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The City Dwellers
A novel of a 21st century dystopia where urbanization has reached its limits.
158 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
2 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Charles Platt
172 books56 followersFrom wikipedia:
Charles Platt (born in London, England, 1945) is the author of 41 fiction and nonfiction books, including science-fiction novels such as The Silicon Man and Protektor (published in paperback by Avon Books). He has also written non-fiction, particularly on the subjects of computer technology and cryonics, as well as teaching and working in these fields. Platt relocated from England to the United States in 1970 and is a naturalized U. S. citizen.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
See:
Charles Platt, born 1869
Charles Platt (born in London, England, 1945) is the author of 41 fiction and nonfiction books, including science-fiction novels such as The Silicon Man and Protektor (published in paperback by Avon Books). He has also written non-fiction, particularly on the subjects of computer technology and cryonics, as well as teaching and working in these fields. Platt relocated from England to the United States in 1970 and is a naturalized U. S. citizen.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
See:
Charles Platt, born 1869
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 27, 2009
The other day, I thought of this novel, which I read when I was about 14. At least, I'm pretty sure I read the whole thing, because it's most unlike me to skip pages, but all I can recall is the sex bits; I remember thinking that they were rather disappointing. There was one scene where they try to do it outdoors, on a river bank, and he doesn't like it. Then there's another one where they do it indoors, and she doesn't like it. The second passage was the more interesting of the two; it takes place in a ghastly future-world entertainment complex, and the idea is to give people the thrill of making love in the open air without actually having to go outside at all. There's a large, dimly lighted hall, the ceiling of which is painted midnight blue and covered in fake stars, and it's pockmarked with foam-rubber padded hollows covered in slimy, fake polystyrene grass. The guy and the girl are in one of these hollows, and they can hear other couples doing their thing all around them. It's not hard to understand why the girl felt utterly revolted.
I'm wondering what I would think of it if I were to re-read it now. Maybe I would see a lot of insightful commentary about how our society has warped our perceptions of sex, and how men and women want different things from sex, and how men are more prone to accept the artificial view of sex that the porn business wants to sell them, and all that kind of thing. Or maybe I'd still think it was a pretty boring novel with a couple of memorably nasty sex scenes. Since it appears that no one else on GR has even read it, I'm inclined to believe that the second hypothesis is more likely.
Well... I saw that AbeBooks had Mr Platt's masterpiece for a mere $1.00, and my curiosity got the better of me. It should be in the mail, and I'll post an update in due course!
______________________________________
I finished it on the plane, and I was rather embarrassed to see how little of it I'd remembered. The first sex scene occurs early in the book, and I guess I just read the rest of it looking for more sex and not really bothering much about the story. In my defense, I was 14.
It's dedicated to J.G. Ballard, and it's obvious that the author has a great admiration for him. Unfortunately, Ballard's style is difficult to imitate. Perhaps you need to have survived a Japanese POW camp to be able to pull it off successfully, and, at any rate, Platt doesn't. The basic scenario is similar to the one in The Children of Men. Women have stopped having children, though here you're given more of a clue as to why that may be; it's strongly implied that men have somehow become weak and insufficient. You get the impression that Platt was also a D.H. Lawrence fan, and there are a couple of rugged D.H. Lawrence-style types who get to show two lucky women what they've been missing.
It isn't really a very sexy book, although I see from the author's Wikipedia entry that he wrote genuine erotic novels as well. As a 51 year old, I'm disappointed with the flat characterization. You never get to find out very much about the people. I would in particular have liked to see more of Cathy, the girl in the two scenes I remembered from my first reading. Now, she seemed like an interesting person. I found myself wondering if she was based on one of the author's ex-girlfriends; I speculated that she left him, and he wrote the novel partly to explore his feelings of loss, rejection and insufficiency, and partly to show her that he was deeper than she'd thought. If so, I don't think she was impressed. I can see her leafing through it, and feeling even more certain that she'd made the right decision. Sorry, Charles.
I'm wondering what I would think of it if I were to re-read it now. Maybe I would see a lot of insightful commentary about how our society has warped our perceptions of sex, and how men and women want different things from sex, and how men are more prone to accept the artificial view of sex that the porn business wants to sell them, and all that kind of thing. Or maybe I'd still think it was a pretty boring novel with a couple of memorably nasty sex scenes. Since it appears that no one else on GR has even read it, I'm inclined to believe that the second hypothesis is more likely.
