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Our December 2021 read is The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke.

I read this one a few years ago. Although a solid 3 star read for me, I would not recognise it as 'his finest novel' mentioned here on GR.

My library has this book and I'll get it soon. I read a good bit of Clarke back in the day but don't think I read this.

I've been playing an SF video game recently. (It is good, but it is a big time sink!) One of the main quests is called "The City and TheStars". It has nothing to do with the actual story of this book.

In fact, most, or maybe all, of the quest names are references to classic SF books, sometimes with a twist, such as "Canid's Cradle" or "The Demolished Woman". I may post the list somewhere else because it is fun to see how many you can recognize.

I'm starting this next week.

I am a big fan of Sir Arthur so I am going to take this as impetus to read this title (and others).

Ed wrote: "may post the list somewhere else because it is fun to see how many you can recognize."

Looking forward to reading it!

I'm reading this version .

According to the cover, it is "as completely in tune with SF now as when it was first published 12 years ago."

Yay! I'm glad it hasn't aged much!

Haha! I started this a few days ago and so far it holds up really well. It always seems that these books can feel a bit dated when people start communicating with each other over long distances. Their fancy telephone communication technologies of the future usually get me.
I’m excited for this one. I recently read Childhood's End and really liked it.
Glad we’re reading this.

I just finished it. The novel was nice, the plot twist quite interesting and I guess a unique genre of SF fantasy (to not be confused with science fantasy like The Fifth Season), with own trickster and own great quest.

About aging well - yes and no. Yes to all concepts with eternal life, tech, ext. No with social - all councils are men-only for example and these stresses at the start like "Since her discomfort was entirely his fault, he handed over his cloak without a word. There was no trace of gallantry in this; the equality of the sexes had been complete for far too long for such conventions to survive. Had matters been the other way round, Alystra would have given Alvin her cloak and he would have as automatically accepted."

I zipped through the first half pretty fast. It is an easy read.

I can't help comparing it with Foundation, published about 5 years earlier. In F., there is a guy who can predict the many changes in history for bazillions of years into the future. In City and Stars, there is a city that has managed to remain exactly the same for bazillions of years. Neither idea is plausible to me. But both are interesting stories.

Also there is a sort of parallel between the Mule in Foundation and the Jester in C&S.

Clarke gives more autonomy to women. In Foundation, they are barely present at all. In C&S there are at least two who have important roles, and he claims that genders are treated equally in the city. (It doesn't seem to be actually true, but still, as one review says: "baby steps".)

Anyway, Clarke can keep me entertained.

Interesting. I’m only about 50 pages in and when I initially read that passage (I remember it) I found it to be very progressive. I haven’t yet gotten to any councils.

The council may include women. It isn't clear. Clarke refers to them as "reasonable men", but he may have been using the word "men" to refer to a group of mixed gender.

What I meant was that while both genders may be equal in this future society, Clarke gives almost all of the important parts of the story to men (and machines).

Ed wrote: "What I meant was that while both genders may be equal in this future society, Clarke gives almost all of the important parts of the story to men (and machines)."

We have several council members identified as he. Also in Lys: the people of Lys reacted to his presence, and then their response took a somewhat unexpected form. A group of five men emerged from one of the houses and began to walk purposefully towards him.

For me it shows that the author tried to be more representative, for which he ought to be lauded, but sometimes what is 'normal' for his time and place slips in. Note that Alvin then was taken to Seranis, who is a woman

Here's my take of a few years ago. I still haven't gotten around to re-reading it (and won't be for this): /review/show...
Quoting myself, "That I still have distinct memories of this classic novel, despite having last read it (I think) maybe 20 years ago, prompted me to bump it up to 4 stars, and mark it for another reread. Lys and Diaspar, calling the long-unused train, the young couple on the immaculate marble walls....

Note that "The City and the Stars"(1956) is a rewrite of his first novel, "Against the Fall of Night" (1953) -- the original title being the better one, I think". ...
Definitely a classic, and arguably his best novel. Would be considered a novella today, I think.

I very much enjoyed most of it, but I felt that it got too silly in the final 1/3. Vanamonde and the Black Sun were a bit too much for me.

Still, glad I read it.

A Clarke novel I haven't read before. Enjoyed it but I'm still trying to figure out what I think about Vanamonde as part of the story.

I read this a few months ago and enjoyed it much more than the other Clarke books I've read - Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise - probably because it's "softer" sci fi.

