City of Truth (Harvest Book) [Paperback]

James Morrow (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book | Publication Date: May 7, 1993

In Veritas, people have been conditioned to always tell the truth, no matter how unnerving the truth may be. Jack Sperry must learn to lie in order to save his son in this witty science fiction novella. Recipient of a 1992 Nebula Award.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Morrow's nearly perfect satiric novella takes place in the dystopia of Veritas, where everyone tells the truth or faces harsh punishment--which Jack Sperry risks when he learns that his son Toby has a fatal disease and that by lying to him he may enable Toby's cure. Illustrations.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A pair of novellas explore the meaning of mortality from different perspectives. Pohl's satire is set in a future that has seen the conquest of death due to the activation of certain genes in the developing fetus. The few genetic failures live out normal, slightly extended lives, as media celebrities--made special simply because of their ephemerality. Morrow's tale approaches the bitterness of farce as he chronicles a desperate man's search for lies to save his dying son. Each story is a small masterpiece, carefully crafted and exquisitely told. Price and brevity, however, may limit purchase to libraries with larger budgets.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; First Harvest Edition edition (May 7, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156180421
• ISBN-13: 978-0156180429
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Empirical or True, December 12, 2002

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: City of Truth (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Here is an initially sharp social satire set in a city where you must tell the truth and lies are against the law. The authorities have literally scared lying out of the population. The book starts hilariously with the citizens of Veritas telling it like it is - ending letters with "yours up to a point" and eating at a restaurant called Booze Before Breakfast. It turns out that Veritas is really obsessed with empiricism (based only on observation and rules) rather than the much deeper "truths" of life. Morrow brings up this point very briefly in chapter 5, but unfortunately fails to expand on this intriguing theme. After that brief insight, the book becomes nonsensical and melodramatic, as the main character escapes to the secret city of Satirev to deal with the real truth about his son's fatal illness. The city of Satirev, in which people are allowed to lie but ultimately are more truthful, is a ridiculous construct that is hard to take seriously, while the story devolves into sentimentality rather than the sharp social observation that was hinted at earlier. Morrow's examination of the real meaning of truth, even if lying is necessary to achieve it, ultimately does not materialize even though he was really onto something big for a while.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Im all right, Jack. Who cares about you?, May 9, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: City of Truth (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

"City of Truth" is really two short stories, three if you count the brief final section. Each section is almost worth its own review, because they are so different.

City I is a description of a society where people have perfect honesty literally burned into their brains. It's incredibly funny because it contrasts so completely with our own feel-good consumer society. Politicians candidly admit that they accepted kick-backs; a salesperson tells you where to buy an item more cheaply from a competitor; restaurants sell "murdered cow" sandwiches with "wilted lettuce."

The odd thing is that the city is rather a flat, cold place. Parents critique their kids' drawings ("It's pretty ugly.") and romance is replaced by the brutal, hurtful truth. After a while, you long for someone to say "Have a nice day!" with a big smile, instead of truthfully expressing their complete indifference.

City II describes a rebel group which teaches people to lie again. The treatment involves exposing disciples to genetically-engineered impossibilities: pigs that fly, dogs that talk. Why this is supposed to help isn't entirely clear, but it enables a father to tell "kind lies" to his terminally sick child. The problem is that the boy can see that his father is lying: This is one case where honesty would be the best policy. City II is a real tear-jerker.

City III has the family leaving both the Truth Tellers and the Liars and settling for the kind of messy mix that we have: trying to tell the truth as far as possible, but making space for poetic license and white lies. That's fair enough, but there are no revelations here. Most of us feel this way already.

Consider the five stars all for the first section and well worth them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Truth Will Set You Free..., July 2, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: City of Truth (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

This wry and gentle science fiction novella is mostly a parable about truth and its application. In the city of Veritas, eveyone goes through a coming of age rite which involves elctroshock conditioning (a la "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" or "A Clockwork Orange") to both remove the ability to lie and the implant the need to tell the entire truth. This makes for a fairly amusing setting in which products bear truthful names such as "Ford Sufficient, " how-to books bear such itles as "You Can Have Somewhat Better Sex," and summer camp is "Camp Ditch-the-Kids." Personal conflict seems to be more or less non-existant as everyone tells the truth and no one gets offended by it. The actual story is about Jack Sperry, an art deconstructionist and his son Toby, who catches an incurable disease. Jack's job involves examining works of art and literature from the past, ie. the "Age of Lies," and physically destroying those that represent things that aren't true, such as winged angels. Jack has read of the "healing power of the positive thinking," and wants to try it with Toby. However, since such a course of treatment is not based on anything factual, and involves lying to Toby, he must find the secret communicty of "dissemblers," who have somehow overcome their conditioning and secretly live among the normal people. This eventually leads Jack to theliteral underground of Satirev (Veritas backward, get it?), where pigs do fly, money grows on trees, and soforth. The part spent in this phantasmagoria is decidely less amusing or interesting than the city of Veritas, which is richer territory for mockery. In the end, Morrow's tale comes to the somewhat mawkish conlusion that while eveyone should have the freedom to choose whether to lie or not, only the truth can really set you free.