James Blish On Poul Anderson

Comparing Poul Anderson's works with those of his contemporary and fellow Campbell future historian, James Blish, has refocused my attention on Blish and I will shortly add to the James Blish Appreciation blog.

Blish commended Anderson's Tau Zero and After Doomsday. In particular, he appreciated the passage of the relativistic spaceship through the period of inter-destruction in Tau Zero and also the recounting of the Battle of Brandobar not in the narrative present but in a later-sung ballad in After Doomsday.

Although Blish understood that Anderson particularly liked his flamboyant merchant prince character, Nicholas van Rijn, he also thought that that character was about played out. However, I think that the van Rijn sub-series of Anderson's Technic History had just about come to an end by the time that Blish expressed that opinion. Because I had been a Blish fan long before I became an Anderson fan, I asked Blish's advice on reading Anderson and, as part of this, asked whether I should disregard Dominic Flandry. Blish agreed with this suggestion at the time! I now realize that it was entirely mistaken, of course. The Flandry series became much more than its earliest-written segment, the "Captain Flandry" series, which continues to be worth anyone's attention in any case.

Blish appreciated and made multiple references to CS Lewis. He valued the moral and psychological insights in That Hideous Strength and The Great Divorce and the chilling account of Weston's possession and damnation in Perelandra and, for these reasons, wished that Lewis had written more fiction. 

He also preferred ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros and Zimiamvia Trilogy to Tolkien's Middle Earth History. It seems that some readers like Eddison or Tolkien but not both. I could not get into Eddison and have read little Tolkien - The Lord Of The Rings only twice.

All of this is relevant to Poul Anderson. I regard CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy as a Christian response to twentieth century science fiction falling, both chronologically and conceptually, between Wells and Stapledon earlier in the century and Blish and Anderson in later decades. And Anderson was transforming Norse mythology into modern fantasy at the same time as Lewis' friend and colleague, Tolkien - although more people know about The Lord Of The Rings than about The Broken Sword.

Unsanitary Conditions And A Long List

In "A Dusk Of Idols," an Earth ship stops at the planet Chandala where the ruling class uses epidemics to control the population. The ship's surgeon and a passenger who is a famous society doctor discuss the situation on Chandala and I could not help thinking that Dr McCoy, from the Enterprise, would have belonged here but the author, of "A Dusk Of Idols," pointed out that McCoy did not even exist in his creator's mind yet when the story was written.
-copied from here.

I was reminded of this James Blish story when reading SM Stirling's account of the unsanitary conditions in ancient Babylon:

"The street was narrow... An irregular trickle of sewage ran down the middle..." (On The Oceans Of Eternity, pp. 116-117)

Blish imagined a society in which such conditions exist not through ignorance but as a deliberate policy of population control.

We compare Stirling with Poul Anderson because Stirling has perfected alternative histories which were one of Anderson's many sf sub-genres. For comparisons of Blish with Anderson, see:

Flandry And Blish
Two Masters Of All The Genres
Event Police
The Other Blog About A Single SF Writer
Anderson And Blish
Past And Future
Anderson-Blish Interaction
Immortality
Some More Comparisons
Between Galaxies
Comparisons With James Blish
Aliens And Gods II
Why Empires III
Origins Of Science
Everything Is Connected
Boxed Sets
Update
Survival
Two Unaging Men
Connections
Cadet Loftus And Ensign Flandry
Blogs
Recruitment
Connections
The Devil Speaks II
Gods Dead Or Withdrawn?
Galactic SF II
Judgment And Doomsday II
Thermonuclear Warfare And James Blish

- or just search the blog for "James Blish" because this list is becoming too long.

Lewis, Blish And Anderson

We find similarities and dissimilarities between works by CS Lewis, James Blish and Poul Anderson. We are currently considering:

the Ransom Trilogy (soft sf) and Surprised By Joy (spiritual autobiography) by Lewis;

the After Such Knowledge Trilogy (mixed genres), the Cities In Flight Tetralogy (hard sf) and The Quincunx Of Time (hard sf) by Blish;

several historical novels and historical fantasies and two later future histories by Anderson.

The Ransom Trilogy, Volume III, That Hideous Strength, mentions Prospero and Roger Bacon on the same page during a discussion of magic, thus indirectly linking this novel both to Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest and to After Such Knowledge, Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis.

