The Book of Strange New Things

Alienation

“We’re the aliens here.”

This book can easily be (mis)taken as generic sci-fi, exploring the impact of colonialism on the existing inhabitants, as well as the newcomers: in the near future, a Christian minister leaves his beloved wife and travels through hyperspace to a human colony on another planet, where his role is to evangelise to alien beings.

That is the medium, but it’s not the message. The message isn’t even the Biblical one that saved Peter from drugs and homelessness, and led him to this mission. There is no message.

This is not a preachy book, even though it’s about a preacher. Rather than a message, it’s an open-minded, open-ended exploration of separation, dislocation, translation, miscommunication, show more God, faith, truth, addiction, madness, scars, healing (“the technique of Jesus”), loss, and what it means to be human. Alienation, in every sense, of every sense.

It is profound and disturbing without being horrific. It’s a slowly-told story that’s nevertheless a page-turner. Like physics, it focuses on the big (Bea’s situation on Earth) and the small (Peter’s on planet Oasis). Ultimately, there are few answers - is that like physics, too?!

“There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT.”

Alienation by Miscommunication

“He opened his mouth to reply, but found the part of his brain where he went to fetch the answers was filled with incomprehensible babble.”

Most of us take language for granted, except when we’re abroad, or if we have an impairment. But there are many ways to be misunderstood. Problems with language of all kinds are at the heart of the alienation pumped through the veins of this book. Although some of the examples seem extreme, they all have implications for ordinary lives on Earth.

Oasans have no identifiable eyes, no readable facial expressions, and no discernible variations of intonation to indicate their mood. Peter can’t tell what gender they are - or even how many genders they have. They look so similar, the only way he can distinguish them is by the unique colour of each one’s garments (hooded robe, soft boots, and gloves) - although eventually, he can recognise some by their voices. Of course, he finds this bewildering, with very little idea of how he’s being received and understood. But on the phone, online, or if talking to a woman in a burqa, we cope without facial expressions and body language.

The Oasans' language “sounded like a field of brittle reeds and rain-sodden lettuces being cleared by a machete”. Some can speak reasonable English, though they all struggle to pronounce ‘T’ and ‘S’ sounds. They are reluctant for Peter to learn their language, let alone translate the Bible into it: “In foreign phrases, exotic power lurked”.

Thus Peter embarks on a Bible paraphrase in English that omits ‘T’ and ‘S’ sounds as much as possible, as well as eliminating things they have no experience of, such as fish, sheep, and money!

But can truth survive through multiple translations and paraphrases, conducted over millennia, through the lenses of different cultures? Peter notes that the Old Testament phrase for “of old” or “long ago” is closer to “from afar”, which is apt for an intergalactic missionary.

Distance, reliance on technology, and consequent time delays, are a huge source of alienation and misunderstanding. Much of the story is epistolary - messages between Peter and Bea - and the gradual, but seemingly inevitable increase in misunderstanding foreshadows their deepening alienation from each other.

Alienation from Others

“He was not ready to face her, not even through the veil of the written word… He needed to adjust to the complicated trivia of human intercourse.”

When communication is impaired, relationships change, invariably for the worse. If you’re alienated from one group, perhaps the only way is to integrate with others. What then is “otherness”? Who is the alien?

USIC, the corporation that created and runs the colony, is suitably mysterious, as is the base on planet Oasis, and its bland, unemotional staff. There is rudimentary email, but no internet or phones (not even phones within the base), photography is “not practicable”, and there are no locks on personal quarters.

The planet itself has a strange climate and beauty that only Peter appreciates, and the native inhabitants are welcoming, but mysterious, strange and new.

The result is a benign but sinister setting, veiled in secrecy and evasion, that numbs the mind.

Some aspects are gradually revealed, but much of importance is never explained. If this is sci-fi, it’s very light on the “sci”, and even on the socio-political angle. It’s the medium, not the message.

