What to Read When You’re Wondering What’s Out There
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Among my friends and family, I am notorious for being a skeptic. I don’t believe in ghosts; I find all cryptozoological sightings unconvincing; I dismiss astrology out of hand. But (and this might surprise my inner circle) I am quite open to the possibility that some form of extraterrestrial life exists. I agree with what Alexandra Oliva wrote in The Atlantic this week: “Considering the sheer number of stars in the cosmos, and the possibly larger number of planets that revolve around them, the idea that humans are alone in the universe strikes me as unlikely. So, instead, I wonder: What is that life like, and will we ever encounter it?”Oliva recommended six books in which the presence of aliens prompts readers to think more deeply about humanity. Do I believe that another planet’s life-forms would be anything like us—social, intelligent, self-aware? Well … that’s where my skepticism kicks back in. But I suppose I can’t rule it out, and imagining what another species might value prompts me to reconsider which traits make us fundamentally human and which ones might not be unique to us at all. Oliva’s list made me think of a book I read recently and adored. The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, is nominally about an interstellar voyage to initiate first contact, but it’s actually about sex, love, God, and the problem of evil.When The Sparrow begins, readers know this: Decades ago, human beings received a radio transmission from a civilization near the sun’s closest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri. The Jesuit order of the Catholic Church sent a small mission to Rakhat, the planet that had sent the message, hoping to reach the beings who lived there. In 2060, a priest named Emilio Sandoz, the mission’s only survivor, finally makes it back to Earth—and his colleagues in the Society of Jesus desperately want to know what went wrong out there.Sandoz is a traum