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SusannaG

SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady

Just another GR refugee.  Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.

Currently reading

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
Paul Watson
Progress: 6 %
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Ed Yong
Progress: 40 %
Wizard's First Rule
Terry Goodkind
Progress: 49 %
Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant
Tracy Borman
Progress: 14 %
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
Helen Czerski
Progress: 20 %
The Hanover Square Affair
Ashley Gardner
Progress: 10 %
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
Beth Archer Brombert, Massimo Montanari
Progress: 10 %
Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth
Holger Hoock
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Progress: 9 %
Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
John Guy
Progress: 20/512 pages

The City and the Stars

The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke

This Arthur C. Clarke novel, The City and the Stars, dates to the mid-1950s, I believe, and is a strange little book.  (Technically this is a reread, as I'm pretty sure I read this going on 35 years ago, but remembered little of it other than the title.)

 

It is the story of Alvin, who is turning twenty, and discovers that unlike the rest of humanity, he is not a reincarnation, but a Unique.  There have been 14 other Uniques, who have all disappeared from the sole city (Diaspar) that is the known universe.

 

Then things get stranger, by turns filled with action, philosophy, exploration, and space opera.

 

There were two female characters of any importance - the spurned girlfriend, and a female political leader.  (Alvin's mother is also mentioned in passing, as half of his "parents," but never seen or heard from.)  For the 1950s, I guess that's something?

 

Amusingly, the most popular form of entertainment in Diaspar is the "Sagas," which look to be an ancestor of D&D and the holodeck on Star Trek.

 

It's not nearly as good as Clarke can be.  From this period, I'd recommend Childhood's End instead.  But if you stumble across a copy, it is interesting.