James Blish

James Benjamin Blish (May 23, 1921 – July 30, 1975) was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling Jr.

Easton Press James Blish books

Case of Conscience - Masterpieces of Science Fiction - 1989
The Devil's Day - Masterpieces of Fantasy - 1996

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Author James Blish

Blish was born at East Orange, New Jersey.

Blish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942–1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Army. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. His first published story appeared in 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave up his job to become a professional writer.

He is credited with coining the term gas giant, in the story "Solar Plexus" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Judith Merril. (The story was originally published in 1941, but that version did not contain the term; Blish apparently added it in a rewrite done for the anthology, which was first published in 1952.)

Blish was married to the literary agent Virginia Kidd from 1947 to 1963.

From 1962 to 1968, he worked for the Tobacco Institute.

Between 1967 and his death from lung cancer in 1975, Blish became the first author to write short story collections based upon the classic TV series Star Trek. In total, Blish wrote 11 volumes of short stories adapted from episodes of the 1960s TV series, as well as an original novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970 the first original novel for adult readers based upon the series (since then hundreds more have been published). He died midway through writing Star Trek 12; his wife, J. A. Lawrence, completed the book, and later completed the adaptations in the volume Mudd's Angels.

Blish lived in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. In 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and lived in Oxford until his death in 1975. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of Kenneth Grahame.

Cities in Flight

Perhaps Blish's most famous works were the "Okies" stories, known collectively as Cities in Flight, published in the science-fiction digest magazine Astounding Science Fiction. The framework for these was set in the first of four novels, They Shall Have Stars (first UK publication under the alternative title of Year 2018!), which introduces two essential features of the series. The first is the invention of the anti-aging drug ascomycin; Blish's employer Pfizer makes a thinly disguised appearance as Pfitzner in a section showing the screening of biological samples for interesting activity. (Pfizer also appears in disguise as one of the sponsors of the polar expedition in a subsequent book, Fallen Star). The second is the development of an antigravity device known as the "spindizzy". Since the device becomes more efficient when used to propel larger objects, entire cities leave an Earth in decline and rove the stars, looking for work among less-industrialized systems. The long life provided by ascomycin is necessary because the journeys between stars are time-consuming.

They Shall Have Stars is dystopian science fiction of a type common in the era of McCarthyism, and even includes a villain who is a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and McCarthy and named MacHinery. The second, A Life For The Stars, is a coming of age story set amid flying cities. The third, Earthman, Come Home, is a series of loosely connected short stories detailing the adventures of a flying New York City; the title piece was selected as one of the best novellas prior to 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America and included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

For his fourth and final installment, The Triumph of Time (UK title: A Clash of Cymbals), Blish set the end of his literature's universe in AD 4004. (The chronology in early editions of They Shall Have Stars differed somewhat from the later reprints, indicating that Blish, or his editors, may not have planned this at the beginning of the series.) A film version of Cities in Flight was in pre-production by Spacefilms in 1979, but never materialized.

The Haertel Scholium

This term describes the background of a number of Blish's science fiction short stories. Three distinct technologies, their invention, and consequences are outlined. There is some overlap between the Cities in Flight saga and that of The Seedling Stars, mainly through one piece of technology, the Dirac Radio. Another unifying concept is the first trans-luminal drive The Haertel Overdrive.

Adolph (Dolph) Haertel developed the drive in order to reach Mars rapidly (Welcome to Mars!). Haertel Cosmology, the result of Haertel's science, in Blish's words, "swallowed Einstein the way Einstein swallowed Newton that is to say, alive." Haertel goes on to develop the drive to allow the entry of men into interstellar space. The DFC-3, piloted by Garrard, reaches Alpha Centauri, where extraterrestrial first contact is made with the Clinesterton Beademung (Short Story: "Common Time"). The Drive at this stage is not well developed, and initially suffers from dramatic chrono-swings from almost complete time-freeze to the hyper-time of pseudo-death.[clarification needed] Proposed Clarification: The traveler experiences thoughts and sensations "subjective time" at a rate which disagrees radically from that of ship and physiology. With refinement, the drive becomes a valid method of interstellar travel, though not without mishap and adventure as other forms of travel are tried, such as the near-useless (though fascinating and instructive for the quantum physicist) Arpe Drive ("Nor Iron Bars").

