num_pages: 318
description: Blish created a trilogy, each volume of which dealt with an aspect of the price of knowledge, &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &amp; arms merchant arranges to call up demons in the midst of a modern world crisis, resulting in nuclear war &amp; 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 &amp; theological terms.
language: English
title: Doctor Mirabilis
titlecomplete: Doctor Mirabilis (After Such Knowledge, #1)
genres: Historical, Catholic, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Collections, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction
ratings_count: 695
series: After Such Knowledge
publisher: Arrow