Editing James Blish (section)

=== ''Cities in Flight'' (1950–1958) ===
{{Main|Cities in Flight}}
''[[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]]'' asserts that not until the 1950s, and the Okie sequence of stories beginning their run, "did it become clear [Blish] would become a [science fiction] writer of unusual depth".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/blish_james|title=Authors : Blish, James|date=2018-03-11|website=[[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]]|access-date=2020-02-19}}</ref> The stories were loosely based on the [[Okie]] migration following the [[Dust Bowl]] of the 1930s, and were influenced by [[Oswald Spengler]]'s two-part ''[[The Decline of the West|Der Untergang des Abendlandes]]'' (''The Decline of the West'')''.''

The stories detail the life of the Okies, humans who migrate throughout space looking for work in vast city-ships, powered by [[Spindizzy (Cities in Flight)|spindizzies]], a type of [[anti-gravity]] engine. The premise and plot reflected Blish's feelings on the state of [[Western culture|western civilization]], and his personal politics.<ref name="Kirkus Big Ideas" /> The first two stories, "Okie", and "Bindlestiff", were published in 1950, by ''Astounding''. "Sargasso of Lost Cities" appeared in ''Two Complete Science-Adventure Books'' in April 1953. "Earthman, Come Home" followed a few months later, published by ''Astounding''. In 1955, Blish collected the four stories together into an omnibus titled ''Earthman, Come Home'', published by Putnam.

More stories followed: In 1956, ''They Shall Have Stars'', which edited together "Bridge" and "At Death's End", and in 1958, Blish published ''The Triumph of Time''. Four years later, he published a new Okies novel, ''A Life for the Stars''. The Okies sequence was edited together and published as ''Cities In Flight'' (1970).

Clute notes, "the brilliance of ''Cities in Flight'' does not lie in the assemblage of its parts, but in the momentum of the ideas embodied in it (albeit sometimes obscurely)."<ref name="Kirkus Big Ideas" />
[[File:Two_complete_science_adventure_books_1953spr_n8.jpg|thumb|The novella ''Sargasso of Lost Cities'', Blish's third ''Cities in Flight'' story, was published in ''[[Two Complete Science-Adventure Books]]'' in 1953. ]]