A Case of Conscience

Father Ruiz-Sanchez — Jesuit member of a four-man scientific team investigating a new alien world—was very happy on Lithia, a biologist's paradise. He grew afraid only when it became clear that this extraordinary planet was a paradise in all other respects as well. And this Ruiz knew could only be a trap—a gigantic trap, on a scale such as had never been set for the human race before. But if he acknowledged that it was a trap—then Ruiz was himself a heretic, cast out and damned for eternity!

In A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, James Blish has written a tour-de-force—not only does he present a compelling moral problem for which he provides a solution (at the same time ingeniously leaving the answer to the reader), but he has created two separate worlds—idyllic Lithia, complete in all its details, and a culture on Earth which has gone below ground, literally, with all the problems inherent in a world of sub-cities. And this is only the framework on which James Elfish builds the stories and characters of four extraordinary men — the priest, who works for the greater glory of God; the dedicated scientist, who works for the glory of man; the hard-headed realist, who works only for himself, and the man who is content to ask nothing of any world, or any man.