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Project Pope
On the Rim planet, End of Nothing, a society of robots and humans toils to perfect an all-embracing religion centering on an all-knowing, infallible computer, a project threatened by a determined journalist and a trained human sensitive who claims she has encountered heaven
313 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
61 people are currently reading
845 people want to read
About the author
Clifford D. Simak
965 books1,063 followers"He was honored by fans with three Hugo awards and by colleagues with one Nebula award and was named the third Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in 1977." (Wikipedia)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
June 22, 2019
I'm of two minds on this one. It's quite strong on showing us some pretty wonderful worldbuilding, a robot Pope with robot Cardinals on a super-remote world in a distant future, spending many thousands of years trying to come to the idea of a perfect religion.
In this respect, it's perfect Simak. A lot of crystalline exploration of the idea of the Holy and what is good and all in all, it's a pretty awesome treatment of AIs (hereforeto referred to as robots) doing right by themselves and all the other races in the universe. If it feels like a nostalgic homage to the humans that created them in the distant past, then you're right. Most of the robots alive today only have vague ideas about humanity.
I think Simak does the subject nice justice, capturing an island of peace and contemplation only available to robots because those pesky humans always seem to f*** it up. :) Of course, the book doesn't end here. The search for Heaven takes a high-math turn and ancient beings who may or may not be a species of angels have been watching over this distant world and with the help of a few humans and a baby (something), the adventure makes a schism in the robot religion.
This is all pretty cool. So why did I knock off a star?
The writing, actually. Sometimes it skims where it could dive deep and the characters and dialogue were kinda lame at parts. *shrug* It annoyed me because the other concepts and turns were pretty damn high quality. :)
In this respect, it's perfect Simak. A lot of crystalline exploration of the idea of the Holy and what is good and all in all, it's a pretty awesome treatment of AIs (hereforeto referred to as robots) doing right by themselves and all the other races in the universe. If it feels like a nostalgic homage to the humans that created them in the distant past, then you're right. Most of the robots alive today only have vague ideas about humanity.
I think Simak does the subject nice justice, capturing an island of peace and contemplation only available to robots because those pesky humans always seem to f*** it up. :) Of course, the book doesn't end here. The search for Heaven takes a high-math turn and ancient beings who may or may not be a species of angels have been watching over this distant world and with the help of a few humans and a baby (something), the adventure makes a schism in the robot religion.
This is all pretty cool. So why did I knock off a star?
The writing, actually. Sometimes it skims where it could dive deep and the characters and dialogue were kinda lame at parts. *shrug* It annoyed me because the other concepts and turns were pretty damn high quality. :)
December 5, 2024
Project Pope was published by Del Rey in 1981 with a lovely Rowena Morrill cover, one of her few non-human science fiction paintings. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for the best sf novel of that year but lost at ChiCon IV to C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station. The story is set in the far future on a desolate planet called End of Nothing on the far edge of the galaxy at a religious institution known as Vatican 17. It's run by a group of robots and their human assistants, and their purpose is to collect all knowledge from our universe and alternate dimensions so that it can be fed into a supercomputer so that a perfect Pope can be created to oversee a perfect religion. Simak maintains his folksy/friendly/downhome style and voice despite treating with such weighty matters. His main theme, I believe, is to examine the differences and dichotomy of rational observed scientific fact and faith, which he accomplishes without being at all offensive to anyone, in my opinion. It's an excellent and engaging story, and a thought-provoking one as well. He leaves a couple of odd events subtly unexplained, which I believe was intentional, not sloppiness. You gotta have faith. When religious sf of the time is discussed Walter Miller and Robert Silverberg and any number of other stalwarts of the field are always mentioned, but I believe Project Pope should have a top spot on the list, too.
September 29, 2024
This novel is full of ideas and explores many different themes, mostly involving religion. It’s full of mystery surrounding robots that are seeking to find the true, universal religion through knowledge and understanding. The robots set up Vatican 17 on an alien planet that is inhabited by 2 species of aliens. The ‘Pope’ is a supercomputer that gathers and parses all the information fed to it. Some humans have followed the robots to this planet, and some of the humans are used as ‘listeners’ to project themselves out into the cosmos and find answers to all the unanswered questions of the universe. Towards the end everything gets a bit muddled, and we don’t really get many answers, but maybe that is what Simak was trying to say. Great book and will eventually like to re-read.
January 7, 2023
Not sure why it happens that the man (Dr. Jason) Tennyson and the woman Jill (Roberts, journalist) arrived on this planet just as the robots' Search for Knowledge and for a constructed Faith also arrived. But so it did, and so we learn about these robots who are interested in humans and in relitions, and about humans, and about a bunch of other truly alien aliens.
The sexism is much more minor than one might expect. Social drinking is totally a thing, but there's no tobacco or drug use, and the sex is totally off-stage. The characters are better developed than expected, too, but in a subtle manner for the careful reader. There are 'loose ends' and unanswered questions, I think, but maybe I didn't read quite carefully enough.
In fact, most of the book is quiet and so, if one has not been reading attentively, the drama near the end and the end itself may seem out-of-proportion and out-of-place... but Simak is skilled, and there's a lot of fodder here for a group discussion and/or a reread. I particularly liked puzzling out which characters we could take at face value and which were not all they seemed, not trustworthy....
Recommended if my comments make it seem interesting, or if you've wanted to read a bit more Simak....
The sexism is much more minor than one might expect. Social drinking is totally a thing, but there's no tobacco or drug use, and the sex is totally off-stage. The characters are better developed than expected, too, but in a subtle manner for the careful reader. There are 'loose ends' and unanswered questions, I think, but maybe I didn't read quite carefully enough.
In fact, most of the book is quiet and so, if one has not been reading attentively, the drama near the end and the end itself may seem out-of-proportion and out-of-place... but Simak is skilled, and there's a lot of fodder here for a group discussion and/or a reread. I particularly liked puzzling out which characters we could take at face value and which were not all they seemed, not trustworthy....
Recommended if my comments make it seem interesting, or if you've wanted to read a bit more Simak....
March 9, 2009
Simak's books have such a gentle folksy voice, as if Prairie Home Companion decided to write science fiction. In Project Pope a group of robots have started a research project Vatican-17 to synthesize a single true religion, but over the centuries the research has grown in importance while the religious side has become, not exactly less important but less urgent. Then one of the human psychic researchers claims she has found heaven, threatening a schism between the more and less fervent factions of the robots. It is a simple science fiction, showing the universe as strange and wonderful and that good-hearted people can come out on top without the need to murder thousands of aliens. Not a bad message.
January 1, 2013
Very Dr Who-ish. Great premise and set-up, but the ending was sort of lousy. The book just sort of ended.
February 24, 2020
Once again, a Simak book that starts off with such charm and promise devolves into an ungodly mess in the final third. The premise of our robot creations searching for a higher power is rife with promise (Dan Simmons handled much the same material with dismal results in his Hyperion sequel) but dismissed with extreme prejudice in the final act in lieu of alien octopuses and taking haystacks. Simak was so close to something special here, if only he’d stayed closer to home.
September 11, 2022
This was the first Simak I read, some decades back, and I enjoyed it then and now. I begin to wonder if it's his best, because nothing I've read by him since compares, although I haven't read many and I've enjoyed all of them except The Visitors. The funny thing is, Simak's writing is deeply flawed -- just for starts his characters tend to blend in the mind, and his phrasing is often clunky -- yet his books have a Midwestern warmth that is particularly unusual in the s-f world.
I grabbed two passages that to me show him at his worst and his best. As is often true of Clifford D. Simak, the dialogue in this book has a stiltedness to it; a rhythm that is just a little off; too many short declarative sentences in a row; the occasional phrase awkwardly structured. Drove me crazy in The Visitors, which is the last one I read so it's not that it was new to me. In this one the awkwardness is rare and mostly subtle enough it doesn’t particularly bother me, for the most part; just strong enough to notice when what they’re saying doesn’t hold enough of my attention.
Example of his awkwardness (in this passage, particularly with his placement of identifiers), and the resulting choppiness (my italics):
“I do not know,” he said, “how I can explain our policy without seeming rude.”
“Then, Your Eminence,” said Jill, “please that you be rude. For I want to know..”
“We have no wish,” said the cardinal, “to be publicized. We do not wish our existence and our work exposed to public view.”
“You could have told me that before I made my trip, Your Eminence. You could have written to discourage me. I would have listened to reason. I might even have accepted, perhaps have understood, your posture. But you hoped, of course, that ignoring me would be discouragement enough.”
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but much of that dialogue feels like I’m rushing forward yet repeatedly hitting stops, which is what often bugs me about Simak’s writing style. And I think it bothers me most in dialogue because all his characters seem to do it, giving them a sameness I find uncomfortable. But a few chapters later, Simak will offer me something like this:
"He could swear that he had heard the crackle and rustle of fallen autumn leaves beneath his feet, that he had breathed a sharp, crisp, wine-like air redolent of leaf bonfires, of ripened apples hanging on a laden bough, the faint scent of late-blooming flowers and a touch of frost on withering vegetation. He had heard, or thought he heard, the rustle of a field-dried patch of corn, the patter of hickory nuts falling from a tree, the sudden, far-off whir of partridge wings, the soft, liquid singing of a placid brook carrying on its surface a freight of fallen autumn leaves. And there had been color—he was sure of that—the coin-golden color of a walnut tree, the purple of an ash, the shouting sun-bright yellow of an aspen, the bright-blood of a sugar maple, and rich red and brown of oak. And over and above it all that bittersweet feel of autumn, the glory of the dying year when work was done and a quiet season of rest had been proclaimed.
