Alex Bustos | The Sparrow

Premise

In The Sparrow, the discovery of alien radio signals in 2019 at the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico leads Father Emilio Sandoz and fellow Jesuits D.W. Yarbrough, Alan Pace, and Marc Robichaux, as well as friends George and Anne Edwards, Jimmy Quinn, and Sofia Mendes, to embark on an interstellar journey to the source of the signals: the planet Rakhat. On Rakhat, the party makes first contact with two intelligent species, the Runa and the Jana’ata. Then, through a series of small but consequential and compounding missteps, all members of the crew—except for Emilio—perish on Rakhat and leave behind a devastating legacy.

The book alternates between chapters detailing the timeline of the mission and chapters focusing on the aftermath once Emilio returns home to Earth and must answer to his peers in the Society of Jesus— Father General Vincenzo Giuliani, John Candotti, Edward Behr, Felipe Reyes, and Johannes Voelker— for the disastrous outcome of the mission.

How did we get here?

I went into this book knowing that it ended in disaster, and also the book doesn’t exactly keep this a secret. From the prologue:

The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God’s other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God.

They meant no harm.

The outcome of the mission is known; the mystery is how things went down. So, for fun, I’ve decided to speed run the series of events that cascade into the mission’s tragic finale.

Astronomer Jimmy Quinn discovers an alien radio signal at the Arecibo Telescope. Humanity comes to interpret these signals as strange but beautiful songs.
Emilio Sandoz (a friend of Jimmy’s) and the Society of Jesus act quickly and decide to travel to the source of the signal. They assemble a team, retrofit a hollowed-out asteroid called The Stella Maris, and embark on a journey across interstellar space.
Some years later, the crew arrives at Rakhat and takes a lander to the surface. The lander is equipped with survival supplies, an ultralight aircraft for scouting, and enough fuel to make some trips back to The Stella Maris.
Shortly after landing, Alan Pace, one of the Jesuits on the mission, randomly dies (unexplained, he just does).
The crew uses the ultralight aircraft to find a small nearby settlement. There, they make first contact with the Runa, a species of nonviolent villagers whose livelihood involves traveling around Rakhat to harvest natural resources. It’s clear to the crew that the Runa lack the technological capability to produce the signal recorded at Arecibo. Regardless, they are friendly and welcoming, so the crew remains in their village, called Kashan, and the two species exchange languages and customs. Emilio’s primary point of contact with the Runa is a child named Askama, who he becomes quite close with.
Some time later, one of the Jesuits, D.W. Yarbrough, gets sick, and the group forms a plan to have Sofia and Marc take the ultralight aircraft to return to the lander to procure medical supplies. Due to heavy overgrowth at the original landing site, the ultralight crashes, so Sofia and Marc decide to fly the lander back to the Runa village. In doing so, they accidentally use up critical fuel reserves that would have allowed them to make return trips to The Stella Maris. The crew is now effectively trapped on Rakhat.
The crew makes contact with a member of the second intelligent species on Rakhat: an enterprising Jana’ata named Supaari VaGayjur. After an initial miscommunication, Supaari and the crew develop a working relationship, and Anne Edwards even becomes friends with Supaari. As a merchant, Supaari is particularly interested in the crew’s supply of coffee beans, which he sells for great profit due to their unique and highly valued aroma. Supaari promises to take the crew to the Jana’ata city of Gayjur, where the radio signals originated.
The crew begins to plant gardens as they settle into their life on Rakhat. In doing so, they inadvertently introduce the Runa to agriculture, causing their population to swell. It’s revealed that before the Runa and the Jana’ata evolved into sentience, the Jana’ata were a predatory species who preyed on the Runa. Now, styling themselves as the stewards of Rakhat, the Jana’ata have essentially domesticated the Runa and maintain a protective attitude towards them. They enforce strict population quotas, both for themselves and the Runa, so as to keep Rakhat’s planetary ecosystem balanced.
While George, Jimmy, and Marc are away with Supaari visiting the nearby city of Gayjur, Anne Edwards and D.W. Yarbrough are killed by a rogue Jana’ata, called a VaHaptaa.
The Jana’ata government in Gayjur discovers the Runa’s increased population numbers and sends soldiers out to cull the Runa newborns. Sofia encourages the Runa to resist, which results in the death of many Runa villagers, along with Sofia, Jimmy, and George. At this point only Marc and Emilio remain alive. They are taken captive by the Jana’ata soldiers. Eventually, they are rescued by Supaari.
For a while, Emilio and Marc live with Supaari in Gayjur. Supaari eventually offers them a procedure called hasta’akala. In Jana’ata society, hasta’akala is considered an honor; Supaari is basically offering to make them his dependents. However, due to a mistranslation, Emilio fails to grasp the full meaning of the operation. The end result is described in the book:

All of the muscles of the palms had been carefully cut from the bones, doubling the length of his fingers, and Sandoz’s hands reminded John of childhood Halloween skeletons.

Although his hands have been rendered completely useless by the procedure, Emilio survives. Marc is less fortunate and dies from the procedure.
Emilio continues living with Supaari. Eventually, Supaari sells Emilio— effectively into slavery— to the poet Hlavin Kitheri, the creator of the original songs picked up by the radio telescope at Arecibo. In exchange, Supaari is granted the privilege of reproductive rights (recall the Jana’ata’s strict population control).
Emilio is severely mistreated by Kitheri. After some time, a second landing crew from Earth, sent by the United Nations, arrives at Rakhat and is led to Kitheri’s residence by Askama, the Runa child who befriended Emilio in Kashan. Prior to their arrival, in a desolate and hopeless state, Emilio resolves to kill the next person to open the door to his cell. When Askama opens the door, before he recognizes her, he throws himself at her and kills her.

Having written all this out, I don’t know if this really qualifies as a speed run, but that’s the gist of what happens. “A series of consequential accidents” is an interesting trope to me, and I just wanted to enumerate exactly what those accidents were that led to the book’s outcome.

So That’s Why It’s Called That

A central focus of the book is Emilio Sandoz’s tenuous relationship with God. After having devoted his life to the Society of Jesus and subsequently having suffered so much and so severely, he’s struggling to either renew his faith in God or renounce his belief completely. Towards the end of the book there’s a passage:

“So God just leaves?” John asked, angry where Emilio had been desolate. “Abandons creation? You’re on your own, apes. Good luck!”

“No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering.”

“Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine,” Vincenzo Giuliani said quietly. “‘Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.’”

“But the sparrow still falls,” Felipe said.

And I just like when a book mentions its own title. Or, when it becomes obvious why a book has its particular title.

Anyway, this book was pretty good. It definitely delivered on its premise, and “well-intentioned, basically good people losing in devastating fashion because they have an incomplete world view” was an interesting subject to explore.