James Blish

Born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1921, James Blish became one of the standout American science fiction writers of his generation. Reliable reference sources describe him as both a novelist and an important critic of the field, and note that he was trained in biology, an influence that helped give his fiction a thoughtful, analytical edge.

He is especially remembered for Cities in Flight, a future-history sequence about wandering cities in space, and for A Case of Conscience (1958), which won the Hugo Award. He also reached a broad audience through his adaptations of Star Trek, bringing television stories into print for readers who wanted more of the series.

Beyond his fiction, Blish wrote criticism under the pen name William Atheling Jr., and his essays were taken seriously inside the science fiction community. Later in life he moved to England, where he died in 1975.