CITIES IN FLIGHT: Four Interconnected Novels in One Volume

by James Blish

Hardcover, 1970

Status

Available

Call number

813

Publication

Nelson Doubleday Inc. (1970), Edition: Book Club (BCE/BOMC), 593 pages

Description

James Blish's galaxy-spanning masterwork, originally published in four volumes, explores a future in which two crucial discoveries - antigravity devices which enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs which enable their inhabitants to live for thousands of years - lead to the establishment of a unique Galactic empire.

User reviews

LibraryThing member clong

Cities in Flight gives us a few intriguing concepts, mixed in with pretty much everything that is bad about “classic” science fiction. Utterly unbelievable characters do utterly unbelievable things and interact in utterly unbelievable ways, with an occasional dash of comically bad romantic

interlude. The series' examination of longevity may have seemed groundbreaking in its day, but so many authors have addressed this topic so much more thoughtfully and thoroughly since that it is hard to take the little that Blish has to say on the subject seriously.

They Shall Have Stars gives us virtually no story, but is perhaps the best book of the tetralogy on the strength of the truly intriguing and genuinely imaginative gravitics research on Jupiter sequence.

A Life for the Stars reads like a barely competent YA adventure in space novel. A young man is press ganged into an ugly situation and eventually ends up in a better situation.

Earthman, Come Home gives us perhaps the strongest storytelling in the tetralogy, but the characters are so flimsy, the romance so comically bad, and the issues to superficially explored and unconnected that it’s hard to find any enthusiasm for it.

The Triumph of Time[ gives us a potentially intriguing end of time scenario that in many ways suffers for being grafted unto this utterly sterile “Okie” universe. And it actually, truly, honest-to-god includes an
"oh you manly, nerdy, engineering-type man, I don't care if I am married to your sometimes best friend and other times nemesis, I want to have your babies" scene. Add to that a story in which anyone who thinks that physics and philosophy are boring is given absolutely no reason to change their mind, and you have a fitting conclusion to the series.

Think 600 pages of the worst of Star Trek, The Original Series, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s in store here.

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LibraryThing member DirtPriest

This is one of my all-time favorite books . I like Blish mostly because the science is sensible and maybe even possible someday, like the Spindizzy space drive which is based on the actual physics book Dirac Equation, postulating a way to use angular momentum of electrons to create a gravity field

that the drive 'falls into' at greater than light speed (being a math nerd does come in handy sometimes!). In a not too distant future, humans use this drive to lift entire cities into space inside a spherical spindizzy bubble. With the addition of a logically developed, but fictional, set of anti-aging drugs, a rather grand history spanning thousands of years is presented for the enjoyment of readers. There are also interesting insights into how people learn and remember things, and how that might be different if people develop a way to live for thousands of years. As a side note, there is a lot about Communist Russia since these books (the novel actually is four joined shorter works adapted from serial magazine stories) were written in the late '50s/early '60s. In Blish's universe, the Russians indirectly won the cold war by default when the U.S. and its allies became so much like the Russians that they became indistinguishable from each other, excessive secrecy, government control of the people through media, rise of military caste, etc. It sounds weird but I'll bet it was a rather interesting conclusion to ponder in the 1960's.

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LibraryThing member Hamburgerclan

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.
--J.

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LibraryThing member duhrer

"Cities in Flight" is a remarkable and epic four-volume cycle of novels that follow space-faring humans from their first tentative rocket-powered journeys to the planets of our own solar system to the end of the universe itself.

The first volume introduces us to a near future which is about to be

revolutionized by two key discoveries that will enable man to venture out into space en masse. The second volume follows one young man suddenly thrust into the "Okie" culture in which entire cities fly from planet to planet looking for work and raw materials (those of you who have read "Execution Channel" by Ken MacLeod may find this concept familiar). The third volume follows the decline of the civilization in which the "Okie" cities operate. The fourth volume continues beyond the decline of civilization to the end of time itself.

