Science fiction, fantasy, and faith: Part 3

You can also read: Part 1 and Part 2

I said I was going to discuss lesser-known authors, but I think I'll begin with famous authors whose use of religious symbolism is not well known.

Before that, though, I thought I'd quickly provide curious readers with practical starting places for authors I mentioned last time. I already did this for some, but not for all:

Anthony Boucher: The short stories "The Quest for Saint Aquin," and "Balaam." The former can be found in the Sacred Visions anthology, and the latter in Other Worlds, Other Gods.

Cordwainer Smith: He's mostly out of print, so you'll probably have to invest in the excellent Rediscovery of Man collection, which includes all of his short works. If you also get Norstrilia, you're set. The stories I mentioned last time are great starting places ("The Dead Lady of Clown Town" always brings tears to my eyes and is simply superb) as well as "Under Old Earth."

James Blish: The 'After Such Knowledge' books are probably all of interest, in this order: A Case of Conscience, Black Easter, The Day After Judgement, and Doctor Mirabilis.

Gene Wolfe: It's all great stuff, but for the religious themes you should start with - The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, and Other Stories, or Storeys From the Old Hotel. Short stories such as "Westwind," "Last Day," "La Befana," "The Seraph From Its Sepulchre," "The Detective of Dreams," "How The Whip Came Back," and "The Eyeflash Miracles" are all wonderful.

Connie Willis: For religious themes see Fire Watch, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Passage. In the last three the theological reflection is pretty subtle, but it is there, and in the end they are faith-affirming rather than faith-denying.

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game is a great read, though it doesn't explicitly deal with religious symbols. Its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, is more concerned with them, particularly as they're worked out in a Catholic colony on a distant planet. His collection Maps In a Mirror has a whole section devoted to religiously-themed short stories. I quite liked "Saving Grace" and "Holy." His introduction to that section delves into the intersection of faith and science fiction, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the topic.

So now that's out of the way I thought I'd mention some famous authors.

Ray Bradbury (1920-) was once a Baptist, and I believe he's become a agnostic-style Unitarian. As recently as 2001 he released A Chapbook For Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers. In any case, his early short stories "The Man" and "The Fire Balloons" deal openly and sympathetically with Christianity, as does his poem "Christus Apollo." His novel Something Wicked This Way Comes is often cited as a religious fantasy. While it deals very clearly with good and evil, I didn't find much religious symbolism, though that may be my own short-sightedness.

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-) is definitely not a Christian. His excellent story "The Star" deals with a religious symbol and lucidly illustrates "the problem of natural evil." Clarke corresponded with C.S. Lewis (you can read their letters), and the two sharply disagreed with one another on many issues. However, Clarke does seem to be something of a mystic and might be considered a deist. This mysticism is illustrated in the whole higher-energy-beings-shaping-human-evolution theme in 2001, and 2010, as well as stories like "Nine Billion Names of God."

Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985), was one of his generation's most brilliant short-story writers and was raised an Episcopalian. He seems to have become some sort of Taoist, though he did return to his roots with his late novel Godbody, which tries to reconcile sexual freedom with Christian values. Many of his beautiful stories like "Slow Sculpture," or "A Saucer of Loneliness" will be of interest to anyone. However, stories such as "Extrapolation," "Take Care of Joey," "Cactus Dance," and "Jorry's Gap" quite clearly deal with spiritual & moral concerns and will resonate with Christian readers.

Robert Silverberg (1935-) is Jewish, and though he appears to have some sympathy for Judaism I'm not aware of how much he practices that religion. His "The Pope of the Chimps" and "Good News From the Vatican" are both wonderful stories about, well, Popes! His novella "Thomas the Proclaimer" is a haunting account of the day the world stood still and a tragic messianic figure. (It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember it being a convincing answer to the question of why God doesn't just give the world an irrefutable, visible sign - because people are crazy enough already, thanks.)

Neal Stephenson (1959-) is a contrarian, and it can be difficult to know what he personally thinks about anything. However, his sprawling novel Cryptonomicon features a heroic Catholic priest, deals with a Japanese man's conversion to Christianity, and has a number of sympathetic references to religious folks. His cyberpunk classic Snow Crash presents religious hysteria as a kind of memetic virus, but also features a Catholic heroine and refers to Jesus and biblical writers as reformers who were seeking to save humanity from the virus.

I'll stop there for now. Soon I'll post about those lesser-known authors.

Part 4 is here.