James Blish
Born	James Benjamin Blish (1921-05-23)23 May 1921 East Orange, New Jersey, United States
Died	30 July 1975(1975-07-30) (aged 54) Henley-on-Thames, England
Pen name	William Atheling Jr. Donald Laverty John MacDougal Arthur Lloyd Merlyn
Occupation	Writer, Literary critic
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	Rutgers University (BS) Columbia University (incompl.)
Period	1940–1975
Genre	Science fiction, fantasy
Years active	1940–75
Spouses	Virginia Kidd (1947–63), div. J. A. Lawrence (1963–75)
Children	Asa Benjamin Blish Dorothea Elisabeth Blish Charles Benjamin Blish
Relatives	Asa Rhodes Blish, father Dorothea Schneewind, mother
Signature

James Benjamin Blish (23 May 1921 – 30 July 1975) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is most well known for his Cities in Flight novels, and his series of Star Trek novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. He is credited with creating the term gas giant to refer to large planetary bodies.

Blish was a member of the Futurians.^[1] His first published stories appeared in Super Science Stories and Amazing Stories.

Blish wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr. His other pen names include: Donald Laverty, John MacDougal, and Arthur Lloyd Merlyn.

Early life[edit]

Blish was born on 23 May 1921 at East Orange, New Jersey.^[2] While in high school, Blish self-published a fanzine using a hectograph, called The Planeteer.^[3] The fanzine ran for six issues. Blish attended meetings of the Futurian Science Fiction Society in New York City during this period.

Futurian members Damon Knight and C.M. Kornbluth became close friends, however, Blish's relationship with other members were often bitter.^[4] A personal target was fellow member Judith Merril, whom he would debate politics with. Merril would frequently dismiss Blish's self-description of being a "paper fascist". She wrote in Better to Have Loved (April 2002), "Of course [Blish] was not fascist, antisemitic, or any of those terrible things, but every time he used the phrase, I saw red."^[5]

James Blish's grave marker.

Blish studied microbiology at Rutgers University, graduating in 1942. He was drafted into Army service, and he served briefly as a medical laboratory technician. The United States Army discharged him for refusing orders to clean a grease trap in 1944. Following discharge, Blish entered Columbia University as a masters student of zoology. He did not complete the program, opting to write fiction full-time.^[4]

In 1947, he married Virginia Kidd, a fellow Futurian. They divorced in 1963. Blish then married artist J. A. Lawrence in 1968, moving to England that same year.

From 1962 to 1968, Blish worked for the Tobacco Institute, as a writer and critic. Much of his work for the institute went uncredited; subsequently, however, his work for the institute has been characterized as delusional and normalizing of "one of the least healthy habits imaginable".^[6]

Blish died on 30 July 1975 from complications related to lung cancer. He was buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. The Bodleian Library at Oxford is the custodian of Blish's papers.^[7] The library also has a complete catalog of Blish's published works.

Blish's The Warriors of Day was originally published in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in 1951 as "Sword of Xota"

Career[edit]

Throughout the 1940s, Blish published most of his stories in the few pulp magazines still in circulation. His first story was sold to, fellow Futurian, Frederik Pohl for Super Science Stories (March 1940), called "Emergency Refueling". Other stories were published intermittently, but with little circulation. Blish's "Chaos, Co-Ordinated", co-written with Robert A. W. Lowndes, was sold to Astounding Science Fiction, appearing in the October 1946 issue, earning Blish national circulation for the first time.

Pantropy (1942–56)[edit]

Blish was what Andrew Litpack called a "practical writer".^[4] He would revisit, revise, and often expand on previously written stories. An example is "Sunken Universe" published in Super Science Stories in 1942. The story reappeared in Galaxy Science Fiction as "Surface Tension", in an altered form in 1952. The premise emphasised 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 Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964, edited by Robert Silverberg.^[8]

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 by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1957. The stories were collected, edited together, and released as the fixup The Seedling Stars (1956) from Gnome Press. John Clute said of all of Blish's "deeply felt work" explored "confronting the Faustian (or Frankensteinian) man".^[4]

Cities in Flight (1950–58)[edit]

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction explains that it was 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".^[9] The stories were loosely based on the Okie migration following the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and were influenced by Oswald Spengler's two part Der 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 by spindizzies, a type of anti-gravity engine. The premise and plot reflected Blish's feelings on the state of western civilization, and his personal politics.^[4] The first two stories, "Okie", and "Bindlestiff", were published in 1950, by Astounding. "Sargasso of Lost Cities" appeared in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in April 1953. "Earthman, Come Home" followed a few months later, published by Astounding. In 1955, Blish collected the four stories together into an omnibus titled Earthman, Come Home, published by Putman.

