Films II

(See previous post.)

The titles, Welcome To Mars and A Life For The Stars, express the ideas of interplanetary and interstellar travel, respectively. These works are two of James Blish's five juvenile novels. Since A Life For The Stars is also one volume of Blish's Cities In Flight or "Okies" tetralogy, we are talking about eight volumes in total.

I suggested that, for purposes of screen dramatization, Welcome To Mars could be reconceptualized as the prelude to the Okie series, thus replacing They Shall Have Stars since the latter was not going to be filmed. I have no idea whether anyone else considered this but it is an obvious implication in the circumstances.

This raises the question whether the remaining three juveniles could also have been fitted into such a film series. Answer: one yes, the other two no. The Lost Jet, set either in the present or in the very near future - "day after tomorrow" sort of thing -, features orbital space flight, the stage before either interplanetary or interstellar travel. Otherwise, there is no overt connection between these works but a connection could have been added on screen.

That leaves the Jack Loftus diptych, The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars. Although, of course, these novels introduce new themes and ideas, they are structurally a sequel to the first Adolph Haertel story, "Common Time," explicitly referring back to the characters and events of that story. This does connect the diptych to Welcome To Mars but differentiates it from Cities In Flight. Loftus, flying a spaceship, not a city, contends with a Malan Hegemony, not with a Vegan Tyranny.

Also, intergalactic politics differ. In the Okie series, the planet He and the Web of Hercules, both originating within the Milky Way, contend at the Metagalactic Centre before an imminent cosmic collision whereas, in the Loftus novels, some of the energy beings called Angels date from the first twenty minutes of the universe while others were born later in the same processes that generate stars. The First Born possibly participated in the First Cause. The Angels have been allied to ten previous galactic federations, collapsed three of those galaxies and communicate between themselves throughout the universe into an indefinite future.

Thus, here are two alternative cosmic histories and potentially two spectacular film series.

Complete Works Syndrome

With Poul Anderson and James Blish, I try to imagine an optimal reading order which is also potentially a way to repackage the volumes for any future Complete Works editions. Several of Blish's works fit together as two-volume sequences or "diptychs." Thus:

Welcome To Mars
the Galactic Cluster trilogy

The Star Dwellers
Mission To The Heart Stars

The Quincunx Of Time
Midsummer Century

Further, the Cities In Flight Tetralogy makes sense as a "double diptych":

They Shall Have Stars
A Life For The Stars

Earthman, Come Home
The Triumph Of Time

These four titles express or evoke a prelude, a life, a return and an ending, thus a complete Wagnerian Tetralogy. Neat.

Of the ten volumes listed here, five are adult novels, four are juvenile novels and one is a collection - in fact, a very short collection if we include only the "trilogy." Of the adult novels:

two are in fact amalgamations of shorter, previously published, works;
one is an expansion, still very short, of such a work;
and another, Midsummer Century, is itself very short, less than a hundred pages of text;
thus, perhaps only The Triumph Of Time is a full-length adult novel written as a unit.

Adolph Haertel, Jack Loftus and John Amalfi are, respectively, the unifying characters of the first, second and fifth diptychs listed above. The third diptych is unified by the presence of Thor Wald in the first volume and a reference to him in the second. The fourth is unified by the presence of Dillon and Wagonner in the first volume and the existence of the Dillon-Wagonner graviton polarity generator in the second.

Black Easter and The Day After Judgement formed a further diptych with a common cast of characters but came instead to be classified and published as a single novel and as Volume II of a Trilogy. Volume III, A Case Of Conscience, comprises "A Case Of Conscience," set on Lithia in 2049, expanded as Book One, and a continuation or sequel, set on Earth and the Moon in 2050, as Book Two. Thus, of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy, only Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis, was originally conceived as a single novel.

Thus, this "diptych" analysis has enabled us to summarize or survey the contents of Blish's Haertel Scholium, Cities In Flight and After Such Knowledge.

My motto is "There is always more."

Something Basic

There is something very basic about James Blish's account of the meeting with the Hegemon of Malis in Mission To The Heart Stars but it took me a while to realize what it was:

our juvenile hero, his companion and their mentor enter an audience room so vast that its ceiling is not visible;
there are machines, no two alike, standing along the walls;
the three Earthmen must walk to where the Hegemon waits;
he is blue, humanoid, over eight feet tall and simply clad in black with bare arms and legs (see image of book cover);
guided both by ancient customs and by machines, he simply states that the Hegemony will forcibly incorporate humanity as a subject race.

On reflection, I realised that I would have accepted without question such an account of an alien contact when I was at primary school. Identifying with the young hero while imagining the companionship of both a peer and an elder, I would expect a hostile alien to be humanoid but menacingly large, also that his civilization would have the, for us, paradoxical features of ancientness, as represented by large, old buildings, and of high technology, as represented in this case by "machines" simply placed along the walls of the vast chamber.

This reads like an archetypal account of human-alien contact. Another such is Dolph Haertel's meeting with the last surviving member of the dominant race of Mars under Lacus Solis in Welcome To Mars.

Short Stories

Earlier, I identified three diptychs by James Blish -

Haertel: Welcome To Mars and Galactic Cluster;
Loftus: The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars;
Wald/Dirac: The Quincunx Of Time and Midsummer Century.

A curious feature of these diptychs is that each of them is also loosely linked to a single shorter work and that these three shorter works are all included in Anywhen which, like Galactic Cluster, is a collection, not a novel.

Welcome To Mars shares its background with "No Jokes On Mars";
the Loftus novels share their background with "A Dusk Of Idols";
The Quincunx Of Time refers to the background of "A Style In Treason".

In each case, there is a query as to whether the shorter work is fully consistent with the novel or novels in question. Welcome To Mars explains the Martian "canals" as natural phenomena whereas "No Jokes On Mars" refers to Canal Masons but both the novel and the short story feature the Martian dune-cats.

I will shortly reread "No Jokes On Mars" to check whether any further comparisons are appropriate.

Welcome To Mars III

Jack Loftus stars in The Star Dwellers and in its immediate sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars;

Adolph Haertel stars in Welcome To Mars and appears in "Common Time," the first of three connected short stories in the collection, Galactic Cluster;

Thor Wald appears in The Quincunx Of Time and is referred to early in Midsummer Century.

Thus, there are three instances of two volumes linked by one character. Loftus and Wald also refer to Haertel but only in the same way as they refer to Einstein.

Haertel:

was introduced in "Common Time";

became a historical character common to alternative futures inhabited by Loftus, Wald and others (Arpe in "Nor Iron Bars" and Ruiz-Sanchez in A Case Of Conscience);

then, in a third and final stage, was adapted as the teenage hero of the juvenile novel Welcome To Mars - although we might ask whether this younger Haertel is quite consistent with any of the various older versions.

Mission To The Heart Stars was written after The Star Dwellers;
Galactic Cluster was written before Welcome To Mars;
Midsummer Century was written while "Beep" was being expanded as The Quincunx Of Time.

Non-technical readers usually trust the scientific information imparted in works of hard sf. In Welcome To Mars, we:

(i) understand that Haertel, in this work called "Dolph," has the urgent problem of how to survive indefinitely when marooned on Mars;

 

(ii) soon come to accept that he has solved this problem;

(iii) might come to wonder whether we have been given enough information to warrant the transition from (i) to (ii).

The information is there but maybe, for some of us, needed to be spelled out a bit more. More on this later. (See here.)

Welcome To Mars

We can perceive any one book very differently. Some - the Bible, the Koran, The Origin of Species - are so influential that we acknowledge their significance and have some idea of their content, or message, even if we have never read them.

Of the books that we have read, it makes a difference whether we have merely read them once or twice in the past, have reread them recently or have studied them. Certain works by James Blish are almost designed to re-arrange themselves in our heads if they are reread or studied closely:

both Welcome To Mars and Galactic Cluster feature Adolph Haertel;

both The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars feature Jack Loftus;

The Quincunx Of Time and Midsummer Century are linked by a "Dirac message";

of the four works mentioned here that do not feature Haertel, three nevertheless do refer to him, as does A Case Of Conscience;

thus, these seven volumes are closely interconnected without forming a linear sequence.

I am currently rereading Welcome To Mars (London, 1978). Having already introduced Haertel as an adult and a future equivalent of Einstein, Blish now tells us about Haertel's parents and his teenage years, when he is known as "Dolph." Mission To The Heart Stars describes Milne and Dingle as intermediate between Einstein and Haertel and Welcome To Mars shows us Haertel studying these intermediaries.

Milne died in 1950. This was "...nearly twenty years before Dolph's birth..." (p. 18). Let us call that eighteen or nineteen years. So Dolph is born in 1968 or '69.

"At the age of seventeen, Dolph Haertel had discovered anti-gravity." (p. 14)

- so that was in 1985 or '86. Blish's Foreword and Afterword are dated 1965 and the text of the novel assumes no Moon landing yet, not even by '85 or '86. Dolph, flying his tree hut to Mars, will be the first man on another planet.

Dolph discovers that gravity "...has polarity..." (pp. 18, 27) and therefore "...could be manipulated..." (p. 18). Although Haertel does not mention the Blacket-Dirac equations, gravitational polarity does sound like the graviton polarity generators, nicknamed "spindizzies," of Blish's Okies or Cities In Flight series and, in fact, Dolph's "...breadboard rig..." (p. 19) does indeed function like a mini-spindizzy by lifting the Haertel's garage an inch from the Earth, thus confirming that it is able to lift a smaller object into space.

There were plans to film two of Blish's juvenile works, this Haertel novel and the second Okie novel. If this had been done, might the two films have become a series with the Haertel overdrive and the Dillon-Waggoner graviton polarity generator merging into a single Haertel graviton polarity generator?

Finally, for this post, Haertel's device functions like Cavorite: Dolph leaves Earth by shutting out terrestrial gravity, then approaches Mars by letting in Martian gravity. Never forget Wells.

Surviving Interstellar Travel

Even at faster than light speeds, interstellar journeys are long and James Blish's characters have different ways of surviving them. In Cities In Flight, entire cities fly through space and the citizens have the anti-agathics so it is possible to live and work in a city for years or decades yet not succumb to old age before journey's end.

The cities also use plants called Chlorella, which are explained in more detail in Mission To The Heart Stars: they renew oxygen, remove carbon dioxide and can be eaten.

In Mission..., the liner adapted to take three men to the galactic centre is powered by a Nernst generator which uses interstellar hydrogen for fuel whereas the flying cities need to mine or buy power metals and one city rightly regards it as important when they claim to have the fuelless drive.

Finally, the ship in Mission..., like other spacecraft mentioned in the same novel, recycles all water, even from human waste. Water recycling, Chlorella, the Nernst generator, large storage areas and stops for supplies enable the crew to make and survive their three year journey to the galactic centre.

An Angel accelerates their return. 

The Mission II

(ii) The second stop:

is a planet terrestroid in size, atmosphere, and distance from its Sol-like sun;
has no continents, islands or ice caps;
is globally subtropical because the single planetary ocean is heat-conservative;
is 80% obscured by clouds;
has some large but deserted coral atolls;
is dominated by a species which, in its sessile form, breeds by budding and builds the atolls that trap fish and, in its mobile form, is an intelligent decapod squid with an advanced technological civilization that scatters its machinery over the ocean floor.

(iii) The third stop:

is a terrestroid planet with an entirely industrialized surface and machines controlling small primates that merely carry goods or clean metal;
uses radio only for coded reports between machines and for "'...entertainment, worse than twentieth century commercial television.'" (Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 66);
can be used to produce for the Hegemony rather than for the needs of its machine-controlled inhabitants.

(iii) The fourth stop is a terrestroid planet whose inhabitants, undescribed except for "...frog-like eyes..." (p. 69), live in large stone temples on pylons in the middle of the sea, cruise in dragon's head sailing ships and centre their ceremonialised lives in music based on the sounds of the waves.

(iv) The fifth stop, Ss'pode, is inhabited by an ancient, wealthy green-skinned race of whom only one in every ten thousand needs to work and who compulsorily sterilise all those who do not do any productive work with the consequence that everyone lives permanently masked in an endless Carnival of music, ritual, fads etc.

(v) The destination is Malis which is 10,000 miles in diameter, with 1.67 G's, millions of years older than Earth and part of a massive planetary system. The Hegemon's audience room has a ceiling too high to be seen and machines along the walls. The Hegemon is humanoid but over eight feet tall.

The Mission In Mission To The Heart Stars I

En route to the Heart Stars, a spaceship needs several scheduled stops for supplies even when it is a liner with most of its interior adapted as storage for a three man crew. An sf writer must exercise his imagination anew for each stop in such a journey.

(i) The first stop seems to be in empty space three light years beyond the red giant Antares. However, the target is a widely orbiting green companion star which happens at the time to be directly between the ship and Antares.

Sending the recognition signal by phase-velocity transmission, called "ultraphone" in other Blish works, which travels at about 125% light speed, Langer, Jack and Sandbag receive a reply within a mere two days, demonstrating that a nearby robot station, receiving their transmission, is communicating with the system of the green star by some other, much faster, means. Blish readers know of the instantaneous Dirac transmitter, which works by inter-particle action at a distance, and the instantaneous CirCon radio, which reaches around the continuum to detect radio signals currently transmitted at interstellar distances.

A voice in heavily accented English informs them that they are in a military area and must proceed directly to their next stop. That is their only contact with the first stop although even that enables Langer to deduce something about the attitudes of the entities involved.

OK, summarising the journey in appropriate detail is requiring more time than I had anticipated so this summary will have to be serialised.

History In The Heart Stars Novels

James Blish's two Heart Stars novels recount pivotal events in a cosmic history:

the First Born among the stable, self-contained electromagnetic fields called "Angels" date from the first twenty minutes of the universe and might have participated in the First Cause;

the processes that generate stars also generate new Angels;

the Angels interacted with civilizations in ten galaxies before the Milky Way and collapsed three of the ten, most recently three million years ago;

they congregate in the Coal Sack Nebula where they build structures, possibly including a central living temple, from gas, dust, energy and stars;

they communicate instantaneously throughout the universe;

the Hegemony of Malis has ruled a peaceful, stable federation of planets among the Heart Stars of the Milky Way for over a million years and can detonate stars;

the Malans watched the Martians die over half a million years ago and have watched Earth for ten thousand years;

in 2050, the UN rules a peaceful, prosperous Earth;

Cadet John Loftus signs a treaty between UN and Angels;

the Angels abandon the Hegemony to unite instead with Earthmen, dolphins and other species on the galactic periphery;

after the lifetimes of Loftus' great-great-grandchildren, the young Angel, Hesperus, will inform human beings of the Angelic debate in which, because he had invoked worship of the First Cause, the First Born could not rule and were obliged instead to consult "'Our brothers everywhere in light...'" (Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 127).

Politics In The Heart Stars Novels

One aspect of the politics of the UN world government in James Blish's two Heart Stars novels, set in 2050-53, emerges only in dialogue near the end of the second novel, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980):

"'...we have done all this [managed an abundant economy, see previous post] without infringing any freedoms except the size of the family, and the right of the franchise. Any high-energy society is forced to do both...'" (p. 101)

Is it? I would have thought a high-energy society would be able to afford to educate and inform a large population with universal suffrage? And those are two major freedoms that have been infringed, especially since Dr Langer goes on to say that it is not just the size of the family that has been restricted. The unemployed majority can neither vote nor procreate. They have not restricted family size but no families!

No wonder Langer adds:

"'...I assure you that a twentieth century man suddenly imported into our century [potential time travel story] could only conclude that the most drastic kind of revolution had taken place since his death - and what's more, he'd be right!'" (pp. 101-102)

But such a revolution would encounter mass resistance and therefore could not possibly be accomplished either so quickly or so easily. The character "Sandbag" Stevens earned his nickname because he was caught up in one of the riots in New Chicago. I should think so. If people rioted, then they were obviously not as happy as Langer made them sound in his account of the high-energy economy. Riots are not natural disasters but confirmation of massive social conflicts.

Blish addresses important issues but rightly says in the Foreword:

"I didn't arrive at any solution for this very complicated problem..." (p. 10)

- by which he meant:

"...the future of human freedom in a high-energy culture like ours." (p. 9)

Economics In The Heart Stars Novels

Economics: production and distribution;
Politics: power and resistance;
History: progress or regression.

(...basically, I think.)

Economics underlies politics which makes history.

In James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), four large stockholder corporations have been specifically organised to profit from space travel and its by-products. The government accepts this because:

space travel is too costly to continue without generating income;
government itself should neither seek profits nor use taxes for costly operations with no visible return.

In the sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), which starts less than a year later:

"'...there is so much energy available for the taking...that it's very difficult to put a price on it...any more that you'd charge people for breathing...three quarters of the work and perhaps as much as half the thinking are routinely done by machines and with almost no supervision...nobody needs to be poor, even the unemployed, because our resources are such that production could vastly outstrip consumption - if we were foolish enough to let it.'" (p. 101)

The latter scenario resembles James Blish and Norman L Knight's overpopulation novel, A Torrent Of Faces, one difference, as far as I remember without immediately checking that text, being that procreation rights had not been restricted in the latter, hence the large population.

But do the two Heart Stars novels describe the same economy? In Mission..., it sounds as if:

no one is being charged for the use of energy;
therefore, no one is either selling it or profiting thereby;
production and distribution are exactly equivalent;
"we," which can only mean the government or society in general as represented by the government, do not allow production to outstrip consumption;
therefore, "we," not profit-seeking corporations, control production and supervise distribution.

So do the corporations operate in space though not on Earth?

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.

One More Detail

"In the photographs he had seen of spiral galaxies, he had always assumed that it was the stars that were distributed in spiral arms, separated by relatively empty space. But now it was perfectly clear that the distribution of the stars in the disc was more or less regular, and that it was rivers of dust and gas that created the dark areas which divided them." (James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 35)

This is "...clear..." to Jack because he is viewing not a photograph but an evolving map. He sees that, when all the dust and gas has become stars, the Milky Way will be a simple disc like many other galaxies. But is this right? I thought that the dark areas between spiral arms were empty space, not dust and gas concealing stars in those areas?

I will leave this question there for the time being.

Some Details In The Jack Loftus Novels

In James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), when Jack Loftus wonders whether Sylvia McCrary had, in similar circumstances, been as scared as he was, we are told:

"Probably not, he decided (completely wrongly)..." (p. 83)

We learn, by reading further, that the comment, "...completely wrongly...," is made not by an omniscient narrator but by a later human historian, who must have been able to read Sylvia's memoirs. A longer novel with multiple viewpoints would have refuted Jack's view of Sylvia not with two interpolated words but with a passage narrated from her point of view - leaving it to the reader to spot the discrepancy between Sylvia's character and Jack's perception of her.

In Blish's better known series, Cities In Flight, entire cities cross interstellar distances. Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980) recognizes that a very large vessel would be necessary to make a very long interstellar crossing. To transport just three men from the Solar System to the Heart Stars, a liner for three thousand passengers and crew must be converted so that most of its interior becomes a mere storage area for food and equipment. Blish conveys the eeriness for the three crew members, "...like being cast away in a deserted ocean liner..." (p. 52).

There are a few more details to note when I track them down but it is now after midnight.

In The Coal Sack Nebula

In James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), the gas in the interior of the Coal Sack nebula has condensed into a cluster of new stars so close together that the centre is a single mass of light. Streamers of gas and dust move around within the cluster before being drawn into yet more newly forming stars.

The cluster contains a hierarchy of increasingly complex artificial structures related to the moving patterns to be seen within one of the spherical energy beings called Angels. Jack Loftus expects the centre of the cluster to contain a living temple of gas, dust, energy and stars but the narrator warns us that Jack does not know because the Angels guard their secrets "...then as now..." (p. 88).

The Angels in the Coal Sack communicate instantaneously with others "...throughout the galaxy and throughout the universe..." (Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 127). Their discussion is "Like sparks in a column of smoke..." (p. 127).

This is perhaps the sublimest of the concepts in Blish's works.

Post-Civilization?

James Blish states in the Foreword to Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980) that this juvenile science fiction novel addresses "...the future of individual human freedom in a high-energy culture..." (p. 9). In such a society, he says, the pace of events accelerates requiring quicker decision-making. Therefore, power is concentrated in the hands of fewer people, many of them unknown to the public, and the time in which a decision can be made is shortened. Thus, the few executives and technicians are unable to consult the public.

"Furthermore, in a novel nobody expects or even welcomes blanket answers." (p. 10)

- so he was able simply discuss the question without prescribing any single solution.

It emerges that the Heart Stars, by subordinating all other values to mere social stability or stasis, have got it wrong and that the UN world government, at least according to the juvenile hero's mentor, Dr Langer, seems to be getting it right.

"'An unstable culture and a short lifetime are both positive goods - not handicaps...'" (p. 123)

Longevity can mean wisdom but can also mean stagnation or senility.

The UN has restricted the rights to vote and to procreate to the employed [now a minority], thus ensuring, in a complex technological society, an intelligent electorate while limiting "'...the multiplication of the incompetent...'" and the cadet system "'...keep[s] the talent pipelines filled...'" (p. 101). Langer calls this a "post-civilization," dynamic equilibrium or "'...experiment in world control of people's lives...'" which "'...preserve[s]...the freedom to be dissident in one's own mind...'" (p. 102).

I don't see that it does. Control preserves freedom? What good is it to be "dissident" if most of us cannot express our dissidence even by voting? Also, there are socioeconomic ways to encourage birth control other than merely denying the right to procreate. However, I welcome Blish's discussion of these issues in a juvenile sf novel.

Point Of VIew In Mission To The Heart Stars

When, in Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), James Blish recounts dialogues between the energy beings called Angels in the Coal Sack nebula and elsewhere with no human observers or participants, he could have simply reverted to an omniscient narrator. Instead, he ensures that the point of view remains that not of his protagonist, Jack Loftus, but of a later human generation that is recording these historic events.

"No human being could possibly have eavesdropped on them...Only the greatest of good fortune has left us a very rough record of that discussion." (p. 71)

"And this, [Hesperus, a young Angel] tells us - and because it is he that tells us, we know it to be true - is as close a transcription of that exchange in the Coal Sack as human language can encompass..." (p. 124)

"...because it is he that tells us..." (etc) sounds like the end of John's Gospel. And religious resonances continue. Because Hesperus invokes worship of the First Cause, the First Born of the Angels cannot rule but must ask, "'Our brothers everywhere in light, what say you...?'" (p. 127)

- and a voice confirms the Star Dwellers' decision: "'This has been ruled where what is willed must be.'" (p. 127)

Coming Of Age

Crispin deFord is sixteen in A Life For the Stars;

Adolph Haertel, seventeen at the beginning of Welcome To Mars, matures on Mars;

Jack Loftus, seventeen in The Star Dwellers, is twenty by the end of Mission To The Heart Stars;

Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry, seventeen in Ensign Flandry, is seventy in The Game Of Empire.

The four Blish novels mentioned so far are presented as juveniles. DeFord has been shot by the time of Earthman, Come Home. These four characters come of age.

Flandry heroically fights Earth's enemies whereas Loftus equally heroically negotiates with the powerful energy beings called Angels. When the Angels, having flown from the Coal Sack nebula to Earth, dramatically entry the UN Assembly Chamber, the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the United States must stand down to allow Jack to complete the UN-Angel treaty that he had begun to negotiate in the Coal Sack. Blish makes this climactic scene as dramatic as a space battle.

A Dusk Of Idols

This is the order of writing and publication -

The Star Dwellers: Terrestrial civilisation must remain stable for one hundred thousand years before it can be admitted to the galactic confederation. In 2050, ninety thousand of those years remain. The energy beings called Angels recommend to the confederation that it halve Earth's trial period. That would mean that about forty-five thousand years remain.

"A Dusk Of Idols": Forty-five thousand years remain. The confederation is referred to as "the Heart stars."

Mission To The Heart Stars: About three years after the events of The Star Dwellers, the confederation, which calls itself the Hegemony of Malis, decides instead to incorporate Earth immediately and by force but meanwhile Angels, Earthmen and other species begin to organize a rival federation...

Blish did not continue this series because in it he had already made the points that he wanted to make about the nature of civilization.

I had thought that "A Dusk Of Idols" was set five thousand years later and was compatible with the first novel though not with the second but a closer examination of the periods of time mentioned does not bear this out. "A Dusk Of Idols" is definitely set some time after the second novel because Earthmen have got used to traveling further into the galaxy.

There are three possibilities:

(i) "A Dusk Of Idols" is indeed compatible with the first novel though not with the second;

(ii) in the period of the short story, Earth is still resisting and organizing against the Hegemony but concealing these activities from many of its citizens;

(iii) both the forceful annexation and the rival federation have for reasons not divulged to the reader been abandoned so that Earth has returned to merely a trial status with respect to the Heart stars.

The two novels are very effective as juvenile science fiction whereas "A Dusk Of Idols" is an extremely effective adult short story yet Blish was able to use the same background for both. In the short story, the protagonist sees the totem poles of doomed cities erected in a vast underground sea on the planet Chandala and concludes, "'The totems are falling all around us as we sit here. One by one...one by one.'" (Blish, Anywhen, New York, 1970, p. 135).