Book Review – The Star Dwellers By James Blish

From what I’ve been told, James Blish is a pulp author who is known for including religion in his sci-fi. This is an area of sci-fi that I feel is very lacking. Not that I don’t understand it, but the fact that it’s rarely dealt with in these different worlds is a loss to storytelling.

I rarely do synopsis for books in reviews but these older pulp novels tend not to have the best descriptions. So very quickly, an alien race is discovered by humanity for the first time. These aliens are referred to as “Angels” and are one of the first being created after the Big Bang and they live forever. They exist as glowing cubes that have the capacity of blowing up Earth ships. They’ve done so in the past due to not knowing how to interact with humanity until one of them nicknamed “Lucifer” (a play on name for “Fallen one”) accidentally enters the engine area of one of the ships and they find out it can harness energy that can greatly enhance mankind’s ability to travel the cosmos. It is now the job of three men assigned by the UN to make a treaty with the aliens. The three men are a worldwide respected ambassador, a hero soldier, and a young man from an elite cadet organization who’s job it is to stay in the ship while the other two take an unobtrusive ship to make contact with the Angel leaders. The main character of the story, Jack Loftus, is the cadet which is already a great start.

Blish wrote the novelizations of some of the stories from the original Star Trek and his writing reads like sci-fi in the Star Trek universe. A major plus. While there is focus on the two other members of the crew and Jack isn’t just “some cadet” but an elite cadet, he’s still the odd man out which makes for a great hero main character. There isn’t really that much focus on other characters and the two other crew members get out of the picture pretty quickly.

The Genesis Of The Final Frontier

The story starts of well and slow enough to build up. There’s an exposition dump at the start that’s done within the confines of the logic of the story. There is no “as you all know” – proceed to explain what everyone knows for 30 pages. There is some good technology talk concerning the aliens and humanity’s technology. It’s advanced for star travel but not really that broad. Again for 1961, there’s a decent amount of science that isn’t handwaved away of “tachyon fields mumbo-jumbo”. The way ships travel at almost the speed of light in a bubble-type field takes into account that the mass of the ship and occupants increase. Pretty neat science talk there.

The Future Of The Past

The story does kind of stall for a bit before the main storyline but there is some interesting coverage of what the future was to 1961. There is the talk of two sexes which for modern-day “Star Trek” stories is heretical. They talk about how music corrupted the youth so the cadet organization instilled celibacy during the time in service so the focus on the job would be prioritized. Education was given to them to value high-minded concepts and instill duty to carry them out. The background even brings up some flaws with this as they say that didn’t want to use legislation to handle the corruption because the other side could deem you as the enemy and might use it again you and your “bad taste”. 2001 would like to have a word in Guantanamo with that take. Lines like addiction being a disease until you legislate it then it turns addicts into criminals and legislation against “smut” creates black markets is very libertarian understanding for 1961 sci-fi. Talk of pacifism in the age of nuclear weapons is pretty neat to see in a book of that era.

The Chariots Of The Angels

We go on to find out that there are other alien species in kind of a Federation of planets that are looking at what humanity does with these Angels to see if they should be included. In this book, there isn’t much that goes into that but it adds another good tension point that adds to the drama. The alien Angels themselves actually read as – alien. There is a fear or at least trepidation since they are so powerful and a danger to humanity. It would have been nice to build that up a little more within the unfolding of the plot but it’s covered enough that it adds to the drama.

The Eschaton

Attempts at communication are handled quickly saving for time but the way in which communication takes place is what makes the story interesting; especially since the “cabin boy” is in charge of the negotiations while the hero and the delegate from Earth are lost in space. Communication and acts based upon standards of importance are what’s focused in the unfolding plot. The aliens are surprised at humanity being a young species and having a sense of justice. Humanity is able to teach them about deals and bargaining which leads to talks about treaties. The negotiations with the leader Angels happens very quickly and it’s a thoughtful answer to what would benefit both sides in the negotiation. The final act of Jack needing to explain himself before the UN seems very odd and loses a lot of the momentum of drama and possible danger. There is an added discussion about whether something so alien could be trusted. There was a lot more that could have been unfolded here like is lying a universal concept as well and why should humanity be trusted? A funny point towards the end shows that the 24 news cycle is a modern-day invention and I don’t really buy Blish’s point on this – the aliens discovered wasn’t ever kept secret but people heard about it on the news and didn’t really care because it didn’t affect them until they came to Earth for the negotiation. Ya, I doubt it, even before the days before CNN/FOX/etc.

Overall, I enjoyed this story even though it had a few sections where Blish slowed the story down a bit. There are some good turn of phrases and allusions to biblical imagery that add to the character of the story. The ending doesn’t feel the need to complete all the components the plot opened up but it does offer hope and an eschaton while also being a genesis.