Divine Intervention by Ken WhartonOn the planet Mandala, the people of the city believe in a god who is experiencing time from the other direction- a god who matures from the time of the Big Crunch, rather than from the Big Bang. The people of the city are lead by a neurotic Prime Minister, who is hypervigilant in protecting his city from the Burnouts, and especially from the Earthies, whose imminent arrival is expected. The preacher in the city is married to a woman whose mutations render her deaf and dumb, and who uses electronic devices to communicate. Their son does the same. And in his prayers, their son, Drew, points his antenna at the moon and talks to the being he knows as God, a God altogether different from his father's. When the PM acts against the Earthies, "God" lets Drew know what is going on, and Drew upsets the entire political balance.
Divine Intervention presents the difficulties of culture clashes, and his Burnout/City relations parody those of hippie/square relations, with sympathies on the hippie side. Wharton comments overtly, as the Commander and as Samuel (an Earthie) on human nature, and especially on the human tendency towards religion. Wharton suggests that religious tendencies are built in because there is a God. But he also shows the conflict within the human conscious when beliefs are disproven, in the preacher and in his son. Many perspectives are given in the telling of this story; the preacher's, his wife's, Drew's, the PM's, the Commander's(this from the distant past), and Samuels'. I would have liked to have Drew's perspective more often, and a Burnout perspective might have aided the story as well. My biggest obstacle in reading this book was my knowledge that the Big Crunch isn't coming; it has been disproven from two angles, and was disproven before the publication of this book in 2001.
Question: Why do humans tend towards religious beliefs?
Happy reading.
