From the Bookshelf of The Alternative Worlds…

Calculating God

Robert J. Sawyer

Why we're reading this: Sherri: Sawyer describes himself as a writer of "Phi-fi" -- philosophical fiction. This book is a great e…more
[close] Sherri: Sawyer describes himself as a writer of "Phi-fi" -- philosophical fiction. This book is a great example of it.

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Apr 11, 2015 Suz rated it it was ok

Shelves: audiobook, science-fiction

I have never read this author (though I guess he's rather prolific and well known and, from what I can gather - not too bad otherwise), and I bought this book based on the blurb. Essentially, an alien lands on earth (for whatever reason) and proceeds to argue with a human, who is both a paleontologist and atheist, about the existence of god. Or God, I suppose.

I will say that the foreward put me off. It was an honest to (hah) god blurb of "if you don't like my book, you're a close-minded asshole. I have never read this author (though I guess he's rather prolific and well known and, from what I can gather - not too bad otherwise), and I bought this book based on the blurb. Essentially, an alien lands on earth (for whatever reason) and proceeds to argue with a human, who is both a paleontologist and atheist, about the existence of god. Or God, I suppose.

I will say that the foreward put me off. It was an honest to (hah) god blurb of "if you don't like my book, you're a close-minded asshole."

Well, I didn't like the book very much, and not because of the subject matter. I actually found the writing rather lacking, so I guess that makes me a closed minded asshole.

The author, btw, is himself, an atheist. I've seen some reviews that seem to think he's pushing the creationism or intelligent design theory, but the book really doesn't push much of anything, except bad arguments.

So, essentially. An alien lands on earth. This alien is part of a species that are (obviously) star-faring and they have come with another alien race to check out Earth/Terra. We're all at about the same technological level, and what they've discovered is that there are 5 mass extinction events that have happened *at the exact same time* to all three races. So, for whatever reason, they're trying to look at the history of Earth to see what other comparisons can be made. Apparently most of the other species discovered thus far have gone post-physical and are out of the picture, but these aliens believe that there is another race out there, playing "god", in that it's causing events, nudging the races to the state they are at. And then a star explodes (well, hundreds of millions of years ago, but, you know, astronomical stuff takes some serious time) and the author pulls a literal deus ex machina and the god-alien saves the day.

In all of this, the scientist-protag is fighting cancer and at the end travels off with the aliens to visit "god."

There is also a very, very weak subplot involving some super-christian neo-con types who are bombing abortion clinics and fossils (lies created by the scientists to manipulate people away from god, of course). This book, btw, takes place in Canada, and I don't know how bad their crazy neo-con abortion-bomber problem is, but it sounds very stereotypical for 'Murika.

So, my issue was I was looking forward to the arguments of this "god" that the aliens know of, but really, the author perverts the idea of god - he takes Clarke's third law (you know, the one about advance technology and magic) and essentially applies that to any sufficiently advanced race/alien. So the argument is moot. It's not that there is a god, it's that there is a powerful enough alien that feels the need to play with other races/lifeforms to get what he wants out of the deal. Which. Meh. Cute, but ultimately boring. ...more

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