Platonism

"...Platonic word..."

I wanted to check, as far as possible, whether this phrase in James Blish's Doctor Mirabilis was a misprint for "...Platonic world..." However, it is "...Platonic word..." in both of the editions that are in my possession.

The references are:

-James Blish, Doctor Mirabilis (New York, 1971), p. 37.

-James Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), p. 49.

The phrase is in Chapter II, "Northover."

However, I think that "world" would have fitted the context better. See here.

After Such Knowledge In One Volume

My Christmas presents included the one-volume  After Such Knowledge (London, 1991) (see image).

pp. 521-522 are printed in the wrong order.

When The Day After Judgment was originally published in a single volume, it had a four page Prologue which began:

"The events leading up to the disaster were as follows:..."
-James Blish, The Day After Judgment (New York, 1971), p. 9 -

- and which then summarized the plot of Black Easter. This Prologue, presumably regarded as no longer necessary, was omitted when The Day After Judgment was published in a single volume with Black Easter and then here in the one-volume After Such Knowledge. However, I think that this impersonal summary adds to the work and should be retained.

For a discussion of ASK, Vol I, Doctor Mirabilis, on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog, see here.

A Proposed Publication Schedule

I now suggest that this is how James Blish's major works could be republished:

Haertel Scholium
Boxed set, seven paperbacks, none long, in fact three very short, colour coded covers.

Haertel Diptych 1: Welcome To Mars.
Haertel Diptych 2: The Galactic Cluster Trilogy.

Loftus Diptych 1: The Star Dwellers.
Loftus Diptych 2: Mission To The Heart Stars.

Wald/Dirac Diptych 1: The Quincunx Of Time.
Wald/Dirac Diptych 2: Midsummer Century.

Coda: Anywhen, minus the completely unconnected story, "None So Blind".

(Midsummer Century is "Haertel Scholium" because it refers to Wald who refers to Haertel.)

After Such Knowledge
Boxed set, three paperbacks. The cover of A Case Of Conscience should show that it is Volume III and also "Haertel Scholium".

Cities In Flight
Boxed set, four paperbacks.

The Seedling Stars
One volume.

Possible Covers

Haertel 1: Young Haertel before the last Martian.
Haertel 2: Older Haertel with Garrard.

Loftus 1: Jack watching Angels congregate in the Coal Sack.
Loftus 2: Jack before the eight foot plus Hegemon.

Wald 1: Wald viewing the Anywhen cover on a Dirac screen.
Wald 2: Martels falling down the telescope of time.

Coda: a map of the galaxy divided between High Earth and Green Exarchy, with a cameo of an Earthman before an eighteen foot Chandalese.

After Such Knowledge I: Roger Bacon before the giant army of Antichrist.
After Such Knowledge II, split cover: the magicians before the Goat seated on an altar/the magicians before the upper part of Satan's body in Pandemonium.
After Such Knowledge III: an Earthman before a twelve foot Lithian.

Fifteen Volumes

Before Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization was gathered into seven omnibus volumes, it had been spread across perhaps eighteen regular-sized volumes, whether novels or collections. Other authors, of course, have written linear series of comparable or even greater length. The central part of James Blish's more compact body of work comprises fifteen volumes including prequels, sequels and cross-references although without in this case combining into any single linear sequence:

The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars are companion volumes;
The Quincunx Of Time and Midsummer Century are, very slim, companion volumes;
each of these diptychs is loosely linked to one other, shorter, work;
the two shorter works, "A Dusk Of Idols" and "A Style In Treason," were collected in Anywhen;
each of the diptychs also refers back to an earlier work featuring Adolph Haertel;
Mission To The Heart Stars summarizes the plot of "Common Time," collected in Galactic Cluster where it does form a linear sequence with two other stories;
The Quincunx Of Time refers, less directly, to Welcome To Mars;
one other novel, A Case Of Conscience, refers to Haertel and is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy;
two parallel linear "tetralogies" are the pantropy series, collected in one volume, and the Okies series, collected in four regular volumes or one omnibus volume.

These fifteen regular-sized volumes contain six series with mutual cross-references and sometimes even overlapping contents. Since Volumes I and II of After Such Knowledge are, respectively, a historical novel and a contemporary fantasy, they seem to be far removed from the remaining thirteen volumes. However, the central character of Volume I is Roger Bacon, the founder of scientific method, thus an early predecessor of Blish's fictional scientists, including Haertel.

What The Okies Do III

In the late 60's and early 70's, I loved Cities In Flight, reread Earthman, Come Home a lot and preferred it to Black Easter. More recently, I have greatly appreciated After Such Knowledge, particularly The Day After Judgement, and have not thought much about Cities for a while. However, on getting back into Cities after comparing Blish's and Anderson's stories of Jovian exploration, I am once again impressed with how rich the series is. Each volume is different and stands on its own feet even though there are problems with fitting them together. Earthman, Come Home has a lot of fast-moving action and adventure in imaginative and well-realized science fiction settings.

The adverse criticisms of Cities are that:

(i) the Chronology is big time inconsistent;
(ii) we are shown conversations of three individuals in the mayor's office but not the life of the flying city;
(iii) there is a major question as to why the cities need paid work since they seem to be self-sufficient.

(i) is undeniable. Indeed, I have drawn attention to the anomaly of the Hevians which was simply not mentioned when an attempt was made to harmonise dates. I cannot accept Richard D Mullen's explanation that the texts are partly mythologized history with the truth somewhere behind the myths (Cities In Flight, London, 1981, p. 599). They read like (fictitious) real history to me.

