I started The City and the Stars with low expectations, but willing to be pleasantly surprised: unfortunately, I wasn't. I already read Childhood's End in the 1950s and retain little memory of its contents, but my impression was very negative. The City and the Stars was published a couple of years after Childhood's End and I either missed seeing it at the time or, perhaps more likely, shunned it because of the earlier book. When Rama was published, some of my friends were impressed by it so I read it, it was OK. Then in a series of acts of increasing folly, I read the tripe which Clarke put his name to in the sequels.
At some point I acquired a second-hand copy The City and the Stars, but not surprisingly, I have only just got round to reading it. It is science fiction without the science, and what little mention of science there is tends to be wrong even by the standards of the mid-twentieth century.

The City and the Stars is set in the very distant future. The city of the title, Diaspar, has existed as a totally enclosed city already for a billion years (meaning a thousand million). Previously, and over some apparently even longer period, mankind had first built up and then lost a galactic empire. The inhabitants of the city never see anything of the outside world, no sky, no sun and no stars and not the desert that surrounds the city, though they do know of the desert and believe that it covers the whole Earth. They all have a strong aversion to any sight of or contact with the outside. The city is maintained and controlled by the Central Computer, which actually seems more like a lot of networked lesser computers, so Clarke was looking in the right sort of direction there. The computer uses advanced technology, more like magic really (Clarke's Third Law), to create and destroy matter according to patterns stored in its memory banks. The inhabitants of the city are created and destroyed in the same way. With extremely rare exceptions, there are no new people. The computer has records of a hundred million or so personalities and healthy young bodies to go with them, though it has made some improvements to the original design, such as no navel and no dangly bits. The computer pops up one of these often enough to maintain an optimal population with each incarnation living for a thousand years or so; as the end approaches, the person decides which memories to retain for the next time round and the computer makes it so.

Our protagonist, Alvin, is one of the very rare exceptions, a new person, the fifteenth such Unique since the city's enclosure. He lacks the normal aversion to all outside the city, rather, he is intrigued by it.

So far so good, we may well say. We have a picture of this static society of recycled people who nonetheless live out satisfied lives together with ever different combinations of companions, and naturally we have a misfit, since without such, there would be no story.

The book is called the city and the stars, so it's not giving much away to say yes, he does find a way out of the city and yes, he gets into space. When he leaves the city, among the things he encounters is an Amazing Plot Device which enables him to figure out how to get a spaceship. Out in the universe, he encounters a rather similar Amazing Plot Device which enables cleverer people than him to figure out the true history of humanity and make grandiose plans for the future.

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Some silly bits.

"When, in the tug of war between the tides and gravity, the Moon at last began to fall, it became necessary to destroy it." (Sample explanation)

Alvin looks out of the city from a ventilation grill in a lighted tunnel. As dusk falls, he sees a striking group of seven stars, a regular hexagon with a central brighter star. To see them in these conditions, they aren't far away in galactic terms. However, when he and his companion visit the system (yes, they really are close together, not at greatly different distances from Earth), "All the stars they had known, all the familiar constellations, had gone. The Milky Way was no longer a faint band of mist far to one side of the heavens; they were now at the centre of creation, and its great circle divided the universe in twain.". They can also instantly tell which spots of light are planets and which distant stars.

"The ship was now above the Pole, and the planet beneath them was a perfect hemisphere. Looking down upon the belt of twilight, Jeserac and Hilvar could see at one instant both sunrise and sunset on opposite sides of the world." The Pole is not relevant.

(Edited 2009.06.22 for clarity after helpful suggestions here.)

As with the majority of A. C. Clarke's work, the idea is excellent, but also as with a lot of his work, the book itself reads like a film. This is not to say it is a bad thing, just a little odd once you realise it.

As for the story you have your post `incident' society that has adapted into something alien but perceivable to ourselves, and of course the lead character is the agent of change. The world Clarke has constructed in this environment is interesting, and provides a reflection of a fundamentally protectionist society with an all powerful but benevolent Big Brother. The characterisation unfortunately is lacking substance, though the ancillary characters of the book are interesting and diverse enough, the protagonist `every-individual' is to put it simply, a bit boring. This is not to say the book itself is boring, there is more than enough to guarantee reading through to the end, it is just a little disappointing and idealistic. ( )

Its a good story. It can be a little long winded at times, and the lead character, Alvin, isn't very developed beyond a need to find something new. ( )

When Clarke passed away earlier this year, I decided to read a book of his I hadn't read before as a tribute. I chose "The City and the Stars". What is most remarkable about this book, is that it was published in 1955, and Diaspar still feels very much like a city of the future. Without giving away any fun surprises, I can assure the potential reader that they won't be encountering clunky examples of now defunct technology, and they will be treated to more than a few examples of technology that have you wondering if Clarke had himself a time machine hidden away in Sri Lanka for research expeditions to the future.

While the city of Diaspar and its inner workings are well developed, the characters are a bit underdeveloped, but adequte for the purpose. Clarke's novel is really a novel of ideas - reflections on culture, progress, and synergy. It's what Clarke does best, and he leaves the rounding out of the characters, even the city's most unique citizen Alvin, to the reader.

To get a sense of the far future from words penned over half a century ago is a testimony to Clarke's wonderful imagination. A most fitting tribute and highly recommended if you are in the mood for contemplating the passage of vast expanses of time. ( )

The City and the Stars is the story of humanity's last city, and the one man who wants nothing more than to leave it. The city, Diaspar, is a huge, enclosed environment, where the last vestiges of mankind has retreated after leaving the stars. Maintained by incredible and infallible machines, Diaspar has stood for a billion years, its immortal inhabitants living life after life, with periods of rest in the great memory banks of the city in between. Outside of the great barriers Earth has died, become nothing but a giant desert. Safe in the city, humans have lost their natural curiosity and cannot bear the thought of leaving the safety of their city. So it goes on, in stasis, until a man who has never lived before is suddenly brought forth by the computers, without the mental barriers, who goes about attempting to leave.

This story was a good enough read, but it never truly gripped me. Mankind has apparently edited out all the traits it found undesirable, so the characters all seem to be paragons of patience and understanding. While this is all well and good from the perspective of future society, it makes it harder to identify properly with most of them. The only flaw they seem to have retained is fear.

Clarke is masterful when it comes to describing the society of the future, however. The insights into the structure and machinery behind the city is inspired. I did at one point think that the insistence on the infallibility of the computers and machines was a bit too much, especially as the expectation was never reversed by a breakdown, but that's nitpicking. The glimpses into the great forgotten past are the most interesting of all. As Alvin, the main character, finally gets out and about and stumbles over the remains of galactic civilisation, we are at Clarke's greatest strength; the incomprehensible artefacts that clearly have much story behind them, but whose true purpose are never revealed to us. No one but Clarke can write mystery like this so masterfully, and I could easily get lost in the speculation.

Of course, this is also the most frustrating part of Clarke's writing, knowing that the answers I so want will not come.

Overall, it is a good book, especially if your tastes lean towards the "science" part of science fiction. Clarke is a artisan at world building, but the characters leave something to be wanted. ( )