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God's World
It is 1997: time of the Millennium... Earth has been alerted by messengers of God and summoned to his planet of angels, 82 Eridani. Powered by a mysterious space drive found in the Gobi desert, a crusading spaceship is launched through High Space to explore this heavenly world.
In fear and wonder, Amy and her companions travel on an hallucinatory, mind-expanding voyage... fighting spectral foes, encountering revelatory visions, in a starship propelled by imagination. Then, in a series of dream contacts searingly, achingly real, Amy discovers the true identity of the alien inhabitants of God's World... and Ian Watson illuminates his own shimmering new world of ideas.
In fear and wonder, Amy and her companions travel on an hallucinatory, mind-expanding voyage... fighting spectral foes, encountering revelatory visions, in a starship propelled by imagination. Then, in a series of dream contacts searingly, achingly real, Amy discovers the true identity of the alien inhabitants of God's World... and Ian Watson illuminates his own shimmering new world of ideas.
- GenresScience FictionReligion
285 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
About the author
Ian Watson
300 books129 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 4, 2020
I have read a lot of "far out" (for lack of a better term) and strange science fiction in my life, and Ian Watson is one of the most inhumanly creative purveyors of such books, but "God's World" is beyond anything else I can recall in terms of ideas and concepts. It has the insane metaphysics of Philip K. Dick and the intellectual erudition of Stanisław Lem, without any of the humor or irony of those masters and with a decidedly new age bent. Yet it works. It is extremely challenging and demanding, but the reward is an experience of science fiction taken to its utmost limit.
December 7, 2025
Human error!? Divine intervention!? Interstellar decay!? The fabric of time and space cut and stitched into a straight-jacket that will finally silence the collective soul of the multi-versed faithful!? Or is this God simply a supreme avatar amidst its holy minions, or perhaps, an idiot collective entity that would rival the ropy and dark-eating space blob, Azathoth?
Holy shit, I think Ian Watson just wrote the Space-Opera equivalent of a doomsday sermon for the delirious New Age A.I. sect. This is unbound metaphysical nonsense in the form of a novel whose sole aim is to entertain through entropy and religion, highlighting his rapid ideas with much explosive beffudlements while leaving little to grasp onto for the breathless long-haul. For example, the climax is told in nearly all dialogue - not just one voice and one dialogue, but two dialogues of two different versions of the same person trying to figure out how to save the universe by using imagination and faith as the main remedies. And don't even get started on if this book is pro or anti religion. I don't think Watson even cares about analysis, traditional or otherwise. Like a tyrant, he's the one who lights the fireworks during Sunday's sermon, and then waits around for crumb cake and coffee.
What a mess. What a glorious mess.
'God's World' plays out a bit like John Varley's 'Titan' in how sex helps power and guide the ship (in this case, The Pilgrim) and how the salacious (and of course, worldly) crew is attacked by creatures webbing out from their satellite abodes, but while Varley aimed to entertain with a wink, Ian Watson aims to entertain with a headfuck. While approaching many offworld topics - such as high space vs. low space travel, or why light brown fuzzy hairs start growing on each scientists' skin once on the planet - there is little to slow the book down besides its delirious tempo. It's not a long book either, clocking in at 250 pages, but Watson clearly is enjoying himself by overloading the calories, filling the plate until the plate can't take much more.
A dubious rating: *** 1/2 for energy and ideas.
Oh, and here's the BBC archive of Harry Harrison decrying that SF has little room for the metaphysical. Ian tries to make him eat his marbles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RZ0C...
Holy shit, I think Ian Watson just wrote the Space-Opera equivalent of a doomsday sermon for the delirious New Age A.I. sect. This is unbound metaphysical nonsense in the form of a novel whose sole aim is to entertain through entropy and religion, highlighting his rapid ideas with much explosive beffudlements while leaving little to grasp onto for the breathless long-haul. For example, the climax is told in nearly all dialogue - not just one voice and one dialogue, but two dialogues of two different versions of the same person trying to figure out how to save the universe by using imagination and faith as the main remedies. And don't even get started on if this book is pro or anti religion. I don't think Watson even cares about analysis, traditional or otherwise. Like a tyrant, he's the one who lights the fireworks during Sunday's sermon, and then waits around for crumb cake and coffee.
What a mess. What a glorious mess.
'God's World' plays out a bit like John Varley's 'Titan' in how sex helps power and guide the ship (in this case, The Pilgrim) and how the salacious (and of course, worldly) crew is attacked by creatures webbing out from their satellite abodes, but while Varley aimed to entertain with a wink, Ian Watson aims to entertain with a headfuck. While approaching many offworld topics - such as high space vs. low space travel, or why light brown fuzzy hairs start growing on each scientists' skin once on the planet - there is little to slow the book down besides its delirious tempo. It's not a long book either, clocking in at 250 pages, but Watson clearly is enjoying himself by overloading the calories, filling the plate until the plate can't take much more.
A dubious rating: *** 1/2 for energy and ideas.
Oh, and here's the BBC archive of Harry Harrison decrying that SF has little room for the metaphysical. Ian tries to make him eat his marbles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RZ0C...
January 31, 2025
“You who seek God do not know what God might be?”
God’s World, first published in 1979, is Ian Watson’s sixth novel.
The story begins when apparitions of religious icons appear across the Earth. Most major faiths are represented—Christ, the God of the Old Testament, Mohammed, the Virgin Mary, and other religious and culturally specific figures. They all preach the same message: humanity must embark on a journey to God’s World, a distant planet orbiting a star in the constellation of Eridanus. They warn of a cosmic struggle between Heaven and malign forces. Only the best representatives of humanity are to make the voyage, and the technology required to do so is buried somewhere in the Gobi Desert. The mode of travel to this world is through a medium called High-Space.
