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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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.

"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. ( )