Humans please don’t colonize planets where there is sentient life. Also, if an alien grows up on earth and decides his mission is to create dissent, we have failed.

Enjoyed the book!

Hugo Award for Best Novel (1959)

This is a book all about the pull and tug between various binary states. The most obvious is the religion vs. science debate that forms the core of the book. But there are also themes of colonization vs. non-interference of "primitive" cultures, nature vs. nurture in determining development of personality characteristics, cold war mutual destruction vs. living in harmony, authoritarianism government vs. insurgence, and probably some others. Most of these questions are not explicitly answered, but left to the reader to think about. As such, this book feels as if it could have been written now.

The book is divided into two distinct parts, not surprising since it is a fix-up novel from two novellas. The first part takes place on an alien planet on which humans are trying to determine if there are enough natural resources to exploit to offset the cost of traveling 50 light years from Earth to obtain. The natives are a peaceful, rather primitive race of curious creatures that go through several developmental stages in their growth, from fishlike, to amphibious, to reptilian. Is it worth disrupting or even eradicating these aliens to develop the planet's resources? The second part sees how one alien fares growing up on Earth. What ensues raises many questions among both his human caretakers and his extended family back home.

Central to this plot line is the journey of a Jesuit biologist whose faith is tested by what he sees and discovers while interacting with the aliens on their planet and then on Earth. It seems Blish took some liberties with Jesuit theology, but the book remains a provocative and serious examination of a man's search for "truth." The ending is ambiguous, leaving crucial questions for the reader to consider. And all this in fewer than 200 pages!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I read this book because of how much I loved The Sparrow. I was not disappointed in finding another Jesuit priest protagonist who suffers more than Christ. I wish we could have spent a little more time on Lithia and with other Lithians. I still have so many questions about The Message Tree! I found it sort of hard to follow in some places. I didn’t know enough about Catholicism to understand why Dr. Ruiz was considered a heretic for believing Lithia was created by Satan. Overall, however, it was beautifully written, a compelling story, and absolutely timeless.

Tantalizingly good premise:

A scout mission is sent to a planet 50 light years away to make contact with the inhabitants and test the viability of gathering resources. The 4 scientist group find the planet, Lithia, to be a veritable paradise. The aliens living therein are an inviting, moral, civilized race and welcome the earthlings. Father Ramon, one of the scientists, is a Jesuit who cannot come to terms with the fact that this alien race has achieved perfect morality without religion. He believes the entire planet to be a ruse crafted by Satan. He recommends against further contact with the planet.

As you might guess, he is outvoted. A Lithian he has befriended during the journey sends him back to Earth with a Lthian embryo as a goodwill gift. The alien hatches and develops on Earth, but without the moral societal framework of Lithia, he becomes sort of a douchey Tyler Durden who embraces the worst in human behavior. Everything falls apart.

The beginning of this book was terrific and things got really muddled in the middle.

amazing story

I was fascinated by the idea of a Jesuit priest faced with a struggle to reconcile faith & science. that order, as he notes in the story, is well known for doing just that. he crafted a beautiful, compelling story around a novel challenge. I’d always been impressed with Blish’s writing in the Star Trek novelizations, but hadn’t realized he wrote such exceptional stories. I’ll need to read more of them.