A vastly different first contact novel, Russell’s book is intelligent, feminine, and moving. While other first contact novels might focus on technology, science, and action, Russell focuses on relationships, religion, and inner conflict. It’s a graceful examination of faith, the search for God and the attempt to understand a God who allows tragedy. It’s also an adept science fiction tale, tackling interstellar travel, time dilation, and a fully realized and original alien culture.

The plot follows Father Emilio Sandoz a Jesuit priest, who we learn in Chapter one, is the sole survivor of a manned mission to an inhabited planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. The story carefully alternates between three timeframes, before the mission, the aftermath of Sandoz’s return to Earth, and the first contact itself. Russell slowly exposes bits and pieces of the first contact, creating intrigue and anticipation, until it’s fully revealed in the final third.

In the first third of the novel, Mary Doria Russell’s writing exhibits a strong grasp of religion, European culture, and history. There is so much character backstory, she almost lost me. However, the quality of the writing and the hints of interplanetary exploration pulled me through. Ultimately, the intricate investment in character development pays off.

Without revealing too much, I’ll say that the first contact portion was imaginative and unique. Russell considers aspects of alien culture rarely addressed, such as their commerce, music, and multiple languages, but more importantly their relationships and social structures. While there’s enough similarities to humanity to mirror our own failings; the planet, its ecosystem, and its intelligent inhabitants feel genuinely alien. I'll also drop a warning that the conclusion includes some violent and horrific events that are not for the faint of heart.

A tragic and powerful tale of exploration, of both interstellar first contact and the internal search for meaning.

What a strange, accomplished nautilus of a novel, every chamber containing both joy and tragedy.

Sometimes a book takes you by surprise.

A quotidian author might find their voice and write a masterpiece. A book whose premise fails to connect might astound in execution. Or what starts out as simply a good book might build steam until, upon putting it down, you realize that the sum was greater than the whole of the parts.

The Sparrow was one of the more surprising books I've read, but unfortunately that was because by the end I hated it.

I tend to love books about first contact, character-driven literary science fiction, and SF that focuses on questions of religion and ethics. The Book of Strange New Things is easily in my top 10 SF books of the last 5 years, maybe top 5, and A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of my favorite books. I've had The Sparrow recommended to me a number of times when bringing up those books.

So where did The Sparrow go wrong? I actually enjoyed the first half or so of the novel. It begins in medias res, with the lone survivor of the first trip to another planet coming home to Earth, having been tortured, isolated, and malnourished. The authorities of the Society of Jesus, of which he is a member, take him in and begin an inquisition to find out what went wrong with his mission. From there, we begin flashing back to the parts of Emilio Sandoz's life that lead to he and 8 friends, a group of both Jesuit and secular scientists, to discover and travel to Rakhat.

There were certain small issues that annoyed me, but I found myself able to overlook or laugh at them for the most part. The story of scientific discovery is always exciting, and I enjoyed the character-focused banter that the main characters had, even if at times it felt that Russell was telling me how to feel, and that the characters were making decisions for the plot, rather than based on their character motivations. However, as the book went on those issues began to magnify, and by the end of the book I was fed up with it.

The characters' continued to make more and more ridiculous decisions, and the book continued to insist that they were good, in-character decisions. They couldn't see what was right in front of their face, and the book presented this ignorance as virtuous, even while every bad thing that happens to the characters was caused by their willful ignorance and bad decisions. In a video game, this kind of thing would be called ludo-narrative dissonance. In literature, I'm not sure what to call it. The characters had to make the decisions they did to get to the ending Russell needed to make her point, but in making those decisions they undercut the very point Russell was trying to make. For instance, JD refusing to tell the others that there isn't enough fuel in the lander, even when he knows they might need to use it.

The most egregious example of this is Sophia's final choice—in sacrificing herself and her own unborn child to save the Runa children, she exhibit's Anne's character traits. Sophia is a survivor who comes from a community that has long known how to survive any situation, and her entire character is explicitly built upon her utilitarian life philosophy. Throwing her own life away for no gain is completely out of character. We weren't even shown her developing a relationship with the Runa, unlike Anne or Emilio, so her choice makes no sense. But Anne had already been killed off, and so it was left to the only other female character to take on the "nurturing" female role in the book (an example of the weird gender politics of the book that I just don't have time to get into).

