First publication of A Case of Conscience, September 1953

James Benjamin Blish (May 23, 1921 – July 30, 1975) was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.

Biography[link]

Blish was born at East Orange, New Jersey.^[1] In the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Blish was a member of the Futurians.

Blish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942–1944 as a medical technician in the United States Army. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. His first published story appeared in 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave up his job to become a professional writer.

He is credited with coining the term gas giant, in the story "Solar Plexus" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Judith Merril. (The story was originally published in 1941, but that version did not contain the term; Blish apparently added it in a rewrite done for the anthology, which was first published in 1952.)

Blish was married to the literary agent Virginia Kidd from 1947 to 1963.

From 1962 to 1968, he worked for the Tobacco Institute.^[2]

Between 1967 and his death from lung cancer in 1975, Blish wrote authorized short story collections based upon the 1960s TV series Star Trek. He wrote 11 volumes adapting episodes of the series. He died midway through writing Star Trek 12; his second wife, J. A. (Judith Ann) Lawrence, completed the book, and later completed the adaptations in the volume Mudd's Angels. In 1970 he wrote Spock Must Die!, the first original novel for adult readers based upon the series. (Since then hundreds more have been published.)

Blish lived in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. In 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and lived in Oxford until his death at Henley-on-Thames, in 1975. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of Kenneth Grahame.

Works[link]

Cities in Flight[link]

Perhaps Blish's most famous works were the "Okies" stories, known collectively as Cities in Flight, published in the science-fiction digest magazine Astounding Science Fiction. The framework for these was set in the first of four novels, They Shall Have Stars (first UK publication under the alternative title of Year 2018!), which introduces two essential features of the series. The first is the invention of the anti-aging drug ascomycin; Blish's employer Pfizer makes a thinly disguised appearance as Pfitzner in a section showing the screening of biological samples for interesting activity. (Pfizer also appears in disguise as one of the sponsors of the polar expedition in a subsequent book, Fallen Star). The second is the development of an antigravity device known as the "spindizzy". Since the device becomes more efficient when used to propel larger objects, entire cities leave an Earth in decline and rove the stars, looking for work among less-industrialized systems. The long life provided by ascomycin is necessary because the journeys between stars are time-consuming.

They Shall Have Stars is dystopian science fiction of a type common in the era of McCarthyism. The second, A Life For The Stars, is a coming of age story set amid flying cities. The third, Earthman, Come Home, is a series of loosely connected short stories detailing the adventures of a flying New York City; the title piece was selected as one of the best novellas prior to 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America and included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

For his fourth and final installment, The Triumph of Time (UK title: A Clash of Cymbals), Blish set the end of his literature's universe in AD 4004.^[3] (The chronology in early editions of They Shall Have Stars differed somewhat from the later reprints, indicating that Blish, or his editors, may not have planned this at the beginning of the series.) A film version of Cities in Flight was in pre-production by Spacefilms in 1979, but never materialized.^[4]

The Haertel Scholium[link]

This term describes the background of a number of Blish's short-story science fiction. Three distinct technologies, their invention, and consequences are outlined. There is a modicum of overlap between The Cities in Flight saga and that of The Seedling Stars, mainly through one piece of technology : The Dirac Radio. Another unifying concept is the first trans-luminal drive — The Haertel Overdrive.

Adolph (Dolph) Haertel developed the drive in order to reach Mars rapidly (Welcome to Mars!). Haertel Cosmology, the result of Haertel's science, in Blish's words, "swallowed Einstein the way Einstein swallowed Newton — that is to say, alive." Haertel goes on to develop the drive to allow the entry of men into interstellar space. The DFC-3, piloted by Garrard, reaches Alpha Centauri, where extraterrestrial first contact is made with the Clinesterton Beademung (Short Story: "Common Time"). The Drive at this stage is not well developed, and initially suffers from dramatic chrono-swings from almost complete time-freeze to the hyper-time of pseudo-death. With refinement, the drive becomes a valid method of interstellar travel, though not without mishap and adventure as other forms of travel are tried, such as the near-useless (though fascinating and instructive for the quantum physicist) Arpe Drive ("Nor Iron Bars").

Refinement of the drive allows the exploration of the near-stars, as well as the Coal-Sack Nebula, wherein the beings known as Angels are first encountered by the hero Jack Loftus, Sylvia McCrary and Dr. Challenger, as well as a long lived and powerful civilization, the Hegemony of Malis (The Star Dwellers). Ultimately deduction, and a first hand experience of a planet deliberately maintained in a state of genocidal savagery ("A Dusk of Idols"), coupled with expert reasoning reveals that the Hegemony is malignant, and Humanity rebels. Journey to the Heart Stars reveals the true nature of the Hegemony, and with the help of a stowaway Angel, Hesperus, humanity is freed of its bondage, and made companions of the Angels.

