Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review. The review was not required to be positive. The views and opinions expressed below are entirely my own. This review also appears on NetGalley, Amazon, and Goodreads.
The Madonna and the Starship follows Kurt Jastrow, who writes science fiction stories for pulp magazines and runs a children's science fiction show (which reminded me a bit of the early Doctor Who serials). He uses his love of knowledge to ensure that there is as much sciencein his fiction as possible, much to others' chagrin. When aliens arrive and take offense to a religious program, Kurt must team up with his love interest and fellow producer to save the world.
I did not expect to like The Madonna and the Starship as much as I did. I judge books preemptively by the covers no matter how much I try not to, and this one struck me as "self-published," a controversial topic I have definitely picked my side in (while there are some good ones out there, I generally believe that publishers reject a work for sound reasons). I am always up for science fiction and satire, good or bad, however, so I entered the giveaway. Turns out, this book isn't self-published and the juvenile cover was misleading.
The book is very well-written and a lightning fast read at 192 pages, and the book manages to be both ridiculous and sort of profound (as profound as a book featuring ginormous talking crayfish can be). In the vein of the genre, the ending is tidy and polished, although I felt some of the issues were brushed over (more of that below).
As an intellectual atheist, I'm someone who enjoys a good bout of religious satire, but I also have a "live-and-let-live" complex that makes it difficult for me to handle anything too offensive or sacrilegious, as I realize I don't have any definitive answers either and thus am in no position to judge. However, Morrow manages to find a working balance and I feel even an open-minded Christian could find this story amusing. The book discusses a lot of philosophy and ideology and shares the moral of tolerance even as it is mocking those beliefs.
There were a few parts that just didn't do it for me, so I have nitpicked the following issues:Â
[THAR BE SPOILERS]
1. I found it shocking that no one questioned that it might be a good idea to allow the aliens to annihilate the religious. While I don't share that particular belief, I feel like it would have added substance and been a little more realistic. There have been times in our history where organized religion has caused a lot of conflict and even full-out wars. There are also plenty of instances in which an intolerant Christian has made life difficult or obnoxious for those who don't share the same beliefs, and plenty of religious people tend to refer to a doctrine of hate and superiority rather than love and morality. I would have liked to see the main characters have a conversation about how they empathized with the religious war on the alien's planet, especially since there are some similarities on Earth. It would have been interesting to see how even one character might have rationalized that making religion extinct could solve a whole lot of problems and joined the aliens' side, or at least entertained the notion for a moment to address these issues before coming to the conclusion that banning God won't make people any better and that one person doesn't have the right to decide what others believe in.
2. No one seemed to consider the consequences of destroying the show until the nth hour. First of all,as this is Wendy's show, don't you think she would instantly be opposed to completely sabotaging her project and career? I imagined she would have put up a bit of resistance or at least sought some alternatives before realizing that was the only option. It would have been smoother and been a less bitter pill to swallow if those things had been brought up at the forefront and then readdressed when the cast sees the script.
3. I am willing to believe that everything works out, and that something changes the minds of the aliens' perspective (although, admittedly, they'd have to be very open-minded or sentimental), and I am even willing to accept that they succeeded in an elaborate cover-up and were able to keep the network running, but I'm not quite sure how the author and co. readily accepted and befriended the aliens who were just about to commit genocide. Suspension of disbelief calls for these things, which were explained away easily enough, but I don't think I'd jump at being buddy-buddy with someone who was trying to kill me (or anyone) just an hour earlier. If there had only been some sort of indication that they were quite charming or repenting after their change of heart or that Kurt was growing some sort of affection for them throughout the story, it would have been more believable. The ending just seemed a little too neat and came off as hurried when just a little bit more detail could have led us into the conclusion less reluctantly.