What really moved the book from the disappointing to hateful category for me was the author interview published at the end of my edition. Russell said that she wrote the book as an apologia for Christopher Columbus, to show that we shouldn't be so hard on him for the "mistakes" (aka atrocities) he committed in coming to the New World.

I have two major problems with this: the first is that Columbus was a monster, and the way he treated the Native Americans he came across should not be forgiven. Russell calls this kind of thinking "historical revisionism", as if updating our ideas about the past when we get new and better evidence is evil, as opposed to just doing the academic pursuit of history. The truth is that Columbus

Russell says that her characters come to Rakhat with "radical ignorance", and thus make mistakes in how they handle themselves. However, Columbus was not ignorant. In enslaving men to work in caves and cutting the hands off of those who wouldn't bring him enough gold, he wasn't acting ignorantly, but with extreme greed and malice. And even if he were ignorant, ignorance is not an excuse for bad behavior. The book treats the characters' ignorance as a virtue, when in fact it's the cause of every bad thing that happens to them, and was not inevitable. They choose to go into every situation without thinking it through, without learning more about the situation. Their ignorance was a choice, and not a virtuous one.

My second issue is in the very way Russell attempts to construct her metaphor. Columbus's whole reason for searching for India and accidentally finding the New World was for economic reasons: he told Queen Elizabeth of Spain that if she gave him ships, he would give her riches she couldn't imagine. Nothing about the mission to Rakhat involves any economic exchange. In trying to write a book about the Columbian contact in order to excuse his actions, Russell has left out the primary motivation that Columbus had for traveling to the new world. As such, the book fails at its own stated goal, regardless of how disgusting you think that goal is (and obviously, I find it hideous).

And this brings me to my final complaint about the book. There is no real reason for the characters to go to Rakhat. That is to say, the mission has no goal. They are not there to trade. They are not there to convert souls (and indeed, the book & characters fail entirely to include the species of Rakhat in their philosophical and ethical inquiries). They aren't there as diplomats. They're hardly even there to learn, being strangely incurious about their surroundings and incapable of doing much physical science due to a lack of expertise & equipment. The mission has no core goal as explicitly uttered by the characters or that they implicitly are following. They are just there because they think it's cool to go, the ultimate tourist destination.

This review barely touches on the regressive gender politics, the "white savior" implications of Sophia's choice at the end, the lack of real ethical considerations of the Rakhat civilization and how that squares with the ethics of the characters, how the Catholics on the mission feel about the lack of religion across the entire planet, how the book constantly told me how funny the characters while being yet I never laughed once, or the extreme sexual torture that's depicted in detail and yet written off by most the characters for most the book as the fault of the victim, etc etc etc. In the end, this was a boring book that pales in comparison to other books that attempt to tackle philosophical questions of faith, ethics, and anthropological discovery in Science Fiction. If you'd like to hear more about those topics, I go into them in-depth in my podcast episode on this book.

I was convinced that this book will be a 5 star read for me. Unfortunately, turned out it wasn’t…
It is a very well written book, touching profound themes but it has too much religious stuff for me. All the quest is brought down to Emilio’s torment: “I love God or not?”

The story is told in alternate time frames – before and during the mission to Rakhat and after returning from there, Emilio Sandoz being the sole survivor of this mission. Don’t jump, it’s no spoiler, this is being told in the first pages. It raises your interest and makes you turn page by page to found out what went wrong and why.

But in the end, all felt pointless to me. Emilio suffered hell, indeed, and my heart cringed at his ordeal, but what about the others? Jimmy, Sofia and their unborn child, George, Anne, Marc? Yes, Emilio suffered because he lost them, but it’s not the same thing. Or this was a way to show that messing with the aliens’ environment, their deaths was a holy punishment? Really, I don’t stomach this…

Anyway, I liked reading it, the alternates past and present, the characters’ types and the alien culture up to a point. The writing is beautiful and fluent, it doesn’t have pace issues, still, I expected something else – and some tech stuff, which lacks completely.

I’m glad I read it, I enjoyed it enough but I won’t continue with the next.