One striking feature is that Peter comments on the (presumed) race of everyone - literally everyone - he encounters. And yet he’s by far the most accepting of the Oasans. Maybe he’s excessively difference-aware, rather than anything worse, though “variations in pigment aside, humans were all part of the same species” and some dubious observations about gender and sexuality don’t really clarify matters. Maybe it’s just another aspect of his own otherness.

Alienation from Self

“The pain of useless empathy.”

When you’ve lost your partner, home, culture, language, food, and climate, and you’re even doubting your faith, what’s left but your sanity? And how can you keep that in the absence of the others?

Watching a disintegrating mind is probably the most painful vicarious experience, as anyone who’s had a loved one with Alzheimer’s or mental illness knows. The helplessness of the observer, and the seeming inevitability of the decline is agony. (I’m not suggesting that applies in all cases, with all conditions.)

For me, that was the most powerful aspect of the book. It is gradual, unsentimental, sympathetic, powerful. Faber wrote it while his wife was dying, but he’s not, and never has been, religious. He asks where God is when tragedy strikes, but suggests no answer.

Quotes
Long-Distance Relationship via Email
• “I miss living through the visible moments of life with you.”
• “To his wife, these messages were already history. To him, they were a frozen present.”
• “His heart and mind were trapped in his body, and his body was here.”
• The rains “were indescribable… but seeing them would leave a mark on him that would not be left on her.”
Humid Climate
• “The rain wasn’t falling in straight lines, it was… dancing!... elegant arcs… a leisurely sweeping from one side of the sky to the other.”
• “He was enveloped in a moist warm breeze, a swirling balm… The air lapped against his cheeks, tickled his ears, flowed over his lips and hands.”
• “The air here was a presence, a presence so palpable that he was tempted to believe he could let himself fall and the air would simply catch him like a pillow… As it nuzzled his skin it almost promised that it would.”
• “The air currents, so similar to water currents, could not move silently, but must churn and hiss like ocean waves.”
• “The warm air embraced them with balmy enthusiasm.”
• The moist atmosphere “was enjoyable… but also an assault: the way the air immediately ran up the sleeves of his shirt, licked his eyelids and ears, dampened his chest.”
• “They truly were rains, plural… The air all around him was ecstatic with water, bursting with it. Silvery lariats of droplets lashed against the ground, lashed against him.”
Oasans
• “The Oasan settlement wasn’t what you’d call a city. More like a suburb, erected in the middle of a wasteland.”
• “Where the ‘S’ should have been, there was a noise like a ripe fruit being thumbed into two halves.”
• King James “Bible verses were like a particularly mellow alcoholic drink”, whereas Peter’s paraphrases were like “local home-brew, a moonshine compromise”. So “maybe he shouldn't dilute its strangeness”.
• Trying to explain the Oasans is “like trying to explain what a smell looks like or what a sound tastes like”.
Corporate Outpost and its Personnel
• “The bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does.”
• “A curious absence of any image that evoked a specific, currently existing spot on Earth, or a passionate emotion.” That, of a corridor plastered in a wide variety of posters.
• "You cannot create a thriving community, let alone a new civilisation, by putting together a bunch of people who are no fucking trouble . . . You want to build Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy, on naked greed."
• “Her boringness was so perfect that it had transcended itself to become a kind of eccentricity.”
• “He did not lose his temper. He had no temper to lose. That was his tragedy, and his mark of dignity too.”
• “His calmness had impressed them… Without knowing it, he’d always been an honorary alien.”
Other
• “The pungent odour of Tartaglione’s loneliness dispelled some of the fog in Peter’s brain.”
• Scars “were not suffering but triumph: triumph against decay, triumph against death… not a disfigurement, a miracle”.
• “Belief was a place that people didn’t leave until they absolutely must. The Oasans had been keen to follow him to the Kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t keen to follow him into the valley of doubt.”

Easter Eggs?

The Book of Strange New Things is what the Oasans call the Bible. However, in Faber’s short story collection, Some Rain Must Fall (published in 1998 and reviewed HERE), there’s a piece called Toy Story, about God’s childhood. It includes the line "His eyes would goggle at the strange new things he found there [in the abandoned universe]... bottled gases which plumed out in the shape of a star when smashed free, huge fluffs of sliver fibre spilling out of the bins like foam... enigmatically specific crystal implements... and... broken engines of paradox."

Perhaps in a nod to Under The Skin, reviewed HERE, on the second page, Peter and Bea discuss whether to pick up a hitchhiker.

One of the characters is called Billy Graham - but not the minister. In the Acknowledgements, Faber says many of the names are from, or loosely based on, Marvel Comics, but surely Billy Graham conjures an early televangelist in most people’s minds.

I wonder if the ubiquitous and multi-purpose whiteflower is a nod to the Wompom of Flanders and Swann. Lyrics HERE and F&S singing it HERE.

See also

• Another novel about priests on an alien planet is Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which I reviewed HERE.

• For a very different take on the missionary experience, in the Belgian Congo, and as suggested by Caroline in the comments, see Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, reviewed HERE.

Picture source for man in space suit in ruined church:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/51c946cde4b0f05142538988/5278a958e4b085eb5.... show less

The Book of Strange New Things contains futuristic technology, space travel, and extraterrestrial beings, but it is not science fiction. Instead, it is the portrait of a marriage.

Peter and Bea are a happy and deeply religious married couple. He is the minister of their church and a former drug addict. She is the lovely nurse who brought him to God. A mysterious corporation is colonizing a faraway planet, and Peter is chosen to preach the word of God to the native population. For unknown reasons, Bea cannot accompany him. They are confident their love can withstand the great distance. Part of their confidence unconsciously stems from the fact that they have never been apart before.

Unfortunately, Peter - like all the men I have dated - show more turns out to be crap at long-distance relationships. It turns out he has landed the cushiest missionary gig in the history of Christianity. The aliens already have some understanding of the Bible - they already speak some English! - and eagerly listen to his teachings. Peter is so absorbed by tending his flock and building his church that he does not always respond to his wife's letters.

Bea, in contrast, describes natural disasters that destroy entire countries and the collapse of Britain's infrastructure. The destruction, combined with pregnancy and her husband's seeming indifference, make Bea's letters more and more frantic, but Peter cannot - or will not - relate to her experiences. He has a frustrating lack of curiosity, especially regarding the motives of his employer, and is quite happy playing with his new alien friends. The central concern of the book is not what the corporation wants, or what the natives want, but what Peter wants!

Like [b:The Bone Clocks|20819685|The Bone Clocks|David Mitchell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398205538s/20819685.jpg|26959610], The Book of Strange New Things raises more questions than it answers. It confused me, irritated me, and left me longing for more. Michel Faber has said this will be his last book, but I hope that he changes his mind and revisits this world that he created. show less

First of all, I’m generally wary about trigger warnings, and reviews that start with trigger warnings. Not the least because they can be spoiler-ish. Nevertheless, I discovered that I have a trigger that I wish I’d been warned about: There is a cat in this book, and it dies. Horribly.

That out of the way, this is one of the best books I’ve read for a while. As a former Catholic, I’m also wary about books about religion. But the preacher here is a Marilynne Robinson–like preacher, a good and gentle soul, never in your face, not one to cause offense. Which, as it turns out, is part of the reason he’s chosen for missionary service to the aliens on Oasis, a planet where a mysterious corporation back on Earth, USIC, is trying to show more establish an outpost. Although this is a mysterious, faceless, potentially Evil Corporation, that is something of a red herring too. They also are not in-your-face evil: they’re supplying a missionary because the aliens have requested one, and Evil Corp. wants to maintain good trading relations with the natives, something of switch from your typical, exploitive, colonialistic Evil Corp.

Nevertheless, everyone and everything at the USIC base on Oasis is a little … off. Everyone is nice enough … maybe a little too nice? There are no locks on the doors. There are no fist fights in the mess hall. Oh, and the previous minister has gone missing…

This may sound like the lead-up to a revelation of malicious mind control by Evil Corp. or other villainous doings, but that’s a red herring also. The answer turns out to be much more grounded in ordinary human nature, and in my opinion even more chilling for that.

