Another Take on "The Sparrow."

"THE SPARROW" by Mary Doria Russell reviewed by Bill Galbraith

INTRODUCTION
This review is written in two parts. In the first part, I have taken care not to reveal the plot, which would spoil the reading of the book - I give only as much as is told to the reader very early on, in the Prologue and first chapter, and then only in general terms. I will just say that the ending is dark and shocking, but the book is very powervul, and to my mind extremely worth reading. It is a fascinating novel, and clearly the author is highly intelligent.
The second part of my Review is clearly marked with a SPOILER ALERT, and should not be read if you have not yet read the book, but intend to. This part has become rather long - sorry! - but I found much of interest, mostly of science.
There is a sequel called "Children of God", which I have not read yet, but I have heard that is not as good as "The Sparrow".

GENRE
The book falls into a very specific and select genre - that of Roman Catholic Science Fiction. The closest to it in theme is James Blish's "A Case of Conscience", in that both are concerned with moral problems arising from contact with alien intelligent life on another planet, though I would rank "The Sparrow" as superior. Others in the genre are C.S. Lewis's trilogy, "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perlandra", and "That Hideous Strength", the first two of which are set on other worlds. The several Charles Williams novels that I have read are set on Earth, as is Walter M. Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" and Shamus Frazer's "Blow, Blow Your Trumpets", which is set before Noah's flood, which I read 60 years ago and have not seen since. One could include C.S. Lewis's seven "Narnia" books, though these are intended for children. I do not include J.R.R Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" in this genre, since they are not specifically Catholic, though of course Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams were closely connected in their informal club "The Inklings".
The genre may be subdivided according to whether the supernatural aspects are overt or covert. In the Lewis trilogy, William's books and Frazer's one, there are definite supernatural characters - angels and demons - or in some of Williams's, just magical events. In Russel's, Blish's and Miller's books, there are no overt supernatural persons or events, and the emphasis is on the convictions, doubts and concerns of the people involved.

STRUCTURE
The construction of "The Sparrow" is unusual and interesting. There is an alternation - not exact - between chapters relating events before the discovery of an alien, intelligent race, and chapters about the aftermath of a manned expedition to their planet, organized by the jesuits, whihc turned into a total disaster, with only one survivor, who is in a highly disturbed state. The two groups of chapeters are separated by about 40 years. The first group descrives the people involved, going into considerable detail into their antecedents, characters, and relationships. Gradually they reveal the discovery of the alien race, the decision to mount a jesuit expedition, teh arrival on teh alien planet, the events as they transpire, and the changing relationship of the humans among themselves and with the aliens. The second group of chapters, interspersed among the first group, tell os other events on the alien planet, as they are slwoly and with great difficulty extraced from the reluctant and bitter survivor. thus the reader gradually discovers what actually ahppened.

CHARACTERS
The human characters and their relationships among themsevles are well develped, and they change with time,. both on Eartha dn on the alien planet. This is unusual in science fiction, in which too often the characters are cardboard, and only the events matter. Though the expedition is Jesuit inspired, not all the crew are Catholic -- as well as several Jesuit priests, there are a happily married couple, an atheist, a homosexual and so on. And of course there are the aliens. The book could be read in a superficial way, but it really requires the ability to put oneself into other people's mind sets, including ones foreign to oneself, as this brings out the richness of the treatment.

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!

TRAVEL
In a sense, the method of travel to the alien planet is unimportant to the plot, except for the time dilation, see below. But it "adds verisimilitude" (W.S. Gilbert), I find it interesting in its own right, and it is commendably well stated in the book -- did the author consult with a physicist, work it out herself, or just pull the numbers out of a hat? I hoped to include a section on the mathematics of interstellar travel, but so far I have become bogged down in it -- perhaps later, but don't hold your breath.
The information given in chapter 11 is that the crew travel in a large, rocky, second hand mining asteroid, equipped with living quarters and thrust generators. They mine its rock on the way and use it as rocket ejecta (the material thrown backwards by a rocket to provide forward thrust) -- presumably powered atomically, though this is not stated. The thrust is kept constant at one Earth gravity by shipboard standard "day," two gravities by "night." The crew feel normal Earth gravity by day, higher to save time when asleep, and only have to cope with weightlessness at the beginning, middle and end of the journey. The distance to the alien system is 4.3 light years, and they reach a peak velocity of 93% of the speed of light at half way, where the ship is turned round and decelerated in exactly the same way. Because of relativity, the time taken, from the viewpoint of the crew, is only six or seven months, while for observers on Earth, it takes 17 years. The return takes the same, plus about six years on the alien planet. So on Sandoz's return, he has aged 7 years, and the whole of the rest of the world is 40 years older.
The figures look convincing, but I have not been able to come up with the same numbers. The first difficulty is relativistic time dilation -- time for the travellers is quite different to their colleagues on Earth, because of the high speed involved, and on return, they will be much younger than their contemporaries. Secondly, how fast is the fuel used (which depends on the attainable ejection velocity of the rocket exhaust). Thirdly, how big must the asteroid be, as it is necessary that there should be sufficient fuel for the return trip. Fourthly, it is required to keep a constant acceleration, for the comfort of the crew, and since fuel is continually being burnt, decreasing the total mass of the ship, the actual thrust, and hence the rate of fuel burning, has to steadily decrease. These four factors interact in ways that I find very confusing.
In the book, it is stated that a very large asteroid is required, to provide sufficient fuel for the journey there and back, but I believe this to be wrong. A larger asteroid has more mass, requires more thrust to accelerate it, and therefore burns more fuel. I think the fraction F of the mass of the asteroid burnt on the whole trip would be a constant, whatever the size of the asteroid. The remaining fraction (1-F) is the payload, ie the crew, living quarters, machinery, thrust generators, and any remaining part of the asteroid itself -- everything that comes back to Earth orbit. Certainly the payload must be sufficient for the needs of the crew, and this puts a lower limit to the initial size of the asteroid.

FINDING A PLANET
I was very pleased that when the travelers reached the alien star system, they didn't simply go to the planet, they had to hunt for it. Most people have no idea of the sheer emptiness of space. One sometimes sees a diagram showing the Sun and the eight planets (not Pluto any more) in their relative sizes and appearances, and this is correct. However, it never states that the distances between them are drawn to a completely different scale, as it would be impossible to draw the distances and diameters to the same scale and have a readable picture, and I think this confuses people. The planets are not really arranged tidily in a line, but are scattered at all angles from the Sun, though approximately in a plane. Also, in most Science Fiction films, there are planets all over the place, practically bumping into each other. So see the next Section for a more accurate model.
To find a tiny planet in a huge space around a star, the crew, on arrival, had to use standard astronomical practice by taking many pairs of pictures of exactly the same star fields, a few days apart. Stars and planets all equally appear as mere dots. Each pair is loaded into a Flicker Comparator, an optical device which superimposes the pair exactly, and then flickers rapidly between them. The stars do not appear to move, being very far away, but anything that appears to jitter back and forth, showing that it is moving, is probably a planet or an asteroid. This must be continued for all star fields until the required planet is found. It was commendable to find this attention to realistic detail in a science fiction novel.

MODEL SOLAR SYSTEM
So let us imagine a properly scaled model of our Solar System, in which the Sun is shrunk to the size of a netball, diameter 9 inches. Here is an approximate description, using familiar objects, and if interested, you can check the numbers in the table below. The length of a tennis court away from the Sun is the Earth, the size of the glass pinhead on a dressmaker's pin. The width of a playing card from it is the Moon, its diameter the width of the shaft of the same pin. A bit more than the length of a football field from the Sun is the huge planet Jupiter, two thirds the size of a ping pong ball. Half a mile from the Sun is the farthest out planet Neptune, the size of a pea. We will not bother with the other five planets. The nearest star is Proxima Centauri, 4,000 miles away in our model, the distance from New York to Rome.
And this is all just our little corner near the edge of our Galaxy. Even on the tiny scale we are using, the diameter of the Galaxy is still about the same as the real distance from Earth to Sun, and it contains about 100 billion suns. On average, galaxies are about 30 times this diameter apart, and there are about 100 billion of them. The distance to the furthest visible galaxy is nearly 20 billion light years, or 17 trillion miles -- quite impossible to model even on our tiny scale. There is an awful lot of extremely empty space out there!

TABLE FOR PREVIOUS SECTION
If you are not familiar with Exponent notation, which I shall use for its convenience and compactness, for instance "E13" means "multiplied by 10 to the 13th power" or "multiplied by 10¹³" or "multiplied by 10,000,000,000,000" or "multiplied by 10 trillion." "E0" means not multiplied by any tens, so 5.0 and 5.0E0 means exactly the same thing, five. But "E-3" means divided by 1000, and so on. For convenience in calculation, I use "m" for meters, "s" for seconds, "ly" for light years, but also show results in more familiar units. There are some minor discrepancies in the given measurements from different sources, both on the Web and elsewhere, and some measurements are my own, but great accuracy is not needed for the present purpose. And if you are very picky and actually go through the calculations, you may find some very minor rounding errors, as I only used 4 significant digits.

SCALING [OK]
Sun diam = 1.391E9 m
Netball diam 9 ins = 2.290E-1m
Scaling factor, Sun to Netball = divide by 6.074E9
Speed of light = 2.998E8 m/s
Year = 3.156E7 s
Light years to meters = multiply by 9.462E15 m
Meters to inches = multiply by 39.37
Meters to feet = multiply by 3.281
Meters to miles = divide by 1609

MEASUREMENTS, m	SCALED, m	OTHER UNITS	OBJECT
Sun diam = 1.391E9	2.290E-1	9.016E0 in	Netball (9 in)
Earth distance (AU) = 1.496E11	2.463E1	81 ft	Tennis court (78 ft)
Earth diam = 1.276E7	2.101E-3	0.0827 in, 1/12 in	Glass pinhead (0.1 in)
Moon from Earth = 3.844E8	6.329E-2	2.492 in	Playing card width (2.5 in)
Moon diam = 3.476E6	5.723E-4	0.0225 in, >1/45 in	Pin shaft (0.02 mm)
Jupiter distance = 7.78E11	1.281E2	420 ft, 140 yd	Football field (360 ft)
Jupiter diam = 1.436E8	2.364E-2	0.931 in	Ping pong ball (1.5 in)
Neptune distance = 4.495E12	7.400E2	2428 ft, 809 yd	Mile, 5280 ft, 1760 yd
Neptune diam = 4.970E7	8.182E-3	0.322 in, @1/3 in	Pea (@3/8 in)

FURTHER
Nearest star, Proxima Centauri = 4.242 light years = 4.014E16 m = 6.608E6 m scaled = 4107 miles = @ New York to Rome
Stars in our Galaxy = 1.0E11 = 100 billion
Diam of our Galaxy = 1.0E5 ly = 9.462E20 m = 1.558E11 m scaled = 97 million miles = about our real distance to Sun
Distance between galaxies = 3.0E6 ly = 2.839E22 m = 4.674E12 m scaled = 3 billion miles
Galaxies in Universe = 1.0E11 = 100 billion
Most distant object seen = 1.8E10 ly = 1.703E26 m = 2.804E16 m scaled = 17 trillion miles

HUMANOID ALIENS.
I would object that the two intelligent varieties of aliens - the Runa and the Jana'ata - are too human, as I mentioned briefly in my review of the film "Avatar". All the differences from us are really trivial - hair covering and tail, and a few other minor ones. We evolved through naked molecules, protozoa, multicells, chordates, fish, amphibia, reptilia, mammalia, primates to humans. This involved a huge number of chance events - big ones like climate changes, continental drift, other predatory and game species evolving at the same time, and small ones such as which individuals happened to breed, travel, or be killed. The chances of the same sequence being followed on another planet are extremely remote. If we ever discover intelligent, alien life, and it turns out to be humanoid, exceedingly unlikely in my opinion, then I should regard this as the most convincing argument yet for the existence of God.
A side note - the reason that the Jana'ata regard humans as sexually interesting is that the sparse hair and the absense of a tail make them seem "extra nude" and unprotected.

INTELLIGENT ALIENS.
One might make some very tentative guesses as to what an intelligent alien might be like. It is frustrating for a biologist that we have only one sample of life itself (all living things, plants and animals, evolved from one start, and therefore do not count as separate examples), and one of intelligent life, and one cannot make statistical predictions from one sample. Even one other case - say something like primitive bacteria on Mars - would add enormously to our understanding.
Would they even need to be a Carbon/Oxygen life form like us - a silicon life form has been suggested as a possibility, and there might be other types of organization we haven't thought of. It would probably need to allow great complexity, as does the organic chemistry of Carbon. Something working like a complex brain would presumably need a huge number of separate elements, comparable to our neurones, each of which could not be smaller than some limit to avoid random noise error, so the alien could not be smaller than some size - my personal guess would be not smaller than a small dog, though it could be huge. The alien would not have become intelligent without complex sense organs to perceive and model the world around it, though the organs might be very different from ours. Some of the organs would be long-range, like our eyes, though not necessarily in the same wavelengths, depending on the radiation from their sun. They would have ability to manipulate their environment - hands, tentacles, claws or something quite different - because without them they would not develop such a full understanding of their world. They would probably be social like chimpanzees and not solitary like bears, as social interaction would surely help along the development of intelligence. I do not think that much more can be guessed.

