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A review by markyon
A Clash of Cymbals by James Blish
2.0
And so, I get to the last in the Cities in Flight series, an imaginatively written but so far uneven set of novels created by fixing up stories first published between 1950 and 1962. A Clash of Cymbals was published as The Triumph of Time in the US in 1959 and then in an omnibus edition in 1970.
After the award-winning (but for me frustrating) novel Earthman Come Home (reviewed here) this is the book most disliked in the series. I’ll try and examine this point later.
In terms of the plot, A Clash of Cymbals is set around 4000 AD. Where we left the story last (in Earthman Come Home, reviewed here) Mayor John Amalfi and the flying city of New York had grounded itself on a planet renamed ‘New Earth’, seemingly never to travel between the stars again.
This story begins with Amalfi, now over a thousand years old due to the use of anti-agathic drugs, clearly getting restless.
We also see the return of the planet He, which we last saw in Earthman Come Home as a slave-planet, travelling away across the galaxy. Their return shows that the people have matured from their god-fearing state which Amalfi left them in to something akin to the people of Old Earth. Having had to discover things themselves, they have developed a means of transport that allows them to not only change their course of travel but also catch up with Amalfi.
They also bring with them a dramatic discovery – that their scientific studies show that the end of time, of everything, is on its way - and soon. Their universe of matter is colliding with a universe of anti-matter, with catastrophic results.
Working with Amalfi and the scientists of New York, together they calculate that the two universes have three years before they end. The rest of the book shows us the consequences of that prediction, of the countdown to it – and what happens afterwards.
So, on its own, as the fourth book in a series, A Clash of Cymbals is perhaps not the best place to start. You can read it alone, but it may leave you a little mystified, although the book begins with a summary of what has happened in the series up to this point.
Allowing for this, the story is easy enough to follow. The end of the universe is coming and how Amalfi and his compatriots deals with it is the story.
So why is this book often disliked? Well, the slight plot is one of the things that lets the book down, in my opinion. I think that part of the reason for the book’s unpopularity is that although the scale of the story is vast, there’s actually little plot.
I did wonder why, with such an epic scale plot point – the end of the universe, time and everything – the story has such a relatively narrow view. In the end, this huge event seems to depend on about half-a-dozen characters, which didn’t sit easily with me. For such an important event, how arrogant is it to suggest that everything in the end depends on the actions of a mere few. Moreover, who is it that merely accepts that these half-a-dozen can take action and make choices for the whole universe – no, universes?
The reason for this plot, of course, is to show how the philosophy underpinning the series plays out. It has been known from the outset that Blish’s inspiration for writing this series has been the ideas of philosopher Oswald Spengler, and in particular that the growth and decline of empires are not due to the passage of time but through individual cultures which grow and decline before the next one develops. Though the ideas of Spenglerism have always been there throughout (and there’s a very useful explanation by Richard D Mullen at the end of the omnibus edition to show this) this time in A Clash of Cymbals it is the overriding feature rather than the background setting of the overall book.
For some readers therefore it may be that Clash is the logical culmination of the series, where the ultimate purpose of the Cities in Flight series is uncovered. It seems that Blish’s intention all along was to write a Future History, like many before him, but one that is deliberately different to say, Asimov’s and Heinlein’s versions. Readers of the whole series may be impressed by this, whilst others not getting the Spenglerian references will be at best confused and at worst bored.
Even though I got the references, I found myself struggling with the intense debate in the middle of this book. I found that most of the middle part of the book is given to philosophical musings and mathematical meanderings, which seemed boring, even if I could follow what was going on. This is perhaps the first of the series where philosophy seems to dominate plot.
More worryingly, I also found myself disliking some of the characters, more than ever before. To me, Amalfi, at over 1000 years old, is now so beyond human that his overbearing arrogance becomes unpleasant. At the same time there were abrupt about-turns in character that seemed unexpected, and even inappropriate. Most noticeably of these to me was when Dee Hazleton admits to a secret love for Amalfi whilst her husband Mark is an ineffectual counterpoint.
Slightly less annoying is that we also have “Okies – the Next Generation”, represented by Web Hazleton and Estelle Freeman, two new characters who are the grandchildren of two families we have met before. Whilst it is important to show that the death of the universe potentially creates no future for them, they also show that at times new thinking is required, in order to solve problems. Their relative innocence is a welcome relief to the darker unpleasantness generated by the older characters.
What is perhaps most memorable is the feeling that an end is in sight. Amalfi feels it from the beginning of the novel, and throughout there is a tone that suggests that the world – no, the universe – is running down to some sort of ending. The story is filled with ideas of fatigue and tiredness to reflect this.
With that in mind, the ending of the novel is both appropriate to its UK title and in its relevance to the ideas of Spengler in action. Some readers will be dissatisfied by the fact that it is abrupt.
I found the book appropriate as a conclusion to the series, but one that for all its cleverness was a tough read to finish. Many of the reviews at the time admired the book’s ambition yet felt that it was lacking in energy and plot. I can only agree.
Oddly, with the passage of time (see what I did there?), A Clash of Cymbals may be seen more favourably than when first published. In the e-book edition there is an Afterword by author Stephen Baxter, which explains the importance of the series to SF. It is a series of books that are an indicator of how SF was changing in the 1950’s, and when compared to many of the stories of Blish’s contemporaries it is a deeper, more intellectual work than many. In 2007, in the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the British Science Fiction Awards, A Clash of Cymbals won the Best Novel of 1958 category.
In summary, A Clash of Cymbals is the logical summation of the series. Broad in scope and elaborate in ambition, it is an intellectual exercise that, whilst impressive, for me lacked the engagement and interest that earlier books engendered.
Nevertheless, reading the series, particularly the earlier books in the series, has been found to be a worthwhile experience. There’s a lot to like and, despite the weaknesses, you have to admire Blish’s intellectual ambition and determination to tell a story his way. The Cities in Space series blazes a trail that has clearly influenced other science fiction writers and created ideas that we can recognise in contemporary novels. But whilst I appreciate its importance to the genre, this book in particular is one I won’t be in too much of a hurry to reread.
After the award-winning (but for me frustrating) novel Earthman Come Home (reviewed here) this is the book most disliked in the series. I’ll try and examine this point later.
In terms of the plot, A Clash of Cymbals is set around 4000 AD. Where we left the story last (in Earthman Come Home, reviewed here) Mayor John Amalfi and the flying city of New York had grounded itself on a planet renamed ‘New Earth’, seemingly never to travel between the stars again.
This story begins with Amalfi, now over a thousand years old due to the use of anti-agathic drugs, clearly getting restless.
We also see the return of the planet He, which we last saw in Earthman Come Home as a slave-planet, travelling away across the galaxy. Their return shows that the people have matured from their god-fearing state which Amalfi left them in to something akin to the people of Old Earth. Having had to discover things themselves, they have developed a means of transport that allows them to not only change their course of travel but also catch up with Amalfi.
They also bring with them a dramatic discovery – that their scientific studies show that the end of time, of everything, is on its way - and soon. Their universe of matter is colliding with a universe of anti-matter, with catastrophic results.
Working with Amalfi and the scientists of New York, together they calculate that the two universes have three years before they end. The rest of the book shows us the consequences of that prediction, of the countdown to it – and what happens afterwards.
So, on its own, as the fourth book in a series, A Clash of Cymbals is perhaps not the best place to start. You can read it alone, but it may leave you a little mystified, although the book begins with a summary of what has happened in the series up to this point.
Allowing for this, the story is easy enough to follow. The end of the universe is coming and how Amalfi and his compatriots deals with it is the story.
So why is this book often disliked? Well, the slight plot is one of the things that lets the book down, in my opinion. I think that part of the reason for the book’s unpopularity is that although the scale of the story is vast, there’s actually little plot.
I did wonder why, with such an epic scale plot point – the end of the universe, time and everything – the story has such a relatively narrow view. In the end, this huge event seems to depend on about half-a-dozen characters, which didn’t sit easily with me. For such an important event, how arrogant is it to suggest that everything in the end depends on the actions of a mere few. Moreover, who is it that merely accepts that these half-a-dozen can take action and make choices for the whole universe – no, universes?
The reason for this plot, of course, is to show how the philosophy underpinning the series plays out. It has been known from the outset that Blish’s inspiration for writing this series has been the ideas of philosopher Oswald Spengler, and in particular that the growth and decline of empires are not due to the passage of time but through individual cultures which grow and decline before the next one develops. Though the ideas of Spenglerism have always been there throughout (and there’s a very useful explanation by Richard D Mullen at the end of the omnibus edition to show this) this time in A Clash of Cymbals it is the overriding feature rather than the background setting of the overall book.
For some readers therefore it may be that Clash is the logical culmination of the series, where the ultimate purpose of the Cities in Flight series is uncovered. It seems that Blish’s intention all along was to write a Future History, like many before him, but one that is deliberately different to say, Asimov’s and Heinlein’s versions. Readers of the whole series may be impressed by this, whilst others not getting the Spenglerian references will be at best confused and at worst bored.
Even though I got the references, I found myself struggling with the intense debate in the middle of this book. I found that most of the middle part of the book is given to philosophical musings and mathematical meanderings, which seemed boring, even if I could follow what was going on. This is perhaps the first of the series where philosophy seems to dominate plot.
More worryingly, I also found myself disliking some of the characters, more than ever before. To me, Amalfi, at over 1000 years old, is now so beyond human that his overbearing arrogance becomes unpleasant. At the same time there were abrupt about-turns in character that seemed unexpected, and even inappropriate. Most noticeably of these to me was when Dee Hazleton admits to a secret love for Amalfi whilst her husband Mark is an ineffectual counterpoint.
Slightly less annoying is that we also have “Okies – the Next Generation”, represented by Web Hazleton and Estelle Freeman, two new characters who are the grandchildren of two families we have met before. Whilst it is important to show that the death of the universe potentially creates no future for them, they also show that at times new thinking is required, in order to solve problems. Their relative innocence is a welcome relief to the darker unpleasantness generated by the older characters.
What is perhaps most memorable is the feeling that an end is in sight. Amalfi feels it from the beginning of the novel, and throughout there is a tone that suggests that the world – no, the universe – is running down to some sort of ending. The story is filled with ideas of fatigue and tiredness to reflect this.
With that in mind, the ending of the novel is both appropriate to its UK title and in its relevance to the ideas of Spengler in action. Some readers will be dissatisfied by the fact that it is abrupt.
I found the book appropriate as a conclusion to the series, but one that for all its cleverness was a tough read to finish. Many of the reviews at the time admired the book’s ambition yet felt that it was lacking in energy and plot. I can only agree.
Oddly, with the passage of time (see what I did there?), A Clash of Cymbals may be seen more favourably than when first published. In the e-book edition there is an Afterword by author Stephen Baxter, which explains the importance of the series to SF. It is a series of books that are an indicator of how SF was changing in the 1950’s, and when compared to many of the stories of Blish’s contemporaries it is a deeper, more intellectual work than many. In 2007, in the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the British Science Fiction Awards, A Clash of Cymbals won the Best Novel of 1958 category.
In summary, A Clash of Cymbals is the logical summation of the series. Broad in scope and elaborate in ambition, it is an intellectual exercise that, whilst impressive, for me lacked the engagement and interest that earlier books engendered.
Nevertheless, reading the series, particularly the earlier books in the series, has been found to be a worthwhile experience. There’s a lot to like and, despite the weaknesses, you have to admire Blish’s intellectual ambition and determination to tell a story his way. The Cities in Space series blazes a trail that has clearly influenced other science fiction writers and created ideas that we can recognise in contemporary novels. But whilst I appreciate its importance to the genre, this book in particular is one I won’t be in too much of a hurry to reread.