Another really good book. The book follows the "series of vignettes" style of the last book, but with more of a serialized tone instead of an episodic one.

There are a few things I'm wondering though, which might not be answered in future books - in particular, what City was Interstellar Master Traders supposed to be, exactly? Florence? Rome? Jerusalem? Goodness knows that last one would have some serious Unfortunate Implications if that was the case.

Also, the comments about New York's subways in the story also kind of makes me wonder - when New York lifted for the first time, was it just Manhattan Island? Did some of the other boroughs come along as well? Inquiring minds want to know?

A Life for the Stars (Cities in Flight, ... Better than the first book, with more of a traditional narrative, and more fleshed out characters.

Did-not-finish. (Read to page 118.)
Usually, I'd give only one star to a did-not-finish, but there's nothing about this book that has aggravated me; I have no strong criticism. It just has failed to hold my interest. I started reading some Haruki Murakami short stories and can't bring myself to pick this back up.

I hadn't read any Blish in probably 25 years - since I was really into reading Star Trek novelizations. As far as I recall, his Star Trek books were OK - some of the first ones - but not the best ones, even back then.

I rather feel that when people criticize science fiction as a genre, they're talking about books like this (if they know what they're talking about.) It features lack of significant characterization, a plot that's a series of events rather than a dramatic structure, and a concentration on ideas rather than story. And they're some quite half-baked ideas too. Socially, it also feels extremely dated (as if everyone in the future is still living in an imaginary 1950's). I'd blame the time period - but I just read some Theodore Sturgeon, written around the same time period, and the guy doesn't fall victim to that trap in the slightest, so... yeah, this book just isn't very good.

The concept is that anti-gravity is invented, which causes cities (as a group) to lift themselves off the face of the earth and to function as mercenary spaceships-for hire. This means that the Mayor of New York (just Manhattan) is now essentially a spaceship captain. Interstellar travel and adventures ensue. Eh.

Earthman, Come Home is set a few hundred years after the previous novel. John Amalfi is still the mayor of the Okie city New York, and is now over 700 years old; thanks to the anti-agathic drugs that all citizens take. New York is running low on supplies and must land and take a job soon, but Amalfi's only option is to pick one of two warring planets in the closest system, both of which they have been warned off by the earth police. Amalfi first chooses to land on Utopia, a planet ravaged by nuclear attacks. But later chooses to move over to Gort, a planet in the old Hruntan Empire. The Hruntans turn out to have been a bad choice of allies, as they hold NY hostage and demand from them an explanation of the sought-after friction-field generator tech. When Amalfi finally manages to escape from the Hruntans, the City has accumulated even more violations on its record, and the earth police are not happy with them. So Amalfi takes the city out into the Rift, a huge expanse of space that is empty of stars and planets, Except for one lonely star system, containing the planet He, which is the only possible place to land inside the emptiness of the rift.

The citys adventures continue on, endlessly, which make it a very difficult book to synopsise. New York, as Okie cities do, moves from one planet to the other, never able to settle, and seemingly never getting ahead, always in some trouble, always low on some resource or other. As such, the plot does seem to wander as much as the city itself does, but later events always rely on something learned or gained in earlier adventures, so things do tie together quite nicely.

The passage of time in this novel was seriously hard to comprehend. With the spindizzy drive, the okie cities can travel across distances that just would not be possible for us, the spindizzy is equivalent to travelling many times the speed of light. But apparently it does still take years to travel between systems, and the cities spend years again fulfilling their contracts on planets. Yet it did take me a while to understand this, there is no feel of a great passage of time in the writing, the story moves on from one event straight to the other, and then suddenly Amalfi will muse that he's 2 centuries older! I found this very jarring. I couldn't relate to the time spans at all.

I also didn't get along very well with the main character. Arguably, Amalfi is supposed to be a hard character to relate to, because he has lived centuries longer than most humans and has become a little detatched from the rest of humanity. I think he even admits at one time that he behaves more like a computer now than a human. But on top of that I'm afraid I found him just plain irritating. Amalfi is constantly keeping plans to himself until the last possible second, even from the reader, which is a really childish way to create a plot mystery, I have to say I expected more from Blish than this terrible fake suspense trick. I'm not even sure why Amalfi keeps a City Manager to run the city, as he never lets Hazleton get on with his job. He makes his plans without telling a single person, and then when Hazleton tries to makes descisions, Amalfi countermands all his orders without an explanation. I found this just incredibly annoying, it doesn't make Amalfi sound heroic or intelligent, just irritatingly childish. Every time it happened I couldn't help thinking how much better things would have gone if he'd have just been open with Hazleton from the beginning. But then of course there would be no 'suspense'.

Another character that irritated me was Dee, the only female character. She was portrayed as fairly intelligent, but unfortunately she never seemed to do anything with her intelligence. She had no role on the city, apart from to be someone elses wife, and she had no skills, and nothing whasoever to do. She may have been an intelligent love interest, but she was just a love interest all the same. I suppose I'm not entirely suprised, considering the decade the book was written in, but I don't have to like it. Although I'm sure Blish's portrayal of female characters improved in the 60s when he started writing for the very progressive Star Trek series.

There were a lot of interesting ideas in the novel, the technology, the planets, and the civilisations were all fascinating, but I don't feel that it was carried off very well at all. Apart from Amalfi's secret plotting, there were also a few too many instances of Deus ex Machina, eg when doctor schloss suddenly saves them all by mending the invisiblility machine they all thought was fake, and then the machine is never mentioned or used again..

I found out after finishing the entire set of novels that although number 3 in the series, Earthman, Come Home was actually the first written. Which explains why it never seems as well thought or out, or as well written as the others. But it still contains a lot of very good ideas, and I suppose in the end it is worth reading in order to tie all the other novels together. Still, I'd have to say this was my least favourite out of all the 4 books.

See my other reviews of Cities in Flight:
← #2 A Life for the Stars | #4 The Triumph of Time →

It is now just over 1000 years since humans first discovered the Spindizzy - the antigravity drive that enabled their exodus to the stars. For a long time, spindizzies have been used not just to drive ships, but to launch whole Cities into space. These Cities - referred to as 'Okies' - live a nomadic lifestyle, wandering through the galaxy and landing for a short time on planets where they take on any job the inhabitants need doing, such as mining, or refining, drilling etc. But most of their time is spent traveling between star systems.

The Industrial city of Scranton, is about to power up its Spindizzy drives and leave earth to go Okie. Crispin (Chris) DeFord has picked his spot beyond the city perimeter to watch Scranton take off. Unfortunately for him, the City is operating press-gangs on the perimeter, and one such group discovers him and forces him into the city as it takes off. Chris is forced to leave behind his family and the only life he has ever known, and make whatever life he can for himself on Scranton. Chris has had no formal schooling, but has a personal interest in astronomy, which he uses to pass himself off as a professional for a short time on Scranton. But it can't last for long, and as soon as another Okie ship offers a trade of workers, Chris takes the opportunity to jump ship. Chris then finds himself on the city of New York, where his chances in life are somewhat improved. He is put through a hard course of advanced schooling through hypnotherapy, and the city fathers - the artificial intelligences that perform all the basic running of the city - drive him hard to find any hidden skills or talents he may have. If he manages to show a useful skill, when his 18th birthday comes, he could be granted citizenship. And like every other citizen he would be granted the anti-aging drugs that let Okies live for centuries on their flying city ships.

I enjoyed this second installment of Cities in Flight almost as much as the first. I found Chris to be a very relatable character, he's young and intelligent and he knows what he wants, but he's yet to figure out how to get it. He's fairly brash and he's willing to lie and break the rules a little to get his own way, but not to the point of losing his own sense of right and wrong. And he seems to make friends easily. He is some what cliche of other sci-fi and fantasy adventurous kids, getting into scrapes but ultimately being forgiven, but it makes him an easy character to get along with.

The tone of the novel was however a little childish at times, I think this is because Blish is writing from the point of view of the teenage Chris, and yet Chris seemed to have some very mature ideas for his age. So the whole young-adult feel to the narration was a little un-wanted and a bit patronising in parts.

One thing I was a little confused at, was how the nature of the anti-agathic (anti-aging) drugs seemed to have changed from how they were first explained in book one. In They Shall Have Stars it was explained that simple removing all diseases from humanity wouldn't be enough to stop them aging, and that there was a separate toxin that caused the aging itself and could be counteracted. But in A life for the Stars the anti-aging drugs were just a collection of antibiotics that prevented all disease, which is a complete backtrack of the original idea, and simply didn't cut it for me. I can't believe that just eradicating disease would stop aging, and the scientists said as much in the first book!

And so in conclusion, I enjoyed the storyline, but I was seriously peeved by the Blish's u-turn on the sciencey bits. I'm definately on with books 3 and 4 tho, and reviews will come soon.


See my other reviews of Cities in Flight:
← #1 They Shall Have Stars | #3 Earthman, Come Home →