AvonVilla reviewed City by Clifford D. Simak
Strange and compelling, brimming with goodness and compassion
4 stars
A strange future history of life on earth and beyond, explicitly presented as a collection of myths. One of them is titled "Aesop", tempting you to think of it as a fable. But that's a deception. There is no simple moral to these stories. Although it's a short book, there's a lot to digest, and I will probably need a bit of time to order my thoughts about it.
A consistent line running through the tales is the way technological progress ends up being a dead end. First it's the demise of the city. Then there's the emergence of a promising new philosophy, Juwainism. It promotes empathy, but the goal of humanity is to harness it to accelerate development and progress. That goal fails, and when Juwainism finally takes hold, it has the opposite effect.
After humans have deserted the earth, or forsaken their own cursed humanity, a super-evolved society …
A strange future history of life on earth and beyond, explicitly presented as a collection of myths. One of them is titled "Aesop", tempting you to think of it as a fable. But that's a deception. There is no simple moral to these stories. Although it's a short book, there's a lot to digest, and I will probably need a bit of time to order my thoughts about it.
A consistent line running through the tales is the way technological progress ends up being a dead end. First it's the demise of the city. Then there's the emergence of a promising new philosophy, Juwainism. It promotes empathy, but the goal of humanity is to harness it to accelerate development and progress. That goal fails, and when Juwainism finally takes hold, it has the opposite effect.
After humans have deserted the earth, or forsaken their own cursed humanity, a super-evolved society of ants takes over the role of development and industry, persisting to the very end with a city of their own, an ambition which proves itself to be another inevitable journey to decay and extinction.
In between, there's compassion, loyalty, love, and even vegetarianism. A clear inspiration is the relationship between dogs and people. What would happen if that partnership evolved as canine intelligence arose to stand alongside its human partners? (Simak seems to prefer dogs to people, I feel certain that would be part of his biography in real life).
When the great works of all the species to have conquered the earth have come toppling down, there is memory, in the form of the ancient robot Jenkins, who has lived through it all and seen everything.
After reading SImak's "Way Station", I'm aware of the way nuclear holocaust shadowed his thinking. He avoids making war and conflict the driving force of his stories. The malign impetus of a doomed humanity is there in other ways, but he also finds hope and beauty at the core of existence.
I only take a star off because the book fails dismally in female representation. I am inclined to re-read the work of Cordwainer Smith, who also explored the way some of our best traits are expressed in the way we interact with our animal cousins.
