Město (original 1952; edition 1992)

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 Arthur (or any other mythical/legendary figure) really existed. I managed to read it then as a myth, as a cleverly constructed series of stories creating a myth-that-might-have-been. Almost a fable (which came to me when the notes made a reference to Aesop). It's a fable of what could happen if we took men out of the equation, and links up with The Book of Merlyn which I reread only last night -- is there something inherent in men that makes us act the way we do?

(It and T.H. White's Arthurian stories weren't written that far apart in time. Is it too late for me to write a dissertation on the preoccupations of those decades and take City and The Once and Future King as my primary texts? I'm sure there are others. It's probably been done, though. Striking that they both used ants and dogs, though probably coincidence -- we have very firm ideas of what ants and dogs are like, what they do, and I think they both used a common image.)

Anyway, it's not a gripping story with a narrative that pushes you forward. I read it with more a gentle curiosity, and it responds well to that. ( )

El futuro quizás no será así, pero es el futuro que a mi me gustaría. Uno de mis libros favoritos de ciencia ficción. ( )

'city' shares a whole lot of DNA with [b:Foundation|29579|Foundation (Foundation, #1)|Isaac Asimov|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320416085s/29579.jpg|1783981] and [b:I, Robot|41804|I, Robot|Isaac Asimov|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320435960s/41804.jpg|1796026]: 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 plot or character, which means though it's occasionally very interesting, it's almost always distant or clinical, and there's nobody to provide that gateway to being emotionally invested. ( )

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 equivalent is) "field notes" between, except for the epilog, which the author explains himself (it was not originally part of the stories).

These stories are old, and not just old, but dated. The science is incredibly dated (evolution by surgery?), and a lot of the story feels dated, too. I know many of the stories were written long ago, so the future is now, and while the future is not just not what Simak wrote, it just wasn't feasible or plausible in any way, shape or form so that it leaves sci fi and hit fantasy for me.

I know it's supposed to be one of Simak's best, but I just didn't care for it. I hope discussion over the book will help me appreciate it more and maybe I can/will update my review. ( )

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 equivalent is) "field notes" between, except for the epilog, which the author explains himself (it was not originally part of the stories).

These stories are old, and not just old, but dated. The science is incredibly dated (evolution by surgery?), and a lot of the story feels dated, too. I know many of the stories were written long ago, so the future is now, and while the future is not just not what Simak wrote, it just wasn't feasible or plausible in any way, shape or form so that it leaves sci fi and hit fantasy for me.

I know it's supposed to be one of Simak's best, but I just didn't care for it. I hope discussion over the book will help me appreciate it more and maybe I can/will update my review. ( )