pondering paper topics

[sigerson]

Do any of y'all know of speculative fiction/scifi/fantasy novels that involve multiple faiths? I seem to be able to name ones that have One Big Church but an imagined world with multiple faiths isn't quickly jumping to mind. I must be missing something.

ETA: Wow. I must have had my brain turned off not to remember Small Gods. Thank you guys so much for these! (Now I have new reading material that doesn't involve the word "discourse"!)

Comments

[2h2o.livejournal.com]

Dune? A Song of Ice and Fire?

[sigerson.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I feel that I wouldn't be able to say much about ASOIAF, since the series isn't done yet; it's hard to tell how much of a role the different faiths (and conflicts between them) will play in the series as a whole.

Curiously, I think of Dune as a One Big Church novel, but I had forgotten that Bene Gesserit counts as its own faith...

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

In the later books, the Bene Gesserit get their own splinter sect, too.

[archaica.livejournal.com]

The Sparrow?

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I think some of Card's later works played with this.

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

Some big series in a desert had a 20-sided gem where each facet was a god who had their own faith in the world. Can't recall the name, though.

[elklad.livejournal.com]

I think that was the Rose of the Prophet trilogy by Weis and Hickman. I remember thinking the series completely lost it in the third book, which happened with a couple of their trilogies.

[cycon.livejournal.com]

Much of the Discworld series, of course; Small Gods, Monstrous Regiment, The Last Hero, Pyramids, and Thud! deal particularly with a specific religion and/or conflict of religions.

[thastygliax.livejournal.com]

I'd second the suggestion of A Song of Ice and Fire, but if you haven't already read the series, it may be a bit too much to digest in a timely manner for whatever reasons you brought up the question. But offhand, there's the Seven Gods (dominant in most of Westeros), the tree-cult of the north, the pirate kingdom's Drowned God, the God of Light (an foreign fire cult), and (on the other continent) numerous other faiths, including one that claims to include ALL the other gods.

Piers Anthony's Tarot trilogy involves a colony on a new planet where just about every Earth religion has a representative, because everyone wants to know whether the weird phenomena on the planet will prove their faith to be the correct one. It's not the greatest story ever--even among Anthony's works--but has a few really interesting ideas, even if the execution is flawed.

[2h2o.livejournal.com]

This reminded me of Zelazny's Lord of Light. Heh.

[kiya]

Jo Walton's The King's Peace/The King's Name duology is an alternate-universe Arthurian with multiple-religious conflicts (including a Christian-analogue king ruling a mostly-pagan region).

I believe the Kushiel series has several religions, agan real-world analogues, but this is scraped together from my hazy recollections of what people have said rather than reading it myself. (I need to read it; I'm told it has kink and spirituality intertwined in it, which, well, obviously so.)

I'm writing something SFnal in which the narrator is a secular Catholic and the main character is a crazed Sufi offshoot; they're currently on a planet dominated by Caribbean Catholicism, but that does you no good as it's not even written, let alone published.

Um. That's what I got off top of head. Some other stuff mentions, y'know, things like 'these nonhuman people have this religion' type stuff, but that's not really the same.

[cute-fuzzy-evil.livejournal.com]

A good one with multiple religions is The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay- it's set in a sort of historically-based environment, though, and sort of corresponds to Moors, Jews, and Christians- I don't know if that's the sort of thing you're looking for.

There's also the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliot, which has multiple religions (one clearly dominant in the setting) but is more interesting for the internal schism in the majority religion.

I recommend reading both, regardless of papers, though I'd be very surprised if you had time for the six ~800-page books of the latter. :)

[ppaladin.livejournal.com]

I second CFE's recommendation of Guy Gavriel Kay -- in fact, nearly every book he writes deals with multiple faiths in the background of his story.

[kmunson779.livejournal.com]

Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series has several religions; several polytheistic, one monotheistic where the practitioners are looked at funny but tolerated, a couple where the deities come down and meddle on a regular basis.

[kmunson779.livejournal.com]

(drat. wrong reply button. sorry.)

[pseudosilence.livejournal.com]

People have already mentioned all the authors that first come to mind: Mercedes Lackey, Carey (Kushiel books author whose first name I can't remember), Guy Gabriel Kay (most especially Lions of Al-Rassan), George R.R. Martin (who I love, but the Song of Ice and Fire is mighty long).

If you need to read something quickly, though, go with Pratchett. Not only does he tackle a lot of religious issues head on, they're fast reads, and I think you'll really enjoy them. In fact, his sense of humor is so up your alley, I'd be surprised if you're not already a fan.

What's the context for the question?

[sigerson.livejournal.com]

Not entirely-idle curiosity; I'm thinking about a paper that talks about how other, multiple narrative lenses superseded the Bible as the primary narrative through which Americans saw their lives.

The context is this: If SF is one of the arenas where we project out our thinking about issues such as what it means to be human, what societies are capable of, and how we face the realities of the universe, then it's an arena where authors and readers ponder questions about faith (among other things, of course). As the US becomes more and more religiously diverse, how do SF authors extrapolate/interpret/imagine new worlds from this starting point?

Pratchett's a key example, partially because I think his books--especially all Ankh-Morpork related ones--reflect some of the UK's growing diversity and how well (or poorly) people deal with it.

