Sawyer is a great hard Sci-Fi writer, finally we have someone who has the style of the good old masters. He is as good as Arthur Clarke in extrapolating science at his best times, as interesting in exploring the consequences of new scientific discoveries as Michael Crichton, but with better characters, and his philosophical discussion regarding God's existence rivals with Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion".

In fact, Sawyer's novel explores more objectively every issue about the existence of God in a throughout manner, considering the latest knowledge in biology, genetics, evolution and cosmology, and without offending or criticizing modern religions, as Dawkins did. For those who read Dawkins's "The God Delusion", this novel will clarify why some consider that Dawkins' weakest argument has to do with the origin of life and the Big Bang. Despite of the fact this is just a sci-fi novel, through the discussion between Holus (the alien who believes in God as a matter of scientific truth) and Dr. Jericho (the Canadian scientist who is a hard atheist, Dawkins style), Mr. Sawyer present us with a fair and balanced argumentation for each position (deist -not to be confused as creationist- vs. atheist). The final is a brilliant, just a shame it is only a brilliant speculation, but based on hard scientific possibilities.

A book highly recommended for hard sci-fi fans, and also for those who enjoyed reading Carl Sagan, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking. I am looking forward to read Sawyer's other books, and I am just sad I didn't discover him earlier, since I haven't read a good hard science fiction novel from a new author since the 20th century.

This is one of the best science fiction novels I have recently read. Not a perfect book; not a classic; but one of the best recently written science fiction novels out today.

The concept of the book is an interesting one; basically a debate/discussion between aliens and humans as to whether or not God exists. The God in question is a "creator" God rather than any specific religious groups' concept of God. I found the debates on God interesting to read, and thought provoking. The strength of the novel however, lies with the characters. Mr. Sawyer's forte is his characterizations. He is a very humanistic writer in the sense that there is a deep sense of empathy for his characters; be they human or alien. He develops these characters, making you sincerely care for them as individuals. Although the novel is serious fiction, I still found myself chuckling out loud over passages dealing with the alien's commentary and reaction to earth. I even quoted sections of alien dialogue to my secretary at work which I found particularly witty.

The weakest part of the book is the seemingly pasted on sub-plot about radical religious rightwingers. Contrary to the rest of the book, these characters did not ring true and seemed to be an afterthought. The whole sub-plot was too short (thankfully)to become a relevant part of the book and too easily handled and then forgotten. The sub-plot simply detracted from the rest fo the story and did not fit in with anything else that was going on. I could have seen a better confrontation with members of the religious right which could have made a valued addition to the storyline, but the one chosen by the author would have been better left out completely. Equally out of place and overly simplistic is the alien discussion of abortion.

The author's prose is easy to read which is unusual for hard science fiction novels. Also unusual for a hard science fiction novel is the character development mentioned above. My reaction upon finishing the book was to immediately purchase two more books by the same author. I have finished reading one of those already and was equally pleased. His characters are his stock in trade!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys science fiction novels with concepts which put you to thinking and who enjoys masterly developed characters. The book is worth reading just for the characters but there is much more to it than that.

Sawyers books are amazingly varied, and always highly interesting and thoughtful. I revisited Calculating God and was so impressed. This story remains as vibrant as the day it was written.

This is a book of ideas. It's a First Contact novel, but without the usual conflict between aliens and humans. The aliens land and ask to meet and spend time with various people, including a tribe of gorillas. All the Earth's governments think that's pretty cool and cooperate. There is a bit of melodramatic conflict with a couple of fundamentalist, anti-abortion, anti-evolutionists.

But this is mostly a book of conversations between a Canadian paleontologist, Dr. Thomas Jericho, and his Forhilnor (alien) counterpart, Hollus. Jerico is an athiest. The Forhilnor, and the other alien races they've met, all consider God a scientifically proven creator of the universe, although they've never received any communication from Him.

If this sounds like an old fashioned book, I guess it is. I haven't read anything like it for a long time. But the author does a really good job of arguing for the necessity of a creator that set every physical constant just so, to enable the evolution of order, life, and intelligence. I was already familiar with most of these arguments. But Sawyer goes on to explain how a God could have arisen before the Big Bang and survived it, and why this God would want intelligence to evolve, Warning: this is not the God of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other human religion I know.

Along the way Sawyer provides an interesting answer to why we haven't previously been contacted by alien races. The level of intellectual creativity is very high. I found it quite satisfying. I've started reading Sawyer's other books.

This is one of my favorite books. Its really deep and fascinating-- the alien Hollis is one of my favorite characters ever. The only downside is I think the author didn't know how to end it really... I wished it would have been left open. I won't spoil anything, though!

As a disclaimer, the idea of "intelligent design"-themed science fiction makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty nail. Given that Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer is billed as exactly that, I expected to hate it. I still wanted to give it a chance, though. And while it had extremely significant problems, I actually enjoyed it. Sawyer, all things considered, is a pretty good writer. At least, based on this book.

