City

By Clifford D. Simak and David W. Wixon

This award-winning science fiction classic explores a far-future world inhabited by intelligent canines who pass down the tales of their human forefathers.

Thousands of years have passed since humankind abandoned the city—first for the countryside, then for the stars, and ultimately for oblivion—leaving their most loyal animal companions alone on Earth. Granted the power of speech centuries earlier by the revered Bruce Webster, the intelligent, pacifist dogs are the last keepers of human history, raising their pups with bedtime stories, passed down through generations, of the lost “websters” who gave them so much but will never return. With the aid of Jenkins, an ageless service robot, the dogs live in a world of harmony and peace. But they now face serious threats from their own and other dimensions, perhaps the most dangerous of all being the reawakened remnants of a warlike race called “Man.”
 
In the Golden Age of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak’s writing blazed as brightly as anyone’s in the science fiction firmament. Winner of the International Fantasy Award, City is a magnificent literary metropolis filled with an astonishing array of interlinked stories and structures—at once dystopian, transcendent, compassionate, and visionary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jul 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504013000

Clifford D. Simak

During his fifty-five-year career, CLIFFORD D. SIMAK produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time. Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Book preview

City

Clifford D. Simak

In Memory of Scootie, Who Was Nathaniel

CONTENTS

Introduction

Editor’s Preface

Notes on the First Tale

I. City

Notes on the Second Tale

II. Huddling Place

Notes on the Third Tale

III. Census

Notes on the Fourth Tale

IV. Desertion

Notes on the Fifth Tale

V. Paradise

Notes on the Sixth Tale

VI. Hobbies

Notes on the Seventh Tale

VII. Aesop

Notes on the Eighth Tale

VIII. The Simple Way

Notes on Epilog

Epilog

About the Authors

Introduction

Clifford D. Simak did not dedicate his books very often, but he dedicated this one—to his dog. He loved dogs, and he made them prominent features of a number of his stories—and in this case he made it clear that the dog in question, Scootie, was the model for Nathaniel, who can be found in Census, the third episode in this book, and who became legend to succeeding generations of dogs.

Scootie was, yes, a Scottie—a black one (there is a photograph to prove it).

And yet, although dogs and a robot dominate the memories of this book for generations of readers, no dog appears in its first episode, City, nor does any robot, unless you want to count an automatic lawn mower.

This book, City, is undoubtedly one of the classics of the science fiction field; its images of talking dogs, of humans abandoning Earth, of a guardian robot, and of intelligent ants are iconic even today, more than sixty years after those concepts were created.

But City (the book) was not created as most novels are; rather, it was written bit by bit, in the form of eight short stories seemingly intended only for magazine publications across a string of nearly nine years beginning in 1943. (A ninth story would be added to the canon twenty-one years after the book’s publication in 1952 and then only because the author felt himself to have no choice but to do so; see his comments preceding that last story, Epilog.)

The book was created by stringing the separate stories in order and then inserting interstitial materials between them—materials crafted as notes written by doggish commentators long after the events in the stories had taken place. But few today realize that in doing so, the author altered some of the stories, particularly the earlier ones, from their magazine versions, which may be found in the collections of Simak short stories that will be published by Open Road Media. (Be not angry: The changes, which are here in this volume, were small, and did not affect the meanings of the stories.)

Another thing that most readers do not realize about City is that the fourth story, Desertion, was actually the first of the stories to be written: Cliff Simak’s journals show that it was sent to John W. Campbell Jr.—the editor of Astounding—in July of 1943. But it would not be published until November 1944, by which time Simak had written, and Campbell had purchased and published, three other stories of the series (City, Huddling Place, and Census). And this raises the question of whether the concept of the entire book was in Simak’s head (or Campbell’s) early enough to explain why Desertion was held for later publication—for certainly Desertion, one of the greatest stories the field has ever produced, should have been published earlier. And since it contains in itself no hint that it had a place in any series, there would have been no reason to hold it up unless it was recognized, even before publication, that it provided the platform needed for its sequel, Paradise.

Over the decades since its publication, thousands of words of analysis and criticism have been written about both the book version of City and the individual stories from which it was created. But few have thought much about, or commented on, those interstitial notes I mentioned, which were added by the author, presumably, sometime in the late forties or early fifties, while he was getting the stories into their ultimate book form. (Although Cliff kept, on a sporadic basis, journals that recorded some information regarding his writing, there seem to be none that covers that period.)

One of those who did appreciate those notes was Robert Silverberg, who, writing as Calvin Knox in 1959, found them to be magnificently funny, likening them to parodies of biblical analyses. More importantly, Silverberg correctly pointed out that the notes served to unify the book.

The academic critic Thomas D. Clareson once commented that even detailed summaries of the individual stories in the City series do not convey the impact of these stories when read within the narrative framework. And he was dead right.

In this case, perhaps the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. And maybe too little attention has been paid, in all those years, to the authorial work that created those notes. Does genius lie in them, made all the more powerful by their brevity? I wish one could know how long it took Cliff to write them … he had first to conceive of the ideas, and then to carry them out … how many drafts might there have been? Did he struggle? Did he draft, and draft again? He produced little by way of new works of fiction during that period of the late 1940s, but I am loath to speculate that he might have been hung up on making a book from the City stories … and it must be remembered that his first child was born in 1947, a second would follow in 1951—and in between he became news editor of the Minneapolis­ Star-Tribune. Surely he had a lot on his mind.

