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Just found the message board after Mr. Card referred to it last night at a book signing in DC. Amazing, all the times I have been to the site, I never noticed the Forums link.
Anyways, one of the things that impresses me about Mr. Card is that he actually mentions religion in his science fiction. It always bothers me that relgion seems to vanish in the eyes of many sci fi authors. Is it because many of them are afraid of being alienated by readers who disagree?
It seems to me that by nature, science fiction readers are going to be open minded. Relgion is such an integral part of humanity's day to day life that it would be impossible to disappear just because we make contact with another species, or start travelling faster than light.
Its one of the things that always bothered me about Star Trek. In almost 20 years of being constantly on the air, no character once mentioned any time of human religious holiday.
Just curious if anyone else has any thoughts.
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Star Trek has actually dealt with religion a fair number of times, but religious people were generally showed to be either ignorant dupes or megalomaniac manipulators.
My guess is that many sci-fi authors show a future without religion because they hope that mankind will outgrow religion just like they hope we outgrow other problems like racism.
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Even then, it was the Bajorans. Other than I think 2 counts of a Christmas tree, both of which may have been fantasies, human relgion seems to have vanished. I would rather see relgions being more tolerant of one another, than disappearing altogether. I guess the exception was Chakotay on Voyager. But even then his whole people had left Earth and gone to another planet to live and practice.
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"Its one of the things that always bothered me about Star Trek. In almost 20 years of being constantly on the air, no character once mentioned any time of human religious holiday."
Specifically, Roddenberry felt that humanity would outgrow religion, and all the series written while Roddenberry was still alive presented a human culture that had for the most part moved "beyond" the need for superstition. Of course, post-Roddenberry shows introduced Amerind mystics, so YMMV.
As has been observed, Babylon 5 did the religion thing much better.
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I'll have to try b5 from netflix. Never seen an episode. I heard once that it has a Jewish character? Something close to my own heart.
One of my favorite novels is Calculating God by Robert J Sawyer. 3 alien races discover that all of their extinction events on their planets occured at the same time paving the way for them to evolve at the same rate. They come to Earth to find out if we have the same geologic history, and we do. They believe there must be a god designing things.
I think of the priest in the original War of the World movie. Before getting fried he says they will not harm them, because if anything a more advanced species would be closer to G-d. He may have been wrong, but I would love to see more sci fi where he wouldn't be.
In some ways I think that the more scientific advances we make seem to point to some kind of intelligent design.
[ March 15, 2005, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: Stephan ]
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Let me warn you, though -- the first season of B5 is kinda rough. There was a thread here with recommendations as to which are the best ones to watch. Let me see if I can dig it up for you.
One of the main characters is Jewish. Another one grew up in an extreme religious community. Another one believes in "a little bit of everything". Another one is agnostic.
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Well, it isn't sci-fi but there is a good fantasy author who had the same gripe about religion not being featured prominently in fantasy stories. So he wrote some. I think the first book is The Oathbound Wizard (by Christopher Stasheff.) They are pretty good books. It's funny that fantasy authors often ignore religion since they are usually writing about a very religious time period. I'm not religious at all but I think you should be true to the times and cultures you're writing about! Posts: 70 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Christopher Stasheff's A Wizard in Rhyme series begins with Her Majesty's Wizard. I really enjoyed the 1st one in that series, and I think I read through the 4th, but the quality went downhill after the 1st, so. . . I haven't bothered with anymore in that series. I think Oathbound Wizard is 2nd, followed by The Secular Wizard 3rd. I think. I'm not sure.
I liked how he incorporated Catholicism into a fanstsy world. It was well done in the 1st book, I thought.
Edit to add: Babylon 5 is my favorite TV show ever. I have all 5 seasons on DVD, as well as "the movie collection." And I like all of it. . even the so-called "awful" season 1. So far as "overall" I would consider that season average, and for a 1st season of a new show, I consider it pretty good. Even if JMS said that even he thought that Infection was so bad that he'd like to knock on each viewer's door and apologize in person for it. And even then I dind't think it wsa *that* bad. Of course, I missed it the 1st time around. I didn't begin watching B5 until the end of the 1st season, and didn't ever see most of it until the DVD's came out. And since I loved the series, I think I was prepared to give the 1st season a bit more "leeway" if you will. So take that for what it's worth.
And for the record, I liked DS9 too, so I know it's possible to like both.
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