The Stars Wait

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, III.

There are many references to stars and to the word "stars" on this blog. Somewhere we discuss the use of the word, "Stars," in sf titles, particularly by Poul Anderson and James Blish. We need not list the relevant titles again. 

Volumes I and II of Blish's Cities In Flight have titles that end with "...Stars." The last chapter of Volume I, before the brief CODA, ends:

"After a while, the man and the woman went to the window, and looked past the discarded bulk of Jupiter at the near horizon, where there had always been visible a few stars."

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Anderson, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 128.

 

The discarded bulk of Jupiter means that the period of merely interplanetary space travel has ended. That a few stars had always been visible means that the period of interstellar travel has always been waiting to begin. We have remarked before that interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom in American sf. See here. (Scroll down.) In Cities In Flight, it is also an escape from a new tyranny on Earth.

"Aycharaych. The chill struck full into Flandry. He raised his eyes to the fading stars. Sol would soon drive sight away from them, but they would remain where they were, waiting." (p.391)

Here again, the stars wait but, this time, their significance is the exact opposite: a rival interstellar empire threatens Terra.