"… He had felt at ease with it, had entered wholeheartedly into it. He had tramped the hills and gone along the winding brook, he had stood and stared across the brown and gold of an autumn-haunted marsh, he had heard the shouting of the gold and red and yellow of the painted trees against the sky and he had felt a strange abiding peace within him. The peace that comes at the long end of summer, the peace and quiet before the chill winter of the soul comes howling down. The little time of respite, the time for resting and for thought, the time for binding up the ancient wounds and forgetting them and all the vagaries of life that had inflicted them."
Which, for anyone who has lived long in the midwest, is resonant and just lovely. Thankfully there are fewer awkward notes in the dialogue as this book goes on, but he still pitches out the occasional clunker that jars me a bit.
And despite its flaws, I'd still recommend reading Project Pope if the subject matter sounds interesting. There's a certain indefinable charm to Simak's writing that is a rare quality which, like love, covers a multitude of offenses. If you're one of those people who appreciates that quality, this book is one of Simak's best.
It's not bad as a straight-up s-f story, either.
I grabbed two passages that to me show him at his worst and his best. As is often true of Clifford D. Simak, the dialogue in this book has a stiltedness to it; a rhythm that is just a little off; too many short declarative sentences in a row; the occasional phrase awkwardly structured. Drove me crazy in The Visitors, which is the last one I read so it's not that it was new to me. In this one the awkwardness is rare and mostly subtle enough it doesn’t particularly bother me, for the most part; just strong enough to notice when what they’re saying doesn’t hold enough of my attention.
Example of his awkwardness (in this passage, particularly with his placement of identifiers), and the resulting choppiness (my italics):
“I do not know,” he said, “how I can explain our policy without seeming rude.”
“Then, Your Eminence,” said Jill, “please that you be rude. For I want to know..”
“We have no wish,” said the cardinal, “to be publicized. We do not wish our existence and our work exposed to public view.”
“You could have told me that before I made my trip, Your Eminence. You could have written to discourage me. I would have listened to reason. I might even have accepted, perhaps have understood, your posture. But you hoped, of course, that ignoring me would be discouragement enough.”
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but much of that dialogue feels like I’m rushing forward yet repeatedly hitting stops, which is what often bugs me about Simak’s writing style. And I think it bothers me most in dialogue because all his characters seem to do it, giving them a sameness I find uncomfortable. But a few chapters later, Simak will offer me something like this:
"He could swear that he had heard the crackle and rustle of fallen autumn leaves beneath his feet, that he had breathed a sharp, crisp, wine-like air redolent of leaf bonfires, of ripened apples hanging on a laden bough, the faint scent of late-blooming flowers and a touch of frost on withering vegetation. He had heard, or thought he heard, the rustle of a field-dried patch of corn, the patter of hickory nuts falling from a tree, the sudden, far-off whir of partridge wings, the soft, liquid singing of a placid brook carrying on its surface a freight of fallen autumn leaves. And there had been color—he was sure of that—the coin-golden color of a walnut tree, the purple of an ash, the shouting sun-bright yellow of an aspen, the bright-blood of a sugar maple, and rich red and brown of oak. And over and above it all that bittersweet feel of autumn, the glory of the dying year when work was done and a quiet season of rest had been proclaimed.
"… He had felt at ease with it, had entered wholeheartedly into it. He had tramped the hills and gone along the winding brook, he had stood and stared across the brown and gold of an autumn-haunted marsh, he had heard the shouting of the gold and red and yellow of the painted trees against the sky and he had felt a strange abiding peace within him. The peace that comes at the long end of summer, the peace and quiet before the chill winter of the soul comes howling down. The little time of respite, the time for resting and for thought, the time for binding up the ancient wounds and forgetting them and all the vagaries of life that had inflicted them."
Which, for anyone who has lived long in the midwest, is resonant and just lovely. Thankfully there are fewer awkward notes in the dialogue as this book goes on, but he still pitches out the occasional clunker that jars me a bit.
And despite its flaws, I'd still recommend reading Project Pope if the subject matter sounds interesting. There's a certain indefinable charm to Simak's writing that is a rare quality which, like love, covers a multitude of offenses. If you're one of those people who appreciates that quality, this book is one of Simak's best.
It's not bad as a straight-up s-f story, either.
August 24, 2020
I really wanted to like this book. First of all, I think Clifford Simak was a great Science Fiction author. Secondly, the premise was quite unique; a planet of robots who are working to build a computerized, infallible pope.
Unfortunately, the book did not live up to my expectations. It rambled around to the point that was difficult to find and follow the thread. Characters came and went, often leaving the reader with way too little information about where they came from and who the were. Worse, there was nearly no science in this science fiction book. In fact the aliens, as opposed to the robots, tended more toward those found in works of fantasy.
At a few points Simak seemed to be on the cusp of asking interesting and probing philosophical questions about truth, god, religion, and the universe. Unfortunately, rather than pursuing those, he returned to a more and more confusing storyline and introduced a slew of new characters and species. When the end finally came, Simak tried to quickly tie together a number of loose ends but, by that point, the story had gone too far afield to get summed up easily.
It is not often that I write a poor review of a book. It is even rarer that I find fault with an author with as great a pedigree as Simak. He wrote this book toward the end of his career when he was seventy-seven. As someone about to enter their seventh decade, I understand the desire to look at the big questions about life, death, our species, and the meaning of the universe. Hopefully writing this book helped Simak find some of the answers he was looking for. Unfortunately, for me, the book was more like the planet it was centered on, End of Nothing.
Unfortunately, the book did not live up to my expectations. It rambled around to the point that was difficult to find and follow the thread. Characters came and went, often leaving the reader with way too little information about where they came from and who the were. Worse, there was nearly no science in this science fiction book. In fact the aliens, as opposed to the robots, tended more toward those found in works of fantasy.
At a few points Simak seemed to be on the cusp of asking interesting and probing philosophical questions about truth, god, religion, and the universe. Unfortunately, rather than pursuing those, he returned to a more and more confusing storyline and introduced a slew of new characters and species. When the end finally came, Simak tried to quickly tie together a number of loose ends but, by that point, the story had gone too far afield to get summed up easily.
It is not often that I write a poor review of a book. It is even rarer that I find fault with an author with as great a pedigree as Simak. He wrote this book toward the end of his career when he was seventy-seven. As someone about to enter their seventh decade, I understand the desire to look at the big questions about life, death, our species, and the meaning of the universe. Hopefully writing this book helped Simak find some of the answers he was looking for. Unfortunately, for me, the book was more like the planet it was centered on, End of Nothing.
December 29, 2007
For some reason I just find this book darling. Simak suffers from all of the weaknesses of his generation of SF writers. The characters are paper mache. There is a lumbering charge through the storytelling to reach the ideas as quickly as possible. His voice has a certain folksy Wisconsin charm to it, and when he's writing about robots in monks' vestments tending roses, there's a certain wacky beauty there that I find really pleasing.
January 29, 2018
Running from the middle of nowhere (the feudal planet Gutshot) after his patron dies and he’s afraid he’s going to be forced to take the fall for it, Dr. Jason Tennyson takes the first ship out and ends up at the end of nowhere—the planet End of Nothing.
End of Nothing has one settlement: Vatican, a robot project to discover the one true faith, preferably one that will include robots.
This is a typically nice Simak story, with friendly characters, who despite being friendly all have different motivations that cause conflict. Stories like this or Way Station are a refreshing change of pace. There are also some neat ideas here. Just as humans find it difficult to lose a reverence for their own hypothetical creator, robots find it difficult to lose their reverence for their visible creator: mankind. That’s one of the conflicts on End of Nothing, that some robots came to the planet, having been created by humans, and some were created later by the human-created robots.
Into all of this, one of the human researchers claims to have discovered heaven—the real deal, with golden stairs, ivory towers, and flying angels. A human heaven. And all the conflicts come out into the open.
End of Nothing has one settlement: Vatican, a robot project to discover the one true faith, preferably one that will include robots.
This is a typically nice Simak story, with friendly characters, who despite being friendly all have different motivations that cause conflict. Stories like this or Way Station are a refreshing change of pace. There are also some neat ideas here. Just as humans find it difficult to lose a reverence for their own hypothetical creator, robots find it difficult to lose their reverence for their visible creator: mankind. That’s one of the conflicts on End of Nothing, that some robots came to the planet, having been created by humans, and some were created later by the human-created robots.
Into all of this, one of the human researchers claims to have discovered heaven—the real deal, with golden stairs, ivory towers, and flying angels. A human heaven. And all the conflicts come out into the open.
