James Blish, "A Case of Conscience"

Mankind has made first contact and among the four researchers sent to investigate the garden-world Lithia and its reptilian inhabitants is Father Ramon Ruiz-sanchez, SJ. The Jesuit botanist and doctor is the only member of the research team to oppose opening the world up for human intercourse. The Lithians, he suspects, may be too good to be true. Indeed, with their peaceful and proseprous society, more advanced in many ways than man, and in their total lack of any idea of faith or the divine, they imply that a sentient species can live the good life without religious revelation. These "unfallen" beings are not angels. Indeed, he fears, they may be a creation of the Devil, meant to tempt man into abandoning religion in light of their enlightened example.

But this belief is heresy. Only God has the power of creation. The Devil merely perverts. If these beings are good, they cannot be a creation of the Devil. Yet why would God create them perfect without religion, while making man imperfect in His image?

Father Ruiz-Sanchez returns to Earth with a precious and frightening cargo, the unhatched egg of a Lithian. Blessed with a genetic memory, his passenger will hatch and mature without Lithian care. But what will happen to an alien raised among men?

The result is horrific; a brilliant, cynical, conscience-less creature who wreaks havoc on human society, manipulating men like a demonic puppet-master plying his craft. His presence on Earth provokes riots and incites murder. Meanwhile, it appears that Lithia is largely made up of weapons-grade lithium, an unimaginable source of thermonuclear munitions. And now the human-raised Lithian has outsmarted his hosts and is on his way back to Lithia, perhaps to cause a fall from grace among his kin akin to the kind that the serpent brought Adam in Eden.

This vivid, imaginative, fast paced, and often poetic work is a book of ideas. The characters are three-dimensional and the situations are quite topical in a timeless way certainly still valid fifty years after it brought its author a Hugo Award for best novel. If you haven't read Blish start here.

The painting is "Lilith" by John Collier.

Walter M. Miller "A Canticle for Leibowitz"

Walter M. Miller Jr.s' magnum opus, constantly in print since its publication in 1960, this work is considered by many to be the most beautifully artistic work of science-fiction ever written. In three parts, Fiat Homo, Fiat Lux, Fiat Voluntas Tua, it traces the future history of man from a post-thermonuclear dark age, through the re-invention of electricity, and back to the brink of self destruction. Written as an explicitly Roman Catholic and pre-Vatican II novel, the Hugo Award-winning story revolves about a monastery named for the titular character, Saint Leibowitz, who never appears live. A basic knowledge of Latin and a willingness to look up a term every other chapter (or to reference the wonderful cheat-sheet of Latin phrases fromn Canticle at Wikipedia) and an ability to suspend any anti-Catholic bias will benefit the reader.

The work is one of worship for heroic effort, of principles upheld, and values passionately pursued. Miller's sense of history and discerning psychological skill lead to vistas and characterizations of Herbertian depth. With the wry dark wit of a Cold War culture that produced Strangelove and Planet of the Apes, irony wrestles with ecstasy. Leibowitz is a Jew, canonized by the Church for accidental reasons. With its span of centuries, another strand woven throughout this epic is the apocryphal Christian mythological persona, the Wandering Jew, condemned to walk the Earth 'til Christ return.

Miller's language is unsurpassingly poetic, his words evoking imagery of Randian clarity. I have read this book three times through. Miller was known primarily as a writer of short stories, often, as in Dark Benediction, of great skill and originality. He led a troubled later life, and never finished another novel. The posthumous, disillusioned and anti-climactic Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was finished by a ghost writer. But this masterpiece has all the pathos and beauty of a great mediaeval cathedral, crucifix included.