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Blasphemy: A Novel (Wyman Ford Series Book 2) Kindle Edition

by Douglas Preston (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 2,186 ratings

Book 2 of 4: Wyman Ford Series

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In Douglas Preston's Blasphemy, 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…

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two wise decisions move this thriller up from the ranks of the ordinary: Scott Sowers's reading and a bonus interview with Preston by the editor-in-chief of Scientific American. Sowers, who has read Preston's work in the past with impressive results, adds a needed degree of calm and charm to this tangled tale of a giant superconducting supercollider particle accelerator called Isabella, located inside a 500-acre mesa on a Navajo reservation. Sowers gives all the characters instant credibility, from the physicist who created Isabella, to the ex-CIA man sent by the president to see what's taking so long, and especially a powerful televangelist who sees the project as blasphemy. In the interview, Preston admits he got the idea from the late L. Ron Hubbard. Sowers and Preston make this confrontation between religion and science surprisingly smart and new.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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 ...

About the Author

Douglas Preston is the co-author with Lincoln Child of the celebrated Pendergast series of novels, including such bestselling titles as Fever Dream, The Book of the Dead, The Wheel of Darkness, and Relic, which became a number one box office hit movie. His solo novels include the New York Times bestsellers Impact, Blasphemy, The Codex, and Tyrannosaur Canyon. Preston is an expert long-distance horseman, a member of the elite Long Riders Guild, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has travelled to remote parts of the world as an archaeological correspondent for The New Yorker. He also worked as an editor and writer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. Preston is on the Board of Directors for International Thriller Writers, and serves on the Governing Council of the Authors Guild.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 Ken Dolby stood before his workstation, his smooth, polished fingers caressing the controls of Isabella. He waited, savoring the moment, and then he unlocked a cage on the panel and pulled down a small red bar.
There was no hum, no sound, nothing to indicate that the most expensive scientific instrument on earth had been turned on. Except that, two hundred miles away, the lights of Las Vegas dimmed ever so slightly.
As Isabella warmed up, Dolby began to feel the fine vibration of her through the floor. He thought of the machine as a woman, and in his more imaginative moments he had even imagined what she looked like—tall and slender, with a muscular back, black as the desert night, beaded with sweat. Isabella. He had shared these feelings with no one—no point in attracting ridicule. To the rest of the scientists on the project, Isabella was an “it,” a dead machine built for a specific purpose. But Dolby had always felt a deep affection for the machines he created—from when he was ten years old and constructed his first radio from a kit. Fred. That was the radio’s name. And when he thought of Fred, he saw a fat carroty-haired white man. The first computer he had built was Betty—who looked in his head like a brisk and efficient secretary. He couldn’t explain why his machines took on the personalities they did—it just happened.
And now this, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator . . . Isabella.
“How’s it look?” asked Hazelius, the team leader, coming over and placing an affectionate hand on his shoulder.
“Purring like a cat,” said Dolby.
“Good.” Hazelius straightened up and spoke to the team. “Gather round, I have an announcement to make.”
Silence fell as the team members straightened up from their workstations and waited. Hazelius strode across the small room and positioned himself in front of the biggest of the plasma screens. Small, slight, as sleek and restless as a caged mink, he paced in front of the screen for a moment before turning to them with a brilliant smile. It never ceased to amaze Dolby what a charismatic presence the man had.
“My dear friends,” he began, scanning the group with turquoise eyes. “It’s 1492. We’re at the bow of the Santa Maria, gazing at the sea horizon, moments before the coastline of the New World comes into view. Today is the day we sail over that unknown horizon and land upon the shores of our very own New World.”
He reached down into the Chapman bag he always carried and pulled out a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. He held it up like a trophy, his eyes sparkling, and thumped it down on the table. “This is for later tonight, when we set foot on the beach. Because tonight, we bring Isabella to one hundred percent full power.”
Silence greeted the announcement. Finally Kate Mercer, the assistant director of the project, spoke. “What happened to the plan to do three runs at ninety-five percent?”
Hazelius returned her look with a smile. “I’m impatient. Aren’t you?”
Mercer brushed back her glossy black hair. “What if we hit an unknown resonance or generate a miniature black hole?”
“Your own calculations show a one in quadrillion chance of that particular downside.”
“My calculations might be wrong.”
“Your calculations are never wrong.” Hazelius smiled and turned to Dolby. “What do you think? Is she ready?”
“You’re damn right she’s ready.”
Hazelius spread his hands. “Well?”
Everyone looked at each other. Should they risk it? Volkonsky, the Russian programmer, suddenly broke the ice. “Yes, we go for it!” He high-fived a startled Hazelius, and then everyone began slapping each other on the back, shaking hands, and hugging, like a basketball team before a game. Five hours and as many bad coffees later, Dolby stood before the huge flat-panel screen. It was still dark—the matter–antimatter proton beams had not been brought into contact. It took forever to power up the machine and cool down Isabella’s superconducting magnets to carry the very large currents necessary. Then it was a matter of increasing beam luminosity by increments of 5 percent, focusing and collimating the beams, checking the superconducting magnets, running various test programs, before going up to the next 5 percent.
“Power at ninety percent,” Dolby intoned.
“Christ damn,” said Volkonsky somewhere behind him, giving the Sunbeam coffeemaker a blow that made it rattle like the Tin Man. “Empty already!”
Dolby repressed a smile. During the two weeks they’d been up on the mesa, Volkonsky had revealed himself as a wiseass, a slouching, mangy specimen of Eurotrash with long greasy hair, ripped T-shirts, and a pubic clump of beard clinging to his chin. He looked more like a drug addict than a brilliant software engineer. But then, a lot of them were like that.
Another measured ticking of the clock.
“Beams aligned and focused,” said Rae Chen. “Luminosity fourteen TeV.”
“Isabella work fine,” said Volkonsky.
“My systems are all green,” said Cecchini, the particle physicist.
“Security, Mr. Wardlaw?”
The senior intelligence officer, Wardlaw, spoke from his security station. “Just cactus and coyotes, sir.”
“All right,” said Hazelius. “It’s time.” He paused dramatically. “Ken? Bring the beams into collision.”
Dolby felt a quickening of his heart. He touched the dials with his spiderlike fingers, adjusting them with a pianist’s lightness of touch. He followed with a series of commands rapped into the keyboard.
“Contact.”
The huge flat-panel screens all around suddenly woke up. A sudden singing noise seemed to float in the air, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“What’s that?” Mercer asked, alarmed.
“A trillion particles blowing through the detectors,” said Dolby. “Sets up a high vibration.”
“Jesus, it sounds like the monolith in 2001.”
Volkonsky hooted like an ape. Everyone ignored him.
An image appeared on the central panel, the Visualizer. Dolby stared at it, entranced. It was like an enormous flower—flickering jets of color radiating from a single point, twisting and writhing as if trying to tear free of the screen. He stood in awe at the intense beauty of it.
“Contact successful,” said Rae Chen. “Beams are focused and collimated. God, it’s a perfect alignment!”
Cheers and some ragged clapping.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Hazelius, “welcome to the shores of the New World.” He gestured to the Visualizer. “You’re looking at an energy density not seen in the universe since the Big Bang.” He turned to Dolby. “Ken, please increase power in increments of tenths to ninety-nine.”