I liked the thought that had gone into how the city changes over time (e.g. having votes on art and construction). I often have trouble getting into the early 20th Century mindset regarding telepathy; physical implausbility aside, it seems to be seen as something that human evolution is "aiming towards", which I feel grates at even a basic understanding of natural selection.

I'm a little surprised to see telepathy in a Clarke novel. But the idea was very much in the air at the time. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other story where people telepathically communicate with robots.

Ed wrote: "I'm a little surprised to see telepathy in a Clarke novel. But the idea was very much in the air at the time."

Worth noting that this book was published in the 50's - and is in fact a rewrite of a story written in the 40's - whereas many of his other famous books were written in the late 60's onwards.

My review /review/show...

I read this a few years ago, and I wanted to fit in a reread this month but don't think that's going to happen. But at the time I really liked it a lot. I thought it was somehow greater than the sum of its parts, but even at the time I remember not really being able to pinpoint why I liked it so much. But it's interesting to see all of your reactions!

I said this in a different group, but here I go again....

Clarke says that the people in the city never get bored even after 1 bajillion years because they have access to plenty of old "sagas" and music. Apparently they don't feel the need to create much more. (Though they do seem to have some occasional new visual art.) That just felt so very wrong to me. Humans are simply not capable of living without creating and enjoying new stories.

He also explained that Lys and the city still have a common language. The language doesn't change anymore in either place because they have sound recordings. HA HA! Human language does not work like that!

Agree, Ed, with regards to telepathy, stories, and language. The art provides one outlet, at least, but it's surprising there's no further entertainment industry.

Ed wrote: " Humans are simply not capable of living without creating and enjoying new stories."

One may assume that the number of new stories that an individual can generate is limited (how often you read a new work of prolific SF writer and say - they can write better, their old stuff was better) so longer lifespan + rebirth + fear of change = they exhausted own creativity

Ed wrote: "The language doesn't change anymore in either place because they have sound recordings. HA HA! Human language does not work like that"

I agree that a language ought to change - see how Latin 'mutated' in mere centuries into French, Italian, Spanish, etc. Moreover 1bn year ought to make even physical changes in Lys, after all the earliest found hominid is just 1-2mn years ago, 1/1000th of 1bn

Handling languages has to be tough for SF authors. There's no realistic way to handle it & still have us understand it without learning a new language. That's too much work for everyone. A lot of fantasy novels try it & I've never been a fan. A few new words is fine, but more than that & I'm lost.

As has already been pointed out, languages change a lot & fast even when there's been plenty of written material around. I was lost when I first read Shakespeare until I'd read a couple of plays with explanations on every other page. According to a quick Google search, there are 225% more words in English now than in Shakespeare's time & he added over 1500 words to the lexicon. That doesn't take into account how the meanings/usage of words has changed, either.

In books like this, we'd be in his place trying to understand the modern language with all the new words for technologies we couldn't dream of & cultural changes too, if there was even a trace of reality. I'd rather suspend my disbelief.

That's why I suggest that 1bn year city is a SF fantasy, which shouldn't be confused with science fantasy like The Fifth Season

Jim wrote: "Handling languages has to be tough for SF authors. There's no realistic way to handle it & still have us understand it without learning a new language. ..."

I agree with that. I occasionally like books that explicitly deal with linguistic concepts. But I don't want every book to do that, or to create new languages.

It is just that Clarke's assertion that language would stay the same over a long time simply because there exist sound recordings is nonsense. He would have been better to just not say anything about why Lys and city people could understand each other.

There are other unscientific things as well. Like, all the oceans had completely dried out, and yet around Lys there were plenty of plants and animals. Where's that water coming from?

So yeah, this is SF fantasy, which is OK. But Clarke is often called a "hard SF" writer.

Oleksandr wrote: "That's why I suggest that 1bn year city is a SF fantasy, which shouldn't be confused with science fantasy like The Fifth Season"

What is the difference?

Ryan wrote: "
What is the difference?"

For me, science fantasy is where something outside science (magic in most general terms) is allowed. So science fantasy is a fantasy with thought out system of magic - where magic is a limited resource, not "i wish and it happens' as in classic fairytales. SF fantasy is where roughly 'scientific' world (i.e. there can be faster than light travel but not magic teleports), usually our Earth/universe future, but withy unrealistic details like 1bn years with zero change not only in biology but even in language. Of course this is my subjective sub-genring

Ed wrote: "Clarke says that the people in the city never get bored even after 1 bajillion years because they have access to plenty of old "sagas" ..."

I agree with you 100% on this critique.

Ed wrote: "He also explained that Lys and the city still have a common language. The language doesn't change anymore in either place because they have sound recordings. HA HA! Human language does not work like that!"

I disagree on this one. While ordinary spoken languages change rather rapidly, literary and liturgical languages are pretty stable. If you study classical Latin at university today, you would be more or less capable of communicating with someone who studied classical Latin in ancient Rome. Of course, you would not be able to speak to that person in their native dialect. But in our modern society, we use compulsory education to teach everyone the standard language, which is a pretty new development in human history, actually (French was still a foreign language to more than half of the population of France in the second half of the 19th century, for example).

Someone else above mentioned Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is often trotted out as an example of how quickly languages change. But Shakespeare was already hard for English speakers by the 18th century, when he was usually performed in rewritten editions! I would argue that Shakespeare was writing at a moment when English as a literary language was still changing rapidly, but that within a hundred years of his death, the language had largely stabilized in its familiar form, and 18th century novels are quite readable (albeit deathly boring, but that is a question of taste, not language, and speaks to your first point, not your second :) I would further venture that so long as modern standard English persists as a leading literary language, Shakespeare will remain hard but possible to read indefinitely. Nor would I hypothesize that English readers in 500 years will have much trouble with the books we write today. I would also hypothesize that if English did change, it would not be because it had gradually evolved to the point of incomprehensibility, but rather because of politics: some group speaking a non-standard spoken version of English would have to decide that they were going to replace the existing standard with its existing set of canonical texts, with a new standard and new texts.

All of which is to say, I think language actually does work like that. Lys and the City speak the same language because they have preserved a set of core texts (or in this case sound recordings) around which they have standardized their language. And while we don't know how sound recordings will effect the evolution of literary languages over centuries, texts alone can preserve a remarkable amount of continuity, as in classical / modern standard Arabic, for example.

Good points, BJ. Are you a linguist? I'd be interested to hear an expert's take on this question.

Ryan wrote: "Good points, BJ. Are you a linguist? I'd be interested to hear an expert's take on this question."

I'm not a linguist! I am a historian, so I spend a lot of time reading 17th and 18th century documents - but that probably gives me false confidence as much as it does actual insight into this kind of linguistic question! Also sorry for going on about it so at length, may have gotten a little carried away writing that yesterday :)

I'm also not a linguist, but am an avid reader of books on linguistics and languages. I find it fascinating.

Your points are valid, but I stand by my criticism of Clarke's idea. He stated, and I'm paraphrasing because the book is back at the library, that because recorded spoken texts existed, the language didn't change. At all. Over a billion years. That isn't realistic.

People in both groups may have been able to communicate by finding a common core language from the past, but they wouldn't just immediately understand each other in their normal daily speech. And that is the way Clarke presented it. They didn't have to make any adjustments to their speech to understand each other.

Some people in Europe continued to able to communicate in Latin long after anyone actually spoke that daily. And some people can communicate in classical Arabic even when they don't speak it daily. But not all speakers of local Arabic can do so.

Your example with French is interesting because that is the only second language I can read fluently. (And speak with difficulty.) Yes everyone is exposed to the standard in school. And there are French institutions that work hard to maintain a standard. And the publishing industry is very conservative (linguistically). Even science fiction books from the major publishers still have people speaking in ways that even the upper crust of French people today do not, and usually cannot, speak. Even so, the spoken language has deviated greatly from the standard. Pronunciation and slang, obviously. But much more. Whole verb tenses have ceased to exist in the spoken form.

You are absolutely right that we don't really know how recorded voices will affect the speed of language change. It will be interesting for future linguists to study that. But recording isn't likely to make language stand still.

Anyway, that is more info than necessary. I could accept that people would still be able, with some effort, to communicate. But not the idea that language stood still.

I guess you could make an interesting argument why language might stand still in this city. Namely, a lot of language change happens because people are lazy and simplify things in speaking or texting. If the city people live 99% of their lives communicating via a virtual world where their thoughts are translated by the computer into language, then the computer could very well put their thoughts into perfect standard grammar.

BJ wrote: "Ed wrote: "Shakespeare was already hard for English speakers by the 18th century, when he was usually performed in rewritten editions! ..."

I can understand Shakespeare better in French than in the original. I wish it would be performed more often in updated English. At least the most difficult parts should be changed.

Despite that fact that most of us have heard "Romeo, Romeo! Wherfore art thou Romeo!" hundreds of times, most don't understand what the word "wherefore" means. (It does not mean "where". She knows he is right there.) Misunderstandings quickly get worse with less familiar phrases, and when he makes puns.

