Rating: 
Summary: Excellent but slightly flawed
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great beginning
Review: Amazing opening and its whimsical tone is marvellous. Highly original and profound. My on problem, I would confess, was as others have said, that it creates too much of an expectation and I wander if any ending would be satisfying. Still, it is well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: God the Scientist
Review: Calculating God is an extremely stimulating book on both a scientific and spiritual level. I would recommend it to anyone with a scientific mind who is disappointed with organized religion, but still believes in God (although perhaps not a perfect one). If this is you, then you will have no problem in relating to this great novel. The drawback to this book would have to be the editorial and story line errors, but these are easy to forgive. All in all, this is a great book, a must read for anyone with a scientific and philosophical mind.
Rating:
Summary: The last great SF novel of the 20th century!
Review: _Calculating God_ is a June 2000 title meaning that it's technically a 20th century, not a 21st century book, and I think it will be remembered as the last great SF novel of the 20th century. Sawyer has been a highly consistent performer and I have enjoyed all his books as well as his occasional short fiction. But this one is my favourite. Sawyer knows how to do real character (not the cardboard usually found in hard SF) and he knows how to synthesize all sorts of disparate areas. In this book, he draws together paleontology, cosmology, the Fermi paradox, oncology, artificial intelligence, astrobiology, linguistics, Julian Jaynes, Stephen Jay Gould, punctuated equilibrium and more in a spellbinding tale. You can just imagine that Sawyer must be a scintillating conversationalist in person since he ranges comfortably and authoritatively over so many subject areas. I have read _Calculating God_ twice now and found myself alternately laughing out loud and wiping away tears both times. Brilliant. Brilliant.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the money
Review: While this book provided an interesting concept, and gave some interesting options for the eternal debate on the existence of a god, it simply wasn't well-written enough to hold my interest. It was a struggle to finish reading the book, which is not normally the case for me. The science, in general, seemed relatively accurate. I'd wait for it in paperback if you must read it, or get it from your local library. It's not worth taking up valuable book-shelf space in your home.
Rating:
Summary: Sawyer is redefining SF for the better
Review: Robert J. Sawyer is my favorite science fiction author and CALCULATING GOD shows why. This guy is redefining the genre. He's saying to the world that SF isn't STAR WARS or STAR TREK. It's not about special effects. Rather, it's about what it means to be human. It's about philosophy and coming to grips with big questions far more than it's about technology. Sure, Sawyer can do all that whizzbang SFnal stuff: his aliens are the best since Larry Niven and Hal Clement (with the decency of James White's aliens thrown in for good measure), and when he wants to go into space or the far future (as he did in STARPLEX and does briefly in CALCULATING GOD) he's second to no one. But those are all tools for Sawyer, not an end in themselves. Sure, CALCULATING GOD has aliens in it and they are very well thought out and very believable. But what Sawyer does here (and in ILLEGAL ALIEN) is put aliens and humans side by side in a contemporary setting. George Lucas can get away with Jar Jar Binks in a fantasy world, surrounded by cardboard stereotypes, but Sawyer puts his aliens and humans in starkly familiar settings: our contemporary world. And you know what? They ring true, they seem natural. He doesn't have the heros and villains of space opera. Instead he writes about real men and real women who have family problems and job problems, who suffer from depression, who react just like actual human beings (or actual aliens!). Not everyone will get or appreciate what Sawyer is doing, but those who do value it highly. It may not seem obvious because stylistically Sawyer writes clear, very readable prose, and we normally associate new fictional paradigms with stylistic experimentation, but this guy really is redefining SF, re-making it for the new millennium. CALCULATING GOD isn't even set in the future (neither was THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT, FRAMESHIFT, or ILLEGAL ALIEN, all also recommended). It's set in the present day. Today. Right now. Some have complained about Sawyer's references to contemporary pop culture, because they say it somehow dates his books. They're wrong. What he's doing is grounding SF in the real world. He's making it accessible to people who don't normally read SF. He's showing the world that SF isn't escapism unconnected with reality. Rather, it's a powerful tool for looking at reality. And once you're drawn in, he makes you think about big questions (in the case of CALCULATING GOD, whether God exists as a question of science not faith), making you turn the pages as much for the philosophy as the plot. It works fabulously.
