Rating: 
Summary: Solid, interesting, even thought-provoking
Review: Sawyer continues to improve. His earlier books, such as _The Terminal Experiment_, featured interesting ideas and occasionally-clunky writing. _Calculating God_ keeps the ideas and improves the craftsmanship. The book follows Sawyer's usual story structure: 1. A big important scientific thing happens. 2. The consequences are discussed. This is pretty much the ur-structure of SF stories dating back to the 1930s. The difference between Sawyer and the classic practitioners is that the latter almost always focused on the *technical* consequences of the big event, while Sawyer focuses on the *human* consequences--how his viewpoint characters feel, react, and change. Tom Jericho, our narrator, is dying of cancer; this makes his reaction to the God question immediate and personal, as well as sympathetic. The other characters are peripheral; this is Tom's story, as it should be. One of the secondary pleasures of this book is that it can irritate both agnostics and theists. Both sides are likely to find ideas that upset their worldviews here. _Calculating God_ isn't perfect. The book is pretty talky; not much happens. There's a subplot with a couple of stereotyped Bible-thumpers that could have been omitted, or alternatively could have been better integrated with the main story. But the talk is interesting, the book moves, the narrator is sympathetic and credible, and in the end some big issues are discussed. What more could you ask for?
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ideas wasted
Review: Calculating God, a Hugo nominee for 2001, is told mostly from the point of view of Tom Jericho, a paleontologist who is a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum. Tom is 50ish, with a 6 year old adopted son, and he is dying of cancer. He is a confirmed rationalist, sort of a second-string Stephen Jay Gould. One day a spaceship lands in front of the ROM -- and an eight-legged alien steps out, enters the museum, and asks to speak to a paleontologist. Tom and this alien, named Hollus, forge a friendly relationship over the next weeks and months. The aliens have been exploring local space in a near-FTL ship for some time, looking for other alien species. So far they have found one other still-extant species, the Wreeds, and the remains of 5 or 6 more species on a variety of planets. Various aliens come to Earth (mostly via telepresence) to study various aspects of Earth -- trading knowledge of the two alien species for the knowledge offered by the humans. It turns out that all three species of very similar levels of advancement -- more remarkably, all three homeworlds have shockingly similar paleontological histories: in particular, extinction events that happened at all but exactly the same time (despite having local causes), and that seem to have been aimed at producing intelligent species. To Tom's complete surprise, the two alien species regard this, and a number of other remarkable facts about the delicate balance of physical constants in the universe, as absolute proof of the existence of God. The book, then, becomes to some extent a debate on this issue: is the universe the product of an intelligent designer? Unfortunately, much of the book rehashes the same old sophomoric arguments we've all heard before. One of the worst examples is when Tom argues that his cancer is proof that God can't exist -- surely an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, God could have designed out cancer. But of course, as should have been obvious to the meanest intelligence, the "intelligent designer" that the aliens postulated was not at all necessarily "omnipotent", to say nothing of "omnibenevolent". The other focus of the book is a gradual building up of a mystery involving the fate of the various disappeared races -- particularly one which apparently sent a spaceship to Betelgeuse. The questions raised here are pretty intriguing, and Sawyer's ultimate resolution is not bad, though aspects of his explanations were unconvincing. Worse was his presentation of the various mysteries, which included Jericho instantly reaching obvious conclusions that the aliens, in considerable time, had never thought of; and which included, particularly at the end, a lot of overconvenient jumping to immediately correct conclusions on minimal evidence by all the characters. I suppose Sawyer was constrained by available space and by the form of his tale: a first person narrative. Still, while it's not quite fatal to the book, it is unconvincing. There is also a monumentally stupid and completely unnecessary side thread a plot to destroy the Burgess Shale fossils. This thread wastes time, attacks easy targets for no reason related to the book, and proves basically a side issue. It should have been excised. On the whole, the book is -- well, not bad but not very good. It goes after some big issues, albeit rather superficially. It presents some interesting SFnal ideas and mysteries. It introduces two well-designed alien species. The characterization is undistinguished but not teeth-grindingly awful -- most of the characters are basically ciphers, but Sawyer works hard at presenting Tom Jericho, and while the work shows too much, and aspects such as the disease-of-the-month TV movie feeling that his cancer suggests are slightly strained, he's at least acceptably done. The book reads breezily and holds the interest -- but thinking deeply about the issues raised, and the too convenient revelation of answers to mysteries, and the constant refusal to consider alternate answers, will leave the reader frustrated. I certainly don't find this remotely a Hugo-worthy book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic, engaging, fast paced read
Review: Sawyer must either be a scientist himself or a friend to the entire scientific community. His ability to weave together diverse areas of study into one comprehensive theory about the genesis of life is simply awesome. This was easily the most thought provoking book I've read this year.
