Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God (2000)

Robert J. Sawyer

• Canadian writer, b. 1960• Born in Ottawa; lives in Mississauga• Has written 17 novels and numerous short stories; also TV

scripts and reviews• Often classified as “hard” SF but also uses mystery elements• Influenced by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke• Organized the Canadian branch of the Science Fiction Writers

of America• The series Flash Forward is based on one of his books

Sawyer’s Themes

- Many of his books are set in Canada; often deals with Canadian/American contrasts (like Gibson, has dual citizenship)

- Science/religion connections- Mind-uploading: human consciousness transferred

into computers- Quantum physics- Terminal illnesses (e.g. Tom’s cancer)- Immortality and the desirability thereof- SF in popular culture

Sawyer and Actual-World Science

• The Burgess Shale (northern BC): discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850-1927)

• References to known evidence of evolution (the horse) and extinctions (dinosaurs, trilobites, etc.)

• The fundamental forces, known and unknown/hypothesized

• All the stars mentioned in the novel are real, but whether they actually have planets is unknown

• DNA and cell reproduction

Intelligent Design Theory

• The belief that the universe must have had a creator (usually, but not necessarily, God)

• Dates back to Plato and Aristotle, but best known from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica

• William Paley (1801): the “cosmic watchmaker” theory

• “irreducible complexity”: organisms/systems/etc. that require all their components to function

• Now popularly associated with creationism, esp. the Discovery Institute

Replies to Intelligent Design

• Theistic evolution: no disconnect between religion and evolution; evolution is the way God works

• Argument from poor design: organisms that have useless or counterproductive features

• Infinite regress: who designs the designer?• “God of the gaps”: using God as all-purpose “answer

to everything”• “Non-overlapping magisteria” (Stephen Jay Gould):

science and religion both explain the universe in different ways – science explains how; religion explains why

Sawyer and Intelligent Design

• “Carl Sagan had always hoped for the receipt of an Encyclopedia Galactica — the scientific wisdom of advanced ETs, transmitted to us, and the rest of the universe, via radio. What wonders such a document might hold!... What would a Carl Sagan-like rationalist have done if the Encyclopedia Galactica asserted that the universe was indeed the handiwork of God?”

• “The idea for Calculating God has been in my head since 1983. I was 23, an atheist with a freshly minted degree in broadcasting, when a coalition of faith groups applying to the Canadian government for a broadcasting license hired me as their staff writer. And I had one of those "the world is more complex than I thought" revelations that are so common at that age. I'd assumed the I'd be dealing with fools comforting themselves with simplistic stories. But I was wrong. The people I met were witty, intelligent, wise, funny (sometimes profanely so), and well-read. I realized that belief in God was something many very bright people felt strongly. Over the intervening years, I found many other people I greatly admired — mainstream cosmologists, physicists, even evolutionists — talking about intelligent design, and the evidence they saw for a creator. And as I read, and thought, and grew, Calculating God took shape.”

• “I'm convinced that science is the only legitimate way of knowing. Not received wisdom from putative holy texts. Not mystical insight. Science. If both perfection and imperfection are taken as proof of God's existence, then the whole idea of proof simply falls apart.”

• “Why should the existence of God be exempted from normal standards of proof? It seems quite reasonable to ask whether we live in an intelligently designed universe. And we should be able to answer this not by looking at Biblical or Koranic accounts, and not by praying for insight, but rather by simply looking at the facts.

• And, surprisingly, the facts do seem to point to some very careful tweaking of the fundamental parameters of the universe.”

• “Unless, that is, there's more than one universe. If there are, in fact, trillions of universes — either currently existing alongside our own, or having previously existed prior to ours being formed — and if those universes have varying combinations of physical parameters, then there's nothing at all remarkable about a universe like this one existing. In all of that variety, this particular combination of parameters was bound to crop up just by random chance.”

• “Many possible futures....From all that are possible, [God] chooses one to observe”

• “I'm more a social commentator than anything, and what I find particularly fascinating is how parts of the established scientific community, and dogmatic elements of the skeptical community, have gone to great lengths to discredit strong ID via ad hominem attacks on its proponents and by rhetorical dishonesty, lumping ID under the label of Creationism, and then dismissing it by saying we've already dealt with creationism, instead of rising to the challenge of actually defeating - if they can - the ID theory through the scientific method. That parts of the scientific world and of the so-called skeptical movement are behaving as dogmatically and as unfairly as the religious right is a real problem, which needs to be exposed to the maximum possible light.”

• “There really is no battle between science and religion; rather, there's only a battle between open-mindedness and dogma, and there are those guilty of the latter equally dispersed in both realms.”

