A scientist in a world where all of nature points to proof of God’s hand in creation finds her faith shaken by a discovery that suggests that Earth was not the center of God’s attention and must find a new grounding for purpose.
I enjoy Chiang’s stories that take a counter-factual cosmology – in this case, “Young Earth” creationism – and build a plausible if strange world around it. Here we have things that prove the recent and sudden creation of the Earth – trees without growth rings, mummies without navels – and a practice of archeology that is built around discerning the purpose of God in the remnants left behind by primordial humans. The discovery that disproves the foundations of science – the discovery of a stable center of the universe that is not Earth – is subtle and devastating, and the protagonist goes through a “God is Dead” crisis in a very short time, emerging with a mature if somewhat bleakly existentialist philosophy to provide a new purpose.
I also like the way he makes things slightly weird with a few alternate spellings – “Chicagou” for “Chicago”, “Arisona” for “Arizona” – that let us know that we’re in familiar but unfamiliar territory.