The Godmakers

Rating:
Summary: What a poor perspective of Mormonism!
Review: ...This is not a book version of the anti-Mormon film The Godmakers. Rather, it's Frank Herbert's oldie, but goodie science fiction novel about a civilization out to use technology to create a godlike entity. Cool stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Herbertalicious!
Review: ...This is not a book version of the anti-Mormon film The Godmakers. Rather, it's Frank Herbert's oldie, but goodie science fiction novel about a civilization out to use technology to create a godlike entity. Cool stuff.

Rating:
Summary: To clear up the confusion
Review: Although some will jump at this book and see a few similarities with the Mormon religion, there are just as many similarities to Buddhism and Shinto. Much like Dune, this book provokes thoughts into both the philosophical and metaphysical. At first asking a reader to ask, "If man WERE to create a god, what would the consequences be?" Through the following chapters, however, the reader is forced to wonder if interference in other cultures for the sake of industry and economics is moral right, it is also a book that forces the reader to wonder whether attempting to dominate other cultures in the hope of peace is feasible, or whether it is moral. With the three concepts intertwined the message is more along the lines of "By interfering with other cultures and forcing them into our image of peace and nationality, are we playing God?" Like any Herbert novel, it both entertains and enlightens. I highly recommend this novel to intellectuals and the philosophically inclined, as well as those who have an interest is great science fiction.

Rating:
Summary: The Godmakers
Review: As an EX-Mormon, I can still say that this is one of the most misleading, hate-filled books on the market. It has often been used in various fundamentalists churches, whose believers are far less devoted to searching for the truth than are Mormons.

It has also been frequently used (along with its film version) to stoke the fires of hate in areas where Mormons are erecting temples. If you think that anti-Mormon hate doesn't exist you need only look at the controversies surrounding the construction of Mormon temples around the country - Seattle, Denver, Dallas, Forest Hills, Tennessee, and, most recently, in Boston. The National Conference of Christian & Jews, The National Council of Churches, and many, many other interfaith associations, have denounced this book as dishonest and hateful. Even many career anti-LDS scholars have criticized it's truthless-ness.

Save your money, your time, and that precious space between your two ears for something far more intelligent, like, say, Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History".

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, if awkward
Review: Frank Herbert asks interesting questions, here, but the writing seems a little awkward, as though he were unsure of how to communicate his awesome ideas. While the writing here is not as good as it eventually became, and some of the story is awkward, it is well worth reading. If you're a Herbert fan, then you should enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting...
Review: I don't know what people are talking about in regards to mormism. This book is building block for what eventually became Dune.
If taken in that context you can see how the world of Arrakis evolved.

Rating:
Summary: what a waste of money
Review: I was looking for a book that would give me an insight into mormonism - this is just not that - it is just a sad persons view
that tries to dismantle something the author simply does not understand. I suggest that this is not the book you are looking for.

Rating:
Summary: The Godmakers
Review: The grand drawn-out scale to Herbert's novels are daunting. New civilizations take birth that challenge us and our definitions of absolutes. The engine of his novels is a network of politics for a power struggle. In the Godmakers a man is pushed to his limits and forced to take a larger part into something he knew nothing about. In most of his novels religion is used as a toy to manipulate (or subue) a race or class of people. But religion is also a connector to the feats of human possiblity which Herbert dreampt up. The book is not as damanding for our attention as the Dune series. It is a more casual and relaxed Herbert telling a simpler and tight story.