City Question 1: General Thoughts

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What were your thoughts on the book? It seems to have its fans and its detractors. Do you enjoy fix-ups generally? How did this one work for you?
Did you have any expectations coming into it, perhaps from reading Huddling Place in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame?

Comments

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    I felt that this was a rather different take on the whole "future of humanity" story - a rather gentle and sorrowful tale exchanging the optimistic stance one often reads for one which gradually fades into oblivion. I'm not sure that I would read it over and over, but U+I'm very glad to have read it now.
    Fixups - mostly these work for me provided that the individual tales hang together. City certainly did.
    I've never before read any Simak so had no expectations, and sadly I know nothing about Huddling Place.

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    I read City before, back in the 70s?, and quite liked it. This time if fell apart on me. It's definitely a 'future history' thing, which was quite fashionable in those days, but I couldn't look past the deficiencies this time.

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    I really liked it. It's kind of what I want SF to be about. Granted, I didn't enjoy each tale equally - sometimes I like the connecting material more than the tales. But overall, I enjoyed it's grand sweep and it's different take on future history. As for fix-up novels, I've found I rather like them. Many have said that the short story is SF's premier format, and I can see the case for that. A fixup takes the tight high concept for of a short story and collects them into themed group, tying the tales together with the voice of a more experienced version of the same author. That's fun.

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    I also really liked it. Something about the tone and the melancholy nature of it appealed to me. I actually did not remember about the Huddling Place being in SF Hall of Fame until I was a couple pages into reading it again and wondering why it sounded so familiar! I don't think I realised initially that it was part of a larger book (or more likely I have now since forgotten).

    I also like fix-ups when they are done well and I thought this was a good example of one where they were connected just enough to keep things held together. For me this was one of the better books I have read this year.

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    There were many things that rubbed me the wrong way about this book. It suffered from far too many tropes of the times for me to enjoy it. I was acutely aware of the 'smurf population distribution' - there were 30 smurfs for every one smurfette. Also the 'only cops in L.A.' thing where only this one family ever did anything. The 'USA is perfectly representative of everywhere' implications of the setting. The ultra-conservative thought behind the 'Change==Death' of human evolution. The whole 'Fate is by definition inevitable' feel of the whole book... It just annoyed me.

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    All true. I think I'm inured, at least in old books, to 'US Citizens are the only people in the future' because, well that's always how it's been when you consume US culture, and that's still mostly how it is now. Being annoyed by it would mean living your life in an annoyed state.

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    The title is really an interesting choice. The novel is named after the first story, but I think that first story is only important because of what grew from it, not because it presented a theme, motif, or enduring character. It's like titling the Bible "Genesis." There is a Webster, but he is a bit player, there is a robot, but it is not a character, andthere are many men refusing to face the reality of change, but "city" is not what the story is about. It is about nostalgia for something that never was. Kudos.

    The stitching was fine, but I found it a bit utilitarian. As @Apocryphal says, I think that short stories are really the basis for SF, and some of these are good short stories. I thought it was interesting to have them gathered together so we could see how the stories developed - I think they changed in focus as Simak matured. However this is also a problem - the first stories are really stories for boys, and immature boys at that. I really had to work to get to the end, but I found the stories were better crafted when I got there.

    Like @clash_bowley the world-building focused on a world that is just too limited to even try to represent a world irritated me. The portagonists and author both are self-absorbed, and I think they remain so until the end. I no longer have much patience with stories that suggest mentally defective men are the world are worth our time and attention. Sympathetic understanding is something humans can do, and those who lack the capacity or desire to work at it are simply immature, perhaps a little stunted. Children are naturally self-absorbed, but if they don't grow out of it they just don't amount to much. I'm really fed up with the idea that childishness in adults is anything but a failure and a problem. Childhood is a stage, not a destination.

    OTOH I think Simak does have a potentially great theme in the effects of nostalgia and what happens as memory replaces sensuality. As @clash_bowley says somewhere else Simak just doesn't know what to do with it. Protagonists always looking to the past, prevented from proper action, is a good basis for drama, but not for admiration.

