Every once in a while, someone will write a story wherein faith in deities 
is justified. I like those stories. I've found very few. Most are like the 
commedians who make fun of atheists, most of whom seem to just state 
"They're atheists" in some way, then laugh, as in "can you believe he said 
he didn't believe in god? WTF?"

The stories I *dis*like are where the deity is just shown to be someone 
playing at being a deity, or

I've found a few novels where the handling of deities was well done.

"Calculating God" - Robert Sawyer. (My favorite such, and best written methinks)

"Wunderland Gambit" - Jack Chaucer. (Stupid, stupid series of novels about a 
group of people who get thrown into parallel or virtual universes, one of 
which contains an actual functioning deity. Each individual world was 
interesting, but the overall premise was stupid.)

"The Prophesy" - starring C. Walkens. Lots of fun.

Some book which is vaguely cyberpunk plus greek gods which was stupid for 
anyone who knew how computers work. (Demons in place of firewalls, logging 
into Olympusnet, dumb stuff like that, but actual deities.)

There were one or two others I'd thought of that kind of fit the mold, but 
apparently not well enough to remember exactly what they were.

Any others that people can suggest? That are good? That don't treat deities 
as "sufficiently advanced technology" or "aliens that appeared long ago"? 
That contain actual deities rather than just faith therein? (Actually, just 
faith therein where the faithful are ultimately justified would do. :-)

I bring this up, because I recently read a short story wherein someone on a 
SF world participated in a ritual that reinforced his faith in the local 
deity to the point of unshakableness. It was handled wonderfully, with the 
faith bringing the kind of inner peace one would expect even in the face of 
others doubting. But then the protagonist finds his faith not to be 
justified but rather a scientific result during his further studies in 
science, and he then goes to try to convince others that they're high rather 
than enlightened, which for me spoiled the story. A world where the 
appropriate ritual reveals the actual deity is much more interesting than 
one in which the appropriate ritual reveals a biochemical high that feels 
like faith, methinks.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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The only book that springs to mind with a really strange deity:
"The Other Side" by Alfred Kubin (1909)

I don't think it meets all required criteria, however. It's rather classic
phantasy literature than cyberpunk - but very weird and off-beat. And certainly
not funny but rather dark, depressing and dystopic.

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On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:57:33 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Any others that people can suggest? That are good? 

I like Roger Zelazny; Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness and Isle of
the Dead are about deities. I've got a lot of his stories in rtf and pdf format
(unfortunatly not Creatures of Light and Darkness which is out of print).
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 08/23/09 20:57, Darren New wrote:
> Every once in a while, someone will write a story wherein faith in
> deities is justified. I like those stories. I've found very few. Most
> are like the commedians who make fun of atheists, most of whom seem to
> just state "They're atheists" in some way, then laugh, as in "can you
> believe he said he didn't believe in god? WTF?"

	I usually tend to point out how many of the loud atheists are so like 
religious people ;-)

> I bring this up, because I recently read a short story wherein someone
> on a SF world participated in a ritual that reinforced his faith in the
> local deity to the point of unshakableness. It was handled wonderfully,
> with the faith bringing the kind of inner peace one would expect even in
> the face of others doubting. But then the protagonist finds his faith
> not to be justified but rather a scientific result during his further
> studies in science, and he then goes to try to convince others that
> they're high rather than enlightened, which for me spoiled the story. A
> world where the appropriate ritual reveals the actual deity is much more
> interesting than one in which the appropriate ritual reveals a
> biochemical high that feels like faith, methinks.

	Oceanic?

	To be honest, I don't see why that story got the accolades it did. I 
felt it wasn't particularly creative nor original. Dark Integers was so 
much better (and with that, I've exhausted all the Egan stories/novels 
I've read).

-- 
How do frogs die? Ker-mit suicide.

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mone wrote:
> The only book that springs to mind with a really strange deity:
> "The Other Side" by Alfred Kubin (1909)
> 
> I don't think it meets all required criteria, however. It's rather classic
> phantasy literature than cyberpunk

I wasn't looking for cyberpunk. I was looking for actual deities treated 
with a reasonable amount of respect. (Cyberpunk deities are actually kind of 
silly, in the 1 or 2 cases I've run across it.

> - but very weird and off-beat. And certainly
> not funny but rather dark, depressing and dystopic.

Cool. Thanks!

Stephen wrote:
 > I like Roger Zelazny; Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness and 
Isle of
 > the Dead are about deities.


Thank you. The only thing I liked of his was one collection of shorts (that 
I haven't again found) wherein each short is one legend, apparently all 
about the same guy. It was really cool, because they were all in the style 
of legends: bad thing happens, hero shows up, solves problem, continues on 
his quest.


Neeum Zawan wrote:
 >     Oceanic?

Yes, exactly. I was somewhat trying to avoid spoilers. :-)

 >     To be honest, I don't see why that story got the accolades it did. I
 > felt it wasn't particularly creative nor original.

Agreed.  It just really killed me to find out the guy was wrong after all. 
Or, well, not that so much, but to have his faith shattered by mere reality 
when it was serving him so well. Maybe I need to re-read it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:52:42 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
> > I like Roger Zelazny; Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness and 
>Isle of
> > the Dead are about deities.
>
>
>Thank you. The only thing I liked of his was one collection of shorts (that 
>I haven't again found) wherein each short is one legend, apparently all 
>about the same guy. It was really cool, because they were all in the style 
>of legends: bad thing happens, hero shows up, solves problem, continues on 
>his quest.

Going from Wikipedia that sounds like Dilvish, the Damned, which I can't
remember reading. I do have a copy of his follow up novel "The Changing Land" in
html format.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen wrote:
> Going from Wikipedia that sounds like Dilvish, the Damned, which I can't
> remember reading. I do have a copy of his follow up novel "The Changing Land" in
> html format.

It's entirely possible there's more than one in the series. "The Changing 
Land" definitely rings a bell.

Oh, and as far as deity-friendly fiction goes, Holly Lisle's "Sympathy for 
the Devil" and its sequels are also very good. My favorite conversation there:

Gabriel: "My Lord, the devils are violating their agreement."
God: "Well, what did you expect?"
Gabriel: "But they must be punished!"
God: "They're already damned to hell. What would you have me do?"

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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If short stories will do for you, maybe you'll like these:

Isaac Asimov, "The Final Question"

Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God"

(Though it's just a "maybe"; they're a bit different from what you 
describe.)

---
"insufficient data for meaningful answer"
- Multivac

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Darren New schrieb:
> Gabriel: "My Lord, the devils are violating their agreement."
> God: "Well, what did you expect?"
> Gabriel: "But they must be punished!"
> God: "They're already damned to hell. What would you have me do?"

Man, that's a good one :-P

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It might be something different than you're thinking, but there's always 
CS Lewis' Space Trilogy.  The short story "The Nine Billion Names of 
God" also seems in this same vein.  Unfortunately I don't read too much 
science fiction these days, so that's all I can think of at the moment.

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