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Cities in Flight #1-4
Cities in Flight
Originally published in four volumes nearly fifty years ago, Cities in Flight brings together the famed "Okie novels" of science fiction master James Blish. Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.
In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.
A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club
In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.
A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club
608 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
James Blish
423 books281 followersJames Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling Jr.
In the late 1930's to the early 1940's, Blish was a member of the Futurians.
Blish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942–1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Army. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. His first published story appeared in 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave up his job to become a professional writer.
He is credited with coining the term gas giant, in the story "Solar Plexus" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Judith Merril. (The story was originally published in 1941, but that version did not contain the term; Blish apparently added it in a rewrite done for the anthology, which was first published in 1952.)
Blish was married to the literary agent Virginia Kidd from 1947 to 1963.
From 1962 to 1968, he worked for the Tobacco Institute.
Between 1967 and his death from lung cancer in 1975, Blish became the first author to write short story collections based upon the classic TV series Star Trek. In total, Blish wrote 11 volumes of short stories adapted from episodes of the 1960s TV series, as well as an original novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970 — the first original novel for adult readers based upon the series (since then hundreds more have been published). He died midway through writing Star Trek 12; his wife, J.A. Lawrence, completed the book, and later completed the adaptations in the volume Mudd's Angels.
Blish lived in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. In 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and lived in Oxford until his death in 1975. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of Kenneth Grahame.
His name in Greek is Τζέημς Μπλις"
In the late 1930's to the early 1940's, Blish was a member of the Futurians.
Blish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942–1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Army. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. His first published story appeared in 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave up his job to become a professional writer.
He is credited with coining the term gas giant, in the story "Solar Plexus" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Judith Merril. (The story was originally published in 1941, but that version did not contain the term; Blish apparently added it in a rewrite done for the anthology, which was first published in 1952.)
Blish was married to the literary agent Virginia Kidd from 1947 to 1963.
From 1962 to 1968, he worked for the Tobacco Institute.
Between 1967 and his death from lung cancer in 1975, Blish became the first author to write short story collections based upon the classic TV series Star Trek. In total, Blish wrote 11 volumes of short stories adapted from episodes of the 1960s TV series, as well as an original novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970 — the first original novel for adult readers based upon the series (since then hundreds more have been published). He died midway through writing Star Trek 12; his wife, J.A. Lawrence, completed the book, and later completed the adaptations in the volume Mudd's Angels.
Blish lived in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. In 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and lived in Oxford until his death in 1975. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of Kenneth Grahame.
His name in Greek is Τζέημς Μπλις"
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June 11, 2022
Habitating ones way to sci fi fame and immortality
Reread 2022 with extended review
Much room filled with naked apes
The ideas of this classic sci-fi series have been used over and over again, but it are especially the mobility of huge habitats and the long term development of its citizens over millennia that made it a milestone.
Interior design ideas
Be it asteroids with structures inside and outside, manmade mobile superstructures, or biotechnological hybrids, the idea of building milelong, new homes for thrillseekers, explorers, or because of overpopulation was always a sexy trope. It´s great for sociological experiments, ideological demonstrations, and alien attacks too.
Look at the options in awe
And how long the trip may take, if it even has a goal or if it´s just an endless exploration journey or fueled by desperation after earth got boomed, how the population grows, changes, dies (if still necessary), what tech they use, what the motivations of the different fractions and religions are, who the enemies are and why, and how the ships hardware and software setting affects other main plots, have become standards of Sci-Fi.
It takes time to get used to the oldfashioned style
Blish was one of the first to use these ideas and describe them in detail, which makes him one of the more unappreciated, but silently influential sci fi authors who build a whole universe and tinkered with the concept of a space opera. And, of course, it´s a bit hard to navigate through this old-fashioned and stereotypical writing style they used those days so it might definitively not be for everyone who is used to the better known sci-fi authors and some skimming and scanning to jump over the lengths is handy too.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Reread 2022 with extended review
Much room filled with naked apes
The ideas of this classic sci-fi series have been used over and over again, but it are especially the mobility of huge habitats and the long term development of its citizens over millennia that made it a milestone.
Interior design ideas
Be it asteroids with structures inside and outside, manmade mobile superstructures, or biotechnological hybrids, the idea of building milelong, new homes for thrillseekers, explorers, or because of overpopulation was always a sexy trope. It´s great for sociological experiments, ideological demonstrations, and alien attacks too.
Look at the options in awe
And how long the trip may take, if it even has a goal or if it´s just an endless exploration journey or fueled by desperation after earth got boomed, how the population grows, changes, dies (if still necessary), what tech they use, what the motivations of the different fractions and religions are, who the enemies are and why, and how the ships hardware and software setting affects other main plots, have become standards of Sci-Fi.
It takes time to get used to the oldfashioned style
Blish was one of the first to use these ideas and describe them in detail, which makes him one of the more unappreciated, but silently influential sci fi authors who build a whole universe and tinkered with the concept of a space opera. And, of course, it´s a bit hard to navigate through this old-fashioned and stereotypical writing style they used those days so it might definitively not be for everyone who is used to the better known sci-fi authors and some skimming and scanning to jump over the lengths is handy too.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
February 25, 2015
Big, swooping ideas, poorly realised and poorly written. After following these characters for, in many cases, several hundred years of life, I still didn't care whether they were happy or hurt, whether they lived or died. The women in particular are very thinly drawn, limited mostly to a scant physical description (always judgmental: she's pretty or she's not, and if she's not, then we won't see her again).
The pacing in places (especially book three, where this may be due to the book being cobbled together from short stories) is appalling, with pages being given to a half hour episode, then decades being glossed over in the next two paragraphs, without a section break. I found this very jarring.
There are certain scenes in this volume (technically comprising four separate books) which are breathtaking, and would give any recent Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster a run for its money. Sadly these are largely drowned out by the noise that is the interminable remainder of the book.
The pacing in places (especially book three, where this may be due to the book being cobbled together from short stories) is appalling, with pages being given to a half hour episode, then decades being glossed over in the next two paragraphs, without a section break. I found this very jarring.
There are certain scenes in this volume (technically comprising four separate books) which are breathtaking, and would give any recent Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster a run for its money. Sadly these are largely drowned out by the noise that is the interminable remainder of the book.
March 20, 2008
I first read these books longer ago that I usually admit to being alive. I think they had a profound influence on me. Having said that, and having reread them recently I have to say they are really bad in places. Characters are cardboard stereotypes for the most part and the story really betrays that it was written as magazine serials so things pop up that really ought to have been mentioned earlier.
So what's good about them? Well this is 'hard' science fiction. You get formulae to describe the physics and the organic chemistry. It isn't a text book and the oft mentioned Blackett-Dirac equation that describes how the 'spindizzy' space drive works is simply wrong. But it almost could be right. Lots of the science is very convincing. But this is also the first (only?) SF book I ever read that considers economics as well as science. Blish has come up with a whole society of space-faring cities and how they would work. He misses a lot of stuff, but remember he was writing for a magazine. And how many SF writers even think about serious navigation issues when crossing the galaxy at many times light speed?
Then there's the philosophy. I still quote stuff from the last book in the series (not that anyone listens).
And finally there's the timeline. Blish has mapped out 2000 years of future history. This is reminiscent of Tolkien, although it's the future not the past. It starts in the not too distant future and assumes the cold war situation in the 60s doesn't improve.
I can't resist mentioning the 'bridge' on Jupiter. A vast structure made of ice built by people stationed on Jupiter's moons by remote control. They wear virtual-reality helmets that give them control over the construction machines. He wrote this stuff way back in the '60s.
So what's good about them? Well this is 'hard' science fiction. You get formulae to describe the physics and the organic chemistry. It isn't a text book and the oft mentioned Blackett-Dirac equation that describes how the 'spindizzy' space drive works is simply wrong. But it almost could be right. Lots of the science is very convincing. But this is also the first (only?) SF book I ever read that considers economics as well as science. Blish has come up with a whole society of space-faring cities and how they would work. He misses a lot of stuff, but remember he was writing for a magazine. And how many SF writers even think about serious navigation issues when crossing the galaxy at many times light speed?
Then there's the philosophy. I still quote stuff from the last book in the series (not that anyone listens).
And finally there's the timeline. Blish has mapped out 2000 years of future history. This is reminiscent of Tolkien, although it's the future not the past. It starts in the not too distant future and assumes the cold war situation in the 60s doesn't improve.
I can't resist mentioning the 'bridge' on Jupiter. A vast structure made of ice built by people stationed on Jupiter's moons by remote control. They wear virtual-reality helmets that give them control over the construction machines. He wrote this stuff way back in the '60s.
February 3, 2016
This is a review of the first two books of the quartet. The first is in a style I have come to expect from Blish; a rather high brow and deep philosophical discussion masquerading as an eventful piece of pulp. Dubious science fiction is carried off by a presentation indebted to a knowledge and understanding of real science, unlike many modern approaches where any attempt to explain the nature of advanced technology is not forthcoming. The book does take oblique looks at two common Blish themes: religion and the search for knowledge, which are closely interwoven in Black Easter, A Case of Conscience and Doctor Mirabilis.
THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN CURTAILED IN PROTEST AT GOODREADS' CENSORSHIP POLICY
See the complete review here:
http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/33...
THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN CURTAILED IN PROTEST AT GOODREADS' CENSORSHIP POLICY
See the complete review here:
http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/33...
January 28, 2016
I have to say I first read these books back in the 70s, and when I came across them again I looked forward to re-reading them.
I wasn't disappointed, the characters are excellent and you really do get involved with them, the scope of the books are immense and have re-ignited my passion for space opera.
I wasn't disappointed, the characters are excellent and you really do get involved with them, the scope of the books are immense and have re-ignited my passion for space opera.
March 27, 2017
I read this back when it was first published, and I can still remember the excitement and wonder I felt when I first encountered these startling ideas. This is one of the original ground breaking novels, from the truly Golden Age of SciFi
April 1, 2013
Oh man, if I had known from the beginning just how literally this title, Cities in Flight, was meant -- I took it to feature the word "flight" in the sense of fleeing pursuit, rather than maneuvering through air or space -- I would have attacked this book a lot sooner. That's one of the disadvantages of scooping up a whole lot of ebook titles at once; if you don't examine the cover art, you're just going on author and title unless you take the trouble to look up the blurb. And the author.*
Cities in Flight is actually an omnibus edition of four novels Blish published in the 1950s: They Shall Have Stars, A Life for the Stars, Earthman Come Home, and The Triumph of Time. I could have read them discretely as I often do with such collections, but I found the central conceit of these stories -- that a pair of technologies developed in the early 21st century allowed entire Earth cities like New York and Los Angeles and Pittsburgh and Scranton to lift themselves bodily, buildings, subways and all, from the planet's surface and go into space as giant spaceships** -- so compelling that I just kept right on going after the first novel, which detailed the development of the twin technologies, a gravity defying/harnessing field called the "spindizzy" and anti-aging drugs, that would allow this weird feat to be possible. Rather than just function as an elaborate prologue to the "real" narrative of the spacefaring cities, though, They Shall Have Stars is a great novel all on its own, as I'll get to in a bit.
But first, I want to share this cool fan-made video by Charlie McCullough. Just because it sells the concept so marvelously, and is cool in its own right:
But so anyway, the novels. These span from the political/budgetary machinations that made the spacefaring "Okie" cities possible, to a tale of a young man kidnapped by the departing city of Scranton, Pennsylvania who later rises, out in the galaxy, to become a man of some importance after he is traded off as useless to New York, NY, to the story of the mayor of New York's thousand-year reign and the tribulations faced by a city whose motto "Mow your lawn, lady?" encapsulates its willingness to do any crappy job, anywhere in the universe, in a universe whose economy is collapsing, to that same city's final establishment as actually being the center of the universe that many of us assume New Yorkers think it to be anyway. Heh.
So, this one has a lot in common with Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, except its eons of time are spanned by a single generation of essentially immortal human beings, which means it has characters of a kind, but don't go looking here for people you'll love or hate or feel like you know. Blish is interested in charting a vast future history, just as Stapledon was; he just chose to give it a slightly more human scale for the benefit of his readers. So Senator Bliss Wagoner's story of secret research projects and financial shenanigans bleeds into Chris DeFord's rise to prominence bleeds into John Amalfi's tribulations at the helm of the city so nice they named it twice bleeds into Amalfi and a bunch of pseudo-cosmologists doing pseudo-cosmology until the reader's face melts... They could just as easily all be the same guy. Why they're not is anybody's guess. But that's okay. What these novels lack in character they make up for in grandiosity, imagination and occasional goofiness -- as well as the odd (and I do mean odd) moral dilemma of a kind that could only occur when big industrial cities are out in the universe doing odd jobs, planet by planet, solar system by solar system.
And hey, if you're going to do science fiction, might as well really freaking do science fiction, right?
*I have mostly known Mr. Blish as the constructor of novelizations of episodes of Star Trek (original series). He did this very competently, no complaints, but since the reader already knew the story from having seen it enacted by Shatner and Nimoy et al, his skill and imagination were eclipsed by memories of Shatner and Nimoy et al. At least they were for me. But then there was Spock Must Die! And Spock's Must Die! was more than a bit brilliant, and it was on the strength of this (and the inclusion of two Blish works in the SF Masterworks series) that made me want to read the man's "own" work.
**Doctor Who fans will be hopping up and down and screaming about The Beast Below, and surely that episode owes a lot to these novels. No starwhales, though.
Cities in Flight is actually an omnibus edition of four novels Blish published in the 1950s: They Shall Have Stars, A Life for the Stars, Earthman Come Home, and The Triumph of Time. I could have read them discretely as I often do with such collections, but I found the central conceit of these stories -- that a pair of technologies developed in the early 21st century allowed entire Earth cities like New York and Los Angeles and Pittsburgh and Scranton to lift themselves bodily, buildings, subways and all, from the planet's surface and go into space as giant spaceships** -- so compelling that I just kept right on going after the first novel, which detailed the development of the twin technologies, a gravity defying/harnessing field called the "spindizzy" and anti-aging drugs, that would allow this weird feat to be possible. Rather than just function as an elaborate prologue to the "real" narrative of the spacefaring cities, though, They Shall Have Stars is a great novel all on its own, as I'll get to in a bit.
But first, I want to share this cool fan-made video by Charlie McCullough. Just because it sells the concept so marvelously, and is cool in its own right:
Cities In Flight from Charlie McCulloch on Vimeo.
But so anyway, the novels. These span from the political/budgetary machinations that made the spacefaring "Okie" cities possible, to a tale of a young man kidnapped by the departing city of Scranton, Pennsylvania who later rises, out in the galaxy, to become a man of some importance after he is traded off as useless to New York, NY, to the story of the mayor of New York's thousand-year reign and the tribulations faced by a city whose motto "Mow your lawn, lady?" encapsulates its willingness to do any crappy job, anywhere in the universe, in a universe whose economy is collapsing, to that same city's final establishment as actually being the center of the universe that many of us assume New Yorkers think it to be anyway. Heh.
So, this one has a lot in common with Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, except its eons of time are spanned by a single generation of essentially immortal human beings, which means it has characters of a kind, but don't go looking here for people you'll love or hate or feel like you know. Blish is interested in charting a vast future history, just as Stapledon was; he just chose to give it a slightly more human scale for the benefit of his readers. So Senator Bliss Wagoner's story of secret research projects and financial shenanigans bleeds into Chris DeFord's rise to prominence bleeds into John Amalfi's tribulations at the helm of the city so nice they named it twice bleeds into Amalfi and a bunch of pseudo-cosmologists doing pseudo-cosmology until the reader's face melts... They could just as easily all be the same guy. Why they're not is anybody's guess. But that's okay. What these novels lack in character they make up for in grandiosity, imagination and occasional goofiness -- as well as the odd (and I do mean odd) moral dilemma of a kind that could only occur when big industrial cities are out in the universe doing odd jobs, planet by planet, solar system by solar system.
