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by James Blish

Author:

James Blish
ISBN:

0380009064
ISBN13:

978-0380009060
Genre:

No category
Publisher:

Avon Books; First Thus edition (1977)
FB2 format

1423 kb
ePUB format

1600 kb
DJVU format

1370 kb
Rating:

4.8
Votes:

759
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BLACK EASTER James Blish ww. f-gateway. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written

BLACK EASTER James Blish ww. com Enter the SF Gatewa. n the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain's oldest and most. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written. Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops.

Black Easter is a fantasy novel by American writer James Blish, in which an arms dealer hires a black magician to unleash all the demons of Hell on Earth for a single day. It was first published in 1968. The sequel is The Day After Judgment. Together, those two novellas form the third part of the thematic After Such Knowledge trilogy (the title is from a line of T. S. Eliot's Gerontion: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?") with A Case of Conscience and Doctor Mirabilis

And, like that book, give "Black Easter" a chance and it just might make your neck hairs stand up a bi.

And, like that book, give "Black Easter" a chance and it just might make your neck hairs stand up a bit. The premise here is that an arms dealer contracts with a practitioner of black magic, the aim being to loose all the demons of hell upon the Earth for one night - JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. Black Easter (or Faust Aleph-Null) is a classic Nebula-nominated work by James Blish, in which an arms dealer contracts with a black magician by the name of Theron Ware to literally let all hell break loose for one night on earth - out of curiosity to see what would happen and to boost profits from arms sales.

Hess was asleep on the long table that earlier had borne Ware’s consecrated instruments. Jack Ginsberg lay on the floor near the main door, napping fitfully, mumbling and sweating. again warning everyone not to touch anything, had dusted off the altar and gone to sleep – apparently quite soundly – upon it, still robed and gowned. Only Baines and Father Domenico remained awake

The Best of James Blish (Del Rey Books).

The Best of James Blish (Del Rey Books). Best known for his Hugo Award-winning classic A Case of Conscience, Blish was one of the first serious SF writers to involve themselves with tie-in novels, writing eleven Star Trek adaptations as well as the first original adult Star Trek novel.

that you wanted your murder done 'tracelessly,' which obviously means that I must have no unusual marks left on the patient. I prefer it that way myself

Need help? Please read our short guide how to send a book to Kindle. that you wanted your murder done 'tracelessly,' which obviously means that I must have no unusual marks left on the patient. I prefer it that way myself. How then could I prove suffering if you asked for it, in a way inarguable enough to charge you extra for it?" "Or, look at the other side of the shield, Mr. Baines. Every now and then, an unusual divorce client asks that the ex-consort be carried away painlessly, even sweetly, out of some residue of sentiment.

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Then read James Blish's Black Easter. A novella that reads like one small part of a much greater tome, a story which describes a world that is simultaneously inconceivable yet effectively conceived. Meet the Devil that lurks in the metaphysical world, the physical world, in you. Meet angels that are not deliverers. Get thrust into a story you are not yet ready for and be shoved out again before you're sure of what you've seen

Book in the After Such Knowledge Series). Published by Thriftbooks. com User, 14 years ago. 1968 was a dark year.

Book in the After Such Knowledge Series). Select Format: Hardcover. Robert Kennedy was assassinated and the world was still in shock over Martin Luther King's senseless murder. Hippies rioted at the Democrat's convention in Chicago, Charles Manson had begun his murderous rage, Vietnam was a debacle, the Cold War was still on and it seemed the world (humanity calls home) was on a downward spiral headed to bummerland.

A novel about a practitioner of witchcraft who is asked to use his powers to kill a powerful politician

Hbr

Different stuff,,,,never before read anything like it....

Xtani

I had read it years ago and did not keep it. This one I will hold on too.

Dont_Wory

Great book.

romrom

One of the greatest SF ever, really well researched and written

Ranenast

I must begin by taking issue with some of the more negative reviews here. No, "Black Easter" is not a modern horror novel, or slasher film, or gore-fest. It was first published in serial form in 1968 (in "If" magazine) under the title "Faust Aleph-null." So, first things first, let's give this fine piece of writing its due ESPECIALLY since it is, as of this writing, forty-four years old. Some reviewers here have complained that it's not shocking now. Well, neither, I suppose, is Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House," but it's a marvelously creepy ghost story nonetheless. And, like that book, give "Black Easter" a chance and it just might make your neck hairs stand up a bit.