CONVERGENT EVOLUTION
The two intelligent species of alien - the herbivorous Runa and the carnivorous Jana'ata - are very similar in appearance, and can be mistaken for each other. The differences are limited to the Jana'ata's possession of teeth adapted to killing and eating meat (the Runa), three fingered hands with large sharp claws, and prehensile feet. The Runa have long, slender, agile hands with five fingers, both the outer ones opposable. These differences can easily be concealed at will, particularly by Supaari VaGayjur. Also, the Runa are highly social, the Jana'ata less so, which would be expected.
The species must be rather far apart in evolution, as the change from herbivore to carnivore is not a small one, requiring differences in the digestive system as well as the outer ones described above. The contention in the book is that this is convergent evolution, enabling the predator to approach the vegetarians closely and secretly to grab stragglers, and thus has positive survival value. I do not find this very convincing, as I know of no large Earth carnivore which does this - perhaps in the insect world. In fish, the convergence is more due to the hydrodynamic requirements of speed. However, once much of the convergence had taken place, and the Jana'ata had achieved intelligence, it is more believable that they might, by selective breeding of the Runa, make them more like themselves, more intelligent so that they could speak and more dexterous in the hands, so that they would be able to work for the Jana'ata. Breeding is rigidly controlled in both species by the Jana'ata, preserving the carnivore to herbivore population ratio and a survivable 4 percent.

HANDS.
Human hands appear to have three bones in each finger, and two in the thumb. In fact there is another bone in every finger and thumb, extending right back to the wrist, but fleshed together to form the palm. This is why a skeleton's hand looks so long fingered - the palm has gone. And almost all the whole of the hand is controlled by muscles in the forearm, acting through tendons - about the only exception is the adductor muscle of the thumb, that opposes it.
The extraordinary operation ordered by Supaari the Jana'ata was to eliminate the palm by separating all the fingers down to the wrist. This was done to the last two expedition members, Alan Pace and Emilio Sandoz, and Pace did not survive it. Sandoz returned to Earth, and sugery and prosthetics were attempted with only partial success. Because of the muscles in the forearm, he would have had some movement in the mutilated hands. Supaari had several reasons for this apparently pointless and cruel order. It made Sandoz's hands, hanging in a long droop, look to Jana'ata eyes more "elegant", more like the slender, long, capable hands of the Runa. This in turn suggested his subservient status as being more related to the herbivorous, domesticated race. At the same time it made him actually subservient and helpless, and less of a threat. Remember that on their very first encounter, Supaari made a swift, lethal attack, and was amazed when the much smaller Sandoz managed to defeat him, using street fighter technique.

RELIGION.
There are four Jesuit priests on the expedition, a married couple one of whom is a flat out athiest, and two others. They are a tightly knit group, get on well together, but freely argue amongst themselves, and their changing relationships and opinions are well described. The aim of the expedition is both scientific and religious - the Jesuits wish to determine whether the aliens are in a state of grace, fallen, saved, atheistic, or what. The main character and last survivor Sandoz is one of the priests. At first, the expedition comes together, arrives at the alien planet, meets the Runa, and all goes so well that he feels forced into regarding it as divinely managed. By the time he returns to Earth, mutilated and bitter, all has gone. All his seven companions are dead, he has rejected a girl he really loves in favour of his celibate vows, the expedition is a disaster, the beautiful music that lured them there has no high purpose, he has accidently killed the little Runa girl to whom he was deeply attached, just as he was about to be rescued, and there was clearly no divine management. He has completely lost his faith, and all his work and sacrifices have been for nothing, so his bitterness is hardly surprising.
The book is so cleverly written that I was unsure as to the religious opinions of the author, but have now read that she converted to Judaism. She clearly understands not just the opinions, but also the deep feelings, of both atheists and of Jesuits, and also of homosexuals. All the eight travellers and other characters are believable and well described.