SOJALS rating:

Awful (1/5)

I most recently read this on the 17th May 2002.

In this further book in the classic "Cities In Flight" series, the spindizzy-powered city of New York, New York continues its faster-than-light adventures across the universe. John Amalfi is the Mayor of New York, as he has been for the past five hundred years. Old he may be, but his negotiating ability and hard-nosed business skills have grown with his age. As usual, the City Manager, Mark Hazelton, is bewildered and appalled by his boss's scheming,

Now if you want to read the whole set of these novels, then you could just get "Cities In Flight", the collected set in paperback or hardback from amazon.com. On the other hand that won't be as much fun as searching through the bookshop looking for the individual books.

I did think it was very Star Trekkie - the novel is really linked short stories. Additionally, the top guys do all the exploring and the solving of problems, and then there's the technobabble of course.

Then I realized that Blish went on to write the first 12 Star Trek novels, plus a variety of Star Trek Readers and of course most of the original Star Trek episodes.

So of course, Blish's "Cities In Flight" series isn't like Star Trek. It is rather that "Star Trek" resembles "Cities In Flight" but with a smaller space craft and more babes.

But you, of course, knew all this. I, however, was so caught up in "Black Easter", "The Day After Judgement" and the fantastic "A Case Of Conscience", that I couldn't see the wood for the trees.