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In this episode Trent reveals the science-fiction books every Christian should read.
Transcription:
Trent:
Science fiction isn’t just for people who want to nerd out over space adventures. It’s a genre of literature that allows us to explore profound ideas through the lens of imaginative worlds and what could be more profound than the truth that God created the world and human beings in his image. But before we jump into today’s list of the science fiction novels every Christian should read, I need to make a distinction between two kinds of science fiction, hard science fiction and soft science fiction. Hard science fiction focuses on the hard sciences like physics and biology, and it’s more interested in the technology of the story than the larger social setting of the story. As a result, hard science fiction tries to be as realistic as possible in its scientific descriptions. A good example of this is Andy Wire’s book The Martian, which was adapted into a 2015 film with Matt Damon about an astronaut stranded on Mars who asked to use his resourcefulness to survive.
Wire is the son of a physicist and engineer, and he took great pains to research how such a Martian colony would work and what an astronaut would do in such a situation. So the book is grounded in applicable science and let’s be realistic also about this channel. It’s only able to grow and reach more people if you click the subscribe button and support us@trenthornpodcast.com. So please keep your support of the channel in the non-fiction section of the library. Now, hard science fiction is more about the science, whereas soft science fiction is more about the fiction. Soft science fiction discusses science, but the focus tends to be on the soft sciences like sociology or even things like philosophy. Star Trek is often criticized for using techno babble to move the plot along and avoid explaining how certain technologies work. But that’s okay because the value of Star Trek comes from exploring philosophical ideas through the various races and situations that the crew of the enterprise encounters.
Oh, and by the way, star Wars isn’t really science fiction. It’s more fantasy about space wizards, which can be seen in the opening titles that say that the story takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is on par with once upon a time in a magical kingdom. The stories in today’s episode will be more of the soft kind of science fiction, which are also some of the easier kinds of science fiction for people to introduce themselves to the genre. So let’s count down the seven science fiction novels every Christian should read. Starting with number seven Cs Lewis’s Space trilogy. Between 1938 and 1945, CS Lewis wrote three novels about an academic named Elwyn Ransom who travels to other worlds. They are out of the silent planet Parra and that hideous strength though together they’re known as the Space Trilogy.
Lewis is more known for his fantasy works like the Chronicles of Narnia, and of course his apologetic works like mere Christianity and the Space Trilogy isn’t science fiction per se, but more like Space Fantasy Lewis himself called it Theologized science fiction or a modern fairy tale for grownups. The Space Trilogy book is definitely more for adults than the Narnia series, and it explores important themes about good and evil and creation and using different planets to ask what if questions about how God would relate to human beings. It also does a great job of using its cosmic setting to describe our battle as Christians with cosmic powers and forces of evil. And even though it was written 80 years ago before the 1960s cultural revolution, it was dead on in its predictions about how modern society would try to undermine the faith. Think about how often you see popular culture go out of its way to denigrate Christianity, including in a horrible episode of your friends and neighbors recently that mocked the Eucharist.
Well, in the final book of the Space trilogy, that hideous strength, there’s a scene where the non-religious protagonist Mark interacts with the professor at the elite but sinister scientific group, nice National Institute for Coordinated Experiments. As part of an exercise, the institute’s Professor Frost instructs mark to trample a large image of a crucifix on the floor. Now, mark has never been a Christian, and so he’s puzzled as to why he should even bother with his exercise. He’s then told this, if you had been brought up in a non-Christian society, you would not be asked to do this. Of course, it is a superstition, but it’s that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for many centuries. It can be experimentally shown that it still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity.
We find in practice that it cannot be dispensed. With Lewis once said that Christians need stronger spells to break Materialisms grip on modern man and the space Trilogy definitely falls into that category of Christian literature. Number six, George Orwell’s 1984. In my previous episode on 10 classic novels every Christian should read, I highlighted ALJs Huxley’s Brave New World as an example of antigo, which shows the emptiness of a world without God. It’s the bad news that stands in contrast with the Good News of Christ. 1984 fills a similar purpose and falls into the category of science fiction because it asks us to imagine what it would be like if the state became God and had an all seeing presence into our lives. Written by George Orwell in 1949. It’s amazing how close the book has come to predicting how technology can invade every aspect of our lives.
