Ends And Beginnings

The previous post about change in Poul Anderson's Technic History ended with a new beginning at the end of the Technic History and therefore connected with a new beginning at the end of Volume I of James Blish's future history, Cities in Flight. Any change is an end and a beginning. Cities in Flight, Volume IV, ends with the ultimate new beginning:

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph of Time IN Blish, Cities in Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

Returning to that conclusion of Volume I, when Wagoner wonders whether to sign his name, he reflects:

"There was writing enough in the stars that he could see, because he had written it there. There was a constellation called Wagoner, and every star in the sky belonged to it. That was surely enough." (p. 129)

What an inspiring introduction to a future history series. Wagoner has been responsible for the discovery of the antigravity and the antiagathics that make interstellar flight possible. Blish, more than any other future historian, devoted early instalments of a series to the invention of the necessary technology. Anderson devotes the first instalment of his Flying Mountains series to the discovery of gravity control, thus paralleling Blish.

Blish's canon is smaller. In Cities in Flight, the interstellar traders and empires exist only in Volumes II and III. We blog more about Anderson partly because of his larger output.