James Nicoll Reviews

James Blish’s 1958 A Case of Conscience is a Hugo-winning science fiction novel. It is part of a thematic trilogy, After Such Knowledge, about which more later.

No sooner did Haertel give humans faster-than-light drives¹ than humans discovered that they share the universe with aliens as intelligent as humanity. Aliens such as the Lithians.

Father Ruiz-Sanchez is part of a four-man UN team assigned the task of assessing recently contacted Lithia. Is the planet and its highly intelligent natives an opportunity for Earth to exploit? Is it a deadly menace? Or perhaps someplace to ignore…

Jesuit Ruiz-Sanchez fears it is a deadly menace. He also fears his reasoning will not sway his teammates.

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James Blish’s 1967 Star Trek was the first of twelve volumes in the Star Trek Original TV Series Adaptations science-fiction TV-show novelizations. Later printings embraced the less misleading title Star Trek 1.

“Novelization” is a bit misleading.

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James Blish’s 1961 The Star Dwellers is the first volume in the Heart Stars Duology. The Star Dwellers is a young adult novel. 

Humanity has long pondered questions like:

• Are we alone in the galaxy? 
• Are amicable relations between aliens and humans possible?
• How does a novel this terrible not only get published but remain in print for twenty years (more than sixty in the UK)? 

The Star Dwellers answers two of those questions. 

Although he is only seventeen years old, Cadet Jack Loftus has benefitted from educational philosophies far superior to those of the 1960s, ninety years earlier. Good thing for humanity, as Jack will be playing a central role in its destiny.

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1970’s Cities in Flight collects revised editions of James Blish’s four Cities in Flight novels, They Shall Have Stars (1956), A Life for the Stars (1962), Earthman, Come Home (1955), and The Triumph of Time (1958), along with Richard D. Mullen’s essay, The Earthmanist Culture. The four novels document the Decline of the West, followed by the eventual rise and inevitable fall of its successor, the Earthmanists. 

It all begins on Jupiter in the far-off year 2013. 

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