History Main / CultColony

Frequently overlaps with SpaceAmish, when the rejection of technology is religiously based. Naturally qualifies as a PlanetOfHats. In sci-fi, Mormons are probably the favorite pick for this - although they are usually off-screen. If the cult develops unsavoury traditions that it hides from visitors, the result will be a TownWithADarkSecret.

* The UsefulNotes/{{Mormon|ism}}s fled persecution in Illinois and Missouri by packing up and heading to Utah, then part of Mexico and inhabited only by Natives. In 1890, the Mormon leadership agreed to ban polygamy, opening a path for statehood and an end to official persecution. A few refused to accept this and began founding their own towns in other nearby states, territories, and countries where they could practice their polygamous lifestyle in relative peace. Some of these towns are still going strong today, with polygamy still going on, even if there is a high-profile raid every several years or so.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' has a mission where Shepard has to infiltrate a colony controlled by the cultists and abduct their leader. Said "colony" is two buildings with a combined population of fewer than 20. Three years later in-game, another of these is found in a cluster near Earth thought to be abandoned. A group of Asari explorers accidentally stumbled across a human colony established and forgotten about before Earth had its own FTL, and after some initial terror at the Asari's [[HumanAliens appearance,]] the colony was slowly integrated into the greater galactic whole. [[SHaggyDogStory Then the Reapers flattened it.]]

* Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'': In ''Literature/EthanOfAthos'', 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. [[RealityEnsues The inherent practical problems]] of maintaining a stable population on a planet where importing so much as a ''photograph'' of a woman involves considerable paperwork is the focus of the plot, and the Athosians are treated quite sympathetically by the standards of this trope.

* At the end of Octavia Butler's ''[[Literature/ParableOfTheSower Parable of the Talents]]'', the second book in the "Parable" series, the followers of the new religion known as Earthseed (created by the main character, Lauren) go up in space to fulfill their "destiny", which is to establish a colony and "take root among the stars". One wonders how this would have progressed [[AuthorExistenceFailure if she had gotten to write the scheduled third book]].

Frequently overlaps with SpaceAmish, when the rejection of technology is religiously based. Naturally qualifies as a PlanetOfHats. In sci-fi, Mormons are probably the favorite pick for this- although they are usually off-screen. If the cult develops unsavoury traditions that it hides from visitors, the result will be a TownWithADarkSecret.

* Utopia, Ohio was home to a bizarre cult that believed that the world was about to enter a 35,000-year-long peace, that people were going to be organized into 'phalanxes' (like communes), and that the oceans were going to turn to lemonade. Yes, seriously. We wish we could make this stuff up. Read more [[http://web.archive.org/web/20180818080405/http://www.forgottenoh.com:80/Utopia/utopia.html here]], courtesy of Website/ForgottenOhio.

This trope is for both colonies explicitly founded by monolithic religious organizations, whether mainstream or cult-like, and for colonies which, some time after their founding, become religiously monolithic due to a sort of revival fervor or the rise of a local charismatic religious leader who converts the vast majority of the population.

Frequently overlaps with SpaceAmish, when the rejection of technology is religiously based. Naturally qualifies as a PlanetOfHats. In sci-fi, Mormons are a probably the favorite pick for this- although they are usually off-screen. If the cult develops unsavoury traditions that it hides from visitors, the result will be a TownWithADarkSecret.

* The German film ''Film/{{The Colony|2016}}'') revolves around a young woman who goes into ''Colonia Dignidad'' (Dignity Colony), in an isolated area of the Chilean Andes during the reign of UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet. ''Colonia Dignidad'' was founded by German expatriate, Paul Schaffer, who rules over the other expats with an iron fist, insisting that men and women must be segrgetated from one another, because he preaches that [[SexIsEvil the love between a man and a woman is wicked and sinful]], however, [[PedophilePriest he regularly rapes little boys]], and leaving the commune is forbidden, with booby traps being set right outside the grounds. He's able to get away with this since the commune gladly accepts [[UnPerson "disappeared" political dissidents,]] and to keep a good relation, [[spoiler: the West German embassy is actively complicit in Scaffer's crimes.]]