(ii) is undeniable. A whole 'nother series needs to be written.

I have tried to reply to (iii) in "What The Okies Do II."

Non-technical readers, of whom I am one, tend to accept that the author gets the technological background right but I am now rereading and paying close attention to this aspect. Amalfi says that New York's business is petroleum geology. The cop interrogating him replies that petroleum geology is not a business for Okies because they all need to mine and crack oil in order to eat. Again, this raises the question, at least in our minds: can they not survive by mining oil on uninhabited planets? Amalfi insists that, "'We trace and develop petroleum sources for planets which need the material'." (p. 339) I think that inhabitable planets with mine-able oil deposits will be rare and might well all be occupied by the time we are talking about so it makes sense that an Okie will have to negotiate with a planet's occupants, receiving, in return for services rendered, either payment in Oc dollars or permission to mine.

Collecting Blish Series

OK. This is the way to do it (a "Why didn't I think of this before?" moment):

I. The Haertel Scholium Prelude: the early interconnected stories and the Galactic Cluster Trilogy.
II. The Heart Stars: the Jack Loftus novels.
III. After Such Knowledge.
IV. The Seedling Stars.
V. Cities in Flight.
VI. The Quincunx Tetralogy.
VII. The Haertel Scholium Coda.

Thus:

"Haertel Scholium" volumes would open and close the sequence;
the "Coda" would be read at the end where it belongs instead of in the opening volume;
"The Haertel Scholium" and "The Heart Stars" form a fortuitous verbal sequence;
the latter is an appropriate title for the diptych, The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars;
The Heart Stars would also be a companion title to The Seedling Stars. 

Two Masters Of All The Genres

Poul Anderson mastered historical fiction, science fiction (sf) and fantasy and even set one novel in each of these genres in the fourteenth century with a minor connection between the historical novel, Rogue Sword, and the sf novel, The High Crusade. (See an earlier post on Poul Anderson Appreciation, "Finding an Unexpected Connection" by Sean M Brooks, Wednesday, 9 May, 2012. Also here.)

James Blish, with a much smaller output, not only mastered these three genres but also went one step further than Anderson or any other author by writing a three genre Trilogy, After Such Knowledge:

in Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis (a historical novel), Roger Bacon, the founder of scientific method, is suspected of witchcraft and has a drug-induced vision of Armageddon;

in Volume II, (a) Black Easter and (b) The Day After Judgement (contemporary fantasies), magicians release and cannot recall demons who then wage and win Armageddon;

in Volume III, A Case Of Conscience (futuristic sf), experiences on an extra-solar planet oblige a Jesuit biologist to ask heretical questions about the relative powers of God and Satan and to fear an imminent Armageddon.

The Trilogy is thematic, not linear, so it does not matter that Armageddon happens in the late twentieth century yet is still to happen in the mid-twenty first century - although this discrepancy might be resolved by the conclusion of The Day After Judgement, when Satan/God undoes (at least some of) the damage caused by the conflict in order to initiate a long development of mankind towards Godhood. This development could still be occurring in Volume III although, as was the case after the Armageddon in Volume II, the characters' mind-sets have not progressed yet.

The unifying theme of the Trilogy is the question whether the desire for secular knowledge is evil. Blish, like Anderson or any other scientifically trained hard sf writer, answered "No" but he managed to write a Trilogy about the question.

Anderson addressed a single theme in different genres when he presented the original of Odin in a historical novel, a time traveler mistaken for Odin in an sf story and Odin in three fantasy novels. However, this single theme does not make these works a single series. Instead, the contrasting treatments differentiate them as distinct works.

I was reminded of Black Easter, the definitive novel of demonic conjuration, when I read Anderson's account of Queen Skuld's ritual cursing in Hrolf Kraki's Saga. Pagan witchcraft was followed by Christian witchcraft which led, in Blish's fantasy, to Armageddon.

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.

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.

Eight Volumes?

A James Blish Complete Works could include eight volumes collecting connected works. I have said most of this before but am trying to refine it.

Vol I, Early Blish: several early stories refer to common characters and technologies. These include "The Real Thrill," which later provided material for a Dirac message received in The Quincunx Of Time, thus in Vol VII below.

II, The Galactic Cluster Trilogy: from Garrard's test flight of the Haertel overdrive through microcosmic exploration to the beginning of interstellar conflict between the Terrestrial Matriarchy and the Central Empire. (In publishing terms, this volume, just three short stories, would be far too short but that is not the point here. Its contents form a linear sequence and are substantial.)

III, The Jack Loftus Novels: from first contact with energy beings called "Angels" to the beginning of a UN-Angels alliance against the Heart Stars Empire.

IV, After Such Knowledge: from Roger Bacon's discovery of scientific method through a magical metaphysical metamorphosis to a conflict between theology and science on an interstellar scale.

V, The Seedling Stars: from the invention of "pantropy," the science of adapting organisms for different environments, to the colonization of the entire galaxy and even of a changed Earth by Adapted Men.

VI, Cities In Flight: from the discovery of antigravity and anti-agathics through flying cities and planets to the end of the universe.

VII, The Quincunx Tetralogy: from Haertel's discovery of antigravity through an unexpected application of the Dirac transmitter (introduced in Vol VI) to both an expanding intergalactic civilisation and a "Rebirth" of human terrestrial civilization.

