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interested expression, like an open-minded watchmaker inspecting a Rube Goldberg, and then carefully rearranging it so that, by hook or crook, it actually makes sense. For example, we have here (in "Beanstalk") Villain kidnaping Heroine, and Hero chasing off through black forest to the lonely mountain cabin where she is pent, guided by Faithful Dog. |
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This is pure nonsense from beginning to end, as nobody realizes better than Blish; so he has given the villain an odd but perfectly sensible reason (which, pardon me, I am not going to reveal) for snatching the girl, and he has made the dog a mutated specimen with more intelligence than a chimpanzee. |
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I haven't finished yet. I'll say once more, just to make it perfectly clear, that all these unlikely patchwork pieces have been totally absorbed; not a scrap is still Western, or murder, or love story; it's all science fiction. |
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As if this were not unlikely enough, Blish has proceeded to make the science fiction itself a synthesis of nearly every major period in the history of the literature, from gadgeteering to sociological, and to match the masters of each on their own grounds; and again there are no seams; the whole is one. (. . .) |
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Plateaus of learning, commonly noticed in the early training of children, seem to occur in later ages and other fields as well; I was in one myself, as a writer, for ten years, and I like to suppose that I am in another now. If Jim Blish has just jumped to a new plateau, meaning that this story is not a brilliant exception but the starting-point for another slow, steady advance, I suggest that the incumbent Mr. Science Fiction get ready to move over. |
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Damon Knight, "The Jagged Edge: James Blish," In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction (1956; rev. ed. Chicago: Advent, 1967), pp. 151-52 |
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This complex, fascinating, uneven, difficult book (A Case of Conscience) is probably the most adult novel yet to appear in this era of "adult" science fiction. It is adult in the sense that Blish has made no concessions to his readers' intelligence, or lack thereof, in writing the book; only a reader who can see the power and excitement inherent in an abstract theological argument is apt to enjoy this book. Others are likely to regard it as a thundering bore. The kind of reader who finds the writings of, say, Aquinas or Kierkegaard stimulating and challenging will find much to admire and relish in A Case of Conscience-but such |
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