Wagnerian Spenglerian Space Opera: Cities in Flight by James Blish

'''Ketterer, David. "Wagnerian Spenglerian Space Opera: Cities in Flight by James Blish."' Foundation'' #31 (July 1984): 45-67.

Extensive discussion of Cities in Flight series (q.v.) and the use therein of the theories of Oswald Spengler. Stresses the image of the "restricting container," which DK relates to the "imprisoning Spenglerian cycles" as "a temporal version of this spatial metaphor. At the end of Cities in Flight an attempt will be made to burst free of the realms of cyclical process" (56-57). See in this Category, R. D. Mullen on "Blish, van Vogt, and the Uses of Spengler."