VIII, The Haertel Scholium Coda: Haertel-related works that do not fit elsewhere. I suggested before that these be included in a Galactic Cluster: Revised Edition but they should be read after all the linear sequences. Thus:

a short story set on not quite the same Mars as that visited by Haertel in the opening novel of Vol VII;
earlier, shorter versions of the second and third works collected in Vol VII;
a short story set in an alternative version of the Angels-Heart Stars history (Vol III)
etc (an editor would decide which other works to collect here and which to place in other volumes of a Complete Works).

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.

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

Interconnected Series Of James Blish

(This article was published in The New York Review of Science Fiction, Sept '08)

Transition, Trilogies and Tetralogies

In his contribution to the “Special James Blish Issue” of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lester del Rey wrote:

“The first ten years of writing were a voluntary apprenticeship for James Blish, devoted to an intense study of skill and craftsmanship.” ¹

From 1939 to 1949, Blish learned plotting, transitions, scene-setting and pacing by writing only pulp magazine short stories, few of which have been reprinted. Del Rey notes four stages in Blish’s transition from mere craftsmanship to mature writing, from mechanical technique to working “…from inside himself outward…," from “…slave labour…” to “…his real beginning as a major writer in the field…” ²

(i) His 1949 novelette, “Let the Finder Beware," later became Jack Of Eagles, “…one of the finest and most seminally rational novels of psi powers at work.” ³

(ii) A 1950 story about flying cities later became Chapters One and Two of the novel, Earthman, Come Home, which in turn became Volume III of the tetralogy, Cities In Flight, combining Blish’s study of history, training in science and ability to think through ideas that would otherwise have remained mere sf cliches, in this case antigravity, antiagathics, near future politics and interstellar economics.

(iii) A 1952 story about human beings artificially adapted to inhabit another planet later became Book Three of the volume, The Seedling Stars.

(iv) The 1953 story, “A Case Of Conscience," combining Blish’s interest in Joyce and theology with his knowledge of biology and sociology, later, after del Rey had requested a sequel, became Book One of a Hugo-winning novel which in turn became Volume III of the trilogy, After Such Knowledge.

These examples exhibit Blish’s tendency to expand or merge short stories into novels for which he has been adversely criticized although some readers value this organic development of story ideas. In fact, Cities In Flight and After Such Knowledge are his two major works – or at least bodies of work. Although Cities In Flight is a linear tetralogy, del Rey found “…no central character or theme…” in After Such Knowledge – three novels of different genres set in different periods - but I doubt whether any critic would deny that each of these volumes individually is a major work by Blish.⁴

 

The Seedling Stars, although shorter, is also major. Like Cities In Flight, which it parallels, it is a linear tetralogy although of stories, not of novels, thus one volume, not four. All three works, or bodies of work, (Cities In Flight, After Such Knowledge and The Seedling Stars) grew from their centers outwards towards a definite beginning, middle and end. Cities In Flight begins with the discovery of antigravity and antiagathics, describes interstellar nomadism and ends with the end of the universe.

The Seedling Stars begins with the discovery of “pantropy," the science of artificial adaptation, describes colonized planets and ends with Adapted Men recolonizing a changed Earth. 

After Such Knowledge begins with the discovery of scientific method in the thirteenth century, describes a supernatural conflict in the twentieth century and ends with a conflict between scientific discoveries and supernaturalist beliefs in the twenty first century. Thus, its three genres are historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction. By definition, only the fantasy volume treats supernatural entities as unequivocally real. There is a case for regarding the supernatural conflict, Armageddon and its aftermath, as the real climax, therefore reading the middle volume, written last, as Volume III and A Case Of Conscience as Volume II.

The chronological order, recommended by Blish, need not be definitive because the trilogy is thematic, not linear. The chronological order is also dialectical, because sf synthesizes the realistic with the fantastic, but the alternative order is dramatic because Armageddon fulfills expectations in the other volumes. The “middle volume” is in fact two volumes, Black Easter and its sequel, The Day After Judgement, amalgamated. Thus, After Such Knowledge may also be described as a tetralogy, written in five parts: “A Case Of Conscience”; A Case Of Conscience, Book II; Doctor Mirabilis; Black Easter; The Day After Judgement. 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. ⁵

Cities In Flight would have remained a trilogy if Blish, asked to write a juvenile sf novel, had not set that novel on a flying city, thus inserting an extra volume between what had been Volumes I and II of a completed trilogy. Earthman, Come Home, now Volume III of the tetralogy, is itself a tetralogy: the complete “Okie” series. (Okies are the nomads who fly cities.) Volumes I and IV of Cities In Flight are, respectively, a pre- and a post-Okie novel. Volume I is two previously published stories, about physics and biology, with new material on politics. Thus, the complete series was written in nine parts. In Earthman, Come Home, Okie society ends when its germanium-based Oc dollar collapses, thus introducing economic issues. While Cities In Flight was still a trilogy, Lester del Rey suggested a post-cosmic sequel, to be entitled “After Strange Gods," but this idea was not accepted.⁶

 

A similar growth towards completion is exhibited by the three stories co-written with Norman L. Knight and incorporated into the co-written over-population novel, A Torrent Of Faces, itself a “…logical outgrowth of…” and “…a sort of sequel…” to two of Knight’s novels although, not having read the Knight novels, I cannot summarize this sequence.⁷

Although Jack Of Eagles is a lesser work, its theme of a proposed rationale for telepathy recurs in several later works. Thus, the transition period provides a framework for considering Blish’s works as a whole.

“Sunken Universe” and “Surface Tension”

When commenting on the 1952 story, “Surface Tension," (iii) above, del Rey wrote:

“…in 1952, Blish proved that he could do very well with a fantasy world where humanity was shrunk to a microscopic size and lived in a universe of a small puddle of water. ‘Surface Tension’ was another example of thinking an idea through far better than anyone else had done. He realized the real difficulty of such things as the force of surface tension – and he made them his problems. It was a fine story, still much reprinted, and so warm and real that no honest writer will try to better this story of shrunken man.” ⁸
 

I agree but Blish had already proved this ten years earlier with “Surface Tension”’s prequel, “Sunken Universe." The latter is full of carefully observed color perceptions, tactile sensations and well-conceived details of life in the pool:

“Lavon’s feet struck a yielding surface, and with a splash he was over his head in icy water. He bobbed up again, feeling the icy division drawn across his shoulders. Other splashes began to sound all along the thermocline as the army struck it, although, since there was water above and below, Lavon could not see the actual impacts.

“Now they would have to wait until their body temperatures fell. At this dividing line of the universe, the warm water ended and the temperature fell rapidly, so that the water below was much denser and buoyed them up. The lower level of cold reached clear down to the bottom – an area which the rotifers, who were not very clever, seldom managed to enter.

“A moribund diatom drifted down beside Lavon, the greenish-yellow of its body fading to a sick orange, its beautifully marked, oblong, pillbox-like shell swarming with greedy bacteria. It came to rest on the thermocline, and the transparent caterpillar tread of jelly which ran around it moved feebly, trying vainly to get traction on the sliding water interface.” ⁹

Characterization is warm and sympathetic, especially for a story whose theme is not particular characters but mankind in an alien environment. Shar, the scientist-scholar, refuses to part from his mysterious history plates and sobs convulsively when one is lost in a battle with Eaters (rotifers). Lavon, view point character, man-of-action and human leader, wants to kill Eaters and destroy their eggs and seems unsympathetic to Shar’s curiosity but basically realises that knowledge is necessary for action against Eaters which in turn will produce a world where men have time for study. Para, a Proto (protozoan) and an objective or at least alien assessor of man, comments that Shar’s thoughts “…are water…” but men plan, lead, remake the world and must be helped if their rule is better. “That is reason.” ¹⁰ (Mankind is superior in this as in other though not all Blish stories.)

If “Sunken Universe” had remained an independent story, it would, I hope, have been included in Blish’s first collection, Galactic Cluster. Instead, it became the earliest written part of the “pantropy” series collected as The Seedling Stars. Book Three of The Seedling Stars, entitled “Surface Tension”, is sub-divided into “Prologue," “Cycle One” and “Cycle Two”. “Cycle One” is “Sunken Universe”; “Prologue” and “Cycle Two” are the 1952 “Surface Tension." Thus, a reader of The Seedling Stars and of del Rey’s article would not realize that “Cycle One," no longer called “Sunken Universe," is ten years older than the rest.

Though Blish later excelled at scientific rationales for sf ideas, “Sunken Universe” does not attempt to rationalize its implausible premise that microscopic brains can be complex enough or have other qualities sufficient for intelligence but Blish makes a token effort to fill this gap in “Surface Tension” by explaining that these Adapted Men have:

“…a minute cellular structure, with nuclei as small as Earthly ricketsiae…”. ¹¹
 

The physically simpler Protos’ intelligence can be at least partially rationalized on the grounds that it is telepathic, collective, uncreative, unimaginative – and extraterrestrial. Blish does not, even fictitiously, attribute intelligence to terrestrial protozoans. But his sunken universe would be less interesting if its only intelligences were human so his license is at least artistically sound.

Brian Stableford writes:

“The notion of a metazoan creature as complex as a man existing in parallel with similarly-sized single-cell creatures is conceptually hopeless, as is the notion that protozoan creatures…could be capable of hive-intelligence and telepathic communication.” ¹²

However, Stableford shows that, despite these weaknesses, inherited from “Sunken Universe," “Surface Tension," like Asimov’s “Nightfall," which Stableford mentions, and Heinlein’s “Universe," which he doesn’t, succeeds because it expresses the scientific myth of:

“…a group of enquiring minds, opposed – as is usual – by cautionary conservatism, issues of faith, and mundane dangers, who are on the threshold of discovering that there lies beyond the horizon of their perception and imagination a vastly greater and more wonderful cosmos.” ¹³

(In all three stories, the dramatic revelation is perception of “the stars” – a central sf image symbolizing the scientific myth. The word Star or Stars appears in seven Blish titles apart from the unoriginal Star Trek.)

Thus, despite his harsh criticism of the scientific implausibilities, Stableford agrees that these need not prevent a story from succeeding on other grounds, though the story that he praises is “Surface Tension," not “Sunken Universe," which, he says, is “…a pure adventure story…” 
containing “…nothing…about the different balance of forces pertaining to underwater life on a small scale…” ¹² It contains less than its sequel but not nothing as I tried to show earlier.

Nor do I agree that shortened protozoans’ names ( Paramecium to Para etc) are one of the story’s “…naïve literary strategies…” ¹² Rather, they are a convenient short-hand for informed readers and plausible in Adapted Men who, it seems, inherit some linguistic memories from terrestrial humanity. Finally, I do not agree that “…the introduction of the stranded genetic engineers…” in the Prologue of “Surface Tension” is a “…weak attempt to ‘justify’ the initial hypothesis…” ¹² The engineers were implied by the title of the plates found in Shar’s spore: “History of the i-terste- - ar e - - e – ition” and in Shar’s unexplained knowledge of protozoans’ names so their appearance is a legitimate expansion of the original idea. ¹⁴ It is the first stage of expansion to the galactic scope implicit in “Sunken Universe”’s opening phrase:

“In a forgotten corner of the galaxy...” ¹⁵

which sets the scene for much of Blish.

The Protos’ intelligence is partly rationalized by the fact that it is telepathic, thus collective. However, Blish disliked telepathy and later used it only when he could present a new rationale for it. His dislike is suggested by “Sunken Universe”’s qualified phrase, “…semi-telepathic impulses…” but unrationalized and now unqualified telepathy is one of “Surface Tension”’s weak conceptual inheritances from its prequel. ¹⁶

 

A Short Trilogy

Rationales in two later stories could help. Galactic Cluster includes a short trilogy, “Common Time," “Nor Iron Bars” and “This Earth Of Hours," of which the middle story is yet another amalgamation, incorporating “Detour to the Stars." This trilogy later acquired a prequel, about the discovery of antigravity, and several branching timelines including the events of A Case Of Conscience but it is difficult to discuss these connections meaningfully without first discussing the connected works. As del Rey commented, citing After Such Knowledge as an example:

“…such complexity in an honest writer must lead to complex threads and themes in his fiction. And sometimes the complexity may overbalance other things, unless the necessary care is taken in reading.” ⁴

A reader tracing non-linear connections between Blish’s works may lose sight of the works themselves, not seeing the trees for the wood.

The Galactic Cluster trilogy begins with the first interstellar expedition, describes a telepathic experience during the second interstellar expedition and ends with a telepathic interstellar empire. The second expedition, detouring through the microcosm by shrinking into an atom, learns that parapsychological fields belong to the microcosm’s fine structure as electromagnetic fields belong to the macrocosm’s, suggesting that any macrocosmic telepathy is an uncontrollable trace, leak or residuum, thus explaining its unpredictability. In “This Earth Of Hours”, it is learned that weak-brained or brainless macrocosmic creatures can use telepathy and have united as the Central Empire. Protos are arguably small enough and certainly brainless enough to be telepaths on this rationale. “Nor Iron Bars”’s subelectronic particles, underlying sentience on an electron’s surface, can help to rationalize merely microscopic intelligence. 

Both Protos in “Sunken Universe” and Calleans in “This Earth Of Hours” converse with nontelepaths by producing with organs not designed for sound-formation pure tones which intermodulate as speech. This is a clear conceptual link between the stories. If “Sunken Universe” had joined not The Seedling Stars but Galactic Cluster, then it would have fitted into a period of human colonization between the second expedition and the encounter with the Central Empire.

Another Connection

Similarly, references in “Surface Tension” to Oc dollars and ultraphones signaled to the reader that pantropy stories might fit into the Okie series. The ideas are complementary. Adapted Men colonize extrasolar planets. Okies trade with extrasolar colonies. A pantropy collection might have become Cities In Flight, Volume II. However, Blish places no Adapted Men on planets visited by Okies. The near future events leading to the development of pantropy are incompatible with those leading to the development of antigravity and antiagathics.

Blish the completist wrote both an opening and a conclusion for each of the two series and these beginnings and endings became mutually inconsistent. The beginnings are parallel narratives: Okies escape from a Russian-ruled Earth; pantropists escape from an American-ruled solar system. The endings are logical developments from their premises. Pantropy enables human beings to spread through the galaxy over many millennia. Antiagathics enable some characters to live until the end of the universe.

However, having decided to write about the end of the universe, it became convenient for story purposes to move that ultimate ending closer to the present. It happens not in the remote future because of entropy but in 4004 AD because of anti-matter. 4004 AD mirrored Bishop Ussher’s creation date but was incompatible both with the many millennia of The Seedling Stars and also with the several millennia of Earthman, Come Home. Therefore, the two series are separate and Cities In Flight is internally inconsistent. Revised dates in later editions, for example 4104 instead of 4004, do not adequately address the scale of the inconsistencies.

Another Series

Another idea in the Okie series generated a separate series. Blish reasoned that, in a four dimensional continuum, the instantaneous Dirac transmitter used by Okies for interstellar communication should receive messages from past and future as well as from the present.


However, Okies able to solve their problems in advance would not have been the kind of characters he wanted to write in that series so this application of the Dirac transmitter became a separate story, “Beep," collected in Galactic Cluster and novelized as The Quincunx Of Time. “Beep”/Quincunx is a utopia because the controllers of the Dirac transmitter foresee themselves preventing disasters and administering a peaceful, expanding intergalactic civilization, free from the conflicts experienced, in their alternative future, by the Okies.

The Special James Blish Issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction featured a new short novel by Blish, Midsummer Century. This novel completes a tetralogy with Welcome To Mars, “A Style In Treason” (in the later collection, Anywhen) and The Quincunx Of Time. Yet again, “A Style In Treason” is an expansion of an earlier story, “A Hero’s Life," so this tetralogy was written in six stages.

The tetralogy begins with the discovery of antigravity by the young Adolph Haertel, first seen as an old man in “Common Time," describes an interstellar civilization based on the Haertel overdrive and the Dirac transmitter and ends in 25,000 AD when a Dirac message that had been received in 2091 is transmitted. Of course, more than this happens in Midsummer Century. For example, the time-projected astrophysicist Martels unwillingly accepts and uses telepathy for which he finds yet another rationale.

Messages from the future contain:
 

“…many future paradigms, which not only conflict with ours but with each other.” ¹⁷

Science is not an arbiter because it is one of the paradigms. Thor Wald, the inventor of the Dirac transmitter, is prepared in “Beep” to accept a deterministic universe but then, in Quincunx, says:

“If a technologically sophisticated people of twenty-five thousand years from now believes that the future is not fixed, it is plain on the face of it that they know something about the matter that we don’t know.” ¹⁸

The Dirac message (in Machine, not in English) to which he refers reads in part:

“‘…the analysis found distinct traces of previous occupancy by a third personality, dating the year of its origin to ‘1955’. This style of dating antecedes Rebirth One and thus cannot be any less than twenty-five thousand years in the past…How could time-projection have been known that long ago without significantly changing history…?’ ” ¹⁹

What does “changing history” mean here? To change anything is to make it different either from what it was before we acted on it or from what it would have been if we had not acted on it. If Greek atomists had initiated an industrial revolution BC, that would have changed history, i.e., would have made history different from what we now know it to have been. It does not follow from this that a foreknown history could have been changed. If there had been going to be a Greek industrial revolution, then that would have been foreknown.

Wald can try to change events as described in messages from his future but should not, I think, draw the conclusion that he does from this particular message. His successors are right to believe that Dirac messages contain mutually inconsistent paradigms but mistaken, I think, if they accept Wald’s conclusion that this message entails mutable history. But, in any case, if someone had been projected into the past and had made history different from the way he remembered it as having been, how would anyone in 25,000 AD know this? If they inhabit an altered timeline, then their memories and records will tell them what has happened in that altered timeline but not what had happened in any original timeline that would be remembered only by the time traveler.

The message interpreted by Wald is transmitted in a Dirac pulse:

“…so that all receivers who might have any reason to care about the problem should have a record of it.” ²⁰

Its senders do not know that the receivers include the inventor of the Dirac transmitter trying to understand its implications.

Not only scientific theories but also historical narratives are mutually inconsistent. References to “A Style In Treason” and Midsummer Century help to expand “Beep” into Quincunx although internal evidence alone would suggest that “A Style In Treason” occupies an alternative timeline with no instantaneous communicator. Although much deception is practiced in the “Treason” period, this cannot account for some of the basic incompatibilities. Thus, in 3480, the president of the Milky Way announces its federation with its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, yet, in a period that may be four thousand years after the twenty first century, these galaxies are and always have been divided between High Earth, served by a Traitor’s Guild, and the non-human Green Exarchy.

It remains at least logically possible that some Dirac messages express merely potential futures which the transmitter’s monopolizers, forewarned, will prevent although, at the end of Quincunx, they seem to expect that, in accordance with their current policy of avoiding hybris by resisting the temptation to choose between potential futures, their organization, the Service, will continue to allow or even actively to cause all foreknown events and therefore will either facilitate or even become the Traitors’ Guild, a process which, because of the galactic federation of 3480, seems to require longer than four millennia but the dating of the High Earth period is in any case imprecise.

Despite their policy, Service agents would not cause all foreknown events if this required them, for example, to commit mass murder. A message reporting a massacre will be received only if such a message is transmitted. It will be transmitted only if a massacre occurs. A massacre will occur only if the Service allows or even commits it. The Service will allow or even commit a massacre only if, first, they receive a message reporting the massacre and, secondly, they are the kind of people who would insist on implementing their policy of preserving the known future even at the expense of allowing or committing massacres. It follows that messages reporting massacres will be received only if messages reporting massacres are received (so far, a tautology) and if Service personnel are capable of massacres. Since they are not capable of this, such messages are not received.

Instead, Service personnel foresee themselves implementing only, to them, morally acceptable scenarios and then have no problem about implementing those scenarios, which is why such scenarios are implemented and foreseen. I suggest that this moral circular causality explains the utopian consequences of Service policy. A Dirac transmitter monopolized by Poul Anderson’s Merseians, Larry Niven’s kzinti or the Star Trek Klingons would have been an instrument of galactic conquest, including the deaths of all their opponents. One welcome feature of the expansion of “Beep” is the extended discussion of the philosophical issues. The moral circular causality argument is my contribution to such discussion.

In Quincunx, Service personnel help the moral circular causality process by never mentioning the date of death of any sentient being in a Dirac message. The Service is an Event Police, not a Thought Police or an Assassins’ Guild. This Service rule is an example of the further thought that Blish had put into Quincunx since, in “Beep," the rule had only been that the dates of Servicemen’s deaths should not be mentioned.

A second welcome feature of the novelization is the increased number of fascinating messages from the future especially since the new messages are derived from otherwise unconnected and even apparently incompatible Blish stories. Even an uncollected 1941 story, “The Real Thrill," provides material for a Dirac message although in revised form.

The culmination of this process of linking stories was the reception in one novel of a message transmitted later in another, despite the characters’ completely different contexts and problems. On the other hand, despite their differences, all Blish’s characters face the future, with science and technology. Most live in what is to us the future. Additionally, our contemporary, Martels, is projected into 25,000 AD and the protagonists of Quincunx, living in our future, receive messages from many periods of their future. Thus, Quincunx is uniquely about coping with the future in a very real sense.

