Rating: 
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
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece by one of the greatest SF writers of all time.
Review: No question about it. The most realistic long-term prediction for the human civilization and how it may end. Not from the technological point of view, but phychological...
Rating:
Summary: Classic pastoral SF
Review: Simak does not write pulse-pounding, viscerally riveting, edge of your seat novels. Blood is rarely spilled in his books, blows are hardly struck, weapons are more often than not never seen. But to be perfectly honest, you don't miss it, because his novels don't require such things. Most of Simak's best work was written in the late fifties and sixties, when the Cold War was in full swing and everyone was afraid of being blowns to bits at any second. Simak, in his wisdom, looked to the future and not just to ten years from now, but many thousands of years and he wrote to reassure us, and himself, that while things right not might be tense and it might be tense for our children and maybe even our grandchildren, in time it will all become better and lead to something grand. "City" is probably the culmination of that ideal, telling a future history of not just mankind, but the earth itself and the creatures that in the end inherit it. The novel is told as a series of short stories, all linked by a framing device where the current residents of the earth (intelligent dogs) debate whether these "legends" are truly real or simply the product of years of storytelling. Each story brings the timeline further down and we see man begin to leave the cities, then the world itself and eventually leave it in the care of the dogs and the intelligent robots that were once their servants (among other beings). Through it all Simak keeps a quiet, calm tone, which amazingly brings a sense of realism to a situation that could only be properly be described as fantastic. SF in the fifties tended to be a bit on the "goofy" side of things so it's a credit to Simak that not only can he make this at all believable but that he manages to make it oddly evocative and poetic, as Man passes the torch to the dogs and sort of bows gracefully off the world, barely leaving any memories of themselves behind. The result is a charming, thought-provoking Future History that relies more on quiet moments and the passing of time than on violence and bloodshed, while heralding back to the optimistic tendancies of older SF, a trait that has come back but with a more ironic slant to it. This novel feels honest and Simak effortlessly conveys his hopes for the future through the pages. Not in print anymore, but easily uncovered, it's worth seeking out for readers interested in the quiet, thinking type of SF that isn't quite as common as it used to be, and even back then, wasn't all that common.
Rating:
Summary: Classic pastoral SF
Review: Simak does not write pulse-pounding, viscerally riveting, edge of your seat novels. Blood is rarely spilled in his books, blows are hardly struck, weapons are more often than not never seen. But to be perfectly honest, you don't miss it, because his novels don't require such things. Most of Simak's best work was written in the late fifties and sixties, when the Cold War was in full swing and everyone was afraid of being blowns to bits at any second. Simak, in his wisdom, looked to the future and not just to ten years from now, but many thousands of years and he wrote to reassure us, and himself, that while things right not might be tense and it might be tense for our children and maybe even our grandchildren, in time it will all become better and lead to something grand. "City" is probably the culmination of that ideal, telling a future history of not just mankind, but the earth itself and the creatures that in the end inherit it. The novel is told as a series of short stories, all linked by a framing device where the current residents of the earth (intelligent dogs) debate whether these "legends" are truly real or simply the product of years of storytelling. Each story brings the timeline further down and we see man begin to leave the cities, then the world itself and eventually leave it in the care of the dogs and the intelligent robots that were once their servants (among other beings). Through it all Simak keeps a quiet, calm tone, which amazingly brings a sense of realism to a situation that could only be properly be described as fantastic. SF in the fifties tended to be a bit on the "goofy" side of things so it's a credit to Simak that not only can he make this at all believable but that he manages to make it oddly evocative and poetic, as Man passes the torch to the dogs and sort of bows gracefully off the world, barely leaving any memories of themselves behind. The result is a charming, thought-provoking Future History that relies more on quiet moments and the passing of time than on violence and bloodshed, while heralding back to the optimistic tendancies of older SF, a trait that has come back but with a more ironic slant to it. This novel feels honest and Simak effortlessly conveys his hopes for the future through the pages. Not in print anymore, but easily uncovered, it's worth seeking out for readers interested in the quiet, thinking type of SF that isn't quite as common as it used to be, and even back then, wasn't all that common.
Rating:
Summary: Simak at his BEST!
Review: Simak has alway been one of the best authors in the history of Sci-fi. City is compelling, facinating, and humorous. One of the few books that I have read more that 4 times!!
Rating:
Summary: When Sci-Fi was still trying to find a niche
Review: Simak was one of those who helped it muscle in to the human consciousness.If you've read the other reviews you'll have noticed a lot of people encountered the book first during the 1950s and 1960s, as I did. I'm uncertain about the others, but I was a lot younger in those days and Sci-Fi was a lot younger. A book of this genre didn't require as much to impress us. During the past few years I've made an effort to go back and read a lot of books I loved or hated when I was younger. A lot of those I loved then were pure drivel to me now, and a lot of those I hated cause me to realize what a shallow level I was reading on. Or maybe, what a few decades of life does to change perspectives about literary works. City's one of the books I loved as a young man that I'm happy to say is still in my list of books I'm happy to have encountered this lifetime. I think you'll be glad all the reviewers said such nice things about it if it causes you to get the book and read it yourself. What else can I say? I hope you read it now, then again when you're my age, and love it twice.
Rating:
Summary: The original futuristic history of mankind. Phenomenal!
Review: The dogs have inherited the earth, after being experimented on by man. They develop the ability to talk and now THEY are the upkeepers of our planet because man has taken to the stars and the "City" is a thing of the past.
My summary is poor, but this is my favorite all-time book
Rating:
Summary: A few good words about the book...
Review: The last thing that this book needs, is more words, because it's speaking for itself. But still, I can't be without saying, that this was one of the best science fiction books beside "The Time Ships" by Stephen Baxter or "The City And The Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke. Despite the fact, that it told the story about the end of the mankind, it gave me so much comfort and feeling of piece thinking about our future in Clifford D. Simak's way. And, beside all this, it was interesting to read for the facts seemed to be quite realistic in every way. Big thanks to Clifford D. Simak for writing the book!
Rating:
Summary: The Complete CITY
Review: The Old Earth Books edition of the classic CITY contains the rarely reprinted (& why is a mystery) final CITY story "Epilog" from Astouding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology and his 1976 Foreword. Great stuff. If you haven't read this you really should, you won't be disapointed. And do check out the other Simak reprint from Old Earth Books, the Hugo winning novel WAY STATION, with the best cover art work the book has ever had.
Rating: 
Summary: Dogs, Robots and Ants Inherit the Earth
Review: The thing that makes this book just a little difficult to get into at first is that the perspective is that of those who inherited the Earth from Mankind. The introduction at the beginning of the story is the kind of introduction you might find today in a book about legends and their sources. While the introduction slows down the reader's entry into the book, the reader later uses the introduction to help tie the eight short stories in the book together into a more coherent framework. What the introduction infers is that the storyteller is an intelligent canine, and the eight stories are the remaining fragments of stories regarding the perhaps mythic creatures called Man. The canine writing the story notes that there are conflicting viewpoints as to whether Man in fact ever existed, or was used to explain the origins of the intelligence of dogs. The perspective of the narrator in the initial introduction and in the introduction of each of the stories is quite interesting and gives the reader a unique perspective. The stories themselves are interesting, but venture beyond science fiction in a variety of ways. An explanation for ghosts is provided briefly. There are so many elements introduced that are beyond our current knowledge that the story is closer to fantasy. The stories cover genetically engineering dogs to have intelligence comparable to Man's. We see a society that is so wealthy that cities are no longer required and everyone lives on a country estate. Energy is abundant and incredibly cheap. Man has the ability to transform himself into other creatures. A class of man has mutated into incredibly intelligent and powerful beings that build doors to other worlds, and then they left the rest of mankind behind. Incredibly intelligent robots also appear throughout these stories. I kept wondering why a robot would serve man for millennia when it had intelligence that appeared to surpass man's, however, I had to suspend logic just a bit, though I also assumed that perhaps the robots had laws similar to those that Isaac Asimov later created for robots. A sort of toss in side story that appears in a couple of places is apparently advanced ants. The one flaw with that side story is that ants have existed for millennia in the tropics and have not had to hibernate, and they had all the advantages of the ants in the story. Once again Simak has included another fantastic story element. These stories were written in the 40s during a time of transition and development of modern science fiction. Science fantasy had yet to be defined, and many early works of science fiction were so bizarre that were they to be published today they might well be considered fantasy versus the previously all-encompassing science fiction category. However, even with the fantastic elements of the story the book is a good read. The perspective of the dogs in the later stories is plausible and interesting. I was most intrigued by the conclusion of the collection. I had anticipated several endings, and yet the actual ending was disturbing and somewhat sobering. Clifford D. Simak tried his very best not to be egocentric with respect to his species. I think that during the time these stories were written this collection was likely one of the more innovative and interesting works. Today the stories are a bit dated because we have accumulated another 60 years of knowledge. We have learned that hibernation is more difficult that we thought it would be at that time. We have learned that Jupiter does not have a solid surface, and the temperature on the planet is quite hot. It does not appear that cities are likely to be abandoned any time in the near (and from what we can tell, even the far) future. If you can ignore that knowledge, the stories turn out to be quite a bit of fun.
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