Six Narratives

James Blish's future historical and other related writings present six long narratives:

from the discovery of anti-agathics and antigravity to the creation of new universes;

from the development of pantropy to Adapted Men throughout the galaxy;

from Haertel's tree hut to first contact with the telepathic Central Empire;

from first contact with the Angels to long term dealings with the Heart Stars;

from Martels' radio telescope and Wald's invention of the Dirac transmitter to an expanding intergalactic civilization and mystical immortality;

from Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century to contact with Lithia in the mid-twenty-first century.

Bacon and Einstein are in many timelines, Haertel in four, the Dirac transmitter in two and Lithia in two.

Haertel And Wald

Adolph Haertel, discoverer of anti-gravity and inventor of the Haertel overdrive, appears in Welcome to Mars, which has a short sequel, "No Jokes on Mars," and in "Common Time," which is the opening story of the Galactic Cluster trilogy, and Haertel is mentioned:

in The Star Dwellers and its direct sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars, although not in its alternative sequel, "A Dusk of Idols";

in A Case Of Conscience, which is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy;

in The Quincunx Of Time, which forms a loose trilogy with "A Style in Treason" and Midsummer Century.

Thor Wald, inventor of the Dirac transmitter and of a mathematical metalanguage, appears in The Quincunx Of Time and is mentioned in Midsummer Century.

In several timelines, Haertel succeeds Einstein. In one of those timelines, Wald, with access to many future scientific paradigms through the Dirac beep, shows that the structure of science makes it impossible to decide between the paradigms because it is one of the paradigms. However, I though that all the paradigms existed within the structure of science which is not a particular theory but a way of testing any theory?

Martian dune-cats appear in Welcome To Mars and in "No Jokes on Mars" and were referenced in a note to an early draft of "How Beautiful With Banners" although that story is set on Titan. Thus, these three works might have formed an even looser trilogy or at least a triad. Ideas proliferate. In the Haertel Scholium, Blish was not bound by a linear history but series intended as linear future histories develop their own internal inconsistencies in any case.

Wise As Serpents And...

James Blish, Midsummer Century, 9.

"Proud, territorily jealous, and implacably cruel - to which had been added, simply by bringing it forward, the serpent wisdom of their remotest ancestors." (p. 73)

Comments
"...territorily..." is a misprint in the text.

Blish describes his intelligent "Birds" but the description also fits Poul Anderson's winged, carnivorous Ythrians. However, Ythrians share a planet with human beings whereas the Birds cannot share Earth with humanity. See The War Against The Birds.

Are serpents really wise?

Reversing The Effect?

James Blish, Midsummer Century, 4.

Martels wants to get:

"...back to his home century; and only in human techniques were there any hints of possible help in this direction. That malfunctioning perisher of a radio telescope had sent him up here, and that had been a human artifact; surely by now, there must be some simpler way of reversing the effect." (p. 27)

Surely nothing of the sort! Martels lost consciousness in 1985 and regained consciousness in 25,000 A.D. That implies merely that he had been unconscious for about 23,105 years. That process is not reversible, i.e., when someone wakes in the morning, he cannot be reversed to a moment after he had gone to sleep the previous night.

Even if Martels' intuition that he had not existed in an unconscious state for 23,105 years but had jumped across the temporal gap is valid, he as a physicist should not assume that it is possible to jump back. He has to reckon with entropy, causality and the arrow of time. When the question of returning Martels to 1985 is addressed, the discussion is unsatisfactory. See here.

Fleeting And Wayward

An sf rationale of telepathy has to explain why ESP is so hard to detect.

Two Rationales

(i) In James Blish's "Nor Iron Bars," parasychology is, possibly, characteristic of the microcosm as electromagnetism is of the macrocosm:

"If so, any telepathic effects that turned up in the macrocosm would be traces only, a leakage or residuum, fleeting and wayward, beyond all hope of control..."
-James Blish, "Nor Iron Bars" IN Blish, Galactic Cluster (London, 1963), pp. 61-92 AT p. 74.

In the sequel:

"Psi forces in general were characteristic only of the subspace in which the primary particles of the atom had their being; their occasional manifestations in the macrocosm were statistical accidents, as weak and indirigible as spontaneous radioactive decay."
-James Blish, "This Earth of Hours" IN Blish, The Best Of James Blish (New York, 1979), pp. 257-280 AT p. 277.

But it turns out that species which think with ganglia instead of with brains are telepathic even across interstellar distances. This would also explain the telepathy of the aquatic micro-organisms in The Seedling Stars.

(ii) In Midsummer Century, Martels speculates that telepathy began as "...a sort of riding light..." (8, p. 61) for the detection of like minds and intentions:

"Such an ability would naturally be selected out in sentient creatures, since from the evolutionary point of view, intelligence would serve the same functions far better. That would leave behind only the maddening vestiges - a sort of vermiform appendix of the mind - which had so persistently disappointed the most sincere occultists from Newton onward." (ibid.)

However, birds' formation flying, migration and homing instinct show that they are telepathic and a future civilization has possibly bred telepathy back into humanity.

Words Used
traces
leakage
residuum
fleeting
wayward
beyond control
statistical accidents
weak
indirigible
vestiges

Martels has a Drang nach Sueden. (8, p. 62)

Sooner And Later

Although James Blish's Haertel Scholium is not a linear history, it has a definite earliest and latest moment: the beginning and end of Midsummer Century, set in 1985 and 25,000 A.D., respectively. Everything else happens between these dates although not in a single timeline.

Welcome To Mars, about the earliest journeys to Mars, is set in the late twentieth century. In 25,000 A.D., John Martels reflects that:

"...the curtain of rising mist which marked the beginning of the icecap might as well be the layer of ice-crystals which delimited the atmosphere of Mars." (9, pp. 69-70)

Thus, Martels faintly echoes Adolph Haertel who did penetrate the Martian atmosphere. There is a stronger link between Martels and Haertel. First, Haertel:

"...was reminded at once of what had happened in his boyhood when he had picked up a wounded robin chick, and had afterwards discovered that his hand was covered with mites, an incident which had divested him of all sentimentality towards birds forever."
-James Blish, Welcome To Mars (London, 1978), 3, p. 36.

Then Martels remembers:

"He had found a fallen robin chick...he had picked it up, but it had died in his hands - and when he had put it down again, his hands were crawling with tiny black mites, like thousands of moving specks of black pepper." (4, pp. 26-27)

This reads like an auctorial experience. In CS Lewis' Perelandra, Elwin Ransom nearly drowns. In his spiritual autobiography, Surprised By Joy, Lewis describes how he nearly drowned. The descriptions are identical. This is an auctorial experience.

Facing A Wall

James Blish, Midsummer Century, 3-4.

John Martels, time-projected from 1985 to 25,000 A.D., shares the living brain of Qvant, a former Supreme Autarch, preserved in a case in a museum surrounded by perpetual jungle.

"Always, except when the rare petitioner came into the museum, they stared at that same damn wall..." (3, p. 16)

They do not sleep. Dreaming has ceased to be necessary. A pump supplies oxygen and blood sugar, carries away lactic acid and prevents fatigue. Qvant is apparently immune to boredom but not Martels. Months become years.

Since I practice zazen, in which we sit with eyes open facing a wall, I should be able to make some comparison with Zen. There are at least two differences:

we do not stare at the wall but notice thoughts arising and passing;
we do not sit long enough to become (very) bored.

Blish mentions Zen:

"[Qvant] seemed to be almost permanently in a kind of Zen state, conscious of mastery and at the same time contemptuous of it." (3, p. 20)

But Martels is not in this state. Blish has got his viewpoint character into a fix. How will he get him out of it?

Gathering The Haertel Scholium

(i) We begin with six novels (although two are short):

Welcome To Mars
The Star Dwellers
Mission To The Heart Stars
A Case Of Conscience
The Quincunx Of Time
Midsummer Century

- and with six shorter works spread across two collections:

in Galactic Cluster
"Common Time"
"Nor Iron Bars"
"This Earth of Hours"

in Anywhen
"No Jokes on Mars"
"A Dusk of Idols"
"A Style in Treason"

(ii) A Case Of Conscience belongs with the After Such Knowledge Trilogy.

(iii) Of the remaining works, six form two pairs:

Welcome To Mars and the Galactic Cluster trilogy are linked by the character of Adolph Haertel;

The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars are linked by Jack Loftus and his colleagues;

Midsummer Century refers to Thor Wald and the Dirac beep which were introduced in The Quincunx Of Time.

(iv) Finally:

"No Jokes on Mars" connects with Welcome To Mars;
"A Dusk of Idols" connects with The Star Dwellers;
The Quincunx Of Time refers to both "A Style in Treason" and Midsummer Century.

Thus, the Haertel Scholium could be six volumes or one omnibus volume with A Case Of Conscience collected separately as part of After Such Knowledge.

(The Quincunx Of Time is a novelization of "Beep," which is also in Galactic Cluster.)

Continuous Creation

James Blish mentions continuous creation in:

Cities In Flight (see here and here) (scroll down);
the Star Trek universe;
the Haertel Scholium.

In Spock Must Die!, a warp-drive adjunct draws energy from Hilbert space, the source of hydrogen atoms, and thus taps continuous creation. Scott says that he would as soon tap into God:

"'I'll ha'e nothin' tae do with thot.'"
-James Blish, Spock Must Die! (New York, 1970), Chapter Thirteen, p. 104.

In Midsummer Century, energy is drawn from the Void, the origin of inner space, but that is not continuous creation which is described as "'...nonsense.'" (3, p. 22)

1985

James Blish said in conversation that his Midsummer Century begins in the "here and now." See Old And New. In one sense it does because the opening chapter accurately describes British and American society at the time of writing. However, the dates do not quite match:

Blish's introductory "NOTE" is dated 1971;
the work is copyright James Blish, 1972;
it was first published in England in 1973;
my Arrow edition was published in 1975;
Martels says that he was born in 1955 (p. 13);
he is aged 30 on the opening page;
therefore, Martels is time-projected from 1985.

This makes the opening chapter near-future or "day after tomorrow" sf, like CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, published in 1945 and set "after the War." That gives the fictional new Sockette State University time to construct their radically new radio telescope with its unintended and unprecedented reach that projects Martels' consciousness to 25,000 A.D. The rest is future history.

Arriving In The Future

HG Wells' Time Traveler arrives physically in the perpetual summer of 802,701 A.D. and, while then, visits a disused and abandoned museum. James Blish's John Martels arrives mentally in a disused and abandoned museum in the perpetual summer of 50,000 A.D. Thus, reading Blish's Midsummer Century might remind us of Wells' The Time Machine even if we do not analyze why.

Midsummer Century is a companion volume to Blish's The Quincunx Of Time which, like The Time Machine, presents the questionable metaphysic of immaterial consciousnesses moving along static, four-dimensional world-lines, which I discuss here and here. Blish is more consistent with this premise than Wells. Martels' consciousness, apparently leaving his dead body in 1985, enters a living brain artificially preserved in the museum.

As in Olaf Stapledon's two Last Men novels and in John Wyndham's "Pillar to Post" (see here), time travel is mental, not physical.

Old And New

In early sf, a narrative always began in its author's and readers' here and now even if it immediately jumped to another planet or time. In H.G. Wells' anticipations:

the Time Traveler travels to 802,701 A.D. and beyond;

the Sleeper sleeps into the twenty second century;

Raven dreams a book of the future, The Shape Of Things To Come;

even "A Story of the Days to Come" (see here) begins with a Mr. Morris in Victoria's reign before hastening down the generations until it reaches his descendant, Mwres;

a companion story both to The Sleeper Wakes and to "A Story of the Days to Come" is "A Dream of Armageddon." See here.

None of these works begins simply with its characters living in the future as in a lot of later sf. James Blish deliberately reverted to the earlier narrative style when he wrote Midsummer Century (London, 1975) in the early 1970s. Having emigrated from the US to England, he created a fictional character, John Martels, who had emigrated in the opposite direction. Chapter 1, pp. 3-6, not only is set in the then "present" but is as full of that "present" as its author can make it:

Martels is part of "...the brain-drain..." (p. 3);

the US gives him higher pay, lower taxes and apparent classlessness although there is ferocious discrimination against blacks, Mexicans and the poor and political opposition is becoming increasingly dangerous, indeed would lose Martels his passport or his citizenship;

originating from a working-class background in Doncaster, Martels speaks in a regional accent that excludes him from upper class British society and that also obliges him to drink in public bars, not in lounges or saloons;

the British population includes "...smuggled Pakistani immigrants..." (p. 4);

Martels' school was not fee-paying and his D.Sc., First class, in astrophysics is not from Oxbridge but from a new redbrick polytechnic;

(much more recently, all "polys" have been upgraded to Universities - my Postgraduate Certificate in Education was from Manchester Polytechnic which has become Manchester Metropolitan University);

in the US, Martels is judged not by his accent but by his grammar, vocabulary and knowledge;

he is at a university in the midwest (remember Everard and other Anderson characters);

he sailplanes.