In addition to historical novels and historical fantasy novels, Anderson wrote some intermediate works that were historical fiction with an element of fantasy. This description might also fit Doctor Mirabilis since Bacon's inner voice, inspiring him to seek the scientia universalis, is possibly demonic. In the Ransom Trilogy, Volume II, Perelandra, Elwin Ransom, a Christian philologist, contends with the demonically possessed physicist, Weston, on the sinless planet, Venus. In After Such Knowledge, Volume III, A Case Of Conscience, Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, a Jesuit biologist, contends with an atheist physicist, Cleaver, on the sinless planet, Lithia.

We find some common ideas. However, a philosophical gulf divides Lewis from hard sf writers like Blish and Anderson. This is how Lewis summarized the philosophical position that he had held before his religious conversion:

"We maintained that abstract thought (if obedient to logical rules) gave indisputable truth..."

-CS Lewis, Surprised By Joy (London, 1964), XIII, p. 167.

Logical abstract thought gives indisputable truth? Not observation or experiment?

Roger Bacon, quoted by James Blish:

"Neither the voice of authority, nor the weight of reason and argument are as significant as experiment..."

-Roger Bacon, De erroribus medicorum, quoted in James Blish, Doctor Mirabilis IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 1-318 AT NOTES, p. 315.

Lewis was a prescientific Platonist.

According to Blish, Bacon defined scientific thinking as we understand it and invented:

"...the theory of theories as tools." (p. 316)

In Cities In Flight, Volume IV, The Triumph Of Time, Bacon is described as the inventor of scientific method. Thus, Doctor Mirabilis, although historical fiction, could be regarded as a remote prequel to Cities In Flight and indeed to hard sf in general.

Lewis' Venerian Adam prophesies a supernatural apocalypse millennia hence whereas Blish's characters in The Quincunx Of Time encounter many scientific paradigms in messages from their future and Anderson presents technologically dominated futures in his later future histories, the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis.

Seven Bodies Of Work

Let us compare and contrast seven substantial bodies of work by just three authors:

The Future History by Robert Heinlein;
Cities In Flight by James Blish;
The Seedling Stars by James Blish;
After Such Knowledge by James Blish;
the Haertel Scholium by James Blish;
the Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson;
the History of Technic Civilization by Poul Anderson.

Four of these bodies of work are future history series. The remaining three are:

a mixed genre trilogy;
a non-linear future historical sequence;
a time travel series.

History, whether past or future, is a significant common theme.

Each of the bodies of work by Heinlein and Blish can be, and most of them have been, collected in a single, usually omnibus-length, volume. Anderson's Time Patrol series comprises one omnibus collection and one long novel while his Technic History fills seven omnibus collections! One of those seven volumes collects a trilogy of novels which is part of the Dominic Flandry series which is part of the Technic History which is just one of Anderson's several future history series.

Thus, we commend Heinlein and Blish for quality and Anderson for both quality and quantity.

Comparing Universes

Of course we might have concluded Intergalactic Travel by comparing Poul Anderson's Tau Zero and The Avatar with James Blish's The Triumph Of Time whose immortal characters use their antigravity drive to fly to the Metagalactic Centre where, after the cosmic collision, their bodies become new monoblocs. Blish, like Anderson, followed Heinlein and wrote cosmological sf and a future history series as well as fantasy and historical fiction. Anderson contributed to several other authors' series whereas Blish contributed to one other, Star Trek - as also did post-Heinleinian future historian Larry Niven. We are talking about a pool of authors and subject matters here.

I was a Blish fan long before I became an Anderson fan and my James Blish Appreciation blog would have been longer if Blish's output had been bigger. Having said that, there are depths in Blish's works that we have not penetrated on either blog.

See:

David Ketterer, Imprisoned In A Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish (The Kent State University Press, Ohio, 1987).

The next three days in Lancaster (for some of us) -

Sunday: Chinese New Year street procession and event;

Monday evening: Zen group or choir;

Tuesday: visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop (we hope).

James Blish And The Megamultiverse

This posts combines two previous themes:

comparison of Poul Anderson with James Blish;

the idea of the incorporation of many fictional universes into a single megamultiverse.

Blish, like Anderson, wrote hard sf, fantasy and historical fiction but with a much smaller output. Blish's main bodies of work are:

Cities In Flight;
The Seedling Stars;
the Haertel Scholium;
After Such Knowledge.

These comprise:

two linear future histories;
one sequence of branching future histories;
one trilogy set in the past, present and future.

It will be seen that the future predominates. In fact, Blish's single volume of historical fiction and single volume of fantasy are Volumes I and II of After Such Knowledge. The branching future histories might provide material for a multiverse? Adolph Haertel, who supersedes Einstein, is referred to in more than one future - but so is Einstein. The planet Lithia exists in more than one future - but so do Earth and Mars.

When "Beep" was lengthened/novelized, it was incorporated into the Haertel Scholium. In the original "Beep," one character explicitly states:

"'I was going to do all those things. There were no alternatives, no fanciful "branches of time," no decision-points that might be altered to make the future change. My future, like yours, Dr. Wald's, and everyone else's, was fixed.'"
-James Blish, "Beep" IN Blish, Galactic Cluster (London, 1963), pp. 93-128 AT p. 116.

Although this piece of dialogue remains unchanged in the lengthened The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), p. 75, the characters think their way around it. Maybe some of the Dirac beep messages come from different futures? Maybe, forewarned and forearmed, they themselves can choose between futures? - although they wisely decide against such an act of hubris.

Three characters discussing the implications of the Dirac transmitter are Blish's nearest approach to Anderson's Old Phoenix clientele and the Service that they found parallels Anderson's Time Patrol.

Event Police

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, people from our future can travel into their past, therefore the Time Patrol protects known past events. In James Blish's "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time, an organization called the Service receives messages from its future, therefore that organization protects known future events. One Service agents says:

"'...the Service is in no sense a thought police. We're interested only in acts. We're an Event Police.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), p. 106.

The Time Patrol is another Event Police.

In the world-wide Bureaucratic State of Blish's Cities In Flight:

"The omnipresent thought police were instructed in the formulae of ballistics and other disciplines of astronautics, and could detect such work - Unearthly Activities, it was called - long before it might have reached the proving-stand stage."
-James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), p. 238.

Thus:

George Orwell's dystopia, 1984, introduced the Thought Police who denied the reality of the stellar universe;
Blish's "omnipresent thought police" suppressed space travel;
Blish's "Event Police" opened up intergalactic expansion;
Anderson's Time Patrol is comparable to Blish's "Event Police."

Blish found two creative uses for Orwell's phrase, "Thought Police." We are surprised when we realize that "the Service" is not an abbreviation for any such phrase as "Secret Service."

The Service monopolizes not only reception but also transmission of messages from the future and therfore enforces this rule:

"'The date of death of a sentient entity must never be mentioned in a Dirac 'cast.'" (p. 110)

A Service agent reflects that:

"An Event Police might have its justifications; but an Assassins' Guild, none." (ibid.)

But is the Time Patrol an Assassins's Guild?

Manse Everard is prepared to contemplate the assassination of a man who has become a personal causal nexus;

in any case, the Patrol protects a history that is full of murders, assassinations, executions, wars, massacres and pogroms.

By contrast, the future protected by the Service is increasingly utopian I think because of a circular causality paradox:

the Service will receive a message describing a massacre only if such a message is transmitted;
such a message will be transmitted only if a massacre occurs;
a massacre will occur only if the Service has caused it;
the Service will cause a massacre only if (i) the organization has received a message describing the massacre and (ii) Service members are morally capable of causing a massacre;
however, Service members are not morally capable of this;
therefore, no such message is ever received.

If the Merseians or the Draka monopolized the Dirac transmitter, then they would use it to conquer the galaxy.

Interstellar Affairs

What will interstellar explorers find in other planetary systems and in the spaces between them? Some, not all, sf merely projects Terrestrial international relations onto inter-species interstellar relations. Several interstellar novels by Poul Anderson do not do this.

However, in Anderson's early Dominic Flandry stories, the Merseians are introduced merely as standard green-skinned space opera villains and the Terran Empire - not serious extrapolation - is just the Roman Empire with spaceships, a colourful backdrop for space opera adventures and even for carefully rationalized swordfights. 

When the Flandry stories were incorporated into a future history series, the Terran Empire, like the Solar Commonwealth before it, became just one phase in the rise and fall of a civilization, the hostility of the Merseian Roidhunate was explained and we learned that not all beings of Merseian descent support the Roidhunate. It is a liberation when we read of friendly ychani/zmayi greeting Kossara Vymezal on her home planet, Dennitza.

But let's return to our theme of interstellar relations reflecting international relations. Is this what some people expect? I suppose that it has to be considered as one possibility:

"'...what happens if the next planet we hit is an outpost for a whole federation, maybe bigger than ours? When that day comes - and it will, it's in the cards -...'"

-James Blish, A Case Of Conscience IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 523-730 AT BOOK ONE, VI, p. 587.

I would say that it is improbable on several grounds but not, I suppose, impossible.

"The nightmare of finding the whole of the center of the Galaxy organized into one vast federation, much older than Earth's, had been troubling the State Department for a long time..."

-James Blish, "This Earth of Hours" IN Robert A. W. Lowndes (Ed.). The Best Of James Blish (New York, 1979), pp. 257-280 AT II, p. 263. 

Nightmare? Yes, to a government that conducts its foreign affairs through a State Department! Current knowledge implies an uninhabitable galactic centre but that is not the main issue here. Would interstellar federations, if they exist, merely absorb or swallow newly discovered planets?

Different branches of Blish's Haertel Scholium present the Heart Stars, the Central Empire, the Green Exarchy and Cleaver's speculation in A Case Of Conscience. In Blish's Cities In Flight, Earthman culture is preceded by the Vegan Tyranny and succeeded by the Web of Hercules. Blish said that interstellar space was vast enough that such conflicts could usually remain indecisive. 

Anderson's Terran Empire falls but before that the Merseian Roidhunate is demoralized mainly by repeated defeats at the hands of Dominic Flandry.

Galactic Center

Fictional Versions Of The Galactic Center

densely inhabited

uninhabitable

exploding

a massive black hole

 

The second, third and fourth versions might be successive stages rather than alternative states.

 

"'To begin with, obviously as one goes inward toward a center of population - stellar or otherwise - one's chances of locating a habitable planet begin to rise. They go up pretty sharply toward the tail of the curve, because the stars at the heart of the galaxy seem to average about a light year apart, or only a little more.'"

-James Blish, And All The Stars A Stage (New York, 1971), 12, pp. 173-174.

 

"The nightmare of finding the whole of the center of the Galaxy organized into one vast federation, much older than Earth's, had been troubling the State Department for a long time, at first from purely theoretical considerations - all those heart-stars were much older than those in the spiral arms, and besides, where star density in space is so much higher, interstellar travel does not look quite so insuperable an obstacle as it long had to Earthmen..."

-James Blish, "This Earth of Hours" IN Blish, The Best Of James Blish (New York, 1979), pp. 257-280 AT p. 263.

 

"'You have boarded galactic observation station five, sun two thousand and thirty-six, arm two. The station is an automatic outpost of the Hegemony of Malis, a confederation of solar systems occupying most of the center of this galaxy."

-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER THREE, p. 38.

 

Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire is ruled from the galactic center although a later contributor to Asimov's future history commented that there is a black hole at the exact center.

 

The center explodes as a quasar in Inferno by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle and as a supernova chain reaction in "At The Core" by Larry Niven:

 

"Already the radiation must have killed all life in the Core if there ever had been life there. My instruments on the hull showed radiation like a solar flare."

-Larry Niven, "At The Core" IN Niven, Neutron Star (New York, 1968), pp. 51-72 AT V, p. 67.

 

And, during another mission to the heart stars in another Niven future:

 

"'State astronomers expected a close-packed sphere of millions of suns averaging a quarter to half a light-year apart, with red giant suns predominating. Instead, we find this: the matter in the core forced into a disk that flattens drastically toward the center, with a tremendously powerful source of infrared and radio energy at the axis.'

"'Like your diagram?'

"'Yes, very like this diagram which I find in my data banks, a representation of the structure of the accretion disk around the black hole in Cygnus X-1.'"

-Larry Niven, A World Out Of Time (New York, 1977), CHAPTER TWO, III, pp. 52-53.

 

"Most [stars] were crowded close to the galactic nucleus, with a radiation background that made organic evolution unlikely almost to the point of unthinkability."

-Starfarers, 19, p. 154. 

The Alien As Threat

(There are a lot of good covers of The War Of The Worlds. See here.)

One phrase in Poul Anderson's The Avatar, XXV, recalls:

three short stories by Anderson;

one short story by James Blish;

one novel each by HG Wells, Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle;

Volume II of the Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis;

two TV series, Quatermass and The Invaders;

a feature film, Independence Day -

- but there are many examples of "alien as threat." (In fact, did the Kryptonians send Kal-El to Earth to conquer it? Is that self-made man, Lex Luthor, the champion of non-superpowered humanity?)

In The Avatar, Ira Quick thinks that the human heritage is "...now menaced by inhumanness." (p. 215)

In Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the organizers of the Festival of Man think that:

"'...the Solar Commonwealth is deluged with alien - nonhuman - influence...the false glamour of ideas never born on man's true home.'"
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic..." IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 49-67 AT p. 53.

In Anderson's "Interloper," an alien alliance secretly exploits Earth. In his "Soldier From The Stars," militarily superior extra-solar humanoid aliens sell their services to the highest bidder among human governments and thus conquer Earth economically.

Wells' Martians come to consume our blood but we are sorry for them when they die in London. Lewis as character fears that his friend, Ransom, who has been to Mars and who is still in touch with extraterrestrial intelligences, is the Trojan Horse for an invasion from outer space but Lewis as author reverses this notion by showing us Terrestrial evil invading the sinless Venus.

In James Blish's "Citadel of Thought," human telepaths detect:

"'...an alien thing, not human, and inimical, cold, deadly, coming from we knew not what nadir beyond our Earth...We felt this deadly current, this other-world pattern, playing coldly across the Earth, and we were afraid.'"
-James Blish, "Citadel of Thought" IN Blish, The Best Of James Blish, Ed. Robert Lowndes (New York, 1979), pp. 1-19 AT p. 8.

Does that remind you of Wells' Martians?

"...intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."
-HG Wells, The War Of The Worlds (Penguin Book, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1974), p. 9.

In "Citadel of Thought," when the alien ship is destroyed, the defenders:

"...caught brief, horror-sickened glimpses of things forever unknowable and indescribable..." (p. 18)

There is an (earlier) kind of sf in which the alien is merely horrific. Many years ago, our local sf bookseller displayed a publishers' poster that read:

"Remember the days when androids didn't have personality problems, every Earthman was a hero and the only good alien was a dead one?" 

Through The Western Gate

This post addresses a dark theme in works by:

SM Stirling;
John Milton;
James Blish -

- but ends on a positive note with Poul Anderson.

"...I wouldn't have liked to be in his skin when he had to make accounting to the Guardians of the Western Gate."
-SM Stirling, Lord Of Mountains (New York, 2013), Chapter Seven, p. 136.

(Anyone who has gone through the "Western Gate" has left his "skin" behind.)

"So many to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory today..." (Chapter Eleven, p. 233)

Is there a judgmental hereafter? If there is, then are we judged by an external deity or by the inner self? The latter process can begin now. How many will be surprised and shocked in such a hereafter? Bigots believe that everyone who disagrees with them will be damned. This happens in Milton's Paradise Lost, Book Three.

James Blish's black magician, Theron Ware, says of his antagonist, the white magician, Father Domenico:

"'He's not significantly holier than us...I know something he doesn't know, too. He's in for a surprise in the next world.'"
-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT Three Sleeps, 7, p. 354.

Later, Ware tells Domenico:

"'I can tell you of my own certain knowledge that every single pillar saint went straight to Hell...
"'...there is no such thing as white magic. It is all black, black, black as the ace of spades, and you have imperilled your immortal soul by practising it...'"
-James Blish, The Day After Judgement IN After Such Knowledge, pp. 427-522 AT The Harrowing of Heaven, 11, p. 511.

Can Poul Anderson tells us anything cheerful after all that? One of his novels concludes:

"'I've a notion He creates nothing in vain. That Satan himself, after Armageddon and what follows have shown him the error of his ways, may repent and be shriven. That on the Last Day, not only will our dead be resurrected, but all that ever was, ever lived, to the glory of God.'
"Father Tomislav was quiet for a space before he said, 'Now don't you suppose that's necessarily the truth. I'm sure of divine love, but the rest of what I spoke was only my mind rambling. It's not in the canon. It could be heresy.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Merman's Children (London, 1981), Epilogue, p. 258.

Father Tomislav combines optimism with humility. Amen.

Anderson And Blish

What Poul Anderson and James Blish have in common:

hard sf;
more than one future history series;
a major future history series based on a cyclical theory of history;
fantasy;
historical fiction.

Anderson, of course, shows us the rise and fall of the Polesotechnic League, the rise and fall of the Terran Empire and the rise of the Commonalty. This is all in many works that are collected in seven omnibus volumes.

Blish shows us the Fall of the West in one volume, the rise and fall of Okie society in two volumes and the end of two universes in one volume. This is all collected in a single omnibus volume. Blish's other trilogies and tetralogies plus related matter, including his other future historical works, would fit, I suggest, into another six omnibuses or collections.

