Book Review – A Case of Conscience by James Blish

I always give Blish credit for including religion in early sci-fi. For the non-establishment genre at the time, it had a lot of gatekeepers who just assumed religion would be phased out in the future a humanity continued to evolve – but smoking and radio would never change! Blish seems to include a Jesuit priest here not for anything Jesuit-like but it seems he knows the Jesuits have a history of being learned men and so would fit in with an expedition of possible colonization.

This book is of two parts in a couple of ways. The first is the expedition and the revelation which was bloody interesting and something a lot different from what I was expecting which was “oh this planet is actually Eden with lizards” so that was a great surprise that it was far from that. The second part is the fish/lizard out of water being on Earth section. While there is some great early 1950s ideas of what the future would look like it really meanders and is weaker in storytelling and a change in tone that throws you out of the story after a decent reveal. The ending also falls into a weak and very quick conclusion that doesn’t borrow from the good parts of the first half of the story.

I did, overall, like this and the shorter aspect of it would make me recommend it to the right person. I also think this would be a good writing prompt someone could pick up with or continue from the idea like we’ve seen with Arthur C. Clarke’s “A Meeting With Medusa“. Great revelation, weak concluding execution.