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Loading... A Year in the Linear City {novella}by Paul Di Filippo
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. What will remian with me here is above all the spectacular setting itself: a city of mythological length (where the question if there really is an absolute centre, a block zero, is a philosophical one), but only two blocks wide, crammed between a river and a set of train tracks. Adding to the strange (yet clear) ambinence of this short story are also the "city beast", a huge subterranean monster on which's back the city rests and the avatars of death constantly circling in the sky, very literally carrying the dead away. "A year in the linear city" has all the things I like about New Weird - a blend of sci fi and fantasy, a twist of strangeness presented as normality, and great detail in it's world building - and is considered a pioneer work of the genre. What keeps the rating down for me is a slight clumsiness in the writing, not quite letting me get to know the characters. Also, it's a bit on the short side for me. With such a richness in detail and imagination, it seems a bit of a waste that so many things are just hinted at. Nevertheless, a very memorable short story about a very memorable place. I felt the plot took a while to get going but I was prepared to wait around for it. A superb and vivid setting on an apparently endless city which is two blocks wide, and where the afterlife visibly comes to get you when you die. The protagonist is a science fiction ("Cosmogonic Fiction") writer; his spectacular girlfriend, his other somewhat disreputable friends, his father, his editor, and the mayor make up a memorable cast. I felt the plot took a while to get going but I was prepared to wait around for it. A superb and vivid setting on an apparently endless city which is two blocks wide, and where the afterlife visibly comes to get you when you die. The protagonist is a science fiction ("Cosmogonic Fiction") writer; his spectacular girlfriend, his other somewhat disreputable friends, his father, his editor, and the mayor make up a memorable cast. no reviews | add a review
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Di Filippo uses his eerie setting for a Jack Vance homage, viewing events with Vance's sort of ironic detachment. Vancian name schemes are employed: Diego lives in the Gritsavage borough, and people are named Volusia Bittern, Milagra Eventyr, Jobo Copperknob, and the like.
Nothing of great import occurs. The principal irony is that Diego makes a living as a writer of Cosmogonic Fiction, a genre of stories wherein the writer speculates on the possibility of worlds differently configured from mundane reality - a reality which is, of course, quite fantastic by our standards. ( )