A Case of Conscience - James Blish

   1958; 188 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Religious Science Fiction, Christian Futuristic Fiction.  Laurels: Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1959 (winner); Retrospective Hugo Award, 2004 (winner).  Overall Rating : 3½*/10.

 

    Good news!  We’ve landed on a far-flung planet called Lithia, and have found sentient life there!  Even better news!  Although the Lithians are about twelve feet tall and kinda resemble T-Rexes, they don’t seem to be interested in eating or attacking us!

 

    They’ve even allowed a small delegation of Earthlings to live among them and learn about their ways.  We've sent a four-man team of terrestrials there, and charged them with studying Lithia, particularly from a technological standpoint, then writing up recommendations on what our next steps should be.

    After all, just because they don’t want to invade us doesn’t mean we can’t invade them.

 

    Our team has a physicist, a geologist, and a chemist on board; all logical choices for the task at hand.  The fourth member is not a scientist though, he’s Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, a Jesuit priest,

 

    I wonder what kind of recommendations he'll make.

 

What’s To Like...

    A Case of Conscience is divided into two sections of similar size.  Part One takes place completely on Lithia, chronicling the interaction between Father Ruiz-Sanchez and a Lithian named Chtexa, and culminating in the team's final recommendations.  The scene switches in Part Two to Earth, featuring Chtexa’s offspring, Egtverchi, whose embryo was brought back to Earth by Father Ruiz-Sanchez.

 

    There’s a time-gap between the two parts, both story-wise and writing-wise.  We meet Egtverchi as an adult Lithian, skipping over his birth and early years entirely.  And while James Blish’s publisher loved his original story, it was only 80 pages or so in length, far too short to be issued as a novel.  So Blish was asked to write a sequel of about the same length, which became Part Two.

 

    Pay attention to Amazon’s genre listings for A Case of Conscience.  The Kindle blurb calls this “Christian Futuristic Fiction” or “Religious Science Fiction”.  The other formats say the genres are things like “Space Opera” or “Science Fiction Adventure”.  Take my advice when deciding whether to read this book:  rely on those Kindle version’s genres.

 

    The main philosophical-religious question in the book is: what happens if we discover an extraterrestrial world with a Code of Ethics remarkably similar to outs, but without any concept of a God?  Part One focuses almost exclusively on Father Ruiz-Sanchez’s thoughts about that, and by extension those of the Catholic Church.  And although this is a work of fiction, it is worthwhile to ponder on how the Christian Church – whether it be Evangelicals, Catholics, or Universal Unitarians – might react to news that sentient life was discovered somewhere else in the galaxy.

 

    At 188 pages (181 pages if you skip the world-building appendix at the back.), this is a short book, but it's not a quick read.  There’s a lot of technical verbiage to plow through, and even though I am a chemist by trade, the science-y stuff slowed things down for me.  Some of the spelling and punctuation is funky: “storeys”, “off beat”, “omni-present”, “near by”, etc.) which also made things drag a bit.  Keep in mind James Blich was an American writer, so “storeys” here is not a Britishism, it’s just weird.  OTOH, I did thoroughly enjoy the use of words such as “whelmed” and “ensmalled”, as well as the mention of Mithraism and Manichaeanism.

 

    The ending is somewhat wry, which I liked, but it felt telegraphed and not very twisty.  There’s room left open for sequels, but AFAIK, no more were ever added, either by Blish or by others.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Heuristic (adj.) : enabling someone to discover or learn something for themselves.

Others: Comminates (v.), Parsimony (n.), Vastation (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 208 ratings and 93 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.63/5 based on 5,843 ratings and 463 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    Agronski: “We don’t know whether our peripheral clues about Lithia are germane or just incidental.  Something enormous could be hidden under the surface without our being able to detect it.

    Michelis: Agronski, stop sounding like a Sunday supplement.  You underestimate your own intelligence.  What kind of enormous secret could that be?  That the Lithians eat people?  That they’re cattle for unknown gods that live in the jungle?  That they’re actually mind-wrenching, soul-twisting, heart-stopping, blood-freezing, bowel-moving superbeings in disguise?”  (pg. 32)

 

    “I can see that you are going to have difficulties in collecting these meteorites,” he said.  “Have you offered incentives?”

    “Oh, certainly.  Everyone understands the importance of the program.  We are all eager to advance it.”

    This was not quite what the priest had meant by his question.  He searched his memory for some Lithian equivalent for “reward,” but found nothing but the word he had already used, “incentive.”  He realized that he knew no Lithian word for “greed,” either.  (pg. 35)

 

“Ah, of course, you are mammals; that is doubtless the difficulty.”  (pg. 42)

    The text is relatively “clean”, which is typical for Sci-Fi penned in the 1950s.  I counted ten instances of cussing in the first 20% of the book, and those were just mild variations of “hell” and “damn”.  I don’t recall any adult situations, booze, or drugs.

 

    What disappointed me most was how much of the text was philosophical musings, and how little action was contained therein.  I was looking for something akin to the “do we greet ‘em or eat ‘em?” themes examined in the Little Fuzzy books written by H. Beam Piper and John Scalzi and reviewed here, here, and here), or at least lots of Space Opera thrills-&-spills.  I guess I should’ve read the Amazon blurbs first.

 

    3½ Stars.  So how did A Case of Conscience manage to win not one, but two prestigious Hugo Awards?  My best guess is that it was due to James Blish’s uncommon target audience.  1950s Science Fiction was almost always geared towards male YA readers.  Here, the target audience seems to be adults interested in the religious ramifications of “first contact” scenarios, as well as those who want a "hard science-fiction" tale of what would happen if we do ever run into other beings out there.  For those readers, Blish's book will be a fascinating study.