Calculating God
(ROBERT J SAWYER)
When the aliens land they are not interested in Washington, Moscow, the Vatican, or NASA: the one that lands outside the
Royal Ontario Museum
wants to see a paleontologist. Much to the shock of senior vertebrate curator
Tom Jericho, the aliens are creationists, believing that the universe shows
clear signs of intelligent design... It turns out that mass extinctions on
other worlds have coincided exactly with those on Earth, despite their causes
being local. (This opening, in the sample chapter of Calculating God
on the web, quickly had me hooked.)
For his plot Sawyer has to exaggerate (or rather invent) evidence for
intelligent design and external intervention in Earth''s evolutionary history.
But all the implausibilities involved resolve into a single big one at the center
of everything, which is much more satisfying (and easier to suspend disbelief
for) than many small unconnected implausibilities: I was close to being annoyed
by Sawyer''s liberties several times, but he always came back. Sawyer also
avoids a facile ending, showing a willingness to honestly face such emotionally
difficult topics as relativistic differential aging and death from lung cancer.
While it offers plenty of interesting ideas and some exposition of science, Calculating
God also works as a novel. It doesn''t have much physical action ? and most
of it is crammed into a somewhat implausible side plot involving real capital-C
Creationists ? but I never found it dry or slow. Though Tom is the only
character we ever get any insight into, his psychological and intellectual
journeys are skillfully interwoven. And Sawyer''s aliens, while they don''t turn
out to be truly alien, are more convincingly different than most such
creations.
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