God isn’t dead?Euntil you pull
the plug. That’s the headline on the back cover of this intriguing
book by prolific sci-fi writer Norman Spinrad. Right off the bat, you know this
isn’t your average, everyday novel. Some might view Deus X as
blasphemous, while others might see it as a great contemporary examination of
religion. Whichever way the wind may blow, most would agree that it is
controversial at best. Controversy is nothing new to Spinrad. His novel The Iron Dream, which
is about Adolf Hitler, was banned in Germany for seven years, and his novel
about presidential politics and television, Bug Jack Barron, was
denounced in the British Parliament. Surely Deus X will do nothing to
endear him to the Roman Catholic Church. But somehow I doubt that such matters are of much concern to Spinrad. What I
mean by this is that making his point about the issues seems to be more
important than whether or not he ruffles a few feathers. And that’s the way it
should be. In Deus X, he takes on several heavy-weight issues: environmental
destruction; cloning, the soul, and what makes us human; and God Himself. The
setting is a future Earth where we have so thoroughly damaged the planet that it
is barely able to support life at all. The remnants of civilization are just
hanging on and a huge number of people have traded in their bodies, or "meatware
templates," for a place on the Big Board—a vast electronic network that
handles almost all aspects of daily life. The crucial question that is debated in Deus X is whether or not these
electronic "successor entities" have souls, are entitled to the same
rights as individuals in the physical world, and have the capacity to achieve
salvation. At the center of the debate is the Roman Catholic Church, whose
followers have been dwindling in number for quite a long while. A papal bull
must be issued to settle the question once and for all, so the Vatican becomes
involved in a risky excursion into the heart of the computer system. The outcome
will either save or destroy the Church. Spinrad really tackles the issue well, and writes in a very earthy style.
This is especially true when he speaks through the private-investigator narrator
Marley Philippe. There is some pretty abrasive stuff in here; stuff that might
truly infuriate some Christians. But it is an honest examination of the internal
battle for identity and purpose that humanity has been fighting since the
beginning, and of what God means to different people. There are also a number of elements and ideas that would later pop up in The Matrix.
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