The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

[rachelmanija]

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!



Once they get to the new planet, which is really under-described, they open the hatch and breathe the air. They test the local plants and animals for edibility by eating them. Didn't anyone think to bring some mice so they could feed the alien plants to something other than themselves to find out if it will kill them???

They meet the indigenous people, who do not appear to be the singers whose song was first heard by SETI, but who are friendly. This was by far my favorite part of the book, as they learn the new language and hang out with aliens. They do not do any investigation of anywhere but the small area they're in, or ask basically any of the questions you'd think they were there to answer. They do not ask about religion. They do not look for the singers, or draw any conclusions from their friends being terrified of singing.

They brought no medical imaging equipment, and although they knew the lander had only a tiny amount of fuel they waste it and then get stuck there permanently.

The shit hits the fan in an extremely rushed section in which everyone but Emilio dies off-page.

It turns out that there are actually two species on the planet. The species they've been hanging with is the prey. The other species eats them. The expedition grew gardens to supplement their own food, and they generously share it with the locals. It turns out that their breeding is tightly controlled by the predatory race, and the females only go into estrus when they get enough calories. So the prey starts breeding like mad, attracting the attention of the predators, who show up and kill them all.

Emilio, the lone survivor, is FED BABY MEAT. Then he's horribly mutilated. Then he's sold to a brothel where he's repeatedly raped by aliens. The rape aliens write pornographic songs about raping him. Then an earthquake makes the brothel fall on him and he's impaled on rebar. Then he gets cancer.

Eventually another expedition of humans arrives and asks about the first one. The alien child Emilio befriended leads the humans to the brothel, which I guess has extremely poor security. (I can't think why he didn't just walk out, if a child could walk in. Maybe she was only able to get in because there were humans with her?) Emilio, meanwhile, has decided he'll kill the next person who walks in the room, since nobody ever comes in the room except to rape him. The kid opens the door and Emilio slams her against the wall, killing her, before he realizes who she is.

The humans are horrified and send a message back to Earth that Emilio is a whore and a child murderer. This arrives twelve years before Emilio does, so he's a famous villain for years.

This makes NO SENSE. Everyone on Earth knows aliens killed the entire party, so would they really think an alien child deserves the same consideration as a human child? Would they find the distinction so meaningless that they don't even mention that she's an alien when they talk about her?

More importantly, it's incredibly obvious that Emilio had no intention of killing a child, but was so traumatized and freaked out that he jumped the first person who walked in and killed her accidentally, having no idea who she was. It even says the room was dark! If you walk into a room where the sole survivor of an expedition murdered by aliens is being held, tortured and mutilated and they jumped the first person walks in the room, this seems obviously an act of intended self-defense or at worst revenge gone wrong, not deliberate murder.



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.

Comments

[heavenscalyx]

Wow that's... how did it get so much acclaim? That whole storyline sounds like something a 13-year-old would've come up with and thought was edgy.

[helen_keeble]

I recall reading and enjoying this when it first came out, but the only thing that’s stuck in my mind was the bit where Emilio realised his alien predator patron/protector (?) thought he’d consented to the hand mutilation due to a translation failure. Something to do with the word for people who’d had the procedure (which if I recall was far less painful/traumatic with alien physiology than to humans) being related to a weeping-willow-analogous plant, so the poor priest thought they were talking about botany?

I recall enjoying the extreme whump and the whole predator/prey alien societies, while also thinking all the human actions were wildly implausible.

[rachelmanija]

Yes! The procedure is called something like "making you like an alien weeping willow" (ie, dependent) and Emilio didn't realize that his hands would be mutilated so his fingers were doubled in length and fell uselessly from his wrists like alien weeping wilow fronds. I actually liked that.

I also liked the predator/prey societies. I love the idea of intelligent predator/prey societies in general. One of my very favorite takes on it was a brief mention in Nick O'Donohoe's The Magic and the Healing, where we see a wedding between two deer-people that involves rituals which derive meaning from them being prey.

[rydra_wong]

They do not ask about religion.

Ah, one of the classic errors of 1950s/60s science fiction, along with not asking about the aliens' reproductive cycle, or their relationship to any other sentient species on their planet ("the other alien species is the adult form of the first species" being a common discovery).

Emilio, the lone survivor, is FED BABY MEAT. Then he's horribly mutilated. Then he's sold to a brothel where he's repeatedly raped by aliens. The rape aliens write pornographic songs about raping him.

