ASK Haertel II

I posted ASK Haertel on Sunday but continued adding to it till Friday. It was not planned but grew in three stages. First, there was an attempt to find some order in the complexity of Blish's Haertel-related works. I have seen these works described as the "Haertel Scholium." This is appropriate because "scholium" is a term much used by Blish himself, for example, in one of the works under consideration:

"...the laws of the macrocosm didn't apply down here; this was the domain of quantum mechanics - though telepathy didn't obey that scholium either." (1)

The Haertel Scholium is divisible into several short comprehensible sub-series. For example, three short stories form a linear sequence in a single collection. This short trilogy starts with a first interstellar round trip and ends by defining a galactic conflict: planets of Population I stars in the galactic centre and the clusters are inhabited by hive organisms hostile to the individual brain-bearing inhabitants of Population II planetary systems like the Solar System. The intermediate story, from which I quoted, describes an exploratory trip to the microcosm and introduces the kind of telepathy that, in the third story, binds together the Central Empire but cannot be used by organisms with brains. Thus, here is a complete interstellar trilogy comparable in theme and content to longer and better known works like Foundation and Dune.

A second sub-series comprises the two novels about the juvenile character, Jack Loftus. This diptych begins with first contact between human beings and energy beings and ends with another galactic conflict when these two kinds of beings begin to plan an alliance against the stagnant tyranny of the Heart Stars Empire. Both the trilogy and the diptych also speculate about possible future directions for human society. In the trilogy, the question is what would result if parents became able to predetermine their children's sex. In the diptych, it is how to organise a high-energy civilization.

Secondly, A Case Of Conscience is both a Haertel overdrive novel and Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy (ASK) so it was appropriate to include discussion of the Trilogy especially since Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis, is a historical novel about Roger Bacon whom Blish credits as the discoverer of scientific method and thus as the forerunner of scientists like Haertel and his successor, Arpe, who explores the microcosm. Since Bacon was mistaken for a magician, it is appropriate that Volume II, Black Easter/The Day After Judgement, a contemporary fantasy novel about practising magicians, shows what magic would have to be like if it existed.

Thirdly, the conflict between theology and science that is the theme of ASK is present to a lesser extent in Blish's hard sf Okie and pantropy tetralogies so these works had to be mentioned. The Okies study and try to intervene in the imminent end of the universe and, of course, are told by Fundamentalists that this is blasphemous. In "ASK Haertel," I mentioned that a "pantropist" wonders whether he and his colleagues seeding extrasolar planets throughout the galaxy with Adapted Men are guilty of hybris but this speculation is not taken seriously.

However, in another Haertel overdrive novel, The Quincunx Of Time, a group of characters gains a knowledge of future events that might enable them to choose between possible futures for mankind and they do reject the exercise of such power as hybris, adopting instead this message to the "...cosmic Dead Letter Office...": "To Whom it may concern: Thy will, not mine." (2)

The Aristotelean spheres, mentioned as real by a magician in ASK II, are dismissed as a "...bad dream..." but the danger of "...that madness: hybris, or overweening pride..." is taken seriously. (3) (2)

The Haertel Scholium, ASK and the Okie and pantropy series are remarkable both for their common themes and for the diversity of their imagined future scenarios.

(1) Blish, James, "Nor Iron Bars" IN Galactic Cluster, London, 1963,  pp. 61-92 AT p. 74.
(2) Blish, James, The Quincunx Of Time, New York, 1983, p. 104.
(3) ibid., p. 61.

ASK Haertel

Works by James Blish referring to his character Adolph Haertel can be grouped as follows.

The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars are the Jack Loftus diptych.

"Common Time," "Nor Iron Bars" and "This Earth Of Hours" are the Galactic Cluster trilogy. (They form a linear sequence and are collected in a volume of that title.)

A Case Of Conscience (ACOC) is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge (ASK) Trilogy. (ASK Vol I, Doctor Mirabilis, and Vol II, Black Easter/The Day After Judgement, are respectively historical and contemporary, thus pre-Haertel.)

Welcome To Mars, The Quincunx Of Time, "A Style In Treason" and Midsummer Century are an untitled tetralogy.

Haertel, young in Welcome To Mars and old in "Common Time," is referred back to by:

Loftus in his diptych;
Arpe in "Nor Iron Bars";
Ruiz-Sanchez in A Case Of Conscience;
Wald in The Quincunx Of Time.

"This Earth Of Hours" refers back to Arpe. The future civilizations of "A Style In Treason" and Midsummer Century transmit Dirac messages received earlier by Wald. In true future historical style, a planet in The Quincunx Of Time is named after a planetary explorer in "Nor Iron Bars." (Quincunx is a novelization of  "Beep" which had been collected in Galactic Cluster, the British edition of which excluded "This Earth Of Hours" so that I originally regarded "Beep" as completing this trilogy.)

Thus, the Haertel Scholium comprises one single volume, one diptych, one trilogy and one tetralogy plus some loose ends:

a short story loosely connected to Welcome To Mars;
another, "A Dusk Of Idols" (see Anywhen cover, below), connected to The Star Dwellers;
earlier, shorter versions of Quincunx and "A Style In Treason."

Works are linked by:

Arpe and Wald, each appearing once;
Haertel and Loftus, each appearing twice;
conflict between sacred and secular knowledge, addressed thrice.

The characters' legacies are:

Roger Bacon in ASK I: scientific method;

magicians in ASK II: a changed relationship to deity;

Haertel and Arpe: interstellar drives, named after them;

Arpe: microcosmic exploration and the discovery that psi forces are characteristic of subatomic space as electromagnetism is of macrocosmic space;

Ruiz-Sanchez: the theological problem of sinless but Godless aliens;

Petard, also in ASK III: his instantaneous communicator, the circum-continuum radio (CirCon);

Wald: (i) his instantaneous communicator, named after Paul Dirac, which, unlike Petard's, receives messages not only from the present but also from the past and future; (ii) a metalanguage for scientific paradigms and multiple dimensions;

Loftus: the Haertel overdrive-using UN, dolphins, extrasolar races and star dwelling energy beings allied against the Heart Stars Empire;

the Traitor in Chief of High Earth in "A Style In Treason": Earth and colonies, using a post-Haertel Imaginary Drive, allied against the Green Exarchy Empire;

Oberholzer in "This Earth Of Hours": the Terrestrial Matriarchy, using a post-Arpe Standing Wave, mobilized against the telepathic Central Empire;

Martels in Midsummer Century: a telepathically guided "Rebirth" of human civilization mobilized against an evolutionary challenge from intelligent Birds.