The ethereal sound increased slightly as Dolby worked on the keyboard. “Ninety-six,” he said.
“Luminosity seventeen point four TeV,” said Chen.
“Ninety-seven . . . Ninety-eight.”
The team fell into tense silence, the only sound now the humming that filled the underground control room, as if the mountain around them were singing.
“Beams still focused,” said Chen. “Luminosity twenty-two point five TeV.”
“Ninety-nine.”
The sound from Isabella had become still higher, purer.
“Just a moment,” said Volkonsky, hunching over the supercomputer workstation. “Isabella is . . . slow.”
Dolby turned sharply. “Nothing wrong with the hardware. It must be another software glitch.”
“Software not problem,” said Volkonsky.
“Maybe we should hold it here,” said Mercer. “Any evidence of miniature black hole creation?”
“No,” said Chen. “Not a trace of Hawking radiation.”
“Ninety-nine point five,” said Dolby.
“I’m getting a charged jet at twenty-two point seven TeV,” said Chen.
“What kind?” asked Hazelius.
“An unknown resonance. Take a look.”
Two flickering red lobes had developed on either side of the flower on the central screen, like a clown’s ears gone wild.
“Hard-scattering,” said Hazelius. “Gluons maybe. Might be evidence of a Kaluza-Klein graviton.”
“No way,” said Chen. “Not at this luminosity.”
“Ninety-nine point six.”
“Gregory, I think we should hold the power steady here,” said Mercer. “A lot of stuff is happening all at once.”
“Naturally we’re seeing unknown resonances,” Hazelius said, his voice no louder than the rest, but somehow distinct from them all. “We’re in unknown territory.”
“Ninety-nine point seven,” Dolby intoned. He had complete confidence in his machine. He could take her to one hundred percent and beyond, if necessary. It gave him a thrill to know they were now sucking up almost a quarter of the juice from Hoover Dam. That was why they had to do their runs in the middle of the night—when power usage was lowest.
“Ninety-nine point eight.”
“We’ve got some kind of really big unknown interaction here,” said Mercer.
“What is problem, bitch?” Volkonsky shouted at the computer.
“I’m telling you, we’re poking our finger into a Kaluza-Klein space,” said Chen. “It’s incredible.”
Snow began to appear on the big flat panel with the flower.
“Isabella is behave strange,” said Volkonsky.
“How so?” Hazelius said, from his position at the center of the Bridge.
“Glacky.”
Dolby rolled his eyes. Volkonsky was such a pain. “All systems go on my board.”
Volkonsky typed furiously on the keyboard; then he swore in Russian and whacked the monitor with the flat of his hand.
“Gregory, don’t you think we should power down?” asked Mercer.
“Give it a minute more,” said Hazelius.
“Ninety-nine point nine,” said Dolby. In the past five minutes, the room had gone from sleepy to bug-eyed awake, tense as hell. Only Dolby felt relaxed.
“I agree with Kate,” said Volkonsky. “I not like the way Isabella behave. We start power-down sequence.”
“I’ll take full responsibility,” said Hazelius. “Everything is still well within specs. The data stream of ten terabits per second is starting to stick in its craw, that’s all.”
“Craw? What means ‘craw’?”
“Power at one hundred percent,” said Dolby, a note of satisfaction in his laid-back voice.
“Beam luminosity at twenty-seven point one eight two eight TeV,” said Chen.
Snow spackled the computer screens. The singing noise filled the room like a voice from the beyond. The flower on the Visualizer writhed and expanded. A black dot, like a hole, appeared at the center.
“Whoa!” said Chen. “Losing all data at Coordinate Zero.”
The flower flickered. Dark streaks shot through it.
“This is nuts,” said Chen. “I’m not kidding, the data’s vanishing.”
“Not possible,” said Volkonsky. “Data is not vanish. Particles is vanish.”
“Give me a break. Particles don’t vanish.”
“No joke, particles is vanish.”
“Software problem?” Hazelius asked.
“Not software problem,” said Volkonsky loudly. “Hardware problem.”
“Screw you,” Dolby muttered.
“Gregory, Isabella might be tearing the ’brane,” said Mercer. “I really think we should power down now.”
The black dot grew, expanded, began swallowing the image on the screen. At its margins, it jittered manically with intense color.
“These numbers are wild,” said Chen. “I’m getting extreme space-time curvature right at CZero. It looks like some kind of singularity. We might be creating a black hole.”
“Impossible,” said Alan Edelstein, the team’s mathematician, looking up from the workstation he had been quietly hunched over in the corner. “There’s no evidence of Hawking radiation.”
“I swear to God,” said Chen loudly, “we’re ripping a hole in space-time!”
On the screen that ran the program code in real time, the symbols and numbers were flying by like an express train. On the big screen above their heads, the writhing flower had disappeared, leaving a black void. Then there was movement in the void—ghostly, batlike. Dolby stared at it, surprised.
“Damn it, Gregory, power down!” Mercer called.
“Isabella not accept input!” Volkonsky yelled. “I lose core routines!”
“Hold steady for a moment until we can figure out what’s going on,” said Hazelius.
“Gone! Isabella gone!” said the Russian, throwing up his hands and sitting back with a look of disgust on his bony face.
“I’m still green across the board,” said Dolby. “Obviously what you’ve got here is a massive software crash.” He turned his attention back to the Visualizer. An image was appearing in the void, an image so strange, so beautiful, that at first he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He glanced around, but nobody else was looking: they were all focused on their various consoles.
“Hey, excuse me—anybody know what’s going on up there on the screen?” Dolby asked.
Nobody answered him. Nobody looked up. Everyone was furiously busy. The machine sang strangely.
“I’m just the engineer,” said Dolby, “but any of you theoretical geniuses got an idea of what that is? Alan, is that . . . normal?”
Alan Edelstein glanced up from his workstation distractedly. “It’s just random data,” he said.
“What do you mean, random? It’s got a shape!”
“The computer’s crashed. It can’t be anything but random data.”
“That sure doesn’t look random to me.” Dolby stared at it. “It’s moving. There’s something there, I swear—it almost looks alive, like it’s trying to get out. Gregory, are you seeing this?”
Hazelius glanced up at the Visualizer and paused, surprise blossoming on his face. He turned. “Rae? What’s going on with the Visualizer?”
“No idea. I’m getting a steady blast of coherent data from the detectors. Doesn’t look like Isabella’s crashed from here.”
“How would you interpret that thing on the screen?”
Chen look up and her eyes widened. “Jeez. I’ve no idea.”
“It’s moving,” said Dolby. “It’s, like, emerging.”
The detectors sang, the room humming with their high-pitched whine.
“Rae, it’s garbage data,” Edelstein said. “The computer’s crashed—how can it be real?”
“I’m not so sure it is garbage,” said Hazelius, staring. “Michael, what do you think?”
The particle physicist stared at the image, mesmerized. “It doesn’t make any sense. None of the colors and shapes correspond to particle energies, charges, and classes. It isn’t even radially centered on CZero—it’s like a weird, magnetically bound plasma cloud of some kind.”
“I’m telling you,” said Dolby, “it’s moving, it’s coming out. It’s like a . . . Jesus, what the hell is it?” He closed his eyes hard, trying to chase away the ache of exhaustion. Maybe he was seeing things. He opened them. It was still there—and expanding.
“Shut it down! Shut Isabella down now!” Mercer cried.
Suddenly the panel filled with snow and went dead black.
“What the hell?” Chen cried, her fingers pounding the keyboard. “I’ve lost all input!”
A word slowly materialized in the center of the panel. The group fell into silence, staring. Even Volkonsky’s voice, which had been raised in high excitement, lapsed as if cut off. Nobody moved.
Then Volkonsky began to laugh, a tense, high-pitched laugh, hysterical, desperate.
Dolby felt a sudden rage. “You son of a bitch, you did this.”
Volkonsky shook his head, flapping his greasy locks.
“You think that’s funny?” Dolby asked, getting up from the workstation with clenched fists. “You hack a forty-billion-dollar experiment and you think it’s funny?”
“I not hack anything,” said Volkonsky, wiping his mouth. “You shut hell up.”
Dolby turned and faced the group. “Who did this? Who messed with Isabella?” He turned back to the Visualizer and read out loud the word hanging there, spat it out in his fury. greetings.
He turned back. “I’ll kill the bastard who did this.”
Copyright © 2007 by Splendide Mendax, 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

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000V7703C
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Forge Books; Reprint edition (January 8, 2008)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 8, 2008
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2389 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 564 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #54,542 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #5 in Native American Religions & Spirituality
- #257 in Technothrillers (Books)
- #3,090 in Suspense (Kindle Store)

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Douglas Preston

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Douglas Preston is the author of for books, both fiction and nonfiction, thirty-two of which have been New York Times bestsellers, with several reaching the number 1 position. He has worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His first novel, RELIC, co-authored with Lincoln Child, was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures, which launched the famed Pendergast series of novels. His recent nonfiction book, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, is also in production as a major television series from Apple. His latest book, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD, tells the true story of the discovery of a prehistoric city in an unexplored valley deep in the Honduran jungle. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian magazines. He is the recipient of numerous writing awards in the US and Europe, including a shared Edgar Award and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Pomona College. From 2019 to 2023 he served as president of the Authors Guild, the nation's oldest and largest association of authors and journalists.

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Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2009

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The world's most powerful particle accelerator is coming online for the first time. Buried in a high mesa on a Navajo reservation, it is poised to make the greatest scientific discovery in the history of mankind. But on the eve of its momentous first run, something unexpected happens. An event so bizarre that the 12 men and women operating the experiment, some of the smartest people in the world, are unable to comprehend their findings.

As they seal themselves in the mesa and stall for time, the political leaders that helped fund the 40 billion dollar project become increasingly anxious. Elections are just around the corner and they want to know why progress has stalled. Meanwhile, religious leaders are concerned that these labcoats are attempting to disprove god. What are the heathens hiding as their experiments dim the lights of Las Vegas? Just what the hell is going on up there?

Enter Wyman Ford. Former monk and ex-CIA agent, Ford has the right combination of skills needed to integrate himself with the scientists and to discern the cause of their delays. Wyman dons the guise of an anthropologist, sent by Washington to sooth the Navajo tribes that surround the particle accelerator. Tribes that grow weary of more promises not kept and increasingly wary of the experiments being conducted on their holy ground. But it is when Wyman discovers that he still has feelings for one of the scientists that he realizes why they picked him for this job.

If you take the cocksure and dysfunctional scientists from Crichton's Sphere, who dare meddle in secrecy with elements beyond their understanding, and combine them with the philosophical musings on science and religion that make up Sagan's Cosmos, the result would be Douglas Preston's Blasphemy. Equal parts techno-thriller and cultural observation, Blasphemy is one of the rare novels that entertains and enlightens at the same time. There is plenty of suspense, unsolved murders, devious characters, conflicting motivations, and tense action in Blasphemy. But the central clash takes place between two very real contemporary opponents: Science and Religion.

It would be easy to blame Preston for taking sides on this conflict. Religious readers may be offended with his portrayal of Christians and see the lionization of science on every page. But that is not what this book is about. One of the worst offenders in this novel is presented as a figurehead for science. And the conclusion of Blasphemy is sure to upset scientists as much as theists. Preston's biting satire is not aimed at those to one side, it is aimed at those to the extremes. At scientists and religious leaders who replace the curiosity that drives us towards truth with the absolute conviction that paralyzes one from seeking it.

Blasphemy, then, is a call for moderation. Douglas Preston casts both sides in an equally negative light in order to reveal the flaws of our fanaticism. He seems to be saying that without doubt and skepticism we become violently sure of ourselves. We replace the humility of not knowing with the anger of not having our every proclamation trusted and accepted. The evangelist who gains power and wealth through his congregation, despite his hypocritical sins, is presented alongside the megalomaniac scientists that are willing to falsify data to further their ideological agenda. Both sides have their figureheads coursing through the book, their creeds like matter and anti-matter which explode on contact.

The tragedy of this cultural war is that it rests on a false premise. Religion was always meant to be a search for truth. It arose naturally from ancient people asking reasonable questions. When a person lays down a spear, it does not move on its own. It only moves when another person makes it move. From these observations, thousands of tiny examples a day, it was natural to conclude that the sun was moved by more powerful men. The winds came from even stronger men. To mock these conclusions is to mock logic, for it was airtight considering the data these thousands of individual tribes had at their disposal.

Up until very recently the greatest scientific discoveries have been made by men of the cloth, not people in labcoats. But something happened around the age of enlightenment. So many of the theories of old fell all at once that the church became threatened. Clinging to the power of divine revelation, they fought against the truth in an attempt to maintain their perfect authority. This has only reduced their claims and entrenched them on the wrong side of discovery.