“One of the many original features of this novel is that it does actually concern the future.” ²¹

Although Quincunx is not a time travel story, it also addresses time and temporal paradoxes in ways that I discuss elsewhere.²² “Beep” assumes a physics of temporal extension identical with the static four dimensional physics expounded in The Time Machine. This physics definitely rules out the kind of temporal motion, at least for material objects, that Wells nevertheless then attributes to his Time Machine. One Dirac message in “Beep” and another in Quincunx do refer to different kinds of time travel, world-line cruising and time-projection, which, if they can be accommodated within Einsteinian physics, do not require a fifth dimension to function as the temporal dimension for their “motion," contra the Wald of Quincunx.

 

To disappear at one moment and to reappear at an earlier or later moment is not necessarily to move along the temporal interval between the two moments in the same way as objects move along spatial distances. The “time traveling” entity might either, like other spatiotemporal objects, extend along the temporal interval or, like a Dirac message, simply not exist between the moments of departure and arrival. Despite his sensation of headlong motion, Wells’ Time Traveler simply prolongs himself further along the Fourth Dimension in an intangible, attenuated form whereas Poul Anderson’s Time Patrollers instantaneously, from their point of view, disappear from one set of spatiotemporal co-ordinates and appear at another.

A vessel moving along the fourth dimension, therefore enduring in a fifth dimension at right angles to our temporal axis, would not extend along our temporal axis but would bisect it at a single set of spatiotemporal co-ordinates. The vessel would be detectable, if at all, by us only as a momentary anomaly. In order to communicate with anyone in our four dimensional universe, the vessel would have to stop moving and start extending along the fourth dimension, i.e., to start enduring in our temporal dimension.

In time-projection, the “…semistable electromagnetic field…” of a personality leaves one physical substrate and energy source and enters another. ²³ “World-line cruising” is more enigmatic but the reference to world-lines suggests the finite spinning universe form of time travel which, I think, involves world-lines curving around through space-time in such a way that they point towards the past instead of, as they usually do, towards the future. This does not seem to require motion along the fourth dimension with duration along a fifth dimension which would, in any case, be undetectable by beings who perceive only three spatial dimensions and experience only one temporal dimension.

Because my training is philosophical, not scientific, I discuss how many dimensions are logically necessary for temporal experience but not how many are mathematically necessary for physical phenomena. My correspondence with Blish on mutable pasts in time travel scenarios led to Quincunx’s multi-dimensionality. The Dirac transmitter allows action on known futures but not on pasts. Wald does contemplate preventing transmission of an already received message but this cannot prevent its past reception whereas a time traveler altering past events does imply a second temporal dimension connecting the original and altered sequences of events. By criticising Quincunx’s multi-dimensionality, I respect Blish’s work and continue the discussion which never ends with a single text.

Differences between “Beep” and Quincunx include, first, that the Wald of Quincunx deduces a fifth dimension from the fact of world-line cruising, secondly, that he receives the 25,000 AD message and, thirdly, that he deduces a mutable history from the latter. Since, on reflection, I disagree with his deductions, I think that the deterministic universe of “Beep," as opposed to the potentially more fluid universe of Quincunx, remains intact.

Wald accepts theoretically that he can prevent some of the events described in Dirac messages but then politically accepts the directive that he should never try to prevent any of them. Thus, his theory is never tested but the beneficial consequences of Service policy are of greater value the quest for scientific certainty. Can this dichotomy occur in the real world? It seems to be an instance of forbidden knowledge, a concept that Blish disagreed with although he reflected on it in After Such Knowledge.

Both the philosophical discussion and the imaginative accounts of future eras could have been continued in further sequels. Blish had hoped to write both a novel set against the background of “A Style In Treason” and a time travel novel based on the finite spinning universe theory. ^24,25 

Because the latter involves world-lines, Blish might have connected it with his “world-line cruiser” traveling from 8873 to 8704 along the world-line of a planet on the rim of another galaxy. ²⁶ I find this tantalizing passage the single most imaginative and intriguing in Blish’s works, especially since our informant, in 2091, neither understands what kind of help the cruiser’s commander will need during his 169 year journey nor knows whether he will receive it.

Brian Aldiss, quoting the world-line cruiser passage in full in two articles about Blish, describes it as one of Quincunx’s “…most famous passages…” ²⁷ and as “…one central image, which, being a numerological incantation, banishes all devils…” ²⁸ I echo this fulsome praise. Aldiss also describes the Dirac transmitter as “…a marvelous gadget…”²⁶ Like Wells’ Time Machine, Blish’s Dirac transmitter is an original, imaginative device occasioning both speculation on the nature of time and colorful visions of future periods. Because I welcome two central aspects of Quincunx, I do not agree that it is merely a doubled “Beep” or a “…trivial inflation of the prose…” ^{29, 30} although it is padded. On the other hand, the change from:

“Josef Faber lowered his newspaper slightly.” ³¹

to:

“The man code-named Josef Faber – and after ten years he no longer cared about his birth name – lowered his bulky newsfac slightly.” ³²

 displays further reflection on the subject-matter. It is possible to enjoy comparing two versions of a text instead of simply preferring one. Knowing, while writing it, that the novelized “Beep” would remain brief, Blish said that he would, if necessary, offer Midsummer Century, which he was writing at the same time, to be published in the same volume.³³ It would also have made sense to include “A Style In Treason” between the two short novels. Thus, Quincunx, like “Beep," would, perhaps appropriately because of its brevity, have been published, in book form, as part of a collection.

