On making first contact with Earthlings Mr Spock stands next to his spaceship banging his intergalactic communicator against the ships hull "hang on a minute, this things playing up again, it sounded as though you said you thought we were all the result of some kind of gigantic cosmic accident" If there is more out there Conifer it won't change the original questions where did the Universe come from and whose idea was it?

I think science itself - not necessarily science-fiction, but science as a nebulous concept that lets clever people do things - is becoming the modern religion. It sounds absurd put like that; surely people leaping on big-S Science, Reason over Superstition, the pursuit of facts and hard truth over the supernatural and divine is a good thing?

The problem is, scientism (a term that's been around a while) isn't really about pursuing scientific truth - it's about believing Science will solve every problem ever without anyone needing to do anything themselves. We don't need to reduce our reliance on limited resources, or reduce food waste to feed hungry people because Scientists Will Find A Way.

That's not a philosophy based on scientific understanding, it's turning Science as a discipline of study into an omnipotent deity that can apparently produce matter out of nowhere.

A scientific approach to space travel, for example, is that it is likely that other planets will have natural resources and the possibility of supporting life and can be colonised, if we can surmount the difficulties inherent to space exploration.

A scientist approach is that the energy and oil crisis is nothing to worry about because we can just go to space and get all the oil we need.

I suspect you are doing the genre a disservice by calling science fiction "a" religion. If it is anything, like a nebula, it is the birthplace of religions.

In fact all our established religions could be seen as sci-fi turned turned serious. Did the Zoroastrians really believe that Ahura Mazda was fighting his equivalent dark side or did they take it to be a great tale? Did the early post-vedic Hindus sincerely think the new god Krishna was a metaphor or literally believe he had a weapon (the chakra) that could even today beat any light sabre? Do those who purport to belong to the Jedi as a religion really come from too far away, or too near in time for many of us to take them seriously?

Yes, science fiction throws up possibilities that would otherwise not occur to us, but so did mythology, and so I'd like to invert your argument and suggest not that sci-fi is the new religion, but religion is the outdated SF...

After "The Book of the New Sun", Gene Wolfe`s novel sequence “The Book of the Long Sun” describes a universe in inhabited by humans, post-humans, aliens, android “chemical people”, sentient machines, all ruled by computer-generated “gods”, who possesses all the powers, arrogance, beauty and self-awareness of “real” gods. And then there is The Outsider, beyond everything within the world, yet able to speak to the heart of individual selves. In other words, the Living God of Judaeo-Christian theology, both immanent and transcendent.

Wolfe`s science fictions are the most theologically subtle pieces of writing in all of modern literature.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Book Review Gene Wolfe SF = Speculative Fiction ( )