2018 AD. The time of the Cold Peace, worse even than the Cold War. The bureaucratic regimes that rule from Washington and Moscow are indistinguishable in their passion for total repression. But in the West, a few dedicated individuals still struggle to find a way out of the trap of human history. Behind the screen of official research their desperate project is nearing completion . . .

The famous skyline still stood, the skyscrapers still towered—it was New York City—a million miles from earth! In a millennium of anti-death pills and spindizzy fields, earth's cities one by one leave the worn-out planet to find new wealth among unknown stars...

When the cities left Earth, they exchanged a simple environment for one of constant, sometimes shattering change. The Universe was littered with cultures in every conceivable stage of development. Only the iron hand of the germanium-backed economy and occasional interventions by the Earth police imposed some kind of order on the spaceways. Even John Amalfi never got used to the life - and he had been mayor of New York for nearly five hundred years now.

In the era of ANTI-MATTER When the scientists of the wandering planet HE - in their journeys through the furthest reaches of inter-galactic space - heard the sounds of hydrogen atoms coming into existence out of NOTHING, they realized that they had accidentally discovered the birthplace of continuous creation. But they didn't know until later, much later, that they had uncovered mankind's Day of Judgement. Following up the Hevian's discovery, scientists of New Earth learned of the existence of a Universe based on Anti-Matter energy - a chemical and physical structure so antagonistic to their own Universe that the slightest contact meant instantaneous oblivion for both worlds. In desperation, the scientists joined forces to create a missile to explore this mysterious and hostile Anti-Matter Universe. But when the missile returned the scientists learned one awesome fact: In three years time the two Universes were doomed to inevitable, catastrophic collision!

Spanning the far-distant future and the infinite reaches of space, Cities in Flight brings together the famed "Okie" novels - named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl - of science fiction master James Blish. Featuring flying cities roaming the galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life, the four volumes in Cities in Flight take us from the death of our universe to the birth of the next." "Blish's classic is built on two crucial antigravity devices - "spindizzies" - which allow whole cities to be lifted from Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs, which enable the cities' inhabitants to live for thousands of years.