The aliens are physically pretty repellent, but they turn out to be just as phlegmatic as the humans on Oasis. And having been introduced to Christianity by the previous preacher, they are eager for the “technique of Jesus.” (Their speech is rendered with the occasional odd symbol to indicate the sounds they have trouble reproducing with their … speech apparatus.)

Our preacher, perhaps rather heavy-handedly called Peter, has left a wife back on Earth (perhaps rather heavy-handedly called Beatrice), with whom he can correspond by text whenever he’s on base and not out ministering to the natives. He’s not gone long before increasingly alarming texts start coming from back home. We readers can see that things are getting pretty dire back home—war, natural disasters, food shortages—but Peter is really busy and very absorbed by his work with the natives and, well, he just doesn’t seem to be paying attention to the warnings.

This is where it can be easy to judge Peter for being a self-absorbed, oblivious jerk. And, frankly, he is a self-absorbed, oblivious jerk. But I think he also represents the way humans like to bury their heads in the sand and ignore “inconvenient truths” in favor of immersing themselves in small, immediate, solvable everyday concerns. Don’t we all? I’d earlier saved this quote, which I think sums it up:

“Werner was a poor lamb, precious in the eyes of the Lord, a charmless creep who couldn’t help being a charmless creep, a geeky orphan who’d grown into a specialized form of survivor. We are all specialized forms of survivor, Peter reminded himself. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses.”

One thing this book said to me is that we all take, or deliver, from religion (or philosophy, or politics, or a particular world view) what we need at the moment. And another thing is that we can all be oblivious to what’s right under our noses, but we need to wake up, and grow up. show less

This is quite a clever novel. From the constant wordplay (USIC... ummm, "M"-less music) to the allusory narrative constructions (Peter's Jesus arc, Bea's parallels to Dante's Beatrice in the Inferno, etc) Faber's story plays with and against the reader's expectations in order to bring about his overarching theme: interactions change everyone involved.

Faber is so good at writing about vulnerability, either physical or emotional, and it is a source of the tension he builds to keep this novel moving. In fact, the fragility of the human body is one of the more powerful ideas flowing under the surface of the novel.

I just finished the novel and I haven't spoken to anyone about it so I'm still processing what I read. I can say this is the kind show more of book that gives you a lot to talk about afterwards. It is also the kind of book, which invites that kind of discussion and I think Faber has made something that will last longer than a Hardcover run.

I highly recommend this to anyone who likes reading, but particularly for anyone in a book club. show less

This tale of a Christian missionary in space tells us more about life, love and faith than most down-to-earth fiction.

Michel Faber once said that he was an atheist. If that is still true, his latest novel — The Book of Strange New Things — suggests that he takes religion so seriously, considers it so valuable, that he cannot bring himself to sully it by believing. Within the novel, the ‘Book of Strange New Things’ is the Bible, and so Faber has written his own bible, what he wants to say to our common humanity about life and death, faith and doubt. He has produced something far more lucid and alive to human joys and sorrows than any bowdlerised attempt by AC Grayling.

The book is full of humour, that warm kind of wit that dimples show more the cheeks when we catch a glimpse of the fact that everyday human existence was ever part comedy. Yet Faber had me weeping in despair for humanity too, and he gently led me back and forth between the two until I understood the need for both.

Peter Leigh is an English Christian pastor who has been called to be a missionary. To say that Peter's marriage to Beatrice is a happy one is an understatement: they are a perfect partnership and their love-life is good. But that mission means that they will be apart for the first time since they married. The novel opens with the couple driving to Heathrow Airport, finding a lay-by for last-minute lovemaking, and the nervous separation.

The Book of Strange New Things is sci-fi, but it would be wrong to pigeon-hole it as genre fiction. It depicts a near future: near enough for everything to be totally recognisable as if it were today. The only difference is that a faceless corporation — USIC — has started a colony on the planet Oasis (so named in competition by a schoolgirl in Nebraska). So much, so sci-fi, except that Peter has been called to bring the Gospel to the inhabitants of Oasis, the Oasans — when a colleague refers to them as ‘aliens’, Peter reminds her that the humans are the aliens on Oasis. We are saved from too much sci-fi by the fact that we are limited to Peter's experience and limited understanding of what is going on. As is common practice in sci-fi, Peter is put into a drug-induced suspended animation for the month-long ‘Jump’ to Oasis, resulting in some crazy, mind-bending jet lag. On arrival, his liaison, Grainger, apparently gives him a full briefing, but, as he cannot remember, we too are left in the dark about the practicalities of living in an extraterrestrial colony until Peter find out the hard way. And there is that nagging question: why would USIC want to spend millions to send a missionary into space?

Read more… https://christhum.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/book-review-the-book-of-strange-new-t... show less

Peter and his wife Bea are evangelical Christians, so committed to their faith that Peter accepts a mission—in every sense—to travel to a distant world, Oasis, where the supremely strange, sentient inhabitants appear ready to be brought to God.

The Book of Strange New Things is an intriguing blend of religious exploration and first contact, anchored by the relationship between a married couple separated by unimaginable distance. At its core, it’s as much about faith and disconnection as it is about aliens.

I enjoyed the novel overall, but the first half felt overextended. Long stretches were devoted to the couple’s exchanged messages and Peter’s early impressions of Oasis. While these sections laid necessary groundwork, they show more lingered to the point of testing the reader’s patience, and at times I found myself tempted to skim. Compounding this is the challenge of Peter himself: he is not an especially likeable or accessible protagonist. Priggish, impractical and selfish. To Faber’s credit, however, he leans into this, shaping a reflective and deliberately distant narrative voice that suits the novel’s themes.

Somewhere in the middle, though, the book pivots. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where, but the story tightens its grip. I found myself pulled in, reading the second half far more quickly. Peter remains remote, yet my curiosity about his fate deepened. There is something quietly unsettling about the Oasans, and I began to anticipate a range of possible, uncomfortable outcomes for him.

At the same time, Bea’s messages take on greater urgency and emotional weight, as Earth appears to be unravelling while Peter becomes increasingly absorbed by the austere simplicity of Oasan life. That growing dissonance between collapse and calm, distance and devotion is where the novel finds its real power. show less

Peter is selected by an American corporation to serve as one of the first Christian missionaries to native inhabitants of the planet Oasis. He leaves his wife at home in London. A previous minister had disappeared, along with a linguist that taught English to the Oasans. He finds the Oasans receptive to the “Book of Strange New Things,” their name for the Bible. He works with them in their settlement to build a church, returning periodically to the USIC base to communicate with his wife on earth. She tells him of many catastrophes that have befallen the earth, but it is difficult for him to fully understand and focus on what is happening so far away. Peter eventually learns an excruciating lesson based on his interactions with the show more Oasans.

This is a complex story that works on multiple levels. One level revolves around testing a marriage to its limits, where distance takes a toll. Another level looks at how religious instruction is received by a population that has no concept of earth. It examines a new form of colonialism – USIC has setup a base but is still dependent upon the Oasans for food. It portrays how faith is tested. It examines addiction and how one can be substituted for another. It depicts the mental stress and alienation that can occur from isolation. It is a combination of literary fiction and science fiction, commenting on the nature of humanity through looking at their interactions with intelligent non-humans.

I listened to the audiobook, wonderfully performed by Josh Cohen. It is an ideal vehicle for audio. Cohen does an amazing job of voicing accents from a variety of countries. He also creates a unique voice for the Oasans. I found the entire experience of this book engrossing.

After finishing, I found it profoundly unsettling and it took a while for my thoughts to gel. It is an example of how good intentions go awry. It shows how rifts can form between people who love each other deeply. It is an examination of empathy across cultures. I am fascinated by the premise of this story and found it both creative and insightful. show less