We might as well be performing Shakespeare for Squirrels. They understand it about as well as many of us.

Ed wrote: "I'm also not a linguist, but am an avid reader of books on linguistics and languages. I find it fascinating.

Your points are valid, but I stand by my criticism of Clarke's idea. He stated, and I'm..."

Yea, I agree with you that Clark's idea that the fact of recording technology existing means languages is will just stop evolving and people will have no trouble understanding each other is pretty ridiculous! I guess its more like I'm coming up with my own "head canon" of how language change might be arrested. I think your last idea, about computers standardizing the grammar for people, is a very interesting thought.

And I do wonder if education alone could do the same, or something similar, if it were so much more regular and society were so much less diverse than today. Your example about French made me think of my own much-struggled-with second language, German. In spoken German, the genitive case (a way of indicating possession, related to 's in English) is no longer used in speech in most parts of the country (there are dialects where it is more natural, I believe), but it is common in writing. But I saw a meme once making fun of highly-educated, bourgeoisie people from Berlin for using the genitive case out loud! (very scientific evidence, no?) If everyone were highly educated, and there was no competing culture, I could imagine language change slowing dramatically as people stuck closer to the formal rules...

edit: but it's a bit of a stretch, I think I'm pretty much persuaded at this point that you're right, that even with a preserved literary core, spoken language will continue to change more or less rapidly!

Also a dictionary changes over time - not just new words for new things - from plane to smartphone but also what some verbs mean, etc. It can be seen reading a book from just 100 years ago - what if the time is 10 mn times longer?

Even now in the age of vast amounts of recorded video and audio, we see some words whose meanings are gradually being changed. Literally, nonplussed, and peruse, to name a few.

Sabri wrote: "Even now in the age of vast amounts of recorded video and audio, we see some words whose meanings are gradually being changed. ..."

My pet peeve is "decimate". How it changed from 1/10th to 'wipeout' is baffling & ridiculous.

Jim wrote: "My pet peeve is "decimate"."

That one's gone through a complicated journey; apparently it was once also used to refer to taxation (I guess 10%) as well.

Someone surprised me a few years back by pointing out that "ambivalent" is closer in meaning to "conflicted" than it is to "apathetic". I always used to use it to mean the latter, and I reckon it will mostly be used in that sense before long.

I feel like meanings changing in bizarre and unanticipated ways is one of those things we just have to accept.

Sabri wrote: "That one's gone through a complicated journey; apparently it was once also used to refer to taxation (I guess 10%) as well..."

I've always heard "decimate" originated from the Roman practice of punishing a group by killing every 10th person; a horrific, if survivable loss.

I thought a "tithe" was used when referring to a tax, although it seems to be mostly associated with religious taxes due to their long history & current use.

I've just finished reading the book and your conversations. You've raised a lot of interesting points about language, and I am fascinated at how languages change over time, sometimes very quickly.

I enjoyed the book, especially the first two thirds of the book-which focussed on Alvin's search for answers.
In one scene in Lys, Alvin eats "real food" that hasn't been made in a replicator-and preferred the artifical food. I wonder if his attitude to real food will change.

The two cities were certainly different!

Can anybody explain the connection between this book and Against the Fall of Night for me? I've always been confused about that.

The wikipedia page does a pretty good job.



"The City and the Stars is a complete rewrite of his earlier Against the Fall of Night, Clarke's first novel, but the main settings and characters are carried over from the first novel."

In "Fall", there is a man living in Shalmirane. In "City" it is a non-human creature.

In "Fall", to get the past the computer blockage in the robot, they build a duplicate robot without the block. In "City", they trick it by making it hallucinate, or something. (I've already forgotten.)

Etc. Differences, but the same story.

I've read both. My understanding, and I think this is based on Clarke's introduction to Beyond The Fall Of Night, is that Clarke wrote Against the Fall of Night first. then chose to expand it into a novel which he called The City and the Stars, making a few minor changes here and there as Ed pointed out above. Later (although no one asked), Gregory Benford wrote "Beyond the Fall of Night" as an authorized sequel to the original novella - it was published along with Against the Fall of Night in one volume titled Beyond the Fall of Night. I didn't strongly prefer one version of the story over the other, to be honest, and the Benford sequel is not required reading unless you are a completist.

I’m actually enjoying this one more than Childhoods End and I didn’t think that that would be the case. It leaves me a lot more to make up in my mind. I initially found Alvin to be a very passive character (maybe I read it wrong) and was a bit surprised at how quickly he became so resolute.