“Solar Plexus” by James Blish original appeared in the September 1941 issue of Astonishing Stories.

You can find this story in these anthologies, which include:

Beyond Human Ken (1952) edited by Judith Merril

Men and Machines (1968, 2009) edited by Robert Silverberg. This version can be read online via Google Books.

The Great SF Stories 3 1941 (1980) edited by Asimov & Greenberg

Warning: This essay contains spoilers.

“Solar Plexus” by James Blish isn’t a famous story. As far as I can tell, it was never included in any of Blish’s short story collections, and there were over a dozen of them. He must not have liked it much.

I was intrigued by “Solar Plexus” because it was first published in 1941 and contained words that shouldn’t have been used that year. I read “Solar Plexus” in The Great SF Stories 3 1941 edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. Either James Blish had access to secret research, was very good at extrapolation and coining words, or he had access to a time machine. Of course, the easy answer, Blish revised this story when it was reprinted for book publication. I wish he hadn’t.

I also wish I had access to a copy of Astonishing Stories September 1941 so I could read the original. Unfortunately, the cheapest copy I could locate for sale is $35 plus $15 for shipping. I’m not going to spend $50 to solve a minor literary mystery.

The first phrase that set off warning bells was “the UN’s police cruiser.” The United Nations was established in 1945. I supposed Blish could have guessed the phrase United Nations from the United States.

The next word that caught my attention was “computer.” In 1941 people used the word computer to mean humans that worked at mathematical calculations, not machines. But still, he could have imagined the language changing.

After that came “transistor radio.” The transistor was invented in 1947, and the transistor radio was first developed in 1954. I assumed Blish rewrote “Solar Plexus” in 1952 for the Judith Merril anthology. Now I’m wondering if he revised it again for the 1968 Robert Silverberg anthology Men and Machines.

Blish also used the word, “astronaut” which has been around for various uses, but I’m not sure it was used the way Blish used it in 1941 for space-traveler. I think NASA made that popular, and NASA was created in 1958.

Blish is credited with coining the term “gas giant” but I find that very hard to believe. Technovelgy says the term wasn’t used in the 1941 version but was in the 1952 revision of the story. Even Wikipedia gives him credit. So, wow!

In my research for this story, I found out that Blish constantly revised his short stories. I consider that a kind of cheating when considering the SF speculation aspects. I love reading old science fiction to understand how people in the past thought about the future. Science fiction never predicts the future, but it does speculate and extrapolate. That’s the art of science fiction.

I assume the basic plot of “Solar Plexus” was the same in 1941 despite the updating of terminology. In the story, Brant Kittinger is an astronomer living in a space habitat orbiting a newly discovered gas giant in our solar system. His work is interrupted when a spaceship arrives and connects to his airlock. Kittinger is tricked into going into the new ship where he discovers it’s controlled by a sentient computer that was once Murray Bennett.

This is the earliest science fiction story I know that presents a cyborg spaceship. Bennett had his own body destroyed, incorporating his brain into a ship’s control system. Blish talks about nerve-to-circuit surgery which science is working on today. Cyborgs have a long history as a concept, and science fiction has had many stories about sentient spaceships, including the popular The Ship Who Sang (1969) by Anne McCaffrey.

The plot of “Solar Plexus” is rather simple. Bennett wants to use Kittinger’s brain to create other ships. But the computer mind struggles to understand motivation and purpose. Of course, Kittinger doesn’t want his brain recycled for spaceship parts. Luckily for him, Bennett has another captive on board, a Lt. Powell, and the two of them figure out how to outwit the ship.

I was troubled by the ending though. I didn’t want Kittinger and Powell to kill the sentient ship. However, they have no qualms about doing it. From the same collection, The Great SF Stories 3, I read Isaac Asimov’s story “Liar!” where we are introduced to Susan Calvin. Calvin coldly murders a sentient computer too. Evidently, back in 1941, there was no empathy for AI minds.

I would have been more impressed with Blish if he had created a sympathetic cyborg. Fiction is driven by conflict, and the easiest threat to create in writing is one of bodily harm. That’s why intelligent computers are mostly seen as nightmare killers because unimaginative authors can’t invent a better complication for the conflicts of their stories.

James Blish didn’t lack imagination, just read “Surface Tension.” “Solar Plexus” would be a better-remembered story if it hadn’t been about another mad scientist wanting to harvest brains. Of course, Astonishing Stories wasn’t a top-tier pulp, and 1941 was still early in Blish’s career as a writer.

That said, I try to imagine what it might have been like to be a teen reading a copy of Astonishing Stories in the fall of 1941. The concepts of space travel, spaceships, computers, weren’t highly developed in the public’s mind back then. “Solar Plexus” showed a lot of creative imagination.

I wish science fiction writers wouldn’t revise their stories. Or if they do, date them some way. We should have “Solar Plexus,” “Solar Plexus (1952)” and maybe even “Solar Plexus (1968)” listed in ISFDB. I wish Asimov/Greenberg had used the 1941 version in their collection. Of the three volumes I’ve read so far, I think one introduction mentioned using the original rather than the revised story.

JWH