Black Easter. James Blish (Doubleday, $3.95). The Final Programme. Michael Moorcock (Avon, 60c). The Still Small Voice of Trumpets. Lloyd Biggle (Doubleday, $4.50). The Doomsday Men. Kenneth Bulmer (Doubleday, $4.50). Flesh. Philip José Farmer (Doubleday, $3.95)

In the field of science fiction or fantasy, morality – when it enters a books at all – is almost always either thoughtlessly liberal (you can't judge other cultures) or thoughtlessly illiberal (strong men must rule) or just plain thoughtless (killing people is bad). James Blish has taken thought and has written a novel called Black Easter. This book is about nothing less than the problem of Evil, and it is brilliant. Says Yeats: “If God is good he is not God. If God is God he is not good,” a dilemma for which there have been many solutions. Blish chooses a heretical solution, the Manichean, and pushes it to its logical outcome. If God is omnipotent and benevolent, why does Evil exist? And if God is not omnipotent, if Evil has any kind of positive existence, what may not happen? To go any further would give away part of the book that a reader ought to have to himself; plot, in this book, is the very embodiment of the theme and not merely a diversionary tactic. It is as beautifully worked, as thorough and as complete a cul-de-sac as I have seen in a long time. Blish's gift for relentless, technical detail is at its best here – more than that, his gift for portraying people who are passionately fond of logic, knowledge, and technical detail. His equation of black magic with science is no accident; it was Levi-Strauss (I believe) who called magic a primitive form of science. And the motives here are the same. In an author's note, the author states that “the vast majority” of “novels, poems and plays about magic and witchcraft … classify without exception as either romantic or playful … I have never seen one which dealt with what real sorcery actually had to be like if it existed.” Black Easter is not in the least romantic, nor is it, God forbid, playful; in a world of such pedantic religion and legalistic metaphysics, it is indeed better to curse God and die.