"The great canvas of interstellar space comes alive under his hand as it does under no other."-Gordon R. Dickson on Poul Anderson, quoted on the back cover of Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995).
"Blish's scale is the whole galaxy, a view that has to be awe-inspiring if he can only make you see it: and he does, I think, more successfully than any previous writer."
-Damon Knight, quoted on the back cover of James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981) and I should still have somewhere Knight's In Search Of Wonder which this is quoted from.
I agree with both. In the 1960s, I got into Blish through Earthman, Come Home, Volume III of Cities In Flight, but took longer to get into Anderson. Blish told me that he enjoyed Anderson's works although he thought that the flamboyant character of Nicholas van Rijn was about played out.
We have previously quoted passages exemplifying the "great canvas of interstellar space" and "the whole galaxy."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Blurbs can make for eyebrow raising amusement!
I did read Blish's Flying Cities books with pleasure as a boy, when I tried to reread them decades later, I did not have the same reaction. Probably because of changes in tastes, attitudes, views, etc.
Old Nick's extravagantly gargantuan character may have rubbed some people the wrong way, but he's still among my favorite fictional persons!
Ad astra! Sean
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