Blish wroteliterary criticism of science fiction using thepen nameWilliam Atheling Jr. His other pen names includedDonald Laverty,John MacDougal, andArthur Lloyd Merlyn.[1]
Blish attended meetings of the Futurian Science Fiction Society in New York City during this period.Futurian membersDamon Knight andCyril M. Kornbluth became close friends. However, Blish's relationships with other members were often bitter.[5] A personal target was fellow memberJudith Merril, with whom he would debate politics. Merril would frequently dismiss Blish's self-description of being a "paper fascist". She wrote inBetter to Have Loved (2002), "Of course [Blish] was not fascist, antisemitic, or any of those terrible things, but every time he used the phrase, I saw red."[6]
In 1947, he marriedVirginia Kidd, a fellow Futurian.[1] They divorced in 1963. Blish then married artistJ. A. Lawrence in 1964,[1] moving to England that same year.
From 1962 to 1968, Blish worked for theTobacco Institute as a writer and critic. Much of his work for the institute went uncredited.
Blish died on July 30, 1975, from complications related tolung cancer. He was buried inHolywell Cemetery,Oxford. TheBodleian Library at Oxford is the custodian of Blish's papers.[7] The library also has a complete catalog of Blish's published works.
Throughout the 1940s, Blish published most of his stories in the fewpulp magazines still in circulation. His first story was sold to fellow FuturianFrederik Pohl forSuper Science Stories (1940), called "Emergency Refueling". Other stories were published intermittently, but with little circulation. Blish's "Chaos, Co-Ordinated", co-written withRobert A. W. Lowndes, was sold toAstounding Science Fiction, appearing in the October 1946 issue, earning Blish national circulation for the first time.
Blish was what Andrew Liptack called a "practical writer".[5] He would revisit, revise, and often expand on previously written stories. An example is "Sunken Universe" published inSuper Science Stories in 1942. The story reappeared inGalaxy Science Fiction as "Surface Tension", in an altered form in 1952. The premise emphasized Blish's understanding of microbiology, and featured microscopic humans engineered to live on a hostile planet's shallow pools of water. The story proved to be among Blish's more popular and was anthologized in the first volume ofRobert Silverberg'sThe Science Fiction Hall of Fame.[8] It was also anthologized inThe Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited byAnn andJeff VanderMeer.[9]
The world of microscopic humans continued in "The Thing in the Attic" in 1954, and "Watershed" the following year. The fourth entry, "A Time to Survive", was published byThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1957. The stories were collected, edited together, and published as thefix-upThe Seedling Stars (1956), by Gnome Press.John Clute said all of Blish's "deeply felt work" explored "confronting theFaustian (orFrankensteinian) man".[5]
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction asserts that not until the 1950s, and the Okie sequence of stories beginning their run, "did it become clear [Blish] would become a [science fiction] writer of unusual depth".[10] The stories were loosely based on theOkie migration following theDust Bowl of the 1930s, and were influenced byOswald Spengler's two-partDer Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West).
The stories detail the life of the Okies, humans who migrate throughout space looking for work in vast city-ships, powered byspindizzies, a type ofanti-gravity engine. The premise and plot reflected Blish's feelings on the state ofwestern civilization, and his personal politics.[5] The first two stories, "Okie", and "Bindlestiff", were published in 1950, byAstounding. "Sargasso of Lost Cities" appeared inTwo Complete Science-Adventure Books in April 1953. "Earthman, Come Home" followed a few months later, published byAstounding. In 1955, Blish collected the four stories together into an omnibus titledEarthman, Come Home, published by Putnam.
More stories followed: In 1956,They Shall Have Stars, which edited together "Bridge" and "At Death's End", and in 1958, Blish publishedThe Triumph of Time. Four years later, he published a new Okies novel,A Life for the Stars. The Okies sequence was edited together and published asCities In Flight (1970).