From here, the story quite literally melts into an amalgam of liquid passages, technicolor voyages, a farrago of disparate ideas, and fantastically strange entities. Our voyagers reach God’s World and learn that its native beings grant access to a Metareality, where one becomes like a god, imagining the universe into existence. In most novels, the reader is clued in while the protagonists remain confused, but Watson does a fantastic job of ensuring that you are just as bewildered as the characters when encountering a new alien culture. It’s as if you, too, are part of the voyage.
This is not easy science fiction. Watson’s metaphysical ideas are extremely demanding, and for those who enjoy this book enough, it welcomes further reading. The novel is effectively probing what the root of all reality might be and what kind of entity or pervading force could sustain such energy.
If you’re looking to be challenged and dive into something truly different, this one is worth the time. Perhaps I’ll revisit it someday, though my one criticism is the ending—it felt a tad too conveniently fashioned for a story of such metaphorically focused abstraction. No doubt, I look forward to reading more of Watson’s work.
"Before you beat the dog, be sure to learn its Master’s name."
God’s World, first published in 1979, is Ian Watson’s sixth novel.
The story begins when apparitions of religious icons appear across the Earth. Most major faiths are represented—Christ, the God of the Old Testament, Mohammed, the Virgin Mary, and other religious and culturally specific figures. They all preach the same message: humanity must embark on a journey to God’s World, a distant planet orbiting a star in the constellation of Eridanus. They warn of a cosmic struggle between Heaven and malign forces. Only the best representatives of humanity are to make the voyage, and the technology required to do so is buried somewhere in the Gobi Desert. The mode of travel to this world is through a medium called High-Space.
From here, the story quite literally melts into an amalgam of liquid passages, technicolor voyages, a farrago of disparate ideas, and fantastically strange entities. Our voyagers reach God’s World and learn that its native beings grant access to a Metareality, where one becomes like a god, imagining the universe into existence. In most novels, the reader is clued in while the protagonists remain confused, but Watson does a fantastic job of ensuring that you are just as bewildered as the characters when encountering a new alien culture. It’s as if you, too, are part of the voyage.
This is not easy science fiction. Watson’s metaphysical ideas are extremely demanding, and for those who enjoy this book enough, it welcomes further reading. The novel is effectively probing what the root of all reality might be and what kind of entity or pervading force could sustain such energy.
If you’re looking to be challenged and dive into something truly different, this one is worth the time. Perhaps I’ll revisit it someday, though my one criticism is the ending—it felt a tad too conveniently fashioned for a story of such metaphorically focused abstraction. No doubt, I look forward to reading more of Watson’s work.
"Before you beat the dog, be sure to learn its Master’s name."
March 4, 2016
This is a metaphysical science-fiction romp a-la Philip K. Dick. And as much of a PKD fan that I am, I preferred this one over VALIS. It puts its foot down right from the beginning, introducing so many bizarre concepts that your head is immediately reeling.
The plot is pretty much impossible to describe succinctly, for it has a stream-of-consciousness quality to it much like the early work of A.E. van Vogt.
In short, I'd recommend this book to anybody who enjoys a heady brew of metaphysics served up with a well-written, pacy science fiction narrative. It attempts - like most of Ian Watson's work - to evolve the readers imagination by pushing it well past the threshold of the ordinary (or even what most of us concede as extraordinary). . .
A powerful book of immense scope. It demands a reprint - but its audience may be those who enjoy the more extreme limits of science fiction/fantasy.
The plot is pretty much impossible to describe succinctly, for it has a stream-of-consciousness quality to it much like the early work of A.E. van Vogt.
In short, I'd recommend this book to anybody who enjoys a heady brew of metaphysics served up with a well-written, pacy science fiction narrative. It attempts - like most of Ian Watson's work - to evolve the readers imagination by pushing it well past the threshold of the ordinary (or even what most of us concede as extraordinary). . .
A powerful book of immense scope. It demands a reprint - but its audience may be those who enjoy the more extreme limits of science fiction/fantasy.
June 19, 2025
A dose of quasi-religious, metaphysical SF, better—at least, to my taste—in the set-up and science-fictional ideas, but it lost me in the metaphysics, more so when it veered into New Agey folderol. I suspect that's more my fault as a reader than Watson's as a writer.
December 31, 2025
I enjoyed the first half of this book with some good characters and an interesting plot direction but for me some of the metaphysical ideas took over in the second half reducing the scope of the characters and my interest.
May 29, 2022
Strangest sci-fi novel I've ever read.
December 24, 2015
Angels, messengers and other unearthly apparitions appear, warning of a war between God and Satan around a nearby star. A parasychological starship drive is provided and a crew of eccentrics and scientists is chosen to crew it. Of course, nithing is what it seems.
Satisfying mystical sf from Ian Watson, who is sadly these days known as a writer of Warhammer fantasy novelisations, but in the 1970s was writing religious/mythic sf.
Satisfying mystical sf from Ian Watson, who is sadly these days known as a writer of Warhammer fantasy novelisations, but in the 1970s was writing religious/mythic sf.
July 24, 2019
Deliciously far fetched.
March 31, 2017
Arguably the best of Watson's early work. I enjoyed the scope of the novel and the ideas he explores. A staple of the 80s sci-fi reader, Watson's cudos remains even if the work is a little dated and more likely to appeal to the philosophically minded sci fi reader. If ideas are your thing this will appeal to you. And if you cut your teeth on 80s sci fi or are latently interested this will be a nostalgia trip or fertile research.
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May 5, 2019I have the german edition: Die Himmels Pyramide
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews