Paul McAuley looks at important works of James Blish

Link.

A few comments on the stories I've read from the Essential James Blish section at the end of his post:

1. I've read 4 of the 5 short stories he mentions, all famous ones: "Beep", "Common Time", "How Beautiful With Banners", "Surface Tension" (download MP3).
   
   First two are essentially about arcane physics & didn't really work for me, but last two are good ones. "Common Time" is one of the very few stories that speculate on time dilation from the point of view of those inside an FTL ship.
2. I've read his space opera fix up, "Cities in Flight". Good adventure, but only after I mentally learned to ignore his space traveling Manhattan magically uprooted from its New York location & with atmosphere, hydrosphere, etc still viable. I could never really develop the suspension of belief needed for uprooted cities, though, at some stage, I began thinking of them as just other magical ships of space opera.

Related: Stories of Paul McAuley, James Blish.

"Avatar", "Call Me Joe", and "Midworld"

Many people seem to be looking for the relation of these stories with the Hollywood movie Avatar. While I've not seen the movie, here is what I know of the subject - along with download links I know of.

"Avatar" & "Call Me Joe".

Folks are finding the telepresence aspects of Avatar a lot like Poul Anderson's short story "Call Me Joe".

In Anderson's story, no human can go to the world that needs exploring. So they create an artificial animal that can thrive in that environment, but is otherwise like a baby. Mind of this artificial being is linked by a communications link to that of a man elsewhere (an invalid, a few million kilometers away). Man can become one with the artificial creation by pressing on a button.

Note there are at least two other well known short stories with similar themes: Clifford D Simak's "Desertion" & James Blish's "Surface Tension". No communications link is involved in these two stories.

In Simak's version, you put a man in a machine, & out comes a being physically adapted for the hostile world, but with the mind & memories of the man who entered. Process is reversible. So the machine can take the local being with his local experiences, & turn it into the original man but with additional memories of his experiences in this artificial body.

In Blish's story, a few human embryos need to be left on a hostile world, with no adult to take care of them. How do you ensure the babies that these embryos will become can survive on their own? You turn them into locally adapted animals but with human minds. Very colorful story - probably the best known short work of Blish.

I know of at least 2 online versions of "Call Me Joe": an audio, & a comic book adaptation.

Text of "Desertion" is included in the scans of the whole Astounding issue where the story originally appeared.

MP3 audio of "Surface Tension" is online.

"Avatar" & "Midworld".

People are finding the alien world of Avatar (& some of its creatures) rather similar to Alan Dean Foster's novel "Midworld".

"Midworld" features a jungle world - a semi-sentient jungle with huge trees that have 7 vertical levels - each level offering a unique ecological niche. Humans live in, I think, level 4 - hence the title. Moving across levels means inviting death - though humans often go through these adventure.

Note that "Midworld" itself is a rehash of Brian W Aldiss' "Hothouse". "Hothouse" has at least two versions - an original short story version, & a later novelization (I've only read first third or quarter of this novelization).

"Hothouse" is really a juvenile work - at least the novel version. "Midworld" is a work for grown ups.

A few months back, BBC had done a show or a podcast based on "Hothouse" - I'm not sure which version. I don't know if it's still available at their web site.

"Hothouse" short story version is probably old enough to have its text online somewhere, but I don't have the URL.

James Blish's "Tomb Tapper" (novelette, war, free)

It reminded me of Arthur Clarke's "Hate". In both stories, the victim is an innocent young Russian girl. In this story, she's killed by evil Soviet government that could not care less about its citizens; Clarke's version is stronger, & has the girl killed by a man from another European country who has a personal grudge against Russia & Russians. Near end, both evoke sentiments somewhat like Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations", though neither comes anywhere close to Godwin's classic in emotional power.

Story summary.

During US/Russia war, a very unusual flying vehicle seems to have entered a railway tunnel in US with great precision, getting stuck half way through the tunnel. US officials examining what they believe is a wreck discover something unusual...

Notes.

Story features a device that can pick memories from the brains of the recently dead, & is used as an espionage aid. This is I think the first story I've seen with such a device, though Isaac Asimov's novel "Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain" tried to achieve a similar effect with a man not quite dead yet.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1956.
Rating: B.
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Included in Ellen Datlow's SciFiction's Classics section.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of James Blish.

James Blish's "How Beautiful With Banners" (short story, sex, free): An animal's primeval urges doom a Titan explorer

Dr Ulla Hillstrøm is out exploring Titan's wilds, away from human base there, in an unusual pressure suite that is actually a living organism she can control as a machine. Only, Titan has its own native animals - "flying cloaks", one of which thinks this terran space suite will make a good mate!

See also.

1. Larry Niven's "Wait It Out": I don't recollect ending of this Blish story very precisely, but I think it involves freezing alive of Ulla. In this Niven story too, we see a human explorer freezing alive - but on Pluto.

Fact sheet.

