Finished Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God this past week. The novel was a solid, not spectactular, read. Saywer is one of the more popular and celebrated science fiction writers on the planet, but Calculating God doesn’t stand up to that adulation. Still the book is worth reading.
The premise? Tom Jericho is a paleontologist with Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. An alien paleontologist, named Hollus, lands in the ROM’s backyard and sets about studying fossils with Jericho. Two major complications of faith factor into Calculating God. First, the aliens believe in an intelligent designer of the universe, which is sort of problematic for a guy like Jericho steeped in the scientific method and dismissive of creationists. Second, Jericho has lung cancer and less then a year to live.
Sawyer uses this setting to explore philosophical issues of life’s relation to God and the universe. David Soya’s review at SF Site captures a lot of my thoughts on Calculating God. One major irritation for me though was that the “scientists” in the story actually didn’t practice any science. Sawyer never really shows them at work. Also, there are a number of points where Jericho and Hollus make assertions, jump to conclusions, and don’t seek out confirming or disconfirming evidence. I also have to agree with most other reviews that the Creationist plot of the story seems like a poor tack-on. Sawyer would have been better served to leave that on the cutting room floor.
Ultimately, Calculating God explores some deep issues in a pleasant and intellectual challenging way. The plot and characters didn’t really move me in a correspondingly meaningful manner, but this was a journey worth taking.