The second, A Life For The Stars, is a coming of age story set amid flying cities. They Shall Have Stars is dystopian science fiction of a type common in the era of McCarthyism. The long life provided by ascomycin is necessary because the journeys between stars are time-consuming. Since the device becomes more efficient when used to propel larger objects, entire cities leave an Earth in decline and rove the stars, looking for work among less-industrialized systems. The second is the development of an antigravity device known as the "spindizzy". (Pfizer also appears in disguise as one of the sponsors of the polar expedition in a subsequent book, Fallen Star). The first is the invention of the anti-aging drug ascomycin Blish's employer Pfizer makes a thinly disguised appearance as Pfitzner in a section showing the screening of biological samples for interesting activity. The framework for these was set in the first of four novels, They Shall Have Stars, which introduces two essential features of the series. Perhaps Blish's most famous works were the "Okies" stories, known collectively as Cities in Flight, published in the science-fiction digest magazine Astounding Science Fiction. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of Kenneth Grahame. In 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and lived in Oxford until his death at Henley-on-Thames, in 1975. (Since then hundreds more have been published.)īlish lived in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. In 1970 he wrote Spock Must Die!, the first original novel for adult readers based upon the series. Lawrence, completed the book, and later completed the adaptations in the volume Mudd's Angels. He died midway through writing Star Trek 12 his wife, J. He wrote 11 volumes adapting episodes of the series. (The story was originally published in 1941, but that version did not contain the term Blish apparently added it in a rewrite done for the anthology, which was first published in 1952.)īlish was married to the literary agent Virginia Kidd from 1947 to 1963.įrom 1962 to 1968, he worked for the Tobacco Institute.īetween 1967 and his death from lung cancer in 1975, Blish wrote authorized short story collections based upon the 1960s TV series Star Trek.
He is credited with coining the term gas giant, in the story "Solar Plexus" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Judith Merril. His first published story appeared in 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave up his job to become a professional writer. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. In the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Blish was a member of the Futurians.īlish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942-1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Blish was born at East Orange, New Jersey.
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