Future faith: Let the Fire Fall (1969) by Kate Wilhelm and Strength of Stones (1981) by Greg Bear

Two quite different science fiction novels both explore religious themes in troubled future scenarios.

Neither Let the Fire Fall by Kate Wilhelm nor Strength of Stones by Greg Bear are among the best-known or best-regarded of their authors’ works. In both cases, they were written well before those authors reached the peak of their success in SF. What they share is a focus on religious themes, albeit approached in very different ways.

Published in 1969 and out of print since 1974, Let the Fire Fall is the fourth novel by Kate Wilhelm (1928 - 2018). Beginning with a contemporary setting, its narrative extends out decades into the future. That future is profoundly changed by the arrival of an alien starship which lands in rural Ohio. While only one infant alien survives, the incident triggers the emergence of a sinister new religious movement which throws the United States into chaos.

Published in 1981, Strength of Stones is the fourth novel by Greg Bear (1951 - 2022). It is a revised extension of two previously published stories. In this far future tale, a confederation of faith groups - exiled from Earth after a series of brutal religious wars - have colonised the planet God-Does-Battle. Intelligent, mobile cities were created to fulfil their every need but humans were declared unworthy and cast out of these machines for living in. A thousand years later, the humans again try to lay claim to the decaying cities.

Let the Fire Fall (1969) by Kate Wilhelm

Within the SF sphere, Wilhelm’s name is inextricably linked to her novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1977). It won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell, and Jupiter Awards for Best Novel, and has come to be seen as one of the best SF novels focused on the topic of cloning as well as one of the most praised books of the 1970s. 

Wilhelm’s other novels are much less well known, including Let the Fire Fall. It fell out of print decades ago, and perhaps contributed to the common view that Wilhelm struggled at novel length. It is a minor work, awkwardly paced and rather oddly structured. 

The novel opens in a small Ohio town where an alien starship makes a (presumably unplanned) landing. The aliens are essentially indistinguishable from humans, although Wilhelm makes little of this surprising aspect. All of them rapidly die, except for a baby who is delivered by the kindly local doctor and his wife. At the same time, a local young woman also gives birth. Perhaps inevitably, the two babies are switched, in a plot beat Wilhelm explicitly compares with Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (1881). 

Surprisingly, Let the Fire Fall declines to follow the development of either the human or alien child closely. Instead, it focuses on the emergence of a sinister pseudo-Christian movement set up by the human child’s conniving, ego-driven father. His dubious church, founded on hatred towards the aliens and preparing for their supposed return, attains huge international power but Wilhelm struggles to sell this idea convincingly.

While it is unfortunate when books fall out of print and become scarce, Let the Fire Fall is no lost classic. More confusing than engaging, it contains little clue to the success its author would have eight years later.

Strength of Stones (1981) by Greg Bear

This early novel by Bear was welded together from three shorter pieces. Part One was originally published as “Mandala” in New Dimensions 8 (1978), edited by Robert Silverberg. Part Two was originally published as “Strength of Stones, Flesh of Brass” in Rigel in June of 1981. Part Three was new to the novel version.

Strength of Stones is an example of the fallen colony story. The planet God-Does-Battle was settled by a religious alliance, for which mobile cities with incredibly advanced technology served as a kind of new Eden or man-made heaven. Relatively soon afterwards, the artificial intelligences that ran these giant machines determined that humans did not deserve to live within them, and cast them out.

The setting is the strongest aspect of the novel. God-Does-Battle is a dry, hostile world and the humans have been reduced to a primitive level of knowledge and technology. Strength of Stones inverts the common relationship between people and cities in science fiction. Very often, people are desperate to escape cities, as in Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars (1956). Here, people are eager to get into the cities, where they believe all their problems can be solved.

Another interesting aspect is that without people to care for, the cities themselves are decaying. By the time the novel begins, few of them are still functioning and the surviving ones wander aimlessly across the barren plains. The machines have various “city parts”, essentially biomechanical robots which slightly resemble the ones in another Clarke novel, Rendezvous with Rama (1973). A faction of marauders actually capture and ride some of these creatures, as if they were horses.

While it has some interesting religious allusions and one or two surprising plot developments, Strength of Stones is an inessential part of Bear’s career. Certainly it never threatens to reach the heights of Blood Music or The Forge of God.

While these novels are not worth going to a lot of effort to track down, they are interesting examples of the religious themes being explored in SF.

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• For another very different take on religion in SF, in which faith plays a key part in humanity reaching the stars, see Robert Silverberg’s To Open the Sky (1967).