The Sparrow

"I am a big science fiction junkie. Ekow Eshun wrote a sci-fi book called Black Gold of the Sun and he says that a lot of immigrant children love science fiction because it is about travel to new worlds even further away than the world they have come from. I found that made sense to me. Russell is a feminist academic and this book is about a Jesuit priest on a Catholic mission, not to Peru, but to outer space, to a place with which contact has been made. There is some communication and trade and he is now going on this mission. He develops a deep relationship but there is a fundamental misunderstanding that results in terrible tragedy. He has committed a terrible murder of a child and can’t forgive himself. A Jesuit in space! It’s brilliant, but it’s not at all comic. It is about how you can transfer God and Jesus to space, how people might seem to have understood you when they have not understood you at all. There is astonishing writing here and if it wasn’t science fiction it would be read as great literature. I think it is about cultural exchange. About the idea of God stemming from cultural experience and what happens to religion on another planet, how it changes as our experience changes and whether or not it can take changes and whatever we find there into account. It is really about one man’s crisis of faith. I mention the mission to Peru because there are similarities – taking this ancient message somewhere where it is not nearly as ancient as what is already there. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount ."

"Sure. This is similar to Semiosis , in that it has an easy hook, which is: Jesuits in space. It’s set in the relatively near future, the early 21st century. We’ve caught up to it in time now. The idea was that we overhear a signal from another planet—not directed at us, music. It happens to be coming from the nearest star to us, Alpha Centauri, which is only four light years away. And while the governments of the world are figuring out what to do, the Jesuits—who have always, as Russell writes, “sought to know God’s other children”—pull together a mission and go. I think that’s so smart. I can see that: missionaries function outside of governmental red tape, and would just get it together and go because that’s what they’ve been doing for centuries. As I said, it was inspired by the 500th anniversary of Columbus. Russell sees this crew going with the best of intentions, with nothing but openness. They’re not trying to proselytise, they’re trying to know God’s other creatures. “Science fiction is about trying to stretch your imagination to see if you can hold an impossible idea in your head, just for a moment” Before she became a novelist, Russell was a paleo-anthropologist. She studied Neanderthals. And the Neanderthals are an example of another sentient species that humans once knew and interacted with. Sure enough, there are two sentient species on the planet that the humans in The Sparrow go to. The humans are kind of slow to figure this out, and are slow to figure out the complex societal relationships between these two species. It’s a fantastically beautiful book; the world is imagined so vividly. And it’s a real, real gut punch of a book. But while there is tragedy, it’s really about trying to know who else might be out there, and connect with them. The main character in The Sparrow is a Jesuit priest who is also a field linguist. He’s the one who is able to figure out how to bridge communication between humans and the aliens they meet."

"This is probably the only science fiction I’ve read that was even more upsetting than Surface Detail . It’s about the perils of exploration and exploitation, and misunderstanding other cultures. The world receives a broadcast from another planet, and it’s incredibly beautiful, otherworldly music. The assumption is immediately made that this is a beautiful peaceful society, and the first group of earth people who are able to afford and mount an expedition to this other world is the Catholic Church. So, as they did in the 14th and 15th centuries, they get a bunch of priests together and set off – if not to convert, then at least to converse with this alien species. They land on the other planet after a long voyage, and they discover that on this world, there are two separate races. One is agrarian and soft and peaceful, and the other is highly, highly intelligent, highly artistic, highly cultured – and preys for food on the softer, more agrarian species. Obviously, the group from Earth are horrified and shocked by this, and various things that they do and cultural misunderstandings that they have result in slaughters and horrific, outcomes. From the beginning, you’re being told the story in flashback from the one character who survived. His body has been taken apart, and so has his mind, and it’s his memories of what has happened – and I won’t spoil it for people who haven’t read it, but the full revelation of what’s happened is genuinely shocking and unpleasant. And deeply moving. She writes really, really beautifully about horrible things. You know, I find I’m surprised at myself that I’ve chosen two such upsetting books on this list, because I’m not someone who likes particularly nasty stuff! But The Sparrow is so empathetic in its treatment of its characters. It’s very much about the way the church behaved in South America, and the ramifications of that which continue today; but it’s also about what religion means in a technological universe, and about misunderstanding other cultures and making judgments about them based on our own moralities – and asking, is there an essential morality? I have a family member who is a Christian – I’m not myself, I’m entirely agnostic – and this is his favourite novel, even though I think it is very questioning of the Church, particularly the established Church. And of religion in general. The name comes from the Biblical line about His eyes on the sparrow, about God watching over everything; but does a human god also keep his eye on other cultures? That’s always one of the big questions in sci fi. But it’s also apparently something that appeals to someone who is a true believer, so I find that really interesting. It’s a book that seemed to be everywhere 10 or 15 years ago but doesn’t seem to be talked about very much anymore, which is strange. She never followed up – she worked on those two science fiction novels, and then she turned to historical fiction and stayed there. And it never got adapted, and never will, I don’t think! The first half of the book is very adaptable – you could make a cracking HBO series out of it. But the second half is just too bleak. I strongly encourage people to read the book. It’s one of those books that expanded my consciousness and my horizons when I read it, in my early 20s. All of these novels are consciousness-expanding, or have been for me in one way or another: The Dispossessed opened my eyes to ideas about other ways of living and anarchism, many of which I’d been introduced to as a kid, but it clarified them for me. Dune introduced me to ideas of story, ideas about storytelling and unpicking your own stories, and anti-storytelling almost; and also it was one of the first science fiction novels I ever read, so it introduced me to the whole idea of interplanetary science fiction. Surface Detail introduced the idea of expanding and extrapolating your ideas, and making them bigger and bigger and bigger… I really like a sci fi novel that is consciousness-expanding. I really like just a good tale as well – one of the books on my long list was Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, the first of the Expanse series. Those books are just cracking science fiction novels that introduce a really well-thought-out future in a straightforward and approachable way. I also had The Forever War by Joe Haldeman on my long list, which is again relatively straightforward in its world building but tells a really good story. But I guess for this list, I chose the worlds that felt like they were opening up my mind."