Summary: J. Gordon Melton has recently argued that in the 1960s when the study of new religions began, scholars were trying to explain why these movements existed, and ‘what was wrong that people were turning to new religions?’ (Melton 2007). He argues that in the twenty-first century the mood has changed, and it is now understood that ‘the emergence of new religions seems to be one sign of a healthy and free society, and we can now see everywhere that the slowing of the process of the formation of new religions occurs only where the suppressive powers of the state are called to bear’ (Melton 2007). This paper argues that this ‘normalisation’ of new religions should be extended to those religions that are explicitly based on fictional texts and include popular cultural phenomena and ludic elements. Employing the theory of cognitive narratology (Zunshine 2006), it will be demonstrated that a vocabulary of neologisms and a strong narrative thread are characteristic of both sf and new religions and spiritualities. Beings such as gods and ancestors, angels and demons (which belong to the domain of religion) are made real to humans through story (written text and oral transmission) and thus Theory of Mind (as employed by cognitive theorists to discuss fictional characters) also works as an interpretative tool for supernatural/supraempirical beings such as those found in religions. In fact, fiction-based religions (particularly based on sf) are actually logical, because Theory of Mind leads readers to invest in the worlds created in the books and to attribute to the characters inner lives and motivations that make them more real and meaningful (and thus likely to occupy the place of gods/angels/etc).
