Customer Reviews (3)

Blish at his best.
This is an expanded version of a short story that didn't tie into any of Blish's other fiction originally. As with the other short story that became an expanded work, Surface Tension, he kind of 'cannibalises' from his writings the way the French composer Berlioz used his earliest music as the basis for greater and more developed musical works.

Oh, and Blish was a music critic on the side, so he probably would've dug being compared to Berlioz.

Fascinating speculations
Readers mainly interested in `stories' are bound to be disappointed by this concise novel: the narrative, as James Blish himself states in the introduction, is minimal. The book's starting point seems simple enough: a machine (the Dirac) enabling instant communication throughout the whole `human empire' has been built late in the 21st century; those who initially thought that they were its sole inventors are soon concerned with a mysterious person who knows even more about it than they do. These basic ideas serve as the backdrop of a set of provocating speculations about man, time, knowledge, causality, free will, responsibility, history, science and technology, as the three main characters, prompted by the yet untapped potential of the Dirac, explore multiple possibilities. `The Quincunx of Time' reads like a philosophical dialogue since it's structured around a few, still scenes in which successive (and sometimes contradictory) views are suggested and evaluated through discussion. Each problem is pared down to specific parts, so that all of its angles - from philosophy to psychology, physics, etc. - are considered. Common science-fiction themes, such as the (possible) role of science and technology in the life of man and in the hands of the world leaders, are given original and nuanced interpretations which go a lot further than where extreme resolutions would have gone. Strongly recommended.

Classic SF with a great idea.
I read this book a long time ago and I liked it a lot. It is based on a great idea: scientists have discovered a faster-than-light means of transmitting data (actually it's *instantaneous*, regardless of distance),a kind of infinite distance radio system. However there is always a 'beep',a glitch at the beginning of every transmission. Engineers cannot remove itfrom the signal.

Then someday, someone has the idea of slowing down thisbeep, to find that it contains every transmission using this technologyfrom the beginning to the end of time !

Highly recommended. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not Free SF Reader
Tighter than Tokyo.

Or, this future what do you want to call it, teralopolis? Or something like that, anyway, has a very serious population problem. It takes a lot of hard work but the genius types running the place to try and keep a lid on things and actually keep stuff going. Any wild card elements thrown in will cause quite a few problems.

a torrent of ideas
In the year 2794 the Earth is ravaged by over-population and lack of food, evne though all available foodstuffs are in use. A new race, the Tritons, have come from the sea to mingle with humans. The only hope for ultimate survival lies in a long-awaited interstellar drive, but all efforts so far have failed. The novel is essentially one of brave people fighting against insurmountable odds.
For a book that contains only 286 pages, there are a lot of subjects that are related to the story: an asteroid collision, mental powers, genetics...
The only animals in the world are contained in a few Preserves and the rest of the land is occupied by gigantic cities and the World Forest. Obviously, a population of a thousand billions (you read that right!) needs land for food. There are also unusual customs in that society but overall, the characters are all true to themselves. Enjoy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Roger Bacon comes alive
Along with Helen Waddell's "Peter Abelard," this novel recreates the struggle for individual conscience against clerical conformity marvelously and movingly. It is not easy; more difficult than Waddell if as ambitious as the previous reviewer's nod to "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco in its intellectual range and intricate themes. As a "trained medievalist" myself I found Blish's research impressively integrated into his evocation of the times when Roger Bacon fought the political and ecclesiastical powers to advance experimental science, and the need for the forces of reason to assert themselves, however hesitantly due to the lack of scientific progress, during the thirteenth century.

As Blish tells in his preface, he captures the syntax and flavor of Middle English in passages where characters would have reverted to it rather than the French of court and diplomat, or the Latin of friars and scholars. The earlier chapters can take, therefore, a while to sink in as you adjust your mind to a different dialect, a different mode of expression. But this then allows you deeper immersion into the mentalities of the characters, often taken from real life chronicles, in an era where friars and inquisitors, kings and barons, heirs and bishops, all contended for the prizes that Church and State contended to control.

Blish expands the little we may know of Bacon's personal story and mixes in the ideas of his era. He captures what Paris and Oxford must have felt like as the universities grew larger and less tolerant. This makes a nice companion with Waddell for the scene since Abelard, and with Eco for the twist on the controversies that while shelved under philosophy or theology now back then drew partisans and protesters to take sides as vehemently as would Marxists or neo-cons in our own time.

Roger outwits his temporal masters, and he learns how to practice disguise. He inquires into alchemy and takes on Thomistic doctrines in the name of greater fidelity to innovation, even as he must rein in his own tendencies under an Order and Papacy who fear schism and heresy, as well it seems as any independence of thought. You find yourself eager to see who wins the Parisian disputation of Roger with Albertus Magnus, you watch as the chained mastiff at a decaying castle snarls as Roger talks with a forlorn noblewoman, you witness the interrogation of radicals by those in charge. You enter the prison cell where dissident friars seeking the apocalyptic reforms and Holy Poverty are jailed, and you are there, somehow, at this dogged English Franciscan's last moments.

For all its challenges, this book proved a valuable testimony to Blish's ability to make us care about the plight of an inquirer whose name now, if barely recalled, is shrouded in magic and hearsay. Blish separates what may well have happened, and he brings us as close to the what-if reality as we can come. Highly recommended for the undaunted reader willing to rise up to a level demanding attention and rewarding concentration.

a great book about the Middle Ages
People looking for a book that captures the atmosphere of the Middle Ages - both the intellectual life and the everyday life - would be much better advised to read this book than, for example, Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. I definitely agree with the other reviewer that this is a classic which should be much better known. Not only is the content interesting for the reasons mentioned above, but it is very well written - a fine piece of literature. My only complaint would be that it is too short.

Another novel which I think does a wonderful job of capturing the feel of life in the High Middle Ages is T.H. White's Once and Future King.

Superb -- both historical fiction and science fiction
This novel about Roger Bacon, the great English medieval monk and scientific thinker, is one of the finest historical novels ever written, and yet -- paradoxically -- it is also one of the finest science-fictionnovels ever written, by one of the greatest writers of science fiction whoever lived.

It is science fiction because it deals with a man who daresto envision a future changed by scientific discovery and technologicalinnovation, in a time and a place where such thoughts are all butunimaginable ... and yet, because Blish so carefully yet unobtrusivelygrounds his work in superb historical research and recreation, it worksperfectly.

It is a tragedy that this book is out of print.

[NOTE: DOCTOR MIRABILIS is the first volume of what Blish intended to be a trilogyunder the general title AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE..., from the ancient question,"After such knowledge, what forgiveness"?The middle novelactually is two novels -- BLACK EASTER and THE DAY AFTER JUDGMENT, whichare entertaining and disturbing but not quite up to the first and thirdnovels in the sequence.The last novel in the trilogy is A CASE OFCONSCIENCE, every bit as magnificent as DOCTOR MIRABILIS.Some brillaintpublisher should do an omnibus volume.] ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Adaptations of some of the best, some of the worst, some of the first, some of the last
The cultural phenomenon of Star Trek was initially slow to grow after the cancellation of the original series. The set of adaptations of the episodes of that series by James Blish was one of the initial and major events driving the growth of the phenomenon. In those books, Blish describes several of the episodes, making slight changes in the dialog and plot but keeping the basic story intact.
The episodes adapted in this book are:

*) Spock's Brain
*) The Enemy Within
*) Catspaw
*) Where No Man Has Gone Before
*) Wolf in the Fold
*) For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

As followers of the series will know, the episodes are not sequential. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is one of the very first episodes and "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is one of the last. "Spock's Brain" is generally conceded to have been one of the worst episodes in the series and "Wolf in the Fold" one of the best.
As is the case in the other adaptations, Blish makes some alterations in the plot in an attempt to make a better story. If you are a stickler for detail, then those changes may bother you but if you are interested in a good story, then those changes will be considered an improvement.