Well... I saw that AbeBooks had Mr Platt's masterpiece for a mere $1.00, and my curiosity got the better of me. It should be in the mail, and I'll post an update in due course!
______________________________________
I finished it on the plane, and I was rather embarrassed to see how little of it I'd remembered. The first sex scene occurs early in the book, and I guess I just read the rest of it looking for more sex and not really bothering much about the story. In my defense, I was 14.
It's dedicated to J.G. Ballard, and it's obvious that the author has a great admiration for him. Unfortunately, Ballard's style is difficult to imitate. Perhaps you need to have survived a Japanese POW camp to be able to pull it off successfully, and, at any rate, Platt doesn't. The basic scenario is similar to the one in The Children of Men. Women have stopped having children, though here you're given more of a clue as to why that may be; it's strongly implied that men have somehow become weak and insufficient. You get the impression that Platt was also a D.H. Lawrence fan, and there are a couple of rugged D.H. Lawrence-style types who get to show two lucky women what they've been missing.
It isn't really a very sexy book, although I see from the author's Wikipedia entry that he wrote genuine erotic novels as well. As a 51 year old, I'm disappointed with the flat characterization. You never get to find out very much about the people. I would in particular have liked to see more of Cathy, the girl in the two scenes I remembered from my first reading. Now, she seemed like an interesting person. I found myself wondering if she was based on one of the author's ex-girlfriends; I speculated that she left him, and he wrote the novel partly to explore his feelings of loss, rejection and insufficiency, and partly to show her that he was deeper than she'd thought. If so, I don't think she was impressed. I can see her leafing through it, and feeling even more certain that she'd made the right decision. Sorry, Charles.
June 22, 2018
A serviceable but unexceptional post-apocalyptic story.
The book was written in the 1970s and focuses on over-population, pollution, resource depletion, and the general ignorance and disinterest of the population as the causes of societal collapse. There's no war or disaster, people just lose interest in being civilized, run out of food and gas, and things keep getting worse. The rich fall back into a few walled cities and ignore the rest of the country (or maybe the world - it's never clear if the collapse extends beyond the United States). Within a few years, those who haven't starved to death or been killed by looters fall into three groups, hippy farmers living in communes, insane teenagers building weaponized vehicles to terrorize everyone else, and wannabe totalitarian militias who march around the country side trying to take everyone's food and "restore order".
The main characters are a rock star, his songwriter, and their various friends including a pair of philosopher/futurist types who show up periodically to explain to the other characters (and the reader) what's happening and why. The books starts with a quick tour of the futuristic US of 1997 with teenage suicide rock, pleasure palaces, recreational drugs and sex, and a huge inequality gap between rich and poor. We then follow the characters through the apocalypse over a period of years.
I never got bored but in the end, it's just one more outdated post-apocalypse novel with nothing special to recommend it. I could make a list of dozen better, more interesting end of the world novels pretty easily. If you run and across the book and you're bored, maybe worth a read but I don't recommend seeking it out.
The book was written in the 1970s and focuses on over-population, pollution, resource depletion, and the general ignorance and disinterest of the population as the causes of societal collapse. There's no war or disaster, people just lose interest in being civilized, run out of food and gas, and things keep getting worse. The rich fall back into a few walled cities and ignore the rest of the country (or maybe the world - it's never clear if the collapse extends beyond the United States). Within a few years, those who haven't starved to death or been killed by looters fall into three groups, hippy farmers living in communes, insane teenagers building weaponized vehicles to terrorize everyone else, and wannabe totalitarian militias who march around the country side trying to take everyone's food and "restore order".
The main characters are a rock star, his songwriter, and their various friends including a pair of philosopher/futurist types who show up periodically to explain to the other characters (and the reader) what's happening and why. The books starts with a quick tour of the futuristic US of 1997 with teenage suicide rock, pleasure palaces, recreational drugs and sex, and a huge inequality gap between rich and poor. We then follow the characters through the apocalypse over a period of years.
I never got bored but in the end, it's just one more outdated post-apocalypse novel with nothing special to recommend it. I could make a list of dozen better, more interesting end of the world novels pretty easily. If you run and across the book and you're bored, maybe worth a read but I don't recommend seeking it out.
April 21, 2010
I got through over half the book before giving up--it just wasn't holding me and I didn't find the base premises credible. The book, published in 1977 is titled "a novel of the near future" and is set in 1997. In the time of the novel, the United States is at the brink of collapse and a totalitarian coup because of scarce resources. I suppose the scenario had credibility in the age of President Carter and the "national malaise" but I immediately thought of the Simon-Ehrlich bet. As the Wiki put it, the two men "entered in a famous scientific wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990." Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, which predicated a "Age of Scarcity" lost the bet.
It's not just that the book depends on what I consider a flawed premise. I can ignore that for a good yarn, but it's just nothing in the characters, plot or writing pulled me in. It's not a bad book mind you--the prose style is competent, the characterizations believable, and the protagonists Lisa and Michael are likeable, but there just wasn't anything distinctive enough, compelling enough, to make me read those last hundred pages. It is, a novel that I found, at best, just OK.
It's not just that the book depends on what I consider a flawed premise. I can ignore that for a good yarn, but it's just nothing in the characters, plot or writing pulled me in. It's not a bad book mind you--the prose style is competent, the characterizations believable, and the protagonists Lisa and Michael are likeable, but there just wasn't anything distinctive enough, compelling enough, to make me read those last hundred pages. It is, a novel that I found, at best, just OK.
May 28, 2024
2 1/2 stars. Hard to judge. Remarkably prescient in some ways picturing society before the fall. Horribly Boomer Dude-y, with occasional senseless platitudes trotted out as if they were meaningful, a rape sequence that's treated as average sex, and unnecessary pedophilia NO ONE was asking for. Not bad aside from all that, but not what you could really call good despite the shockingly accurate social predictions in the first half of the book. To call this "lesser New Wave SF" is being kind.
March 8, 2022
This is actually a collection of four short stories that have a city dystopia with population drop scenario as a common theme. It is rather average in style but there were some cool ideas and scenes and here and there.
August 18, 2024
This is the only Platt I have and it’s my first time reading him. Platt was a British author who moved to the states around the time this book was published in 1970. It feels more British than American to me.
The book is dedicated to J. G. Ballard and a few other buddies, and it’s very reminiscent of Ballard in tone and subject matter. The cover of this edition really doesn’t reflect the contents, which describe a near future, dystopian, failed and failing urban society, kind of like Ballard's Highrise, but taken two steps further up the timeline to where the rot has spread across the entire city and country.
The book contains four short stories united only by the setting. The setting is an impressionistly bleak urban conglomeration - ‘the city’, which stands for any city or urban environment. The city has decayed, and urban stalwarts, the civics, live in organized clusters under sometimes desperate sounding draconian laws. These clusters are dying because their women are dying. Rusy old monorails move people around within and between clusters. Young men tear up streets for fun in gas-guzzling roadsters consisting of little more than the metal frame, chairs, and V8 engines. Sometimes they head out into the lone lands in search of a woman.
Outside these clusters live the loners, who eke out a more free but riskier life in the climbing burbs outside the enclaves. The lone lands have largely been abandoned by authority. The building and infrastructure in these area are better build, but older and crumbling. Outside of these areas is the countryside, largely abandoned it sees because of the difficulty of getting resources, except by some rugged survivalists.
All four of the short stories focus on different characters. They’re sort of like vignettes into the setting. All the stories deal with the theme of escaping the oppressive city, and what happens on the outside.
Story summaries:
I really rather liked this book, though it is quite bleak. It’s not Ballard, but I liked the theme and execution and prose that Platt brings forth, and they are very Ballardian. I can’t quite bring myself to give it 4 rating, but I liked it more than most of the other GR readers seemed to have. so I’m going with 3.5 rounded to 3.
The book is dedicated to J. G. Ballard and a few other buddies, and it’s very reminiscent of Ballard in tone and subject matter. The cover of this edition really doesn’t reflect the contents, which describe a near future, dystopian, failed and failing urban society, kind of like Ballard's Highrise, but taken two steps further up the timeline to where the rot has spread across the entire city and country.
The book contains four short stories united only by the setting. The setting is an impressionistly bleak urban conglomeration - ‘the city’, which stands for any city or urban environment. The city has decayed, and urban stalwarts, the civics, live in organized clusters under sometimes desperate sounding draconian laws. These clusters are dying because their women are dying. Rusy old monorails move people around within and between clusters. Young men tear up streets for fun in gas-guzzling roadsters consisting of little more than the metal frame, chairs, and V8 engines. Sometimes they head out into the lone lands in search of a woman.
Outside these clusters live the loners, who eke out a more free but riskier life in the climbing burbs outside the enclaves. The lone lands have largely been abandoned by authority. The building and infrastructure in these area are better build, but older and crumbling. Outside of these areas is the countryside, largely abandoned it sees because of the difficulty of getting resources, except by some rugged survivalists.
