Join us as we discuss the Hugo Award winner for 1959: James Blish's A Case of Conscience. You can find the book on the Internet Archive here.

Host: Christine D. Baker, a historian who lives in Vancouver, BC. You can find her at @klaxoncomms.com‬ on Bluesky or follow what she's reading at her website: https://klaxoncomms.com/reading/

This month's guest is Alana Vincent, a scholar who studies the portrayals of religion in literature, especially in Science Fiction and Fantasy. They are a series editor for Bloomsbury Studies in Popular Fiction and Religious Dynamics. The most recent book in the series, Sang-Keun Yoo's Speculative Orientialsm: Asian Religions in New Wave Science Fiction, came out in September 2025. You can find Alana on Bluesky at @alana-m-vincent.net.

From about 5:38-27:54, Christine is recapping the book, which has A LOT of spoilers. The rest of the episode isn't spoiler free, but that section goes through the plot in detail.

If you'd like to support the podcast on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/HugoHistory

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Some things mentioned in the episode:

A biography of James Blish: Imprisoned in a tesseract: the life and work of James Blish by David Ketterer.

Jo Walton's rundown of the 1959 Hugo Awards.