When a number of writers, including Kurt Vonnegut, expressed resentment at the fact that their work was thought of as "science fiction," and did everything in their power to avoid the label, Blish campaigned for all "loyal" science fiction writers to insist that their works should be clearly labelled, and for they themselves to wear the title of "SF writer" with pride. He was always an earnest advocate of … [specifying] that known scientific facts should never be violated by science fiction, which must work only within the realms of the possible. He also wanted science fiction to be good—to be literate as well as logically competent. As a critic he was merciless when attacking on either front. (p. 4)
There is a great deal of labelled science fiction [in which] … the establishment of the basic hypothesis [is] little more than a ritual process involving the deployment of conventional key phrases ("mutation," "space warp," "hyperspace," etc.) rather than the extension of connecting threads to real scientific knowledge and theory. The priority in such fiction is on reasoning forward from the idea to its possible consequences. In Blish's fiction a much heavier emphasis is placed on reasoning backward in search of firmer foundations for ideas, and it is in the corollaries generated by the formation of elaborate supportive structures that he characteristically finds the impetus to go forward again. It is to a very large extent this essential thoughtfulness, and the more analytical approach to science fiction that it generates, which gives the work of James Blish its unique qualities. All of his major endeavors follow the pattern of first going back in search of a historical and rational background to set his ideas in perspective, then going on ahead to take them to their logical conclusion.
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