The novelization occurred at the request of an editor, Larry Shaw, who had seen that the story was about something and I can add, as a reader, that, on first reading “Beep," I thought that it should be novelized.

Years ago, when I visited the Fantasy Centre Bookshop in London, its proprietor raised one further question about “Beep”/Quincunx. Each Dirac communicator simultaneously receives every Dirac message past, present and future. Surely the arrival of all that energy in the first communicator would have destroyed the machine (with a bang, not a “beep”), thus preventing the transmission of any future messages?

One Other Connected Series

The Jack Loftus diptych, Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars, begins when Haertel overdrive-using Earthmen meet energy beings whom they nickname “Angels” and ends when Angels, Earthmen and other species, encountered either in the first volume or in “Common Time," begin to unite against the tyrannical Heart Stars federation, in accordance with yet another suggestion by Lester del Rey. “Common Time” is common to different timelines. As an account of a first interstellar crossing, it is referred to by other stories with interstellar settings regardless of whether those stories are mutually consistent. 

For example, the Central Empire and the Heart Stars occupy the same volume of space during the same period of history so they must inhabit alternative timelines. Anywhen contains two remaining stories set among Blish’s branching timelines, one set on a version of the Mars shown in Welcome To Mars, the other set long after the events of the first Jack Loftus novel. Thus, the interconnected series are contained in fifteen volumes.

Conclusions

I have shown how Blish’s interconnected series grew from each other and I have focused on two stories from opposite ends of his career: the imaginative opening, “Sunken Universe," and the intellectual achievement, Quincunx. There is a great deal more than this to be said about Blish’s works, particularly about his major series, Cities In Flight and After Such Knowledge.

Very few Blish stories from the 1940’s have been included in his collections. The implied unimportance of most of the others highlights “Sunken Universe”’s early excellence. Published a decade before its sequel, it became, as we have seen, the first installment in a long sequence of diverse speculations about interstellar travel and we can be grateful to Blish for rescuing it from pulp obscurity and for building such an immense edifice upon it.

Even if Blish had never revisited either the Traitors’ Guild or time travel, it seems likely that he would have continued to build references to earlier stories into later works. On the other hand, he did not merely rehash earlier ideas but continued to think creatively as readers can verify first by recognizing the diversity of the contents of the interconnected series and secondly by checking references to his unfinished novels, “Glass Night," “King Log” and “The Breath of Brahma," in David Ketterer’s comprehensive study of Blish’s works. ^{5, 6}

 

1. Lester del Rey, “The Hand at Issue” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Vol. 42, No. 4, Whole No. 251 (New York, Mercury Press Inc, April 1972), pp. 72-77 at p. 72.
2. ibid, pp. 72-73.
3. ibid, p. 73.
4. ibid, p. 76.
5. James Blish, letter to Philip K. Dick, 13 June 1964, quoted in David Ketterer, Imprisoned In A Tesseract: the life and work of James Blish (Kent, Ohio, and London, England, The Kent State University Press, 1987), pp. 192, 349.
6. Ketterer, op cit, p. 191.
7. James Blish and Norman L. Knight, A Torrent Of Faces (London, Arrow Books, 1978), pp. vi-vii.
8. del Rey, op, cit, p. 74.
9. James Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, Arrow Books, 1972), p. 126.
10. ibid, p. 120.
11. ibid, p. 115.
12. Brian M. Stableford, “The Science Fiction of James Blish” in Foundation: the Review of Science Fiction no. 13 (London, the Science Fiction Foundation, 1978), pp. 12-42 at p. 20.
13. ibid, p. 21.
14. Blish, op, cit, p. 129.
15. ibid, p. 116.
16. ibid, p. 124.
17. James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, Avon Books, 1983), p. 108.
18. ibid, p. 101.
19. ibid, p. 98.
20. James Blish, Midsummer Century (London, Arrow Book, 1975), p. 86.
21. Brian W. Aldiss, “Peep: An Introduction to The Quincunx Of Time” in The Quincunx Of Time, pp. 6-10 at p. 7.
22. Paul Shackley, “The Logic of Time Travel”, www.paulshackley.co.uk.
23. Blish, Midsummer Century, p. 18.
24. James Blish, letter to Paul Shackley, 4 January 1970, quoted in Ketterer, op, cit, p. 152.
25. James Blish, letter to Paul Shackley, 23 June 1970, quoted in Ketterer, op cit, pp. 325-326.
26. Blish, The Quincunx Of Time, p. 85.
27. Aldiss, op, cit, p. 6.
28. Brian W. Aldiss, “James Blish: the mathematics of behaviour” in Foundation no. 13, pp. 43-50 at p. 48.
29. Brian M. Stableford, “ ‘Beep’ x 2 = Quincunx” in Foundation no. 9 (November 1975), pp. 104-105, quoted in Ketterer, op, cit, p. 353.
30. Stableford, “The Science Fiction of James Blish”, p. 27.
31. James Blish, “Beep” in Galaxy Science Fiction, Vol. 7, No. 5-A, February 1954, reprinted in Blish, Galactic Cluster (London, The New English Library Ltd, 1963), pp. 93-128 at p. 93.
32. Blish, The Quincunx Of Time, p. 15.
33. James Blish in conversation with Paul Shackley.