The stories considered part of the Haertel Scholium include A Case of Conscience, and the Pantropy series (see below). Both are anomalous in that they do not appear to have the Dirac Radio, though it is plausible to assume that A Case of Conscience takes place before the development of the Dirac.

A unifying force of galactic civilization is the Dirac Radio, developed by Dr. Thor Wald. This radio is able to permit faster-than-light radio transmission. It has an additional and unsettling ability — within every transmission, is the sum total of all transmissions from the device, throughout all of time and space. The Department of Intelligence, headed by Captain Robert Weinbaum, and aided by the beautiful video reporter Dana Lje, make this shattering discovery. Three hundred years later, the "Service" is the dominant government of the Galaxy, and Dirac is the center of their power, with a network built from Haertel Overdrive spacelanes. ("Beep").

4000 years in the future, Human civilization has met its first full antagonist — the Green Exarchy. A system of many civilizations ruled by a non-human emperor, the Green Exarch, this represents a significant threat to High Earth. The Green Exarch has at his employ the extremely dangerous shapeshifting (protean) agents known as Vombis, who will appear human, but do not revert to their true shape when killed, giving them an air of great mystery and menace.

The Haertel Overdrive is now called the Imaginary Drive, and the Dirac is still in common use. High Earth remains the center of Human civilization. That civilization is remarkably advanced — for all practical intents, humans are now immortal. A memory cleanse known as Baptism permits those filled with ennui to begin lives anew, though there are side effects from subconscious recall. A quasi-religious group known as Sagittarians also play a part. The most important financial force in the empire of High Earth is the Traitor's Guild, who permit money to flow from system to system in reward of treachery to system governments, producing a Feudatory system between worlds, though not at the expense of internal stability. Traitors skillfully employ advanced biotechnology to further their aims, and are known to employ fungal cytotoxins, DNA reverse transcription mutation agents (to inject false memories and appearances in order to forestall recognition and testimony during interrogations), as well as technology to petrify dead bodies in order to make up wall fortifications in far offworld planets. The Traitors Guild may be found on all planets (A Traitor of Quality, Section in The Quincunx of Time with a lecture about the Traitor's Guild, and The Green Exarchy).

5000 years later still, Human civilization has gone through many Rebirths, or Renaissances. The chance infusion of a mentality from 1949 through a freak combination of the active mode of the Dirac within a Radio Telescope results in the formation, after many adventures and an ultimate resurgence of Man, the Quint, the Autarch of Rebirth V. A computer of this far future time uses the Dirac as both a means of communication and infinite memory storage (Midsummer Century). Its existence was foretold at the time of Capt. Weinbaum, though no-one could interpret its messages then (The Quincunx of Time, novella expansion of "Beep").

After Such Knowledge[link]

Blish declared that another group of novels was a trilogy, each dealing with an aspect of the price of knowledge, and given the overall name of After Such Knowledge (the title taken from a T. S. Eliot quote). The first published, A Case of Conscience (a winner of the 1959 Hugo Award as well as 2004/1953 Retrospective Hugo Award for Best Novella), showed a Jesuit priest confronted with an alien intelligent race, apparently unfallen, which he eventually concludes must be a Satanic fabrication. The second, Doctor Mirabilis, is a historical novel about the medieval proto-scientist Roger Bacon. The third, actually two very short novels, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment, was written using the assumption that the ritual magic for summoning demons as described in grimoires actually worked. In that book, a powerful industrialist and arms merchant arranges to call up demons in the midst of a modern world crisis, resulting in nuclear war and the destruction of civilization. Black Easter is devoted to that element of the plot; The Day After Judgment is devoted to exploring the consequences of the destruction of the world, with an extraordinary ending in both narrative and theological terms that should not be given away.

The Seedling Stars (Pantropy)[link]

Blish's most famous short stories are the "Pantropy" tales, collected in the book The Seedling Stars. In these stories, humans are modified to live in various alien environments, this being easier and vastly cheaper than terraforming.

• Book One (Seeding Program) is about the inception of Pantropy, when the Pantropy program appears to have deteriorated into hideous genetic experimenting and has been outlawed. It describes Sweeney, a modified ("adapted") human whose metabolism is based on liquid ammonia and sulfur bonds and whose bones are made from ice IV, who is inserted into a colony on Ganymede by the Terran Port Authority (a para-military organization) to capture a renegade scientist and end his plans to seed modified humans on distant worlds. However, the government really only tries to derail pantropy because it will cut their profits from terraforming attempts. Sweeney is surprised to find a well established, functioning community on Ganymede and eventually realizes that he was just used as an expendable agent and that he has been fed false hopes about the possibility of being changed into a normal human being who could live on earth. Having found a real home, he switches sides and with his help the Ganymede colony manages to launch their seed ships to secret destinations, beyond the reach of the corrupt government.

• Book Two (The Thing in the Attic) depicts a very successful seeding project. It tells the story of a small group of intellectuals from a primitive culture of modified monkey-like humans living in the trees of their jungle world. Having openly voiced the opinion that the godly giants do not literally exist as put down in the book of laws, they are banished from the treetops for heresy. In their exile on the ground they have to adapt to vastly different circumstances, fight monsters resembling dinosaurs, and finally happen upon the godly giants — who turn out to be human scientists who have just arrived on the world to monitor the progress of the local adapted humans. The protagonists are told by the scientists that their whole race must eventually leave the treetops to conquer their world and that they have become pioneers of some sort for accomplishing survival.

• Book Three (Surface Tension) gives another example of a culture of adapted humans: A pantropy starship crashes on an ocean world, Hydrot, which is on orbit around Tau Ceti. With no hope for rescue, the few survivors modify their own genetic material to seed microscopic aquatic "humans" into the lakes and puddles of the world and leave them a message engraved on equally scaled metal plates. The story then tells how over many seasons, the adapted human newcomers explore their aquatic environment, make alliances, invent tools, fight wars with hostile beings and finally gain dominance over the sentient beings of their world. They develop new technologies and manage to decipher some of the message on the metal plates. Finally they build a wooden "space ship" (which turns out to be two inches long) to overcome the surface tension and travel to "other worlds" — the next puddle — in search of their ancestry, as they have come to realize that they are not native to their world.

• Book Four (Watershed) takes a look at the more distant future. A very long time after the beginning of the Pantropy program, a starship crewed by "standard" humans is en route to some unimportant backwater planet to deliver a pantropy team who are "adapted" humans resembling seals more than humans. Due to racial prejudices, tension mounts between the crew and the passengers on board. When the captain decides to restrict the passengers to their cabins to prevent the situation from escalating, the leader of the adapted humans informs him that the planet ahead is Earth, where the "normal" human form once developed. He challenges the "normal" humans to follow him onto the surface of their ancestral home planet and prove that they are superior to the "adapted" seal people who will now be seeded there — or admit that they were beaten on their own grounds. The story concludes as the captain and his lieutenant silently ponder the possibility that they, being "standard" humans, are just a minority, and an obsolete species.

(The German title of the anthology is Auch sie sind Menschen..., literally "They, too, are humans". The stories' titles are Aussaatplan, Himmel und Hölle, Oberflächenspannung and Rückkehr respectively, which would literally translate back into English as "Seeding plan", "Heaven and Hell", "Surface tension" and "Return" or "Homecoming". However, except for Surface Tension the original English titles seem to be different.)

Watershed makes reference to the planet, Lithia, which is the centerpiece of A Case of Conscience, and it must be assumed that the Pantropy stories take place in a slightly different Universe, given the respective fates of the planet within each Universe.

Other[link]

Blish collaborated with Norman L. Knight on a series of stories set in a world with a population a thousand times that of today, and followed the efforts of those keeping the system running, collected in one volume as A Torrent of Faces. Included in this collection is Blish's Nebula-nominated novella The Shipwrecked Hotel, a story about a semi-submerged hotel with approximately a million guests which experiences a massive computer failure (a result of escaped silverfish) and begins to sink. Running parallel to all the side-plots is the inevitable catastrophe of the mile-wide asteroid "Flavia" striking near the east coast of the United States.

The stories are also notable for including a form of pantropy that has been used to modify humans into a sea-dwelling form known as "Tritons".

James Blish's grave marker

Selected bibliography[link]

Cities in Flight[link]

• They Shall Have Stars (1956; also published under the title Year 2018!)
• A Life for the Stars (1962)
• Earthman Come Home (1955; originally published as four short stories)
• The Triumph of Time, (1958; published in the UK as A Clash of Cymbals)

A one-volume collection of all four Cities in Flight books exists, first published in the United States by Avon (1970), (ISBN 0380009986) and later in the UK by Arrow (1981), (ISBN 0099264404), which includes an analysis of the work (pp. 597 onwards) as an Afterword by Richard D. Mullen, derived from an original article by Leland Shapiro in the publication Riverside Quarterly. It is now available in hardcover and trade paperback from Overlook Press.

Outside the United States, a single volume collecting all four books is available from Gollancz as part of its SF Masterworks series. This edition includes a new (2006) introduction by Stephen Baxter; and uses the original United States title The Triumph of Time for A Clash of Cymbals. The first two were also collected as Cities in Flight, Vol. 1 (1991) and the second two as Cities in Flight, Vol. 2 (1991)

After Such Knowledge[link]

• A Case of Conscience (first section published in If magazine, 1953, expanded version published 1958)
• Doctor Mirabilis (1964), about Roger Bacon
• Black Easter (more correctly titled Black Easter, or Faust Aleph-null) (serialized as Faust aleph-null in If magazine, 1968)
• The Day After Judgment (published in Galaxy magazine in 1970, book publication 1971)
• The Devil's Day (1990, Gregg Press) collects Black Easter and The Day After Judgment
• After Such Knowledge (1991, Legend Books) [omnibus of all 4 books]

