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The City and the Stars

4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 · rating details · 7,674 ratings · 175 reviews

The City and the Stars (1956) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It is a complete rewrite of his earlier novella, Against the Fall of Night.

Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend ha...more

Paperback, 254 pages

Published March 8th 2001 by Gollancz (first published 1956)

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Jun 24, 2012 Apatt rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have neglected Sir Arthur C. Clarke for far too long. Way back when I started reading science fiction I tended to read more of other two authors from the group commonly known as "Big Three of science fiction", these other two being Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. I felt their works were somehow more flamboyant and entertaining. As for Sir Arthur I read may be three of his books as I found his writing a little too dry and his science was beyond my ken. Now decades later other sf readers are s...more I have neglected Sir Arthur C. Clarke for far too long. Way back when I started reading science fiction I tended to read more of other two authors from the group commonly known as "Big Three of science fiction", these other two being Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. I felt their works were somehow more flamboyant and entertaining. As for Sir Arthur I read may be three of his books as I found his writing a little too dry and his science was beyond my ken. Now decades later other sf readers are still going on about him and popular contemporary sf authors still cite him as an influence, clearly I must have made a mistake and shortchanged him (or myself) terribly.

While reading The City and the Stars I had a sort of epiphany, I realized that great science fiction does not need to have great character development if other aspects of the book is good enough to compensate for this shortage. This is probably not a universal truth but it works for me. Nobody on their right minds would say Clarke is a writer of beautiful lyrical prose but his writing has a clarity that much better suited for the hard SF stories he wanted to tell. The immensity of his imagination and the grandness of his vision compensate the reader aplenty for any shortcoming in the artistic department. Unless I am very much mistaken this book is highly influential for more recent titles which have also become classics in their own right. I am thinking of Iain M. Bank's Culture novels where the A.I. characters seem to have been inspired by this book, Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon which uses the concept of immortality through digitization of people , Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer where machines can create furniture and object out of thin air (well, molecules), not to mention the epic scale of Alastair Reynolds's works which seem to be a direct descendant of Clarke's epic galaxy spanning concept.

The story of The City and the Stars is almost a A Tale of Two Cities or even The City and the City if not for the fact that it has nothing in common with these two books except that the main part of this novel is focused on two cities, Diaspar and Lys. The former is a post-scarcity super high-tech society where the citizens are immortal while the other is less reliant on technology and the citizens are all telepaths. The scale of the story expand very far beyond these two cities later in the book, but I am not in a synopsizing mood today so I will skip this part and get on with the review. Clarke's world-building talent and attention to details is seriously awe-inspiring, the only possible complaint is that the characters tend to be a little flat. There is a character called Khedron who is the official jester of Diaspar, his job is to cause little mischiefs to unstabilize the city just a little bit so it does not stagnate. Great idea except this Khedron does not seem to have a sense of humor and is even described as having an "astringent personality"! I can only recall one little humorous passage from the entire book, here is Sir Arthur describing a futuristic penis:

"It was merely that his equipment was now more neatly packaged when not required; internal stowage had vastly improved upon Nature’s original inelegant and indeed downright hazardous arrangements."

This is not to say that book is all doom and gloom, there is a feeling of lightheartedness and optimism to the proceeding in spite of the lack of actual jokes. The protagonist Alvin is also a little less flat than the other characters and is almost sympathetic and likable by the end of the book. The twist at the end is ingenious and I closed the book with satisfaction.

I feel like I am just scratching the surface here of Arthur C. Clarke's works, perhaps it is just as well I have neglected his books until now, give me a lot more to look forward to.(less)

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Jun 11, 2010 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, 1954-1969, science-fiction, far-future

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Another superb novel by one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. One of Clarke's earlier works, this is actually a re-write of [book:Against the Fall of Night|33841 and thus does not read like an early novel. Well written and full of BIG, BIG ideas it is classic Clarke. Set billions of years in the future, this is the story of a stagnant society, disconnected from the rest of the galaxy that, with the help of the main character, rediscovers it's place in the uni...more

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Mar 11, 2009 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

One of the grand daddies of modern science fiction, in my view.
It's hard to believe that Arthur wrote this just after the Second World War, on a boat trip from Australia to England as that was the normal way to travel such a short time ago. And he had vision! As part of the tale, he had computers, anti-gravity, machines with no moving parts, faster-thatn-light space travel, the distant future where the remnants of humanity, watched over by computers and other machines, live out their lives in th...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Martin Adil-Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Four words describe this book;
“This’ll blow your mind!”

