Blish created a trilogy, each volume of which dealt with an aspect of the price of knowledge, & gave it the overall name of After Such Knowledge (from a T.S. Eliot quote). The 1st published, A Case of Conscience (winner of the '59 Hugo Award as well as 2004/1953 Retrospective Hugo for Best Novella), showed a Jesuit priest confronted with an intelligent alien species, apparently unfallen, which he eventually concludes must be a Satanic fabrication. The 2nd, Doctor Mirabilis, is a historical novel about the medieval proto-scientist Roger Bacon. The 3rd, actually two short novels, Black Easter & The Day After Judgment, was written using the assumption that the ritual magic for summoning demons as described in grimoires actually worked. In that book, a powerful industrialist & arms merchant arranges to call up demons in the midst of a modern world crisis, resulting in nuclear war & the destruction of civilization. Black Easter is devoted to that element of the plot; The Day After Judgment is devoted to exploring the consequences of the destruction of the world, with an extraordinary ending in both narrative & theological terms.
Po takovém poznání Série
Tato série zkoumá temná zákoutí lidské psychiky a etické dilemata, často zasazená do prostředí s nádechem temné fantasy a hororu. Vyprávění se ponořuje do otázek víry, moci a následků ďábelských dohod. Čtenáři se mohou těšit na hluboké filozofické úvahy propletené s napínavými dějovými zvraty a znepokojivou atmosférou. Je to dílo, které nutí k zamyšlení nad povahou zla a hranicemi lidské vůle.
Doporučené pořadí čtení
Black Easter
- 176 stránek
- 7 hodin čtení
A novel about a practitioner of witchcraft who is asked to use his powers to kill a powerful politician
The Day after Judgment
- 172 stránek
- 7 hodin čtení
Theron Ware and Father Domenico are left to combat the evil forces unleashed on Black Easter
Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez S.J., is a part of a four man scientific commission to the planet Lithia, there to study a harmonious society of aliens living on a planets which is a biologist's paradise. He soon finds himself troubled: how can these perfect beings, living in an apparent Eden, have no conception of sin or God? If such a sinless Eden has been created apart from God, then who is responsible? Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1959.
Související knihy
The Devil's Day
- 10 stránek
- 1 hodina čtení
A bored weapons entrepreneur enlists the greatest black magician of all time to perform a magical feat of stupendous proportions, and only one man--a simple Italian monk--feels the imminent danger. But the holy man must stand and watch helplessly as the magician unleashes the most powerful demons of Hell onto an unsuspecting world.