I give up. This is one of the most absurd books I have ever tried to read. Earth finally makes contact with a planet in Alpha Centuri and who decides to make the first trip there but a group of Jesuits, a young astronomer, a middle aged doctor and her engineer husband and a beautiful computer expert, none of whom have any interstellar expertise. Did I mention that they are making this trip inside a hollowed out asteroid? Makes perfect sense to me. Not. Apparently something goes tragically wrong and one priest returns to Earth, horribly deformed and in disgrace.
I can only suspend belief so far and this book pushed me to my limits. The lack of any scientific basis for anything in the story is irritating. The characters are caricatures for whom I cared nothing. The plot is absurd. There is enough foreshadowing early enough to let you know where the story is going. Supposedly there is some deep philosophical/ religious revelation in the book that brings it all together. I got 179 pages in and just gave up. It's just not worth the tedium of the story to get there.

Sadly, goodreads has yet to allow a kill-it-with-fire rating, so I'll have to content myself with a one star review and a nice cup of tea to quell the overpowering nausea. Not due to the "shocking" ending, which I would have welcomed somewhere around page two. Not due to the incompetent sci and incredibly half-assed fi. Due to the revolting, self-congratulatory, aren't-we-so-clever-and-cute, wink-to-the-audience characters. But perhaps this was intentional. Perhaps Ms. Russell intended her audience to greet the tragic death scenes with laughter, loud cheers, and grateful relief that these idiots will FINALLY shut up. No? There's still more than 100 pages left? ... God, damn it.

I can only imagine Ms. Russell's thought process went a little something like this:

"Now I want to set this book in the future, but I don't actually want to go to the effort of developing a rich, textured, and believable future society. I know! I'll have all my main characters be obsessed with the 20th century! And they'll do nothing but reference 20th century pop culture! And then they'll all stand around complimenting each other on how funny and brilliant and totally sexy they all are! I mean, anyone reading my book will HAVE to think my main character is witty if all my other characters say he's witty. Ooo! Ooo! And they'll all agree with everything I think, and one of them will actually be me, but no one will notice because I'll be super subtle about it and -"

You would think that at this point someone would have stepped in, if not for Ms. Russell's sake, if not for the sake of future generations, then for the whole field of science fiction. They've already dumped Stephenie Meyer on us. Did we really need this too?

It took me a while to get into this book, partly because a similar book about a religious order exploring another planet was much more engaging from the start (Anathem by Neal Stephenson). Once I hit page 100 though, I started realizing how deeply I was caring for this cast of characters. It might seem strange to read a book about Jesuits in space, but really this book is about the span between belief and doubt, the complexity of relationships, and the moral and ethical dilemmas that are faced when interacting with an alien culture from our own small world view.

The author jumps between the before and after of the Jesuits hitting Rakhat, and I found the revelations and conclusions heartbreaking and thought provoking. It is rare that a novel can bring me to tears, but I think it is reflection of how well the characters are written that I even cared that much.

I'm not sure I can adequately express how profoundly this novel affected me. I certainly wasn't expecting such a personal examination of faith. I can't really find the words to explain the physical and emotional reaction the story evoked for me, but I believe that for anyone who has ever lived a life of faith, and then found it severely shaken or lost, they would also find Emilio Sandoz's tale to be a visceral read as they recall their own process.

Beautiful writing.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set out on his infamous voyage to discover the New World. His purpose would seem to be a very noble one of expanding the horizons of the present day world in the name of the royalty of Spain and the holy Christian faith. What he succeeded in doing, however, was nearly exterminate the vast majority of the Native inhabitants of this new world and to grow the transatlantic slave trade.

In 1519 Hernan Cortes left Cuba seeking riches in the islands to the west. What he succeeded in doing, however, was to discover and ultimately destroy the unknown Aztec civilization of Mexico. It is often said that if we as humans do not learn from history then we are doomed to repeat it.

The book, The Sparrow, is a very good example of explorers not remembering history. Although the story is fiction, it begins on Earth with humans in the not-to-distant future that should have been aware of the explorers, Columbus and Cortes, and of the disasters brought about by their inaccurate assessment of other cultures. Instead, the passengers of the Stella Maris choose to make contact with the inhabitants of Rakhat without understanding their culture, behaviors, or the larger ecological impact.

