Cities in Flight - James Blish

The ‘SF Masterworks’ series, by The Orion Publishing Group, covers some sixty plus years of science-fiction writing, boasting a collection of novels from authors such as Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Frederik Pohl, Larry Niven, Alfred Bester and many, many others. ‘Cities In Flight’ is the third book of the series and was written by James Blish, who was born in 1921 and is probably best known for his novelisations of Star Trek scripts, also laying claim to having written the first original Star Trek novel, ‘Spock Must Die!’. ‘Cities In Flight’ was originally four separate, but intertwined, novels and short stories, which for this edition have been put ...  Read the complete review

A Millennium SF Masterwork originally published in four volumes, here reprinted in the order in which they occur within Blish’s imagined history rather than the order in which they were published, Cities in Flight is one of the few novels I have read where I thought the high page-count (604 pages; I normally refuse to touch any novel over 500) was actually justified. The first section, “They Shall Have Stars”, is probably the weakest in the book (which I point out merely to indicate the very high standard of the others), and details the discovery of devices which will come to be known as ‘spindizzies’, in effect anti-gravity ...  Read the complete review

Cities in flight. A life for the stars. A small review for a small book, well the author didn't have much to say and neither have I. Synopsis: When the work runs out, cities begin to simply lift off into space looking for their future. The main character in the story is Chris and one day whilst out spying on Scranton he is caught inside the spindizzy field as the city of Scranton begins its ascent into space. His old life gone forever. All must contribute on the now space city so he becomes an apprentice astronomer under the tutelage of Prof Boyle Warner. But he is no astronomer, so when scranton meets New York city he is ...  Read the complete review

I'm a very contrary reader. Sometimes I pick something of the SF shelves of a bookshop, look at it, and wonder why they can't just tell a human interest story for once, instead of all this derivative, meaningless, dissociated nonsense they don't really understand themselves; remembering Sagan's description in Contact of the mission as 'the most expensive psychotherapy session in human history.' True. The neuroses that drive people to write, and read, science fiction-- a field whose notoriously appallingly low literary standards continue to haunt it to the extent that almost none of it seems worth reading- could be solved with almost trivial ...  Read the complete review

Cities in flight. =========== Chris is a nosey teenager and one day that nose gets him into trouble. He is snooping around the outskirts of a town called Scranton hoping to see the town 'lift off' as it launches itself into space but he misjudges and is inside they Spindizzy field when they engage themselves and he is carried up and into space. He will never see his old life again. He goes on an adventure with the town but is then traded over to the City of New York with whom he finds a new and interesting life and career. He will have his mind expanded by the robot 'city founders', he will take part in battles and politics before ...  Read the complete review