Russell Russell subscribes to the School of Sapphire naming where you just reach into a pouch of Scrabble tiles and whatever you pull out is what the name for your thing is. He's being an opportunist. And that that is taken to an extreme in the last part of the book that I don't want to talk about. Of course, what he does and why. So yeah, they establish contact with him and from there, things continue going okay for a while until they abruptly don't.
We're back to sci-fi this week, but we take a break from the politics-heavy universe of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow instead uses science fiction to discuss anthropology, colonialism, and theology. There's some genuinely funny and warm stuff in this book, but there's a shadow hanging over the proceedings from the outset: eight people set out to explore the first known alien planet inhabited by sentient life, but only one comes back, and he's much worse for the wear.
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