SF Gospel

New review of The Gospel According to Science Fiction

Fledgling SF review site Fruitless Recursion has just released its second issue, which includes a fairly long and very thoughtful review of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. Alvaro Zinos-Amaro doesn't agree with all of my conclusions, but he says the book made him think—which is the highest praise I could hope for. 

"Gabriel McKee’s The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier, a fascinating study of the intersection of theology and SF, is a must-read for anyone who cares to learn more about how SF has explored ideas pertaining to creation, morality, identity, the body/soul conundrum, free will, the problem of evil, the afterlife, messiahs, and of course the nature of faith itself. More than that, it should be read by anyone interested in gaining a wide perspective of SF, one neither constrained to the printed word nor simply relegated to a discussion of its manifestations in popular media... One comes away from McKee’s study with a wondrous sense of the polysemic gospel that SF sings."

Read the full review here.

The issue also includes a review of the third volume in Mike Ashley's historical survey of SF magazines, Gateways to Forever: The Story of Science Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980. (I'm currently on volume 2, covering the '50s and '60s, and I'm finding it an invaluable resource.) The reviews at Fruitless Recursion are intelligent and insightful; I wish this new site the best. 

Religion in the Golden Age: Astounding, July 1939

Golden Age science fiction was atheistic. 

Right?

Or, if not atheistic, at least radically secularist. Its authors presented religion as a dangerous, irrational opponent of scientific inquiry and, therefore, human progress.

Right? 

That's what the conventional wisdom seems to hold, at least. In God in the Movies, Albert J. Bergesen states that SF "turns potential grace experiences into science-like puzzles," de-mystifying the mystical. SF critic Darko Suvin has argued that SF that attempts to incorporate religious ideas produces only "fairy tales." More recently, Books Under the Bridge described, as a foregone conclusion, "the lack of any serious portrayal of religion in science-fiction." And this all started, it seems, in the rationalistic humanism of the authors of SF's golden age, prominent, anti-theist names like Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, whose stories frequently describe the struggle of science against faith. 

But does that attitude accurately describe the golden age? As a test, let's examine the magazine that's often credited with ushering SF out of its Gernsbackian adolescence and toward its maturity: the July 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. What makes this issue stand out? Two stories, primarily. The issue contains A.E. van Vogt's first professional sale, "Black Destroyer," which is probably best known these days as the (very loose) inspiration for Alien. The July 1939 issue also includes Isaac Asimov's "Trends," which wasn't his first story, but was his first sale to uber-editor John W. Campbell, who was to the '40s and '50s what Hugo Gernsback was to the '20s and '30s.

"Trends" certainly seems to support the theory that the golden age was an age of secularism. The story concerns a would-be astronaut named John Harman whose attempts to launch a manned space mission face opposition from a powerful religious zealot. Otis Eldredge, the story's preacher-villain, embodies an extreme vision of faith-reason conflict, stating that "science has gone too far... We must halt it indefinitely, and allow the world to catch up." A newspaper editorial supporting Eldredge's views puts forth an opinion on space travel similar to that of C.S. Lewis:

"It is not given to man to go wheresoever ambition and desire lead him. There are things forever denied him, and aspiring to the stars is one of these... In allowing [Harman] to carry out his evil designs, we make ourselves accessory to the crime, and Divine vengeance will fall on all alike."

The story's conclusion sees rationalistic science triumphant over irrational faith. The point of the story, as suggested by the title, is the swinging of society's pendulum from radical to reactionary and back again—an idea that turns up again, in a more complex manner, in the Foundation series. But the story makes no bones about which side of that swing is better for society. The story is secularist, humanist, agnostic (if not explicitly atheist)—all the things that the conventional wisdom ascribes to Golden Age authors as a whole. Asimov clearly didn't think much of religion, and "Trends" is a powerful statement against the tyranny of dogmatism. 

What of the other era-defining story in this volume? Does "Black Destroyer" have anything to say about religion and society? On the surface, it would appear not. It is a taut adventure story about a group of astronauts who are terrorized by a predatory alien—no preacher-villains here. Where "Trends" wears its philosophy of religion on its sleeve, "Black Destroyer" is more subtle, but it stands in stark contrast to Asimov's story. When the astronauts arrive on the decaying planet of the deadly Coeurl, they ponder the forces that have led to the world's decline:

"There is no record of a culture entering abruptly into the period of contending states. It is always a slow development; and the first step is a merciless questioning of all that was once held sacred. INner certainties cease to exist, are dissolved before the ruthless probings of scientific and analytic minds. The skeptic becomes the highest type of being. 

"I say that this culture ended abruptly in its most flourishing age. The sociological effects of such a catastrophe would be a sudden vanishing of morals, a reversion to almost bestial criminality, unleavened by any sense of ideal, a callous indifference to death."

For van Vogt, religion isn't an opponent to progress, it is the glue that holds a functioning society together. Without it, things fall apart, and the sleep of faith breeds monsters like the Coeurl. Van Vogt's attitude toward religion is one of Protestant rationalism, an almost Weberian consideration of the societal benefits of shared faith. 

The role of religion at the inception of the golden age of SF gets even more complicated with the consideration of the nonfictional content of this issue of Astounding. In 1939 Asimov wasn't just an author, he was also a fan and letterhack, and the magazine that boasted his first sale to Campbell also contains a letter from the young writer. In responding to another reader's comments on the role of women in society (and, by extension, in SF), Asimov shows a very different attitude than that presented in "Trends":

"Who says that only men are responsible for war and repression?... How about Catherine II of Russia? How about Catherine de Medici of France? How about Semiramis of Assyria? How about Queen Elizabeth of England? A sweet lot—not... On the other hand, the great philosophers and the great religious leaders of the world—the ones who taught truth and virtue, kindness and justice—were all, all men."

Of course, the most apparent thing about this letter is its unabashed sexism.* But it's telling that Asimov's example to show the inherent superiority of women over men doesn't come from science, it comes from religion. He presents the highest expression of human achievement as spiritual—quite a surprise from someone who is, today, considered wholly atheist. Taken in this context, "Trends" takes on the appearance not of an attack on faith itself, but on a particular kind of faith, a close-mindedness that has forgotten the wisdom of those great teachers of "truth and virtue, kindness and justice." 

So let's ask it again: was golden age SF atheistic? SF certainly became mystical in the '60s and '70s, and that spirituality had not yet developed. But, more importantly, neither had atheism. The spiritual visions of later authors like Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, and Samuel R. Delany the anti-religious sentiment of Arthur C. Clarke and the later Asimov both grew from seeds planted in the soil of the golden age. But that soil nurtured both equally. The authors of the golden age had a variety of attitudes toward religion, and individual authors could present what seem to us contradictory arguments. The golden age may have had individually atheistic authors, but their attitudes changed over time and were often more complex than present-day understandings of the term allow. Atheism has changed a lot over the last few decades, and assuming Dawkins-style attitudes of even the most secularist of golden age authors is ultimately anachronistic.

*My initial thought on reading this was just how wrong he is, too. The first preacher in Christianity was a woman, for cryin' out loud.**

**My second thought was—wow, is that the first use of "not" as a single-word, humorous negation? Should we add to the list of Asimov's achievements the accurate prediction of Wayne's World?

Illustrations: cover by Graves Gladney; "Trends" illustration by Paul Orban; "Black Destroyer" illustration by Kramer.

Presuppositions about faith in Asimov's, Oct./Nov 2008

The October/November 2008 double issue of Asimov's opens and closes with a pair of excellent novellas. At the top is Nancy Kress's "The Erdmann Nexus," which concerns the emergence of a gestalt consciousness in a nursing home. As the first experiences of this group mind begin to crop up, there are an understandably vast variety of interpretations. The title character, Henry Erdmann, is a 90something physicist whose scientific skepticism makes it difficult for him to accept what's happening. Others in the assisted-living facility have their own interpretations. Among them is Gina Martinelli, a conservative Christian who sees the glimpses of collectivity as a sign of the imminent Second Coming. Contrasted with Gina is Erin Bass, a new-agey mystic who interprets the experiences through the lens of Eastern mysticism (or at least a Westernized version thereof):

"What we see in this world is just maya, the illusion of permanence when in fact, all reality is in constant flux and change. What's happening here is beyond the world of intellectual concepts and distinctions. We're getting glimpses of the mutable nature of reality, the genuine undifferentiated 'suchness' that usually only comes with nirvana. The glimpses are imperfect, but for some reason our collective karma has afforded them to us." 