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...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Smcleish rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in June 2008.

I had the impression that in my teenage years I read pretty much all of Arthur C. Clarke's output to that date. Yet I managed to miss The City and the Stars, one of his best known novels, until I picked up a copy in a secondhand bookshop recently. (I went off Clarke after a while, which explains not picking up on this omission earlier.)

Far in the future, when humanity's galactic empire has risen and fallen, and alien invaders have pushed us back...more Originally published on my blog here in June 2008.

I had the impression that in my teenage years I read pretty much all of Arthur C. Clarke's output to that date. Yet I managed to miss The City and the Stars, one of his best known novels, until I picked up a copy in a secondhand bookshop recently. (I went off Clarke after a while, which explains not picking up on this omission earlier.)

Far in the future, when humanity's galactic empire has risen and fallen, and alien invaders have pushed us back to the Earth alone. Those who remain live in the eternal city of Diaspar, living lives of everlasting leisure, docile and without interest in the universe beyond the city walls. After a thousand or so years of life, the citizens return their "patterns" to the computer banks while others come back to life from these same memory stores. Diaspar has remained essentially unchanging for millennia, but then Alvin, the central character of The City and the Stars, comes along. Alvin is a Unique, a person who has never before been activated, and he is different from all the other people in Diaspar. He finds that he needs ot know what the outside is like, and eventually finds a way to leave the city.

The story is effectively a polemic for two of Clarke's philosophical positions: that what makes us human is our curiousity about the world, and that organised religious belief holds back our ability to understand the universe. To Clarke, these ideas are related, as he believed that the certainties of faith extinguish the desire to find out. In The City and the Stars, Alvin's quest to escape the city is a version of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, complete with guru figure in the form of the "jester" appointed to shake Diaspar's complacency through practical joking. But Alvin is contrasted so strongly with the other citizens that the hidden agenda becomes blatant, and the story less interesting: it seems unlikely that he would ever have been able to live in the city for as long as he does.

When Clarke died recently, one of the pieces I read about him was by Michael Moorcock, not really an author with whom he might be expected to have had much in common, even if they were both writers in the same genre. However, that they knew each other in Moorcock's early days as a professional writer in London appears not to be the only link between them, for there seem to be definite connections between The City and the Stars and one of Moorcock's best known series, The Dancers at the End of Time, which is also one of my favourites from the whole science fiction genre. Moorcock's trilogy is better, as far as I am concerned, for several reasons. (I should point out that Moorcock says he was unfamiliar with most of Clarke's writing, so may well not have read The City and the Stars.) The decadence it portrays is more convincing than that of the dwellers in Diaspar. Moorcock's characters party desperately to stave off world weary boredom worthy of Huysmans, while the inhabitants of Diaspar are far more conservatively portrayed, as effete artists as opposed to the vigorous Alvin. Given the resources at their control, the actions of the Diasparans are really too rooted in the twentieth century: a little virtual reality on top of conventional art. This is, to me, a major failure of the imagination at the centre of the book when compared to Moorcock's baroque creations. Clarke's attitude to sexuality also causes problems, though of course the limitations placed on genre authors in the fifties were much stricter than those faced almost twenty years later by Moorcock; a book as explicit as The Dancers at the End of Time would never have been published. But even so, prudishness is taken to an extreme. There are just two or three minor female characters, and The City and the Stars is even more male dominated and asexual than The Lord of the Rings, another novel where almost all the significant relationships are about male companionship. Women are pretty obviously excluded from the heroics of scientific discovery about the universe. Moorcock is able to have a more egalitarian background, in which lust (if not love) is commonplace. Moorcock also introduces an extra theme with time travel. But the most important difference is that Moorcock's writing has a sense of humour, a concept which is alien to the earnestness of much fifties science fiction.

The worst fault of The City and the Stars is that the second half of the book, when Alvin escapes the city, is less interesting than the beginning. The thesis that curiousity about the universe is what makes us human, and Clarke's consequent need to make the scientific endeavour heroic, should mean that Alvin's exploration of the universe is made really gripping. Yet the puzzle of how to get out of Diaspar is much more interesting, and told in such a way that it is clear that Clarke found it more interesting himself. Alvin's trip is hackneyed space exploration from the pulp era, complete with outlandish monsters, and would have been old fashioned even in 1956, particularly as it isn't accompanied by character development: Alvin and his companion travel across the galaxy, yet remain just the same as they did before they set out.

The parallels with on of my favourite books make me sure I have not read The City and the Stars before, because the similarities are such that I am convinced that I would remember it. It's not, to my mind, one of Clarke's best, particularly given the second half. What it does remind me is why I had no particular urge to return to Clarke after binging on his stories in the early eighties.(less)

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Aug 07, 2012 Francesco Camagna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantascienza

Fantascientifico! Che dire? Clarke sì che sa scrivere... Molti lo hanno definito poco psicologico, ma il suo stile è bello così com'è: La città e le stelle credo che sia uno dei suoi migliori romanzi di fantascienza, assieme a Le guide del tramonto. Arthur Clarke in questo romanzo ci presenta Diaspar, una città chiusa dentro una cupola trasparente che non vuole assolutamente avere contatti con l'universo. Ma Alvin, un Unico, non è d'accordo: decide di voler ribellarsi e uscire fuori, spinto da q...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Marjorie Baldwin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Marjorie by: my younger brother (a year younger)

Shelves: classic-scifi

This was the first SciFi book I ever read. One of my older siblings actually bought it -- new -- in the 1950s when it came out and by the time I found it (in 1969 I think it was, around the time of the moon landing), the pages were beyond dog-eared and into frayed. I remember being so upset that some words were missing due to a corner having torn off. I was only 9 at the time, but this book inspired me to begin writing my own science fiction stories. I thought this book was so magical, so captiv...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Parthena rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 25, 2010 Judy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-fiction, books-from-1956, sci-fi

Being somewhat new to Arthur C Clarke, this being only the second of his books I've read, I find him unique to the point of odd amongst science fiction authors. He comes across as a philosopher as much as he does a sci fi writer.

The city is Diaspar, set in a desert on Earth, completely closed off from the outside world which is now all desert, no oceans. It was designed a billion years ago, after mankind had already been to the stars, created an empire and then been defeated by invaders. The...more

Being somewhat new to Arthur C Clarke, this being only the second of his books I've read, I find him unique to the point of odd amongst science fiction authors. He comes across as a philosopher as much as he does a sci fi writer.

The city is Diaspar, set in a desert on Earth, completely closed off from the outside world which is now all desert, no oceans. It was designed a billion years ago, after mankind had already been to the stars, created an empire and then been defeated by invaders. The place is run by a central computer, the inhabitants programmed to be content there while they harbor an automatic terror of going outside the city.

Except for Alvin, who we learn is a Unique, and yearns for nothing more than to get out of the city and explore the world and the stars. He does accomplish his desires and learns the history of mankind back to the era when man first went to space. The story is interesting though not that exciting and often improbable.

I have not been able to decide what point Clarke was trying to make. He introduces an entity named Vanamonde, created by human scientists over a billion years earlier, who is described as pure intelligence. There is also another city on Earth whose inhabitants are telepathic where Alvin goes to learn about life outside Diaspar.

After all his adventures, which include a journey to the stars, Alvin decides to stay on Earth and help bring it back to life, making it worthy for his ancestors who went off to another Galaxy, in case they should return. Yet one of the characters foresees a possible end of the Universe and of time itself. Well, yes, I suppose that is the way it could go, that there is an end to eternity as we know it, but what does that have to do with anything?

I was left with the idea that the decade of the 1950s, with its deadly boring bestsellers and its somewhat out there ideas in authors like Clarke, Iris Murdoch, William Golding and others, was a big pivot point in history. The old ways of Western civilization were beginning to fade and some new era beginning to arrive. Is it the legacy of the nuclear bomb or an advance in human consciousness? If reincarnation and multiple lifetimes are real, I'd like to be around to find out.

(less)

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Feb 22, 2010 Raj rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, space-opera

The city of Diaspar has stood for a thousand million years, its eternity circuits protecting it against the ravages of time and entropy as the city itself nourishes and protects its immortal citizens. In this changelessness Alvin is Unique, the first person to be 'born' in millions of years. Although Diaspar is all that remains on a dying Earth, Alvin is determined to get outside and see the world for himself.

I first read this when I was an impressionable youth, and goodness me did it leave an i...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Wayne Palmer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Most people will agree that Arthur C Clarke is one of best sci-fi writers of the twentieth century and is probably best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey. However I feel one of his best stories is this one, “The City and The Stars”, a tale based billions of years in the future that shows humanity as a simple footnote in the tides of the universe. It is a story of courage, of finding oneself and of forcing one to look beyond the world that one is comfortable in. This is a broad canvass and is proba...more

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Mar 31, 2012 William Herschel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, 2012

It's classic old science-fiction. It reads more like a parable (although I hate to use that word), so maybe more like a historic story told around a fire by an old man with a white beard.

And it's full of awe and wonder, and emptiness, consequently because it deals with time in the billions, distances beyond the universe; and yet it begins in a city who won't look beyond its own walls.

The city is Diaspar, and I never could stop my mind from tricking itself into reading instead Despair. Alvin is b...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Oni rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

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 sinc...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Leo Walsh rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like always with Clarke, the The City and the Stars has a great premise and very clear writing. He can evoke a scene like no other writer in the Classic era of science fiction. But his characters have always, to me, seem flat.

That said, The City and the Stars is a decent book. If it were being written today, I assume it would be considered Young Adult, since it follows the adventures of 20-year-old Alvin. Alvin is born into an eternal, dream-like city billions of years in the future named Dias...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Ian Dennis rated it 5 of 5 stars

this is another great depiction of the distant future, and it is filled with some great ideas, including the design of a civilization that is so systeqmtized as to require no conscious upkeep... but it is still notable that this was written during the early days of digital computers, so many of the ideas are ahead of their time. in particular, I liked the depiction of the monster in the crater, which consisted of a distributed organism made up of simpler machines. I also liked the character of t...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Valerie added it · review of another edition

I think I've read both versions of this. This is the edition I own.

It's not until well past the middle of the novel that we really get an idea of what humans look like in Diaspar and Lys. Did Adam have a navel? Who knows? But Alvin doesn't--and Hilvar does. This alone may be a guide to exploring the differences between their complex societies.

Diaspar is not a refugee camp. It's a very well-upholstered place. The people live well. They're not even particulary hemmed in, though they live in a limi...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Erik Graff rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Clarke fans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: sf

Clarke was one of the first science fiction writers to come to my awareness when still in elementary school. I'd been reading the genre since second grade, but it took quite a while for me to really distinguish between and actually seek out particular authors. The book that did it for me as regards Clarke may well have been his collection, Tales of the White Hart.

As I got older and as the New Wave passed from the UK to the USA in the sixties, my tastes changed. Now Clarke seemed a bit passe, his...more

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Dec 25, 2011 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Stunning. I read against the fall of night when I was around 15 and loved it. Reading the revision at the age of 31 was wonderful as it was the same enough to something I remembered but different enough to be exciting and still bring the sense of wonder that only Clarke can do so well. GOD I love classic science fiction.

I would take a classic like this which is a hair over 200 pages yet keeps you wanting more and not quite satisfying (which is GOOD modern sci fi writers) and filled with concept...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Thegurkenkaiser added it

