Stan Gooch & Christopher Evans

Science Fiction as Religion

First published in the UK by Brans Head Books Ltd.

     Science in general refuses to speculate, proffering to its adherents only those facts it considers to be established by virtue of the inductive method. It is useless to ask a scientist - in his working role - such questions as 'why are we here?', or 'how could the universe come into being?', for he will merely say he does not know. Answers of a kind are, of course, available from traditional religious teaching, but they are answers which to most people no longer gel and are almost no better than no answer at all. The gap between discoveries on the frontiers of science and their assimilation into some useful cosmological theory is already immense, and there is real danger that it may grow wider still. To the working scientist, this is not necessarily alarming. He realises that technology can easily outstrip philosophy, and holding himself to be a technologist he is content to leave it to the philosopher to make sense of his discoveries. To the vast majority of mankind, however, who are still not yet scientists by any stretch of the imagination but who are never the less steadily acquiring a more articulate curiosity which modern telecommunications only serve to titillate, this attitude is basically unsatisfying. In their heart of hearts most people still want some fairly simple, reasonably logical answers to the questions that human beings have always asked - answers which will ease the chill which we have all felt when, in the small hours of the morning, we wonder about life and death, time and space, creation and destruction.
      Such questions do need answering. And if science and present day philosophy - currently obsessed with semantics and linguistics - seem unprepared to help while the great world religions offer up only their outdated, time worn and implausible concepts, then the field is ripe as never before for stop gap systems, pseudo scientific philosophies, quasi technological cults and new messiahs to emerge. They are in fact already here, and there is good evidence that their strength is growing. In particular, for the purposes of this essay, we have science fiction. Science fiction fandom is one of the fastest growing of these movements in existence.

     Can it be, one asks, that science fiction succeeds where science itself fails? The answer appears to be yes. SF is itself a surrogate belief system, though not of course the only one available. Others are Ufology, Scientology, the Aetherius society, Reichian orgone theory and many, many more. Science fiction is not wholly identical with these from several, and even major, points of view. For example, it does not present itself as a belief system in the way that, say, the Aetherius society does. But it does share significant common ground with the more overtly religious modern cults. In turn these share a good deal of common ground with science fiction. We shall need to look both at science fiction as religion and at recent religious movements as science fiction. They seem to be but two sides of one coin. But let us first consider mans apparently dynamic need to believe in something which normally is manifested in religions.

     In his writings on psychoanalysis Freud suggested that the nervous system, or the mind, possesses a fund of what he termed free-floating anxiety. This, he claimed, is anxiety present by construction in our mental constitution which is, so to speak, looking for a home. It has to be used up, or more correctly it has to be ‘invested’, and in this way it becomes tied up or encapsulated. Though this encapsulation does not actually get rid of it, we know where it is and thus we have its measure. If left to float free, this anxiety becomes defused throughout all kinds of situations and behaviours, leaving us permanently ‘on edge’ and generally incapacitated.
     With the notable help of C.G.Jung, it is also possible to think in terms of a free-floating ‘will-to-believe’ and to employ this as a useful analogy. This free-floating will-to-believe, it would seem, also has to be invested and, like free-floating anxiety, if not suitably tied up in appropriate objects and situations it causes vague havoc throughout the whole system, rather like sugar in the petrol or glue in the sump.

     Certainly Jung goes a good way towards such a view in his Flying Saucers: a modern myth. He noted that every reported sighting of flying saucers and every account that suggested that they might actually exist was avidly devoured by the general public, but that any suggestion that they did not exist was steadfastly ignored. He concluded that such events – UFO sightings – were badly needed in psychological terms. They were ‘visionary rumours’ of some deep-seated lack of malaise in the human psyche. That malaise, Jung argued with a flash of anticipatory insight, was due to the collapse of traditional religion. In the terms we have used earlier, one could say that the free-floating will-to-believe, which until quite recently has been successfully invested in traditional religion, was now on the loose again and looking for a home.

     Any detailed comparison of religion and science, or any attempt to show the separate influence of both or any one product, involves us in definitions. What about a definition of religion as a start? A religion is a system of belief in which man relates himself conceptually to the unknown and inexplicable in the universe. Science, on the other hand, is a way of examining the universe to see how we can manipulate it and predict it, and as a consequence of these operations build up a model to explain it.
     In a paper one of us (CE) wrote on Scientology in the American magazine The Humanist, the following criteria was set up which any movement claiming to be (or accused of being) a religion must largely meet.

