The Day After Judgement by James Blish and After Doomsday
by Poul Anderson sound almost interchangeable. However, Blish's
Judgement is spiritual and supernatural, a literal Armageddon, whereas
Anderson's "Doomsday" is secular and scientific, the sterilisation of
Earth by aliens. In other words, Blish's novel is fantasy whereas
Anderson's is science fiction (sf).
CS Lewis begins Perelandra
by pointing out that we imagine non-human intelligences as either
supernatural or extraterrestrial, then informs us that his character,
Ransom, met on Mars beings that were both. That shook me when I read it.
A
few other sf writers have had similar ideas. In two of Heinlein's
novels, the Martian "Old Ones" are ghosts. In Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles,
Martian "Old Ones" are spiritually evolved Martians. In Brian Aldiss's
Helliconia Trilogy, Helliconians have contact with their hereafter which
contrasts strangely with the Terrestrial observation station in orbit
above their planet. (When, in that station, orderly life broke down,
Aldiss wrote an italicised descriptive passage including this marvelous
sentence: "Everything depraved flourished.")
Starting
with a reflection on two superficially similar but essentially
contrasting titles, I have drawn a few parallels between six great names
in sf: Blish; Anderson; Lewis; Heinlein; Bradbury; Aldiss.
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