The Holy Machine
Ratings3
Average rating4
15
Ratings3
Average rating4
Illyria is a scientific utopia, an enclave of logic and reason founded off the Greek coast in the mid-twenty first century as a refuge from the Reaction, a wave of religious fundamentalism sweeping the planet. Yet to George Simling, first generation son of a former geneticist who was left emotionally and psychically crippled by the persecution she encountered in her native Chicago, science-dominated Illyria is becoming as closed-minded and stifling as the religion-dominated world outside ... The Holy Machine is Chris Beckett's first novel. As well as being a story about love, adventure and a young man learning to mature and face the world, it deals with a question that is all too easily forgotten or glibly answered in science fiction: what happens to the soul, to beauty, to morality, in the absence of God?
Reviews with the most likes.
“(Religious worldview or scientific view) It would be nice to have both, but suppose that isn't possible? Which one should we keep? It's not a straightforward question is it? Terrible things are done in the name of religion, without a doubt, but it was not religion but science that brought the world itself to the brink of destruction.” —The Holy Machine.
I am a Christian, and it is ironic how much this book gets right. Mocking and scorn, but truth exist in the simple context that I believe that I am a poor miserable sinner that is forgiven through Jesus Christ His only Son. This book balances mocking of many faiths, and yet the realization that one can not live on knowledge alone. Sermon over.
What happens when AI becomes aware? What happens when humans become addicted to growing technology? Many good questions and thoughts, but you are left to decide for yourself.