So it's not a paper topic yet, but it might become one.

[ltlbird.livejournal.com]

Okay. You are so cool for thinking about this. This makes a lot of sense and fascinates me.

Another suggestion is Tamora Pierce's books, and they are quick, fun reads, too.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

Existing-in-real-life faiths? Or faiths they built as part of their world-building?

The one that jumped into my mind is Dan Simmons' Hyperion series. It has Catholicism, reimagined, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, as well as created faiths for the particular world.

I'm a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire as well...

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

As far as multiple (created by author) faiths, there's also the Chanur series of C.J. Cherryh. But that doesn't really involve conflict or confrontation--people just take it for granted that different species will have different faiths.
If we plunge into the realm of Very Old stuff, there's also Charles Williams's /Many Dimensions/, which I just read. Though that may not be quite what you're thinking of either.
I feel like there's more... (aside from Mists of Avalon)

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Oh, and of course Geraldine Harris's Seven Citadels series, though that's a bit obscure. (But very good, and a much better example than the others.)

[minyan.livejournal.com]

Stranger in a Strange land?

Certainly has Martians, Fosterites and a liberal Muslim.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods? Every pantheon you can think of.

Nalo Hopkinson has written a series of books with a Carribean Pantheon; she's Trinidadian, a quick read, and awesome.

I haven't read Octavia Butler, but the one on my shelf follows a female prophet.

Molly Gloss, The Dazzle of Day — I don't know if this fits, quite, but it's about a Quaker society that has gone looking for another habitable planet, at the point where they find one, and questions about the limits ofhumanity and people's relationships to place, creation, and community come up constnatly.

[kansas-dave.livejournal.com]

Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett. There are nigh-infinite powerless wisps of gods that become potent when, for whatever reason, people start worshiping them.

[magdalene1.livejournal.com]

Dune, for sure.
The Song of Ice & Fire do.
Sadly, I'm pretty sure the Robert Jordan ones deal with it.

[magdalene1.livejournal.com]

Also, see God Stalk by PC Hodgell and the sequell, Dark of the Moon.

And if anyone knows PC Hodgell, MAKE HER WRITE THE LAST BOOK ALREADY, OK?

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Too many comments to read, so forgive me if I repeat what others have said, but Ursula LeGuin has got to have some good stuff in there, wot? I don't know my LeGuin very well (never read Left Hand b/c I'm a slacker) but Changing Planes comes to mind, although those cultures don't interact with each other.

Also, I'd recommend Ring of Swords by Eleanor Arnason and The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle. I believe these both concentrate on the meeting of two cultures, rather than two religions, and I don't remember how big a part religion plays, but the first especially might be worth a look - I can lend, if you want!

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

And how can we forget the Star Trek novels?

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Also, I remember The Deed of Paksenarrion deals a good deal with faith, but I think it might be the juxtaposition of faith against lack of faith, rather than a different faith. It's been a while since I read that one!

[spyscribe.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Lois McMaster Bujold's newer fantasy trilogy involves multiple religions, although people seem to roughly agree on the pantheon (as tends to happen when you have a world with more concrete forms of divine intervention) but do cry heresy based on whether you believe in four gods or five. The second one, Paladin of Souls, conveniently contains a version of the creation myth in an early chapter and can be read before Curse of Challion.

I'm not sure if Tanya Huff's "Quarter" series would qualify or not. There the divide is between the people who think that those who can sing to elemental spirits are gifted and blessed, and those who think they are basically witches. But again, it tends to fall along national lines.

Are you looking specifically for different religions coexisting?

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

There's some wonderful stuff outside of mainstream American sci-fi...I took a course that involved some post-colonial stuff, including Archie Weller's Land of the Golden Clouds and Nalo Hopkinton's Midnight Robber.

Oh, and the Illuminatus! Trilogy?

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Took me long enough to reply to this, but here's a few thoughts:

It seems that a lot of spec fic either does one of two things with regard to religion: 1) splits the civil/community aspect of it (ritual, etc.) off from the spiritual aspect. Forms are followed, but they're portrayed as empty. (Cf. works vs. faith? Not sure.) Or 2) sets one religion up against another to illustrate Good and Bad on a macro scale. A number of novels I like do this -- A Song for Arbonne, for example, is all about the Good Caring Female Religion versus the Bad Overbearing Male Religion, to the point where you feel like you've been beaten about the head with a sack of marbles. However, there are works like Judith Tarr's Avaryan Rising, which not only sets up this dichotomy, it then calls it into question and does not flinch from its conclusions.

A couple of science fiction works came to mind: "Sanctuary," by Michael Burstein, is an excellent novella (novelette?) about how religious practices intersect with human-alien interactions. The Android's Dream, by John Scalzi, involves a new religion called the Church Of the Evolved Lamb, simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and earnest, and it's hard to say where that one ends up. I've heard The Sparrow also involves religion, but I haven't read it and am too sleepy to remember the salient points.

One thing that struck me as well: in Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist, it's mentioned that when Duke Aubrey disappeared, so did all the priests. I'm not sure if I can explain how important Duke Aubrey is without explaining the novel, so either I'm going to have to loan it to you or sit down and describe it sometime.

I sleep now.