There were places in the book when it seemed that the researchers realized that an assumption they had made might not be accurate but, instead of following up, they chose to ignore inconsistent or contradictory data.

The existence of a second species on Rakhat came as a surprise to the humans and yet there were apparent signs that this was a strong possibility. On page 325 Emilio states that “there were indications that we failed to recognize…the Runa have ten fingers, but the numbering system was based on six - the Jana'ata hand has only three digits…from the beginning, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Quinn noted a mismatch between the Runa culture we observed on Kashan and the culture that produced the radio signals that led us to Rakhat.”

Another example is the gardens that the researchers introduced into the Runa culture.

Before beginning their journey the ecological impact of bringing seeds had been discussed and it was decided to bring the seeds for possible planting at their destination.

Later, on the planet, there had been an ecological impact discussion concerning the remains of the first explorer to die, Alan Pace. At that point, Anne made the following statement, “The moment we stepped out of the lander, we affected this ecosystem. We have breathed and vomited and excreted and shed hair and skin cells. This planet has already been inoculated with whatever bacteria we're carrying.”

This is perhaps when the researchers began to lessen their attention to the impact of their activities on the inhabitants of Rakhat. They felt the gardens were necessary for their survival, obtained permission from the Kashan elders, and were happy when the Runa began gardening and seemed to flourish from their efforts.

Had the researchers been more informed about the cultures of Rakhat, the gardens would have been recognized as something that could and did upset the ecological balance of the “New World”. Seemingly harmless assessment situations are often subtly biased toward a researcher's views and experiences.

The ethics of what happened on Rakhat as viewed through a community psychologist's lens is summed up by Arthur K. Heller. In a quote from his article entitled Ethical Dilemmas in Community Intervention, Heller states, “We should, of course, constantly strive to act in an ethical manner, but we also must recognize that ethical dilemmas often have no clear resolution…At times, helping one group may mean harming another, or helping to resolve a present crisis may increase the likelihood of future difficulties.”

A great science fiction book with the importance of social responsibility threaded throughout the story.

In the spring of 1636, Isaac Jogues, Society of Jesus, sailed from France to Quebec. He was part of a Jesuit party set out for the New World, to Christianise the native population of what was then called Nouvelle-France (a vast territory colonised by the Crown of France, that spanned from the Labrador and the Saint Lawrence River, to the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and Louisiana). Father Jogues settled in Ontario with a group of Jesuit missionaries, among the Iroquois, the Huron and the Algonquin. The situation between the natives and the French settlers was tense indeed and, at some point during his mission, a war party of Mohawks captured Isaac Jogues. During his captivity, the priest was beaten, hung, mocked, flogged, horribly tortured and had the ends of his fingers cut off. Jogues endured his ordeal with an equanimous attitude, considering his martyrdom as an imitation of Jesus’ torments on the cross and the persecution of the early Church. Isaac Jogues managed to escape his torturers and get back to France. He was canonised in 1930.

The Sparrow is a science fiction novel, but it is secretly inspired by the life of Isaac Jogues. Mary Doria Russell imagines that, at some point in the near future, the giant radio telescope at Arecibo picks up a message from an alien civilisation, somewhere in the region of Alpha Centauri (an idea probably borrowed from Carl Sagan’s Contact). A group of scientists, among them several Jesuit priests, decide to set out for that distant planet, in a secret mission sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. Several years later, only one survivor, Father Emilio Sandoz, a linguist from Puerto Rico, returns from the mission to Earth, his hands atrociously mutilated. He is questioned by the Father Superior, and the whole point of the novel is to discover, through a series of flashbacks, how he got these stigmas.

The underlying idea of the novel is extraordinarily compelling and reminded me of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion (which also includes a story with a Jesuit). Father Sandoz, as well as most of the characters involved in the interplanetary mission, stand out well, each with their background, with their issues, with their language and outlook on the world. And Russell has the rare merit of presenting the priests as multidimensional and endearing characters. She also has a remarkably deft pen, devoid of affectation, which makes her prose very pleasant to read. Unfortunately, it seems the execution doesn’t quite live up to what I was expecting.

