James Blish – författare

Science has come to humanity''s rescue with two crucial discoveries - antigravity devices that enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs that allow their inhabitants to live for thousands of years - lead to the establishment of a unique Galactic empire.Now, the earth''s cities are able to abandon the worn-out homeworld for a new life, a new future. But what will they find as the hurtle off into the depths of space . . . ?

Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez S.J., is a part of a four man scientific commission to the planet Lithia, there to study a harmonious society of aliens living on a planets which is a biologist''s paradise. He soon finds himself troubled: how can these perfect beings, living in an apparent Eden, have no conception of sin or God? If such a sinless Eden has been created apart from God, then who is responsible?Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1959.New introduction by Ken MacLeod.

Tipton Bond was a man who lived for challenges - and Earth had no more challenges for him. But on Xota: One of the giants'' faces bent over him, sardonically benign. "You are an Earthman, little human electron. You are a denizen of a planet which the Warriors of Day will reach and engulf, in a bare thousand years. Did you think to escape us by coming to Xota? You have brought yourself closer to the thing which you thought to escape. You will share in the general holocaust when the Wild Star arrives!" Giants they might be, Bond decided, but they had limitations. "What is this Wild Star?" he called. The slow thunder answered: "It is the most condensed of white dwarfs, almost pure neutronium throughout. And what makes a sun a runaway sun? The answer, little one, is very simple: The Warriors of Day!"

Danny Caiden is on the run - from the FBI, the SEC, the Justice Department and the Mob. Only recently, Danny was an average New York copywriter, until he suddenly found he had ESP. His knowledge of the future is astonishing, and the rest of Danny''s powers are just beginning. But someone has plans for Danny: a mysterious group of sinister men bent on world domination. They''ll stop at nothing until they capture Danny . . . or destroy him. For only Danny Caiden has the power to sabotage their diabolical tyranny. Through no fault of his own, he has found himself at the centre of a shattering psychic struggle for the future of humanity. In the final battle, Danny must master all of his powers, or sacrifice himself - and all mankind - to satanic slavery forever.

If you were looking for a fallen star, would you go happily off to the North Pole and dig holes into the seas-bed, grubbing for pieces of rock? You wouldn''t? Neither would Julian Cole. He was dragged there. Would you choose as companions a cashiered astronomer whose capacity was purely alcoholic, a pneumatic woman whose walk alone was enough to set a man to itching, plus a collection of failures and misfits scooped from the gutters of New York? Neither did Julian. They picked him.And when this bungling crew of heterogeneous hoboes stumbled on to a world-shattering discovery, would you believe them? Julian had to. He was there.

The glowing ovoid plummeted downward, the whole sky screaming like a metallic banshee as the air boiled away from its sides.A supersonic bang broke over the forest, but the thing was already gliding down to Earth. As the ovoid settled in among the trees, the entire forest burst into flames.A thin black line appeared and etched a perfect circle on the side of the metal egg, then thickened into a door. The air was rent by a searing hiss. Slowly, the strange being - soon to be known to all mankind as VOR - began to emerge . . .

The tetraploids, giant men and women created by genetic experiment, only wanted to live their lives in peace, but they had to live in the world of the jealous ''normals'' who gathered in screaming mobs with murder in their hearts.Sena, the heroine of this remarkable science fiction novel, is a tetraploid giantess whose youth would last more than a century, who looked with wonder at the toy bridges and houses of normal men and women who regarded her with fear and revulsion. Beautiful, defenceless Sena was the first of a new race, but would she be allowed to live . . . ?

The continent lay before them, vast areas of it unexplored, its forests, plains, jungle and mountains teeming with forms of life unknown to modern man. Here the witch-doctors reigned supreme, using their inexplicable and remarkable powers on men and beasts. The purpose of the safari was mysterious, its members an oddly assorted group of people unlikely to have any sane objective in common . . .

There are too many men in a world governed by women. They''re bored and disillusioned and often resort to ''suicide missions'' - jobs in experimental space research. Jorn applies for such a job, is selected and trained as a navigator for the huge ship Javelin, the first to implement the recently discovered faster-than-light Evrak Effect.Before the Effect is tested, however, it is discovered that life will be extinct within nine years; the sun is burning up, preparing to explode. The Evrak Effect will save a small percentage of mankind, take civilisation to a yet unknown planet. Production on new ships is given priority, the ruthless selection of passengers begins. Twenty-five billion people will be left behind.Led by Javelin, thirty ships wander in space through many light years of promises, lost hope and death for the original crew and passengers. But life does survive, children grow and learn, to inherit the beginning of another world, another promise.James Blish has written a compelling novel of gigantic moral problems and of people who learn to cope with their own limitations in order to deal with them.

In the year 25,000 ADWhen John Martels returned to consciousness he found himself the Delphic Oracle of a world far different from the Twentieth Century. Humanity has risen and fallen three times and was back once again in a semi-primative state.He shared his oracular powers with a mind and a device left over from the last Rebirth, but the real problem was not rebuilding civilization, it was that another genus of creatures had arisen to claim inheritance of the world - the evolved. Strangely intelligent birds, whose priority was the elimination of the world''s former masters.The problem of man versus bird, complicated by the question of John''s personal survival, presents a canvas worthy of the diverse talents of the author of A Case of Conscience and Cities in Flight.

Travel at light speeds is common, and Earth - the first in the universe to discover it - now reigns over many worlds. But in order to rule effectively, Captain Robin Weinbaum, head of Security, needs an extremely advanced communications system. He gets it with the Dirac transmitter, the first machine capable of sending instantaneous messages anywhere in the universe. The only problem is that someone called J. Shelby Stevens has a machine that can do the impossible - tap the transmissions before they are even made! It is Weinbaum''s job to find Stevens. And unless he does, time will be abolished and the universe closed to Earth forever . . .

You didn''t make an Adapted Man with just a wave of the wand. It involved an elaborate constellation of techniques, known collectively as pantropy, that changed the human pattern in a man''s shape and chemistry before he was born. But the pantropists didn''t stop with biology. Education, thoughts, ancestors and the world itself were changed, because the Adapted Men were produced to live and thrive in the alien environments found only in space. They were crucial to a daring plan to colonize the universe.And millennia later, it is only fitting that they should return to a long forgotten planetary system to colonise a hostile world called . . . Earth.

Past worlds almost too strange to describe, three men hurtle into the dark uncharted mystery of space. Their task: to make contact with the Hegemony of Malis, the unknown force that has been watching the Solar System since before the beginning of recorded history. On their success or failure depends the future of the entire Earth. Join them as they accelerate on Haertel drive towards the stunning core of the Hegemony itself in James Blish''s masterpiece of the time to come, Mission to the Heart Stars.

Dolph Haertel had made history. An incredible anti-gravity discovery, made entirely through his own efforts, had put him miles ahead of the professionals in the space race - and now he was setting off to prove his theories by travelling alone to Mars! The journey went perfectly - until Dolph actually landed on the Red Planet. There, he discovered a fault in his ship that couldn''t be repaired without a vital - and missing - spare part. And Dolph Haertel, first Martian explorer, was marooned. His situation was critical. And his only hope lay with the one person to whom he had confided his secret of space travel. But would that person be able to find him in time . . . ?

For several years, hiding under a cloak of anonymity, the most penetrating critic of the field of magazine science fiction was known as ''William Atheling, Jr''. it soon became a challenge to guess his real identity. And that was no easy game, for Atheling''s dissection did not spare even his alter ego, the noted science fiction writer James Blish.Here, then, is a collection of William Atheling''s critiques of SF magazines covering the period 1952 - 1963. no subject is too sacred or taboo for Atheling''s shredding typewriter: from sex to God, from religion to satirical poetry. No author, however fragile, is spared the bloody mark of his relentless ;ash; from Anderson to Heinlein to Wyndham, and all stops in between.A vastly entertaining collection in its own right, The Issue at Hand is also a first-class primer for new writer and seasoned professional alike.

James Blish, in his incarnation as ''William Atheling, Jr'' has written more than his share of the most incisive criticism of contemporary science fiction. Following on form The Issue at Hand, this new volume of Atheling''s critical writings skewers literary malefactors of many kinds, including some well-known authors whose great popularity is all the more puzzling because there seems to be so little reason for it. Atheling does not stint on praise where it is due, but in other cases, the sins and errors of the filed are dispatched with his trademark rapier-like incisiveness.

When James Blish died in 1975 he was one of the top science fiction writers. in addition, he was perhaps the leading technical critic in the science fiction field. Following on from the two earlier collections of his critical writing, under the anonymous pseudonym of ''William Atheling, Jr'', The Tale that Wags the God is a final selection of the insightful and incisive analyses of one of the field''s great critics.