All four of the short stories focus on different characters. They’re sort of like vignettes into the setting. All the stories deal with the theme of escaping the oppressive city, and what happens on the outside.
Story summaries:
I really rather liked this book, though it is quite bleak. It’s not Ballard, but I liked the theme and execution and prose that Platt brings forth, and they are very Ballardian. I can’t quite bring myself to give it 4 rating, but I liked it more than most of the other GR readers seemed to have. so I’m going with 3.5 rounded to 3.
August 2, 2024
Una novela de apocalipsis lento, pero inevitable. Escrita amargamente, con mucho componente “erótico” como solía ser en los locos años 1970s.
El cambio de la vida al acabarse la sociedad, el cómo ajustarse, el que soy y que no quiero ser. Es un constante gris.
Se lee bien, es más que correcta, pero no será recordada en mis archivos.
El cambio de la vida al acabarse la sociedad, el cómo ajustarse, el que soy y que no quiero ser. Es un constante gris.
Se lee bien, es más que correcta, pero no será recordada en mis archivos.
August 14, 2024
A series of four vignettes, that chart the decline and fall of some futuristic urban sprawl know as "The City"
The first covers a sexually dysfunctional popstar, the second an artist couple that decide to move further into the wilderness after a particularly bad party, the third a group of nomad scavengers roaming the suburbs and the fourth the full on mad-max-esque decline of a depopulated urban center.
The books a bit light on both the sci and the fi. The futuristic city when depicted at it's pre-collapse heights is almost indistinguishable from any modern urban environment. It's not until we meet the post-collapse scavengers that we get a glimpse of a vast sprawling prefabricated wasteland of concrete and plastic, built but never inhabited. This is the only point at which the book is remotely interesting as a piece of genre fiction, but it has neither the length nor the literary chops to pull it off.
The first covers a sexually dysfunctional popstar, the second an artist couple that decide to move further into the wilderness after a particularly bad party, the third a group of nomad scavengers roaming the suburbs and the fourth the full on mad-max-esque decline of a depopulated urban center.
The books a bit light on both the sci and the fi. The futuristic city when depicted at it's pre-collapse heights is almost indistinguishable from any modern urban environment. It's not until we meet the post-collapse scavengers that we get a glimpse of a vast sprawling prefabricated wasteland of concrete and plastic, built but never inhabited. This is the only point at which the book is remotely interesting as a piece of genre fiction, but it has neither the length nor the literary chops to pull it off.
October 21, 2024
Ho letto molti libri di fantascienza e questo, al netto di alcune idee carine sul post apocalittico, non spicca per qualità.
La scrittura è accettabile ma al servizio di una trama sciapa
La scrittura è accettabile ma al servizio di una trama sciapa
August 11, 2023
I was convinced this was the most prescient and unjustly forgotten 1970s new wave sci Fi dystopia, right up until the pedophilia.
October 15, 2022
Charles Platt: the man whose life is - perhaps - more interesting than his books (and I mean that in a nice way - I'm not denigrating his books).
This book is a series of short tales on the same grim theme. The first tale seems a little dated, but once you have read passed the hip future, the un-hip future resolves itself into an alternative present. In each of the mini-tales there are no happy endings (or characters you might want to be friends with), but that is the nature of the book (it is about an unhappy ending).
If you want a book that makes you feel happy and uplifted then this is not the book for you. If you are more into Looney Tunes than Disney, then this book might suit you.
This book is a series of short tales on the same grim theme. The first tale seems a little dated, but once you have read passed the hip future, the un-hip future resolves itself into an alternative present. In each of the mini-tales there are no happy endings (or characters you might want to be friends with), but that is the nature of the book (it is about an unhappy ending).
If you want a book that makes you feel happy and uplifted then this is not the book for you. If you are more into Looney Tunes than Disney, then this book might suit you.
November 7, 2011
The title is a bit misleading, and the back text gives you the assumption that this book will be about characters...it's really about the city itself, seen through the eyes of different people at different stages of the city's life. It's only about 155 pages long, and I got it for $.50 at a library sale. The cover alone is worth more than that just sitting on your shelf. Looks great, the story is alright, gives you a dated, 70s dystopia feel I can really get behind. Some of the scenes in the book are hundreds of years apart, so don't expect any real threads to carry you from start to finish.
Still, a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.
Still, a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.
February 17, 2009
Started off as an extremely dull dystopia, but the last two sections were good.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews