Blasphemy Review

Manufacturer: Forge Books
Author(s): Douglas Preston

ISBN: 0765311054 EAN: 9780765311054
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 416

Average Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Retail Price: ~~$25.95~~
Online Sale Price: $15.10
Save $10.85 Today!
* Price is subject to change.
This item qualifies for
Free Super Saver Shipping!

The world's biggest supercollider, locked in an Arizona mountain, was built to reveal the secrets of the very moment of creation: the Big Bang itself.

The Torus is the most expensive machine ever created by humankind, run by the world’s most powerful supercomputer. It is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate William North Hazelius. Will the Torus divulge the mysteries of the creation of the universe? Or will it, as some predict, suck the earth into a mini black hole? Or is the Torus a Satanic attempt, as a powerful televangelist decries, to challenge God Almighty on the very throne of Heaven?

Twelve scientists under the leadership of Hazelius are sent to the remote mountain to turn it on, and what they discover must be hidden from the world at all costs. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, is tapped to wrest their secret, a secret that will either destroy the world…or save it.

The countdown begins…

User Submitted Blasphemy Reviews

September 1, 2008
What garbage!
Love the Pendergast novels, but this one isn't worth the trouble. It will offend everyone and it's laborious to get through.

August 28, 2008
The words of Isabella is the best part.
Ok, I started this book because LHC is about to go online and I'm a Relics fan. Unfortunately this book is not as good as I have hoped. The story is slow (it did pick up pace near the end, but not a lot), and the storyline of the televangelist/pastor is rather boring. The lead scientist's resume is way over the top and sounds like a character from a bad science fiction novel. 10(?) people running a 40 billion dollar project occupying a mountain is not believable, and we didn't get any interesting details of the accelerator itself.

There are also some rather disturbing plotholes which remain unaddressed. I'm not going to spill the details, but suffice to say the author underestimated the power of the scientific method. A crticial requirement for a scientific discovery is repeatability, after you made the big announcement, others would want to repeat what you have done, and if they can't repeat it, your credibility in the science community would be in serious trouble. This would easily crash the scheme in the novel, even if it may take another 40 billion dollars.

In the end, I found the best part of the novel is what Isabella says, you don't have to agree with it, but it's a fun reading for anyone with a science/technology background.

August 23, 2008
Hard to Put Down for Anyone Interested in Religion and Science
Over-the-top, maybe but painfully true. This book strikes a responsive chord for anyone not trying to deny the history of fundamentalist Christianity. I ended up suspending everything until I finished this book.

In addition to being a great mystery and a great read, this book gives you a lot to think about.

Highly recommended, especially today.

August 14, 2008
Religion vs Science
This is a decent book with some unsettling thoughts about life, humans and the relationship of science and religion. As I read the book it dawned on me that this could be a fictionalized account supporting a version of Stuart Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred. Dr Kauffman, an researcher of emergent properties, attempts to bring together the separate belief systems of science and revealed religion in general in his book, although he is partial to the science side throughout.

The imagines in Preston's book are unsettling, especially of the fanatical masses attempting to destroy what they don't or won't understand. It reminds me of the villagers trying to destroy Boris Karloff's Frankenstein in his old monster movie.

Also, the idea of establishing a new religion through fraud is compelling although the tools worked beyond expectations. The references to L. Ron Hubbard and various other religious figures is interesting, although he doesn't reference Joseph Smith which might have been a good comparsion considering his own martyrdom.

I rated it as a 3 out of 5 because I felt it lacked something and I can't really put my finger on it.

August 7, 2008
If a book ever deserved 5 stars its this one!
Seriously I recommend you do whatever you can to get a hold of specifically the AUDIO BOOK version. The narrator was fantastic in the varous voices he created ranging from Navaho Indians, to a southern televangelist and even a Borne Agan Biker. His voice for Gregory North Hezalious was particularly memorable though he sounded a lot like Sandi Griffin from Daria LOL. Truly though it was great book to listen too...the climax made feel like I was watching rather than listening to a very exciting movie. The audio version brings this book alive.
Trust me you will enjoy it.

August 5, 2008
Truly horrible
Truly horrible--although I am a huge fan of the authors, and think they have written some top-notch thrillers (Riptide and The Ice Limit are classics), this book is truly horrible. I deplore hypocrisy, but why Douglas Preston had to decide that Religion is Evil and for losers is beyond me. Plodding... and the author's typical twist at the end makes you doubly-regret reading this book. My wife has devoured every one of their books, and after reading this I told her "don't bother"... that is what I tell you. Depressingly disappointing-- A book I want to throw in the trash so that nobody else wastes their money. Go re-read The Ice Limit.

July 20, 2008
`It seems that both of our creator stories have origin problems'
The world's most powerful particle accelerator, Isabella, buried deep in an Arizona mountain is the most expensive machine ever built. The purpose of the machine is to explore what happened at the moment of creation, but there is a fear that it may suck the earth into a miniature black hole.

Against a backdrop of rising concern about the money spent, the team of 12 scientists led by Gregory North Hazelius is under increasing pressure to demonstrate the value of the project. In addition there are rising Christian fundamentalist views that the plan is a satanic attempt to disprove the book of Genesis, as well as concerns about the project by the Navajo people (on whose reservation the site is located). There seem to be problems in getting Isabella on line and Wyman Ford is implanted within the team to report back to government about what is really happening.

