Mr g: A Novel About the Creation [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

I found this to be a profound and conceptually well thought out book. It addresses both the fundamental physics of creation and the philosophical implications of a creator. Mr. g has lingered in The Void with his aunt and uncle for eternity and decides to create the universe. This concept is a simple and enduring one, but his own attitude towards his creation is initially ambivalent. He starts with some basic organizational principals, then produces time, space, quantum physics and matter. From there the universe develops on its own within the premise of cause and effect. What Mr. g doesn't realize is that a product of his design is Belhor, an entity within The Void that can interfere in the universe but is also immortal and powerful in his own right. Not the devil per se, but an intellectual sparring partner who questions Mr. g's motives and his grand design. As Mr. g contemplates his creation and the ideas that Belhor presents to him, he becomes more sympathetic to his animate matter and its suffering.

The writing is wonderful and allows the enormity of the universe to be accessible. Lightman depicts various worlds that have developed throughout the universe and how diverse conditions allow for countless species to evolve. He also does a fantastic job describing the vastly infinite nothingness of The Void.

For such a small book, it gave me a lot to think about. The notion of eternity, the physicality of myself, and the duality of good and evil are all heavy concepts, but Lightman's effective use of physics makes these ideas manageable. It is not mind blowing, but definitely thought provoking.

It's best if you don't think of Mr G: A Novel About the Creation as a novel. It's really a series of brief essays about the Big Questions: How the universe was created, the nature of good and evil, whether suffering is necessary, and whether human beings can understand God.

Mr G (the creator) lives in the Void with his temperamental Aunt Penelope and his placid Uncle Deva. Their origins and nature are unclear, but they provide viewpoints for discussions with each other and with Mr. G as the universe develops. A more interesting character is Mr. G's counterpart Belhor, who is accompanied mob-like by two dim-witted henchmen, Baphomet the Large and Baphomet the Small. Belhor is clearly Satan--but is he evil? That depends on whether evil exists as an absolute. In any case, Belhor provides Mr. G with a stimulating partner for many philosophical discussions.

Author Alan Lightman is a physicist and a professor as well as a writer. His expertise in all three professions is demonstrated in this book. The large portion focusing on the creation of physical matter reads much like lectures on Physics for English Majors. Once conscious intellects have evolved, the book reads much like Philosophy 101. In other words, the tone is grand but remote. All the topics are undeniably important, they are carefully analyzed, but this book doesn't make the reader care about them except on an abstract level.

The first-person account of creation has told by many talented science fiction writers, including Robert Sheckley, Philip Jose Farmer and Arthur C. Clarke, and some literary authors like Archibald MacLeish. Most of these are dark and humorous short stories, filled with thought-provoking unorthodox theological insights and references to traditional religious beliefs.

Mr g is a very very long short story. It is not so much dark as empty, the universe is created by a bored and shallow creator, and has no meaning. It is one of a very large number of universes. It is experimental, and illustrates Arthur C. Clarke's famous line, "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him." The creator is surprised by the emergence of consciousness and begins to get a dim sense of morality from watching his creations. He likes to hum tunes the creatures invent and bask in the beauty of their architecture.

This is a pale imitation of the best works in the genre. Four characters are introduced to provide humor, all fall flat. This is a humorless account and throwing in a few zany meaningless incidents doesn't change that. Instead of references to serious works on the subject, Mr g tosses in a few words from Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Medieval versions of European languages that are supposed to sound deep.

I found the story in the book unsatisfying. This creator answers no big questions. He exists eternally, and doesn't question that existence, which removes the single best reason to speculate about creation--why isn't there nothing? He lives in the "Void" a place that is described as totally empty, yet it seems filled with "wisps of nothingness" than can be used to comb hair, make dresses, stairs and even fully-furnished castles. Perhaps the author is trying to communicate something subtle, but it seemed to me like his creator lived in a place much like our universe, with the words "void" and "empty" being redefined.

The creator makes time and space before creating our universe, removing two more mysteries that you would expect to be at the center of a creation story. Time and space are the same in and out of our universe, which would seem to pose some relativistic paradoxes. Time is qualitatively different from spacial dimensions and there are three spacial dimensions and four elementary forces. So no grand unification theories, or any progress beyond Standard Model physics. The universe of Mr g is the universe of contemporary physics, presumably all the anomalies are explained without additional dimensions or symmetries and no further simplifications are possible.

The creator starts with a big bang, then much later intervenes to make matter, and again to explore the evolution of consciousness. I find theories more satisfying that posit either a single intervention or constant intervention. Consciousness is described as complexity only, which has some well-known philosophic problems. A minor complaint is that there is a single named universe (Aalam-104729) which unexpectedly self-destructs when the creator posits contradictory physical laws. The next attempt to make a universe is more successful, and is our current universe. It is referred to throughout the book at Aalam-104729. The author may be suggesting some deep thought here, but I suspect he merely forgot that he had destroyed his universe.

I did not find the book enjoyable to read or thought-provoking. To the extent it has point, I am reminded of the line Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote for George Sanders to deliver to Marilyn Monroe in All About Eve, "You have a point, my dear, an idiotic one but a point." The best I can say is that it lays out most of the basic issues of creation, both physical and moral, in an orderly way. A reader with imagination can fill in his or her own thoughts chapter by chapter without being distracted by the author's views.

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