The plot is basically this: a humanoid alien with eyestalks and mouths on its limbs, a member of the Forhilnor race, named Hollus, walks into the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and asks to see a paleontologist. The person who ends up meeting with Hollus is Tom Jericho, a vertebrate paleontologist. Hollus has collected data from different worlds with living systems pointing to identical dates for major extinction events. This, along with other surprising data, points to only one conclusion for Hollus: that the world was intelligently designed by a God.

And that is basically it for the plot. Another alien race is introduced, and there is a subplot with two American creationists who want to destroy the Burgess Shale collection housed at the ROM, but the book is almost entirely a "talking heads" book. A good 90% of the novel is recounting in detail the various conversations between Tom and Hollus, which range between being fascinating and incredibly irritating for the reader, depending on the subject.

The main idea behind the novel is interesting enough: some outside intelligence is intervening in the evolution of multiple different races in order to promote the spread of intelligence in the universe for its own mysterious purposes. This, in itself, isn't all that different from some of Arthur C. Clarke's work. Clearly the evidence collected by Hollus is compelling enough to at least make any rational person admit that something very strange and outside of our current scope of knowledge is happening.

This leads to the first problem I want to discuss: Tom Jericho is an atheist, and apparently in Sawyer's mind that means ignoring completely irrefutable proof for the existence of God when it is presented to you out of sheer stubborness. Jericho is perhaps one of the worst depictions of an atheist I have ever read in a novel. Not only does he deny very obvious and extraordinary evidence for the existence of a God (something no intellectually honest atheist would ever do) but his 'conversion,' so to speak, toward a very broad kind of theism (more on that in a minute) comes because of the presentation of bad creationist arguments that have been made many times in the past. Tom, as a well-read and apparently life-long skeptic, would have listened to and rejected these arguments in the past; why now is he convinced by bad creationist arguments put forth by an alien? It's bad enough that he brushes off pretty irrefutable evidence of the existence of God; does he really have to be convinced by arguments that have been made and have failed in our own time. This was the first sign that Sawyer was more interested in promoting the current Intelligent Design (ID) movement than exploring a speculative "what if?" ID scenario. He even presents Michael Behe's Irreducible Complexity argument as if there weren't perfectly good counters to it already. Another irritating aspect of Tom's character is that he personifies the paranoid creationist conspiracy-theory that evolutionary biologists are deliberately oppressing the ID/Creationist community and don't really fully believe in what they expouse. This is also known as the "Darwinian Orthodoxy" idea, and there is simply nothing good in it.

If he writes a really bad atheist character, though, you should see how vicious he gets with biblical Creationists. Or are they more supposed to represent Americans? It's hard to tell in this novel because Sawyer is constantly taking glaringly obvious potshots at America and bragging about all things Canadian, which gets annoying after awhile. I'm glad he's proud to be a Canadian, but does he have to do it by shooting down his neighbors to the South? Anyway, this is another sign to me that he is trying to make the modern ID community look good. One thing the ID people have been trying to do for years is distinguish themselves from traditional creationists. The reason for this among American ID advocates is obvious: they are unable to influence classroom biology lessons due to Supreme Court rulings against teaching religion in the classroom. Thus, the crafty modern creationists are constantly morphing themselves into increasingly secular guises in order to evade the rule of the law. Intelligent Design was an attempt at separating creationist tenants from religion, and thus arguing that there is scientifically detectable "design" in nature. Anyway, by essentially dehumanizing traditional creationists in the form of the characters JD Ewell and Cooter Falsey (really, that's his name) Sawyer is attempting to make a sharp distinction between the more enlightened creationism of his aliens and "hick creationism." His American Creationist duo, who also bomb an abortion clinic prior to the events of the novel, travel to Canada, armed to the teeth (speaking of which, is Sawyer's novel inadvertently knocking Canadian border control when the two sneak into Canada with semi-automatic weapons). Does anyone really enjoy this kind of character assassination, however? The mockery is too unsubtle to be amusing, and it puts me in the awkward position of having to defend the dignity of a group of people I despise (ideologically, at least).

If Sawyer is a bit too eager to dehumanize characters for propagandistic purposes, however, he at least does a good job with making his central characters emotionally realistic. Tom Jericho is, on an emotional level, a compelling character, and I felt for him. Hollus isn't explored as well, but I got a good sense of what it was like. The dialogue strikes a nice balance between realism and harmony (that is, his characters all speak like very well-educated individuals, which they are, the creationists stick-figures aside). The writing is very clean and smooth. There is a lot of intelligent and interesting ideas in this novel not relating to ID (although the novel's discussion of morality is pretty pitiful), such as explanations for why Hollus' two mouths occasionally say whole words as well as alternating words between the two mouths (the answer relates to the Forhilnor race's history of aggression) or the complicated epistemology of the Wreed race (an alien species which also has sent a few members to travel around with Hollus and the other Forhilnor on its ship: the race is much less anthropocentric than the Forhilnor are, and their inability, say, to comprehend things discreetly, but only holistically, and this leading to a lack of mathematics among their kind and a fundamentally different way of apprehending the cosmos). Perhaps the novel's biggest plus is its pacing: it turns a talking-heads novel about creationist aliens into something of a page-turner. That has to count for something.

