The Sparrow

The Sparrow is the first novel by science fiction author Mary Doria Russell. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.

The novel begins when the SETI program, at the Arecibo Observatory, picks up broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The first expedition to the world that is sending the music is organized by the Jesuit order.

Only one of the crew, a priest, survives to return to Earth, and he is damaged physically and psychologically. The story is told in flashback. In 2059 a Vatican inquest is begun in order to find the truth. The survivor, Emilio Sandoz, slowly reveals the fate of the expedition, starting with the discovery of the signals in 2019, up to his rescue from the planet Rakhat. His return has sparked great controversy. Not just because the Jesuits sent the mission independent of United Nations oversight, but also because Sandoz, the sole survivor, was found by his rescuers apparently engaging in prostitution. In fact, when the rescuers appeared, he savagely murdered the alien child who had guided them to him. Contact with the UN mission, which sent Sandoz back to Earth alone in the Jesuit ship, has been since lost.

From the beginning, Sandoz, a talented linguist born in a Puerto Rican slum, believed the mission to Rakhat was divinely inspired. When he was posted to his hometown on Puerto Rico, he invited his friend Anne Edwards, a physician with a background in anthropology and her husband George, a retired engineer, to work with him. George volunteered at Arecibo, where he met astronomer Jimmy Quinn. Sophia Mendes, a computer expert (and former prostitute), came to Arecibo to create an AI program based on Quinn's work. She had previously worked with Sandoz to make an linguistics training AI. In Sandoz's mind, only God's will could bring this group of people with the perfect combination of knowledge and experience together at the moment when the alien signal was detected by Quinn.

The Society of Jesus quickly organized a mission to find the origin of the beautiful singing heard coming from Alpha Centauri. A small asteroid, left over from a defunct mining operation, was quietly purchased and converted to an interstellar vessel. The crew would consist of Sandoz, his four civilian friends, and three other Jesuit priests. D.W. Yarbrough was an ex-military pilot and the leader of the expedition. Marc Robichaux was an naturalist and Alan Pace, a musicologist.

The Stella Maris arrived in the Alpha Centauri system one year later, ship-time. Seventeen years had passed on Earth in the mean time. The crew found that the signals they had heard were radio broadcasts being reflected off of the planet Rakhat's moon, a necessity since the planet possessed no ionosphere. They landed on the surface away from signs of civilization, to acclimatize themselves to the new world. They experimented with eating local flora and fauna and the mission seemed to be going well until Alan Pace died suddenly and inexplicably.

Despite this blow to their faith in the mission, they continued. After spying a village with their solar powered glider, they decided to make contact with the inhabitants. The cat-like Runa of the village of Kashan were a peaceful agricultural people. They were clearly not the singers of the radio broadcasts, to the crew's disappointment.

Sandoz set about learning the language of the Runa, with the help of the Runa child Askama. Mendes, although admittedly attracted to Sandoz, decided to marry Quinn. And Yarbrough's health slowly began to fail.

While on a trip to obtain supplies from their orbital landing craft, Mendes and Robichaux crashed the glider. Neither was seriously injured but the glider was a total loss. They flew the landing craft back to Kashan, not realizing until they arrived that they used up too much fuel to ever return to Stella Maris with the craft. The crew accepted that, barring the arrival of another craft from Earth or discovery of a local fuel source, they were stuck on Rakhat.

The crew got their first glimpse of the culture of the singers in Supaari VaGayjur, a merchant with a trading relationship with Kashan. Supaari was a Jana'ata, a similar but separate species from the Runa. He promised to show the crew his city Gayjur but seemed in no hurry to deliver on this promise.

What the crew did not realize was that Supaari was a member of the lowest caste of his people, a third-born Jana'ata with no right to reproduce. He was economically comfortable due to his ease of interaction with the Runa but had little social status. In the crew from Earth, he saw an opportunity to raise his status. The crew had brought with them many things, like coffee, that were of great fascination to the inhabitants of Rakhat.

The crew introduced the concept of gardening to the Runa, who had previously only harvested wild plants growing outside their villages. With new nearby food sources, they grew quite fat and fertile.

In the crew's third year on Rakhat, they finally got a glimpse of the civilization of the singers. Accompanied by Supaari, George Edwards, Robichaux, and Quinn secretly entered Gayjur. Robichaux took in some hallucinagenic Jana'ata performance art and Edwards and Quinn went out drinking with Supaari's Runa secretary. All-in-all it was a thrilling experience for them, although Robichaux did witness the public execution of some Runa by the Jana'ata.

When the party returned to Kashan, they found that Yarbrough and Anne Edwards were dead, their bodies having been found by Sandoz and Mendes horribly dismembered. Yarbrough had been declining rapidly and had not been expected to see the party's return from Gayjur but Anne's death along with his, and the manner, was devastating to the crew. Supaari told them that it was probably outlaw Jana'ata who were responsible for the deaths.

Soon after this, a patrol of the Jana'ata military came to Kashan. Many babies had recently been born to the Runa there. The Jana'ata ordered the Runa to bring them forward. And began to slaughter them.

The crew had failed to realize that the Runa, though sentient, were like livestock to the Jana'ata. In their eyes, the overbreeding caused by the introduction of gardening had to be contained. But the crew could not stand idly by and resisted, along with some of the Runa. Mendes, Edwards, and Quinn were killed. Robichaux and Sandoz were arrested by the Jana'ata and were taken along with the patrol to nearby Runa villages. These villages had copied gardening from Kashan and in them the slaughter continued. The only food the humans were offered was Runa meat. Robichaux refused it.

Supaari rescued the two and took them to his home. There he offered to perform a Jana'ata ritual called hasta'akala on them. Not fully understanding what it entailed, Sandoz quickly agreed. It turned out to be a horribly mutilating surgical procedure performed on the hands, where tissue was removed from between the bones in the palms of the hands. Essentially, the patient would now have extremely long fingers but with little use of them. They would now be totally dependent on the one who made them hasta'akala. Weak from hunger, Robichaux did not survive the procedure. Sandoz barely did.

Sandoz lived for many months, in misery, with Supaari and learned the Jana'ata language K'San from him, while in turn teaching him English. Then Supaari did what he had perhaps planned all along: he gave Sandoz to Hlavin Kitheri, the Reshtar of Galatna. The Reshtar was a prince among the Jana'ata and someone with whom Supaari wanted favor. Kitheri was in fact one of the singers the crew had heard in the Rakhat signals. At first, Sandoz thought he had become part of an aristocrats menagerie. He was wrong.

It was a harem. And after enduring months of rape and abuse, Sandoz finally decided he would kill the next person to come into his cell. It was Askama, bringing the rescue party from Earth. She was dead before he realized his mistake.

Sandoz returned to Earth, his friends gone and his faith in God shattered.

Children of God is the sequel to this book.