208 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/24/16 Porcupine Tree’s Yellow Pixel Dreamscroll”

1. Ob SF:

   Someone mentioned Walter John Williams’s Voice of the Whirlwind on Amazon for 99c, just to say it is also available on Amazon UK for 99p along with another in the same series Wolf Time. Just blagged them both.

   Nice to see more WJW available in the UK, like Cherryh and Bujold their work has been difficult to find.

2. @ Stoic Cynic; Here’s your routine:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdqv5xIsFLM

   As for religion in SFF…. uh, Dune!?

   I don’t read a lot of YA but have recently re-watched a lot of X-Men Evolution thanks to Jay’s reviews on X-Plain The X-Men. Definitely YA or MG and in their Christmas ep not only is Kitty’s Judaism made plain but Rouge and Cyclops actually have a brief but touching conversation about belief and disbelief. And if memory serves the 90s cartoon portrayed Nightcrawler’s Catholicism in a positive light (while, admittedly, deep-sixing Wolverine’s Buddhism),

   And hell, the only SFF TV I’m invested in right now is freakin’ Preacher.

3. @Simon Milligan Re Dune:
   Exactly.

4. So many thoughts. No coherence. Later.

5. @microtherion Interesting! Can you give some SFish examples? Would you say that (apart from Mel Brooks), there are no comparable Jewish themes in SF?

   There are some Jewish themes and Jewish authors. Jews vs Aliens. Michael Burstein includes Jewish themes in some/most of his stories. There are a couple Jewish Vampire stories out there. I’m not impressed by any although one had a fair amount of buzz a couple years ago. I created a Goodreads list for any mention of Jewish vampire stories as I’ve written a really bad one myself which I don’t think is on the list. A Jewish Werewolf story which had an interesting concept. Golems can be found frequently misused in comics and SFF. There is Jewish fiction similar to Christian fiction – I don’t read much of it *shudders*. There is lots more Jewish SFF out there I’m not remembering. My husband is the one for book recommendations. I know we help corrupt young Jews by giving them SFF written by Jews for their Bat/Bar Mitzvah gift. 😀

   ETA: We have shelves of Jewish fiction but don’t separate out our SFF. Laura Resnick and Esther Friesner also come to mind has having Jewish themes or less Christianity in their books.

6. @lurkertype I’d really like to find more historical novels and historical romances that aren’t thinly or not at all disguised Christian self-congratulations; the ones set in ancient Jewish times where the characters relate to YHWH just like evangelicals talk about Jesus are particularly offensive. Some decent pagan Romans would be neat too.

   Exactly the type of thing I had in mind. Although I’ve found the problem also happens in SFF with made-up religions which are thinly disguised versions of Christianity. It’s so natural to them they just don’t realize they are doing it – isn’t this how everyone thinks & does things? Different religions includes Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, other Christians, and you know other people I guess. Non-denominational means for everyone doesn’t it?

7. @Lela E. Buis Because this is a recipe for disaster? I can’t imagine the flame war. Cue Kate Breslin’s and her novel For Such a Time.

   There are plenty of authors who could include religion without doing conversion or offensive marriages. Some authors are just bad or don’t think things through. Others do a very good job at writing their own and the other well.

8. As for religion in SFF…. uh, Dune!?

   If it’s a question of representation, then made up religions (even ones extrapolated from existing ones) aren’t really relevant. (Though Jews do eventually pop up in the Dune universe, but only after the series takes a nosedive.) Citing fantasy religions is a bit like saying, “My book’s plenty diverse. I’ve got elves and dwarves and goblins!” Even if your dwarves are kinda Jewish, and your elves are kinda Indian, it doesn’t work.

9. The argument is not that there are no religious themes or characters in SFF, ever, but rather that religious characters are underrepresented.

   80% of the world’s population are religious. Are 80% of characters in SFF religious? If not, shouldn’t the diversity/representation arguments made about ethnicities and sexual orientations also apply here?

   Personally, I think “representation”, applied uniformly, can lead to absurdity. If 40% of American voters are Republicans, say, must your contemporary American characters reflect that?

   I think that religious people are underrepresented in SFF, but I also think that that is OK. But there is also a debate to be had, which should not be dismissed out of hand.

10. There are plenty of authors who could include religion without doing conversion or offensive marriages. Some authors are just bad or don’t think things through. Others do a very good job at writing their own and the other well.

