This was my second Sawyer book, the first being Terminal Experiment. There are actually two stories here. One tackles the question of intelligent design in an innovative way: What if the extinction events that occurred on our planet also occurred simultaneously on different planets? And what if an alien from one of those planets comes to ours seeking answers? Now what if that alien's primary contact on this planet happens to be an atheist?

The God-believing alien is an interesting premise and fairly well executed except for the author's inclusion of the main character's all too frequent exposition on his affliction (lung cancer). The chapters that cover the interactions between Tom Jericho and Hollus, the alien (reading his anal probe crack actually made me laugh out loud), are good but are too often broken up by Tom's personal accounting of his fight with cancer, from discovery to treatment. It kills any momentum or suspense from the previous chapter. That is not to say that the parts dealing with Jericho's cancer aren't written well, they are. Actually, it would make a great read standing by itself. Unfortunately, the way the two stories are interleaved, the alien interaction is sometimes overshadowed by the cancer aspect to the point where it seems like a mere backdrop.

Then there's Jericho's almost magical discovery of the reason for an abandoned planet which is almost as ridiculous as Hollus' blithe acceptance of said discovery. To call it forced would be an understatement. And the section where the three planets are saved by an unearthly power had about as much intensity and drama as a soggy noodle.

Another thing, and one I've found common to Sawyer books, is a weak protagonist and very little drama or suspense. While I mostly enjoyed both books they were a bit flat in the excitement department. Cerebral and thought-provoking, yes. Riveting or fast-paced they are not.

I must have been reading a different book than most of the other reviewers. The plot could have been interesting, but the characters are so wooden and the science so bad I lost interest. I couldn't get past Chapter 5, in which Hollus and Jericho display, on page 67, ignorance of basic science they both understood on page 63. They discuss, or rather Hollus lectures at length upon, the attributes of water as if those attributes were completely independent of, rather than the inevitable result of, the fundamental forces discussed moments before.

And that discussion was almost as irritating. After Hollus trotted out the anthropomorphic principle, Jericho counters with the many worlds hypothesis, which Hollus detroys with the author's fictional, and very convenient, 5th fundamental force. Why didn't Jericho point out the real fallacy with the anthropomorphic principle, that it is essentially drawing a bull's eye around the spot where your arrow fell? A cynic would suggest that the author had nothing up Hollus's sleeve, or rather the folds of his (her?) toga, to handle that objection.

Judging from some of the other reviews, I was spared the bad biology by abandoning the book when I did.

Calculating God (2000) is a standalone SF novel. In this novel, Thomas D. Jericho is a fifty-four year old paleontologist with lung cancer. He has a wife and a six year old adopted son. He is now the head of the paleontology department at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

One day, a spider-like alien comes to visit ROM and asks to speak to a paleontologist. The security guard calls Jericho and he comes down to the lobby. Jericho knows immediately that the alien is not a fake, but a living creature. After Hollus, the alien, asks a few informed questions, Jericho forgets the alien aspects and begins to converse with a fellow professional.

Their conversation is interrupted briefly by a television cameraperson, national security agents, and the museum director, but Hollus makes his position clear and proves that his body is just a projection. The authorities finally decide to leave the two alone, so Hollus and Jericho get into a really deep discussion of fossils, mass extinctions and God.

Hollus's people, the Forhilnors, have already met another sapient race, the Wreeds. After discussing the fossil evidence with Jericho, Hollus states that all three planets had mass extinctions at roughly 440, 365, 225, 310, and 65 million Earth years in the past. He also notes that all three peoples have DNA based genetic material, composed of the same four bases.

The Forhilnors and the Wreeds believe that there is sufficient evidence that God the Creator exists; the Grand Unified Theoretical System of the Forhilnors seems to eliminate many objections and the Wreeds just intuit this answer. Yet neither people think that God is interested in individuals. In other words, this being essentially fits the Deist interpretation of God.

Hollus cites various aspects of the universe that support this viewpoint. Most of this evidence are known to Jericho, everything from the anthropic cosmological principle to the unique properties of water. But Jericho believes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; that is, he wants to see the smoking gun.

Hollus asks if the evidence for intelligent design is any less compelling than that for evolution and Jericho is forced to admit to himself that this is not the case. Evolution still has holes in its proof. No direct evidence of the creation of new species has ever been found in nature. Some features of living creatures do not appear to have been the result of stepwise changes, although evolutionist dogma states that proof will be found some day. Is the evidence for directed evolution any weaker than for random evolution?

In this story, Jericho is driven to acceptance of a creator by heavenly signs, as seen through the telescope on the Forhilnor ship. At the same time, he is compelled to accept his own death from lung cancer. But the subject of souls is left up in the air.

This work is, of course, only fiction, but the author points out the abundant evidence for a creative force that designed the universe. Only minor changes in physical laws would preclude life as we know it. Maybe other universes within a multiverse exhibit different natural laws that would not allow life, but our universe seems designed for such lifeforms. Can science prove the existence of God the Creator? Would science then become a religion?

This author seems to write as a philosopher rather than a scientist; some of his works address the major questions of philosophy -- and theology -- rather than speculative science. With this work, he has probably managed to alienate every religionist in the world -- with the possible exception of the Buddhists -- and probably half the scientists! This is science fiction at its best.

By the way, the author sidesteps the issue of life after death. He implies that this issue is not contingent upon the existence of God. Other SF works have addressed this issue, mostly in a semi-serious manner (see Sawyer's Terminal Experiment).

Highly recommended for Sawyer fans and anyone else who enjoys tales of scientific inquiry, philosophical ruminations and moral conflict.

-Arthur W. Jordin