An edition of City (1952)

City

  • 4.5 (4 ratings) ·
  • 45 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 13 Have read
Not in Library

My Reading Lists:

Create a new list

Check-In

×Close
Add an optional check-in date. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals.
Today

  • 4.5 (4 ratings) ·
  • 45 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 13 Have read

Buy this book

Last edited by ImportBot
April 17, 2024 | History
An edition of City (1952)

City

  • 4.5 (4 ratings) ·
  • 45 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 13 Have read

Comment by John Clute:

We know better now, of course. But they still entrance us, the old page-turners from the glory days of American SF, half a century or so ago, when the world was full of futures we were never going to have. In the mid-1940s, when he began to publish the episodes that would be assembled as City in 1952, Clifford Simak, a Minneapolis-based journalist and author, could still carry us away with the dream that cars and pollution and even the great cities of the world – "Huddling Place", the title of one of these tales, is his own derisory term for them – would soon be brushed off the map by Progress, leaving nothing behind but tasteful exurbs filled with middle-class nuclear families living the good life, with fishing streams and greenswards sheltering each home from the stormy blast.

Fortunately, Simak soon gets past this demented vision of a near-future world saved by technological fixes, a dementia common then to SF writers and gurus and politicians alike, and launches into an astonishingly eventful narrative of the next 10,000 years as seen through the eyes of one family and the immortal robot Jenkins, and all told with a weird pastoral serenity that for a kid like me seemed near to godlike. In its course City touches on almost everything dear to 1940s SF, and to me remembering. Robots. Genetic Engineering. Space. Jupiter. Domed cities. Keeps. Hiveminds. Matter transmission. Telepathy. Parallel worlds. Paranormal empathy. Mutants. Supermen. It's all there, and, thanks to Simak's skilled hand at the wheel, it's all in place: suave, sibylline, swift. The whole is framed as a series of legends told by the uplifted Dogs who have replaced the human race, now gone for ever. They have been bred not to kill. At the end, only Jenkins remains to keep them from learning how to repeat history and die.

It all seemed immensely sad and wise then, but fun. It still does.

Publish Date
Publisher
Magnum
Language
English
Pages
248

Buy this book

Previews available in: English French

Edition Availability
Cover of: City
City
November 2004, Old Earth Books
Hardcover in English - Centennial edition
Cover of: Demain les chiens
Demain les chiens
February 18, 2002, J'ai lu
Mass Market Paperback in French
Cover of: City
City
1982, Magnum
Paperback in English
Cover of: City
City
1981, Ace Books
in English
Cover of: City
City
1954, Permabooks
in English
Cover of: City
City
1952, N. Doubleday
Hardcover in English - Book club ed.
Cover of: Demain Les Chiens
Demain Les Chiens
Publish date unknown, Editions 84
Mass Market Paperback in French

Add another edition?

Book Details


Table of Contents

A collection of 8 stories by Clifford D. Simak, each preceded by an explanatory prologue.
On a far future Earth, mankind's achievements are immense: artificially intelligent robots (the good and the wild robots), genetically uplifted animals, the legends and history of the ascendancy of Dogs who take over the earth, the emergence of the cobblies and the insistence on the law of not killing, interplanetary travel, genetic modification of the human form itself.
The cities of the world are deserted and automation has invaded every aspect of human life; the robots make spaceships; the ants create huge buildings on the remains of old towns.
But nothing comes without a cost. Humanity is tired, its vigour all but gone. Society is breaking down into smaller communities, dispersing into the countryside and abandoning the great cities of the world. As the human race dwindles and declines, which of its great creations will inherit the Earth? And which will claim the stars ...?
Contents:
City (1944);
Huddling Place (1944);
Census (1944);
Desertion (1944);
Paradise (1946);
Hobbies (1946);
Aesop (1947);
The Simple Way.

Edition Notes

Originally published, New York , Gnome Press, 1952.

Published in
London
Copyright Date
1952

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
813/.54

The Physical Object

Format
Paperback
Pagination
248p. ;
Number of pages
248
Dimensions
7 x 4.3 x .7 inches
Weight
.4 pounds

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL22778492M
ISBN 10
041706540X
ISBN 13
9780417065403
OCLC/WorldCat
16604572
Library Thing
18582
Goodreads
6477362

Source records

Better World Books record

Community Reviews (0)

Feedback?
No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
April 17, 2024 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 1, 2023 Edited by mheiman Merge works
October 9, 2012 Edited by Lou Beauregard added info, from: http://www.amazon.com/City-Clifford-D-Simak/dp/041706540X/
October 9, 2012 Edited by Lou Beauregard Added new cover
December 30, 2008 Created by ImportBot Imported from Talis record