    I agree, although many people thought Breslin’s book was award-worthy. It was apparently quite well-received by the Christian readership and ended up being strongly supported by the alt-right.

    I thought the original comment was whether we should have a discussion of diversity of religion, though. This is a subject fraught with peril, similar to politics, that you’d never want to bring up at a social gathering. Especially when there are examples like Breslin out there, then people want to steer clear. Because religion is a sensitive subject, I’d expect publishers would also avoid taking on heavy religious themes or works that question Christianity or Islam, for a couple of examples.

    Generally if you have a diversity of writers, then you’ll get a diversity of religions. Usman Malik, for example, often writes about Muslim characters. See “Resurrection Points” for an example.

11. I agree that most SF books have little in the way of religion. I tend to like books that have characters who follow a religious faith as long as it fits the story line. S.M. Stirling’s Change series has multiple religions. The “Wearing the Cape” books the female protagonist is a practicing Catholic.

12. 11) Where the Boys Are

    The point Beale misses in his predictable trajectory is that Disney just made a billion dollars from a film with a female lead. But, Zootopia bursts every one of his awkwardly stitched seams and I understand why he’d refuse to acknowledge its existence. He’s got a narrative, here, and reality isn’t going to get in his way.

    So far, Moana looks like it follows a pattern of hiring popular actors for supporting roles, used to good effect in Aladdin and Mulan. The Lilo and Stitch vibe is strong, for me, given the setting and Maui’s kinetic demeanor. It looks neat and absent watching the thing I can’t say much more than that. Maybe good, maybe not.

    I’m curious to see where Disney will be in a few years. Given production cycles, we’re likely to see what effect Zootopia had on the company– Around 2020.

    @Stoic Cynic:

    (With apologies to Robert E. Howard:)

    “It was so long ago and far away
    I have forgotten the very name mares called me.
    The flank and cutie mark are like a dream,
    And quests and galas are like shadows. I recall
    Only the stillness of that sombre land;
    The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
    The dimness of the everlasting woods.
    Equestria, land of Darkness and the Night.”

    😀

13. SF has always seemed to me to be a place where religion in general and speculations about/kicked off by religious ideas got addressed in interesting and adventurous ways separate from apologetics or evangelism–C. S. Lewis aside. This might be aided by the fact that the subculture as a whole skews a bit secularist/agnostic/non-theist and (as Steve Davidson points out) has a big dose of Jewish-American in its fannish roots. (Second prize goes to the Catholics, particularly Jesuit-educated types like yr. correspondent.)

    To the list of writers who have deployed religious themes, I’d add Phil Farmer, particularly Night of Light (to say nothing of Jesus on Mars). And I recall many conversations with Phil Klass/William Tenn, who once told me, “I began life as a Marxist and am ending as a somewhat religious man–I try, though an atheist, to be devout” and that early in his career “I was trying to write morality, I was writing pieces of prophecy–that’s the word, I was trying to write biblical prophecy for the modern world.”

    Oh, and one of the main characters in Gibson’s Spook Country is a sympathetically protrayed adherent of Santaria. And Mary Doria Russell is a really interesting case–an ex-Catholic convert to Judiaism writing sympathetically about several Jesuits with varying degrees of personal difficulty.

    Anyhow, expectations of representation certainly need to include an understanding of what function the depiction of religious beliefs and practices of a character might have in the work. In some real-world situations/settings, faith and practice and even theological minutiae are quite important, while in others, these things operate in the background. My own antennae (tuned in a time when matters of faith and sect could be deal-breakers in courting or other social matters) are quite sensitive to attempts to push religious topics and sentiments forward in a non-functional way, either explicitly or subtextually.

14. @Clack: 80% of the world’s population are religious. Are 80% of characters in SFF religious? If not, shouldn’t the diversity/representation arguments made about ethnicities and sexual orientations also apply here?

    The obvious distinction is that arguments about diversity and representation regarding ethnicity and sexual orientation argue for marginalized and under-represented people to be better represented in cultural texts. The argument for religious diversity is that the numerical majority should be better represented. And while it’s possible that every religious group can be a numerical minority/marginalized in some places, the majority of times I hear the religious diversity argument being made it’s white Christians in the US claiming to be all persecuted by Starbucks coffeecups, so I tend to knee-jerk a bit at any claim about Christians being under-represented in popular culture.

    And at least in terms of publishing (as opposed to film/television/media), there’s a whole publishing industry dedicated to publishing CHRISTIAN literature as a Google search of ‘christian publishing industry’ will show.

15. io9 did a story about Zootopia and originally they had the male fox as the main character, but at some point they realized they were doing it all wrong and that it would work better with the female rabbit in the lead. (OK, I haven’t seen it yet. I mainly just watched the scene on YouTube with Idris Elba.)

16. Re (20)

    I think (20) addresses a whole host of related, but separate, issues, and some of the file has found new wrinkles to them the original piece didn’t touch.

    I think lurkertype and Tasha are on to something here: often, its already there. The themes of Christianity are so woven into English speaking culture they can crop up, or at least seem to be obvious parallels, everywhere. Whether it’s the TNG episode “Transfiguration” or the very end of Buffy, the concepts can map quite clearly onto that two millennia story. I also thought the Family of Blood two parter in Martha-era Who could be an excellent re-run of Last Temptation. And yes, I’m aware of the creators of some this fiction’s works – I think its why their good examples of the parallels being hammered in deep. But I figured I needed more difficult go-tos than Dune, or Ancillary, or pre off the deep end Dan Simmons.

    Of course, I’m assuming “religion” to have a broader definition than the plot screeching to a halt so a narrowly evangelical version of Christ. When “religion” is thought to be not represented because it isn’t people presenting their strict evangelical bona fide, well, the argument from the numbers falls apart under the weight of a lot of Muslims and Catholics and Hindus. And has been observed before, the evangelical [genre] have the problems with story that can make their works a heavy lift for those outside the club.

    Also, I realize I’m approaching a third rail here, but I think it’s relevant, especially considering the Brexit’s also been discussed: SFnal (or secular) cloaks on religious or ethnic bigotry. A lot of Leave involved “look! Scary Brown Immigrants with their Scary Brown Immigrant Ways!” Reading some of Dr. Harris’ thoughts on Muslims and Muslim immigrants, and their’s the occasional feeling that I’m seeing the educated class justification for the Leave voter who wouldn’t be caught dead at a UKIP rally or saying good things about Nigel Farage.

    What I’m driving it is that this overlaps with some other representational question: isn’t if funny how being able to excise Muslims from any story of the scientific future allows you to hack out a lot of people who are not white, or whose culture might not be utterly western, as well? If a number of people with this new-found love of representation and diversity thinks this covers “those others” maybe I’ll listen.

    Secondly, Ayn Rand has come up already, and how does she fit in? (And if this were several decades ago, how would the various strains of orthodox marxism fit in?) If we’re talking about religion in science fiction, we need a broader base, encompassing other perhaps dogmatisms which may not have anything overtly supernatural, but in their discussion of, their conviction of, what is rationally possible require many a leap of faith.

17. @ Mike Glyer – Your points about Disney trailers are good ones. Can’t argue when I nod my head while reading them.

    Although I feel obliged to point out that there is a tradition in Hollywood about making trailers that have little to do with the movie itself.

    And to whoever pointed out Cranston’s short screen time in Godzilla, just think of him as the Raymond Burr of the 21st Century and you’ll be fine.

18. Religious SF: I loved The Sparrow, which was deeply religious without feeling “preachy” to me.

    Zootopia: waaaaait, the male fox isn’t the protagonist? I got tricked by that trailer but good.

    Frozen: I went into the movie wanting to like it, but it just left me cold. (Badum-tish.) It felt like it was just going through the motions, hitting the usual Disney Masterpiece buttons. I wandered off after Olaf was introduced and never finished watching.

19. Re: Characters “of faith”

    *Headdesk*

    You know when I see the phrase “People of Faith” I remember Nancy Fulda. I think “Oh look, a Christian is trying to get people of all religions to unite against someone who spoke up when the Christian in question treated them badly.” The person who spoke up might have an atheist but they might also have been a nonChristian theist or even a fellow Christian; it is not like people pulling this scam are particularly honest.

    I wonder which particular brand of Christianity Krysta is trying to get non-Christians to help her promote in SF.