What's impressive is the way in which Blish manages to project his ideas about the life cycle of cultures and civilizations while still making it clear that cultures and civilizations are always composed of living, breathing individuals. In the first volume, there are three key characters who give us a vantage point to understand the declining western culture and the two key scientific discoveries that make possible the birth of the new culture of space pioneers. In the second volume, we follow a young man who is swept up ("press-ganged") into an "Okie" city, and through him we learn about the emerging "Okie" culture. Towards the end of the second volume, we are introduced to John Amalfi, the mayor of the space-faring city of New York, New York, who is the main character of the third and fourth volumes.

The omnibus edition I read includes an afterword that ties the timeline of the volumes to historical civilizations and compares them to the "Okie" civilization. Even without the afterword, this is a well-crafted exploration of culture and civilization with heavy references to our own Earth-bound history, and stands the test of time incredibly well. Well worth a read.

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LibraryThing member baswood

At last I have finished a book - well four actually because Cities in Flight collects together four science fiction novels published by Blish between 1955 - 1962. The first novel [Earthman Come Home] published in 1955 is the third in Blish's chronology (Cities in Flight is published in Blish's

chronological order and that is how I read them) and is by far the most inventive and by far the most pulpy of the four books, which seems to have been written for a young adult market. In Blish's science fiction future two major discoveries have made space flight possible; one is the invention of the spindizzy an anti-gravitational device that can be used to lift whole cities off into space and the other is an anti-ageing drug ascomycin. In the future whole cities leave behind an over bureaucratic earth in search of work in the known galaxy and the story focuses on one of the largest of these NYC, whose city manager must fight against a galactic economic collapse as well as a threat from an older civilisation. This is an early space opera and as such must have been an inspiration for the likes of [[Alistair Reynolds]], but today the platitudes get in the way of a reasonably well written adventure story. The successful spaceman is the one that can take the the most advantage of any given situation, lying, cheating are par for the course as the only thing that matters is that you are successful. Other people rights, feelings are brushed aside as not important, the only things to be admired are courage, an ability to outwit your opponent and of course ways of making money. If this sounds like some of the worst aspects of Star Trek then it would be no surprise to learn that Blish adapted some of the old TV scripts in the 1960's to make into novels.

[They shall have the Stars] published in 1956 is more tightly written and while less ambitious it does have a fine adventure story to tell. Again aimed squarely at the Youth market it fills in some of the gaps from the previous novel, explaining some of the reasons for the cities flights into space. It introduces the concept of the cities as Okies; migrant workers in space and paints in more details of the economic struggle facing them. It is like a shorter scene from a grand space opera and as such has an anti-climatic ending. [The Triumph of Time] published in 1958 takes us to the end of time and the end of the Universe. The boys own adventure story has largely been replaced with theories on the the structure of space and time and while this strays into a world of hard science fiction it still managed to be readable and has that sense of wonder that is so important for science fiction. Blish's characters still do and say some fairly corny stuff, but you are not reading these books for well rounded psychological insights and the story has enough about it to keep you guessing toward it's imaginative ending. [A Life for the Stars] was published in 1962 and is basically a prequel to the Cities in flight saga. Set in the immediate future (late 1960's) it predicts a cut back on space exploration until the discovery of the spindizzy by a maverick scientist and only the foresight of a far seeing political strategist in Washington sets in motion the finance for experimentation that leads to the [Cities in Flight]. It serves as an excellent introduction to the series and Blish's popular writing style is honed down to tell a credible story and one that we can easily relate to.

I had previously read [A Life for the stars] where the story of the work on the bridge on Venus had stuck firmly in my memory and I had also read [They shall have the Stars] where the take-off of Scranton, Pennsylvania to join the other cities in flight had also stayed with me and so re-reading these novels some thirty odd years later had me reminiscing about my early reading experiences, not such a bad thing. I have to say that I found much of [Earthman Come Home] pretty dire as far as a literary experience is concerned, but found myself reading happily along with the other three novels. This is 1950's pulp fiction, but written by an intelligent author who had some great ideas. Nostalgically 3.5 stars.

