Theodicy

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Father Sandoz, the sole survivor of a Jesuit mission to an alien planet, grapples with his faith as he reluctantly confesses the disastrous consequences of meeting "God's other children."*

This is a book you have to allow to sink into your brain and heart, where it will certainly take root. It is a character study of Father Sandoz and his closest friends as well as a chilling first contact story of the impossibility of entering a truly foreign culture without suffering from dangerous ignorance and misunderstanding.

I admit to feeling impatient with Sandoz as he mopes and avoids telling his story (which is recounted VERY slowly in parallel flashback chapters, told in third person), but by the revelations at the end I was completely on his side - the horrors he suffered are every bit as soul-shattering as his reticence suggests.

Russell sees no conflict between religion and science, and for this I am profoundly grateful: her characters encompass a range of belief (from priests to atheists), but each person is educated, intelligent, and articulate. The Jesuit mission on Rakhat is to learn, not to proselytize, and the portrayal of the priests is human and sympathetic.

There are no other books quite like this one, but science fiction does have more than its fair share of thoughtful books about first contact by brilliant writers: Contact by Carl Sagan, China Mieville's Embassytown, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin...I could go on.

SPOILER(ISH)

P.S. There are traces of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine here, too, for anyone who remembers the Eloi and the terrifying Morlocks.

* This annotation was a joint effort by students, created in class for "Adult Reader's Services" taught by Nancy Pearl (Spring 2013).

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Avice Benner Cho is a human from Embassytown, a frontier outpost inhabited by Ariekei, whose singular Language can only be spoken by genetically modified Ambassadors. When a new Ambassador is sent to the Ariekei, his attempts to speak the perplexing Language results in devastating consequences for the entire planet.

This book takes about half of its length to warm up, but once the groundwork for the complex universe has been laid out the plot zips to its tense conclusion.

A basic knowledge of the language theory of sign/signifiers may be helpful to understanding the plot - but then again, maybe not. The alien Language, looked at too closely, is completely impossible but must be accepted at face value for the machinery of the plot to turn. There are plenty of puns and linguistic quirks (Avice's initials are ABC, after all), which is fun. I especially liked the way Language is written (like fractions, since it must be spoken by two mouths simultaneously), the naming convention for the Ambassadors (CalVin is an Ambassador made up of two perfectly identical people: Cal and Vin), and the idea of "biorigging"(basically all Ariekei tech are living machines).

There are plot points that don't quite pay off - Avice's friendship with a mysterious autom (a computer intelligence), and her odd relationship with her husband seem half-baked. Characters don't drive this science fiction story: ideas do, and the mystery of how the new Ambassadors could possibly eff up an entire species just by speaking their own language to them. The Ariekei are appropriately alien (I imagined them as giant praying mantises), but - like most of the characters - difficult to empathize with.

If you're into big-concept science fiction and don't mind struggling with disorientation as you try to figure out the rules, I think the ideas are interesting enough to carry you through. There is real horror and dread as Embassytown falls apart in the last half, and Avice's sense of the world ending is not an understatement.


(SPOILER)