Clute notes, "the brilliance ofCities in Flight does not lie in the assemblage of its parts, but in the momentum of the ideas embodied in it (albeit sometimes obscurely)."[5]
Blish continued to rework older stories, and did so for one of his best known works,A Case of Conscience (1958). The novel originated as a novella, originally published in an issue ofIf, in 1953. The story follows a Jesuit priest, Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, who visits the planet Lithia as a technical member of an expedition. While on the planet they discover a race of bipedal reptilians that have perfected morality in what Ruiz-Sanchez says is "the absence of God", and theological complications ensue. The book is one of the first major works in the genre to explore religion and its implications. It was the first of a series includingDoctor Mirabilis (1964) and the two-part storyBlack Easter (1968) andThe Day After Judgment (1971). The latter two were collected asThe Devil's Day (1980). An omnibus of all four entries in the series was published by Legend in 1991, titledAfter Such Knowledge.
A Case of Conscience won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and was collected as part of Library of America's omnibusAmerican Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956-1958.[11][12]
Bantam Books commissioned Blish to adapt episodes ofStar Trek. The adapted short stories were generally based on draft scripts and contained different plot elements from the aired television episodes.
The stories were collected into twelve volumes and published as a title series of the same name from 1967 to 1977. The adaptations were largely written by Blish; however, his declining health during this period proved problematic. His wife, J. A. Lawrence, wrote a number of installments. Her work remained uncredited until the final volume,Star Trek 12, published in 1977, two years after Blish's death.[13]: 25
The first original novel for adults based on the television series,Spock Must Die! (1970),[14] was also written by Blish, and he planned to release more. According to Lawrence, two episodes featuring popular character Harry Mudd, "I, Mudd" and "Mudd's Women", were held back by Blish for adaptation to be included in the follow-up toSpock Must Die!.[15] However, Blish died before a novel could be completed. Lawrence did eventually adapt the two episodes, asMudd's Angels (1978), which included an original novellaThe Business, as Usual, During Altercations by Lawrence. In her introduction toStar Trek 12, Lawrence states that Blish "did indeed write" adaptations of the two episodes. The introduction toMudd's Angels acknowledges this, stating that Blish left the two stories in various stages of completion and they were finished by Lawrence; Blish does not receive author credit on the book.
Blish credited his financial stability later in life to theStar Trek commission and the advance he received forSpock Must Die!.[13]: 21
Blish was among the firstliterary critics of science fiction, and he judged works in the genre by the standards applied to"serious" literature.[16] He took to task his fellow authors for deficiencies, such as bad grammar and a misunderstanding of scientific concepts, and the magazine editors who accepted and published such material without editorial intervention. His criticism was published in "fanzines" in the 1950s under the pseudonym William Atheling Jr.
The essays were collected inThe Issue at Hand (1964) andMore Issues at Hand (1970). ReviewingThe Issue at Hand,Algis Budrys said that Atheling had, along withDamon Knight, "transformed the reviewer's trade in this field". He described the persona of Atheling as "acidulous, assertive, categorical, conscientious and occasionally idiosyncratic".[16]
Blish was a fan of the works ofJames Branch Cabell, and for a time editedKalki, the journal of the Cabell Society.
In his works of science fiction, Blish developed many ideas and terms which have influenced other writers and on occasion have been adopted more widely, such asfaster-than-light communication via the Dirac communicator, introduced in the short story "Beep" (1954). The Dirac is comparable toUrsula K. Le Guin'sansible.
Blish is also credited with coining the termgas giant, first used in the story "Solar Plexus", collected in the anthologyBeyond Human Ken, edited byJudith Merril. The story was originally published in 1941, but it did not contain the term. Blish reworked the story, changing the description of a largemagnetic field to "a magnetic field of some strength nearby, one that didn't belong to the invisiblegas giant revolving half a million miles away".[17]
Blish's work was published by a variety of publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States, often with variations between editions, and with different titles. Blish also expanded and re-published his older work on numerous occasions. His works continued to be re-published after his death.
Very few of Blish's first editions were assigned ISBN numbers.
The Seedling Stars (February 1959). Signet #S1622.
Best Science Fiction Stories of James Blish (1965). Faber & Faber, also published asThe Testament of Andros (August 1977). Arrow BooksISBN0-09-914840-4.
^James, Blish (January 1976). "Surface Tension". In Silverberg, Robert (ed.).The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Vol. 1. New York: Avon. pp. 477–514.ISBN9780380007950.