At the same time, science has become just as sure of itself. This, despite the self-correcting nature of its discipline. The more often individual elements are proven wrong, the stronger its members feel about its methods, which is the antithesis of the current struggles that religion endures. Growing ever more complicated, science speaks less and less to the general public. The field rarely deals with the emotional matters which move people to support a cause. Its practitioners are seen as cold, over-logical, unfeeling, meddlesome, arrogant, and dangerous.

If it seems like this struggle does not merit the label Culture "War", consider that one side sees the other as killing about 1.5 million innocent lives each year. The other side sees fanatics flying into buildings and blowing themselves up, they see a rejection of modern medicine, they see diseases that could be treated via stem-cell research. Whichever side you fall on does not change the fact that both sides see incredible harm in the other. It is a very real divide that paints my own country in two colors every November. There is a battle going on, and Douglas Preston forces us to recognize it in Blasphemy.

Of course, many readers are not happy with this bit of introspection. Christians in particular have been critical of the book. And this is what frightens me: the armies which clash in Preston's novel should not be ones that we identify with. No scientist should read about the character of Hazelius and empathize with his actions and ideology. No Christian should read about Spates and Eddy and see these abominations as real members of their faith. The terrifying result of Preston's novel is to see how many readers and critics rush to the defense of pure evil. Their own fanaticism is too great to see that Preston is not supporting one side or the other, but something wholly original today: Neither!

Blasphemy ends with a bizarre compromise, one which convinces me that Douglas Preston's goal is not to foment the flames of theism vs. atheism. His goal is to examine a possible path forward and beyond. It is an amazingly original conclusion, one which is sure to displease both sides of the debate. But that is the nature of compromise. And a middle-ground is never as distasteful as mutually-assured destruction. Consider this: The rational leaders of science and faith today have proposed that the two go their separate ways. That religion be the sole proprietor of morality and spirituality and that science lead the way in the discovery of cold truth. This is the solution put forward by moderates from both camps. It is an admission of defeat. A bugle horn for rallying armies to one side or another of a great divide. What Preston urges, and what so many are criticizing him for, is the possibility of us all fighting together. Fighting against tyranny and abuse. Fighting to discover scientific and ethical truths at the same time. It is a refreshing idea in a contemporary climate that urges we part company and go our separate ways.

These solutions fail because most of us are both spiritual AND logical. Most of us want to be guided by reason, but also to be overwhelmed with wonder. To undersand the source of a rainbow, but to be able to feel a rush of spirituality when we encounter just the right one. Our protagonist, Wyman Ford, is not a former monk and ex-CIA scientist by accident. He is the common ground that exposes the extremes to either side. Logical and skeptical, able to reason and feel, characters like Wyman and Begay are the ones we should celebrate in Preston's novel. Aligning ourselves to either side simply exposes the urgent need for this debate and for more books like Blasphemy which inspire them.

If this sounds like heady stuff, don't worry. The book is a thrill-a-minute; the philosophical musings are hardly noticed. They are necessary to the plot and they propel this amazing story further and faster like enormous magnets. Just as The Da Vinci Code entertained and stirred controversy at the same time, Blasphemy will be a book you can't put down... and then can't stop thinking about once you do.

The hardback is practically being given away at Amazon for $8.99. Grab a copy right now. I can not recommend it highly enough.

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ZenLala

Outstanding

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2024

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Brilliant. Profound. Humorous. It was so entertaining that I lost a lot of daylight hours unable to UT this story down. Thank you for a great story! Looking forward to reading more from my new favorite author.

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Elaine Kittredge

Masterful, Unpredictable

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2024

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Blasphemy is fascinating and unpredictable in so many ways. It encompasses my love of Native American culture, the magical Southwest, mystery, exciting drama and such exquisite writing. I would rather read a book than listen, and the movie in my brain was magnificent! Thank you, Douglas Preston. It's a work of art.

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Michael D. Sweeney

What does god need with a particle accelerator?

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2017

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Also, don't cross the beams.

So I'm left not sure what I think about this book, but that's a solid point in it's favor -- many books, the only thing you are left thinking about after you'e finished it is, "So, what else is on?"

