Prayer

Fiction reflects life. Fictional characters pray.

(i) Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn makes offerings to St Dismas.

(ii) Anderson's Dominic Flandry addresses his dead fiancee, who will later be canonized, but does not think that he receives an answer.

(iii) SM Stirling's Father Ignatius converses with an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

(iv) Characters in works by Anderson and Stirling meet and converse with gods and goddesses.

(v) CS Lewis' juvenile characters meet Aslan in Narnia and his adult hero, Ransom, is addressed by Maleldil in Perelandra.

(vi) James Blish's magicians meet Satan who has become God.

(vii) Stieg Larsson's Jan Bublanski thinks about life/talks to God in the back of a church.

(viii) Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo not only talks to the Lord in a church but also receives explicit replies! However, I think we understand that the replies are the promptings of Don Camillo's conscience, not a literal divine voice?

(ix) Graphic fantasies are too complicated to summarize here - although John Constantine (and see here), very familiar with demons, once meets the Good Shepherd!

(x) A cartoon that someone cut out and stuck on the notice board in the Lancaster University Religious Studies Department:

a man in pajamas kneels in prayer beside a bed;

a large bearded male figure wearing a horned helmet and holding a hammer hovers above the bed;

the man says, "Oh, I'm sorry, Thor. I thought that, when I said, God," I'd get...well you know...JEHOVAH!"

By God

Poul Anderson shows us gods coming and going over the centuries and millennia in several works of historical science fiction. Hanno the immortal is a Christian during the centuries when it is expedient to be one. Time travelers interact with gods in interesting ways.

In SM Stirling's Against The Tide Of Years (New York, 1999), Chapter Eleven, when a Nantucketer says, "'...by God...," (p. 169), a Babylonian prince wonders, "Which god does he swear by?" (ibid.)

If there were many gods, then each would have to be identified by a particular name whereas, if there is only one, then the single word "God" suffices just as, if there were only one surviving male human being, then he could be addressed indifferently either as "John" or as "Man," although he might still prefer "John." Some monotheists continue to insist on a particular divine name: Allah; Jehovah; Krishna.

Someone pinned a cartoon on the noticeboard in the Lancaster University Religious Studies Department -

a man in pajamas kneels in prayer beside his bed;

above the bed hovers a large male figure with a beard, a horned helmet and a hammer;

the man: "Oh, I'm sorry, Thor! I thought when I said 'God," I'd get, well, you know...Jehovah!"

Gods And God

(In Lancaster University Religious Studies Department, someone displayed a cartoon on the noticeboard. A man in pajamas kneels in prayer beside his bed. Above the bed hovers a familiar figure with a hammer. The man says, "Oh, I'm sorry, Thor. I thought when I said, 'God,' I'd get, well, you know...Jehovah!")

Poul Anderson does present a very few details about human religion after the Long Night. Evalyth "...from a half barbaric part of Kraken..." tells her unborn child, "You will grow up...as the gods meant you should."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. 663, 687.

In accordance with Krakenite custom, Evalyth intends to kill her Atheian husband's killer. In the absence of any contrary evidence, I will assume that Captain Jonafer is also from Atheia, the most civilized of the Allied planets. Jonafer appeals to Evalyth:

"'I hoped...that you'd agree to let the man go...'
"'No.'
"'In the name of God -'
"'Your God.'" (p. 700)

So we seem to have barbaric polytheist Krakenites and civilized monotheist Atheians? But no one makes any comparison of Lokonese cannibalism with Christian communion.