ich wollte nur kurz reinschauen und bin absolut klebengeblieben. die konstruktion ist erstaunlich plausibel: eine gesellschaft die die zeit vollständig besiegt hat aber sich im raum auf eine einzige stadt beschränkt. das ist relativ plausibel angesichts immer weiterer speicherkapizitäten. wenn man bewußtseine auf technische speicher übertragen kann ist die kategorie der zeit erledigt.
allerdings wäre damit auch der raum erledigt. ein zeitlich entgrenztes bewußtsein braucht weder zeit noch körper...more ich wollte nur kurz reinschauen und bin absolut klebengeblieben. die konstruktion ist erstaunlich plausibel: eine gesellschaft die die zeit vollständig besiegt hat aber sich im raum auf eine einzige stadt beschränkt. das ist relativ plausibel angesichts immer weiterer speicherkapizitäten. wenn man bewußtseine auf technische speicher übertragen kann ist die kategorie der zeit erledigt.
allerdings wäre damit auch der raum erledigt. ein zeitlich entgrenztes bewußtsein braucht weder zeit noch körper noch raum. so weit geht clarke aber nicht. die menschen in der stadt leben zwar um die 1000 jahre (und werden später neugeboren), aber sie bewegen sich physisch in ihrer stadt, wenngleich sie technisch jederzeit überall präsent sein können.
Nun ist das außerhalb der stadt nur noch wüste und für die meisten bewohner_innen (geschlecht ist nicht abgeschafft, aber die fortpflanzung funktioniert technisch)
der protagonist allerdings fühlt sich irgendwie beengt und will raus aus der stadt - schließlich muß es ja irgend eine störung im ablauf geben sonst wäre es nur eine beschreibung einer utopie aber kein roman. an der stelle bin ich jetzt.

Die "Science" in guter Science Fiction ist ja zuallererst mal die Wissenschaft von der Gesellschaft. Vonb dem Standpunkt aus ist das buch sehr gute science fiction. Der Witz besteht ja nicht einfach in irgendwelchen technischen phantsairereien, sondern im Entwurf eines utopischen oder dystopischen gesellschaftsmodells und der frage: wie konsequente kann der autor/ die autorin seine/ihre eigenen prämissen durchhalten. und wie plausibel sind sie? in der differenz und den ähnlichkeiten zur existierenden gesellschaft entfaltet sich das gesellschaftsanalytische erkenntnispotenzial von science fiction. Im falle von Clarke haben wir es hier mit einem hitech-kommunismus zu tun. das verblüffende ist, dass man aus clarke sehr wenig (aber etwas doch! zwangsläufig) von dem rausliest, was landläufig so als "typisch 50er" gilt. science fiction von früher ist jsa oft ein blick in die vergangenheit der zukunft. technisch wie bei lem (flaschenpost zur kommunikation in einem gebäude, da muß man heutzutage schon stark abstrahieren) oder sozial (vlarke hat 2 geschlechter, alles ist heterosexuell. immerhin progressiv: Clarke beschreibt dass sex nicht der fortpflanzung dient und das in wirklichkeit auch schon früher immer nur ein winziger bruchteil seiner funktionen war- für 1956 doch recht mutig)

so, das meine ersten gedanken nach 1/4 des buches. mehr wenn ich durch bin. dann reden wir nochmal über kommunismus, die bedeutung der wirklichkeit in einer entzeitlichten gesellschaft und warum das alles viel scharfsichtiger ist als orwells 1984 oder auch "The matrix".

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endnotiz:

nach hinten raus wirds etwas weniger interessant. ich glaube das kann man clarke nicht vorwerfen. ich kann mit faszinierenden settings mehr anfangen als mit dem handlungsfortgang der dann stattfindet. bisschen anstrengend ist die aneinanderreihung von superlativen: dieser krieg dauerte hunderte von millionen jahren, das reich stieg auf über tausende zilliarden jahre usw.(less)

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Feb 25, 2013 Marina_f rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1950s, american, dystopia, sci-fi, mixed-feelings

Первое знакомство с данным Отцом-Основателем! Трепетно обожаю Азимова, негативно отношусь к Хайнлайну, а Кларк - к нему я отнеслась нейтрально. Глупо оценивать всего писателя по одной книге, но прочитав послесловие переводчика, где было указано, что эта книга одна из самых сильных и интересных у Кларка, я таки задумалась, а стоит ли читать дальше его.

Хорошая идея, любопытные умозаключения, но все так медленно и плавно. Нету динамики, короче. Понимаю, что не все книги как "Песни Гипериона" или "Д...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was reading some article in Wired or something and it was listing off things that science fiction authors had predicted, and it said something like "And Arthur C Clarke predicted artificial intelligence in The City and the Stars" and I thought "Wait what?" I thought I had read every Arthur C Clarke book when I was a kid, but apparently I had missed this one (AND Against the Fall of Night, an earlier version of the book). So I bought it and got to read my first new Arthur C Clarke book in like...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Shantnu Tiwari rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are very few books that you read, put away, and then come back to read. This is one of those.