The stories themselves, I suggest—no matter how well done they may be as individual stories—are after all just individual stories; it is the notes, as Silverberg suggested, that place them in a context that lights them up with the extra layers of implied meaning that could not be gleaned from the stories themselves. And this idea seems to be somewhat corroborated by Thomas F. Monteleone’s comment that although a Simak story may be summarized easily, its quality must be determined by its rich characterization, human feeling, and intellectual depth.

In other words, you have to go beyond the plots to really appreciate Simak’s works: His plots, while sometimes great, are replicable; the humanity with which the stories are told is not. It is perhaps similar to the way one can sometimes see, and feel, the meaning, the depth, even the love, in a quiet face, in silent, bright eyes …

Although the first of the stories to be published, City, would initially be somewhat overlooked, critical acclaim for the stories of the series would soon begin to build—and by the time the book was published in 1952, a number of critics were pointing to the series as the sign that Simak, roughly twenty years after he had begun writing fiction, had become a major writer (although some of us would argue that those signs were there in earlier stories too). Anthony Boucher once called City the high-water mark in science fiction, and Clareson identified the element of Simak’s "harsh judgment in City of man’s surrender to technology as marking a turning point in magazine science fiction."

Cliff Simak had, as early as 1939, criticized those stories in science fiction that were mere pointless adventure or whose cardboard characters appeared only as mouthpieces for the exposition of some scientific theory or apparatus. But City changed that, demanding of its readers some understanding, a certain level of compassion for characters of types other than those then familiar to mainstream thinking. The City stories, by demonstrating a level of moral complexity seldom seen in science fiction up until that time, moved the genre away from being only about humankind’s selfish concerns and opened readers’ eyes to the concept of a world with other intelligences, or even without mankind.

In 1974 Clifford Simak would say that in preparing to write the ninth story, Epilog, he had reread the book versions of the series for the first time since its publication, and that thereafter he ached to rewrite the individual stories. At the time he wrote them, he said, he had felt that the stories represented an advance in his craftsmanship, a step forward in his maturity as a writer. And yet, recognizing that the authorial craft, when practiced by one who is, as he put it, worth his salt, never stands still, but always advances, Simak later would be able to see flaws in his prior work that the author he had become would never have allowed if he had been around earlier.

But Cliff had the wisdom to see that the river of time had taken those stories out of his hands and that if he tried to rewrite them, he would—while certainly making them better in some ways—be destroying things that he had gotten right in those first versions. It would be impossible, he saw, for him to apply to those stories the additional craftsmanship he had gained in the intervening time without coming out with vastly different results—for he was a different man, a different author.

Simply put, there was too much of value in City as it was and is to allow for a rewriting that, however much value it might add, would certainly destroy some of the past value. The City of 1952, Cliff saw, could, and would have to, stand on its own for all time.

David W. Wixon

2015

EDITOR’S PREFACE

These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story’s done they ask many questions:

What is Man? they’ll ask.

Or perhaps: What is a city?

Or: What is a war?

There is no positive answer to any of these questions. There are suppositions and there are theories and there are many educated guesses, but there are no answers.

In a family circle, many a storyteller has been forced to fall back on the ancient explanation that it is nothing but a story, there is no such thing as a Man or city, that one does not search for truth in a simple tale, but takes it for its pleasure and lets it go at that.

Explanations such as these, while they may do to answer pups, are no explanations. One does search for truth in such simple tales as these.

The legend, consisting of eight tales, has been told for countless centuries. So far as can be determined, it has no historic starting point; the most minute study of it fails entirely to illustrate the stages of its development. There is no doubt that through many years of telling it has become stylized, but there is no way to trace the direction of its stylization.

That it is ancient and, as some writers claim, that it may be of non-Doggish origin in part, is borne out by the abundance of jabberwocky which studs the tales—words and phrases (and worst of all, ideas) which have no meaning now and may have never had a meaning. Through telling and retelling, these words and phrases have become accepted, have been assigned, through context, a certain arbitrary value. But there is no way of knowing whether or not these arbitrary values even approximate the original meaning of the words.

This edition of the tales will not attempt to enter into the many technical arguments concerning the existence or nonexistence of Man, of the puzzle of the city, of the several theories relating to war, or of the many other questions which arise to plague the student who would seek in the legend some evidence of its having roots in some basic or historic truth.

The purpose of this edition is only to give the full, unexpurgated text of the tales as they finally stand. Chapter notes are utilized to point out the major points of speculation, but with no attempt at all to achieve conclusions. For those who wish some further understanding of the tales or of the many points of consideration which have arisen over them there are ample texts, written by Dogs of far greater competence than the present editor.

Recent discovery of fragments of what originally must have been an extensive body of literature has been advanced as the latest argument which would attribute at least part of the legend to mythological (and controversial) Man rather than to the Dogs. But until it can be proved that Man did, in fact, exist, argument that the discovered fragments originated with Man can have but little point.

Particularly significant or disturbing, depending upon the viewpoint that one takes, is the fact the apparent title of the literary fragment is the same as the title of one of the tales in the legend here presented. The word itself, of course, is entirely meaningless.

The first question, of course, is whether there ever was such a creature as Man. At the moment, in the absence of positive evidence, the sober consensus must be that there was not, that Man, as presented in the legend, is a figment of folklore invention. Man may have risen in the early days of Doggish culture as an imaginary being, a sort of racial god, on which the Dogs might call for help, to which they might retire for comfort.

