The Sparrow

a sci-fi novel in which humans track an alien song and send an expedition to the planet it originates from, in a far away galaxy. The expedition is Jesuit-financed and equipped, and has a single survivor who tells the story, a Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz. The characters are fairly well done, likeable enough, though not as irresistible as someone like Stephen King would write them. The story, however... The idea is great, travel by using a self-sustained meteor to a new world, a cautious expedition. The foreign planet though is so disappointingly based on our earthly pre-conception of value, money and trade, that after a while it almost turned me away from the book. Something bothered me for a long time while reading, and I couldn't quite figure out what, until it hit me - why are we only able to construct a concept of values based on our own? Why does it must be trade and exchange for money or some such richness? Why does the society have to be built around the ruling carnivores and their enslaved tightly controlled herbivores who are as intelligent and have language of their own, so we can relate? Why can't we conceive an intelligent life form without all the follies of humans? After all, we are so incurably flawed with our materialism, concepts of freedom which vary even between our own different cultures and our food and riches, we could hardly be called "intelligent species"! Couldn't an alien life be based on something else? I guess it was meant exactly so we can relate, but I long for a more original life form. Something that can't easily fit to our concepts of right or wrong, rich or poor, intelligent or dumb. I so wanted to like this book, and was so disappointed at the end, I had to remind myself of its original premise to give it the rating I think is fair: 3/5

J’ai beaucoup aimé ce roman, mais en fait, je ne sais pas trop pourquoi, et ça, c’est plutôt étrange. Peut-être le fait d’utiliser des jésuites comme héros (dont la vie, l’oeuvre et l’histoire étaient pour moi inconnus jusqu’à présent) implique une plus grande interrogation métaphysique, incluant le classique problème de l’unicité de l’Homme. Peut-être le fait que la race extra-terrestre soit en fait composée de deux races intelligentes, dont l’une est le bétail de l’autre, implique une étrangeté assez saisissante. En fait, je ne pense pas que ce soit ça, même si ça donne un charme supplémentaire au récit. Ce qui est réellement bien, c’est de voir l’histoire de cet homme infirme, de cette aventure incroyable et des différentes erreurs qui ont poussé une expédition bien née dans les pires ennuis. Enfin, ce que je trouve assez agréable, c’est de voir que les classiques scènes de gore (que je commence désormais à associer à certains auteurs américains) sont ici soigneusement évités pour laisser la place à des descriptions beaucoup plus émouvantes (de mon point de vue).