Thus, ASK and Haertel present:

two theories of telepathy (Arpe's and Martels');
two instantaneous communicators (Circon and Dirac);
three theology-science conflicts (Bacon, magicians and Ruiz-Sanchez);
three interstellar empires (Heart Stars, Green Exarchy and Central Empire);
four interstellar drives (Haertel, Arpe, Imaginary Drive and Standing Wave).

Circon, reaching around the continuum, detects and replies to radio waves currently transmitted light years away whereas the Dirac communicator controls the placement of an electron in the circuits of another Dirac communicator by controlling the frequency and path of a positron moving through a crystal lattice accompanied by de Broglie waves which are transforms of the waves of the electron so that a message is received by amplifying the bursts and reading the signal.

Thus:

Dirac is not radio;
its effect is simultaneous, not wave-like;
CirCon and Dirac are not two names for the same device.

Bacon, wrongly accused of magic, is the historical forerunner of scientists including:

in our era, Einstein and Dirac;
in several Blish futures, Haertel;
in different Haertel futures, Petard and Wald.

Blish's imagined scenarios are both extrapolative and exotic. ASK and Haertel are not a continuous sequence, except for ACOC, but Haertel etc as scientists are Bacon's successors.

Blish appropriately extends the theology-science issue from a medieval monk in ASK I through modern magicians in ASK II to a future Jesuit biologist and an atheist physicist in ASK III. However, despite the seriousness with which Blish treats this issue here, all his other fictitious scientists simply expand human knowledge of the galaxy, the universe, the microcosm and space-time without being troubled by theology.

Ruiz-Sanchez's contemporary, Petard, a lapsed Catholic, parallels the entirely secular Wald's invention of an instantaneous communicator but Wald goes further by also inventing a metalanguage for discussing the succession of scientific paradigms that had been initiated by Bacon in Doctor Mirabilis.

Doctor Mirabilis can therefore be regarded not only as Volume I of ASK but also as a prequel to Blish's various sf series and, in fact, John Amalfi, the central character of Blish's non-Haertel Cities In Flight Tetralogy, does appropriately refer to Bacon when discussing the scientifically predicted imminent end of the universe which, of course, revives theological concerns in some other characters although the title of Cities In Flight Vol IV, The Triumph Of Time, conveys the entirely secular view that time, not eternity, is the final arbiter of human destiny.

This article began as an attempt to group together the works of the Haertel Scholium but, because that Scholium overlaps with the After Such Knowledge Trilogy, it became a discussion of that Trilogy in relation both to the Scholium and to the Cities In Flight Tetralogy. For completeness, we should also mention Blish's shorter tetralogy collected as The Seedling Stars.

In Book Two of The Seedling Stars, extrasolar colonists, temporarily separated from terrestrial scientists, revive the conflict between sacred (scriptural) and secular (scientific) knowledge. In Book Three, the pilot of a crashed spaceship remarks that, if he were a religious man (which clearly he is not), he would think that the crash resulted from divine vengeance for the hubris of trying to seed the galaxy with Adapted Men. He and his fellow "pantropists" play the god-like role of designing microscopic human beings to inhabit water pools on the planet where they have crashed.

In Book Four, Adapted Men have spread throughout the galaxy without encountering any divine vengeance or, as far as we can see, experiencing any further religious qualms although the pagan expletive, "gods of all stars," familiar from Cities In Flight, remains in use. Lithia, the planet whose sinless but Godless inhabitants had disturbed Ruiz-Sanchez, is mentioned. Destroyed by human interventions in 2050 in ACOC, Lithia exists unchanged millennia later in The Seedling Stars so Ruiz-Sanchez's conflicts have not occurred in the essentially secular history of this alternative timeline.

The Dirac transmitter first appeared in the Okie series that became Cities In Flight but the transmitter's capacity to receive messages from the future would not have fitted into Okie culture, where cities fly into the unknown, so it had to be developed separately in one of the Haertel timelines. Similarly, the Okies, interstellar traders, and the Adapted Men, extrasolar colonists, could have complemented each other in a single series but Blish wanted to show that the Okies, despite their anti-agathics, would not live forever and demonstrated this drastically by ending the universe in 4004 whereas the Adapted Men needed much longer to colonize the galaxy so these two series necessarily diverged despite some early common references:

a pantropist refers to the Okie currency, the Oc dollar;
pantropists, like Okies and Wald, have the faster than light ultraphone.

Okies and Wald, but not pantropists, have the instantaneous Dirac transmitter but only Wald and his colleagues receive the Dirac "beep" containing messages from the future and including messages from later stories. Thus, one potential series became three distinct series whose defining technologies are:

"spindizzies," gravitron polarity generators, moving spaceships and cities through space faster than light, later moving a planet between galaxies and to the Metagalactic Centre;

pantropy, adapting human beings to other planets;

the Dirac communicator, receiving Dirac messages transmitted from any other point in space-time.

The text of  "A Style In Treason," and even the Dirac message received from that period, assume faster than light but not instantaneous communication, ultraphone but not Dirac. However, the politics of the period are somehow based on institutionalized deception and Blish would have been able to resolve any inconsistencies in his projected High Earth/Traitors' Guild/Green Exarchy novel.

The various series are also differentiated by their beginnings. Blish laid a sound basis for each series by describing the discoveries underlying his characters' later activities:

antigravity in "Bridge," incorporated into Cities In Flight, Vol I;
anti-agathics in "At Death's End," also incorporated into CIF, Vol I;
pantropy in The Seedling Stars, Book One;
antigravity, this time discovered by Haertel, in Welcome To Mars;
test flight of the Haertel overdrive in "Common Time";
test flight of the Arpe Drive in "Nor Iron Bars";
the theory of telepathy that later accounts for the Central Empire, also in "Nor Iron Bars";
the Dirac transmitter in "Beep," novelized as The Quincunx Of Time;
scientific method in Doctor Mirabilis.

