The Sparrow 45
| The Sparrow | |
| author | Mary Doria Russell |
| pages | 405 |
| publisher | Ballantine Books, October 1997 |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | James Scott |
| ISBN | 0-449-91255-8 |
| summary | A comic, tragic, category-defying exploration of the human condition |
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell's first novel, is not easily labeled. Though the plot features interstellar travel and first contact with an alien race, it is not strictly a science fiction novel. Many of the characters are members of a religious order (the Society of Jesus), but the book never assumes a pious or moralistic tone. The story ultimately reveals immense suffering, but it also sparkles with wit and word play. Fortunately, what Ellington said of music (there's only two kinds: good and bad) is also true of books. Whatever category of novel The Sparrow may fit into, it is certainly a good book.
The first part of the novel introduces two story lines, and the narrative shifts between these stories until the very end of the novel. The first story is set in early 21st century Puerto Rico. Jimmy Quinn, a young radio astronomer at the Arecibo array, detects signals originating from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Upon analyzing these transmissions, Quinn hears music of an obviously non-human variety. He first shares this discovery with his friends, including a Jesuit priest named Emilio Sandoz. Sandoz immediately proposes mounting an expedition to Alpha Centauri. He quickly convinces his Jesuit superiors to sponsor the adventure, populating the crew with both priests and lay people. They find their way to Alpha Centauri aboard a dugout asteroid powered by a mass driver, where they discover the planet Rakhat, populated by two sentient species.
The second thread, a courtroom drama of sorts, features the Jesuit hearing into the events of the expedition to Rakhat. In late 2059, Sandoz has returned to Earth alone, physically and emotionally shattered. He is preceded by bizarre allegations of murder and prostitution, transmitted by a UN-sponsored followup expedition to Rakhat. The Jesuit order is desperate to dispel this mounting scandal and nurses Sandoz back to health so that he may tell his story. With calculated and sometimes sadistic effort, the Father General of the Society of Jesus flattens Sandoz' defenses and forces him to describe the horrible truth of his experience on Rakhat.
As a science fiction novel, The Sparrow breaks very little new ground. The reader will find no startling new technological or social ideas here, though Russell does a fine job of constructing two distinct alien races. The real value of this book is its exploration of spiritual matters. The the first few months on Rakhat go so well that even the agnostic and atheistic members of the crew begin to think that God might be watching over them. Nonetheless the mission ends in disaster, with most of the crew dead. Sandoz, who despite his priestly vows never developed a personal relationship with God, survives to ponder the implications. What kind of God would abuse human faith in such a callous manner?
In contrast with the weighty nature of its central issues, this book is quite an enjoyable read. This is due in part to the author's liberal application of humor. Russell has created a handful of genuinely funny characters who deliver one-liners and make smooth pop-culture references with frequent grace. She also takes pains to create real emotion in the religious figures, including imperfect faith and sexual attraction. This adds up to an engaging collection of people who draw the reader into the story. When it comes time to pay the piper, we know enough about them to truly appreciate the turmoil they endure.
The Sparrow is definitely worth a few hours of your time. It doesn't map any new sci-fi territory, but it will provoke you to examine your spiritual world-view. Fortunately Russell offers no pat, hollow answers in this book. Instead she offers a painful and wonderful look at what it means to exist. She gets it right: it's hard to be human no matter what planet you're on.
Purchase this at fatbrain.
Why the sparrow doesn't suck (Score:1)
1. "The whole first half of the book should be cut" or "It's like a soap opera." This is totally bogus. What people are objecting to is that it has character. The first half of the book is what makes the second half tragic. If we didn't know about people's pasts, we wouldn't care when they died.
2. "There are other novels with priests in space." Give me a break! There can be more than one novel about priests in space. People comparing this to "A Case Of Conscience" are comparing apples and oranges.
3. "There are better SF books about religion." If so, not many. This is the only book that I know that religious people say affirms their faith and non-relious people say affirms their non-faith. It's a book that's so true that people's see their own religious opinions reflected in it.
