SOURCE: “Catholic Science Fiction and the Comic Apocalypse: Walker Percy and Walter Miller,” in Renascence, Vol. XL, No. 2, Winter, 1987, pp. 95-110.

In the following excerpt, Young compares and contrasts the work of Walker Percy and Walter Miller, contending that both have authored science-fiction novels in the sense that science fiction deals with the effects of science on the human condition.

According to one prominent science fiction writer, science and technology together constitute the “dominant” object of worship of the modern world. “To put it simply,” he remarks, “science is a god-thing: omniscient, omnipotent, master of that terrible trinity of hope, fear, and power” (Sturgeon, 99, 100). This portentous utterance adds a certain gravity to the familiar quip, “Science fiction is the religion of atheists.” There is something surprising, then, in the realization that science fiction can be the mode for novels of profound Christian vision, not only in a work...