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BLISH
April 7, 2008
March 23, 2009
One of many achievements you can
lay at the door of James Blish is
that he was one of the first to HUMAN_WONDER
write serious criticism about
science fiction.
Reading through James Blish's
"More Issues at Hand" (It took some effort
(largely pieces from the 60s) not to title this
"A Man with Issues".)
I'm struck by a reach for respectability,
an intention to bring SF into the world
of Literature that perhaps misses much of
what is good, or can be good about science
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
of human feeling... intelligent, but rather icy. pulpiest days
of his
spindizzy
stories...
But if the idea is that SF should
be explorations of psychology, CITIES_IN_FLIGHT
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 It's a little strange that a
some *other* level-- which you commentator as intelligent
might call technology, or history, as Blish can be blind to the
or humanity or perhaps even The background/foreground
Universal... inversion of SF.
From his essay about Heinlien,
ETERNAL_HUMAN "First Person Singular":
"It is surely an odd
POV novel that is at it's
*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 His dismissal of the
figure... he spent many material about "cat
years doing public protocol" in "The Door
relations for the tobacco into Summer" strikes me as
industry, and he eventually a symptom of someone
died of lung cancer. trying too hard to be a
proper Literary Man.
I gather that he got out of
that business and managed According to taste, that
to become a full time stuff might strike you
writer... but at the price as excessively cutesy,
of switching to hack work, or twee -- and in the
pounding out lifeless intervening years, I'm
conversions of Star Trek afraid that shit has
scripts to short story been done to death --
form. Most of his good
work was done before that But I don't see how you
period. can rule it out as
improper material for
Despite Blish's many and various a novel.
attempts (and many a triumph) at
elevating the intellectual tone (Mere sentiment
of SF, if he's remembered by the has no place in
younger fans at all he's our fiction of
remembered as the lamest of the The Intellect.)
authors of Trek books.
I have this nightmare image of
Blish diagnosed with cancer,
kicking into high gear, desperately
cranking out more commercial trash
to leave behind something to
support his family.
The last of the "Cities in
Flight" books was the
bleak "The Quincunx of Ah, that makes
Time" which was published a nice story,
in 1973. He died in 1975. doesn't it?
Too bad I got it
Actually, the "bleak" wrong.
novel I'm thinking
of is "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
Quincunx *was* published in '73, doubt appealed to
but it's just a slight expansion Blish's streak of
of a Galaxy novelet from '54. literary snobbery.
QUINCUNX
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