4. "It's sappy," or "Sandoz didn't have it bad. No, it's not. What Sandoz went through was horrible. If you want to tell me that you could take that, no problem, then e-mail me, and I'll sign you up for some tim at the mental institution. And that's all I'll say, to avoid spoilers.
-Dave Turner, AC of convinience
For the record, I think it was an 8/10, and the sequel was a 6/10, because it was about telling things like MDR wanted them to be, rather than like they are.
Re:mundane fiction bias (Score:1)
Stanislav Lem (Score:1)
Fiasco is the best first-contact-gone-bad book
I've read. Lem manages to write "spiritual" books
without all the new age crap that seems to pollute
sf nowadays. It's just that I've been so deeply
dissapointed with the books i've read recently.
Is this a sign of growing up? Or is sf really
declining as a genre.
This book had many difficulties. (Score:1)
My impressions:
Flat dialogue, miraculous jumps in plot and exposition.
Lacked the imagination/courage to examine the effects of alien life on theology (given it was a theological novel) big blank there.
Mostly a lack of the alien POV.
Despite being a reflection of the Jesuit arrival into America, and their subsequent torture (in some cases) by natives, it focuses more on "why does god allow bad things to happen" rather then on the results of the far more dangerous meme of "for the glory of god".
Science is mostly skimmed over and frankly unbelievable. Catholic church cobbles together an interstellar spacecraft in secret capable of a a good fraction of C in a few years? Humans land on the planet with no testing of the atmosphere? Try native cuisine unhesitatingly? Here her anthropology experience shows through. But exobiology will probably have but little similarity.
And what gives with the people selected for the mission? Seems more a recipe for disaster then a psych profiling.
That being said, the book *is* a good examination of the courage of faith in the face of god's indifference to his creation. It is not good sci-fi, however.
I would recommend "Grass" and "Hyperion". Both are much better "priests in space" books.
Interestingly, the author is a former Catholic turned Jewish. Presumably mystic. It does give her, along with her anthropology experience, some unique insights into human culture and religion.
That being said, like the author of "A history of God" who went the same route, she deftly avoids conclusions to the valid questions concerning her religious meme.
Re:*snicker* (Score:1)
And so what if the author won the Arthur C.Clark award? Should I bow and scrape before them? Or arent' I allowed to show my total disgust for some brands of SciFi? Sir Arthur is more of a pervert than SF writer these days anyway.
*snicker* (Score:1)
good book, but not great (Score:1)
also, the part of how the church could cobble the money and technology to build a starcraft that powerful stretched credibility. how that particular cast of characters got chosen for the mission stretched it even more. of course, it had to so you'd get people that could make the series of boneheaded mistakes they made which comprise the story.
the 2nd book, children of god, goes more into the alien POV, but contains some really big contrivances of its own (now the mafia is building big-ass starships!). and the aliens aren't all that alien, anyway.
if you can suspend disbelief and ignore those numerous contrivances, the books are a pretty powerful character study. the switching of the story back and forth between rakhat and italy is effective in how it reveals the main characters layer by layer. it worked for me, anyway. however, the sci fi part of things seemed to me to be somewhat feebly cobbled together to set up the character study. as some other poster mentioned, dan simmons covered similar territory much more effectively in the hyperion series.
i give the sparrow a 6/10 and children of god a 7/10.
tim
Re:Who are the monkeys doing these reviews? (Score:1)
I have read much of Mr. Heinlein's oeuvre and most of it is quite juvenile. His fertility obsession and his trite elitest philosophy make him almost unreadable. And as for character development, even Stranger in a Strange Land [fatbrain.com] (arguably his best) while fairly entertaining was entirely full of smug static characters I wanted to hit over the head with a real moral dilemma that couldn't be solved with high school algebra.
Mr. Dick and Mr. Vonnegut, while much better writers, still tend to write about situations, not characters, so to damn Russell for only exploring one character fully when the writers you cite are largely uninterested in character seems a bit strange. And no one claimed that it was SF - the reviewer described it as somewhat unclassifiable.
If you want to read more about some of the other chararcters in the book, you might have a look at the sequel Children of God [fatbrain.com].
