I am reading this book because Modern Mrs. Darcy recommended it to someone on her podcast. The premise is interesting: Peter is going to the planet Oasis as a missionary to the people who inhabit the planet. He is sent by a corporation called USIC to take the gospel to the Oasans.
I’m about halfway through the book. Maybe all of the following issues are resolved and explained in the second half, but right now I have some burning questions about our protagonist missionary and his mission. Some things just do not compute.
1. Peter’s mission. How does Peter even know that the Oasans need the gospel? Are they sinful creatures, in rebellion against the Creator? Do they need forgiveness and redemption? Maybe they already know God and walk in perfect fellowship with Him. Maybe not.
2. Which brings me to the second problem, Peter’s ignorance. Our missionary, Peter, is remarkably naive and unquestioning. He knows nothing or almost nothing about the people/creatures he is planning to evangelize. He knows next to nothing about the planet Oasis. He doesn’t even know what the initials OSIC stand for. When he does ask a few tentative questions, he is stonewalled. And still he allows this corporation that he knows nothing about to send him millions of miles away to a planet he knows nothing about to minister to a people he knows nothing about.
3. Problem #3: Peter’s and Bea’s marriage, which is supposed to be the central theme of the novel. They are said and shown to be very close, in a very loving and inter-dependent marriage. Yet, not only does Peter leave Bea to go to a planet far, far, away for an indeterminate length of time, but when he has the opportunity to email her, to answer her plea for details about his mission, to reassure her that he is there and that he still cares for her, Peter can’t manage to write much more than a few sentences at a time, every two or three weeks. This ostensibly strong marriage falls apart in short order. Maybe the point is to remind us of our bodies, that we are embodied creatures, very dependent on physical intimacy to maintain emotional and spiritual intimacy?
4. There’s a mystery about the Oasans and their relationship to OSIC and their relationship to Jesus. I get that there’s a mystery. And that part will probably get resolved. But what in the world is going on with OSIC supplying these non-human creatures with pharmaceuticals? They haven’t examined these “Oasans” and don’t even know how they look on the outside, much less their body chemistry and physiology, but they’re giving them antibiotics, analgesics, and other medicines that have been tested on humans but never on Oasans? Wouldn’t that be unethical and highly dangerous—or else maybe ineffective? And no one is questioning the ethics or the efficacy of this “drug drop”?
5. The people who work for OSIC come across as very amateurish and untrained. Oh, they have engineering degrees or mining expertise, but they don’t seem to know much about Oasis or the overall mission of OSIC or anything besides their own narrow job skills. And that mission, whatever it may be, looks as if it’s thrown together by a bunch of amateur NASA wannabes. No astronaut or cross-cultural missions training for Peter, no details or background education for any of the other OSIC workers. The Oasans want drugs? OK, give them whatever we have left over. The Oasans want to hear more about Jesus? OK, hire a missionary. There’s this flower that grows here and is good for food? OK, let’s eat it. It rains a lot on this planet? OK, drink up.
I just finished reading The Martian by Andy Weir before I started this book, and no doubt the previous book colored my reading of another space travel science fiction book, The Book of Strange New Things. Peter the Missionary and his cohorts just are so very amateur and unprepared compared to the protagonist in The Martian. Mark Watney, the astronaut who is stranded alone on Mars, knows how to fix almost anything, and he has been trained to the nth degree. By comparison, Peter the Missionary looks like a child wandering in the dark. Maybe The Book of Strange New Things is meant to make Christians look like credulous fools, except that Peter comes across as really intelligent, but also gullible and unquestioning. I won’t really know until I finish the book.
So, have any of you read either The Martian or The Book of Strange New Things? What did you think? Are you frustrated, as I am, at Peter’s lack of curiosity and his credulous nature? And on the other book, does anyone believe that even a NASA-trained engineer could survive what Mark Watney survives in The Martian? I wouldn’t have have made it five minutes–even if I had all the NASA training that Mark Watney had.
I read The Book of Strange New Things because a close friend put it in my hands and said I HAD to read it…and quickly, because it was on loan from another friend. Did you know that World Mag gave it Book of the Year for Fiction? Which struck me as Very Odd.
I wasn’t sorry I read it, but I would never want to read it again. (3 1/2 stars on Goodreads) I think it fits in the category of speculative fiction. I get the sense that Christians were so delighted to be mentioned that they got fizzy about it.
The Martian is on my TBR list. I’ll probably listen to it with my husband. He is the one who told me about it in the first place.
Typing this comment makes me think how much joy we could have discussing books face to face. Your thoughts about TBoSNT are so much deeper than mine were. I value them.
I am interested in your thoughts on this book since WORLD magazine gave it very high ratings. (I dismissed it since I am not a big sci-fi fan.) Looking forward to what you have to say when finished.
I read The Martian, and it seemed pretty believable to me. It was recommended to me by an aerospace engineer, and he liked it because it kept to facts and everything that happens was possible. Since I don’t know the science, I take his word for it. That does not mean that I would survive if the same thing happened to me. I like to think that I’m resourceful, but I, also, doubt I’d make it past waking up in the storm impaled by the communication rod.
I haven’t read the other book you are talking about so I can speak for it. However, I think Andy Weir did a good job making the science follow fact.
My daughter recommended this to my wife, and she thought it might appeal to me. (They both loved it.) As science fiction – of which I used to be a connoisseur in the dim and distant Ray Bradbury, James Blish, James Tiptree Jr, Bob Shaw era(s) – it is lacklustre. It feels as if Faber has either never read any of the classics, or, if he has, has failed to pay them any mind. ‘The Martian Chronicles’ (Ray Bradbury, 1950) deals with pretty well all of the same themes and issues, more briefly, more interestingly, and more tellingly: first encounter; dilemma of two slightly different worldviews. Also, I was reminded of Stanislaw Lem’s ‘The Fiasco’ (published in English 1988). However, it is entirely possible that the science fiction mis en scene is a cover for a book about something else. The question is – what? Is this is fable about personal salvation? Is the central character a Christ? (But he does not seem to be a saviour.) Is it a story about sacrifice?
Whatever it is about, it is way too long. In particular, the e-mails (Shoot) from Bea are interminably rambling and inconsequential – is the Earth coming to an end or not? (How many people do you know who write e-mails that long?)
And, as others have raised, what’s all this about drugs? I looked in vain to find why the Oasans were being given drugs. (Unless this is a sort of metaphor for American imperialism.)
However, one thing has stayed with me – the moment when Peter was bitten by one of those funny duck-like animals. That felt like the heart of the book – though buried towards the back for some reason. But where did it lead? He recovered. The Oasans thought he would die. Why?
And why do the Oasans, who, interestingly all wear slightly different coloured robes (why?), all have essentially the same name in English? Oh yes, and what is all that with the strange script? I mean, come along. You cannot make things mysterious and other-worldly by using a funny typeface. It is simply irritating. I always think, when I am reading a book, why is this not as good as Chekhov?