And hey, if you're going to do science fiction, might as well really freaking do science fiction, right?
*I have mostly known Mr. Blish as the constructor of novelizations of episodes of Star Trek (original series). He did this very competently, no complaints, but since the reader already knew the story from having seen it enacted by Shatner and Nimoy et al, his skill and imagination were eclipsed by memories of Shatner and Nimoy et al. At least they were for me. But then there was Spock Must Die! And Spock's Must Die! was more than a bit brilliant, and it was on the strength of this (and the inclusion of two Blish works in the SF Masterworks series) that made me want to read the man's "own" work.
**Doctor Who fans will be hopping up and down and screaming about The Beast Below, and surely that episode owes a lot to these novels. No starwhales, though.
May 6, 2020
This is a four-in-one of a series of James Blish novels. They're all in the same universe, but only get truly related to each other later.
The first book, They Shall Have Stars, takes place in an early twenty-first century as seen from about 1956. This means there's all sorts of technical oddities, but the meat of the story is an interesting take. The United States has grown so paranoid about security that everything is split up into little bits that don't get to talk to each other. Notably, this has happened to science, and since technical progress depends on peer review, and other methods relying on the free flow of information, progress is grinding to a halt. The plot then revolves around a clandestine effort inside the government to squeeze out a couple last breakthroughs, so a young generation can go riding off into the sunset.
The second book, A Life for the Stars, takes place near the year 3000, and a decent chunk of the galaxy has been colonized by humanity in a couple of waves, thanks to the anti-gravity devices developed in the first book. Earth is seriously depleted of its natural resources, and apparently most of the cities have left for the stars, looking for places to work. Which means all these 'cities' are really just the major production centers; steel towns and the like, and there's no reason why a financial, service, or administration center would need to (or rather, be able to) pick up and leave like that. Of course, the main city the remaining three books follow is former financial hub New York.... But, the story itself the best of the bunch, with a well-done coming of age theme.
What's odd is that the main character of that book gets killed off-screen in between books, even though he could have made it (this looks to be a result of the stories that make up the second book being written later, necessitating writing him out). But the last two are further adventures of New York City (or at least Manhattan), focusing on the Mayor, who is just a secondary character before this. The fourth book (The Triumph of Time) has some of the oddest feel to it, as it's kind of Blish's extended farewell to the universe and characters of the first book. It also really runs into modern physics problems as modern cosmology renders the initial seed of the problem nonsense.
Earthman, Come Home is probably the longest, and most extensive plot of the series, and really shows its origins as a series of short stories stitched together. It indulges in lots action-adventure, and saving the day through engineering. Now, for that sort of thing, it is very well done, and overall hangs together well. Its the real core of the series, and works well as such.
I have to say, when I'd heard of antigravity and flying cities... this isn't at all what I had in mind. My thoughts were far more down to Earth, with the engineering of cities where vertical distance, and the ground below not being a real concern... not space-opera concepts of 'cities' as interstellar vessels. However, in its own axioms, the stories do well, and I can see why its one of the classics.
The first book, They Shall Have Stars, takes place in an early twenty-first century as seen from about 1956. This means there's all sorts of technical oddities, but the meat of the story is an interesting take. The United States has grown so paranoid about security that everything is split up into little bits that don't get to talk to each other. Notably, this has happened to science, and since technical progress depends on peer review, and other methods relying on the free flow of information, progress is grinding to a halt. The plot then revolves around a clandestine effort inside the government to squeeze out a couple last breakthroughs, so a young generation can go riding off into the sunset.
The second book, A Life for the Stars, takes place near the year 3000, and a decent chunk of the galaxy has been colonized by humanity in a couple of waves, thanks to the anti-gravity devices developed in the first book. Earth is seriously depleted of its natural resources, and apparently most of the cities have left for the stars, looking for places to work. Which means all these 'cities' are really just the major production centers; steel towns and the like, and there's no reason why a financial, service, or administration center would need to (or rather, be able to) pick up and leave like that. Of course, the main city the remaining three books follow is former financial hub New York.... But, the story itself the best of the bunch, with a well-done coming of age theme.
What's odd is that the main character of that book gets killed off-screen in between books, even though he could have made it (this looks to be a result of the stories that make up the second book being written later, necessitating writing him out). But the last two are further adventures of New York City (or at least Manhattan), focusing on the Mayor, who is just a secondary character before this. The fourth book (The Triumph of Time) has some of the oddest feel to it, as it's kind of Blish's extended farewell to the universe and characters of the first book. It also really runs into modern physics problems as modern cosmology renders the initial seed of the problem nonsense.
Earthman, Come Home is probably the longest, and most extensive plot of the series, and really shows its origins as a series of short stories stitched together. It indulges in lots action-adventure, and saving the day through engineering. Now, for that sort of thing, it is very well done, and overall hangs together well. Its the real core of the series, and works well as such.
I have to say, when I'd heard of antigravity and flying cities... this isn't at all what I had in mind. My thoughts were far more down to Earth, with the engineering of cities where vertical distance, and the ground below not being a real concern... not space-opera concepts of 'cities' as interstellar vessels. However, in its own axioms, the stories do well, and I can see why its one of the classics.
February 26, 2011
James Blish’s Cities in Flight has been whispering ‘read me, read me’ for many a year. I remember being amazed by the cover of the book when I was a kid. After all this time, I have finally read it.
I was expecting great things from a book in the renowned SF Masterworks series. Most of these I have read have been great. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, and struggled to read more than ten laborious pages at a time. There are six hundred in all.
I don’t want to trawl out the plot here, only as much as to summarize:
In the future, mankind will escape the tyranny and poverty of an Eastern controlled Earth, by colonizing the galaxy. Instead of using the usual method of building space craft, mankind has chosen the far simpler method of floating all the great cities of the world into space using anti gravity engines. Instead of developing faster than light travel to shorten the vast interstellar distances, he will develop life extending drugs, so that the he can survive the hundreds of years of flight.
These are the two scientific ideas which form the spine of the science behind the plot. Unfortunately, I think they are both ridiculous from the off! During the vast bulk of the book, we follow the city of New York, as it travels from one adventure to the next. Even though this is supposed to be set hundreds of years in the future, the images of a 1950s New York prevail; with Chrysler building, streets and blocks, full of characters which have walked straight out of a fifties b-movie. James Blish has not really thought very far forward in his imagination of society; hundreds of years may pass, but people talk and act the same, and the city looks the same. This place is run on oil and coal. A future of nuts and bolts engineering.
There will be thousands of these floating cities, roaming around space. What will be the main occupation and reason for these cities to travel?? Doing odd jobs. Like travelling repairmen moving from planet to planet, working for a living. This was essentially because they were poor ‘oakies’ on the run. The whole book is ‘The great Depression’ of the 1930s, but ‘set in space’. Again, I just find this ridiculous.
Anyway… this goes on and on… and on. Eventually it ends, which is a relief.
Sorry, but I have read many books written before this, with far more thought provoking ideas.
I was expecting great things from a book in the renowned SF Masterworks series. Most of these I have read have been great. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, and struggled to read more than ten laborious pages at a time. There are six hundred in all.
I don’t want to trawl out the plot here, only as much as to summarize:
In the future, mankind will escape the tyranny and poverty of an Eastern controlled Earth, by colonizing the galaxy. Instead of using the usual method of building space craft, mankind has chosen the far simpler method of floating all the great cities of the world into space using anti gravity engines. Instead of developing faster than light travel to shorten the vast interstellar distances, he will develop life extending drugs, so that the he can survive the hundreds of years of flight.
These are the two scientific ideas which form the spine of the science behind the plot. Unfortunately, I think they are both ridiculous from the off! During the vast bulk of the book, we follow the city of New York, as it travels from one adventure to the next. Even though this is supposed to be set hundreds of years in the future, the images of a 1950s New York prevail; with Chrysler building, streets and blocks, full of characters which have walked straight out of a fifties b-movie. James Blish has not really thought very far forward in his imagination of society; hundreds of years may pass, but people talk and act the same, and the city looks the same. This place is run on oil and coal. A future of nuts and bolts engineering.
There will be thousands of these floating cities, roaming around space. What will be the main occupation and reason for these cities to travel?? Doing odd jobs. Like travelling repairmen moving from planet to planet, working for a living. This was essentially because they were poor ‘oakies’ on the run. The whole book is ‘The great Depression’ of the 1930s, but ‘set in space’. Again, I just find this ridiculous.
Anyway… this goes on and on… and on. Eventually it ends, which is a relief.
Sorry, but I have read many books written before this, with far more thought provoking ideas.
June 25, 2009
This sucker is actually four novels collected into a single volume. The collection starts with They Shall Have Stars. The year is 2013 and humanity is out among the solar system while, back on Earth, a quiet struggle is going on between the West and the Soviets. It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the two, however, as the Western governments seek to impose more and more control on their populace. Amidst this all is a scheme of Alaskan senator Bliss Wagoner, which is playing out in a lab on Earth and a gigantic construction project in the atmosphere of Jupiter. They Shall Have Stars was entertaining enough. The 1957 story seemed dated in many ways, but in others it seemed eerily prescient.
A Life for the Stars is the second tale in the collection, set centuries after the first. Humanity has discovered the gravitronpolarity generator, or "spindizzy" and over the years, first factories, then entire cities have used this gravity cancelling device to leave Earth and propel themselves through interstellar space. Chris deFord gets press ganged onto the departing city of Scranton and begins a new life among the stars.
Story #3, Earthman Come Home, is the first (and best) of the tales to have been written. It's the saga of the city of New York, an "okie" city travelling the stars and looking for work. Mayor John Amalfi and City Manager Mark Hazelton guide the city through a series of adventures culminating in a... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
The Triumph of Time closes out the volume. Mayor Amalfi comes out of retirement to face a final challenge, one that will have significance for the entire universe. It was the least satisfying of the four stories. Overall, the book is good, classic science fiction. The concept of space faring cities is intriguing, though it failed to truly grab hold of my imagination. But it was enough to carry me through dozens of lunch breaks, so I can't really complain.
A Life for the Stars is the second tale in the collection, set centuries after the first. Humanity has discovered the gravitronpolarity generator, or "spindizzy" and over the years, first factories, then entire cities have used this gravity cancelling device to leave Earth and propel themselves through interstellar space. Chris deFord gets press ganged onto the departing city of Scranton and begins a new life among the stars.
Story #3, Earthman Come Home, is the first (and best) of the tales to have been written. It's the saga of the city of New York, an "okie" city travelling the stars and looking for work. Mayor John Amalfi and City Manager Mark Hazelton guide the city through a series of adventures culminating in a... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
The Triumph of Time closes out the volume. Mayor Amalfi comes out of retirement to face a final challenge, one that will have significance for the entire universe. It was the least satisfying of the four stories. Overall, the book is good, classic science fiction. The concept of space faring cities is intriguing, though it failed to truly grab hold of my imagination. But it was enough to carry me through dozens of lunch breaks, so I can't really complain.
Read
January 16, 2009Disappointing. Mr. Blish chose cities as his medium of exploring space but totally neglected to incorporate city information or life into his stories. To read Cities in Flight is to read about Mayor Amalfi, the City Fathers, and a few people around him. Otherwise there were only a couple of cops and that about represented the whole of Manhattan. I mean, if you want to stage a vast city as your base at least have a cast of one hundred drawn from various areas of Manhattan. For such a famous place that was no information about any of it. The book should have been four times as long. It may as well have been a story about a small spaceship with a crew of 8 and a computer.
March 17, 2011
As a pure science fiction collection, this was first rate. I really enjoyed the science involved. The authors of the 60s really stick to what is plausible, even though it may not be probable. Today's science fiction involves too many impossibilities. For example, Star Wars and Star Trek gave us noisy explosions in space, ships and people rocked and shimmied in zero gravity. The vacuum of space became of none effect. The authors of the past adhered to physical realities and where those were bent, they justified them by proving their theories with plausible explanations, James Blish does this convincingly.
Cities in Flight is a collection of 4 related stories. The first, They Shall Have Stars explains the dual development, scientifically and politically, of the Dillon-Waggoner Gravatron polarity generator, or Spindizzy, and the anti-agathic drugs that made space flight possible. The Spindizzy allows large bodies to travel through space at almost any imaginable speed, the potential speed relating to the size of the body. With Spindizzy technology, whole cities and even planets could be hurled through space. The science behind the Spindizzies are carefully explained and at least seem plausible.
One aspect of potential space travel that modern writers/directors avoid is the amount of time, even at fantastic speeds, space travel takes. It would be futile to send out generations of people through space, even to the nearest star, with no possible life other than breeding and dying. The author also had to construct a way to increase the life-span to hundreds or thousands of years, hence the development of the anti-agathic drugs. The drugs and the Spindizzies combine in the stories to make space travel possible.
The sad aspects of the story involve the realization of how little progress has been made. The story begins in 2013 where humans have colonized the other planets and have begun exploiting their resources. In actuality, the promise of the space program has been squandered and has died with 2012 seeing the retirement of the shuttle Discovery and the death of NASA as a reasonable tax expenditure. Instead of reaching for the stars, humans, and Americans especially, have given up on such endeavors.
One possible reason for this is the introversion and self-centerndness of modern man. The advent of the personal computer, Facebook, GoodReads, MP3 players, and Je-jaws (cell-phones) have created a generation of spoiled children. We have become isolated in our own little worlds and fail to even notice or care about what is out there. The computer has stagnated our collective minds by not requiring us to think. One of the climaxes in the book involve the falling out of two of the main characters John Amalfi, the mayor of New York, New York and the city manager, Mark Hazelton. When Hazelton resigned he accidentally left his slide rule on the dinner tray and it was swept away to the incinerator before John could save it. All the complex computations were made with the slide rule and Marks mind. Today, it would be impossible.
The first book describes the death of the scientific method. It died under its own weight. We have experienced that in the real world where today's scientists try to conform their data to fit a preconceived consensus. Data is rigged to show the expected outcomes based on political agendas and popular mythology like global warming, rather than letting the data speak for itself.
As space, through the Spindizzies, and time, through the anti-agathics are conquered, the spacemen eventually come to feel like they are gods. When the planet He, moving though space discovers the end of time, they position themselves to create their own worlds. While this makes for a good story, it bogs down in its own theology. In this type of world, only the elites have access to their salvation, only they are smart enough to understand. Of course, God in his wisdom has a much simpler plan that everybody, even a child can understand. Don't look for answers to the meaning of life in this book, it isn't there. The Triumph of Time will come when Christ returns and establishes his earthly kingdom.
Cities in Flight is a collection of 4 related stories. The first, They Shall Have Stars explains the dual development, scientifically and politically, of the Dillon-Waggoner Gravatron polarity generator, or Spindizzy, and the anti-agathic drugs that made space flight possible. The Spindizzy allows large bodies to travel through space at almost any imaginable speed, the potential speed relating to the size of the body. With Spindizzy technology, whole cities and even planets could be hurled through space. The science behind the Spindizzies are carefully explained and at least seem plausible.
One aspect of potential space travel that modern writers/directors avoid is the amount of time, even at fantastic speeds, space travel takes. It would be futile to send out generations of people through space, even to the nearest star, with no possible life other than breeding and dying. The author also had to construct a way to increase the life-span to hundreds or thousands of years, hence the development of the anti-agathic drugs. The drugs and the Spindizzies combine in the stories to make space travel possible.
