James Blish
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference
(written from a Production point of view)
James Benjamin Blish (23 May 1921 – 30 July 1975; age 54) was an American author, born in East Orange, New Jersey, who wrote many novelizations of TOS episodes. He was the first to do so under Bantam Books. He adapted every TOS episode into a short story with the exceptions of "Mudd's Women", "I, Mudd" (which he intended to write as novel-length stories, later finished by his wife as Mudd's Angels and printed in 1978), "Shore Leave", and "And the Children Shall Lead" (he died before he finished these stories). These novelization were printed in twelve popular mass-market paperbacks, titled Star Trek 1, Star Trek 2, etc. all the way up to Star Trek 12. He also wrote the first original Bantam novel Spock Must Die!.
Blish was a distinguished author of science fiction apart from his work with Star Trek. His work included a set of different future histories that intertwined with each other on different levels – The Cities in Flight, and a collective series known as The Haertel Scholium. Blish pioneered a number of different concepts now found throughout science fiction:
- The Spindizzy, which is a more comprehensive interstellar drive & spatial shield able to hurl entire cities into superluminal flight.
- The concept of the Anti-Agathic, drugs that prevent death from the effects of cellular aging and cell death.
- Pantropy, or Tecto-genetic engineering of humans to permit colonization of planetary environments not normally considered remotely habitable to normal humanity.
- The Dirac Transmitter, permitting instantaneous transmissions across the galaxy, and whose collective transmissions also transcend time.
Blish was married to fellow author J.A. Lawrence, who finished up the Star Trek 12 collection after Blish's death in 1975. Blish died in Henley-on-Thames, UK.