For one, the plot drags on from one piece of conversation to the next, most of which are not devoid of funny repartee and cloister jokes, but add very little to the story, tend to water down the stakes and get a bit irritating in the end —especially the slightly gooey Anne character and the constant sprinkling of foreign idiomatic expressions.

Secondly, some plot points are a bit far-fetched, for instance, the decision, taken practically on the back of an envelope, between a few friends who coincidentally happen to be around, to set up a mission to the alien world on an asteroid travelling at close to the speed of light, and all secretly funded by the Church!

Too, considering this is a book about a bunch of ecclesiastics, many considerations are geared toward priesthood, the vow of celibacy and some vague theological thoughts. Still, it seems to me Russell is just scratching the surface on these topics to give her novel some philosophical gloss.

I was also disappointed by the way Russell lacked a sense of awe when imagining what an alien planet and civilisation would be like (is this attributable to the fact that the author is an anthropologist?…): basically, it’s a bit too similar to our planet and human civilisation — say from pre-Columbian America? — and I’ll leave it there to avoid spoilers.

And finally, the last fifty pages, which unveil the mystery of the maimed priest, take a sharp turn towards a gruesome, even tearful, ending, that I found somewhat surprising, disturbing, clumsy even — when considering the benign, casual tone of the rest of the novel — and, all in all, almost unnecessary.

So why didn’t Russell write a novelised biography of Isaac Jogues instead of this lumpy sci-fi tale?

Serçe’nin hikayesi görünürde basit bir soruya dayanmakta: “Uzayda bir yerlerde bilinç sahibi bir tür keşfetseydik, onları ziyarete gittiğimizde neler olurdu?” Bilimkurgu eserlerinde görmeye alışkın olduğumuz şey ilk adımın genellikle uzaylılardan gelmesidir, ancak Russell’ın tercih ettiği yola da yabancı sayılmayız. Zaten Serçe’yi etkileyici bir roman yapan da kurgusunun veya olay örgüsünün marifeti değil. Uzaylılarla ilk temas gibi sık işlenen bir temayı araç olarak kullanan yazar aslında hikayenin temeline tanrı inancı gibi bambaşka bir konuyu yerleştirmiş. Russell’ın oldukça tehlikeli sayılabilecek, kolaylıkla birçok kişinin tepkisini çekebileceği böyle zor bir konudan başarıyla ayrılmasını sağlayan ise iyi yazılmış karakterleri, özellikle de olayların merkezinde yer alan kahramanımız Emilio Sandoz.

Serçe farklı zaman dilimlerinde geçen ve paralel olarak okuduğumuz iki ayrı anlatı üzerinden ilerliyor. Aralarında 40 sene bulunan bu iki anlatının da başrolünde dilbilimci Cizvit rahip Emilio Sandoz var. Ama ortak nokta neredeyse bu kadar, çünkü yan karakterlerin yanı sıra hikayelerin tonu da baya farklı.

İlk zaman dilimi 2019 yılında başlıyor. Porto Riko’daki Arecibo Radyo Teleskopu çalışanlarından biri Alfa Centauri’den alınan bir sinyali fark eder ve sinyali incelediğinde bunun bir şarkı olduğu anlaşılır. Anlamadığımız bir dilde bilmediğimiz enstrümanlarla çalınmıştır ama sonuçta akıllı bir yaşam formu tarafından ortaya konduğu açıktır. Bu buluşunu önce en yakın arkadaşlarıyla paylaşır, aralarında Emilio Sandoz’un da bulunduğu bu arkadaş grubu daha sonra Rakhat adı verilecek gezegene giden ekibin de parçası olacaktır.

Bu keşif kısa sürede hem Birleşmiş Milletlere hem de Cizvit -veya bilinen başka adlarıyla İsa Cemiyeti, İsa’nın Askerleri- yöneticilerine haber verilir. Lakin kitabın önsözünde de söylendiği gibi “Birleşmiş Milletlerin yıllar harcayarak aldığı kararı, İsa Cemiyeti sadece 10 günde almıştır”. Zira Cizvitlerin kuruluşlarından beri esas aldıkları bir amaçları vardır: Ad Majorem dei Gloriam, Tanrının şanını yüceltmek için.