* ''The Burning Bridge'', by Poul Anderson, is set an a spacecraft going to establish such a colony to escape political persecution on Earth. Then a message arrives via SubspaceAnsible asking them to return home as the political situation has changed. The question then becomes, do you believe the message and return home, or go on to establish the colony, which will require years of labor on an inhospitable world?

* In ''Literature/TheExpanse'', the Church of Latter Day Saints (AKA Mormons) are financing the construction of a massive GenerationShip - the first of its kind - destined for approximately 100 years of travel to a nearby star. When it is shown in [[Series/TheExpanse the TV series]], it's larger than a city and the only ship to have CentrifugalGravity.

* ''Founding Fathers'', a short story by Creator/StephenDedman, 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.

* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/{{Genome}}'', the entire population of the Ebon colony consists of the devout followers of the Church of the Angered Christ, which mandates that all aliens must be exterminated to make way for the "true children of God." To this end, they start breeding experts in torturing and killing aliens and building devastating weapons and ships (including StarKilling bombs). By the time TheEmpire decides to shut this nuthouse down in order to appease it's alien neighbors, the military strength of Ebon rivals the combined might of TheEmpire. However, no Ebonite will willingly kill a human, and their entire fleet is destroyed with only a few shots fired in response (mostly by nervous captains who immediately commit suicide). When humanity is threatened with an all-out war with their alien neighbors, the Emperor seriously considers letting the Ebonites loose in order to save TheEmpire. Thankfully, it never gets to that.

* Played for laughs in the Creator/RobertSheckley short story "The Native Problem"; a man travels to a distant tropical planet via a FTL ship and stakes a solitary claim, only to have a [[LightspeedLeapfrog sublight colony ship]] full of xenophobic (and rather incompetent) religious fundamentalists show up. He eventually marries into the new colony as the "last" member of his tribe of "extinct" natives.
* The novel ''The Nineteenth Wife'' features the First Latter Day Saints, a fictional fundamentalist Mormon cult located in the (likewise fictional) town of Mesadale, Utah. The Firsts and Mesadale are closely modeled on the very real Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also called the United Effort Plan or UEP) and Colorado City (formerly Short Creek), Utah.

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Literature/SongsOfDistantEarth'' mentions different religions, namely Mormons, Neo-Christians and Muslims, sending seedships in the generations before the End. It's implied that they may very well have succeeded.

*** It crops up several times in the side stories. One is a relatively new colony formed from religious dissidents off Haven, in the novella ''The Service of the Sword'' in the anthology of the same name. Another crops up as part of the Tallbot Sector in much the same position as Grayson, though in this case it's 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 solidly atheist and rather bitter about their ancestors' fanaticism. The Haven-controlled world of Prague was settled by white supremacists who were out to create an Aryan paradise, but only ended up with a dirt-poor backwater planet known best for the natural good looks of its prostitutes. Thandi Palane's homeworld was settled by black supremacists who, due to an unintentional side effect of genetic engineering, ended up with descendants who were practically albino. Weber also likes having ironic things happen to this type of colony.
** ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'': Pardal from ''Heirs of Empire''; this is the variety that didn't start out fanatical, but became so after the interstellar civilization that founded it broke down. Specifically, [[spoiler:a super-bioweapon got spread by their [[{{Teleportation}} matter-transmitters]] throughout the Empire; Pardal quarantined itself, but heard the death of the rest of the empire on its "radio". Since technology had wiped out their civilization, they destroyed it all and went back to a preindustrial lifestyle, founding a church and theocracy to enforce that.]]

** The Luddite colony from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E15Paradise}} Paradise]]" is a dark and unwilling variation: rather than recruit like-minded potential colonists, the leader instead intentionally stranded her fellow shipmates/passengers and used a secret anti-technology energy field to ''force'' them to live according to her luddite philosophy. When this is eventually revealed, most of the surviving colonists decide to remain and figure out for themselves whether to maintain their way of life, but she herself is arrested for the crimes she committed stranding them there and for the ''murder'' of those colonists who died since because of her enforcing the anti-technology (including medicine) lifestyle.

