Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75393 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 620 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the grandest, and certainly one of the best written, of wide-screen space operas, Blish's Cities in Flight takes us from the collapse of American civilisation at the moment of its greatest scientific success to its final transfiguration at a moment of cosmic disaster. New York, enclosed in a vast dome, and powered by anti-gravity and hyper- drive, wanders among the stars, a labourer for hire, and yet also the seed of humanity's brief ascendancy in a hostile galaxy. This is the story of people as well as vast historical moments-- of Wagoner, the Senator who gives his life and good name for humanity's future; Chris, the naive youngster to whom New York gives everything, and from whom it will take everything away; and above all John Amalfi, who starts as Mayor of New York and ends up as a sort of god. And along the way, we meet some of the strangest of the shapes human society takes among the stars. Crackling with ideas about the progress of history, and passionate in its evocation of the deep reaches of time and space, Blish's sequence is intelligent and visionary, a true classic of the genre. --Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
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.

About the Author
SALES POINTS * #3 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written * 'This is the real heady wine of science fiction -- exciting, intelligent galaxy-spanning stuff that these days would require six brick-thick volumes' -- Terry Pratchett * 'An outrageous imaginative coup ... Crammed with high adventure yet illuminated by a searching intelligence, this four-part epic completely reinvented the traditions of space opera' -- Paul J. McAuley

Customer Reviews

Don't start at the beginning - read part 3,' Earthman come home', first !
This is 4 novels, originally published independently( from the late 50s to early 60s), the first 2 being self-contained, although serving as prequels (potentially, originally, but explicitly here, in this edition). These are: 'They shall have stars' (also published as 'Year 2018'), 'a Life for the Stars', ' Earthman come home', and ' a Clash of Cymbals'. They were originally published out of sequence, although the fourth novel, a Clash of Cymbals, was explicitly a follow up to 'Earthman, Come Home'.

The third novel, 'Earthman come home', is the place to start and, frankly, stop if you don't like it, or even if you do, but find it enough to be going on with - I read it three times, over many years, before I was aware of the others. Don't look for any refinements of style - in fact, it's wincingly awful sometimes. Blish is definitely 50s cold war American comic book in outlook and depth of characterisation, but that has it's attractions for me - simplicity and focus on a story, and an easy read. I read all his books I could find when I was younger, for all that. I think Blish, like many of the early SF pioneers, became a regular contributor of scripts to Star Trek. Anyway, 'Earthman, Come Home' is an amusing flight of fancy. Earthmen had long ago spread throughout the home galaxy. A technology (spindizzy drives) had been developed, which enabled entire cities to lift into space ( Blish obviously had a background in engineering or physics - there's a sprinkling of plausible, if dated, technological language). Earth's cities had long ago been deserted by its cities, which traveled the galaxy looking for work amongst the settled planets, contracting for work as needed. Earth, which had once had an empire, but which few of the flying cities had now ever seen, still maintained a police force, which enforced contracts, and generally policed the flying cities. There are some nods to John Steinbeck's tale of 1930s depression America, 'the Grapes of Wrath', about migrant workers, driven by desperation to seek work in California, known as 'Okies' (from Oklahoma) - so we have 'Okie cities' and an 'Okie jungle' (hobo jungle). Don't expect Steinbeck, though, or even Philip K. Dick. The central character is the mayor of the city once known as New York (just the Manhattan bit, though). The first 'adventure' is a bit confusing, but after that it's quite straightforward.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a film based on 'Earthman...' soon, now that the CGI is up to it.

The fourth novel continues the story, not very remarkably as I remember. The first 2 novels are set in time before the cities took off from Earth, recognisably our world a little in the future (as imagined in the 50s or 60s). 'Year 2018' centres around the bizarre effort to build a bridge from Jupiter to one of its moons, which tested a lot of the theory later used to lift the cities. 'A Life for the Stars' is the story of how the central character of 'Earthman...', John Amalfi, mayor of Manhattan-in-space, took his first step from Earth into a life in the stars.

I can understand the readers who found this a drag, though, which is why I say: read 'Earthman, come home' first - it's the most action-packed and imaginative, and is the core of the quartet; then read the sequel(if you want), 'a Clash of Cymbals'. Then read the other 2 at your leisure. They were published originally as self-contained novels (except for the last one) and should be treated as such; Blish's style is fine in short bursts, as originally conceived, but to read all these books in a row would tax most people who don't already have a fondness for them - in fact, I myself have never read them all in a row like this.

If you can get one of the old Mayflower paperback editions of 'Earthman, come home', the jacket would be worth the price: the cover is, I think, the work of cult artist Richard Powers, who was the biggest influence in jacket design for early SF, for a while. The cover has an abstract expressionist painting (paint splashes), Jackson Pollock style (I saw one of his paintings recently that looked like it might have been the one that gave Powers the idea for this). In the middle of the paint whirls and doodles is a little picture of a man in a space suit, as if in the midst of some cosmic quantum soup - for me a perfect illustration of the contents with it's 'Dirac transmitters' and 'spindizzy generators'. The uniquely American art (and some say CIA sponsored - but that's another story - see Serge Guilbaut's ' How New York stole the idea of modern art' for a start) of abstract expressionism, married to the science fiction of the cold war space race era, perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the times.

Treat With Caution
I've got to admit to being a real fan of classic SF but find that, while some bears up very well with the passage of time, some fares much less well. This has dated very badly and while there a few excellent underlying notions it is impossible to ignore the clunky technology and out-moded social ideas that inform the work.

This is almost certainly a work of 'historical importance' within the SF field and it is that alone, I feel, which explains why it was placed so highly in the 'SF Masterworks' series(one of the things that nudged me into reading it), but I can't recommend it as a reading experience.

Whatever you do don't make this your first journey into 'Classic SF' try Bester(The Stars My Destination), Asimov(Foundation),Clarke(The City and the Stars), Dick(The Man in the High Castle),...

Intriguing but turgid
Great idea; I thought I was in for a sort of twist on those ripping 'spend-generations-in-space and watch society evolve' type plots which made for some really interesting SF. Robert Silverberg (the world inside) and Larry Niven (integral trees, ringworld) are superb at this stuff.

Ughh! I was dead wrong. I'll come clean and admit I couldn't get through the whole thing - I got mired down just about half way through. The premise is interesting; if cities could move anywhere in the universe, where would they go, and how would it affect society? Unfortunately James has written from a mildly autistic 1950's structural engineers point of view. The equivalent today of a Linux Geeks view of the world. '...uh, what would be the effect of a mega-Tsunami hitting us here in London? Nothing serious - I'd be back on-line using my 3G cellphone in minuites. *snort*'

It's a bit Uber-Heinlein if you know what I mean; 'Bossing' jobs, women are decorative, technology is gritty and mechanical, and people will do what they're told by their properly elected local government.