Today we have two stories about religion! Errrr… Scientology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster qualify, right?

The Hubbard Continuum by Lavie Tidhar (an Israeli Jewish man)

from Redstone Science Fiction, March 2011

L. Ron Hubbard was right and the future is a Scientologist nightmare with with Clears, Pre-Clears, implant stations and such. The plot is a short, fun romp with time travel and “psychic Thetan death-rays”; maybe a bit too self-referential for my tastes, though it’s by no means as bad as the usual ‘writing about writers who are writing’. I can’t help feeling Scientology ought to be more… paranoia-inducing.

I’m getting tired of repeating “this story was inspired by X, this story was inspired by Y”, but what can I do? Surely there is nothing new under the sun, but to see so many stories which are direct homages or rewrites is disappointing, even when they turn out to be decent work after all. I didn’t expect this! With that being said, this story was apparently inspired by William Gibson’s The Gernsback Continuum, except here the future is not Gernsbackian, but Hubbardian. Apparently, because the debt is not acknowledged by the author (compare Liu’s novella in my previous post), though the title makes it obvious. Still, I couldn’t find a single review online which noticed the link. This probably explains why the story is better-received than it ought to be: it seems more original than it actually is.

Grace Immaculate by Gregory Benford (an American man)

from Tor.com Originals, Oct 19 2011

A flash story about first contact with aliens and religion, with a twist. I’m bored with SF where the aliens learn something from the humans which Would Never Have Occurred To Them Otherwise – that’s so anthropocentric. But at least here (spoiler!) the aliens get the last laugh.

This one is mostly for completionists – while we’re at it: do send me links to religion-related SF, gotta catch ‘em all! – or those who really just want a mildly amusing story to go with their morning coffee.