(Review by Nick Gevers, Ph.D., Cape Town, South Africa)

With Children of God (1998), Mary Doria Russell apparently concludes the story of First Contact, existential confusion, and hard-earned redemption that she began in The Sparrow (see my Parsec review of that atmospheric and persuasive novel). In the second volume, the scope of the tale broadens; the themes of the earlier book are sounded again, cunningly reversed, and skillfully resolved; and Russell’s ‘Rakhat’ sequence confirms its place as one of the most important SF works of the decade.

Like its predecessor, Children of God consists of two alternating narrative streams. In one, a second Jesuit mission travels to the planet Rakhat, its members hoping that the terrible fate of the first expedition can be explained, that it will be revealed to have had a divine purpose after all; their reluctant companion is the hero of The Sparrow, ex-Father Emilio Sandoz, who emerged from his earlier stay on Rakhat mutilated and raped by the alien Jana’ata, his faith destroyed, and who awaits God’s answers with a complex dark cynicism. The interactions of the characters on board ship are volatile and troubled, yet humorous as well, as they interrogate each other’s philosophies and motives. In the second body of chapters, we see how Rakhat is meanwhile changing: with a mixture of baroque exoticism and acute sociological insight, Russell describes how the Jana’ata Paramount seeks to reform his domain, influenced in an intriguingly oblique manner by his previous predatory acquaintance with Sandoz; how to his frustration a human woman and a Jana’ata renegade spark a revolution by the Runa, the mass of peasants and chattels who are Rakhat’s second and more docile intelligent species; and how liberation of the Runa threatens genocide for the Jana’ata. Copious Biblical echoes are struck, as the Runa lose their Edenic innocence, as different equivalents of Moses lead their peoples into the wilderness, as possible redemptive meanings for the horrors of history come into view. Ultimately, the Jesuits arrive; and the resolution of their spiritual, political, environmental, and psychological quests is deeply entwined with the achievement of a new, fragile harmony of Runa and Jana’ata. For the despair that darkened The Sparrow, an antidote of qualified optimism is offered.

Children of God is a new demonstration of SF’s potential for cogent discussion of the central concerns of politics, religion and history. In Russell’s rich tapestry, the ecological balance of herbivores and predators is compared with the relation of serfs and aristocrats, and corresponds also to tensions between the human genders; the mechanics of social change are scrutinized, as inspired reform is vitiated by passionate revolution; human contact with aliens echoes sinisterly yet hopefully the past impact of Europe on the lands it explored and colonized; and in the myths and wars of a distant world, the content of Christianity and Judaism is recontextualized and re-argued. In the ‘Rakhat’ novels, Russell may at times simplify her issues for the sake of clarity, and moralize a little too sentimentally; but these are minor defects. These dense, deliberate, sympathetic, and eloquent texts are a model for the rest of SF to emulate.

VILLARD (USA). 1998. HARDCOVER.

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