First published: Damon Knight (Ed)'s "Orbit 1" (1966).
Rating: B.
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Included in Ellen Datlow's SciFiction's Classics.
Related: Stories of James Blish.

Free fiction: Audio: Arthur Clarke's "Childhood's End" & Robert Heinlein's "Methuselah's Children"

Huge collection of desperate stuff, including science fiction, at Internet Archives' Audios, Movies, & Books collections. But even browsing to figure out interesting will be substantial effort - its very big.

Blue Tyson seems to have browsed at least part of the audio collection & has identified some things worth looking up:

1. Robert Heinlein's "Methuselah's Children"; download audio: Not read.
2. Arthur Clarke's "Childhood's End"; download audio: One of the most famous novels of Clarke, though I found it among his worst (its original short story version with James Blish, "Guardian Angel", is a far better read that cuts out the crap). Later parts are essentially a religious story - a retelling of one of the Hindu beliefs.

James Blish's "One-Shot" (short story, Cold War, free): A good gambler's gut feeling can have other uses too!

In many ways, it's a typical Blish story - good start, interesting middle that builds up anticipation, & then a somewhat dull ending. Some of his stories have cool concepts too, but this is not among them.

Story summary.

"Polish freighter Ludmilla" has dropped something into the waters after entering the New York City harbor. Those on-board the ship, including crew, had no knowledge of it; it was done completely automatically by someone who had rigged the ship. Communists are hinted at as culprits.

Colonel Harry Anderton, the Harbor Defense chief, has a problem at hand. He must know what was dropped - it may be a bomb, or something harmless. But waters here are full of junk, & he may not have enough time.

So he signs on the team of Dr Andy Harris at CIA ("Civilian Intelligence Associates"!). Harris will, in turn, enlist the services of a well known & very successful professional gambler - 'Abner Longmans ("One-Shot") Braun'.

While Harris' team of Dr Joan Hadamard & Clark Cheyney is on the job of remotely working with crew at site to locate the "egg", time is really running out. So Harris has appealed to Braun's _hunch_! Is the object a bomb or not? Braun is supposed to crystal graze!

It was interesting till this point. I was hoping something interesting will come out. There was a twist - but it was a dud.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955.
Rating: B
Download full text from Project Gutenberg/Manybooks/Feedbooks/Munseys.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: All stories about US/USSR Cold War.

* James Blish's "Common Time" (short story, science fiction): Speculations on how time will behave on an FTL ship

Assume you could build a space ship that moves faster than light. This story is some speculations on how time would behave for an observer inside the ship, & at terminals of the trip. Story is told from the perspective of the pilot inside the ship - to go to Alpha Centauri system & return. He meets intelligent locals there too!

Fact sheet.

First published: ...
Rating: B
Listed in "William G Contento's Top Ten Most Reprinted Stories".

Note: Why is this post so short?

** James Blish's "Beep" (short story, science fiction)

Rather complicated story about a future viewing device, & how benign security agencies wield it for the good of the society. The only saving grace is readable language; I found the plot uninteresting, though it is revealed after a lot of suspense.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, February 1954.
Rating: B

Note: Why is this post so short?

James Blish's "Surface Tension" aka "Lavon" (novelette, science fiction, free): Redesigning humans for colonizing hostile planets!

Fantastic concept. Great start. But much of the story came across as yet another version of a society gone to primitive times & now rediscovering wonders of technology. But it's set in an extremely exotic locale.

Free SF Reader gives this link to an MP3 version of this story. I've not heard this audio version.

Story summary.

In this era of faster than light travel, humans have been colonizing space by a rather exotic means: send a "seedship" to an earth-like world, create new life forms adapted to live on that world but still essentially humans - basically reengineering the body but not the thought processes or thinking ability. Ensure these locally adapted "humans" will survive, & the ship goes off to repeat the process on next world.

One such ship ("la Ventura") has just landed, or rather crashed, on the world called Hydrot, in Tau Ceti system. It's a waterworld - "only one small, triangular continent, set amid endless ocean; and even the continent was mostly swamp." Crew know they are doomed; cannot get help - communications gear is gone.

Their "germ cell bank" is gone too, so "can't seed this place in the usual way". They won't last a month - the air is poisonous. They will "be able to populate this world with men, but ... won't live to see it." They must create local versions of humans that can survive, & then rediscover their humanity in due course. The world has a lot of local life - but none that is intelligent.

Panatropes (machines for this reenginnering of humans) "take human germ cells - in this case, our own, since our bank was wiped out in the crash - & modify them toward creatures who can live in any reasonable environment. The result will be man & intelligent. It usually shows the donor's personality pattern too, since the modifications are usually made mostly in the morphology, not so much in the mind, of the resulting individual.

... The adapted man is worse than a child in his new environment. He has no history, no techniques, no precedents, not even a language. Ordinarily the seeding teams more or less take him through elementary school before they leave the planet, but we won't survive long enough for that. We'll have to design our colonists with plenty of built in protections and locate them in the most favorable environment possible, so that at least some of them will survive the learning process.

