Theologians and science fiction (SF) authors would benefit from talking to each other: this observation prompted the organization by the Head of Ethics (Ethics, Technology and Transhumanism) of the Catholic University of Lille to a symposium on “Science Fiction, Religions, Theology” on June 10 and 11, 2022. Indeed, there are countless works that mobilize religious or spiritual discourse in San Francisco, both in films and in literature. We also note a lack of mutual knowledge between the two universes, which often only come into contact with each other.
An exceptional guest at this seminar, Serge Lehmann, novelist, comic book screenwriter and author of an anthology dedicated to SF, candid to life This attraction to religious stories, the great promoters of meaning and imagination.
The introductory conference for the symposium will be presented. Why does this issue of religion in San Francisco matter to you?
I’ve always been interested in science fiction theory. Twenty years ago I had terrible difficulties in writing, I looked into the history of the genre and realized that it was literally imbued with images of religious origin and metaphysical concepts, while I automatically considered it a very rational type, rooted in science and concerned with staying “in the reasonable period” – that’s what separates it about reasonable.
This contradiction was already noted in the early 1990s by philosopher Guy Lardeau in the article Philosophical fiction and science fiction (Actes Sud), in which he supported the idea that SF had taken over metaphysics “The Mission of Imagining Worlds”. And in the Great American Encyclopedia of San Francisco by John Clout and Peter Nichols, the article dedicated to God notes that it was one of the most common words in the titles of San Francisco novels. There was something to think about…
The idea that the SF secretly compiled the great metaphysical and religious novels that were losing steam in the twentieth century sparked controversy in France…
When I mentioned this idea in 2009 in the introduction to the anthology Back to the horizon (Denoël), was poorly received by part of the French SF community, which is deeply rooted in its rationalist tradition. This tradition is legitimate, because it made it possible to clearly distinguish SF, which is an art form, and pseudoscience, with which it shares certain things: cryptozoology, optics, some conspiracy theories, etc. Hence the virulence of reactions.
Seeing what was put out of the door enter through the window made many people feel rough. But this controversy opened a debate, which resulted in the work of a French Canadian university Hidden Gods of French and Francophone SF (Purdue University Press). The discussion was finally fruitful, as a new symposium on this topic was held after 20 years in Lille.
Why such a religious resonance in this literary genre?
SF as Mahabharata (Great epic poem about Hindu civilization, editor’s note) scientific civilization. They are meditative myths, telling the story of the possibilities in our world. From its first steps, at the end of the 19th century, SFR recycled images from the Bible or myths. For example, file Frankenstein Translated by Mary Shelley modern Prometheus, Another SF text by Jules Verne is called Eternal Adam.
There are stories about the end of the world and the beginning, of powerful creatures or entities that can change the course of events … These situations and these characters left literature at the end of the nineteenth century when literature was liberated. Weight of debt, as they immigrate to SF. It is a heavy and deep structure: SF is at the crossroads of science, metaphysics and art at the exact moment when Modernism is to abandon this crossroads.
We have a sense of the lack of understanding between the religious circles and those of the sixth, with their own language, somewhat textured.
Paradoxically, it seems to me that scientific circles have sometimes been more resistant to social inflation than religious circles. During the second half of the twentieth century there was a conservative but persistent interest by some religious intellectuals in San Francisco, which perhaps echoes the slow recognition of the French theologian Teilhard de Chardin…I see it as a parallel attempt to think of religion in light of an entirely scientific world.
Communication difficulties come mainly from the fact that, in France, the word “sci-fi” has been misused: it soon ceased to name aspiring literature to use as a synonym for “ridiculous” or “grotesque”. The screed that fell at the reception of this species was so strong that for half a century it was almost impossible to do serious academic work on this topic.
What links the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin to science fiction?
in Hyperion, By Dan Simmons, one of the great American novels in the Sixth In the early 1990s, the humans who colonized part of the galaxy practice the “dean of Teilhard de Chardin”. This is how I discovered this attractive theologian.
In it we feel a desire to reconcile a universe that is entirely grounded in science and a universe that remains open to transcendence and mysticism, presenting them as converging.
Teilhard de Chardin is also associated with the concept of “noosphere”, which defines the field of human thought. Now, this concept is the intellectual matrix of the Internet. And let’s not talk about the omega point. For a writer in San Francisco, this mental world is instantly familiar.
Is there not a tendency among many authors to see religion as a simple, often oppressive social structure, in which creatures create their gods and not the other way around?
This is especially true in France, where exiting from religion was more radical than anywhere else. Author Pierre Burridge, invited to the Lyell symposium, well expressed this contrast between a strong personal mystical impulse and a great distrust of established religions.
Personally, this is not my problem. Outside of France, the situation is more complicated. There is of course an old tendency in San Francisco to imagine anthropology and thus create fanciful religions, which authors often view very negatively. But there are also hundreds of stories that tell of humanity’s encounter with an inexplicable and transcendent entity … And even if the author suggests that this entity may not be transcendent, the dramatic drama of the stories confronts the human race in situations that are.
For example, a novel by James Morrow called jehovah It tells the story of God’s corpse falling into the ocean and dragging it to Antarctica to freeze. James Bleach novel a case of conscience It tells the story of the arrival of a Jesuit mission on a planet where we discover a powerful entity that is not God. The sixth is fond of these moments of joy and contemplation in the face of situations or entities of a metaphysical type. In my opinion, it is even more about it.
Do you see a development in these relations between camp and religion?
A large portion of SF authors today feel obligated to position themselves in relation to the concept of “singularity”. It’s a foresight theory that comes from the high-tech and SF realms of the United States.
It assumes that if we prolong the pace of technological progress, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, we could end up with a major disruption, such as the emergence of a superintelligence at the heart of the global network (Teilhard de Chardin y perhaps they will see a reworking of the omega point). It is a stereotypical religious theory that tells of transhumanist thought, such as Elon Musk and other big billionaires.
Will San Francisco today explore humanity’s relationship to technology more than it is to God?
The relationship with technology is central. In the United States, the golden age of SF, in the years 1940-1950, corresponded to the moment when the country became aware of its new position as a global superpower and the role played by science and technology. This gave the Promethean, not scientific, a sixth, particularly on the themes of space conquest and energy mastery.
In reaction to this period, authors’ interest in the humanities increased, such as Philip K. Dick or Frank Herbert, author of Sand dunes In the 1950s and 1960s he tried to make a different kind of science fiction, less technically clever and more philosophical. That’s why there are religious issues there.
These two authors, in particular, worked on the issue of consciousness to the point of dizzy … and today films like dunes where Blade Runner 2049 The sequel to the Ridley Scott movie based on the novel by Philip K. Dick, and examine these topics in the light of the present period, which are again becoming of a strongly scholarly character.
Religion will make it possible to challenge the omnipotence of technology…
Yes and no. It opposes it, but it can also give it meaning, even justify it. I believe, like Michael Welbeck, that human society cannot live without religion. The common story cannot be satisfied with the biochemical axioms about the emergence of life 3.5 billion years ago…
We need a meta-narrative that includes existence. in surrender, Houellebecq carefully analyzes the decline of the Republican narrative as a substitutional sacramental narrative…We believed in it, there was indeed Republican fascination, but it’s over. Ultimately, great religious themes of origin and end still manage to draw an immediate appeal to us.
What is the nature of this temptation in contemporary minds?
I take an example. A very modern and powerful paraphrase of a religious theme intended for the San Francisco general population is the one he directs matrix, Where we find a spiritual beginning, the discovery of the world as a veil of illusion that must be transcended to reach the truth, the transformation of the hero into Christ, and finally the encounter with the all-knowing and all-powerful entity.
It is a compendium of illusions associated with technological omnipotence and investigations into the deep nature of the universe – in ontology. The existential question remains, but is reformulated with each generation taking into account the new scientific and philosophical status of humanity.
What do you expect from the seminar hosted by the Catholic University of Lille?
I came here without prejudice. I am curious to hear what theologians have discovered in the San Francisco texts. It will be a very new experience for me!