June 6, 2016
Wow, what an odd book! OK so if you get past the robot civilization who has set up a search for all knowledge using clones of humans who can transplant their consciousnesses across time and space, led by an evolving computer that aims to be the perfect religious and knowledge amassing computer (the Pope) and you wonder where the book is headed, suddenly in the last 50 pages: BAM: aliens that look like haystacks, aliens that look like white boards (cubes), aliens that look like giant snakes with faces, aliens that look like bouncing balls, and finally, aliens that look like the nano cloud from Prey. If you can get past THAT weirdness, then, well, congratulations, because the book then ends abruptly. :D As a Catholic, I enjoyed the philosophizing at the hands (robotic hands) of the robot cardinals, gardeners, butlers, and their all too few human companions. And how the heck did I never know about this official SFWA Grand Master--the 3rd named! Well done, Mr. Simak, may you rest in peace. Hopefully you found on the other side what these robots and humans were searching for (Heaven).
May 2, 2017
I bought this book when I was a kid because I liked the cover. I never finished it. Decades later, I understand why.
Unlike a lot of other science fiction writers, Simak isn't especially concerned with plot or even character--at least not here. Yes, there are both in Project Pope, but the book is more about religion, spirituality, and our need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.
If you're looking for an action-packed, laser-filled, intergalactic shoot-em-up, this probably isn't the right book for you. This is more about big, philosophical ideas. It's not a perfect novel, and in fact, it drags at times, but if you're looking for a break from the tried-and-true space opera, it's well worth a read.
Unlike a lot of other science fiction writers, Simak isn't especially concerned with plot or even character--at least not here. Yes, there are both in Project Pope, but the book is more about religion, spirituality, and our need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.
If you're looking for an action-packed, laser-filled, intergalactic shoot-em-up, this probably isn't the right book for you. This is more about big, philosophical ideas. It's not a perfect novel, and in fact, it drags at times, but if you're looking for a break from the tried-and-true space opera, it's well worth a read.
August 1, 2019
Tennyson is running from people, so he stows away on a ship going to a planet called The End of Nowhere. Arriving there with another passenger, a reporter, he settles down in a society called Vatican. The planet was built by human made robots and loosely based on the Catholic system. When a human "listener" thinks she has found heaven, the robots have to determine its validity and the split between factions begins to escalate. Meanwhile, after befriending a being called The Whisperer, he and the woman, Jill travel to strange new worlds of equation beings and the place that turns out NOT to be Heaven.
Science Fiction at its best. Loved it.
Science Fiction at its best. Loved it.
October 6, 2015
This is a lovely book based on an amusing premise. Not much to say but that I loved it to bits when I read it. And re-read it a couple of years later. Also, one of the few paperback SF books that I have retained in my library, carefully secured in a box (with others in the garage) from which I will someday extract it to read again. Or maybe I'll see if it's out in EPUB yet. Definitely this should be on the required reading list for anyone majoring in Sci Fi.
March 7, 2025
Fatalist Conceit the novel
Why would someone write a book about faith and religion when they have no knowledge or understanding on the subject? It would like if Chesterton wrote a book about Data Structures and Algorithms. It all comes across as very Reddit, as most of these mid century Sci-Fi writers do. The kind of theology you hear from the pulpit when you’re 12 and never think about the under lying meaning of what the preacher is trying to communicate. You think you’ve outsmarted thousands of years of theology when in actuality you just had a bad pastor.
Simak plays around with some interesting ideas but essentially all of them were already circulating within academia at that point so he loses points for novelty. None of the ideas are fleshed out enough to truly be something to ponder on either, very surface level stuff in terms of engineering.
I will say, Simak is a great writer. He knows how to bring a scene along, excitement, romance, and, al biet, ham fisted philosophy. The characters are great though, responsive, personable or at least understandable.
I’ll be honest though, I’m kind of sick of nerd writers who care more about the idea of technology than technology itself as it actually is. It’s asinine to read something when the writer clearly doesn’t understand anything about what they’re writing and just hand waves things away. I’ll be sticking with the Geek writers from now on.
Why would someone write a book about faith and religion when they have no knowledge or understanding on the subject? It would like if Chesterton wrote a book about Data Structures and Algorithms. It all comes across as very Reddit, as most of these mid century Sci-Fi writers do. The kind of theology you hear from the pulpit when you’re 12 and never think about the under lying meaning of what the preacher is trying to communicate. You think you’ve outsmarted thousands of years of theology when in actuality you just had a bad pastor.
Simak plays around with some interesting ideas but essentially all of them were already circulating within academia at that point so he loses points for novelty. None of the ideas are fleshed out enough to truly be something to ponder on either, very surface level stuff in terms of engineering.
I will say, Simak is a great writer. He knows how to bring a scene along, excitement, romance, and, al biet, ham fisted philosophy. The characters are great though, responsive, personable or at least understandable.
I’ll be honest though, I’m kind of sick of nerd writers who care more about the idea of technology than technology itself as it actually is. It’s asinine to read something when the writer clearly doesn’t understand anything about what they’re writing and just hand waves things away. I’ll be sticking with the Geek writers from now on.
January 31, 2023
On this re-read of a book I first enjoyed 30+ years ago, I have to say that I liked it again, but maybe for different reasons.
Clifford Simak does a great job of bringing his science fiction down to the personal level, to ground level. Though this novel takes place on a planet far from earth, it still is set in a small town on the edge of the wilderness, like so many others. The characters chat around a fire or walk in the woods and they have a drink while they explore what's going on around them. It's a different feel and a different pace from most SF.
I think my initial reads of Simak's novels, this one included, were generally just following the plot and looking for the answers to the riddles and mysteries. That's still fun the second time through, but it's the atmosphere he creates that I enjoy most now. Genteel robots discussing faith and the possibility of Heaven with the main character in an unhurried, friendly way, just feels like a future that isn't terrifying. It's human.
Some reviewers feel different about the novel. I get it. The plot is pretty jagged, and despite their warmth, his characters are never fully realized. I like it, though. I think we find a kind of conversation here, one that he started with his readers a dozen books before this one, a conversation that continues through all of his books, and it's one that matters to me. He shows us a ghost and asks us if we can consider it a person; he does the same with a primitive man from the distant past; then with intelligent animals; then aliens; then with a disembodied mind; and frequently, here and elsewhere, robots and computers. Are they like us? If no, why not? If they can visit with us and ponder the universe, aren't they the same as us?
It's pretty clear what Simak thought about that. And it helped form my opinion as well.
Clifford Simak does a great job of bringing his science fiction down to the personal level, to ground level. Though this novel takes place on a planet far from earth, it still is set in a small town on the edge of the wilderness, like so many others. The characters chat around a fire or walk in the woods and they have a drink while they explore what's going on around them. It's a different feel and a different pace from most SF.
I think my initial reads of Simak's novels, this one included, were generally just following the plot and looking for the answers to the riddles and mysteries. That's still fun the second time through, but it's the atmosphere he creates that I enjoy most now. Genteel robots discussing faith and the possibility of Heaven with the main character in an unhurried, friendly way, just feels like a future that isn't terrifying. It's human.
Some reviewers feel different about the novel. I get it. The plot is pretty jagged, and despite their warmth, his characters are never fully realized. I like it, though. I think we find a kind of conversation here, one that he started with his readers a dozen books before this one, a conversation that continues through all of his books, and it's one that matters to me. He shows us a ghost and asks us if we can consider it a person; he does the same with a primitive man from the distant past; then with intelligent animals; then aliens; then with a disembodied mind; and frequently, here and elsewhere, robots and computers. Are they like us? If no, why not? If they can visit with us and ponder the universe, aren't they the same as us?
It's pretty clear what Simak thought about that. And it helped form my opinion as well.
April 30, 2018
A race of robots built by robots models its society on the old Vatican. Questions come up. Can robots have values? Religion? A sense of humor? Aesthetics? But it's an opportunity wasted as all different kinds aliens start popping up and the plotless story seems to forget where it left off. You end up with our heroes mixing it up with blobs and octopi from a fake Heaven.
Very slow and frustrating going. My first question: How can you live on a planet all your life and have no idea who the other inhabitants are?
Very slow and frustrating going. My first question: How can you live on a planet all your life and have no idea who the other inhabitants are?
April 29, 2025
A strong 3.5, cheekily rounded up to a 4.
Project Pope (1981) by Clifford D. Simak is a work of science fiction that weds philosophical inquiry to the classic themes of artificial intelligence and religion — a representative specimen from the author’s later, more contemplative period, when he had retired and was, let’s say... easing off the creative throttle.
The plot unfolds on the planet End of Everything (yes, that’s its name — subtlety is overrated), where a community of robots and monks (mostly of the cassocked variety) toils away at constructing the perfect, infallible Electronic Pope: an artificial intelligence intended to reconcile all spiritual truths of the universe. “Seekers”, humans endowed with psychic abilities, are dispatched to far-off worlds in search of religious wisdom to feed into the Pope’s ever-expanding database. All goes relatively well until one such Seeker returns claiming to have found Paradise. Naturally, this upends the fragile balance of faith and harmony surrounding the project.
Spoiler: the lady in question is clearly having a bit of a moment — particularly when some apparition wags a cosmic finger at her and mutters “naughty!” — but as with all religions, one mad prophet is often all it takes to spark a movement, and once the believers start piling in, good luck closing that door again.
To its credit, the book does grapple with some legitimate philosophical heft: What is truth? Can a machine comprehend or express the divine? Where, if at all, do science and faith intersect? (Spoiler alert: “Only in the fevered minds of the faithful.”)
