Black Easter - Character Names

Character Names

It is likely that Blish got the name for his black magician, from the titular character in Harold Frederic's 1896 novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware. The quest for knowledge leading to damnation is central to the lives of both the black magician in Blish's novel and the Methodist minister in Frederic's novel.

Many of the white monks at Monte Albano are named after Blish's fellow science fiction writers:

• Anthony Boucher: "Father Boucher, who had commerce with some intellect of the recent past that was neither a mortal nor a Power, a commerce bearing all the earmarks of necromancy and yet was not;"
• Jack Vance: "Father Vance, in whose mind floated visions of magics that would not be comprehensible, let alone practicable, for millions of years to come;"
• Robert Anson Heinlein: "Father Anson, a brusque engineer type who specialized in unclouding the minds of politicians;"
• Roger Zelazny: "Father Selhany, a terrifying kabbalist who spoke in parables and of whom it was said that no one since Leviathan had understood his counsel;"
• J. Michael Rosenblum: "Father Rosenblum, a dour, bear-like man who tersely predicted disasters and was always right about them;"
• James Blish: "Father Atheling, a wall-eyed grimorian who saw portents in parts of speech and lectured everyone in a tense nasal voice until the Director had to exile him to the library except when business was being conducted;"

(Black Easter, pp 119–120)