The Silent City

“The Silent City” is set in a dystopian future in which the sealed off Cities were created as refuges for society’s leading thinkers, scientists, artists (and of course politicians and the very wealthy who wormed their way in) while the outside world collapsed into disease and chaos. In the City of the story, few residents remain, but they have managed to extend their lives through biological rejuvenation processes and controlled mechanical substitutes—ommachs. One such long-lived individual has been sequestering mutants from the Outside and has created a genetically modified child—Elisa. Elisa can self-heal (rejuvenate) and grows up in this enclosed environment among a few humans and the ommachs. Eventually she realizes she show more must leave— her own creator is unstable and may destroy her. Before she leaves, she learns she can manipulate her body to the extent that she can change her sex, an important transition for life in the outside world, where a virus skews the sex ratio in favor of females but males still dominate the social structure. As her life outside the City unfolds, Elisa struggles between fulfilling the ambitions of her creator and caretaker and finding her own role in the Outside. Without my being wide read in the world of scifi, I am not sure to what extent this genre deals with gender fluidity, but it is an important conceptual component of this novel. In part, living as both a female and a male Elisa better understands the perspective of both. An interesting read. show less

Full of surprising ideas, with twists that really shock. The writing seemed clumsy, with some sections dragging into repetitive musings and other important sections being under-explored. This could be the fault of the translation. Overall, for fans of post-apocalyptic/gene-manipulating/life-extending/battling of the sexes novels, a must-read!