    But Simak seems to want to blame character flaws on blood, say it is fate, and writes as if the loss of these flaws is something to regret, as if perseverance in selfishness that confuses my own self with the "race of Man" is somehow admirable. I disagree - People like that are fucked up.

    So last thing - I found there is quite a bit of similarity with Asimov's Foundation and Robot stories, Herbert (Dune really), and also PKD. A focus on psychiatry, an interest in the social sciences over physics, the main reason for the text being an idea. All of these are interested in death. As I read this book I remembering reading some of the analogies and examples and thinking that they were quite close to elements of South and East Asian culture, but seemingly without awareness that those other people have thought about these things. Made me think about how many of the stories of the time are about these kind of characters re-inventing the wheel. I'm thinking particularly of PKD's future histories that are about how war is no longer what it was.

    Anyway long and rambling. Happy to have read it, not sure that I would read any other of his early stuff.

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    Interesting analysis, @BarnerCobblewood! I agree that nostalgia is deeply important to this book, and I have no particular sense of nostalgia. I don't associate emotions with things and places, so the way the people act in this book seems bizarre to me. This may be the source of my irritation, as it took Barner's comments above for me to see important nostalgia is with this book. It's less irritating, as I know nostalgia is an important feeling for most people, so I can understand it somewhat better.

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    @BarnerCobblewood said:
    I no longer have much patience with stories that suggest mentally defective men are the world are worth our time and attention. Sympathetic understanding is something humans can do, and those who lack the capacity or desire to work at it are simply immature, perhaps a little stunted. Children are naturally self-absorbed, but if they don't grow out of it they just don't amount to much. I'm really fed up with the idea that childishness in adults is anything but a failure and a problem. Childhood is a stage, not a destination.

    Seems like a funny thing to say in the Trump/Musk age, no?

    So last thing - I found there is quite a bit of similarity with Asimov's Foundation and Robot stories, Herbert (Dune really), and also PKD. A focus on psychiatry, an interest in the social sciences over physics, the main reason for the text being an idea. All of these are interested in death.

    D____ C___!

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    @clash_bowley Nostalgia is a weird thing. Not much of a fan myself. OTOH as I get older I do appreciate some souvenirs, but making a cult of the past, which I think many if not all the protagonists of these stories do, is a manifestation of a negative kind of death cult, the idea that goodness in the future will be found among the dead.

    I also wonder if nostalgia might not be a response to rejection and inability to maintain friendships and affection as we experienced when children as we age. I don't have any doubt that the way we live is counter to affection, and I have no doubt that lack of affection is a blight on most everyone's life. That said, there are several civilisations that emphasise the importance of affection. There's a strange confluence of the mores of late capitalist business and weird science that is dominant right now, but I don't think it will last long, long historically speaking. Not helping me put up with it right now though. And I worry about what its going to mean for all of us, especially kids and grandkids.

    @Apocryphal I think all of these writers, should add Bradbury, probably lots of others, presented the greatness of really terrible things, and expected that people would recognise the terribleness, and question whether the greatness was gold or brass. So they didn't put many markers in about the terribleness. I now think they under-estimated the power of shiny to entrance people and make them neglect the price that "greatness" exacts.

    The thing about death is that it is inconceivable, inexorable, unmanufactured, and seemingly at the end not dependent upon our actions. Tough stuff. Terrible, awful, etc. Horror. Exactly what cults, and cultures, are made for. Our personal deaths are fated, but the extension of that idea of fate to race? Strange idea. Simak keeps capitalising "Man" in the book. It's like he's lampshading the inability to extend our heart to include everything, our need to remain "huddled" in a little house to feel safe.

    That said, I don't think Simak is lampshading it, because I don't think as a writer he's quite in control of his theme. The theme is great even though the manifestation is a work in progress. Maybe he's just lucky.

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