I do not share the majority opinion on The Sparrow, but I'd rather be positive and suggest a few alternatives which I feel deal more inventively with the themes of first contact, the alien, and colonialism: Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Stanislaw Lem's Eden, Solaris, The Invincible, and Fiasco.
Wolfe does a fine job of modulating his prose style according to the dictates of his content, and unpacking the workings of the book over repeated readings is a pleasure -- both admirably Joycean qualities in a writer.
Lem I admire for his commitment to imagining the alien as something truly alien, resistant to simple analogies with our existing store of experience.
Wolfe does a fine job of modulating his prose style according to the dictates of his content, and unpacking the workings of the book over repeated readings is a pleasure -- both admirably Joycean qualities in a writer.
Lem I admire for his commitment to imagining the alien as something truly alien, resistant to simple analogies with our existing store of experience.