A lifetime science fiction writer, I sometimes enjoy grabbing a book by one of the old masters, especially if it’s one I haven’t read. This summer the book I grabbed was The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. Not one of his more well-known books, it’s still an excellent example of 1940’s science fiction. One of the reasons it’s fun to go back and read some of these is because you can see what the writer got right. In this case, Clarke accurately predicted the internet, social media, and virtual reality.
As to the story itself, there is a young man coming of age in a utopian society, a city shut off from the rest of the world. The young man, Alvin, asks “What lies beyond the walls?” You might think you’ve seen this theme many times, but remember, Clarke was one of the first.
Alvin lives in Diaspar, where individuals live thousands of years, then go into the central memory of the city to be born again thousands of years later. Though sex still exists, no babies are born because they are not necessary. And all a person’s needs are taken care of.
But Alvin is a Unique — he has no previous lives. His tutor believes Uniques are “born” from time to time to introduce an element of randomness into the system to avoid stagnation. Randomness is also introduced by a person known as the Joker, whose job it is to create chaos. Up to now, the chaos he has created has been minor. But when the Unique meets the Joker, Alvin gets what he wants — a way out of the city, and what he finds changes the lives of the people on Earth forever.
I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Clarke, but The City and the Stars had passed me by. It doesn’t reach the heights of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the expanse of the Rama series, but it is definitely worth a read.