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The Sparrow
The Sparrow is paleo-anthropologist / novelist Mary Doria Russel's first novel, published in 1996 and set in the year 2019 and 2060. It is a first-contact science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
The characters can be loosely grouped into the following categories:
1. The Jesuits: Voelker, Giuliani etc.
2. The crew on board the Stella Maris: Father Emilio Sandoz, Sofia Mendez, Jimmy Quinn etc.
3. The Janata (on the planet Rakhat): Supaari Vagayjur, Hlavin Kitheri etc.
4. The Runa (on the planet Rakhat): Askama, Anasazi etc.
In 1996 MDR imagines 2019 commerce to be dominated by asteroid mining (not data). Politically the US has been one-upped in the space race by a newly resurgent Japan, that has taken most of Asia in conquest, and also virtually monopolizes space. There is also a thriving education-arbitrage business where businesses have securitized education loans. The investing business not only receives a share of the student's future earnings but can also trade the 'invested rights' on a secondary market. What hasn't changed in The Sparrow are the Jesuits, who are given an early and enduring nod in the novel, which is detailed below.
Jimmy Quinn works at the SETI program in Puerto Rico; after a night of heartbreak he returns to his work looking for alien life. that night he stumbles upon a signal (in the form of music) from the Alpha Centauri system that could be a sign of alien life of the planet Rakhat. Jimmy, and a group of his friends are recruited by the Jesuit Society to travel to the planet of Rakhat. Asteroid mining technology transports Jimmy & friends to Rakhat.
While the terrestrial settings on Earth are grounded in reality and thoughtful, the interstellar journey from Earth to Rakhat is hardly believable. Other than the effects of time-dilation, there is little detail about the effects and the efforts that go into space travel. However the serious side of science fiction in The Sparrow comes from how the author speculates through anthropological, personal, cultural, religious, social and ecological changes. Think of Frank Herbert's Dune, instead of Neal Stephensons Seveneves (which takes a long and detailed look at humans leaving the planet).
The world of Rakhat
The principles were the same: form follows function, reach high for sunlight, strut your stuff to attract a mate, scatter lots of offspring or take good care of a precious few, warn predators that you’re poisonous with bright colors or blend into the background to escape detection.
Located in the Alpha Centauri solar system, 4.37 light years from Earth, Rakhat has 3 suns and of mass slightly smaller than Earth, so weaker gravity made humans stronger than they were on Earth. The technology on Rakhat is comparable to 19th century Earth, on account of the radio waves signals that were picked up on Earth. The air, water, soil and vegetation are like earth; the flora and fauna follow similar paths of evolution, growth and society.
By far, one of the memorable subjects of The Sparrow is the relationship between the Jana'ata & the Runa - the two major animal species on Rakhat. The Jana'ata are the dominant of the two; they are carnivores, have better technology and live in a complex social organization which evolved in context of cooperative hunting. The author has compared the relationship between these two alien species to the symbiotic relationship between cheetahs and gazelles.
The Runa are more numerous than the Jana'ata but vegetarian, docile, sleek, fur covered and feline. They are traders, and good with languages. They also have a sophisticated practice of raising a child jointly with a trading delegation, learning the new language and cementing the relationship for generations. The Runa are intertwined in Jana'ata life, playing the parts of servants, labourers, assistants and bookkeepers. The Jana'ata also breed the Runa to serve as concubines, given the strict population controls in Jana'ata society (only the first two children in a Jana'ata family are allowed to breed and have families of their own).
The interstellar mission was undertaken in secret and ended in tragedy. Just one member - the linguist Father Emilio Sandoz - survived despite having been physically and psychologically broken down on Rakhat. The circumstances that lead to this anthropological undertaking turning into a nightmare are revealed in the course of the book. The suspense of the story is established when 'what happened' becomes known early on, but 'how it happened' is revealed slowly, and completely only at the end.
The ideas of the story are big, but it is narrated almost throughout with context to interpersonal relationships - among the crew of the Stella Maris, and also with context to cultural differences in the way life and society have emerged on Rakhat. In later interviews the author compared the mutilation of Father Emilio Sandoz with foot-binding procedures prevalent in Japan at one time. The author also narrated how the arrival of the crew of the Stella Maris on Rakhat played into one of the Janatas quest against cultural population control measures.
The title refers to the gospel of Matthew which says that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God's knowledge - which is strange because in the afterward MDR - who grew up Christian, then veered towards atheism, then moved back towards Christianity when her son was born and finally converted to Judaism - says that Jews know better than people of most other faiths that God does not take an active role in the affairs of men. The Sparrow won the Arthur C. Clarke award and bunch of other awards as well, and is widely acclaimed in sci-fi circles, but doesn't seem to we widely known outside. It is accepted as science fiction but delves deep into religion and topics concerning God.
The Alpha Centauri triple star system.
The author, as mentioned - gives an early and enduring nod the to proactive Jesuit Order, who for centuries have attempted to spread Christianity far and wide, and at significant personal risk. Refer to James Clavell's Shogun for another illustration of missionary Jesuits in feudal Japan, and Google 'sentinel island john' for a missionary expedition gone wrong. In Shogun the protagonist Blackthorne finds himself shipwrecked in Japan, and as he makes his way to a position of respect among the samurai he finds Jesuit priests already established within the political and religious systems.
It was predictable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research.
In Rome, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send.
One had to be patient to thrive in Rome, where time is measured not in centuries but in millennia, where patience and the long view have always distinguished political life. The city gave its name to the power of patience—Romanità. Romanità excludes emotion, hurry, doubt. Romanità waits, sees the moment and moves ruthlessly when the time is right. Romanità rests on an absolute conviction of ultimate success and arises from a single principle, Cunctando regitur mundus:Waiting, one conquers all.
Again, these lines above will resonate with readers of Shogun, who's hero - Toranaga Yoshi (based on Ieyasu Tokugawa) - waited through the rule of two giants of Japanese martial history (based on the historical warlord Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi) till the right moment to strike out and establish a shogunate that lasted over two centuries.
The author ends The Sparrow by once again flexing the proactive nature of the Jesuit Order, that wins the day despite their faults, bureaucracy and rigidity.
“There is no form of death or violence that Jesuit missionaries have not met. Jesuits have been hanged, drawn and quartered in London,” he said quietly. “Disemboweled in Ethiopia. Burned alive by the Iroquois. Poisoned in Germany, crucified in Thailand. Starved to death in Argentina, beheaded in Japan, drowned in Madagascar, gunned down in El Salvador.”
Jesuits in the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar in India.