Some might argue that the relative dearth of Christians among the ranks of science fiction writers is due to the fact that Christians tend to find the ideas typically explored in science fiction to be not very congenial to Christian beliefs. For instance, it is sometimes alleged that the existence of extraterrestrial life--a common topic in science fiction--would represent a threat to the Christian faith. After all, it is argued, if there are other forms of life on other worlds, that would tend to undermine the notion that the earth and the human beings that live on it are the unique creations of God and thus of upmost importance to him. It was this argument that C. S. Lewis addressed in his 1958 essay "Religion and Rocketry" (see here). In this essay, Lewis contended that the existence of extraterrestrial life would not necessarily represent a death-blow against Christianity. It would depend on what the nature of that extraterrestrial life was. We would need to know whether these extraterrestrials had "rational souls," whether or not they were (like the human race) spiritually fallen, and so forth.
Nevertheless, regardless of the reason(s) for the relative absence of Christians among the leading figures in the genre, there have been, in my opinion at least, a number of genuine masterpieces focusing on science fiction themes written by Christians. In this post I would like to briefly introduce one of them, one with which I suspect many of my readers are unfamiliar.
The work in question is actually a poem, which may seem a little odd since poetry is not often associated with science fiction. However, this particular poem would definitely fall under the category of science fiction, as I think readers will discover. Its author was Alice Maynell (1847-1922), a British Roman Catholic who was a friend of the poet Francis Thompson, celebrated for his highly imaginative poem "The Hound of Heaven." The following is the complete text of Maynell's own highly imaginative poem, "Christ in the Universe":
With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars has heard
How He administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or His bestowals there be manifest.
But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul !
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
What Maynell does in this poem is to tackle head-on the question of what the existence of extraterrestrial life would mean for the Christian faith. In effect, she suggests that the Incarnation of Christ on earth will turn out to be one of many incarnations in the course of "His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way." That is to say, the plan of salvation will turn out to be even greater in scope than we imagined, genuinely cosmic--that the Gospel will prove to have been replicated a million-fold ("a million alien Gospels") throughout the universe. I am not sure whether Maynell truly believed this or was simply engaging in an act of imagination (something that poets are known for!) when writing of "the myriad forms of God." Regardless, in composing this poem, with its magnificent language (I have always loved her idea that earth's "chief treasure" is "one forsaken grave"), Maynell demonstrated that the notion of extraterrestrial life is not necessarily in conflict with Christian theology, the very point that Lewis tried to make in his essay "Religion and Rocketry."
To close, I would like to point out that Maynell's poem is but one of several masterpieces of science fiction written by Christian authors. In future posts I plan to introduce a number of other works written within the science fiction genre that reflect a Christian worldview, which I hope will be of interest to my readers.
Image of Alice Maynell from wikipedia.org