• A 2002 review in the Skeptical Inquirer accused Sawyer of being pro-creationist

The Characters and Their Belief Systems

• Tom: atheist, rationalist/humanist; also elitist (e.g. his disputes with Christine)

• Susan: religious, but doesn’t dismiss Tom’s skepticism• Christine: believes in popularization of knowledge; didn’t believe

in aliens until meeting Hollus• Hollus: believes in the existence of God, but does she have a

religion?• The Wreeds: strong sense of morality; believe we can

communicate with God• The Activists: militant fundamentalists; willing to destroy

anything or anyone they disagree with

Sawyer, Science, and Religion

• “The primary goal of modern science...is to discover why God has behaved as he has and to determine his methods”

• “That all may know his work”• “Every time we believed there was something

special about us...science showed that we were misguided”

• “We are indeed at the centre of creation, if only you know how to look at it”

• “God was...a programmer; the laws of physics and physical constants he devised are our universe’s source code”

• Universal recurrence of DNA - and of cancer: “The potential for cancer...is woven into the very fabric of life”

• “since God is imperfect, there will be suffering”

• Is Tom reassured? Is the reader?

• The activists: “fossils are fake.... Created by God to test the faith of the weak”

• “The aliens may believe in God, but they haven’t yet found Christ”

• Are Tom and the activists that different from each other?

Sawyer and Politics

• Tom vs. Christine: politics of knowledge?• References to the political climate in Ontario

at the time• Political structures/practices of alien

civilizations: the Forhilnor’s “unified planetary government”; the Wreeds’ cities; the Groombridge inhabitants’ preemptive strike on other civilizations

Sawyer’s Aliens

• Described in terms relating them to terrestrial phenomena, where they can be related

• Can speak human languages, though not always perfectly

• Uncertain genders, by human standards (Tom mistakes Hollus for a male)

• Do not only communicate with humans, but also with animals

• “You humans do have some crazy mythology about extraterrestrial visitations”

• “You’re supposed to want to meet with the authorities....Because that’s how it’s done”

• Anthropomorphized aliens in earthly popular culture

More on Sawyer and Popular Culture

“It probably lived in a typical sci-fi world”Alien impressions of earthly popular culturePopular culture on alien worldsTom’s references to SF fandom Popular culture as new mythology/master narrative?Christine’s “popularization” attempts: do they fit with

popular culture too?“This side up...Vengeful Beast of Mass Destruction...

Stellar Voyager”

Sawyer’s Divine Intervention

• Aliens as divine messengers?Direct intervention in the evolutionary process?Supernovas, then and nowWibadal as “new god”, created from samples of existing beingsWhat form(s) does God take in this universe?Connections to earthly religions, or something entirely different?“pre-apocalyptic” imagerySignificance of the protagonist’s name

Answers to Everything?

• “Preeminent thinkers...have devoted themselves to asking what is the meaning of life and how do we know when something is morally wrong”

• “A mind is wired for one or the other, but not both”

• “You cannot reduce these issues to mathematics”

• Aliens’ “grand unified theory” - is it possible in earthly science?

“And this issue is important?”

• “We call it irony…Apparently, not all humans understand it”

• “Only through intelligence can one overcome the violence that gave rise to that intelligence”

Sawyer, Unreality, and Immortality

• The Game of Life - early example of computer modelling of complex systems

• Virtual-reality simulations• Mind-uploading: cyberspace as the new heaven?• “I am not sure that I want to live in a world in which the only

certain thing was taxes....my children are my immortality”• “I’d love for my son to live forever, but I hope he, and everyone,

chooses normal existence”• “My life had meaning because it was real”• Counterpart theory: which would be real, the physical or the

virtual? Both? Neither?

Narration and Reconstruction

• The epigraph (written by Tom)

• First-person narration with third-person intervals

• Later chapters in the future

• Narration after death?

• “American SF has happy endings, Canadian SF has sad endings, and British SF has no endings at all”

• What sort of ending does this novel have?

Sawyer and Possible Worlds

• Rejects the multiple-universes hypothesis, except for quantum physics

• Role of the divided brain (cf. Murakami)

• Characters’ worldviews as ‘possible-worlds’ theories

The SF/Mystery Connection

• “Science fiction and mystery are not an unnatural pairing – indeed, I’ve always thought that science fiction has way more in common with mystery than it does with fantasy. SF and mystery, after all, both prize rational thinking and both require the reader to pick up clues artfully salted about what is really going on – although in SF that’s mostly because of the narrative conceit we use.”

• Are there mystery elements in this novel?

Sawyer and Other Writers

• Sawyer vs. Lem: role of aliens and extraterrestrial contact; “imperfect God”; science/religion connections; academic discourse

• Sawyer vs. Dick: human/nonhuman similarities and differences; references to artificial intelligence; possible significance of Ricky’s name

• Sawyer vs. Adams: use of humour; playful approaches to ideas of the nature of the universe; proofs of the existence (or not) of God; treatment of aliens, esp. as observers of Earth

• Sawyer vs. Banks: references to utopia/dystopia; politics and life itself as games (metaphorical vs. literal); treatment of aliens, esp. gender and society; unconventional narration

• Sawyer vs. Gibson: role of virtual reality and artificial intelligence; virtual reality as transcendent realm; references to immortality

• Sawyer vs. Stephenson: playful treatments of society and popular culture; connections between the divine and ‘alternate’ worlds; virtual transcendence; compatibility of religion and science; scientific discourse

• Sawyer vs. Murakami: first-person narration; play with narrative conventions; references to the divided brain; different treatments of possible worlds