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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
so severian, i don't mind the spoilers, but what's the role of the camorra in "the sparrow"?
i've been more curious about it since you mentioned it. do they blackmail someone? do they traffic in priceless scientific information? are they actual emissaries from the evil planet, as tesla69 would have us believe?
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Ok, so I think I'm rested up enough to answer you now, but it occurs to me that plenty of folks here probably haven't read "The Sparrow" or "Children of God," and that some of those folks might want to read them at some point.
These folks may not feel the same way about spoilers, so I will reply to your question in a PM, and I will use this opportunity to make a shameless plug.
A space mission, manned by scientist priests, marks the biggest and most controversial discovery in human history. The crew left under strange circumstances to investigate sonic signals from a distant planet. They've been gone for decades. They lost touch with earth about a year into their mission. The world is shaken when the ship, The Sparrow, crash lands in the ocean, suddenly and without warning.
Only one person is aboard the ship when it returns. Father Emelio Santos. It's only been about 18 months for him since the Sparrow left Earth. He returns to find a world changed, and he himself is changed. He is mangled, sick, traumatized; his hands deformed in an inexplicably surgical way. He is weak, in shock, near death... and he is about to stand "trial" (Catholic trial) for the murder of his crew mates. :eek:
"The Sparrow," by Mary Doria Russell, is one of the most powerful and terrifying books I've ever read. I tend to just
inhale science fiction, and the result is that I often read books that are absolute shit from a literary perspective.
"The Sparrow" is the kind of book I live for. It has sci-fi elements up the wazoo, but it is by no means a "sci-fi" book. It was recommended to me because of my interest in science and religion, in fact.
It's the story of a near future, where the Catholic church has essentially become the most powerful private enterprise in the world, influencing and forming governments, pioneering scientific exploration, and just generally being ahead of the rest of the world in every conceivable way. At the forefront of this movement, the Jesuits have re-emerged as the Order Not To Be Fucked With, and they have abandoned traditional religion in terms of the pursuit of knowledge and power. Religion has become more a philosophy with which the Jesuits and all of Catholicism is publicly aligned, rather than a rule book for their own behavior. In fact, they operate a bit like a giant, well-financed, shadowy mafia. Ethically and morally blurry at best.
ANYHOO — Pretty much every enterprise is linked in some way to the Catholic church, and when a discovery is made about possible life on other planets, our a young hero priest with a fuckton of issues believes it God calling to him, and he and his fellow Jesuits (who are also, mostly, highly credentialed specialists in the fields of linguistics, physics, anthropology, medicine, etc.) decide to stake their claim on this discovery and send a crew of "missionaries" into space to meet and greet this possible new life form before the pesky old government can make a move.
Long story short... it's not God. If anything, what they find is the opposite. And boy does it get brutal. Not in an "Alien" kind of way... not at all. In a much more sinister way.
"The Sparrow" fucked me up. Gave me nightmares and inspired me at the same time. Horrifying. It is a tragedy, make no mistake.
Read it, bitches!
EDIT: Also there's a sequel called "Children of God" that is a fun read, but pretty much bullshit compared to "The Sparrow."
