Not a Sparrow Shall Fall
Posted on | February 16, 2010 | 1 Comment
And wouldn’t you know it, nigh on four years ago, Brad Pitt purchased the rights for himself to play the central character of the Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz. Having not read it at the time, I failed to notice this tidbit, but now cannot help but wonder how he will handle the surprise buttsecks bit. Oh? Whazzat? Spoilers? Don’t worry, the buggering comes in early and so the spoilage is minimal.
The book? Whew. I’ll skip the brief plot overview – Jesuits in space, making first contact, yaddayadda – and instead poke around its intriguing mix of almost credible verisimilitude and ultimate naïveté (gotta love those diacritics). I am having a really hard time delineating the two. After all, one of the subjects of the book is the constant dialogue on whether the events at hand are the work of divine will or mere random happenstance. If the former were true, there can be no quarrel with the seemingly improbable coincidences and slight utilization of handwavium, though the question of Epicurean theodicy would weigh heavily upon such a deity, as indeed, it does throughout the book’s framing for the prodigious flashbacks.
Should, however, the latter be the case, the flashbacks themselves become troublesome, with their attempts at imagining a viable method of interstellar travel and extraterrestrial life and civilizations falling just a pinch too short, thereby all the more to poke the discerning and scientifically minded reader in the eye (much akin to a slight, but unwavering toothache). This weighs heavy on segments of the book wherein the plot does little to advance, opting instead to linger on so nearly plausible yet entirely unfeasible technical details – a true crime for such a weighty tome.
In the end, though somewhat overlong, the book is quite satisfactory if you set out for a balanced discussion on the merits and place of religion in the world, divorced from both kinds of extreme fundamentalism. I know where I stand on the issue, but “The Sparrow” illuminates an “opposing” side that I can understand and live peacefully alongside, without considering it’s proponents, as is often the case in the real world, somewhat stupid fur uncritically buying into bronze-age bicameral fairy tales.
If however, you are looking for a plotty sci-fi romp around the stars or a light book to flip through on the beach, steer clear. This one makes you think, and pauses frequently to do so itself.
Tags: aliens > book review > first contact > jesuits > novel > seti > sf > sparrow
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Written in minutes and fact-checked in seconds via Google. May contain unsafe levels of self-righteousness. Past cleverness is no guarantee of future results.
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February 16th, 2010 @ 14:52
Meh. No img tags allowed. And I had a funnier trollcat :P
http://bit.ly/5J7JMh ;)