Biography

Blish trained as a life scientist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942-1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Army. Fallowing a war he became a science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. His number one promulgated story appeared within 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave higher his job to be the agency writer.

Possibly his best known works were a 'Okies' stories around Astounding Science Fiction, known collectively when a 'Cities inside Flight'. A framework for these was placed in the novel It Shall Use at times Stars. This shows a development of the ii essential features of the series. A foremost was a invention of the anti-aging drug ascomycin; Blish's employer Pfizer makes a thinly masked appearance around the part showing the screening of biological samples for interesting activity. (Pfizer besides appears inside disguise when one of a sponsors of the polar expedition around Fallen Star). A 2nd was a development of an antigravity device known as a 'spindizzy'. Since a device became other effective when its field of influence was increased, entire cities were lifted from either Earth and sent roving amongst a stars.

Of a little joe novels, the 1st (It Shall Develop Stars) is straight dystopian science fiction of a nature and severity which was commons in the era of McCarthyism. The 2nd (A Life For The Stars) occurs as fairly standard growing-higher story, which manages to display a fairly big part of the society of the flying cities along the way. A third (Worldling, Are Residence) occurs as series of loosely attached short stories detailing a risky venture of a flying Just released York, & the for is however different once again.

A stories stand continued as a series indefintely, were it non for Blish setting a prevent of a Universe around 4004 AD (the chronology within early editions of It Shall own Stars differed somewhat from either a late reprints, a hint that this might not develop been planned by Blish at the beginning of the series). A dangerous undertaking a Okies use at times when it encounter various civilizations prefigure, somehow, victims of the Enterprise in the original series of Star Trek, which Blish novelized.

An additional class action of novels were (apparently retrospectively) declared by Blish to exist as a trilogy, to each one treating by using an aspect of the price of cognition, & given the overall title by Blish of 'Fallowing Such Knowledge' (a title taken from either a T.S. Eliot quote).

The 1st, A Pack of Conscience (the winner of the 1959 Hugo award as well as 2004/1953 Retro-Hugo award for Right Novellthe), showed a Jesuit priest confronted with an alien intelligent race, apparently unfallen, which he at length concludes must become the Satanic fabrication.

A 2nd, Doctor Mirabilis, is an historical novel all about a mediaeval proto-scientist Roger Bacon. This book was considered by Blish himself to exist as one of his better works.

A third, actually deuce super short novels, Black Easter & A Day after Judgement, were written using a assumption that the ritual sorcerous for summoning demons as described inside grimoires actually worked.

In the foremost book, the moneyed arms manufacturer comes to the melanize magician, Theron Ware, by using the unknown asking: he wishes to release all the demons from either hell for 1 nighttime to view what may happen. a book includes the extended description of the evocation ritual, & a elaborated (& when exact when conceivable, given the available literature) desciption of the grotesque numbers of the demons when it pop up. Tension between whiten magicians world health organization pop up to have the line of communications sustaining heaven, & Ware is woven across a terms & conditions of a witching covenant that is designed to provide for observers & limitations. Black Easter ceases sustaining Baphomet announcing to a participants that the demons might non exist as compelled to go to to hell: the War is terminated, & God is dead.

A Day After Judgement, which follows in a series, develops & extends a characters from either the number 1 book. It suggests that God might not become dead, or even that demons might not become inherently self-destructive -- when something appears to become restraining a actions of the demons upon Globe.

Of Blish's short stories, his best known come a 'Pantropy' stories (collected in The Seedling Stars), where homo come modified to sleep in various alien environments, this existence more leisurely & immensely inexpensive than terraforming. A virtually all popular of this series was Surface Tension, where generations of minute aquatic man battle sustaining a more resident of their globe, finally building a space ship to cross to more worlds - at the climax of the story, them-inch yearn wooden space vehicle trundles along in caterpillar treads to the next flow of any stream(!) when a crew speculate in "life in other worlds".

Blish collaborated with Norman L. Knight on a series of stories set in a world with a population a thousand times that of today, and followed the efforts of those keeping the system running, collected in one volume as A Torrent of Faces.

He is credited sustaining coining a term gas giant, in the story "Watershed" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Individual Ken (Ed. Judith Merril, 1954). This is one of people terms that has shake off a field of science fiction to be completely standard in the scientific literature.

Between 1967 and his death around 1975, Blish became a 1st creator to write novels depending upon the cult TV series Star Trek. Within aggregate, Blish wrote Eleven volumes altered from either episodes of the 1960s TV series, as well as an original novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970 - a number 1 original novel for fully grown readers depending upon the series (since so literally 100s supplementary use been published). He died halfway across writing Star Trek 11; his wife, J.A. Lawrence, completed the book, as well as two additional volumes of Star Trek episode adaptations.

Blish sleep in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. Within 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and sleep in Oxford until his death from either lung cancer in 1975.

Selected bibliography
Cities in Flight
It Shall Keep around Stars (1957) (also published under a title Season 2018!) The Life for the Stars Earthling Came House (1955) G. P. Putnam's Sons, Up to date York. The Clash of Cymbals, another time called A Triumph of Instance. (1959)

After Such Knowledge
The Experience of Conscience (number one segment published within If magazine, 1953, expanded version published 1958) Doctor Mirabilis (1964) Black Easter or even Faust Aleph-aleph-nought (serialised when Faust aleph-aleph-nought inside If magazine, 1970) A Day After Judgement (published inside Galaxy magazine in 1970, book publication 1972) Others
A Seedling Stars (1957) VOR (1958) Avon Publications, Inc., New York, within wrappers (paperback book). A Nighttime Shapes Jack of Eagles Welcome to Mars! Fallen Star (1957) - Set in the International Geophysical Year of 1958, it tells the story of the disaster-ridden polar expedition that finds the meterorite containing fossil life forms. A Quincunx of Time Mission to the Heartstars ''Titans' Girl (as well under a title Beanstalk) The Torrent of Faces (by using Norman L. Knight, 1967) Midsummer Century Star Trek One-11 (1967-1975) Novelizations of the scripts of the easily-known TV series. Spock Must Die (1975) An original Star Trek novel.

Non-fiction

Blish wrote criticism of science fiction (a select few quite vituperative) under a title of William Atheling Jr, too when reviewing under his have title.: a Atheling articles were reprinted within 2 collections, A Issue at Hand (1964) and Supplementary Issues at Hand (1970), and a posthumous A Tale That Wags A God 1987 collects Blish essays.

He was the fan of the works of James Branch Cabell, and for the period emended Kalki, a journal of the Cabell Society.

More on James Blish
Jailed around a Tesseract, the life & function of James Blish by David Ketterer ISBN H/C 0-87338-334-6 April 1972 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction - Special James Blish Issue

Honors, Awards and Recognition
2002 Elected to Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame 1977 Creation of the James Blish award for Criticism (first winner, Brian Aldiss) 1976 BSFA Special Award for Better British SF 1970 Nebula award nomination for "A Style in Treason" "Best Novella" 1970 Guest of honor, British Eastercon 1969 Hugo award nomination for "We All Die Naked" "Best Novella" 1968 Nebula award nomination for Black Easter "Best Novel" 1965 Nebula award nomination for "The Shipwrecked Hotel" "Best Novelette" (with Norman L. Knight) 1960 Guest of Honor, World Science Fiction Convention 1959 Hugo award for A Pack of Conscience'' "Best Novel" 1953/2004 Retro-Hugo for "Earthman Come Home" "Best Novelette" 1953/2004 Retro-Hugo for "A Case of Conscience" "Best Novella" 1950/2001 Retro-Hugo nomination for "Okie" "Best Novelette"