On Religion in SF and Fantasy:
An Interview with Orson Scott Card

by Moira Allen

In your view, how well (or poorly) is religion portrayed in current fantasy and science fiction?

There is little difference on this point between speculative fiction and literary fiction — or any other genre except that of religious fiction itself.

In our culture, intellectuals have become so uniformly a-religious or anti-religious that our fiction, with few exceptions, depicts religious people in only two ways: the followers are ignorant and stupid and easily fooled, and the leaders are exploitative and cynical, manipulating others’ faith for their private benefit.

I know some people who fit those descriptions. But they are in a tiny minority. Most religious people I know are smart, well-educated, independent-minded, stubborn, honest, and generous — at least as much so as the average intellectual, and usually more.

The hostility toward religion among American intellectuals arises, I think, from a clear awareness that it was against a publicly religious culture that their own culture rebelled. Now that rebellion is completely successful in terms of capturing control of all the public instruments of transmission of culture — the universities, the media, and the literature and art — but it has become such a shibboleth of intellectual life to snipe at religion that, like the aging “revolutionaries” of the old Soviet Union, they mindlessly continue to “rebel” in order to defend their tight grip on the establishment. Indeed, those intellectuals are the establishment. And what was once a daring and rebellious stance is now just another example of lockstep conformists mindlessly echoing ideas that they haven’t examined.

More…

I did a Google search for “Doctor Who Catholic” and was directed to Catholic Blogs (www.catholicblogs.com), where these articles were listed.

At Vox Nova:
Vox Nova At the Tele: Doctor Who, Partners In Crime

At Veritas nunquam perit:
It’s bigger on the inside than on the outside. (A reference to the Doctor’s mode of travel, the TARDIS). He’s a Catholic seminarian and on his sidebar he lists as one of his current reads a novelization of based on the new Doctor Who episodes.

There’s got to more out there than this, so I’ll keep looking.

Yesterday I mentioned that I thought the intermittently long-running British television series Doctor Who was no longer suitable for children.

I received as gifts the 1st and 2nd seasons of the brand new version of the show that they’re doing now, and after watching the 1st season episodes I’ve banned it from my house due to unacceptable sexual references. Too bad. When I was a kid watching the Doctor there was no hanky-panky in the Tardis: no mention of people waking up in bed with their executioners (Capt. Jack Harkness), no allusions to the female companion and her boyfriend getting a hotel room and spending the night (Rose and her boyfriend–Micky, I think his name is…), no long, lingering kisses between the Doctor and his female companion (the Doctor and Rose), and certainly no kisses between the Doctor and his male companion (the Doctor and Capt. Jack Harkness).

I was bummed, but oh well. It is a high quality show: the production values (special effects, cinematography, locations, sets, sound, music, costuming, and so on) are much better than when I was watching the show in the 70s and 80s, the stories are as imaginative and vast in scope as they ever were (nothing but the fate of the entire universe is regularly at stake…), and that inimitable British humor is refreshing and enjoyable, but…sigh. Why do they always have to ruin things by the “sophistication” of sexual innuendo and subplot, especially the homosexual references?

I haven’t even removed the shrink wrap from my season 2 episodes…I cringe to imagine what I may find.

I’ll look around the blogosphere a bit to see if other SF-Catholics concur. Comments welcome on this subject. (And all other subjects.)

Not too amazing, I’ll admit. How about the eighth or so thing I ever posted–a review of an old episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.

If you haven’t checked out SciFiCatholic yet, you must. Great stuff.

Here’s something I came across there recently regarding Star Trek:

Thanks to two readers who alerted me to an excellent essay and a news item.

James Pawlak of Crusader Knight sent me Raymond J. Keating’s article “Faith, or Lack Thereof, in Star Trek,” which appears at OrthodoxyToday.org. Most people are probably aware that Gene Roddenberry was an atheist, and it is reflected in his most famous creation, as Keating explains. However, I object to Keating’s insistence that a similar rejection or ignorance of religion exists in most sf or even most TV sf. Though I don’t see much television, I specifically remember a Babylon 5 episode celebrating the diversity of human religion, and it seems the remake of Battlestar Galactica, though I didn’t particularly like what I saw of it, also has religion on its mind.

“Several conservatives writing on NR seemed to wrestle with being fans of this rather liberal television show. It’s an interesting point, including for this self-confessed conservative Trekker. Perhaps it’s as straightforward as a combination of interesting characters, compelling stories that often involve some big issues to debate and discuss, cool space stuff, and general sci-fi geekiness.”

Here at The Sci Fi Catholic where we don’t believe everything has to match our worldview to be good fiction, we’ll just say, “Stop wrestling, Ray.”

(SciFiCatholic, 10/22/07)

LINKS

Blog: The Sci Fi Catholic
http://www.scificatholic.com/

Article: “Faith, or Lack Thereof, in Star Trek”
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/KeatingStarTrek.php

Something odd happened when I was there, though: I tried to leave them a comment, but every time I came near a link, it disappeared. (!) Oh well. I’ll try back later, meanwhile go here:

www.scificatholic.com