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BLISH
April 7, 2008
One of many achievements you can March 23, 2009
lay at the door of James Blish is February 18, 2010
that he was one of the first to
write serious criticism about HUMAN_WONDER
science fiction.
That was in the 1950s, and published Books of SF criticism were
in some obscure fanzines though it still very rare back then.
was later gathered into collections The title "The Issue at Hand" was
"The Issue at Hand", in 1964 and it's a small pun because at the outset
sequel in 1970. it was commentary on the latest
issues of SF magazines, which was
Re-reading the second of these, the dominant form back then.
"More Issues at Hand" (largely (It took some effort not to
pieces from the 60s), I'm struck title this "A Man with Issues".)
by a reach for respectability, an
intention to bring SF into the [link]
world of Literature that perhaps
misses much of what is good, or (Hm... did I steal a
can be good about science bit from Delany here?)
fiction.
It's all well and good
to say that SF must Though Blish's own fiction
embrace the full range had a reputation for being Even in the pulpiest
of human feeling... intelligent, but rather icy. days of his spindizzy
stories...
But if the idea is that SF should CITIES_IN_FLIGHT
be explorations of psychology,
the immediate question would be
"what advantage would there be
to doing a psychological study
in an SF framework?"
A little better would be the
idea that SF can be about an
interaction between the
psychological level and some It's a little strange that a commentator
*other* level-- which you might as intelligent as Blish can be blind to
call technology, or history, or the background/foreground inversion of SF.
humanity or perhaps even The
Universal... From his essay about Heinlien,
"First Person Singular":
ETERNAL_HUMAN
"It is surely an odd novel that is at it's
POV
*best* when the
author is openly
editorializing."
-- p. 55
You might say
the same about
"War and Peace".
James Blish the man is not
hard to see as a tragic
figure... he spent many His dismissal of the
years doing public material about "cat
relations for the tobacco protocol" in "The Door
industry, and he eventually into Summer" strikes me as
died of lung cancer. a symptom of someone
trying too hard to be a
I gather that he then got proper Literary Man.
out of that business and
managed to become a full According to taste, that
time writer... but at the stuff might strike you
price of switching to hack as excessively cutesy,
work, pounding out lifeless or twee -- and in the
conversions of Star Trek intervening years, I'm
scripts to short story form. afraid that shit has
Most of his good work was been done to death --
done before that period.
But I don't see how you
can rule it out as
Despite Blish's many and various improper material for
attempts (and many a triumph) at a novel.
elevating the intellectual tone
of SF, if he's remembered by the (Mere sentiment
younger fans at all he's has no place in
remembered as the lamest of the our fiction of
authors of Trek books. The Intellect.)
I have this nightmare image of Blish
diagnosed with cancer, kicking into
high gear, desperately cranking out Though one of the last
more commercial trash to leave behind of Blish's real works
something to support his family. was the rather strange
"The Quincunx of Time",
published in 1973. He
died in 1975.
QUINCUNX
He chose to rework and
expand this apparently
slight earlier work (from
Galaxy, in 1954), which
presents a vision of a
static, pre-determined
history... with an uneasy
worry underneath that it
might not be determined,
your actions *might* matter.
The last of the "Cities in Flight"
books is not so late in his career,
though if anything it's even
stranger than "Quincunx": "The
Triumph of Time" from 1959.
The British title was
"A Clash of Cymbals".
Both are great
titles... I guess
putting "Time" in
the title works to
flag it as SF.
And the Swinburne
reference works well
enough, also, and no
doubt appealed to
Blish's streak of
literary snobbery.
"Ah, had I not taken my life up and given
All that life gives and the years let go,
The wine and honey, the balm and leaven,
The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?"
-- Swinburne, "The Triumph of Time" (1866)
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