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."

A Style In Treason

James Blish's speculative hard science fiction (sf) addresses the questions: how can human beings live indefinitely, control gravity, travel faster than light (FTL), colonize other planets and communicate instantaneously or telepathically? Also, in particular works: what is life and should society be stable or dynamic?

(Incidentally, They Shall Have Stars prefigures The Star Dwellers:

("...there was no logical reason to rule [life] out even on the Sun - some animated flame no one would recognize as life..." (Year 2018!, London, 1964, p. 138))

Despite its interstellar setting, "A Style In Treason" concentrates not on hard sf but on colourful images and descriptions and exotic settings. It was written as a pastiche of Jack Vance who wrote the kind of sf in which technological advances like FTL are merely assumed, not carefully rationalized. The FTL drive in "A Style In Treason" is called the Imaginary Drive as an auctorial comment on the implausibility of this standard sf prop.

A battle is described as:

"...like a raid by the twenty-fifth century upon the thirteenth, as imagined by someone in the twentieth - a truly dreamlike sensation." (Anywhen, New York, 1970, p. 43)

- thus not intended to be taken seriously as either sociological or technological extrapolation. The battle includes ornithopters, wing-flapping aircraft, which are also to be found in Dune.

Sometimes, when reading a fictional narrative, we do not yet fully understand the context or motivations of the characters' actions but expect to understand more fully later. If this expectation is not fulfilled, then either we feel cheated or we accept that the narrative had other merits in any case. I am not sure that it is necessary to understand the convoluted intrigues of the self-described "Traitors." I remarked to Blish that I did not understand how a system based on treason could work and he replied that he did not understand it either. A further novel would have been written.

Textually, there is a contradiction between internal and external evidence. Internally, the text states:

"Neither the [faster than light] ultraphone nor the Imaginary Drive permitted the extension of human hegemony over a radius of more than ten light-years..." (ibid., p. 27)

- but explains that "...a roughly uniform interstellar economy...," in which the traitors "...act as brokers..." enforces a rule that is not widely recognized as such.

Externally, the characters in The Quincunx Of Time receive on their instantaneous Dirac transmitter a message describing the civilizations of "A Style In Treason" and addressing an audience within one of those civilizations. The Dirac transmitter is used to extend human hegemony across galaxies. Indeed, the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds had been federated two and a half millennia before the Traitors' Guild period.

However, the use of the Dirac is deliberately limited and the Traitors' Guild system is based on deception so no doubt it would have been possible to devise some way to fit these ostensibly incompatible narratives into a single timeline.

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.

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?

Accelerated Education

In James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), set in 2050:

knowing the calculus is legally necessary to drive a car; 
there is a new, accelerated school curriculum;
in the V class, students are advanced as fast as they are able, regardless of school terms or years;
a seventeen year old can be a trained technician in a difficult discipline;
in the cadet system, judgement is force-matured as fast as possible in sink-or-swim situations while apprenticed to a top adult practitioner;
there is a competitive exam for the ten year foreign service cadet apprenticeship;
after two years, a foreign service cadet is apprenticed to a senior operating officer and may go into space;
at sixteen, Jack Loftus becomes senior foreign service cadet to the Secretary for Space;
the Secretary's trouble shooter, Dr Langer, has a cadet understudy, Jerry "Sandbag" Stevens;
before a space journey, Langer gives the cadets computation drill: "'Read and feed...,'" then "'...snap interpretation from the tape against the stop watch...'" (p. 37).

In the sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980):

Sandbag surprises Langer and Jack by retaining some of his compulsory classical language courses;
to speak in secret, Langer addresses Sandbag in Greek and, when this fails, Latin;
Jack has legal, though not conversational, knowledge of Latin;
to pass some time, Sandbag writes much of the Aeneid from memory; 
he and Langer discuss Virgil's style.

My point here is that I doubt that this much knowledge of classical languages would be retained in a technological milieu.

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.

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.

Two Haertels; Four Histories

There are two versions of James Blish's fictitious character, Adolph Haertel:

Haertel I appears in "Common Time" and is referred to in the divergent timelines of "Nor Iron Bars," A Case Of Conscience and the Jack Loftus diptych;

Haertel II appears in Welcome To Mars and is referred to in The Quincunx Of Time.

In 2011, Haertel I showed that Einstein's relativity was only a special case of Milne's which was only a special case of Haertel's. The faster-than-light overdrive was constructed in 2030 as a result of "...Haertel's pencil-and-paper achievement..." (Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 48).

Haertel II's achievement was not merely with pencil and paper. At the age of seventeen, he discovered antigravity and flew a tree hut to Mars. Since The Quincunx Of Time describes Haertel as having made an important discovery at seventeen, I identify the Haertels of these two novels rather than postulating a third.

Haertel is referred to in different timelines just as we can expect Einstein to be.

The Photon-Skiff

In James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), the "'...photon-skiff...'" is "'...an interstellar sailing vessel.'" (p. 64) When I googled "photon-skiff," all that came up was two references to Blish's text and no image. When I have published this post, I will have to check whether it comes up as well.

The photon-skiff:

is a very light keel with lugs to hook spacesuits to;

has a mile-long steel cable kept at right angles to the keel by a small inertia-controlled atomic reactor at the far end;

on the cable, a mile-square zirconium foil sail rigged with other small reaction motors by radio control;

in the Coal Sack nebula, will respond to dust squalls, radiation storms, other disturbances, light pressure and slow neutrons.

If that is all that the skiff is, then how does Dr Langer get it to pass the speed of light? (p. 98) Jack, watching, does not understand this and I don't think that he ever finds out?

Later: googling "photon-skiff" with inverted commas brought up only my sentence above, "When I googled 'photon-skiff'..."

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).

Divergences

(i) In "Common Time," Garrard makes an interstellar round trip with the Haertel overdrive and confers with Haertel on his return.

(ii) In "Nor Iron Bars," the Arpe drive replaces the Haertel drive.

(iii) In "This Earth Of Hours," in the further future, Terrestrials representing a Matriarchy and using the Standing Wave, which has replaced the two earlier drives, encounter the civilization at the galactic center, which is called the Central Empire.

(iv) In The Star Dwellers, in the near future, the Haertel drive is called the Standing Wave.

(v) In Mission To The Heart Stars, Terrestrials, representing a peaceful UN world government and using the Haertel drive/Standing Wave, encounter the civilization in the galactic center, which is called the Hegemony of Malis, and discuss Garrard's journey.

(vi) In "A Dusk Of Idols," in the further future, the events of The Star Dwellers are referred back to.

(vii) In A Case Of Conscience, in the near future, Terrestrials, representing a nuclear shelter-based UN world government, use the Haertel drive and discuss Garrard's journey.

Clearly, these works have both continuities and divergences:

(i)-(iii) are the Galactic Cluster trilogy;
(iv)-(vi) are the "Heart Stars" trilogy;
(vii) is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy, which starts not with Adolph Haertel in the future but with Roger Bacon in the past.

Mission To The Heart Stars mentions every aspect of Garrard's experience:

his subjective time variations;
the "psuedo-death";
the mysterious aliens encountered.

Thus, appropriately, "Common Time" fits both as the opening story of Galactic Cluster and as a Prelude to a Heart Stars collection. "Common Time," the pivotal events of the two novels and "A Dusk Of Idols" set in a further future would make an impressive "future history" volume.

POV In CIF etc III

James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979) is narrated entirely from the point of view (POV) of its central character, Jack Loftus, - except that the (omniscient?) narrator does wade in when necessary.

Inside the Coal Sack Nebula, concealed from any external observers, is a new star cluster inhabited by many of the energy beings that Earthmen call "Angels." We are told that:

"The central temple of this great cluster was as alive as the Angels were, and in the same kind of way. Jack could not have defended his knowledge of that for an instant against a sceptic, but he knew it was so. He could see it. Anyone could see it!" (p. 87)

The first sentence here states, as if this were an objective fact, that the central part of the cluster was alive. However, the second sentence, beginning "Jack..." shows that the perception of life is Jack's. Thus, it does not quite have the status of a definite fact imparted by an omniscient narrator. Nevertheless, usually, when a fictitious text informs us that its POV character knew x, we understand that we are to accept that x is true, within the fictitious scenario of course, even if we are also told that he "...could not have defended his knowledge..."

Surprisingly, in the first sentence of the following paragraph, the narrator not only does come center stage but even contradicts Jack's perception:

"But about this he was wrong. He never saw that central temple, if it exists; nor has anyone else seen it since. It may be alive, as Jack thought; or it may not. Howard Langer may have come a little closer to it, but if he did, he saw less of it than Jack did. The Angels guarded their mysterious heaven very closely, then as now; and the First Cause remains unplumbed." (pp. 87-88)

"...now..." refers to some later date at which the narrator tells us of these historic events. So maybe this narrator is not omniscient, just better informed than the viewpoint character? After all, he does seem not to know whether the central temple is alive. What was Jack wrong about? His certainty that anyone could see that it was alive. A mystery remains...

The sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars, closes with an Angelic dramatic dialogue that is not witnessed by any human being. Since it is in dramatic form (characters' names capitalized followed by colons, then speech), it does not present the POV of any one of the speakers. We are then told that neither Jack nor even his great-great-grandchildren ever heard any of it so we seem to have gone far beyond the range even of the narrator who said, "...then as now...," in The Star Dwellers.

Parallel Blogs

I am trying to run two blogs in tandem at present. I think it is appropriate to read and study the works of James Blish and Poul Anderson in conjunction with each other but there are consistently more page views on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog than there are here.

The most recent addition to the Poul Anderson blog, "Cadet Loftus And Ensign Flandry," (see here) summarizes a passage in Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979) where that novel's central character, Jack Loftus, is said to have read a kind of fiction that sounds as if it could well include the Flandry series. I could just copy that post here, as with some others in the past, but I am now trying to refer readers of each blog to the other.

The Flandry series is more or less implausible space opera of a kind that is well critiqued in the relevant passage of The Star Dwellers but what is important about it is that it is very good space opera and hard sf and social commentary, thus not a body of work to be summarily dismissed as "'...nonsense...' " (p. 49).

Since The Star Dwellers was written as a reply to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, anyone interested in serious science fiction would do well to read in succession:

Heinlein's five volume Future History;
Heinlein's fourteen juvenile novels, including Starship Troopers;
Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, including the Flandry series, now republished in seven omnibus volumes;
Blish's four volume future history;
Blish's two Jack Loftus novels.

There is more, of course, but I have just referred to thirty two volumes as a starter.

Inconsistency?

There is some sort of agreement among sf writers that it is either impossible or at least inadvisable for a spaceship to switch on its faster-than-light drive when it is very deep in the gravity well of a star. Thus, it is usually regarded as necessary to make a sub-light speed interplanetary journey perhaps to beyond the orbit of Pluto before going FTL. (Larry Niven spends some time re-examining this assumption in one of the later Ringworld novels.)

In James Blish's The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), this limitation on the use of FTL does not apply. One spaceship:

"...rose from the surface of the Earth to the top of the atmosphere with the gentleness of a lift - after which she flicked into Haertel [FTL] overdrive so efficiently that she utterly vanished." (p. 34)

However, in the sequel, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980):

" 'Of course, if we go directly on to the Standing Wave [Haertel overdrive] from orbit, there'll be a planet-wide minor earthquake.' " (p. 106)

In the first novel, Blish, demonstrating that the interstellar vessels of 2050 are unlike earlier spacecraft, uses phrases like "...gentleness..." and "...utterly vanished...," whereas, in the sequel, when he is imagining a hasty escape from a hostile planet, he reverts to the idea that an immediate transition to FTL will have violent consequences. The result, I think, is an inconsistency between the novels.