For example, in the book, characters have to be careful about hidden microphones eavesdropping on their conversations, but today our cell phones silently listen to us and then recommend advertisements based on what we’re talking about. The novel also discusses how the totalitarian regime rewrites history and forces people to use unnatural words in order to serve its ends. Similar to how governments today force people to use unnatural words to defend transgender ideology or rewrite history concerning things like the COVID Pandemic, this all reminds me of a quote from the novel who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past. In other words, if you can rewrite history, you can control the trajectory of present events and thus control the future of human affairs. This is why Christians should especially be careful to read books like 1984 because many critics of the faith like to rewrite Christian history and distort it in order to promote an anti-Christian future.
For more on how to rebut them, I recommend the real story of Catholic history answering 20 centuries of anti-Catholic myths by Steve Wykoff. Now even though totalitarian regimes throughout history have tried to stamp out religion, man is a religious creature, which means that any attempt to remove religion will always require creating a surrogate religion in its place, and Christians must be wise to spot this anti-religion and antichrist when it does appear. Number five, Philip k Dix. Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep. Some of my favorite science fiction films are based on the novels of Philip k Dick. These include Minority Report Total Recall, and the criminally underrated as Scanner Darkly mature content warning on the last two. By the way, the most famous film adapted from Dick’s novels is probably 1980 two’s Blade Runner, which is based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep.
The film has overshadowed the novel so much that its scenes are often used as cover art for the book, and the title Blade Runner is often splashed on the cover somewhere, even though the term Blade runner is not found in the original novel. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco in 1992, though it’s later changed to 2021 in future editions of the novel, and it’s a crowded Los Angeles in the film. Now, in the novel, the earth has been poisoned by radiation and most people have left the earth for other planets and most animals have died from the radiation leaving those humans who want pets to have to use robotic duplicates instead, which have become status symbols. Humans also use Androids referred to as Andes in order to do many off world tasks. However, violent rogue Andes have to be killed or retired as the characters say, which is the job of bounty hunters like Rick Decker, the book’s protagonist.
In order to appreciate Dick’s novel though you have to disconnect it from the film where bounty hunters are called blade runners and androids are called replicants and the whole fake animal plot line is dropped. Now in some respects, I preferred the film to the book because in the film, Deckard is just a much cooler character and the film has a smoky cyberpunk noir thriller quality to it that’s different than the novel, but the novel is a great way to explore many themes of the book that are left unsaid in the film. For example, the question of what it means to be human often comes up because the Androids are almost indistinguishable from human beings. Now, unlike characters like data from Star Trek, the Androids and Dick’s novel are living organisms. Deckard tells one, Android, legally you’re not alive, but really you are biologically, you’re not made out of transistorized circuits like a false animal, you’re an organic entity.
What makes Androids different than humans in the book is that they lack empathy, which is said to be a uniquely human quality. And so an exam called the vo comf test is used to identify androids even though other characters in the book note that some unempathetic humans wouldn’t pass the test either. And Christians often face the question of what it means to be human over bioethical issues like IVF and euthanasia where critics will say a human being is just a collection of memories or psychological states and biological humanity doesn’t matter. Dick’s novels, however, throw into question how much we should base our humanity and our value on something as shaky as memories and psychological states that can be manipulated and for a good academic rebuttal to that idea, co Carter Snead’s recent book, what it Means to Be Human, the Case for the Body in Public Bioethics.
I’d also recommend watching the film Blade Runner because I prefer in the film how it portrays the Androids, which are really just genetically engineered human beings and so they shouldn’t be treated like objects. And by the way, it’s really cool to watch Blade Runner in black and white to get more of that noir thriller quality out of it. And while we don’t have robot androids or engineered androids in 2025, we do have powerful AI that raise similar questions about what it means to be a person. So Christians would benefit from reading science fiction that delves into these important questions. Number four, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Frankenstein probably also belongs on my previous list of 10 classic novels, but I was hesitant to include it there and even here because I didn’t really enjoy the book. I know I know for some people this will have them coming out for me with torches and pitchforks as if I were some kind of well Frankenstein monster, but I found the book to be slow paced at many parts even by 19th century standards.
