Throughout history, there has been a tendency to depict science and religion as being in conflict with one another. Now, that sentence alone takes several weighty tomes to unpack but one simple corollary is that science fiction has a rough history when it comes to religion, especially real-world religions. While the Force, for example, can easily be woven into a space opera setting, depictions of humanity’s future often gloss over religion, if not outright reject it. During the Golden Age, there was a general assumption that religion was just a phase, one that humanity would outgrow as it reached for the stars. If religion was mentioned, it was in the context of outdated superstitions. That is, most of the time. There are places within the science fiction sphere that treat religion with more than a little respect. Let’s take a look at three of them.

1907 saw the publication of Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson. Now, this work of proto-SF is very much a Christian novel. Benson was ordained, and the book is as much a warning about the perils of atheism as it is a work of fiction. Benson portrays a twenty-first century in which Catholicism is on the verge of destruction thanks to a global rise in secular communism. Some of the strawman arguments against socialism are unintentionally hilarious, while the plot runs largely on convenience as the literal Anti-Christ takes control of the world. However, Benson’s theory that humanity yearns for some spiritual component to their lives, even if a wholly artificial one, has stood the test of time. Lord of the World is unashamedly Catholic propaganda, but its depiction of a war between science and faith casts a long shadow over the genre.

1959’s A Case of Conscience opens with a note from author James Blish explaining in no uncertain terms that this is not a Christian novel, but a novel about a Christian. nevertheless, it still asks important questions, most notably ‘can their be godliness without God?’ This Hugo Award-winner sees a Christian priest travel to an alien world that is without sin, yet has no knowledge of God or religion, leading to a great many musings on the nature of morality and innocence. At the centre of the debate is the idea of original sin – the Christian belief that Eve’s first bite of the apple in Eden is the source of humanity’s damnation. It’s worth pointing out here that this novel is expanded from a short story, and the latter half that has been tacked on is far worse than the original, and does Blish no favours. That being said, the opening half is enthralling, and offers multiple perspectives on the titular crisis without ever favouring one over the others.

1979 witnessed the arrival of The Fountains of Paradise by the legendary Arthur C. Clarke, which won him his second Hugo Award for Best Novel. Here we see a classic Hard SF idea of a space elevator, with the added twist that the only suitable location is a holy site. Here the religion in question is Buddhism rather than Christianity, but the bigger difference is that the conflict between science and faith is far more limited. The majority of the religious elements occur on the distant past, and the time gap between the two leaves the book feeling disjointed. While there is some quite literal separation of science and faith in narrative terms, in thematic terms Clarke takes a neutral eye to both sides. Science as seen here is not a substitute for religion, but perhaps a new line of thinking to sit alongside the myriad faiths of the world.

What these three books have in common is a depiction of faith as a source of morality. religion is not portrayed as backward or primitive, but as something that has value beyond the material. Yet while Benson saw a rejection of faith as the deepest of immoralities, Blish and Clarke are more open to the idea of morality coming from different sources. This more humanist approach is perhaps the lasting legacy of of science fiction, seen here in a kinder light that the stark brutality of their Golden Age contemporaries.