Science Fiction reviews

I've been enjoying some Science Fiction post-Christmas in reading Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and watching James Cameron's Avatar.

The Sparrow is an unusual Science Fiction novel in that its theme is of a crisis of conscience for Emilio Sanchez, its Jesuit central character. It's a well written story, once it gets going, with an engaging central character who is honest about the deficiencies and the inspirations of his faith. The split narrative works well before meshing at the conclusion to bring together the events of the central crisis and the response to it. This central crisis is genuinely shocking although its resolution is probably a little too easy and dealt with too briefly but the novel, as a whole, provides an engaging and challenging exploration of God's presence and guidance in human exploration and suffering.

Avatar has been criticised as a simplistic eco-fable with good indigenous characters lined up against the evil exploitative humans but this is to ignore the conversion of Jake Sully, its central character. This conversion, supported by the other members of his immediate team, is that which is needed by the human race if climate change and peak oil are to be countered and a narrative and world in which we can be immersed, as is possible in watching Avatar, can have an effect in changing consciousness of the issues. For that to be the case, both the narrative and the world created and imagined have to be of sufficient depth for the viewer to become immersed and this seemed to me to be the case with Avatar.

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Woven Hand - The Beautiful Axe.