Fictional religion
By 1940s and 1950s this started to change, for example with Robert A. Heinlein's "If This Goes On—" (1940) and Sixth Column (1941), and Fritz Leiber's Gather, Darkness!
[7]: 435 Some works feature religions in the context of "instrumentality of future tyranny", such as in James E. Gunn’s This Fortress World (1955).
Others feature religions formed or evolved in the post-apocalyptic conditions (Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1960), or in settings of interstellar civilizations (Simmons' Hyperion, or Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom’s series that begun with The Jesus Incident, 1979) or featuring artificial intelligence (Clifford D. Simak’s Project Pope, 1981).
Greg Egan’s ‘‘Oceanic’’ (1998) describes conflict between fictional future religious faiths in a posthuman context.
Lewis' Space Trilogy series beginning with Out of the Silent Planet (1938), the religious practices on Mars and Venus are invented, but dovetail into and endorse Christian belief.
[20][21] Orson Scott Card has criticized the science fiction genre for oversimplifying religion, which he claims is always negatively depicted as "ridiculous and false".
[8] Some fictional religions in role-playing games have been controversial due to accusations of encouraging occultism (see also: religious objections to Dungeons & Dragons).
[28] Stableford notes that "thinkers and writers who could not set aside their own propensity for faith" created not just literary images, but real world new cults, of various popularity.
[29]: 1–3 [30][31] The Church of Scientology mythology written by L. Ron Hubbard draws heavily on pulp SF tropes.
[29]: 2 [32] The Church of the SubGenius, also commonly classified as a parody religion, celebrates several holidays in honor of characters from fiction and popular culture, such as Monty Python, Dracula, and Klaatu and its mythology is influenced by, among others, the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P.
[29]: 101, 104 Octavia E. Butler's fictional religion of Earthseed (introduced in the Parable of the Sower, 1993) has also led to some real-world new religious movements.
