"Calculating God" by Robert Sawyer

This is the fourth book by Sawyer that I have read and he never fails to leave me in awe of his imagination and vision in the construction of plausible explanations for some of life's biggest questions. "Calculating God" continues the course of "Starplex" to consider wonderfully complex intelligent life forms from other worlds and the speculation regarding the nature of dark matter that comprises so much of our universe.

However, "Calculating God" takes a surprising twist in presenting the reader with life forms that are vastly superior in intelligence to human beings and who take the existence of God as a scientific certainty. However, their "search" for God has nothing to do with religion even though they are searching for answers to questions that have vexed humans throughout history and for which we have constructed religious answers such as "original sin" and "the fall".

This book is probably the most emotionally moving of Sawyer's books as the reader can easily identify with the main character, Thomas Jericho, a paleontologist and non-believer, facing his own mortality and who, in his final hours, comes face to face with a "God" he can comprehend and realizes how the cancer that has ravaged his body fits within the larger picture of the universe.