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Brian Clegg's Reviews > They Shall Have Stars
They Shall Have Stars (Cities in Flight, #1)
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The first of the Cities in Flight novels, my all time favourite series as a teenager, so it was interesting coming back to it 40 years later.
By modern standards, the writing creaks abysmally. But like that other great 1950s series, Asimov's Foundation books, it really doesn't matter, because both series are based on sweeping, wonderful ideas that few others have ever come close to matching. So, yes, the treatment of women seems painfully dated. Yes, the dialogue could be out of a 1930s B movie. And some of the predictions (this novel is set around the present day, written in 1956) are woefully inaccurate. But that misses the point.
Firstly, Blish superbly captures the psychology and politics of space travel, even though he is writing before Sputnik was launched. Just as in the present, there has been a hiatus for decades. It really isn't going anywhere and needs a whole new direction to get itself going. And secondly, the underlying scientific basis of the book (and the other three novels) is beautifully thought through.
Later novels are more about storytelling, but this one (written after the third in actual sequence, so it's technically a prequel), is all about politics and science with a mere wisp of a plot to string it together. The politics is painfully told - not surprising given it was written in the McCarthy era - while the two very different strands of science have remarkable detail for fiction. The scientific themes are anti-aging (or more precisely, anti-death) biology and antigravity. When the antigravity technology is explored we get the likes of Dirac and Blackett invoked, and there are even equations. That part of the book could be popular science, rather than fiction, if it weren't for the fact that one crucial part is made up.
If you took this book in isolation as a novel it would be interesting for its scientific and political content, but probably not worth reading. But as the foundations on which the other three novels are built, it is essential before getting on to the real meat. Here is where we meet the best bit of SF space technology ever, the spindizzy, prior to its role in lifting whole cities in the later books. (Why these aren't movies by now, I have no idea. Modern CGI would work wonders with cities in flight.)
Read it, but only as a stepping stone the second book.
By modern standards, the writing creaks abysmally. But like that other great 1950s series, Asimov's Foundation books, it really doesn't matter, because both series are based on sweeping, wonderful ideas that few others have ever come close to matching. So, yes, the treatment of women seems painfully dated. Yes, the dialogue could be out of a 1930s B movie. And some of the predictions (this novel is set around the present day, written in 1956) are woefully inaccurate. But that misses the point.
Firstly, Blish superbly captures the psychology and politics of space travel, even though he is writing before Sputnik was launched. Just as in the present, there has been a hiatus for decades. It really isn't going anywhere and needs a whole new direction to get itself going. And secondly, the underlying scientific basis of the book (and the other three novels) is beautifully thought through.
Later novels are more about storytelling, but this one (written after the third in actual sequence, so it's technically a prequel), is all about politics and science with a mere wisp of a plot to string it together. The politics is painfully told - not surprising given it was written in the McCarthy era - while the two very different strands of science have remarkable detail for fiction. The scientific themes are anti-aging (or more precisely, anti-death) biology and antigravity. When the antigravity technology is explored we get the likes of Dirac and Blackett invoked, and there are even equations. That part of the book could be popular science, rather than fiction, if it weren't for the fact that one crucial part is made up.
If you took this book in isolation as a novel it would be interesting for its scientific and political content, but probably not worth reading. But as the foundations on which the other three novels are built, it is essential before getting on to the real meat. Here is where we meet the best bit of SF space technology ever, the spindizzy, prior to its role in lifting whole cities in the later books. (Why these aren't movies by now, I have no idea. Modern CGI would work wonders with cities in flight.)
Read it, but only as a stepping stone the second book.
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They Shall Have Stars.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
July 2, 2013
–
Finished Reading
July 3, 2013
– Shelved
