History Main / CultColony

* The [[FanonDiscontinuity much derided]] Moon-Moon colony, a WackyWayside tribe in ''MobileSuitGundamZZ''.

* Grayson in the ''HonorHarrington'' stories was founded by the Church of Humanity Unchained, a sort of SpaceAmish cult that wanted to escape from the corrosive effects of technology. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, the planet they landed on had such high concentrations of heavy metals that they needed a very high level of technology to simply survive. They later went through a civil war and schism and sent out their own colony of religious dissenters to exile, who formed their own CultColony on the nearby planet of Masada.

*** Weber is quite fond of this trope. It crops up twice more in the Literature/{{Honorverse}} is the side stories. One is a relatively new colony formed from religious dissidents from Haven. Another crops up as part of the Tallbot Sector in much the same position as Grayson, though in this case its a local bug killing their crops and they were able to relocate to another habitable planet in the other half of their binary star system very early on. Unlike Grayson the current population is rather bitter about their ancestors fanaticism.

*** Weber is quite fond of this trope. It crops up twice more in the {{Honorverse}} is the side stories. One is a relatively new colony formed from religious dissidents from Haven. Another crops up as part of the Tallbot Sector in much the same position as Grayson, though in this case its a local bug killing their crops and they were able to relocate to another habitable planet in the other half of their binary star system very early on. Unlike Grayson the current population is rather bitter about their ancestors fanaticism.

* The prison colony of Cygnus Alpha in the first season of ''[[{{ptitle3ox9crrdkerj}} Blake's Seven]]'' was ruled by a corrupt cult leader who enforced his control by controlling access to a "medicine" that protected against a divinely-sent plague. The disease was actually a minor environmental poison on that planet that quickly cleared itself, but since no one knew that, the cult members stayed in line and kept taking the drug.

* In {{Lois McMaster Bujold}}'s ''[[VorkosiganSaga Ethan of Athos]]'', the planet Athos was settled by a misogynistic religious order as an all-male colony. They used frozen eggs and artificial wombs to keep the population up.

* In ''OryxAndCrake'' and ''The Year of the Flood'', it's clear that most people in-universe see the God's Gardeners as a cult. Whether or not it really is a cult depends largely on the reader's perspective, although parts of the latter book told by members of God's Gardeners provide a more nuanced view.

* In 1630, members of another breakaway sect known as the Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony forty miles north of Plymouth, establishing the city of {{Boston}}. They promptly made it illegal to be anything but a Puritan, and soon were expelling large numbers of their own members for not being sufficiently Puritan, which is how the nearby colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut got started.

* The Pilgrims, best remembered for inspiring the {{Thanksgiving}} holiday, were largely members of a separatist faction of the Church of England. Fed up with being persecuted by more moderate factions, they left Britain for the Netherlands, which had [[FreestateAmsterdam much the same reputation]] then as now, but at least didn't persecute people for disagreeing with the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1620, some of the separatists, afraid that their children were assimilating into Dutch society and losing their English identity, booked the freighter ''Mayflower'' to found Plymouth in what is today Massachusetts. They were originally planning to settle in the existing colony of Jamestown, Virginia, but were blown off course.

* In ''StarshipTroopers'', "Mormon Extremists" build themselves Port Joe Smith, a fortified human outpost on planet a considered by the Arachnids to be part of their sphere of influence. [[KillEmAll It didn't end well.]]
* In {{Pitch Black}} Richard B. Riddick encounters Imam, a character determined to find the colony Mecca, where multiple religious groups are alleged to co-exist without religious conflict.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* Pick any {{SciFi}}-based OrsonScottCard series.

* In the {{PitchBlack}} Richard B. Riddick encounters Imam, a character determined to find the colony Mecca, where multiple religious groups are alleged to co-exist without religious conflict.

* Several RobertAHeinlein stories mention such colonies, such as that one planet mentioned in ''Friday'' where the Pope-in-Exile is allowed to openly celebrate mass.

* [[DisContinuity The much derided]] Moon-Moon colony of ''GundamZZ''.

* The modern nation of UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} was established in order for the Jews to escape persecution in Europe. Of course, the area they picked out was also their ancient ancestral homeland, subverting this trope.

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** Same deal in John Varley's ''[[GaeaTrilogy Titan]]'' series, only with neopagan lesbian separatists and frozen sperm.

* "Founding Fathers", a short story by Stephen Dedman, mentions several planets of this type, and is set on one settled by a bunch of people who were prepared to go to the trouble in order to live and raise their families on a planet with no black people.

* Grayson in the HonorHarrington stories was founded by the Church of Humanity Unchained, a sort of SpaceAmish cult that wanted to escape from the corrosive effects of technology. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, the planet they landed on had such high concentrations of heavy metals that they needed a very high level of technology to simply survive. They later went through a civil war and schism and sent out their own colony of religious dissenters to exile, who formed their own CultColony on the nearby planet of Masada.

* Some of L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s science fiction books use this along with divisions along racial lines, to the point where some characters begin confusing race with ideology. Most notable are ''The Parafaith War'' and ''The Ethos Effect'', with the predominantly Caucasian "Revenants of the Prophet," which evolved out of a merging of Mormons and a white Muslim offshoot sect. The protagonist of ''The Parafaith War'' has to deal with strong suspicion about his motives and loyalties because he [[PhenotypeStereotype looks a lot like a generic Rev]] in a society whose population was mostly derived from south/east Asia.

* In GordonRDickson's ''ChildeCycle'' (better known as the Dorsai books) the dawn of space colonization causes humanity to separate along philosphical lines (Faithholders, warriors, rationalists, mystics, etc.)

* Sharon Shinn's Samaria series features a planet founded by Christians. There are genetically engineered humans with wings called angels, whose voices call out to a spaceship in the sky that runs the planet.

* A preacher in the OuterLimits episode 'A New Life' led a group of followers to the woods to form a colony. [[spoiler: It turns out that the preacher is an alien who wanted to enslave the followers' decendents.]]

* ''MassEffect'' has a mission where Sheppard has to infiltrate a colony controlled by the cultists and abduct their leader.

* In {{Lois McMaster Bujold}}'s ''Ethan of Athos'', the planet Athos was settled by a misogynistic religious order as an all-male colony. They used frozen eggs and artificial wombs to keep the population up.