Despite these sober conclusions, however, there are those who see in Man an actual elder god, a visitor from some mystic land or dimension, who came and stayed awhile and helped and then passed on to the place from which he came.

There still are others who believe that Man and Dog may have risen together as two co-operating animals, may have been complementary in the development of a culture, but that at some distant point in time they reached the parting of the ways.

Of all the disturbing factors in the tales (and they are many) the most disturbing is the suggestion of reverence which is accorded Man. It is hard for the average reader to accept this reverence as mere story-telling. It goes far beyond the perfunctory worship of a tribal god; one almost instinctively feels that it must be deep-rooted in some now forgotten belief or rite involving the pre-history of our race.

There is little hope now, of course, that any of the many areas of controversy which revolve about the legend ever will be settled.

Here, then, are the tales, to be read as you see fit—for pleasure only, for some sign of historical significance, for some hint of hidden meaning. Our best advice to the average reader: Don’t take them too much to heart, for complete confusion, if not madness, lurks along the road.

NOTES ON THE FIRST TALE

There is no doubt that, of all the tales, the first is the most difficult for the casual reader. Not only is its nomenclature trying, but its logic and its ideas seem, at first reading, to be entirely alien. This may be because in this story and the next a Dog plays no part, is not even mentioned. From the opening paragraph in this first tale the reader is pitchforked into an utterly strange situation, with equally strange characters to act out its solution. This much may be said for the tale, however—by the time one has labored his way through it the rest of the tales, by comparison, seem almost homey.

Overriding the entire tale is the concept of the city. While there is no complete understanding of what a city might be, or why it should be, it is generally agreed that it must have been a small area accommodating and supporting a large number of residents. Some of the reasons for its existence are superficially explained in the text, but Bounce, who has devoted a lifetime to the study of the tales, is convinced that the explanation is no more than the clever improvisations of an ancient storyteller to support an impossible concept. Most students of the tales agree with Bounce that the reasons as given in the tale do not square with logic and some, Rover among them, have suspected that here we may have an ancient satire, of which the significance has been lost.

Most authorities in economics and sociology regard such an organization as a city an impossible structure, not only from the economic standpoint, but from the sociological and psychological as well. No creature of the highly nervous structure necessary to develop a culture, they point out, would be able to survive within such restricted limits.

The result, if it were tried, these authorities say, would lead to mass neuroticism which in a short period of time would destroy the very culture which had built the city.

Rover believes that in the first tale we are dealing with almost pure myth and that as a result no situation or statement can be accepted at face value, that the entire tale must be filled with a symbolism to which the key has long been lost. Puzzling, however, is the fact that if it is a myth-concept, and nothing more, that the form by now should not have rounded itself into the symbolic concepts which are the hallmark of the myth. In the tale there is for the average reader little that can be tagged as myth-content. The tale itself is perhaps the most angular of the lot—raw-boned and slung together, with none of the touches of finer sentiment and lofty ideals which are found in the rest of the legend.

The language of the tale is particularly baffling. Phrases such as the classic dadburn the kid have puzzled semanticists for many centuries and there is today no closer approach to what many of the words and phrases mean than there was when students first came to pay some serious attention to the legend.

The terminology for Man has been fairly well worked out, however. The plural for this mythical race is men, the racial designation is human, the females are women or wives (two terms which may at one time have had a finer shade of meaning, but which now must be regarded as synonymous), the pups are children. A male pup is a boy. A female pup a girl.

Aside from the concept of the city, another concept which the reader will find entirely at odds with his way of life and which may violate his very thinking, is the idea of war and of killing. Killing is a process, usually involving violence, by which one living thing ends the life of another living thing. War, it would appear, was mass killing carried out on a scale which is inconceivable.

Rover, in his study of the legend, is convinced that the tales are much more primitive than is generally supposed, since it is his contention that such concepts as war and killing could never come out of our present culture, that they must stem from some era of savagery of which there exists no record.

Tige, who is almost alone in his belief that the tales are based on actual history and that the race of Man did exist in the primordial days of the Dogs’ beginning, contends that this first tale is the story of the actual breakdown of Man’s culture. He believes that the tale as we know it today may be a mere shadow of some greater tale, a gigantic epic which at one time may have measured fully as large or larger than today’s entire body of the legend. It does not seem possible, he writes, that so great an event as the collapse of a mighty mechanical civilization could have been condensed by the tale’s contemporaries into so small a compass as the present tale. What we have here, says Tige, is only one of many tales which told the entire story and that the one which does remain to us may be no more than a minor one.

1

CITY

Gramp Stevens sat in a lawn chair, watching the mower at work, feeling the warm, soft sunshine seep into his bones. The mower reached the edge of the lawn, clucked to itself like a contented hen, made a neat turn and trundled down another swath. The bag holding the clippings bulged.

Suddenly the mower stopped and clicked excitedly. A panel in its side snapped open and a cranelike arm reached out. Grasping steel fingers fished around in the grass, came up triumphantly with a stone clutched tightly, dropped the stone into a small container, disappeared back into the panel again. The lawn mower gurgled, purred on again, following its swath.

Gramp grumbled at it with suspicion.

Some day, he told himself, that dadburned thing is going to miss a lick and have a nervous breakdown.

He lay back in the chair and stared up at the sun-washed sky. A helicopter skimmed far overhead. From somewhere inside the house a radio came to life and a torturing clash of music poured out. Gramp, hearing it, shivered and hunkered lower in the chair.

Young Charlie was settling down for a twitch session. Dadburn the kid.

The lawn mower chuckled past and Gramp squinted at it maliciously.

Automatic, he told the sky. Ever’ blasted thing is automatic now. Getting so you just take a machine off in a corner and whisper in its ear and it scurries off to do the job.

His daughter’s voice came to him out the window, pitched to carry above the music.

Father!

Gramp stirred uneasily. Yes, Betty.

Now, father, you see you move when that lawn mower gets to you. Don’t try to out-stubborn it. After all, it’s only a machine. Last time you just sat there and made it cut around you. I never saw the beat of you.

He didn’t answer, letting his head nod a bit, hoping she would think he was asleep and let him be.

Father, she shrilled, did you hear me?

He saw it was no good. Sure, I heard you, he told her. I was just fixing to move.

He rose slowly to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. Might make her feel sorry for the way she treated him when she saw how old and feeble he was getting. He’d have to be careful, though. If she knew he didn’t need the cane at all, she’d be finding jobs for him to do and, on the other hand, if he laid it on too thick, she’d be having that fool doctor in to pester him again.

Grumbling, he moved the chair out into that portion of the lawn that had been cut. The mower, rolling past, chortled at him fiendishly.

Some day, Gramp told it, I’m going to take a swipe at you and bust a gear or two.

The mower hooted at him and went serenely down the lawn.

From somewhere down the grassy street came a jangling of metal, a stuttered coughing.

Gramp, ready to sit down, straightened up and listened.

The sound came more clearly, the rumbling backfire of a balky engine, the clatter of loose metallic parts.

An automobile! yelped Gramp. An automobile, by cracky!

He started to gallop for the gate, suddenly remembered that he was feeble and subsided to a rapid hobble.

Must be that crazy Ole Johnson, he told himself. He’s the only left that’s got a car. Just too dadburned stubborn to give it up.

It was Ole.

Gramp reached the gate in time to see the rusty, dilapidated old machine come bumping around the corner, rocking and chugging along the unused street. Steam hissed from the over-heated radiator and a cloud of blue smoke issued from the exhaust, which had lost its muffler five years or more ago.

Ole sat stolidly behind the wheel, squinting his eyes, trying to duck the roughest places, although that was hard to do, for weeds and grass had overrun the streets and it was hard to see what might be underneath them.

Gramp waved his cane.

Hi, Ole, he shouted.

Ole pulled up, setting the emergency brake. The car gasped, shuddered, coughed, died with a horrible sigh.

What you burning? asked Gramp.

Little bit of everything, said Ole. Kerosene, some old tractor oil I found out in a barrel, some rubbing alcohol.

Gramp regarded the fugitive machine with

Reviews for City

[elenchus_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Simak wrote a framing story to prepare eight existing stories for publication as a fix-up novel in 1951, and City has proven to be one of the enduring such efforts. Later he wrote an Epilog, a ninth story missing from my edition; it isn't clear it adds much to the significance of the original story cycle. The eight were each published in Astounding under editorial direction of John Campbell, curious how much Simak envisioned them of a piece, rather than being unrelated stories forcibly to be retrofitted afterward. For example, the dogs don't appear until the third story -- odd for what seems so central an element in the overall scenario.Simak's descriptions of Jupiter involve domes set on firm ground and with crystalline cliffs nearby, none of which exist according to current science. Evidently Simak imagined the ammonia atmosphere hid a solid planet, rather than the gas giant with (perhaps) an ocean of liquid hydrogen behaving like molten metal. As with most science fiction, though, the bits he got wrong are trivial when assessing the work overall. City is a novel of ideas, more about what it is to be a person and part of humanity, what is unavoidably caught up in the species and what might be changed, than anything in the literal environment or technology.In the Foreward, Simak claims the fix-up was written as no sort of protest, but as means of escape, given the disillusion that World War II brought (his word). Fitting then, that the novel ends with the sentient dogs escaping from this world into another. Humans may not be able to escape our fate, defined by innate aggression and an attendant loss of purpose once our post-scarcity civilization provides for all our essential needs -- but it seems we may help enable others to escape. In this way, perhaps, human culture outlasts humanity itself. Or that's one scenario that Simak paints for us.

[ailurophile-709426 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was very disappointed in this book. The decline and fall of humanity, and its replacement by dogs as earth's dominant life form, was an interesting premise. But I do not think it was well developed here. The rationale for humanity's downfall was unconvincing. The description of how dogs became sentient and capable of speech, as described in the text, seems to be a primitive kind of Lamarckianism, which had already been discredited at the time the stories were written. One plot element - the transmutation of human beings into "Lopers," organisms capable of living on Jupiter - was presented with so little context that it smacked of a technological Deus ex Machina.

I have read other works by Simak and enjoyed them. I also know that many people like City. So I was surprised to find it - at least, for me - so unsatisfying.

[liscarey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a collection of connected short stories and novellas, recounting the decline of the civilization of Man and the rise of the civilization of Dogs. Obsolete usage intentional; these stories were written in the 1940s, with a couple of exceptions, and the underlying viewpoint is that of a midwestern American man of that era, born in 1904. In the case of Simak, that's a compassionate, kindly, humane, even in many ways progressive viewpoint, but it's not the viewpoint of someone whose formative years were the 1960s or later.These stories chronicle thousands of years of history in relatively brief glimpses of a total of nine short stories and novellas, and the "notes" that tie them together and provide added context, to make them a novel. We follow the men of the Webster family; the Webster family's robot and household retainer, Jenkins; and the dogs. Or, as they start to become beginning in the third story, the Dogs, the uplifted species that will succeed Man.The first two stories show the start of the unraveling of human civilization, due to, in fact, its success. Nuclear power as an energy source, creating wealth and independence from the need to gather in cities, combined with the existence of nuclear weapons, making cities fatal places to be if there's ever another war, leads to people dispersing into the countryside. Land is cheap outside the cities, and every man can buy acreage and build a luxury estate for his family. (And yes, the use of gender and possessive in that sentence is deliberate. As noted above, Simak's a good man, but not a man of even the late 20th century.) As technology develops (largely undescribed, but we see what are videophones more advanced than we have but entirely recognizable, as well as robots with AI that's still just a happy daydream for us), no one needs to leave home for any of the essentials or luxuries of life, and many don't. Agoraphobia becomes a significant and common problem, which has crucial plot implications in one of the stories, with consequences that reverberate down the centuries.Seeing the flaws in human beings, one of the Websters, Bruce Webster, starts to work on the dogs, giving them the ability to speak, and the ability to read--including the physical modifications necessary to make these things physically possible for them, not just intellectually possible. We learn of, and encounter, the mutants, humans with far greater intelligence, and lacking the human instinct to gather and connect with each other. In each story we see the dogs on the road to becoming Dogs, advancing in intelligence and understanding. A crucial turning point is the story, "Desertion," where humans on Jupiter are sending out exploratory missions of humans transformed into lifeforms able to live on Jupiter outside the human domes--for the purpose of reporting back, with the awkward complication that none of them do. Finally the head of that project goes out himself, with just his dog, Towser, leading to the complete upending of the progress of humans toward dominating the solar system and expanding to the stars.The notes frame these stories as the myths and fables of Doggish civilization, in a time when Dogs are pretty sure that Man is only a myth, a tribal legend from the early days of their race, before civilization developed. The one continuing character who ties all the stories together is Jenkins, the robot who served the Websters, and then inherited their responsibility to help the Dogs along their own path. There's an underlying sadness in these stories, a certain pessimism about humankind, intertwined with a love for both humans and dogs.What's missing, almost entirely, is women. Women are mentioned from time to time, but there's only two women who become in any way real characters with their own personalities and views, and only one of them is outside of the roles of wife, girlfriend, daughter, secretary. I love these stories; I don't love that aspect of these stories. These are still fine and much-loved stories, but they are also period pieces, and should be approached with that in mind.Still very much recommended.I bought this audiobook.

[figre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Some trips into the past do not go so well. You revisit old haunts and all that exists are the creaky ghosts. You see old friends, the memories don’t gibe, and you remember why you left in the first place. And you reread books you hold with fond memory (revisiting the old haunt and seeing old friends within) and the clunks and chains of old age drip from the page.Put more simply, books remembered fondly do not often age well.And then…and then…and then. Then there are those times when you are reminded why a book was a classic when it came out and why it should still be considered one. City is one of those books. Yes, there are a very few parts that creak, but they creak very softly. And that still makes it better than the majority of books that clunk upon the first reading. And the overall story (and storytelling) does more than hold up – they hold their own against anything else currently being written.The story seems simple. Man helps dogs evolve, man runs off into the stars (kind of), and the dogs take control of the natural earth…for a while. But that is short shrift, a glancing blow at what is going on here. The novel shows us the evolution of multiple species in a series of eight tales – stories the dogs tell around the fire. And each story contains volumes of information, all plotted and played out simply, but containing deep concepts and idea – some pursued; some left for us to ponder on our own. In a style Simak uses in many of his stories and novels, ideas are buried within ideas. Some are explored and some questions are left unanswered. What is really going on in Jupiter? Where did the mutants go, and why? What are the cobblies and how do they exist in the alternate worlds? What are the robots doing? And what about the ants? All of the above would probably cause you to expect a 900-page doorstop of a book. But that is what is so amazing about this novel. It tells this broad, sweeping story in just 255 pages. There is much to explore. And each section could easily have been its own book. But that is not what Simak is doing here. (And, back when this was written, it couldn’t have been done.) Thousands of years pass, uncountable changes occur, and Simak holds it all together in the eight tales the dogs tell. Yes, I know part of this is a function of the business side of science fiction in the 40s – serialization and writing short stories that could be brought together as a novel. But this is an example of how it can work to the good.There is a good chance anyone actually reading this review already knows of City. But if you do not, or you’ve heard about it and always wondered, then do yourself the favor of visiting this City. And, if you have read it before and wonder if the old neighborhood is still the same, well, actually it is. The changes have all come from you. And that only makes it better.

[john_warner-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The initial eight tales in this fix-up science fiction novel is the product of its golden age. All were published within Jack Campbell's Astounding Magazine. The final story, "Epilog" was added as a tribute to Jack Campbell when he died. Although differing stories, several contain reoccurring characters including Bruce Webster and his robot servant, Jenkins. Webster, whose name becomes over time synonymous as "humans." The patriarch Webster is a man reminiscent of an earlier times when Earth cities existed. Webster is worshiped by dogs in later stories since he surgically enables the dogs for speech and human-like vision. The stories in their entirety covers a time-span of 10,000+ years.A foreword by the anonymous editor introduces the stories as a legendary saga frequently told by the dogs around a campfire. Man has been gone so long from the earth that the stories are considered more myth than history. The literary history and structure has been studied and analyzed by historians such as "Bounce" and "Rover." Each of the stories is introduced with commentaries by future dog historians similar to humans who might provide commentaries about Greek myths. The initial stories deal with humans coping with modern technology. In the 1990s, families being able to afford nuclear-powered helicopters have extended the distances each can live similar to how the automobile created the suburban migration. Additionally, traditional farms have died with the rise of hydroponics freeing up land in the country for relocation resulting in the end of the cities. (One of the pleasures to reading classic science-fiction is discovering how right and wrong, such as in this case, the author can be about their speculations).The expansion continues with man leaving Earth in droves for other planets in the Solar System, especially Jupiter. Initially, man occupies Jupiter in domed cities; however, soon the human physiology is adapted for Jovian atmosphere through "converters." One particular poignant stories is "Desertion" when men are converted, exit the domes, but fail to return, causing the scientists to wonder what happened to them.Clifford Simak is best known for his City short stories, who was awarded the 1952 International Fantasy Award. If you are interested in the writers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Theodore Sturgeon, you need to include this novel as one of your choices.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

City by Clifford D. Simak is a collection of science fiction stories that were originally published separately between 1944 and 1951, along with brief notes on each of the stories. These notes were written in order to link the stories into one novel. In 1973, a further story called “Epilog” was written and later added. These stories are progressive and tell of a world where humans have developed technology to a point where society becomes more and more isolated until eventually mankind simply dies out because of loneliness and isolation. A different life-form then rises to become the dominant species and in this story that species is a pacifist society of dogs. Thousand of years pass by and the dogs are now dealing with another rising species, ants. While humans would have been quick to eliminate this threat, dogs do not believe in killing for any reason and so they must come up with a different solution. I took two meanings from these stories, first, I felt Simak was showing his concern over mankind’s every increasing need for technological progress, fearing it would carry mankind to a point where we no longer needed to interact with one another. Secondly, these stories show his feeling that humans are unable to live at peace, not only among themselves but with any other species as well. City is a serious social commentary that was quite visionary for it’s time, but I never quite swallowed his premise and found the book quite dated.

[alexezell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This collection of stories stands out to me more for its structural elements than for its plot. There's a lot to consider here based on the context (post-WWII America) and the structure. Each story is prefaced with a short essay written by a critic/historian who seems to be trying to place the stories in a framework of what is true/real and what is merely myth. It seems to be intentionally mirroring a lot of writing that happens about the Bible or other religious texts. Given that these essays are written by the far-future descendants of the dogs whose origin story (myth?) is contained within the stories, there are quite a few layers to unpack. So, then, there's the plot itself which is interesting but is in full service of the social and cultural points being made. This is writing that rewards close reading as the symbolism and metaphor are combined with a wry humor that slides by unnoticed on occasion.

[unclebob53703 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very well written, I love his style, but definitely a downer of a book, with each story detailing some human failure. He really makes you feel the loneliness and desolation of the centuries, even when his characters are machines or animals. The "notes on the tales" add a certain playfulness, as he explains what the dogs think of the tales. My copy doesn't contain the ninth tale, added years later, and I'm a little peeved since it's an Easton Press special edition published after that tale came out. Feel like somebody didn't do their homework, as this added tale is even mentioned in Robert Silverburg's introduction--note to Easton Press: You probably shouldn't mention something in the intro to the book that you haven't put in the book.

[jameshold-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Simak tries to write 'great' tales. He does better when he simply writes 'good' ones.

[baswood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Published in 1952 this is another novel from the science fiction masterworks series, which according to wiki:“began in 1999 and comprises selected pieces of science-fiction literature from 1950 onwards (with a few exceptions). The list was compiled by the managing director of Orion Books, Malcolm Edwards, with the help of "leading SF writers and editors" and the goal of bringing important books back into print. The list was described by science fiction author Iain M. Banks as "amazing" and "genuinely the best novels from sixty years of SF”City is definitely worth its place in the 170 odd books that now form the masterworks series. It is a collection of eight short stories linked by generations of one family and covers a 12000 year span of the future of the human race and their future is not great. Simak’s theme that man is a self destructive animal is present in nearly all of these stories. Each tale is forwarded by a short essay written by a representative of the dogs at a time in the far distant future when the existence of man no more than the stuff of myth and legend. The stories are tales that the dogs tell their pups when they are close together in the family circle and the inevitable questions arise:“What is Man?“What is a city?“What is a war?”The Webster family are the anti-heroes of the tales; they hold positions of power and influence and it is to some extant the result of their decision making that leads to man no longer being present on earth. Dogs, ants and robots are the inheritors of a world where killing is almost unknown.This book is very much of it’s time with Simak’s use of generations of one family giving the whole book a sense of home spun story telling. It does not pretend to be great literature but it is well enough written and the forward progression of the tales with an intelligent linking device provides an expectation of things to come. No hard science fiction, no over the top moralising just a series of intriguing stories with some interesting ideas. A four star read.

[theampersand · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm giving this book three and a half stars mostly because I'm more of a literary type than a science fiction fan, and there are stretches in "City" where it feels like the author is more interested in making an argument than relating a story: telling instead of showing, in other words. But "City" is still full of interesting ideas, and once in a while, especially in the book's latter stories, the author manages to communicate them in a way that might leave the reader feeling spooked and perhaps saddened. "City" is a good example of how science fiction can help answer both literature's most important question -- what does it mean to be human? -- and one of science's central imponderables -- will the human race survive? "City was written in the shadow of the Second World War, and it shows: Simak's view of human nature is exceedingly bleak. He sees humanity as fundamentally self-destructive, the bearer of an ineradicable tragic flaw. The book spends much of its time wondering what sort of civilization might have better chances of survival in the long term. A race of mutant humans? Dogs? Robots, perhaps? The idea that humans might be replaced by some other civilization seems not to trouble the author at all, which suggests a commendably clear-eyed view of things, considering the fact that the book was written in the late nineteen forties, and shows an excellent understanding of what often calls deep time. What's a thousand years to a robot, after all? The author's literary executor notes in the introduction, "City" was perhaps one of the first works of science fiction to shift its focus from humanity to a more inclusive view of life in all of its forms. Simak deserves credit for putting real effort into imagining into a society run by these other beings might be like and what its values might be. In other words, he writes these non-human races from the inside out, which takes real imagination.The author's not afraid to blur his categories, either, which sometimes makes the book truly fascinating. Throughout the book, and even as millennia pass, some traces of values and practices that their human creators imparted to the races they created -- super-intelligent dogs and robots -- remain. Like Brian Aldiss's "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand," "City" imposes a eons-long plot structure on what was originally a collection of stories, and it's a much better book for it, and not just because a text written hyper-intelligent canines arguing about whether the human race ever existed is slyly humorous in its own right. In "City," dogs and robots pass down myths and stories whose origins are unknown to them. They keep traditions and protect places and things whose original purpose has been forgotten. Simak seems to be asking how history turns into myth and how the values that myth creates can help hold a society together. Robots take on human attributes, while dogs, try as they might, struggle to eradicate their past roles as pets and helpmates to humans. Simak shows how cultural tendencies might echo down the centuries. The prose may be workmanlike, but there's a lot of food for thought in these stories. Recommended to readers who, like myself, are trying to escape the carefully delineated preserve of literary fiction to see what's out there in other genres.

[ardvisoor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For me there is always a rich taste in classic Sci Fi which I can’t find in recent stories. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy modern sci-fi books as much but there is always a nostalgic feeling in reading classic Sci Fis. City is no exception. Eight different but related stories told in a future time which there is no sign of man on earth. As stories proceed we see how earth become what it is then.Dogs has inherited the earth and they have these stories as historical documents and there theories to believe them or not…."So long ago, thought Jenkins. So many things have happened, Bruce Webster was just starting to experiment with dogs, had no more than dreamed his dream of talking, thinking dogs that would go down the path of destiny paw in hand with Man… not knowing then that Man within a few short centuries would scatter to the four winds of eternity and leave the Earth to robot and to dog. Not knowing then that even the name of Man would be forgotten in the dust of years, that the race would come to be known by the name of a single family."

[mathmaverick-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very well written and interesting collection of short stories. They tie together well, making a very cohesive book. Recommended for all and well worth the read.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales the pastoral and pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man. Each tale is preceded by doggish notes and learned discussion.As the tales unfold, they recount a world where humans, having developed superior transportation, have abandoned the cities and moved into the countryside. Hydroponic farming and decentralized power allow small communities to become self-sufficient. In the beginning the driving force for dispersion is the fear of nuclear holocaust, but eventually humans discover they simply prefer the pastoral lifestyle.The tales primarily focus around the Webster family, and their robot servant, Jenkins. The name Webster gradually becomes "webster", a noun meaning a human. Similar themes recur in these stories, notably the pastoral settings and the faithful dogs. Each successive tale tells of further breakdown of urban society. As mankind abandons the cities, each family becomes increasingly isolated. Bruce Webster surgically provides dogs with a means of speech and better vision. The breakdown of civilization allows wandering mutant geniuses to grow up unrestrained by conventional mores. A mutant called Joe invents a way for ants to stay active year round in Wisconsin, so that they need not start over every spring. Eventually the ants form an industrial society in their hill. The amoral Joe, tiring of the game, kicks over the anthill. The ants ignore this setback and build bigger and more industrialized colonies. It is notable that over time the past is forgotten by the dogs. In the penultimate tale entitled, ironically, Aesop the narrative says "there wasn't any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one's mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time." (p 188) The memory of the past is beyond the stage where it could be reconstituted by the taste of a madeleine. Not even Proust's creation Marcel would be successful here. (In Search of Lost Time: "And as soon as I had recognised the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated segment which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine.")By the end of the last story even the man-made robots begin to wear out. And the word man is reinvented to be defined as "an animal who went on two legs". The story becomes so animal-centric it reminded me of a shorter and different story that shared a similar perspective, Orwell's Animal Farm. Simak's work is another literary masterpiece.

[benkline · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting way of looking at the end of humans on Earth. Dogs and ants and robots taking over. The short story form written with scholar notes and formed into a full novel was both new, different, and interesting.

[jaddington-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I fell in love with this before I completed the first story. How can one not thoroughly enjoy the perspective of dogs regarding humans. Better yet...they doubt that we were ever real. Just a myth. Love it. And and lets not forget the robots. Each story stands on its own, yet they are all linked together. I am not a short story reader, but I could not stop reading these. I will search out of of Mr.Simak' works to read.

[rlangston-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Deep, cohesive and ambitious themes, reminiscent of much later writing - incredible to think this was written in 1952.

[brucecoulson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's hard not to like a novel which takes a classic phrase that condemns change and the future, and makes a good story about it. (No spoilers; read the book and think about it.) Some of the best commentary on people comes from humor, though, and City has much to say about humans, sentience, ecology, and society.