Re:Who are the monkeys doing these reviews? (Score:1)
Literary snobbery, or a misguided attempt... (Score:1)
In either case, I am *so* tired of it.
When I got into sf fandom, before a good number of y'all were *born*, the criticism from the lit'ry community was that sf, the literature of ideas, "didn't have any character development or growth". So, along came the New Wave, and we got all of that, and more, in spades (e.g., Lord of Light, or Stand on Zanzibar, or...). So what happened, suddenly, lit'rature didn't tell stories, that was *so* declassee, Real Lit (tm) set moods. So thee was Dahlgren, and a number of others.
I haven't heard anything lately, other than them apparently saying that Real Lit only sets mood pieces with people that you *really* wouldn't want to know in RL, and rehashed old garbage. To me, it only shows that the majority of the Lit'ry community has never, in their lives, passed a science course, knows nothing of the computers on which they type their stories, and, in fact, knows little of how the world that they live in functions.
Their reaction, so far as I can tell, only shows that, in order to deal with their inner inferiority, they find demeaning names for those of us who *do* have a clue...or did y'all think nerd, geek, techie, and all the others were lovingly applied nicknames of approbation?
Personally, I won't play their games. I dunno why Hemos feels the need to.
mark
Re:*snicker* (Score:1)
But then again, what can you expect from an illiterate teenagers.
Personally, I'd give The Sparrow and its successor, Children of God, 7.5 out of 10.
BTW, the author has won the Arthur C. Clarke award.
mundane fiction bias (Score:1)
Ok, so what makes it's not strictly a science fiction novel?
Re:Who are the monkeys doing these reviews? (Score:1)
Most sf writers have a problem with characterization, either because they stay focused on the story or technology, or because characterization isn't trendy to do in "modern" writing. (One of my favorite exceptions is Walter M. Miller, Sr.)
At any rate, Sparrow didn't sit well with me, despite the priest's odyssey and development in suffering; it seemed a bit overwrought and in need of editorial work. YMMV.
Re:*snicker* (Score:1)
Re:Speaking as an athiest... (Score:1)
The textbook definition of an atheist is someone who believes that it can be *proven* that God doesn't exist. Is this what you believe?
Agnostics on the other hand believe that it's impossible to prove anything either way, and that you just have to believe one thing or another.
Sceptics believe that nothing can be proven to 100% certainty, but with matters of God it's close enough.
So, what are you? Still an atheist?
Re:17 Thumbs Up! (Score:1)
If I begin reading a book that's dull, I close it and put it away. I'd feel bad trying to review a book like that. People here aren't professional reviewers - don't expect them to read boring books (and thus giving 1/10 etc.)
Normalizing wouldn't help, 1/5 would never be given by a person who thought the book was average. All you do is remove the option of a little refinery in your review of a somewhat good book.
James Blish put Jesuits in HIS future (Score:1)
James Blish had a Jesuit as a primary character in his his 1958 (Hugo-award-winning) novel, A Case of Conscience. This is not only a real science fiction novel, but one of the best ones ever written.
Religious orders were primary agents in the exploration of the Western hemisphere, what makes you think they would have no role in exploring other new worlds (so long as these have sentient life forms)?
Michael Kerpan
really. (Score:1)
I don't know what textbook you're reading, but I suspect it's in yer head. Break the work apart: a- = no/absence of (as opposed to mono- or poly- ); -theist = believer. An athiest is anyone who doesn't believe in god(s). [not capitalized]. Belief in god(s) is a direct belief; in whether it can be proven is more abstract.
that God doesn't exist.
Just what god are you referring to when you capitalize that word? The Christian Jehovah is just one god of many; while this in itself is a semantic mistake it looks like you have a bit of a narrow perspective.
Agnostics on the other hand...
The only agnostic I know just didn't want to argue about religion. Most people believe that it's impossible to prove anything, including some very strongly believing people, and anyone who believes it's possible to prove anything that they can't think of a way to prove is a little confused. I'd say the people who point to faith healers as the proof of their god don't know what the word god means, so they don't count. Just about everyone is an agnostic, by your standard.