As with much of Simak’s oeuvre, Project Pope is suffused with humanity and a quietly hopeful tone. His gaze — as also seen in City and Way Station — is one of compassion, gentleness, and reverence for man, nature, and the cosmos. His imagined worlds have that quintessentially “Simakian” vibe — somewhere between tranquil and mildly sedated — and though this is ostensibly science fiction, it’s more contemplative than kinetic. Think less pew-pew, more ommmm.
Of course, not everyone will be charmed. The “action��� (such as it is) unfolds at a pace that might politely be described as glacial, which may test the patience of readers more inclined toward dynamic storytelling, laser battles, or blood-soaked alien carnage. Moreover, while the novel is rich in ideas, its characters can feel almost aggressively nice — to the point of one-dimensionality. But then, this is a novel of ideas, not people. The lack of tension or true danger renders it more a philosophical allegory (which it is, let’s be honest) than a dramatic narrative.
So yes, you’ve guessed correctly: Project Pope is not your typical sci-fi novel. It’s a utopian, metaphysical quest set in a curiously placid future. Recommended for those who favour philosophical science fiction and writers like Stanislaw Lem or Ursula K. Le Guin. It won’t scratch the itch for action or suspense, but if what you’re after is “deep thought in space”, it may be just the ticket.
3,5 που στρονκηλέβη (sic) σε 4
Το Project Pope (1981) του Clifford D. Simak είναι ένα έργο επιστημονικής φαντασίας που παντρεύει φιλοσοφικές αναζητήσεις με την κλασική θεματολογία της τεχνητής νοημοσύνης και της θρησκείας — ένα χαρακτηριστικό δείγμα της ύστερης, πιο στοχαστικής περιόδου του συγγραφέα, όταν έχει πάρει σύνταξη και παράγει τα εχμ… λιγότερο ενδιαφέροντα έργα του.
Η πλοκή τοποθετείται στον πλανήτη Εντ οφ εβριθινγκ, όπου μια κοινότητα ρομπότ και ανθρώπων (κυρίως καλόγερων) εργάζεται για τη δημιουργία ενός τέλειου, αλάνθαστου Ηλεκτρονικού Πάπα – μιας τεχνητής νοημοσύνης που θα συγκεράσει όλες τις θρησκευτικές αλήθειες του σύμπαντος. Οι "seeker", άνθρωποι με ψυχικές ικανότητες, ταξιδεύουν σε άλλους κόσμους αναζητώντας θρησκευτική σοφία για να την επιστρέψουν και να την ενσωματώσουν στη βάση δεδομένων του Πάπα. Ωστόσο, όταν μια seeker ισχυρίζεται πως βρήκε τον Παράδεισο, αρχίζουν να εμφανίζονται ρωγμές στην αρμονία και την πίστη του εγχειρήματος. Προφανώς και η μαντάμ έχει πάθει ντελούρι και δεν έχει βρει τον παράδεισο, ιδίως όταν στο παραλήρημά της ένας τυπάκος της κουνάει το δάχτυλο και της λέει «naughty!», αλλά όπως συμβαίνει με όλες τις θρησκείες, αρκεί ένας μουρλός για να δημιουργηθεί ρεύμα και μετά «δεν κλείνει η πόρτα».
Σϊγουρα το βιβλίο έχει ένα κάποιο φιλοσοφικό βάθος και εξερευνά υπαρξιακά και θεολογικά ερωτήματα. Τι είναι η αλήθεια; Μπορεί ένας υπολογιστής να κατανοήσει ή να εκφράσει το Θείο; Πού συναντιούνται επιστήμη και πίστη (spoiler alert «μόνο στο σαλεμένο μυαλό των πιστών»);
Ακόμη (όπως το σύνολο του έργου του Σίμακ) το «Project Pope», διαπνέεται από ανθρωπιά και ελπίδα. Η ματιά του συγγραφέα, όπως και σε άλλα έργα του (City, Way Station), είναι γεμάτη συμπόνια, με έναν ήπιο τόνο και σεβασμό προς τον άνθρωπο, τη φύση και το σύμπαν, ενώ ο κόσμος του είναι κλασικά Σιμακικός (κάπου μεταξύ αταράξ και λεξοτανίλ) ήρεμος για έργο επιστημονικής φαντασίας. Δεν βασίζεται στη δράση, αλλά στην ιδέα και τον στοχασμό, δημιουργώντας έναν «διαλογιστικό» ρυθμό αφήγησης.
Φυσικά, δε μπορεί να είναι όλοι χαρούμενοι. Η «δράση» (όση τέλος πάντων υπάρχει) προχωρά με πολύ αργούς ρυθμούς, γεγονός που ίσως αποθαρρύνει αναγνώστες που προτιμούν πιο δυναμική αφήγηση, «πίου πίου» λέηζερ, σφαγές, εκατόμβες εξωγήινων, κ.λπ. Επίσης, παρότι οι ιδέες είναι βαθιές, οι χαρακτήρες είναι σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις υπερβολικά «καλοί» ή μονοδιάστατοι. Άλλωστε, είναι έργο «ιδεών», όχι «χαρακτήρων», η δε απουσία αντιπαραθέσεων ή πραγματικών κινδύνων κάνει το κείμενο να μοιάζει περισσότερο με στοχαστική αλληγορία (που… είναι), παρά με δραματικό αφήγημα.
Ναι, καλά καταλάβατε. Το «Project Pope» δεν είναι ένα τυπικό μυθιστόρημα επιστημονικής φαντασίας· είναι μια ουτοπική, μεταφυσική αναζήτηση σε ένα απρόσμενα ήσυχο μέλλον. Προτείνεται σε όσους αγαπούν το φιλοσοφικό sci-fi και συγγραφείς όπως ο Stanislaw Lem ή η Ursula K. Le Guin. Δεν θα ικανοποιήσει όσους αναζητούν δράση ή αγωνία, αλλά είναι ιδανικό για αναγνώστες που ψάχνουν «βαθύτερο στοχασμό» μέσα από την επιστημονική φαντασία.
Project Pope (1981) by Clifford D. Simak is a work of science fiction that weds philosophical inquiry to the classic themes of artificial intelligence and religion — a representative specimen from the author’s later, more contemplative period, when he had retired and was, let’s say... easing off the creative throttle.
The plot unfolds on the planet End of Everything (yes, that’s its name — subtlety is overrated), where a community of robots and monks (mostly of the cassocked variety) toils away at constructing the perfect, infallible Electronic Pope: an artificial intelligence intended to reconcile all spiritual truths of the universe. “Seekers”, humans endowed with psychic abilities, are dispatched to far-off worlds in search of religious wisdom to feed into the Pope’s ever-expanding database. All goes relatively well until one such Seeker returns claiming to have found Paradise. Naturally, this upends the fragile balance of faith and harmony surrounding the project.
Spoiler: the lady in question is clearly having a bit of a moment — particularly when some apparition wags a cosmic finger at her and mutters “naughty!” — but as with all religions, one mad prophet is often all it takes to spark a movement, and once the believers start piling in, good luck closing that door again.
To its credit, the book does grapple with some legitimate philosophical heft: What is truth? Can a machine comprehend or express the divine? Where, if at all, do science and faith intersect? (Spoiler alert: “Only in the fevered minds of the faithful.”)
As with much of Simak’s oeuvre, Project Pope is suffused with humanity and a quietly hopeful tone. His gaze — as also seen in City and Way Station — is one of compassion, gentleness, and reverence for man, nature, and the cosmos. His imagined worlds have that quintessentially “Simakian” vibe — somewhere between tranquil and mildly sedated — and though this is ostensibly science fiction, it’s more contemplative than kinetic. Think less pew-pew, more ommmm.
Of course, not everyone will be charmed. The “action��� (such as it is) unfolds at a pace that might politely be described as glacial, which may test the patience of readers more inclined toward dynamic storytelling, laser battles, or blood-soaked alien carnage. Moreover, while the novel is rich in ideas, its characters can feel almost aggressively nice — to the point of one-dimensionality. But then, this is a novel of ideas, not people. The lack of tension or true danger renders it more a philosophical allegory (which it is, let’s be honest) than a dramatic narrative.
So yes, you’ve guessed correctly: Project Pope is not your typical sci-fi novel. It’s a utopian, metaphysical quest set in a curiously placid future. Recommended for those who favour philosophical science fiction and writers like Stanislaw Lem or Ursula K. Le Guin. It won’t scratch the itch for action or suspense, but if what you’re after is “deep thought in space”, it may be just the ticket.
3,5 που στρονκηλέβη (sic) σε 4
Το Project Pope (1981) του Clifford D. Simak είναι ένα έργο επιστημονικής φαντασίας που παντρεύει φιλοσοφικές αναζητήσεις με την κλασική θεματολογία της τεχνητής νοημοσύνης και της θρησκείας — ένα χαρακτηριστικό δείγμα της ύστερης, πιο στοχαστικής περιόδου του συγγραφέα, όταν έχει πάρει σύνταξη και παράγει τα εχμ… λιγότερο ενδιαφέροντα έργα του.
