History Literature / CitiesInFlight

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: The series involves the Western democratic government model becoming ever more intolerant, eventually resembling the Soviet model very closely, and then the Soviets winning the war (and absorbing the West) because they were better at being Soviets.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The first of the novels was written in TheFifties and has the Western world ruled by a [=McCarthyist=] government that purges anyone who has "anti-Western" views, or for associating with such people. Scientific research is hamstrung by excessive secrecy, affecting the freedom of information necessary for the scientific method to work. Ideology is not "democracy" or "capitalism" but just "anti-communism"; ironically both sides end up merging because they are NotSoDifferent.

* CoolStarship: The devices called "Spindizzies" lift up whole cities and send them into space. It's just as cool as it sounds. [[spoiler:They can also be used on whole entire planets.]]

* DomedHometown: Blish created domed cities out of familiar earth cities like Pittsburgh and New York and had them travel through space looking for work.

* {{Hobos}}: Mayor Amalfi likens the titular cities to the migrants of the United States, saying that most cities are hobos, migrant workers, but some are tramps, basically petty criminals, and a few are the lowest sort: bindlestiffs, migrants who live by robbing other migrants.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: PlayedWith. The protagonists carefully save up [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium germanium]] for use as currency. After they come back to "civilization" some time later, they are told that it's a "fine and useful metal, but you buy it, you don't buy things with it." Ironically, the sellers want a "valuable" metal like... gold.

* ColonyDrop: The rogue city known as Interstellar Master Traders does this with a flying city in ''Earthman Come Home''.
** [[spoiler: {{Inverted|Trope}} When New York City sticks a bunch of Spindizzies on an uninhabited planet, and flies it into the Vegan Orbital Fort.]]

* LostColony: The planet He.
* MovingBuildings: The stories take this to its (il)logical conclusion by having entire cities fitted with antigravity and faster than light propulsion. The idea of flying cities was later used in a British Airways commercial depicting Manhattan in flight.

* {{Overdrive}}: The cities of the title can fly at faster-than-light speeds, but they're all equipped with a gadget called "Situation N" which can instantly teleport them away from trouble. Only thing is, it can only ever be used once per city. Why? Because if they used it more than once it would be too convenient for the author, I guess.
** Situation N has the great disadvantage of depositing the affected city in a completely unknown location, a very long way away. As it happens, this becomes a plot point but there us no given reason why the City would not find itself stranded in interstellar space, unable to navigate, seek work or even able to transit anywhere useful within its available supplies. Indeed, there is a specific penalty whereby a City can be broken up to prevent this being attempted, and City Fathers have been known to execute or otherwise depose city managers to prevent this.
* UsefulNotes/{{Pandeism}}: The final novel (''The Triumph Of Time'') has several characters decide to have themselves thrown 'outside' of the universe — it's going to temporarily cross "through" another universe; they (most likely) won't survive the process — in space suits packed with explosives. The expectation is setting off the explosives would allow each character to become a personalized "big bang", with the resultant baby universes having their physical constants being 'seeded' by the constants contained within each astronaut.

* RememberTheAlamo: In the series, it's "Remember Thor V!"
** We're never told [[NoodleIncident just what happened on Thor V]], only that the City known as Interstellar Master Traders did something terrible to the colony there. The only suggestion is the phrase "[IMT] made the sky fall -- which is [[ColonyDrop all too possible]] if you have a city with a spindizzy drive.

* UrbanLegend: The passengers have a legend of a Lost City that will take them away to a planet where [[CityOfGold antiaging drugs can be found in the local plantlife]]. The protagonist is sworn to secrecy about this, only to find that everyone knows about this legend anyway. Some urban legends are obviously cautionary tales--rogue Cities and [[AIIsACrapshoot City Fathers]]--while others turn out to true. [[spoiler:The Venus Fort praying on Cities.]]
** the [[TheRemnant Vegan Orbital Fort]] is widely regarded as this, but makes a dramatic reappearance during the March On Earth

The series is a grand, sweeping epic, based on the development of a form of AppliedPhlebotinum called "the Spindizzy drive", which provides cheap anti-gravity, artificial gravity, force-fields, and faster-than-light travel. So cheap and powerful is the Spindizzy that most of the major cities of Earth decide to take off and head for the stars.

* DomedHometown: Blish created not only domed cities out of familiar earth cities like Pittsburgh and New York but they travelled through space looking for work.
* DoomedHometown: The flying cities are forced off Earth by the disaster of world conquest by a totalitarian state. So each of them is a town with a Doomed Hometown.

