Science Fiction and Religion

Date: 9 September 2011
Time: 18.30
Venue: LAB 026, Cambridge campus

All welcome

Science fiction is a literary form which 'exploits the imaginative perspectives of modern science' (David Pringle) and might therefore be presumed to be indifferent or hostile to religious feelings and beliefs. In fact the genre has a strongly metaphysical orientation and many of its most interesting texts take the form of theological thought experiments which probe the conflict between religion and science found in all modern industrial societies.

After a brief account of some of the many different ways in which science fiction can engage with religious ideas, there will be a more detailed consideration of two novels with an explicitly theological dimension, Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man and Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. Finally, Professor Wymer will compare Stanislaw Lem's classic novel Solaris with its film adaptation by Andrei Tarkovsky in order to propose some general conclusions about the relationship between science and religion in science fiction.

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