Recently I’ve been reading A Case of Conscience by James Blish. This is a science fiction novel written in the 50s about a Jesuit priest/biologist studying a race of reptillian anthropoids on a distant planet. They have a seemingly perfect ethical society without friction or conflict, but also utterly destitute of religion or any sense of transcendence. He thus concludes that they are, literally, spawn of the Devil!
I haven’t finished it yet, but it provides an interesting contrast with C. S. Lewis’ Out On the Silent Planet where an Earthman encounters “unfallen” extraterrestrials. One of the chief differences is that the aliens have a kind of natural rapport with God and the humans are almost uniformly malicious and predatory. Lewis expressed in a few different places his firm belief that nothing good could come from human encounters with extraterrestrials. He was convinced that we would treat them pretty much the way European colonists treated indigenous peoples. Being subject to Original Sin, he thought humanity should be quarantined.

Leave a comment