Refinement of the drive allows the exploration of the near-stars, as well as the Coal-Sack Nebula, wherein the beings known as Angels are first encountered by the hero Jack Loftus, Sylvia McCrary and Dr. Challenger, as well as a long lived and powerful civilization, the Hegemony of Malis (The Star Dwellers). Ultimately deduction, and a first hand experience of a planet deliberately maintained in a state of genocidal savagery ("A Dusk of Idols"), coupled with expert reasoning reveals that the Hegemony is malignant, and Humanity rebels. Mission to the Heart Stars reveals the true nature of the Hegemony, and with the help of a stowaway Angel, Hesperus, humanity is freed of its bondage, and made companions of the Angels.

The stories considered part of the Haertel Scholium include A Case of Conscience and the Pantropy series (see below). Both are anomalous in that they do not appear to have the Dirac Radio, though it is plausible to assume that A Case of Conscience takes place before the development of the Dirac.

A unifying force of galactic civilization is the Dirac Radio, developed by Dr. Thor Wald. This radio is able to permit faster-than-light radio transmission. It has an additional and unsettling ability within every transmission, is the sum total of all transmissions from the device, throughout all of time and space. The Department of Intelligence, headed by Captain Robert Weinbaum, and aided by the beautiful video reporter Dana Lje, make this shattering discovery. Three hundred years later, the "Service" is the dominant government of the Galaxy, and Dirac is the center of their power, with a network built from Haertel Overdrive spacelanes. ("Beep", the inspiration for tachyons).

Four thousand years in the future, Human civilization has met its first full antagonist the Green Exarchy. A system of many civilizations ruled by a non-human emperor, the Green Exarch, this represents a significant threat to High Earth. The Green Exarch has at his employ the extremely dangerous shapeshifting (protean) agents known as Vombis, who will appear human, but do not revert to their true shape when killed, giving them an air of great mystery and menace.

The Haertel Overdrive is now called the Imaginary Drive, and the Dirac is still in common use. High Earth remains the center of Human civilization. That civilization is remarkably advanced for all practical intents, humans are now immortal. A memory cleanse known as Baptism permits those filled with ennui to begin lives anew, though there are side effects from subconscious recall. A quasi-religious group known as Sagittarians also play a part. The most important financial force in the empire of High Earth is the Traitor's Guild, who permit money to flow from system to system in reward of treachery to system governments, producing a Feudatory system between worlds, though not at the expense of internal stability. Traitors skillfully employ advanced biotechnology to further their aims, and are known to employ fungal cytotoxins, DNA reverse transcription mutation agents (to inject false memories and appearances in order to forestall recognition and testimony during interrogations), as well as technology to petrify dead bodies in order to make up wall fortifications in far offworld planets. The Traitors Guild may be found on all planets (A Traitor of Quality, Section in The Quincunx of Time with a lecture about the Traitor's Guild, and The Green Exarchy).

Five thousand years later still, Human civilization has gone through many Rebirths, or Renaissances. The chance infusion of a mentality from 1949 through a freak combination of the active mode of the Dirac within a Radio Telescope results in the formation, after many adventures and an ultimate resurgence of Man, the Quint, the Autarch of Rebirth V. A computer of this far future time uses the Dirac as both a means of communication and infinite memory storage (Midsummer Century). Its existence was foretold at the time of Capt. Weinbaum, though no-one could interpret its messages then (The Quincunx of Time, novella expansion of "Beep").