... One of the new creatures can have my personality pattern, but it won't be able to remember being me...

... There may be just the faintest of residuums... we'll leave behind people who behave as we would, think and feel as we would, but who won't remember la Ventura, ... - or Earth."

They choose to create the local humans as microscopic shallow fresh-water-inhabiting life forms - an individual about 500 microns in size! Adapted for puddles & lakes of this swamp. They will be equipped with limbs to make & use tools etc. These descendants of humans will eventually have to come out of water again, the way our ancestors once did!

Crew of ship also leave corrosion resistant metal plates with text that tells the story of humans & how locals came to be. Hoping the descendants will some day figure it out & eventually claim their rightful place in the bigger star-faring community of humans.

That's may be first 10% of the story. Rest of it is the story of these microscopic water-borne humans. They have survived & thrived, have discovered tools & agriculture, medicine & pets, have subdued hostile natives, etc. They have decoded parts of ancient plates left by colonists, though some are lost; but these texts are treated with skepticism by practical people.

Lavon, hero of the story, will lead the discovery of the world above water - & dreams of eventually figuring out if the little lights in the night sky are indeed stars mentioned in the ancient plates.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".
2. Robert Silverberg (Ed)'s "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1964".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1952.
Rating: A
Download MP3 audio from Internet Archive. Disclaimer: I've'nt heard this one. [via Free SF Reader].
Related: Stories of James Blish; fiction from 1950s.

Arthur C. Clarke's "Guardian Angel": Prelude to "Childhood's End"

While I wasn't impressed with Childhood's End, I picked this up because an earlier shorter versions is sometimes better than the longer ones.

And that is the case here, except for last couple of paragraphs. This is nearly the same text as the first part of Childhood's End, but with far fewer words.

I still don't quite find it among the great first contact stories, though I have read worse. At best, it's a mundane story. Or may be I am biased against stories that depict humans as hapless primitives to be quickly colonized. I mean, may be we would be helpless against aliens, but a story should be suggesting a way around it!

Story summary.
On an unspecified day in near future, a "sudden shadow had fallen across a score of the world's greatest cities." Twenty huge alien ships, just floating there silently for 7 days! "And on the eighth day, Karellen, Supervisor for Earth, made himself known to the world; in perfect English." Colonization of earth is complete!

Five years later, about the only thing known about the aliens is that Karellen "was a professor of astropolitics on a world he calls Skyrondel", & that "there's something thousands of years ahead of him which he seems to fear". Humans don't even know how the aliens look like, & dub them Overlords.

Overlords had made Stormgren (aka Rikki), the UN Secretary General, in charge of earth; he was the sole individual Karellen directly communicated with. While old countries retained some independence, for all practical purposes, the idea of a nation was dead.

Freedom League is a political organization, primarily fighting to retain independence of European countries in the form of a proposed European Federation. Overlords are not interested. League is led by Alexander Wainwright, a moderate. League also has a militant faction, as we will learn through the story.

In the first meeting between Alexander & Stormgren, we hear arguments about why this colonization is good that I find totally insane. Being from a country that has seen colonization, I can see the ugliness behind the welfare arguments presented; your mileage might vary.

Both Alexander & Stormgren agree the colonization is a good thing, but Alexander has basically two misgivings: integration into a World State should be a choice of local bodies & happen more slowly, but much more importantly, aliens should reveal themselves. Not knowing anything about the Overlords bossing over you gives people creeps. And how can we trust someone means well when he is so secretive?

Next we meet the militants of the League. Stormgren wakes up one fine day, & finds that he has been kidnapped, & is being kept deep in the bowels of earth in some mine; militants apparently figured out a way pick him up under the nose of Karellen.

A few days later, some robots of Karellen rescue him; apparently he had an idea of hostage's location all along, but waited for militant leaders to arrive. Now Karellen knows their identity & can neutralize them.

During his captivity, Stormgren was presented with an idea to learn about aliens. He puts this into operation later. In collaboration with Pierre Duval, "chief of the Science Bureau", Stormgren's briefcase will be outfitted with small devices using which he will eventually manage a glimpse of Karellen's backside: "the long black tail disappearing behind" a swiftly turning door. "A very famous & unexpectedly beautiful tail... A barbed tail."

In the meantime, aliens agree to meet a demand of league, at least partially. "In fifty years - two generations from now - we shall come down from our ships and humanity will at last see us as we are."

Trivia.
This quote from introduction to this story in "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke" provides some information: "originally written in 1946, ... After several more rejections my agent, Scott Meredith, asked James Blish to rewrite the story, which he did, adding a new ending, after which the story was sold to Famous Fantastic Mysteries... Later, in 1952, 'Guardian Angel' was expanded to become Part 1, 'Earth and the Overlords', of Childhood's End."

Fact sheet.
Guardian Angel, short story, review
First published: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1950
Rating: B

This story appears in the following collections.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "The Sentinel"