The Sparrow & Children of God - probably the greatest story I ever read...

OK, my aim in this blog is give my opinions about the books I've read. I don't have to be impartial and I don't want to give too much away in case I ruin the read, but I could go on for hours about these two books.

About the Author
Mary Doria Russell is a former anatomist and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband and their son. She has studied six languages, trained as a paleoanthropologist and is the author of scientific papers ranging from bone biology to cannibalism, Mary Doria Russell's first novel, The Sparrow, won the 1996 James Tiptree Award, the 1998 BSFA Award and the 1998 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Dr Russell has also won the Cleveland Arts Council Prize for Literature and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of Science Fiction. Her second novel, Children of God, is the sequel to The Sparrow.

 The Sparrow

Back in the late 90's I used to spend many a happy half hour in Books Etc in Victoria St SW1 before going to begin a night shift in City Hall (sadly Books Etc is now a clothes shop). For a chain bookshop Books Etc had a good range of all kinds of books and the SciFi section wasn't bad. I'd seen this book "The Sparrow" on the shelves for weeks before I finally picked it up. I had initially been put off by the cover which I thought looked like something spiritual rather than something SciFi. I was both right and wrong but for the next couple of days I couldn't put The Sparrow down.

From Wikipedia:
"The novel begins in the year 2019, when the SETI program, at the Arecibo Observatory, picks up radio broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending the music, is organized by the Jesuit order."

I was amused by the fact that when these radio signals were first detected the whole world was arguing about who should go to investigate. Meanwhile, quietly, the Vatican organises and sends a mission lead by missionaries as they presume that the music from Rakhat is religious.

Another point in the story that amused me greatly was that when first contact was actually made, the crew were listening to Van Halen being pumped loudly from the lander.

The Sparrow is set in two time frames, one before the mission to Rakhat and one after it has returned. The plot development is excellent, and Russell builds a rich set of characters that I really felt as though I knew. (Once when travelling on the tube home from work I read that two of them had suddenly died, I nearly burst into tears). Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest, is the main character and in the earlier time frame you see him as a young, vibrant man whilst in the second time frame he has visibly aged and is physically and mentally damaged. I couldn't put the book down because I needed to know so badly what had happened to change someone so radically. When I eventually found out I actually had to put the book down and think about it for 5 minutes as I was so shocked...
Don't let that put you off, the terrible event really is awful, but it is essential to the book. The Sparrow isn't just a good story, it is also a tale about faith, spirituality, morality, love and suffering. It is also about how misunderstanding and a clash of faith and cultures can have truly dramatic consequences.

Children of God

Children of God is the sequel to The Sparrow and this time the story picks up with Sandoz's recovery and a return mission to Rakhat. To properly appreciate this novel you need to have read The Sparrow, as most of the real action in Children of God takes place on Rakhat and involves the survivors of the first mission, the crew of the second mission and the two intelligent species on Rakhat - the Jana'ata and the Runa. I loved the book, but it wasn't the roller-coaster ride that The Sparrow was.

If you are put off by the SciFi tag, don't be. I believe that SciFi is, just like any other genre, a story about people. All that SciFi does is put the story on a grander scale. If you do read SciFi already, well done, I think it makes for more accepting and broader minded people.

Praise for The Sparrow:
"It is science fiction brought back to the project with which it began in the
hands of a writer like Jules Verne: the necessity of wonder, the hope
for moral rectitude, and the possibility of belief."
--America

"The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"The Sparrow is an incredible novel, for one reason. Though it is
set in the early twenty-first century, it is not written like most science
fiction. Russell's novel is driven by her characters, by their complex
relationships and inner conflicts, not by aliens or technology."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"It is rare to find a book about interplanetary exploration that has this
much insight into human nature and foresight into a possible future."
--San Antonio Express News

Praise for Children of God:

"...a tragic, haunting parable about moral justice that miraculously avoids all of the usual clichés and even subverts some of them. Here, for a change, is a sequel that counts."
-- Entertainment Weekly, Tom De Haven

"Russell succeeds in painting an alien culture with remarkably detailed verisimilitude."""
-- The New York Times Book Review, Jim Gladstone

Interview on YouTube with Mary Doria Russell 

S.M. Stirling - The Domination of Draka

I enjoyed this series, probably because the Draka are sooo bad that they become fascinating and bloody scary.

The Draka begin their history as the Cape Colony is lost by the Netherlands to the British. After the American War of Independence British Loyalists (along with their slaves) are resettled in the Cape joined by Hessian mercenaries who fought on the Loyalist side. The Cape Colony becomes the Crown Colony of Drakia after Francis Drake and later becomes the Dominion of Draka. From Wikipedia "The Crown Colony of Drakia (later, the Dominion of Draka) is an aggressive militaristic slave-owning society reinforced over the course of the 19th century by Icelanders fleeing their island after 1783-84 Volcanic devastation. 25,000 Icelanders offered asylum in Drakia, arriving 1783-86. French royalists, 150,000 defeated American Confederates and other reactionary refugees. The much earlier Dutch Boer settlers are completely assimilated by these subsequent immigrants. The genealogical lineage of both the original Boer and Southern Loyalist settlers is almost overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Germanic and Celtic although later immigrants are French Protestant Huguenots fleeing persecution from Roman Catholics, and then the aforementioned French aristocrats seeking sanctuary from the French Revolution."

The Draka have slaves known as serfs who they keep dominated on large farm or factory estates. The Draka themselves pride themselves on physical fitness and their citizen troops are in superb condition aided by their Janissary troops. The Draka citizens comprise only 10% of the population, the other 90% being serfs who are brutally repressed if they try to rebel. A favoured punishment is impalement, causing a slow and painful death. Taken from Marching Through Georgia "It was amazing, Trooper Patton thought. The German impaled on the stake still had the strength to moan. Even to scream, occasionally, and to speak, now and then. Muzzle flashes had let her see him, straddling as if the pointed wood his own weight had punched into his crotch was a third leg. Every now and then he tried to move; it was usually then that he screamed." Copyright S.M. Stirling 1988

What Stirling does well is make the Draka understandable. Most Draka believe that they are doing the right thing by their society's standards. Most Draka also believe that unnecessary cruelty to a serf is wrong, but I do remember being horrified by one passage where farmers were made to drive  tractors into minefields under the threat and torture of their families. Stirling suffered some criticism from readers who believed that the morals of the Draka were shared by himself. Those people are idiots, the Draka and the world that Stirling has created is a facinating, repulsive and compelling dystopia, but it is fiction boys and girls.

I found the first book (Marching Through Georgia) a bit of a plod as Stirling does go into great detail about military technology and technique, but it was worthwhile in the end. I enjoyed the second and third books (Under the Yoke & The Stone Dogs) much more. The fourth book (Drakon) was very good but I felt slightly unfulfilled at the end.

If you like science fiction and alternative history you will love the Draka series. But be warned - you will need a strong stomach as well.

Oh, and by the way, just because I enjoyed the Draka books, that doesn't mean that I approve of the Draka...

S.M. Stirling - the Nantucket Series

I wish I had discovered S.M. Stirling long ago, but then I wouldn't have had the pleasure of catching up on his books the way that I did.

The first I read was Island in the Sea of Time quickly followed by it's sequels Against the Tide of Years and On the Oceans of Eternity.

This series of books is known as the Nantucket series as the premise is that the island of Nantucket is transported back in time to 1250 BC. The main character is Captain Marian Alston and as she's a she, and African American to boot, she raises some eyebrows when she visits ancient Alba (Bronze Age England). I feel that Stirling manages to build stronger and more rounded female characters than his men. Alston and her partner the warrior, Swindapa Kurlelo, are no exceptions as both of them are conflicted souls that I learned to love.

I also enjoyed the idea of individuals from the  warrior tribes of Alba being turned into something very close to G.I.'s with crew cuts and modern military equipment.

As in all the best books the baddies are very bad and Stirling pulls no punches when it comes to violence. The main bad guy, William Walker, is one of Alston's own officers and he teams up with the deliciously psychotic Alice Hong to carve out an empire in Europe which inevitably this leads to conflict with the Nantucketars... 

Stirling weaves a believable world with 21st century morals and science coming into conflict with barbarism and savage conflicts. He brings to life  historical figures, places and people coming to terms with the new tools brought by the Americans from the future.

Only 3 books in the series but the ending does leave open a chance for a return to this world...

John Scalzi

Recently I have been mostly reading John Scalzi - I started with Old Man's War which I loved and then quickly followed it up with The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony. Old Man's War is considered to be his debut novel but I've also read Agent to the Stars which Scalzi released as shareware back in 1997.

I like my scifi with a hard science edge (which is probably why I'm not a huge fan of fantasy, with the honourable exception of the Riftwar Saga) and Scalzi delivers this by making the technology and science believable whilst not getting bogged down in the detail. The characters are well fleshed out and I felt that I knew and liked John Perry, the main protagonist.

Scalzi writes with a dark humour that makes his characters very 3 dimensional and his stories have believable aliens that remain alien, but do become understandable.
My favourite kind of alien.

The Amazon UK Product Description for Old Man's War:

"With his wife dead and buried, and life nearly over at 75, John Perry takes the only logical course of action left: he joins the army. Now better known as the Colonial Defense Force (CDF), Perry's service-of-choice has extended its reach into interstellar space to pave the way for human colonization of other planets while fending off marauding aliens.

The CDF has a trick up its sleeve that makes enlistment especially enticing for seniors: the promise of restoring their youth. After bonding with a group of fellow recruits who dub their clique the Old Farts, Perry finds himself in a new body crafted from his original DNA and upgraded for battle, including a brain-implanted computer. But all too quickly the Old Farts are separated, and Perry must fight for his life on various alien-infested battlegrounds." 

'Scalzi's astonishingly proficient first novel reads like an original work by the late grand master, Robert A. Heinlein' Publishers Weekly

'Delivers fast-paced scenes of combat, and pays attention to the science underpinning his premise' San Francisco Chronicle

Geek Love

How many of you scifi fans have felt that wonderful moment when you realise that you have met another geek? You talk for ages about books and film and TV shows in such a way that anyone else nearby has no idea what you're talking about?

Geek Love - Feel It.