Book Description: The pleasant little American city of Middletown is the first target in an atomic war - but instead of blowing Middletown to smithereens, the super-hydrogen bomb blows it right off the map - to somewhere else! First there is the new thin coldness of the air, the blazing corona and dullness of the sun, the visibility of the stars in high daylight. Then comes the inhabitant's terrifying discovery that Middletown is a twentieth-century oasis of paved streets and houses in a desolate brown world without trees, without water, apparently without life, in the unimaginably far-distant future.
Stands up very well after all these years! I read this book in my early teens in the 60's, and then lost it, and have hunted for it ever since. At last, a friend found it and sent it to me, and last night, I read it again and held my breath to see if it was as good a story as my younger self thought it was.
To my surprise, it really was. It's obviously very dated, and there's some sexism in there that made me grit my teeth. (Especially the bit about the main [male] character's frustration with the inability of the female mind to grasp scientific concepts! Grrr.) And then there was the people's unquestioning faith in science to solve every problem, so that all the scientists had to do when people were panicking was assure them that the science was reliable, so therefore everything would turn out okay. That made me smile a little fondly, at the good ol' days.
But apart from some of those things, the story really does stand up well. It was an excellent examination of what might have happened to people whose entire town had been thrust far into the future of an almost-expired earth. The story poignantly conveyed the loneliness of the arid world, and the deep loss felt by the people, yet it also portrayed their resilience and the power of the human spirit to adapt and bring good out of something terrible.
It definitely resembled the first Star Trek series, in the way it had such faith in that resilience and human spirit. In much the same way as many Trek episodes, you got that scene where the undaunted human being stood alone in front of a galatic council, reminding the star-flung descendants of his world that they owed all their high principles and peaceful lifestyle to the struggles -- and yes, wars -- that the people of his time went through. Very rah-rah humanity.
And yet, the book brought great sensitivity to the question of what it means to have roots. What would it really mean to a community to be wrenched out of the world they knew, with all its interconnections and its known history? And then to be told that what was left of their world was so uninhabitable that they'd even have to leave it, and move to another world altogether? Where is the breaking point, and how much of your own genealogy/history can you leave behind without becoming another type of being altogether?
What struck me as I considered this question was that it would have been harder in the fifties, when the book was written, than it is now. To this author and his characters, the thought of going to the stars induced panic, because the earth was what grounded people, and once they'd lost that foundation, they'd be totally lost. Yet now, after a generation or two of science fiction books and movies and television series, the idea of being a galactic citizen rather than solely an earthly citizen isn't the fearsome thing it used to be.
Or rather, it's not as fearsome for a large number of people. I suspect there are still a lot of people who would feel horror at the thought of stepping off the earth and having to broaden their world so much. It may just be psychologically impossible for some people. And that's one of the main points of the book.
So aside from a few of the things that date it, I'd say it's still an immensely relevant story.
4 reviews at CITY AT WORLD'S END (Del Rey Books (Paperback)) 4 reviews of this book are found at the entry: CITY AT WORLD'S END (Del Rey Books (Paperback))
Photo of book at the entry: The City at World's End: The SF Classic [DOWNLOAD: MICROSOFT READER] with Editorial review and one Customer review
4 reviews at CITY AT WORLD'S END (Del Rey Books (Paperback)) This book is available on another web page on amazon:
4 reviews of this book are found at the entry: CITY AT WORLD'S END (Del Rey Books (Paperback))
4 reviews at CITY AT WORLD'S END (Del Rey Books (Paperback)) 4 reviews of this book are found at the entry: CITY AT WORLD'S END (Del Rey Books (Paperback))
Photo of book This book is available on another web page on amazon:
Photo of book at the entry: The City at World's End: The SF Classic [DOWNLOAD: MICROSOFT READER] with Editorial review and one Customer review
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