Mary Doria Russell - The Sparrow: A Novel

A paleoanthropologist known for work on cannibalism and craniofacial biomechanics, MARY DORIA RUSSELL is the author of The Sparrow and Children of God, which have earned her a number of awards and have been translated into a dozen languages, and A Thread of Grace. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband and their son. Her website is www.MaryDoriaRussell.info.

The
Sparrow

MARY DORIA RUSSELL

A Readers Guide

A Conversation with Mary Doria Russell

Q: Until The Sparrow you had only written serious scientific articles and technical manuals. How did you end up writing a speculative novel?

A: The idea came to me in the summer of 1992 as we were celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbuss arrival in the New World. There was a great deal of historical revisionism going on as we examined the mistakes made by Europeans when they first encountered foreign cultures in the Americas and elsewhere. It seemed unfair to me for people living at the end of the twentieth century to hold those explorers and missionaries to standards of sophistication and tolerance that we hardly manage even today. I wanted to show how very difficult first contact would be, even with the benefit of hindsight. Thats when I decided to write a story that put modern, sophisticated, resourceful, well-educated, and well-meaning people in the same position as those early explorers and missionariesa position of radical ignorance. Unfortunately, theres no place on Earth today where "first contact" is possibleyou can find MTV, CNN, and McDonalds everywhere you go. The only way to create a "first contact" story like this was to go off-planet.

Q: How did religion come to play such a central role in the story?

A: At the time I wrote this I was in the process of bringing religion back into my own life. I was brought up as a Cathotic but left the Church in 1965 when I was fifteen. After twenty years of contented atheism I became a mother. Suddenly I was in a position of having to transmit my culture to my son. I needed to decide what things to pass on and what things to weed out. I realized my ethics and morality were rooted in religion and began to reconsider those decisions I had made when I was young. I found myself drawn, to Judaism and eventually converted. When you convert to Judaism in a post-Holocaust world, you know two things for sure: one is that being Jewish can get you killed; the other is that God wont rescue you. That was the theology I was dealing with at the time. Writing The Sparrow allowed me to look at the place of religion in the lives of many people and to weigh the risks and the beauties of religious belief from the comfort of my own home.

Q: What exactly are the risks and beauties of religion?

A: The beauty of religion is the way in which it enriches your understanding of what your senses tell you. I see no conflict between scientific and religious thought. They are just two very different ways of interpreting what we see all around us. What I gained was a cultural depth, a perspective that reaches back 3,200 years. Theres a certain kind of serenity that comes from knowing that the ethics you draw on have been tested and re-tested by one thousand generations in every possible cultural and ethical climate, and that they have been found reliable and useful by so many people for so long under many different circumstances.

The risks have to do with believing that God micromanages the world, and with seeing what may be simply coincidence as significant and indicative of divine providence. Its very easy then to go out on a limb spiritually, expect more from God than you have a right to expect, and set yourself up for bitter disappointment in his silence and lack of action.

Q: Where did the idea come from for the two alien races on Rakhat, the Runa and the Janaata?

A: It started with a look at two austratopithecine species from Earths prehistory: herbivores and carnivores/scavengers. I began by thinking, What would it be like if the herbivores were still around? That was the beginning of the idea. Then I asked myself, What would civilization be like if a carnivore had domesticated its prey species? Thats where I came up with the idea for the relationship between the Janaata and the Runa. The Janaata are a carnivorous herding society that breed their prey, the Runa, for intelligence and adaptability as well as meat.

Q: Whats the hardest thing about using two narrative lines to tell a story?

A: Pacing. You have to stop and think, Who does the reader want to be with now? Some time ago I realized the books that kept me turning pages were the ones that had two or more story lines. Its a structure I admired as a reader. As a writer, having two story lines proved to be of great value. When I played out my imagination in one story line I could take a break from it and turn to the other with fresh enthusiasm. The tricky part is in introducing two separate sets of characters in the first one hundred pages. Theres a lot of setup that goes into it and you have to keep readers interested while developing the new characters.