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This is one of several classic novels about Jesuits in space.
The book takes place in two timelines. In the present, Father Emilio Sandoz has returned to Earth as the sole survivor of a trip to a newly discovered planet which went disastrously wrong. He is near death from malnutrition and general bad treatment, and has been tortured, gang raped, and horrifically mutilated by kangaroo-like aliens. He was discovered in this condition in an alien brothel, and literally everyone on Earth seems to believe that he just randomly decided that he'd like to be a whore for aliens.
People often do refuse to believe that any given survivor was actually raped and instead claim that the sex was consensual. But if there's ONE situation in which people are likely to believe that a rape happened, it's when the victim is the sole survivor of a massacre and is discovered starving, tortured, mutilated, injured by violent sex, and locked in a brothel.
So that entire storyline, which is an enormous part of the book, was one that I found impossible to believe. Especially since until near the end of the book, literally nobody even considers the possibility that Emilio – who, don't forget, was mutilated so he is literally unable to use his hands – had been raped rather than having consensually had incredibly brutal and violent sex with a bunch of aliens.
The other thing everyone blames him for is that he killed a child. We get no details on that until the end of the book, so I'll just say that once we learn the details, I had a big problem believing that blame too.
This book got an incredible amount of mainstream acclaim. Unsurprisingly, it has a number of the flaws common to science fiction written by writers who don't normally write it, and largely read by people who don't normally read it. It has genre tropes but not the underpinnings that make them make sense.
What it also has a lot of is whump. If it was written for Whumpfest for the prompt "Everybody blames character for being gang raped, mutilated, and nearly killed," I would say, "Excellent job!"
At least 50% of the entire book consists of Emilio being accused of terrible things, being so traumatized that he's unable to defend himself, having nightmares, having migraines, throwing up, not eating, doing agonizing physical therapy with painful prosthetics, etc. I felt like I was reading a Bucky Barnes fic circa 2018.
The second timeline is the story of the expedition to the alien planet Rakhat. It's discovered when a low-level tech working on SETI, Jimmy Quinn, hears aliens singing on radio waves. Jimmy, who is friends with Emilio and his group of friends, gets together with them one night. They decide it would be cool to visit the planet, and come up with the idea of making an asteroid into a spaceship. They present this to the Vatican, which is the only entity who cares enough to send a spaceship. It hires the entire friend group who came up with the idea to be the crew, plus a couple redshirts.
I cannot think of a less-qualified crew for a first contact mission. It consists of Emilio (linguist and priest), Sofia (another linguist), an elderly doctor, her husband the elderly engineer (all sorts of engineer, he does everything from mechanical engineering to nanoparticles), another priest, and Jimmy, the low ranking dude at SETI. None of them are qualified to go on an expedition to another planet! None of them are capable of designing a spaceship on the back of an envelope!
( Spoilers! )
Religion is a huge part of the book but it's weirdly unmoored from the science fiction part. There's tons of discussion of Emilio's celibacy (the most boring aspect of being a priest IMO) but despite the Catholic Church funding the expedition and putting multiple priests on it, there's no discussion about the theological implications of aliens. Nobody even asks the aliens whether they have a religion!
Back on Earth, Emilio agonizes over how a benevolent God allowed the terrible events he experienced. This is a very understandable reaction, but there is an entire field of study devoted to that exact question. It's called theodicy and it ought to be something a priest would be aware of. Even if Emilio is too traumatized to think of it, the other priests ought to be bringing in actual theology when they talk to him about it, because THEY'RE ALL PRIESTS.
Also, nothing about Emilio's crisis of faith had to be science fictional. He'd be having the exact same crisis if he got caught up in a war on Earth where his friends were killed and he experienced the exact same trauma only done by humans.
The book takes place in two timelines. In the present, Father Emilio Sandoz has returned to Earth as the sole survivor of a trip to a newly discovered planet which went disastrously wrong. He is near death from malnutrition and general bad treatment, and has been tortured, gang raped, and horrifically mutilated by kangaroo-like aliens. He was discovered in this condition in an alien brothel, and literally everyone on Earth seems to believe that he just randomly decided that he'd like to be a whore for aliens.
People often do refuse to believe that any given survivor was actually raped and instead claim that the sex was consensual. But if there's ONE situation in which people are likely to believe that a rape happened, it's when the victim is the sole survivor of a massacre and is discovered starving, tortured, mutilated, injured by violent sex, and locked in a brothel.
So that entire storyline, which is an enormous part of the book, was one that I found impossible to believe. Especially since until near the end of the book, literally nobody even considers the possibility that Emilio – who, don't forget, was mutilated so he is literally unable to use his hands – had been raped rather than having consensually had incredibly brutal and violent sex with a bunch of aliens.
The other thing everyone blames him for is that he killed a child. We get no details on that until the end of the book, so I'll just say that once we learn the details, I had a big problem believing that blame too.
This book got an incredible amount of mainstream acclaim. Unsurprisingly, it has a number of the flaws common to science fiction written by writers who don't normally write it, and largely read by people who don't normally read it. It has genre tropes but not the underpinnings that make them make sense.
What it also has a lot of is whump. If it was written for Whumpfest for the prompt "Everybody blames character for being gang raped, mutilated, and nearly killed," I would say, "Excellent job!"
At least 50% of the entire book consists of Emilio being accused of terrible things, being so traumatized that he's unable to defend himself, having nightmares, having migraines, throwing up, not eating, doing agonizing physical therapy with painful prosthetics, etc. I felt like I was reading a Bucky Barnes fic circa 2018.
The second timeline is the story of the expedition to the alien planet Rakhat. It's discovered when a low-level tech working on SETI, Jimmy Quinn, hears aliens singing on radio waves. Jimmy, who is friends with Emilio and his group of friends, gets together with them one night. They decide it would be cool to visit the planet, and come up with the idea of making an asteroid into a spaceship. They present this to the Vatican, which is the only entity who cares enough to send a spaceship. It hires the entire friend group who came up with the idea to be the crew, plus a couple redshirts.
I cannot think of a less-qualified crew for a first contact mission. It consists of Emilio (linguist and priest), Sofia (another linguist), an elderly doctor, her husband the elderly engineer (all sorts of engineer, he does everything from mechanical engineering to nanoparticles), another priest, and Jimmy, the low ranking dude at SETI. None of them are qualified to go on an expedition to another planet! None of them are capable of designing a spaceship on the back of an envelope!
( Spoilers! )
Religion is a huge part of the book but it's weirdly unmoored from the science fiction part. There's tons of discussion of Emilio's celibacy (the most boring aspect of being a priest IMO) but despite the Catholic Church funding the expedition and putting multiple priests on it, there's no discussion about the theological implications of aliens. Nobody even asks the aliens whether they have a religion!
Back on Earth, Emilio agonizes over how a benevolent God allowed the terrible events he experienced. This is a very understandable reaction, but there is an entire field of study devoted to that exact question. It's called theodicy and it ought to be something a priest would be aware of. Even if Emilio is too traumatized to think of it, the other priests ought to be bringing in actual theology when they talk to him about it, because THEY'RE ALL PRIESTS.
Also, nothing about Emilio's crisis of faith had to be science fictional. He'd be having the exact same crisis if he got caught up in a war on Earth where his friends were killed and he experienced the exact same trauma only done by humans.
