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• W4206366932 abstract "365 BOOKS IN REVIEW discussions it provokes that are groundbreaking here; as many artists as have been included here, this reviewer can think of dozens more who could also be said to incorporate sf themes in their work. Perhaps it would have been better to leave some of the older theoretical texts aside, to collect their arguments in a more authoritative editorial position, and thereby leave more room for the thoughtful and compelling work emerging from contemporary art.—Joel P.W. Letkemann, Aarhus School of Architecture Opposites Attract. Jim Clarke. Science Fiction and Catholicism: The Rise and Fall of the Robot Papacy. Gylphi, 2019. x+281 pp. $29.99 pbk. At first glance, the subject matter of Science Fiction and Catholicism might seem somewhat narrow or of decidedly niche appeal, but Jim Clarke has produced a thought-provoking study about the influence on sf of not only Catholicism but also spirituality in general. Many critics have commented on the ways in which sf and religion possess affinities, but there is also a distinct subgenre of Catholic-themed speculative fiction, some sympathetic or even written by adherents, others openly hostile, such as Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration (1976). This is a playful though hard-hitting counterfactual tale of the consequences of a successful Spanish Armada on Western history. Jim Clarke tackles these different approaches head on in an introduction entitled “The Contested Territories of Science Fiction and Catholicism” (1-27), noting that the “antagonism between sf and Christianity is partly explained by the fact that both religion and science seek to answer similar questions about existence and reality” (2). One result of these polarized viewpoints is that most scholarly criticism of religious-themed sf has been partisan and theological in nature or, at the other extreme, has been willfully or casually overlooked by those with little interest in spirituality. This book argues that such generic earmarking is not only lazy but also does considerable injustice to a fascinating and wideranging body of literature. Perhaps the most popular identifiably Catholic-themed works are Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow (1996) and its sequel, featuring a Jesuit linguist as its central character, and Dan Simmons’s HYPERION CANTOS (1989-1997), in which an evolved Catholic Church plays a prominent role in a future intergalactic empire. Clarke turns his attention to both these series, particularly Russell’s, whose work he suggests is a “space age extension of the mistakes of previous eras” (173), mirroring Jesuit missions to the New World. He believes that Russell sees both positive and negative outcomes to human interference in the societies of planet Rakhat and, although not every reader will agree with his conclusions about these starkly bleak works, his analysis is anchored closely in the fiction here and elsewhere, one of the strengths of the book. Many of the lesser-known short stories and novels that form part of the study’s corpus invite reading or reacquaintance and Clarke is skilled in implicitly forwarding why we should take these contributions seriously. As is sometimes the case, Clarke points out when authors are mistaken about the finer (or more basic) points of theology and doctrine, as is the case with papal infallibity in Clifford Simak’s Project Pope (1981), though he remains 366 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) indulgent at the license taken in some fictional worldbuilding. Clarke devotes a section to imaginings of robot papacies (61-124), announced in the study’s subtitle, using it as a prism for discussing Catholicism’s sometimes uneasy and often suspicious relationship with new technologies throughout the ages, and this section provides a useful summary of the Church’s evolving positions on issues such as bioethics and artificial intelligence via the neo-Platonist worldview of St. Augustine and the scholastic precision of St. Thomas Aquinas. The latter looms large in Anthony Boucher’s short story “The Quest for Saint Aquin” (1951). Clarke highlights the “coherent Thomism” of the robotic saint (91), who ends up committing suicide not out of despair but rather to best serve God by its own annihilation, while it also senses its potential to usurp humankind and is therefore obeying Asimov’s First Law (Asimov’s 1941 story..." @default.
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• W4206366932 date "2021-01-01" @default.
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• W4206366932 title "Opposites Attract" @default.
• W4206366932 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2021.0050" @default.
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