More stories followed: In 1956, They Shall Have Stars, which edited together "Bridge" and "At Death’s End", and in 1958, Blish released The 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 as Cities In Flight (October 1970).

Clute notes, "the brilliance of Cities in Flight does not lie in the assemblage of its parts, but in the momentum of the ideas embodied in it (albeit sometimes obscurely)."^[4]

The novella Sargasso of Lost Cities, Blish's third Cities in Flight story, was published in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in 1953.

After Such Knowledge (1958–71)[edit]

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 of If, 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 including Doctor Mirabilis (1964) and the two-part story Black Easter (1968), and The Day After Judgment (1971). The latter two were collected as The Devil's Day (1980). An omnibus of all four entries in the series was released by Legend in 1991, titled After Such Knowledge.

A Case of Conscience won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel,^[10] and was collected as part of Library of America’s omnibus American Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956-1958.^[11]

Star Trek (1967–77)[edit]

Blish was commissioned by Bantam Books to adapt episodes of Star Trek. The adapted short stories were generally based on draft scripts, and contained differing plot elements, and situations present in 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, however, her work remained uncredited until the final volume, Star Trek 12 released after Blish's death in 1977.^[12]:25

The original novel based on the television series, Spock Must Die! (1970), 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 to Spock Must Die!.^[13] However, Blish died before a novel could be completed. Lawrence did eventually adapt the two episodes, as Mudd's Angels (1978), which included an original novella Business, as Usual, During Altercations by Lawrence.

Blish credited his financial stability later in life to the Star Trek commission, and the advance he received for Spock Must Die!.^[12]:21

Literary criticism and legacy[edit]

Blish was among the first literary critics of science fiction, and he judged works in the genre by the standards applied to "serious" literature.^[14] 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 critiques were published in "fanzines" in the 1950s under the pseudonym William Atheling, Jr.

The essays were collected in The Issue at Hand (1964) and More Issues at Hand (1970). Reviewing The Issue at Hand, Algis Budrys said that Atheling had, along with Damon Knight, "transformed the reviewer's trade in this field". He described the persona of Atheling as "acidulous, assertive, categorical, conscientious and occasionally idiosyncratic".^[14]

Blish was a fan of the works of James Branch Cabell, and for a time edited Kalki, the journal of the Cabell Society.

In his works of science fiction, James Blish developed many ideas and terms which have influenced other writers and on occasion have been adopted more widely, such as faster than light communication via the dirac computer, introduced in the short story "Beep" (1954). The dirac is comparable to Ursula K. Le Guin's ansible.

Blish is also 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 did not contain the term. Blish reworked the story, changing the description of a large magnetic field to "a magnetic field of some strength nearby, one that didn't belong to the invisible gas giant revolving half a million miles away".^[15]

Honors, awards and recognition[edit]

The British Science Fiction Foundation inaugurated the James Blish Award for science fiction criticism in 1977, recognizing Brian W. Aldiss. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2002.

Awards and nominations[edit]

• 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel, for A Case of Conscience.^[10]


• 1965 Nebula Award nomination for Best Novelette, for "The Shipwrecked Hotel", with Norman L. Knight.^[16]


• 1968 Nebula Award nomination for Best Novel, for Black Easter.^[17]


• 1970 Hugo Award nomination for Best Novella, for We All Die Naked.^[18]


• 1970 Nebula Award nomination for Best Novella, for A Style in Treason.^[19]

Posthumous Awards and nominations[edit]

• 2001 [1951] Retro-Hugo Award nomination for Best Novelette, for "Okie".^[20]


• 2004 [1954] Retro-Hugo Award for Best Novella, for A Case of Conscience.^[21]


• 2004 [1954] Retro-Hugo Award for Best Novelette, for "Earthman, Come Home".^[21]

Guest of Honor[edit]

• 1960 Guest of Honor, 18th World Science Fiction Convention.


• 1970 Guest of Honor, Scicon 70.