* UsefulNotes/{{Pandeism}}: The final section (''The Triumph Of Time'') has several characters decide to have themselves thrown 'outside' of the universe — it's going to temporarily cross "through" another universe; they (most likely) won't survive the process — in space suits packed with explosives. The expectation is setting off the explosives would allow each character to become a personalized "big bang", with the resultant baby universes having their physical constants being 'seeded' by the constants contained within each astronaut.

** We're never told [[NoodleIncident just what happened on Thor V]], only that the City known as Interstellar Master Traders did something terrible to the colony there. Except that they 'made the sky fall' -- which is [[ColonyDrop all too possible]] if you have a city with a spindizzy drive.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: PlayedWith. The protagonists carefully save up [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium selenium]] for use as currency. After they come back to "civilization" some time later, they are told that it's a "fine and useful metal, but you buy it, you don't buy things with it." Ironically, the sellers want a "valuable" metal like... gold.

** We're never told [[NoodleIncident just what happened on Thor V]], only that the City known as Interstellar Master Traders did something terrible to the colony there.

* {{Pandeism}}: The final section (''The Triumph Of Time'') has several characters decide to have themselves thrown 'outside' of the universe — it's going to temporarily cross "through" another universe; they (most likely) won't survive the process — in space suits packed with explosives. The expectation is setting off the explosives would allow each character to become a personalized "big bang", with the resultant baby universes having their physical constants being 'seeded' by the constants contained within each astronaut.

* {{Arcology}}: Cheap and easy anti-gravity and faster-than-light technology leads to most of Earth's major cities converting themselves to arcologies and setting off for the stars.

** [[spoiler: {{Inverted|Trope}} when New York City sticks a bunch of Spindizzies on an uninhabited planet, and flies it into the Vegan Orbital Fort]]

* Pandeism: The final section (''The Triumph Of Time'') has several characters decide to have themselves thrown 'outside' of the universe — it's going to temporarily cross "through" another universe; they (most likely) won't survive the process — in space suits packed with explosives. The expectation is setting off the explosives would allow each character to become a personalized "big bang", with the resultant baby universes having their physical constants being 'seeded' by the constants contained within each astronaut.

* MovingBuildings: The stories take this to its (il)logical conclusion by having entire cities fitted with antigravity and faster than light propulsion.

* TechnologyMarchesOn:
** Slide rules are apparently still being used for course calculations for interstellar space flight.
** New York City has an AI collectively known as the City Fathers, which reside in a set of self-reconfiguring servers so large they ride around on their own system of train tracks.
---> '''City Fathers''': We conclude that ''we'' are the city.

** [[spoiler: Inverted when New York City sticks a bunch of Spindizzies on an uninhabited planet, and flies it into the Vegan Orbital Fort]]

* RememberTheAlamo: In the series, it's "Remember Thor V!"

* WhenThingsSpinScienceHappens: The Spindizzy drive. It's never actually been seen or described in canon, but it has "spin" and "dizzy" in the name so it's a reasonable assumption that it spins. Spindizzies are based on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Blackett,_Baron_Blackett P. M. S. Blackett's]] work on planetary magnetism, correlating magnetism, gravity, and angular momentum. As angular momentum is a key factor, a spinning device is necessary.
** Or maybe not. The intent was to use magnetism and spin to change Newton's [[strike:fudge factor]] gravitational constant, flipping it negative, and causing anti-gravity. (Blackett's work in this area was discredited to his own satisfaction in his lifetime.) Some writers (like [[http://www.astronomycafe.net/anthol/scifi1.html this one]]) say that "spindizzy" is what the device does to the subatomic particles: changing their angular momentum.

* WhenThingsSpinScienceHappens: The Spindizzy drive. It's never actually been seen or described in canon, but it has "spin" and "dizzy" in the name so it's a reasonable assumption that it spins. Spindizzies are probably based on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Blackett,_Baron_Blackett P. M. S. Blackett's]] work on planetary magnetism, correlating magnetism, gravity, and angular momentum. As angular momentum is a key factor, of course a spinning device is necessary. The intent was to use magnetism and spin to change Newton's [[strike:fudge factor]] gravitational constant, flipping it negative, and causing anti-gravity. (Blackett's work in this area was discredited to his own satisfaction in his lifetime.)

* TechnologyMarchesOn: In ''Cities in Flight'':