Star Dwellers
The Star Dwellers by James Blish is one of two linked juveniles he wrote. Neither is a really good book, but they have their interesting points.
Jack Loftus is a cadet for the Secretary of Space Daniel Hart. The current crisis involves the violent discovery of The Angels, beings living in the Coal Sack Nebula that are not life as we know it. They are apparently similar to ball lightning in appearance, but very old, and very powerful beings.
So Jack, trouble-shooter Dr. Langer and his cadet Sandbag Stevens go off to visit them to conduct treaty negotiations.
Blish was apparently working out some political agenda in these books for the society he has set up is rather different. It seems to me to be somewhat elitist in ways similar to the Lensmen novels of E. E. “Doc” Smith. You can’t vote unless you are employed, and many people are not allowed to have children since they are not intelligent enough.
I am aware of the problems that other authors have pointed out in this area. It does seem as if the smart and ‘successful’ people of the world do not have many children, while the poor do. See The Marching Morons by Kornbluth for example.
But this society seems vaguely fascist to me . I am very in favor of the rights of individuals and this society seems to have trampled on them a bit too much.
But the story is pretty good, there is a lot of action, and the Angel are an interesting alien life form. I wish he had spent more time developing and describing them, rather than the society on Earth.
All in all a reasonably good book.
The vanished jet
The Vanished Jet is the next juvenile by James Blish that I read all those years ago. It’s the story of Stan Dorman and the Sub-Orbital Transport.
Now even Blish says in the foreword it’s not a SF novel. And to some degree it isn’t. But, I think it mostly is. It’s about a rocket powered jet plane that goes into space as it travels to its destination. This was a technology of the future when the book was written, and I guess still is. Blish thought this story would take place in 1975. No such luck.
It’s mostly an adventure novel with lots of travel color and scenery . Stan travels to Lithuania to find his missing parents (on the vanished jet) and almost gets captured by the MVD.
He then joins the Hajj to Mecca and at least this time has some help from the US Government come along.
Yes it’s a bit improbable that a teenager would get used by the Air Force as a spy, but you are supposed to suspend your disbelief. And I think it works.
It’s very well written and I guess either Blish had traveled to these lands, or did a lot of research because the local color, etc comes off well to me.
Stan,of course, is the hero, and Louise a potential girlfriend is duly impressed.
A very good read that again shows how major writers like Blish did these books and the results were usually superior. This is how SF fans got started. Are the kids of today reading books like this? Is anyone writing them? Or is everyone playing video games online?
Well now you know why I am sometimes known as a curmudgeon.
Next post, more James Blish juvenile fiction.
