I could have read them discretely as I often do with such collections, but I found the central conceit of these stories - that a pair of technologies developed in the early 21st century allowed entire Earth cities like New York and Los Angeles and Pittsburgh and Scranton to lift themselves bodily, buildings, subways and all, from the planet's surface and go into space as giant spaceships** - so compelling that I just kept right on going after the first novel, which detailed the development of the twin technologies, a gravity defying/harnessing field called the "spindizzy" and anti-aging drugs, that would allow this weird feat to be possible. And the author.*Ĭities in Flight is actually an omnibus edition of four novels Blish published in the 1950s: They Shall Have Stars, A Life for the Stars, Earthman Come Home, and The Triumph of Time. That's one of the disadvantages of scooping up a whole lot of ebook titles at once if you don't examine the cover art, you're just going on author and title unless you take the trouble to look up the blurb. Oh man, if I had known from the beginning just how literally this title, Cities in Flight, was meant - I took it to feature the word "flight" in the sense of fleeing pursuit, rather than maneuvering through air or space - I would have attacked this book a lot sooner.
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