Blish, James

• The Devil's Day (7)

  • If you've cruised the 'net looking for reviews as I have, you've stumbled across the good reading guide, that series of short reviews of a variety of authors. Anyway, I've gotten a lot of good author ideas from that, including Blish. This was the first time I'd found anything by him in a bookstore that wasn't part of an incomplete series. It's a very nuts-and-bolts look at the life of a modern day demonologist and the consequences of his work for a dedicated customer. Those who like, say, Kurtz, for her detailed descriptions of how Deryni magic works will definitely appreciate Blish's work here in describing black magic in a modern-day setting. Overall, the plot is not bad. Not a classic but worth reading for the combination of decent plot, decent characters and very strong style. The ending, a clear nod to Dante's inferno, didn't work for me, but if you like reading Old English, you may find it really good.

• The Day After Judgement

  • Oops. This book turns out to be an older version of the second half of the book "The Devil's Day".

• A Case of Conscience (7)

  • Another heady mix of theology and hard science fiction by Blish and well worth the read. This book follows the story of a Jesuit priest who slowly becomes convinced that a planet full of intelligent, thoroughly rational lizards is actually of Satanic origin. Throughout the book, even up to the neat final scene, Blish keeps the ambiguity alive between the rational world and the world ruled by religion. It's too bad that in the history of Speculative Fiction, the genre didn't "grow up" in the image of authors like Blish (who really make use of the "speculative" in "speculative fiction" as a plot device rather than as window dressing). I look forward to his other books.

• Cities in Flight (8)

  This can be found as a single book containing four novelettes outlining a future history of the Galaxy. This is a future written from the standpoint of 1958, so it does seem dated in places. In fact, much of the Astronomy in the books is just plain wrong, but I guess if I can read over the bogus Physics in the "Brackett/Dirac equations", others can read over Blish's problems with Astronomical distances and theories. The first story, about the development of the technology, is excellent. The other stories describe the future of mankind, which is pictured as a collection of self-contained cities abandoning an economically depressed Earth to become migrant workers on a Galactic scale, in the tradition of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath". The first of these three is extremely good, and the others are definitely worthwhile reading. Books like this are one of the chief reasons I refuse to buy hardbacks...with so many great old books sitting around neglected on the shelves of used bookstores, it's not hard to pass the time waiting for a particular author to finish a series and have it all out in paperback, especially when older science fiction is so rich. Be sure to check out the titles in the books. There is partial to complete overlap in many older book collections that have had multiple reprints. For "Cities", you will find the "Volume 2" (sold as a separate book) contains only the last two stories that appear in "Cities in Flight" (this is true for the copies I have at least).

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