A Clash of Symbols: The Triumph of James Blish

63 Pages·1979·4.652 MB·English

by  Brian M Stableford

THE MILFORD SERIES
Popular Writers of Today
Volume Twenty-Four
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°!JAMES BLISH
The Triumph
by
Brian M. Stableford
R. REGINALD
$~" ,£-,:Ui6
THE
SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA
MCMLXXIX
For Judy Blish
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:
Stableford, Brian M.
A clash of symbols.
The Milford Series: Popular writers of today ; v. 24 (lSSN 0163-
2469)
Bibliography: p.
1. Blish, James-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Science fiction,
American-History and criticism. 1. Title.
PS3503.L64Z87 813'.5'4 79-13067
ISBN 0-89370-005-3 (Limited edition)
ISBN 0-89370-134-3 (Cloth edition; $8.95)
ISBN 0-89370-234-X (Paper edition; $2.95) OCLC #4933454
Copyright © 1979 by Brian M. Stableford.
A shorter and substantially different version of this book appeared
as The Science Fiction of James Blish in Foundation 13 (May. 1978),
Copyright © 1978 by The Science Fiction Foundation on behalf of the
original contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without the expressed \vritten consent of the
publisher. Published by arrangement with the author. Printed in the
United States of America by Griffin Printing & Lithograph Co., Glen
dale, CA.
Produced, designed, and published by R. Reginald. The Borgo Press.
P.O. Box 2845, San Bernardino. CA 92406. USA. Composition by Mary
A. Burgess. Cover design by Judy Cloyd Graphic Design. Cloth binding
by California Zip Bindery. San Bernardino. CA. A special hardcover
edition of this book. signed by the author and limited to fifty copies for
public sale, is available from Barry R. Levin. Science Fiction & Fantasy
Literature, 2253 Westwood Boulevard, Los Angeles. CA 90064.
Limited Edition--October, 1979
Trade Edition October, 1979
INTRODUCTION
"In my opinion-in my profoundly religious opinion, I might add
it is the duty of the conscientious science fiction writer not to falsify
what he believes to be known fact. It is an even more important function
for him to suggest new paradigms, by suggesting to the reader, over and
over again, that X, Y and Z are not impossible."
James Blish, "The Science in Science fiction"
When John W. Campbell, Jr. took over Astounding Stories in the late
Thirties he brought to the pulp fiction category labelled "science
fiction" a new manifesto-a new declaration of the nature and aims of
the species. Hugo Gernsback, who had taken the opportunity to identify
science fiction as a separate genre while the pulps were undergoing a
phase of rapid diversification, had issued a bold prospectus in which SF
was represented partly as a medium of prophecy, partly as a medium of
education. It was to look forward-in both senses of the phrase-to
the wonderful future made possible by technology, advertising its
wonders and inspiring the imagination of the young, whose destiny it
was to live in and participate in the Age of Power-Freedom. By the time
Campbell took over Astounding, however, this prospectus no longer
seemed convincing-Astounding itself had been founded not to per
petuate this mythology but simply to take advantage of a new milieu
for pulp melodrama. Campbell was determined that science fiction
could and should be more than costume melodrama set in gaudy futur
istic scenarios, and therefore he revised Gernsback's manifesto and
asked that science fiction should become more akin to science itself:
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that the inventions of his writers should assume the status of hypotheses
in literary thought-experiments. This idea of the essential mission of
science fiction infected a whole generation of writers, and for twenty
five years "taking SF seriously" meant adopting Campbell's view of its
nature and purpose. So far as those writers who are happy and proud to
accept the label are concerned, it still does, though there are now a
considerable number of writers who take their work seriously, and who
write books whose content invites description as science fiction, but
whose seriousness belongs to another mode of thought.
Of all the writers influenced by Campbell, none took his prospectus
more seriously than James Blish. When a number of writers, including
Kurt Vonnegut, expressed resentment at the fact that their work was
thought of as "science fiction," and did everything in their power to
avoid the label, Blish campaigned for all "loyal" science fiction writers
to insist that their works should be clearly labelled, and for they them
selves to wear the title of "SF writer" with pride. He was always an
earnest advocate of holding to the Campbellian rules of the game. which
specified that known scientific facts should never be violated by science
fiction, which must work only within the realms of the possible. He also
wanted science fiction to be good-to be literate as well as logically
competent. As a critic he was merciless when attacking on either front.
Blish was born in 1921. and began writing in 1940. He was just a frac
tion too young to become part of the stable of writers which Campbell
recruited between 1938 and 1940 (which included such new "discover
ies" as Robert A. Heinlein, Lester del Rey, Isaac Asimov. L. Sprague
de Camp, A. E. van Vogt, and Eric Frank Russell, and revitalized old
hands Clifford D. Simak, Jack Williamson. and Edward E. Smith).
Blish's earliest short stories were rather too naive to sell to Campbell.
and appeared in such magazines as Super Science Stories. Cosmic
Stories. and Future. To all of these magazines he had a ready-made
entree by virtue of his association with the fan group called . 'The
Futurians," which supplied their editors and most of their would-be
contributors. The group included Frederik PohI. Donald Wollheim,
Robert Lowndes, Damon Knight, and Cyril Kornbluth. All were pass
ionately and intimately involved with science fiction production in all
its aspects-they began as dilettantes (Wollheim edited Cosmic Stories
and its companion with no editorial salary and no editorial budget for
the joy of being a part of the SF establishment), but they learned the
secrets of pulp professionalism very quickly. All their careers, however,
were interrupted by the advent of the war in 1941. Blish was drafted,
and by virtue of the fact that he was a college graduate in biochemistry,
he became an army medical technician. Upon release he resumed his
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education, undertaking a post-graduate course in zoology, but became
disenchanted with the prospect of a career in science, and returned his
attention to the world of pulp fiction.
The war and its corollary paper shortage had brought about a drastic
cut-back in pulp magazine production. The major science fiction maga
zines had survived, though only Astounding had managed to hold a
monthly schedule, but the bottom end of the market-where the Futu
rians had thrived-had simply shrivelled and died. The stage was set,
however, for a new period of expansion. Most of the Futurians em
barked upon new careers as writers and editors, several of them be
ginning by taking jobs in the Scott Meredith literary agency, appraising
the sales potential of stories for a small fee, and handing out instructions
on how to write pulp fiction according to a strict formula. Blish was one
of these-and Damon Knight has credited him with the invention of
part of the Meredith plot formula (D. Knight, "Knight Piece", Hell's
Cartographer's, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1975, p. 122).
Because of the hiatus introduced into the evolution of pulp science
fiction by the war, a whole new generation of writers appeared to spring
forth from nowhere in the immediate post-war period. Some-including
the Futurians and Alfred Bester-had appeared in the pre-war pulps
without making any real impression, while others came fresh to the
scene: Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, and-slightly
later-Philip Jose Farmer and Robert Sheckley. Along with the new
generation of writers came a new generation of magazines. The Maga
zine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was founded in 1949, Galaxy in
1950, both as digest magazines rather than as pulps. Astounding
had been a digest for some years, and it was in this format that the
future 'of the magazines was to lie. Many pulps, though, maintained
production until 1955.
