SF Writers Use Islam To Explore The Familiar Alien

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SF Writers Use Islam To Explore The Familiar Alien

dunebutler.jpgThe Islam And Science Fiction website is addictive reading, mostly because it shows how many different ways non-Muslim writers have portrayed Islam in SF works. I already knew that Dune borrows tons of ideas from Islam, but I'd forgotten that Philip K. Dick's Eye In The Sky used a fundamentalist Islamic world to reflect paranoia about McCarthyism and Communist hysteria. (In a few works, Islam seems to be the "safe" other to project an author's fears of oppression onto.) But since 9/11, portrayals of Islam have actually become more sympathetic in novels such as Charles Stross' Accelerando and Brian Aldiss' Harm. [Islam In Science Fiction]

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