Theme & Character Lists: Patriarchal Theocracies
Women, Religions, and State Control

see also christian dystopias

Many dystopias entwine religious authority into either the government or the society. These novels explicitly portray theocracies or the effects on women of religious control. Not necessarily Christian, Islamic, or otherwise earth-originated or reality-based. But they must have some state control.

Also, these are usually -- but not always -- patriarchal theocracies.

• Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (fundamentalist Christians)

• Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover world included a patriarchal theocracy, particularly highlighed in The Shattered Chain but mentioned elsewhere, too. Seemingly patterned after desert-originated Islamic cultures.
• Gael Baudino's O Greenest Branch!
• Brunner, John. The Stone That Never Came Down. 1973. Leader of right-wing religious group wants to take over the world.

• Flynn Connolly's The Rising of the Moon (Catholicism in near-future Ireland)

• Suzette Haden Elgin's "For the Sake of Grace"

• Fletcher, Jane. The World Celaeno Chose (Dimsdale: London, 1999) - a matriarchal theocracy rules an all-woman world ...
• Esther M. Friesner's The Psalms of Herod and The Sword of Mary (a post-apocalyptic variant of xtianity)

• Killough, Lee. A Voice Out of Ramah (1979) (a patriarchal theocracy, in which women somehow still manage to pretty much do whatever they want, and male priests secretly winnow out 90% of the males)

• Le Guin, Ursula K. The Telling (2000) (the protagonist, now in another world and another time, spends some time in the novel remembering the Unist theocracy on Earth)

• Marley, Louise. The Terrorists of Irustan (1999) (a quasi-Muslim theocracy)

• Joanna Russ' The Two of Them

• Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing (post-millennial fundamentalist Christian sect runs southern California)

• Sheri Tepper, in general. Most of her science fiction & fantasy work, from early to late, has societies where the culture, the religion, and the State are inseparably oppressive to women and other groups.
  --. Raising the Stones (an evolution (no pun intended, heh heh) of fundamentalist Christian / Islamic sects; they are the state in their part of the world)
  --. Grass (some unpleasant amalgam of Catholicism & Mormonism). Not exactly the State but wields an awful lot of political power.

  Other Works

• Roberts, Keith. Kiteworld. (1985)