James Blish

Born 23 May 1921 · Died 30 July 1975

From East Orange, New Jersey, United States · Nationality: United States · Writes fiction

Blish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942–1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Army. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company.

Quotes

“The early anatomists, who laid the foundations of scientific medicine, were primarily artists; the early psychotherapists, like Freud, were primarily poets. Neither group ever cured anything, but each opened up a previously forbidden area of investigation.”
In Tomorrow’s Little Black Bag, p. 305
“One thing you learn fast in the munitions business is that it’s a very good idea to stay off battlefields.”
The Day After Judgment, Chapter 11
“A metaphor is not a tautology.”
A Style in Treason, Chapter 5
“Yet the closer he came to it, the more alert he felt; it was as though he were paying more and more attention to fewer and fewer things, so that at the heart of the mystery he would paradoxically be totally intent upon nothing at all.”
Midsummer Century, Chapter 11
“We often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as n-dimensional—it’s like modern sex, any number may be played with.”
The Quincunx of Time, Chapter 10