As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Religion

This Is How It Ends (Deadworld Book 1) by Nick Wilgus

by

Title: This Is How It Ends (Deadworld Book 1) Author: Nick Wilgus. Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Young Adult. Publisher: DSP Publications Pages/Word Count: 276 pages Blurb: High school juniors Billy Gunn and Rory Wilder return from a weekend camping trip to find a mysterious plague has wiped out their small town of Port Moss, Mississippi. The question of why is only the beginning especially when the dead refuse to stay dead. Figuring out what happened is job one for Billy and Rory. But complications quickly set in. Not only do the dead rise, but a freak storm threatens torrential downpours … Read more

Review: Lessons on Destroying the World by Gene Gant.

by

Title: “Lessons on Destroying the World.” Author: Gene Gant Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult. Publisher: Harmony Ink Press Pages: 200 pages Blurb Micah McGhee has struggled all his life against prejudice and abuse. Forced to drop out of school after the death of his mother, Micah works full time to support himself and his alcoholic father. One night, on his way home from a party, Micah’s hard life ends when he’s beaten to death by a street gang. Three days later, Micah awakens with godlike abilities granted by the alien device that resurrected him. His work helping the downtrodden and … Read more

Worldbuilding Week Day Six: Religion

by
Worldbuilding Week

Welcome to the second annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; tools and techniques; and religion. It should be a lot of fun. For our final day, we’re talking about religion, and Jenna Hale will be our moderator. Her take: How many religions exist in the history of the world? Likely you’ll think of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam–the Abrahamic trio–or Buddhism and Hinduism. You might be familiar with Shinto, the varying flavors of paganism and Wicca, … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Caravaggio’s ‘John the Baptist’

by

I just got a real treat last month. I went to Rome and saw my favorite Caravaggio painting in person; ‘John the Baptist’. This playful, ethereal boy is so different than the martyr, the severed head in other versions of John the Baptist. This is also very different from the two other paintings Caravaggio has done of ‘John the Baptist’, which are also in Rome. No shadow of death or despair touches this boy. He teases playfully, as he smiles coyly at us from a veneer of cloth, which enhances his nudity rather than concealing it. What is he subtly … Read more

For Writers: The Future of Religion

by

A bit of a hot topic today – is there religion in your future? Sci fi has a long and sketchy history of dealing with religion. In many stories of the future, religion fades away in the face of reason. In others, it becomes a driving force. And yes, sometimes Sci Fi writers even create their own religions. And we all know how that ends. So my questions today: As a writer, do you include religion in your sci fi, and if so, what’s it like in the future? Will our current religions continue to predominate, will they fade away, … Read more

Could Religion Survive Contact With Extraterrestrials?

by

I’ll be honest with you: I think it’s extremely unlikely that humanity will ever make contact with intelligent life from another planet. I possess no special expertise on the subject. It’s just that my inveterate skepticism tells me that the stupefying vastness of space combined with the relative rarity of evolution producing species capable of interstellar communication — let alone travel — will make such contact extremely unlikely. My skepticism isn’t widely shared. Aside from the UFO industrial complex and the enormous number of science-fiction novels, films, and television franchises that imagine a universe teeming with technologically advanced civilizations, there … Read more

A Gay Messiah

by

Today’s topic comes from QSFer Jim Comer: “Do we need a gay messiah? Do we want one? Basically, despite all of the “Jesus-was-gay” stuff, what would a QUILTBAG messiah be like? What would an LGBT Buddha be like? Do we want a queer Muhammad? Can we tell this kind of story? SF is fill of messiahs, such as Phil Dick’s VALIS books and Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land.’” Jim supplied this link to Rufus Wainwright’s video for the song “Gay Messiah”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV7UGntnEks So let’s tackle this from a sci fi angle – there are many religions in the world … Read more

Building Your Own Religion

by

There’s an old story that goes something like this (via StackExchange): It is widely believed that L. Ron Hubbard and Robert A. Heinlein made a bet in a bar one night either than L. Ron could not create a religion, or to see who could create a religion first. (In the second case, Stranger in a Strange Land is often cited as Heinlein’s effort.) The story has been widely debunked, but it is a fact that sci fi author L. Ron Hubbard came up with Scientology. I often struggle with the role of religion in my sci fi stories – … Read more

Would the Existence of Extraterrestrials Mean the End of Religion?

by

In A Brief History of Time Professor Stephen Hawking asks, “…if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?” Indeed, the more humanity learns about the universe in which we are just a very miniscule part, the less need we seem to have for a higher power. The theory of evolution cogently describes how we as a species came into being, and the Big Bang elegantly enumerates on how the universe itself came into existence. As our scientific understanding expands, … Read more