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A review by michaeldrakich
Cities in Flight by James Blish
4.0
With four novels in one book, the tendency to want to reviews this series, each book does stand alone, is to start with the first novel and go through to the last. After completing it, the thing that occurred to me is the only proper way to review this is not in the sequence in which the stories play out, but in the order in which they were written.
To do so, I must start with the third book in the series - Earthman, Come Home. Although originally a number of short stories, it was complied together into a novel in 1955. As a result, it does read as what it is, a number of short stories with a common theme and characters. Still, it is enjoyable as both a space opera, and to some degree, hard scifi. Now the series is known for its hard scifi, but in this novel, it is limited. They still use slide rules, for gosh sake! No, the real hard scifi shows up much more prevalent in the next two Blish wrote. Outside of the main character, Mayor Amalfi, the reader never really gets to identify with the others. It has a very omniscient feel. My opinion on this one, 4 out of 5 stars.
The second book released is actually the first book in the series - They Shall Have Stars. I'll tell you right now, this was my favorite. Not only did I identify with the characters, but the science aspects of this novel were excellent. Running along two tracks, anti-gravity, which leads to the creation of the spindizzies, and anti-aging, in essence eternal life. This story is split between things on Earth and events on Jupiter and its moons. Very compelling, with many references to politics of the time - McCarthism, the cold war, and more. A very solid 5 out of 5 stars. I loved this one.
The third book Blish released was the closer - The Triumph Of Time. A fair warning here.If you have any adversity to an abundance of techno-babel, I wouldn't read this. You will not enjoy it. Blish attempts to include just about every macro physics theory, as well as quantum ones, in conjunction with a lot of nonsensical math, do drive the average reader over the edge. With an ending that I am ambivalent toward, I cannot give this novel more than 4 stars out of 5.
Lastly, the second novel in the series is - A Life For The Stars. Written four years after the rest, this short work is clearly nothing more than solid space opera. Hard science doesn't play a part. In all honesty, I would recommend any reader of this collection to entirely skip this story. Far and away the weakest, but most disappointing is that the main character, who the reader becomes endeared to, disappears in the third book and is reported killed. I found this strange and wondered why the author did it. He could very well have used the character who replaced him in the third novel. For this one as a stand alone, 3 out of 5 stars, but in this collection, it drops to a 2 star.
Examining all four books as a single novel, it's less than a 4 star novel, but I'm not prepared to drop it to 3 as it is definitely better than that. So finally, I shall consider it a 4 star rounded up.
To do so, I must start with the third book in the series - Earthman, Come Home. Although originally a number of short stories, it was complied together into a novel in 1955. As a result, it does read as what it is, a number of short stories with a common theme and characters. Still, it is enjoyable as both a space opera, and to some degree, hard scifi. Now the series is known for its hard scifi, but in this novel, it is limited. They still use slide rules, for gosh sake! No, the real hard scifi shows up much more prevalent in the next two Blish wrote. Outside of the main character, Mayor Amalfi, the reader never really gets to identify with the others. It has a very omniscient feel. My opinion on this one, 4 out of 5 stars.
The second book released is actually the first book in the series - They Shall Have Stars. I'll tell you right now, this was my favorite. Not only did I identify with the characters, but the science aspects of this novel were excellent. Running along two tracks, anti-gravity, which leads to the creation of the spindizzies, and anti-aging, in essence eternal life. This story is split between things on Earth and events on Jupiter and its moons. Very compelling, with many references to politics of the time - McCarthism, the cold war, and more. A very solid 5 out of 5 stars. I loved this one.
The third book Blish released was the closer - The Triumph Of Time. A fair warning here.If you have any adversity to an abundance of techno-babel, I wouldn't read this. You will not enjoy it. Blish attempts to include just about every macro physics theory, as well as quantum ones, in conjunction with a lot of nonsensical math, do drive the average reader over the edge. With an ending that I am ambivalent toward, I cannot give this novel more than 4 stars out of 5.
Lastly, the second novel in the series is - A Life For The Stars. Written four years after the rest, this short work is clearly nothing more than solid space opera. Hard science doesn't play a part. In all honesty, I would recommend any reader of this collection to entirely skip this story. Far and away the weakest, but most disappointing is that the main character, who the reader becomes endeared to, disappears in the third book and is reported killed. I found this strange and wondered why the author did it. He could very well have used the character who replaced him in the third novel. For this one as a stand alone, 3 out of 5 stars, but in this collection, it drops to a 2 star.
Examining all four books as a single novel, it's less than a 4 star novel, but I'm not prepared to drop it to 3 as it is definitely better than that. So finally, I shall consider it a 4 star rounded up.