Arbieroo reviewed Star Dwellers by James Blish
Review of 'Star Dwellers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This book shows James Blish on typical form, trying to discuss more ideas than there is adequate space for in a short novel. In this example he touches on some of his favourite themes - education vs. experience, biological influences on human thinking - whilst telling a story of "second contact". For when Jack Loftus is left to attempt to form a treaty between humanity and the Angels, beings of pure energy, there is already one of their race installed in a position of power on Earth and no other humans around to help him....
The very thing that makes Blish worth reading is that the majority of his stories are brimful of ideas worth thinking about. This is in stark contrast to many contemporary writers, in my experience; too many novels are published, two or three times longer than The Star Dwellers' 140 pages, lacking any worthwhile theme or …
This book shows James Blish on typical form, trying to discuss more ideas than there is adequate space for in a short novel. In this example he touches on some of his favourite themes - education vs. experience, biological influences on human thinking - whilst telling a story of "second contact". For when Jack Loftus is left to attempt to form a treaty between humanity and the Angels, beings of pure energy, there is already one of their race installed in a position of power on Earth and no other humans around to help him....
The very thing that makes Blish worth reading is that the majority of his stories are brimful of ideas worth thinking about. This is in stark contrast to many contemporary writers, in my experience; too many novels are published, two or three times longer than The Star Dwellers' 140 pages, lacking any worthwhile theme or idea, yet exuding pretensions to "literature".
Blish's usual weaknesses are also present; somewhat thin characters, extreme naivity of style, but the swift narrative pace tends to compensate - it is like reading a very short thriller with intellect substituted for violence.
I must comment on Blish's introduction to the novel, where he discusses the discovery of viruses and the consequent debate about the definition of life as his inspiration for creating a species made from pure energy. Blish trained as a zoo-ologist and much of his writing is informed by his background in biology. He offers a new definition of life - any system that "reverses entropy". Perhaps if he had asked some of his piers who trained as engineers or physicists he would not have made this glaring error - unless he truely believed that his fridge was alive.
Fridges input electricity (usually) and output heat. Meanwhile the entropy inside the fridge goes down. Cellular organisms input oxygen and output heat - meanwhile the entropy inside the cells remains approximately the same. Hence either the fridge is as alive as cellular organisms, or the definition is wrong.