Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Absense of Religion in Furry Fiction

General Writing Discussion
#1

I’m editing one modern-period story for an anthology I’m doing, and I noticed that one of the characters exclaims, “Oh Gods.” This isn’t the first time this has popped up in other furry fiction, or roleplaying I’ve done. Anthro characters using the exclamation Gods, but aside from that, I rarely if never see mention of religion in furry writing (unless it’s fantasy and part of the genre).

Outside of just exclamations, I can only think of Kyell Gold’s Foreseter universe where they also say “Lion Christ”. And that’s it.

What I think is interesting here is the Gods part implies polytheism, which you just do not see in modern times or fiction set post-fantasy periods (aside from Hinduism and other Eastern religions, but they really get little play here in the West or in pop culture).

Which is too bad, because I think this is something that could be very interesting to exploring. Purely from a world building or character perspective, because religion - or at least belief systems - is fairly important for an individual character as well as society. It says things, as well as informs certain decisions. If not being plot related for various reasons. That and to simply see how it would be different in a furry world, especially polytheistically.

#2

I find this statement interesting as I see polytheism in modern times fairly often. Maybe it’s because I am Pagan and interact with people of alternative faiths fairly often, or maybe it’s something to do with the difference between Canada and the USA in regards to religion.

Either way, just something I observed.

#3

It’s possible that someone would use “Gods” instead of the singular to show respect to other religions. I know of someone that uses the exclamation, despite being an atheist. I’ve seen/heard the expression used enough where it no longer phases me as awkward or odd, so I’ve definitely seen it around a bit.

#4

Otters In Space, paragraph 1:

The bus stop sign and shelter were in front of a giant, white church. The Church of the First Race was an historical building, preserved from the time when humans still walked the Earth. It dwarfed the taller but smaller-scale high-rises around it. It was the oldest building in New LA. Kipper had been inside once and sat on the monstrous pews, but, like most cats, she didn't feel comfortable with First Race doctrine. It was a dog religion -- they preached that humans, the First Race, had left Earth as emissaries to the stars and would return to bring all the peoples of Earth into a confederation of interstellar sentience. Someday.
#5

I think that God Of Clay should also be mentioned here…

#6

I’ve both used and not used religion in my books. The problem with using religion is that you run the risk of offending a significant percentage of your readers (militant atheists) right off the bat, no matter how gentle or indirect your approach. The problem with not using religion is that spirituality is unquestionably a major part of the human experience as a whole, and it very commonly manifests itself in organized religion. To skip it is to be unrealistic. My general rule is to leave it out when it’s not directly plot or character-relevant. While I personally am an agnostic, I’ve written major characters who are devout Christians, “fallen” Christians, and Lapists (as well as Lapists who are also both devout and fallen Christians). It’s all a matter of what I think the situation calls for.

Note that I don’t write Buddhists, Muslims etc. simply because I don’t feel competent to.

#7

Religion is a constant presence in my stories. I also have a detailed furry religion based out of hinted at, but thus far I havent revealed much. Itll play a larger role in my next story.

#8

I completely forgot that religion actually plays a plot point in Handcuffs & Lace. Pretty bad, forgetting your own stuff. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s really common in Fantasy because Gods are strongly represented in tropes there. There they can show up or at least grant magical power. It’s a part of world building people love to show. Polytheism in fantasy is also not only the standard, but it’s rare to see something else.

It’s once you get out of fantasy that any mention disappears.

Sort of like how in mainstream SF, it is very uncommon to see religion mentioned (or even exclaimed), almost as society just stopped believing.

#9

That is indeed a fun discussion I’d like to have, but it would threadjack this discussion fast. :wink: As far as Popular Culture is concerned, I honestly cannot think of a single character I’ve encountered who was Pagan outside of your typical witchcraft-urban fantasy story, fantasy, or as a caricature.

#10

Religion shows up all over the place in sci-fi. I almost wrote an English thesis on the subject of how religion is portrayed in science-fiction in college, and I had no trouble finding works to reference. I did have trouble motivating myself to actually bother with writing the thesis, and since it wasn’t required, I ended up not doing it. But there were TONS of books I could have written about.

Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, & That Hideous Strength - C.S. Lewis
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Contact - Carl Sagan
Dune - Frank Herbert
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

These are just the books that leap to mind. And, getting away from books…

Battlestar Galactica, Deep Space 9, and Babylon 5 have tons of religion.

So, no, religion doesn’t just disappear in science-fiction.

#11

One of my favourite sci-fi stories involving religion is Asimov’s Trends. I see a fair bit of pendulum-swinging in the world today and I hope it swings back again sharpish.

(Off-topic, but even though I’m an atheist I love Out of the Silent Planet, and also The Screwtape Letters, as well as the Narnia books.)

#12

C.S. Lewis had a lot of interesting ideas and was a pretty good writer.

#13

  1. I didn’t say religion disappears from SF. I said it disappears from Furry lit.

  2. I said religion was very uncommon in SF. It’s been pretty absent in almost all the sci-fi I’ve experienced. I have to think hard to find any. Also I’ve only read one of those books on that list; aren’t most of those books at least 30 years old?

#14

Does literature become irrelevant after thirty years?

Regardless, The Sparrow and Snow Crash are both from the nineties. They’re also both excellent. For that matter, all three of the sci-fi television series I listed are less than thirty years old.

#15

I was trying to think of a good source of recent sci-fi stories that deal with religion that I could link to online. I was just reading one the other night in an anthology, but I thought it would be more useful to be able to link to ones that can be read for free. So, I checked out Daily Science Fiction’s categories. At first, I was surprised to see that they didn’t have a category for religion. Then, I realized that they do – it’s just categorized under fantasy.

http://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/religious

That got me thinking about arguments I’ve heard about how the greatest genre works get labelled as “literature” – meaning that genre fiction gets limited to anything not good enough to count as “real literature.” If it’s good enough, then, clearly, it’s not genre anymore. So, perhaps it’s less that religion doesn’t appear in science-fiction and more that most speculative fiction which handles religion automatically gets labelled as fantasy.

#16

Genres change over time. If something stops being present at a point, the genre has moved away from it and changed. If the primary examples of x being prevalent come from materials put out a generation or more ago, that suggests it may no longer be prevalent.

I could say that Sci Fi is all about rockets going into space, robots, exploration and aliens invading by pointing to 50s era sci-fi as my examples. At that time it was the case, but the focus of the genre broadened, moved on, and refocused many times since that era. This doesn’t make those sources irrelevant.

For that matter, all three of the sci-fi television series I listed are less than thirty years old.
Which is why I said the books, not the shows.
#17

While I don’t think this is the case, that’s also not the point. But this isn’t how some are categorizing it. I’m saying, what I[ consider to be sci fi to generally lack any mention of religion.

But this is getting really off track from a side comment I made about mainstream SF, and away from Furry, which is what my primary point was about.

#18

My Occidentania Cycle books actually have a developed pantheon and mythology, though there’s also a hidden backstory that will be explained in the upcoming fourth book, “The Linen Butterlfy.” When my characters say “By the shield!” or “Sweet Ovego!” they’re referring to tropes within an internally-consistent mythology, not just blurting something out to fill pages.

Here are some world-building notes on important sketches from the religion in my stories.

Creation story:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3522609/

Religious re-ordering myth: The Tale of Mortibe
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5233452/

Somewhere I’ve also got the Tale of Ovego, but the long and short is this: he’s considered the last of the saints, and he dies shielding pilgrims from a wild boar (hence the phrase “By the shield” or more rarely, “By Ovego’s Shield”).

Also, “The Linen Butterfly” and the last book in the cycle, “The Vimana Incident,” are essentially Gnostic allegories so the religious element is twofold.

#19

One more example that bears mention here is “St. Ailbe’s Hall”, a short story that received an Ursa Major nomination about ten years ago and subsequently appeared in the Ursa Major Awards anthology.

There are a couple of distinctions to keep in mind when discussing religion in fiction, especially in anything resembling a SF/F setting. The first is whether we are talking about real world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.) vs. invented religions. The second is whether the portrayal of religion is limited to belief, tradition, ritual, and so forth, possibly including militant fanaticism, (essentially what we can and do see in the real world where religion is a matter of faith) vs. a story universe where the god or gods are active and influence events in an objectively perceptible way.

#20

If that’s the story that I’m remembering, it was AMAZING.