Blasphemy (Hardcover)

by Douglas Preston (Author) "KEN DOLBY STOOD BEFORE HIS WORKSTATION, his smooth, polished fingers caressing the controls of Isabella..." (more)
Key Phrases: abella project, protest ride, titanium door, Red Mesa, Big Bang, Blue Gap (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Like Isabella, a giant superconducting supercollider particle accelerator, the thought-provoking new thriller from bestseller Preston (Tyrannosaur Canyon) takes a while to power up, but once it does, this baby roars. The ostensible goal of Isabella's creator, physicist Gregory North Hazelius, is to discover new forms of energy, but what he really wants is to talk to God. The project, located inside Red Mesa (a five-hundred-square-mile tableland on the Navajo Indian Reservation), is behind schedule, so presidential science adviser Stanton Lockwood hires ex-CIA man Wyman Ford to go to Red Mesa and find out what's causing the holdup. Meanwhile, a Navajo medicine man, a televangelist and a pastor who runs a failed mission on the reservation are gearing up to pull the plug on Isabella before she destroys the earth. Science has often tangled with religion in this genre, but Preston puts his own philosophical spin on the usual proceedings, and when he gets his irate villagers with their burning torches headed for the castle, the pages simply fly.
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Review

Praise for Blasphemy: "This baby roars... the pages simply fly."--Publishers Weekly

"Highly recommended... Preston joins Michael Crichton as a master of suspenseful novels that tackle controversial issues in the realm of science."--Library Journal

"An unusually alarming and thoughtful thriller... Clever and terrifying."--Kirkus “A superb read! Blasphemy is both thoughtful and flat-out entertainment--a page-turning thriller about science and religion in which good and evil collide at the speed of light. You'll be up all night with this book.”--Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author of The Sleeping Doll

"Science versus religion--the ultimate crunch.  Douglas Preston has written The Novel of the Year, an extraordinary, unique, fascinating, wildly imaginative mix of thriller, satire, Sci Fi, and every other genre in the book.  Blasphemy--you're going to love it."—Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassin

"Terrifyingly realistic.  An electrifying page turner.  Preston at his very best."--Nancy Taylor Rosenberg, New York Times bestselling author of Revenge of Innocents

"With Blasphemy, Douglas Preston has finally gone too far. One way or another, I'm afraid he may burn for this book."—Lincoln Child, New York Times bestselling author of Deep Storm “Blasphemy takes the latest theories of physics and pits them against the ancient religious beliefs that they now threaten, in an explosive, hell-bent and finally deeply moving book that I doubt I will ever forget. It literally made me pace as I contemplated the ideas that crackle through these pages, and it gave me pause as I realized that the physics here is so close to reality that the face of God that appears in this book may soon be, in real life, before us all.”—Whitley Strieber, New York Times bestselling author of 2012: The War For Souls “In Blasphemy, Preston rips the toga off God, and what remains is simply the answer to the most profound question of human existence...why are we here?  A stunningly great read.”—W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, USA Today bestselling authors of People of the Nightland and the novels of North America's Forgotten Past

“Blasphemy is one hell of a good book. I couldn't stop reading, and at the end I had to force myself to slow down!”—David Hagberg, winner of three American Mystery Awards and USA Today bestselling author of Dance With the Dragon

“Preston has taken a fascinating concept and implemented it brilliantly. It's one of those books you think and talk about after you've finished it. I loved the characters. Even the sleazy ones were well-done.  Science meets religion with a side order of politics. The mixture is explosive!”—Larry Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Dangerous Ground

“Can science discover God? Blasphemy is a stunningly ambitious novel that lives up to its goals. The theme is nothing less than the question: Is science the new religion?”—Barbara D’Amato, Edgar Award Winner and author of Death of a Thousand Cuts

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765311054
• ISBN-13: 978-0765311054
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (189 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #142,575 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars `It seems that both of our creator stories have origin problems', July 19, 2008

By	J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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

90 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's a (holy) Ghost in the machine, January 12, 2008