The sad aspects of the story involve the realization of how little progress has been made. The story begins in 2013 where humans have colonized the other planets and have begun exploiting their resources. In actuality, the promise of the space program has been squandered and has died with 2012 seeing the retirement of the shuttle Discovery and the death of NASA as a reasonable tax expenditure. Instead of reaching for the stars, humans, and Americans especially, have given up on such endeavors.
One possible reason for this is the introversion and self-centerndness of modern man. The advent of the personal computer, Facebook, GoodReads, MP3 players, and Je-jaws (cell-phones) have created a generation of spoiled children. We have become isolated in our own little worlds and fail to even notice or care about what is out there. The computer has stagnated our collective minds by not requiring us to think. One of the climaxes in the book involve the falling out of two of the main characters John Amalfi, the mayor of New York, New York and the city manager, Mark Hazelton. When Hazelton resigned he accidentally left his slide rule on the dinner tray and it was swept away to the incinerator before John could save it. All the complex computations were made with the slide rule and Marks mind. Today, it would be impossible.
The first book describes the death of the scientific method. It died under its own weight. We have experienced that in the real world where today's scientists try to conform their data to fit a preconceived consensus. Data is rigged to show the expected outcomes based on political agendas and popular mythology like global warming, rather than letting the data speak for itself.
As space, through the Spindizzies, and time, through the anti-agathics are conquered, the spacemen eventually come to feel like they are gods. When the planet He, moving though space discovers the end of time, they position themselves to create their own worlds. While this makes for a good story, it bogs down in its own theology. In this type of world, only the elites have access to their salvation, only they are smart enough to understand. Of course, God in his wisdom has a much simpler plan that everybody, even a child can understand. Don't look for answers to the meaning of life in this book, it isn't there. The Triumph of Time will come when Christ returns and establishes his earthly kingdom.
August 8, 2019
The tale of a universe in which interstellar travel is possible for literal Earth cities torn out of the ground.
This is four novellas/novels set in the same universe. The first two I adored! The third I found difficult (especially since my favorite character got ganked in a side note), and the last one I skimmed...then skipped entirely, as it doubled down on the most annoying elements from book 3. My score: 5...4...3...2 for the separate books.
One of the characters in book 3 sums up my feelings on the latter two books by demanding if the guy in charge, who has been rushing the city (and the reader) from plot twist to plot twist and going, "I didn't set this up or warn you but aren't I so clever?" in a manner which puts the biggest Star Trek deus ex warpdrive moments to shame, is playing god. The last two books, I feel, was the author not playing fair with the reader, consistently and repetitively, by doing these big reveals that were neither hinted at beforehand nor sufficiently explained after the fact. No other plot devices required--or allowed!
Recommend first two books whole-heartedly for any SF reader, the last two for completists.
This is four novellas/novels set in the same universe. The first two I adored! The third I found difficult (especially since my favorite character got ganked in a side note), and the last one I skimmed...then skipped entirely, as it doubled down on the most annoying elements from book 3. My score: 5...4...3...2 for the separate books.
One of the characters in book 3 sums up my feelings on the latter two books by demanding if the guy in charge, who has been rushing the city (and the reader) from plot twist to plot twist and going, "I didn't set this up or warn you but aren't I so clever?" in a manner which puts the biggest Star Trek deus ex warpdrive moments to shame, is playing god. The last two books, I feel, was the author not playing fair with the reader, consistently and repetitively, by doing these big reveals that were neither hinted at beforehand nor sufficiently explained after the fact. No other plot devices required--or allowed!
Recommend first two books whole-heartedly for any SF reader, the last two for completists.
Read
April 10, 2009I'm not sure which of these I've actually read--when I was young, my father used to go to used book stores every week, buy about a dozen books, bring them home, let us all read them, sell them back, and get another dozen. This series was one of the ones he 'rented'.
I expect the social stuff to be dated--very few authors can manage to extrapolate social trends, or write things that don't dessicate and curl up at the corners. amd Blish wasn't one of the few.
What I'd like to find if I reread the things today is a technical discussion of how the cities were levitated and maintained in flight. I have to admit to not remembering that part--it may not've been very detailed.
I expect the social stuff to be dated--very few authors can manage to extrapolate social trends, or write things that don't dessicate and curl up at the corners. amd Blish wasn't one of the few.
What I'd like to find if I reread the things today is a technical discussion of how the cities were levitated and maintained in flight. I have to admit to not remembering that part--it may not've been very detailed.
February 6, 2016
This is one of the benchmark books in the world of "hard" science fiction and Blish did a superb job of creating one of the most unusual, but believable, cultures in the genre. I've read this book 3 times and, if I live long enough, will probably do so again in a few years.
I have one caveat, and it's something that many SF writers did in the early years. Too much scientific 'baflegab". And not simple baflegab, but stuff that would challenge the attention span of an advanced nuclear scientist. Fortunately, a lazy reader, like me, can skip over those bits without losing the thrust of the story line.
I have one caveat, and it's something that many SF writers did in the early years. Too much scientific 'baflegab". And not simple baflegab, but stuff that would challenge the attention span of an advanced nuclear scientist. Fortunately, a lazy reader, like me, can skip over those bits without losing the thrust of the story line.
August 8, 2009
This is actually 4 complete novels. Fairly short ones. And I originally read a couple of them unders separate covers. A collossal achievement really. In the future whole cities take flight through the galaxy and its very interesting to see Blish expand on this concept. Good works. Perhaps Blish's best.
September 30, 2013
Why did I just read a 600 page Spenglerian sci-fi tetralogy? Because it was there, I guess. The promise of Lotus Sutra scale cosmic urbanism intrigued me; of a rust belt Midwestern town "going into space, to become a migrant worker among the stars." The books themselves, alas, I found too conventional in racial, gender, and plot conventions.
September 24, 2016
Simply his best.
Read
July 25, 20232023 reads, #59. DID NOT FINISH. I originally picked this up because of the "Five Books About..." series at the blog of science-fiction publisher Tor, I believe in that case the subject being five books about alternative forms of spaceflight besides fuel-based rockets. It was written by James Blish, one of those Silver Age also-rans who was writing and publishing sci-fi in the 1950s that sounded almost exactly like his peers Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, but who ended up not achieving nearly the same kind of success as them. (He's arguably most famous now not for his original work but for being the first-ever author of official Star Trek non-canon novels, back in the late 1960s soon after the original series first went off the air, including the now classic Spock Must Die!)
As such, then, it's important to know that Blish's work suffers from all the same problems as Asimov and Heinlein as well, only magnified and then intensified since his writing doesn't contain the kinds of strengths that allowed Asimov and Heinlein's work to counterbalance the weaknesses. In particular, one of the big drawbacks here is that Blish very much defined himself (at least with these books) as a "hard" sci-fi author, meaning that the main point of his books is to actually examine the real science behind whatever subject is being discussed (in this case the human race's discovery of "anti-gravity," with Blish positing this development a mere two decades after the real-life discovery of "anti-matter," basically allowing his fictional humanity to begin interstellar exploration in the year 2018); but as we've discovered now, 75 years later, what the writers of the '50s called "hard" sci-fi was actually based on little more than academic theories at the time that have largely been disproven by now, meaning that the "hard" sci-fi they thought they were writing has turned out to be as soft and squishy as a children's book about little Mary Sue playing with her adorable little dog.
