Calculating GOD (Robert J. Sawyer)
Jul. 29th, 2009 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgConsistency can be a virtue. Sometimes. In Calculating GOD, Robert J. Sawyer does what he's done before (or possibly after, for I've not checked the relative publication dates); he explores interesting ideas, but frames these with the flimsiest of characters, setting and narrative.
Two people sit in a room and debate the existence of god and/or an intelligent designer. Sometimes one person sits in a room and contemplates the existence of god and/or an intelligent designer. Occasionally we are lectured in detail and at length about the physical properties of water, the basics of mathematics, the evolutionary sequence of the dinosaurs, and DNA (etc), all in chunky prose.
One of the main themes revolved around the fact that the lead was dying of cancer, the question why-would-god-let-cancer-happen, the subsequent answer that cancer was the price to pay for life. But I sense an opportunity lost: I should have *felt* more, but I didn't.
His habit of tossing in cultural references is really starting to annoy me. I think it anchors the narrative to a particular time period in a heavy and clumsy way that breaks the speculative nature of the work. It was almost justified in Rollback, where it was necessary to establish the different cultural experiences of characters from different generations, but here it was unforgivable.
I think Sawyer would make a good con panellist: he speculates at length in an interesting way, but he really can't write a decent SF novel. And yet, I keep reading them, so the value of his ideas is at least worth the cost of his writing.
Two people sit in a room and debate the existence of god and/or an intelligent designer. Sometimes one person sits in a room and contemplates the existence of god and/or an intelligent designer. Occasionally we are lectured in detail and at length about the physical properties of water, the basics of mathematics, the evolutionary sequence of the dinosaurs, and DNA (etc), all in chunky prose.
One of the main themes revolved around the fact that the lead was dying of cancer, the question why-would-god-let-cancer-happen, the subsequent answer that cancer was the price to pay for life. But I sense an opportunity lost: I should have *felt* more, but I didn't.
His habit of tossing in cultural references is really starting to annoy me. I think it anchors the narrative to a particular time period in a heavy and clumsy way that breaks the speculative nature of the work. It was almost justified in Rollback, where it was necessary to establish the different cultural experiences of characters from different generations, but here it was unforgivable.
I think Sawyer would make a good con panellist: he speculates at length in an interesting way, but he really can't write a decent SF novel. And yet, I keep reading them, so the value of his ideas is at least worth the cost of his writing.
