A Case of ConscienceMakes a Case for Science

How much does the “ scientific discipline ” in “ skill fable ” matter , really ? Let ’s mull that over while we study A Case of Conscience , by James Blish , the Hugo - advance novel from 1959 .

There is a long - standing debate about how important scientific discipline is to scientific discipline fiction . essentially , the argument goes : If your technology is identical from magic — if it ’s all midi - chlorians and red thing that attend to the game but that are no more naturalistic than Polyjuice Potions orpalantírs — then you ’re not really writing science fable at all , just fantasy garb up in lasers and robots .

And I incline to fit in with that sentiment , at least when I ’ve got my nitpicky written matter editor green eyeshade on and I ’m trying to be vewy , vewy caweful with my words . When I do n’t have the eyeshade on , of course — which is usually , since wear it interferes with my beer helmet — I ’m much less exacting and willing to receive everyone from the ecstasy - piece to the Ghostbusters to the party , and probably even Taylor Lautner , because I ’m hoping he ’ll bringhis girl . I think I ’ve always think that was the good mode to handle the problem : to admit that , yes , technically speaking , “ science fable ” has a very specific meaning , and much of what we apply the term to does n’t actually meet that meaning ’s criteria ; but also to recognise that for practical determination , a flock of us who care narrative about terraforming Mars like stories about dragons , too .

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A Case of Conscience got me retrieve about this some more , because this book is just pack with science , a hatful of it the real kind . It runs the whole gamut of field of study , from biology to geology to interpersonal chemistry to physics to astronomy , and nearly all the crucial plot of land points hang up on one of those . You ’ve sire :

an alien satellite that ’s valuable to earthling because of its massive reserves of lithium and tritium , which could be used to make nuclear artillery ;

its aboriginal mintage , which are suspected of being creatures of Satan by a Jesuit priest because even though they ’re peaceable and good - natured , their science fundamentally does n’t add up ;

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and a flood tide that hinge on a couple of technical breakdowns .

And at first , I was going to advise that the story could be told just as easily without any such level of veracity at all — that you could substitute dilithium orthiotimolinefor the genuine constituent , in brief explain how they mould , etc . , etc . , and provide the reader with an amusement that was more or less as thought - provoking as the literal book is . Because despite all the scientific discipline in A Case of Conscience , it ’s also very clearly an allegory , a piece of lit with a substance , and the majority of its second half reads like a cross between V and K - PAX andNetwork . So , I wondered , why all the scientific accuracy ? Just for purposes of pedantry ? The same way some of us * have to imagine our wives dead of a tragic * * illness before we fantasize about delivering a pizza toTaylor Lautner ’s girlfriend ?

But the more I call back about it , and especially the second and third plot of land points mentioned above , the more I realized that no , you could n’t tell this story without the scientific discipline . At least not without doing ten metre more work to concoct something a hundred sentence less believable .

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James Blish not only trained as a scientist , but alsoworked as a skill editorfor a major pot until he could make enough of a livelihood from his fiction . And although a vocation background in science is certainly something a deal of SF writers have own , I have to say I ’m peculiarly impressed with how he manage to weave so many disparate aspects of it into a very neatly box account — one that look at its characters off into all different directions and still manages to resolve every thread at the end — in A Case of Conscience . This was an left over small book , one I ’m not sure I liked , exactly , for the reason I tend to like script — the character , to a one , are pretty frickin ’ teasing , and a second too visibly robotic in the service of the plot of land — but one that I suspect will mill around with me much , much longer than any of the Hugo winners that add up before it .