Thursday, 30 July 2026

Some Comparisons

At a Memorial Evening for James Blish, the publisher, Charles Monteith, described Blish's Cities In Flight as "a greater and higher Star Trek." We can make a similar comparison with Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In Star Trek, there are many intelligent species and perhaps two main ones:

Klingons
Vulcans/Romulans

In the Technic History, there are many intelligent species and perhaps four main ones:

Merseians
Ythrians
Wodenites
Cynthians

Wodenites and Cynthians are mainly represented through individuals:

Adzel, then Axor;
Chee Lan - and some others.

But perhaps the closest parallel to Spock is the Chereionite, Aycharaych: pointed ears and a more powerful telepath but on the other side.

Trekkies should read Anderson and Blish.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

The problem is, however, that aside from a few of his works, like A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, Blish seems to be fading away into obscurity. Which I hope does not happen to Anderson's stories.

Fans of Peter Jackson's overrated HOBBIT and LOTR movies should read Tolkien's actual stories. THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS are so much better than the movies.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: a movie is equivalent to a short story or at most a novella -- it has less information density than a written work.

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I agree, of course. But what esp. outraged me about Jackson's movies were the uncanonical additions and distortions he had the infernal gall to add to the stories. I know some slimming down of the plots of long stories will be necessary for filmed adaptations. The HOBBIT and LOTR movies would/could have been so much better if they had been more strictly faithful to the plots.

Ad astra! Sean