Η πλοκή τοποθετείται στον πλανήτη Εντ οφ εβριθινγκ, όπου μια κοινότητα ρομπότ και ανθρώπων (κυρίως καλόγερων) εργάζεται για τη δημιουργία ενός τέλειου, αλάνθαστου Ηλεκτρονικού Πάπα – μιας τεχνητής νοημοσύνης που θα συγκεράσει όλες τις θρησκευτικές αλήθειες του σύμπαντος. Οι "seeker", άνθρωποι με ψυχικές ικανότητες, ταξιδεύουν σε άλλους κόσμους αναζητώντας θρησκευτική σοφία για να την επιστρέψουν και να την ενσωματώσουν στη βάση δεδομένων του Πάπα. Ωστόσο, όταν μια seeker ισχυρίζεται πως βρήκε τον Παράδεισο, αρχίζουν να εμφανίζονται ρωγμές στην αρμονία και την πίστη του εγχειρήματος. Προφανώς και η μαντάμ έχει πάθει ντελούρι και δεν έχει βρει τον παράδεισο, ιδίως όταν στο παραλήρημά της ένας τυπάκος της κουνάει το δάχτυλο και της λέει «naughty!», αλλά όπως συμβαίνει με όλες τις θρησκείες, αρκεί ένας μουρλός για να δημιουργηθεί ρεύμα και μετά «δεν κλείνει η πόρτα».
Σϊγουρα το βιβλίο έχει ένα κάποιο φιλοσοφικό βάθος και εξερευνά υπαρξιακά και θεολογικά ερωτήματα. Τι είναι η αλήθεια; Μπορεί ένας υπολογιστής να κατανοήσει ή να εκφράσει το Θείο; Πού συναντιούνται επιστήμη και πίστη (spoiler alert «μόνο στο σαλεμένο μυαλό των πιστών»);
Ακόμη (όπως το σύνολο του έργου του Σίμακ) το «Project Pope», διαπνέεται από ανθρωπιά και ελπίδα. Η ματιά του συγγραφέα, όπως και σε άλλα έργα του (City, Way Station), είναι γεμάτη συμπόνια, με έναν ήπιο τόνο και σεβασμό προς τον άνθρωπο, τη φύση και το σύμπαν, ενώ ο κόσμος του είναι κλασικά Σιμακικός (κάπου μεταξύ αταράξ και λεξοτανίλ) ήρεμος για έργο επιστημονικής φαντασίας. Δεν βασίζεται στη δράση, αλλά στην ιδέα και τον στοχασμό, δημιουργώντας έναν «διαλογιστικό» ρυθμό αφήγησης.
Φυσικά, δε μπορεί να είναι όλοι χαρούμενοι. Η «δράση» (όση τέλος πάντων υπάρχει) προχωρά με πολύ αργούς ρυθμούς, γεγονός που ίσως αποθαρρύνει αναγνώστες που προτιμούν πιο δυναμική αφήγηση, «πίου πίου» λέηζερ, σφαγές, εκατόμβες εξωγήινων, κ.λπ. Επίσης, παρότι οι ιδέες είναι βαθιές, οι χαρακτήρες είναι σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις υπερβολικά «καλοί» ή μονοδιάστατοι. Άλλωστε, είναι έργο «ιδεών», όχι «χαρακτήρων», η δε απουσία αντιπαραθέσεων ή πραγματικών κινδύνων κάνει το κείμενο να μοιάζει περισσότερο με στοχαστική αλληγορία (που… είναι), παρά με δραματικό αφήγημα.
Ναι, καλά καταλάβατε. Το «Project Pope» δεν είναι ένα τυπικό μυθιστόρημα επιστημονικής φαντασίας· είναι μια ουτοπική, μεταφυσική αναζήτηση σε ένα απρόσμενα ήσυχο μέλλον. Προτείνεται σε όσους αγαπούν το φιλοσοφικό sci-fi και συγγραφείς όπως ο Stanislaw Lem ή η Ursula K. Le Guin. Δεν θα ικανοποιήσει όσους αναζητούν δράση ή αγωνία, αλλά είναι ιδανικό για αναγνώστες που ψάχνουν «βαθύτερο στοχασμό» μέσα από την επιστημονική φαντασία.
Read
February 22, 2025Extremely interesting things here:
-"Robots are building a pope" as a premise delivers so much in 5 words
-Very interesting/dated how closely this book identifies humans and robots, as the same, as opposed to "aliens"
-I'm not really sure what happened in the ending? I was surprised that was it!
-"Robots are building a pope" as a premise delivers so much in 5 words
-Very interesting/dated how closely this book identifies humans and robots, as the same, as opposed to "aliens"
-I'm not really sure what happened in the ending? I was surprised that was it!
May 17, 2015
I LOVE the cover.. it totally grabbed me, and then I saw it was Clifford Simak, and I couldn't resist. The story revolves around to lost souls of sorts, one, Tennyson, a Doctor on the run from a political upheaval on his planet, the other, Jill, a reporter looking for the story of her life. They both go to End of Nothing, a planet were a colony of robots and humans that are trying to find the one true religion.. the one robots can get behind. Their city is call Vatican, but they're not necessarily Christian, but they did start out that way 1000 years ago.
They also have people called listeners, who are some sort of telepaths who 'visit' other worlds, other times, even other galaxies, to get information. The information is fed into the Pope, a super computer, to analyze and find the ultimate truth.
Sounds like a great premise, right? Sadly, it falls flat about 1/2 way through. They start with a conflict... is knowledge the path to faith, or is faith the path to knowledge? The conflict comes to a head when one of the Listeners things she finds Heaven, but then is thrown out when she tries to go back. Sadly, the interesting philosphy that's promised never really gets discussed much.. instead, we get a murder, some interesting yet ultimately not that important aliens, and the story ends rather abruptly without much resolution.
They also have people called listeners, who are some sort of telepaths who 'visit' other worlds, other times, even other galaxies, to get information. The information is fed into the Pope, a super computer, to analyze and find the ultimate truth.
Sounds like a great premise, right? Sadly, it falls flat about 1/2 way through. They start with a conflict... is knowledge the path to faith, or is faith the path to knowledge? The conflict comes to a head when one of the Listeners things she finds Heaven, but then is thrown out when she tries to go back. Sadly, the interesting philosphy that's promised never really gets discussed much.. instead, we get a murder, some interesting yet ultimately not that important aliens, and the story ends rather abruptly without much resolution.
October 17, 2020
Simak characters speak with a gracious mid-20th century mid-western formality of speech. Most
of the characters speak similarly. There is little to tell between them, but it is enough. I like his short sentences. Each sentence is a complete, clear thought. I think a fine radio play might be made of this story, which is largely dialogue. What little is not, could be made so, or assigned to a narrator.
Clifford Simak has always struck me as a gentle writer. I'm not quite sure what I mean because people kill and are killed, hurt and are mistreated, and there is danger physical and ideological. But always there seems to be a goodness in everything and things work out. Everyone is likeable, villians can be pitied. There is mystery: enough is explained, but never everything.
of the characters speak similarly. There is little to tell between them, but it is enough. I like his short sentences. Each sentence is a complete, clear thought. I think a fine radio play might be made of this story, which is largely dialogue. What little is not, could be made so, or assigned to a narrator.
Clifford Simak has always struck me as a gentle writer. I'm not quite sure what I mean because people kill and are killed, hurt and are mistreated, and there is danger physical and ideological. But always there seems to be a goodness in everything and things work out. Everyone is likeable, villians can be pitied. There is mystery: enough is explained, but never everything.
December 24, 2020
Některé knihy jsou jako hamburger, člověk je přečte rychle, doslova to do sebe nahází, celkem se zasytí, ale nezanechá to příliš velký dojem. A pak jsou tu knihy, co spíše připomínají geniálně připravený steak co vám v nějaké fajnové restauraci přinesou na předehřátém talíři a vy si v klidu vychutnáváte každé sousto. Knihy pana Simaka patří k tomu druhému typu.
Příběh o odlehlé planetě na konci naší galaxie, kde si roboti ze Země po tisíc let stavěli svůj vlastní Vatikán s obřím počítačem coby papežem. Nejen o robotech, and především o lidech...
Příběh o odlehlé planetě na konci naší galaxie, kde si roboti ze Země po tisíc let stavěli svůj vlastní Vatikán s obřím počítačem coby papežem. Nejen o robotech, and především o lidech...
October 5, 2018
Clifford D. Simak, the third writer to receive the lifetime achievement Grand Master of science fiction title (Heinlein was the first), produced Project Pope in 1981. It was at the end of his long career, which included the brilliant City (1953) and my personal favorite Way Station (Hugo Award 1964). Project Pope is about a group of robots who have spent the last 1,000 years trying to create an infallible pope and true religion. They have been collecting knowledge of the universe, and even multi-verses, to give their robot pope so that it will have all knowledge. They expect to factor out what is universally true across all cultures and thus create a true faith. "Knowledge before faith" is their motto.
Sounds like a great motto and a great plan, right? Except their project, actually called Vatican 17 not the pope project, is run by robots who would seamlessly fit in with the political jockeying of the Vatican in the HBO series The Young Pope, or that classic funny satire,
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister by Robert Browning. Oh, and one of multi-verses that appears to be Heaven turns out to be more like something from Peter Clines’ 14 and The Fold. Ooops.
