Asking the Wrong Questions: The 2011 Hugo Awards: The Novelette Shortlist

Abigail puts her finger on it: "What's wrong with "Leviathan" isn't just that it's badly written and that all its characters seem to have been created either to spout talking points [...] or act as straw men [...].  Worse than these is the fact that it's not a story so much as a thought experiment that posits a situation in which none of the negative associations of Christian missionary work are applicable... The premise of proselytizing to aliens raises a lot of questions, but Stone is more interested in giving definitive answers, ones that shut down all objections to missionary work, among humans and aliens alike."