Adaptations of some of the best, some of the worst, some of the first, some of the last
The cultural phenomenon of Star Trek was initially slow to grow after the cancellation of the original series. The set of adaptations of the episodes of that series by James Blish was one of the initial and major events driving the growth of the phenomenon. In those books, Blish describes several of the episodes, making slight changes in the dialog and plot but keeping the basic story intact.
The episodes adapted in this book are:

*) Spock's Brain
*) The Enemy Within
*) Catspaw
*) Where No Man Has Gone Before
*) Wolf in the Fold
*) For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

As followers of the series will know, the episodes are not sequential. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is one of the very first episodes and "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is one of the last. "Spock's Brain" is generally conceded to have been one of the worst episodes in the series and "Wolf in the Fold" one of the best.
As is the case in the other adaptations, Blish makes some alterations in the plot in an attempt to make a better story. If you are a stickler for detail, then those changes may bother you but if you are interested in a good story, then those changes will be considered an improvement.

Blish adapts "Star Trek" scripts by Matheson and Bloch
"Star Trek 8" was originally published in 1972 as science fiction author James Blish continued to adapt the screenplays of various episodes from the original series.You have to remember that way back when the original "Star Trek" was in syndication in your market, if you were lucky, and videotapes were way in the future.So the only way to really enjoy the episodes was to collect the paperbacks with these "novelizations" ("shortstorizations"?) by Blish.The chief attraction is that Blish manages to remain faithful to the original scripts while also taking into account the changes made in the actual filming of the episodes, while using his own talents as an author to flesh out the details and make these stories stand on their own.In terms of adapating television shows, Blish set the standard.

Included in Volume 8 are the following episodes: "Spock's Brain," the rather odd little story of how a woman steals Spock's brain so it can be the new controller for her underground city's life support system.This was not one of the finest moments in the series, although Spock talking Bones through the last stages of the surgery to reconnect his brain has its moments, such as they are."The Enemy Within" is based on a Richard Matheson script and has Kirk split in two when he beams back to the "Enterprise," his aggressive and docile halves now running around in their own bodies.Blish does a nice job of reinforcing the episode's point about how Kirk needs both halves to be a great starship captain."Catspaw" is a "Star Trek" Halloween episode with a script by Robert "Psycho" Bloch that has Kirk and the crew running around a castle with strange creatures in what must have seemed a good idea at the time.

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the first episode of "Star Trek" aired, where Kirk's old friend Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner are injured on an away mission and end up with strange new powers, apparently a preview of human evolution.Blish works out the details of Mitchell's disturbing changes as he turns on Kirk and becomes something more, and less, than human.Robert Bloch's "Wolf in the Fold" brings one of his recurring subjects, Jack the Ripper, into the "Star Trek" universe as the "Enterprise" crew discovers a connection between various strings of serial killings stretching across the galaxy back through the centuries."For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is the one where McCoy learns he is suffering from a rare and untreatable condition and will have less than a year to live.When the "Enterprise" encounters a generation ship that is build inside an asteroid and the high priestess Natira, Bones decides this is where he wants to live out the rest of his life on what the inhabitants think is the world Yonada.But then McCoy learns the truth about what is happening and that changes everything.

I would not say there any of these half-dozen stories constitutes a classic "Star Trek" episode, although "Where No Man Has Gone Before" comes close, and a couple of these are less than stellar, but at least half of them are solid offerings. You also have half of the six being adapated from works by a pair of major writing talents in the field of horror.Even if a world where the original series is available on DVD and VHS, those of us who fondly remember these Blish collections are going to contend that once again it is time for these books to be reprinted.

