Review of Calculating God
by Emily Stewart

Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer was published in 2000 and has been nominated for a Hugo award this year. This year's Hugos will be presented in Philedelphia at the Millenium Philcon Worldcon. For the complete list of nominated works go to http://www.netaxs.com/~phil2001/hugos/

Robert Sawyer has previously won a Nebula for his book The Terminal Experiment in 1995. Calculating God is Sawyer's twelfth novel.

Calculating God started out really good, Robert Sawyer has a good understanding of his audience and how to appropriately invoke humor. The story begins as an alien walks into the Royal Ontario Museum and demands to see a paleontologist. The alien, named Hollus, is seeking an explanation for five concurrent mass extinctions on five different worlds. The focus of the story is between the paleontologist, Thomas Jehrico, an atheist and Hollus, a theist. Hollus is joined on earth by another alien, a Wreed named T'kna (an anagram for Kant), introduced to present a purely intuitive and philosophical perspective in opposition to Hollus's qualitative theorys about a divine presence.

Calculating God is true Hard SF. Sawyer accurately cites scientific sources, gives plausible explanation for the technology presented and develops a believable universe for his story to exist in. In addition to the central theological theme, there are several peripheral stories that are related back to the main focus. Jehrico is in an ongoing struggle with the ROM's director over the direction that public science education should take and he is also involved in an inner struggle with lung cancer.

While the story has a clear intent to define a potential future relationship between relegion and science, there were several problems with some of the arguments and the story itself. First, there are several 'leaps of faith' that the author makes in order to keep the story from becoming too wordy that were difficult to swallow. On three different occasions in the book, an event without explanation is provided and Thomas Jehrico supplies a hypothesis that is taken as fact for the remainder of the story. One of the most upsetting parts of the story is where Hollus uses Occam's razor as plausible explanation for a divine entity, simply because it is the most likely.

For the most part, this is a good book. It was certainly enjoyable to read and while I don't believe that it is worthy of a Hugo, it was cleverly written and I would recommend it. For more about Robert Sawyer, visit his website at http://www.sfwriter.com