[PREV - MAKER] [TOP]
CITIES_IN_FLIGHT
March 25, 2003
January 3, 2006
"Cities in Flight"
by James Blish
is a patch job. (Much like the
"Foundation"
series) RETCON
The fun stuff is in the "third"
volume, and was originally "Earthman, Come Home", book
short stories published in publication 1955, from stories
Astounding. published earlier, beginning with
"Bindlestiff" in December 1950,
The other volumes closing with "Sargasso of Lost Cities"
accumulated around from Spring of 1953.
it in an odd
order, reflecting
Blish's thinking There's supposed to
at the time. be an undercurrent Oswald Spengler, as I
of "Spenglerism" to understand it, claimed
"They Shall Have the series. to have come up with a
Stars" (1956) © taxonomy of cultures
is the first and rules for their
volume -- written evolution.
second, beginning I don't know
with the short enough about
story "The Bridge" the subject
published in the to perceive Much like Freudianism,
February 1952 whether the this is one of those
issue of series gets things that some
"Astounding". more or people took this very
less seriously for awhile,
Here, Blish was dealing Spenglered. before everyone
with the fear that the suddenly went "Hey,
cold war would balkanize wait a minute..."
science, that you'd end
up with a situation
where no one really knew
what was going on.
The second volume --
published last, in 1962 --
"A Life for the Stars"
focuses on the life of one
of the "little people" a
young kid that barely A friend likes this
manages to sneak into one the best because of
Scranton, PA before it this focus on the
"spins", and then starts underbelly... Most of
scrambling his way through the series is in effect
life, and up the ladder. a literature of kings
("A Life For The Stars") without much attention
paid to the serfs. And there was,
I would guess this is perhaps, a tendency
Blishes attempt at towards fascism
doing something in Blish's social
like one of Heinlein's ideas...
"juveniles".
And then there's the fourth,
about the inevitable winding
down of everything, as A character detail Blish
immortality palls and the uses to suggest the
universe itself comes to a halt: onset of decadent decline:
the "Triumph of Time" (1958).
The wife of the second
banana hero hits on
There's this gosh-wow space the first banana.
opera stuff at the core of the
series, and yet it leads up to He turns her down
this incredibly bleak finish: a in disgust.
battle to secure the "center of
the universe" for somewhat Pretty racey
obscure reasons. stuff for the
pulply, juvenile
The right to commit world of SF,
suicide under certain but in retrospect
conditions...? it seems pretty
laughable.
So that your soul has a
chance at surviving the How many centuries
end of the universe? did it take her to
get around to this?
(And he turns
her down?
Really?)
The central premise of the early
stories: the economic situation of
the planet earth falls apart, and in
desperation the cities of earth
exploit a new technology transform
themselves into space ships, to split
apart from the earth and go And that is the central image
wandering, looking for opportunities of the series: the cities of
elsewhere. earth surrounding themselves
with spherical force fields,
Hobos. Bindlestiff cities. floating off into space as
though stuck inside of soap
bubbles.
It really isn't all that
clear how the economy of So what you've got
the city is supposed to here is someone
work. starting with an
imaginative, Note the
I guess when Blish was dream-like premise, 1949 story
writing, there was still and then later "The Box"
some industry inside of trying to firm it has NYC
Manhattan itself, but up and use it for imprisoned
even then anyone who more serious in spherical
really thought about it purposes. force field
would know that the New (a "standing
York tri-state area is wave").
really one linked
industrial region... the
idea that Manhattan would Blish -- in his identity
be worth anything as the critic Atheling --
separated from New Jersey once complained about how
and Brooklyn is pretty Modern SF had become much
ridiculous. less imaginative when it
became more serious.
He's got Manhattan
competing and winning The pulp fiction
against Scranton on of his youth was
Scranton's turf. full of all
sorts of strange
(Part of the idea: earthquake rays,
they carry knowledge, atomic reduction
expertise, not just beams, and so on.
equipment. But still:
Manhattan would know In comparison,
a lot about selling what life is
soap...) there in a
mere laser?
"Cities in Flight"
is clearly a
notion coming
out of that
older school,
HARD for all the
talk of spinning
electrons
and name dropping
of Dirac.
THORNE
--------
[NEXT - HARD]