This novel is marketed as thriller about religion and science. It could also be marketed as an illustration of a triad of hubristic cynicism: government, science and religion all seeking to manipulate public opinion. What makes the novel work, on one level, for me is that none of the players demonstrate superiority and while each fail in different ways the end result demonstrates that nothing substantive has been learned.

I found this an interesting way to spend a few hours on a rainy afternoon: plenty of action, albeit with predictable outcomes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

July 18, 2008
An uninformed, arrogant cliche
The first half of Blasphemy had me hooked. The latter half would have been outright boring if it wasn't so inflammatory and offensive. Preston takes a thrilling, creative idea and ruins it with characters who are absurdly, offensively stereotypical idiots. Preston's portrayal of the hypocritical televangelist is as tired as discarded socks.

This could have been a good book if Preston had studied the evangelical people he lampoons so viscously, and had portrayed his extremists as just that--a radical fringe. Unfortunately, Preston betrays his disdain for Christians by portraying his hateful, psychopathic, murderous mob as typical of most mainstream American believers. If Preston had stopped with the televangelist he would have been guilty of being unimaginative and unoriginal, but by portraying an entire group of religious people as ignorant, intolerant lemmings, he demonstrates an attitude that would best be described as racist if only the mob had been united by color rather than creed.

In an interview with the author recorded at the end of the audiobook edition, Preston makes several arrogant statements that show just how little he understands religion and science. He says "Science for the last two centuries has been systematically disproving the central tenants of the world's religions. For example, where did we come from? Evolution has shown that we're not created by God. We evolved from animals. The question of how the universe was created. These are questions that religion used to deal with and religion answered and answered wrongly and now science is answering these questions correctly."

This paragraph is not a review of the book, but this statement begs an intelligent rebuttal. Modern science has its own language. It is precise, observational and linear. To assume that religious texts, several millennia old, were written in the language of modern science and were written to answer modern questions with modern specificity is extremely arrogant. It's like asking a question of someone who speaks a different language and declaring them wrong because their babble makes no sense to you. For example, Genesis was written for a people who had emerged from ancient Egypt where they had been slaves. The Egyptians worshiped the Sun, Moon, oceans and animals as gods. THE POINT OF GENESIS IS THAT GOD CREATED THE SUN, MOON, etc. It is futile to try to understand Genesis in terms of modern science. Science can no more discredit God as Creator than it can disprove the idea of life after death. Science will inevitably cause shifts in religious interpretation but some questions will always be beyond its reach.

Remarkably, Preston addresses many of these questions and mysteries in Blasphemy and does so in thought provoking ways. There is a conversation between a scientist and a medicine man about the similar origin problems of what caused the big bang and where did God come from. I think Preston could have found a more effective way to bring his story to a climax. It's a shame to have turned what could have been fascinating and provocative book into an obnoxious rant.

July 14, 2008
The title says it all
The title says it all. This is certainly a page turner, but as a Bible believing Christian, I found the quasi-theologies and the portrayal of Christians as a bunch of off-their-rocker goons very distasteful. This really is not what Christianity is all about, although you will always have the "crack pots" out there, this is a very mocking portrayal of Christianity, as well as misleading theology in regards to the supreme entity communications. Despite all of that, he is a very good writer and I did enjoy the literary positives of the book and the way he developed his story.

July 7, 2008
Good once it got going
This is a book that obviously offended a lot of people, and in a way I don't understand it. I'll grant you that the fundamentalists are portrayed in a poor light, but so are many of the scientists. In fact, the only character that remains sane is the person most centered - a scientist who also lived in a monastery. I don't think the message is that religion is evil, but rather, extremism is evil. Anything taken too far, even the best of ideas, can get twisted and corrupted. And I don't see how that can be offensive, but then, I suppose, I'm not an extremist.

The mob mentality portrayed is also very realistic. People do strange, uncharacteristic things in large crowds. It's a very well-researched phenomenon. And a frightening one. I don't think that was meant to reflect poorly on the individuals; it's highlighting a very real problem with whipping a bunch of people into a frenzy. It's just not a good thing.

As far as the story goes, I found it started fairly slowly. The introduction of all the characters and the various story lines was a bit tedious and dull, and you don't see their importance until later. Once they all start to come together, though, the pace picked up and I found myself carried along with the story. Right up until the end, which I do admit dropped off a bit. There were the lingering questions, the doubts, and the suppositions (which make for good discussion material, but a rather boring narrative), but the climax of the story happened a bit too long before the absolute end. So instead of ending on a high note, I felt it petered off into a predictable, boring end.

The characters were a mixed bag for me. A few I really liked and enjoyed, a few I hated (though they were well-done and I was supposed to!), and a few I felt very indifferent towards. And there were a few I had some conflicted feelings about - those are the most interesting, most well-done characters, I think. The ones you can't quite figure out and pigeonhole. Overall I think the good outweighed the bad.

If you're looking to be offended, you'll find that in this book. If you're looking for a fluffy, action-packed novel, you can find that, as well. And if you're looking for a very interesting study of characters and their interaction, you'll find that. You can even find some contemplation about the universe and the limits of technology. This book is what you want to make it.

For more Blasphemy reviews click here.