Yeah, I'd agree with that assessment based on what I've read by him before, i.e., Book of Ptath and Voyage of the Space Beagle. That latter book is, again, probably one of the first SF stories to focus on a galaxy-spanning research vessel. It's filled with interesting ideas, but ultimately others would later do a better job with the concept. I think Book of Ptath is probably the best of the ones I've read.

Jack of Eagles
James Blish, 1952

Although Blish had been writing SF since the mid-1930s, this is apparently his first novel. Also published under the more indicative title ESPer, it is about a pretty ordinary guy working as a reporter for a trade newspaper that covers the exciting world of food packaging named Danny Caiden who learns that he has psychic abilities. They first manifest as minor predictive powers, i.e., standard ESP stuff, but then he almost stumbles onto the fact that he’s also telepathic, telekinetic, can absorb massive amounts of information (like reading an entire shelf of library books in an hour), etc. This causes him no end of problems, though, as he loses his job, gets a gambling syndicate and the FBI on his tail, and then – after learning that there are others with psychic abilities – runs afoul of an organization called the Psychic Research Society, which initially seems benign but has a rather nefarious agenda that could alter the entire future of humanity – they want Danny to join, or else.
This is a very entertaining novel. Even though the main theme is extra-sensory ability in humans, Blish also takes the opportunity to poke fun at real world figures who were big names in parapsychology and related fields in the first half of the 20th century, not just quacks like fortune-tellers and mediums (in which context Houdini’s name also comes up) but also more ‘serious’ self-styled researchers like Charles Fort and the Forteans and others, and amusingly enough, he even takes a little one-sentence dig at the then recently invented concept of dianetics. He also took pains to provide rather plausible sounding scientific explanations for many of the physic phenomena in the book, and at one point he even seems to have anticipated nanotechnology (when describing a small device that jams/amplifies psychic abilities).
The book’s title by the way, is derived from an actual fifth playing card suit, eagles (also known as crowns), that was introduced in the 1930s and used in a number of different card games. It was kind of a fad for a while, but apparently having a fifth suit complicated things too much and by the mid-1940s it was completely discarded. At one point in the book, Danny – when feeling down and out – refers to himself as the ‘jack of eagles’, i.e., lowest-ranking face-card in a forgotten suit.

And All the Stars a Stage
James Blish, 1971

Several descriptors can be applied to this short novel: dystopian, generation ship story, anti-space opera. The basic story: an aimless, unemployed young man named Jorn Birn (man, that name has a familiar ring to it…) living in a technologically highly advanced society full of young men just like him applies for a job vaguely described as something involving space research. Against all of his own expectations, he passes through a rigorous interview and weeding out process and is set to be on the crew of the first interstellar vessel. But then scientists discover that the sun will go supernova in about 50 years, and the planet will become unlivable in about 10, so the former fleet of research vessels is now repurposed into gigantic makeshift lifeboats and colony ships. Only about 30 ships are completed in time, and each can only carry about 10,000 people. (There was a little humor in the description of the screening process for who would be eligible to go on these ships, as one of the stipulations was: “No parasitic skills, such as brokerage or advertising”). They barely launch in time just as they are attacked by an army of the angry and dissatisfied people left behind. The ships begin to traverse the galaxy seeking a new home while also drifting farther away from each other. A number of the ships are destroyed by malfunctions or suffer outbreaks of disease that kill everyone on board. The ship on which Birn is a pilot, the Javelin, even finds two promising planets in two instances, but both attempts at settlement end disastrously. They persist, though, as the decades inexorably pass…
This is a very somber and at times bleak exploration of the theme of space travel, space exploration and the possibility of finding inhabitable worlds out there – part of that is due to the fact that Blish makes an effort to ensure that the science is plausible. It’s worth reading, but there were some rather puzzling misogynistic bits in the story that I found rather offputting.

Marque of Caine
by Charles Gannon

This is the currently last (and definitely my last) book in the series.. where the 'travelogue' continues and the Dornaani are next up. One problem, though, to manage to get Caine to go there, we have what is a nonsensical plot to get him there... he has to leave his son (who he's finally met and seems to like alot, because of course Caine Riordan is great at everything) to chase after his probably dead wife.

Oh, and by the way, he's also immortal now. Ugh.

On top of that, the Dornaani are far less interesting that they could have been.. just another race in decline because of awesome technology... nothing unique at all after what could have been very good.

Not sure the next books will ever be released (they were announced when this one came on in 2019.. Amazon does have covers and descriptions), but even if they do I'm not interested in where the plot went... it'll just be a re-tread of the last book with different aliens.

...And as a sort of p.s. or addendum to my preceding post, I also read another - the last, in fact - traveller in black story, "The Things That Are Gods," which was first published in the fall 1979 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction Adventure Magazine...



After finishing the book with the traveller's collected stories from 1971, I was a bit surprised that Brunner wrote another, because the last story in that volume, "The Dread Empire" seems like a sort of conclusion to that character's saga. But regardless, this is a pretty interesting story, as it - among other things - involves the traveller granting a boon to a being known in the borderland of chaos as an elemental (essentially a type of god), which is unusual for him. Since I read it in a pdf of the original magazine, it also included the excellent illustrations by George Barr.

This last story is also included in the later edition of the book from the 1980s, The Compleat Traveler in Black.