This is a book that takes a while to gel. Not in a good way; I came close to giving up on it over the first dozen chapters. There's so much about the science that seems wrong or wonky. The explanation, when it finally comes, does much to answer those questions. Answer them for the reader, at least; the question remains how the rest of the world, particularly the scientific establishment, isn't going to see just how "off" the whole thing was. It's rather a wash in the end; it works for the story but isn't the depiction of Big Science I might have liked to read. And, yes, some of the science is just stupidly wrong (and not anything that advanced, either!) It makes it all the more strange when in later chapters he seems to up his game.

The philosophy is amusing and moderately engaging. The evangelical/millennialist stuff rings true enough but then this is already familiar to me after a few decades of following various science blogs around the fringes of the culture wars (especially the Creationists). I can imagine that a reader more familiar, or less familiar, with this material would react differently. For me, it was familiar enough I was practically skimming those pages.

As usual with Douglas Preston the New Mexico stuff is wonderful, but for that I strongly recommend his non-fiction "Cities of Gold." However, in the early chapters it too felt paint-by-numbers, adding to the impression of a thinly researched, rushed, phoned-in book. It gets better, much better, but still doesn't quite rise to the potential of the material.

Lastly, the novel itself hangs on the unveiling and the eventual understanding of the central event. This is a distinct problem for the reviewer. It can't be discussed in depth without a big spoiler, and once that spoiler is made, there's hardly a point in reading the book. The surrounding action is amusing, but insufficient to take the place of having that mystery.

Oh, and I don't get Wyman Ford. He carries around a big "I'm the protagonist" sign with him but I still can't tell what it is about him, what drives him, what makes him interesting, why I am supposed to care. He's engaging enough company but he, too, feels like you are only getting the first couple of chapters. Only for him, there is (as yet) no rest of the book.

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Eleanor Sawyer

Published in 2007 Still Relevant Today

Reviewed in Canada on October 21, 2020

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Written by Douglas Preston, this novel provides a look at how information gets twisted and used
by radical believers to pursue their own ends. Preston reintroduces Wyman Ford who is hired to find
out why a forty billion dollar government project has fallen so far behind schedule. The world's biggest
supercollider is to be used as a alternative source of power. Or is it? Some televangelists think the government
is trying to disprove the story of creation and even God's existence. Well worth the read and a little scary!

Gwynne Evans

Need more W Ford novels

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2022

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The entire Wyman Ford series has been just brilliant, I would like to see a few more books based
on the character,they really are my kind of stories.

Amazon Customer

A man who wanted to become God trough a machine.

Reviewed in Italy on October 4, 2021

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I was flabbergasted to see to what extremes people are willing to go to elevate themselves from the human condition.

オーナーオブ・ロンリーハーツクラブバンド

よく出来てます

Reviewed in Japan on March 23, 2013

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テーマはビッグバンの再現です。作者がどう料理するのか、それだけでも十分に興味をそそられます。が、作者は単に科学者の視点から語るのではなく、宗教家、マイナー民族、ロビイストと実に多彩な顔ぶれを登場させます。その結果、話が進めば進む程引き込まれていきます。余りに間口を広げ過ぎて収集がつき辛くなったきらいもありますが、クライマックスではB級パニック小説で終わることなく、もう一ヒネリしてくれます。よく考えたものだなぁと感心しますし、表題（冒涜）の意味についても深く考えさせられました。

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Arno Gündisch

Wissenschaft vs. Fanatismus

Reviewed in Germany on March 8, 2008

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Douglas Prestons Roman spiegelt genau das wieder, was in Zukunft auf innovative Wissenschaftler zukommen könnte, wenn die Welle des religiösen Fanatismus in den USA und sonstwo nicht gestoppt wird.
Während die Wissenschaft Fortschritte macht, schwärt das Archaische weiter-ein Thema, das aktueller nicht sein könnte.
Preston stößt mit diesem Roman in die Fußstapfen eines Jules Verne des 21. Jahrhunderts und schafft ein brisantes episches Werk mit polemischer Spitze-mehr kann man von einem Roman der Jetztzeit kaum erwarten...
Fazit: alle, die Jules Verne, H.G. Wells oder Isaac Asimov mögen, sollen hier unbedingt zugreifen-und die anderen sollen auch einen Blick riskieren, er lohnt sich!

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