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LibraryThing member salimbol

Great concept (Cities. In. Space!), flawed execution. It has a genuinely epic scope, and it was quite fascinating to see which aspects of his vast future history the author chose to explore. Thumbs up also for including economics in this, and for intelligently considering some of the implications

of humankind essentially conquering aging. Nevertheless, this is *extremely* didactic old-school science fiction, in which people stand around earnestly explaining political philosophy and scientific theories to each other. The characterisation is pretty thin at best, and I found the central character increasingly unsympathetic. I was also extremely aware that this is a future universe still ruled primarily by white heterosexual males; women have immensely restricted roles (even when the narrative obviously fancies that they're "emancipated") and I can recall only one person of colour at all who wasn't classed as a "savage". While this isn't uncommon for works produced in the 50s and 60s, I found it particularly grating here. Of all the books in the SF Masterworks series that I've read over the past year, this one has probably dated the most, and it ended up being quite a struggle to finish it (but seeing as it has been sitting on my shelf for nearly twelve years, waiting to be read… it had to be done!).

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LibraryThing member BobNolin

In my continuing survey of the classics of SF, I've just completed Cities in Flight, by James Blish. This is an omnibus of four novels written in the 1950's and assembled by the author in 1970. Of the four, "Earthman Come Home" was written first, though it appears here as the third part. This was,

by far, the best of the four, and if you're not up for a 600 page book, read just that part. You don't need to read the first two sections to understand what's going on. The first part, actually, I thought was pretty substandard stuff. It's the story of how the "spindizzy" (antigravity) and anti-agathic drugs (immortality) were created, amid Cold War politics extrapolated into the 21st century. (When I read these old books, it's always painful for me when the story shows the USSR still throwing it's weight around past 1990). Part two was a SF "juvenile" type, and was interesting. As a Pittsburgher, it was interesting to read about Scranton, PA, taking off for the stars. Part four was written in a very stiff, formal voice unlike the other three parts. Here, Blish throws in physics equations and terms like "Hilbert space" as if everybody knows what he's talking about. Indeed, he seems much more comfortable throughout "Cities" when his characters are talking about machines, enemies, and engineering problems than when they're relating to each other as people. His handling of love and romance is just awful. All in all, it was an interesting read. The plot, apparently, was mostly based on the work of the philosopher Spengler, which tells you a lot about Blish, I suppose. He claimed, in the forward, to not be good at plot and imagining things. Instead, he would just follow an idea through to its logical conclusion. A story based on "What if THIS were true...", like much of SF. This means, in Blish's case, the book's ideas are superb, but the story itself suffers at times by the extreme intellectual nature of its author. As Betty Ballantine says in the forward, (I'm paraphrasing), it's no wonder the man wrote so many Star Trek novelizations (which I read 35 years ago!) : he and Spock were much alike.

As I read through the classics, it's interesting to see where some ideas from current-day novels were, um, borrowed. In the case of "Cities", recent novels which obviously owe Mr. Blish a tip of the hat (at least) are "Moving Mars" by Greg Bear, the unreadable "Tinker" by Wen Spencer (she even moves Pittsburgh, in that one), much of A.C. Clarke, and any book dealing with generation starships and/or immortality. There's a lot going on here, and it's all done with slide rules and vacuum tubes!

Fascinating, as Spock would say.

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LibraryThing member IdeasWIN

I loved this book at first reading (many years ago) and recently decided to renew that feeling. A terrific set of novellas written over 15 years (as per author) and not written in order! There are some minor inconsistencies because of this. James Blish mentions in the footnotes to the Afterword by

R. D. Mullen that he has corrected the major ones.
Memory served me well and the reading was a pleasure. Sure, there are some very 'dated' ideas presented but the books are about people struggling with existence in a changing universe. Here and there the science is either too heavy or too thin but the story is presented in a very readable manner.
Not all the characters are fleshed out as well as they could be although those presented in depth are real, with quirks, self doubt and often a scary but endearing brashness.
The Afterword is a bit heavy but draws some interesting parallels between history and these stories. It also brings in a little of Blish's inspirational source. James Blish is not noted as much as I think he deserves to be. In the course of this reading I learned about his poetry and intend to delve into that a little also.

All in all - a good read. Fun, entertaining, and thought provoking.