In order to enjoy the book though, you have to separate yourself from the idea of Frankenstein that comes from the 1931 Boris Karloff film featuring a blockhead, a grunt with bolts coming out of his neck. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is different and it’s portrayed well in the 1994 film aptly titled Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It also looks like it’s going to be done well in the upcoming Guillermo del Toro adaptation of the book, Frankenstein is the name of the monster’s creator, not the monster, and the novel doesn’t go into great detail about exactly how Frankenstein brings the creature to life. The book is more of a gothic horror novel than science fiction per se, but it does raise deep questions about the nature of life and its creation, especially since Frankenstein’s creation is not a dumb giant. He grows an intelligence over time and eventually acquires the ability to seek vengeance against his creator. However, if you want to faster paced hard science fiction book that covers similar themes, then you might want to try Michael Creighton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park. Though one wonders if the book would’ve been successful if it had the title principle Skinner proposed
CLIP:
I finally have time to do what I’ve always wanted, write the great American novel. Mine is about a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques. I call it Billy and the Clone OSAs,
Trent:
And not to sound like a broken record, but to enjoy this book, you have to set aside what you saw in the movie. The characters in the book act more like normal people and communicate a lot of science in a digestible way. So instead of Ian Malcolm coming off as a sleazy, Jeff Goldblum aping an academic. In the book, Malcolm actually shares really good insights about chaos theory and the folly of scientism, which is truly interesting and not just something he uses to flirt with people. Now, aside from changing character deaths and personalities, the film doesn’t radically diverge from the novel’s core narrative. Though many of the scenes that couldn’t be included in the film were repurposed for the sequels like the River Escape in Jurassic Park three, a film that is really, really not good. So whether it’s dead human bodies or dead dinosaurs brought back to life.
Both of these stories are great ways to show why the only person who should play God is God himself. Number three, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 4 51. You might think this book is redundant given that 1984 is already on the list, and this is just another dystopian novel about a totalitarian government except Fahrenheit 4 51 is not about the evil of totalitarianism, it’s about the evil of television. Ray, bad Barry’s 1953 novel follows Guy Montag, a firefighter whose job isn’t to put out fires, it’s to start them in order to burn books and other materials. The government deems to be subversive or unnecessary for people’s happiness while government overreach is present in the novel. What is more horrifying is the dependence people have on television, even considering characters in television shows to be beloved family members, people don’t want to be alone or think by themselves so they drown themselves in entertainment. Here’s Bradbury talking about this part of the book and predicting television’s dominance and culture,
CLIP:
But Fahrenheit is firmly based in technology and what we are doing to ourselves With television. I could foresee the day would come when you’d have wall to wall television and we have it right now if you want to install it as
Trent:
A result, many commenters today speak about Fahrenheit 4 51 accurately predicting the future where people forego reading, not because the government locks up books, but because they simply no longer want to read books. People prize efficiency over presence, so they listen to media while surfing the internet or they watch recaps of movies instead of the actual movie, which mirrors how Fahrenheit 4 51 describes people preferring to read summaries of novels instead of the novels themselves before the books ultimately went out of fashion. So if you’re worried that you spend too much time on a screen, pick up a copy of Fahrenheit 4 51 and maybe you won’t ever pick up a screen again. Number two, PD James’s the Children of men. My first introduction to this book was through the 2006 film Children of Men, which takes a fair amount of liberties with the original source material and doesn’t explore the religious themes as much.
The novel which alternates between diary entries and third person narration follows Theo Ferran, an Oxford professor who is navigating life 25 years after year Omega when the sperm count of the entire human race drops to zero, even frozen sperm and laboratories are no longer viable. Humanity now has given up trying to cure this disease and has come to accept that in a few decades the human race will cease to exist. Many people have embraced suicide, especially the elderly, which has turned into a government forced euthanasia program. The film glosses over this by making it look like everyone takes pills to die when the deaths are much more gruesome and bureaucratic. In the book, showing how government sees people as being disposable, the film is a gritty thriller that follows a ragtag group of rebels who oppose England’s now totalitarian government and try to safeguard the last pregnant woman on earth.
It’s fast paced and has some amazing camera work, but the novel does a better job of world building. The escape sequence only appears in the last third of the book, whereas most of the story describes what humanity goes through as they come to grips of the fact that children no longer exist. It also shows how different groups of people cope with this fact. The youngest children Omegas are now in their early twenties and the story describes them devolving into entitled brats who corral around in violent gangs that act like the kids from the Lord of the flies. Older people, on the other hand, experience a deep longing for children that drives some of them batty. As someone who knows Catholics with large families that often get dirty looks in public, it’s interesting to see that these same people in a world without children might act like the characters in this novel who go to communally watch old movies just to hear children laugh or burn children’s toys because the side of them is too painful to see.
Except for dolls, dolls and kittens in the novel become surrogate children with some liberal ministers choosing to baptize them. People even gather to celebrate the birth of kittens like they’d celebrate the birth of a child. The novel provokes a lot of thought about the value of life and especially the value of children and how society often misplaces its priorities, and it isn’t that far flung as a science fiction scenario as western countries are in the midst of a demographic winter where there aren’t enough children to replace an aging population. Japan even has villages where it’s so unpopulated. One resident makes scarecrows to fill in for the missing people who should have been born. A detail that would fit in perfectly in James’ novel. And finally, number one, Walter Miller Jr’s a Canal for Lebowitz. This isn’t just one of my favorite science fiction books, it’s one of my favorite books, period.
I’ve always been interested in apocalyptic fiction, but what I find more fascinating are books that detail how humanity comes back from the brink of extinction. This is cataloged well in the book World War Z, which presents an oral history of a global war against zombies. Don’t watch the Brad Pitt film. It’s terrible and nothing like the book. World War Z describes how the zombie apocalypse began, but also how humanity comes back from the brink of extinction to contain the zombies and rebuild civilization. A canal for Leitz does something similar with nuclear annihilation. The book is divided into three parts that take place 600, 1100 and finally 1800 years after the initial nuclear war or the flame deluge as it’s called in the novel. It follows the monks of an order named after a Jewish convert named Lebowitz who survived the war and becomes a monk who is later recognized as a saint.
The reconstruction of the world, which in the novel is set in the American Southwest, follows similar beats in Western history. Part one is similar to how the church barely kept order in the European world after the fall of Rome by saving off by bur hodes and saving classical knowledge in the novel. This takes the form of the church providing stability in the face of marauding simpletons who rebel against learning, which they see as the cause of the nuclear war. Part two mirrors how the church created a rich civilization of Christendom in the Middle Ages and gave birth to modern marvels. Indeed, it was the work of saints and people like Albert the Great and Francis Bacon that helped pave the way for modern scientific catalog of knowledge. In the book, the Order of St. Leitz has grown and there is hope now for the invention of electricity.
Indeed, it’s amusing to see how the characters try to reconstruct the knowledge of the past and often misunderstand things that are far removed from them except for theological truths which have a built-in mechanism in the liturgy and language used to keep them preserved over time. Finally, in part three of the book, the modern World seems to have emerged from the destroyed past, but one wonders if humanity will learn its lesson. Miller Jr converted to Catholicism after World War ii and this fact along with his experience from bombing missions in the war are both on full display in the novel underscoring its realism. I like what one critic said of the book in 1960, he wrote, author Miller proves himself chillingly effective at communicating a kind of post-human lunar landscape of disaster. His faith and religious faith is commendable but not compelling. It is difficult to tell whether he believes that better bomb shelters or more Roman Catholics or the hope of the world. I think Miller Jr would say that the latter is where our hope should be grounded, but he should has some of the former just in case. Alright, those were seven science fiction novels that every Christian should read. Please let me know in the comments below if there’s a novel I should have included on this list. And if you like this list, check out my previous episode on 10 classic novels every Christian should read. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.