Buddhist Reception in Pulp Science Fiction

Abstract

Science fiction has a lengthy history of irreligion. In part, this relates to its titular association with science itself, which, as both methodology and ontological basis, veers away from revelatory forms of knowledge in order to formulate hypotheses of reality based upon experimental praxis. However, during science fiction’s long antipathy to faith, Buddhism has occupied a unique and sustained position within the genre. This article charts the origins of that interaction, in the pulp science fiction magazines of the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which depictions of Buddhism quickly evolve from ‘Yellow Peril’ paranoia towards something much more intriguing and accommodating, and in so doing, provide a genre foundation for the environmental concerns of much 21st-century science fiction.