... is there a particular motive for this? I realize that on Earth humans frequently rape and mutilate other humans, but even if these aliens are just like that, Emilio is presumably their first contact with someone from off their planet, so you'd think he'd be of some scientific interest and even if they are purely evil, they'd at least want to vivisect him or something?

Also "hey, these aliens are really into rape and mutilation" seems like contextual information that it'd be relevant to pass back to Earth, and, again, might contribute to people not assuming that Emilio decided to have sex with them for fun.

[rachelmanija]

h, one of the classic errors of 1950s/60s science fiction, along with not asking about the aliens' reproductive cycle, or their relationship to any other sentient species on their planet ("the other alien species is the adult form of the first species" being a common discovery).

Yes! Though this was from 2008. The Jesuits notice all sorts of things that are odd, like the aliens being terrified of music when it was singing that alerted the humans to the existence of their planet, but give up on asking about them when it seems hard to translate.

... is there a particular motive for this?

Baby meat: They had a lot of baby meat and had to feed him something. There was another survivor who refused to eat it and died, which makes Emilio feel even more guilty and terrible.

Mutilation: This was possibly a cultural misunderstanding. It was a ritual which makes one person another's dependent, and is less excruciating for the aliens who have fewer nerves in their hands. It was possibly one alien trying to protect Emilio, who consented to "Let me protect you" without realizing how that was done.

Rape: The aliens thought Emilio was really hot, apparently.

Also "hey, these aliens are really into rape and mutilation" seems like contextual information that it'd be relevant to pass back to Earth, and, again, might contribute to people not assuming that Emilio decided to have sex with them for fun.

You'd think. Especially since they murdered the rest of the party! Why didn't that make humans seriously side-eye the aliens instead of blaming Emilio?

[liv]

Yes, all the things you said. I sort of loved the alien linguistics and important stuff (like whether Emilio consented to the weird mutilation and rape-prison thing) getting lost in translation, in spite of everything else. Also Sofia is a Jewish character in a not at all the typical ways that the one Jewish person in the [generic SF setting] tropes go. I think MDR started off Catholic and converted to Judaism, (which normally I wouldn't bring up, since someone who is Jewish is just Jewish whatever their pathway to where they are now), but it feels like she was working through some emotions about Christianity and theodicy, while also coming to a very personal interpretation of why Judaism is better.

I feel like some of the buzz about this was based around, isn't it amazing to explore the rape of a celibate male character. I don't think that can have been so unusual in the 90s, but the SF community really got very enthusiastic about it. The book even won the Otherwise which is supposed to be for really innovative takes on gender.

[rachelmanija]

I think MDR started off Catholic and converted to Judaism, (which normally I wouldn't bring up, since someone who is Jewish is just Jewish whatever their pathway to where they are now), but it feels like she was working through some emotions about Christianity and theodicy, while also coming to a very personal interpretation of why Judaism is better.

Oh, that does make sense. So does the part about male rape being seen as new and original. Probably it was the first time many readers had seen it taken seriously rather than as a prison joke.

[vaznetti]

The thing about Russell is that she writes well, on a technical level, but the stories she tells are just not very good. I've always felt that she would have benfitted from four or five years on ff.net writing those Harry Potter novels where Harry (or whoever the designated woobie is) gets raped and tortured by the Death. Eaters for a while, and then all his friends turn on him for a while and he is very sad. Just to get it out of her system, you know?

You can also see the ways in which she was influenced by Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, but just takes it all so far over the top that it gets a little silly.

[rachelmanija]

I've always felt that she would have benfitted from four or five years on ff.net writing those Harry Potter novels where Harry (or whoever the designated woobie is) gets raped and tortured by the Death. Eaters for a while, and then all his friends turn on him for a while and he is very sad.

It felt just like that.

[starlady]

Wow. I had heard vaguely that this book was dark, but also that it was good. One of those things seem to hold up!

[minoanmiss]

Word.

[coffeeandink]

The fact that no one on the entire planet Earth believed it was rape and that an expedition to another planet USED UP ALL THEIR FUEL without thinking about it were the two things that just made the entire thing impossible for me to take seriously.

... And then I read the sequel because people said there was an interesting use of Judaism, and, well, okay, sorta? But also not worth it.

[rachelmanija]

The fact that no one on the entire planet Earth believed it was rape and that an expedition to another planet USED UP ALL THEIR FUEL without thinking about it were the two things that just made the entire thing impossible for me to take seriously.

Right??? Those were so ridiculous that I could not get past them. Also just randomly eating alien plants when they had plenty of their own food.

What was the use of Judaism in the sequel?

[recessional]

…thank you i will never read this book. :| ffs i can think of like twelve ways to make the whump HORRIFYINGLY BELIEVABLE and you wouldn’t even have to change the plot that hardly at all!!

[rachelmanija]

Do tell.

[davidgillon]

Another missed opportunity: the Vatican actually runs an IRL observatory, partly staffed by Jesuits, and has run conferences on extra-terrestrial life. If the Vatican decided to run a space mission, it could do a better job than this shower.

it has a number of the flaws common to science fiction written by writers who don't normally write it

*le sigh* And usually acclaimed as being somehow better than mainstream SF by reviewers who don't usually review it.

the elderly engineer (all sorts of engineer, he does everything from mechanical engineering to nanoparticles)

*Sigh*, engineering doesn't work like that. As anyone would have realised watching me try to bang a nail into a piece of wood yesterday. I'm tempted to say this is another flaw common to 'literary' writing.

[rachelmanija]

Another missed opportunity: the Vatican actually runs an IRL observatory, partly staffed by Jesuits, and has run conferences on extra-terrestrial life.

Cool! I didn't know that.

I felt defensive of the Vatican's competence while reading it, which is not a feeling I have ever felt before.

Even I know engineering doesn't work like that, and I know nothing about engineering.

[nestra]

This sounds like the least interesting thing to do with a Jesuit in space.

[machiavellijr]

Bad brain, why did you immediately jump to making up verses for "What shall we do with a space-goin' Jesuit?"

[lirazel]

Okay, this solidifies my resolve not to read this book. I am always ravenous for any books about religion in space, and I knew this one was very acclaimed. But snickfic read it and had the same reaction as you and now reading your very thorough review...I think it would just piss me off. Why can't people write good books about religion in space???????

[rachelmanija]

Got a link to snickfic's review?

I feel like there must be good books about religion in space but I can't think of any offhand. I do really like this fanfic inspired by Tiptree's "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on this Cold Hillside, The Locust, which is about medieval Jesuits encountering sexy aliens. It's tagged "Alien Sex, Localized Apocalypses, Early Modern Xeno, Size Difference, Epistolary, 16th Century CE,Plague, and has one of my favorite comments of all time, "It feels like I found it in an anthology I am somehow not old enough to be reading."

[cyphomandra]

Ha! I quite enjoyed this when I read it, but it was along time ago and even then the “of course this mutilated guy with PTSD we found in a brothel is there voluntarily” never worked for me. I did not like the sequel at all, and although I liked A Thread of Grace, her decision to decide who lived and who died based on a coin flip did not help the book AT ALL.

I went to a terrible book panel where Russell was interviewed by a local author who knew even less about SF and space exploration than Russell - she spent quite a bit of time praising Russell’s invention of the SETI program (Russell did correct her!) and once off that spent most of the time going on about how sexy Emilio was.

[rachelmanija]

A literal or metaphorical coin flip?

once off that spent most of the time going on about how sexy Emilio was.

Hahaha. The kangaroo aliens felt the same way!

[sovay]

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.

This novel came out while I was working at a non-sf bookstore and was my first exposure to the phenomenon of science fiction written by people who do not normally write it, compounded by the fact that I was accidentally the sff specialist at that bookstore because most of my coworkers did not read it. It was in fact a huge deal; we were selling copies off table displays. I remember genuinely liking the confusion of the two intelligent species, although in hindsight I am less impressed that the prey are all peaceful victims and the predators all violent rapists. I do not remember liking the sequel at all.

[ratcreature]

Though IIRC in the sequel

spoilers for the sequel

the prey starts a revolution with the help or some humans and a traitor predator and nearly wipes out the predator species, though at the end there are some survivors? The tables are rather turned though, and I recall that post revolution the remnants of the predator species also started to feel bad about eating the others but the former prey who eat plants wouldn't even let them hunt for other species via their troops, that confined the survivors and they were all starving slowly or something like that.

[eglantiere]

This confirms my Little Life Theory of Literature (with the disclaimer that I didn't read LL, understand that some people find value in it that's valid, etc): the lit critics are so starved for kinky/iddy/plotty/sf stories and have so little understanding of their own need that when a book that's otherwise clumsily or overbearingly retreads the kinky/iddy/plotty/sff genre beats is written by a lit author, they mistake their own strong emotional reaction for the book's literary value, and it gets passed on.

[rachelmanija]

I am positive that is exactly what was going on. If you're starved for whump without even knowing it, of course you'll love the whump book.

