The narrative was wholly engaging from two key points. At this juncture, the current narrative mainly showed Father Sandoz suffering extreme trauma of what happened on Rakhat, and finding it immensely difficult to cooperate with the inquisition. Thus, building upon the characters, first and foremost. It took almost a quarter of the book before the signal was discovered. The past timeline introduced us to the characters who were part of the space expedition. However, I found the narrative flow between the past and current timeline to work really well. At first glance, this may seem confusing. The second timeline was about 40 years later, when Emilio Sandoz, a linguist, was recovered back to Earth as the sole survivor of the expedition and had to undergo inquisition as to what really happened on Rakhat. A secret space expedition led by Jesuit priests was sent forth to locate the source of these signals, which turned out to be a planet called Rakhat.

One was when the SETI Programme at Arecibo picked up signals from the Alpha Centauri region of space in the form of music and singing. The Sparrow was predominantly a story about a Jesuit priest named Emilio Sandoz over two timelines. The context in which The Sparrow was discussed in that Course finally tipped me over to pick it up. And then it was mentioned in the Great Course audiobook for How Great Science Fiction Works, which I’ve recently finished, under the sub-topic of ‘Religion in Science Fiction’. First was when a friend recommended it to me many years ago, but I’ve forgotten about it. I came across this title over two separate occasions. After reading it, I could understand why. The Sparrow is a multi-award-winning science fiction novel about first contact. “Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.” Published: 20th anniversary edition, 2016 by Ballantine Books (first published in 1996)

The sparrow mary doria