City in The Alternative Worlds

Aug 26, 2012 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-classic, z-clifford-d-simak

gosh i loved this one!

City is a collection of eight connected stories depicting the future and end of mankind, and the rise of dogs. just as i always suspected, dogs will eventually inherit the earth. good dogs!

Simak is a humanist, but a clear-eyed one, an author who doesn't let much sentiment cloud his storytelling. man fails, and fails again, but his strivings are viewed with both careful distance and genuine affection. this is not one of those scifi novels about man being the architect of his gosh i loved this one!

City is a collection of eight connected stories depicting the future and end of mankind, and the rise of dogs. just as i always suspected, dogs will eventually inherit the earth. good dogs!

Simak is a humanist, but a clear-eyed one, an author who doesn't let much sentiment cloud his storytelling. man fails, and fails again, but his strivings are viewed with both careful distance and genuine affection. this is not one of those scifi novels about man being the architect of his own doom. well, i suppose it sort of is - but minus the doom part. there is a kind of transcendence achieved, or at least a movement by mankind into a state that is clearly more glorious and exuberant than their earthly forms. they reach for the stars (ding, ding, ding, cliche time arrives) but don't quite get there. eh, no matter. how does the song go? you can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes... you get what you need. man gets what he needs. when dogs inherit the earth - well, perhaps, not our earth - man is basically a mythical creature. the stories in City are tales told and studied by the dog race a millenia in the future.

the novel is subtle, nuanced, tender; even-tempered and even-handed. the prose is clean and straightforward and rather literary as well. the narrative is anything but straightforward, although the stories move sequentially in time. people and places and things and ideas are mentioned, developed, dropped, and yet always return. nothing of value is left abandoned. this is not a novel that is by any means thuddingly obvious. i was consistently surprised at the twists and turns that each story took and how the story of our future history is developed. and don't expect hard science - or any realistic science in general - when reading this. expect yearning and melancholy and kindness and a sweet sort of poetry and an infinite largneness of spirit. it is a classic novel for many good reasons; i was completely enthralled. the kind of novel where, after i finished, all i wanted to do was hug the author for creating it.

of particular interest to me was the depiction of a society based on mechanistic ideas compared to that of a society based around more... i suppose the word would be psychic ideas. that still doesn't feel like the right word. some kind of word that includes psychic but also spiritual and emotional and mental. ish. ah well, words fail him. a typical human failing!

this would be a 5 star book for me but, sad to say, i did find the first story to be rather weak. the second story was interesting but i wasn't quite sold. the third story and beyond: perfection.

but hey, what is it all about? well,

ants evolving into mysterious threats and building strange structures, flights into alternate dimensions, dimensions that dogs can see, threats that exist in those dimensions and sometimes cross over, a robot guardian named Jenkins - guardian to the future race of dogs, intelligent animals, a brotherhood of animals, the last city of Geneva fallen silent and its denizens sleeping an endless sleep, the race of men transported elsewhere, the race of men now a handful of bow and arrow naturals, psychic robots, wild robots, mutant humans living in castles and crossing the universe through strange doorways, the family known as Webster - forever moving mankind forward (or not), a trap for humans built by mutants - a trap based around empathy, a terrible and remorseless mutant named Joe, Jupiter as a gateway to transcendence, the ability to change form and adapt to Jupiter, Nathaniel the first genetically enhanced dog, census-taking on a pastoral world, agoraphobia, Martian philosophers, a Martian plague, humanity moves first to the countryside and then from the earth itself, the death of cities...

and now i must beg your indulgence:

(view spoiler) ...more

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May 28, 2012 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf, wwe-grandmasters-challenge, wwe_grandmasters_challenge

This slim white hardcover from the Science Fiction Book Club has caught my eye numerous times over the years, nestled between its bigger shelfmates in my family's science fiction collection. I had a vague knowledge that it was narrated by dogs, and a vague knowledge that this was a "fix-up novel" - a group of short stories tied together with an overarching structure for publication purposes. I'm glad I didn't go into it with any further preconceptions. Simak did an excellent job of linking the s This slim white hardcover from the Science Fiction Book Club has caught my eye numerous times over the years, nestled between its bigger shelfmates in my family's science fiction collection. I had a vague knowledge that it was narrated by dogs, and a vague knowledge that this was a "fix-up novel" - a group of short stories tied together with an overarching structure for publication purposes. I'm glad I didn't go into it with any further preconceptions. Simak did an excellent job of linking the stories; I thought the conceit of the story notes added great depth to the ideas put forth in the stories.
The book consists of eight stories and a framework of notes that precede each story. I'd like to call them anthropological field notes, but I think the more accurate term might be caninological, since they are written by an advanced race of dogs. "These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north," says one of the early notes. The stories the dogs examine span twelve thousand years, starting in a near future with dates now past. Some of the stories are put forth as apocryphal, some as fables, some as containing a germ of truth. They discusses the nature of time, and the nature of the bond between dogs and people, and the nature of dogs, and the instincts that govern both. A human family by the name of Webster is present in almost all of the tales. The Webster family robot, Jenkins, serves as the human proxy when no human is available, and as a common thread woven through the lengthy timeline. Jenkins is a surprisingly rich character, with fascinating motives.
I had never read Simak before, and didn't expect the beauty of the language or the depth of the ideas he explores. Though this is a story of dog, it is also a story of mutants and robots and ants and men and websters and Websters and cities and aliens and cobblies, all of which cycle in and out of the stories. I loved the way various members of that cast of characters appeared and reappeared. New situations were sketched with a deft hand, bringing the reader up to date quickly despite jumps of thousands of years.
If I have any complaint, it is the absolute lack of female characters. I don't think a single female dog is named in the entire book, and there are only a couple of human women, dismissed quickly. I can justify it somewhat by making a connection to fables and fireside stories, and suggesting that each Wolf and Bear and Squirrel is meant to stand for something larger. Still, it speaks to the quality of the stories and the concepts and the prose that I was mostly able to ignore the rather glaring omission of half of the population. I would probably name this as my new favorite novel-in-stories.
...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Nicky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction, fantasy

I really wouldn't attempt to read City as speculative fiction, despite the opening stories and the fact that there's space travel and alternate dimensions. After I saw the reactions of group members to it, I thought I wasn't going to get on with it at all -- totally unscientific, only one or two female characters even mentioned, etc.

But then I started reading and the scholarly notes really tickled me. I've read them before, in a sense, in every book that attempts to piece together whether King A ...more

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Jun 24, 2010 Simon rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-masterworks, sf

I have to say that this was quite a disappointment for me and not what I was expecting after reading the excellent Way Station.

"City" is basically a chronicle of mankind's demise, usually involving characters who are decendents of the Webster family who invariably end up involved in pivotal events in our future history. No single event or catastrophy here, rather it is a gradual decline. And the reasons are more social, cultural and psycological than anything else.

This is actually a collection I have to say that this was quite a disappointment for me and not what I was expecting after reading the excellent Way Station.

"City" is basically a chronicle of mankind's demise, usually involving characters who are decendents of the Webster family who invariably end up involved in pivotal events in our future history. No single event or catastrophy here, rather it is a gradual decline. And the reasons are more social, cultural and psycological than anything else.

This is actually a collection of interelated stories, depicted as a set of legends that dogs tell each other around the camp fire. Yes, for dogs have inherited the earth and mankind is now no more than a myth disbelieved by all except their most crackpot scholars. There is a fictitious editorial introduction to each story, whom we are to think of as a dog, that briefly expounds various canine interpretations of the stories. Daft as this might sound, these parts were actually my favourite parts of the book.

Various things let this book down in my opinion. Firstly it just hasn't dated very well. Both in terms of the ideas and the dialogue. Okay, it was first published in 1951 but it must have seemed very far fetched even then. The ideas become more wild and ludicrous as we get further into the future until we end up in the realms of pure fantasy. The character's usually sounds like hillbillies, even when it's the animals who are talking (yes animals aquire a hereditary ability to talk through vivisection!)

The above might well have been largely forgiven but for the fact that the story lines are almost completely devoid of narative tension. Occaisionally I thought a story started out interestingly only to skirt around the moments that would help build and maintain the reader's interest to needlessly shift focus elsewhere (like a badly edited movie). Ultimately, it left me largely uninterested in the overall story arc and was a bit of a struggle to finish.

Many others seem to be quite fond of this book so perhaps I am being unkind but for me the flaws just kept getting in the way of my getting much out of it. And it's left me not to keep to try anything else by Simak. ...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Daniel Roy rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, wwe-gmrc, taw-bookclub, sf-masterworks, abandoned

I'm usually pretty good at reading classic SF in its proper context, but I nevertheless gave up on City halfway through. The SF just feels hopelessly outdated, the science is ridiculous, and none of the characters offered me any chance to empathize with them.

Dated SF doesn't have to be a deal-breaker. I recently read Ray Bradbury's classic The Martian Chronicles, and although a 2012 read offers no verisimilitude whatsoever, the SF was whimsical enough that I found myself sharing Mr. Bradbury's w ...more

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Aug 31, 2008 Richard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

A fix up of eight related stories, linked together as a mythology from a far future Dog society, living on a parallel Earth long after the passing of Mankind. A charming thoughtful book, told through the eyes of the Webster family and their Robot, Jenkins, may be slightly dated now and even a little naive or narrow minded in a place or two. The gentle pastoral style and evident love of the countryside are present here as in other of Simak's works, as well as a favourite idea or so that can be s ...more

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Apr 13, 2012 Suz rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, science-fiction, award-winner, classic, library, grand-masters, among-others-biblio, grand-masters-2012-challenge

So... I found this book to be merely OK. I don't know if I just didn't read closely enough, if I just missed something, or what, but I didn't get it.

I know it's another 'fix-up' novel, published as a series of short stories in the publication which became Analog. These stories have a theme running through them - the decline (or what have you) of the human race and the rise of the canine race. It's told as a series of stories/fables/legends with brief anthropological (or whatever the canine equiv ...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Michelle rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, book_club, award_winner, dtb-own, grand_masters

'city' shares a whole lot of DNA with Foundation and I, Robot: a bunch of loosely connected stories slowly builds to a whole picture, without a central character to anchor them. with improvements in technology (farming, transportation, economics), the necessity for people to band together into cities is dissolved, leading to the eventual end of war (if you can't shoot at a target, well...), and perhaps the end of civilization wherein everything goes to the dogs. it's a novel of ideas rather than ...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Maree rated it liked it

Shelves: grand-masters-challenge-2012

I loved the premise of this book -- I described it to my brother and ended with "and commentary from those looking back at the tales from the future . . . who are dogs" and got a good laugh out of it. The tales, especially coupled with the author's commentary, were definitely a good read. I like the messages conveyed. Though I believe ants could totally take over the world. They're scary. ...more

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Apr 21, 2015 Danielle Just rated it it was amazing

This is one of my favorite books.

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Jan 05, 2008 bsc rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-2008, science-fiction, fiction

I was quite disappointed in this book, after reading such praise for it. Simak produced a very imaginative story, very "Asmovian", but I was never sold on the whole premise. I was thrown off by his science and his view of what the future will look like. This is normally understandable if you are aware that you are reading a 50+ year old science fiction book, but it was very distracting here. ...more

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