     It is hardly necessary to add that the question about whether a religion is a religion is not affected in any way by whether or not any of the beliefs held in items 2 and 5 are ‘correct’ or not. It is a characteristic of all religions that their followers believe (not surprisingly) that their own systems are correct and that if inconsistencies exist they are due to the irrationality or lack of insight of the followers of other belief systems.

     Having set up these five criteria for assessing whether or not a system is a religion or not, there are two further points that need to be made. As we have said earlier, until roughly the middle of the 19th century, questions about the meaning of existence, the purpose of the universe – the ‘Why are we here?’ of life – were answered by mainstream religion. From the mid-nineteenth century on, however the rapid evolution of natural science (perhaps most notably the triumphs over scourges of disease, but there were many elements) began to weaken the traditional ‘answering’ role of religion. Sciences such as astronomy, for example were beginning to give some of the actual details of how the universe evolved. One no longer had to appeal, in the first instance, to the mysterious agency of a powerful god.

Not only did science become a good answerer, and then a better answerer, of questions on fundamental matters, but the answers it gave were very different from those given by religion. A credibility gap was opening – a gap that is still widening – although the position is not simple. For it seems, paradoxically, that the more science discovers, the less it is able to explain. That problem aside, the split between science and religion, at this stage, is a formidable one.

     This split between science and religion is the first point. The second point is a reversal of the position – or rather it seems to be more of a would be reversal than any true resolution of the split. For the period we are now entering is one of a surge of new cults and religions that have a significant and unmistakeable quasi-scientific ring. It seems that modern religious strivings can only find satisfactory expression in the terminology of fringe and pop science.
     The very name Scientology (a minor, but growing religious movement) argues a melding or blending of science and religion. Nor is that process in any way merely confined to titles. Whether we look at Scientology, Ufology, the Aetherius society, to Reich or to George de la Warr’s radionics, we find a preoccupation with technological gadgetry. The scientologist has his E-meter, which plays a significant role in the training of the auditor and the advancement of the pre-clear up the many-runged ladder to the highest strata of the movement. Followers of other movements favour various other technical aids. These may be as straight forward as the camera or telescope in the case of Ufologists, or as boldly off-beat as the spiritual energy radiator employed by members of the Aetherius society during times of crisis (see below). In most, if not all cases, the gadgetry serves as quasi-scientific equipment whose physical reality is inarguable but whose role is comprehensible and meaningful only to individuals embroiled in the movement itself. The E-meter, for example, is a piece of apparatus which may easily be described in the terminology of mechanics or electronics, but whose value in the psychological role claimed for it would be a matter of scientific dispute the same presumably is true of the spiritual energy radiator.

     The enthusiasm for devices as such is not hard to understand. To most people, a bit of technological apparatus, provided that it has a wheel turning, a light flashing or a needle wagging, is immediately exciting and somehow true on its own. This is particularly true when the individual himself has a limited scientific background: then the mysterious apparatus acquires an aura of profundity which serves as the physical equivalent of the specialised jargon in which so many movements rely. The E-meter and its analogues are actually their implicit obeisance to the machine age, an unconscious recognition that the icons of today must be cast in the image of jet engine, television set and digital computer.
     The gadgets I have sighted are intended as technical aids and are treated as such by their operators. They are not – as the US Food and Drug Administration found to its embarrassment in its clumsy and ill-dash advised assault on the E-meter – sold or promoted as therapeutic devices. Nevertheless, complicated and incomprehensible equipment has found its way into quasi-medical areas and has there formed a strong platform for various cult-like activities. The best examples are those devices which have lately acquired the generic term of ‘Black Boxes’. They are important because, while few actually have cults built round them, all have acquired cultist significance. At heart they are all really doing the same thing – seeking to demonstrate or prove the existence of some independent mental or psychic process, some élan vital or spiritual component in man. Occasionally the veneer of science is superficially convincing, but it is never necessary to scratch deep before the true nature of the material reveals itself. One is simply being reminded that man is both flesh and soul.

     Why should it be, at a time when religion and science proper have never been further apart, that a proliferation of cults arises whose main function seems to be to bring the two together? Perhaps the answer is itself tied up in the question. Perhaps the unpleasant truth is that we are seeing an attempt at putting science and religion together again before it is ‘too late’? Before, that is, the human mind tears itself into never to be reunited fragments, in a kind of global schizophrenia? This is strongly put, but perhaps not too strongly.

     One further example of this almost frenzied desire to reunite science and religion should be given. The following account is taken from Cults of Unreason (1973) and concerns material actually published by the Aetherius Society, a minor religious group based in London and Los Angeles. As we see, it reads more like science fiction than orthodox religion, but classical religious themes can be seen running through it.

One of the principal, and by no means least exacting duty members of the Society is to participate in frequent bouts of activity known as ‘Spiritual Pushes’. The concept of the Spiritual Push is an important one. All life forms are said to be motivated by, and themselves may utilise, a vital power know to enthusiasts as ‘prana’. For centuries now, the White Powers of this solar system, represented mainly by the Master Aetherius and his allies, have been shoving prana into the Earth and its ungrateful inhabitants for all they are worth.
     The main method of doing this is to bring a giant spaceship – the one generally used is known as ‘Satellite Three’ which is some miles in length – into a tight orbit around the Earth where it acts as a base for a ‘push’ of vital energy. Details of how this is effected are not at all clear, but if we remark that it involves ‘metaphysical manipulations’ and the beaming of ‘magnetic energies’ this should serve to give some idea as to what is going on. During the periods when Satellite Three is in orbit (it is covered by a radiation absorbing screen which renders it invisible and non-responsive to radar signals) members of the Aetherius Society assist by various spiritual exercises, prayers, meditations and the like, thus doing their bit towards re-charging the Earth’s dwindling batteries. There is no doubt that such assistance is appreciated. On numerous such occasions the Master Aetherius and Jesus (who now lives on Venus), together with the Saint Peter and other holy beings, have been unstinting in their praise, and have hinted that the power of their allie’s ‘push’ has been enough to tip the scales during very ticklish moments.

     The saga runs thus. Some time ago our Earth was inspected from afar by highly intelligent fish living on the water-bound planet known as Garouche, situated ‘on the other side of the Milky Way’. These creatures, aptly described as fiends, made it their purpose to ‘annihilate all humanoid life on Terra, by drawing the atmospheric belt’ away from Earth. Happily the plans of these creatures were intercepted by friendly Martians who intervened at a cost of great effort, and some loss of life.

However the attack from the fiends of Garouche was as nothing compared to the fearful duel which took place more recently.

The principal problem seems to have been an evil scientist by the name of Lubek who had ‘for hundreds of years….thrown the whole of his energies into amassing occult data’. Being one of the chief scientific advisors to none other than Satan himself, Lubek made it his business to keep abreast of all the latest developments in science and technology and had devised a massive computer complex known as Egog which covered ten square miles of land – in the lower astral realms of course. Into this impressive instrument the evil scientist had steadily been feeding all the occult data of the universe and was also developing software to match.

     The possession of this huge data bank, which would in due course fall into the hands of Satan, posed a real threat to the Forces of Good, as Aetherius, Jesus and others were not slow to realise. Fortunately, Lubek, like so many terrestrial scientists of his ilk, became so wrapped up in the intricacies of his computer’s mechanics and in the spectacular programming problems it provided, that he began to waver from his goal. As the Aetherius Society newsletter of July 1969 puts it, he ‘became more and more the pure scientist and less and less concerned with the dog-eats-dog politics of the lower astral kingdoms. His whole mind was turned to the improvement of his computer system.’
     Before long Lubek found himself challenged by the feudal barons of the astral realms who, taking advantage of his preoccupation with Egog, strove to unseat him in Satan’s favour. It was at this point, with their enemies divided by internal bickerings, that Aetherius decided to strike. Backed by the concerted ‘pushing’ and other metaphysical efforts of Aetherius Society members on earth, and numerous emergency gatherings at their headquarters in London, Los Angeles and elsewhere, a James Bond mission was launched to seek out Lubek’s computer and destroy it.
     It was a grim but stirring time. On 24th May 1969 at two o’clock in the morning, Dr. George King (earthly leader of the Aetherius Society) ordered the spiritual energy radiator switched on ‘in the reciprocating fashion’ in an attempt to stave off an assault by Lubek on his headquarters. This wonderful device - there are, unhappily, only too few on the planet – consists of a series of simple rotating parts, activated by an electric motor and allegedly emanating prana or some similar vital force in the common good. Lubek apparently received the spiritual equivalent of a thick ear from the device but, having the ever-curious mind of the scientist, could not refrain from sticking around to examine it in detail. It was a fatal error, for while thus engrossed he was attacked by the forces of good, rendered unconscious and removed by them, very sensibly, to a special satellite which they had placed in orbit as a prison station. Explosive charges were then planted in appropriate places and the computer, ‘so painstakingly built and educated throughout the years, disintegrated into a mass of twisted wires and shattered crystal in a matter of seconds.’

It is important to realise that this material, no matter how outlandish it may seem to the outside observer, is accepted almost without question by adherents of George King and his Society. Periods of Spiritual Push are taken with complete seriousness and crises such as that engendered by Lubek and his Egog are treated with the awe engendered in most people by international upheavals.

     But the Aetherius Society is just one example of this trend in modern quasi-religious thought. In our view, a great many books and treatises currently presented as fact could, by and large, be described as science fiction – that is, works of the imagination. While the authors, and their delighted readers, would of course disagree, such a list must include Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods, as well as at least the greater part of such books as John Michell’s View over Atlantis, while books like Flying Saucers Have Landed or The Great Pyramid in Fact and Theory especially appear as fairy stories presented as fact. Most of these volumes are not, strictly speaking, concerned with religion (though Chariots of the Gods is), but they are certainly concerned with belief – more precisely perhaps with the suspension of disbelief.

     Sometimes the blend of religion, science and science fiction is remarkable. For example, when L. Ron Hubbard launched Dianetics (later to evolve into Scientology) it was in the pages of John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. In his enthusiastic preview Campbell wrote:
Next months issue will, I believe, cause one full scale explosion across the country. We are carrying a sixteen thousand word article entitled ‘Dianetics…An Introduction to a New Science’ by L. Ron Hubbard. It will, I believe, be the first publication of the material. It is, I assure you, in full and absolute sincerity, one of the most important articles ever published. In this article reporting on Hubbard’s own research into the engineering question of how the human mind operates, immensely important basic discoveries are related.
     This is now wild theory. It is not mysticism. It is a coldly precise engineering description of how the human mind operates, and how to go about restoring correct operation tested and used on some two hundred and fifty cases. And it makes only one overall claim: the methods logically developed from that description work. The memory stimulation technique is so powerful that, within thirty minutes of entering therapy most people will recall in full detail their own birth. I have observed it in action, and used the techniques myself.

     Campbell, incidentally, had had a sound scientific training, graduating in engineering from Duke University and for a time working in the laboratories of Mack Trucks Inc. this training of course did not prevent him later also espousing the ‘Hieronymous machine’. It resembled the other machines we have discussed in that it consisted of a rudimentary circuit in a box along with some electrical components. It had no power supply. The simplest form of the machine involved drawing the circuit on a piece of paper and using that instead. Nonetheless, Campbell described the wonders of this machine to the World Science Fiction Convention in London in 1957.
    A.E. Van Vogt, perhaps one of the most outstanding science fiction writers, similarly championed Hubbard’s Dianetics. He not only wrote an sf novel based on the power of Scientological insights (The Universe Makers) but took up the actual practice of Dianetics. At the time of writing he still practices it on a semi-professional basis.
     It is clear therefore that many of these modern movements not only influence and feed sf in a wholly public and direct way, but they are also themselves in receipt of inspiration from sf sources. This, incidentally, is quite different from an author writing an imaginative novel involving cult which he himself does not believe in. for example, Harry Harrison’s The Streets of Ashkelon does not purvey religion, but only a religious viewpoint adopted for the sake of argument, and for the sake of the story. The same goes for Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz a fine tale of saints and sinners and the Church as scientist. C.S. Lewis’s novels however (The Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet and many others) are a very notable exception, not only portraying, but quite openly and deliberately purveying the religious view. These are the devout novels of a devout believer, and as such they are avowedly polemical and evangelical.

     To revert to the self-religion tie-up, L. Ron Hubbard was of course himself a science fiction writer at one time, and a very prolific and imaginative one. His History of Man, an allegedly factual account of man’s past, recalled by Hubbard himself from a reincarnationist viewpoint during long sessions of introspection, is worth reading because it reveals the link between sf concepts and the Scientologist’s religious philosophy.

     According to Hubbard we are devolved Thetans. Thetans are indestructible, immortal, omnipotent beings. They sat around for a few trillion years and finally out boredom began playing ‘matter games’. They created various universes. Then, however, they became ensnared in one of their own creations – trapped in matter, energy, space and time. Nowadays we have forgotten that we are Thetans and go around thinking we are bodies. Numerous ‘explanations’ are derived from this basic state of affairs. For example, the habit of smoking is apparently a memory of the age of volcanoes. At our ‘death’ we pass to one of the reporting stations (e.g. Mars), receive a forgetter implant, and are once again shot down into a body about to be born.

     As in the case of the Aetherius Society, it is hard for the outsider to distinguish these writings from sf – except on one criterion. Even this turns out to have less force than at first appears. George King of the Aetherius Society, while agreeing that his reports on the astral struggles of good and evil read like science fiction, claims that they are ‘true in every detail’. This points to the apparently crucial difference between sf itself and sf religions – namely that the religious followers literally believe their leaders’ astonishing accounts to be true. They believe equally literally, that their black boxes and radionics gadgets really work – not in any auto-suggestive sense, but by actual, physical, though subtle, radiations and emanations.

     Now, if we take an sf fan and ask him whether he literally believes in Tralfamadore, or literally believes there are men on Mars, literally believes in anti-gravity devices or matter transmitters, he will say no. While no doubt insisting that sf is very definitely about possible futures (or pasts), he recognises and admits that the stories produced by sf writers are works of imagination and not works of fact, as science defines fact. Then we must pause however, and say that the sf fan is not telling the whole truth, even though he may think he is. For it is by no means an untenable viewpoint to suggest that sf readers do react to certain major novels very much as if they were true. These novels, interestingly enough, on examination can be shown to contain at least as many of the elements that have powered the great religions.

     Let us first take Frank Herbert’s bestseller Dune. It is on any standard an interesting and involving book, many-layered and intricate – but there is more. It is also the story of a saviour of desert people – Prince Paul – who is going to turn their wilderness into a land of plenty. Is the true appeal of the book – with its desert setting, its nomadic peoples, its saviour rising – perhaps the fact that in many ways it recalls the actual Bible story, the Bible settings, the Redeemer himself? This is, at least, one possibility. Undoubtedly too, such matters as the necessary recycling of actual body-water and all ‘waste’ water on the desert planet strikes today a responsive chord in those concerned by the waste of resources on our own planet Earth. But for the main, let us keep in mind the Messianic element.

     A different, but equally compelling work is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Once again, we have an extensive and intensive book, again many layered and intricate. The story, in its own right, also makes a strong appeal to a complex, highly technical society’s longing for a return to the simple, magical life of childhood (and perhaps of past ages). But again there is more. There is also the story of a fundamental struggle between Good and Evil, and in this sense the story is not only deeply religious, but traditionally so.

     A third ‘cult’ book, or rather threesome of books, is Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Once again this is an expansive book one can lose oneself in – even a work to be lived in. some part of the appeal of books like this, as we have already suggested, is that they provide us with an additional living space (a remark which of course also applies to sf as a whole and to all good literature). The sheer richness of texture is one of the elements that holds us, but once again there is more to it than that.

     Hari Seldon, the hero of the trilogy, is both prophet and messiah. Like a true messiah he rises after death (for he dies at the outset of the story) to appear periodically to his followers in a vision throughout the ensuing thousands of years.
Admittedly the vision is a videotaped recording – but that detail is perhaps a necessary sop to the sf reader’s intellect. Psychohistory as such – Seldon’s alleged mathematical-statistical means of ‘seeing’ and predicting the future – though again tricked out in intellectual vestments, reminds us strongly of mystical, prophetic vision. Hari Seldon, from beyond the grave, leads his peoples through the night of doubt and sorrow, through the Valley of Shadow, and back into the Light.

     As a final example in this category, let us take Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. This is a shorter book than the others mentioned, though certainly no less ingenious and enthralling. What we have here, and really manifestly so, is the story of the spiritual re-birth or awakening of the human race. In the change at the end of the book the dead, corrupting, outlived bodies of the children yield up the soul of man (as does the transcended body of the planet itself). The spirit of man abandons the body of man and moves off, in possession now of immortality and infinity, in search of its destiny. To utter the next remark is to do the book a great injustice – but the story-line is, after all, the ascent of man to heaven. Clarke himself seems particularly keen that we should not miss the religious implications of his story, for the physical forms of the Overlords (who come to study man in his time of spiritual re-birth) is that of the mediaeval devil. All in all, the visionary quality of Clarke’s story would reflect no discredit on, and no professional betrayal by, a Swedenborg or Thomas a Kempis.

     A very important difference between these science fiction stories and religious accounts is however this – in sf stories man is his own saviour (or destroyer): in traditional religion, the spiritual saviour or destroyer comes from without, and from above.

Moving from the particular to the general, a good many sf writers have concerned themselves with future Utopias – with a time when man’s ancient wounds will be healed and all need disappear. Thomas More’s actual Utopia is itself of course considered by many to be one of the earliest forerunners of sf. The question we ask here is whether we are entitled to consider the concept of Utopia as the intellectual version of the mystic’s heaven or Nirvana. In other words, is the psychological urge to conceptualise this blissful future state the same in both cases? Note that we are referring to the psychological or emotional heart of the concept when suggesting that both these visions are the same. For outwardly and superficially, at least, there remain differences. Man does not have to die to reach Utopia (indeed, one of the features of Utopia may be the conferred ability to escape death), but one does have to die to reach Heaven. Yet the defeat of pain and death is still the defeat of pain and death, no matter in what terms one describes it.

True, the Utopia of sf often has one important flaw. It is wholly a standard concept that while 99.9% of the population is blissfully happy, one, or one or two, individuals seek to escape from and change the ‘perfect’ structure. So Clarke’s The City and the Stars, Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day and Huxley’s Brave New World. The reason is always the same – perfect happiness means stagnation. The structure must be smashed to allow progress to begin again, even at the price of universal unhappiness and renewed chaos. In this too, our parallel with the Christian concept of Heaven does not let us down, for Lucifer, in Heaven, takes precisely the same action in the face of universal bliss.
    
     Many religious texts also contain the notion of the opposite state to Heaven – namely Hell and the Apocalypse. (The Apocalypse is perhaps a sort of Hell on Earth, as opposed to Hell somewhere else.) Science fiction has its equivalents of both of these, though ‘Hell on Earth’ is usually preferred to Hell in Outer Space. Doom-warning, end of the world, end of the universe themes have been so consistently around since the inception of sf that there is really no need to dwell on specific examples. Just for the record, however, let us name John Christopher’s Death of Grass. The basic plot of these novels tend to resemble each other fairly closely. Something awful happens – a basic crop or all vegetation dies, a Super-Ice-Age begins or a Super-Nova, a reckless atomic war either destroys all life, or leaves behind a handful of twisted, stunted mutants (in the true manner of Hell, these stunted mutants start work to rediscover atomic weapons). The cause of these awful events is often, though not always, man’s blatant stupidity, greed, selfishness or whatever. He upsets the ecological balance with his industrial processes, fights an annihilating war, sets the atmosphere on fire or eats his larder bare. This is of course the crime of hubris – the prideful attempt of man to assert himself against the gods (or in sf terms, the balance of nature and the forces of nature). So both the religious and the sf reason for the Apocalypse is really the ‘evil’ of man.
    
Once again, we are not disputing we are not disputing here the superficial and external differences between man-made as opposed to God-made Hells. We experience the sf Hell before dying, like the sf Utopia; Mystical Hell is supposed to happen to us after death, like Mystical Heaven. But the psychological and emotional motivation (the underlying, unconscious guilt perhaps) that lies at the back of these negative visions may be in both cases the same.
    
We can move to a still more general level of consideration. Earlier we mentioned the readily demonstrated will-to-believe which characterises many sf fans. Does sf itself show the will-to-believe in any definable sense? Probably yes. Simply to write a story set in the future does not, of course, imply a belief in the future. After all, a scientist might well say he believes that in five years time we shall have a cure for cancer; this does not mean that he is using the notion of future as anything but a hypothetical construct. He would readily add to his statement ‘assuming we are still here’ or ‘assuming no general economic collapse’, and so on.

     From both the readership and authorship of science fiction one receives the distinct impression that the future (for them) is not a hypothetical construct. In sf the future itself is a fact. Note that we say the future itself – not any particular version of that future. Everyone involved in sf would agree that any particular description is only a guess or a hypothesis. But that man, beyond doubt, has a future of some kind, be it pleasant or unpleasant, is not questioned. The belief in the future or in a future is the article of faith. It is a belief, therewith, in a destiny of man.
     Many novels and stories affirm this view quite openly. Childhood’s End and Dune are themselves excellent examples. The view that sf believes in the destiny of man – that sf is the destiny of man! – has been expressed by many writers.
     We pointed out that the difference between the religious cultist and the science fiction cultist was that the former believed want he read and said to be literally true. It seems clear, however, that for the sf cultist also that which is actually a hypothetical construct, the future, is  - literally – true. We have thus reached a point where the ‘one sure distinction’ between religion and sf is beginning to look very unsure. Nor can one stop here.

     The psychological aim of modern religious movements of the kind we have been describing seems to be to unite religion and science. Does science fiction have the same aim? If we are willing to change the terms of definition slightly, the answer must be yes. The psychological aim of sf seems to be to unite science and imagination, or science and wonder. The two, modern religion and science fiction, therewith seem to be struggling towards a common meeting point – though they have as yet not reached it. Also, they are approaching it from opposite directions.

     Religion is aware that it has lost credibility, that it fails to meet the challenge of intellect. It is striving (however inadequately at the moment) to remedy the defect. Similarly, science fiction is aware that science fails to meet the challenge of emotion and experience. Science fiction strives (however inadequately) to infuse those elements into scientific frameworks or cosmologies. Science itself of course can have no sense of wonder – though some scientists manage to have it – and is concerned with such dull matters as dependant variables, repeatable experiments, and with the way things are, not the way things should be. It is concerned only with how, never with why. Yet, nevertheless, science does not satisfy something in the human psyche which religion alone cannot satisfy. (And, as indicated, the converse is equally true.)
It is not enough to say that science fiction differs from science only in that the former is literature and the latter is fact. Science fiction is in now way just science in story form, and some of the science of science fiction will not bear too close scrutiny. Nor is it enough to say that science fiction, in turn, is ‘just literature’. Sf has qualities by no means found in all literature – the sense of wonder, for example. A detective story has no sense of wonder. Science fiction, moreover, is deeply concerned with man’s potential. Much literature is concerned only with man as he is, and it appears to us that those several qualities which are special to sf, and not to literature in general, are those very qualities which sf shares with religion.

     At this point, let us refer back to the five criteria of religion given earlier. It does seem, after all, that science fiction can fully meet most of them, and at least partly meet the remainder.
     Item 1 is fairly straightforward. The devotees of the sf cult require no forcing. The founding fathers are, perhaps, Jules Verne and H.G.Wells. Their mantle falls on all sf writers, who are the priests and custodians of sf beliefs. The reader is possibly the disciple.
     In respect of items 2, 3 and 4, although sf gives many answers in each case, as opposed to ‘the’ answer of a traditional religion, it certainly can in no way be said to duck these issues.
     Item 5 is perhaps the only one that sf as a whole is inclined to avoid. Nonetheless, as we have seen, individual writers are concerned and others are becoming increasingly concerned about such matters as morality – the heart, so to speak, as well as the head of man. Let us say they are working on it. One of the recent ‘Commandments’ formulated by sf, and taken up vigorously by science-fact, is ‘Thou Shalt not Waste’. Another, hopefully, is ‘Thou Shalt not Overpopulate.’
     Science fiction undoubtedly has a Messianic function. It plays John the Baptist to the certain coming of the future – be that Utopian or Apocalyptic. It insists that the future is a fact, regardless of its philosophical non-existence. But in its major Messianic role will sf, like John the Baptist, in time talk itself out of a job? To remind humanity constantly that one day we shall face aliens from outer space ceases to be a very productive occupation once the aliens have arrived. In the same way, speculation about the atmosphere, flora and fauna of planets around other stars will become a trifle empty once we have actually seen and explored a few thousand such. So it may be – or perhaps the future of sf will be as infinite as infinity itself.

   In summary, as one of us has described in more detail in Cults of Unreason, modern religions seem to find it necessary to take unto themselves all the gadgetry of modern science – computers on the astral plane, gods travelling to Earth in space ships, and so on. In a less obvious way it seems that science fiction is finding it increasingly necessary to smuggle in human values and moral issues by the back door. The conclusion is that powerful emotional factors are at work pushing human affairs in a definite direction. We have in our time witnessed religion turning itself into science fiction. Are we now witnessing science fiction turning itself into religion? And if so, can we at least expect science to turn itself into science fiction?

copywrite Christopher Evans & Stan Gooch 1981

republished 2007 Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom