This review was also posted here - https://cavetothecross.com/blog/stardwellers/

From what I've been told, James Blish is a pulp author who is known for including religion in his sci-fi. This is an area of sci-fi that I feel is very lacking. Not that I don't understand it, but the fact that it's rarely dealt with in these different worlds is a loss to storytelling.

I rarely do synopsis for books in reviews but these older pulp novels tend not to have the best descriptions. So very quickly, an alien race is discovered by humanity for the first time. These aliens are referred to as "Angels" and are one of the first being created after the Big Bang and they live forever. They exist as glowing cubes that have the capacity of blowing up Earth ships. They've done so in the past due to not knowing how to interact with humanity until one of them nicknamed "Lucifer" (a play on name for "Fallen one") who accidentally enters the engine area of one of the ships and they find out it can harness energy that can greatly enhance mankind's ability to travel the cosmos. It is now the job of three men assigned by the UN to make a treaty with the aliens. The three men are a worldwide respected ambassador, a hero soldier, and a young man from an elite cadet organization who's job it is to stay in the ship while the other two take an unobtrusive ship to make contact with the Angel leaders. The main character of the story, Jack Loftus, is the cadet which is already a great start.

Blish wrote the novelizations of some of the stories from the original Star Trek and his writing reads like sci-fi in the Star Trek universe. A major plus. While there is focus on the two other members of the crew and Jack isn't just "some cadet" but an elite cadet, he's still the odd man out which makes for a great hero main character. There isn't really that much focus on other characters and the two other crew members get out of the picture pretty quickly.

The story starts of well and slow enough to build up. There's an exposition dump at the start that's done within the confines of the logic of the story. There is no "as you all know" - proceed to explain what everyone knows for 30 pages. There is some good technology talk concerning the aliens and humanity's technology. It's advanced for star travel but not really that broad. Again for 1961 there's a decent amount of science that isn't handwaved away of "tachyon fields mumbojumbo". The way ships travel at almost the speed of light in a bubble-type field takes into account that the mass of the ship and occupants increase. Pretty neat science talk there.

The story does kind of stall for a bit before the main storyline but there is some interesting coverage of what the future was to 1961. There is the talk of two sexes which for modern-day "Star Trek" stories is heretical. They talk about how music corrupted the youth so the cadet organization instilled celibacy during the time in service so the focus on the job would be prioritized. Education was given to them to value high minded concepts and instill duty to carry them out. The background even brings up some flaws with this as they say that didn't want to use legislation to handle the corruption because the other side could deem you as the enemy and might use it again you and your "bad taste". 2001 would like to have a word in Guantanamo with that take. Lines like addiction being a disease until you legislate it then it turns addicts into criminals and legislation against "smut" creates black markets is very libertarian understanding for 1961 sci-fi. Talk of pacifism in the age of nuclear weapons is pretty neat to see in a book of that era.

We go on to find out that there are other alien species in kind of a Federation of planets that are looking at what humanity does with these Angels to see if they should be included. In this book, there isn't much that goes into that but it adds another good tension point that adds to the drama. The alien Angels themselves actually read as - alien. There is a fear or at least trepidation since they are so powerful and a danger to humanity. It would have been nice to build that up a little more within the unfolding of the plot but it's covered enough that it adds to the drama.

Attempts at communication are handled quickly saving for time but the way in which communication takes place is what makes the story interesting; especially since the "cabin boy" is in charge of the negotiations while the hero and the delegate from Earth are lost in space. Communication and acts based upon standards of importance are what's focused in the unfolding plot. The aliens are surprised at humanity being a young species and having a sense of justice. Humanity is able to teach them about deals and bargaining which leads to talks about treaties. The negotiations with the leader Angels happens very quickly and it's a thoughtful answer to what would benefit both sides in the negotiation. The final act of Jack needing to explain himself before the UN seems very odd and loses a lot of the momentum of drama and possible danger. There is an added discussion about whether something so alien could be trusted. There was a lot more that could have been unfolded here like is lying a universal concept as well and why should humanity be trusted? A funny point towards the end shows that the 24 news cycle is a modern-day invention and I don't really buy Blish's point on this - the aliens discovered wasn't ever kept secret but people heard about it on the news and didn't really care because it didn't affect them until they came to Earth for the negotiation. Ya, I doubt it, even before the days before CNN/FOX/etc.

Overall, I enjoyed this story even though it had a few sections where Blish slowed the story down a bit. There are some good turn of phrases and allusions to biblical imagery that add to the character of the story. The ending doesn't feel the need to complete all the components the plot opened up but it does offer hope and an eschaton while also being a genesis. Final Grade - B+

This book shows James Blish on typical form, trying to discuss more ideas than there is adequate space for in a short novel. In this example he touches on some of his favourite themes - education vs. experience, biological influences on human thinking - whilst telling a story of "second contact". For when Jack Loftus is left to attempt to form a treaty between humanity and the Angels, beings of pure energy, there is already one of their race installed in a position of power on Earth and no other humans around to help him....

The very thing that makes Blish worth reading is that the majority of his stories are brimful of ideas worth thinking about. This is in stark contrast to many contemporary writers, in my experience; too many novels are published, two or three times longer than The Star Dwellers' 140 pages, lacking any worthwhile theme or idea, yet exuding pretensions to "literature".

Blish's usual weaknesses are also present; somewhat thin characters, extreme naivity of style, but the swift narrative pace tends to compensate - it is like reading a very short thriller with intellect substituted for violence.

I must comment on Blish's introduction to the novel, where he discusses the discovery of viruses and the consequent debate about the definition of life as his inspiration for creating a species made from pure energy. Blish trained as a zoo-ologist and much of his writing is informed by his background in biology. He offers a new definition of life - any system that "reverses entropy". Perhaps if he had asked some of his piers who trained as engineers or physicists he would not have made this glaring error - unless he truely believed that his fridge was alive.

Fridges input electricity (usually) and output heat. Meanwhile the entropy inside the fridge goes down. Cellular organisms input oxygen and output heat - meanwhile the entropy inside the cells remains approximately the same. Hence either the fridge is as alive as cellular organisms, or the definition is wrong. ( )

An exploratory mission from earth clashes with dangerous and mysterious aliens, coming away much worse for the encounter. Who are we going to send to investigate? The Hardy Boys!

The Star Dwellers is a quick read that offers a few interesting ideas and a concept that had the potential for a reasonably intriguing Star Trek-TOS-like first contact scenario, but it doesn't really do much with them. More fantasy-fulfillment-for-scientifically-inclined-adolescent-males than hard science in this one. ( )

A good tale, rather simple and typical of the period. But the cover is quite odd. ( )

Not sure what to make of this one. Mostly aimed at the Hardy Boys audience, it lacks a bit of the technical science that I like from Blish, but it still is a decent enough story. Blish always seems to have some point to make about his times, in this one he has quite a rant about the poor education of such impressionable young minds. He advocates, if that is the right word, a crash course education where children are force fed as much information as possible as quickly as possible. This leads to an elite Cadet Corps where a teenager in the program is assigned as an apprentice to an adult member of the government. So, man has developed an interstellar space drive (as usual) and are early in the exploration game, having discovered a few life forms of questionably intelligent life forms, make a big discovery of interstellar life in the Coal Sack nebula. The life forms like living in the space drives on the ships and in nuclear power plants on earth. Anyhow, the point is that a younger person can apply wisdom if they are properly educated and a treaty is signed with these very foreign and abstract life forms, some of which are as old as the universe. A bit open ended though. ( )