    There are plenty of unmarked characters in SFF–characters who don’t perform their religion for the reader–characters who do’t go to church or whatever “on stage.” But that’s like saying there are plenty of characters in SFF whose ethnicity or sexuality is never touched on so they don’t count as white or straight and we need more straight white characters for diversity boo hoo.

    If this was about diversity she’d have left Christianity out of it,

20. @TYP

    What I’m driving it is that this overlaps with some other representational question: isn’t if funny how being able to excise Muslims from any story of the scientific future allows you to hack out a lot of people who are not white, or whose culture might not be utterly western, as well?

    Yeah, I noticed this a while back too. Which is why I’m working to develop a space-opera mil-SF-ish series, in which the protagonist is a Muslim woman from West Africa. (I asked myself: what demographics appear the least often in contemporary SF written by white dudes? Okay, here we go . . .)

21. I recently finished Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station. Judaism is definitely present in that future. As it also is in the past in A Man Lies Dreaming, I also recently read.

    @lurkertype – I occasionally read some Christian fiction for work as I need to keep up with what our patrons read and, yeah…. The ones that really fascinate me, though, are the Amish Christian fiction stories in which, in many cases, that variety of Christianity has been layered on top of an Amish lifestyle. In some cases, they fetishize the Amish as a purer form of Christianity to strive for. It is not my favorite sub-genre by any means. I’m currently reading some smutty romance as a palate cleanser for some Wanda Brunstetter books I’ve been reading. 🙂

22. The themes of Christianity are so woven into English speaking culture they can crop up, or at least seem to be obvious parallels, everywhere.

    I’ve read some discussion to the effect that our modern concepts of fantasy are so based on Christian themes that it won’t really work effectively without them. I disagree, as I think good and evil are fairly universal concepts. However, we do tend to evaluate good and evil from a cultural platform that includes our spiritual/religious legacy.

    My own antennae (tuned in a time when matters of faith and sect could be deal-breakers in courting or other social matters) are quite sensitive to attempts to push religious topics and sentiments forward in a non-functional way, either explicitly or subtextually.

    This is a fairly common complaint, about politics as well as religion. As long as viewpoints are well-integrated and supported by the story, I think they will be well-received. However, when the author’s religious/social/political agenda takes precedence, then readers will roll their eyes.

23. Lela E. Buis I think good and evil are fairly universal concepts.

    Umm depends on how you are defining good and evil? Judaism has a much more nuanced view on it than Christianity. As do a number of other worldwide religions and atheism. This is one of the places I find Christiancreep in fiction:
    heaven/hell
    g-d/devil
    angels/fallen
    fully evil/total good
    Salvation/savior/messiah
    Kind of praying
    Prayer instead of action

24. Re: religion in sff

    It was pretty easy for me: all I had to do was treat my characters’ religion with the realism and sensitivity that I did their sexuality….

    I think I have one character in the Alpennia series so far who is described as being a religious skeptic. But he’s rather specifically skeptical of Catholicism, so I’m not sure that counts as non-religious.

25. And if this were several decades ago, how would the various strains of orthodox marxism fit in?

    The East German writer Franz Fühmann created a collection of stories titled Siäns-Fiktschen, with a satirical-dystopia-type setting. In this fictional Communist country, Marxist materialism is explicitly a religion. Characters exclaim “Thank Material!” One story centers on a character having a rather lovely faith-experience in this religion.

26. @Jack Lint: io9 did a story about Zootopia and originally they had the male fox as the main character, but at some point they realized they were doing it all wrong and that it would work better with the female rabbit in the lead.

    I’m impressed by Disney’s willingness to throw their work out and start over, particularly given the lateness of the hour and the money involved.

27. @ Sean O’Hara; An excellent point if one is aiming to represent people of a particular faith rather than the more nebulous ‘people of faith’ or, indeed, faith in general… or people in general for that matter. I do, however, think one certainly can satisfactorily explore the concepts of religion and diversity using fantastical counterparts. Frankly it seems obtuse to suggest a genre built, in great part, on such metaphors should limit itself to mapping the issues one to one.

    I find the need for personal validation in my fiction to be a bit odd; it seems more apropos of viewing the work as a product rather than art. OTOH, I am a strait male white atheist who is quite well represented in the field (heck, my favorite TV SF character is John Crichton who is all of that and a fellow southerner to boot) so I’m not feeling a bit left out.

    I personally found the Tleilaxu space-jews rather more off-putting in a far (far!) future setting than the more believably synchretized mainstream faiths of the Dune universe. It’s science fiction, extrapolation is what it does. OTOH, the Jesuits in A Case of Conscience (a century in the future) or the different but still recognizable Catholic monks of A Canticle for Leibowitz (a millennia or two in the future) felt natural and proper in their settings.

28. Mike Glyer on June 24, 2016 at 10:51 pm said:
    Wow, RedWombat, are you allowed to talk about Mitford novels that way without endangering your North Carolina citizenship?

    I’ve also never read Look Homeward, Angel and thus am probably beyond redemption.

    The annoying thing is that I really love…oh…community-style books. (Is there a clever name for these?) The ones where the plot problems are solved by a bunch of people working together. You don’t seem to see that except in Superhero ensemble films, and then pretty much they’re just massive battle scenes, not with ordinary people. (One of the things I really loved about Book of Life was that the whole family came along on the hero’s journey.) I wish there were a lot more of them in SFF, and less use of Campbell as a crutch.

29. >The ones where the plot problems are solved by a bunch of people working together.

    This type fiction made a strong appearance in the 2016 Hugo finalists. Seveneves made an effort in this direction. Also check out Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds.

30. Umm depends on how you are defining good and evil? Judaism has a much more nuanced view on it than Christianity. As do a number of other worldwide religions and atheism. This is one of the places I find Christiancreep in fiction:
    heaven/hell
    g-d/devil
    angels/fallen
    fully evil/total good
    Salvation/savior/messiah
    Kind of praying
    Prayer instead of action

    These things actually predate Christianity, though. They’re pretty much endemic in Middle Eastern religions. I do agree that ideas about good and evil will change when you move away from this model, for example into Buddhist and Shinto territory, but I think these include clear definitions of evil, as well. Aren’t demons pretty widespread?

31. RedWombat: I’ve also never read Look Homeward, Angel and thus am probably beyond redemption.

    OMG! And to think I’m acquainted with a big-time Thomas Wolfe scholar, who goes to their gathering every year… (Just don’t tell him I’ve never read that book myself.)

32. Hmm, thinking of religion in SFF…I think fantasy gets a lot of mythology, but only a couple intense delves into Christian theology that I can think of off the top of my head, and most of those seem to be “wizard tries to figure out how magic works, smacks into divine* themed.

    But for me, I think an element comes from the–ah–Golden Age of SF, as it were, namely twelve years old. I grew up in a household that started Catholic and then went through a powerful spasm of evangelical Christianity attached to a particular stepfather, then rapidly reverted to Catholic once he was out of there. And I hated evangelical Christianity as a kid. This particular church was miserable and joyless and nonsensical and wasted valuable reading time. I was furious when I finally figured out that Narnia was Christian allegory, I felt like Lewis was in league with the grown ups at church. My portal fantasy was to get away from all that.

    People are complicated, but I suspect that for a small chunk of us at least, for whom Christianity was an instrument of torture in our youth, who are now writing the books we needed when we were kids, we avoid writing organized religion because we wanted to get away from that.

    (And even now, when I do write religion, it’s my grandmother’s saints and not my stepfather’s church.)

33. Personally, I think “representation”, applied uniformly, can lead to absurdity. If 40% of American voters are Republicans, say, must your contemporary American characters reflect that?

    Your characters should reflect the diversity of the area where the story’s set, including the political diversity. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with the characters or even portray their views positively. You can have your main character be a liberal who’s constantly rolling her eyes at the idiocy she has to deal with.

    I’m currently working on an urban fantasy set in Northern Virginia. The main character’s father is always watching Fox News and muttering about the “Lame Stream Media” and “President Obummer.” Because that’s the sort of person you find in Northern Virginia. There’s another character whose dad is the head of the “Christian Confederation” for Virginia. Because that’s the sort of person you find in Northern Virginia. But there’s also a Muslim girl in the story, along with her dad who’s a BBC reporter, her grandfather who’s a retired professor, and her sister who’s majoring in Women’s Studies. Another character is an agnostic who attends a Catholic school because it has an outstanding academic reputation. Then there’s the lesbian computer programmer, the goth girl who dresses like she’s Dracula’s bride, and the Chinese family that owns a local restaurant. Because those are also the sort of people you find in Northern Virginia.

