The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
"The City and the Stars" is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke, set in a distant future where humanity has retreated into a singular, enclosed city called Diaspar. The protagonist, Alvin, is a unique creation, having been born anew in a society that values artificial immortality and fears the outside world. Unlike his peers, Alvin is curious and unafraid of the barren landscapes beyond Diaspar's walls, prompting him to seek a way to explore the mysterious world outside. His journey leads him to the contrasting city of Lys, where people live natural lives, embrace mortality, and possess telepathic abilities.
In Lys, Alvin learns about its inhabitants and their rich history, including legends of past conflicts against extraterrestrial threats. Together with his new friend Hilvar, they uncover the remnants of ancient civilizations and challenge the long-held beliefs about their world. Their adventures culminate in a quest for a spaceship, as they defy the conventional wisdom that prohibits space travel. The narrative weaves themes of exploration, the pursuit of knowledge, and the duality of human existence, pitting the artificial immortality of Diaspar against the natural life of Lys. Ultimately, the story raises profound questions about humanity’s past and future, as the characters embark on a journey to reclaim their history and aspirations for the stars.
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The City and the Stars
First published: 1956
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—superbeing
Time of work: The far future
Locale: The Earth cities of Diaspar, Lys, and Shalmirane, and the system of the Seven Suns
The Plot
Alvin is a Unique in Diaspar, freshly created rather than revived from the city’s Memory Banks. He is one of only fifteen new creations in a billion-year history. He knows he is not like others because he has never feared the open spaces in the seemingly dead world beyond the city’s towering walls. He finds a vantage point from which to view the endless sands, the night sky, and the fading stars, but no one in Diaspar is willing or able to bear the vistas he yearns to explore. He begins a systematic attempt to escape from the city’s perfect enclosure.
By regressing a computer-generated scale model of the city, Alvin locates the long-buried hub of a forgotten transit system. Because everything of value is maintained by eternity circuits, the rails are still in place and ready to carry a passenger to the only destination left on Earth, the city of Lys. Alvin steps aboard and is whisked away to a land he never knew existed.
Lys is the opposite of Diaspar. There, people have chosen to reproduce and die naturally rather than pursue an artificially maintained immortality. They live in scattered villages, grow their own food, and communicate telepathically. They restrain the encroaching deserts behind Earth’s last mountains and maintain a complex ecosystem within their shelter. Science and philosophy are still vigorous in Lys. According to legend, the scientists of Lys fought off the dreaded Invaders at Shalmirane when humans were driven from the stars at the end of the Dawn Ages.
In Lys, Alvin meets a peer named Hilvar, whose mother governs the land. Together they explore Lys while Alvin decides whether to stay or to return to Diaspar with all memory of his travels erased. Diaspar has forgotten Lys, and Lys is content to be unremembered. The discoveries the young men make at the ruins of Shalmirane change everyone’s plans, because Alvin acquires a spaceship and a robot to pilot it.
No one approves of Alvin and Hilvar’s plan to cross the vast distances of space because common belief is that the Invaders spared Earth on the condition that humans abandon space travel. The explorers, undeterred, head straight for the Seven Suns, a perfect circle of stars at the heart of the galaxy. There they find only shards of the former galactic empire. More important, a living remainder of that ancient glory finds them. Vanamonde is a pure mentality constructed before the adventurous peoples of the empire took off en masse into intergalactic space.
By the time the travelers return, a citizen delegation from Lys is visiting Diaspar. Vanamonde returns with Alvin and Hilvar to Earth, and with his powers to see all places and all times he unveils the lost secrets of the Dawn Ages, when humans traveled the galaxy freely. The scientists of Lys, with their telepathic powers, soon learn that the myth of the Invaders is a myth and no more, and that Shalmirane was constructed to destroy the moon when its orbit began to decay. They also learn about Vanamonde’s malevolent predecessor, The Mad Mind, imprisoned in the Black Sun until it failed. In the distant future, Vanamonde and The Mad Mind will meet in the universe’s greatest struggle. Until then, the citizens of Lys and Diaspar will bend themselves to the task of rebuilding Earth, re-exploring the galaxy, and searching beyond for evidence of those who left on even greater explorations.