James Blish (1921–1975)

This 1972 novella is quirky in ways I don't often see in contemporary SF. In the 20th century, John Martels, astronomer, slips and falls from the top of his radio telescope. When awareness returns, his consciousness is hosted in a brain-in-a-box 23,000 years in the future. The brain's owner, the Qvant, Supreme Autarch of Rebirth III, can't evict him - and anyway, Martels is a change from endless staring at decaying exhibits in the disused museum where the Qvant is stationed, Rebirth III having given way to Rebirth IV long ago. At intervals, one or another 250th century human visits, to ask the Qvant for advice in their losing war against the Birds - avian species having become larger, smarter, better organized, and much more hostile than in our era. Can the mind from antiquity save the human species from extinction?

The struggle against the Birds is paralleled by Martels' increasing understanding of the psionic forces that brought him to the future and govern the afterlife humans go to. Blish provides a lot of moments where Martels comes to a realization that just is not evident in what the reader knows. I had forgotten how like A. E. van Vogt he could be in this way.

We're also reminded that Blish didn't deserve his reputation as a writer of hard SF, which mainly rested on his having heard of one or two more physicists than most mid-century SF writers. For example, at one point Martels looks at the Moon and notices that it's gotten visibly farther from the Earth over 23,000 years. At 3.8 cm per year, we actually expect less than a kilometer's difference - not visible.

Still, quirky: the psionics, plus various of Blish's hobbyhorses, e.g. that history moves in cycles - the Rebirth eras. So my rating is higher than the story deserves. A newcomer to Blish should skip this one and try "Surface Tension" or A Case of Conscience.… (mer)

A sequel to Black Easter, which follows on directly from the events of that book. The four men, priest, black magician, arms dealer and the latter's sidekick go their disparate ways to try to deal with the situation that now exists after nuclear weapons have destroyed many great cities and demons are loose on the earth. Eventually they will be drawn back to a common destination to confront their destiny. At times reminiscent of the film Doctor Strangelove, this comes across as darkly humourous in parts. The ending where Satan is revealed to be devastated at having to assume God's role in his mysterious absence or death was a bit confusing, as I wasn't sure, when the infernal city of Discussion disappeared and Death Valley was restored to normal whether this applied to the rest of the earth.

Read as part of the After Such Knowledge omnibus and posted as an individual review as all the other GR reviews are under the individual books.

… (mer)

Given that the other reviews of the books within this omnibus have been posted under the individual novels, I have done likewise.

Doctor Mirabilis
Black Easter
The Day after Judgement
rel="nofollow" target="_top">A Case of Conscience

Apart from Doctor Mirabilis, which I rated as four stars, I gave these books three stars each, hence my rating for the omnibus as a whole.… (mer)

A book literally of two halves, the first and better being originally published as a 1953 novella, and the second added to expand it to novel length in 1959, when it won the prestigious Hugo award. In Part 1, we have a setup rather like that in Black Easter, volume 2 of the After Such Knowledge sequence, of which A Case of Conscience forms the fourth and final part. Four men have been sent to Lithia, a planet 50 light years from Earth, to investigate and deliver a report to the United Nations as to how the planet should be exploited or whether it should be closed to humans. As in Black Easter, one of the men is a Catholic priest, a Jesuit, and also a biologist. Up to now, he has been an enthusiastic supporter of the planet and its sentient species, 12 foot tall marsupial reptiles, though puzzled as to how they maintain a society free of crime or conflict. Because of planetary differences, such as a lack of iron, the Lithians lack certain aspects of human technology and scientific knowledge, although they are far in advance with others, such as genetics.

Ruiz-Sanchez's colleagues have differing opinions. One, a chemist, admires the peaceful lifestyle of the Lithians and wants to open the planet for mutual trade and knowledge transfer. The geologist has no firm opinion and vacillates between those of his colleagues. The physicist turns out to want to turn the place into a bomb factory, with the Lithians forced into slave labour.

As book 1 develops and these opinions are expressed, Ruis-Sanchez drops a bombshell. For some reason, the revelation by a Lithian friend of his, that they lay eggs into the sea and that various lifeforms around their forested city are immature Lithians, makes him jump to what I found an irrational conclusion - that Satan must have created the planet as a temptation to humans because it seems to show that sentient beings can live harmoniously from pure reason alone, having no faith or religion. Apart from the chauvinism of a view that another world is only valid for its relationship and effect on humans, Lithians don't really live in a Utopia. They lack all creativity including art, writing, even simple story telling, and presumably also the serendipitous leaps of understanding that have led to so many scientific discoveries on Earth. And my own reaction to this revelation was that it demonstrated a callousness to their own young - these have to fend entirely for themselves, in danger from different predators at each stage of the life cycle, so that only the "fittest" survive, which struck me as eugenist and even Nazi in attitude.. For this reason, Father Ruis-Sanchez votes for quarantine, though aware that his recorded decision will land him in big trouble with the Vatican because it is the heresy of Manichaeism imputing equal creative power to Satan as to God. As the Earthmen prepare to leave at the end of Part 1, the priest's Lithian friend presents him with his own son in egg form to be a kind of ambassador.

Part 2 deals with the raising of the Lithian child or rather his misraising, as the Father goes off to Rome to face the music, leaving him with the chemist and a young woman scientist. Due to basic lack of common sense, they do not give him an environment anything like the one required, not even periods of darkness for sleep, and he grows up mentally as well as physically wrong, with no inbuilt moral compass, unlike the other Lithians. Although the chemist can speak Lithian, he doesn't bother to teach the child and gets him accepted as a citizen because he finds him odd and uncomfortable to be around, and wants to shrug off responsibility for him.

Most of Earth has been turned into huge underground shelters because of the now past threat of nuclear war, and as a result, many people are borderline or actual schizophrenics. The young Lithian grows quickly, ends up as a media celebrity and uses his TV show to incite civil disobedience, which rapidly escalates into major riots. He eventually escapes authority by stowing away on a ship back to Lithia despite stating earlier that he had no interest in the place or his people.

Meanwhile, the priest is not excommunicated but is instructed to exorcise Lithia, which he eventually gets a chance to do over a new superduper telescope which shows the planet in real time. The physicist has been backed by the UN to carry out nuclear experiments - and destroy the Lithians unique communications system, illogically -and it seems he ignores a message sent aboard the same ship used by the returning Lithian to stow away on, to warn him of a serious error in his calculations. At least, when the Father performs an exorcism over the telescope, Lithia blows up and it is left open as to the cause,: whether the physicist's faulty equipment did it or whether the priest is right to believe he has destroyed a whole planet which was truly the devil's snare.

Read as part of the After Such Knowledge omnibus and posted as an individual review as all the other GT reviews are under the individual books.… (mer)