Continuing my Summer Reading Extravaganza ‘08, I recently finished The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke.

The City and the Stars is the story of humanity’s last city, and the one man who wants nothing more than to leave it. The city, Diaspar, is a huge, enclosed environment, where the last vestiges of mankind has retreated after leaving the stars. Maintained by incredible and infallible machines, Diaspar has stood for a billion years, its immortal inhabitants living life after life, with periods of rest in the great memory banks of the city in between. Outside of the great barriers Earth has died, become nothing but a giant desert. Safe in the city, humans have lost their natural curiosity and cannot bear the thought of leaving the safety of their city. So it goes on, in stasis, until a man who has never lived before is suddenly brought forth by the computers, without the mental barriers, who goes about attempting to leave.

This story was a good enough read, but it never truly gripped me. Mankind has apparently edited out all the traits it found undesirable, so the characters all seem to be paragons of patience and understanding. While this is all well and good from the perspective of future society, it makes it harder to identify properly with most of them. The only flaw they seem to have retained is fear.

Clarke is masterful when it comes to describing the society of the future, however. The insights into the structure and machinery behind the city is inspired. I did at one point think that the insistence on the infallibility of the computers and machines was a bit too much, especially as the expectation was never reversed by a breakdown, but that’s nitpicking. The glimpses into the great forgotten past are the most interesting of all. As Alvin, the main character, finally gets out and about and stumbles over the remains of galactic civilisation, we are at Clarke’s greatest strength; the incomprehensible artefacts that clearly have much story behind them, but whose true purpose are never revealed to us. No one but Clarke can write mystery like this so masterfully, and I could easily get lost in the speculation.

Of course, this is also the most frustrating part of Clarke’s writing, knowing that the answers I so want will not come.

Overall, it is a good book, especially if your tastes lean towards the “science” part of science fiction. Clarke is a artisan at world building, but the characters leave something to be wanted.