Blish did not envisage any single political future:

when anti-gravity and antiagathics have been discovered and some extrasolar planets colonized, Russia wins the Cold War and bans space travel but, later, with anti-gravity rediscovered and the Vegan Tyranny defeated, a new confederation, roughly based on the former UN, rules Arm II until replaced by the Web of Hercules although New Earthmen continue to control the Greater Magellanic Cloud and the planet He explores the Andromeda galaxy;

the Greater Earth Port Authority, so enriched by tolls that its police force has absorbed the United States armed forces, aims to charge landing fees on terraformed planets and nearly suppresses pantropy but Adapted Men escape and occupy the galaxy;

ACOC's UN has imposed a world government in response to Corridor Riots in the self-sufficient city-sized underground nuclear air raid shelters controlled by Target Area Authorities derived from self-policing port authorities;

Loftus' UN world government, which controls a high-energy culture maintaining a large unemployed majority in comfort but not allowing them to vote or procreate, learns that the Heart Stars is a stagnant tyranny and allies with other races against it;

in Oberholzer's future, sperm electrophoresis enables parents to predetermine children's sex, causing a glut of males and a Matriarchy which discovers that planets of Population I stars in the galactic center and the clusters are populated by beings with hive mentalities and ganglia instead of brains and who regard brains as tumors so are hostile to the brained inhabitants of planets of Population II stars like Sol;

in the High Earth period, neither the ultraphone nor the Imaginary Drive permits hegemony over more than ten light years but a uniform interstellar economy is maintained with traitors as brokers in a bourse where planets seek financial advantage although half of the human worlds are ruled by the Green Exarch which draws tithes from six fallen empires older than man;

Wald's successors in the Earth intelligence bureau foresee themselves preventing disasters and presiding over peaceful intergalactic expansion, then do what they have foreseen themselves doing. (As Brian Aldiss wrote in an Introduction to The Quincunx Of Time, this novel really is about the future. Not only do we read about a fictitious future but the characters receive a series of messages from different periods of their future.)

These are seven very differently imagined futures although the High Earth-Green Exarchy conflict is supposed to be incorporated somehow into the peaceful expansion supervised by Wald's successors - unless, contradicting both their theory and their policy, this Dirac message turns out after all to originate from a merely potential future which they prevent instead of causing? (I don't think so but there you are.) 

ASK, Haertel, Okies and pantropy are not one series but they are a single coherent body of work: one diptych, two trilogies and three tetralogies. Uniform editions could comprise six volumes including a revised Galactic Cluster containing the short trilogy and the "loose ends."

"It was not until 2011 that the great Haertel succeeded..." (1)

Haertel's achievements, not necessarily mutually compatible, were:

to incorporate Einstein's relativity into Milne's and Milne's into his own (he did this in 2011, last year!);

to prove that there is only one fundamental particle;

to assume at the age of seventeen that a Pythagorean geometry of points, not a Euclidean geometry of lines, applies to ultimate particles like positrons;

also at age seventeen, to discover anti-gravity and fly a tree hut to Mars.

Loftus' mentor regards Haertel as the greatest theoretical physicist ever and Wald sometimes thinks that he must have been God so it is unsurprising that he is prominent in several timelines.

(1) Blish, James, Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 48.

The Eight Volumes

Yes, I think that these proposed eight volumes would adequately present James Blish's interconnected works:

I, Some Early Blish.
II, The Galactic Cluster Trilogy.
III, Jack Loftus.
IV, After Such Knowledge.
V, The Seedling Stars.
VI, Cities In Flight.
VII, The Quincunx Tetralogy.
VIII, The Haertel Scholium Coda.

The Haertel Scholium, ie, works referring either to the character Adolph Haertel or to his interstellar drive, comprises Volumes II, III, VII and VIII and a third of IV. Anyone who had read to the end of Vol VI would by then have encountered three Haertel overdrive futures and one spindizzy-Dirac communicator future. (The spindizzy or Dillon-Wagonner gravitron polarity generator is, like the Haertel overdrive, a faster than light interstellar drive.) Vol VII presents a Haertel overdrive-Dirac communicator future.

The instantaneous Dirac communicator, simultaneously receiving all past, present and future Dirac messages in a single "beep" of sound and light, first appeared in a one-off story never published in its original form because, under the guidance of Blish's Editor, John W Campbell, it was transformed into the concluding episode of a four part "Okies" series collected as Earthman, Come Home. That volume plus one pre-Okie novel, one juvenile Okie novel and one post-Okie novel equals Cities In Flight.

The pre-Okie novel, They Shall Have Stars, is a joint novelisation with new material of two stories each showing one of the two discoveries, anti-agathics and antigravity, that were necessary for Okie civilization. Logically, there should be a third story showing the invention of the Dirac communicator. In fact, that story exists but could not be incorporated into Cities In Flight because Blish wanted his Okie characters to meet challenges without being helped by messages from their future. Therefore, both the invention of the Dirac and the extraction of messages from the beep are described in the independent story, "Beep," novelized as The Quincunx Of Time.

In the longer version, one Dirac message describes the background of Blish's story, "A Style In Treason," and another is transmitted in his novel, Midsummer Century. Thus, Volume VII, for which I suggest the title The Quincunx Tetralogy, would contain:

Welcome To Mars, about Haertel's discovery of antigravity;
The Quincunx Of Time;
"A Style In Treason";
Midsummer Century.

The early Adapted Men stories could have fitted into the Okie sequence, and indeed looked as if they were going to, but then the two series developed in different directions so the former are collected as The Seedling Stars. Thus, the contents of Volumes V, VI and VII grew from two roots, the earliest written Okie and "pantropy" (science of Adaptation) stories, but also incorporated other material from the Haertel Scholium (Welcome To Mars and The Quincunx Of Time) and via the Dirac transmitter ("A Style In Treason" and Midsummer Century).

Because most of these works describe the consequences of future scientific discoveries, it makes sense that, in the first part of After Such Knowledge (ASK), Blish presents a fictitious biography of Roger Bacon, the discoverer of scientific method. Because Bacon, a scientist, was mistaken for a magician, it is also appropriate that the second part of ASK is neither sf nor about scientists but fantasy about magicians. The third part of ASK is a Haertel overdrive novel about a future conflict between theology and science.

"Common Time," the opening story of Galactic Cluster, presents Haertel as an elderly scientist receiving a report back from the pilot of the first successful test flight with his overdrive whereas Welcome To Mars, written later, presents him as a teenager discovering antigravity and flying to Mars while a slight variation on that version of Mars is presented in the story that would introduce Vol VIII. These works present creativity without linearity.

Future Historical References

After Such Knowledge (ASK), Volumes I and II
I, Doctor Mirabilis: Roger Bacon, founder/discoverer of scientific method, is possibly inspired by a demon.
IIa, Black Easter: twentieth century magicians conjure major demons, causing Armageddon.
IIb, The Day After Judgment: after Armageddon.

The Haertel Scholium
Welcome To Mars: Haertel on Mars.
"No Jokes On Mars": later on Mars.
"Common Time": Haertel and Garrard.
"Nor Iron Bars": after the Haertel overdrive, tested by Garrard, the Arpe drive.
"This Earth of Hours": after the Arpe drive, the Standing Wave.

The Star Dwellers: a version of the Haertel overdrive that is a Standing Wave.
Mission To The Heart Stars: sequel; references to Garrard and to the Centaurians that he encountered.
"A Dusk of Idols": references to the star-dwelling Angels and to the Heart Stars.

The Quincunx Of Time: the Haertel overdrive; a planet named after Hammersmith, who traveled with Arpe; Dirac messages from the futures described in the two subsequent works.
"A Style in Treason": the Imaginary Drive, an auctorial comment on Haertel's and other FTL drives.
Midsummer Century: reference to Thor Wald, inventor of the Dirac communicator.

ASK, Vol III/The Haertel Scholium
III, A Case Of Conscience: a Haertel overdrive future with a theological or demonological problem.

Comments
This sequence is not linear. Armageddon is not necessarily a discontinuity because its effects are reversed at the end of ASK, IIb. However, four futures diverge although they are directly or indirectly linked by references to Haertel.

These four futures culminate in:

conflict between the Terrestrial Matriarchy and the telepathic Central Empire;
conflict between the UN/Angels alliance and the Heart Stars;
an expanding intergalactic civilization based on a monopoly of prescience while civilizations guided by higher mental states rise and fall on Earth;
the problem posed by the Lithians. 

Welcome To Mars III

Jack Loftus stars in The Star Dwellers and in its immediate sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars;

Adolph Haertel stars in Welcome To Mars and appears in "Common Time," the first of three connected short stories in the collection, Galactic Cluster;

Thor Wald appears in The Quincunx Of Time and is referred to early in Midsummer Century.

Thus, there are three instances of two volumes linked by one character. Loftus and Wald also refer to Haertel but only in the same way as they refer to Einstein.

Haertel:

was introduced in "Common Time";

became a historical character common to alternative futures inhabited by Loftus, Wald and others (Arpe in "Nor Iron Bars" and Ruiz-Sanchez in A Case Of Conscience);

then, in a third and final stage, was adapted as the teenage hero of the juvenile novel Welcome To Mars - although we might ask whether this younger Haertel is quite consistent with any of the various older versions.

Mission To The Heart Stars was written after The Star Dwellers;
Galactic Cluster was written before Welcome To Mars;
Midsummer Century was written while "Beep" was being expanded as The Quincunx Of Time.

Non-technical readers usually trust the scientific information imparted in works of hard sf. In Welcome To Mars, we:

(i) understand that Haertel, in this work called "Dolph," has the urgent problem of how to survive indefinitely when marooned on Mars;

 

(ii) soon come to accept that he has solved this problem;

(iii) might come to wonder whether we have been given enough information to warrant the transition from (i) to (ii).

The information is there but maybe, for some of us, needed to be spelled out a bit more. More on this later. (See here.)

The Haertel Scholium

A recent reference to Dirac made me think about and rethink James Blish's Haertel Scholium. An omnibus collection of the Scholium would comprise eleven works, a two part prequel/prologue/prelude, Welcome To Mars and "No Jokes On Mars," followed by three trilogies:

The Galactic Cluster Trilogy
"Common Time"
"Nor Iron Bars"
"This Earth Of Hours"

The Heart Stars Trilogy
The Star Dwellers
Mission To The Heart Stars
"A Dusk Of Idols"

The Quincunx Trilogy
The Quincunx Of Time
"A Style In Treason"
Midsummer Century

In "This Earth Of Hours," the Terrestrial Matriarchy must contend with the Central Empire of the galaxy;
in the Heart Stars trilogy, the UN and the star-dwelling Angels must contend with the Heart Stars federation;
in "A Style In Treason," High Earth must contend with the Green Exarchy;
in The Quincunx Of Time, Earth, armed with the Dirac transmitter, builds its own intergalactic civilization;
in a twelfth Haertel Scholium work, A Case Of Conscience, which is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy, the UN must cope with the planet Lithia which, in accordance with this novel's place in the ASK Trilogy, is a third historical example of the question whether the quest for secular knowledge is evil.

James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy

(This article, with some slight textual alterations, was originally published in The New York Review of Science Fiction, No. 250, Vol. 21, No. 10, June 2009.)

Trilogy

James Blish claimed that one historical novel, one contemporary fantasy and one futuristic sf novel comprised his trilogy, After Such Knowledge. The three volumes are:

Doctor Mirabilis;
Black Easter and its sequel, The Day After Judgement, considered as a single work;
A Case Of Conscience.

Black Easter/The Day After Judgement, hereinafter abbreviated as Black…Judgement, comprises Volumes IIa and IIb.