Rating: 
Summary: Great premise - little follow-thru
Review: Robert Sawyer is a man with great ideas, but with little understanding of how to properly follow-thru on those great ideas. Like FlashFoward last year, and Factoring Humanity before that, his books are missing that certain "oomph", taking those great ideas of his to their logical conclusions, not going down the path you'd hoped it would, or should, take. I liked this book alot. His main character is wonderfully sympathetic, a man in a horrible predicament whose overly ordinary life is turned inside-out by the arrival of an alien come to Earth to prove the existance of God. Great, you'd think. A mind-bending treatise on God Vs Science, Darwinism Vs. Creationism. You get that, quite often in this book. Pages long discussions, most of which are fascinating, about the scientific process, how in some ways it precludes the existance of God, and how in some ways necessitates it. Halfway into the book, you get cheated (sorry, it would be a major spoiler to tell you exactly how that's the case). Lemme just say its all in Sawyer's way of handling the God Vs No-God debate and how he throws away a good portion of Christianity's view of God and relies upon the "aliens" view of God as dogma. No fascinating Bible debate here, kids. This is strictly religion-light. Perhaps he was afraid of offending some people? I didn't get the impression he was writing from his heart sometime after the middle of this book. From that point on, it's all downhill - at least it was for me. With that one great cheat, I lost a good portion of interest in the journey that followed, one more disappointing hack after another. Great idea. No follow-thru. If you want a great Sawyer book, read "Starplex" or "The Terminal Man". If I'm impressed by one thing about this man, it's his grasp of science in general. I'm a BioChemist by trade, and boy does this man know his stuff about everything. Thankfully, his science never detracts from his writing. It's only his plotting that gets in the way....
Rating:
Summary: physics better than metaphysics
Review: I enjoyed Rob's book, the first I've read by him. It gave me some interesting new insights and references on the issue of what science has to say about whether there is evidence of intelligent design of the universe. Rob is also often amusing, and I laughed out loud at a clever dig on William Shatner. Minor gripes: I found some of his conjectures obfuscating and contradictory, and the resolution of the story rather hokey. More significantly, Rob's perspective is clearly that of someone much better grounded in science than philosophy and theology. However, there's lots of interesting ideas in the book, and it makes a great point of departure for further discussion of the topic.
Rating:
Summary: Just 'ok'
Review: I found the story of this book to be entertaining, but notice a number of mistakes, making me wonder if there were other areas with errors in that I did not notice, such as in the science area where I do not have the numbers at my finger tips. For example, things trivial as calling Faith Hill's song "The Kiss" instead of "This Kiss" to the alien using a term he hadn't heard of - by his own admission on the proceeding page and the question asked. I did enjoy the story, but when an author is asking one to suspend disbelief areas where that is not required should be more accurate.
Rating:
Summary: Take Me to Your Paleontologist
Review: Robert J. Sawyer burst onto the science-fiction scene with all the force of a supernova, winning the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1995 before most SF fans even knew his name. Since then, the prolific Canadian novelist has churned out books at a rate of about two a year, and operates the largest Web site devoted to a single SF author in the world... Sawyer writes in the stripped-down, straight-ahead style of a Heinlein or Asimov, but in Calculating God, he floats a premise neither dean of SF would have touched: What if the Man Upstairs really exists? An alien spaceship lands Klaatu-like outside the Royal Ontario Museum in present-day Toronto, and the ET inside asks not to meet with Earth's leaders but to view the museum's fossil collection. It seems that the five major extinction events in Earth's past (including the comet impact that iced the dinosaurs 65 million years ago) coincide exactly with similar cataclysms on at least two other worlds, a fact that the alien accepts as scientific proof of a divine Creator. The alien befriends the museum's head paleobiologist, an affirmed atheist, and the pair debate the evidence for a designed universe in a series of thought-provoking dialogues that cover the science but never twist off the reader's head with SF doubletalk. And just when things seem to be winding down, a supernova threatens to extinguish life on all three worlds. Will God intervene? (Here's a hint: He does!) The finale is pure hooey, of course, but at least it resolves questions raised earlier in the book. Overall, a fascinating treatment of a topic rarely explored in science fiction.
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