[cahn]

Oh, I read this when it came out! I was young enough (just out of college) that I didn't have the critical apparatus to articulate anything about it besides "wow that was a LOT of torture," and I'm sure the whump was a selling point to me at the time :)

THEY'RE ALL PRIESTS.

I laughed out loud at this. I'm gonna have to find more opportunities to use this line, like HOOKS FOR HANDS.

[rachelmanija]

Hey, sometimes you just really want "character is raped and tortured and everyone blames him for it."

[shipperslist]

I felt like I was reading a Bucky Barnes fic circa 2018.

Fucking yikes. 😬

[movingfinger]

I started this, but never finished, according to the bookmark in my copy. I guess I was lucky... and you have released me from keeping it! Off to the library booksale it goes.

[skazka]

Ooooo, this book gets me so tangled up in knots -- it has a lot of things I really enjoy (including apparently Jesuit priest whump, go figure) but then the actual treatment of in-universe responses to the expedition once they're out of Rakhat, both in wider society and within the Catholic Church itself, is absolutely baffling. I can buy all kinds of horrific misunderstandings, miscommunications, misrepresentations, etc. of traumatic experiences taking place in a literally-alien cultural context, but somehow just... not these ones. It feels like a fanfic AU of some other work where things like the handwavey approach to SF/science in general can be chalked up to the author's wheelhouse lying elsewhere. (Also like. The novel itself touches on this to some degree but not only is theodicy/the problem of evil a pretty damn big area of theology in general, atrocities perpetrated by and against Catholic clergy are a pretty big part of the history of the Catholic Church in general and the Society of Jesus specifically! Which I'd wager is part of the novel's inspiration, with the Early Modern Jesuits' queasy track record for cross-cultural contact with previously predominantly non-Christian cultures, but it should be possible to show the Catholic administration back on Earth having partisan beefs around the expedition itself/Sandoz as a figure without acting like this is the first time anything remotely like this has ever happened, ever.) Anyway, I obviously ended up here because you recced my own weird alien sex fanfiction so I am probably exactly the target market for this novel, but I have zero doubt there's room for a much better treatment of these same themes (like the fascination with first-contact narratives) and their relevance specifically in SF that is like... 20% less whumpy. At least.

[rachelmanija]

I also like alien culture clashes but... not like this.

You're right, Jesuits are not unfamiliar with missionaries doing horrible things and suffering horrible things! It's like no one has ever read any history OR theology.

[sartorias]

I remember that thing. Yet another Lymond whumpfest with the serial numbers filed off, to be replaced by a religion she didn't understand, and a world that made no sense, except of course to set up the whump.

[dhampyresa]

several classic novels about Jesuits in space.
THERE'S MORE THAN ONE OF THESE?!

[rachelmanija]

Yes! The other is A Case of Conscience by James Blish.

https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/tag/genre:+space+jesuits

[sabotabby]

Oh shit yo, it's A Little Life in space!

...is it bad that I kind of want to read it? Like it sounds very crosses-the-line-twice.

[rachelmanija]

Please please please read and review it.

[ratcreature]

I read this years ago and recall it being whumpy but don't remember it as having this many implausible plot holes....

[wateroverstone]

From memory-its a long time since I read itArthur CClarke wrote a short story about a Jesuit in space: the Star. It won sci fi awards

[minoanmiss]

I've been trying to remember that title this whole conversation. That story was so gloriously meanspirited.

[sheafrotherdon]

A lot of what feels inexplicable about this book hinges on the fact that she wrote this in the run up to 1992 and the 500th anniversary of Columbus. She's said openly that she thinks Columbus gets a bad rap and we wouldn't do any better if we had it to do over. So a lot of the stuff - breathing the air, eating the food etc - is mimicking what Columbus et al did.

That doesn't explain why Emilio ends up as he does, in the brothel. That whole part of the story was just torturous, for everyone, characters and readers, on every level.

[rachelmanija]

She's said openly that she thinks Columbus gets a bad rap and we wouldn't do any better if we had it to do over.

The second part of that doesn't follow the first.

So a lot of the stuff - breathing the air, eating the food etc - is mimicking what Columbus et al did.

That makes no sense. Modern people have modern knowledge. They aren't going to do things that Columbus only did specifically because he lived in a time before certain specific discoveries. Modern people might make similar mistakes, but not in the sense of acting like they don't know about advances in chemistry and toxicology.

[edenfalling]

WOW.

Thank you for reading this so I don't have to!