That's a huge problem with authors like Blish, because when you remove the debunked science from their stories, almost nothing is left from a literary aspect, with Blish (much like Asimov and Heinlein) not really that interested in such petty things as "compelling characters" or "believable dialogue" or "a three-act plot that makes any sense whatsoever." Now add that he suffers from the same woman-hating problem as all these other bullying '50s nerds (there's literally two female characters in this entire novel, and both of them are described primarily by how fuckable they are in the eyes of James Blish), and you've got yourself a book that's nearly impossible to actually get through in the 2020s, much less enjoy. I originally checked out the four-book omnibus of this series from the library, entitled Cities in Flight; but I have to admit, I couldn't even get halfway through the first book in the tetralogy (1956's They Shall Have Stars) without throwing away the entire thing in bored, offended disgust, which unfortunately has been the case with most 1950s sci-fi I've tried to read here in the 21st century. That's a shame, because this important genre deserves a better history than the one filled with manipulative sexists writing terrible books that we actually have; but it doesn't stop the fact that this is now a book to be avoided instead of celebrated, and that the problematic elements regarding the origin of modern science-fiction is destined to simply get worse with each passing year instead of better. It should all be kept in mind when deciding whether or not to pick up a copy yourself.
As such, then, it's important to know that Blish's work suffers from all the same problems as Asimov and Heinlein as well, only magnified and then intensified since his writing doesn't contain the kinds of strengths that allowed Asimov and Heinlein's work to counterbalance the weaknesses. In particular, one of the big drawbacks here is that Blish very much defined himself (at least with these books) as a "hard" sci-fi author, meaning that the main point of his books is to actually examine the real science behind whatever subject is being discussed (in this case the human race's discovery of "anti-gravity," with Blish positing this development a mere two decades after the real-life discovery of "anti-matter," basically allowing his fictional humanity to begin interstellar exploration in the year 2018); but as we've discovered now, 75 years later, what the writers of the '50s called "hard" sci-fi was actually based on little more than academic theories at the time that have largely been disproven by now, meaning that the "hard" sci-fi they thought they were writing has turned out to be as soft and squishy as a children's book about little Mary Sue playing with her adorable little dog.
That's a huge problem with authors like Blish, because when you remove the debunked science from their stories, almost nothing is left from a literary aspect, with Blish (much like Asimov and Heinlein) not really that interested in such petty things as "compelling characters" or "believable dialogue" or "a three-act plot that makes any sense whatsoever." Now add that he suffers from the same woman-hating problem as all these other bullying '50s nerds (there's literally two female characters in this entire novel, and both of them are described primarily by how fuckable they are in the eyes of James Blish), and you've got yourself a book that's nearly impossible to actually get through in the 2020s, much less enjoy. I originally checked out the four-book omnibus of this series from the library, entitled Cities in Flight; but I have to admit, I couldn't even get halfway through the first book in the tetralogy (1956's They Shall Have Stars) without throwing away the entire thing in bored, offended disgust, which unfortunately has been the case with most 1950s sci-fi I've tried to read here in the 21st century. That's a shame, because this important genre deserves a better history than the one filled with manipulative sexists writing terrible books that we actually have; but it doesn't stop the fact that this is now a book to be avoided instead of celebrated, and that the problematic elements regarding the origin of modern science-fiction is destined to simply get worse with each passing year instead of better. It should all be kept in mind when deciding whether or not to pick up a copy yourself.
March 4, 2024
7 3,5 stars. I often saw these books at the local library when I was a teenager, but I never read them, because I thought they were about the cities (as in: the cities were the characters). A weird preconception to have. Turns out they are about traditional characters. Scientists, a young boy shanghayed to join a mining city and the mayor of New York, Amalfi. The cities are hardly present as different from each other, functioning more like giant space ships. Furthermore, the stories in these books (four very different stories, I might add) all belong to the 'hard SF'-style that I loved as a teenager (and even now). I might have loved them more as a teenager even - having become a bit more critical in my older years. This is the kind of SF with mathematical formulas on the page and discussions about theoretical physics, antibiotics, cosmology and economics going on for pages and pages. Reading this, it's clear the author was following science in the fifties very closely and still his far out speculation on the science of his day is fun to read about (even if in hindsight some of the theories of those days turned out to have things wrong). It's the kind of book that nowadays would come with a list of referenced academic publications in the back, like Stephen Baxter provides in his books. But I think the greats like Asimov and Clarke were more succesful in integrating their scientific ideas in the story itself and suggesting the background more than having characters lecture the reader about it. Thus it's clear that from the golden age SF-authors Blish is not as well known as others of his time. That being said, he tries to do more with his characters and their psychology than Asimov ever did, even remembering they have sexual desires and conflicts among each other, and having these affect the plot. Like Asimov and co however his prose is functional, expository, and lacking a bit in evoking the awe of cities flying through space. On the other hand, like Clarke, he is not afraind to go out with essentially a downer - with his characters after many excursions having to deal with the end of the universe itself. An A for ambition! There are more great ideas in here: a giant bridge being built on Jupiter in the midst of giant storms. The cities functioning like hobo's, trekking from planet to planet in search of a job. Whole planets acellerated beyond the speed of light to colonize another galaxy and a probe built from exotic matter to explore an anti-matter universe. Those are a few of the out there ideas you will find in here. There are giant computers able to answer any question, like proto internet, however people still use slide rules. And wow, just the idea of New York floating through space is genius! Good old timey SF-fun.
To me, reading the four books in one volume, was a bit too much in one go. It would have been better had I spaced the volumes out, instead of reading them one after the other - which is no problem, because the four books can certainly be read as stand alones.
Not essential reading, even for those trying to gain a feel for the history of the SF genre. However, if you like the golden age hard SF in the style of Asimov and Clarke, the kind where there's formulas on the page, then this will certainly bring you joy.
To me, reading the four books in one volume, was a bit too much in one go. It would have been better had I spaced the volumes out, instead of reading them one after the other - which is no problem, because the four books can certainly be read as stand alones.
Not essential reading, even for those trying to gain a feel for the history of the SF genre. However, if you like the golden age hard SF in the style of Asimov and Clarke, the kind where there's formulas on the page, then this will certainly bring you joy.
September 21, 2020
Four books combined chronological order to make this omnibus - I had read that some suggest reading in publication order, but I decided to stick with the way it was collected here. Character-wise all four books are on about the same level - interesting characters that I liked and enjoyed reading but not the most realised.
For They Shall Have Stars - starts a little slow and with a bit too much "science" - I've read a fair bit of "hard" sci-fi but I found the technobabble in the first and last book to be pretty impenetrable. But the story ends well and gave me great excitement for the next book.
A Life For The Stars - A very enjoyable read, the main character was a joy to follow, and a good introduction to the flying cities. I did find the ending a bit abrupt.
Earthman, Come Home - The first written and the best of them all. The only one that felt like an actual novel that would be enjoyable to read as a stand-alone and not just a short story.
The Triumph of Time - My least favourite of the lot, a lot of dubious "science". While I'd really enjoyed reading the rest of the collection this made the end a slog. However, the ending of the story itself was unique and interesting and saved the rest retrospectively from being terrible.
For They Shall Have Stars - starts a little slow and with a bit too much "science" - I've read a fair bit of "hard" sci-fi but I found the technobabble in the first and last book to be pretty impenetrable. But the story ends well and gave me great excitement for the next book.
A Life For The Stars - A very enjoyable read, the main character was a joy to follow, and a good introduction to the flying cities. I did find the ending a bit abrupt.
Earthman, Come Home - The first written and the best of them all. The only one that felt like an actual novel that would be enjoyable to read as a stand-alone and not just a short story.
The Triumph of Time - My least favourite of the lot, a lot of dubious "science". While I'd really enjoyed reading the rest of the collection this made the end a slog. However, the ending of the story itself was unique and interesting and saved the rest retrospectively from being terrible.
Read
October 25, 2023I hate DNF. In a year, I get through about 60 books, on average, and I DF about one a year. This is the one for 2023.
I wanted to read all the SF Gateway books in order, so falling down at book number 3 is actually pretty hilarious.
I was really struggling to relate to any of the characters, so made an effort to cast and list everyone with a speaking part with an A-List Hollywood actor to play the part. I'd suggest that old/fat Ben Kingsley made a great Mayor Amalfi (It was a coin toss between him and Danny DeVito) but even his stellar performance wasn't good enough to carry my interest for another 250 pages. I'm led to believe that this is hard SF, but I'd categorise the science in it as routinely stupid.