Bibliography[edit]

Blish's work was released by a variety of publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States, often with variations between editions and different titles. Blish also expanded and re-released his older work on several occasions. His work continued to be published after his death.

The Bodleian Library's catalog of Blish's works, and James Blish at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database are the sources for this bibliography.

Note: Very few of Blish's first editions were assigned ISBN numbers.

Short fiction and novellas (1935–86)[edit]

Novels published in complete form, or serialized, in fiction magazines are included for completeness, and to avoid confusion.

ᵝ Novelette, ᵅ Novella, ᵞ Novel.

First publication of A Case of Conscience, September 1953.

Anthologized short fiction (1952–2008)[edit]

• 
  Beanstalk,ᵅ Future Tense (1952), ed. Kendell Foster Crossen. Greenberger.
  ↳ Expanded in Titan's Daughter (1961).


• "Common Time", Shadows of Tomorrow (August 1953), ed. Frederik Pohl. Permabooks #P236.


• "A Matter of Energy", The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fifth Series (January 1956), ed. Anthony Boucher. Doubleday.


• "Nor Iron Bars"ᵝ (expanded), Galactic Cluster (October 1959), ed. James Blish. Signet #S1719.


• "The Abattoir Effect", So Close to Home (27 February 1961), ed. James Blish. Ballantine Books #465K.


• "None So Blind", Anywhen (July 1970), ed. James Blish. Doubleday.


• "How Beautiful With Banners", Orbit 1 (1966), ed. Damon Knight. Whiting & Wheaton.


• "We All Die Naked", Three for Tomorrow (August 1969), ed. uncredited. Meredith Press.


• "More Light", Alchemy and Academe(November 1970), ed. Anne McCaffrey. Doubleday.


• "Statistician's Day", Science Against Man (December 1970), ed. Anthony Cheetham. Avon #V2374.


• "Getting Along",ᵝ Again, Dangerous Visions (17 March 1972), ed. Harlan Ellison. Doubleday.


• "A True Bill: A Chancel Drama in One Act",ᵝ Ten Tomorrows (September 1973), ed. Roger Elwood. Fawcett Gold Medal #M2820.


• "The Price of a Drink", The Beserkers (January 1974), ed. Roger Eldwood. Trident ISBN 0-671-27113-X.


• "Making Waves", Works of Art (30 January 2008). NESFA Press ISBN 978-1-886778-70-2.

Novels (1952–90)[edit]

• 
  Jack of Eagles (1952). Greenberg.


• 
  The Frozen Year (19 March 1957). Ballantine Books #197.
  ↳ Also released as Fallen Star (1957). Faber & Faber.


• 
  VOR (April 1958). Avon #T-238.


• 
  The Duplicated Man (1959). Avalon Books.


• 
  A Torrent of Faces (1967), with Norman L. Knight. Doubleday.


• 
  The Warriors of Day (1967). Lancer Books #73-580.


• 
  The Star Dwellers (1961). G. P. Putnam's Sons.


• 
  Titan's Daughter (March 1961). Berkley Medallion #G507.


• 
  The Night Shapes (October 1962). Ballantine Books #F647.


• 
  Mission to the Heart Stars (11 November 1965). Faber & Faber.


• 
  Welcome to Marz (July 1966). G. P. Putnam's Sons.


• 
  The Vanished Jet (1968). Weybright and Talley.


• 
  … And All the Stars a Stage (July 1971). Doubleday.


• 
  Midsummer Century (May 1972). Doubleday.
  Included in Midsummer Century Daw ed. (1974).


• 
  The Quincunx of Time (October 1973). Dell #07244.

Cities in Flight series (1955–62)[edit]

• 
  Earthman, Come Home (1955). G. P. Putnam's Sons.


• 
  They Shall Have Stars (1956). Faber & Faber.


• 
  The Triumph of Time (October 1958). Avon #T-279.
  ↳ Also released as A Clash of Cymbals (1959). Faber & Faber.


• 
  A Life for the Stars (1962). G. P. Putnam's Sons.

After Such Knowledge series (1958–90)[edit]

• 
  A Case of Conscience (April 1958). Ballantine Books #256.


• 
  Doctor Mirabilis (1964). Faber & Faber #55198.


• 
  The Devil's Day (February 1990). Baen ISBN 0-671-69860-5.

Collections (1957–2009)[edit]

• 
  The Seedling Stars (1957). Gnome Press.