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly bad and ineptly plotted
Review: This is a major disappointment. CALCULATING GOD has quite a few good ideas about God (the aliens here are trying to find the hand of God in evolution), but nothing here isn't dealt with in a freshman level college philosophy class. But the biggest problem I had was the trivial plotting and the point of view shifts. He has two American red-necks, one named (of course) Cooter, who shoot up a fossil exhibit, both of whom are one-dimensional at best. However, the main character is dying of cancer and you'd expect a less energetic narrative from such a man (and certainly more self-pity); but no, Sawyer just plods happily along. (I envisioned the character looking like the smiling picture of the author on the back cover.) This wasn't a good book at all and seems, in the end, to have been something Sawyer just knocked off to get some money out of Tor. The last thing that galled me were the constant references to all things Canadian. Sawyer never explained why the aliens chose the Royal Ontario Museum to land at, out of all the great (and greater) museums in the world. Sawyer appears to want to constantly remind the reader of Canada's importance the way Orson Scott Card hawks all things Mormon and Harlan Ellison hawks ... well, all things Harlan Ellison. Read FLASH-FORWARD, Sawyer's clear masterpiece and avoid this book entirely.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful theological sf and a good read!
Review: This is only my second Sawyer book. (The first was the fascinating _Illegal Alien._) This is my third (well, fourth, no fifth) theological science fiction book. 1 & 2 were Octavia Butler's _Parable of the Sower_ and _Parable of the Talents_. 3 & 4 were Mary Doria Russell's _The Sparrow_ and _Children of God._ There were passages in this novel that gave me a headache like the main character's because I had difficulty keeping up with his and Hollus' science. While it takes place in the future that is tomorrow, next week or next year, this novel is very hard science fiction. No, not hard sf, but hard science. Unlike other reviewers I liked Jericho's cancer his 'why me?' seemed very real and heartfelt. This internal debate of his humanized him and his struggle to me. I recommend this book, just as I recommend the other very different books I mentioned above.
Rating:
Summary: I could not put it down.
Review: The start of this book made me smile. An alien arrives in Earth's not-too-distant future, and says, "Take me to your paleontologist." It's as if the alien doesn't know its line... But it does. This alien has arrived to tell humanity that on similar timeframes all of the major civilizations it has encountered so far have had the major evolutionary disasters (ie: when the Dinosaurs were wiped out, similar evolutionary extinctions happened on other planets in parallel). Therefore, the alien points out, a higher intelligence - God - must exist. The main character of this book, a paleontologist, begs to differ. This book is science fiction at its best. There is a scientific tone to the tale itself, but the story is more an extrapolation of philosophies and diverse viewpoints. As the plot with the paleontologist becomes more heart-wrenching (and let me tell you, folks, when Robert Sawyer decides to jerk your heart-strings, he does it with great aplomb), and as the alien characters become just that: incredible characters, you'll find yourself slipping, as I did, into the book. I didn't put it down. I picked it up, began to read, and didn't stop until I was finished, losing an entire evening to this fabulous blend of science fiction and philosophy. This is a style Sawyer does well: in "Flashforward," we debated free will, and in "Calculating God," we debate a higher order of intelligence. Get this, read it, and you too will fall into fandom of Canada's best SF Author. 'Nathan
Rating:
Summary: Utterly boring
Review: This is one of the most boring sf books I ever read (and I read many). The main idea in the book boils down to an old theological argument: God must exist since our universe is so well adapted to life. If mosquitos could think, by the same argument they would conclude that God must exist because there are so many humans to bite. The aliens described in the book are sort of spiders which talk and think exactly like humans, the novel is slowly paced and the final is disappointing. In conclusion: boring
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and Imaginative. Well worth the read.
Review: I loved this book! Thoroughly and completely! It was a smorgasbord of various concepts like paleontology, quantum mechanics, the many-worlds interpretation, the basis of biology, periodic mass extinction events, the inevitability of death, the meaning of life, the existence of a creator - and all within a wonderful science-fictional storyline. Having said that, recommending it categorically is a hard thing to do. Just like you have to have a certain mentality to read Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett and a different one to read Kurt Vonnegut or Christopher Buckley, I can see some people not liking this book because it mainly serves as an exposition of ideas wrapped around an interesting plot. You have to like ideas and the general pursuit of knowledge to really like this book and get the most from it. And you have to like when an author wants to showcase a lot of material in order to present his plot. I could easily see some people not liking this book simply because they might feel it really has too much dialogue, for example. For me, however, I like that. If you like the original Isaac Asimov material (where dialogue figured prominently and character-driven was the path of the book) and you like the presentation of scientific concepts in a science-fictional format I think you will really get a kick out of this book. To get the most out of this book, you should probably have a well-rounded knowledge set about different scientific disciplines - but even if you do not have that, Saywer explains all of the concepts in easy and lucid prose. It just depends on what level you want to enjoy the concepts. If I had to pick a flaw in the book at all, I would say that in order to tell as much of a story as he wanted to, Sawyer had to make his characters jump to some extreme conclusions based on assumptions. Again, however, this was not a serious detraction for me (although it usually is) because of the general story that was being put forth.
Rating:
Summary: Best SF novel of 2000
Review: In my view, this was the best SF novel of 2000, although Karl Schroeder came close with VENTUS. But Sawyers beats his by being about something significant. Tom Jericho, Hollus and Sawyers other characters will stick with you. Philosophical and funny.
Rating:
Summary: Oh,Bob has done so well his science homework!
Review: Venus on the Half Shell of Philip J. Farmer came to the same conclusions, only whit a better story and a better writing.
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