Imprisoned ina Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish

In this study of James Blish, the first full-scale critical and biographical account of a contemporary writer of science fiction, David Ketterer mines the Bodleian Library Blish Papers and recollections of those who knew Blish best to extract extensive information on the writer's often troubled personal life and a career that issued from his association with the famous Futurian Society of New York.
Ketterer treats Blish in light of the theoretical nature of science fiction, its literary value, and the situation of a particular author in relation to U.S. genre publication from the 1940s to the 1970s. Ketterer also makes thorough use of the Blish files of Faber & Faber, the prestigious British firm which published Blish's best works, including the first edition of Doctor Mirabilis, the historical novel about Roger Bacon that was rejected by twenty-three American publishers. Doctor Mirabilis (given its concern with the possibility that knowledge may be evil) forms a trilogy with the previously written Hugo-award-winning science fiction novel, A Case of Conscience, and the subsequently written fantasy diptych, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment.