Cities in Flight

An omnibus of James Blish's tetralogy of novels about cities leaving Earth and flying from star system to star system as interstellar hobos looking for work.

Classic hard SF that takes the business of earning a living seriously. The main character grows on you in such a quiet way the ending is unexpectedly emotional.

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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!). show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I breezed through the ludicrous initial premise, the baseline sexism, and the rather dated style and was enjoying it as if I was reading it as a kid in the 60's, when about half way through a sudden bolt of explicit misogynist violence threw me right out of it. A group of abused slave women on a backwoods planet are sent as bait for an enemy of the City without so much as a blink of the eye for their inevitable doom. I didn't finish the book.

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 imaginative gravitics research on Jupiter show more 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 so 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. show less