The book raises an even more fundamental question than is heaven a place or a state of mind: why does everyone think robots (and artificial intelligence systems) are infallible? 15 minutes with Siri and spell-checking or reading the news about Tesla’s autonomous driving should dispel anyone of that notion.
What does infallible actually mean? It appears that most writers are referring to either a) being able to find a solution to a problem that was there but couldn’t be found by a human because it required searching over a huge database or set of possibilities or b) making correct inferences using logic. Search and logic, which has many forms by the way, are mainstays of artificial intelligence. Search finds things that are explicitly in the knowledge base or could be directly computed, like finding a needle that we know is in a haystack or the shortest route between locations. Logic finds things that aren’t implicit but logically follow from what is known (also called entailment), like that since Mary lost her needle, was playing in the haystack, and it is not anywhere else, it must be in the haystack.
Logic isn’t a silver bullet for intelligence for at least two reasons. One is that inference is only one of many mechanisms associated with intelligence. We can also infer new solutions or ideas through analogical reasoning, see The Secret Life of Bots. Inference is not understanding nor it is learning; it’s solving a puzzle of sorts.
A second reason why logic isn’t a silver bullet is that It can be mathematically correct but wrong if the axioms given to it in its knowledge base are wrong. Articles of Faith has a robot reason about God using what it is told as fact; most people probably wouldn’t have taken some of the pastor’s statements on face value without much more questioning. Logic starts with a knowledge base about the world, then applies an inference engine to deduce a new concept. In Articles of Faith, the new concept was that robots have souls. The different inference engines generally require the knowledge base to be written in a specialized format, such as in Horn clauses to support chaining algorithms or in conjunctive normal form to support theorem resolution algorithms. Horn clauses, and especially CNF, are practically unintelligible to a human. And given that a human has to enter the knowledge base, an error will creep in somewhere in the knowledge base.
Roboticists from time to time try to take a short cut and create if-then rule bases. These look a lot like Horn clauses and are more intuitively appealing because we know the “logic” syntax from procedural programming languages. Unfortunately if-then rule bases may reflect “programming logic” but don’t have a mathematical guarantee that they will lead to correct inferences (it is sound) or find inferences that it should (it is complete). Worse yet, the answer you get depends on the order of the rules. Humans adding more rules tend to introduce more unwanted side effects. The takeaway is that if you’re trying to use logic, you have to man up and do it right.
Different variations of logic capture different types of problems, there is no “logic” per se. Propositional logic deals with just facts. First order logic handles relationships and functions plus observations of features and attributes. Neither can handle uncertainty or changes over time. Temporal logics strive to do that but haven’t been completely fleshed out so these logics aren’t sound (only producing logically true conclusions) and complete (can derive any true conclusion that is possible to generate). Regardless of what logic is being used, the point isn’t discovery of new concepts but rather filling in the blanks as needed (e.g., chaining to diagnose why your car isn’t working) or proving a concept that you think is the answer (e.g., resolution to reason whether it is safe for your avatar to go through door A).
Project Pope proves that Simak is not infallible as a writer; he has written a book where there’s no real action and a lot (and I do mean a lot) of talking. But if you liked C.S. Lewis’ Christian essays more than his Narnia series, Project Pope should be close enough to heaven.
- Robin
Sounds like a great motto and a great plan, right? Except their project, actually called Vatican 17 not the pope project, is run by robots who would seamlessly fit in with the political jockeying of the Vatican in the HBO series The Young Pope, or that classic funny satire,
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister by Robert Browning. Oh, and one of multi-verses that appears to be Heaven turns out to be more like something from Peter Clines’ 14 and The Fold. Ooops.
The book raises an even more fundamental question than is heaven a place or a state of mind: why does everyone think robots (and artificial intelligence systems) are infallible? 15 minutes with Siri and spell-checking or reading the news about Tesla’s autonomous driving should dispel anyone of that notion.
What does infallible actually mean? It appears that most writers are referring to either a) being able to find a solution to a problem that was there but couldn’t be found by a human because it required searching over a huge database or set of possibilities or b) making correct inferences using logic. Search and logic, which has many forms by the way, are mainstays of artificial intelligence. Search finds things that are explicitly in the knowledge base or could be directly computed, like finding a needle that we know is in a haystack or the shortest route between locations. Logic finds things that aren’t implicit but logically follow from what is known (also called entailment), like that since Mary lost her needle, was playing in the haystack, and it is not anywhere else, it must be in the haystack.
Logic isn’t a silver bullet for intelligence for at least two reasons. One is that inference is only one of many mechanisms associated with intelligence. We can also infer new solutions or ideas through analogical reasoning, see The Secret Life of Bots. Inference is not understanding nor it is learning; it’s solving a puzzle of sorts.
A second reason why logic isn’t a silver bullet is that It can be mathematically correct but wrong if the axioms given to it in its knowledge base are wrong. Articles of Faith has a robot reason about God using what it is told as fact; most people probably wouldn’t have taken some of the pastor’s statements on face value without much more questioning. Logic starts with a knowledge base about the world, then applies an inference engine to deduce a new concept. In Articles of Faith, the new concept was that robots have souls. The different inference engines generally require the knowledge base to be written in a specialized format, such as in Horn clauses to support chaining algorithms or in conjunctive normal form to support theorem resolution algorithms. Horn clauses, and especially CNF, are practically unintelligible to a human. And given that a human has to enter the knowledge base, an error will creep in somewhere in the knowledge base.
Roboticists from time to time try to take a short cut and create if-then rule bases. These look a lot like Horn clauses and are more intuitively appealing because we know the “logic” syntax from procedural programming languages. Unfortunately if-then rule bases may reflect “programming logic” but don’t have a mathematical guarantee that they will lead to correct inferences (it is sound) or find inferences that it should (it is complete). Worse yet, the answer you get depends on the order of the rules. Humans adding more rules tend to introduce more unwanted side effects. The takeaway is that if you’re trying to use logic, you have to man up and do it right.
Different variations of logic capture different types of problems, there is no “logic” per se. Propositional logic deals with just facts. First order logic handles relationships and functions plus observations of features and attributes. Neither can handle uncertainty or changes over time. Temporal logics strive to do that but haven’t been completely fleshed out so these logics aren’t sound (only producing logically true conclusions) and complete (can derive any true conclusion that is possible to generate). Regardless of what logic is being used, the point isn’t discovery of new concepts but rather filling in the blanks as needed (e.g., chaining to diagnose why your car isn’t working) or proving a concept that you think is the answer (e.g., resolution to reason whether it is safe for your avatar to go through door A).
Project Pope proves that Simak is not infallible as a writer; he has written a book where there’s no real action and a lot (and I do mean a lot) of talking. But if you liked C.S. Lewis’ Christian essays more than his Narnia series, Project Pope should be close enough to heaven.
- Robin
June 25, 2016
Narrator OK but after several tries I set it aside. I liked some of Simak's earlier stuff but the language and sentence structure here didn't seem natural. Not sure I would call it amateurish, but more like dialog you would find in a 1950's western movie.
February 25, 2021
"Constructing a pope," said Tennyson, "is a strange task to set oneself. I wonder where the robots got the idea and what they expect the end result will be."
"You never can tell about robots," the captain observed. "They are a funny lot. Spend enough time in space and you quit worrying or wondering about why anyone is doing something or what they expect from doing what they do. None of these rummy aliens think the way we do. They're a bunch of zany bastards. Compared to most of them, robots are downright human."
"They should be," said Jill. "We are the ones who dreamed them up. No other culture did. There are those who will tell you that robots are extensions of ourselves."
"There may be some truth in that," the captain agreed. "Screwy as they may be at times, they are still several cuts above any alien I ever met."
Clifford D. Simak's Project Pope is an old fashioned science fiction yarn written in the 80s but steeped in the sentiment of the 50s. There was a lot of interesting ideas here, but Simak maintains a carefree plot that hints at deep implications he never explores. The conclusion does not conclude anything, really, and we leave this intriguing universe wishing at least one of the darker paths had been followed.
First, Clifford's view of robots as religious zealots cloistered in collecting data on the universe to unify existence is heady. He notes several times robots are creatures made in the image of humanity--and this religious undercurrent is never explored: robots know their creators, man doesn't. Simak's robots do not really act like robots; they have emotions, feelings, and foibles. Like I said, the novel has a 50s vibe to it.
Second, I'm not sure about the revulsion these human characters have towards aliens. The quote at the start of this review occurs in the opening pages of the novel; over two hundred pages later, we have this one:
Other roads seemed to be for pedestrians only. Along these crawled and hopped and skipped and walked and jumped and shambled an array of life. Looking at them, Tennyson remembered the Wayfarer captain and his loathing of all alien forms. Seeing some of those that traveled the pedestrian ways, he could understand something of the captain's loathing. In his time he had come into contact with varied alien life, but never in such horrifying forms as he now was seeing.
Humans created robots in their image and humans have no difficulty accepting them in their culture despite the rather non-human outlook robots possess. Within this novel, aliens, the truly non-human, trigger deep-seated fear and paranoia. We have an innate fear of the other; the belief that a snake is more horrific than, say, a dog, is because a snake looks less human.