The trilogy is thematic, not linear, i. e., is three related works, not one three-volumed work, but how are the three works related? David Ketterer suggests that scientifically rationalized sf (Volume III) synthesizes the realism of historical fiction (I) with its antithesis, fantasy (II). ¹

In Doctor Mirabilis, Roger Bacon believes that a gaseous explosion is demonic. In Black Easter, a scientist denies that a visible demon is real. Natural phenomena preexisted understanding of them. Supernatural beings would outlast belief in them. In both cases, reality transcends concepts. Conceptual breakthrough is a theme of the trilogy as of sf in general and of Blish’s in particular.

Thus, appropriately in Hegelian dialectics, the thesis, an accurately realized historical period, and its antithesis, a vividly imagined supernatural incursion, are interconnected. Also appropriately, they are connected by conceptual advance and resistance to it.

thesis	Historical events did occur. Historical fictions could have occurred. Bacon causes an explosion by natural means although his inner voice may be demonic.
antithesis	Fantasy describes supernatural events that scientific rationalists believe cannot occur.
synthesis	Scientists controlling natural forces can cause apparently miraculous events and might cause more in future. Futuristic sf writers must both describe fantastic events and realise future periods as effectively as historical novelists realize past periods.

This triadic formula explains why only Volume II treats the supernatural as unequivocally real. Volume III returns to the ambiguity of Volume I but at the higher synthetic level of rationalized fantasy (=sf).

Volume III also introduces an apparent contradiction between scientific discovery and religious belief. This conflict, already implicit, becomes explicit when the scientific achievement of interstellar travel enables Earthmen to meet aliens who do not conform to Christian preconceptions. A Jesuit priest-scientist finds an answer that satisfies him but ambiguity remains. The planet Lithia explodes when but not necessarily because Fr. Ruiz-Sanchez exorcises it from a safe distance. The explosion is also scientifically explicable.

It is also appropriate that a synthesis generates a further antithesis.

An Alternative Order

Blish’s suggested chronological reading order corresponds to Ketterer’s proposed dialectical order. However, I argue that another order is also valid: Volume II, written last, is the literary climax.

Reading the trilogy in chronological/dialectical order, we encounter the black magician, Theron Ware, in Volume II and a reference to a commentator on Finnegans Wake called “Fr. Ware” early in Volume III. Either “Fr. Ware” is real or Blish used the same fictitious surname twice. Either way, an unknowing reader might think that Theron Ware had been ordained after the events of The Day After Judgement whereas the writing order alone shows that Blish cannot have meant this.

More importantly, in Black…Judgement, demons defeat Heaven and their fortress of Dis rises to the Earth’s surface. It is therefore an anticlimax for the chronological reader when, near the end of Volume III, Ruiz-Sanchez thinks that:

“…Lithia transformed into a planet-wide fortress of Dis was a threat to Heaven itself.” ²

There is no such threat in this Volume but Ruiz-Sanchez’s heretical over-dramatization is a seed of Volume II. A Case Of Conscience could have been followed by a novel set later in which the Antichrist did appear. Instead, Blish next wrote a novel set earlier in which the Antichrist did not appear although Armageddon occurred.

Armageddon, anticipated in Volumes I and III, occurs, although with an unexpected outcome, demonic victory, at the end of IIa. IIb presents an unexpected, but logical, consequence of that outcome: Satan becomes God but unwillingly.

The ending of Black Easter had precluded any further secular events, yet A Case Of Conscience, set later, was regarded as a subsequent volume of the same trilogy. At the end of The Day After Judgement, Satan/God reverses the effects of a nuclear war so that perhaps the events of A Case Of Conscience can occur after all but this is not necessary for the unity of the trilogy.

What is clear is that the occurrence of Armageddon and the examination of its consequences make Black…Judgement the dramatic fulfillment of anticipations in both of the previously written volumes. Volume IIb reads like the culmination of a long literary sequence but is also a turning point: Satan, who fell at the beginning of Paradise Lost, in a prequel to Genesis, anticipates his far future transference of Godhood to man.

In the literary sequence from the Bible through Dante and Milton to Black…Judgement, the literary form has changed from scripture to epic to novel. At the end of The Day After Judgement, the text shifts from standard prose to indented paragraphs to Miltonic verse to dramatic dialogue, thus expressing ontological changes. The characters and their context have been transformed. A film director might show this by shifting from monochrome to color or from animation to live action. Blish progresses through the literary forms: prose, verse and drama.

Parallels and Influences

Black Easter belongs at the end when comparing Blish with his predecessor, C. S. Lewis. Lewis’s Ransom trilogy is a Christian reply to Wellsian-Stapledonian sf. Blish, a Wellsian sf writer and agnostic, refers to and quotes from Lewis in After Such Knowledge. I suggest that Blish’s Welcome to Mars and After Such Knowledge Volumes III and IIa constitute a “post-Lewis” trilogy. Ransom visits Mars and a sinless planet, then demons manifest on Earth. In Blish’s works, Haertel visits Mars, his successors visit a sinless planet and demons manifest on Earth. 

Whereas Volumes II and III of After Such Knowledge are post-Lewis, Volumes I and II are post-Eddison. E. R. Eddison’s fantasy novel, The Worm Ouroboros, inspired Blish to write a novel about ceremonial magic. Mistakenly believing that Roger Bacon was a magician, Blish researched Bacon, learned that he was a scientist mistaken for a magician, wrote Doctor Mirabilis about him, then returned to magic in Black Easter. This common origin, although illuminating, is neither evident in the texts nor sufficient to link the novels directly to each other.

A Case Of Conscience originated separately. What became Book One of the novel was commissioned for a collection of stories set on a fictitious planet designed by two scientists. However, I agree with Blish that a common theme does link the three volumes.

A Trilogy?

The volumes are connected by:

a chronological sequence (past, present and future) culminating in Volume III;
a dialectical process (thesis, antithesis and synthesis) culminating in Volume III;
a dramatic progression (fears, prophecies and their fulfillment) culminating in Volume II;
a two-volume Eddison influence (demons, magicians and conjurations) culminating in Volume II;
a two-volume Lewis parallel (quotations, references and common themes) culminating in Volume II.

Thus, Volume II emerges as a focal point. But would we have called the three volumes a trilogy if Blish had not? 

We would at least have recognized common references to Bacon, Catholicism, Popes, supernatural evil, Antichrist, Armageddon and science. Each novel begins by assaulting the senses (a freezing stone corridor, a slammed stone door, a stink of demons), presents interactions between practicing scientists and supernaturalists and ends with transformations (deaths and realizations). Bacon is a scientist-monk mistaken for a magician. Ruiz-Sanchez is a scientist-priest who initially forgets that the office of exorcist remains open to him. In Black…Judgement, the black magician, the monk-magician and the scientist are different characters.

Even genre diversity connects the volumes. Fantasy and sf transcend existing experience. Historical fiction and futuristic sf present other periods. Blish wrote:

“…the historical novel is a natural second medium for the ‘hard’ SF writer.” ³

The Bacon of Doctor Mirabilis is a forerunner of modern science struggling against medievalism. Volume III describes a culmination of science: interstellar travel. Its aggressively atheist scientist character, Cleaver, regards Christianity as medieval and strives to thwart Ruiz-Sanchez. Thus, these two works might have been seen as a diptych. The Armaggedon and Dis references and Lewis parallels are enough to link Volumes II and III.

Because the trilogy was not preconceived, Blish was unable, for example, to incorporate into Bacon’s apocalyptic vision, in Volume I, prophetic images of the Lithian explosion (Vol. III), the Black Easter conjuration (Vol. IIa) or the SAC attack on Dis in Death Valley (Vol. IIb). However, this would have been inappropriate in any case. The historical Bacon did anticipate flying machines and submarines so it is legitimate for a novelist to present him visualizing them. However, Doctor Mirabilis is otherwise a straightforward historical novel which would arguably be marred by intrusions from a fantastic present or a technological future. Later volumes refer to Bacon but he cannot refer to them.

Knowledge As Evil

Blish tells us that, as its title suggests, After Such Knowledge dramatizes the question whether the desire for secular knowledge is evil. Each volume does address this question, thus validating the thematic unity of the trilogy whatever its reading order.

Volume 1:

Bacon’s inner voice claims:

“I am the raven of Elias," ⁴

a source of food in the desert (1 Kings 17.6) but Bacon rejects this claim as “blasphemous and untrue." ⁶ Since Elias’ raven was from God, the claim may be blasphemous. Food in the desert, wealth where there was poverty, would be good unless it were gained at the expense of a greater evil: exploitation or pollution – or blasphemy or untruth.

The voice continues:

“Thou art the man shalt bring back into the world the scientia universalis.” ⁴

To medieval Christians, all discovery was rediscovery because:

“…God revealed all wisdom to his holy patriarchs and prophets from the beginning of the world…” ⁵

Bacon (fore)sees Antichrist leading an army, sees aircraft, submarines and subterrenes and hears an anagrammic formula for gunpowder. If science did only destroy, then it would be evil. But it doesn’t. Aircraft are not used only in warfare. Armies preexisted Bacon’s conceptual revolution. Wealth, once produced, was fought for as Doctor Mirabilis, opening with the seizure of the Bacon estate, reminds us.

“…men began to abuse science, turning to evil what God granted in full measure for the safety and advantage of man…” ⁶

Later, Bacon challenges authority with the scientia experimentalis, knowledge from experience. Although this science is not prima facie evil, it was safer to practice it secretly in Latin Christendom. Even a Pope who does not want to offend the powerful religious Orders must ask Bacon to send his major work “in secret." ⁷ Bacon attributes experimental science not only to God and Socrates but also to his own “…imprisoned demon self." ⁸ Thus, he champions science but remains ambivalent about his role in it.

Bacon’s legend requires a “…deathbed renunciation of his whole life and purpose…” ⁹ In Doctor Mirabilis, he says:

“ ‘Now bitterly do I regret, that I spent mine wholle lyf in the lists against the ignorant. Enough! Lord Christ, enough!’ ” ¹⁰

Ketterer comments:

“…because this renunciation is not prepared for and is quickly passed over, it is highly likely that the reader will not even notice it…There is, then, little doubt that Roger’s act of renunciation is not endorsed by Blish.” ¹¹

I did notice Bacon’s powerful statement but did not recognize it as a renunciation. I thought that he regretted that he had had to oppose the ignorant. Thus, he would have preferred a life in which there were no “ignorant” authorities for him to oppose, not a life in which he himself avoided the conflict. While writing this article, I quoted Bacon’s “last words” to someone who did recognize them as a renunciation so perhaps I have been alone in misunderstanding them.

Of the two men present at Bacon’s death, one says:

“ ‘…he was so perverse…forever at hares and hounds after matters men are forbidden to know.’ ” ¹²

The other replies:

“ ‘…there can be nothing that is forbidden for man to know since we ate of that Apple; for it states in the Proverbs that knowledge is good and beautiful for its own sake.’ ” ¹³

This conclusion remains ambiguous. Knowledge is inherently good in Proverbs but eating its fruit was sinful in Genesis.

Bacon knows Simon de Montfort and hears of “Robin of Sherwood”. We inherit experimental science, parliamentary democracy and popular resistance. Ketterer thinks that Blish imparts insufficient historical information, e.g., about why the French were then so influential. I suggest that readers may either consult reference works or accept that historical fictions have wider contexts and that what matters here are the effects of contemporary conflicts on Bacon.

Volume III:

Ruiz-Sanchez’s scientific discoveries on Lithia seem to him to contradict Catholicism. If the Lithians are apparently good without divine help, then they are really created by Satan to mislead mankind even though Catholics deny that Satan can create. Pope Hadrian VIII helps Ruiz to resolve this conflict by regarding the Lithians as a demonically-induced hallucination but how plausible is that? If Satan does not, we think, induce planet-wide hallucinations on Earth, why should he be able to do so fifty light years away? But, in any case, mere contradiction of Catholicism would not make the desire for secular knowledge evil.

An atheist defeats Ruiz by influencing UN policy on Lithia. A lapsed Catholic inspires awe in Ruiz by communicating instantaneously with Lithia. Thus, secular scientists dominate Ruiz’s period for both good and evil, communication and destruction.

Volume II:

Ware and his client, Baines, an arms merchant, seek knowledge that can be gained only by causing immense suffering. The scientific equivalent of “let’s see what the demons ‘…would do if they were left on their own hooks…’ ” would be “let’s see what this chemical weapon does to an entire population." ¹⁴ The desire for such knowledge would be evil. If, at the end of The Day After Judgement, the last magicians do begin to move away from their destructive motivations, then I think that they will have to deal with a great deal of guilt. Lewis’ morality, if not his theology, remains relevant.

(Incidentally, surely it was predictable that unrestrained demons + nuclear stockpiles = nuclear war. When Ware releases forty eight major demons all night without restraint, he is confident that this will not unleash Armageddon because there is no Antichrist. He is also confident that the demons will harm no one inside his magic circle because he is a skilled magician. However, neither he nor Baines would have wanted to emerge into a nuclear wasteland. “Deterrence” should have prevented the Last Conjuration as it had, until then, prevented World War III. Self-interest, if not morality, would have prevented Ware’s “experiment”.)

After writing two and a half volumes, Blish recognized the common theme and named the trilogy accordingly.

The Volumes resemble not three panels of sequential art but three paintings with a common theme, the middle painting, a sequential diptych, hanging slightly above the others.

Possible covers: I, Antichrist’s giant army; IIa, the crowned and immensely horned Goat, seated on an altar; IIb, Satan cut off at the breast by the floor of the great hall in Pandemonium; III, a twelve foot Lithian. In each picture, the main figure(s) dwarf human characters in the foreground.

Other Volumes?

An expanded After Such Knowledge sequence could incorporate other works by Blish.

Doctor Mirabilis was to have been the first in a series of historical novels about important scientists and crucial ideas in the history of science. Blish had started the second novel, “…set in the Venetian Republic during the Borgia pontificate…”, focusing on “…the invention of the security system for technical information”. ¹⁵ Here, not religious authority but political control threatens scientific knowledge.

The adverse effect of “security” on science is central to Blish’s They Shall Have Stars:

“…scientific method…depends on freedom of information, and we deliberately killed that.” ¹⁶

It also occurs in Black Easter when Baines asks Ware to arrange the death of a scientist who might otherwise make discoveries that Baines’ company wants, temporarily, to monpolize.

Blish’s Fallen Star is sf if Elvers’ claim to be a Martian is genuine but mainstream if he is psychotic. As Volumes I and III of After Such Knowledge remain ambiguous about the supernatural, Fallen Star remains ambiguous about the extraterrestrial. ¹⁷

Elvers destroys scientific evidence of extraterrestrial life because, he says, it includes forensic evidence of Martian genocide. They destroyed an inhabited planet. Elvers’ action suggests an inversion of the T. S. Eliot quotation:

“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” ¹⁸

from which Blish named his trilogy. Elvers does not seek knowledge that may be evil but suppresses knowledge of an evil act. He thinks that, after knowledge of this crime, there will be no forgiveness. Like a terrestrial dictator, he suppresses knowledge of an atrocity. The next step for dictatorships is to control what counts as knowledge and therefore to suppress the search for knowledge in any objective sense. Genuine science and scholarship become unforgivable offenses. Elvers, killing explorers and destroying evidence, personifies the worst aspects of medievalism and dictatorship.

Fallen Star and The Night Shapes are an “Expeditions” diptych with Arctic and African antitheses. The Polar explorer of Fallen Star had previously sought the African “night-shapes," not knowing that these surviving dinosaurs had been wiped out fifty years earlier in the other novel. The hero of The Night Shapes, an American alienated from Western civilization, identifies the real night-shapes as the ideas of evil inside us but does not go as far as to identify secular knowledge with evil. ¹⁹

Reality

Ketterer argues:

“From a strictly human point of view, the major events which take place in Black Easter’s fourth-dimensional rendition of our world do not, strictly speaking, happen…To a three-dimensional perception Earth has not been destroyed. None of the major events described are part of recorded human history. They amount to some kind of Blakean vision of what is really going on behind the scenes…The preponderance of internal settings and the complementary, almost allegorical characterization accentuates the feel of a stage set for inner vision; the outside setting with which The Day After Judgment concludes marks a return to everyday reality…there are no references to the general public.” ²⁰

I suspect that when Satan=God starts Man on a new path by undoing the effects of nuclear war, he also revises the memories of everyone except the main protagonists. Thus, the war did occur but will not be recorded. Allegorical characterization could be an extra level overlying the novel’s literal level.

Ketterer backs up his dimensional metaphor by arguing that Black Easter emphasizes threes whereas:

“ The Day After Judgment ends with four statements indicative of improvement…a threefold vision has been transformed into a fourfold vision…” ²¹

and the concluding “…four literary modes…might somehow approximate a completed fourfold vision.” ²¹

The diptych does end with a fourfold vision (Domenico’s thought, Baines’ belief, Ware’s hope, Ginsberg’s love) but the evidence offered for an earlier threefold vision is more diffuse (the three word phrase, “God is dead," the “Three Sleeps” Station, three-headed demons, World War III). ²¹ I think that the four literary modes express changes in reality although they could, of course, have more than one meaning.

Volume II (antithesis), unlike I (thesis) and III (synthesis), presents not only believers in demons but also literal demons. It deals:

“…with what real sorcery actually had to be like if it existed…” ²²

Baines wants to know what the major demons would do if they were “‘…loose in the world…’” and Blish’s “…aim in the sequel was to pursue the literal-mindedness of the first book to still greater absurdities.” ^{14, 23}

Ketterer quotes the scientist, Hess:

“‘Couldn’t all this be a hallucination…?’” 

But Hess is swallowed by the Goat. ^{24, 25} Before that, Baines had reminded him:

“‘…you and I have seen a demon.’” ²⁶

Baines affirms the reality of the Black Easter event whether caused by demons or electrons but his remaining skepticism about demons flounders when Hess is swallowed.

