City (Collier Nucleus Fantasy & Science Fiction)

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Summary: The all time best science fiction book
Review: I cannot compare this book to any other I have read before or after. This book puzzles me and enlightens me at the same time.

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Summary: Please reprint!
Review: I have read this book about 20 years ago. It is a piece of a work. Unfortunetely, somebody takes my copy. I am looking for another one, but it is a hard task. If anyone have an extra copy, I would like to buy it.

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Summary: Great fantasy sci-fi
Review: I read City back in the late 60's. I was captivated by the tale, or several tales actually, that make up the story. I realized that trying to explain it to someone unfamiliar with it just made it sound silly (talking dogs, lopers on Jupiter, robot butlers, etc.) so I would just recommend it to friends and let them discover the magic. Most did. Simak himself said he wrote the story to reassure himself, in the darkest days of the cold war, that there was a better world coming. And, in some ways the book is dated to that period. But in more important ways it's timeless. There is a poignancy to the stories that's difficult to describe, but which moves the reader more than at first realized. This is what keeps me coming back, these many years later, to re-read them. They seem to stimulate feelings associated with similar settings and activities in the reader's life, almost like prosaic haiku poetry. There is no hard science fiction here, and no high fantasy. There are wonderfully written, fanciful tales that will enchant and entertain readers of many different ages. I highly recommend City, now a fantasy sci-fi classic, and to this reader, Simak's best.

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Summary: absolutely fantastic!! catches your breath away!
Review: I read this book quite a while ago, when I studied at high school (about 1990 or so). I was so much captured by the idea that in the future someone who will come to inhabit the Earth after us will doubt that humans existed after all!! It was fun to imagine some kind of a far future historian that will develop theories of what we watch now as a reality and will argue if they are true or false. I think that actually Simak described with irony what our generation of scientists tries to find out about the past history of earth and its inhabitants... Overall, I think the book is the greatest that I have ever read in the field of science fiction. Go for it!!! :))

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Summary: Disappointed
Review: I read this book years ago and it has stayed on my mind ever since. I have been searching for it at every book store I go to, but with no luck. (my inability to remember the author's name contributed to my faliure-I thought) So I finally had some time and searched through the 23,779 matches for "city" that amazon came up with. I am so disappointed to discover it is out of print! But, my search will continue (and now I know I am armed with the author's name!)

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Summary: A real treat
Review: I remember this book from when I was a child. My dad would read it to my brother and I before we went to sleep. I had a hard time finding a copy of it because, though I knew the author I only knew the title in French! I ordered one from a bookstore a few years back and I guess I was lucky for they were able to provide me with a copy. It is as good as I remember it perhaps even better in its Original Version.

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Summary: My All-Time Favorite Book
Review: I started reading Science Fiction 40 years ago with Clifford Simak's "All Flesh is Grass" and I have been hooked ever since. "City" is his best. I gave it to a new friend and when she said it was the Planet of the Apes with dogs, I was crushed. She wasn't my friend for very long! I still pull out my copy on cold winter nights, when I, too, can sit around the fire and listen to the tales of the dogs.

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Summary: These are the tales that dogs tell....
Review: I still get choked up when I think of generation after generation of highly evolved dogs sitting around a camp fire and debating over whether or not the mythical race of gods known as "man" ever really existed. Of course the same goes for the idea of robots carrying out man's dream of exploring the universe, as a sacred trust, long after men have ceased to be. There is also the supreme sacrifice of man to ensure that his old companions will develop to their full potential, without human interference.
As much as I love Simak's _Waystation_ and _The Goblin Reservation_, this book is probably his masterpiece. It is certainly his most epic, covering so many millenia. Here are themes that he would expand in such works as _Ring Around the Sun_, _A Choice of Gods_, and _Special Deliverence_. This is good, because you definately are left wanting more when you finish.
I think that it was Heinlein that once said, "If you don't like Simak, then you don't like science fiction." I couldn't agree more.

Rating:
Summary: The best!!!
Review: I've read this book at least 7 times, and as far as i am concerned it is one of the best sci-fi books ever written. It bogels my mind: not only the supurb writting but that Simak isn't read and appreciated by more people!!!!

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Summary: When your dog gets his learn on
Review: It would probably be appropriate to start this review with a critique of the science involved in City. Simak's grasp of some concepts seems elementary for his time and later developments put to ridicule other aspects of the book. Some examples would be the colonies on Jupiter. It would be very difficult for the Lopers to crawl around on Jupiter, as it has no solid surface. Even placing cognitive abilities aside, the idea of dogs being able to speak human tongues goes against all we know about the evolution of language and the human language organ as described by Chomsky. In one of the tales, some humans are described as choosing to go into some type of stasis referred to as sleep. Now, even given the improbability of human hibernation for short periods, longer hibernations would feature characteristics irreconcilable with the preservation of corporeal integrity. Muscles wither without stimulation. Stimulation keeps hibernation from happening. Plus, think of the bedsores after several thousand years!!!!!!! A full dissection of the scientific flaws of this novel would certainly run almost the length of the work in question.
That being the case, how does a novel with physical flaws as its very base merit a five-star review? That is a fair question for anyone who hasn't read City. Those who have read it know the answer: the stories. City is composed of eight interconnected tales each introduced by an anthrop/cynologist. The tales as described by the canine narrator, begin with the downfall of the city as a viable community and extend through a doggish explanation, and attempt at debunking, the lack of historical artifacts as proof of the fabled race of man. The prose is solid throughout but the literary style is secondary to the development of Simak views of humanity and what it has to offer to the rest of the world.
Simak's substitution of a race that appears, by human standards anyway, to be more arbitrarily brutal than man as its replacement is surely suspect but it is merely a prop for his story. The tales comprising City were originally published separately as stories in pulps in the 1940's during and immediately after World War II before being collected in book form by Gnome Press in 1952. Simak's hope for a bettering of mankind after the dark time he witnessed it pass through is obvious throughout the works. The evolution of humans (and other animals) beyond killing is one of many noble ideas presented. The one morally questionable idea is the development of a slave race of intelligent robots. The enslavement of beasts of burden is certainly bad enough, but enslaving something that understands its servitude is surely worse. Characters in the novel achieve peaks of knowledge and understanding but are unable to show it to their fellow man. They are able to perform unique acts of medical expertise but cannot reason out agoraphobia enough to leave the house to bring about philosophical revolution. They show all the flaws of humanity and some of its talents as well.
What I found most interesting of all the ideas present, was the call for the complete changing of the guard for humanity. Severing all ties to the old cadre as a means of preventing their poisoning of the next generation is a neat concept. One loses all the benefits they provided but also shucked are prejudices, irrationalities, and codes/rhythms of behavior that produced them, outside of whatever among them are biologically induced anyway. All in all, I would call this book a great read and were it not for the publication of The Demolished Man in the same year, it surely would have been the inaugural recipient of the Hugo Award. It has an appreciable depth of imagination. It has a solid construction of sentence and flows wonderfully. It stimulates where many merely entertain