Emil
3/1/2011
Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez is a Jesuit priest, and his problem is one of conscience. How should one deal with an alien race who seems to live the perfect moral existence and yet have no concept of God? Is it Eden, or a cunning trap set for man by the devil to tempt us with a vision of an unfallen world?
As the story unfolds and shifts back to Earth and follows the development of an alien egg (with a rushed, yet detailed worldview and laboured dialogue, insights and formulations), Ruiz-Sanchez doubts and crisis of conscience only grows worse until he is compelled towards a thespian and doomed resolution of them.
Despite (arguably) being one of the most unusual and thought-provoking sf novels ever written, it has lengthy moments of typical 1950s boredom, and suffers gravely from... dullness. It's saved from being a truly bad novel by its clandestine questioning of injustice without challenging the liberal hegenomy - Blish gives no indication that we have to accept that Ruiz-Sanches' beliefs are correct, for his interest is not religion but in moral dilemmas that the confrontation with alien-ness produces. It has to be comended for recognising the significance of faith in a genre dedicated to world-building, which has proven crucial in generating the critical density of the complete science fiction narrative, for what is sf without the questioning of set beliefs?
We will not all reach the same conclusions as Ruiz-Sanchez, but the genuine agony and dispear of conscience he suffers are brilliantly conjured, saving the novel, if only by a whisker.
(Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow" is a much more mature attempt at the same theme.)