If, at the end, Domenico alone had emerged from a trance, then we could have located Armageddon in his inner landscape. However, demons interact, sometimes fatally, with people who did not previously believe in them: a succubus visits Ginsberg; airmen photograph Dis; demons slaughter soldiers; General McKnight sees the Goat on TV.

Ketterer observes that the world population, the magicians, the military and the demons successively experience defeat, thus acknowledging that the events do occur for the general public. He points out that it is hypothesized that perhaps in some sense Dis had never been in Death Valley. But perhaps, in some other sense, it had, as the SAC computer concluded.

Televised pictures of devastation looked:

“…like scenes from an early surrealist film, where one could not tell whether the director was trying to portray a story or only a state of mind.” ²⁷

but they were televised pictures of the results of a war. Later, can the SAC attack on Dis be “behind the scenes”?

Brian Stableford writes: 

“…demons are released from the mind of the characters…this is difficult to take. Demons in the mind are much more credible than demons at large.” ²⁸

I agree that demons are “at large” but find this acceptable in fiction. They are released not from the mind but from Hell where, in Christian belief and Blish’s fiction, they preexisted human minds.

There may be some textual evidence that the demons are not really at large. When Domenico wondered why an angel conjured by the white magicians appeared headless:

“The leaden skies returned him no answer.” ²⁹

And when Hess suggests that they are all insane, he does so “…in a leaden monotone.” ³⁰

Does Hess’ leaden monotone confirm that Domenico’s leaden skies are part of a collective hallucination? The word “leaden” seems significant. Blish would have known that he used it twice and that, by doing so, he linked an inner state, insanity, to an outer appearance, an unanswering sky. However, the Goat’s swallowing of the hysterically incredulous Hess seems even more significant, a decisive statement that demons are real.

Ketterer calls McKnight’s identification of the Goat with “‘…the insidious Doctor Fu Manchu!’” “corny”; Stableford calls it flippant. ^{31, 32, 28} McKnight needs to identify an enemy, can think only in terms of national or racial stereotypes, has watched all his weapons fail and now sees an “immense Face” on a Cinerama-sized screen so he loses his grip on reality and retreats into fiction. ³³

Others also apply old concepts to new experiences: Domenico sees a demon Pope as the Antichrist, not as the new divine appointee; Ginsberg lives on “company time” after Armageddon; Hess denies his senses.³⁴

Blish on Knowledge

Although Blish addressed the question whether the desire for secular knowledge is evil, there is no doubt about his answer to it, as expressed through other characters.

In another work, an alien says:

“This organism dies now. It dies in confidence of knowledge, as an intelligent creature dies. Man has taught us this. There is nothing. That knowledge. Cannot do. With it…men…have crossed…have crossed space…” ³⁵

Blish’s major character, Amalfi, says:

“That’s the priceless coin, gentlemen, the universal coin: human knowledge.” ³⁶

When the universe ends, a scientist pronounces the:

“…epitaph for Man: We did not have time to learn everything that we wanted to know.” ³⁷

And that is a fitting epitaph for James Blish.

Acknowledgement

  David Ketterer’s book provides a framework for discussing Blish’s works. I am grateful to Ketterer for both writing the book and sending me a copy and am sorry that my response is so late and slight.

1. David Ketterer, Imprisoned in a Tesseract: the Life and Work of James Blish (Kent, Ohio: the Kent State University Press, 1987), pp. 318-319.
2. James Blish, A Case Of Conscience (New York: Ballantine Books, 1958; Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd, 1963), p. 180.
3. James Blish, “The Strange Career of Doctor Mirabilis” (Australian SF Review, no. 6, January 1967), quoted in Ketterer, op. cit., p. 195.
4. James Blish, Doctor Mirabilis (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1971), p. 157.
5. ibid, p. 155.
6. ibid, p. 156.
7. ibid, p. 255.
8. ibid, p. 254.
9. James Blish, letter to Lois Dwight Cole, quoted in Ketterer, op. cit., p. 214.
10. Blish, DoctorMirabilis, p. 330.
11. Ketterer, op. cit., p. 214.
12. Blish, Doctor Mirabilis, p. 329.
13. ibid, pp. 329-330.
14. James Blish, Black Easter (New York: Doubleday, 1968), reprinted in Black Easter and The Day After Judgement (London: Arrow Books Ltd, 1981), p. 73.
15. James Blish, letter to Philip K. Dick, 13 June 1964, quoted in Ketterer, op. cit., pp. 192, 349.
16. James Blish, They Shall Have Stars (New York: Avon, 1957; London: Faber & Faber, 1956), reprinted in James Blish, Cities in Flight (London: Arrow Books Ltd, 1974), pp. 7-129, at p. 14.
17. James Blish, Fallen Star (Signet/New American Library, 1977; London: Faber & Faber, 1957).
18. T. S. Eliot, “Gerontion”, www.bartleby.com.
19. James Blish, The Night Shapes (Ballantine Books, 1962; London: The New English Library, 1963).
20. Ketterer, op. cit., p. 312.
21. ibid, p. 313.
22. Blish, Black Easter, p. 11.
23. James Blish, letter to Paul Shackley, quoted in Ketterer, op. cit., p. 303.
24. Blish, Black Easter, p. 107, quoted in Ketterer, op. cit., p. 312.
25. ibid, p. 111.
26. ibid, p. 106.
27. Blish, The Day After Judgement, p. 131.
28. Brian Stableford, “The Science Fiction of James Blish” (Foundation 13, 1971), p. 41.
29. Blish, Black Easter, p. 86.
30. ibid, p. 107.
31. Blish, The Day After Judgement, p. 192.
32. Ketterer, op. cit., p. 306.
33. Blish, The Day After Judgement, pp. 191, 185.
34. ibid, pp. 125, 182.
35. Blish, The Seedling Stars (Gnome Press, 1957; London: Arrow Books Ltd, 1972), p. 180.
36. James Blish, Earthman, Come Home (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1955), reprinted in Cities in Flight, pp. 235-465, at p. 376.
37. Blish, The Triumph of Time (New York: Avon, 1958), reprinted in Cities in Flight, pp. 466-596, at p. 596.

Email address: paulshackley2017@gmail.com