Consider: The robots in this novel are striving to discover the truth of the universe, the maxims of a universal creator. We have humans, we have non-humans--and the novel traverses the territory mainly focused on humans. For the aliens encountered, their thoughts or actions are primarily and at times disappointedly human. They aren't allowed within the scope of this story to be truly "alien."
Simak's novel is a fascinating story. He provides glimpses of ideas which would take another novel to unravel, leaving them simmering on the wood-stove. He keeps the story interesting but focused and succinct. It's a throw-back novel with some rather fantastic elements and no real hard science, but it's worth the time. Project Pope definitely puts the "speculative" in "speculative fiction."
"You never can tell about robots," the captain observed. "They are a funny lot. Spend enough time in space and you quit worrying or wondering about why anyone is doing something or what they expect from doing what they do. None of these rummy aliens think the way we do. They're a bunch of zany bastards. Compared to most of them, robots are downright human."
"They should be," said Jill. "We are the ones who dreamed them up. No other culture did. There are those who will tell you that robots are extensions of ourselves."
"There may be some truth in that," the captain agreed. "Screwy as they may be at times, they are still several cuts above any alien I ever met."
Clifford D. Simak's Project Pope is an old fashioned science fiction yarn written in the 80s but steeped in the sentiment of the 50s. There was a lot of interesting ideas here, but Simak maintains a carefree plot that hints at deep implications he never explores. The conclusion does not conclude anything, really, and we leave this intriguing universe wishing at least one of the darker paths had been followed.
First, Clifford's view of robots as religious zealots cloistered in collecting data on the universe to unify existence is heady. He notes several times robots are creatures made in the image of humanity--and this religious undercurrent is never explored: robots know their creators, man doesn't. Simak's robots do not really act like robots; they have emotions, feelings, and foibles. Like I said, the novel has a 50s vibe to it.
Second, I'm not sure about the revulsion these human characters have towards aliens. The quote at the start of this review occurs in the opening pages of the novel; over two hundred pages later, we have this one:
Other roads seemed to be for pedestrians only. Along these crawled and hopped and skipped and walked and jumped and shambled an array of life. Looking at them, Tennyson remembered the Wayfarer captain and his loathing of all alien forms. Seeing some of those that traveled the pedestrian ways, he could understand something of the captain's loathing. In his time he had come into contact with varied alien life, but never in such horrifying forms as he now was seeing.
Humans created robots in their image and humans have no difficulty accepting them in their culture despite the rather non-human outlook robots possess. Within this novel, aliens, the truly non-human, trigger deep-seated fear and paranoia. We have an innate fear of the other; the belief that a snake is more horrific than, say, a dog, is because a snake looks less human.
Consider: The robots in this novel are striving to discover the truth of the universe, the maxims of a universal creator. We have humans, we have non-humans--and the novel traverses the territory mainly focused on humans. For the aliens encountered, their thoughts or actions are primarily and at times disappointedly human. They aren't allowed within the scope of this story to be truly "alien."
Simak's novel is a fascinating story. He provides glimpses of ideas which would take another novel to unravel, leaving them simmering on the wood-stove. He keeps the story interesting but focused and succinct. It's a throw-back novel with some rather fantastic elements and no real hard science, but it's worth the time. Project Pope definitely puts the "speculative" in "speculative fiction."
May 10, 2025
I had to do a double-take when I saw that Project Pope was published in 1981. Simak, though not technically part of Science Fiction's Golden Age, his stories tend to smack of that old sense of brass rocket nostalgia and futuristic optimism. Science Fiction by way of Prairie Home Companion. He was a throwback even in his own era.
This makes Project Pope something of an interesting literary object if only because it is endearing and worth studying (if you're into this sort of thing) for looking at a writer who so adamantly stuck to his guns and wrote the story he wanted, even after the New Wave had sent ripples through the genre with cyberpunk in the on-deck circle (Neuromancer was only three years away). Simak at this stage of his career was fully a writer outside of his own time, his own world.
Sadly, Project Pope does not serve as a bridge between the two eras but instead must have arrived stale with outdated portrayals of artificial intelligence and the emotionless logic of robots and a bewilderingly narrow scope for such a lofty topic. Ultimately, Simak did not have the horsepower necessary to make this story work.
The novel lived and died by its robots, sadly some of the worst I think I've read. Never before has a science fiction setting used robots more prominently and then made them feel like stage actors in grey facepaint-- wholly and completely human, familiar in every way when robot pilgrims forming their own religion should feel some level of distinction. Their way of life does not feel fully considered, their futuristic Vatican nothing more than slabs of cardboard cutouts for the stage actors to speak awkward Simakian "aaaawwww shucks" dialogue that I typically find good wholesome fun but here was dull to the extreme. That so much of the (supposed) big ideas in this book hinge on how the robots interface with faith or reckon with the fact that they, like God, are created in the image of their creators (only they get to look their creators in the face) end up being obfuscated by deeply uninteresting aliens shoehorned in is bad enough, but Simak does shockingly little with his own premise even when he devotes the time to it. To write a novel about the collision between Faith, Logic, organized religion, and spirituality-- one would think you would need to cast a wide net. So much of these religious robots would seem to lend themselves to Eastern religions like Buddhism or Hinduism, but Simak does not go anywhere near this. It is an unimaginably narrow-minded story.
The premise is built on robots trying to comb the galaxy for signs of heaven and prove god through robot practices is indicative of Arthur C. Clarke's famous short story The Nine Billion Names of God. The tension of being familiar with this story can't help but loom over the entirety of Project Pope. The entire book should have been about unpacking what it would look like and even mean to comb the heavens for empirical signs of, well, heaven. Instead, it devotes enormous space to nothing-characters and aliens that feel like they're from an entirely different book.
This was late career Simak, a twilight of a career that is not generally well regarded. While this was a tantalizing potential bridge between the old and new, it is a sad attempt by a writer of the old guard to tackle new ideas, new problems, and ancient philosophies with rusted-out tools. A big disappointment.
This makes Project Pope something of an interesting literary object if only because it is endearing and worth studying (if you're into this sort of thing) for looking at a writer who so adamantly stuck to his guns and wrote the story he wanted, even after the New Wave had sent ripples through the genre with cyberpunk in the on-deck circle (Neuromancer was only three years away). Simak at this stage of his career was fully a writer outside of his own time, his own world.
Sadly, Project Pope does not serve as a bridge between the two eras but instead must have arrived stale with outdated portrayals of artificial intelligence and the emotionless logic of robots and a bewilderingly narrow scope for such a lofty topic. Ultimately, Simak did not have the horsepower necessary to make this story work.
The novel lived and died by its robots, sadly some of the worst I think I've read. Never before has a science fiction setting used robots more prominently and then made them feel like stage actors in grey facepaint-- wholly and completely human, familiar in every way when robot pilgrims forming their own religion should feel some level of distinction. Their way of life does not feel fully considered, their futuristic Vatican nothing more than slabs of cardboard cutouts for the stage actors to speak awkward Simakian "aaaawwww shucks" dialogue that I typically find good wholesome fun but here was dull to the extreme. That so much of the (supposed) big ideas in this book hinge on how the robots interface with faith or reckon with the fact that they, like God, are created in the image of their creators (only they get to look their creators in the face) end up being obfuscated by deeply uninteresting aliens shoehorned in is bad enough, but Simak does shockingly little with his own premise even when he devotes the time to it. To write a novel about the collision between Faith, Logic, organized religion, and spirituality-- one would think you would need to cast a wide net. So much of these religious robots would seem to lend themselves to Eastern religions like Buddhism or Hinduism, but Simak does not go anywhere near this. It is an unimaginably narrow-minded story.
The premise is built on robots trying to comb the galaxy for signs of heaven and prove god through robot practices is indicative of Arthur C. Clarke's famous short story The Nine Billion Names of God. The tension of being familiar with this story can't help but loom over the entirety of Project Pope. The entire book should have been about unpacking what it would look like and even mean to comb the heavens for empirical signs of, well, heaven. Instead, it devotes enormous space to nothing-characters and aliens that feel like they're from an entirely different book.
This was late career Simak, a twilight of a career that is not generally well regarded. While this was a tantalizing potential bridge between the old and new, it is a sad attempt by a writer of the old guard to tackle new ideas, new problems, and ancient philosophies with rusted-out tools. A big disappointment.
November 3, 2025
Simak was a master of SF, if a less-known one; where Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein and all that gang wrote about Big Scientific and Technological Ideas and their Societal Impacts, Simak mostly wrote about the emotional effects that would follow if those BS&TI came to pass; further, where the mainstream of SF was urban and suburban, Simak, though his best-known book is called
City
, wrote as often as not in a pastoral mode.
Project Pope is, in all these ways, typical of him. It also features the very human robots that were something of a Simak trademark, and goes into some discussion of why his robots were so human.
The story opens with a brief Prologue which introduces a secondary viewpoint character, Thomas Decker, on a wilderness trek -- we will learn that this wilderness is on the planet End of Nothing, where the story mostly takes place -- with his mysterious non-human companion Whisperer.
The scene then shifts to one of the main viewpoint characters, Jason Tennyson, M.D. Fleeing for his life on the planet Gutshot, Tennyson stows aboard a starship; when found, he pays for passsage and becomes a passenger, sharing cabin space (chastely) with Jill Roberts, a reporter and writer of non-fiction books who is following her story to End of Nothing.
End of Nothing is home to Vatican-17, a religious institution founded by robots seeking the one true religion, and shared with humans. To find this relgion, they have built an immensely powerful computer, their Pope, and are feeding into it all the knowledge they can glean; and to glean this knowledge, they employ human sensitives capable of extraplanetary -- and, it appears, extrauniversal -- perceptions, one of whom claims to have found Heaven in her searching.
Tennyson quickly finds himself ensconced in Vatican-17 as doctor to their human inmates, for their previous doctor has recently died in a hunting incident. Roberts, seeking information about the place, finds herself simultaneously denied, and offered full access to all information about it: the robot Cardinals want her to write a full history of the thousand-year-old institution.
And things get weird from there. End of Nothing turns out to be the home of not one but two sapient species. "Heaven" turns out to be not quite what it seemed (which comes as no particular surprise to any experienced reader of SF). Tennyson and Roberts find themselves whisked to a world remniscent of one of Stapledon's stranger venues in Star Maker .
In all, Project Pope is not one of Simak's truly great books, but neither is it a minor work: it's a good solid novel. Out of print since the early '80s, but available as an eBook, it's worth searching out.
Project Pope is, in all these ways, typical of him. It also features the very human robots that were something of a Simak trademark, and goes into some discussion of why his robots were so human.
The story opens with a brief Prologue which introduces a secondary viewpoint character, Thomas Decker, on a wilderness trek -- we will learn that this wilderness is on the planet End of Nothing, where the story mostly takes place -- with his mysterious non-human companion Whisperer.
The scene then shifts to one of the main viewpoint characters, Jason Tennyson, M.D. Fleeing for his life on the planet Gutshot, Tennyson stows aboard a starship; when found, he pays for passsage and becomes a passenger, sharing cabin space (chastely) with Jill Roberts, a reporter and writer of non-fiction books who is following her story to End of Nothing.
End of Nothing is home to Vatican-17, a religious institution founded by robots seeking the one true religion, and shared with humans. To find this relgion, they have built an immensely powerful computer, their Pope, and are feeding into it all the knowledge they can glean; and to glean this knowledge, they employ human sensitives capable of extraplanetary -- and, it appears, extrauniversal -- perceptions, one of whom claims to have found Heaven in her searching.
Tennyson quickly finds himself ensconced in Vatican-17 as doctor to their human inmates, for their previous doctor has recently died in a hunting incident. Roberts, seeking information about the place, finds herself simultaneously denied, and offered full access to all information about it: the robot Cardinals want her to write a full history of the thousand-year-old institution.
And things get weird from there. End of Nothing turns out to be the home of not one but two sapient species. "Heaven" turns out to be not quite what it seemed (which comes as no particular surprise to any experienced reader of SF). Tennyson and Roberts find themselves whisked to a world remniscent of one of Stapledon's stranger venues in Star Maker .
In all, Project Pope is not one of Simak's truly great books, but neither is it a minor work: it's a good solid novel. Out of print since the early '80s, but available as an eBook, it's worth searching out.
August 7, 2022
I loved Clifford Simak when I was a teenager and devoured his books whenever I could. He typically builds a gentle world of rolling hills and quiet forests like the southern Wisconsin hill country he grew up in. His protagonists are usually strong, decent, independent loners who face strange situations with dignity and common sense.
This book revisits these themes along with robots, another topic he has used well in the past and he creates a world that, even if I didn't see his name on the cover, I would immediately recognize as his work.
Robots, impressed by human religion, have traveled to a distant unknown planet, and established a center there to research faith and establish a religion of their own. But after a 1,000 years, it has broadened into a search for truth in general, not just religious truth, spawning a reaction among some of the robots to return to the simple concepts of faith they had in past.
Unable to entirely separate from humans, both out of ancient appreciation of their creators and because humans are sensitive to things robots cannot directly experience, they have included them in their quest and on their planet, and in general, have created a community where both races, human and robot, work well in harmony.
Our heroes, a physician escaping political intrigue on a neighboring planet, and a reporter hoping to write about the robots and their project, arrive at the planet simultaneously and become entangled in the controversy among the robots there.
The story is a little slow moving, but is filled with the charm and warmth that Simak typically brought to his stories, along with a thought provoking exploration of the relationship between faith and truth. Instead of reading it all in one go, like a typical thriller, I found myself dipping into it a little bit at a time day-by-day, honestly wishing I could visit a place like that where most people (and robots) were decent and trying to do the right thing, though they disagree about what that is. Such a contrast to our world today. Having finished it, I wish I was still there.
Because it is a little slow, I feel it deserves about four and a half stars, but I'm rounding up to five, partially out of all the pleasure that Simak have given me over the years, and which he did not fail to provide in this book as well.
This book revisits these themes along with robots, another topic he has used well in the past and he creates a world that, even if I didn't see his name on the cover, I would immediately recognize as his work.
Robots, impressed by human religion, have traveled to a distant unknown planet, and established a center there to research faith and establish a religion of their own. But after a 1,000 years, it has broadened into a search for truth in general, not just religious truth, spawning a reaction among some of the robots to return to the simple concepts of faith they had in past.
Unable to entirely separate from humans, both out of ancient appreciation of their creators and because humans are sensitive to things robots cannot directly experience, they have included them in their quest and on their planet, and in general, have created a community where both races, human and robot, work well in harmony.
Our heroes, a physician escaping political intrigue on a neighboring planet, and a reporter hoping to write about the robots and their project, arrive at the planet simultaneously and become entangled in the controversy among the robots there.
The story is a little slow moving, but is filled with the charm and warmth that Simak typically brought to his stories, along with a thought provoking exploration of the relationship between faith and truth. Instead of reading it all in one go, like a typical thriller, I found myself dipping into it a little bit at a time day-by-day, honestly wishing I could visit a place like that where most people (and robots) were decent and trying to do the right thing, though they disagree about what that is. Such a contrast to our world today. Having finished it, I wish I was still there.
Because it is a little slow, I feel it deserves about four and a half stars, but I'm rounding up to five, partially out of all the pleasure that Simak have given me over the years, and which he did not fail to provide in this book as well.
May 4, 2017
End of Nothing. That is where almost all of this story takes place. It is also at the far edge of the Milky Way, thus its name. There are numerous mentions of "Old Earth" throughout the book, but nobody in the story seems to actually have been there. End of Nothing's main feature is Vatican-17, which seems to be a remote spin-off of the Roman Vatican. While humans are present, most of the society is actually made up of robots. However, the robots are subject to human emotions and, thus, human frailties.
The main character, Jason Tennyson, is a doctor with a possibly checkered past, although that never catches up with him. While he does fall in love with the historian Jill Roberts, fortunately Simak does not turn this novel into a love story, and basically works it into the overall structure of the book. Thomas Decker, a loner, is a mysterious character whose past is only partially told. And then there is Ecuyer, who welcomes Tennyson to the complex and asks him to be the physician. The only other regular human who appears is a ship captain at the very beginning. The rest are robots or other alien creatures.
Simak seems to throw some water on organized religion, although not excessively. In Vatican-17's quest to locate Heaven, Simak posits that many people perhaps cling to a naive view of what Heaven may actually be. He does this through one of the Listeners, an old frail woman named Mary. Did she find Heaven? She thought so, yet she was denied entrance. There is discussion amongst the characters about what Heaven actually is, with of course the result being that nobody who is alive truly knows.
This is a really good effort by Simak. The pace was brisk but interspersed with periods of character development and dialogue. He manages to keep the plot together for most of the story, although I did get a little confused towards the end. How Tennyson was able to erase Jill's scar can only be guessed at. Why did Tennyson suddenly have this ability - if one can call it that - but then just as suddenly not have it? What was Plopper, and what exact purpose did it serve? In addition, the ending seemed rather anticlimactic. However, getting there certainly was anything but.
The main character, Jason Tennyson, is a doctor with a possibly checkered past, although that never catches up with him. While he does fall in love with the historian Jill Roberts, fortunately Simak does not turn this novel into a love story, and basically works it into the overall structure of the book. Thomas Decker, a loner, is a mysterious character whose past is only partially told. And then there is Ecuyer, who welcomes Tennyson to the complex and asks him to be the physician. The only other regular human who appears is a ship captain at the very beginning. The rest are robots or other alien creatures.
Simak seems to throw some water on organized religion, although not excessively. In Vatican-17's quest to locate Heaven, Simak posits that many people perhaps cling to a naive view of what Heaven may actually be. He does this through one of the Listeners, an old frail woman named Mary. Did she find Heaven? She thought so, yet she was denied entrance. There is discussion amongst the characters about what Heaven actually is, with of course the result being that nobody who is alive truly knows.
This is a really good effort by Simak. The pace was brisk but interspersed with periods of character development and dialogue. He manages to keep the plot together for most of the story, although I did get a little confused towards the end. How Tennyson was able to erase Jill's scar can only be guessed at. Why did Tennyson suddenly have this ability - if one can call it that - but then just as suddenly not have it? What was Plopper, and what exact purpose did it serve? In addition, the ending seemed rather anticlimactic. However, getting there certainly was anything but.
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