Thus, merely in terms of word count, Anderson's longest future history is comparable to the totality of Blish's future histories and similar works. The main difference between these two writers is in quantity of output. Blish wrote one historical novel as against Anderson's five - or more, depending on how we classify those that include an element of historical fantasy without being primarily fantasies.

As previously indicated, I have become absorbed in rereading and blogging about Blish's Cities In Flight, in other words what I have been doing with Anderson for the past year though now with a different but similar author. There really is a lot more in this Blish Tetralogy than I would have thought from previous readings. If you have read all of Anderson and want to read something comparable, knowing that it is similar in quality although less in quantity, then please read some of the works of James Blish.

James Blish On Poul Anderson

William Atheling Jr., The Issue At Hand, studies in contemporary magazine science fiction, edited and with an introduction by James Blish (Advent: Publishers, Chicago, 1964).

More Issues At Hand (for reference, see Gadgets).

In The Issue...
On pp. 71-74, in a review written in Autumn, 1953, Atheling/Blish discusses Poul Anderson's "The Immortal Game" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February, 1954). Apparently, the editorial blurb by Boucher and McComas described the story as:

science fiction;
"The Chess Game Story";
as having "incomparable romantic sweep";
a "tragic epic." (p. 71)

Blish denies all these descriptions and adds that "...several more negative judgments..." (ibid.) could be applied. He argues that, in a chess game story:

the game should be a good one;

there should be an evident relationship between the moves and the story;

the story should come first;

a story that follows the game to its detriment satisfies neither chess fans nor fiction readers;

the game should "...be original with the writer..."; (p. 72)

it should be "...a part of the creative act..." (ibid.), serving the story like any other background condition;

Through The Looking Glass satisfies all these criteria whereas "The Immortal Game" does not.

Blish continues that, in "The Immortal Game":

the game, not original with the author, is a straitjacket imposed on the story;

the chessmen are clumsily personified;

there is a parenthetical attempt to explain the personifications by reference to computers;

there is a small amount of "...fan-fiction irony..."; (ibid.)

the plot is nothing but the sequence of moves;

the name-keys and typographical tricks have no advantage over using the right names for the elements of the game;

translating the nomenclature back into chessboard terminology leads the reader our of, not into, the story;

the writing is in Anderson's Planet Stories vein which is like "...writing in his sleep..."; (ibid.)

this is not "tragic epic" or "romantic sweep" but "romanticist-manque"; (ibid.)

the text is full of "...duplicate or incantatory statement[s]..." which are "...signs of automatic writing..."; (p. 73) (Blish quotes: "'Good! Oh, good, my Queen!'" (ibid.) etc)

Finally, Blish presents "Danish Gambit" by Carl Gentile as a very good chess story which Boucher and McComas should reprint "...to take the taste of the Anderson out of the mouths of chess lovers and fiction readers alike..." (p. 74)

Blish quotes Anderson as replying that his story was allegorical and made a "...childishly obvious..." point (p. 72) that "...seems to have escaped Mr. Atheling." (ibid). Blish responds that:

the point still escapes him;
a real game is too specific "...to support an allegory." (ibid.)

We feel that giants have clashed.

The Other Blog About A Single SF Writer

While rereading and editing James Blish Appreciation, I have come across a few posts on that blog that either refer to Poul Anderson or compare Blish with Anderson. Recently:

Memory And Patience
Sequel, Serial, Series

I then searched on James Blish Appreciation for "Poul Anderson" with results to be found here.

The James Blish blog has fewer posts only because of Blish's considerably smaller output. However, I strongly recommend the works of each author to fans of the other. There is in fact more to be said about Blish, who is by no means an easy writer, but I have been taking the easier course of rereading the many works of Poul Anderson and, more recently, reading for the first time the novels of SM Stirling whose third Draka volume should arrive this week.

Openings

Many factors external to the text of a novel alert prospective readers as to whether this work is mainstream or genre fiction before they have even opened the volume but how soon does the text declare itself? 

Lewis 

The Preface to CS Lewis's The Hideous Strength explains that this novel is sub-titled "a fairy-tale" because its opening chapters read like contemporary fiction, giving no warning of the later magicians, devils and angels. Lewis acknowledges that some readers dislike fantasy.

 

Blish

"The stone door slammed. It was Cleaver's trademark: there had never been a door too heavy, complex, or cleverly tracked to prevent him from closing it with a sound like a clap of doom."

