Islam in SF

I had one of those Google moments — “hey, is there anything out there on ‘Islam in science fiction’?”—and yes, of course there is, a nifty Islam & Science Fiction site with a presumably growing list of novels, short stories, movies, and comics. The list includes, as expected, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Kim Stanley Robinsons’s Mars trilogy, and various Bruce Sterling stories, along with a host of others I haven’t read.

It also includes Charles Stross‘s Accelerando. One of the stories in that collection, “Halo,” was what made me enter the search in the first place: cool, tech-savvy, and with a fun idea for making the plot turn on the ijtihād (individual juristic effort) of an Islamic legal scholar orbiting Jupiter — your mileage may differ, but I think it is very nicely handled. There turns out to be an Accelerando website, with the book available for free download (under a Creative Commons license) in a wealth of formats. Hats off to everybody!