Cities In Flight and Stand On Zanzibar

[suupaabaka]

These are my next on my To-Buy list, but a number of books caught my eye at Borders today. So I thought I'd go home and ask my fellow Chronic Chroniclers about what they've thought of these books.

What do you think of Stand On Zanzibar and/or Cities In Flight?

[HardScienceFan]

1380I James Benjamin Blish, B.Sc., Ed. (***) [m]
Can't help with "STAND",never read it.I tended to avoid fat novels.
Dunno if the link is any help,probably not much
Cities in flight is considered slightly uneven by some,some parts work better than others

[j. d. worthington]

Ben... I'm not really sure that's all that responsive to the question.....

Cities in Flight... To be honest, though I quite like the set, and think they are wonderful stories in their way, they are rather dated, and not among Blish's best work, I think. If you're heavily into Golden Age sf, then by all means, go for it. If not, then I'd put that one lower on the list, and suggest going for A Case of Conscience, or some of his story collections.

As for Stand on Zanzibar -- a difficult novel, in some ways, due to its unconventional structure, which would allow it to be read in several different ways; nonetheless, I'd say a brilliant novel, well worth reading. It may take a bit of getting used to, but it's well worth the effort. And, if you're interested in such things, it's part of an "ecological dystopia" trilogy: Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, and The Sheep Look Up (the last having been called one of the 100 best horror novels because of its presentation of the grim ecological scene). Now, you don't have to have read any one of these to enjoy the others, but read together, in this order, they each build on the previous ones thematically, making the final volume even more powerful in many ways.

So, if you had to choose, I think I'd pick the Brunner as the better book, in this case, though I do think Cities in Flight worth reading -- just not as much so as some of Blish's other work....

[suupaabaka]

Looks like Stand on Zanzibar it is! I'll leave Cities for later. Oh, and unconventional structure is an understatement. Brunner probably had quite a bit more than blood running through his veins while he wrote it.

[gully_foyle]

Originally Posted by suupaabaka

Oh, and unconventional structure is an understatement. Brunner probably had quite a bit more than blood running through his veins while he wrote it.

I'm with you there suup. I've just started reading it and I hope it doesn't take too much perserverence as I really only have a short attention span these days.

[williamjm]

I didn't like Cities in Flight, in fact I didn't finish it. It does admittedly have some interesting ideas in it (some of them quite visionary about the future considering it was written in the 1950s) and an entertaining central premise with New York flying through space. Unfortunately, I found the characters tedious and at times Blish seemed to be almost trying to avoid writing an entertaining story, avoiding opportunities to actually have the characters experience important plot events and instead just discussing them after the fact in some bland exposition.

[GOLLUM]

I recently purchased "Stand" so it will be intresting to follow member's thoughts on this thread...

[Ragnar]

I haven't read the Blish so can't comment but Stand on Zanzibar is an aweome piece of work - any of the three that j.d. mentioned earlier are worth your time. The Sheep Look Up is my favourite SF novel.

[Taltos]

Read Stand On Zanzibar about 2 years ago - 2 main things about this book were:
1) slow start - it takes a long time to get going - over 100 pages to understand who are the 'main' characters and 100 more to understand where this book is going at all - or maybe I'm just slow to understand things
2) very chaotic book - jumping from one narrative to another, with those 'newspaper articles' poping up randomly, but actually that was pretty good although the reading required a lot of concentration.

[Gav]

I've never got around to reading Stand... but I have read Cities in Flight.

They are excellent books - and unfortunately dated.

That's not really a problem (not with the first couple anyway) as the central themes are actually very interesting. I found the last book incredibly dull but getting to it a lot of fun.

[Anthony G Williams]

I read SOZ a long time ago, and found it rather depressing - I'm not a fan of dystopias. A book I admired rather than liked.

CIF is more entertaining IMO: not one of the greats, but certainly a classic.

[High Eight]

Originally Posted by Ragnar

I haven't read the Blish so can't comment but Stand on Zanzibar is an aweome piece of work - any of the three that j.d. mentioned earlier are worth your time. The Sheep Look Up is my favourite SF novel.

I'm with you there, Ragnar - it's one of my favourites too. The ending is one of the most chilling things I've ever read, especially the very last segment - 'Next Year'. Just that verse by Milton. Brrr!.

[gully_foyle]

I've just been reading Stand On Zanzibar and I gave up about 300 pages in. I'm sorry, but I found it incredibly racist and mysogynistic. I know he was trying to paint a picture of a society, but my 21st century sensitivity found it a bit hard to deal with. I found the outtakes from the main story to be tiresome, but once again, maybe 21st century boy wants sound bites rather than laboured examples of how effed up life can be for people wanting to procreate.

I wanted to like this book, it's a masterwork after all. But its main story, when you get to read it, moves at a glacial pace and sort of has a so what? factor about it.

Maybe I should stick with it, but for now it's at the bottom of the TBR pile.

[pyan]

Read Cities a long time ago, and still re-read it occasionally. Dated it may be, but the ideas in it still make it worth reading.

[Razorback]

I also found it tough to get into Stand on Zanzibar. I stuck with it and was glad I had by the time I finished. I even have the two sequels in my to-be-read pile. I haven’t read Cities in Flight, but it’s also in my to-be-read pile.