that "movement." If only because there are so many hundreds, even thousands of "evangelical" sects with sharply opposing ideas and beliefs that I simply can't see them UNITING around a Scudder type of politician.
I can see why RAH disliked evangelical Protestantism, from my own personal experience. SOME, not all, are arrogant, presumptuous, and cruel. And far too many are blindly STUPID about science, rejecting out of hand things like evolution and an Earth SCIENTIFICALLY proven to be about 4.5 billion years old, not a mere few thousands. But I don't believe MOST "evangelicals" are bad people. Rather they strive to be as good as their view of Christianity allows them to be. Mind you, I believe them to in error in many ways.
Nor do I believe that most evangelicals would have anything to do with any kind of Nehemiah Scudder style dictatorship. That is not how I believe tyranny is likely to arise in the US. Rather, as Alexis de Tocqueville presciently argued over 150 years ago in DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, despotism will come from power being more and more concentrated in the central gov't. And I believe we are too far down THAT path for comfort.
Sean
Kaor, Sean!
If I recall DOUBLE STAR correctly (it’s been years), there is a mention of the vote on Venus depending partly on theological disputes among the Venusians too subtle for humans to understand. Also, in the past of the society shown, there had been some kind of monastic order (if that’s what it was) that used brainwashing drugs to assure that its members would have no secrets from their Brothers. So, IIRC, there is some mention of religion, and it necessarily hostile to all religion, although not highly favorable either.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Are you sure? I do recall there was a political crisis brewing in the Empire over how and by what means MARS, not Venus, would agree to being incorporated into the Empire. But I might be wrong, it's been too long since I last read DOUBLE STAR.
Regards! Sean
Nicholas,
You seem to be discussing some book other than DOUBLE STAR.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And DOUBLE STAR is one of my favorites of RAH's pre STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND books. I must have read it at least two or three times.
STRANGER is when I date the beginning of Heinlein's catastrophic decline as a writer.
Sean
Kaor, Paul and Sean!
I at least think I’m discussing DOUBLE STAR. The narrator is hired/abducted t9 go to Mars and impersonate the politician Bonforte; he doesn’t go to Venus as I recall, but there is a general election, IIRC, and there is mention of the vote on Venus. If someone has a copy of the book handy, he can check.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Yes, but unlike some of Heinlein's other books, I don't recall any particular discussion of religion in DOUBLE STAR. There was a political crisis revolving around the Supreme Minister, Bonforte, whose enemies badly hurt him, and Bonforte's friends basically shanghaied an actor to impersonate him till he recovered.
Regards! Sean
Nicholas,
Yes but I don't know where you're getting your monastic order from.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The monastic order did not appear as active at the time of DOUBLE STAR, but as having existed previously. When the real Bonforte was recovered, he had been given brainwashing drugs, and the narrator reflects with horror on the use and abuse of such drugs, including by the Brothers of Something, as I recall.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Nicholas,
Thanks.
Paul.
Kaor, Nicholas!
I still find your comments rather puzzling. But that only goes to show I need to reread DOUBLE STAR. Maybe after I finish either Julian May's THE NON-BORN KING or Drake/Stirling's THE FORGE.
Regards! Sean
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