The social forces which determine which books become popular and which fade into obscurity will forever baffle me. The City and the Stars will hence forth be a classic cause of my bafflement. Let me explain.There are two extremely well known works which deal with Utopia, the ultimate "end" of society. They are, of course, Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. This review will make much more sense to you if you have read those works but you will probably find this review useful even if you haven't. As of the time of this writing, 1984 has 1,293,726 ratings on Goodreads and has an average rating of 4.09. Brave New World has had 730,212 ratings and is averaged at 3.92. While both of these works are indeed excellent and form important counterpoints to each other, I cannot begin to understand why a work like The City and the Stars, which forms yet another crucial counterpoint to these works, has a mere 12,888 ratings though an equally significant average of 4.06. While every barely cultured man has had exposure to Orwell and Huxley, it is only those of us who enjoy science fiction for its own sake who will ever stumble across Clarke's great works. It is a pity, as will shortly become clear.Like 1984 and Brave New World, The City and the Stars deals with the daunting question of mankind's future, the Utopia which we may or may not be building for ourselves. Unlike 1984 and Brave New World, The City and the Stars is a work with levels of ambition which the former works could only dream of. What makes this work great is that it actually succeeds. The work is set a thousand million years in the future and whereas the vast majority of works which aim for such a distant future abysmally fail to capture how radically different such a future must be, Clarke succeeds as well as one could possibly hope. That is not to say he presents a future completely beyond our imaginations. Rather, he successfully creates a world in which such a distant future can still be logically tied to our present reality. To create such a world is a challenge which few authors are capable of confronting and I fully commend Sir Clarke on his success. Along similar lines, as with any great work of science fiction, the future presented is as believable in the 21st century as it must have been when it was first written. Given that it was written in the 50s, a time before even the most basic computers existed, this too is a truly spectacular achievement and one which the sensitive reader will find breathtaking.The subject of the work is of course the ultimate decadence which such future societies must achieve, but unlike Brave New World which only manages to present that which such societies must lose, The City and the Stars manages to convey that such a society will not necessarily be an empty shell of its former glory. Rather such a future will have gained much but at a cost. Though the book by its very nature obviously implies that the gain was not worth the cost, unlike Huxley, Clarke does not bully the reader to accept this view and ultimately leaves it to the reader to decide whether our protagonist's decisions are correct, necessary or even meaningful. It is these aspects of the book which make it a much more pleasant read than the so called giants of "Utopian" literature and accordingly, I can strongly recommend this work to anyone who has enjoyed the aforementioned "great" works.Some words of warning though. For those seeking an exciting story, this work is not for you. There is a story, of course, but it is uninteresting in and of itself and lacks momentum. In ordinary fiction the world provides the context for the story to occur in. In works like these, the story provides a context for the world. This is not a failure of the work but if you are looking for something and fail to find it, you will likely blame the work and not yourself. You have been warned.Given such a glowing review, why not 5 stars then? Despite the fact that the work most certainly succeeds, it doesn't carry itself through to the end. I get the distinct impression that Sir Clarke did not know how to end such a work and I understand his dilemma. To end with a bang would be to do his perpetually unchanging world a disservice and yet the story must end somehow. Sir Clarke's solution is to allow the story to peter out but this ultimately fails to provide the reader with the climax he craves. I do not know if such a work could be ended successfully but that is the problem every author must face when writing a perfect work. That the work fails to achieve a perfect ending is not an expression of failure, it is a testimony to the quality of the rest of the work.Enjoy.
Clarke uses the classic A-B-A storytelling format for two different cities, A and B. A- ennui. B- learning!. A again- add learning to ennui equals stuff!! We see this often in literature. Rude Vile Pigs by Leo X. Robertson is another shining example.So good that I'll let him off with telling me his protagonist's feelings like EVERY TIME or ending chapters with stuff like "She just made a promise she couldn't keep", like, okay- are you telling me the twist in the coming chapters is that she doesn't keep the promise? Just twist it later, mate! Don't tell me you're gonna!They should really make this into a film. And I mean properly- they shouldn't steal from this and others and call it Interstellar. MUUUUURRRPPHHH (omg guys, this film is super serious. Take it super seriously. Like, all humanity seriously. So serious. Guys, don't joke about Interstellar. It's really, really, seriously serious. Seriously. Do you think that, like Looper, it was partially funded by the Chinese and that's why the end of humanity was, um "crop blight" (what the fuck) and not global warming? Okay clearly it was funded by someone. For the love of god, don't make the thing in your film everyone's going to see the actual pressing global issue! Don't educate them ffs- make it something lame, I beg you!!) Because later on some descriptions would be awe-inspiring on the big screen. Don't you think the latest sci-fi films have been fucking lazy? This book is from the 50s and has more ideas than 50+ Insterstellars and Ex Machinas. It's true that FILMS haven't done what those films did yet (or have they? I bet they have, even!), but the stories they told were told better in novels 60+ years old! Don't let them get away with it: they're not contributing anything to speculative fiction! I know I just asked for this novel to be made into a film, but then you're outright stating that this book was written when it was written- you're not claiming to have contributed anything new. It's just like all these comic book films too: their success is testament to just how many idiots don't fucking read. No such idiot is reading this text, though, so good for you. And hey! You! Don't you think there are so many fucking idiots about? I mean, Jesus!An aside (and not that Clarke did this here but) don't you hate it when novelists write films? JANUARY, 2006- THE WHITE HOUSE (uuummm this is a page. Not a screen. Just put me there you lazy hack bastard.) pew pew pew! They're shooting each other! Um, I don't care. These are just words. Do an emotion or two instead.
