Issue/Publication: San Jose Mercury News

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Douglas Preston's brilliant new novel, "Blasphemy'' (Forge, 415 pps., $25.95), covers some of the same religion-challenging territory as did Robert Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi classic "Stranger in a Strange Land,'' but is radically updated for the computer age.

In this day, we all have seen Hubble images of the birth of galaxies, spent a lot of time Googling and have at least some idea about machines called "particle colliders.''

In "Blasphemy,'' Preston has a group of scientists apparently talking with God Himself, via the largest, most expensive machine in history, a giant particle collider called Isabella.

It's worth noting that Heinlein's working title for what became "Stranger in a Strange Land'' was "The Heretic.''

Isabella, built for $40 billion in tax-payer dollars, is under Red Mesa in Arizona. Built 300 feet underground in an abandoned coal mine and 15 miles in diameter, Isabella -- powered by massive amounts of electricity and controlled by a supercomputer -- shoots proton and antiproton beams in opposite directions until they reach almost the speed of light, then bring them into collision.

The goal is to create "energy levels not seen since the universe was a millionth of a second old,'' the president's science advisor, Stanton Lockwood, tells Wyman Ford, with the idea of probing such energy levels and exploring some exotic ideas for generating power.

The trouble is, all that money in a big hole, and so far, no results. Hence the hiring of Ford, former CIA agent and former monk, to go in and find out what has happened. Lockwood just doesn't trust the project leader, Gregory North Hazelius. Ford's cover story is that he will be an anthropologist sent to deal with local Indian tribes who are protesting what is going on with the huge machine on their tribal lands.

What is going on is that when the scientists get Isabella's supermagnets up to near full power and turn the particle beams to collide, something strange shows up on their visualizer screen: a writhing flower shape, then blackness, then the word "GREETINGS.''

And that's when the real fun begins. At first the scientists think their computer has been damaged by malware, but as they continue to work the problem -- sleeplessly, under great pressure, the message on the visualizer tells them that "for lack of a better word, I am God.''

And then begins to convince them, one by one, that He is real. Or, at least, not malware.

"The universe is one vast, irreducible, ongoing computation, which is working toward a state that I do not and cannot know," says the mysterious entity. "The purpose of existence is to reach that final state. But that final state is a mystery to me, as it must be, for if I knew the answer, what would be the point of it all?''

And then: "By computation, I mean thinking. All of existence, everything that happens -- a falling leaf, a wave upon the beach, the collapse of a star -- it is all just me, thinking.''

The dialogue with the universe -- if that is what it is -- is the greatest fun of this book, and reminds a bit of "Stranger in a Strange Land,'' in which Michael Valentine Smith teaches the Martian concept of the oneness of life. Thou art God, do you grok?

But there is plenty of other stuff going on, including Ford meeting up with a former lover who is now one of the Isabella scientists, a desperately poor Christian preacher on the Navajo reservation, the Navajo themselves and a big-deal TV preacher with lots of followers.

The fundamentalist Christians get the idea that the scientists are trying to disprove the idea of intelligent creation, but when they hear that the scientists may be trying to actually talk with God, all hell -- we're talking fire and brimstone -- breaks loose.

Preston is a terrific writer, full of intelligence and capable of bringing a wide range of knowledge to his stories, as well as great understanding of the popular audience. In this book he gives us a fine addition to cyber science fiction and a lot of talking points about modern religion.

Heinlein could only predict what actually has happened with organized religions, to wit, powerful fundamentalist churches as corporate entities that control radio and television networks and other businesses. Preston gets to play with what is already in existence.

Write to John Orr at johnorr@triviana.com

A version of this column appeared in the San Jose Mercury News