Six Volumes

My proposed "Eight Volumes" for James Blish's interconnected works do not make sense for publishing because three of the volumes would be very short. However, six would be practicable, starting with The Galactic Cluster Trilogy And Other Works:

Part One, Some Early Blish;
Part Two, The Galactic Cluster Trilogy;
Part Three, The Haertel Scholium Coda.

This single opening volume would form a triad with:

The Jack Loftus Novels;
After Such Knowledge.

A second triad would be:

The Seedling Stars;
Cities In Flight;
The Quincunx Tetralogy.

After Such Knowledge is a Trilogy overlapping by one volume with the "Haertel Scholium," works referring to or connected with the character Adolph Haertel or his interstellar drive. The "Early Blish" stories are not part of this Scholium but are precursors to it.

The second triad moves away from Haertel but returns to him in its concluding volume which synthesizes the Dirac transmitter, introduced in Cities In Flight, with the Haertel overdrive, introduced in "Common Time," the opening story of Galactic Cluster. Thus, these coherent and interconnected works deserve to be republished in uniform editions.