Customer Reviews

City

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
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Thousands of years in the future, the canine population of planet Earth, along with their robot helpers, sit around campfires and tell each other controversial fables about how they owe their ascendance to an extinct and perhaps mythical species of benevolent, if misguided, humans. This bleak, melancholy portrayal of humanity's prospects for survival is unusual, then, not only for its dystopian vision but also for its often pastoral storytelling.

Originally published during the 1940s as a series in Astounding Science Fiction, these eight stories were gathered into a novel in 1952. For the book, Simak made a few revisions and added a framework of "textual commentaries," featuring remarks from canine critics who debate both the meaning of the tales and the likelihood that humankind ever even existed. The stories themselves focus on the role of the (human) Webster family, whose descendants during the course of thousands of years influence the future of humans, dogs, robots, and even ants. The only character common to all the tales is a robot named Jenkins, who serves first human, then canine masters as various threats present themselves over the course of numerous millennia.

The first three tales describe a deteriorating human society that retreats from urban blight and escapes to remote family outposts, relying almost entirely on robots for supplying the labor and on the wired world for communication and supplies. (Simak's prescient vision of the Internet is one of the most hauntingly accurate prophecies in this book.) As a result, many of the earth's inhabitants suffer from agoraphobia--a combination of simple lethargy and a fear of leaving their homes--and this isolation is amplified in the form of nearly immortal human mutants that live entirely on their own, "disdaining all the artificiality of society."

The most memorable (and most original) pair of tales portrays a few humans who venture outside their homes to other worlds and who inadvertently discover a form of nirvana by assuming the genetic makeup of a mysterious, gas-based life-form on Jupiter. Humanity is thus confronted by a choice: either perpetuation of their own species or the allure of paradise under a different guise.

Simak's initially relaxed pace soon surrenders to a more riveting style, especially because the later stories are more interrelated (both by common characters and by plot devices) than the first three almost-standalone tales. The book's underlying hopelessness, which often flirts with a subtle misanthropy, is hard to explain, however; there's no real apocalypse. Instead of doom or destruction, the future of humanity according to Simak is a world of isolation and loneliness, and perhaps that's the most depressing vision of all.

City is great science fiction, a social commentary of sorts told in a unique and highly effective manner. The tales collected in this book are the myths that have been told by generation after generation of Dogs. Dog scholars debate their origin, and only Tige is so bold as to argue that Man ever truly existed. The majority argument makes sense--man was a highly illogical creature, too selfish and materialistic to ever survive long enough to form a lasting, advanced culture. These stories themselves basically tell the story of the Webster family, a remarkable family whose genealogical line was gifted with genius yet cursed with failures. As the story goes, humans abandoned the cities and sought a bucolic lifestyle, shedding the old tendencies to huddle together in cities for protection. They explored the solar system, and in time the majority of the population sought an alien bliss in the form of Jupiter's native life forms. One Webster had a vision of two civilizations, man and dog, working together to plot a new future--he utilized deft surgical means to enable dogs to speak, he designed special lenses to allow dogs to see as men do, and he designed robots to aid dogs by serving as their hands. Over the years, man's society continued to break down, and eventually a Webster manages to shut off man from the world at large, determined to let the dogs create a new earth free of man's dangerous ideas and influences. Jenkins, the faithful robot servant of the Websters, oversees the dogs' evolution. Unfortunately, the Dog world was not isolated from a handful of human beings after all, and eventually a man builds a bow and arrow and kills a fellow creature, thus upsetting the balance of life all over again. There are many more facets of the story than I have just mentioned, but one central point that seems to emerge from the stories is that man is inherently "bad." Jenkins had tried very hard to erase the memories of the straggling number of humans living in the era of the Dogs, and the fact that a man eventually killed a fellow creature means that man's troubles did not arise from our remote ancestors' taking a wrong path on the road to civilization but that in fact the fault lies in fact finds an inherent flaw in man's social makeup. Reading this rich, multi-layered tale, one can certainly understand why modern Dogs simply cannot believe that such a creature as Man ever existed.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. The ending did not provide a sense of closure, but such a work of fiction as this would be hard to wrap up tightly with no loose ends. Simak presents a valuable viewpoint on society and mankind in general, and the unique viewpoint offered through the eyes of the Dogs serves to highlight the points Simak makes. My favorite part of the book is the section of notes before each tale, wherein we learn about the debate among Dog scholars as to whether or not these stories have any basis in fact, with the stubborn Tige dissenting from the majority opinion of Bouncer, Rover, and others that these are just myths and legends with no basis in fact, that Man is effectively the anti-Dog and was created by ancient storytellers for satirical or educational purposes. From now on, when I hear someone say the world is going to the dogs, I will think to myself that such a happenstance would not really be that bad, all things considered.

