Why and how I read ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’

In this book I weave together a perhaps somewhat unusual variety of topics, texts and genres. They reflect fragments of myself that I seek to unite in a momentary tale of being: cultural critic, scholar in religious studies and in women's studies and bookworm, who alternates bursts of passionate science fiction reading with indifference to the genre. That is, at times I am thrilled by its daring and imaginative worlds, while at others I suddenly find myself bored with or even chafed at what I then experience as science fiction's artificiality and complacency. Yet some authors never fail to rouse my excitement and admiration. James Tiptree, Jr is the most persistent of them.

As a theologian, I have always considered modern literature an important resource and challenging dialogical partner for posing questions about the meaning(lessness) of life. It was not until some ten, twelve years ago, however, that, to my great surprise, I found such qualities in science fiction. A previous interest in utopic literature and the discovery of messianic themes in television serials like Star Trek and V, watched on lazy Sunday afternoons, gradually converged on the reading at random of loads of science fiction. Its alternative worlds, extrapolations, fantastic imagination, and speculative vein became an acquired taste to me: and indeed, food for religious studies in a double sense. First, there is science fiction's either intended or subliminal transformation of mythological and religious themes and images. Think in particular of the battle between good and evil, end time myths, stories and figures of Fall and Redemption. On another level, science fiction's best writings are of interest to the theologian because of their critical and visionary qualities. In its imagination of, literally, new worlds, science fiction may shatter the apparent naturalness of the existent and suggest the myriad horizons of the possible.

‘Theology’ and ‘religious studies’ will be used interchangeably in this book. In my perception, the distinction between evocation in the former and explanation in the latter is not so much a matter of rigid fences but of emphasis and intention.