By	James Tepper (Boonton Township, NJ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Blasphemy is the story of a group of researchers at Isabella, the new US government financed $40 billion particle accelerator, located on an Arizona reservation leased from the Navajos. The main goal of the accelerator is to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, to test modern theories of the creation of the universe. When the newly completed accelerator fails to get on-line as quickly as expected, the Feds send in an operative under cover as a Navajo liaison to find out what has gone wrong. Turns out a lot has, either as the result of deliberate sabotage, a bug in the software, or something really strange. Mix in a few thousand fundamentalist Christians who view the whole thing as an attempt by anti-religious atheistic scientists to disprove the existence of God and undermine the good book, incited to a frenzied pitch by a slick televangelist huckster and a well-meaning but psychotic and delusional fundamentalist minister on the Rez, season with elements of the AntiChrist, miniature black holes and the possibility of a really large explosion, and you have all the ingredients for a suspenseful and successful potboiler.

The writing is crisp and lean and everything moves very fast. The book is hard to put down as it is very much plot-driven and paced and parsed very well, and, well, you just have to find out what happens next. Do not read this if you contributed regularly to the ministries of Jerry Falwell or Jim Baker or if you disliked the Preston-Childs collaborative novels featuring the irrepressible Agent Pendergast. On the other hand, if you have recently finished and were impressed by "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris or "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and/or their intellectual brethren, I predict you will find this novel very amusing. In spite of a hole in the plot big enough to land a 747 in (sorry - no spoilers here - if interested see my comment), this novel is great fun and highly recommended.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Novel of "Big Ideas" that comes up short, January 24, 2008

By	Patrick A. Hayden (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Douglas Preston, along with his frequent collaborator, Lincoln Child, has written some of the more memorable science-based thrillers of the past decade. The novels involving their very original protaganist, FBI Agent Pendergast, usually are well plotted, expertly paced, and written with scares and some of the supernatural in mind. With Blasphemy, Preston's third major novel without Child, the ideas and the plot is there, but the pacing is weak and the story a bit much even for a Sci-fi fan like myself.

The novel centers around a former CIA-agent turned monk turned PI with the unlikely name of Wyman Ford. He is tasked by the President's Science Advisor to investigate what is happening at Isabella, the largest Superconducting Supercollider in the world, a project that the President has hung his legacy on and that has cost the US taxpayers billions of dollars. Isabella, it seems, is not working as it should, and Congress is threatening to pull funding. Unless Ford can get the team of scientists at the site to admit what the real problems are, the project may be doomed.

The Isablla project is run by the enigmatic Dr. Hazelius, a super-genius who is trying to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang so that science can learn more about the creation of the Universe, and other big scientific questions. Hazelius is probably the best written character in the novel, as all of his motivations and actions, as they are revealed, make a very good logical sense. He feels like a real person, not just like a character in the book.

The problem with Blasphemy is that Hazelius is the only really well-defined character. Ford, essentially spying on the scientists, is at first only in it for the money, but his heart changes when he discovers the ex Love of his Life is one of the chief researchers. His character acts mostly as a sounding board for the other characters to run through the philisophical and theological arguments that come up in the book.

The theological elements are also a problem. The book is trying to start a debate about how and if religion and science can coexist. The Isabella project is under verbal assault from a televangelist who feels like a cross between Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell, and who never seems like more than a cipher than a real character. He's obstensably the villian of the piece, but he's such a caricature it's hard to take him seriously or what his actions lead to seriously either, and since his actions spur the last third of the book, I found my interest in the novel waning. The religion vs. science debate is a debate worth having, but Preston makes the mistake of setting up strawman arguments for the science side to strike down, and then escallating the religious wackos into militant crazies by the final act.

There are too many threads running around and the message that Preston is sending, while noble in my eyes, is lost in the poor characterization and motivation for both the hero's and the villains. The action is well described and the book reads quickly, but I would recommend a visit to the library for this one over a purchase. Preston may have a great novel in him yet, but this is not it.