What do You think about The City And The Stars (2001)?
Am I a sf philistine? Clarke's book bogged right the hell down for me. I put it down for weeks and only picked it back up cause I was bloody minded. I remember reading other of his books, probably Childhood's End, 2001 and Rendezvous with Rama and enjoying them when I was a teen. But I found the book had most of the sins of early sf - a cypher for a main character, completely cut off from anything that would ground the book in some sort of believable world. Interesting ideas, but it just could not hold me, even for such a short book. Such a very long short book!Okay, so this is me talking completely out of my ass, but I do wonder if Clarke being gay at a time when it was not okay to be gay, is a part of what makes this book so terrible for me? I'm really glad I went back to the book, because one of the later sections is from the point of view of Alvin's best friend in the novel - Hilvar - the other half of the human beings who are telepathic and much more in touch with their feelings and the world around them. If the book had been from Hilvar's point of view I probably could have gotten into the story, but it might have been much more dangerous for Clarke, because, at least from the vantage point of today, I think Hilvar is in love with Alvin. (This might be me reading modern sensibilities into a story re-written in the 50s, yet Alvin is simply not interested in the female 'love interest' in the book and does want to hang around with his friend - 50s code for gayness?) Perhaps this is Clarke being brilliant - he's written a novel about human beings cut off from their human quality with a main character who can't admit his own desires - yet I found the book so dry and alienating that I nearly didn't make my way through it.I think it is a flawed book, in the sense that, like many other reviewers, I think that once Alvin gets outside the city the book flags seriously and only picks up again right at the very end where there is a burst of - not action - but explanation! That such a small book can have such a flabby middle is quite the accomplishment! Still, it's a interesting book, both for the author's huge ego and conflicted sexuality, as well as some of its ideas. Alvin's learned humility was quite amusing! One of Clarke's constant motifs is about what comes beyond 'mankind', yet in this novel, hand waving about transcendence seems like yet another psychological escape for discomfort over the body and what it really wants. This is probably a reductionist reading, but take it for what it is, my frustrated reaction to a vexing book.
—Jay Daze
The story is about Alvin, a Unique, who tries to escape from the city of Diaspar, just because he wants to find out what lies outside his confined city. Once he manages to get out, he will change the fate of not just his city, but the entire humanity.This novel is full of dialogues concerning science, philosophy, religion and psychology. It is what you expect from a full blown science fiction, and you can expect it from one of the grandfather of modern science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke. But since the ideas addressed in this novel is not "novel" to me, it think it costs the novel one star in my part. The writing is also a bit dry, less emotional that my taste. I find it a bit difficult to find a character that I can attach with. Maybe Clarke did this deliberately, because the citizens of Diaspar are lacking of emotion indeed.One thing that I need to mention specifically is the prophecy made by Clarke in this novel. In the future city of Diaspar, once in a very long life span of the citizen of Diaspar, they will be an artist. Their art pieces will be displayed in the city, and the other citizens vote. The one which gets enough voting will be preserved, otherwise destroyed, or at best preserved among the artist's friends. Clarke correctly predicted the era of Internet when art is democratized by voting on Internet! Well, maybe not the entire artworks, but you get the idea; when you click "like" on facebook, youtube, or whatever social media site. The one which gets most "like" is preserved, otherwise forgotten.Compared to his other works, I find that this novel is a bit below par. My favorite Clarke's novel are still his Rendezvous With Rama series, followed second by 2001: A Space Odyssey series. Maybe because this novel is among his earlier works, but he definitely writes better in time.
—Oni
Clarke does it again. In "The City & The Stars", he paints a vivid picture of humanity in the far future that has reached for the heavens before inevitably falling back to Earth and stagnating.Enter our hero, who feels that there must be more to existence than the city he lives in and sets out to discover what else there is.Much like "Rendezvous With Rama" there is no villain other than Man's ignorance and prejudice, and in truth this is a very gentle, if intriguing story.So why do I think it is so amazing? Simple - the vision. Clarke eloquently describes such technologies as 3d printing, wireless communication and energy transfer, genetic engineering, wormholes and wormhole-inducing-space engines, personal interactive holograms... the list goes on. Now you may quite reasonably ask "so what?". After all these are staples of sci-fi.This book was published in 1956. Most homes in the UK did not have television and nearly 50% did not have a landline.I like to think I have an original idea once in a while, but Clarke... he was a visionary. The things he could both conceive and express in layterms is breath-taking.Now all of the gushing aside, there are a couple of areas where the book is let down. The first is one of morality. Everyone that our hero encounters is very moral and virtuous. I have no problem with that, but there is a distinct lack of any faith, spirituality, or religion - that's fine as far as it goes, but then what has replaced that and how is then morality governed? It is not explained.I am told that "Beyond The Fall of Night" is a sort of sequel, and I will certainly put it on my "to-read" list. "City..." is complete, but there are a number of loose ends that I would love to see explored. What becomes of Mad Mind? What did call to the Galactic Empire and where are they now? What is They City's real mission?In conclusion, buy this, enjoy it, tell others.
—George
