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.