Adaptations of 6 episodes, 2 from each season
First published in 1972, these short stories are Blish's adaptations of the screenplays of various episodes from the original series. The episodes aren't sorted into books according to either chronological order or identity of screenwriter.

"Spock's Brain" (episode 61, season 3, screenplay Gene L. Coon, who ought to be ashamed. Since he wrote this as "Lee Cronin", maybe he was; the only first-rate episode produced under that name was "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".) A woman from a culture experiencing a literal, centuries-long war between the sexes steals Spock's brain to implant as the new controller for the life-support machinery of her underground city. There's even a gadget acting in a D&D magic paradigm: it imparts sophisticated knowledge, which for plot/play balance purposes wears off quickly. There are so many things wrong with this episode that it oughtn't to be first in this collection's line-up; Blish just doesn't have good stuff to work with here.

"The Enemy Within" (episode 5, season 1, screenplay Richard Matheson). One of season 1's character-development episodes. Kirk beams up from an expedition to Alfa 177 feeling sick; tests run with an animal on the transporter result in two animals, one aggressive, one docile. Spock realizes that Kirk's 'gentle' and 'aggressive' aspects have been split into two separate physical bodies, which can't survive long separately - and the 'evil' Kirk resists the recombination. Interesting points made here: Kirk *needs* his mean side, which contains his decisive aspects that let him function as a commanding officer.

"Catspaw" (episode 30, season 2, screenplay by horror-writer Robert Bloch, originally aired around Halloween) On Pyris VII, the ENTERPRISE makes contact with Korob and Sylvia, a mysterious humanlike couple with many of the trappings of magic, including a castle and something like a magic wand - a transmitter for their peculiar power. Unfortunately, Sylvia in particular is inclined to treat humans as toys, and not only in her alternate shape as a black cat. [Frankly, I never thought highly of this episode, which colours my perception of Blish's adaptation; see "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" for a better sample of Bloch's efforts.]

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" (episode 2, season 1, screenplay Samuel A. Peeples) While investigating the 'energy barrier' at the edge of the galaxy, several ENTERPRISE crew members are seriously injured, all but two of whom die: Kirk's old friend Gary Mitchell, and psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. Mitchell begins intermittently displaying ESP, seems to be increasing in intelligence, and his eyes begin turning silver - but far more disturbing are his emotional changes. (For instance, he callously reveals to Kirk that while they were in the Academy, he subtly sabotaged Kirk by arranging for a girl to distract him, giving her pointers on how to do it effectively - a very cruel revelation, as Kirk, stunned, reveals that he nearly married her.) As Mitchell's abilities grow, he becomes more and more detached from humanity - all except Dehner, and in her case, Mitchell forces her to realize that she too is undergoing these changes, only at a slower rate. How can the rest of the ENTERPRISE crew protect themselves from people who can read their minds at will?

"Wolf in the Fold" (episode 36, season 2, screenplay Robert Bloch) McCoy and Kirk are out for a little R&R with Scotty on Argelius II - they've been worried about him lately, since a recent incident seemed to have made him unnaturally wary around women. He seems back to normal as the trio are watching a belly dancer perform - but when he's found standing over her murdered body after walking out with her, they must defend him from a murder charge that even he can't refute, having suffered a blackout. A local dignitary's wife volunteers to use her empathic powers to help determine the truth (very seance-type feel to that) and is herself murdered after crying out the names of many murderers from history. What is the connection between serial killers spread out over many light-years and centuries?

"For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (episode 65, season 3, screenplay Rik Vollaerts) One of several episodes in which one of the trio Spock/Kirk/McCoy is presumed dead or dying. Chapel, learning that McCoy is suffering from a rare condition leaving him only a year to live, reveals his secret to Kirk, as her duties as a nurse and an officer of the ENTERPRISE must come before anything else with her. Consequently, when the ENTERPRISE soon afterward encounters a generation ship built from a hollowed-out asteroid, McCoy is willing to spend his last days among the generation ship's inhabitants - who have long since forgotten that they're aboard a ship. The high priestess Natira, for her part, would rather have a year's happiness with a man she loves than no life with him at all, and arranges to have him adopted among her people. McCoy, however, is more knowledgeable than any native-born Yonadan, and gains information that must be communicated back to his old comrades, whatever the cost.

One of the better of a bad series.
The James Blish "Star Trek" series is a twelve book series of adaptations of the stories from the original "Star Trek" television series. Frankly, Blish didn't do a very good job of it, and most of the series is pretty weak, even for a longtime fan of the series. As far as the writing itself is concerned, this book is no exception; Blish embellishes very little on the basic plots he was given, which to an extent is a good thing; the stories are all pretty well what we saw onscreen. But he takes it to an extreme; there is little description beyond what is absolutely necessary, and little insight into character beyond what is demonstrated by action and dialogue. Further, the editing is as sloppy as one might expect from 1960s dime-store paperbacks; simple arithmetic, apparently, is beyond both Blish and his editors, as is evidenced by the following exchange, found in the first story, on page 21 (at least, in the edition that I have):

Spock: Captain, how much time since my brain was removed?

Kirk: Forty-eight hours.

Spock: Sir, Dr. McCoy must have told you that seventy-two hours is the maximum that my body can be...

Kirk: I know, Spock. That leaves us fourteen hours.

But beyond the sloppy editing and poor writing, this book actually DOES have something to recommend it; the first and last of the six episodes may be among the worst in the entire run of the original "Star Trek" series ("Spock's Brain", in which said brain is removed by an alien for the purpose of being used as an organic computer to run her world's life support systems, which gives us the immortally bad lines "Brain and brain! What is 'brain'?" and "Where is this place?" "This place is...here." and "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky", which just isn't interesting enough to summarize, respectively) but the four episodes sandwiched between those two turkeys are four of the very best episodes from the series: "The Enemy Within", in which Kirk is confronted with a double that embodies all the evil that every person keeps carefully hidden within themselves, "Catspaw", one of the better examples of the crossover between horror and Science fiction, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the "second pilot episode", in which Kirk's longtime friend Gary Mitchell has the extrasensory part of his brain stimulated, giving him godlike powers and driving him insane, and "Wolf In The Fold", another horror crossover in which the Enterprise crew meet the being behind the "Jack The Ripper" crimes.

I can't say that I recommend this book in general, nor even specifically to someone who liked those episodes. Better by far to get the videotapes of the episodes. But if you want to read any of those stories, this is where to find them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

nice example of 1960s YA sf
Short YA novel, a sequel to "the Star Dwellers". I found that I could read and enjoy this book without having read the first one, as there's enough backstory worked into it that new readers aren't left floundering. It's set in a relatively near future, not long after mankind has first developed an interstellar drive and made contact with other intelligent species. One of those species is an energy-based lifeform which has been around since the Big Bang, but which is nevertheless culturally compatible with humans. The Angels have sponsored humans for membership in another galactic culture, one that is short-lived by the standards of the Angels, but still remarkably long-lived and stable by human standards. So long-lived that even having the normal probationary membership period cut in half at the Angels' urging means waiting 50,000 years for full membership.

Naturally, some politicians are too impatient to wait. And so begins the mission to the Heart Stars, a journey to the heart of the empire to ask in person for immediate full membership. Along the way, the crew of the diplomatic mission ship see exactly how that peaceful, prosperous stability is achieved.

The book has a reasonable balance of engineering and social commentary. The science behind the faster-than-light drive is pseudo-science, but it's the sort that's extrapolated from real physics and internally consistent, not pure plot-devicium powered. It's a little too overtly preachy, but that's largely a result of it being a YA book written in the mid 60s. I'm not sure I'll keep it any longer, but it's a book I enjoyed enough that I've read it more than once. ... Read more