The story is an old fashioned adventure, the type that made AC Clarke so famous. A young man lives in a perfect city, where everyone is immortal, & lives idyllic lives. There is only one problem - no one can leave. Our hero is the first man born in thousands of years who wants to leave. But how do you escape the perfect city?

The boy manages to escape, and a discover a secret thousands of years...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: mid-century-sf

This is Clarke's rewrite of his first novel, Against the Fall of Night(1939). Either he didn't rewrite it enough or maybe should have let it alone and moved on. THe City and the Stars is filled with descriptions and explanations of society a billion years from now, rather than scenes that immerse us in this world so we have to figure some of the workings out for ourselves. Often the dialog reads like more exposition with quotation marks placed around it. All the classic Clarke motifs are in plac...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Peter Horsfield rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic-sf

Listened to this on Audible while commuting, and it was a well produced audio book with a cast of characters and sound effects. This really enhanced the experience.

I never did get over the idea that this book was set billions of years into the future. A few hundred thousand... maybe. But despite that, it really set the author free to explore some ideas about the challenges in sustaining a civilization over cosmic timeline.

I may not agree with how things had played out, or were to play out in the...more

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Mar 11, 2010 Bill Wellham rated it 3 of 5 stars

Just closed the book. How to review? I enjoyed the book, as it only took a few days to read; but was left feeling a little underwelmed.

Humanity a billion years from now, living under a dome, with a system of imortality and central computer controlled society; happy in their way. Almost a utopia, except of course it is not! A story of a young mans quest to discover the truth about humanity's history. He asks questions that no body else dares to. What lies outside the dome? Why is he the only one...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Tuan Ho rated it 5 of 5 stars

WOW! The last 30 pages are incredible!

You can't help but feel full of joy and an intense desire to travel the stars after reading this book!

Even if the future may never make it possible for ordinary citizens to fly past the stars -- at least reading a book like this will satisfy your mind's desire to do so.

It is marvellous how Clarke is able to capture the curiosity and longing for the stars a person feels when they look up at the skies.

I also loved this book as it's a nice dig at religion -- or...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Ignacio rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Aficionados a Ciencia Ficción

Me ha gustado mucho. La forma de escribir de Arthur C. Clarke no es, para mi gusto, de las más depuradas, pero en cambio es facil. Lo más importante, en todo caso, es la grandeza de sus ideas y la brillantez con la que las plantéa.

En este case, la novela se ubica en un futuro muy, muy lejano y presenta dos posibles evoluciones de la humanidad, una tan tecnificada que ha conquistado la inmortalidad pero a costa de desconectarse del resto del universo y parar su propia evolución como raza. La otr...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was classic Clarke. He poses some really deep questions about science and the nature of humanity, is totally poetic about it, and does not overdo it with bad names and a million planets. So, this is textbook science fiction.

The basic plot: a unique man is born among immortals in a city that has not seen outside of its barrier wall for many millenia. He yearns for whats outside. He finds it, and he finds them.

I think what really made this outstanding, outside of Clarke's remarkable st...more

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Oct 16, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, u-of-chicago

This is a classic science fiction novel from one of the masters. Arthur C. Clarke has written more popular sf novels (see 2001: A Space Odyssey), but many including myself consider this his best. There is a clarity of style and a sense of wonder about how and why the Earth has begun to decline in spite of the beauty and brilliance of the City where people live their lives. Perhaps it is the simplicity and fairy-tale like setting that makes it one of my favorites, since I read fairy tales at an e...more

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Jun 25, 2007 Jesse rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

This is sci-fi at its best, both fun to read and deeply metaphysical at the same time.

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About Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke was one of the most important and influential figures in 20th century science fiction. He spent the first half of his life in England, where he served in World War Two as a radar operator, before emigrating to Ceylon in 1956. He is best known for the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-created with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke was a graduate of King's Co...more

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2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250024.The_City_and_the_Stars?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340242824l/250024.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250024.The_City_and_the_Stars?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke[/url]

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