Subject: Postview: "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell

From: [email-masked] (pm agapow)
Date: 13 Aug 1999 12:15:47 -0400

"The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell
		A Postview, copyright p-m agapow 1999

It is the near future.  A signal, alien music, is detected from another
star.  By happenstance, the Society of Jesus - the Jesuits - are present
at the moment of reception and rapidly launch a contact mission.  Forty
years later, the sole survivor is rescued and returned to Earth,
traumatised.

"The Sparrow" has collected much praise (including the Arthur C Clarke
award) and, to preempt myself, it deserves a lot.  It may not be a great
novel, but it has moments of greatness and it certainly a lot more worthy
than most recent award winners.  It's a book invested with a lot of
passion by an author who has done his groundwork.

"The Sparrow" is an old-fashioned novel in many senses,.  Others have
compared it to James Blish's "A Case of Conscience," over-emphasising fact
that many of the main characters are priests.  More to the point is the
fact that Russell dares to have her main character tortured by
metaphysical and moral issues.  The young priest Sandoz is tormented not
just by the loss of his colleagues but also by the malice the universe has
shown to them, as if God was playing with their hopes.  In lesser ways
this theme echoes through the story: the alienation of the young priest
saved from poverty by a career in the church, an orphan doing whatever is
necessary to survive a warzone, the contact party unwittingly changing a
culture by the simplest acts.  It's a universe for adults, one of
consequence and responsibility.

In the afterword the author reveals a few of her inspirations and sources.
While such revelations are often attempts to garner glory by association
 -- by the logical chain "X is great, I have copied / been inspired by X,
therefore I am great" or just "look at how much I've read!" -- Russell's
short list of references remind you of how much thought has gone into the
book.  The aliens of Rahkat are, although humanoid, split into two
contrasting races, bound by complex biological realities and social mores.
Although the contact party rapidly learn the local language, its shades of
meanings and connotations remain hidden to them.  Alien thoughts are not
human thoughts.  This becomes apparent when the sole survivor consents
unknowingly to mutilation, a misunderstanding that turns on the derivation
of a verb.  It's the sort of society that could only have been made up by
an anthropologist.

There is a flipside to the careful planning shown in "The Sparrow".  In
retrospect many of the plot turns are fairly manipulative.  It requires
quite a few implausibilities to get the story to the end.  The idea of
those who received the initial signal and their friends (a radio-
astronomer, a priest, a doctor, an engineer and an AI programmer) being
selected as the contact team is beyond absurb.  When the team start dying
off, the characters are ablated away with gay abandon, as if there was a
race to the end of the book.  One crucial event in the book turns on the
landing craft being critically low on fuel, the chief pilot not telling
anyone and the other pilot not noticing.  The fingerprints of the author
are far too obvious at these junctures, but to reiterate this is clear
mainly in retrospect.

If I might be spared a few moments in my role as professional
SF-curmudgeon, by the end of the book I'd had enough of quirky and
worldly-wise Jesuits.  Notice how the one "conventional" priest is the
only real villain in the book?  It also has one of those horribly smarmy
middle-aged couples who can act as surrogate parents to everyone, be very
wise and yet still be hip.  You know, the type that are only ever found in
science fiction novels.  The tirade endeth here.

"A hopeful sign that science fiction might reclaim its heritage as a
literature with boundless capacity to kindle wonder" is what Entertainment
Weekly said and that's a bright and fair claim.  I look forward to
Russell's future work with great interest, with great hope.
[***/interesting] and "You go girl!"  on the Sid and Nancy scale.

%A Mary Doria Russell
%T The Sparrow
%I Black Swan
%C London
%D 1996
%P 506pp
%G ISBN 0-552-997777-3
%O paperback, UKP£6.95

Paul-Michael Agapow ([email-masked]), Biology, Imperial College
"We were too young, we lived too fast and had too much technology ..."