The Sparrow (Cover image via Ballantine Readers Circle)
18. Mary Doria Russell
Mary Doria Russell’s work is well known for its fine-grained examination of relationships, history, and the future. That’s a broad description, to be sure, but then so is Russell’s work. She’s created some truly staggering science fiction. That’s along with a historical romance, a World War II thriller, and two novels focusing on the life of Doc Holliday. Oh, and she also has a Ph.D. in biological anthropology and has taught extensively at the university level.
For all of Russell’s numerous and impressive accomplishments, however, we’re here to talk science fiction. Two of her six novels have just that focus, though through an anthropological lens that is unique to the genre.
The first, The Sparrow (1996), centers on a Jesuit mission to the planet Rakhat. SETI has received radio broadcasts of strange, alien music from the planet. Father Emilio Sandoz travels with other researchers to the planet in order to investigate. Without spoiling too much, the team discovers something far more intricate and wide-ranging than a series of songs. Its sequel, Children of God, followed in 1998.
Though some reviewers claim that it’s not fair to label The Sparrow and Children of God as science fiction novels, neither is it fair to deny the sci-fi elements in both. Can’t The Sparrow be a searing philosophical work that also contains also contains science fiction touchstones like aliens, starships, and Jesuits in space? You can have your science fiction cake and eat it, too.
The Sparrow raked in the rewards for Russell. It won the Best Novel Award from the British Science Fiction Association, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the gender-focused James Tiptree Jr. Award. She later won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, in 1998.