A Case of Conscience by James Blish

Hated it. Despite hating it, I finished it because I wanted to know what happened. But still, I hated it. The motivations for the actions of the characters are mostly a mystery, and the characters are incredibly unethical. And it just makes no sense.

For example, a group of four people are sent to a planet inhabited by intelligent, sentient lizards to find out if Earth should have some sort of permanent contact with them... or something. Basically it is a first contact group. Two of the men have strong feelings about what Earth should do, and the other two just join a side. One of the men is a Catholic priest as well as a biologist and linguist. He became more involved with the alien world and society than the others, mostly because the others had no interest in learning the alien language, and one guy was downright hostile toward the idea. And this is the first contact team?! How are they suppose to learn about culture without learning the language?! Anyway, the biologist/priest does. However, he learns that they are highly ethical creatures, but that they have no belief or even concept of God. This freaks the priest/biologist out, and his recommendation to Earth is that they have absolutely no contact with these people, ever, because clearly they were created by Satan. He seriously presents that the Earth. And he is taken seriously!

The other guy, one who was most hostile to learning the language, is even a step down. They discover that this planet has deposits that can be used for making nuclear weapons. His proposal is that they tear the planet apart to build weapons for the UN (there don't seem to be autonomous countries at this time; the UN is the big, planetwide ruler), and the aliens can be used as slave labor because they don't have any concept of money. He seriously proposes this! This is our first contact team? Psychotic and unethical?! And Earth decides to go for his proposal.

What the heck?!

After that the story goes downhill. They come back to Earth, and they bring an alien baby with them (he was a gift). The characters then do things, including the alien, but the reason for why they act is either never shown or doesn't make sense.

Bad story.