A Case of Conscience (James Blish, 1958)
I’m trying to read all the books that won the Hugo award and so far it has not been a good journey. “A Case of Conscience”. This is a science-fiction book that combines religion and science-fiction and might have made people in the 50s go “Hmm…thought-provoking, here have an award”, but in the sexy 00s, I was bored.
Okay, let’s see. The people in the future have discovered an alien planet and it is up to four people that were sent there to study it and recommend if it should be opened up or closed off. One of them is a priest who finds a religious paradox within this alien planet. The aliens are rational, happy, moral, logical, and so on. They have no religion, also. So he figures, if this is understood on earth, they would argue that a world without religion or God has produced better aliens. He concludes that this alien world is the work of Satan. But a creative Satan is heresy. Does this interest you? Maybe, it could, but not in the context of the book. The book has badly written characters, a plot that makes little sense, and progress of events does not seem realistic or identifiable.
2/5
