Rating: 
Summary: Five stars are not enough.
Review: Virtually everyone here seems to agree with me, so I don't think I need to repeat these sentiments, so I'll just say this. The first time I read it, I was almost home in L.A., flying back from Europe. I was young, and the mere ideas of flying and travelling was magical ones for me. We were just passing over Las Vegas in the darkness, which was much smaller in 1973 than it is today, and it was a solitary brilliant jewel on the breast of the desert. I had just read the part about Alvin's first trip to Lys, and how that isolated place reminded me of the gigantic underground switching station that he passed through, midway during the trip!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Science Fiction Story Ever Written
Review: Wednesday, September 02, 1998The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke is my favorite all time work of fiction. It's near unbelievable that anyone could have come up with the concepts in this book, in the 1950s. This book was written about the time the first commercial electronic computer appeared, yet some of the things that The City's computer did were from concepts that only a very learned modern day computer programmer with a great vision could have come up with. This shows beyond any doubt what an intuitive scientific thinker Arthur C. Clarke is. He is pure scientific genius, and pure fictional genius. What a combination. The story is about two cities, and the universe itself. One city is high tech; the other city is rather simple. The non high tech city has inhabitants who are into mind things that most people could never imagine. The high tech city is beyond present day believe, but the things in the city may well be possible someday, millions of years from today. As with all good fiction, the human side is very present. Great concepts and higher truths are in this great work of Science Fiction, as it always is in the best of any kind of fiction. The characters are well written. The plot is great. One is held spell bound by it. A novel you cannot put down. And after finishing this great book, I begin reading it again. I will read it many times in my lifetime. Though Arthur C. Clarke is best known for his great story, 2001 A Space Odyssey, the City and the Stars is so superior. The City and the Stars makes 2001 look like a very simple science fiction story. In my opinion, this is the best science fiction story ever written.
Rating:
Summary: The best from the best
Review: What is it that is so fantastic about Arthur C. Clarke's writings ? Probably his clarity, scope and depth of vision. Or could it be the relentless power of his narrative. Or the sheer humanity of it ? I could go on. This book exemplifies all his greatest qualities and is his finest work...please buy it and be awed.
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Summary: The Futility of Progress
Review: While I agree with one of the earlier reviewers that character development is not Clarke's forte, this book is the clearest statement of the ultimate futility of material progress that I know of. Mechanical reincarnation assures the immortality of the inhabitants of Diaspar, but, alas, with no purpose! Indeed, the plot of the story requires the hero to appear in order to temporarily break the Diasparans' repetitious routine, which he does not find meaningful. For their part, the inhabitants of Diaspar, after reaching the ultimate in scientific progress, now have no desire to do anything but amuse themselves. Clarke has brilliantly anticipated the video game culture, no doubt. For all his polemic against religion in this book, Clarke's work is itself fundamentally about religion. Here in this work, Clarke exposes the futility of mere material existence once scientific progress has run its course. No doubt this leads him to think that ultimate progress must involve the mind becoming disconnected with the body altogether, as here or most insistently as in "Childhood's End." The despair that marks both works is only thinly covered by a veneer of scientistic optimism. It would appear that Clarke's study of Buddhism would have something to do with his writings, his pessimism about this world, his claim that disembodiment of mind leads to a higher but indescribable plane of existence, and, in "The City and the Stars," his interest in reincarnation and its consequences. This outcome is rather odd for this high priest of scientism and foe of traditional religion. "The City and the Stars" seems especially relevant today with the evident failure of the space program and the probable impossibility of any stable or lasting colonization of space by humans, because in this book the scientized humans have already reached this plateau. Today, our real earth is both closed and full, there are no more frontiers in it to explore, and expansion into space is not a possibility, as space has proven far more arid, desolate, dangerous, and inhospitable to human life than anyone could have imagined possible. Thus, we remain earthbound, to contemplate the possibilities (or the lack of them) in our own Diaspar, just as Clarke has so presciently anticipated in this book. I certainly hope it will be reissued in paperback; there is no doubt that it deserves that.
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