Interesting concept, good stories ( )

Another really good book. The book follows the "series of vignettes" style of the last book, but with more of a serialized tone instead of an episodic one.

There are a few things I'm wondering though, which might not be answered in future books - in particular, what City was Interstellar Master Traders supposed to be, exactly? Florence? Rome? Jerusalem? Goodness knows that last one would have some serious Unfortunate Implications if that was the case.

Also, the comments about New York's subways in the story also kind of makes me wonder - when New York lifted for the first time, was it just Manhattan Island? Did some of the other boroughs come along as well? Inquiring minds want to know? ( )

Earthman, Come Home is the longest book in the Cities in Flight series, even so it is still a relatively spritely 266 pages making it a fairly quick read.

The story gains even more scale in this book with New York continuing it's adventures and travels through the universe, times get harder for them in this book and they're forced to make some tough decisions in some rather adverse conditions.

Certainly builds upon the foundations laid out in the earlier books of the series (although interestingly this was written first in 1955, the first in 1956 then the second in 1962 as a bridge between this and the first) and paints quite a vivid universe. ( )

Did-not-finish. (Read to page 118.)
Usually, I'd give only one star to a did-not-finish, but there's nothing about this book that has aggravated me; I have no strong criticism. It just has failed to hold my interest. I started reading some Haruki Murakami short stories and can't bring myself to pick this back up.

I hadn't read any Blish in probably 25 years - since I was really into reading Star Trek novelizations. As far as I recall, his Star Trek books were OK - some of the first ones - but not the best ones, even back then.

I rather feel that when people criticize science fiction as a genre, they're talking about books like this (if they know what they're talking about.) It features lack of significant characterization, a plot that's a series of events rather than a dramatic structure, and a concentration on ideas rather than story. And they're some quite half-baked ideas too. Socially, it also feels extremely dated (as if everyone in the future is still living in an imaginary 1950's). I'd blame the time period - but I just read some Theodore Sturgeon, written around the same time period, and the guy doesn't fall victim to that trap in the slightest, so... yeah, this book just isn't very good.

The concept is that anti-gravity is invented, which causes cities (as a group) to lift themselves off the face of the earth and to function as mercenary spaceships-for hire. This means that the Mayor of New York (just Manhattan) is now essentially a spaceship captain. Interstellar travel and adventures ensue. Eh. ( )

I really don't quite know what to make of this book, now. 'Earthman come home' was, as far as I recollect, the fifth sf novel I ever read (don't worry, I don't list them all in the order of reading! It's just that the first five sf novels I read are fairly fixed in my memory for a number of reasons...). This means that I first read it at the age of about 13 and then re-read it fairly regularly up to the age of 21, since when I haven't picked it up at all - so that's at least 37 years that have gone by since I last looked at it, until I started a re-read of the whole 'Cities in flight' sequence earlier this year.

I found the first two novels uneven going, to say the least. I was relieved when I got onto this book, which I note was written the year before I was born. The odd thing was that I went straight back into the story, with the text proceeding as though I was re-acquainting myself with an old friend - but a friend whose motives I thought I understood once but now no longer do. The events of the book flowed past, with plot milestones passing by with great regularity. Yet it had exactly the same resonance as driving a familiar road;. no shocks, no surprises but no excitement either.

Along the way, I noticed odd things. The dialogue is very 1950s; the one major female character is sort of well-drawn for the time but plays the role of the newcomer to the Okie city who needs everything explained to her. I had completely missed the fact that a black character is introduced towards the end of the book, and he is moderately well done, although the plot requires him to play the role of stupid serf, though Amalfi, the main protagonist, knows that this is deliberate, so we might let the author off a bit there. (But what happened to New York's black population between 1956 and the distant future?) I still have the images I had of the main characters from my youth, but there were a lot of expository lumps (though not as bad as in the first volume of the series), and some surprisingly cyberpunkish dropping of trade names (although they are all future trade names and so mean nothing to us - Dinwiddie pickups and Bethé blasters). Amalfi seems to take a cavalier attitude to loss of life, whether it's his own citizens or others. And a lot of the plot seems to happen because Mayor Amalfi guesses lucky, or even just plucks the right answer out of thin air.

The technology is badly out of date, of course - one minute, we're talking about anti-gravity devices and instantaneous Dirac transmitters, the next Amalfi is putting down what sounds like a very 1950s Bakelite telephone whilst his navigators are picking up their slide rules. Yet there's a bidding session for a work contract that is done by video link which was very easy to visualise in 2015 terms, and by and large the obsolete tech didn't get in my way. And there is an AI, the 'City Fathers', though they are not so much a character as a plot device, as they only seem to advance information or advice when asked, although later on, when the Okies have mobilised the planet Hern VI, it turns out that the City Fathers are actually doing most of the flying, though this is not reflected elsewhere in the novel - they are not credited with running that much of the city's autonomous systems. Oddly, most of the rest of the Okie cities appear to have equivalent systems, but there is little penetration of computerised systems into everyday life.

There are humourous asides - the so-called 'Emperor of Space' who appears to have learnt his English from Liverpudlians is particularly smile-provoking - but what really surprised me was the extent of Blish's erudition on a range of subjects, from literature and history to economics and (some of the) science. My teenaged self must have done a lot of skimming in this novel, though I'm not conscious of that - or perhaps what I thought was super-science in the late 1960s/early 1970s was actually sound knowledge that I hadn't yet discovered.

So not too bad a brush with the Suck Fairy, that magical creature that touches all the things we loved in our youth and makes them awful when we pick them up again as adults. The invention makes up for many of the faults, and the style of the writing itself has no major infelicities. But I suspect I'll leave a further re-read for a good few years, because too much further exposure would most probably make things go seriously bad for me and this book. ( )