i was recently invited to interview with TheoFantastique about a paper that i wrote a few years ago about science fiction and religion. the interview is available here.
i'm very interested in using sci-fi as a window for cultural analysis, as is apparent from the way i've used it in the past (in the essay cited, "Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction," which can be found here), in my book Apocalyptic AI, and also in a recent paper i presented at the American Academy of Religion (link here), which i've recently submitted as a full paper for peer review.
one of the things i love about sci-fi is the way it reveals (in many ways) the religious ways we approach technology. sometimes we respond to machines as though they are sacred, sometimes we promote certain religious perspectives (such as transhumanism), sometimes we reject or accept institutional religions, etc. science fiction is a gold mine for thinking about our cultural response to the modern world.
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I loved "The ways in which sci-fi provides religious incentives.... When I was a kid, reading Clarke's passage quoted here:
ReplyDeletehttp://giulioprisco.blogspot.com/2008/03/thank-you-sir-arthur.html
was a very powerful religious incentive.