A Case of Conscience: A Catholic priest faces aliens with morality but no religionOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureGreat A-side, dreadful B-side. This is James Blish’s 1959 Hugo-winning SF novel, expanded from the1953 novella. Part One (the original novella) is set on planet Lithia, introducing a race of reptilians with a perfect, strife-free society and innate sense of morality. However, to the consternation of Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, they have no religion of any kind. Their morality is inherent, and they have no need of a religious framework to direct their actions. As a Catholic, Ruiz-Sanchez cannot make heads or tails of this. Without religion, do the Lithians have souls? If so, are they fallen into sin like humans, or still in a state of grace like Adam and Eve? He struggles with this conundrum, as well as the purpose of the expedition to Lithia, which is to determine whether the planet should be exploited for its lithium or quarantined since the Lithians are clearly created by Satan to undermine the need for faith to form the basis for an ideal society. It’s very unclear whether Blish thinks this is a legitimate debate or not, and while it’s good for the author to let the reader decide (I’d like to see Heinlein hold back on judgment, for example), this Part ends inconclusively with Ruiz-Sanchez receiving an egg from his Lithian friend Chtexa to bring back to Earth.Part 2Part 2 must be the most incoherent and poorly-written second act ever in SF. It’s about Egtverchi, the Lithian born from that egg, as he grows up in human society. He quickly learns about the world, and starts to question why humans are living in underground shelters brought about by earlier nuclear conflict. In the process, he causes a massive rebellion among the stir-crazy people of Earth, who are suffering from the psychosis of living underground.At the same time Ruiz-Sanchez is brought before the Pope fore heresy, since his suggestion that Satan created Lithia to undermine God is a form of Manichaeism, a religion that posits a struggle between equally-matched good and evil. The Pope points out that Ruiz-Sanchez may have been deceived by the Lithians (and by extension Satan) and that he should have performed an exorcism of the planet! That wouldn’t have been my conclusion, but…Then the story does another sudden about-turn and we discover that a scientist from the initial expedition has gone back to Lithia and is trying a dangerous experiment that may destroy the planet. As Ruiz-Sanchez performs his exorcism, Lithia explodes. Was it his exorcism that did it, unraveling Satan’s illusion, or merely the mad experiments of the scientists who destroyed an innocent and perfectly moral society? The story provides no answers, and furthermore no basis to form an opinion.Part 2 was so badly-constructed and garbled that I wonder what happened to James Blish when he wrote it. It’s just a complete mess and actually got me fairly irritated. I really cannot understand how this book won the Hugo Award that year. A Case of Conscience is truly dated in every sense, and it would almost certainly never be written or gain any following today. The wooden characters and dialogue wouldn't withstand scrutiny, and a philosophy-centric story almost certainly would seem irrelevant in our information-drenched, hyper-realist world. While I consider the book a failure as a piece of SF literature, it certainly deserves credit for its unlikely storyline and refusal to wrap things up neatly at the end. However, the deplorable quality of the latter half really makes it hard to take seriously. It's clear that back in the 1950s authors often wrote good short stories and were then pushed by publishers to expand them into less satisfying longer works. Of course the pendulum has swung too far the other way now, since any genre work that wants to be taken seriously has to be at least 800 pages long. But it is unfortunate that some early classics feel poorly constructed, and that reflects the tenuous state of the genre back in the Golden Age of Astounding and Galaxy before full-length SF really hit its stride.
