James Blish Biography

American science fictionwriter and critic, born in East Orange, New Jersey, educated at Rutgers and Columbia Universities; he lived in England in later years. Among his best-known works are A Case of Conscience (1958), a dramatized debate about the theological status of an alien race; Cities in Flight (1970), a collection of four earlier works in which Earth cities like New York literally take off and orbit the planet; The Seedling Stars (1957), a collection of short stories; Doctor Mirabilis (1964), a fictional study of Roger Bacon; and Black Easter; Or, Faust Aleph-Null (1968), a discussion on the death of God. Blish's criticism was collected in The Issue at Hand (1964), More Issues at Hand (1970), and The Tale that Wags the Dog (1988). See also space opera.