Life for the Stars (Cities in flight / James Blish) [Paperback]

The setting is a future where the Earth's resources have been exhausted and the economy has entered into a worldwide and lengthy depression. Fortunately for many of the inhabitants, a device that allows objects of enormous size to engage in interstellar travel faster than light has been invented. That device is known as a spindizzy and some cities have used it to travel to the stars seeking work and planets to colonize. As is always the case, while the majority of the cities engage in honest contractual obligations, others are not so honest.
Chris is a teenager living a hardscrabble existence near the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania. When the city announces their intention to use a spindizzy to leave Earth, he decides that he wants to see it take off. However, the mayor of the city needs additional laborers so he sends an impressment gang out to round up some additional bodies. Chris fights as hard as he can, but he is overpowered and his faithful dog killed.
Scranton leaves Earth and eventually encounters the city of New York and Chris is transferred to that city and "adopted" by a family headed by a soldier/policeman. While the city has a mayor, it is actually run by a computer known as "the city fathers" which monitors all conversations. Chris is educated and violates orders to solve a serious problem that comes up between New York and the evil mayor of Scranton.
This story has a lot of interesting plot devices, such as the culture that develops between the cities among the stars. There are rigid rules of contractual behavior with police cities to enforce them. This is intertwined with the separate and distinct internal cultures of each individual city. However, there is one enormous logical flaw. The energy generated by a single spindizzy is so great that it alone would have been enough to solve all of the energy needs of Earth. Energy of that magnitude would have made it possible to grow all necessary food and extract mineral wealth from even the most diffuse of sources. There would have been little work on Earth, not because there was a depression, but because the computers combined with the energy would do most of it.

Blish continues the excellent writing, jumping ahead some 600 years, to a time when the spin dizzy has been invented and aging defeated. The spin dizzy is an anti-gravity device, allowing ships to transcend the upper limits of light speed and travel virtually energy-free. But the anti-aging drugs are available only to the wealthy, and the spin dizzy has allowed most of Earth's major cities to leave Earth on their own power, traveling to other planets. This latter concept is what drew me to this series, as it was detailed and shown at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.

In this book we follow a boy, conscripted into the city of Pittsburgh, and then his fortunes in the larger floating city of New York. Blish uses the Depression era terms to conceive of cities traveling around like hobos, looking for work, and becoming integrated into a galactic economy.

This continues to be some excellent writing, and greater story development and imagination than you find in most science fiction. In particular the adventures of the boy really create a bond between the character and the reader. Blish has done an incredible job of creating a vivid character that you feel for, and you want to continue to follow his exploits in future novels. Unfortunately, in this last regard, the reader is sorely disappointed in the third installment.

A Life for the Stars is the second novel according to internal chronology in James Blish's famous Cities in Flight series. Unlike the much more serious first installment, They Shall Have Stars (1956), A Life for the Stars is generally regarded as a juvenile work (i.e. science fiction for a younger audience containing a positive moral message, an intelligent but poor teen boy struggling against all odds, etc).

The serious hard sci-fi edge which I found so appealing in They Shall Have Stars is replaced with a delightfully hokey premise accompanied by a genuine sense of wonder (only if you refrain from constantly laughing at the premise), and surprisingly little political moralizing which often plagues 50s and 60s juveniles. I found this superior to Blish's earlier juvenile, The Star Dwellers (1961).

And really, who can resist nomadic space-faring Earth cities heading for the allures of distant planets!?!

A solid juvie. Although not as good as Heinlein's Starman Jones (1953), Farmer in the Sky (1950), or Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) it's worth reading for fans of this sci-fi "sub-genre"...

Brief Plot Summary

Future Earth -- depopulated, economically depressed, poverty stricken, politically repressive -- is covered with the shells of once thriving great cities. Our young hero, Chris, lives near Scranton PN, once a mining hub. Chris is an intelligent yet poor boy whose father, a onetime professor when universities still existed, teaches him everything his knows.

The previous installment of the series, They Shall Have Stars, concerned the development of two technologies -- the spindizzies ( intersteller drives) and a life prolonging serum.

Scranton, and many other cities around the world, installs a spindizzie drive to transport the city to greener pastures in the reaches of spaces. The inhabitants of the spacefaring cities are called Okies (i.e. historical migrations to Oklahoma, etc).

While Chris and his dog are watching Scranton prepare for departure he falls afoul of an impressment gang who kill his dog and take him onboard the departing city. Scranton is ruled with an iron fist by the city manager who decides to find a planet to start a mining operation.

With little chance to rise in the ranks or get an education, Chris leaves Scranton for the spacefaring New York which they encounter on the way. In New York Chris receives an education and decides to receive citizenship. Unlike Scranton, New York is controlled by the mechanical "Founding Fathers" and the mayor Amalfi.

The "tension" arises when New York encounters Scranton on a distant planet violating its terms of settlement and mining rights. It's up to New York to set things aright by kicking Scranton out and for Chris to save the day!

Final Thoughts

The novel's final dismount is tensionless and hasty even by juvenile standards. However, the lead-up is on the whole quite enjoyable. Yes, the premise is outrageously silly but the message is a positive one -- despite having a lack of structured education, Chris is able to rigorously apply himself and eventually succeed.

The concept of mankind vacating one's planet is powerful and alluring. But, I couldn't stop laughing because the question of food production for an entire city while in deep space is never mentioned.

An enjoyable, fast, read... If only I read it when I was 11!