Customer Reviews

Earthman, Come Home (Cities in Flight, Book 3)

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The third book in James Blish's Cities in Flight tetralogy is cobbled together from previously published novelettes. Powered by anti-gravity "spindizzy" devices, whole cities have taken to the stars, where they wander from planet to planet looking for work. These stories focus on the city of New York and its mayor, John Amalfi.

I have made the commitment to read this series because of its reputation as an SF classic, but I haven't enjoyed a single one of them yet. The episodic nature of this book weakens it as a novel, but at least it helped to keep me reading, since none of the stories on their own are strong enough to sustain a book-length treatment. These stories feature extraordinary amounts of dull exposition, as well as the naïve infatuation with extraordinary, god-like intellectuals that is so common in Golden Age science fiction. Amalfi treats other human beings as pawns, even sacrificing their lives as he sees fit. Now, I have no trouble believing that a man in his position might find it necessary to do terrible things in order to protect his people, but it is incumbent upon the author to deal with the moral implications. Blish ignores them completely, treating each triumph as merely another victory for the clever Amalfi. Blish also fails to convey the sense of New York as a city with a population of millions. We really only get to know three characters and they serve primarily as mouthpieces for Blish's theories of history and economics.

"Earthman, come home" is the third in James Blish's classic "Cities in Flight" Space Opera quartet, written about fifty years ago, which consists of

1) They Shall Have Stars (Cities in flight / James Blish)
2) A Life for the Stars
3) This book, "Earthman, Come Home"
4) A clash of cymbals

This series tells a "future history" epic, covering 2,000 years, in which machines called "Spindizzies" could lift not just starships, but entire cities, through space. Escaping the "Bureaucratic State" a totalitarian world state which had followed the West's gradual loss of the cold war, Earth's cities left the planet behind one by one, and sought a new freedom in the stars. These city spaceships became known as "Okie" cities: their inhabitants living long, almost immortal lives because anti-aging drugs have largely abolished death from natural death.

"Earthman, Come Home" is set some 1,700 years from now, and begins aboard the Okie city of New York, which had been the last of Earth's major citites to leave Earth in 3111 AD. The central character is John Amalfi, who has been Mayor of New York since shortly before the city left earth - in other words, he has been in office for about 600 years.

As the story begins, New York is arriving at the yellow dwarf star with two inhabited planets. The city is hoping to trade use of it's enormous industrial capacity for raw materials, and stop long enough to clear out an infection in the hydroponic tanks which provide the citizens with food.

Unfortunately the two planets have been at war for a century. Their struggle had continued for decades without anyone else noticing, but Earth's police have just become aware of it, and order New York to leave the area. Which, because of the city's urgent needs, John Amalfi has no intention of doing ...

"Cities in Flight" is a classic SF series for good reason: both the series and this book are strongly recommended.