[If you feel you need a spoiler warning, consider yourself warned—but the strength of Kress's story is more style than surprise.] In the story's final pages, our third-person omnipotent grants us some glimpses inside several characters' minds as they are given the choice to join the group mind or continue their . For Erin Bass, the experience is defined within the terms of her spirituality. It is "satori... oneness with all reality." Similarly, a nameless woman in Shanghai interprets the experience of joining the transcendent mind as "the gods entering her soul." What, then, does Gina Martinelli experience? Unlike Bass, she does not see the experience through the lens of her faith. She experiences transcendence, but does not see Jesus there. She concludes: "If Christ was not there, then this wasn't Heaven. It was a trick of the Cunning One, of Satan who knows a million disguises and sends his demons to mislead the faithful." She rejects the group mind, opting to wait for the Second Coming outside of the collective intelligence. 

What does this say about faith and religious experience? If two non-Christian characters are allowed to interpret their experiences in the vocabulary of their faith, why isn't the Christian character allowed the same leeway? My guess is that Kress's intention was to show that non-Western religions have provided a vocabulary that is better suited to describing transcendent experiences than Christianity has. But that simply isn't true—from Pseudo-Dionysius to Meister Eckhart to Philip K. Dick, Christianity is chock full of mysticism that would allow for the kind of collective experience this story describes to be described quite well. Of course, Gina is presented as having a particularly narrow kind of faith. Perhaps I'm splitting hairs here—after all, I complain about the close-mindedness of conservative Christianity pretty frequently, and ignorance of the history of mysticism is certainly part of that close-mindedness. But even I will allow that conservative Christians have their own strands of mysticism, as the growing popularity of Pentecostalism shows. I would expect that even as stereotypical a Bible-thumper as Gina Martinelli would be able to see her faith reflected in the totality of all existence. To describe a transcendent experience with culturally-specific terms—"satori," "the gods"—and to refuse to allow a character from a different faith-tradition to have the same kind of culturally-specific interpretation strikes me as a double-standard. It's a quibble, really: Martinelli is a pretty minor character, and Kress's story is characteristically good. Nevertheless, that kind of detail does tends to rankle.

At the close of this issue of Asimov's is Robert Reed's similarly-epic novella "Truth." Most of the story takes place in an underground prison containing a mysterious convict. Ramiro is a terrorist, arrested after crossing the Canadian border with a sizable lump of uranium, who seems to come from over a century in the future. Ramiro is introduced as a Muslim—the second page of the story makes references to his "five daily prayers, the salat"—but his story is far more complicated than one might assume. The story details his captors' respect for him, and the wealth of information with which that respect is rewarded. (Of course, the end of the story makes that a bit more complicated, too.) There are no easy answers in "Truth;" it's a story that shows that the world doesn't necessarily fit into the categories we devise to describe it. But unlike Gina Martinelli in "The Erdmann Nexus," Reed's characters are able to question their presuppositions by the story's end.

On top of those great novellas, this issue has a nice SF mystery from usually-a-fantasy-author Brandon Sanderson, a brief parable about the curse of wealth from Leslie What, and a wonderfully elegiac tale of societal collapse from Ian R. MacLeod, all beneath a wonderfully retro cover from Virgil Finlay. (These days not enough magazine covers show fairies riding giant insects shooting at planes, I say.) I'm always surprised to see how low the circulation numbers for Asimov's are, given the always-high quality of the stories they publish... so go buy a copy, ok? 

