Trivia / The Sparrow

• Time Marches On:
  "You follow baseball, John?"...
  "Cubs fan," John muttered. The Chicagoan's curse.
  Sandoz pushed a towel aside, eyes wide. "How bad?"
  "Anybody can have a lousy couple of centuries."^note This is a paraphrase of Chicago real estate developer's Harvey Walken's famous line "Any team can have a bad century". It's often attributed to Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse, but Jack was quoting Harvey when he said it.
  "I guess. Wow.... Well, that explains why Giuliani brought you over." Suddenly John heard [Sandoz imitating] the Father General's voice saying: "Voelker, I need someone to take care of a hopeless wreck coming back from Rakhat. Get me a Cubs fan!"

This conversation takes place in August, 2060.

• The alien signals are first picked up by the observatory at Arecibo. In 2020, the massive 57-year-old radio-telescope was decommissioned after sustaining irreparable weather-related damage. On November 30, 2020, the observatory collapsed in on itself, the 900-ton platform crashing onto the iconic dish. Meteorologist Ada Monzón broke into programming on WAPA Guaynabo "with my heart in my hands", to announce the observatory's death.