Many of us feel like science is the enemy of religion. We believe that as we discover more of the universe all around ourselves that the need for gods and monsters will fall by the wayside, cast off the way a child leaves their toys behind when they step into adulthood. However, religion runs deep through people, and the need to believe is not altered or changed by new discoveries, technologies, or facts.
In many cases, these things only lead to new (often stranger) permutations of religion.
From attempts to reach nirvana through uploading one's consciousness into digital neural networks, to remaking one's form into something approximating the divine through manipulation of the genetic code, to the act of terraforming as a duty of faith, religion can take unexpected forms in the distant future. The need to believe in something, and to seek purpose in the greater universe, can lead people in all sorts of unexpected directions.
Of course, many of these cults have dark sides to them. Because when all the horizons have been pushed, and all the curtains of the universe are thrown back, we often find that we are the monsters warned about on those ancient maps.
- from the publisher's blurb