Reviews

Ostras, no lo había puntuado. Clásico, interesante para frikis de la historia de la ciencia ficción, pero mala reunión de libros.

La reseña completa la podéis leer en SuperSonic Magazine #3

pandoozled14's review against another edition

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Boring

kundor's review against another edition

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3.0

The first two novels (They Shall Have Stars, and A Life for the Stars) were the best. The third novel, Earthman, Come Home, was munged together from a variety of stories which were written years earlier than the other novels, which were written as novels. As a result, ECH suffers from a lack of plot arc, bad pacing, anticlimaxes, and is riddled with internal inconsistency. The author had some work to do on comprehending his scales, also (a major point is the difficulty of fitting 300 city-sized objects comfortably into a solar system; our heroes have to park 18 AU out. Except that these cities came, in the first place, FROM EARTH, so they are known to fit in a tiny fraction of a 1 AU orbit! Come on; they could all fit inside the orbit of Mercury and not even know the rest of them were there!) I also just didn't like the protagonist, Amalfi, that much; he never really shows us why he deserves to be in charge, repeatedly doing gross damage to the city, causing the deaths of citizens, etc. for no particularly compelling reason. People go on at length about atrocities committed by the "mad" city, IMT, thousands of years before, but Amalfi does things nearly as bad without even appearing to think about it, and nobody bats an eye.

So, Amalfi's presence is probably why I didn't like the last novel, Triumph of Time, either, despite it being written as a novel. The first two, however, are definitely worth reading. TSHS begins in 2013, so it's timely!

brizreading's review against another edition

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2.0

Good ol' boy sci-fi, where the rich vastness of the universe is nonetheless incapable of dislodging the narrative from narrow-minded white American male-ness.

In this, Protagonist is a stowaway on a massive (Miyazaki-esque) flying city contraption; almost a proto-steampunk visual. Too bad the city feels about as diverse as Pittsburgh. (I say this with much love and respect for Pittsburgh.)

joosty's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

arf88's review against another edition

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4.0

Four books combined chronological order to make this omnibus - I had read that some suggest reading in publication order, but I decided to stick with the way it was collected here. Character-wise all four books are on about the same level - interesting characters that I liked and enjoyed reading but not the most realised.

For They Shall Have Stars - starts a little slow and with a bit too much "science" - I've read a fair bit of "hard" sci-fi but I found the technobabble in the first and last book to be pretty impenetrable. But the story ends well and gave me great excitement for the next book.

A Life For The Stars - A very enjoyable read, the main character was a joy to follow, and a good introduction to the flying cities. I did find the ending a bit abrupt.

Earthman, Come Home - The first written and the best of them all. The only one that felt like an actual novel that would be enjoyable to read as a stand-alone and not just a short story.

The Triumph of Time - My least favourite of the lot, a lot of dubious "science". While I'd really enjoyed reading the rest of the collection this made the end a slog. However, the ending of the story itself was unique and interesting and saved the rest retrospectively from being terrible.

nwhyte's review against another edition

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http://nhw.livejournal.com/370816.html[return][return]The full series in a single volume, containing They Shall Have Stars, A Life For The Stars, Earthman, Come Home and The Triumph of Time (aka A Clash of Cymbals).[return][return]The first book, They Shall Have Stars, is set off from the other three by being set in the near future, on a recognisable Cold War earth; I was slightly amused to note mention of Eritrea and Latvia as independent states, which must have seemed rather less likely than the end of the Cold War back when it was first written in 1957. (Heck, here I am in the capital city of a country that nobody had heard of a hundred years ago.) Story not especially engaging, a reflection really on contemporary US politics, McCarthyism, the space program, J. Edgar Hoover, the likelihood that the West would lose to Communism. The central character, Senator Wagoner, starts a trend for the rest of the series by working out a complex plan manipulating his political enemies into allowing his ideas to triumph.[return][return]I think I first read A Life For The Stars perhaps even before I left primary school - I seem to remember having to look up the word "concubine" in my dictionary. It was the last to be written, certainly the best of the four I think. A Bildungsroman of young Chris deFord, who accidentally leaves earth with the flying city of Scranton Pennsylvania; using the techniques sponsored by Wagoner ni the first novel, cities have been flying around the universe for ages by now. Chris ends up on New York and saves the day. Generally good stuff, although Chris' only close friend (the one with the concubines) gets treated pretty badly by the author.[return][return]Earthman, Come Home is supposed to be the real classic of the series, with one of its component novellas winning a retro-Hugo last year. I didn't completely understand why (well, I suppose the fact that the other stories in the running for the retro-Hugo were much more obscure may help explain why). Mayor Amalfi of New York (Blish having disposed of Chris deFord in a casual half-sentence) feels a bit like Doctor Who but in a city-sized TARDIS, advised by the computers known as the City Fathers, zooming from one episodic scrape to another, in the penultimate episode saving humanity at the cost of eternal exile. I didn't think it really hung together all that well, and by this stage Amalfi's habit of working out a complex plan manipulating his political enemies into allowing him to triumph was beginning to annoy me.[return][return]The series ends with a bit of a whimper. The Triumph of Time has lots of grand ideas, stabs at character development both of the established characters from earlier volumes and of a romantic young couple, and the end of the world as we know it; but doesn't really deliver on any of them. A bit disappointing. There's a rather pointless essay postscript about Blish and the historical theories of Spengler, by one Richard D. Mullen; perhaps I was just tired by then but I didn't feel it had added much to my understanding of the book.[return][return]However the audacity of Blish's vision and his ability to make you suspend your disbelief in flying cities do help the series as a whole succeed. And apart from the end the plotting is generally solid. Good old-fashioned stuff.

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