"City" is a magical book, a true modern fable, and I highly recommend it. But if you do read it, I hope it doesn't take you as long as it took me to get started. As the old saying goes, you can't judge a book by its cover. Or its first tale, for that matter.

Not that it is a bad story. On the contrary, it has a certain nostalgic flavor, a dated atmosphere that has to be appreciated under the correct light, Like the light of the fireplace in the Webster House, the rural property that serves as the common scenery that connects the tales, and leads the story into its climax.

But I guess I wasn't prepared for that when this book first got into my hands. I was attending a seminar for English teachers in Southern Brazil and the school where the event was taking place was giving away some old books, the kind nobody wants anymore. City was among the ones I picked.

The graphic layout of the cover showed how old the book was, and so was the fact that it was literally falling apart. Anyway, I read the first story, and all these elements together left me the strong feeling that it was just another curiosity, an example of how far from reality SF writers of the past were, of how wrong they were when predicting the decades still to come, and what the end of the twentieth century would be like.

Family planes powered by atomics? Yeah, right. Those guys in the fifties thought nuclear energy either would be the ultimate curse or the ultimate solution. References to World War II as "the war"? Of course there wouldn't be any other wars after that one. Hydroponics replacing "dirt farming"? People fleeing the cities to live in large estates in the interior? Yeah, like there would be room for everyone in the country.

Th result, I thought, was almost laughable. I thought City was a tribute to the author's lack of sight, his complete inability understand the major social and economical trends. As many SF/fantasy writers have done, he picked one specific phenomenon, the bucolic lifestyle in American suburbs, (and from there to the country) and extrapolated that to the entire human race. All of this in the distant year of 1990...

So I put the book aside and didn't touch it for another eleven years. But now, when I'm older and wiser, I did a little restoration work on those old yellow pages, and read it all the way though. As the story advanced, and hundreds, even thousands of years passed, I realize I was before a deep and thought-provoking tale of incredible literary and philosophical value. And the more the story progressed, the more my impression of the author's universe changed.

The fact is that the book has many surprises, and is a real gift for the reader. When it finally ended, I was hoping for more, but of course, there won't be more, as it was written a long time ago, and the author is already dead. Like a message in a time vault from a distant past.

Sometimes a book leaves me feeling this way. Another was the also classic "More than Human," by Theodore Sturgeon. It's really gratifying when an author has the sensibility to look into the human nature in such an insightful and equally entertaining way. And, who knows, now that we have the Internet, who says people might not prefer to live away from the cities? And perhaps in a not so distant future, the author's predictions might get to be much closer to reality than we thought possible.

I first read City when it was published in 1952.

Then, we young people were used to "duck and cover" drills in school and the imminence of the nuclear destruction of the world. It was a normal thing to go to sleep thinking that there would be no tomorrow.

This was the climate in which I first read City.

My initial response was that the idea of dispersing humans to lightly populated rural realms was a surefire way to make the nuclear threat impotent. No cities, no mass destruction. Of course at the time the effects of radiation/nuclear winter were not that well known, and therefore I was not aware of the fact that something close to a nearly total exchange between the USSR and the USA would have affected everyone, not just those in the cities.

However, Simak's idea of eliminating targets was a first step toward the realization that life would go on. Its military consequences are one of the "breakthrough" parts of the book, where humanity at last realizes the folly of killing itself due to an economic/political disagreement.

Then, ah then, the real story begins. Alien philosophies, humans transformed into Jovian beings, Nietzschean evolution, interdimensional interfaces (often unpleasant), electronic memory, the passing of thousands of years, facts transforming into fables. Thank goodness for the story tellers!

Humans are humans, after all. And dogs are dogs. And the twain is that the humans leave, the dogs remain, and we are privileged to experience the ultimate destiny of life on Earth. Or almost. There are always those pesky ants.

City is a wonderful, epic, sobering, nostalgic, enthralling, non-anthropocentric, imaginative discourse on what might be the future of life on Earth.

Simak's magnum opus.

Clifford D. Simak's novel "City" sketches out the future history of the planet Earth: a future of genetically altered talking dogs, mutated humans, omnipresent robots, and other wonders. Simak uses a richly ironic structure to tell this vast saga. The novel is broken up into eight "tales," each of which is prefaced by a short note. Each of these eight notes is actually part of Simak's fiction. The commentary on the first tale, for example, refers to humankind as a "mythical race" which may have never actually existed.

Within this bold but witty structure, Simak deals with such themes as philosophy, phobia, history, legend, violence, culture, and evolution. The book is filled with memorable moments; one of my favorites is a poignant encounter between a genetically advanced talking dog and a primitive wolf. Simak's portrait of the ultimate fate of humanity is comparable to the work of Arthur C. Clarke in "Childhood's End." Throughout the book, Simak has a charming, enjoyable writing style. "City" is a book that, in my opinion, belongs in the canon of science fiction classics.

