The City and the Stars
Clarke's masterful evocation of the far future of humanity, considered his finest novel Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar. For millennia its protective dome shut out the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rule the stars. But then, as legend has it, the invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique, to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.
Stats for nerds
22recommend
49mentions
38people
2009–2026years
57% recommend39% neutral4% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke is one of my favourites and have only ever met one other person who has read it. Just reread it recently and it's even better and more relevant than I remembered.
The 1950s was a particularly good time for sci fi I think.
- The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke.
I also grew up with three full-sized bookcases mostly filled with all sorts of sci-fi and adventures by my granddad. But when I think of a book, this one always comes to mind first.
Unlike other sci-fi I’ve read before it, this novel had this out-of-usual-limits existential mystery and background dread, mostly unresolvable by its very nature and built into the plot almost immediately so that you have to re-realize it, as if you were at a therapist. I’ve read books with galactic wars, dark corners of space, empires, horrors, strange alien encounters, but only this one touched me so deep.
From non-fiction, it was “from basic to assembly” (noname, can’t find it) and few years later some 80386 system programming manual. I remember another book on assembly in between, it was dark blue.
- "A Canticle For Leibowitz"
"The Sparrow"
"Lord of Light"
"The Immortal"
"Hyperion"
"The Last Question"
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
"Stranger in a Strange Land"
"The City and the Stars"
"Childhood's End"
"Anathem"
"Eifelheim"
"A Case of Conscience"
"VALIS" trilogy
"The Book of Strange New Things"
"Behold The Man"
"The God Engines"
"Book of the New Sun"
"The Parable of the Sower"
"The Dosadi Experiment"
"Grass"
"Project Pope"
"Calculating God"
"Factoring Humanity"
"Jesus on Mars"
"Surface Detail
- Not quite the same but you have reminded me of Clarke's The City and The Stars.
- If you want a nerdy sci-fi take on it, then "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke is the one to read.
- Not really contemporary but the non-cerebral book that got me reading for reading sake without a specific purpose or objective was a second hand paperback 'The City and the Stars' by Arthur C. Clarke.
I remember only reading for a few minutes a day on the train, but it pretty much felt like watching a TV mini series where each train ride was a short episode.
I think that book in particular was the turning point for me, from only reading technical books and having no interests outside non-fiction, to realising I was just looking through fiction books that I didn't actually enjoy.
