James Blish's Cities In Flight...

[Warped9]

I've just picked up a copy of this with all four volumes in one, after years of hearing about it. The volumes are in chronological order as opposed to the order in which they were written and released. The forward to the book as well as an afterward by Stephen Baxter suggests reading the volumes in print order (3, 1, 4, 2) and I think that's what I'll do.

I'm curious to hear opinions of anyone who has read these and your impressions. The only other Blish works I've read are Spock Must Die! (which I quite like), his TOS adaptations and A Case Of Conscience (which I thought was quite good).

Anyone?

 

[Christopher]

I keep meaning to track these down...

 

[Warped9]

I keep meaning to track these down...

I ordered it from Amazon.

The idea behind it is quite off-the-wall, or it must have seemed so when it first appeared: whole cities fitted with antigravity drives, leaving Earth and heading out for the stars. Mind you now that I've seen Stargate: Atlantis do that very thing it doesn't seem quite so far fetched. But Blish's stories span centuries and even millennia as well as interstellar distances, and he also does quite a bit of far future world building. Suffice to say it's got scope on a big canvas. So far I've only read the prologue of Book 3 where I'm starting as suggested. It has a flavour of hard SF yet with a sense of starfaring adventure.

One thing you gotta say about Classic SF: they could think big. Another thing I admire about SF writing of those days is their somewhat economical style of writing. Some of these writers could tell complete, amazing galaxy spanning tales within 200 pages or less and you rarely felt anything was left out. Today you can read 500+ page books and it's only the beginning of the story or you can feel left wanting because they're so damned padded.

 

[stj]

James Blish is one of the greats in science fiction. Cities in Flight is not even his best but still well worth reading.

Earthman Come Home was a series of stories fixed up into a novel. Triumph of Time was an original novel, a sequel to Earthman Come Home, albeit set centuries later. They Shall Have Stars is a prequel establishing the the origins of the tech in a near-future dystopia. And A Life for the Stars is a young adult novel set in the same universe. The hero of A Life for the Stars is mentioned in Earthman Comes Home. I recommend this order, or the chronological order, though, not Baxter's.

Some of Blish's best work was in short form, including the famous stories Common Time, Beep, A Style in Treason, Beanstalk, Sunken Univers, Surface Tension and How Beautiful with Banners.

Another series of novels was collectively titled After Such Knowledge, which is unique (I believe) in that each entry is in a different mode. Doctor Mirabilis is historical fiction about the life of Roger Bacon. It features one of the most stunning tour-de-force experiments in style I've ever seen, being written in a comprehensible pastiche of Middle English grammar. A Case of Conscience is Hugo-winning science fiction, about a Jesuit priest's encounter with an alien species, one member of which comes to Earth. Last, the doublet of short fantasy novels, Black Easter and The Day After Tomorrow, in which a magician releases the demons from hell.

Blish tackled ESP as a theme in the Fifties novel Jack of Eagles (also known as Esper, I think,) and the Seventies novel Midsummer Century. In both, Blish cleverly rationalized psychic powers, using entirely different rationalizations.

The Seedling Stars collects Sunken Universe and Surface Tension. These stories introduced the idea, so far as I know, of engineering humans for alien environments.

Blish also wrote science fiction criticism, second only to Damon Knight I would say, under the pen name William Atheling Jr.

The Star Trek adaptations are the least, most piddling of his work. His original Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, with all due apologies to the Trek writers who frequent this board, the only Trek novel I've ever seen that actually was intrinsically interesting as a novel.

 

[Warped9]

I've always loved Spock Must Die! and it remains my favourite of Trek novels. Part of the reason is because it reads as a good SF story as well as a good Star Trek story. Although it's long past ever happening I think it could have made for a great episode or even a cool feature film, assuming the right sensibilities were brought to it. No way in hell do I think that it could be done well now in the NuTrek style. I also remember thinking it could have been a great followup to TMP and something I would have preferred to TWOK.

And I do intend to look up other works of Blish.

 

[Kelso]

I have this one, but it wound up in storage when I moved and has yet to be rescued. Let us know what you think of it.

 

[Warped9]

This is the one I've got. I liked the cover and thought it was evocative.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Blish is an interesting and very eccentric writer; The Seedling Stars is a great collection and contains one of the most peculiarly imaginative sf novellas of that generation, "Surface Tension." It's about man's conquest of...outer space.

 

[Starbreaker]

I have this one, but it wound up in storage when I moved and has yet to be rescued. Let us know what you think of it.

That's the copy I have. I haven't read it yet, but maybe this year.

 

[Warped9]

Blish is an interesting and very eccentric writer; The Seedling Stars is a great collection and contains one of the most peculiarly imaginative sf novellas of that generation, "Surface Tension." It's about man's conquest of...outer space.

Haven't read it, but I heard a radio version of it. Very interesting.

 

[Christopher]

Blish is an interesting and very eccentric writer; The Seedling Stars is a great collection and contains one of the most peculiarly imaginative sf novellas of that generation, "Surface Tension." It's about man's conquest of...outer space.

Haven't read it, but I heard a radio version of it. Very interesting.

Ooh, the X Minus One version? That's virtually nothing like the story Blish wrote. The concept of the microscopic "human" civilization is just about the only thing the two versions have in common.

 

[Kelso]

^ Thanks for that. I heard the X Minus One version in that sci-fi OTR collection that Ray Bradbury selected and was unimpressed. Now I need to track down Blish's story!

 

[MLJames]

I remember when I read Cities In Flight that some things in it sounded familiar, and at the time the only other Blish works I had read were the Trek novelizations. I did some checking in the copies I had, and it turned out he used some material from Cities as background filler in the adaptation of Tomorrow Is Yesterday. At least, that's what I remember; this was in about '73 or '74 IIRC, so I could be mistaken about the episode.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I recall that reference, when Scotty mentions the Vegan Tyranny.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I read Spock Must Die and Cities In Flight ages ago, in the early 70s. I'd have to actually refresh my memory of CIF, but I do remember loving it; grand classic Golden Age SF. Love that stuff.

 

[Stevil2001]

"Surface Tension" is amazing, one of my favorite sci-fi short stories. One of the best encapsulations of the joys and amazements of space exploration.

I read A Case of Conscience a couple months ago and enjoyed it. I was more lukewarm on The Devil's Day.

 

[Australis]

Been decades since I read CIF. I remember the third one as my favourite, and preferring the alternate title of the last one, A Clash of Cymbals, over Triumph of Time. Classsic SF.

 

[Christopher]

I just requested a copy of this from the library. The catalog entry was sadly lacking in specifics, but it's a 1970 Doubleday release entitled Cities in Flight and is 591 pages long, which seems to correspond to the descriptions of the omnibus containing all four novels.

And hey, isfdb lists one additional novelette in the Cities in Flight universe, "Bridge," which apparently isn't in the omnibus. It's apparently the first work Blish wrote in that universe, dated 1952. The link shows the various works it's been collected in. My library turns out to have one of them, an anthology called The Science Fictional Solar System, and I've requested that as well. I love it when I can satisfy my completist urges.

 

[Christopher]

^I got those books from the library today, and it turns out that "Bridge" is actually included within They Shall Have Stars as one subplot of the novel. So the omnibus is indeed the complete saga.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Is "Bridge" the story about construction on Jupiter? If so it was in the Cities In Flight collection I had thirty years ago.

Blish refers to "the Cold Peace," a bit of future political history in his original stories, in the novelization of "Miri."