Have you ever wondered who wrote the first science fiction novel? I recently happened on the name Johannes Kepler who authored The Dream, a book about a man who traveled to the moon, written in 1609 and began wondering a lot about him. I found an interesting blog about him in the Marginalian (https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/12/26/katharina-kepler-witchcraft-dream/) and, of course, in the current repository of all knowledge, Wikipedia.
It turns out Kepler, a genius scientist and mathematician, was also deeply spiritual. A quote attributed to him is, “I am merely thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” Certainly, in his culture and era, if the thoughts of God you discovered directly contradicted the current religious and scientific institutions, you could get in a lot of trouble. Add to that the problem of proving your insights during a time of nascent science and math and widespread illiteracy. Which is why it amazes me that Kepler took time out from his scientific work to write a story which he hoped would help non-scientists get their heads around the fact that the Earth is not the center of the Universe. In this novel, the people on the moon think Earth revolves around them, and he describes how they made that mistake… hoping those on Earth would realize they are making the same one.
Reading about Kepler made me wonder about other authors who reach out to find the patterns of God and then make them more accessible to people. Maybe all good fiction does this to some extent, but there seems to be in science fiction a subgenre of “religious” or “spiritual” sci-fi. Such works come in two flavors:
The first is the story which imagines a near future while challenging firmly held theological ideas and religious assumptions. This is mainly what I attempted in Eden.2, and what we see in such works as C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra trilogy and Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and The Children of God. Brian McLaren, a well-known modern theologian, has just written a sci-fi trilogy in this vein. His first installment, The Last Voyage (due for release July 31, 2025), sets forth intelligently and thoroughly the present atmosphere of religious debate in our American culture, and begins to imagine new ways of engaging with God.
Other authors jump completely out of the framework of current Earth’s societies to explore theology without the baggage of worn assumptions and stale conflicts. I’m thinking here of Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Quin, but also, to my surprise, Vernor Vinge. I recently read his Zones of Thought trilogy and grappled with his concept of distinct regions in space where the capacity of AI and natural thought processes speed up until human limits are left behind. He imagines transcendence being won by whole cultures intentionally working towards becoming gods. As you can imagine, the dangers of such exploration are equal to its advantages. It makes for a fascinating read!
I tried to move in this second direction when I wrote Intersecting Eternity, deliberately leaving behind distinctions between the three religious groups (Jewish, Muslim and Christian) who originally settled Goldilocks to focus on the lived spirituality of that young planet. I am very aware, though, that my feet rest firmly in the Christian tradition and the questions I ask are not new.
To bring this back to Kepler, he somehow caught a glimpse of God’s pattern and in this very first sci-fi novel offered that insight to the world. While it caught the imagination of some, it also threatened a world not ready to open its eyes. In fact, the leaders of his hometown used it as evidence against his mother, whom they accused of witchcraft. Kepler spent years defending her, winning her freedom just before she succumbed to old age and the abuse of her tormentors.
I suppose all successful prophets have difficult journeys as they attempt to articulate the beauty and expanse of God’s pattern, which includes so much more than our limited minds are comfortable with. I hope that, in the end, Kepler experienced the beauty of ‘thinking God’s thoughts’ as its own reward.