James Blish

James Blish (1921–1975) brought unusual intellectual seriousness to science fiction. His ‘Cities in Flight’ sequence sends whole cities voyaging through space on antigravity ‘spindizzies’; A Case of Conscience, about a Jesuit confronting a sinless alien world, won the 1959 Hugo. Under the name ‘William Atheling, Jr.’ he was also one of the field’s sharpest early critics, and he introduced the word ‘gas giant’ to the language.