ABSTRACT
The science vs. religion binary remains a healthy debate: David J. Turell in Science vs. Religion (2004) claims that studying science reveals evidence of a God, whereas the late Stephen Hawking in The Grand Design (2010) insists that understanding the scientific origin of the universe renders God unnecessary. Jerry A. Coyne in Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (2014) argues that religion is incompatible with science, a position that Neil deGrasse Tyson disputed in his 2018 interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert when he identified Catholicism as “science-friendly.” Within the genre of science fiction, religion co-exists with science, albeit in ways equally fraught. Religion is pervasive in SF, as any examination of Hugo winners proves. “Science Fiction and the Religious Imagination” details teaching approaches designed to show that SF’s sinuous narrative elasticity is supple enough to include not only the fantastic, the technological, and the scientific, but the religious well. Section one grapples with how SF explores the nuances of faith; section two examines gradations of evil in SF; and section three demonstrates how to structure a course around the concept of the mad scientist, a familiar SF trope with its very origins in religious disputes.