Throughout the early Forties Campbell had been the only construc
tive force guiding and shaping science fiction through the medium of a
magazine. The contemporary pulps were aimed at a teenage audience,
and dealt almost exclusively in ritualistic adventure stories using the
apparatus of SF in much the same way that companion magazines
marketed by the same chains used the apparatus of westerns and war
stories. From 1949, however, the situation was very different. Anthony
Boucher and J. Francis McComas, editors of The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction, asked for short stories which had more in common
stylistically with the fiction that was being published in the "slick"
magazines than the pulps. Horace L. Gold, the first editor of Galaxy,
was less idiosyncratic than Campbell, and was possessed of a much
more subtle sense of humor. The pulps Startling Stories and Thrilling
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Wonder Ston'es, first under Sam Merwin and later under Sam Mines,
also became much more interested in the quality of the material which
they presented, and in promoting new ideas,
The result of this change in the market situation was that virtually all
of the new writers published important early work (including, in almost
every case, their first novels) outside Astounding. Different kinds of
demands were made upon them, and they made different demands upon
themselves. Blish and Damon Knight, in columns run by fanzines and
some of the lesser professional magazines, asked their colleagues to
aspire to a higher level of literary craftsmanship, and did their best to
set an example. It was a period when the limits of the Campbellian pros
pectus were tested and expanded. Science fiction diversified, and
writers experimented to see just how much could be done with the
framework they had inherited from the pre-war generation. This widen
ing of the interests of SF writers coincided with something of a loss of
faith in the kind of answers to hypothetical problems which Campbell
and his stable had favored, and to some extent Astounding was handi
capped by its own tradition. The technological optimism and glib
inventiveness that had seemed perfectly appropriate to the world of
1940 no longer seemed quite so appropriate to a post-Hiroshima world.
Campbell and the writers he sponsored found themselves having to dig
in so that they could defend technology against suspicion and hostility,
but the new writers producing material for new magazines found
themselves free to sidestep the fight in favor of fresher fields. and even
to indulge themselves in a. little suspicion and hostility on their own
account. They felt more at liberty to weigh up the pros and cons of tech
nological innovations and their social and psychological implications.
It is against this background that the career of James Blish. and his
achievement in making a significant contribution to the evolution of
science fiction, must be set. The market situation allowed him the
opportunity to experiment with ideas and methods, and to use science
fiction in new ways. He brought to the writing of science fiction an atti
tude which coupled imaginative boldness with a rigorous discipline of
thought and method. His best work stretched Campbell's manifesto to
its limit without ever violating its spirit: his hypotheses were frequently
highly unusual, but his handling of them was always careful and tho
roughly rational. His intolerance of sloppy thinking and sloppy writing
made writing. for him, a difficult business. but when things worked out
(there are many stories in which they didn't) the effort invested was
repaid in the quality of the products.
In the late Forties Blish wrote standardized fiction for a wide range of
pulp outlets while working for Scott Meredith and-after 1949-editing
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trade journals. This was, in a sense, his "apprenticeship" in the busi
ness of professional writing. Relatively little of his science fiction
appeared before 1949, most of it written in collaboration. During this
period he learned professional cynicism, but he never let it claim him.
Throughout his career he remained willing to turn out work that was
quite trivial while simultaneously investing considerable effort in pieces
which probably gained him (in the short term, at least) no more money
and little more acclaim. In the detailed account of Blish's work that
follows I have made no attempt to be exhaustive, ignoring much of the
work that seems to me to be trivial and some that seems to me to have
failed in its aims in order to concentrate on the stories which are more
interesting. Because Blish repeatedly returned to his earlier work in
order to extend and elaborate the ideas therein it would be inappropriate
to fit discussion of his career into a rigid chronological framework, and
I have therefore divided his work up into several categories, some of
which are his and some of which are imposed artificially from without.
It is my earnest hope that this adds up to a competent overview of
Blish's work, and that the omissions will not prevent my doing justice
to the measure of his contribution to science fiction.
1. FOUNDATION STONES
During the "hobbyist" phase of his career, when he wrote stories for
the minor pulps in 1941-42, Blish published only one story of any real
interest. This was "Sunken Universe" (Super Science Stories, May
1942, under the pseudonym Arthur Merlyn), about the adventures of
microscopic aquatic humanoids fighting for survival. This was to be the
seed of "Surface Tension", and hence of The Seedling Stars, and will be
discussed in the context of that book. There was, however, another
interesting story written at this time that did not see publication until
1950-the novelette "There Shall Be No Darkness" (Thrilling Wonder
Stories, April (1950). Blish-habitually critical of those of his works
which did not measure up to his standards of rigorous scientific fidelity
or quality of prose-once referred to the story as "a schoolboy pastiche
of Dracula" ("The Critical Literature", SF Horizons 2 [Winter 1965]
p. 43), but it has certain features which foreshadow the strategies which
were to become typical of his modus operandi.