The Haertel Scholium[link]

• Galactic Cluster (stories, Signet, 1959) — Containing among others "Beep", "Common Time" and "Nor Iron Bars". The book version of the last story combines "Detour to the Stars" (1956) and "Nor Iron Bars" (1957). The 1960 UK hardback removes three stories from the Signet edition and adds "Beanstalk" (1952); the 1963 UK paperback edition removes three stories from the Signet edition (only two of the three are the same as those removed for the 1960 variation); the 1980 UK paperback uses the 1963 contents and adds "Beanstalk".
• So Close to Home (stories, 1961)
• The Star Dwellers (1961)
• Mission to the Heart Stars (1965) — A sequel to The Star Dwellers
• Welcome to Mars! (1967) — Dolph Haertel's seminal first flight to Mars.
• Anywhen (1970)—Contains among others the novella A Traitor of Quality and the short story "A Dusk of Idols" (The 1971 UK edition removes the preface and adds a short story, "Skysign"]
• Midsummer Century (1972) — The Far Future, at the time of Rebirth V. [The 1974 edition adds two unconnected short stories]
• A Case of Conscience — Technically part of the Scholium, thanks to presence of the drive (see above)

Other Novels[link]

• There Shall Be No Darkness (Thrilling Wonder Stories, 1950) — horror story where guests at a remote country estate discover that one of them is a werewolf. This was filmed as The Beast Must Die! (aka Black Werewolf) (1974)
• The Warriors of Day (1951)
• Jack of Eagles (1952)
• Get Out of My Sky (novella, 1957)
• Fallen Star (1957) (also published as The Frozen Year) — Set in the International Geophysical Year of 1958, it tells the story of a disaster-ridden polar expedition that finds a meteorite containing fossil life forms.
• VOR (1958) [expanded by Blish from the collaborative 'The Weakness of RVOG' [with Damon Knight], {Thrilling Wonder Stories}, Feb 1949]
• Titans' Daughter (1961) (expanded from "Beanstalk" (in Future Tense, ed. K. F. Crossen, 1952)
• The Night Shapes (1962)
• The Duplicated Man (with R. W. Lowndes, 1959)
• A Torrent of Faces (with Norman L. Knight, 1967)
• The Vanished Jet (1968)
• And All the Stars a Stage (1971)
• The Quincunx of Time (1973) expansion of "Beep" (Galaxy, Feb 1954)

Star Trek[link]

• Star Trek (1967) (later as Star Trek 1) Collections of adaptations of the scripts of the well-known TV series
• Star Trek 2 (1968)
• Star Trek 3 (1969)
• Spock Must Die! (1970) The first Star Trek novel for an adult audience
• Star Trek 4 (1971)
• Star Trek 5 (1972)
• Star Trek 6 (1972)
• Star Trek 7 (1972)
• Star Trek 8 (1972)
• Star Trek 9 (1973)
• Star Trek 10 (1974)
• Star Trek 11 (1975)
• Star Trek 12 (1977) [with Judith Ann Lawrence]

[Books 2, 3 and 8 were combined as The Star Trek Reader (1976). Books 1, 4 and 9 were combined as The Star Trek Reader II (1977). Books 5, 6 and 7 were combined as The Star Trek Reader III (1977). Books 10, 11 and Spock Must Die! were combined as The Star Trek Reader IV (1978)]

• Star Trek: The Classic Episodes 1 (with Judith Ann Lawrence) (1991) (27 of the adapted screenplays arranged in order of transmission)
• Star Trek: The Classic Episodes 2 (with Judith Ann Lawrence) (1991) (25 of the adapted screenplays arranged in order of transmission)
• Star Trek: The Classic Episodes 3 (with Judith Ann Lawrence) (1991) (24 of the adapted screenplays arranged in order of transmission)

Other Collections[link]

• The Seedling Stars (1957)
• Best Science Fiction Stories of James Blish (stories, 1965) [includes There Shall Be No Darkness] [the revised 1973 edition removes There Shall Be No Darkness and adds 2 stories from the late 1960s; this revised version was published in 1977 as The Testament of Andros]
• A Work of Art and other stories (edited by Francis Lyall) (1993)
• A Dusk of Idols and other stories (edited by Francis Lyall) (1996)
• Flight of Eagles (edited by James Mann, foreword by Tom Shippey) (2009)

Anthologies[link]

• New Dreams This Morning (1966)
• Nebula Award Stories No. 5 (1970)
• Thirteen O'Clock and other zero hours (collection of C M Kornbluth stories; edited by Blish) (1970)

Non-fiction[link]

Blish wrote criticism of science fiction — some quite scathing — under the name of William Atheling, Jr. (derived from a pseudonym Ezra Pound used for music criticism), as well as reviewing under his own name. The Atheling articles were reprinted in two collections, The Issue at Hand (1964) and More Issues at Hand (1970), and the posthumous The Tale That Wags The God 1987 collects Blish essays.

He was a fan of the works of James Branch Cabell, and for a time edited Kalki, the journal of the Cabell Society.

Reviewing The Issue at Hand, Algis Budrys described "Atheling" as "aciduous, assertive, categorical, conscientious and occasionally idiosyncratic." ^[5]

More on James Blish[link]

• Imprisoned in a Tesseract, the life and work of James Blish by David Ketterer ISBN 0-87338-334-6
• Fantasy and Science Fiction (April 1972) — Special James Blish Issue

Honors, awards and recognition[link]

• 1959 Hugo Award for A Case of Conscience "Best Novel"
• 1960 Guest of Honor, World Science Fiction Convention
• 1965 Nebula Award nomination for "The Shipwrecked Hotel" "Best Novelette" (with Norman L. Knight)
• 1968 Nebula Award nomination for Black Easter "Best Novel"
• 1969 Hugo Award nomination for "We All Die Naked" "Best Novella"
• 1970 Nebula Award nomination for "A Style in Treason" "Best Novella"
• 1970 Guest of honor, British Eastercon
• 1976 BSFA Special Award for Best British SF
• 1977 Creation of the James Blish award for Criticism (first winner, Brian Aldiss)
• 1950/2001 Retro-Hugo Award nomination for "Okie" "Best Novelette"
• 2002 Elected to Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
• 1953/2004 Retro-Hugo Award for "Earthman Come Home" "Best Novelette"
• 1953/2004 Retro-Hugo Award for "A Case of Conscience" "Best Novella"

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. pp. 51–53. ISBN 0-911682-20-1. 
• Tymn, Marshall B.; Kenneth J. Zahorski and Robert H. Boyer (1979). Fantasy Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide. New York: R.R. Bowker Co.. pp. 52–54. ISBN 0-8352-1431-1. 

External links[link]

• Website of the Blish family
• James Blish at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• James Blish at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• James Blish biography at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame
• James Blish Appreciation
• Works by James Blish on Open Library at the Internet Archive

Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer^[1][2] who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. His best-known works include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night". Appreciative critics have also noted the craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my Craft or Sullen Art",^[3] and the rhapsodic lyricism in "And death shall have no dominion" and "Fern Hill".

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

Dylan Thomas was born in the Uplands area of Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales, on 27 October 1914 just a few months after the Thomas family had bought the house. Uplands was, and still is, one of the more affluent areas of the city.

5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea, birthplace of Dylan Thomas

His father, David John Thomas (1876–1952), had attained a first-class honours degree in English at University College, Aberystwyth, and was dissatisfied with his position at the local grammar school as an English master who taught English literature.^[4] His mother, Florence Hannah Thomas (née Williams) (1882–1958), was a seamstress born in Swansea. Nancy, Thomas's sister, (Nancy Marles 1906–1953) was nine years older than he. Their father brought up both children to speak only English, even though he and his wife were both bilingual in English and Welsh. David was even known to give Welsh lessons at home.

Dylan is pronounced ˈdəlan in Welsh, and in the early part of his career some announcers introduced him using this pronunciation. However, Thomas himself favoured the anglicised pronunciation /ˈdɪlən/.^[4] A review of a biography by Andrew Lycett (2004) notes: "Florence, the boy’s mother, had her doubts about the odd name: the correct Welsh pronunciation, which the family used, is “Dullan,” and she worried that other children would tease him by calling him “dull one.” Later, when broadcasting on the Welsh service of the BBC, Dylan Thomas had to instruct the announcers to say "'Dillan,' the way he himself pronounced it".^[5] His middle name, Marlais, was given to him in honour of his great-uncle, Unitarian minister William Thomas, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.^[4]

His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his maternal aunts' Carmarthenshire farms.^[6] These rural sojourns and the contrast with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably many short stories, radio essays, and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to be a sickly child who suffered from bronchitis and asthma. He shied away from school and preferred reading on his own. He was considered too frail to fight in World War II, instead serving the war effort by writing scripts for the government. Thomas's formal education began at Mrs. Hole's Dame school, a private school which was situated a few streets away on Mirador Crescent. He described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning:^[7]

Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime — the pulling of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.

In October 1925, Thomas attended the single-sex Swansea Grammar School, in the Mount Pleasant district of the city, where his father taught. He was an undistinguished student. Thomas's first poem was published in the school's magazine. He later became its editor.^[4] He began keeping poetry notebooks and amassed 200 poems in four such journals between 1930 and 1934.^[4] He left school at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave the job under pressure 18 months later in 1932. After leaving the job he filled his notebooks even faster. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these first years.^[4] He then joined an amateur dramatic group in Mumbles called Little Theatre (Now Known as Swansea Little Theatre), but still continued to work as a freelance journalist for a few more years.

Dylan Thomas Theatre Home of Swansea Little Theatre

Dylan's £5 writing shed in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire

Thomas spent his time visiting the cinema in the Uplands, walking along Swansea Bay, visiting a theatre where he used to perform, and frequenting Swansea's pubs. He especially patronised those in the Mumbles area such the Antelope Hotel and the Mermaid Hotel. A short walk from the local newspaper where he worked was the Kardomah Café in Castle Street, central Swansea. At the café he met with various artist contemporaries, such as his good friend the poet Vernon Watkins. These writers, musicians and artists became known as 'The Kardomah Gang'. In 1932, Thomas embarked on what would be one of his various visits to London.

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in a "three nights' blitz". Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were destroyed. Thomas later wrote about this in his radio play Return Journey Home, in which he describes the café as being "razed to the snow". Return Journey Home was first broadcast on 15 June 1947, having been written soon after the bombing raids. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: "Our Swansea is dead".^[8] The Kardomah Café later reopened on Portland Street, not far from the original location.

Career and family[link]

Statue of Dylan Thomas, outside the Dylan Thomas Theatre at the Marina, Swansea

It is often commented that Thomas was indulged like a child and he was, in fact, still a teenager when he published many of the poems he would become famous for: “And death shall have no dominion" “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower". "And death shall have no dominion", appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933^[4]and further work appeared in The Listener in 1934 catching the attention of two of the most senior poets of the day T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender. His highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, and went on to win a contest run by The Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, which did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement would later be used by a number of other new authors, including Philip Larkin.

His passionate musical lyricism caused a sensation in these years of desiccated Modernism; the critic Desmond Hawkins said it was “the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years”.^[4][9] In all, he wrote half of his poems while living at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive before he moved to London.^[10] It was also the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.^[9][11]

In the spring of 1936, Dylan Thomas met dancer Caitlin Macnamara in the Wheatsheaf pub, in the Fitzrovia area of London's West End. They were introduced by Augustus John, who was Macnamara's lover at the time (there were rumours that she continued her relationship with John after she married Thomas). A drunken Thomas proposed to Macnamara on the spot, and the two began a courtship.^[12] On 11 July 1937, Thomas married Macnamara in a register office in Penzance, Cornwall.^[13] In 1938, the couple rented a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on 30 January 1939 (d. 2000). Their daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, was born on 3 March 1943 (d. 2009). A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born on 24 July 1949.

Wartime and after[link]

At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was designated C3, which meant that although he could, in theory, be called up for service he would be in one of the last groups to be so. He was saddened to see his friends enter active service leaving him behind and drank whilst struggling to support his family. He lived on tiny fees from writing and reviewing and borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances, writing begging letters to random literary figures in hope of support, envisaging this as a plan of long term regular income.^[4] He wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information asking for employment but after a rebuff eventually ended up working for Strand Films. Strand produced films for the Ministry of Information and Thomas scripted at least five in 1942 with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye), New Towns For Old, These Are The Men and Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain).^[14] He actively sought to build a reputation as a raconteur and outrageous writer, heavy drinker and wit.^[4]

The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic W. J. Turner commented in The Spectator "This book alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet".^[15] Thomas was well known for being a versatile and dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings. He made over 200 broadcasts for the BBC.

Often considered his greatest single work, Under Milk Wood, a radio play featuring the characters of Llareggub, is set in a fictional Welsh fishing village ('Llareggub' is 'Bugger All' backwards, implying that there is absolutely nothing to do there). The BBC credited their producer Stella Hillier with ensuring the play actually materialised. Assigned "some of the more wayward characters who were then writing for the BBC", she dragged the notoriously unreliable Thomas out of the pub and back to her office to finish the work.^[16] The play took several years to write, the first half mostly in South Leigh, Oxford, in 1948, whilst the second half was mostly written in America in May 1953. Fewer than 300 lines were written in Laugharne, according to one account, which also explains the influence of New Quay on the play.^[17]

New York[link]

John Malcolm Brinnin invited Thomas to New York and in 1950 embarked on a lucrative three month tour of arts centres and campuses in the States. He toured there again in 1952, this time with Caitlin, who discovered that he had been unfaithful on his 1950 trip. They both drank heavily, as if in competition, Thomas's health beginning to suffer with gout and lung problems. Thomas performed a 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood solo for the first time on 3 May at Harvard during his early 1953 US tour, and then with a cast at the Poetry Centre in New York on 14 May. He worked on the play further in Wales, where in its completed form it premiered the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen, Wales on 8 October 1953,^[18] just 12 miles away from Laugharne. It was said Thomas gave a 'supreme virtuoso performance'. He then travelled to London and on 19 October he flew to America.^[18] He died in New York on 5 November 1953 before the BBC could record the play.^[19] Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954 and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film.

Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. He wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night", a villanelle, to his dying father, who passed away in 1952, one of the poet's last poems.

Death[link]

Thomas's image on the pub sign of his Laugharne 'local', Browns Hotel

Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953, to take part in a performance of Under Milk Wood at the city's prestigious Poetry Centre. He was already ill and had a history of blackouts and heart problems, using an inhaler in New York to help his breathing. Thomas had liked to boast of his addiction to drinking, saying "An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do."^[20] He "liked the taste of whisky" and had a powerful reputation for his drinking. The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how the tension would build before a performance: “Would he arrive only to break down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party? Would he be offensive, violent, obscene? These were alarming and yet exciting possibilities.” His wife Caitlin said in her embittered memoir “Nobody ever needed encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.” Thomas “exhibited the excesses and experienced the adulation which would later be associated with rock stars,” however the amount he is supposed to have drunk in his lifetime and in New York before his death, may well have been exaggerated as Thomas became mythologised.^[5]

On the evening of 27 October 1953, Thomas's 39th birthday, the poet attended a party in his honour but felt so unwell that he returned to his hotel. On 28 October 1953, he took part in Poetry And The Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16, which included panellists Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, and Willard Maas. The director of the Poetry Centre, John Brinnin, was also Thomas's tour agent. Brinnin didn't travel to New York, remaining at home in Boston and handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell.^[21] Reitell met Thomas at Idlewild Airport (now JFK airport) and he told her that he had had a terrible week, had missed her terribly and wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Reitell's previous misgivings about their relationship they spent the rest of the day and night together at the Chelsea Hotel. The next day she invited him to her apartment but he declined, saying that he was not feeling well and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. After spending the night at the hotel with Thomas, Reitell went back to her own apartment for a change of clothes. At breakfast Herb Hannum noticed how sick Thomas looked and suggested a visit to a Dr. Feltenstein before the performance of Under Milk Wood that evening. The doctor went to work with his needle, and Thomas made it through the two performances of Under Milk Wood, but collapsed straight afterwards. Reitell would later describe Feltenstein as a wild doctor who believed injections could cure anything.

A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses, such as Thomas had. By the end of the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog.^[21] On 3 November Thomas spent most of that day in bed drinking.^[22] He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse Tavern, a pub he'd found through Scottish poet Ruthven Todd, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record!"^[22] The barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time later commented that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that amount.^[23] Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam house in New Jersey on 4 November. When phoned at the Chelsea that morning, he said that he was feeling awful and asked to take a rain-check. Later, he did go drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing morphine, which seriously affected Thomas's breathing. At midnight on 5 November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein.

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's hospital. The medical notes state that he arrived in a coma at 1.58 am, and that the "impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response".^[24] The duty doctors found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the presence of an infection. Caitlin in Laugharne was sent a telegram on 5 November, notifying her that Dylan was in hospital. She flew to America the following day and was taken, with a police escort, to the hospital. Her alleged first words were "Is the bloody man dead yet?"^[24] The pneumonia worsened and Thomas died, whilst in coma, at noon on 9 November.^[24][25]

Aftermath[link]

The first rumours to circulate were of a brain haemorrhage, followed by reports that he had been mugged and soon stories began to fly that he had drunk himself to death.^[24] Later, there were speculations about drugs and diabetes. At the post-mortem, the pathologist found that the immediate cause of death was swelling of the brain, caused by the pneumonia reducing the supply of oxygen. Despite his heavy drinking his liver showed little sign of cirrhosis.^[25]

Following his death, his body was brought back to Wales for his burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne on 25 November.^[26] One of the last people to stay at his graveside after the funeral was his mother, Florence. Thomas's obituary was written by his long-time friend and Welsh poet Vernon Watkins. His widow, Caitlin, died in 1994 and was buried alongside him. Thomas's father 'DJ' died on 16 December 1952 and his mother Florence died in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000.^[26] His only daughter, Aeronwy, died in 2009.

Caitlin Thomas's two searing autobiographies, Caitlin Thomas – Leftover Life to Kill (1957) and Double Drink Story: My life with Dylan (1997, published posthumously), both describe the highly destructive effect of alcoholism to the poet and to their relationship. "But ours was a drink story, not a love story, just like millions of others. Our one and only true love was drink", she writes. "The bar was our altar".^[27] His biographer Lycett ascribed the demise of Dylan's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife Caitlin, who deeply resented his affairs.^[28]

Poetry[link]

Statue of Dylan Thomas in Swansea – same statue as shown above from different viewpoint

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and preaching, and Freud.^[29] Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in poems such as Fern Hill, In Country Sleep, Ballad of the Long-legged Bait or In the White Giant's Thigh from Under Milkwood: <poem>

Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house

and heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,

the scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse

of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed^[30]

</poem> Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:

I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance. [...] I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever.^[31]

Memorials[link]

A statue of Thomas is in the city's maritime quarter. The Dylan Thomas Theatre Swansea Little Theatre and the Dylan Thomas Centre, formerly the town's Guildhall, are also found in Swansea. The latter is now a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held, and is the setting for an annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. The memorial is a small rock in a closed-off garden, set within the park. The rock is inscribed with the closing lines from "Fern Hill": <poem>

