This session provokes new ways of thinking about religion through papers that extend the
meaning of both religion and "speculative fiction." Jonathan Campoverde considers how
Dungeon Crawler Carl, a Literary Role-Playing Game ("LitRPG") novel, pulls readers into the
game world of a post-Apocalyptic survivor and his cat companion. Enduring cycles of creation,
destruction, and renewal, protagonists play through layers of the game to win their freedom
and restore the Earth. Rohan Hassan discusses how Hindu mythology is recast in the Indian
science fiction film Kalki 2898 AD. By tying the film to the contemporary economy of religion in
India, Hassan offers it as a material apparatus for gestating and promoting religious discourses.
Emily Fitzgerald argues that the Buddhist Vimalakirti Sutra is a form of speculative fiction.
Through world-building and narrative devices this ancient text conforms to modern
speculative fiction's ability to expand our thinking about embodiment, truth, and religious
experience.
LitRPG apocalypses is a burgeoning genre that allows for the investigation of people’s responses to systemic oppression. In most cases, LitRPG apocalypses feature protagonists who labor for the liberation of themselves, their communities, and even their planets, whether through establishing themselves as powerful enough to protect their freedoms or by dismantling the oppressive systems thus forcing a renewal or rebirth into something better than before. Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series—and particularly the latest installment This Inevitable Ruin—exemplifies the genre, analyzing oppression and liberation with the misadventures of a guy named Carl and his talking cat Donut. This paper highlights that analysis and uses the works of Mircea Eliade, Pablo Freire, and others to connect Dinniman’s work to the greater conversation regarding liberation.
Drawing from the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata, Kalki 2898 AD (2024), reimagines elements of the grand narrative in a futuristic wasteland while setting out to explore questions of belief and faith, of the messiah and the messianic, of authority and godhood, of climate driven apocalypse and eschatology, of sin, guilt and redemption. What is more interesting,is how the movie,a significant pop-cultural product,serves as a material manifestation of specific religion while excluding specific ones, helping in formation of modified categories of the religion and ultimately aiding in its contemporary circulation.This paper will attempt to unravel the entanglement between religion and science fiction in Kalki 2898, by drawing from the framework of the possible avenues of interaction (Thrall 2024) and the methodology of religious materiality (Chidester 2018). While Thrall provides a succinct guideline to interpret the interactions, Chidester arguments about materiality help locate the findings in real world religious manifestation.
This paper argues that the Vimalakirti Sutra, a 1st-3rd-century Mahayana Buddhist text, can be read as an early example of speculative fiction. Through world-building and narrative devices, it challenges assumptions about embodiment, perception, and reality, and its portrayal of multiple realms pushes against the idea that religious texts must rely on “truth claims” to be meaningful. The sutra also destabilizes normative embodiment through events like a goddess transforming the arhat Shariputra into a woman, challenging gender norms within and beyond Buddhist doctrine. Additionally, it emphasizes sensory perception—particularly smell—offering a model of embodied understanding that resists purely linguistic explanation. These strategies invite students to engage with religion as world-making rather than just doctrine, illustrating how speculative fiction can expand our thinking about embodiment, truth, and religious experience. By reframing the Vimalakirti Sutra as speculative fiction, we can explore religion as a dynamic, imaginative force that resists fixed categories.