Thursday, 13 August 2026

Some Relevant Passages In Works By James Blish

Even in James Blish's more accurate description of Jupiter as a gas giant planet, Helmuth finds life forms which resemble jellyfish floating through the atmosphere. Because Jupiter occupies four fifths of the sky of Jupiter V, the Bridge gang feel as if they are falling down onto the planet whereas, in Anderson's "Call Me Joe," Jupiter occupies a fifth of the sky of Jupiter V and, if there had been any significant gravity, Cornelius would have felt that the planet was falling onto him but instead he feels sucked upward. (Different sensations in different timelines.)

On Ganymede, an Adapted Man thinks:

"To an Earthman, nothing could have looked more desolate  - but no Earthman was looking at it."
-James Blish, "Seeding Program" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 5-66 AT p. 66.

In The Seedling Stars, the omniscient narrator spells out that the viewpoint character is living through a pathetic fallacy even though that character cannot realize this because he has never read any fiction!

There is bound to be a lot more that I have not noticed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I also thought of Anderson's "The Snows of Ganymede," colonized by un-adapted human beings.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Yes. The concluding story of TWILIGHT WORLD.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

That one I did not think of mentioning.

Ad astra! Sean