* "Jonestown" from ''Music/ThePerfectStranger'' by Music/FrankZappa is a haunting classical composition written about the Jonestown Massacre in 1978 where cult leader Jim Jones ordered his followers to drinking a cyanide cocktail. The end result were 900 deaths, including women and children.

* Averted for the most part in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', as most Imperial cults end up different due to centuries of isolation rather than being different at the start ([[KillItWithFire those are usually eliminated quite quickly]]). When these isolated planets rejoin the Imperium the more pragmatic Inquisitors and Ecclesiarchs just check that there's no real heresy and let them get on with life instead of purging them from orbit because the stained-glass window shows the God Emperor's eyes in the wrong color. In fact they're willing to let quite a lot go, do you want to worship the Emperor in the belief that he was a simple farmer before being the Emperor, go ahead. Do you believe that the stars are the Emperor's eyes and that he is always watching you, that's fine too. Both of those are canon examples, the big point is that it is clearly the Emperor you worship and not chaos or something else.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' has a mission where Shepard has to infiltrate a colony controlled by the cultists and abduct their leader. Said "colony" is two buildings with a combined population less than 20. Three years later in-game, another of these is found in a cluster near Earth thought to be abandoned. A group of Asari explorers accidentally stumbled across a human colony established and forgotten about before Earth had its own FTL, and after some initial terror at the Asari's [[HumanAliens appearance,]] the colony was slowly integrated into the greater galactic whole. [[SHaggyDogStory Then the Reapers flattened it.]]

** The SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/PandoraFirstContact'' has the Divine Ascension, led by Lady Lilith Vermillion. Originally founded by Lilith to gather blackmail information on her followers via the social media, it has grown by leaps and bounds. At some point, a [[TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain failed assassination attempt]] results in Lilith believing herself to be a genuine prophet.

* The planet of New Tau Ceti in ''Literature/AssociatedSpace'' was founded as a "pastoral enclave" by a religious movement that decided only humans could sin, so if humans became animals again, they could live without sin. So the cult members turned themselves into sheep. But the sheep still sometimes did stuff that would otherwise be considered sin, so the solution was that the sheep were blameless, but the shepherd had to pay the price for the actions of the sheep under their protection. Random visitors to the planet are thus conscripted as shepherds and forced to fight for their lives in an arena against a genetically-engineered super wolf. If they do well enough, they have defeated sin, and may depart in peace. If they die, well, they've paid the price for sin, as is only proper.

* People like the Branch Davidians (of the infamous Waco siege) count as this. If it weren't for the fact that they have their own homes and the only place that they've walled up is their place of worship, the Westboro Baptist Church might also count as this.

* The German film ''Film/LaColonia'' (''The Colony'') revolves around a young woman who goes into ''Colonia Dignidad'' (Dignity Colony), in an isolated area of the Chilean Andes during the reign of UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet. ''Colonia Dignidad'' was founded by German expatriate, Paul Schaffer, who rules over the other expats with an iron fist, insisting that men and women must be segrgetated from one another, because he preaches that [[SexIsEvil the love between a man and a woman is wicked and sinful]], however, [[PedophilePriest he regularly rapes little boys]], and leaving the commune is forbidden, with booby traps being set right outside the grounds. He's able to get away with this since the commune gladly accepts [[UnPerson "disappeared" political dissidents,]] and to keep a good relation, [[spoiler: the West German embassy is actively complicit in Scaffer's crimes.]]

* In ''The Worthing Saga'' by Creator/OrsonScottCard, protagonist Jason Worthing establishes one of these largely by accident. His colony ship is hit by a missile that causes SubsystemDamage to the colonists in Suspended animation. It destroys their memories and leaves them MindWipe[=d=]. When they awake, in a regressed childlike state, they see Jason as a parental figure, and from there it is a short step to revere him as a god, especially since Jason Worthing has PsychicPowers. Out of pragmatism, Jason permits this.

* Utopia, Ohio was home to a bizarre cult that believed that the world was about to enter a 35,000-year-long peace, that people were going to be organized into 'phalanxes' (like communes), and that the oceans were going to turn to lemonade. Yes, seriously. We wish we could make this stuff up. Read more [[http://www.forgottenoh.com/Utopia/utopia.html here]], courtesy of Website/ForgottenOhio.

* In ''Literature/Neuromancer'' a group of semi-Rastafarians live in a colony in Earth orbit; they are descended from the workers who built the orbiting pleasure stations

* The modern nation of UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} was established in order for the Jews to have an own state again. The area they picked out was also their ancient ancestral homeland, subverting this trope to a degree. Also partially averted in that they welcome people who don't follow their beliefs to the extent that there have been periodic worries that the majority will someday be non-Jewish, though there are ''some'' restrictions on that for "the legal code was written by {{shell shocked|Veteran}} Holocaust survivors" reasons.

* In 1630, another Puritan sect founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony forty miles north of Plymouth, establishing the city of UsefulNotes/{{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. That Boston today is associated with Catholic immigrant populations (Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Caribbean, etc.) is a supreme irony that probably has the founding Puritans rolling in their graves.)

* In 1630, members of another Puritan sect founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony forty miles north of Plymouth, establishing the city of UsefulNotes/{{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. (That Boston today is associated with liberalism and Irish Catholics is a supreme irony that probably has the founding Puritans rolling in their graves.)

** ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'': Pardal from ''Heirs of Empire''; this is the variety that didn't start out fanatical, but became so after the interstellar civilization that founded it broke down. Specifically, [[spoiler:a super-bioweapon got spread by their [[TeleportersAndTransporters matter-transmitters]] throughout the Empire; Pardal quarantined itself, but heard the death of the rest of the empire on its "radio". Since technology had wiped out their civilization, they destroyed it all and went back to a preindustrial lifestyle, founding a church and theocracy to enforce that.]]

If and when humanity ever goes out into space to establish colonies, unless we develop some sort of [[CasualInterstellarTravel super-fast]] [[FasterThanLightTravel warp drive]] surprisingly early, the first few extrasolar colonies will be rather isolated for quite a while. They will also be rather expensive to set up. What sort of people would volunteer for such an endeavor? Who would willingly cut themselves off from all other human contact, leave all their friends, neighbors, and relatives behind, and strand themselves years away from any support, rescue, or even conversation quite literally light-years from home? And who could afford to build a GenerationShip, [[HumanPopsicle Sleeper Ship]], or other large but low-tech means of journeying to another world with enough people and equipment to found a self-supporting colony on a brand new world?

** The Ryke of Aryan, founded by a collective of RightWingMilitiaFanatic types who set up a cult worshipping Qeq (an amalgam of Pepe the Frog and Q Anon's Q) that practiced ethnic cleansing and human sacrifice. Eventually their followers got tired of this and turned against the culture, with many of their descendants now [[BecomeTheirOwnAntithesis worshipping the demon meant to represent the globalist boogeyman]].

* Sanctum from ''Series/The100''. It wasn't ''intended'' to be this, but when the original colonists (called "Primes") discovered a form of Immortality by uploading their [[BrainUploading Mind Drives]] into [[BodyBackupDrive host bodies]], they ensured all future generations were raised in a cult that worshipped the Primes, [[RaisedAsAHost and would willingly surrender their bodies for the Primes' use]].

* Sanctum from ''Series/The100''. It wasn't ''intended'' to be this, but when the original colonists (called "Primes") realized they'd need [[BodyBackupDrive host bodies]] to house their [[BrainUploading Mind Drives]], they ensured all future generations were raised in a cult that worshipped the Primes, [[RaisedAsAHost and would willingly surrender their bodies for the Primes' use]].