I’ve just finished re-reading Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. This is a very fine SF novel, which won the 1968 Hugo Award for best novel. It is effectively based on Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The "magic" in this case being elements and characters based on Hinduism and its pantheon of gods. More background and a plot synopsis can be found on the page in Wikipedia devoted to the book. Definitely worth (re)reading.
The book begins (after a couple of quotes from religious texts, one real and one imagined) with a paragraph that, the first time I read it, guaranteed that I would settle down and immerse myself totally in Zelazny’s masterwork:
"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could."
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