[After Such Knowledge 01] • Doctor Mirabilis

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.