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

</poem>

Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boat House, has been made a memorial. Several of the pubs in Swansea also have associations with the poet. One of Swansea's oldest pubs, 'The No Sign Bar' (since renamed 'The No Sign Wine Bar') was a regular haunt of Thomas's and is mentioned in his story "The Followers". A class 153 diesel multiple unit was named 'Dylan Thomas 1914–1953' and in 2004 the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in honour of the poet,^[32] awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. Following this, in 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award^[33] was established. The prize is administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, and is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival. In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in his honour in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Selected works[link]

Poetry collections[link]

• 1934 18 Poems
• 1936 Twenty-Five Poems
• 1939 The Map of Love
• 1943 New Poems
• 1946 Deaths and Entrances
• 1950 Twenty-Six Poems
• 1952 In Country Sleep
• 1952 Collected Poems, 1934–1952

Collected prose[link]

• 1940 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Dent
• 1946 Selected Writings of Dylan Thomas, New Directions
• 1953 Adventures In The Skin Trade And Other Stories (Adventures In The Skin Trade, an unfinished novel). New Directions
• 1954 Quite Early One Morning (Planned by Thomas, posthumously published). New Directions
• 1955 A Child's Christmas in Wales, New Directions
• 1955 A Prospect of the Sea and other stories and prose writings, Dent
• 1957 Letters to Vernon Watkins, Dent
• 1965 Rebecca's Daughters, Triton
• 1969 The year of love.

Drama[link]

• 1954 Under Milk Wood (Radio play)
• 1953 The Doctor and the Devils and Other Scripts
• 1964 The Beach of Falesa (Screenplay)

Further reading: collections[link]

• 1966 Dylan Thomas: a Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Charles B. Cox
• 1971 The Poems of Dylan Thomas W. W. Norton & Co
• 1978 A Child's Christmas in Wales illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. 1996: published as Dolphin Paperback from Orion Children's Books
• 1982 Selected Works, Guild Publishing, London
• 1984 The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas, New Directions Publishing
• 1986 Collected Letters. Edited by Paul Ferris. MacMillan
• 1992 On the Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts, Ed. Ralph Maud New Directions Publishing
• 1994 Eight Stories, W. W. Norton & Co
• 1995 Dylan Thomas: The Complete Screenplays, Ed. John Ackerman. Applause Books
• 1997 Fern Hill: An Illustrated edition of the Dylan Thomas poem. Red Deer College Press, Canada
• 2000 Collected Poems 1934–1953, London: Phoenix
• 2000 Selected Poems London: Phoenix

Critical studies[link]

• Brinnin, J M Dylan Thomas in America: an intimate journal, 1957
• Gilbar & Stewart Literary Santa Barbara 1998, pp. 248–252
• Lycett, Andrew. Dylan Thomas: A new life, 2003
• Thomas, Caitlin Leftover Life to Kill, 1957
• Thomas, David N. Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? David N. Thomas, Seren 2008
• Thomas, David N. Dylan Remembered, Volume 2: 1935–1953, Seren 2004
• Thomas, David N. Dylan Remembered, Volume 1: 1913– 1934, Seren 2003
• Thomas, David N. The Dylan Thomas Murders, Seren 2002
• Thomas, David N. Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren 2000

Discography[link]

• Dylan Thomas: Volume I — A Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems (Caedmon TC 1002–1952)
• Under Milk Wood (Caedmon TC 2005–1953)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume II — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1018–1954)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume III — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1043)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume IV — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1061)
• Dylan Thomas: Quite early one morning and other memories (Caedmon TC 1132–1960)
• Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood and other plays (Naxos Audiobooks NA288712 – 2008) (originally BBC – 1954)

Posthumous film adaptations[link]

• 1972 Under Milk Wood, 1972, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole
• 1987 A Child's Christmas in Wales. Directed by Don McBrearty.^[34]
• 1992 Rebecca's Daughters starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson
• 2007 Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM D23702 – 2006)
• 2009 Nadolig Plentyn yng Nghymru/A Child's Christmas in Wales, 2009 BAFTA Best Short Film, animation, soundtrack in Welsh and English, Director: Dave Unwin. Extras include filmed comments from Aeronwy Thomas. 5-016886-088457.

Media depictions[link]

• 1964: Dylan, a Broadway play by Sidney Michaels, starring Alec Guinness as Dylan Thomas.
• 1978: Dylan, film of Thomas's final visit to America; directed by Richard Lewis.
• 1990–91: Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, a one-man stage show featuring Bob Kingdom as Thomas and directed by Anthony Hopkins.^[35]
• 2008: The Edge of Love starring Matthew Rhys as the poet, directed by John Maybury, written by Sharman Macdonald^[36]

References[link]