After Such Knowledge

Blish declared that another group of novels was a trilogy, each dealing with an aspect of the price of knowledge, and given the overall name of After Such Knowledge (the title taken from a T. S. Eliot quote). The first published, A Case of Conscience (a winner of the 1959 Hugo Award as well as 2004/1953 Retrospective Hugo Award for Best Novella), showed a Jesuit priest confronted with an alien intelligent race, apparently unfallen, which he eventually concludes must be a Satanic fabrication. The second, Doctor Mirabilis, is a historical novel about the medieval proto-scientist Roger Bacon. The third, consisting of two very short novels, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment, was written using the assumption that the ritual magic for summoning demons as described in grimoires actually worked. In Black Easter, a powerful industrialist and arms merchant arranges to call up demons and set them free in the world for a night, resulting in nuclear war and the destruction of civilization; The Day After Judgment is devoted to exploring the military and theological consequences.

The Seedling Stars (Pantropy)

Blish's most famous short stories are the "Pantropy" tales, collected in the book The Seedling Stars. In these stories, humans are modified to live in various alien environments, this being easier and vastly cheaper than terraforming.

Book One (Seeding Program) is about the inception of Pantropy, when the Pantropy program appears to have deteriorated into hideous genetic experimenting and has been outlawed. It describes Sweeney, a modified ("adapted") human whose metabolism is based on liquid ammonia and sulfur bonds and whose bones are made from ice IV, who is inserted into a colony on Ganymede by the Terran Port Authority (a para-military organization) to capture a renegade scientist and end his plans to seed modified humans on distant worlds. However, the government really only tries to derail pantropy because it will cut their profits from terraforming attempts. Sweeney is surprised to find a well established, functioning community on Ganymede and eventually realizes that he was just used as an expendable agent and that he has been fed false hopes about the possibility of being changed into a normal human being who could live on earth. Having found a real home, he switches sides and with his help the Ganymede colony manages to launch their seed ships to secret destinations, beyond the reach of the corrupt government.

Book Two (The Thing in the Attic) depicts a very successful seeding project. It tells the story of a small group of intellectuals from a primitive culture of modified monkey-like humans living in the trees of their jungle world. Having openly voiced the opinion that the godly giants do not literally exist as put down in the book of laws, they are banished from the treetops for heresy. In their exile on the ground they have to adapt to vastly different circumstances, fight monsters resembling dinosaurs, and finally happen upon the godly giants — who turn out to be human scientists who have just arrived on the world to monitor the progress of the local adapted humans. The protagonists are told by the scientists that their whole race must eventually leave the treetops to conquer their world and that they have become pioneers of some sort for accomplishing survival.

Book Three (Surface Tension) gives another example of a culture of adapted humans: A pantropy starship crashes on an ocean world, Hydrot, which is on orbit around Tau Ceti. With no hope for rescue, the few survivors modify their own genetic material to seed microscopic aquatic "humans" into the lakes and puddles of the world and leave them a message engraved on equally scaled metal plates. The story then tells how over many seasons, the adapted human newcomers explore their aquatic environment, make alliances, invent tools, fight wars with hostile beings and finally gain dominance over the sentient beings of their world. They develop new technologies and manage to decipher some of the message on the metal plates. Finally they build a wooden "space ship" (which turns out to be two inches long) to overcome the surface tension and travel to "other worlds" — the next puddle — in search of their ancestry, as they have come to realize that they are not native to their world.

Book Four (Watershed) takes a look at the more distant future. A very long time after the beginning of the Pantropy program, a starship crewed by "standard" humans is en route to some unimportant backwater planet to deliver a pantropy team who are "adapted" humans resembling seals more than humans. Due to racial prejudices, tension mounts between the crew and the passengers on board. When the captain decides to restrict the passengers to their cabins to prevent the situation from escalating, the leader of the adapted humans informs him that the planet ahead is Earth, where the "normal" human form once developed. He challenges the "normal" humans to follow him onto the surface of their ancestral home planet and prove that they are superior to the "adapted" seal people who will now be seeded there — or admit that they were beaten on their own grounds. The story concludes as the captain and his lieutenant silently ponder the possibility that they, being "standard" humans, are just a minority, and an obsolete species.

The German title of the anthology is Auch sie sind Menschen..., literally "They, too, are humans". The stories' titles are Aussaatplan, Himmel und Hölle, Oberflächenspannung and Rückkehr respectively, which would literally translate back into English as "Seeding plan", "Heaven and Hell", "Surface tension" and "Return" or "Homecoming". However, except for Surface Tension the original English titles seem to be different.)

Watershed makes reference to the planet, Lithia, which is the centerpiece of A Case of Conscience, and it must be assumed that the Pantropy stories take place in a slightly different Universe, given the respective fates of the planet within each Universe.

Blish collaborated with Norman L. Knight on a series of stories set in a world with a population a thousand times that of today, and followed the efforts of those keeping the system running, collected in one volume as A Torrent of Faces. Included in this collection is Blish's Nebula-nominated novella The Shipwrecked Hotel, a story about a semi-submerged hotel with approximately a million guests which experiences a massive computer failure (a result of escaped silverfish) and begins to sink. Running parallel to all the side-plots is the inevitable catastrophe of the mile-wide asteroid "Flavia" striking Canada.

The stories are also notable for including a form of pantropy that has been used to modify humans into a sea-dwelling form known as "Tritons".

James Blish books in order

The Planeteer

Neptunian Refuge (1935)
Mad Vision (December 1935)
Pursuit into Nowhere (1936)
Threat from Copernicus (1936)
Trail of the Comet (1936)
Bat-Shadow Shroud (1936)

Super Science Stories

Emergency Refueling (1940)
Bequest of the Angel (1940)
Sunken Universe (1942) (rewritten as Surface Tension in 1952)

Stirring Science Stories

Citadel of Thought (1941)
Callistan Cabal (1941)

Science Fiction Quarterly

Weapon Out of Time (1941)
When Anteros Came (1941)

Cosmic Stories

Phoenix Planet (1941)
The Real Thrill (1941)

Future

The Topaz Gate (1941)
The Solar Comedy (1942)
The Air Whale (1942)
Struggle in the Womb (1950)
The Secret People (1950)
Elixir (1951)
Testament of Andros (1953)

Astonishing Stories

Solar Plexus (1941)

Super Science and Fantastic Stories

The Bounding Crown (1944)

Science Fiction

Knell (as Arthur Lloyd Merlyn 1946)

Astounding Science Fiction

Chaos, Co-Ordinated (as by John MacDougal, with Robert A. W. Lowndes 1946)
Tiger Ride (with Damon Knight 1948)
Okie (1950)
Bindlestiff (1950)
Bridge (1952)
Earthman, Come Home (1953)
At Death's End (1954)
One-Shot (1955)
Tomb Tapper (1956)
Get Out of My Sky (1957)

Startling Stories

Mistake Inside (April 1948)

Planet Stories

Against the Stone Beasts (1948)
Blackout in Cygni (1951)

Thrilling Wonder Stories

No Winter, No Summer (as by Donald Laverty, with Damon Knight 1948)
The Weakness of RVOG (1949)
The Box (1949)
The Homesteader (1949)
Let the Finder Beware (1949)
There Shall Be No Darkness (1950)

Jungle Stories

Serpent's Fetish (1948)

Fantastic Story Quarterly

The Bore (1950)

Imagination

The Void Is My Coffin (1951)

Two Complete Science-Adventure Books

The Warriors of Day (1951)
Sargasso of Lost Cities (1953)

Other Worlds Science Stores

Nightride and Sunrise with Jerome Bixby (1952)

Galaxy Science Fiction

Surface Tension (1952 collected in The Seedling Stars 1957)
Beep (1954)
The Writing of the Rat (1956)
The Genius Heap (1956)
On the Wall of the Lodge with Virginia Kidd (1962)
The Shipwrecked Hotel with Norman L. Knight (1965)
The Piper of Dis with Norman L. Knight (1966)
Our Binary Brothers (1969)
The City That Was the World (1969)
A Style in Treason (May 1970)
The Day After Judgment (1970 collected in The Devil's Day 1990)
Darkside Crossing (1970)
The Glitch (1974)
The Art of the Sneeze (1982)

Dynamic Science Fiction

Turn of a Century (1953)
The Duplicated Man with Robert A. W. Lowndes (1953)