The mechanics of the plot of "There Shall Be No Darkness" are crude
in several respects. The basic situation is an innocent caricature of the
traditional English country-house party which forms the conventional
matrix for so many light comedies, romances, and detective novels. In
the opening scene the intoxicated and rather anti-social hero, Paul
7
Foote, is seized by a conviction that the suave foreigner playing the
piano is a werewolf. This remarkable intuition is quickly confirmed by
another member of the party, who happens to be an expert on lycan
thropy. The whole company, despite their natural incredulity, are soon
convinced in their turn. The werewolf's transformation is precipitated
by a sprig of wolfsbane carelessly placed on the piano, and the host's
wife, having been bitten, becomes a werewolf herself.
In a straightforward horror story these revelations could only be the
prelude to a long crescendo of predatory suspense, ultimately reaching
a climax of terror. All the efforts of the author would be devoted to
maintaining the affective qualities of the narrative. But Blish treats the
story as science fiction, and this involves much more than simply import
ing a pseudoscientific rationale for the metamorphic power of the were
wolf. Once transformed into a hypothesis, the presumed existence of
werewolves quickly generates corollaries: whole classes of "super
natural beings" can be accounted for in accordance with the same
logic-and, inevitably, another member of the house-party turns out
to be a witch. Science fiction, however, is not merely a matter of imagin
ative apparatus: it also embodies an attitude of mind, a way of looking
at the world and tackling problems. Blish's characters. faced with the
reality of the werewolf, set out to fight it logically and rationally. plan
ning their strategy step by step. When supernatural fiction is trans
formed into science fiction, madness must be replaced by method.
Fear remains, but what acts against it and overcomes it is not courage or
virtue but reason and calculation.
The actual process by which the apparatus of classical werewolf
mythology is "rationalized" is quite straightforward. An imaginary
hormone secreted by the hyperpineal gland is conveniently imbued with
the appropriate series of properties: it allows liquid protoplasm to re
construct its containing structures, but can be broken down by contact
with silver (which thus becomes poisonous to all hyperpineal types,
who are invulnerable to ordinary injury by virtue of their powers of
tissue-reorganization). The hormone is also responsible for an allergic
reaction to wolfsbane. All this is basically a "jargon of apology," but it
is unusually careful. at least in the context of its time. Jack William
son's Darker Thall You Think. published shortly after Blish wrote his
story, attempts a similar rationalization. but is content to do so with
vague references to a mysterious hereditary process which pays no heed
to the limitations of Mendelian genetics or the logic of natural selection.
The slightness of this "explanation" does not detract from the power of
Williamson's novel as a literary work. but it does disqualify it as science
fiction by the criteria of the Campbellian prospectus (it appeared, of
8
course, in Campbell's fantasy magazine Unknown). There is a great
deal of labelled science fiction (including much that was promoted by
Campbell) which has far more in common with Darker Than You Think
than with "There Shall Be No Darkness," with the establishment of
the basic hypothesis being little more than a ritual process involving the
deployment of conventional key phrases ("mutation," "space warp,"
"hyperspace," etc.) rather than the extension of connecting threads to
real scientific knowledge and theory. The priority in such fiction is on
reasoning forward from the idea to its possible consequences. In Blish's
fiction a much heavier emphasis is placed on reasoning backward in
search of firmer foundations for ideas, and it is in the corollaries gener
ated by the formation of elaborate supportive structures that he charac
teristically finds the impetus to go forward again. It is to a very large
extent this essential thoughtfulness, and the more analytical approach
to science fiction that it generates, which gives the work of James Blish
its unique qualities. All of his major endeavors follow the pattern of first
going back in search of a historical and rational background to set his
ideas in perspective, then going on ahead to take them to their logical
conclusion.
