Consolations of a New Earth

Abstract

In a marginalized group, personal suffering is inescapably united to excluding social and political structures and situations. To provide consolation to an individual then also involves showing a way of how the group can escape its painful predicament, which in early Christianity took the form of an end times confrontation between good and evil; and the emergence of new heavens and a new earth. In science fiction literature, a variant on this theme of cosmic regeneration is the escape to an earth-like planet with the help of an interstellar space ship. An interesting recent case of such an offer of consolation in outer space is the novel, Voyage to Alpha Centauri, by Michael O’Brien, a contemporary Canadian author. The story is a commentary on the marginalization of traditional, especially Catholic, Christianity, and the growing strength of a liberal secular order.