8 kişiden oluşan mürettebatta Emilio Sandoz dışında biri müzikolog, biri doğa bilimci ve biri de eski pilot olan üç Cizvit rahibi, mühendis George Edwards ve antropoloji eğitimi almış tıp doktoru karısı Anne, keşfi ilk yapan gökbilimci Jimmy Quinn ve son olarak da yapay zeka adaptasyonu üzerinde uzmanlaşmış Sofia Mendes var. Karakterlerin çeşitliliği yalnızca meslekleriyle sınırlı kalmıyor çünkü Edwards çiftinden biri ateist diğeri Katolik yetiştirilmiş bir agnostikken Sofia ise İstanbul’da büyümüş bir Yahudi. Ama Serçe kesinlikle bir din eleştirisi ya da güzellemesi değil. Yazar etliye sütlüye dokunmayayım demek yerine biraz kısıtlı fakat hiçbiri öbüründen üstün gösterilmeyen farklı bakış açıları sunarak kararı okura bırakıyor.

Romanın ikinci anlatısı ise Rakhat yolculuğunun sonrasında geçiyor. Kitabın daha ilk bölümünde yolculuktan geriye yalnızca Emilio Sandoz’un dönebildiğini öğreniyoruz. 2059’da başlayan bu hikayede ötekine kıyasla çok daha karamsar bir hava var. Bir yandan Cizvit yetkililer Sandoz’un başına neler geldiğini öğrenmeye çalışırken bir yandan da Sandoz kendi başına gelenleri anlamlandırmak için çaba gösteriyor. Özellikle beğendiğim bir nokta da paralel ilerleyen bölümler sayesinde birinci zaman dilimindeki bazı olayların ikinci anlatıda Sandoz’un ağzından aktarılması oldu. Yazar böyle anlarda okuru kısmen yaşananların dışına yerleştirerek olayları daha açık bir şekilde değerlendirmemizi kolaylaştırmış.

Russell anlattığı iki hikaye arasında dengeyi güzel yakalamış. İlk sayfalarda bize vadedilen büyük olay romanın son sayfalarına dek bizden saklansa da gerilim ve merak duygusu neredeyse hiç kaybolmuyor.

Gelgelelim bu kadar övmüş olsam da Serçe kusursuz bir eser değil. İlk olarak kitabın bilimsel konularda inandırıcılıktan uzak olduğunu söylemem lazım. Yabancı bir türle ilk kez iletişim kuracak ekibin zahmet harcamadan belirlenip çok az eğitim alarak bu göreve gönderilmesi veya bu gezegene iniş gerçekleştiğinde de hemen hemen hiç zorluk yaşamadan ortama uyum sağlamaları gözüme batan bazı şeyler. Kitabın bir diğer sıkıntısıysa gerekenden fazla uzun olması. Russell Serçe’yi yazmaya başladığında aklında bir öykü varmış fakat daha sonra karakterleri zenginleştirerek bir romana dönüştürebileceğini fark etmiş. Ne var ki romanın bazı kısımları hikayeye bir katkıda bulunmadığı gibi bende de sanki sadece kitabı biraz daha uzatabilmek amacıyla yazılmış izlenimi uyandırdı.

Serçe, özellikle doğru beklentilerle okunmaya başlanırsa, okura başta inanç olmak üzere çeşitli konularda sunduğu felsefi tartışmalarıyla birçok kişiyi memnun edecektir. Hazır Metis Yayınları uzun bir aradan sonra devam kitabı Tanrının Çocukları’nı da Türkçeye kazandırmışken, bilimkurguya ilginiz olsun olmasın sizi düşünmeye sevk edecek kitaplardan zevk alıyorsanız Serçe’ye mutlaka şans vermelisiniz.

- Burak MERMER

İncelemenin tamamı için: http://kayiprihtim.com/inceleme/serce...

Fans of well-written and extremely thought-provoking fiction should run out to a bookstore or library and pick up a copy of this incredible book. It's one of those rare novels that transcends several genres, while still being respectful of those genres. Ostensibly a science fiction novel about a first contact with an intelligent alien species, "The Sparrow" makes a very poignant and fascinating commentary on numerous theological issues. It asks many Big Questions, the least of which, believe it or not, is Is there a God? Spiritual without being preachy and moving without being sentimental, this book is, by far, one of the best science fiction novels I've read in a long time.