In true Blish style, the text refers to:

"...Ursa Major No. 2, a cluster of galaxies half a billion light-years away..." (p. 4)

When Martels begins to be projected into the future, Blish switches to the omniscient narrator mode used by Wells in "A Story of the Days to Come." We are informed, although Martels, whose point of view we have shared until now, certainly does not know this, that Thor Wald will be born in 2060. We see Wald in 2090-'91 in The Quincunx Of Time.

These two companion volumes by Blish, The Quincunx Of Time and Midsummer Century, are worthy successors of Wells' The Time Machine although what a long way we have come from Wells' Mr. Morris to Blish's John Martels. Wells' description of Mr. Morris' half-timbered house passing away reminded me of passages in The Time Machine and in Anderson's There Will Be Time that I compared here.

Judgment

See Doomsday And Wine.

James Blish has a scientific end of the universe in The Triumph Of Time and a supernatural end of the world in Black Easter. The end of the universe involves anti-matter and is called the Ginnungagap because it is followed by new creations whereas the end of the world involves demons and is Armageddon with an unexpected outcome.

In Blish's Midsummer Century, John Martels dies and finds that he is being asked questions lacking semantic content. He wonders:

"Was this the Judgment?"
-James Blish, Midsummer Century (London, 1975), 10, p. 84.

No. His consciousness has merged with an advanced computer to which questions are being inputted. Midsummer Century is sf and its accounts of mystical states are rationalized. But someone from Martels' post-Christian milieu is bound to wonder about "Judgment."

Every Option

Adapted Men colonize extrasolar planets and Okies trade with extrasolar colonies. Volume I of Cities In Flight describes the discoveries of anti-agathics and antigravity that made the Okies possible. However, The Seedling Stars, in which Adapted Men spread through the galaxy, is not Volume II of this tetralogy because the two series developed towards different conclusions. See Interstellar Travel. They also acquired different beginnings, making them distinct series, unlike the Haertel Scholium where four futures share a common beginning.

Earth is ruled by:

the Russian Bureaucratic State in Cities In Flight;

an American Port Authority in The Seedling Stars;

a UN where entire cities have become underground "Shelters" in A Case Of Conscience;

a peaceful UN in the Heart Stars novels.

Blish presents four rationalizations of parapsychology, two in the Haertel Scholium and two in independent works. He gives the impression of addressing every option like Poul Anderson with interstellar travel, time travel, aliens and AI.

Interstellar Communicators

Ultrawave/ultraphone: FTL but not instantaneous.
CirCon: instantaneous.
Dirac transmitter in Cities In Flight: instantaneous.
Dirac transmitter in The Quincunx Of Time: instantaneous but also receiving messages from the past and future.

The Angels and the Heart Stars also have some means of instantaneous communication.

See the previous post. The Quincunx Of Time, "A Style in Treason" and Midsummer Century are set in different periods of a single Haertel overdrive timeline. All three have ultrawave. Quincunx and Century also have the Dirac. "Treason" seems not to have it although Quincunx contradicts this. Apparent contradictions are to be expected, especially since there is a Traitors' Guild in "Treason."

Interstellar Travel

James Blish conceptualizes requirements or adjuncts of interstellar travel:

the spindizzy or the Haertel overdrive and its successors;

the ultrawave/ultraphone, the Dirac transmitter, the CirCon radio;

the germanium-based Oc dollar, the Traitors's Guild;

the anti-agathics;

pantropy.

Cities In Flight has the spindizzy, the ultraphone, the Dirac transmitter, the Oc dollar and the anti-agathics;

The Seedling Stars has an unspecified overdrive, the ultraphone, the Oc dollar and pantropy;

The Quincunx Of Time has the Haertel overdrive, the ultraphone and the newly invented Dirac transmitter;

"A Style in Treason" has the Imaginary Drive, the ultraphone and the Traitors' Guild (an interstellar bourse);

Midsummer Century has ultrawave and Dirac;

A Case Of Conscience has the Haertel overdrive and the newly invented CirCon (circum-continuum) radio;

Narratives diverge. Anti-agathics entailed the possibility of some characters living until the end of the universe which, however, for fictional convenience, was brought unexpectedly close to the present whereas pantropy entailed the possibility of Adapted Men inhabiting the entire galaxy millennia hence.

Although the Dirac transmitter was introduced in the first written Okie (Cities In Flight) story, the propagation of Dirac pulses in a four-dimensional continuum had consequences that did not fit into that series so the idea was developed more fully elsewhere. The stories of the discoveries of the spindizzy and of anti-agathics were incorporated into Volume I of Cities In Flight whereas the invention of the Dirac transmitter is described in The Quincunx Of Time. 

The Two Tetralogies

The pantropy series originally had five installments encompassing a beginning, an intermediate stage and a culmination. However, two of the intermediate installments, set on the same planet, were amalgamated when the series was collected as The Seedling Stars, thus generating a tetralogy covering:

experimental colonization of Ganymede;

routine colonization of an extrasolar planet;

three time periods on a planet where the crew of a crashed spaceship have to genetically engineer microscopic human beings to inhabit small pools of water;

a far future culmination when Adapted Men return to the Solar System to recolonize the changed Earth.

The Okie series, four stories with a definite conclusion, were collected as Earthman, Come Home. However, Blish added a prequel, a sequel and a juvenile novel, thus generating a total of four volumes collected in one omnibus volume as Cities In Flight.

The prequel, They Shall Have Stars, jointly novelizes two stories with new material. The three alternating narrative strands cover:

biology, culminating in the anti-agathic drugs;
physics, culminating in antigravity;
politics, culminating in escape from dictatorship.

Four Main Bodies Of Work

Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy is one of the four futures of the Haertel Scholium whereas the two tetralogies, Cities In Flight and The Seedling Stars, are independent and parallel future history series. Thus, the relationships between James Blish's four major bodies of work can be encapsulated in a single and aesthetically pleasing sentence. There are:

two tetralogies which are also future history series;
three volumes of the trilogy;
four fictional futures referring to Adolph Haertel who also appears in one novel and one short story.

I became fascinated with this emergent structure which, of course, is not what the individual works are about. Each of the stories or novels is of high quality quite independently of its place in this structure.

Book I of A Case Of Conscience is part of a Twayne Triplet and part of A Case Of Conscience which is part of After Such Knowledge and of the Haertel Scholium. Further, A Case Of Conscience is about the planet Lithia which becomes relevant and therefore is mentioned in the culminating installment of the pantropy series collected as The Seedling Stars.

Freedom In Two Haertel Overdrive Futures

The Dirac Transmitter Future
"'...the more you know, the wider your field of possible operations becomes, and the more fluid and dynamic a society you need. How could a rigid society expand to other star systems, let alone other galaxies? It couldn't be done.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), AN EPILOGUE, p. 106.

"'...we know that the consciousness of the observer is the only free thing in the universe. Wouldn't we look foolish trying to control that, when our working physics shows that it's impossible to do so? That's why the Service is in no sense a thought police. We're interested only in acts. We're an Event Police.'" (ibid.)

(The abomination of a Thought Police exists in 1984 and in the Bureaucratic State period of Blish's Cities In Flight. The latter bans even thinking about spaceflight as Unearthly Activities but cannot ban atomic research...)

The Heart Stars Future
In the Heart Stars federation, even the dominant Malans:

"...are slaves to their own laws and the machines that interpret them. All these planets are also very low on curiosity, except in very limited areas, and they make sure to keep those areas harmless.'"
-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 123.

Earthmen learn that they must not join the Heart Stars federation but build a free alliance against it.

Scriptural Passages

James Blish, like Poul Anderson (see here and here), refers to the Bible (see here).

Also:

"...And a river went out of Eden to water the garden..." (etc)
-James Blish, The Night Shapes (London, 1965), III, pp. 44-45.

I think that there is a concealed Biblical reference in Mission To The Heart Stars. Thus:

"He is the disciple who spoke of these things, the one who also wrote them down; and we know that what he said is true."
-John, 21. 24.

And:

"...one of the speakers was Hesperus...It is certain, because he has told us so...because it is he that tells us, we know it to be true..."
-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 124.

Lastly, for now, Blish varies scriptural sources by quoting from the Koran Sura LVI and XXI at the beginning of The Triumph Of Time.

A Few Details

James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time, CHAPTER THREE and CHAPTER FOUR.

"The age of Dun and Bradstreet..." (p. 39)

I accepted that on every previous reading but have now googled it.

"...violations cases took Jarndycean lifetimes to try..." (ibid.)

Likewise.

"Weinbaum ordered a twenty-four-hour Dinwiddie watch..." (ibid.) (?)

"...a New Dynasty poet named George Macbeth." (p. 45)

Is this the right George Macbeth? What is the "New Dynasty"?

"'Barratry is a deadly weapon in a government's hands.'" (p. 49)

Unity

James Blish's Haertel Scholium presents not a linear narrative but four alternative futures, characterized respectively by:

microcosmic and interstellar telepathy;

the extrasolar Lithians;

star-dwelling energy beings called "Angels" and the Heart Stars federation;

the Dirac transmitter by means of which a message transmitted in 25,000 A.D. in Midsummer Century is received in 2091 A.D. in The Quincunx Of Time.

Garrard, test flying the Haertel overdrive in "Common Time," lives in a time common to the four futures. Before Garrard's test flight, Mars had been explored by Haertel in Welcome To Mars and colonized in "No Jokes on Mars" and the Martian dune-cats had been mentioned in an earlier draft although not in the final text of "How Beautiful With Banners." Fictional realms include those that were envisaged but did not make it into print - or onto screen in the case of proposed film adaptations (scroll down) of Welcome To Mars and Cities In Flight.

A Case Of Conscience, about the Lithians, is Volume III of Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy about the question whether the desire for secular knowledge is evil. Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis, is a historical novel about Roger Bacon, the discoverer of scientific method, who is thus the precursor of later scientists including Einstein, Haertel and Thor Wald, the inventor of the Dirac transmitter. Volume II, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment, is a contemporary fantasy about magicians conjuring demons.

In The Beep, I contrast Wald and his colleagues with the magicians.

In Angels And Demons, I compare "Angels" with demons.

In Communication, I summarize the theme of communication in the Haertel Scholium, Cities In Flight and The Seedling Stars.

In Darkness And Optimism and Darkness And Optimism II, I compare the conclusions of the works in the Haertel Scholium.

What emerges is a sense of the unity of Blish's major works.

Recounting The Future

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, the Time Traveler describes to his dinner guests:

the experience of time traveling;
802,701 A.D.;
the Further Vision.

In James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time, Dana Lje tells Robin Weinbaum and Thor Wald of Dirac messages that she has received from 3480 and from a cruiser traveling from 8873 to 8704. Then these three receive messages from six other future periods. See "Chronology Of The Beep," here.

Wish fulfillment: if only we could sit in comfort and receive accurate information about future history.

James Blish and Poul Anderson are worthy successors of Wells.

Darkness And Optimism II

See Darkness And Optimism.

The loosely connected stories of James Blish's Haertel Scholium vary.

In the Heart Stars timeline, "A Dusk of Idols" ends:

"...I cannot bring myself to forget that the Heart stars classify Chandala as a civilized world."
-James Blish, "A Dusk of Idols" IN Blish, Anywhen (New York, 1970), pp. 105-135 AT p. 135.

The Heart Stars value social stability, not individual well-being, and Chandala unequivocally meets this criterion.

In the The Quincunx Of Time timeline, "A Style in Treason" ends somberly:

"...he still had many guilts to accept, and not much left of a life-time to do it in.
"While he was waiting, perhaps he could learn to play the sareh."
-James Blish, "A Style in Treason" IN Blish, The Best Of James Blish, Ed. Robert A. W. Lowndes (New York, 1979), pp. 313-348 AT p. 348.

But the conclusion of the last installment returns to long term optimism. Newly introduced to a mystical form of immortality, John Martels says:

"'...I might even come to like it.'"
-James Blish, Midsummer Century (London, 1975), 12, p. 106.

Darkness And Optimism

Mission To The Heart Stars and The Quincunx Of Time, set close to the outermost reaches of very different branches of James Blish's Haertel Scholium, both end with unqualified optimism:

"Jack Loftus never heard that whisper, nor even dreamed of it. Nor did his great-great-grandchildren. But he already had more than enough reasons for joy."
-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 127.

The novel, already set in our future, moves forward three generations in its second last sentence. What kind of world will Jack's great-great-grandchildren live in?

Newly promoted within the Service, Jo Faber is told that his first new assignment will be as easy as any previous one. He must find the cabdriver who had guessed that the Service has time travel because this brings him:

"'...uncomfortably close to the truth...The Service is about to take in a new raw recruit!'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), AN EPILOGUE, p. 110.

The other two branches are darker:

"...ahead the galactic night was black as death."
-James Blish, "This Earth of Hours" IN Blish, The Best Of James Blish, Ed. Robert A.W. Lowndes (New York, 1979), pp. 257-280 AT V, p. 280.

"...they had left him alone with his God and his grief."
-James Blish, A Case Of Conscience IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 523-730 AT XVIII, p. 723.

But the optimisms transcends the darknesses.

Angels And Demons

In James Blish's Black Easter and The Day After Judgment, demons, conjured by a magician, are fallen angels, supernatural, hypersomatic. There is speculation that they are energy, thus that their "eternal life" is permanent negative entropy but this question is not pursued.

In Blish's The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars, "Angels," designated as such by their human discoverers, are almost immortal energy beings, formed by the same nebular processes that generate stars. Since these Angels claim to serve the First Cause, perhaps the angelic terminology is more appropriate than was first thought?

An intermediate group is the eldila in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy. These immortal, inorganic beings, barely visible to human eyes, inhabit space, which they call "Heaven," and serve a mysterious being called Maleldil. However, "bent," i.e. evil, eldila oppose Maleldil, are confined to Earth and are responsible for most of the ills suffered by humanity.

Thus, Blish assumes supernatural angels and demons in two works of fantasy and speculates about energy beings in two works of hard sf whereas Lewis restates his Christian beliefs in a trilogy of "soft" sf.

And now, for the love of the gods, I must pause to eat. (But see also Poul Anderson's "Kyrie.")

A Thematic Trilogy

James Blish's After Such Knowledge (ASK) is a thematic, not a linear, trilogy. My summary here suggests a spurious linearity. To reformulate that summary:

I. One demon (maybe) speaks.
IIa. Many demons attack Heaven.
IIb. The chief demon becomes God.
III. He (maybe) creates.

Thus, I have generated a dramatic sequence that is not present in the texts. First, the two "maybe"s are significant. Secondly, Volume I is about Roger Bacon, not about his (hypothetical) demon. Thirdly, Satan's assumption of divinity in IIb has no bearing, either direct or even indirect, on his (again hypothetical) creativity in III.

Volume II, written in two parts, was written last. But, in any case and whatever the order of writing, the theological revolution in II and the theological problem in III are unrelated narratives.

The theme of the trilogy is the question whether the desire for secular knowledge is evil. One question can be addressed in otherwise inconsistent and even mutually contradictory narratives. Indeed, before IIb was written, the world had ended in the twentieth century in II, yet still existed in the twenty first century in III - but, nevertheless, ASK remained a thematic unity, three related works, not one tripartite work.

Communication

In the Haertel overdrive futures:

telepathy unites the Central Empire;

the Lithians have a Message Tree and the CirCon radio is instantaneous;

the Dirac transmitter will unite an expanding intergalactic civilization although, in an intermediate period, High Earth may or may not be Old Earth, the Traitors' Guild motto is "Mundus vult decipi," "the world wishes to be deceived," and the Green Exarch is served by shape-shifters;

the Angels communicate on a universal scale -

"Like sparks in a column of smoke, the discussion whirled and danced away throughout the galaxy and throughout the universe..."
-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), p. 127.

In Cities In Flight, the Web of Hercules leaves a record that is read in a subsequent universe.

In The Seedling Stars, many original human beings remain prejudiced against Adapted Men, i.e., in this case, a lack of communication.

Another Summary

See Future Historical References.

After Such Knowledge
A demon possibly inspired Rogen Bacon.
Demons definitely win Armageddon.
Satan, now God, reverses Armageddon.
Satan possibly created the planet Lithia, which is reached with the Haertel overdrive.

Demons are definite in fantasy but only possible in historical fiction and sf. This demonic/Satanic sequence begins with Roger Bacon, founder of scientific method, and ends with two scientific achievements, the FTL Haertel overdrive and the instantaneous CirCon radio.

The Haertel Scholium
Haertel flies to Mars.
A base is established on Mars.
Garrard test flies a Haertel overdrive ship to Proxima Centauri.
After Garrard, Arpe discovers parapsychology in the microcosm.
Parapsychology unites the galactic Central Empire.

This Haertel Scholium sequence begins with Haertel but ends with interstellar travel on the Standing Wave, replacing both the Haertel overdrive and the Arpe Drive.

So far, there have been two climaxes: the destruction of Lithia and conflict with the Central Empire. The two other Haertel overdrive timelines culminate in transgalactic utopias.

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.