Editing James Blish (section)

=== Pantropy (1942–1956) ===
[[File:Two_complete_science_adventure_books_1951sum_n3.jpg|thumb|Blish's ''The Warriors of Day'' was originally published in ''[[Two Complete Science-Adventure Books]]'' in 1951 as "Sword of Xota"]]

Blish was what Andrew Liptack called a "practical writer".<ref name="Kirkus Big Ideas" /> He would revisit, revise, and often expand on previously written stories. An example is "Sunken Universe" published in ''[[Super Science Stories]]'' in 1942. The story reappeared in ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]'' as "Surface Tension", in an altered form in 1952. The premise emphasized Blish's understanding of microbiology, and featured microscopic humans engineered to live on a hostile planet's shallow pools of water. The story proved to be among Blish's more popular and was anthologized in the first volume of [[Robert Silverberg]]{{'s}} ''[[The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964|The Science Fiction Hall of Fame]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=James|first=Blish|title=The Science Fiction Hall of Fame|date=Jan 1976|publisher=Avon|isbn=9780380007950|editor-last=Silverberg|editor-first=Robert|volume=1|location=New York|pages=477–514|chapter=Surface Tension}}</ref> It was also anthologized in ''[[The Big Book of Science Fiction]]'' (2016), edited by [[Ann VanderMeer|Ann]] and [[Jeff VanderMeer]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Big Book of Science Fiction: 9781101910092 {{!}} PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248846/the-big-book-of-science-fiction-by-edited-by-ann-and-jeff-vandermeer/|access-date=2020-06-27|website=PenguinRandomhouse.com|language=en-US}}</ref>

The world of microscopic humans continued in "The Thing in the Attic" in 1954, and "Watershed" the following year. The fourth entry, "A Time to Survive", was published by ''[[The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction]]'' in 1957. The stories were collected, edited together, and published as the [[fix-up]] ''The Seedling Stars'' (1956), by Gnome Press. [[John Clute]] said all of Blish's "deeply felt work" explored "confronting the [[Faustian]] (or [[Frankensteinian]]) man".<ref name="Kirkus Big Ideas" />