Skeptics, w/ a 'k', don't seem to care much in your definition. Skeptics are people who don't trust things that they hear.
Sorry to yell at you, but if yer gonna go around bothering people about their religious beliefs you should at least be enlightened enough to understand the answer. If you're so curious about religion, read a book.
The Sparrow is pretty poor (Score:1)
Review=Bad, Comments=Good (Score:1)
Full of weaknesses, such as shallowly developed yet overly worshipped characters, and with the slack, lackadaisacal self-indulgent meandering of a Heinlein novel. But then, this is science fiction, so that's nothing you haven't all seen before. The question is, is it _good_?
I'm tempted to say it's emotionally manipulative at it's core - so my enjoyment and appreciation of it was a weakness. Certainly, if you like post-doc physics realism or lit mag snobbish character development, you won't find it here - and yet you're still supposed to be _really moved_. On the other hand, I wouldn't say the book was exactly weak - Russel just seems to be focused elsewhere.
She has some things to say about some classic religious arguments - free will versus predestination, and the nature of god. But most interesting is the secular, anthropological thinking - the network of relationships between animal and man. The book presents an innocent hunter-gatherer society's development of agriculture. The foundation that lays for deep thinking about the development of society, and indeed, religion... innocence and natural balance, versus intelligence, proliferation and conflict... very interesting. There are enough avenues of speculation here to keep you thinking.
Perhaps she keeps quiet about her biggest religious statement - perhaps it's even unintended? But you have enough room to read it that the explorers take the role of the serpent in the Garden of Eden... making a tremendous indictment of a carnivorous God. Or perhaps God is just plain irrelevant, until the pandora's box of agriculture is opened, and natural balances get thrown out of whack - a statement in itself. (For the non-clued, primitive man's development of agriculture is widely speculated to be the primary turning point of the collective human psychology - indirectly at least, a catalyst of organized religions - of most things modern, really.)
In any case, Russell could have written a paper, but it takes a novel, even a roughshod one, to expose the emotional realities of the issues. And I did enjoy it, whether I should have or not. :)
Tired of hearing it. (Score:1)
Scale of 1-10 not good indicator (Score:1)
I'm not at all surprised that all of the books reviewed here get scores of 8-10. I can imagine a Slashdot article about a really bad book, but only if it wasn't obvious that it was bad, or it was really popular in spite of its being bad. "The Bible Code" comes to mind (not flamebait - just my opinion). Just as with movies and music, I tend to tell all of my friends about the really good books (and sometimes the really bad) but I often forget about the mediocre - the 3's and 7's.
That said, one way I like to rate books is something like "that was the best book I've read in the last month" or "the last year" or "possibly ever".
"The Sparrow" was the best book I've read in about two years, and I like to read a lot. Though it didn't have a lot of sci-fi, the sci-fi that was in it was mostly good (plausible). I really loved the treatment of the alien languages, and the human characters were believable and even lovable. Parts of it were very heavy and hard to read, which is why I haven't yet picked up "Children of God".
Re:17 Thumbs Up! (Score:2)
a good read.. (Score:2)
Not for the faint of heart (Score:2)
Having said that, I should warn anyone who reads it that it is quite an emotional roller-coaster if you care about the characters. I usually describe the book to people as starting off as a mix of L'Engle and Sartre and eventually doing a sudden nose dive through Stephen King and ending up reading like Elie Weisel. She does truly awful things to some of her characters that make you have to put the book down and stare at a wall for a while.
The comparison with Weisel is also a good reason for recommending the sequel Children of God [fatbrain.com]. Weisel's life did not stop at the end of Night [barnesandnoble.com] , and Sandoz's does not stop at the end of The Sparrow [fatbrain.com]. The end of his journey (and that of the other characters) is as important as the beginning.
So please read it, but brace yourself.
Re:*snicker* (Score:2)
Well done. Try not to get yourself nominated for a Darwin Award...
Re:Whats not Sci-fi about it? (Score:2)
Courses focusing on science fiction are being taught in many (most?) Literature curriculums and there's a long, solid history of quite literate science fiction. (Granted, one sometimes has to dig through the never-ending "novelizations" to find them, but "mainstream" fiction has no shortage of pulp either.) But some people still Don't Get It ... and clueless marketers don't help.
(Nitpick: Not all science fiction is set in the future.)
Re:17 Thumbs Up! (Score:2)
Secondly, while a boring fiction book would probably get a bad review, those are the only kind that would do so. For instance, a highly inaccurate technical book would as well. I read one such a couple years ago, but didn't realize how wrong it was until I tried using the printed source code. Talk about errors! Not just misprints, but actual logic problems, missing functions, etc. It was clear that no one had ever created a working program from this code.
My point is that it's not enough to be guided TO good books, we also need to be warned AWAY FROM bad ones.
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17 Thumbs Up! (Score:2)
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Trite elitist philosophy (Score:2)
The only extent to which Heinlein (or his characters) had an "elitist philosophy" was insofar as it was true.
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Rotten title (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as an athiest... (Score:2)
Um, it can't be proven that god dosn't exist, just like it can't be proven that Santa Claus dosn't exist.
It dosn't mean you should belive in ether one though...
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
I'm an athiest... (Score:2)
I personaly feel that there is no reason to belive in god, and I don't mean like "It's good for you" or whatever.
If you want me to belive somthing, you need to prove it, or at least come resonably close. There is no evidence that god exsists, so why belive in him?
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
Whats not Sci-fi about it? (Score:2)
Sci-Fi that sucks... (Score:2)
1. Exploring humanity and concluding that "Because we have emotions, that makes us better than aliens and androids."
2. Assuming that emotions are a requirement of sentience and/or an advantage--not just rules-of-thumb with a purely logical core created for beings lacking the mental power to analyze every situation in real-time.
3. Exploring religion and/or God and getting Christianity wrong.
4. Creating singular alien cultures (planet-wide language, religion, clothing, etc.) or aliens that are an exaggeration of a "human" quality such as greed or selfishness.
5. Assuming that most every sentient alien you'll ever see looks 98% human (Two arms, legs, and eyes... One head, speaks at our frequencies, 6'1", and differs only in a bump on the forehead or pointed ears).
6. Using impossible or completely implausible technologies.
7. Every story has to be about something going horribly wrong.
Re:Who are the monkeys doing these reviews? (Score:2)
PKD I'm not that familiar with -- read the requisite Androids/Sheep, but High Castle and Albemuth read like he really, really needed his meds. It's rather odd that people are claiming it's not sf -- space travel and aliens aren't required for a story to be sf, but surely a story with those elements cannot be other than sf.
Of course, if by 'hard' SF people mean plot- and characterization- free techno-wankfests like everything Niven ever wrote, I suppose this isn't SF.
gomi
Re:mundane fiction bias (Score:2)
Also, there's not a whole lot of exploration of the alien species in this book. We aren't allowed to really know what makes them tick, and we don't get to know them too well even after the story moves to Rakhat. The whole time we're focused on the human characters. Again, somewhat unusual for a scifi novel.
Neutron
Speaking as an athiest... (Score:3)
To Ms. Russell, I'd no like to apologise, and thank her for writing what I consider to be the finest book of 1997.
If you're interested, its sequel, Children of God manages miraculously to be every bit as good.
In short: this is a book you have to read. If you have non-sf-reading friends, give them this book as an example of everything that good science fiction can be.
I'm still waiting for her third book, and I'll buy it the nanosecond it's available.
Who are the monkeys doing these reviews? (Score:3)
Sparrow's not *bad*, but it's not a 9/10 either. It's a slightly-better-than-mediocre first attempt at sci-fi by a decent author, there's good ideas in there, but half of the book could have been edited out and left none the worse. Parts read more like a soap opera than a serious novel -- I like personal conflict and characterization, but with development and growth (beyond a single axis of personality), please! I'd give it a 6/10. If you like religion in your scifi, it's probably worth a read; but I can think of a dozen Heinlein, P.K. Dick or Vonnegut books that can tear this to shreds.