Jim's Reviews > Cities in Flight

As a pure science fiction collection, this was first rate. I really enjoyed the science involved. The authors of the 60s really stick to what is plausible, even though it may not be probable. Today's science fiction involves too many impossibilities. For example, Star Wars and Star Trek gave us noisy explosions in space, ships and people rocked and shimmied in zero gravity. The vacuum of space became of none effect. The authors of the past adhered to physical realities and where those were bent, they justified them by proving their theories with plausible explanations, James Blish does this convincingly.

Cities in Flight is a collection of 4 related stories. The first, They Shall Have Stars explains the dual development, scientifically and politically, of the Dillon-Waggoner Gravatron polarity generator, or Spindizzy, and the anti-agathic drugs that made space flight possible. The Spindizzy allows large bodies to travel through space at almost any imaginable speed, the potential speed relating to the size of the body. With Spindizzy technology, whole cities and even planets could be hurled through space. The science behind the Spindizzies are carefully explained and at least seem plausible.

One aspect of potential space travel that modern writers/directors avoid is the amount of time, even at fantastic speeds, space travel takes. It would be futile to send out generations of people through space, even to the nearest star, with no possible life other than breeding and dying. The author also had to construct a way to increase the life-span to hundreds or thousands of years, hence the development of the anti-agathic drugs. The drugs and the Spindizzies combine in the stories to make space travel possible.

The sad aspects of the story involve the realization of how little progress has been made. The story begins in 2013 where humans have colonized the other planets and have begun exploiting their resources. In actuality, the promise of the space program has been squandered and has died with 2012 seeing the retirement of the shuttle Discovery and the death of NASA as a reasonable tax expenditure. Instead of reaching for the stars, humans, and Americans especially, have given up on such endeavors.

One possible reason for this is the introversion and self-centerndness of modern man. The advent of the personal computer, Facebook, GoodReads, MP3 players, and Je-jaws (cell-phones) have created a generation of spoiled children. We have become isolated in our own little worlds and fail to even notice or care about what is out there. The computer has stagnated our collective minds by not requiring us to think. One of the climaxes in the book involve the falling out of two of the main characters John Amalfi, the mayor of New York, New York and the city manager, Mark Hazelton. When Hazelton resigned he accidentally left his slide rule on the dinner tray and it was swept away to the incinerator before John could save it. All the complex computations were made with the slide rule and Marks mind. Today, it would be impossible.

The first book describes the death of the scientific method. It died under its own weight. We have experienced that in the real world where today's scientists try to conform their data to fit a preconceived consensus. Data is rigged to show the expected outcomes based on political agendas and popular mythology like global warming, rather than letting the data speak for itself.

As space, through the Spindizzies, and time, through the anti-agathics are conquered, the spacemen eventually come to feel like they are gods. When the planet He, moving though space discovers the end of time, they position themselves to create their own worlds. While this makes for a good story, it bogs down in its own theology. In this type of world, only the elites have access to their salvation, only they are smart enough to understand. Of course, God in his wisdom has a much simpler plan that everybody, even a child can understand. Don't look for answers to the meaning of life in this book, it isn't there. The Triumph of Time will come when Christ returns and establishes his earthly kingdom.