Anderson and Blish

For anyone who may have been following these posts chronologically, I have finished rereading The Winter Of The World and have started rereading The Avatar but meanwhile have posted "ASK Haertel" on www.jamesblishappreciation.blogspot.co.uk.

Both Blish and Anderson:

were serious hard sf writers;
were among the authors whose series were edited by John W Campbell;
felt obliged to present new rationales for standard sf props like FTL;
wrote future histories;
speculated about the future of society;
were agnostics who took religion seriously;
also wrote historical fiction and fantasy.

Differences:

Anderson was prolific, able to produce many works very quickly, whereas Blish's much smaller body of work was written at times, we understand, with considerable effort; 
Anderson not only wrote both historical fiction and sf but also synthesised them in several works;
Blish managed to combine the three genres of historical fiction, fantasy and sf in a single trilogy;
Blish's sf series are more closely interconnected as he develops related ideas in different directions.