Sheri S Tepper is not hugely regarded as a Science Fiction author, but perhaps she should be. She has a way of choosing a difficult topic in modern life and exploring it in detail. In “Raising the Stones”, Sheri S Tepper explores the topic of religion. What would an ideal religion be like? How could a religion make life better than atheism?
Her answer is, wait for it, the utopian God is truffle-oid.
An ideal God would be symbiotic, like the symbiosis between fungus and algae in lichen. But set up so both species can survive without the other, but both are better when they cooperate.
An ideal God would:
- be omniscient (almost)
- be omnipotent (almost)
- suppress irrational fears and anxieties without suppressing fear of real dangers
- communicate in a non-intrusive way
- care for all animals and plants, not just humans or worshippers
- be kind
- always arrange for resources (human and otherwise) to be available exactly when needed
- allow good humoured arguments and disagreements that never become violent
- physically create plants, animals and beautiful landscapes
As well as slightly more ominous things:
- be evangelistic
- eliminate by exile, deadly argument or murder, those people who are intractably violent.
This utopian God-religion is set off against others. One other is the worst imaginable type of religion on Voorstod – arbitrary cruelty for fun, slavery, inequality of sexes, and a policy of ultimately killing everyone in the accessible universe. Another is a multitheistic religion, where Gods are bought and sold for profit. Another is where a revelation (from a passing alien) has been perverted by interpretation over the generations. Another, humorous one, is an alien slug-oid race with a scatology. Set all that against a bureaucratic “Authority” and a queen-led monarchy, both largely atheist and both largely paralysed.
The story begins badly, both the utopian God and the turnip-oid race with detachable legs who own the God commit suicide on a new human colonisation planet called Hobbs World. A bad beginning often makes a good book. But the human who had been feeding (with a local species of vermin) the God dies at the same time and is buried with fungal spores. The children in their spare time, with adult help, build a new temple in imitation of the old, and adults and children together move the new truffle-oid God into it. Children Jeb and Saturday cuts and stores fungal mycelium, to be buried with recently dead people from the other settlements.
“As quarrelsomeness and strife disappear, clear thinking prevails and worship of the new god spreads to other settlements”
Moving years forward in time and the horrible religion from a different planet kidnaps Jeb. Saturday, with her packets of mycelium, and Jeb’s father Sam follow. The slaves of Voorstod sew the truffle-oid mycelium, and those prophets mentally unable to cope with the resulting non-violence are ejected.
Not the end of the story though. One of the priests of the perverted revelation, frightened of the mind-altering ability of the God, sends a small army to Hobbs World that burns the truffles and hills hundreds. And the exiled Voorstod prophets attack Authority taking charge of Authority’s mindless killing robots, which they send against Hobbs World. But the almost omniscient and almost omnipotent God of Hobbs World has seeen this coming, and fights back in a way reminiscent of HG Wells “War of the Worlds”, even as Sam walks among the invaders spreading dissent.
As a SciFi book, the bad parts AFAI am concerned are that parts of the book are boring, the ability to travel instantly between worlds, and the presence of telepathy. Good features include long timespan (ten years or so), and the lack of humanoid aliens (the aliens are slug-oid, turnip-oid and truffle-oid). Tankfully, even instant travel between worlds and telepathy are treated sensitively – instant travel runs a big risk of unconsciousness and death, and telepathy is so unintrusive that it almost doesn’t exist.
Something of a puzzle to me is the phrase describing the utopian religion as “a way, a convenience, a kindness”. “A way” is clearly a reference to “The Tao”, but “A convenience”? Web dictionary defines it as “the state of being able to proceed with something without difficulty”. Wouldn’t that be nice!
But the real crux of the story is its definitive answers to the questions “What would an ideal religion be like? How could a religion make life better than atheism?”
What do you think? Do you think a telepathic truffle would make the ideal God?
