Season 5, Episode 06—Religion
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TOF tackles the subject of religion, how it relates to genre, mostly movies and TV, mostly a Christian perspective. Religion is such a large topic, that it is hard to do it justice in one episode. We only have time to cover a few things.
Jerome Stueart joins Troy and David for the episode. As a first time guest, we ask Jerome his first experiences with the speculative genre, and what he fell in love with. David also asks him what was the first genre thing he fell in love with. And Troy asks Jerome what his all-time faves are, in the 6 categories we ask now, which are: Favorite genre author, novel, shorter work, movie, TV show, TV episode.
Troy does a short introduction of religion.
Some of the things covered:
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Exorcist
Deep Space 9
Mazes and Monsters
Children of Men
5th Element
Dogma
Field of Dreams
The bible as fantasy novel
Contact
The Book of Job
God Game
The Matrix
Signs
Carl Jung’s Synchronicity
Battle Star Galactica (BSG)
This is our holiday episode, and part of what is also discussed, the idea of faith and religion as vehicles of hope, compassion. social justice, and caring for the poor. That loving each other is the message. And, how religion and fantasy work so well together. How faith may give you reasons to be compassionate. The question of what if, why is this happening, closure, grief, meaning, and purpose.
TOF will hopefully return to the topic of religion, do a deeper dive, and cover other creation myths, the darker side of religion (covered briefly in this episode), Disc World, A Canticle for Leibowitz, the Sparrow, The Handmaid’s Tale, and much more.
Jerome Stueart is a gay writer and artist whose writing has appeared in F&SF, Fantasy, Tor.com, Geist, Strange Horizons, On Spec, and several Tesseracts anthologies.
In 2020 he was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in Short Fiction. His work is often found at the intersection of science fiction, fantasy, and faith. As co-editor of the 2015 anthology Wrestling with Gods (Tesseracts 18), he asked others to explore that same intersection.
Stueart lived for nearly a decade in the Yukon, but now lives, writes, and paints in Dayton, Ohio, as well as working in a café bakery.