Reading Schedule for Cities in Flight by James Blish
3rd book in the SF Masterworks series
Our third book for the 2025 SF Masterworks read-alongs is Cities in Flight by James Blish, and it's quite a hefty read.
What’s Cities in Flight about?
James Blish’s galaxy-spanning masterwork, originally published in four volumes, explores a future in which two crucial discoveries – antigravity devices which enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs which enable their inhabitants to live for thousands of years – lead to the establishment of a unique Galactic empire.
As Terry Pratchett aptly put it, this is "the real heady wine of science fiction - exciting, intelligent, galaxy-spanning stuff."
How will we read it?
The book has four volumes, so we’ll aim to read one volume each week throughout March. If that’s too much, we can always extend the read-along into April. But don’t worry, we won’t miss the April book!
At the end of April, I’ll share a review of both books.
And of course, feel free to chat along the way!
Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll join me on this read-along!
Four volumes in a month is ambitious for me with my TBR pile as it is, but the premise sounds wild — whole cities turned into spaceships and people living for thousands of years! It definitely feels like the kind of “galaxy‑spanning stuff” Pratchett was talking about. I've got a copy somewhere...