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A Case of Conscience by James Blish (Arrow 1975), Cover: Chris Foss James Blish wrote some very popular books in the post-war years - including
space operas like Cities in Flight, in which, after two sentences of the
proverbial double-talk, whole Earth cities (by Earth we mean the US, I think)
fly gracefully off into space like migrant workers looking for Pilgrimage to Earth by Robert Sheckley (Bantam, 1957), Cover: Anonymous This collection of tales by Robert Sheckley, from the 1950's, is somehow very
typical of the softer sort of SF of the fifties. The stories appeared mostly in
Galaxy Magazine, with a couple from other sources including Playboy magazine.
Perhaps Sheckley's most famous work was
One doesn't know much about Brian Ball or whether he still writes, but I
found this book very entertaining in the old 'sense of wonder' manner. Robots
and robotic weapon systems of a world that was only about fifty years in the
future when he published the book, are now not much more than twenty years off,
one feels. Somehow the atmosphere in which a very real fear of intelligent
machinery dominates the book is much more believable than any other tale of
robots turning on their Click on Golden-Age at Booklovers logo to buy these books and others Back to F & SF Feedback to Golden Age
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employment.
In some sense it is the diametric opposite of Hal Clements careful scientific
infrastructrural books, with the one magic word 'Spindizzi' solving all the
technical problems of the preposterous key idea of the book. Why not
abracadabra, I ask, or bibbedy-bobbedy-boo? But
A Case of Conscience is another story
altogether. It deals with a marvelous dilemma facing a priest on an alien world
peopled by sentient and intelligent reptiles. Blish's solution is somewhat
chilling, but he is obviously at home in this moral swamp, although in a way the
book sits uneasily with his other religious books, Black Easter and The
Day After Judgment, with their very tangible devils and angels. A Case of
Conscience (first published in 1959) is a must on the reading list of
anyone into science fiction, and is a clear example of a writer who has dealt
with mind-bending issues never addressed by much more trendy literary figures in
mainstream fiction. Blish tried to get away from the SF label during his life;
he told me he was going to write only mainstream fiction at one point late in
his life, but he still started on more SF after that. The Foss cover is great
fun, but it ain't about souls, is it?
Immortality Inc., but there are some interesting stories here including the
title story, Pilgrimage to Earth. It begs a few questions about the right
approach to good SF. In it a chappie from a distant rather backward agricultural
world travels to earth to find love and romance. Once he gets there he is sold
love, not sex, love, but guess what, it all turns sour, so he visits a
stall when you can kill, yes kill, lots of pretty girls. My first criticism is
that there's always something disturbing about books about guys killing lots of
pretty girls whatever philosophical, artistic or psychological wrapping has been
used. And secondly the only necessary SF ingredient to the story was the love
drug, all the interplanetary hoo-ha was gratuitous. There are several good
stories though, like Trap, with an alien underestimating the intelligence of
good old homo sapiens, and soon getting his comeuppance. There are
one or two silly ones as well, an aging professor having his brain somehow
transferred to a dog. The point of the tale? He wants to have his head patted.
Not so hot.
