Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4274 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-08
• Released on: 2008-01-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Whether it's scientists, CIA agents, greedy politicos, religious fanatics, or entire towns of Navaho Indians--somehow Scott Sowers juggles them all, making what could have been a chaotic story exciting as well as comprehensible. It's easy to go back over the printed page, not so easy if you're driving and listening. Listeners are in exceedingly capable hands--Sowers never lets us down. He weaves together the complex subplots of what happens when science and religion collide. The scientists out on the Red Mesa desert thought they were inventing a particle collider that would allow them to look back into the Big Bang. What they weren't expecting to find was God. D.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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

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Customer Reviews

`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

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.

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.