-James Blish, A Case Of Conscience IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1981), pp. 523-730 AT I, p. 531.

Those are the opening two sentences of a novel by James Blish: so far, no indication of genre. However, the third sentence:

 

"And no planet in the universe could possess an air sufficiently thick and curtained with damp to muffle that sound - not even Lithia." (ibid.)

- both completes the opening paragraph and confirms what we probably already knew, that this is sf. 

 

(IIRC, the publisher queried whether the title was appropriately sfnal.) (Another interesting feature of that opening sentence is that BOOK ONE, originally a novella, concludes: "The air lock door slammed." (p. 615) as if to symbolize Cleaver's triumph over his antagonists.)

 

Anderson

Skipping, at least for now, past the unheaded italicized passage preceding Chapter I of Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, we find:

"Every planet in the story is cold -..."

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT I, p. 342.

In this case, we do not need to finish reading that opening sentence. Its opening phrase, indeed its second word, is sufficient - whereas the title alone might have suggested fantasy or medieval romance.

Incidentally, those planets are:

Terra

Diomedes

Talwin

Dennitza

Chereion

- a good mix of the familiar and the new. Only Dennitza is entirely new.

This post refers to CS Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy and Poul Anderson's Technic History. Read or reread all three!

As for the rest of the text of A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, that still awaits us.

Eating And Ending

(Genghis Khan, the Ancestor.)

Two authors whom we compare with Poul Anderson we now briefly compare with each other, with a guest appearance by CS Lewis.

"I just saw the Ancestor's emissaries devour a man's soul."
-SM Stirling, The Sky-Blue Wolves (New York, 2018), CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 332.

"'The thing that called itself Screwtape let slip to Lewis that demons do eat souls.'"
-James Blish, The Day After Judgement IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 427-522 AT p. 432.

At the end of The Sky-Blue Wolves, Orlaith says that the ending is a beginning whereas Reiko replies that both are illusions and that there is only life, unchanged by the Change.

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"
-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

For a Lewis-Stirling comparison, see Visions Of Heaven.

Identifying SF Texts

When we start to read a novel, we usually know whether it is sf! We have been informed in several ways, probably by the title, the author's name, the cover, the publisher, the blurb etc. Nevertheless, the text needs to identify itself quickly. I once read a pulp paperback sf novel that began by informing us that the central character's hair was receding so fast that you would think that his nose was radioactive. This was amusing and established a scientific frame of reference. CS Lewis subtitled That Hideous Strength as a fairy-tale to warn readers because the first two chapters are undiluted contemporary fiction - or near future fiction but we do not notice that difference. And I did not sense any discrepancy on a first reading but then I already knew that this was Volume III of an interplanetary trilogy with an sf-fantasy interface.

We have quoted this opening phrase before:

"Every planet in the story is cold -..."

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT I, p. 342.

The text can only be sf even if we did not already know it.

James Blish's Black Easter opens with a single-sentence paragraph:

"The room stank of demons."

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London. 1991), pp. 319-425 AT p. 325.

OK. Despite the author's name, not sf, fantasy. But the work by Blish that I wanted to compare, in this respect, with A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows was A Case Of Conscience which opens:

"The stone door slammed. It was Cleaver's trade-mark: there had never been a door too heavy, complex, or cleverly tracked to prevent him from closing it with a sound like a clap of doom. And no planet in the universe could possess an air sufficiently thick and curtained with damp to muffle that sound - not even Lithia."

-James Blish, A Case Of Conscience IN After Such Knowledge, pp. 523-730 AT BOOK ONE, I, p. 531.

Alright. We have to wait till the third sentence - not too long - but we get there. These guys work on different planets. Despite its proximity to Black Easter, Case is sf. Planets are an easy indicator.

The Early Twenty-First Century

The early twenty-first century in six future history series:

in Robert Heinlein's Future History, the interplanetary colonization described in The Green Hills Of Earth;

in James Blish's Cities In Flight, escape of the "Colonials" from the Solar System followed by Soviet domination of Earth;

in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, UN world government and interplanetary colonization;

in Anderson's Technic History, Technic civilization succeeds Western, Soviet etc and English becomes Anglic;

in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium History, US-USSR CoDominium and interstellar colonization;

in Larry Niven's Known Space History, organ banks, Belt colonization and independence, UN world government, interstellar probes and slowboats.

(I didn't mean to go through all those again but they just came out. All these series told us that we were going somewhere interesting.)