This review contains spoilers for several of James Blish's novelsI discovered James Blish when I was about 10 (I believe the first one I read was The Star Dwellers), and I have returned to him many times throughout my life. I don't think I know any author who is quite as frustrating an example of Kilgore Trout syndrome. Wonderful ideas, but in most cases terrible execution: for every novel or short story that succeeds, at least three are left butchered and bleeding by the side of the road. Blish had a clutch of fascinatingly heretical theories about the relationship between Man and the Divine, and if he'd been able to write properly you sometimes feel he could have been another Dante or Nietzsche. In Black Easter, a surprisingly good novel about black magic, an insane arms dealer joins forces with a sorcerer to release all the major demons from Hell for one night; the book's terrifying conclusion has Satan appearing in person to announce the death of God. The sequel has another fine idea, but it's ruined by hasty and shoddy writing: it turns out that this is also part of the Divine Plan, and the Devil is unwillingly forced to take God's place. In his longest work, the four-volume Cities in Flight, Blish developed an even more grandiose and imaginative concept. The first volume depicts the Second Coming of Christ, and the concept is once again excellent. Christ confounds the expectations of the world's faithful by incarnating as Bliss Wagoner, the U.S. Senator for Alaska (this was well before Sarah Palin was born, in case you're wondering). He delivers on His promise to give eternal life in the heavens to His people, but does so in an unexpected way, by diverting federal funding into research programs which result in faster than light travel and an immortality drug. One of the most agreeable conceits of the novel is that Christ is not recognized by anyone, and is never explicitly identified; it's only when you get to the book's final sentence that Blish comes clean, and even then he phrases it cryptically. Alas, this brilliant idea is again spoiled by poor writing. And the same goes for the fourth volume: despite coming up with one of the best end-of-the-universe plots ever devised, in which the meaning of God's Creation is triumphantly revealed on the last page, the greater part of the book is boring and flat.So it should be no surprise that A Case of Conscience is more of the same. We have discovered a planet peopled by an apparently gentle and civilized race, the Lithians, who are gradually revealed as being literally a creation of the Devil, intended to delude and ensnare humanity. The protagonist, a Jesuit priest, too late recognizes the Lithian ambassador to Earth for what he is, and is powerless to oppose him; this scenario, it occurs to me now, is rather like that in Black Easter. And then, after what everyone here agrees is a fantastic buildup, the whole book falls apart, leaving the reader frustrated over yet another disappointment. It's genuinely tragic.Poor Blish always seems to have been in a hurry; except in a few short stories, and perhaps in Black Easter, he never had time to sit down and get it right. And he died quite young, at the age of only 54. He's probably been sentenced to a few thousand years in Purgatory for all those spectacular missed opportunities. But when he finally gets to Heaven, I expect he'll have figured out how to stop doing it and he'll be able to settle down to his long-term job as one of God's favorite jesters. It's clearly what he was meant for.____________________________________I just looked up Blish on Wikipedia and discovered that he's buried near Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows. I hope they are now collaborating on a joint project, though I must admit I'm having trouble imagining what it would look like...
What do You think about A Case Of Conscience (2000)?
As I read the first part of this novel I really enjoyed the thought put into world of Lithia, the debate between the 4 scientists about how to classify the planet and the deception of one of those scientists. But moving into the second part of the novel Lithia, the relationship of the 4 scientists and the deception is moved into the background. In its place, we follow a Lithian's life (and its oddly growing fame) on Earth. It felt like two completely separate stories, and I would have preferred to go deeper into the first part.
—Geoff
I am not well read in the science fiction genre, but in comparing A Case of Conscience to science fiction novels I have read, it stands as one of the oddest. It won the Hugo Award in 1959.A four man exploratory team is investigating Lithia, the first planet found so far with sentient life. The aliens are reptilian, have no experience of faith or religious belief, and their complete reliance on reason has produced a society devoid of evil or sin.Father Ruiz-Sanchez, a Jesuit and a biologist, is one member of this team, who are charged with recommending to their superiors what should be done with Lithia. The physicist on the team proposes making it into an atomic research planet, but the Jesuit decides it is a product of the Devil and wants it sealed off to protect mankind from temptation.My only knowledge of Jesuit scientific philosophy come from Mary Doria Russell's excellent novel, The Sparrow. James Blish did nothing but confuse me as I attempted to follow the reasoning of Father Ruiz-Sanchez. (Hilarious plot element: the Jesuit is studying Ulysses by James Joyce to learn more about the Devil.)In the second half of A Case of Conscience, the team returns to Earth with one of the alien creatures. This little Lithian grows up to become a psychopathic menace to society; a character who could have been created by Truman Capote. Is this supposed to prove the Jesuit's theory?The book was actually a good exciting read. I just could not figure out what the author meant by his obviously deeply pondered theme of science vs religion. Does anyone want to help me out here?
—Judy
Recommended to me by an online friend, because its plot/ situation is similar to The Sparrow and Children of God, that we both loved. In this terrific short novel of ideas, Peruvian Jesuit biologist Ramon Ruiz- Sanchez joins an expedition to the planet Lithia. There he comes upon 12 foot tall sapient lizards who rely on logic and reason, who have a moral code but are without the capability for God or faith, which makes them a heresy. Only Satan could have created them. (When Fr. Emilio Sandoz fo
—Julia
