psc@lzwi.UUCP (Paul S. R. Chisholm) (10/05/85)
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THE YEARS OF THE CITY: novel, Frederik Pohl, 1984. Winner of the John
W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year.
Recently, it seems I've talking about the good points of a book,
then vaguely explaining why I don't like it. This time, I'm hard put to
find particular elements that are outstanding, but I like the results.
THE YEARS OF THE CITY looks like a collection of short stories.
It's not. It's a novel that covers several hundred years, by
considering five crises. (I'm not sure if they would stand alone as
five individual stories.)
The city of the title is "the City", New York. The first episode,
"When New York Hit the Fan", tells of a city very much like the one we
know and love (well, some of us), on a day where the Mayor is less in
charge than Murphy. The key to this story is that New York - and by
imitation, the rest of the world - decides to really *solve* its
problems. The next two parts, "The Greening of Bed-Stuy" and "The
Blister", concern the forces of change and their fight with the powers
that be, notably, organized crime. The final two sections, "Second-hand
Sky" and "Gwenanda and the Supremes", take place in a New York that's a
utopia, compared to our own. The problems are trivial, compared to the
earlier stories, because New York has learned to deal with some of its
worst weaknesses.
So, how does it measure up on my usual rulers? The characters
don't leap out of the book at you, but they're fleshed out nicely, no
more or no less than necessary for the stories to be about THEM. The
prose is Pohl at his best: GATEWAY, say, or THE SPACE MERCHANTS. But
what I really enjoyed about the book is the way Pohl kept it all
together. Most of the changes the city (and society) goes through are
based on ideas from the twentieth century (well, heck, Pohl had heard of
them). One year's dream is the next year's project, and the following
year's history. At the beginning, the new political and technological
ideas are in conflict with each other, as well as the STATUS QUO; they
blend together as time goes on. And by various tricks, Pohl manages to
keep a minimal continuity of characters across the centuries.
Some books are good reads. THE YEARS OF THE CITY is a GOOD read.
(And it's now out in paperback, or soon will be.)
--
-Paul S. R. Chisholm The above opinions are my own,
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