The City, Not Long

Rating:
Summary: a tour de force - it must be read
Review: Following the Plague that destroyed most the inhabitants of America, the City of San Fransiscoe remains populated by artists, hippies and the like. An army general is on a course to re-unite the once great America and San Fransisco is the city next in line on his agenda - but the artists resist, not by military confrontation - but by 'fighting with their art and creativity.' The characters are so alive and energetic - the story is chilling, memorable and superbly told by Pat Murphy. This is one of the greats - not to be missed!!!

Rating:
Summary: Powerful, if a bit cliched -
Review: I first stumbled upon this book some seven-odd years ago, when I was just moving into the beginnings of a proverbial intellectual 'awakening.' I spent perhaps four months tracking it down, as it was out of print and not carried at my library; read it at least a half-dozen times while it was in my posession, and only begrudgingly gave it up when the time was due (though it was rather tempting to keep and fess up the library fine).

In hindsight, this book is idealistic in nature: It is a peaceful, love-beaded dystopian novel with more than its share of hope. It tells the story of a community of citizens who have migrated to San Francisco, in an event to both continue with their crafts (There are painters, sculpters, just plain tinkerers). They also attempt to organise themselves against the "General," a militaristic dictator-esque figure moving across America.

This settlement comes in the wake of an outbreak of plague, as a result of an altruistic attempt to bring peace to the world, and to the United States.

Although a children's book, this novel still stands out in my mind as being one of the most powerful books I have ever read. Rarely do a book's details stay with one for the better part of ten years, in the clarity that this one has. Well-worth tracking down, or buying used.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book, worth reading & re-reading!
Review: I've read this book a number of times since I first discovered it a few years ago. The story & characters stay at the edge of my memory and as the details get blurry, I take it out & read it again. Pat Murphy's description of San Franscisco as the artists transform it, is so vivid that I can see their art and understand its impact. It's an entrancing book -- I wish it had a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book, worth reading & re-reading!
Review: I've read this book a number of times since I first discovered it a few years ago. The story & characters stay at the edge of my memory and as the details get blurry, I take it out & read it again. Pat Murphy's description of San Franscisco as the artists transform it, is so vivid that I can see their art and understand its impact. It's an entrancing book -- I wish it had a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: A magical post-apocaliptic tale of San Francisco
Review: Set in San Francisco "not long after" most of the population has died. Some of the survivors have decided to stay in the City they love and have established an odd community of hippies, artists and misfits.
The plot centers around their decision to resist militaristic invaders on their own terms.

This is a lyrical and entrancing novel with a solid plot and interesting charachters. The subject matter could easily dissolve into New Age sentimentality but Murphy comes through with shinning colors, staying true to the characters while delivering an original and fascinating story with a poetic and mythological feel.

If you live in San Francisco you must read this. If you don't live here it'll make you wish you did.

Rating:
Summary: minimal-footprint war story - art vs. military
Review: So there's this plague, see, that wipes out about 99.9 percent of the population. San Francisco is a big artist commune - one group paints the Golden Gate Bridge blue. An army decides to take over. The ensuing war is one of the oddest battles ever fought - soldiers, cut down by tranquilizers, have the word DEAD painted on their cheeks, and are warned via a letter that if they don't consider themselves hors-de-combat, they may very well die for real next time. Other soldiers are dived-bombed with water balloons full of jasmine perfume and LSD. Probably the lowest body count of any book featuring battle scenes. I read this book on a whim and fell madly in love with it. I have to reread it again soon.

Rating:
Summary: minimal-footprint war story - art vs. military
Review: So there's this plague, see, that wipes out about 99.9 percent of the population. San Francisco is a big artist commune - one group paints the Golden Gate Bridge blue. An army decides to take over. The ensuing war is one of the oddest battles ever fought - soldiers, cut down by tranquilizers, have the word DEAD painted on their cheeks, and are warned via a letter that if they don't consider themselves hors-de-combat, they may very well die for real next time. Other soldiers are dived-bombed with water balloons full of jasmine perfume and LSD. Probably the lowest body count of any book featuring battle scenes. I read this book on a whim and fell madly in love with it. I have to reread it again soon.

Rating:
Summary: UnBelievable that I could have almost missed this
Review: The author, Pat Murphy has been one of my favorites for years. Lately I got to tracking down all that she has written and came upon this wonderful gem.
Other reviewers have reiterated the story for you - don't believe any of it until you have read it for yourself. The tease I will give you - I could not put it down.
I think it is the best book I have read in awhile (maybe 2 or 3 years) and I am an avid reader; at least a book a week sometimes a book a day. And I have read some good ones.
This book filled me with unaccountable glee and random bouts of laughing and crying. It was philosophically intellectual, artistically rendered in joy and hope, intertwined with magic and possibility. But mostly it is a story of the absolute reality of art and the responsibilities of artists; to change the world, make it over in the image that delights them the best, and nothing is ever the same afterwards. That is what this book did to me, and I am grateful.
But I am not selling my copy; it goes into the save forever to read over and over group.


Rating:
Summary: A delicious critique of post-apocalyptical fiction
Review: This is a wonderful and refreshing subversion of the post apocalyptical tradition, for which David Brin's The Postman stands as a paradigm for. Though at times The Postman is spiritual, it does portray the issues of national reunification after a catastrophe as a given and the achievement of that reunification (or resistance to it) as inevitably violent.

Though Kim Stanley Robinson's Wild Shore critiques this patriotic urge deliciously, only Murphy has managed to outright attack it. There are no natural or artificial forces making survival a struggle in Murphy's post-civilised Utopia. Instead, the San Francisco of this unspecified future is alive and well - albeit very underpopulated - and is in fact flourishing after a plague has indiscriminately wiping out all but an anarchic cross-section of artists. Cries for `Progress' and `Order' are the exception, and the majority feel "disorder works just fine."

Through her characters, Murphy could be imagined to be having an argument with other speculative fiction writers: "It seems we have very basic disagreement ... You seem to think that joining together into a larger and more powerful nation is automatically good ... Personally, I've always thought that nations were tremendously overrated."

The City, Not Long After asks what we would become outside of civilisation, and what San Francisco would be without the U.S. It provides a lovely answer.