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LibraryThing member towo

Reading the four books that compose this "metabook" in one go, the average reader will be subjected to an overload of scientific content, toting speculative natural sciences as well as anthropological theories. This might seem a bit irksome at some point, and especially the (from today's point of

view) partially outdated baseline of thought adds to the awkwardness of the repeated descriptions portraying scientific minds in the process of research.

Aside from the academic infestion, though, the novels prove as a rather interesting thesis of the future regarded from the viewpoint in the middle of the cold war, limited as it may be.

What bothered me more than the academic overload (even though I am mathemagician, mind) were the leaps of faith, for the lack of a better wording, when the protagonists Amalfi and Hazleton routinely required in their deductions. Supposedly, these range from an almost ultimate anthropological understanding, but in essence seem like just a cheap recurring Deus Ex Machina, transforming the long-living city leaders into superheroes.

Well, just a bunch of thoughts, really, not an actual review.

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LibraryThing member mmyoung

The writing quality of the four books that make up this collection varies but what does is the sense of wonder and excitement that underlies the entire series. For this reader the latter two books (Earthman, Come Home and The Triumph of Time) were, with Clake's Tales of the White Hart Inn, crucial

in the development of an early and ongoing love of the entire field of science fiction.

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LibraryThing member Dadbrazelton

The English author born in 1921 has basically written a science fiction book about applying logical reasoning to solving many types of problems. The author obviously has obtained knowledge in a wide variety of areas. Unfortunately, his logic is often very faulty and he attempts to disguise this

through vocabulary (much of which I believe he invented), long rambling sentences, and often just 'skips' away from the problem to a new scene. The 591 page book does manage to hold your interest for awhile, but you soon find yourself wishing for 'The End'.

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LibraryThing member tronella

A Series of four sci-fi novellas. I enjoyed this a lot, but some of the seventies-ness about women got a bit wearing around part three.

LibraryThing member nmele

I came across a copy of "Cities in Flight" a month or so ago and it brought back vivid memories of a major character, the mayor of New York, and of the ending of the final volume. Rereading them, I found them not as enjoyable as the first time, because of large blocks of expository material in some

of the volumes, particularly the final novel, and because the science, particularly in the earliest volume, just rang false. There are some disconnects and startling coincidences in the narrative but overall the imaginative arc of these four novels is bold, daring and still captivating. Without revealing too much, it runs from the Cold War era to the end of the universe.

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LibraryThing member reading_fox

Classic Sci-Fi where concepts metastasize through suceeding books, but politics remains the same.

LibraryThing member villemezbrown

The first two books weren't bad: "They Shall Have Stars" was a dry, but enjoyable bit of generic science fiction. It was too bad none of the characters really came back and got developed. "A Life for the Stars" was a fun YA adventure of a young kid shanghaied into space and coming to grips with his

new situation. "Earthman Come Home" was tolerable, but I wasn't a fan of Mayor Amalfi taking center stage. "The Triumph of Time" just about ruined all that came before. Amalfi became even more of a pain and the silly revelation that the whole universe was about to end just made for a tiresome slog to oblivion . It was lucky for me that the omnibus printed the books in chronological order of the storyline instead of publication date or I would have stopped reading the series before getting to my favorite book of the four.

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LibraryThing member tungsten_peerts

I'm giving this 5 stars for the heavy ingot of pure pleasure this tetralogy gave me when I read it as a young guy ... it really formed one of the peaks of my early science fictional reading, when I was going through my own "golden age" of wonder and there were a few books -- like this one -- that

stood out taller than the rest.

I'd love to re-read this thing but that is a journey fraught with ... little perils. I survived my re-read of the Foundation Trilogy, though -- and even enjoyed it!

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LibraryThing member KevinRubin

"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.

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LibraryThing member antiquary

I just picked this up recently, but I recall reading some of these stores long ago about when they came out entire cities taking of into space, working their way as honest hobos or being more evil as bindlestiffs. I don't think I had read the first story which (though written as the space program

reached its climax0 that the [program would go stagnant --though at that, Blish is optimistic in assuming it would stagnate only after getting colonies as far as Titan.

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LibraryThing member Byzantine-01

This was a chore to read!

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