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The back cover of this refers to it being "Back in print by insistent demand, here is your chance to read this International Award winning science-fiction classic." It's indeed a re-issue, though, of the first paperback printing of the collection (which was published in 1952).City won the "International Fantasy Award" for 1953 (very short lived award, ranging from 1951 to 1957). I'm basing the 1971 publication on a guess from an advertisement in the back offering (among other things) "World's Best Science Fiction of 1971" which implies that this must have been published in 1971 or later. It cannot be too much later, because the price was 75 cents.Great book. Still good, and still with things to say.

[suzemo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So... I found this book to be merely OK. I don't know if I just didn't read closely enough, if I just missed something, or what, but I didn't get it.

I know it's another 'fix-up' novel, published as a series of short stories in the publication which became Analog. These stories have a theme running through them - the decline (or what have you) of the human race and the rise of the canine race. It's told as a series of stories/fables/legends with brief anthropological (or whatever the canine equivalent is) "field notes" between, except for the epilog, which the author explains himself (it was not originally part of the stories).

These stories are old, and not just old, but dated. The science is incredibly dated (evolution by surgery?), and a lot of the story feels dated, too. I know many of the stories were written long ago, so the future is now, and while the future is not just not what Simak wrote, it just wasn't feasible or plausible in any way, shape or form so that it leaves sci fi and hit fantasy for me.

I know it's supposed to be one of Simak's best, but I just didn't care for it. I hope discussion over the book will help me appreciate it more and maybe I can/will update my review.

[traveller1_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Read this when I was a kid. Re-read it many times. Simak could write. Brings back memories and associations.

[bunwat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had read this many years ago, and vaguely remembered liking it quite a bit. On this go round I decided to listen to it as an audio book, because I had a bunch of stuff to do that wasn't compatible with reading. And I had read it before after all. Not sure how successful that was.

I didn't really enjoy the narrator, he kind of overpronounced words which was a little irritating. And put emphasis where I would not have put emphasis, and made people sound more earnest than I would have thought they were being. I'm still trying to unwind whether I didn't like it as well this time because of the format, or because I just didn't like it as well.

One issue for me was that since the stories were originally published individually in magazines, each story had to cover some back story because there was no knowing if the reader had seen the previous one. So I felt like we kept covering the same ground over and over. Apparently when I read I skim through that stuff with less attention, but being read to I couldn't mentally edit as easily.

I do like Simak though. I just think I like him better when he's being funny.

[charlesboyd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While waiting to get CITY from half.com, I read WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN? both by Clifford D. Simak.I much preferred WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN? (Referred to hereafter (pun not intended) in this review as simply: HEAVEN)CITY had a lot fewer scenes than HEAVEN and some of the scenes were like an early one where the scene was from the pov of a character at a town council-type meeting. People telling each other what happened in the past and telling each other what was going on in the present. Not compelling stuff. HEAVEN had lots of scenes, lots of people interacting, people in conflict, people trying to reach a goal. In CITY the reader gets little of this. The best part of CITY was the chapter (chapters?) set on Jupiter. There you get some of what you get in HEAVEN.In HEAVEN, there are people who are in the novel throughout the story, some leaving and coming back, but part of the story nontheless. In HEAVEN you only get a robot all throughout. He's portraited as somewhat human, but that really didn't do it for this reader.CITY certainly has interesting ideas and was worth reading, but the same is true of HEAVEN. I can't see myself reading CITY again, I can see myself reading HEAVEN again. Maybe.

[rboyechko_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While definitely one of the more fantastic science fiction books, I enjoyed it quite a bit and it's still quite fresh in my memory even after years since I've read it. Perhaps the most unbelievable element were the intelligent dogs with modified vocal cords to permit speech.

[grundlecat · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the great science fiction books of all time. Still reads fresh and real in the 21st century. And, of course, the Dogs are awesome.

[ngabriel_52 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful book that explores what it means to be human.

[kewpie_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't get over the bad pseudoscience in this book. Most people -- even in the 1940's -- knew that Lamarckian evolution isn't plausible. Yet the main premise of these stories is that a race of sentient dogs evolved when a man surgically altered a mother dog and her puppies were all born with the same alteration! I couldn't buy that a race of sentient dogs would force all creatures of the world to become vegetarians and the world would become this peaceful utopia, where preditor and prey could communicate and be friends with each other. Usually, I'm not such a curmudgeon about "real" science in science fiction, but for some reason, this collection of stories rubbed me the wrong way. I did like the Ants story. The ants were pleasingly alien and made for the most interesting story in the book.

[sandpiper_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A truly inventive piece of science fiction. The history of man presented as stories known by a race of dogs. The dogs disagree whether these stories are actual history, or just fables. Each story is prefaced by an introduction from the dogs, with current thinking from various dog philosophers; none of them agree on the origin of the stories. The stories themselves paint a truly amazing future for the human race, with many curious twists.Should be considered to be a science fiction classic - and a fabulous cover to the 1954 UK hardback.

[damy_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books that you read and wonder why you never heard of it before. It's the story of man's rise and fall from space travel and boredom, their creation of a genetically modified talking dog, the rise of talking dogs with immortal robots as their hands, the advancement of the ants who no longer hibernate, the suppression of violence among animals, and the discovery of new worlds. It's a beautiful piece of speculative fiction that knits together 8 legendary stories of man that the dogs tell around their campfires. Granted, they do not know whether the legends of man are true or not because, for the dog, there is only now.

[maowangvater · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The world goes to the dogs in eight tales covering twelve thousand years.