Science fiction writers don't usually give that assurance much credence. Even Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) and Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)—serious and sympathetic explorations of religion—aren't centrally concerned with the survival of the Church. Science fiction's speculations don't naturally stray toward ecclesiology's future tense.
Yet three notable works of science fiction do address themselves to the power of that old promise against the secular infinitudes of time and space: Cordwainer Smith's “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” (1964), John Morressy's The Mansions of Space (1983), and R. A. Lafferty's Past Master (1968). These novels share a Christian preoccupation—a theological preoccupation—with the survival of faith threatened sometimes by oblivion, sometimes by annihilation, and sometimes indeed by the gates of hell.
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