Although surprisingly little is understood about the planet – Oasis – or its inhabitants, the aliens have specifically requested a missionary be sent, in order that they might learn more about the teachings of the Bible – or as they know it, The Book of Strange New Things – and more particularly its promises of eternal life. Yet there’s little doubt there have been few science fiction novels as explicitly concerned with the meaning of faith as Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, a book that features a missionary despatched to an alien world to preach the Gospel to the natives while what looks suspiciously like the end of days consumes our own.įor the missionary, the aptly named Peter Leigh, the position is an extraordinary opportunity, even if it means being separated from his wife, Bea.

After all, what are the final moments of Kubrick’s 2001, or the uploaded consciousnesses and singularities of the cyberpunks and their inheritors but updated versions of the Rapture?

At first blush, science fiction and religion might seem curious bedfellows, the one priding itself on its hard-headedness and rationality, the other giving primacy to faith and the acceptance of mystery.īut dig a little deeper and the differences are less obvious, and not just because of the tradition of books such as James Blish’s A Case of Conscience and Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow that explore questions about religion, but because Christianity’s eschatological underpinning is given literal form in many of science fiction’s most famous images of transcendence.

The book of strange new things ending