Heaven on Earth: Tunguska, 30 June 1908

Abstract

For two thousand years, the monotheistic West considered heaven the place of salvation. The overwhelming skepticism of science put an end to that fiction, even if various strands of utopian thought have long nourished hopes at least for an innerworldly paradise. Focusing on the ominous meteor strike in Siberia in June 1908 that Stanisław Lem used for several novels as well as works by Georg Simmel, Vladimir Sorokin and Peter Sloterdijk, the chapter sketches the outlines of this discourse both in the intertwining realms of science fiction and anthropology. It argues that twentieth-century space research has contributed to a new heaven of communication, as already conceived in the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the 1950s.