Writing the Words of God

In Douglas Preston’s thriller Blasphemy (Reviews, Oct. 22), a physicist builds a giant particle accelerator that allows people to talk with God.

You raise the possibility of a rather dire consequence that could occur when scientists turn on that giant Swiss particle accelerator, the real one.

Yes, the large hadron collider, the model on which I’ve based my fictional collidor, Isabella, might be powerful enough to create tiny black holes that will sink to the center of the earth. Because these black holes are so much smaller than an atom, they could knock around for quite some time before they absorb enough matter to become dangerous. Physicists figure once they acquire enough mass, the end will come in a matter of seconds. A couple of hundred thousand years of absolute quietness, and then whoomp, the earth implodes and we’ll be gone.

And when are they going to fire up this accelerator?

It’s scheduled for sometime this month.

Yikes. Besides all the action in the book, you’ve come up with some interesting philosophical and religious ideas. In fact, you pretty much invent your own religion.

I’ve long been fascinated with L. Ron Hubbard, who said the greatest thing a person could do was found a religion. Writing was a waste of time, if you really wanted to get rich and powerful start your own religion. I was a physics major in college; I’ve always been interested in the implications of quantum mechanics, what we know about the size of the universe, the depths of time, but these concepts haven’t been considered much in religious or even philosophical thinking. The religion I’ve come up with that frames and informs the action in the book is grounded in science. In fact, the primary tenets were developed over the course of years by a group of very respected scientists.

What was it like to write the words of God?

Intimidating. I suggested working on this novel with my writing partner, Lincoln Child. He said, Doug, you’re insane to think of doing this book, how could a writer possibly write the words of God? I originally thought, what if God spoke in the most impenetrable of riddles, like the poetry of Wallace Stevens, poetry that’s so obscure you never feel that there’s any bottom to it but you know it’s beautiful. In the end, I tried to avoid a god-sounding voice; I wrote it flat and toneless and in the least metaphorical way possible.

What would you do if you got up some morning and found supplicants gathering on your lawn?

I’d be terrified.