a very odd compilation of the four Okie novels Blish wrote- the first in 1952, the last in 1970 (Cities in Flight - James Blish)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Cities in Flight - James Blish
Date:	14/11/00 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Scene- setting; apart from the fourth novel, first rate; A

Disadvantages: Science; one equation, and derivatives; if your gizmo runs out of jargon, name it after someone; C

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 readjustment. We're all just infantile hysterics, and cheap, tacky ones at that. Then I wander down to general fiction, pick up one of those human interest stories, and realise why I prefer to read science fiction. We're short on maturity and stability; they're short on intelligence and sense of potentiality.

All in all, it was a strange mood to encounter James Blish's Cities In Flight in, because it is a very odd compilation of the four Okie novels Blish wrote- the first in 1952, the last in 1970, also published as part of the SF Masterworks series. It is another allegory; a story which uses make- believe technology to put far more than usually plausible characters and social situations through their paces. Despite the sharing of some elements with Vacuum Diagrams- and one of these days I must find out who first came up with the possibility of dirigible planets- it comes from the opposite pole. Thank god. Far from the giant cosmic sweep of Baxter, although Blish also prematurely and artificially destroys the universe, it is primarily a cycle of character interaction and political skulduggery.

I really can't speak about Blish's view of the cycles of history, although he admits to believing in something of the sort. He claims to have been heavily influenced by a t
hinker called Oswald Spengler, and there is an afterword claiming that Blish's societies can be modelled accurately by Spengler's theories of history. Although I deeply distrust such grand schema- reality seems too tangled for anything of the sort to be as accurate as it's makers claim, and they always lead to history by timetable, too great a concentration on what is happening instead of why- certainly Blish was taking this far more seriously than most science fiction authors would, and it clearly shows.

Divergence from our reality begins in 1950; the West chokes itself to death with national security, all vitality passing out of it. It's last great achievement is the joint discoveries of anagathic drugs- a possibility being inched towards even now with experiments on telomerase- and the spindizzy motor, a device which effectively takes the object within the field of effect into a special reference frame of it's own which is limited by few if any of the rules of the external cosmic reference frame. The development of them is the content of the first novel.

The second novel develops the concept of flying cities. A town can rip itself out of the soil with spindizzy motors, fair itself over and add long- duration stores, and take to the stars. Many do. The spindizzy was used briefly, suppressed, and then rediscovered independently by the Bureaucratic State that succeeded the west; they fought a galactic war against the previous dominant force, the Vegan Empire, won, and seeded the stars- with vicious, small-minded, unintelligent lumps for the most part. The flying cities, Okies, are effectively (Blish's analogy) cosmic bees; migrant workers, necessary because of the high degree of backbiting and low level of wit amongst the settled colonists that prevents many things from being done. There was a galactic empire established by the earth fleet that won the war; the earth did not like this, and set out to overthrow that. It alm
ost fell apart of it's own accord anyway. They hire the cities to do things, industrially, they cannot manage themselves; the whole is policed by the earth police, who do not like the Okies but need them too much to stop them. The action in the second novel is centred around one of the cities- New York- and itá'ás inhabitants, involved in a dispute with another rogue Okie city.

It has to be said, this is a science- fiction series fans of crime might enjoy - following the action depends largely on a whodunniteerá'ás instincts. We rarely get to hear what the characters are thinking except in conversation with one another or in situational reverie. Which is a good excuse for only giving away partial details of the plot.

Any economic situation is too dependent on temporary, turbulent factors to prevail for long. In the third novel the galactic currency, backed by earth and based on Germanium, collapses. Itá'ás actually much more complex than the second, involving Vegans, local squabbles, bindlestiff (robber) cities, moving planets, an assault (in the name of currency regulation and free trade) on Earth by unemployed Okie cities, reintegration- much else. Detail would give too much away; all that can be said is that although it is certainly not free of space- opera theatricality, it is very high quality theatricality.

As far as characterisation goes throughout, none of us have led varied enough lives to know people in their every mood and form, so- let us be charitable here- which literary form actually best conveys the actions of people as we know or imagine them will vary from individual to individual; but it's a fair bet that in the vast majority of cases it isná'át SF. Within those limits it is very good, although the maddening reluctance of characters to explain to one another what they have in mind is a seriously jarring note. Bad guys are frequently not really characters at all.

The fourth novel is th
e one that jars. Blish, in what must be the earliest actual physical, as opposed to guessological, mention of anything resembling an omega point, has the universe collide with itá'ás antimatter twin, sometime around 4104 AD. The action is fought over the chance to get to the collision point, the dead zone at the heart of the event, and have a hand in influencing the starting conditions of the next universe. Fairly cosmic, isn't it?

Ratings;
Imagination; Spenglerian history, realistic economics, cities of earth; combinatory intelligence rather than wild speculation, B-
Science; one equation, and derivatives; if your gizmo runs out of jargon, name it after someone; C
Scene- setting; apart from the fourth novel, first rate; A
Characterisation; dubious in itself but better than average, B+

Overall; B+

Summary: