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!