As usual I make it policy never to rate a book I haven't finished. I admit defeat on the grounds that life's too short, and consign this one to the starless rift.
I wanted to read all the SF Gateway books in order, so falling down at book number 3 is actually pretty hilarious.
I was really struggling to relate to any of the characters, so made an effort to cast and list everyone with a speaking part with an A-List Hollywood actor to play the part. I'd suggest that old/fat Ben Kingsley made a great Mayor Amalfi (It was a coin toss between him and Danny DeVito) but even his stellar performance wasn't good enough to carry my interest for another 250 pages. I'm led to believe that this is hard SF, but I'd categorise the science in it as routinely stupid.
As usual I make it policy never to rate a book I haven't finished. I admit defeat on the grounds that life's too short, and consign this one to the starless rift.
December 8, 2022
Humanity's future is assured when the spindizzies lift the first cities into space and the aging process is halted by the discovery of new medicines. But always, that questing spirit drives mankind ever onward.
Blish is a fine writer with expansive ideas and although his writing is a bit dated, it is worth persevering with.
Blish is a fine writer with expansive ideas and although his writing is a bit dated, it is worth persevering with.
December 19, 2023
A behemoth of a book, but we'll worth all the calories burnt turning so many pages.
February 21, 2016
I bought this omnibus a few years ago, following some recommendation (here on GR, I think). 'Cities in Flight' is part of the SF Masterworks series, hailed as one of the must-read classics and what not. I had never heard of James Blish, let alone read any of his works.
There's a quote from Terry Pratchett on the cover: "This is the real heady wine of science fiction.". I can only agree, because it's indeed science (!) fiction: You get enough mathematics, chemistry and physics thrown at you over the course of the four books. If you don't have enough (basic?) knowledge in those fields, it might be better to skip this/these book(s), even if it's science "fiction", meaning there's a story (or multiple) to be read.
There are four books, but they are related, even if the story time-line is spread over several thousands of years (from the Cold War, or 20th century, to somewhere in 4100).
Blish's writing style also doesn't allow to fly through the book(s), let alone the rather flat characters. It was hard to sympathise with any of them, although Mayor John Amalfi was, especially in the last book, becoming a real annoyance, stuck-up and what not.
The introduction is done by Adam Roberts, who wrote that, while the books are ordered chronologically (as they are to be placed on the stories' time-line), it's best to start with the first one that was written, i.e. book 3 (Earthman, Come Home). Since I didn't like to go back and forth, I decided to start from the beginning: They Shall Have Stars.
The blurb mentioned longevity drugs and anti-gravity devices (spindizzies). The spindizzies were developed to set up space flight and discover new planets to conquer to establish a new empire, a new life away from Earth, where the Cold War had been going on far longer than it had in reality and Russia had kicked the West's butt. Hence the world looking totally different. Some US cities (no sign of anything European, though, or I must have overlooked it) then took to space, thanks to those anti-gravity devices and looked for income and settlement elsewhere. Of course, fierce competition arises, etcetera, etcetera. The thing is... I never had the impression a new empire was being built. It was more about exploring space, looking for new adventures, new settlements and enough resources to survive.
The longevity drugs are a consequence of the space flight. Instead of antibiotics, you take something to prolong your life for several tens of years. If you take the pills at 70, then you'll be 70 for a few decades, with your health staying like that. It's thus better to take the drugs at a younger age, obviously.
Learning is not done via traditional means, but through hypnopedia or sleep-learning: Computers stuff any required teachings, subjects, ... into your brain. There's also supervision of the city and internal political decisions with the City Fathers, which I think are large computers (server-like?) that hold a lot of information and can calculate certain events or provide background information on historical happenings.
There are, at the end, afterwords by Stephen Baxter (who gave his advice and background info on the books, content-wise and its historical value) and Richard D. Mullen (who gave a philosophical analysis, based on Oswald Spengler's book The Decline of the West, on the Earthmanist culture that was a main theme in the books). Or, added value that is always good to have with such books.
In short: I can see why it has been republished, why it's considered a "classic", as it deals with some interesting and "new" themes (at least at the time of writing), but I found it relatively hard to get through.
I will not go into further detail about the content. Other readers have done a very good job at that, so I'll just link to e.g. Sath's reviews, which are detailed enough. I also agree, on a general level, with her points of critique, although we differ in rating the books.
They Shall Have Stars: click here
A Life for the Stars: click here
Earthman, Come Home: click here
The Triumph of Time: click here
There's a quote from Terry Pratchett on the cover: "This is the real heady wine of science fiction.". I can only agree, because it's indeed science (!) fiction: You get enough mathematics, chemistry and physics thrown at you over the course of the four books. If you don't have enough (basic?) knowledge in those fields, it might be better to skip this/these book(s), even if it's science "fiction", meaning there's a story (or multiple) to be read.
There are four books, but they are related, even if the story time-line is spread over several thousands of years (from the Cold War, or 20th century, to somewhere in 4100).
Blish's writing style also doesn't allow to fly through the book(s), let alone the rather flat characters. It was hard to sympathise with any of them, although Mayor John Amalfi was, especially in the last book, becoming a real annoyance, stuck-up and what not.
The introduction is done by Adam Roberts, who wrote that, while the books are ordered chronologically (as they are to be placed on the stories' time-line), it's best to start with the first one that was written, i.e. book 3 (Earthman, Come Home). Since I didn't like to go back and forth, I decided to start from the beginning: They Shall Have Stars.
The blurb mentioned longevity drugs and anti-gravity devices (spindizzies). The spindizzies were developed to set up space flight and discover new planets to conquer to establish a new empire, a new life away from Earth, where the Cold War had been going on far longer than it had in reality and Russia had kicked the West's butt. Hence the world looking totally different. Some US cities (no sign of anything European, though, or I must have overlooked it) then took to space, thanks to those anti-gravity devices and looked for income and settlement elsewhere. Of course, fierce competition arises, etcetera, etcetera. The thing is... I never had the impression a new empire was being built. It was more about exploring space, looking for new adventures, new settlements and enough resources to survive.
The longevity drugs are a consequence of the space flight. Instead of antibiotics, you take something to prolong your life for several tens of years. If you take the pills at 70, then you'll be 70 for a few decades, with your health staying like that. It's thus better to take the drugs at a younger age, obviously.
Learning is not done via traditional means, but through hypnopedia or sleep-learning: Computers stuff any required teachings, subjects, ... into your brain. There's also supervision of the city and internal political decisions with the City Fathers, which I think are large computers (server-like?) that hold a lot of information and can calculate certain events or provide background information on historical happenings.
There are, at the end, afterwords by Stephen Baxter (who gave his advice and background info on the books, content-wise and its historical value) and Richard D. Mullen (who gave a philosophical analysis, based on Oswald Spengler's book The Decline of the West, on the Earthmanist culture that was a main theme in the books). Or, added value that is always good to have with such books.
In short: I can see why it has been republished, why it's considered a "classic", as it deals with some interesting and "new" themes (at least at the time of writing), but I found it relatively hard to get through.
I will not go into further detail about the content. Other readers have done a very good job at that, so I'll just link to e.g. Sath's reviews, which are detailed enough. I also agree, on a general level, with her points of critique, although we differ in rating the books.
They Shall Have Stars: click here
A Life for the Stars: click here
Earthman, Come Home: click here
The Triumph of Time: click here
November 12, 2012
"Cities in Flight" is hard science fiction, with hard science, chemical formulas and mathematical equations tossed in to clarify concepts the characters talk about. It's four related stories. One thing to remember while reading this is, it was written before Sputnik.
The first begins in the early 21st century, with the Soviet Union subtly winning the cold war by "sovietizing" the west, that is, the west is so secretive now, it's behaving like everything they're fighting in the Soviet Union. One rebellious, but powerful senator organizes a lot of scientific and engineering research knowing that the west will collapse soon and opening up the stars for travel and colonization.
The research culminates in a biological compound to keep people from growing old and dying, and in an antigravity device to move objects in space, with a long, engineering and political name, but which everyone simply call spindizzies.
The second story opens up about 1100 years later, when whole cities pack up as space ships, using spindizzies, and take off as migrant workers to look for work out in other star systems.
The third story gives a bit of history of space flight and the science behind it. Blish does get some future predictions wrong (again, written before Sputnik) about how the Soviet Union was against space flight as then the unhappy people would leave.
Overall the third story was the weakest. It was like a bunch of episodes of Star Trek mashed together as mayor Amalfi leads the Okie city, New York, on various adventures, from one narrow escape from disaster to another. They were all over the galaxy and I found it incredibly hard to keep track of time and distance.
Some aspects felt very out of date now, in the early 21st century. For instance, now we're used to all large air craft having identifying signals, but in this space craft as large as New York City have nothing like it.
For now it was all too much and I didn't enjoy the 3rd story, so I'll skip the 4th and come back to it in a few months. The first two were definitely the strongest, good characters and good plots.
The first begins in the early 21st century, with the Soviet Union subtly winning the cold war by "sovietizing" the west, that is, the west is so secretive now, it's behaving like everything they're fighting in the Soviet Union. One rebellious, but powerful senator organizes a lot of scientific and engineering research knowing that the west will collapse soon and opening up the stars for travel and colonization.
The research culminates in a biological compound to keep people from growing old and dying, and in an antigravity device to move objects in space, with a long, engineering and political name, but which everyone simply call spindizzies.
The second story opens up about 1100 years later, when whole cities pack up as space ships, using spindizzies, and take off as migrant workers to look for work out in other star systems.
The third story gives a bit of history of space flight and the science behind it. Blish does get some future predictions wrong (again, written before Sputnik) about how the Soviet Union was against space flight as then the unhappy people would leave.
Overall the third story was the weakest. It was like a bunch of episodes of Star Trek mashed together as mayor Amalfi leads the Okie city, New York, on various adventures, from one narrow escape from disaster to another. They were all over the galaxy and I found it incredibly hard to keep track of time and distance.
Some aspects felt very out of date now, in the early 21st century. For instance, now we're used to all large air craft having identifying signals, but in this space craft as large as New York City have nothing like it.
For now it was all too much and I didn't enjoy the 3rd story, so I'll skip the 4th and come back to it in a few months. The first two were definitely the strongest, good characters and good plots.
May 25, 2017
The premise is great: a way to travel in space that is so cheap whole cities are using it to travel the galaxy. But that's also where it ends. These four books are all boring and make very little sense. Here are some of the reasons:
* Somehow the cities end up in a role similar to that of hobos. They go all over the galaxy to... do odd jobs. And they're constantly being harassed by the police. Seriously, with all the vastness of space, they still manage to get chased around by the police for breaking some kind of nonsense rule.
* After the first book, there was just the mayor and a bunch of characters he interacted with. They all behaved and talked pretty much the same, so it didn't matter much that I frequently had no idea who was who.
* There were a lot of inconsistencies from one book to the next. I mainly noticed the computers governing the city. Early on, they seemed to have all the power and could have people executed at will. A dictatorship of cold, hard logic. But later on, the computers were just turned off when the mayor thought they would interfere and in the last novel, they were little more than also present.
* The plots never really made sense. At one point a planet wanted to get rid of its rainforests, so the city decides to move the whole planet. There's gotta be an easier way than that! It seemed like a lame excuse to turn a planet into a space ship.
* The last book consists of finding out the end of everything is near and somehow there's no escaping it, but at least they can do some interesting science experiment with it, which they (and we) will never know the outcome of.
* Somehow the cities end up in a role similar to that of hobos. They go all over the galaxy to... do odd jobs. And they're constantly being harassed by the police. Seriously, with all the vastness of space, they still manage to get chased around by the police for breaking some kind of nonsense rule.
* After the first book, there was just the mayor and a bunch of characters he interacted with. They all behaved and talked pretty much the same, so it didn't matter much that I frequently had no idea who was who.
* There were a lot of inconsistencies from one book to the next. I mainly noticed the computers governing the city. Early on, they seemed to have all the power and could have people executed at will. A dictatorship of cold, hard logic. But later on, the computers were just turned off when the mayor thought they would interfere and in the last novel, they were little more than also present.
* The plots never really made sense. At one point a planet wanted to get rid of its rainforests, so the city decides to move the whole planet. There's gotta be an easier way than that! It seemed like a lame excuse to turn a planet into a space ship.
* The last book consists of finding out the end of everything is near and somehow there's no escaping it, but at least they can do some interesting science experiment with it, which they (and we) will never know the outcome of.
October 1, 2014
Blish had some fascinating ideas. Though a lot of the scientific concepts seem very outdated now, it is interesting to track the possibilities embodied in the basic concepts of longevity drugs, and "spindizzies" to move entire cities and planets around the universe at hyper-speeds.
But a lot of the action falls flat, as the reader is expected to believe that the main characters have anticipated the actions of other people and cultures to an impossible degree. The assumption that the main character has contrived events from beginning to end becomes sort of a psychological "deus ex machina" that is embedded in the story all along, but which is hidden from the reader. That approach appears to be nothing more than a clumsy approach to creating a false sense of suspense.
What's more, the fact that the four volumes were not written in chronological order is evident. While Blish claims in the end notes to have cleaned up some of the inconsistencies, even a fairly casual reading reveals inconsistencies, particularly in time frames, that make the story more difficult to grasp.
But a lot of the action falls flat, as the reader is expected to believe that the main characters have anticipated the actions of other people and cultures to an impossible degree. The assumption that the main character has contrived events from beginning to end becomes sort of a psychological "deus ex machina" that is embedded in the story all along, but which is hidden from the reader. That approach appears to be nothing more than a clumsy approach to creating a false sense of suspense.
What's more, the fact that the four volumes were not written in chronological order is evident. While Blish claims in the end notes to have cleaned up some of the inconsistencies, even a fairly casual reading reveals inconsistencies, particularly in time frames, that make the story more difficult to grasp.
September 6, 2016
The problem with science fiction is that you can create new technology, customs, food, fashions, transportation, slang, games, and more – but it is really hard to have your characters act like they are in the future and not from your own time.
And while not always immediately apparent upon publication, it can become more noticeable over time, as seen in a lot of sci-fi from the mid-twentieth century that features characters supposedly in the far future, but with now-unpalatable attitudes about treatment of all things Other that is straight out of 1950.
Blish attempted to portray what the Future would look like, but all of his characters are clearly highly influenced by his own experiences in the early and mid-twentieth century, which today pulls the reader out of the story. It was a good attempt, but, unfortunately, for a story that gets into the very nature of Time itself, does not quite hold up to the test of time.
September 7, 2010
Like many people, I first read this collection of four novels when I was in High School. Long out-of-print I was very happy to see them repackaged for a whole new generation. This is high-quality science fiction from the golden age. I was suprised that so little of the technology is out-of-date (vacuum tubes excepted) that it reads as fresh now as it did before.
But this is more than just the superficial sci-fi that we sometimes hear about. Much more than spaceships and aliens, these novels dig deep into our culture, our sensabilities, our fundamental attitudes. It is a story of the human condition, as told by one of the grand masters of science fiction. If you enjoy Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury, you'll like this one. If you aren't into sci-fi, I think you will still find a lot to like about Cities in Flight.
But this is more than just the superficial sci-fi that we sometimes hear about. Much more than spaceships and aliens, these novels dig deep into our culture, our sensabilities, our fundamental attitudes. It is a story of the human condition, as told by one of the grand masters of science fiction. If you enjoy Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury, you'll like this one. If you aren't into sci-fi, I think you will still find a lot to like about Cities in Flight.
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