Worlds of If

A Case of Conscience (1953 expanded as A Case of Conscience in 1958)
The Thing in the Attic (1954 collected in The Seedling Stars 1957)
Watershed (1955 collected in The Seedling Stars 1957)
To Pay the Piper (1956)
Welcome to Mars (1966)
Black Easter (1967 collected in The Devil's Day 1990)
Now That Man Is Gone (1968)

Star Science Fiction Stories

F.Y.I. (1953)

The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

First Strike (1953)
The Book of Your Life (1955)
With Malice to Come (3 vignettes) (1955)
A Time to Survive (1956)
This Earth of Hours (1959)
The Masks (1959)
The Oath (1960)
Who's in Charge Here? (1962)
No Jokes on Mars (1965)
Midsummer Century (1982)

Fantastic Universe

Translation (1955)

Infinity Science Fiction

King of the Hill (1955)
Sponge Dive (1956)
Detour to the Stars (1956)
Nor Iron Bars (1957)

Science Fiction Stories

A Work of Art (July 1956)

Science Fiction Adventures

Two Worlds in Peril (1957)

Amazing Stories

… And All the Stars a Stage (1960)
And Some Were Savages (1960)
A Dusk of Idols (1961)

Impulse

A Hero's Life (1966)

Analog

To Love Another (1967)
Skysign with Norman L. Knight, (1968)

Penthouse

A Light to Fight by (1972)

Fantasy Book

The White Empire (1986)

Anthologized short fiction

Beanstalk, Future Tense (1952)
Common Time, Shadows of Tomorrow (1953)
A Matter of Energy (1956)
Nor Iron Bars, Galactic Cluster (1959)
The Abattoir Effect, So Close to Home (1961)
None So Blind", Anywhen (1970)
How Beautiful With Banners, Orbit 1 (1966)
We All Die Naked, Three for Tomorrow (1969)
More Light, Alchemy and Academe (1970)
Statistician's Day, Science Against Man (1970)
Getting Along Again, Dangerous Visions (1972)
A True Bill: A Chancel Drama in One Act Ten Tomorrows (1973)
The Price of a Drink, The Berserkers (1974)
Making Waves, Works of Art (2008)

Novels

Jack of Eagles (1952)
The Frozen Year (1957)
VOR (April 1958)
The Duplicated Man (1959)
A Torrent of Faces (1967)
The Warriors of Day (1967)
The Star Dwellers (1961)
Titan's Daughter (1961)
The Night Shapes (1962)
Mission to the Heart Stars (1965)
Welcome to Mars (1966)
The Vanished Jet (1968)
… And All the Stars a Stage (1971)
Midsummer Century (1972)
The Quincunx of Time (1973)

Cities in Flight series

Earthman, Come Home (1955)
They Shall Have Stars (1956)
The Triumph of Time (October 1958)
A Life for the Stars (1962)

After Such Knowledge series

A Case of Conscience (1958)
Doctor Mirabilis (1964)
Black Easter (1968)
The Day After Judgment (1971)

Collections

The Seedling Stars (1957)
The Seedling Stars (1959)
Galactic Cluster (1959)
So Close to Home (1961)
Best Science Fiction Stories of James Blish (1965)
New Dreams This Morning (1966)
Anywhen (1970)
Midsummer Century (1974)
The Best of James Blish (1979)
Get Out of My Sky (1980)
A Work of Art and Other Stories (1993)
With All Love: Selected Poems (1995)
A Dusk of Idols and Other Stories (1996)
In This World, or Another (2003)
Works of Art (2008)
Flights of Eagles (2009)

Anthologies

Nebula Award Stories 5 (1970)

Nonfiction

The Issue at Hand (1964 as by William Atheling Jr.)
More Issues at Hand (1970 as by William Atheling Jr.)
The Tale That Wags the God (1987)

Omnibuses

Cities in Flight (1970)
After Such Knowledge (1991)
The Seedling Stars / Galactic Cluster (1983)
Black Easter / The Day After Judgement / The Seedling Stars (2013)

Source and additional information: James Blish