• 
  The Seedling Stars (February 1959). Signet #S1622.


• 
  Best Science Fiction Stories of James Blish (1965). Faber & Faber.


• 
  Midsummer Century (February 1974). Daw #UQ1094.


• 
  The Best of James Blish (August 1979). Ballantine/Del Ray ISBN 0-345-25600-X.
  ↳ Also released as The Testament of Andros (August 1977). Arrow Books ISBN 0-09-914840-4.


• 
  Get Out of My Sky (April 1980). Panther ISBN 0-586-04817-0.


• 
  A Work of Art and Other Stories (July 1993). Severn House ISBN 0-7278-4464-4.


• 
  With All Love: Selected Poems (March 1995). Anamnesis Press ISBN 0-9631203-1-X.


• 
  A Dusk of Idols and Other Stories (May 1996). Severn House ISBN 0-7278-4967-0.


• 
  In This World, or Another (2 July 2003). Five Star ISBN 0-7862-5349-5.


• 
  Works of Art (30 January 2008). NESFA Press ISBN 978-1-886778-70-2.


• 
  Flights of Eagles (20 October 2009). NESFA Press ISBN 978-1-886778-86-3.

Anthologies (1959–70)[edit]

• 
  Galactic Cluster (October 1959). Signet #S1719.


• 
  So Close to Home (27 February 1961). Ballantine Books #465K.


• 
  New Dreams This Morning (October 1966). Ballantine Books #U233.


• 
  Anywhen (1970). Doubleday.


• 
  Nebula Award Stories Five (11 December 1970). Doubleday.

Blish's novelette "And Some Were Savages" was the cover story for the November 1960 issue of Amazing Stories, illustrated by Ed Emshwiller.

Nonfiction (1964–87)[edit]

• 
  The Issue at Hand (1964), as by William Atheling, Jr. Advent Publishers.


• 
  More Issues at Hand (December 1970), as by William Atheling, Jr. Advent Publishers ISBN 0-911682-10-4.


• 
  The Tale That Wags the God (July 1987). Advent Publishers ISBN 0-911682-29-5.

Star Trek (1967–77)[edit]

• 
  Star Trek (January 1967). Bantam Books #F3459.


• 
  Star Trek 2 (February 1968). Bantam Books #F3439.


• 
  Star Trek 3 (April 1969). Bantam Books #F4371.


• 
  Spock Must Die! (February 1970). Bantam Books #H5515.


• 
  Star Trek 4 (July 1971). Bantam Books #S7009.


• 
  Star Trek 5 (February 1972). Bantam Books #S7300.


• 
  Star Trek 6 (April 1972). Bantam Books #S7364.


• 
  Star Trek 7 (July 1972). Bantam Books #S7480.


• 
  Star Trek 8 (November 1972). Bantam Books #SP7550.


• 
  Star Trek 9 (August 1973). Bantam Books #SP7808.


• 
  Star Trek 10 (February 1974). Bantam Books #SP8401.


• 
  Star Trek 11 (April 1975). Bantam Books #Q8717.
  ↳ Also released as The Day of the Dove (October 1985). Spectra ISBN 0-553-25169-4.


• 
  Star Trek 12 (November 1977), with J. A. Lawrence. Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-11382-8.

Omnibuses (1970–2013)[edit]

• 
  Cities in Flight (February 1970). Avon #W187.


• 
  After Such Knowledge (July 1991). Legend ISBN 0-09-983100-7).


• 
  The Seedling Stars / Galactic Cluster (April 1983). Signet ISBN 0-451-12148-1.


• 
  Black Easter / The Day After Judgement / The Seedling Stars (26 September 2013) ISBN 978-0-575-12930-6.

See also[edit]

• Virginia Kidd


• J. A. Lawrence


• Futurians

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• 
  Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish (September 1987), by David Ketterer. Kent State University Press ISBN 0-87338-334-6
  


• "Special James Blish Issue" (April 1972) The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. ISBN 0-7165-7204-4.

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: James Blish

Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Benjamin Blish.

• Official author website


• 
  Works by James Blish at Project Gutenberg
  


• 
  Works by or about James Blish at Internet Archive
  


• 
  Works by or about William Atheling at Internet Archive
  


• 
  Works by James Blish at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)


• 
  James Blish at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  


• 
  "James Blish biography". Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. 
  


• 
  James Blish on IMDb