In Blish's history, by 2019, the Western population is uniformly racially mixed. We imagine that this process has become global in the parallel periods of the Technic and Known Space histories. 

We find the kind of textual error that we have previously encountered in Anderson's works:

"'Wild velocity has already topped all previous records...'"

-James Blish, Year 2018! (London, 1964), 11, p. 154.

"'Wind velocity has already topped all previous records...'"

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981) AT CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 128.

(Needless to say, They Shall Have Stars and Year 2018! are alternative titles of Cities In Flight, Volume I.)

We fully appreciate all of these series by considering their relationships to each other. 

The Technic History And Cities In Flight II

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Earth Colonials meet and defeat the Vegan Tyranny but the Earthman culture is later superseded by the Web of Hercules whereas, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, a Grand Survey ship makes first contact with Merseia and the Polesotechnic League saves Merseia from supernova radiation but the Terran Empire must later contend with a resentful and aggressive Merseian Roidhunate. The Merseians, originating as standard space opera villains, are green, scaled and tailed whereas we are told that an atypical man could pass as a Vegan. However, the Vegans, like the few other alien races mentioned in Cities In Flight, remain off-stage whereas, in the Technic History, human beings interact with many intelligent species, usually described in detail.

The Technic History is admirably consistent whereas, in Cities In Flight, the inconsistencies:

"...are too numerous and too prominent to be regarded as anything other than an essential feature of the overall story."

-Richard D. Mullen, AFTERWORD: THE EARTHMANIST CULTURE: CITIES IN FLIGHT as a Spenglerian History IN James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 597-607 AT p. 599.

Since Blish rigidly controls point of view, each statement can be attributed to a particular character so Mullen concludes that the tetralogy is not a consistent history but "...a historical narrative with a large admixture of myth..." (ibid.)

The Technic History ends at the edge of another spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy whereas Cities In Flight goes further to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, then to the Metagalactic Center and the creation of new universes:

 

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 466-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

 

If you read Anderson, read Blish.

Energy And Consciousness

Causes and effects are connected empirically and contingently, not logically. An effect is neither identical with nor entailed by its cause. Their relationship is observed, not deduced. On Earth, it has been learned that electrically firing, chemically interacting neurons cause consciousness. Neurons, detected and observed by neurologists, are objective. Conscious behavior is observed. Thus, we can objectively state, e.g., that a cat stalking a bird is conscious of the bird. However, consciousness itself, e.g., the cat's perception of the bird, is subjective. How does the objective cause the subjective?

Sf writers imagine alternative causes of consciousness.

"Stable plasma vortices...thought."

-Poul Anderson, "Kyrie" IN Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), pp. 344-354 AT p. 347.

 

Each of these vortices is:

 

"...a form of ions, nuclei, and force-fields. It metabolize[s] electrons, nucleons, X rays..." (ibid.)

 

It maintains itself and thinks.

 

"'On the edge of the Coal Sack the McCrary fleet encountered a life form of a completely unprecedented nature: a stable, self-contained electromagnetic field, rather like Earthly ball lightning, capable of moving as freely through empty space as a bird flies in the air or a fish swims in the sea.'"

-James Blish, The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), 1. p. 17.

Anderson and Blish imagine conscious energy. Might some as yet undetected energy field help to explain human consciousness?

"'The personality is a semistable electromagnetic field; to remain integrated it requires the supplementary computing apparatus of a brain, as well as an energy source such as a body, or this case we live in, to keep it in its characteristic state of negative entropy. Once the field is set free by death, it loses all ability to compute and becomes subject to normal entropy losses. Hence, slowly but inevitably, it fades.'"

-James Blish, Midsummer Century (London, 1975), 3, p. 18.

In this account, brains do not cause but support consciousness. However, no such semistable electromagnetic fields have been detected and, even if they were, the mind-body problem, the question of how objectivity cause subjectivity, would remain.

We think that organisms with central nervous systems become conscious because brains cause consciousness. In Anderson's "Kyrie," stable plasma vortices cause consciousness/become conscious. In Blish's The Star Dwellers, stable, self-contained electromagnetic fields cause consciousness/become conscious. In Blish's Midsummer Century, a semistable electromagnetic field remains conscious as long as it is supported by a brain and an energy source. Thus, here are four objective phenomena:

our brains

Anderson's vortices

Blish's stable, self-contained electromagnetic fields

Blish's semistable electromagnetic fields

How does any of these empirically detectable, objectively existent entities cause subjective experience?