Religion in Science Fiction

Science fiction is a genre that imagines other worlds: futures, alternate pasts, different dimensions, and spaces hidden within the present. Science fiction authors populate these speculative worlds with governments and cultures, sciences and technologies, families and communities. Science fiction inevitably, then, asks questions about religion. Will religion exist in our collective future? Will science one day answer our deepest questions? Will technology change what it means to be human? What kinds of “gods” await us? This course explores religion in science fiction, but it is far from a systematic survey. We’ll read sci-fi, fantasy, and scholarly texts. We’ll watch films and television shows, and listen to music. We’ll investigate how science and religion are portrayed in these media, and then we’ll look at how science fiction can itself become part of a religious phenomenon