Taking religion (seriously): Jerry Oltion's "Salvation," Robert R. Chase's "...Mr. Roboto," and Sarah K. Castle's "Kukulkan" (Analog, December 2007)

Stories about time travelers who visit ancient Palestine to meet a certain trouble-making preacher are hardly a new thing. Writers from Richard Matheson to Michael Moorcock have used the trope (and, for my money, none have topped the latter's Behold the Man). In the December 2007 issue of Analog, Jerry Oltion takes a crack at the theme in "Salvation." The story opens with a broad picture of religious conservatism as scientist William Winters requests funding for his time travel research from a megachurch called the Universal Church of the Divine Revelation.* Winters is able to convince Rev. Billy Dickerson that time travel will be as great a boon to religion as it will be to science—particularly since it can allow firsthand knowledge of the historical Jesus. Before long the time machine is completed, and Winters and Dickerson's first destination is Jerusalem circa 30 CE.

Which is where the story's real problems begin. First of all, the story seems to treat Jesus as a long-time resident of Jerusalem, rather than an itinerant preacher who spent only six days there. Second, the characters speak two languages to Jesus: Aramaic, which isn't problematic, and Latin, which is. Mel Gibson aside, Greek was the language of the eastern Empire, not Latin, and there's little evidence to suggest that Jesus spoke even that. Third (and most irritatingly, since the story's conclusion hinges on it), Winters speaks to Jesus about "science"—and Jesus knows exactly what he's talking about, with no apparent explanation of the term necessary. Assuming, as the story does, that Jesus did know Latin, and Winters is using the term scientia, they're simply talking about knowledge, and those who practiced scientia in the first century were philosophers, not scientists. The story acts as if Roman philosophers practiced 17th-century style science, which simply isn't the case. Perhaps I've been spoiled by having recently read Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, who painstakingly avoids linguistic anachronisms of this sort, or even more painstakingly explains them when he makes them. The anachronisms in "Salvation" generally just pulled me out of the story. At one point in the story Jesus even states: "This scientific method sounds very much like something I've been thinking all along, but couldn't put into words. Investigate, then explain." It would be one thing if the story made any connection between what Jesus had apparently "been thinking all along" and what we actually have a record of him saying, but as it stands the story is just putting words in his mouth.

None of this is to say that I didn't enjoy "Salvation" (I did) or that I disagree with its ultimate message (I don't—at its core, at least). But the broad strokes this story draws serve to weaken its impact, and a bit more research could have made it into a far more compelling tale. "Salvation" is more fable than treatise, but even fables have a few rules to follow.

This issue of Analog includes tow other stories that tackle their religious content more seriously. Robert R. Chase's "'Domo Arigato,' Says Mr. Roboto" makes good use of its brevity, using a mere 12 pages to paint a moving picture of a self-aware machine and produce and solve a tricky puzzle about that machine's legal status. The story's conclusion takes on a distinct flavor of Cartesian dualism, alluding to "a threshold" between machine and human that more blunt writers might call the soul.

Sarah K. Castle's "Kukulkan" (which seems to be the author's first published story—if so it's an auspicious start) is a tale about tradition. It begins as a character study of Pascual Teotalco, an astronomer of Mayan descent who struggles to hold onto his ancestral culture in a near-future that makes little room for indigenous religion. When aliens land in Guatemala, it is both a challenge to and an affirmation of his beliefs: the alien Cheorka look exactly like the Mayan god Kukulkan, better know as Quetzalcoatl. The story's main focus is on Teotalco's racial identity, but the religious aspects of that identity are certainly an important part of the story, which is well worth reading.

Finally, the letters page of this issue contains even more material on Michael Flynn's "Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo" and its accompanying essay, this time from a reader who wonders if Flynn is arguing that the decline of religion as a cultural foundation of science will lead to the decline of science as well. Flynn's response, again in the medieval style of Aquinas, is no. He notes that, to the contrary, even the most anti-scientific aspects of religion still seek scientific respect:

"Even creationists crave recognition for 'creation science' and contend, contrary to theology, that God can be demonstrated by the material evidences of biochemistry. This is akin to proving the existence of Frank Whittle by careful measurement of particular jet engine components."

*These generically-named megachurches pop up everywhere in SF as a shorthand for a particular caricature of religious institutions. (Another appears in a story in this month's Asimov's, on which more in a few days). Though I understand the desirability of using this kind of shorthand—it's the same thing that allows writers to talk about "time travel" or "FTL drives" without lengthy technical explanations—it is a bit troubling that this particular abbreviation has remained essential unchanged since the Church of the New Revelation in Stranger in a Strange Land. You can't fault Heinlein for accurately predicting megachurches, but you also can't claim his critique is of them is a subtle one.