Editing James Blish (section)

== Literary criticism and legacy ==
Blish was among the first [[literary critics]] of science fiction, and he judged works in the genre by the standards applied to [[Literary fiction|"serious" literature]].<ref name="Budrys">{{Cite magazine|last=Budrys|first=Algis|date=June 1965|editor-last=Pohl|editor-first=Frederik|title=Galaxy Bookshelf|magazine=Galaxy Science Fiction|location=New York|publisher=Galaxy Publishing Corp.|volume=23|issue=5|pages=164–169}}</ref> He took to task his fellow authors for deficiencies, such as bad grammar and a misunderstanding of scientific concepts, and the magazine editors who accepted and published such material without editorial intervention. His criticism was published in "fanzines" in the 1950s under the pseudonym William Atheling Jr.

The essays were collected in ''The Issue at Hand'' (1964) and ''More Issues at Hand'' (1970). Reviewing ''The Issue at Hand'', [[Algis Budrys]] said that Atheling had, along with [[Damon Knight]], "transformed the reviewer's trade in this field". He described the persona of Atheling as "acidulous, assertive, categorical, conscientious and occasionally idiosyncratic".<ref name="Budrys" />

Blish was a fan of the works of [[James Branch Cabell]], and for a time edited ''Kalki'', the journal of the Cabell Society.

In his works of science fiction, Blish developed many ideas and terms which have influenced other writers and on occasion have been adopted more widely, such as [[faster-than-light communication]] via the Dirac communicator, introduced in the short story "Beep" (1954). The Dirac is comparable to [[Ursula K. Le Guin]]'s [[ansible]].

Blish is also credited with coining the term [[gas giant]], first used in the story "Solar Plexus", collected in the anthology ''Beyond Human Ken'', edited by [[Judith Merril]]. The story was originally published in 1941, but it did not contain the term. Blish reworked the story, changing the description of a large [[magnetic field]] to "a magnetic field of some strength nearby, one that didn't belong to the invisible ''gas giant'' revolving half a million miles away".<ref>{{cite web| url=https://sfdictionary.com/view/52/gas-giant| title=Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: gas giant| access-date=2022-11-17}}</ref>