The Sparrow

The Sparrow is a 1996 science fiction novel by the American writer Mary Doria Russell and her first book. It is built on two timelines: the voyage that follows a signal from another world, and the aftermath, in which the priest who survived the mission is brought home and has to account for it.

The people sent are Jesuits and their colleagues, chosen for what they can do on the ground rather than for what they can represent, and among them are the linguists and doctors whose professional habits shape everything that follows. The account of the voyage is told with the suspense already removed, because the book is framed by a catastrophe the reader learns about in its opening pages.

The novel's interest is theological as much as scientific. The survivor's experience leaves him questioning the existence of God, and the book keeps that question open while the investigation of the mission proceeds, so the first contact story is told from the point of view of people whose business is belief and language. A sequel, Children of God, followed in 1998.