’’Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.’’ - Sir Arthur C Clarke. And his book ’’The City and The Stars’’ stands true to this
quote.
The book written somewhere around 1956, takes us to an Earth millions(or should I say billions ) of years in the future where the last piece of humanity survives in the
technological brain-child of man, a mega-city named Diaspar, the only one of its kind. Or is it? We are taken on the fantastic almost spiritual journey of our protagonist,
Alvin to find the ultimate truth(I guess in some ways we all are searching). Alvin’s journey takes him to places which are considered taboo by his people, but he persists.
Does he succeed in his quests? Well, thats what the book is for.
I seem to have this inherent weakness for books dealing with the ’’quest’’ or ’’journey of self-discovery’’ themes and Arthur C Clarke’s books have plenty of that. ’’The City
and The Stars’’ being one of them. It is a beautiful work of hard SF clearly exhibiting the immense imagination of the author. I think ’’science-fiction’’ lacks sufficient depth
to characterize the genre of this book. Maybe ’’super SF’’ would suffice. Just kidding.
The book is sufficient food for thought to where we are going with our technology and our science. Will our technology finally transcend its creators? Will technology
evolve to such an extent that humans, its creators, fail to understand how it works?
Alvin is perpetually haunted by the questions he is seeking answers to. So he embarks on a pivotal journey, both physically and figuratively, which ultimately alters the
very foundation of his society.
There are very few hardcore SF books which finds parallels in philosophy(not that I am a big fan of it). But Clarke’s book has the right blend of philosophy and advanced
science that makes an otherwise difficult subject easy to digest. The book has enough material in it to put those gray cells working and I believe we can extrapolate on it in
numerous ways. But since that is beyond the scope of this review, and also because it might lean towards the blasphemous, I’ll leave it at that.
This is one clean book with a very linear style of plot development. There are no sub plots and ’’sub sub’’ plots to confuse the reader. The reader takes part in Alvin’s
quest and solves the technological ’’puzzles’’ along with our hero. I believe that is what makes it such an interesting read.
For all the die-hard SF fans, this is one book worth having in your collection.