Radio, Dirac And Cats

James Blish's Haertel Scholium begins with Welcome To Mars and ends with Midsummer Century.

See: One Story Grows Into An Exotic Future History.

In Welcome To Mars, Dolph Haertel, stranded on Mars in the twentieth century, unexpectedly receives a radio signal originating from somewhere else on that planet whereas, in Midsummer Century, John Martels, who has been time-projected from 1985 to 25,000 AD and who is now embodied in a sentient computer, unexpectedly receives a message transmitted as a Dirac beep. These two mysterious receptions suggest a bond between these two characters although they are not in any direct contact with each other. The Scholium is all about faster means of travel and communication. Haertel and Martels are indirectly linked by Thor Wald who reveres Haertel and invents the Dirac transmitter.

The Scholium includes two cat-like intelligent species, one on Mars in the two Mars instalments and another on an extra-solar planet in the two Jack Loftus novels. If the Scholium or selected parts of it had been edited into a linear series, then maybe these two species would have been conflated.

Haertel Timelines

Although James Blish's Haertel Scholium does not comprise a single linear future history series, it could be republished in a boxed-set uniform edition with minimal editing. Such a set should exclude the novel, A Case Of Conscience, because that is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy and need not be collected twice, which leaves six volumes:

Two Adolph Haertel Volumes

Welcome To Mars

Galactic Cluster: Revised Edition ("No Jokes on Mars" + the short Haertel trilogy)

These first two volumes cover:

Haertel on Mars

Mars

Haertel

Haertel's successors

Two Jack Loftus Novels

The Star Dwellers

Mission To The Heart Stars (+ "A Dusk of Idols")

Two Thor Wald Volumes

The Quincunx Of Time (+ "A Style in Treason")

Midsummer Century

The second and third pairs cover alternative successors of Haertel.

There are alternative versions of Mars and also of the galactic centre. The Haertel who is directly referenced in Mission To The Heart Stars and the Haertel who is indirectly referenced in "This Earth of Hours" cannot be the same Haertel because these works present mutually incompatible accounts of what is to be found at the galactic centre. Consequently, Haertel exists in different timelines.

Versions Of Mars

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, and in the second of Blish's two Jack Loftus novels, Mission To The Heart Stars, the long extinct Martians had covered their planetary surface with the Diagram of Power.

In Blish's first Haertel Scholium novel, Welcome To Mars, Martian canals are crustal faults or spalled cracks caused by meteor impacts and the intelligent six-foot-long dune-cats had been domesticated by the just-extinct Old Martians whereas, in "No Jokes on Mars," the four-foot-long but otherwise identical dune cats (unhyphenated) are possibly descended from the long-extinct Canal Masons.

In After Such Knowledge, Volume III, A Case Of Conscience, there are unintelligent Martian sand crabs.

The "Diagram of Power" Mars exists in two timelines, those of Cities In Flight and of the Loftus novels.

Although Blish stated that "No Jokes on Mars" was set at least a decade later than Welcome To Mars, it is clear that the story and the novel are set on similar but different versions of Mars and therefore in different timelines.

Neither version of the dune-cats exists on the "Diagram of Power" Mars but the sand crabs might although there is no reason to think that they do.

The Haertel Scholium

James Blish's Haertel Scholium comprises:

(i) four stories collected in Galactic Cluster, the first featuring Adolph Haertel;

(ii) five novels - one about Haertel, the others referring to him;

(iii) four more shorter works, three stories collected in Anywhen and the short novel, Midsummer Century.

(i) A linear trilogy:

"Common Time"

"Nor Iron Bars"

"This Earth of Hours"

- and an offshoot, "Beep," which is a further development of the idea of the instantaneous Dirac transmitter which had been introduced in Blish's Cities In Flight Tetralogy.

(ii) (a) Three juvenile novels:

Welcome To Mars, about Haertel;

The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars, both about Jack Loftus.

(b) A Case Of Conscience, which is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy.

(c) The Quincunx Of Time, a (still short) novelization of "Beep."

(iii) Each of the four remaining shorter works connects with one of the novels:

"No Jokes on Mars" with Welcome To Mars;

"A Dusk of Idols" with The Star Dwellers;

"A Style in Treason" and Midsummer Century with The Quincunx Of Time.

Midsummer Century, written while Blish was expanding "Beep," is a companion volume to The Quincunx... The two volumes cross-refer and are linked by a Dirac message.

Everything comes together.

James Blish And Poul Anderson

I post more about Poul Anderson than about James Blish if only because Anderson had a much bigger output. Blish's main future history series, Cities In Flight, is four volumes or one omnibus volume with a beginning, a middle and an end whereas Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is seventeen volumes or seven omnibus volumes and remained open-ended. Blish's characters face the end of the universe in Cities In Flight, Volume IV, The Triumph Of Time, whereas a different set of Anderson's characters face the same problem in the non-series novel, Tau Zero. Blish's characters fly to the Metagalactic Centre in The Triumph Of Time whereas different sets of Anderson's characters fly between galaxies in the non-series novels, Tao Zero and World Without Stars. Blish's characters live indefinitely prolonged lifespans in Cities In Flight whereas different sets of Anderson's characters live indefinitely prolonged lifespans in the non-series novels, World Without Stars, The Boat Of A Million Years and For Love And Glory and in his Time Patrol series.

However, because of several parallels between these two authors, we frequently refer to Blish on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. Currently, see here. More generally, see here.

Narrative Growth

 

A single Okie story became the concluding fourth section of Earthman, Come Home which became Volume III of the Cities In Flight Tetralogy which, in turn, was collected in a single omnibus volume.

A single pantropy story became Cycle One of Book Three of The Seedling Stars, a single volume.

A single theological sf story became Book One of A Case Of Conscience which became Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy, eventually collected in a single omnibus volume.

A single Haertel overdrive story became the basis of the Haertel Scholium which includes A Case Of Conscience.

James Blish's Main Works

Blish's Four Main Bodies of Work

Cities In Flight

The Seedling Stars

The Haertel Scholium

After Such Knowledge

Haertel Scholium works either feature or refer, directly or indirectly, to Adolph Haertel.

After Such Knowldege, Volume III, A Case of Conscience, is a Haertel Scholium novel.

Blish's main bodies of work can also be listed as three future histories and three (Haertel-related) trilogies.

Future Histories

Cities In Flight

The Seedling Stars

The Haertel History

Trilogies

The Heart Stars Trilogy

The Quincunx Trilogy

After Such Knowledge