Oh, by the way

My review of the Fringe pilot, if anyone is interested:

Booooooorrrriiiinnng.

[P.S. Despite my desire to have a one-word review, I must say this: Melting faces at 8 PM? I'm no censor, but, Fox, really? I mean, where I live that's dinnertime.]

Just what do you mean by "apocalypse"?

Reader (and frequent commenter) David Ellis posted the following comment on my review of the season 2 premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: 

"In secularizing their conceptions of the end of the world, such stories (perhaps unknowingly) invert the morality of apocalyptic literature, proposing that the established order must be upheld in the face of destruction."

Are you saying we should WANT apocalypse?!!

My response sums up a lot of my personal thinking about apocalypticism and Revelation. Since I talk about both quite a bit—and since the comments interface won't allow me to put in links or formatting—I thought it might be worthwhile to bring my response out of their exile in the comments section and put it here as a regular post. So here it is:

That depends on how you're defining "apocalypse"; it's got a slew of meanings. 

Do I think the world should end? No. Do I think nuclear war is good? DEFINITELY no. Do I think that the structures of political power from the Roman Empire to the Bush administration are ultimately destructive and dehumanizing? Yes. Some governments and leaders are better than others (Obama-Biden '08!), but power, by its very nature, corrupts. It hurts those who don't have it, and it hurts those who do.

I don't think I've ever stated it outright, but I'm something of a Christian anarchist. I think an important aspect of Christianity—and one that's been pretty much ignored since the conversion of Constantine—is opposition to temporal power in all its forms. The last shall be first, etc. 

So what does that mean for apocalypticism? Well, as I've argued here and elsewhere, the real point of Revelation isn't the destruction of chapters 1-20, but the New Jerusalem of chapter 21. There can be a perfect world; there will be a perfect world—but only if we work to build one outside of the traditional realms of temporal (i.e., political/financial/military) power. (I hope I needn't say that this precludes any sort of violence.)

Of course, this is all armchair rebellion. I don't live on a commune; I have a job; I vote. But I think where one's heart is is important, and after all, "my kingdom is not of this world." In any event, that's what I'm talking about when I talk about apocalypticism.

Disobey!

Recommended reading: 

God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan

io9 interviews Neal Stephenson on science, religion, and Anathem

io9 has posted a brief interview with Neal Stephenson, who has finally returned to proper SF with his latest novel, Anathem. The book takes place on a world divided between the Avout, who are sort of science-monks, and the religious Deolators. This could, of course, fall into some oversimplification traps involving a perceived science/religion conflict, but based on his responses it seems Stephenson knows things are more complex than that. When asked about the (in)compatibility of science and religion, Stephenson replies:

There are many, many examples of legitimate scientists who espouse some form of religious faith, so I don't see any essential hostility. I grew up in a community of church-going scientists and engineers. The recent science/religion fireworks are driven by a theological movement that is as controversial within Christianity as it is in secular culture.

Thank you, Neal, for realizing that not all Christians are creationists!

I hope to be reading Anathem soon, so expect more on Stephenson in the relatively-near-future.

Read the full interview here.

Tessa Dick (and Whitley Streiber?) on Philip K. Dick

Tessa Dick, Philip K. Dick's fifth* and final wife, writes a brief post on her husband's religious experiences Unknown Country. The problem? The site is run by Whitley Streiber, the author of the widely-discredited book Communion. (Discredited why, exactly? Well, my favorite clue that he might be maknig things up is the bit in the sequel, Transformation, where Streiber claims to have seen aliens disguised with scarves and sunglasses complaining about Communion to a bookstore manager in Manhattan. Yeeeeah.) Writing about Philip K. Dick on Streiber's website hints that the two are somehow equivalent. At best that marginalizes Dick; at worst it paints him as a fraud.

Thomas Disch—who eloquently debunks Streiber in a review reprinted in his book On SF—did a bit of marginalizing himself in his otherwise-excellent book The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of. His chapter on religion in SF uses three main examples: Philip K. Dick, L. Ron Hubbard, and Aum Shinrikyu. This isn't exactly nice company to be in, and Disch seems to miss the real point about Dick. Not only did he never drop writing to start a multi-million-dollar religious corporation, not only did he never launch chemical attacks in major cities, he never wanted to. His religious experiences were far more likely to torpedo his career than to send it skyrocketing, so it's a big stretch to argue that he faked his religious experiences for financial gain (the unlikely claims of Anne Mini's suppressed memoir notwithstanding). It's a lot easier to argue that Whitley Streiber did that, though, and accounts of his general unpleasantness make it seem even more likely that his goal was more cash than truth. Philip K. Dick was more interested in philosophical underpinnings of the nature of reality than getting a couple million for film rights. Tessa's short piece on Streiber's site seems to put Philip K. Dick's experiences into the context of Streiber's, which I think is a big, big mistake. Streiber is never going to enter the mainstream of philosophical thought; Philip K. Dick could, and should. 

Far better is her recent The Dim Reflection of Philip K. Dick. It's short—30 pages or so—but it considers Dick on his own terms, which is a far, far better way to consider him. Tessa was married to Phil during his religious experiences in 1974, making this an extremely useful firsthand account of the events of that year, their philosophical underpinnings, and their theological aftermath. Philip K. Dick's ideas are not part of the alien-abduction fad or an attempt to cash in on an outré persona; they are an honest, if eccentric, entry in a long, long line of philosophical mysticism. Tessa herself puts it best:

The message of the visions was always there in Phil's novels and stories. He tended to complicate the message with arcane interpretations and obscure terminology. However, it really is quite simple. This world is not what it appears to be, and many of the scriptures in various traditions tell us that. The Hindus describe the Veil of Maya, which disguises reality and maintains the illusion. The Bible tells us that all is vanity, that we see this world in a defective mirror, and that this world is not our home.

The world is not what it appears to be. That is absolutely the message of Philip K. Dick's fiction and non-fiction, and it's also an important—to my mind central—idea in Christianity. In Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter, my book on Dick's religious experiences, I compared his ideas about the illusory nature of reality with Martin Luther's theology of the cross. According to Luther, the transcendence of God is concealed within the cross on which Christ was crucified—a Dickian idea if ever there was one. Martin Luther, the authors of the Vedas, the Apostle Paul—that is the company Philip K. Dick belongs in. Putting him in the dubious company of Whitley Streiber or L. Ron Hubbard risks marginalizing ideas that deserve better.

*Misidentified at the link in question as his fourth.

[Also of interest: Total Dick-Head's recent interview with Tessa Dick, here.]

Analog, November 2008: Robert J. Sawyer's Wake

Analog will be a particular joy for the next few months: They're serializing Robert J. Sawyer's next novel Wake, the first volume in his WWW trilogy. The first quarter concentrates on Caitlin Decter, a blind-from-birth teenager who becomes a candidate for an experimental implant that may be able to give her sight. Interspersed between the chapters are hints of intriguing events to come: signs that her story will parallel that of Internet's emerging consciousness. There are lots of clever allusions to Helen Keller, who, like the story's developing AI, took time to develop a sense of self. Sawyer quotes her autobiography:

Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I had neither will nor intellect... My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.

The idea of a computer (or network of computers) with a sense of self lends itself quite well to pondering and defining the soul. What makes an artificial mind (or a real one) senseless one second, sentient the next? If there's a downside to Sawyer's latest, it's that its focus on a single, youthful protagonist may limit the opportunity for the learned philosophical dialogs that appear in most of his novels. But Caitlin, like Sawyer, is smart, and there should be plenty to think about in the installments to come.

Also in the November issue of Analog: Paul Levinson's "Unburning Alexandria," a time-travel tale set, if I'm not mistaken, in the world of his novel The Plot to Save Socrates. It's of note here because it co-stars Augustine of Hippo (during the Donatist controversy, no less).

For more on the connection between artificial intelligence and the soul, see chapter 3 of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. 

Serenity comics: Book's next chapter

Shepherd Book, Serenity's itinerant preacher, was the great unexplored mystery of the Firefly 'verse. Clues that the soft-spoken minister was more than he appeared were sprinkled liberally throughout the unjustly-cancelled TV series, making him perhaps the most complex preacher character in SF history. Those secrets may soon be revealed: Dark Horse will be publishing a prequel miniseries, penned by series creator Joss Whedon, exploring Book's backstory. ComicMix, a comics podcast with way too many annoying sound effects, interviews Whedon about the series here (it starts about five minutes in). 

For a bit more, check out my essay on Serenity's complex approach to questions of faith here.

Sarah Connor meets Samson, Delilah, and somebody or other from Babylon

In The Gospel According tyo Science Fiction, I criticized the Terminator franchise for the shallowness of its religious imagery:

Films such as James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998) use the language of Revelation, but they are not describing the catastrophes that must precede the Golden Age. The “end of the world” as depicted in these films is a crisis that the heroes must rush to stop. In secularizing their conceptions of the end of the world, such stories (perhaps unknowingly) invert the morality of apocalyptic literature, proposing that the established order must be upheld in the face of destruction.

One wonders if the producers of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles read that bit and took it to heart: they've been doing their best to build an infrastructure of real apocalypticism underneath the films' surface-only use of Biblical eschatology. In the first season we met Dr. Silberman, Sarah Connor's doctor in the psychiatric hospital in T2, who now sees her apocalyptic visions through a Biblical lens. In the season finale's greatest moment, we saw the Terminator known as Cromartie go on a truly inspired rampage set to the tune of Johnny Cash's end-times masterpiece "When the Man Comes Around."

The season two finale continues in that trend, putting meat on the series' spiritual bones. There's the scene where Sarah and John burst into a storefront Catholic Church, seeking asylum from a killer robot. (The priest interrupts the baptism he's conducting to help them. A bit rude to the parents, I thought, but when bruised-and-bloodied fugitives need help, what's a minister to do?) But the real interesting bit comes at the end, when newly-introduced villain Catherine Weaver (about whom there's a great reveal in the last scene, by the way) starts talking about the computer that we-the-audience know will eventually destroy the world. She names it Babylon—a name with a whole range of possible interpretations. Is it a reference to the Tower of Babel? The Babylonian Captivity? The episode's title—"Samson and Delilah"—certainly points us to the Old Testament (on which more later). But given the series' past eschatological interests, I think we're meant to look to Revelation for our clues. There Babylon is the materialistic city whose destruction allows the construction of the New Jerusalem, the eternal capitol of God's kingdom. This clearly complicates the picture of the end of the world presented in Terminator 2. There, the Connors fight to protect the current, established order from nuclear destruction. In this series, where nuclear destruction is looking increasingly inevitable, they're fighting to overthrow the coming robotic tyranny. "Babylon" isn't the world we live in, but the world that's right around the corner, a world in which reliance on technology has made humans the slaves of our machines. That's the world that Catherine Weaver is trying to create in the form of Babylon—no mystery, then, which character in Revelation she is supposed to be. (15 Killer Robot points to anyone who got the scriptural pun there.)

Also of note is the title's Biblical allusion. In Judges 16, Delilah, a spy for the Philistines, seduces the great Hebrew hero Samson, and while he sleeps she cuts of his hair, which is the source of his power. In this episode, Cameron, the Terminator sent back in time to protect John, goes bad and tries to kill him, but at the end of the episode seems to have gone back to good again. We see a robot's-eye-view in which she overrides her mission to terminate him—but is that a permanent override, or is she trying to trick him so she can kill him later? In any event, he cuts his hair at the end of the episode, suggesting that whatever weakening was going to happen is done. (But would anyone argue that his hair was the source of his power? I always thought it looked a bit goofily mid-90's.) In any event, this show is good and getting better. In a year without a writers' strike The Sarah Connor Chronicles probably wouldn't have made it to season 2, and it looks like it's going to make the most of its amnesty.

Watch "Samson and Delilah" on Fox's website.

Watch it right here, courtesy of Hulu.