The portrayal of God in this novel is interesting. Neither Forhilnor nor Wreeds believe in a personal God. Their God is actually more akin to a super-advanced alien intelligence which is able to influence the evolution of life and design the fundamental parameters for life in the cosmos, but cares not a jot for the needs or feelings of its creation. Putting aside a bizarre futuristic answer to the Christian mythology of the virgin birth near the end of the novel, I was pretty happy with the intelligent way Sawyer portrayed a more naturalistic God.

This novel is interesting, but it has too many very serious problems to be a great novel. As it stands, I'd recommend it as an interesting but ultimately failed experiment in ID-themed science fiction.

Robert J. Sawyer is rapidly becoming one of my favorite science fiction authors. He brings intelligence and humor to whatever issuing he is addressing. In Calculating God, Sawyer is addressing one of the biggest issues: Is there a god who planned out creation and set it in motion?

For Tom Jericho, a palentologist at the Royal Ontario Museum, the answer is a resounding "no." But then one day a six-legged, two-armed alien resembling a spider named Hollus shows up to request a meeting with a paleontologist. Tom just happens to be available and the pair compare notes on mass extinctions. Seems on Hollus's world the mass extinctions happened at the exact same intervals as on earth and the home world of another species of alien. Furthermore, the aliens see the hand of an intelligent creator moving behind the scene - something Tom can't bring himself to accept.

Much of the book consists of convrsations between Tom and Hollus as they sort through theories. For some readers these conversations will probably seem a bit dull. I found them fascinating. I've always found myself on the scientific/rational side of the argument, so it was interesting to hear the aliens present the flip side. It didn't make a believer out of me (and I suspect many of the creationists and an proponents of intelligent design would have problems with the alien's version of intelligent design) but it did make me think about other possibilities.

If there were times when the book got a little "talky" in places, I just chalked it up to listening to a professor who knew his subject well and was able to present to in a way that the average Joe off the street could understand if they wondered into the middle of the lecture. The only problem I had was that some of the ideas have become outdated. That's hardly Sawyer's fault considering the book was written more than a decade ago ... well before all the current interest in string theory.

One more brief observation: I have yet to read a book by Sawyer that I didn't come away from without learning something new. Calculating God was no exception. Not only does he tell intriguing stories, but he gets you to learn new things along the way whether you intended to or not.

I decided to read the book before reading the reviews. I had already read the Neanderthal Parralax, and decided to trust the author to not disapoint me. He delivered.

In the book, an alien craft lands at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.

'The alien sidled up to the blue-blazered security officer— Raghubir, a grizzled but genial Sikh who’d been with the ROM forever— and said, in perfect English, “Excuse me. I would like to see a paleontologist.”' (Kindle Locations 108-109).

In the book, The Day the Earth Stood Still by Harry Bates, Klaatu is killed by the Americans; in the Robert Wise movie, he was shot but not killed, though killed later. Also shot in the recent remake. This Canadian version of first contact was much more interesting. Strangely, the Canadians did not behave like Americans! Sawyer is Canadian, a different perspective. If you have any familiarity with Canada, it was a refreshing change.

The aliens had evidence for the existence of a god, a prime mover of the universe. The aliens stated the finely tuned universe arguments and the irredicible complexity argument, with our atheist paleontologist making counter arguments.

It was a rather interesting book, with particular relevance to myself. Obviously, you will keep in mind that an agnostic is recommending the book, and the fact that it is science fiction, note the word fiction.

There is a section at the end of the book - Book Group Discussion Questions. If I get enough people reading it, we will have a book discussion as well.

DaveN

Start with 3 different species, add a few rednecks, and you’re set for a lot of very different approaches to everything. Good enough that I’ve purchased a copy for my priest friend.

This is the first book of Sawyer's I have read and it won't be the last. Sawyer presents arguments in a very amusing way and I often wonder if the aliens in the novel are supposed to be so human!

The book does have it's downsides, it seems quite hurried in places and lacking for ideas. I would have liked to seen a bit more of God in action as it were (without wanting to give away spoliers), instead of the alien and human intellectual chin stroking. It's also a bit clumsy with some of the coincidences. However the plausiable is very much the point of this book.

My biggest complaint about this book was I would have liked it to have been deeper, a bit more philosophical perhaps - another couple of hundred of pages would have been wonderful! Not that any of this detracts from this being a good book... merely I was sad to come to the end as quickly as I did.

If you're into the philosophy of religion, evolution, and the kind of musings stoned and idle university students come up with - then this one is for you.

(Couldn't help but imagine the Canadians in the book as looking like the Canadians from Southpark!)

En este libro Robert toca varios temas controvertidos y provoca al lector a tener un pensamiento crítico. Es entretenido y con suficiente acción para mantener la atención.

Ainda estou lendo. Para quem gosta de conteúdos sobre ET... leitura perfeita.

Very entertaining reading, ethically challenging. I Enjoyed the characters and the author' s vision, his way to imagine our future.