Science-Fiction, Hollywood, and the Technology of Antichrist
by Thomas Millary
Sci-Fi and False Signs
In his seminal work, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose condemned “the spirit of science fiction.”1 His critique of that literary genre is found within the chapter “Signs from Heaven: An Orthodox Christian Understanding of UFOs.”2 Fr. Seraphim incisively argued that the so-called ‘UFO phenomenon’ would be a major component of the emerging religion of the future, the religion of Antichrist. By examining the descriptions of supposed ‘alien encounters’ and the beliefs of UFO enthusiasts, he demonstrated that an Orthodox perspective can only consider this phenomenon to be demonic. Before launching into this critique, he contextualized it by looking at the sector of pop-culture which had done the most work to prime society to accept outlandish spiritual beliefs about extraterrestrials. He turned to the popularity of science-fiction to answer the question “What were men prepared to see in the sky?”3