Other hallmarks of Blish's work can be seen in embryonic form in
''There Shall Be No Darkness." One is the ability of the characters to
adapt to the situation in which they unexpectedly find themselves.
There is an orderliness in their reactions which reveals them to be
sensible, open-minded, and capable people. Sometimes this revelation
is unconvincing, in that we know that most people are not like that.
"There Shall Be No Darkness" is a cardinal example, for of all the
places one would expect to find such people an English country house
party is very nearly the last. The characters in the story are not so
committed to their unbelief that they cannot relinquish it in the face of
evidence, and even among scientists this is rare-the great majority of
people are quite prepared to reinterpret the evidence of their senses
wholesale in order to protect their established beliefs. Throughout
Blish's work this pattern recurs-characters are presented with situa
tions which are extremely strange, sometimes apocalyptic, and fre
quently odd enough to offend the sensibilities of editors who would not
buy the stories, and yet they are sufficiently adaptable to overcome their
surprise and bring rationality to bear on their predicaments. Readers
have occasionally taken this to be evidence of a lack of emotion of the
part of the characters concerned-they often seem callous and calcula
ting despite the author's careful reference to their emotional states.
This commitment to the scientific method, apparently strong enough to
make it difficult for Blish to model characters not similarly possessed of
9
it, is one of the principal shaping forces in the author's literary philo
sophy. He was conscious of this commitment-and, by a curious stroke
of fate, able to doubt its wisdom-and the intense contemplation of the
commitment became the focal point of his greatest work, Doctor M iTa~
bilis.
Blish's concentration on the method of science rather than its appara~
tus results in the fact that in many of his stories resolution is sought by
analysis and redeployment of the material of the hypotheses rather than
by further innovation. A great deal of science fiction takes advantage of
the genre's tremendous potential for deus ex machina resolutions. The
world is menaced by aliens or mad scientists whose threat is embodied
in their miraculous gizmos. The hero is harried and persecuted for the
requisite number of chapters, then disappearc; into his laboratory to
emerge with an equally miraculous anti-gizmo which saves the status
quo. One imaginary invention is cancelled by another, conveniently and
economically. It is possible to read science fiction for many years without
noticing this pattern or realizing how easy it is to manipulate. Over the
last ten or twenty years such formularistic solutions have declined
largely because conscientious writers have rejected them as unsatis
factory, but they were a godsend to pulp hacks. Blish became conscious
of the essential falsity of the device early in his career, and none of his
good work makes use of it. In "There Shall Be No Darkness," as in all
his significant stories, the problem is solved within its initial para~
meters. This not only makes for a more satisfactory story but allows the
story, in its climax, to take on extra depth when the characters, trapped
by their own predicament, become aware of the fact that the werewolf
is likewise trapped-a prisoner of his own biology. The note of sym
pathy thus intruded into the plot is, of course, by no means unusual
(it is this element which sets the Lon Chaney film The Wolf Man head
and shoulders above most other horror films), but the important thing is
that it rings true as a genuine corollary of the initial hypothesis.
* * * * *
The first notable story which Blish produced following his return to
SF writing in the late Forties was · 'Let the Finder Beware" (Thrilling
Wonder Stories, December 1949), which was later to be expanded into
the novel Jack of Eagles (1952). The same method is again apparent:
Danny Caiden gradually assembles evidence of the fact that he is poss
essed of an unusual precognitive talent, and once convinced he sets
about trying to understand and come to terms with it. His procedure is
rational and controlled: he borrows books from the library, consults a
medium (who turns out to be a charlatan), visits the Fortean Society
and the parapsychological research unit at the local university, and
10