This is one of the best novels of its kind that I have ever read. City has an almost ethereal quality. That the future technology that the novel alludes to is so far removed from the present reality makes it all the more mysterious, almost as if one were reading science fiction written by someone in a similar, but alternative universe where the earth's future took an entirely different path.

Of course, any book that contains intelligent, talking dogs cannot be all bad. Even the somewhat tedious Dean Koontz has mined this vein to considerable effect.

I read this book as a teen, and find it still stands up, lo these many years later... The future of humankind (and its works) is explored in several parallel plotlines, one of the humans and ex-humans that have migrated to other planets and dimensions, another follows the fortunes of a family known as the Websters, initially a scientist who chooses to stay behind on Earth while others leave, and then, after the Webster line dies out, of the immortal robot who is left behind to tend the experiments the Websters left behind... As noted elsewhere, the book's premise is rooted in the paranoias of the Cold War era, but the semi-utopian alternatives Simak comes up with are presented in such a thoughtful, gentle way, and the characters themselves are so richly and sympathetically conceived, that this is one of the most emotionally resonant sci-fi books I know of. It's really a great book.

City is a masterpiece of creative genius crafted in Simak's trademark soft-spoken, pastoral style - a breath of fresh air contrasted against today's hard-boiled, fast-paced and typically cynical style of writing.

A series of loosely joined short stories is presented as the myths and legends that are told by dogs around their campfires to each other and their pups in a future so distant that no dog is actually certain that the creature Man ever really truly existed. From the standpoint of the reader, City represents a Michener or Rutherfurd style multi-generational family saga - a future history, in other words. Mankind, as represented by the Webster family and their robot, Jenkins, is seen as ascending to marvelous heights of technological achievement while evolving away from a traditional city style government, travelling to the stars and beyond, but ultimately descending into an agoraphobic, dystopian Spartan existence and disappearing into extinction. Jenkins - a ten thousand year old repository of flawless electronic memory and the only remaining human artifact - knows the true story of man's rise and fall but, acting in a fashion distinctly unlike anything Asimov might have attributed to a robot, keeps it to himself. Jenkins has concluded he owes canine society an opportunity to grow and flourish on its own unaware of the fact that dogs were once nothing more than pets to a mean-spirited and violent race of humans.

Although City contemplates a lonely ending to mankind as a species, hard core tech weenie sci-fi fans will rub their hands with glee as they read of Simak's imagination and prescience at work - automatic lawnmowers, atomic powered private planes, televisor ports, laboratories and manned bases on Venus, Jupiter and Pluto, an inter-stellar expedition to Alpha Centauri, the demise of natural farming fuelled in part by the rise of mass production hydroponics, ICBMs, inter-dimensional transportation, fireplaces reduced to an anachronistic self-indulgence, suspended animation called "The Sleep" as a psychologically gentler form of suicide, and, of course, thinking, sentient robots as servants and work mates.

To draw on a cosmological metaphor, the ending for man that Simak tells of is not the violent, catastrophic big crunch type ending that would see us wiped out in a blaze of glory. He rather talks of a much bleaker, almost unbearably sad ending to humanity as it simply disappears - the infinite boredom of heat death, as it were, as all motion ends and the universe reaches a boundless uniformity with the maximization of entropy. Simak is blistering in his criticism of man's arrogant opinion of his own place in the world, a theme he will return to again and again in such novels as "Time is the Simplest Thing" and "Time and Again":

"But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices - the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered - the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation."

At once inspiring, frightening, un-nerving, depressing and yet touching, City is a classic that needs to be read by all true sci-fi fans.

Paul Weiss

The Clifford D. Simak Centennial Edition of "City" includes all the stories form the original book from 1952 (although in a different order) as well as an Introduction written in 1976, and a final story called "Epilog" written in 1973 as a tribute to John W. Campbell. This book won the International Fantasy award in 1953 for fiction, was rated 2nd on the Astounding/Analog Poll for books in 1956, and then 9th in 1966. It was also rated 30th on the 1987 Locus All-Time Poll for All Time SF Novels, and tied for 38th on the 1998 Locus All-Time Poll for SF Novels Before 1990.

Like several other Science Fiction novels, this one is actually a collection of short stories written earlier. Unlike some other novels built from stories, it appears that these stories were always strongly linked together, and the linking premise of scholars looking back at ancient mythological tales, works extremely well. The amazing thing about this book is the number of science fiction themes that it touches upon, and yet it still maintains a steady pace, and moves forward.

The stories are as follows:

"City" is a novella, first published in Astounding in May of 1944. It is this story that gives the book its name, and it is an unusual name since there are no cities in the rest of the book, and in fact they are dead even in the first story. The first story is about the death of cities, and introduces the reader to the Webster family with the character John J. Webster.

"Huddling Place" is a short story, first published in Astounding in July of 1944. In this story we meet Jerome A. Webster M.D., a man who in his younger days traveled, but now in the later stages of his life he suffers from Agoraphobia. Prior to that, he had become friends with Juwain, a Martian philosopher. Juwain is working on a philosophy which will advance Earthmen and Martians alike by hundreds of thousands of years in just a couple generations. When Juwain needs an operation that only Webster can perform, he is forced to make a choice between the safety of his own home, and saving a friend. This story introduces the character of Jenkins, who is a robot that serves the Webster family, and appears in most of the stories. This is the only story in which there are Martians, although the lost of Juwain's philosophy is very important to many of the stories.

"Census" is a novella, first published in Astounding in September of 1944. This story is about a census taker, who is traveling around to get an understanding of the Earth's population, and also to learn about the Mutants. He learns about a mutant (Joe) who is able to fix things easily, and tries to get him to finish Juwain's philosophy. This story introduces the reader to several important characters and events. First there is the dog Nathaniel, who is the first talking dog, as well as Bruce Webster, the man who performed the operation to allow Nathaniel to talk, and Thomas Webster who invented the space ship drive that is allowing man to travel outside the solar system. The character Joe is important, as are the mutants. Joe's stealing of Juwain's philosophy, and his work with ants that allows them to evolve is also important to the overall tale.

"Desertion" is a short story, first published in Astounding in November of 1944. This is the story of Kent Fowler, who is trying to find out if man can survive in a different form on Jupiter. The problem is that the people he sends to find out are not returning. Finally he decides that he himself must go, and he takes with him his faithful dog, Towser. This is perhaps the most unusual of the stories, as it doesn't include a Webster character, or Jenkins. However, the transformation to a Jovian life form is very essential to the story.

"Paradise" is a short story, first published in Astounding in June of 1946. Kent Fowler decides to give up paradise, and leave behind Towser, so that he can let humanity know of what he experienced as a Jovian life form. Tyler Webster tries to conceal Kent Fowler's story, so that man will not abandon Earth and instead fulfill his destiny. This story is important, because it leads to the exodus of man from Earth, and the decision by Joe to turn over Juwain's philosophy to humanity, which ultimately serves his own ends.

"Hobbies" is a novella, first published in Astounding in November of 1946. In this story Jon Webster sees the end of man's reign on Earth. Most of humanity has left for Jupiter, and those that remain are engaged in various hobbies that do nothing more than pass the time, and the Juwain Philosophy makes it impossible for them to ignore their fate. Jon Webster journeys to see Jenkins, and learns that man must leave Earth to the dogs and the robots so as to avoid dominating them.

"Aesop" is a novella, first published in Astounding in December of 1947. Peter, one of the few remaining humans, creates a bow and arrows. When he uses them to kill a bird, accidentally, Jenkins is forced to seek help from the Mutants. This story is important to the story, because we learn that the Mutants have left Earth, and this is also the first we see of travel between dimensions.

"The Simple Way" is a novella, first published as "The Trouble With Ants" in Fantastic Adventures in January of 1951. In this story, we learn the ants that Joe helped advance way back in "Census" are still around and taking over Earth. Jenkins seeks help by awakening Jon Webster, but when the only solution he can offer is killing the ants, Jenkins realizes that he cannot allow the ways of man to return.

"Epilog" is a short story, first published in Astounding for the John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology in 1973. This last story, written so long after the others, is a wrap up of Jenkins' life. He outlasts the ants, and then only he and the mice remain. The dogs return in a spaceship, and Jenkins realizes he has no reason to stay any longer on Earth.

I still get choked up when I think of generation after generation of highly evolved dogs sitting around camp fires and debating over whether or not the mythical race of gods known as "man" ever really existed. Of course the same goes for the idea of robots carrying out man's dream of exploring the universe, as a sacred trust, long after men have ceased to be. And of course there is also the matter of the supreme sacrifice of man to ensure that his old companions will develop to their full potential- without human interference.

As much as I love Simak's _Waystation_ and _The Goblin Reservation_, this book is probably his masterpiece. It is certainly his most epic, covering so many millenia. I am so glad that Old Earth Books has put it back into print. Here are themes that he would expand in such works as _Ring Around the Sun_, _A Choice of Gods_, and _Special Deliverence_. This is good, because when you finish you definately are left wanting more.

I think that it was Heinlein that once said, "If you don't like Simak, then you don't like science fiction." I couldn't agree more.