    Why wouldn’t you want a cast that diverse and with so many potential conflicts?

    The obvious distinction is that arguments about diversity and representation regarding ethnicity and sexual orientation argue for marginalized and under-represented people to be better represented in cultural texts. The argument for religious diversity is that the numerical majority should be better represented

    Religious representation doesn’t just have to be about Christianity. Ms. Marvel is a nice first step, but Muslim-Americans are still underrepresented in fiction (at least in fiction where they aren’t terrorists or terrorist suspects), to say nothing of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Baha’i. Wiccans are probably the only religion to be as well represented as Christianity and non-belief, and that’s only because of the supposed connection between Wicca and historical witchcraft.

34. For those interested in German language SF (Vasha and at least one or two others), here is a video of a TV report about German language apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction (in German, sorry):

    http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/?mode=play&obj=59797

    The books discussed are Der Fuchs by Nis-Momme Stockmann, Die Verteidigung des Paradieses by Thomas von Steinäcker and Eigentlich müssten wir tanzen by Heinz Helle.

    Regarding religion in SF, I have thoughts on this, but no time to write them down right now.

35. I do think it is necessary to separate three different things regarding religion and fiction:
    1) Characters who are religious believers
    2) Religious symbolism and themes in a story
    3) Discussion, extrapolation and exploration of the truth of religious concepts and statements.

    All of these may coexist in the same story, but they are very different things.

36. (11): So this “Vox Day” claims that capitalism doesnt work? Must be a Communist.

37. For Jewish themed stories, in addition to the two Wandering Stars anthologies, Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace edited People of the Book (Prime Books). I believe that one was sort of in response to the “Why is there no Jewish Narnia?” article.

    There is also Lavie Tidhar’s HebrewPunk and a very small anthology called Strange Kaddish.

    Some of Peter S. Beagle’s short stories such as “The Rabbi’s Hobby,” and “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” are clearly Jewish-themed, although he’s pretty clearly a fantasy rathr than an SF author. Ted Chiang has written a golem story – “Seventy-two Letters.”

    And if you want Christian-themed but anti-Christian (and arguably anti religion in general) there’s always Harry Harrison’s “The Streets of Ashkelon” where the very literal minded natives of the planet crucify the idiot missionary priest and are pretty wrecked when he doesn’t rise. There’s also Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man.

38. @Lila E Buis
    Most of the stuff I mentioned is not common to Judaism or the way it’s portrayed in many books is specifically Christian like. Demons? Well if you go into Kabbalah I guess but not a basic part of Judaism. Not as I was taught and not something focused on as central to the faith.

39. Chuck Tingle’s trying to write his way out of the current dystopia.

    https://www.amazon.com/Pounded-Pound-Socioeconomic-Implications-European-ebook/dp/B01HJXVP8G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1466879040&sr=8-2&keywords=pounded+by+the+pound

40. @Sean O’Hara

    Your characters should reflect the diversity of the area where the story’s set, including the political diversity. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with the characters or even portray their views positively.

    Exactly. This.

    Why wouldn’t you want a cast that diverse and with so many potential conflicts?

    I don’t know but more than half the books I read don’t.

    Religious representation doesn’t just have to be about Christianity. Ms. Marvel is a nice first step, but Muslim-Americans are still underrepresented in fiction (at least in fiction where they aren’t terrorists or terrorist suspects), to say nothing of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Baha’i. Wiccans are probably the only religion to be as well represented as Christianity and non-belief, and that’s only because of the supposed connection between Wicca and historical witchcraft.

    Yes, yes, yes.

41. @Micael Gustavsson
    Great points.

    @Cathy
    Thanks for the recommendations! Some I’ve read others are now added to TBR.

42. @Dawn Incognito, if you only saw the first third or so of Frozen, you might perhaps want to revisit it, if you get a chance. Disney actually subverts some tropes. (Which surprised me; I was expecting a cookie-cutter princess movie.)

43. Aren’t demons pretty widespread?

    A “demon” in Buddhism* is, for the most part a very different entity than the one you’re used to in Christianity*.

    * = the flavour I’m used to anyway.

44. Not to be having any heretical thoughts, or anything, but I wonder if demons found their way in from Zoroastrianism or the influence of Greek folk religion on early converts.

    Although you have the serpent in the garden and Satan in Job, the oldest scripture seems more concerned about rival gods than adversarial spirits. And then there’s condemnation of Saul for utilizing a witch to contact the dead. Not so much evidence for demons (though more in some Apocryphal books.)

45. Did a little bit of looking for Japanese Hell (as opposed to the Land of the Dead) and came across a blog post describing some of the levels and tortures contained therein. I would think the oni in those levels closely correspond with the Christian concept of demons.

    (I am fascinated by the diversity of Japanese monsters and ghosts. Some are certainly malevolent, some are tricksters, some just want to be left alone, some are actually helpful. Very different from my preconceived Western notion of supernatural beasties.)

46. Aren’t demons pretty widespread?

    There are lots of folkloric creatures in other belief systems that get translated as demons in English, but that doesn’t mean they’re quite the same as what we mean by demons. A good way to see this is to watch some anime, where you’ll find different shows using Christian, Buddhist or Shinto conceptions of demons with very different results. For instance, check out Nura: the Rise of the Yokai Clan or Twin Star Exorcists, which deal with Japanese demons, then watch Death Parade, which is much more Buddhist in nature, and then … maybe High School DxD, which is full of Western demons with names taken from the Ars Goetia. They’re very different in key respects.

47. Re Judaism in SF, I rather liked that Judaism had survived in the dystopian series that begins with The Psalms of Herod. And in the Kushiel series, Jews and Christians get along well with each other as they have more in common than the dominant religion of Blessed Elua.

48. @Mike Glyer
    Jewish scholars spend a lot of time arguing over what the serpent really is. Satan is more of an attorney than a devil or demon in the Christian sense. Isn’t it nice to know witches were real in some sense of real? This is more going to outsiders rather than our one true G-d (turning away from G-d) – the one for us that is.

49. There’s relatively little discussion of the characters’ religious beliefs or lack thereof in a lot of, especially, sf rather than fantasy. Mostly that’s because it’s not relevant to the story being told. There’s a lot else of everyday life that doesn’t figure in most novels of any kind other than the most irritatingly “literary.”

    But.

    Sometimes it is relevant, or would be if we were talking about real people. Consider Pern. Consider what the world is like for the people of Pern. In the circumstances the people of Pern face, with not only their technology but all memory of it gone, and death periodically raining down from the sky, and the necessity of maintaining corps of Dragonriders who are largely useless when Thread isn’t falling, these people would develop a religion. And it would probably be a fairly nasty one. It’s just frankly unbelievable that these people, in the circumstances they’re in, and with none of the intellectual and cultural values of the founding population preserved, don’t have a religion requiring blood sacrifice. Cheerful, universal atheism is just not on as a possibility in these conditions.

    More broadly, when there are religious characters in sf, it’s rare, by no means unheard of, but rare, that it’s a positive portrayal of a member of any mainstream religion, a Christian or Muslim or Jewish. Okay, maybe sometimes a good, believable Jewish character. Maybe.

    But mostly those characters are there to be either the village idiot, or the Bad Guy, and it can get tiresome.

    Having said that, I think it’s significantly less true than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Religion is far more likely to come up where it naturally should, and significantly less likely to be the kind of cartoon negative portrayal I instinctively brace against. Sometimes they even get to be, far more interesting than just being right, wrong for interesting and complicated reasons!

    Partly I think there was a period of at least a quarter century when I was frequently selecting a certain type of story that had many elements I liked and which satisfied a real need I had in my fiction reading, but which also often came with this particular downside. I think it really is less frequent now, but I think I’m also selecting different kinds of stories.

    Footnote: Portrayal of religion in fantasy is also at risk of being cartoonish . When The Curse of Chalion came out, it was after a string of fantasy books I’d read had “religions” which were cartoonish portrayals of the author’s negative view of Christianity, with the serial numbers barely filed off. This included the assumption that of course the priests and other educated people didn’t really believe this nonsense…

    The Curse of Chalion felt like cool water in the desert, with a complex, interesting religion that the people, including the clergy, believed in, and were not crazy or stupid for doing so. And it wasn’t Christianity with the serial numbers filed off, badly or otherwise!

50. Concerning religion in SF

    Lois Bujold just published her second Penric novella: Penric and the Shaman

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