The premise here is that an arms dealer contracts with a practitioner of black magic, the aim being to loose all the demons of hell upon the Earth for one night -- JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. What happens, unfortunately, is Armageddon; once loosed, the legion of demons cannot be whisked back to the underworld.

Some who've complained that "Black Easter" seems short and incomplete should know that there's a good reason for that: Blish considered it to be merely the first half of a novel, the other half being "The Day After Judgement." In 1990, a small publishing house called Gregg Press finally released the two novellas as the single novel Blish had intended, under the title "The Devil's Day." Presented in that way, both "Easter" and "Judgement" seem whole, and the entire story arc just makes more sense.

Both "Easter" and "Judgement" are worth reading. True, even for me they don't pack the punch they did when I first read them as a teenager in the 1970s. But still, there are some very dark, disturbing concepts here. Essentially, Blish is writing about the terrible price that experience and knowledge can extract from a person, even to the point of destruction.

And in fact, if the two books are considered as one book under the title of "The Devil's Day," then another of Blish's claims holds water: He considered this the final book of a trilogy about the price of knowledge, with the first novel being 1959's "A Case of Conscience" and the second being "Dr. Mirabilis," published in 1964. His title for the trilogy was "After Such Knowledge," a phrase pulled from the writings of T.S. Eliot.

Those first two books do not share the same character set that appears in "Easter" and "Judgement" or, if you prefer, "The Devil's Day." But if you're going to read "Black Easter," I would definitely pick up a copy of "The Day After Judgement" and read the two novellas back to back as a single novel, as Blish intended. They are fascinating books, their central question being, "What would happen if good were NOT necessarily stronger than evil?"

Finally, I do agree that Blish as a writer can be a bit problematic -- especially annoying is his tendency at times to tell rather than show. But in his best passages here, he presents a world both fascinating and repellent, an Earth awash in wickedness unleashed not with great malice but simply recklessness.

Gold Crown

I have a soft spot for fantasies of the Apocalypse, as in the Biblical Apocalypse or Book of Revelations, but subverted or not played straight.

Black Easter (or Faust Aleph-Null) is a classic Nebula-nominated work by James Blish, in which an arms dealer contracts with a black magician by the name of Theron Ware to literally let all hell break loose for one night on earth - out of curiosity to see what would happen and to boost profits from arms sales. Most of the narrative is an intricate exploration of the ritual involved, based on actual books of such rituals, although there is a pleasant diversion involving a rather fetching succubus.

The white magicians of the Catholic Church are also involved, but are limited to observations of protocol due to their non-aggression compact with the forces of black magic. However, what everyone, including Ware himself, was implicitly relying on to contain the ritual, falls apart in the concluding punchline to the novel.

There is a sequel - The Day After Judgement - but it never truly rises to the force of the concluding punchline of the first novel (which in turn would probably have been more effective as a shorter work). The apocalypse ensues, but the demons mysteriously seem restrained in their destructive force. The original characters from the first novel attempt to reverse the apocalypse, on a quest to the City of Hell that has risen in the place of Las Vegas (where else? Although Stephen King had a similar idea in The Stand…). The mystery is uncovered when they encounter a mournful Satan in finest Miltonian form.

RATING: IT'S A RAVE 3 STARS***

Landaron

First off, the fact that this is such a brilliant, pithy, amazingly tight little tome is doubly amazing when one realizes that the quite gifted Mr. Blish also wrote novelizations of Star Trek episodes. Ah well, even the best have to pay rent.
Second, there is no finer fictional chronicle of diabolism, either ancient or modern, in English, and none that I know of in most of Earth's other tongues. Each of Blish's characters is deftly crafted with a minimum of prose, a compliment which can extend to the rest of this slight and delicious book; Blish accomplished in a few pages what today's pompous and prolix authors take hundreds of pages to say...Stevie King, though the man can write when he wants to, comes to mind.
Finally---and a mild criticism---while it is delightful that Blish takes care to present Malefica as a discipline, it is (or was, for when I first read this I was merely thirteen) somewhat disenchanting to see that Blish gets most of the Satanic formulae, Latin incantations, and demon summoning paraphernalia hopelessly wrong. I have since found older grimoires to draw upon, though, and Black Easter is a work of fiction, so no victim, no foul.
All in all a devilishly clever and delightful book; for more nastiness pick up The Day After Judgement, which is actually the third in a trilogy (the first of which was After Such Knowledge).

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