Blasphemy: A Novel [Paperback]

Douglas Preston (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Forge Books (2007)
• ASIN: B00196YYNI
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (223 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,299,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Douglas Preston, who worked for several years in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction works Dinosaurs in the Attic and Cities of Gold, and the novel, Jennie. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 51 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
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This review is from: Blasphemy (Hardcover)

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

115 of 140 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
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This review is from: Blasphemy (Hardcover)

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.

92 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Horribly melodramatic, January 23, 2008

By 

Brian Reaves (Anniston, AL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blasphemy (Hardcover)

Douglas Preston has really been on a roll with his last two solo novels. In "Tyrannosaur Canyon" he has this theory about how the dinosaurs had died...and then he proceeded to restate it a dozen times throughout the story to the point where it actually eclipsed anything happening in the book. In "Blasphemy", he suddenly gives us a glimpse into his theory of science as God.

We are treated to pages-long tirades about how faith and science cannot co-exist, one must destroy the other. About how science is the true religion and God has never spoken to man before. The villains of the story are Christians...but not like any you've ever met in real life. They are melodramatic caricatures of the real thing. They somehow manage to form a killing mob in the middle of the desert two hours after an email goes out...so ridiculously unrealistic I can't see how this made it past any sane editor. Christians will ignore every other End-Times prophecy in the world, but when a lone pastor in a tiny mission writes them about this dangerous new thing called a "kohm-pew-tur" using something called "ee-leck-tri-sit-ee" and how this has to be the Anti-Christ, they come out in droves to kill the demon machine and its creator? Yeah, that's realistic. And the ramblings of Isabella/whoever sound honestly like a physicist on an LSD trip just chattering away at every freaky theory he's ever had in his life. And yes, I got the little twist at the end that's supposed to explain the machine, but that still doesn't excuse the flat characters and ridiculously over-the-top plot. When Ford is in the control room looking at the faces of these stoic atheist scientists who are suddenly becoming converted by this computer, it's like something out of a bad movie. They ridicule the "crutch" of religion throughout the story, but then wholly embrace their own version of it without batting an eye later? Sure.

I think Preston really needs to treat Lincoln Child well, because it appears Child is the one in the writing duo who keeps the Pendergast stories sane and interesting. It's really a shame that his solo work has gone so downhill lately, because I thought "The Codex" was amazing. Hopefully Preston will approach his next solo novel with the idea to tell a good story, not write a scientific theory with a few characters thrown in to call it a novel.