New York has left the Milky Way behind. The spindizzies are failing one by one. And on a planet in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, Mayor Amalfi is about to go head-to-head with the most notorious criminal city in Okie history. This is the finale.
Amalfi is turning a dead rock into a weapon. Hern VI is a planetoid, small and ugly, and his people are bolting spindizzy engines all over it. The work is brutal. Every driver has to be placed at exact compass points, locked to the center of gravity, balanced against every other machine. And there still aren’t enough to make the thing fully steerable. When this rock finally flies, it will be clumsy and wild. But it will fly.
In Part 5, we saw the jungle of Okie cities gathering near a red dwarf star, desperate for work. An Acolyte entrepreneur showed up offering terrible wages, things got violent, and Lieutenant Lerner’s cops accidentally blew up a bystander city. Amalfi watched it all and decided it was time to visit Buda-Pesht, the King’s city, in person. He brought Hazleton and Dee along. And now things get political.
Three hundred flying cities are parked around a dying red dwarf star. Most of them can barely keep their lights on. Welcome to the Okie jungle. Think of it as a hobo camp in space, except the hobos are entire cities, and the camp rules are written by whoever has the most power to burn.
The chapter is called “Murphy,” and if you know Murphy’s Law, you already know how this is going to go. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. And then it gets worse.
This is the big one. Chapter 4 of Earthman, Come Home is called “He,” and it’s the longest chapter in the entire novel. “He” is a planet, not a person. And what happens on that planet is one of the most ambitious things Amalfi and New York City have ever attempted. They move a whole world.
Last time, New York landed on Utopia and Hazleton went missing with a local girl. Now things get worse. The city has to deal with a golden-armored space dictator, and then fly into the emptiest stretch of space anyone has ever seen.
We are now in the third novel of Cities in Flight, and this is the big one. “Earthman, Come Home” is the longest book in the collection, and it shifts focus to the character who matters most in this universe: Mayor John Amalfi of New York City. Not New York on Earth. New York flying through space, powered by spindizzy engines, looking for work among the stars.
This is it. The final part of A Life for the Stars. Chris deFord has gone from a farm boy snatched off Earth to someone who actually understands how Okie cities work. And now, in these last three chapters, everything comes together.
Chris tried to be a hero and it kind of blew up in his face. Then the city left that storm-planet behind, flew back into space, and things got philosophical real fast.
Chris deFord just arrived aboard New York City. The real one. Flying through space. And now the city wants to know: what is he good for?
We’re now in the second novel of Cities in Flight, and the story jumps forward by centuries. The spindizzies exist. The anti-aging drugs exist. And whole cities are ripping themselves off the ground and flying into space to find work among the stars. They call these migrant cities “Okies,” and the Earth they leave behind is broke, used up, and slowly emptying out.
This is where everything pays off. All the political scheming, the impossible engineering on Jupiter, the secret drug research in the Bronx. In this final section of They Shall Have Stars, the two storylines crash into each other and we learn what Senator Wagoner was really doing all along.
Things are picking up speed now. Both storylines in “They Shall Have Stars” start moving fast in chapters 5 through 8. The drug research in New York gets tangled up with love and spies. And out on Jupiter, the Bridge crew is cracking under the weight of that giant planet staring down at them. Let’s get into it.
In Part 1, we met our three storylines: Colonel Paige Russell poking around a secretive drug company, the Bridge crew building an impossible structure on Jupiter, and Senator Wagoner playing a quiet political chess game. Now all three threads get more interesting. And more uncomfortable.
They Shall Have Stars opens not with rockets or alien planets. It opens with two tired men talking by a fireplace in Washington. And the shadows on the walls are making them nervous.
So I just finished reading Cities in Flight by James Blish, and I have thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Enough that I’m going to retell this whole thing as a blog series.