‘In this universe the night was falling; the shadows
were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But
elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and
along the path he once followed, Man would one day go again’.
CLARKE, A. C. - The city and the stars
I had heard about Arthur C. Clark for its short story
called “The Sentinel” which was the origin for the Stanley Kubrick's movie
“2001: A Space Odyssey”, but I had never read anything of him before. Then,
this book came across and I could not resist. I managed to finish it just in
few days, as it wasn’t possible to stop reading it.
To be honest, I didn’t realize at first that the book
was from this author who made a huge contribution for the science fiction
literature genre and was knighted by the British as well as awarded by Sri
Lanka with the highest civil honour for his work.
‘The city and the stars’ is about the human race and
the projection of its nature in the future. Breaking up with the limit of a
little time frame of some decades, centuries or just millenniums – as all
traditional literature does, the author lead us to some millions of years
ahead, when human beings eventually forgot about dominating all the universe
and kept all their might to dominate their own destiny by keeping it apart from
the rest.
The book tells us the story of Diaspar, what is
believed to be the last human city, where diseases, food shortage and even
death were just sorted out and the sun always shines through its artificial
sky. Where people never get older neither are born or die nor even need to
sleep. Where machines take control of almost everything which could ever bother
men and society lives just for their own pleasure.
In Diaspar, if people get tired of their life
experience, which could last for a thousand years if one likes it, they just
can choose go through the hall of creation and refresh that again, being
reintegrated into society randomly many years afterwards and even get their
memory back as they wish, erasing the bad experience that they might not need
nor want to keep in mind.
Diaspar is a living, eternal and perfect city with the
most complex social structure ever created, but capable of delivering the
perfect life for its inhabitants who wish no more of it. In order to keep it
functional and safe from collapsing, the central computer takes care of the
city’s patterns to a micro-level, including the city’s culture and individual
configuration, so everybody shares compatible visions which maintains the
status quo of the city. No one would ever wonder what would there be across its
boarders, neither even thinking about the possibility of getting out of the
city. No one, it seems, but Alvin.
Alvin, the main character of the book, is different
from its companions. He seems to have this uncontrollable wish for meeting the
unknown. This feeling is shared with no one else within the city and he is
perceived as an alien when his ideas come forth. Alvin is not able to
understand why people’s thoughts cannot go further the limits of the city and
the time it was created. He set himself up to a search for answers which
brought him to understand his own purpose and the human condition itself.
It is possible recognise many philosophical issues as
Alvin steps on his path for knowledge and the author does not miss the
opportunity to criticise many of our current social values using an almost
naïve-sounded narrative. Nevertheless, it seems that, just as J. R. R. Tolkien
once put it on his forewords to his second edition of ‘The Lord of the Rings’,
Arthur C. Clark makes use of an ‘applicable’ story instead of allegories.
Tolkien said that he would prefer an applicable narrative than allegories
simply because if the first one belongs to the reader and its capacity to cross
situations and possibilities to create new interpretations, the second one
belongs to the author, hiding the real meaning from those who cannot grasp what
the author really means.
While reading the book it is hard to believe that it
was published in 1956. Some of the technological terms and ideas look very
up-to-date which gives more credit to the author’s imagination.
Imagination is for sure one of the elements that drags
me into science fiction. These stories exercise the free thought and create
whole scenarios, worlds, races, happenings that go much further the usual. Some
times than can be really accurate, just over exaggerating trends that can be
seen today. Other stories, though, prefer give the most inaccurate
explanations, justifying that even what we think about reality today, is
actually a very small and limited grasp of what will be found in the future
about what the universe laws really are.
Nevertheless, it is not just imagination itself that
stick me on Science fiction, but this melancholy of understanding that human
beings are always incomplete for having a huge capacity of developing and
learning without embracing the real reason for their existence. Some recurrent
feelings many times lay down on science fiction which I believe go on the
direction of what the famous quote from writer Oscar Wilde says ‘There are only
two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is
getting it’.
The Arthur C. Clarke's book ‘The city and the stars’
is a classic for science fiction fans as well as other genres readers. I assess
rather a book is worthy reading by the feeling it gives me when I finish it. If
the book did things such as making me think, travel my mind, or understand
things, then it was worthy reading it.
As my last words, this book reminds me of a short
story called '2 B R 0 2 B' which I read some years ago by Kurt Vonnegut. It is
a very short which tell us about a future were the world is just fine: no wars,
famine, or death. You can find the link below .
